In all my haste I had forgotten to bring an ax, but I think I couldn’t use it even if I had brought it. There was always my Swiss army knife in my back pocket, but that, too, seemed more a burden than anything else. It would be a cold-blooded act to these rosebushes—like lopping off the arm of a child that is merely reaching for the cookie jar on the shelf above her head. I push back the branches—delicately as I can—and gasp as the thorns retract where I touch the stem, as if they’ve understood.
The white glow is coming from a glass cage on the stone table I finally find. It stands tall to the height of my waist, and the curved dome glitters in the moonlight.
Within the glass is a red, red rose.
The rose is dying. Its redness speaks not of life and passion, but of death and blood. Its leaves are green but wrinkled, and its thorns sag like the horns of aged unicorns. There’s a sudden sharp pain between my ribs, as if a horn has indeed been thrust within me, and I drop to my knees, reaching out and clutching the glass pillar for support. But the pain continues, growing until there is a roaring in my head.
Then I realize the roaring is not in my head, but in my ears, and I look up to behold the shadow of the beast, blocking the moon with his shaggy silhouette. He doesn’t sound happy.
He must know that I am not his chosen one. I am not his sacrifice, his bride, his Beauty. I do not want a beast. Granted, he’s only brutish in his beast form (But is he? People change when in love, and do we ever read if our handsome beast-prince returns to his former ways?), but I am content with my Eric. Eric would beat this beast’s ass up. Not as enchanting as a beast or romantic as a garden; he’s a down-to-earth marine. So I’ve already found love. I’m taken.
So what am I doing in this garden, weeping, staring at this beast and this rose?
“I haven’t touched it,” I stammer. “I was only curious…” Beauty’s line. Quick, think up something else. “I mean no harm.”
A long yellow glare, and he turns on his big lashing tail and vanishes into the rosebushes with a final glance over his great black shoulder. The beast understands who I am. And I understand what he wants. I already know—feel—that he won’t be physically coming out on the other side of the neighbor’s moonlit garden. I don’t feel alarmed, somehow.
He has business to attend to, somewhere I cannot follow. He has a belle to find to break his spell. And when he finds her, or her father, he will return, and release me from my vigil—the vigil I appointed to myself when I touched the glass. I am stuck guarding this rose in his absence. Of course they wouldn’t add someone as exciting as that in a fairy tale.
I sit down before dying rose and draw my legs to my chest, resting my chin on my knees. “Don’t die,” I whisper to the flower. “Live, so we both live.”
Another petal drops, but the rose stirs, and I hope it listens.
"Angreek87"
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