The Whitest Roses Have the Sharpest Thorns

There is a story told to little girls, after the candles burn low in the villages. Their pale hands grip straw dolls and the flames of the fireplace flicker in their eyes as their mothers whisper, “Beware of the beast that lives in the forest, its claws slick with blood and the bones of its victims trapped within its jaw. It watches the village through the trees and snatches those who do not do as they’re told. The first victim it claimed was a girl such as yourself, who was disobedient and looked far too long at the men’s books. You mustn’t be like her. You must behave. Do you understand?”

Across the village and throughout the years young girls would nod. 

Yes mother. 

~ ~ ~

Twigs snap under the figure of a man in the forest. The beast looks with one yellow eye through the slits in the forest’s walls. It watches him step slowly forward, snapping twigs loudly on the forest floor. He carries the king’s colors and wears the face of a king’s son, but his shield lays limp at his side and he does not hold his sword straight. His eyes scan the trees in front of him, but not well enough. The beast creeps forward to claim its prisoner. 

The prince does not realize how large the beast is until he stands in its’ shadow. He stares up at its jaw for a moment, unable or unwilling to raise his sword in defense before the beast rakes its curled claws across his beautiful face. 

He wakes deep in the forest with his legs bound, and the beast watching him through the trees. The wait has begun. 

~ ~ ~

Many years ago, there was a young woman at the village market. The smell of freshly baked bread swirled through the bustling bodies. Every Saturday the multicolored stalls appeared on the town’s cobbled streets. Shouts could be heard across the square. Bakers barking orders or the butcher calling out the lowest prices of the day. The young woman ducked in and out of market stalls with her basket. Fruits, breads, jams, cheeses, meat. Eyes followed her here and there, a widowed man’s daughter with wrinkled and muddied skirts. She paid them no mind, adding items one by one to her basket, handing out her father’s coins with a simple “Good day mademoiselle” in return. 

She bides her time before greeting the village miller at the last and final stall. 

“I have instructions from Mr. Marchand to pick up a bag of grain, please”. She said. 

The miller, a hunched old man who looks at her with cold blue eyes, smiled sharply. 

“My weekly customer,” he says, “Soon you will be shopping for your husband, I hope.” The young woman attempted a polite smile, but only half succeeded. “Straight to Mr. Marchand now,” the miller said. 

She nodded deeply and accepted the small sack of grain. She bid him good day with a short curtsy and headed out away from the market as the miller’s eyes followed her, but not before she heard him mutter under his breath, “what a strange girl.” 

As she got further outside of town, the number of hurried townspeople lessened, until at last she ducked around the last cobbled wall that surrounded the village. On the opposite side of town, the winding streets led up to the King’s castle, and the forest beyond that, but this side of the village gave way to nothing but lush farmers’ fields. Eventually she came to a well. Its rope had given way many years ago, but its tapered strands still twisted above the treacherous drop into the earth. Stones tumbled down the sides and moss nestled in the nooks and crannies. Despite the isolation, the girl was experienced enough to crouch out of sight as she dislodged one of the stones at the well’s base and slipped the object under it into her bag of grain. She replaced the stone quickly and descended back into the village. 

Mr. Marchand’s shop was on the edge of town. He was a bookseller, and as such his storefront was nestled into one of the more crooked streets, underneath a painted sign that swung from a wrought iron hook. The bell tinged as the girl managed to push the door open with both the basket and sack in her hand. 

“Ah, mademoiselle. Is it time once again?” Mr. Marchand looked up from his desk and smiled. 

The girl placed the bag of grain on the wide tabletop. “Yes sir.”

“I trust your father is doing well,” He opened the bag of grain and nodded at the contents. He took the book out of the sack and brushed off only a little bit of dirt and moss before returning it to its place on the shelf without comment. 

“Of course,” she said.

Mr. Marchand handed her a squarely wrapped package. “A loaf as exchange. I think you’ll like this one,” he smiled.  

She stepped out of the bookkeeper’s shop, winding around and out of the cobbled alleyway toward her father’s house. It was then that the King’s party galloped through the gates on their black horses with their week’s bounty. She thinks often now that if she had only left the bookshop a moment later, she could have hidden. She backed into the shadows of the wall behind her, but it was too late. 

“If it isn’t my most beautiful Odette,” prince Jacques shouted over the accumulating villagers.

Jacques slowed his horse to a stop and swung down onto the pavement. He brushed several golden sweat-soaked strands of hair out of his eyes, and smiled with the same grin that he greeted his prey with in the forest. 

She smiled back, hoping that the sickness in her stomach would dissipate. Jacques grabbed her hand in his black leather glove and kissed it long and wet. This was not the first time, nor she was sure at the time, would it be the last. 

“Mademoiselle,” he says. 

He pulled a white rose from behind his back and held it out to her. 

“I know you have been hesitant before, but I must insist that this be the evening you join us at the castle. The doors will be open to the town, and I have been told to invite whichever esteemed guests I please,” Jacques leaned in close to her as he spoke, and she could smell his hunt.

Odette could picture the castle, the ballroom with its ornate gold, and the offer of marriage that would pass through Jacques’s lips in front of the town and the king on the day that she chose to finally oblige. She could picture herself donned with expensive fabrics and surrounded by the three most beautiful princes she had ever seen if she chose to accept his hand. She could see herself then, already nearly too old to be a bride, running girls’ errands for her father until she withered as grey as the rest of the town. But it was the dark rumors she heard of the king whispered in her ear—of muttered curses and dark spells—as she took a step back from the prince. 

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I must decline. I must stay and care for my father this evening.” 

Odette curtsied before turning to go, leaving the prince with his arm still outstretched, but a hand gripped her wrist. 

“Madam I have asked more than once. It would be polite of you to accept such a gracious offer.”

The townspeople had begun to gather around the two figures, including the miller and Mr. Marchand. “You would do well to accept, girl,” the miller spat. 

Odette pulled away once more, but the prince would not let go. He yanked her back toward him, and between that moment and the next the prince acquired the deep scratch of fingernails across his wrist, and Odette’s basket fell to the ground, leaving a measly loaf of bread and two thin books scattered across the muddy cobblestones. 

The villagers gasped, for there is no reason for a girl such as herself to have been hiding books in her bread loaves. “Beastly girl,” they spat, “Thief.” 

And so they took her to the king in the end. 

~ ~ ~

The prince watches the beast, who watches him back. There is blood running down his face. Around him are trophies, shields from castle guards and torn bits of the king’s crest lying on the ground. He feels his own royal blood seep into his clothes and knows that it is what has kept him alive this long. 

“Perhaps you don’t understand,” he says weakly, “he won’t come for me.”

The beast doesn’t budge. Not through the day or night. By the next day, the prince’s blood has dried, and he has not eaten. When he cannot hold the Beast’s gaze any longer, he looks up at the trees and recites “Demain dès l'aube”, a poem to pass the time. When he runs out of words, he sleeps. He awakes to food and water by his bound feet. 

~ ~ ~

The king has three sons, and they are as beautiful as the crowns that rest delicately on their heads. 

The youngest son is a boy, not quite old enough to step out from his older brothers’ shadows. The second son, Jacques, is a hunter adored by his people. The oldest son, Hugo, is the heir and nothing more. 

Hugo did not watch his younger brother carry the village girl bound with chains into the castle, and, had the King not threatened to punish him too, he would never have chosen to follow the king and his brother into the forest to administer her punishment. 

They made the young woman walk, dragged behind the horses, for miles into the dark tree line. When they were far enough from the village, the King had his guards chain her down. 

“Watch, Hugo. One day you will be in my place.” 

Hugo looked past the girl into the trees as his father whispered incantations carried by the wind. You will wear the beastly form that you earned. He watched the leaves rustle angrily as she writhed and shrieked. Until you can find another man to ask for your hand, you will remain. Snarls erupted. Beside him, Jacques smiles.  

Years pass, and while Jacques chose a different young girl as his wife and took charge of the hunting party in place of his aging father, Hugo stayed in the castle. He sat in front of the carved library windows and snuck off during hunting practice into the kitchen to help with supper instead. It was simple and calming, nothing like watching his brother seduce women or his father brew curses. Louis, the castle baker, laughed at his jokes, and only when they were alone in the kitchen would Hugo smile back at him without fear that his father could have been watching. He knew that the day would come when his father would force him to marry, and that he did not have the strength to settle for someone he did not love, let alone a woman. 

“If you are to be my heir you must be strong,” the King said to him many years later. “A king must do what he must to uphold the values of this land, do you understand?”

“Yes, father.”

“You cannot bend to whims such as kindness, no matter how tempting they seem. You would do well to heed this advice without opposition,” he said sternly. 

Hugo looked his father in the eye. 

“I will be strong. And I can rule, but I cannot promise to rule according to your guidelines,” Hugo said. 

“Then perhaps you have not proved yourself enough,” the King said sharply.

Hugo did not speak. 

“Kings do not hide among dusty bookshelves, and they certainly do not fraternize with the kitchen staff. What a king gives to his people is control. Kindness will only get you so far, boy. When villagers come in mobs at your door you will learn that good kings must make examples in order to maintain peace, and that cannot happen from kindness.”

Hugo raised his voice in protest, but his own reasoning was drowned out by the King’s booming voice. 

“A truly strong heir would have no problem slaying the beast,” the King slammed his hand onto the arm of his throne, “If you’d like to do the village a kindness then perhaps you should begin with that.”

Silence seeped into the room. 

“What, father?”

“You hear me,” the King steps forward until his face is level with his son’s, close enough feel the hot breath of every word as his father explains, “You will go into the forest, hunt the beast, and kill it. If you succeed, I will consider you worthy of the title you hold. If you do not, than the beast will deal your consequence in my place.” 

“You cannot make me.”

“I can do as I please.” 

The King gestured to the guards in the corner of the room, who stepped forward on either side of the prince. 

“Father,” Prince Hugo pleaded. 

But the shackles had already clicked shut around his wrists. 

 ~ ~ ~

“He won’t come for me,” he tells the Beast, as he has told her every day. Hugo’s legs have begun to ache from sitting on the damp earth. He knows that much like his father believes, he is not strong enough. There is no good ending, for he cannot return without the Beast. Yet he knows that if they stood face to face, truly looked into her eyes, that he could not drive a sword through her heart. So he waits, and begins another poem. 

Odette has listened to him recite for days, watched him patiently wait for her realization. Today is the day that she understands. She is responsible for disposing of him. She does not know if she can. He was not like the other king’s men, goaded into hunting her for sport. Nor did he carry himself with the same superior air as Jacques. Jacques, who had not entered her part of the woods since the day that he smiled down at her chained wrists. This prince searched for her curiously, and she made the grave mistake of believing that she could use him to harm the king. No, the king had tried to use her to harm him. But she knows that she could never slay him. So she waits for him to recite yet another poem. 

The beautiful prince and the dangerous beast sit among one another. The prince cannot help but turn the King’s curse over and over again in his mind. Until another man asks for your hand, you will remain. Perhaps it wouldn’t work, but at least if Hugo were to fail he decides that perhaps someone should succeed. So he begins to speak to her. 

“My name is Hugo,” the prince begins. 

The beast sits patiently, listening to his tale as, she learns, he knew hers all along. He speaks for what could have been hours until at last he presents his bargain to her. 

Odette declines his proposal, and he lets her. She watches him leave the forest a free woman, but not before she introduces herself, for she is certain she will see him again. When Hugo returns to the castle, he lays the shed pelt and a single broken claw down at the King’s feet and prepares to take his place as ruler, the image of the woman he left behind in the forest still dancing in his mind. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jewel Miller is a Senior Media and Communications student with a concentration in multimedia publishing and a minor in Creative Writing. Despite being a comm major, she is passionate about exploring all things writing and photography, and tries to incorporate both in her study. In her free time, she enjoys taking walks (preferably ones where she can look at trees), going on adventures with her friends, and spending time with her dog.