Beauty and the Beast

Years ago, when the accords still held, we would have killed him on sight. Instead we begged with her to accept him into her service. And she agreed. Pale and trembling, she stood over him and accepted his oaths of fealty. Later, the moment would be memorialized in countless paintings each one showing a strong, erect, confident woman exerting haughty control over a cowed and shrunken beast.

The reality was more like some nightmarish dance. She flinched at his every move and her every flinch struck him like a blow. She was small and terrified. When he lay prostrate on the floor before her, it only served to heighten our sense of just how much larger than life he was.

As soon as the oaths had been bound, we rushed them to battle. I watched them the first time, from a distance. She rode in a carriage, curtains draw, and he ran at an easy lope beside. When they came within sight of the enemy encampment, she stepped out of the carriage. She was shivering. There was a long moment, and then her arm slowly came out. I blinked, or I think I did, and he was gone. Sometimes on two legs, sometimes on four, he rushed the enemy’s walls. My lord blinked in surprise, grabbed the horn from his belt, sounding his captains to the attack. They shared in the glory of that victory, without spilling one drop of blood.

In the following months, the war began to turn in our favor. The Beauty and the Beast, they were called, after the old tale. They traveled up and down the front, she in her carriage, he on foot, seeking out the deadliest fights, the most desperate battles. Time and again she sent him to die and time and again he went. They were both disappointed.