“Were it not for the beast, we never would have made it here in the first place,” she points out.
The animals are beginning to surround us on all sides. They sneak glances but move steadily forward toward the large barn in the distance. “That may be, but without your stone, we never would have seen it for what it was. I would have been at the mercy of the witch. And she would have shown me none, for certain. Did your friend ever mention a connection between the stone and a witch?”
Beauty shakes her head. “She never knew where her mother was headed when she left home, or even how she came by the stone in the first place.”
Mumford stops beside a large red barn and motions for all of us to gather around him. I cannot help but steal glances at the animals. I am fairly certain all of them were once human, but I cannot bear to think on it. At least I still had the body of a human (well, mostly). There is nothing human about any of these poor creatures, except the expressions in their eyes. Sadness, fear, frustration, and now, a bit of hope. “I must not let them down,” I whisper fervently. If Beauty hears me, she does not comment.
Mumford leads the crowd a few more feet until we are hidden from view behind the barn, and then steps onto a bale of hay to address the crowd. “Attention please, everyone. I am Mumford, formerly known as The Witch’s Pig.”
At this, the crowd stomps, crows, snorts, bleats, barks, and flaps.
“Shh,” he says. “We must move fast.” He gestures for me to stand beside him. “This is, er, I do not actually know your name?”
“I am Prince Riley from one of the seven kingdoms due south from here.” I stand up straight like Mother always taught us when addressing the townsfolk. My voice still sounds strange to me, like a boy’s voice. Which, of course, it is. I admit, there were elements of being the beast that I will actually miss — the deep voice being one of them. I clear my throat, and try to sound older. “This is my friend Beauty. She kissed me and broke the witch’s curse. She will do the same for you.”
More barking and all-around happy animal noises erupt. Mumford holds up a hand and they quickly settle down. I continue. “When everyone has transformed back to their former selves, the witch’s power will be gone. At least we hope so.” I do not want to admit that we have thought no further than that. We will need to keep her from starting all over again. But first things first.
Beauty joins me in front of the crowd. I notice for the first time that her arms and cheeks are scratched from the branches during our run. She never even complained.
“Hello, everyone,” she says. “I would like to ask the women to stand to the left, and the men to the right.”
A flurry of fur and feathers later, they are sorted into two nearly even groups. I cannot figure out Beauty’s intent. She turns to me and Mumford and says, “Pucker up, boys, you have some kissing to do, too.”
Mumford looks from one group to the next, and then lets out a big belly laugh. “Of course! The girl is right!” He positions himself in front of a fluffy white poodle, and points next to him at a particularly large brown sheep. The poodle wags her tail happily as she looks up at Mumford. My sheep eyes me warily. I do not blame her. I have never kissed an animal in my life, since Mother does not allow pets in the house. I may have kissed one of the royal horses when I was three, but that is the extent of it.
“Let us begin!” Beauty says. She races over to the first in her group, and kisses an owl right on the top of his head. Without waiting to see what happens, she moves on to a frog, and then a turtle. Mumford has already kissed his poodle and has moved on to a three-toed sloth. He elbows me. “Get to the kissing!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the animals Beauty kissed are falling to the ground, transforming in a tangle of limbs. I quickly turn back to my sheep and kiss her lightly on the ear. It felt like kissing my blanket at home. Not that I have actually done that, of course.
Without looking back, I move quickly down the line. An antelope, a cat, three rabbits, and a hedgehog. Judging from the muffled shouts and weeping and shuffling going on behind me, I surmise my kisses are doing their job. I am about to kiss a parrot when I catch Beauty’s eye. She smiles at me over the head of a donkey and winks.
I smile and kiss my parrot square on the beak. I’m about to move on to the next animal when I realize Mumford and I have no more animals in our group. Working together has allowed us to move more quickly than Beauty, who still has a handful to attend to. I consider asking some of the newly transformed women to help, but they are all still very disoriented and most are having trouble even sitting up without help. In hindsight, Mumford recovered very quickly following his own transformation. I wonder what his special gift is. Strength maybe, or bravery. Beauty has just finished kissing a mule, and is bending down toward a large gray buffalo.
“Wait a moment,” I say, hurrying to join her. When the buffalo sees me, he shuffles backward until his hind legs are up against the wall of the barn. I squint at him. The shiny almost-silver-colored coat, the horns so low they scrape the ground. “I have seen you before,” I tell him. “You were with the witch the day I was cursed.” He only lowers his head further, his horns digging small ditches in the soft ground.
“Do not be afraid,” Beauty says, approaching him cautiously. She rests her palm on his back, but he bristles and shies away from her hand.
“I am loathe to rush you, m’lady,” Mumford says, joining us. “But we must finish our task and get everyone to safety.”
We both glance back at the twenty-five or so fully human people huddled together. Old and young (though none as young as I), they are talking excitedly, their eyes alternately frightened, cautious, and gleeful.
Beauty turns away and quickly kisses the cowering buffalo. Soon he is a tall, thin man, huddled in a ball. He pulls his silver cloak tight around himself and refuses to look at us.
Beauty bends down beside him. “Sir? Are you all right? You are amongst friends here.”
He shakes his head. “I failed the royal family. I tried to warn them, but I could not.”
She looks up at me, surprised, then back down at him. “You look familiar to me. Have we ever met?”
He glances up at her and shakes his head.
“I do know you, though,” she murmurs. “Wait! You are the man at the mill. The one who can tell if someone is telling a fib!”
He nods, wincing. “That is I. All the witch does is tell fibs. And I could do nothing to stop it.”
Beauty leans close to me and whispers, “When I saw him last, he was confident and strong. Now he is a broken man.”
I kneel down. In my most princely voice, I say, “Sir, you are not to blame. You tried to warn us as best you could, and in return you were struck by the witch. I am certain when all of this is over, our kingdom would be lucky to have a man such as yourself working with us.”
He meets my gaze. “Truly?”
I nod.
He pushes himself into a sitting position. “Thank you, Your Highness. I shall pull myself together.”
Satisfied that he won’t have a problem on his hands, Mumford helps the man the rest of the way up, and brings him over to the other group. “Run as fast as you can,” he instructs everyone. “Hide in the cellar of the slop house. The witch never goes there. I shall come for you when it is safe.” Before they turn to go, they lob oaths of loyalty and words of gratitude to me and Beauty, then take off, running and stumbling and helping each other up. They disappear around the side of the barn. I do not see where they go from there.
Just as I’m about to ask Mumford where we can find the witch, a black cat with white spots rushes up to us. It is the same one the witch was petting so lovingly earlier. “Oh, no, we missed one!” Beauty says, kneeling down and puckering her lips.
Mumford yells, “Stop! Don’t go near that cat!” but it is too late. The cat has sprung up, hissing and spitting and adding to the scratches on Beauty’s soft cheeks.
“Ouch!” she cries out, trying to fend off the cat
with her elbows. I run up and grab the cat from behind, holding it as far out in front of me as my arms (which seem short and stubby to me now) can reach. It squirms free and dashes away.
“That is not good,” Mumford says, holding his hand to his face. “If he is here, the witch is not far behind. I had hoped to have the element of surprise on our side.”
“Who is he?” Beauty asks, dabbing at her face with her sleeve. “Or should I say, who was he?”
“I do not know,” Mumford replies. “But he and the witch are very attached to each other. She turned him long ago. I think he was not a good person to begin with.”
“If she likes him so much, why doesn’t she turn him back to human?” I ask. “Surely she can break her own curse.”
“’Tis a good question. I think she likes having him as her eyes and ears amongst the other animals.”
The words are no sooner out of his mouth than the cat reappears, followed only two steps behind by a withered old woman, bent nearly in half. Her eyes, full of hate, are directed entirely at me.
“You!” She spits at my feet. A gross glob of green goo slides between blades of grass, barely missing my boots. “You have done this to me! How dare you?”
I motion for Beauty to get behind me, but instead she stands beside me and takes my hand. “We have done this to you,” she corrects the witch. “We did it because no one else should have to suffer like Riley did. Or any of the others you took away from families who loved them. How dare you, is the question.” She juts out her chin in defiance. It trembles a little, but does not waver.
I turn to Beauty in amazement. I knew she was brave — she’d have to be to agree to live with a beast and then to come here with me — but I did not know she was capable of this.
The witch waves her hand at Beauty, dismissing her like one would a pesky fly. “I still have enough power left for one more transformation,” she hisses at me. “I turned you into a beast once. I shall do it again.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mumford sneak up on the cat and grab him. “I do not think you will,” I reply calmly.
“And why is that?” she asks.
I step to the side and point at Mumford. “Because we have your cat.”
If I thought her eyes were filled with hate before, now they are furious. “You will not hurt one hair on that cat’s head,” she says, emphasizing every word.
“No,” I admit. “But Beauty just might kiss him.”
The witch gasps.
“You will lose your prized companion, and the last bit of your power, all at once.”
“I would take the boy at his word,” Mumford says. “I’ve seen the girl in action.”
Beauty rolls her eyes at us. “You two did your fair share of kissing, too, as I recall.”
“Give me the cat!” the witch bellows. Then she rears back and lunges for him.
In response, Mumford quickly tosses the cat over the witch’s head to me as though I actually have a chance of catching him without getting sliced to shreds. He lands beside me on all fours, springs back on his hind legs, and bares his sharp teeth. Meanwhile, the witch has landed squarely in Mumford’s now-empty arms, and he grabs her tight. Seeing this, the cat begins to screech in protest.
“You are not using your magic to free yourself,” Beauty says to the squirming witch. “That must mean you are saving what little you have left. If you do indeed have enough for one more transformation, then we shall give you a choice. You can use it on one of us, but we will just break the curse the moment after, and you will have no power left at all. You will wind up locked in the dungeon of Prince Riley’s castle.”
I shudder. “I can tell you from experience that it’s not very comfortable down there.”
“Or,” Beauty continues, “you can turn yourself into an animal and live out the last of your days in the wild.”
Once again ignoring Beauty, the witch turns her fierce gaze on me. “I tried to kill you once,” she hisses. “Would have saved me a lot of trouble, too. But all you did was blow a hole in the wall with the ingredients I sent you. Hard to believe you’re supposed to become such a great scientist.” She snarls. “What place would magic have in the world if men could control nature themselves?”
My eyes widen. “You sent me that box? I’m going to be a great scientist?” I cannot believe this! Me, who cannot even keep a worm alive! “That’s why you turned me into a beast?”
“How wonderful!” Beauty exclaims, shaking my shoulder. “I knew she didn’t make a mistake choosing you. You do have a special gift! Imagine what you will contribute to the world!”
As she shakes my shoulder, her necklace sways a bit and the sunlight glints off of the pink surface. For the first time, the witch snaps her full attention to Beauty. She narrows her eyes at the necklace with such focus that I fear she will burn a hole through Beauty’s chest. When Beauty realizes what the witch is looking at, she takes a few steps backward and clutches the stone.
“Where did you get that?” the witch asks, struggling to free herself of Mumford’s grasp. “That is mine!”
“I do not think so,” Beauty says. “It belongs to my friend. And I intend to give it back.”
The witch shakes her head. “Wrong! It belongs to me! It belonged to a young woman who I transformed into an ant a few years ago. Once she became my possession, so did the stone.”
“Mumford,” I ask, “is there an ant here that used to be a person? I thought the cat is the last?”
Mumford shakes his head. “The ant ran away a few years ago with a grasshopper. The pull on them was not strong enough to keep them here. After that, the witch turned people into larger animals.”
The witch spits again, and Beauty and I back up farther. “They stole my stone. Where did you find it?”
Beauty does not reply. She is no doubt thinking the same thing I am — the young woman who became an ant must have been Veronica’s mother. She could still be alive out there somewhere!
“Where she found it is none of your business,” I tell the witch. “You have only a moment left to decide what will become of the rest of your life. Life in our prison, or the life of an animal.”
The cat, who I had nearly forgotten about, dashes over and winds himself around the witch’s legs, purring. With a final hateful glare at all of us, the witch begins to dissolve! Mumford grunts as his arms suddenly fall empty to his sides. At his feet, a new cat lays curled on the ground in front of the black-and-white-spotted one. This new one is gray, with a black spot over where its heart should be. The witch-turned-cat stretches, then springs up. The two touch noses, then turn and stroll away, heads and tails held high. The second they disappear from sight, so does the barn, the pasture, the lemon trees in the distance, and the bright sun.
I shiver in the midday fog but am glad to see the ruins again, the thick forest, the wide sea. I breathe in a deep breath. It feels clean. Mumford sits down on a rock, dazed. He must not have seen the witch’s illusion of the ruins before. I scratch my head — is THIS the illusion, or was the other? I suppose it matters not.
Beauty runs over to the dried-up brook she had pointed out when we first arrived. I follow and find her crawling on her hands and knees at the edge.
I clear my throat. “Beauty, I … ouch!” I reach down to slap at my ankle. A grasshopper jumps up and down in the grass. “I think that thing just bit me!”
Beauty laughs and holds out her hand. The grasshopper jumps up on it. “I believe it is you who led me to the crystal.” The grasshopper jumps excitedly in her palm.
“Um, Riley?” Beauty asks, as sweetly as can be.
I remember something Alexander told me during one of his How to Get a Girl to Like Me lessons. Basically it was: “Do what they ask even if you really don’t want to or it’s really icky.”
And that is how I wind up kissing my first — and thankfully last — grasshopper.
We stand back as she transforms into a white-haired woman. “Finally!” she exclaims, stretching her ar
ms out wide. “I’ve been waiting for that kiss for years!”
Beauty peers at the woman. “Are you … Veronica’s mother? The first to escape the witch?”
The woman shakes her head. “Katerina escaped first, but I was only moments behind. After us, the witch stopped making insects. Far too easy for us to slip through the cracks! I have stayed here to guard the stone. Katerina always knew her daughter would come in search of her one day.”
“Then what happened to her?” Beauty asks. “To Katerina?”
The old woman shakes her head. “I was already the witch’s prisoner when Katerina first set out from her home to find out the origin of her stone. The witch captured her in the woods far from here, took the stone, and turned Katerina into an ant. As an ant, she was small enough to slip into the witch’s drawer and strong enough to drag out the stone. When we realized we were able to get out of the compound, we hid the stone in the brook, where water still flowed and hid it from view. Then Katerina set off for home. It has been many years now, and, of course, an ant cannot travel very fast. I am sorry to say, I doubt she still lives. In the compound we are well cared for, for the witch needs us healthy. Out here in the wild, we face the same challenges as any animal would.”
“Thank you for guarding the stone so well,” Beauty says. “Veronica is very grateful to have it, and without it, today could not have happened.”
The old woman beams and then walks off to join the others, now streaming from the compound. Mumford heads over to us.
“I am going to start some signal fires. The fishermen on shore will be too curious not to send out a boat. Once they find us, I shall ensure everyone reaches land safely.”
I tilt my head at him. “You are more than a simple peasant, are you not, dear Mumford?”
He smiles. “I suppose I am. But my story is long, and we have much work to do.”
“I shall help you. I have one thing to do first, though.” I reach out for Beauty’s hand, relishing the way it feels in mine. I doubt I shall ever wear gloves again, even in the coldest of winter.