Free Mrs. Beast by Pamela Ditchoff Page A

debt?   I'll start paying you back this moment by weaving you in peace. From now on, I sweep in my own room."
         Elora restores her voice and dryly says, "As he sashayed out of the bridal boudoir, I flew over and bit his nasty ass."
      *       *       *
     

 
    Chapter Five
     
     
    auf Wiedersehen, Snow White
     
         "I gather your silence means I shouldn't have asked about Runyon's needle,"   Snow White says. "I want to know how it feels to . . . "
         Beauty blinks three times. "But you are a married woman."
         "A married maiden."   Snow White pouches her bottom lip round as a cherry tomato.
         Now Beauty's curiosity is piqued. Was Snow White also a beauty spurned by her husband, or had she refused her groom?    "Really?"
         Snow White nods, then reclines across the bottom of the bed.   "Did the dwarfs tell you what Prince Otto said when he first saw me?"
         "Something about wanting to take the coffin, and that he couldn't live without you?"
         "He could not live without looking on me.   Unfortunately, that's all he wanted to do."
         "Go on!"
         "Truly. Can you imagine awaking in a coffin?   I'd been in that glass box a whole year with a chunk of poison apple stuck in my throat.   The last thing I remembered was an old peasant woman offering me an apple.   It was January, and you know how hard it is to get fruit in winter.   This apple was beautiful; deep red and shiny.   The old woman cut it in half and the flesh was firm, white and juicy.   I swear, I didn't know it was Vanita, even though Otto later insisted I did."   Snow White sits up and hugs her knees to her chest.
         "The next thing I knew, I woke up in the coffin, flung the lid open and shouted, Where am I?    I heard a voice answer: You are near me .    I turned around thinking, Do I know anyone who would come up with such an incredibly stupid response?   There was Otto, all six feet of him, dressed in a gold tunic, arms spread as if I'd just won a raffle and he was the grand prize.   Otto wasn't handsome as you've described Runyon, but not unattractive either.   He had an air of self-confidence and strength I found extremely appealing.   He said, I would rather have you than anything else in the world.   Come with me to my palace and you shall be my bride.
         "Well, what was I to do?"   Snow White stares at Beauty with a stupefied expression.
         Beauty does not know how to answer. If she had asked what Beauty would have done, she could have said: Talk with him, allow love to grow if it will, then marry him, as I did with my Beast. But then , she reconsiders, I thought his love would remain constant in spite of his transformation.
         "I'd been living with the dwarfs four years, and still they worried about leaving me home alone.   Obviously, Vanita wasn't going to give up tormenting me.   And, I had dreamed of a prince coming to claim me, and of the happily ever after I'd been promised.   I bid a tearful good-bye to my seven friends and rode off with Otto."   She sighs and lifts her nightgown to pick at a scab on her knee.
         "You spoke of Runyon's passion for mirrors.   Otto's passion was glass; more precisely, objects enclosed in glass.   Pastiche Palace contained rooms of glass cases displaying Otto's collections: brilliant butterflies, bird's eggs of every shape and color, pressed flower blossoms, and dead animals stuck in unnaturally serene poses."
         "Oh," Beauty murmurs and Snow White meets her eyes.
         "You're quick as well as beautiful.   Yes, I was the piece de resistance of Otto's collection.   Being so, I wasn't allowed to mingle, despite the scores of visitors to the palace.   I was confined to my rooms where hairdressers, beauticians, dressmakers, shoemakers, and the royal jeweler prepared me for the nuptials.   The wedding, as you know, was a glorious affair, in spite of the incident with