"Beauty and the Beast, 16-18" by Carmel D. Shachar

Suzie was very quiet the next morning. Almost too quiet. Almost because even if Suzie’s hush was for the wrong reasons, it still was better than her talk.

"Beautina can we talk?" Beauty stood up from the floor. Her alarm was ringing. After the age of five she had lost all nicknames. She had been too prickly for one.

"Oh yeah Su. Whatcha wanna talk about." They sat on the bed and had the uncomfortable feeling that had they been good human beings they could have looked each other in the eye.

"Shaping up to be a lovely day."

"Oh yes."

A pause lasting for a while and seeming for an eternity.

"I hope it’ll be warm."

"Me too."

A pause.

"Gee whilkers, isn’t this a nice room. You don’t get rooms with such… um room like qualities nowadays."

"Oh yeah Su."

A pause.

"So, do you like living here?" Beauty carefully broached the subject they both wanted to avoid yet desired to talk about.

"It’s okay. I mean, when I don’t have to work for it."

"Work for it? Hon, that’s Cinderella you’re thinking about."

"No. No. I always feel like I need to be seductive and glamorous in order for the patriarchal society of this gender discriminatory day to reward me for conforming to the ideal feminine stereotype."

"Ah, I see. Well if its any comfort, some days I hate the fact that in order to escape the gender hierarchy and to become a non-traditionalist empowered female I must forego the pleasures society has branded feminine and domesticated and substitute cynical and obnoxious commentaries on the foolishness of society in order to establish myself as a outsider."

"Ah, the same old same old."

"Yep."

A pause.

"You know Su… normally I wouldn’t share this with you, but since we’re having a bonding moment and all…"

"Yeah?"

"I dunno about your room, but my room has a magic mirror."

"Oh cool beans." Su wrinkled her forehead. "Does it tell the future."

"I don’t think so. It just shows you stuff."

"Wow. Can I try it?"

It took a while to get the mirror to work for Su. At first the mirror simply shook from side to side and showed a Suzie getting out of Beauty’s room. Finally Beauty took charge.

"I believe there’s an elf in the mirror. Show me him."

The face of a slovenly elf appeared. "You gots problems lady?"

"Yes, my sister doesn’t seem to be able to use the mirror."

"Oh that ain’t no problem. She don’t work the mirror. Don’t have the talent."

"Oh. But I want her too."

"YOU can do it fer her. Now, I be going."

"Fine."

Beauty took a deep breath. She closed her eyes.

"Now Su, tell me what you want to know."

"What is a man I really love doing right now?"

Beauty opened her eyes. Phillip was lying idly in his chair, as he normally did. A surge of hate washed over her. Suzie sighed gently. Then she noticed Beauty’s face.

"Okay that’s enough. Thank you so much… I miss our brother… I mean our family." She ran out of the room.

Chapter Seventeen

Beauty walked down to breakfast happily, whistling a tune that the narrator doesn’t quite know, which was all right because Beauty wasn’t too sure on it either. And yes, it did sound horrible. Beauty wasn’t very musical.

As she opened the once grand, now familiar doors to the dinning hall, she heard shouting. It clashed horribly with her whistled. By sheer dint of its horribleness it became almost musical.

She came across Su in a tantrum. The Beast was also throwing a tantrum. It was some twisted contest.

"I will too!"

"You will not!"

"I hate you!"

"I feed you! I have the right to decide for you!"

"I want a vacation!"

"You can’t have one!"

"Ahem." Beauty said right before Suzie was going to through a pleasantly valuable vase to the floor. It did no good. Suzie and the Beast froze, and Suzie dropped the vase. Beauty winced.

"Oh heh, hi Beauty."

"Hey sis."

"What is going on here?" You both ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Throwing tantrum like little children." She said haughtily. "Or cubs." She added as an afterthought.

"Oh, well, I never."

"He means to say…"

"Well, there’s nothing that you two can’t say minus the screaming, plus a little reason. What is the problem?" Beauty was amazed that these two people, who usually argued the longest with her, followed her orders. She sat at the head of the table and began playing with a knife in order to play up the drama. Given half the chance, Beauty was as dramatic as Suzie was.

"Well, umm, I mean, haven’t I been very kind to you and your sister?" The Beast started in sad quiet terms. Beauty consciously had to resist falling under the spell of his voice.

"What he means to say is that he’s agreed to let me go visit our family. Since," She gave a nasty glare to the Beast. "He’s such a good kind soul."

"I never! I can not! I will not let you!"

"You better buddy, or else!"

"Or else what? I’ll treat you like we’ve been married for sixteen years… see how you like it when I don’t do my hair prettily."

"It’s not that pretty."

"That’s not the point."

"It doesn’t matter. It’s still not that pretty."

A good moderator would have stopped them ages ago, but Beauty was a human moderator, and liked to see them bicker. It seemed right for them to bicker; after all she was tired of doing all the bickering by herself.

Still, it was getting out of hand.

"Beast, please leave. I must discussing things with my sister."

"What things?" The Beast asked warily, as guys are wont to do when girls talk about private chattings.

Beauty smiled horribly. "Girl things."

A slim figure ran out of the shadows of the castle in to the light of the garden. Then she was again in shadows. Shadows from the real world.

Beauty was sitting at the desk in the front hall. It was imposing, which also meant drafty in those days. She shivered. Damn cold, she thought, couldn’t it ever be warm in this place.

She then shivered again when she heard the roar. Calculating, she though, well, that sound like its coming from our rooms. So if he’s really mad, it ought to take, oh, say, five or six second to get down here. That is if he takes it slowly, and isn’t too mad. No guarantees on that.

It took him three seconds and eight milliseconds exactly.

"How dare she!" His voice was ruff and deep. It almost sounded like the devil’s. Beauty was taken aback.

"Well…" She said quietly, almost in a whisper. No sense in being heard if you could avoid it.

"I give her my life. I give her my riches. I give her my castle. And how does she repay me! With pain!"

"Well…"

The Beast bounced up to a mirror. "Show me where the girl is!" He roared. Beauty made a mental note that all mirrors in the castle were evidently magical.

This mirror did not have an attitude like the one in her room. Which was not good, since she needed to buy time. The elf would have. This one did not.

It showed Suzie making good progress to the village.

To Beauty’s horror, the Beast muttered. "Fine, I can over take her in twenty minutes tops." He started running out the front doors. Beauty gulped and then put her life on the line. She grabbed him.

He froze, and turned to her, his hackles raised. "You! How dare you!" He raised a hand to strike a blow that could knock her across the hall, and nearly as bad, kill her.

Beauty looked up at him. "She’s going to come back. She promised. And I have to do this. I promised."

"You! You… would put your life on the line for her?" His voice subsided.

"Well, yes. I think I have to."

"Oh." He slumped over. He muttered to himself "Well, one down, one to go."