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I am the Beast of Black forest. I am a man cursed by false love and betrayal.
I was handsome once, you know. Not that anyone would believe me were I to tell them so. My body was strong and fit, my hair the color of burnished gold, and my skin like that of a peach. I was the envy of every man in my village and the love interest of every woman, every woman that is except one, Beauty.
The day she and her father came to our village was the day I fell in love for the first time. Before that I had always been a bit of a playboy, no woman holding my interest long. Some considered me dishonorable for that, but I never left a partner unsatisfied or hurt. If they got into my bed it was because they understood that they were only going to get a one-night stand with me.
Beauty was a different kind of girl. Rumor said she’d been raised as a noble woman before her mother’s death and her father’s fall from grace. She believed in marrying for love and social betterment and I as a simple hunter was not an option in her eyes. Instead, she turned eyes to the East where the city lay and would stare at it for hours, sighing over some beau or other she’d been forced to leave behind.
I tried for months to get her attention to no end. She turned her nose up at the meat and wildflowers I brought her, no doubt thinking that a Lord could give her so much more than I, a simple peasant, could. Her father at least was always grateful for what help I could offer him in keeping their pantry stocked and as he always invite me to dine with his family when I brought food by, I continued to do so even when it became obvious that I would not win Beauty’s heart by doing so.
I became so enamored with the idea of taking Beauty as my wife that I stopped being interested in the other village girls, a fact that was probably part of my downfall.
One day a message came to the village by way of a peddler. I didn’t know much about what it spoke as I had never seen the ocean of which it spoke, but I realized that it meant something important when Beauty’s face lit up like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. I fell even more hopelessly in love with her at the sight, not realizing at the time that her happiness was caused by the belief that she would soon leave our little town behind and make her way back to the big city.
The first time I even got an inkling of that fact was when Beauty’s father asked me to escort him through the Black forest so that he could return to the city and see to business. Liking the man and being familiar with the territory, I saw no reason not to.
The journey passed without incident and we reached the far side of the forest in short order. He said he’d return on the new moon and asked me to be at that place again at the next full moon. I quickly agreed and we parted ways.
At the time, neither of us knew that the missive was a lie. There would be no ship waiting in port for him and no business to keep him in the city for a month’s time. While I understand his leaving the city, I’ll never understand why he chose to travel in the Black forest alone, at night. Surely, someone must have warned him that the woods were cursed and that traveling them in the darkness would lead to nothing but sorrow. Perhaps somebody had told him and he simply didn’t believe.
Either way the result was that two weeks after his departure for the city, he returned. His once ruddy face pale with fatigue and his auburn mane turned white from fear. This was the face of a man who had seen the curse and lived to tell about it. The strange thing was that despite his continued life he still clutched a funeral rose, the roses that grew on the grave of anyone who’d ever fallen victim to the curse.
That rose meant that something horrible had happened and that something even more horrible was to come. That rose spelled the end of my love for Beauty.
Two nights later, the village was awoken by the screams of a terrified horse. When I finally managed to calm the animal down and discover its identity I could have screamed myself. This was Beauty’s chestnut mare. Something awful had happened and I was foolishly determined to discover what that something was.
When I arrived at Beauty’s farm I discovered her father raving like a mad man, yelling about deals with the devil and death lying in the Black forest. Being unable to calm the poor man down I gave him a strong shot of whiskey and put him to bed, praying that the morning light would return his sanity and he’d be able to tell me where Beauty had gone.
Luckily, my prayers were answered. He told me of the beast he’d found in the center of the forest and of the deal he’d struck to save his own skin. He claimed he’d never expected to have to go through with it, to have to send Beauty to her death, and I believe him. He was a man of the city and no doubt didn’t believe in the Old Ways, the ways of Witchcraft. He couldn’t have know that the moment he struck that deal he doomed Beauty.
Still, being young and foolish I accepted his pleas for assistance and agreed to search for Beauty within the Black forest, all the while assuming that I’d be bringing her bones home to bury.
It took me two years to fulfill that promise to Beauty’s father. Finding her became my obsession, so much so that I sacrificed everything in my pursuit of Beauty. I spent more and more time inside the cursed forest, even finding my bed in it many a night. I became a denizen of its eminence and a living representation of its curse, my body becoming rough and worn as the forest destroyed the parts of me it did not find useful.
By the time I found my Beauty, I was no longer the young boy she’d known, in fact when I arrived at the gates of the great castle that lay in the center of the forest she didn’t even recognize me. Even if he didn’t know me her husband, the Beast of the Black Forest, recognized what I was. He knew that I was a creature of the forest now and he knew why I had become such.
He was deeply in love with Beauty as she was deeply in love with him. Despite the pain I felt at the sight of them together, I was still glad to see Beauty so happy. A gladness the Beast didn’t hesitate to use against me. He told me that as the Beast he was the one whose body embodied the very foundation of the curse, in his current state he could never leave the forest or have the children he and Beauty so desperately wanted.
At the time I didn’t understand why he told me those things and I very much wish I never did. You see there are two things that are required for a new man to take on the mantle of the Beast. First, he must belong to the woods and no other and second he must know what is going to happen. Nowhere in those rules does it say that the new man must give his consent. A fact that the last beast took full advantage of; when he had Beauty feed me drugged wine and used his powers to transfer his curse and beastly visage onto me.
When I finally woke from my drugged stupor it was to a castle empty of both Beast and Beauty and a body that could not leave the forest. So the Beast I became and a Beast I remain until the day someone reads this, my story, and I can cast the spell on some unwary soul and become a man once more.
On that day I will finally be able hunt Beauty and her Beau down and destroy them for what they did to me.