BEFORE THE BEAST
Chapter 1
I have killed my mother. Now I must die.
If not for this crime, why would
the villagers have called for my death?
Why would the captain of the guard have arrested me? Why would the high-priestess of the
grape-loving god have bound my hands behind my back? Why would my sisters have refused to return
from their kingdoms to see me one last time?
Why would my father have ordered me to be abandoned on Beast Hill? Guilt has ripped at my heart for sixteen
years, or at least from the time I knew my birth cause my mother’s death. Now my guilt has been uncovered and I have
been shown for what I am: a creature
worthy only of the Beast.
Leading the procession to Beast
Hill, in her garish robes and oversized bird-head mask, is the
high-priestess. Two attendants follow
closely behind her, their smaller bird-head masks nearly, but not quite,
touching the robes of the high-priestess with each step forward. I, dressed in my white flaxen gown – my
bridal gown – and head uncovered, trail behind them. Two more attendants grasp my bound arms and
push me to close the gap. In their
closeness, I can smell the stench of the juice of the fermented grape on their
breath. I hear the deliberate steps of
my father and his counselors behind me.
Because he relies so completely on their twin crutches of advice and
protection, my father would never venture into the villages without his
counselors flanking him. Not a word is
spoken between the three men; they are strangely silent.
Beast Hill is far from the Valley
of the Roses – at least a four-hour hike.
As we progress through Village Cair before entering the forest
surrounding Beast Hill, the curious villagers leave their hovels and flow into
the street to see the Beast’s chosen one.
The Villagers Cair have seen me in
the past, as have all the other villagers.
As the king’s third and youngest daughter I was no stranger to
them. For the past three of my sixteen
years, I have moved among them. Lately,
I have visited them almost daily, bringing food into their homes in the events
of marriage and birth, and sickness and death.
I rejoiced when they rejoiced and sorrowed when they sorrowed. I thought they loved me. But I was wrong. They stare as if I have appeared from another
world. There is no love in their faces,
no sadness, not even pity, just horror and, perhaps, relief. In me they see both the beginning and the end
of the drought that has plagued their fields and livestock these past three seasons. I caused, and I shall cure, their famine.
With each step, nettles and thorns
sting my legs, and twigs and branches pierce my bare feet. During my last walk on Earth, I consider my
first moment on Earth. Not that I remember
my birth, of course, by Sofia and Magda told me often enough of my mother’s
cries during my delivery. Children were
not allowed in the birthing room, but even from the nursery my mother’s cries
were heard. “Psyche! Here name is Psyche!” As I breathed my first breath in this world,
my mother breathed her last.
Sofia, who had been in her seventh
year and would remember such facts better than Magda who was in her fourth
year, told me that my mother was as Greek and as pale as the plundered statue
that still graces the outside of our roughhewn cave-temple. She was as foreign to our land as marble to
granite. While she was not as lovely as
the stone goddess, she was not as cold either.
Perhaps her very warmth marred the perfection of her appearance. To me, though, my mother may as well have
been of stone, for I never knew of mother of flesh.
No comments:
Post a Comment