Mrs. Beast (15 page)

    
"No need to consult your mirror, Princess."
 
The old man unfolds his webbed fingers.
 
A golden key gleams in his palm.
 
"Twenty paces forward, at the base of the giant black oak, is a door.
 
This key fits the lock, and inside the tree is a passage to Glass Mountain."

    
Beauty blinks. "How do you know I'm searching for Glass Mountain?"

    
"Take the key, Beauty, and fulfill your destiny."

    
Beauty is about to touch the key when she's struck from behind, as if a heavy wooden swing has caught the back of her knees, and she's swung fifty feet into the air.
 
Watching the ground diminish below her, Beauty sees a woman jump from the forest, grab the old man's beard and kiss him passionately as her other hand slips a jeweled dagger from her belt.

    
Beauty turns away and meets the face of the giant who holds her in his mammoth hand.
 
She gapes at his bald bumpy head and ridged forehead that slants to such an extreme degree it nearly obscures his red eyes fixed on the road.
 
He pulls his lips back in a grimace, displaying two rows of giant yellow grinders.
 
Beauty is spiritually preparing to meet her maker when a sharp whistle sounds from below.
 
The giant plucks the woman from the road and deposits her next to Beauty in his cupped hand.

    
"Are you all right?" the woman asks.
 
Beauty doesn't answer; her eyes remain riveted to the giant's gruesome visage.

    
"Don't be afraid.
 
He's my friend, Uele.
 
My name's Rapunzel, what's yours?"

    
Beauty's finally breaks her stare and instantly, her fear vanishes.
 
Rapunzel is an angel in a gossamer white gown; her complexion radiates a pink aura of health, her body is a fluid, graceful connection of curves, and her green, almond-shaped eyes are iridescent as a peacock's breast.
 
Her hair cascades in waves along her body, flowing like a sun-struck river down to her ankles.

    
"That old lurker down there is a wizard and if you'd have taken the key, well, there are many unsavory possibilities."

    
"Forgive me; thank you," Beauty stammers and extends her hand. "My name is Beauty."

    
"You're not from Stromberg, are you?
 
It's been a long while since a woman offered her hand to me."
 
Rapunzel shakes Beauty's hand, then snaps her head toward the gathering din of horns and tambourines, howls and shrieks. "Oh-oh, we'd better get into the city.
 
The evil ones are converging on Glass Mountain."

    
"That's where I need to go!"
 
Beauty exclaims.
 
" I'm . . ."

    
"Not tonight," Rapunzel interrupts.
 
"Every witch, wizard, gremlin, beastie, and hobgoblin in Grimm Land is going there to celebrate Walpurgisnacht.
 
At midnight, the May Fires will blaze and there will be enough drinking, dancing, and debauchery to raise the dead. Good thing Uele spotted you.
 
I was picking rampion.
 
Want some?"

    
Beauty nods and Rapunzel tears two leaves from the bunch in her shoulder sack.
 
"I can't get enough of this wonderful green stuff," she chews noisily.
 
"It's none of my business what you were doing on that road, but I suggest you come home with me tonight."
 
She whistles through her teeth and shouts, "To the main gate, handsome, and quickly!"

    
With a dozen strides of his titanic legs, Uele clears the forest and steps onto a rolling heath strewn with boulders. He kneels and places his palm flat in the heather.
 
Beauty peers over the rim of Uele's forefinger to find she's still seven feet from the ground.

    
With an arcing motion of her right arm, Rapunzel gathers her hair and wraps the ends around Uele's thumb.
 
The giant crooks his thumb, and Rapunzel nimbly springs from the fleshy platform.
 
Her tresses float like a golden parachute then stretch taut as her feet touch the ground.
 
"Use your scarf, Beauty.
 
Loop it over my hair and slide down."

    
Rapunzel catches Beauty with open arms.
 
The giant spreads his fingers, forcing the hair to slide sensuously through them.
 
He utters a sound like the whine of a giant puppy.
 
Rapunzel yells, "How many are caught on your thumbnail?"

    
The giant holds up two fingers.
 
Rapunzel traces the hairs to the top of her head and plucks them out at the root.
 
Uele reels them in and lopes into the forest.

    
"What does he do with them?" Beauty asks.

    
"Your guess is as good as mine," Rapunzel replies.
 
"Human hair is strong though, strong enough to hold fat old Mother Gothel."

    
Goaded with curiosity, Beauty is about to inquire further when Rapunzel hooks her arm through Beauty's and pulls her along at a merry pace toward the walled city of Stromberg.

*
     
*
     
*

    
"Mondo-bizzaro!
 
Beauty's been saved by another beauty; a Grimm Land first.
 
Could start a trend."
 
Elora's in the pink and turquoise Deco ballroom checking on Beauty's progress in her crystal ball before making final preparations for tonight's party.

    
Croesus flops to the floor and snuffles with doggy laughter.

    
"Cut it out, you skeptic.
 
I shouldn't be surprised.
 
Beauty's not a Grimm home girl, and Rapunzel's a compulsive rescuer. She rescued her sorry-assed father simply by being born.
 
Remember that summer night in Gothel's garden?"

    
Croesus whines and points a paw at the crystal ball.

    
"Bricklebrit.
 
I swear you have the memory of a dracaena." Elora holds out her hand and catches the three gold coins that spill from the dog’s mouth.
 
She checks her watch, muttering, "I've conjured up twenty wood piles outside the palace, there's a hundred bratwurtz in the fridge, I filled fifty kegs with Walpurgis nectar . . . dancing."

    
Elora waves her arms, all the furniture in the ballroom disappears, and a Wurlitzer 1015 jukebox appears at the end of the hall.
 
"I'll give you twenty minutes of Rapunzel's story, hound, then I need a pre-party sauna."

    
Elora snaps her fingers and the ball reveals a short, thin man, his shirt stuffed with rampion, scaling a garden wall.
 
She freeze-frames the shot.

    
"That's Rapunzel's old man, Henry, twenty five years ago. His pregnant wife Louise could see over Gothel's wall into the rampion bed, and she just had to have some. Now, you know the peasants in that village were scared cack-less of Gothel and wouldn't go near that wall to save their miserable lives.
 
But Louise said,
Henry, haul your clinkers over that wall because if I don't have some rampion, I'll up and die
.
 
Henry thought the sun shone out of Louise's butt, so in the twilight hour, he crept over the wall and snatched a bunch of the weed.
 
That's where we are now."

    
Elora snaps her fingers and Henry reaches the top of the wall to meet the formidable figure of Mother Gothel.
 
Gothel's voice squawks from the crystal ball:
How dare you climb into my garden like a thief and steal my rampion!
 
 
Henry pleads: Be
merciful rather than just. I have only done it through necessity, for my wife saw your rampion from her window and became possessed with so great a longing, she would die if she could not have had some to eat.

    
Elora clicks her tongue in disgust. "That, my furry friend, is another example of a beauty's father stealing and shifting the blame to a woman, like Marcel stealing the Beast's rose and giving up Beauty . . . here we go . . . listen to Gothel."

    
If it's as you say, you may have as much rampion as you like, on one condition. The child that you bring into the world must be given to me.
 
I will care for it like a mother.

    
"Bingo!" Elora hoots, and the scene changes to show Henry putting the newborn Rapunzel into Gothel's ample arms.
 
“It’s a Grimm thing for witches and elves to connive the acquisition of infant humans, whom they enslave or transform into four-legged creatures, inanimate objects, or dinner. Gothel has never been rash; she calculates and schemes. However, while cogitating the possibilities baby Rapunzel could present, she had to keep the baby alive. Gothel laid her next to the spotted kid and stuck a nanny udder in her mouth. Rapunzel would drink her fill then wail like a five alarm fire, and the only thing to stop her was Gothel’s embrace.” Croesus covers his eyes with his paws.

    
"Hey, I know Gothel's cold as an iguana and spiteful as a baboon, but every creature responds to touch."
 
Croesus rolls to his back and Elora scratches his tummy.

    
"Rapunzel was one of the most beautiful children ever born, and Gothel decided the best way to use the baby was to keep that beauty to herself.
 
She built the wall around her house higher and longer.
 
Nobody could see in, and Rapunzel was never seen outside the wall.
 
By the time she turned twelve, Rapunzel had transformed from pretty baby to blonde bombshell.
 
Gothel got paranoid.
 
She whisked her off to the deepest, darkest acre of Grimm Forest and shut her in a tower."

    
Elora waves her hand over the ball and a tower appears.
 
Rising forty feet high, its green stone surface is polished smooth as jade with nary a crack for a foot or vine to take hold.
 
Rapunzel leans out the single small window, unfurling her hair.
 
Gothel stands on the ground shrieking,
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!

    
"For two years the old witch kept Rapunzel prisoner, sometimes visiting once a week, sometimes waiting an entire month so Rapunzel would be lunatic lonely when Gothel finally waddled her fat fanny into the woods. The Grimm psychologist says this is a typical adolescent problem: jealous mother preventing her daughter from gaining independence.
 
He claims that while it was selfish of Gothel to keep Rapunzel to herself, it doesn't seem a serious crime in the eyes of children who want desperately to be held onto by parents.
 
Please, give me one break!
 
On the outside, Child Protection would've been on her like bald on Kojak."

    
Elora snaps up two lollipops, black cherry for her, liver flavor for Croesus.

    
"Rapunzel's only diversion, besides bird watching, was her collection of dolls.
 
Once in a while, Gothel brought a doll to win Rapunzel's affection and keep her childish. I flew up there one day as a monarch butterfly."
 
Elora grimaces and slides the sucker into the side of her mouth.

    
"Let me tell you, it was classic X-Files.
 
I could smell her from fifty feet away--the girl was ripe!
 
Two years without a bath, big ole rope of greasy hair coiled on the floor, doll heads poking out of the plaits like baby birds.
 
It was Rapunzel's singing to those dolls that drew Prince Johann to the tower.
 
I wonder how long she would have stayed up there if he hadn't come along?
 
Would she have stood up to Gothel and punched her lights out, or jumped?"