Grim

BEAUTY AND THE CHAD by Sarah Rees Brennan

The briars twined and climbed over the wooden frames to form an arch, giving the garden the feeling of a cathedral, hushed and golden and hung with roses. The thief walked so softly that the blades of grass barely bent underneath his feet.

Against the evening sky hung a single perfect rose. Its petals glowed, red so rich it seemed luxurious, conjuring up images of costly things like velvet and silk and blood.

The thief reached out to seize the rose, but something else seized him first.

The creature moved faster and quieter than a mortal man could. Its vast shadow fell on the thief only an instant before the creature itself did: he grasped the man’s shirt in his claws and lifted him toward the sky as easily as if he was a plucked flower.

The thief gasped, horror choking off his voice so it was little more than a rattle in his throat. Outlined against the evening sky was a vast horned and furred creature, terrible scimitar-shaped fangs glinting in the dying light.

“Dude,” said the Beast. “Who steals roses? That is so not cool.”

“And then what happened, Father?” asked Gabrielle, the oldest sister. “However did you escape?”

Beauty, the youngest sister, sat crouched by the hearth. She had been trying to be so good and sensible, asking for a flower, because she hadn’t wanted her father to spend money they didn’t have.

It had been wonderful since Father had lost all his money. Beauty, for all that people liked how she looked—hence the nickname—had been terrible at being a court lady. She could not dance or flirt with her fan or make idle conversation the way a lady should. It was sad for Gabrielle and Suzanne, who had been perfect ladies, but the small house that needed fixing up and the single elderly white horse that needed tending suited Beauty much better. Time had eased the memories of tripping over her elaborate skirts, saying something shocking and knowing her behavior injured her sisters’ chances of good marriages.

She had forgotten how it felt, to have made a terrible error which would hurt her family. She remembered now.

Her father had tried to steal a rose for her, and a beast had attacked him.

“I’m surprised he didn’t eat you,” said Suzanne, who was of a morbid turn of mind.

“Of course I could tell that was what was on its mind,” Father said sagely. “One look and it could not disguise. It had hungry eyes.”

The three girls shuddered.

“I pleaded with the Beast, told it that I had a family, and the Beast offered me a bargain. He said that he needed a boy to serve him and care for his infernal steeds. I promised to send him my son.”

Beauty looked up from the hands twisted together in her lap. “What?”

Gabrielle and Suzanne were already smiling, the same smile they had worn at court, as if they understood something Beauty did not.

Her father was smiling, too. “Don’t you see?” he said. “I tricked the Beast. I promised him a son, and I have no son to give! The oath is void. Any dark enchantments he tries to cast will fail.”

Gabrielle clapped him on the back. “Oh, well done, Father.”

“But,” Beauty said. “But what about honor?”

Honor had been a watchword at court: to keep his honor a man could never cheat at cards, refuse a duel, break a betrothal or bear another gentleman’s insult. Above all else, he had to keep his word.

As a child Beauty had believed she had to keep to all those rules, as well, and had been scared to play card games with her sisters in case she found herself cheating by accident. Then she grew up and learned all a lady’s honor seemed to demand was that she not commit indiscretions with a gentleman. It was probably childish of her, but Beauty had still never told a lie in her life.

Suzanne laughed. “Do you think you’re a knight in one of those moldering old books you read?”

Her father snapped, “One does not have to deal with a beast with honor.”

“It’s your honor, not the Beast’s,” Beauty said. “Shouldn’t you have it all the time?”

Her father’s face shaded from displeased to actually angry, and Beauty stood up from the hearth, shutting her book and tilting her chin up defiantly.

Then her father laughed and turned back to his meal. “Oh, little Belle, my Beauty, why am I even trying to explain to you how matters of honor work? You’re a woman. You know nothing of honor.”

The dismissal stung more than his anger.

The next day, Beauty rose from her warm bed in the cold dawn and did not do her chores. Instead she cut off her golden hair and put on the old footman’s uniform that Gabrielle had been planning to pick apart and use to patch their dresses. She saddled Snowball the horse and rode in the direction of the castle.

It was not hard to find, though it was a long journey to get there. All Beauty had to do was follow the road south and keep riding, and soon she saw the castle outlined against the sky.

The sun had sunk behind the tower by the time Beauty rode into the courtyard. The courtyard was gray with the coming night, but Beauty suspected it might be gray anyway—there was an empty fountain with the briars of dead roses curled all around it, and gravel that had not been disturbed by carriage wheels in years.

Beauty dismounted and knocked on the tall gray door. The sound echoed in the silence, sending tremors down through her bones.

The door creaked open of its own accord. Beauty drew in a breath at this clear sign of magic, but she stepped through all the same. Above her, the chandelier tinkled, though there was no wind to stir it. A curtain drew back with no hand to assist it, revealing a portrait of a staring man.

The Beast leaped from the top of the curving flight of marble stairs to land crouched in the center of the floor. The tiles were already broken there, Beauty saw, crushed beneath his weight and his claws.

She looked at the tiles so she would not run or scream. She was here for her father, she told herself. She was here for her family’s honor.

She looked up, from claws to fur to fangs, and intent, terrifying eyes.

“I am the boy you wanted to care for your horses,” she said. She had intended to mimic a man’s voice, but in this moment, before the Beast, all she could manage was a low whisper.

“Dude,” said the Beast, “am I glad to see you.”

Beauty blinked. His eyes were light, light brown, almost amber: almost an animal’s eyes.

“Every time I go near the stables the horses freak out,” the Beast said. “I just feed them and run. It sucks because I like horses, you know? Before all this happened, I used to play polo.”

Beauty blinked again. “I apologize,” she said at last. “The tongue of beasts is not familiar to me. I do not fully understand your idiom. But I am here to serve, Beast, and happy to care for the horses.”

“Awesome,” said the Beast. “So come in. Pick a room. Oh, uh, and how much do you want to be paid? I’ll be honest here, this is kind of a buyer’s market, I’m desperate and I have piles of gold around. You can just pick up the stuff, basically.”

“I think I’m misunderstanding something, Beast. I actually thought you just said that you were going to give me piles of gold.”

“Well, in return for looking after the horses,” the Beast said. “Obviously not as, like, a present. We just met, dude. Maybe on your birthday.”

Beauty stared. “I am looking after the horses in return for my father’s life!”

“You what?” said the Beast.

“My father said you were going to eat him.”

It was hard to tell, with a visage that was mainly fur and those fearsome teeth, but Beauty thought she saw the Beast make a face.

“Whoa. I was not going to eat him. I’m not a vegetarian or anything, but I draw the line at eating people. I thought that your dad trespassing to steal flowers was a bit much, but I hadn’t talked to anyone in weeks and trying to make a help-wanted sign was getting embarrassing, what with the claws. All I did was ask if he knew someone who’d look after the horses for me.”

She was already here. She could see no reason for the Beast to lie to her, no advantage to him in doing so.

She had never felt quite so stupid in her life.

“I suppose my father panicked,” she said eventually.

“I mean,” the Beast said generously, “I’d panic, if I thought someone was going to eat me.”

Her noble sacrifice was now basically ridiculous. Beauty could go home, she supposed, but she could not bear the idea of that long ride and how her father and her sisters would call her a stupid, stupid girl.

She looked at the Beast, and tried to see him clearly. He looked something like a wolf, and something like an ape, something like a jungle cat and even something like a man.

Looking past the long fangs and the other teeth distorting his jaw, she thought she could see an expression of friendly bewilderment. When he moved his pawlike hands, claws glinting, Beauty steeled herself for a blow, and instead his claws clicked together like dominoes and he looked down at them as though vaguely startled by the fact that they were there. He was, Beauty saw, wearing clothes, even if they were strange, ragged things: trousers of some rough canvaslike material that were simply shreds at the end, and something that might once have been a shirt and now was a scrap of fabric that stretched across his furry barrel of a chest, and an odd, brief collar that was nevertheless standing up.

He saw her looking, and she was fairly sure he misinterpreted the look when he said, with an attempt at gentleness, “You don’t have to stay here, you know.”

“Let us make a gentleman’s agreement,” Beauty suggested.

“Uh,” said the Beast, “okay.”

“To atone for my father’s crime, O Beast, I shall stay in this castle and serve you for a year and a day.”

That seemed the traditional length of time offered in Beauty’s books. The other options were seven years, which seemed a very long time, or a hundred years, at which point Beauty herself might as well volunteer to be eaten.

“Thanks, that’s very cool of you,” the Beast said, and his huge shoulders slumped with relief.

It was settled so simply. Beauty could hardly think about the magnitude of the new bargain she had made, when she might have gone home instead. She squared her shoulders in her man’s jacket and started on her way up the stairs to choose a bedroom.

“One more thing,” said the Beast from the foot of the stairs.

Beauty tensed. “Yes?”

“This whole ‘Beast’ deal? Kinda hurtful,” said the Beast. “Call me Chad.”

Beauty chose the room whose door opened for her, though it gave her a nasty shock at first. She walked in and saw the gauzy curtains and the mirror decorated with golden roses, turned and tried to walk out. But the door slammed in her face.

“This is a very pretty room,” Beauty told the room, and the curtains fluttered like a girl batting her eyelashes. “But I am here in a disguise, and I will not be convincing as a man if I have a dressing table with a little lacy frill around it and a teddy bear on top!”

The room blurred, the mirror frame bending as if in a shrug. Then it resolved into a room once more, the gauzy curtains gone and everything in sturdy green, even the mirror. The teddy bear remained, half-hidden under the bed, but Beauty decided it was close enough.

“Thank you,” she said, and went downstairs to stable her own pony and meet the other horses.

They were not, as her father had said, infernal steeds. They seemed to be perfectly normal horses, of the sort you could ride out hunting or have pull a light showy carriage: there were three matched pairs of gray, chestnut and black. They were restless in their stalls, eyes rolling toward the castle, but as enthusiastic as puppies for Beauty, pushing their muzzles into her palms. She wondered how long it had been since they had seen a human person, and set about currying and calming them.

It was enough work that she did not even see the Beast for a night and a day: it was evening again when she stumbled inside, shoulders aching from hoisting a shovel.

As she opened the door of the castle, she was greeted by the smell of food, savory and sizzling and delicious. Beauty followed her nose to the dining room. She barely noticed the blue panels for walls and wedding-cake trim up at the ceilings—she was most concerned with the vast mahogany table creaking with food.

The Bea—the Chad was sitting in a vast chair, being served by a gravy boat that came toddling up to him, a flirtatiously twirling teapot and a platter that seemed to be tobogganing.

“Guys,” he said, gesturing with a fork that looked tiny in his huge paw. “Guys, guys, we’ve talked about this, it’s creepy, I don’t like it, you’re gonna spill stuff, I like my inanimate objects the way I like my coffee—inanimate!”

“The whole castle is filled with charms,” Beauty said. “It must have been created by powerful sorcery.”

The Beast twitched. “Ugh. I guess. I wasn’t really raised to believe in, you know, all that.”

“You don’t believe magic exists?”

Beauty had no idea of the relevant intelligence of beasts. She had assumed from the clothes and the way he could speak that he had the intelligence of a human, but that might not be true: now he was saying he didn’t believe in perfectly obvious things, as if he was a child claiming not to believe in the sky.

“I mean, okay, magic exists,” the Beast said grumpily. “Castle full of dancing sofas and some broad turned me into...this...on the steps of my frat house and sent me to live here. But Dad would have fits and say this was hippie communist garbage.”

“I am having trouble understanding your beast idiom again,” Beauty said. “All of it.”

The Beast raised his eyebrow, which was basically a shaggy shelf of extra fur. “Pull up a chair, dude. This food isn’t going to eat itself. Well, it might, but that’d be weird and you’d be doing me a favor if you did it instead.”

Beauty understood enough to know he was asking her to dine with him. She’d planned to spend as little time as possible in his company, since he was a beast and if he found out about her deception he could tear her to pieces, but the smell of the food worked as well as an enchantment. She drifted over to a chair at the shadowy end of the table, and a tureen of soup made its determined way in her direction.

“Guys? Guys, I’m not kidding around, quit it, I will not be the ringmaster of the teapot circus!”

“Thank you,” Beauty whispered to the tureen, and it wriggled with delight.

“No, dude, don’t encourage them,” the B—Chad said, sounding genuinely distressed, but as more and more plates whizzed toward Beauty, he gave up with a sigh like a furry bellows, propped his massive, teeth-heavy jaw on his curled paw and said, “So how are the horses?”

“Very well,” said Beauty. “They were just a little spooked. I got them calmed down.”

She almost jumped out of her chair, threw the chair at the Beast and leaped out of the window before she realized his bared teeth might be a smile. Instead she took a long drink of mead, and choked.

“You okay, dude?”

“Fine,” said Beauty, hitting herself on her bound chest, which hurt. “I’m very used to mead. It’s a manly drink. So of course I drink it frequently.”

The Beast shrugged. “I miss Jägerbombs.”

Beauty took another cautious sip and made the decision to ignore it when the Beast—Chad, Chad—said incomprehensible things.

“So, what’s your name?”

“Beauty,” said Beauty.

The Chad’s shaggy eyebrows drew together into a unishelf of annoyance. “Dude, I’m sorry. It’s uncool they called you that.”

“What?”

“Like, they did it to tease you, right?” the Beast asked. “Because, you know, you’re kind of pretty for a dude. No offense. And I don’t think you need to shave that often. Again, not throwing shade here, since basically I have to go at my whole body with the hedge clippers. And I might add that the hedge clippers, also weirdly alive, and I am pretty sure they’re judging me.”

Beauty frowned. She had not thought much about her name—that was what everybody called her, that was what people thought when they saw her. Nobody was trying to tease her.

And yet she thought she might like it, to have someone call her something else, because when they saw her they saw something else in her besides beauty.

Besides, now that Chad mentioned it, it was an odd name for a boy.

Which also ruled out her real name, Isabelle, and Belle.

“There are other things I could be,” Beauty allowed.

“So far you’re awesome with the horses,” Chad contributed. “We could call you Horsesome? No, that kind of sounds... Never mind that.”

“I thought you were calling me Dude,” Beauty said. “Is it an honorific in your land?”

“Think we’ve come up against that language barrier again,” said Chad. “No, bread basket, stay still and let me reach for you!”

The bread basket scuttled disobediently toward its master’s paw.

Beauty felt like she had finally deciphered one thing he had said, though the “Horsesome” issue had her completely puzzled.

“You said...someone put you under a spell,” she said. “Someone...something...broad?”

“Uh, I just meant a woman. Yeah.”

“And you were taken away from your home,” Beauty said. “Do you not wish to learn how to break the spell and return?”

It occurred to her that she could end her term of service sooner—and do a heroic deed—if she could help him find out about the spell.

Chad looked darkly at the bread basket, which butted against his arm.

“I know how to break the spell. The woman—witch, I guess? She told me. But it’s not an option. It involves kidnapping someone—which, dude, no, wrong—and then hoping they have a really bizarro fetish. I’m not doing it. This is my mess. So, I guess I’m stuck here.”

Which meant Beauty was trapped here, too.

But Beauty was trapped for only a year and a day, and the Chad was trapped here forever, a beast now, whatever he had been before, caught in a web of magic where he could never be happy and longing for home.

“If breaking the spell would hurt somebody else, it is noble of you to suffer yourself instead of inflicting suffering on others. You must miss the land of frat house very much.”

The Beast ducked his head, like a horse trying to escape the bridle. Beauty thought the gesture might almost have been shy.

“I miss my Xbox,” he admitted. “But I couldn’t really work the controller with the claws anyway.”

Beauty had no idea what the Beast was saying, but this much was clear: he was sad, and she could not simply care for his horses if she was going to wipe away the debt of her father’s life. If he was trapped in this body, in this castle, he needed help.

The next day the Beast took her on a tour around the castle. The kitchen, with its animated carving knives, was terrifying, and the portraits in the portrait gallery made creepy faces at them. None of that mattered when he opened the door and escorted her into the library, its curved walls shining with leather spines in green and black and red and brown and blue, stretching from ceiling to ceiling and from wall to wall, a treasure room better than one filled with gold and jewels.

“You like reading, huh?”

“I love reading!” Beauty exclaimed.

“I used to listen to audiobooks at the gym,” Chad said wistfully and incomprehensibly. “I’ve come in here and looked at the titles and stuff, but I don’t think it’d be a great idea for me to try and read the books.”

He waggled a demonstrative hand, claws outstretched, then bared his ferocious teeth, but only a little, in what Beauty thought was a sheepish grin.

“Would you like me to read to you?” she asked, and when he gave an embarrassed nod she took her time selecting the right one. “This is my favorite kind of book,” she told him at last. “There are daring sword fights, magic spells and a hero in disguise.”

“Like you?” said Chad, and when Beauty was shocked silent he scratched the ruff of fur on the back of his neck. “Well, you know, coming to be a stable boy when you’re obviously...not really raised to be a stable boy? That’s kind of a disguise. And it was heroic of you, to do it for your dad.”

“Oh,” said Beauty. She had never thought of herself in that way before—as someone who could be the center of a story. She dropped her gaze to the book and began to read, hiding her smile.

A few days, a few quiet story hours and a few lively dinners later, Beauty rode one of the horses down to the village near the castle. She alighted from the horse and went into the nearest shop.

Being able to ride down a lane and not have anyone comment on her beauty, or her lack of chaperone, having everyone ignore her as if she was just a person free to do whatever she chose, gave Beauty an unexpected and heady sense of freedom.

“I want to purchase some saddle brushes, preferably not animated,” she announced. “Oh, and I am employed as a stable boy in the castle of the Beast.”

Beauty wondered if the woman leaning her elbows against the shop counter might scream and faint at the name: she was disappointed when the woman did not even raise her eyebrows.

“I’d forgotten we have a new beast. Stable boys are different, mind.”

“A new beast?” Beauty asked. “There have been others.”

“It is a tale as old as time,” said the woman. “There’s bound to be a few variations. Be a waste of the castle to have just one beast. There was an original beast, obviously. Prince of the castle, turned into a beast because of his vanity and pride, lessons learned through love, et cetera, but since then we have been importing beasts. The witch takes young spoiled princes from many lands, but the beast always lives here.”

The woman chatted idly as she fetched down the saddle brushes, with the slightly bored air of someone who would rather be discussing the weather.

“So your village lies in the shadow of a castle in which there is always a beast, punished for his misdeeds by being trapped in the body of a ferocious killing machine? Pardon me for asking,” said Beauty, “but do you never consider moving?”

The woman sniffed. “Certainly not. We have an excellent tourist trade.”

“Fair enough,” said Beauty. “Everybody has to pay the bills. I suppose the tourists would flock here if there was a chance of actually seeing the Beast, and going into the magical castle.”

“Tourists who get eaten do not tell all their friends about our fair town,” the shopkeeper snapped.

“Chad would never!”

The shopkeeper’s eyebrows rose with such velocity Beauty thought her ruffled cap might pop right off.

“Is that the way it is?”

“What?” asked Beauty. “Is what the way what is? Look, all I’m saying is, we’d be open to having a fete up at the Beast’s castle. There could be bunting, and...food served outside, and games for all the family....”

Beauty racked her brains for another suggestion.

“Some sort of gay parade, I have no doubt?” the woman asked.

“Yes!” Beauty exclaimed, pleased that she was getting into the spirit of things. “A merry parade would be lovely.”

The shopkeeper still looked skeptical.

“You could charge at the gate,” Beauty said. “Just think about it.”

She rode away home and at dinner that night described her adventure to the Chad.

“So you’re saying that you bought saddle brushes and also invited the village to a kegger at our place?” Chad asked. “My man! Give me five.”

Beauty gave him a stare of blank incomprehension.

The living furniture seemed initially puzzled and then very excited about the party at the castle. The table and chairs for outside started holding what Beauty thought were practice drills, and Chad spent his time pleading with them. “Play dead for the guests!”

Beauty was surprised she was not more nervous herself. But she was the stable boy: she would have practical things to do and get to wear comfortable clothes. Nobody would expect her to be charming or ornamental, just useful.

She put ribbons in the trees, since Chad could not be trusted with ribbons. After a while, the ribbons got the idea and started to twine about in the branches themselves.

The day of the Beast’s fete dawned clear and bright, and the shopkeeper Beauty had spoken to, whose name turned out to be Aimee, arrived not long after. She was carrying a plate full of pastries.

“Welcome to the castle,” said Beauty.

“Yeah, uh, mi casa es su casa,” said the Beast.

The woman sniffed.

“That had better not be foreign for ‘I am going to eat your children.’ Well, lead me to the refreshments. It was a long walk and I could use a restorative beverage.”

“Of course, perhaps lemonade?” Beauty suggested.

“Dude, I think she means booze.”

Aimee favored Chad with a smile. “Escort me to the sherry, sir, and no clawing the tapestries on the way.”

Curiosity apparently trumped fear of being mauled and eaten, because most of the village showed up. A set of instruments crept out from the music room and played in the rose garden, lurking behind bushes so nobody would notice the lack of actual musicians, and the villagers started to dance around the lawn.

Beauty had never been to a dance before where she did not have to dance or worry about not being asked. She hummed as she cleared the tables to make way for the desserts.

“This was a nice idea,” said Aimee the shopkeeper behind her, and she jingled her box of change. “And I’m turning a nice profit, too, of course,” she added almost absently. “Quite a nice young beast, too. Much preferable to the last one. It was nothing but brood, brood, brood on the battlements in the rain all day long. The castle smelled like wet dog for seventy years.”

Beauty looked over at Chad. The children had got over their worries about being eaten very quickly when offered piggyback rides. One little boy was on Chad’s back now, laughing so hard she thought he might be sick.

“He is all goodness.”

“Hmm,” said Aimee. “They’re all made beasts for a reason, my dear boy. But come—I don’t want to spoil your day. Go play tug-of-war.”

Beauty’s team won at tug-of-war, and people clapped her on the back as if it was excellent that she was strong, and no man minded her showing them up at all.

She was walking across the castle lawn feeling well content with the world when she heard the scream come from the stables.

Beauty turned and ran toward the sound.

When she arrived, she saw no scene of carnage or villagers demanding the Beast’s head. What she saw was Chad, with a group of young men from the village all clapping him on the back, just like Beauty had been clapped on the back, and the little boy she had noticed before trembling on the point of tears.

Chad saw her. “Don’t worry about it, dude,” he said. “We just gave him a little scare, that’s all. It’s only fun.”

Beauty looked from the laughing men to the upset child. “Doesn’t look like much fun to me.”

She saw the boy’s mother coming toward them, looking angry: the boy saw her but did not run to her. Instead he tried to join in the laughter, as if he had not been hurt, as if denying he had feelings meant that he would stop having them.

Beauty had never been quite so angry in her life. She stamped off into the castle, wanting to cry like a woman or hit something like a man and refusing to do either because neither would help.

“Lighten up, dude,” Chad said from behind her, sounding worried.

“I don’t know what you’re asking me to do but I won’t do it!” Beauty snapped. “Nobody has to do anything just because other people expect it. How did you get cursed to be the Beast? What did you do to the witch before she cursed you?”

“Nothing!” Chad shouted. “Well...look, I was just kidding around.”

“While everyone was laughing,” Beauty said. “All your frat brethren. Not the witch.”

“Frat brothers.”

“I don’t care!” said Beauty. “You are not a villain, but what does it matter if you playact like one? If good men pretend to be villains, how is anybody supposed to know the difference between them?”

“What am I supposed to do?” Chad demanded.

“Think,” said Beauty.

“Anyone could tell you I’m not good at that!”

“Think and be kind,” said Beauty. “You are good at that. You’re much better at that than being vicious to impress other boys you’re hanging around with.”

“Jesus, were you homeschooled?” asked Chad. “They’re just being guys. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, Dad always said—”

“What a stupid thing to say!” Beauty exclaimed. “You’re not an animal.”

Chad made a violent gesture with one clawed hand. “Oh, no? We can’t all be heroes discharging the debt for our father’s lives or whatever. You don’t have to stay here, you know—you can ride off on your white horse and do good deeds and be better than everybody somewhere else!”

He turned and slammed out of the room. Beauty went and flung herself in an armchair. She felt tempted to resort to liquor, but Aimee had basically drunk the castle dry.

Instead, she sulked in the armchair. The curtain hanging by her elbow lifted itself tentatively and patted at her arm, and Beauty felt slightly better.

By the time Chad slunk back into the room, it was dark and Beauty could hear the clatter of some guests leaving, and the music as those remaining danced.

“I said I was sorry,” Chad said. “I guess I was being kind of a jerk. It isn’t funny to upset little kids.”

“It isn’t funny to upset anyone,” said Beauty.

Chad shrugged, which looked like furry mountains shifting in an awkward miniearthquake. “I guess.”

Beauty kicked at the hearth rug, which slapped her boot back. “I didn’t offer to stay because I’m so noble,” she said. “I wanted to have a different life. I wanted to have adventures, and prove I was a different person than everybody thought I was, and I would’ve been embarrassed to go straight back home. I was always disappointing them. I shouldn’t give lectures to anyone about caring too much what people think.”

Chad sank into the armchair next to Beauty’s. “You were right about my dad, though. I know a thing or two about disappointing people.”

“It must be difficult, to be the son of a king.”

“He’s a CEO,” said Chad. “He’s a bit cutthroat.”

“Does he order a lot of executions?” Beauty asked sympathetically, and Chad choked. “Think how happy the people will be when you ascend the throne and temper mercy with justice.”

“Uh, I don’t think...” Chad began, and trailed off with a beastly sigh. “It doesn’t matter anymore. But it’s hard to stop thinking about what people think of you.”

Beauty thought of being in a glittering gown at court, and dressing in boy’s clothes to climb on her white steed.

“Today was the only party I’ve been to in my life that I actually enjoyed. It’s all different kinds of performances,” Beauty said miserably. “But I don’t perform well.”

“It’s not just putting on an act,” Chad told her slowly. “I know you did this to make other people think about me differently—so they’d be kind to me. That was you being kind to me. That wasn’t an act.”

Beauty hesitated. “Oh, well. I just thought—they were wrong not to accept you. And now you can get a different stable boy when the time comes.”

Chad hesitated in his turn.

“I don’t want a different stable boy,” Chad said at length. “You—you are kind to me and you’re brave and I don’t want you to pretend anything. You’re my friend. I wish you’d stay.”

He was the only person who had ever said to Beauty that she was enough the way she was. Beauty looked over at him, at his kind dark eyes: he was closer now. Neither of them had moved; it was the chairs who had edged together.

“Uh,” said Chad. His voice cracked. “No homo? Dumbass interfering furniture.”

Beauty leaned forward. She didn’t understand everything Chad said, but she thought she understood enough.

She leaned forward, in the silence just after midnight, and pressed a kiss somewhere in the vicinity of Chad’s fangs.

The arm of the chair splintered under Chad’s claw.

“Uh,” he said, and his voice cracked. “Maybe a little homo?”

Beauty smiled at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I have to go?” Chad said. “Yep. I have to go and sit in my room and have a think and hope the wardrobe doesn’t try to give me relationship advice. Okay, bye!”

He ran, leaving claw marks on the door. The door creaked a protest at him, waggling back and forth reproachfully.

It was Chad’s decision whether or not to accept her courtship. Beauty tried not to worry about it and to focus on her job, so the next day she rose bright and early to curry the horses. She was finishing up on Vin Diesel (Chad had named the horses after heroes in his own land) when she heard the half growl, half stutter of Chad’s cough behind her.

“Dude, can I have a word?”

“Of course,” said Beauty, and got up from the straw.

The horses all shied away from Chad, still uneasy even though Beauty had been doing her best to accustom them to his presence. Except for Snowball, who had taken a fancy to him and went over to butt his arm in a mute demand for apples.

Chad patted Snowball’s nose, careful of his claws.

“Dude,” he said. “I’m really sorry that I ran off. I was just—I was just freaked out. But it wasn’t that I didn’t want to— I was freaked out because I did. I care about you, and that sounds a little gay but obviously that’s okay. It’s okay to be a little gay. Or a lot. And human sexuality is a complicated and beautiful thing, or that’s what a psych major I dated once told me. And honestly, Matt has hooked up with every guy in the frat house and it can’t just be about being drunk because if you were that drunk you’d probably hook up with a chick once or twice. It all got a little statistically unlikely. No offence to Matt. It’s all good. He’s still my bro.”

Beauty honestly only understood one sentence of that, but she thought it was the important one.

She beamed. “I care about you, too.”

“Thanks, man,” Chad said. “Seriously. I mean I realize you’re overlooking a lot here, the claws and everything—honestly I’m very concerned about them—” Beauty did not see why Chad was suddenly so very concerned about his claws.

“I’m not overlooking anything,” she said. “I’d rather be with you than anyone else.”

Chad scuffed the straw on the stable floor with a clawed foot. It looked like someone had started raking the yard. “Me, too,” he muttered. “So—so what do we do now?”

It seemed very obvious to her.

“We love each other, don’t we?” Beauty asked.

“Uh,” said Chad. “Yeah? Yeah.”

“So we should get married.”

Chad choked, rattled, and hit himself in the chest so hard he almost fell over backward. Beauty got the impression he was a little surprised.

“I don’t...” he said. “What? Are you serious? Can we even—legally? In this country?”

“Oh, yes,” said Beauty.

She understood his concern completely now, but she knew of a prince who had married a swan. It was what was inside that mattered.

“Well, that’s surprising but great,” said Chad. “Like, obviously. My dad’s a Republican and he’s not in favor, but I, I am. But I’ve never really, um... Dude, this is new to me. How does it even work? Which of us is even meant to ask?”

“Will you marry me?” said Beauty.

Chad cleared his throat and fed Snowball an apple. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. Great.” He paused and there was an embarrassed silence. “Thanks,” he added.

“Thank you,” Beauty told him. She glanced at him and caught him glancing at her, and they both found themselves smiling.

All the villagers assembled in the chapel on their wedding day. Doves had appeared from somewhere—Beauty believed that the furniture had kidnapped them somehow. The glass windows blazed, showing heroes and monsters of days long gone by in scarlet and blue, and as soon as Chad caught sight of Beauty he had a fit and dragged her outside.

“Why are you wearing that?” he demanded.

Beauty tugged on the ivory-and-pearl skirt of her wedding gown. “Don’t you like it?” she said, rather hurt.

“You look like a gi— You look great, of course,” said Chad. “But you don’t— You shouldn’t feel as if you have to dress that way. You can dress any way you want.”

“I know,” said Beauty. “And I like trousers, mostly. But it felt all right to wear this today. Because it’s a significant occasion, and because it’s tradition, and it doesn’t matter what other people think but I still want them to see and be absolutely sure this means something.”

“Okay,” said Chad. “If you’re sure.” He bit his lip, and winced with fang-related pain. “Do you want me to wear the wedding dress instead? Uh, I will if you want.”

Beauty laughed. “I don’t know why you think we have time to make one in your size. And your fur would catch on the lace.”

She caught his hand, and instead of looking worried, he had to concentrate on not hurting her with his claws.

She went down the aisle hand in hand with Chad, and they were married as the villagers whispered and the stolen doves fluttered overhead, and Chad kept his eyes on her throughout, seeing her and finding nothing wanting.

When Beauty promised to love and cherish him, the air in the chapel dazzled and shimmered and turned into somewhere new: a stone room in a high tower, where the enchantress was waiting for them.

It was Aimee, dressed in flowing black and green and red, like evil Christmas. Beauty and the Chad stared.

“Oh, come on,” said Aimee the shopkeeper, now Aimee the evil enchantress (who possibly kept a shop as a sideline). “I gave you plenty of hints.”

Beauty abruptly remembered Aimee talking about the many Beasts she had seen, even though one had been a Beast seventy years.

“You didn’t give me any hints,” Chad grumbled. “You sold me overpriced cheese but you didn’t give me any hints.”

“Well, she’s the hero,” said Aimee.

“Fair enough,” said Chad, and then, “She? What?”

Aimee clapped her hands together, and said, “You married him—that counts as love until disappointment in the bedroom or a midlife crisis. Consider the spell broken.”

“Wait,” Chad said. “She? Wha—” He began to shimmer and shift, body writhing and fur rippling away, until he was gone. There was a boy standing in his place.

He was a very odd-looking boy, with short hair that was a different color at the tips than at the roots. He was wearing a necklace of tiny seashells, and he was staring at her as if he didn’t know her.

“You’re a girl?”

“Of course I’m a girl!” Beauty snapped. “How could you marry me otherwise?”

“Hey, dudes can marry other dudes,” Chad said. “Don’t be a hater.”

Beauty blinked. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

It made her wonder if there were other things she had not heard of: if she could dress like a boy without saying she was a boy, or a girl, exactly. If she could be what she felt like, without having to fit into either of the boxes everybody tried to force you into.

Aimee the evil enchantress patted her on the shoulder. “She’s been very sheltered. They keep women here uninformed and pretend that’s the same thing as stupid.”

“Beauty’s the smartest person I know,” Chad said, and returned to staring at her. “Dude,” he said at last. “Uh, wait. Babe?”

“You always call me Dude,” Beauty said, confused and a little hurt.

“Dude it is,” Chad said. “Sorry. I’m just— It’s a bit of a surprise. But a nice surprise! Though it would have been cool the other way, too.” He hesitated. “It’s all good, as long as you’re with me.”

Beauty reached out in the quiet of the enchantress’s tower and took his hand. It was a little strange without claws.

“Me, too,” Beauty told him. “I just want to be with you. I don’t mind that your hair is extremely odd.”

“Dude,” said Chad. “My hair is awesome.”

Chad grinned. It was the smile Beauty recognized, and not the eyes, in the end.

“Yes, yes, very heartwarming,” Aimee the evil enchantress drawled. “Now I think we’ve all learned a valuable lesson, and we probably want to thank me.”

“Nope,” said Chad.

Aimee the evil enchantress looked offended. Beauty pressed Chad’s hand in warning: she would still love Chad if he was turned into a frog, but it wouldn’t be her preference.

“Look, I may have been a jerk, but turning someone into a giant talking animal is basically a huge overreaction. And even if it was fair to me, it wouldn’t have been fair to the innocent people whose heads I could’ve totally eaten. With great power comes great responsibility, dude.”

Aimee continued to look offended for a moment, and then shook her head and laughed. “I must admit you two have been entertaining. Well, what shall it be...? Will you stay in your lady’s enchanted kingdom, or return to be prince of your own?”

“CEO,” Chad mumbled. “And it’s up to Beauty. She’s the one who saved me, right? She went on the quest and broke the curse. She’s the hero. She can decide on the ending.”

It was another moment for Beauty where she could look at him and recognize her Beast without a doubt. Then she looked out the window of the enchantress’s tower and saw the rolling green fields, little villages and grand castles of her land, laid out before her. She knew what would happen if she stayed: security, love, happiness within certain boundaries. Beauty thought what might lie beyond those lands: for Chad an inheritance, which would let him be kind, and for herself another adventure, which would let her be brave.

“Will you tell my family,” she asked the evil enchantress, “that I’m happy?”

“Not safe?”

Beauty smiled. “I don’t want to be entirely safe.”

Aimee the evil enchantress smiled, and snapped her fingers.

* * * * *