A Serendipitous Dip

Water trickled down the curve of a razor-sharp fang, over a blue lip, and into a wiry, green beard, soaking a patch of gray fur beneath. A behemoth, clawed hand reached up to wipe away the next tear that rolled from a yellow eye with a slitted pupil.

This was the beast’s nightly ritual—return to hovel (be it cave or abandoned woodland cottage), eat whatever creature he had slaughtered on the day’s journey, weep, then fall into a fitful sleep.

Every fortnight or so, however, he broke his routine. On these nights, the beast would creep towards whatever town laid nearby. He would hide amongst the bushes or under a bridge, waiting for a straggler to leave the village’s boundaries, then approach.

Each time his shadowed, looming form came into sight, he was met with a blood curdling scream. The lone townsperson would feel the beast’s footfalls quaking the earth, smell his foul breath, and flee. Every attempt he made was met with the same reaction, only the language of the shouted exclamations differed as the territory changed. The beast’s roaming had taken him far and away, over many lands, for more than a century.

The following morning, he woke on hard earth with a groan. His body did not age, but his heart and head had grown so weary that the beast’s bones had begun to ache phantomly. Scorching sunbeams reached into the mouth of the cave, caressing the gnarled lumpy skin of his face and stinging his tear-swollen eyes.

Another day, he thought to himself, grudgingly.

He pulled his throbbing bones up to stand and lumbered out of the cave. Despite his bulk, once his body warmed, he moved agilely down the cliff, flinging himself from crag to nook until his cumbersome, claw-tipped paws landed with a boom on the forest floor. He sniffed the air, his beastly senses picking up the sweet scent of berry bushes mingled with the sound of a babbling river.

The beast made his way cautiously to the waterway, wary not to cross paths with another soul besides the odd rabbit or squirrel.

Perched on the riverbed, he stared into the soft and welcoming current, tossing ripe, red berries into his mouth. Each of their kernels popped when pierced by his sharp, forked tongue, releasing saccharine juices. He was miles away from the nearest town, where a few nights before he had been met with the usual screeches of “Monster!” from a pair of adolescents sneaking away to entwine themselves. So, he decided this spot was remote enough to rid himself of the rags he wore and bathe in the crisp river, a reprieve from the day’s stifling heat.

The stream was not wide, but it was deep enough in the middle for the beast to crouch and submerge his furry head beneath the surface.

Below the water, silver-scaled fish scuttled past his glowing yellow eyes, undeterred by his hideousness. He stood, sending cascades of water down his enormous body, then began scrubbing the clumps of dirt and grime from his beard and talons. It had been a long while since the beast felt clean… in more ways than one. Lost in the pleasure of water moving through his every hair and bristle, he did not hear the woman approach.

“Hello.” A sing-song voice reached his tufted, wolf-like ears from behind. The beast froze.

He turned as if sifting through sand, his claws trailing furrows in the water. It occurred to him he was naked, though no human would care about his impropriety when they laid eyes on his eight-foot stature and menacing fangs.

“The water looks lovely.”

The beast’s unnatural eyes grew wide at the sight of the beautiful, softly curved woman who seemed unfazed by his beastliness. She hiked up her long, blue skirt, tucking the hem into her belt. She then removed her scuffed leather boots and socks, rolled up the sleeves of her collared, white shirt, and tied her long, curly black hair into a knot atop her head before wading in.

The beast’s keen eyes followed her, and he flinched when she drew closer, baring his teeth with an involuntary snarl. The woman ignored his growl, the freckled, button nose on her round, medium hued brown face scrunching at the shock of cold water. Her bright green eyes danced with the reflection of the glittering stream while she picked her way to a large rock in the river, close enough for the beast to reach out and grab her. She perched, mermaid-like, leaning back on her hands and tilting her head back to bask in the sun, eyes closed, one foot gliding circles in the river.

Without turning her head, she asked, “Do you speak?”

The beast coughed, clearing the cobwebs from his unused vocal cords. “Yes,” he replied.

Though he meant for his answer to complement the softness in her request, the fearsome grrrr that rolled through the word could not be bridled.

The woman stopped her sunbathing to fix her incredible gem eyes on him. Under her scrutiny, his nakedness now made him squirm, and he glanced down to ensure the swirling waters came up past his grey furry haunches.

“So,” she started, “were you born as this creature or is this a curse situation?”

The lightness with which the woman referred to the one-hundred-and-five years the beast had spent wandering the world alone and unsightly should have been bothersome. Instead, it elicited a smirk of his blue lips.

“A curse situation.” The deep rumble of his voice provoked the birds to take flight from the tree branches around them.

“Very well,” the woman said. “Tell me of this curse, and then we shall see if there’s anything to be done.”

“My—my clothes.” He pointed a claw at the threadbare, cobbled together shirt and pants on the shore. Too large to fit any human.

The woman waved a hand in dismissal. “I am a healer, friend. If you are comfortable in the water, you can remain there. You possess nothing I have not seen.” She eyed him up and down from his pointed ears to his fur covered navel sitting just above the turbulent waters. “Well, perhaps that isn’t entirely true.” She laughed, the sound of it deeper and more robust than the beast would have predicted.

The word friend sat strangely in the beast’s ears and a spark of old, buried humanity pricked in his chest—it was not decent to bare your body before a lady with whom you were not familiar. He sensed these beliefs belonged to a bygone era but was not privy to society’s current norms. Sopping, he emerged, clawed hands covering his bits.

While he dressed—forgoing a shake of his fur coat to dry himself—the woman also made her way to the riverbank. He sat and watched as she mopped the back of her neck with a wet kerchief, then came to sit beside him upon the round, smooth stones.

“Your story, friend. If you please.”

The beast surveyed the woods across the river, discerning a path for escape, should this meeting go afoul. His mind spun in the wake of being spoken to for the first time since being cursed. Who was this ethereal creature who dared to approach him? And what was his story? He had all but forgotten the events which led to this hollow existence.

He sighed deeply. “I held the heart of an exceptional woman and greedily consumed her love, without giving her mine in return. My actions drove her to madness.” A storm of regret brewed behind his feral eyes. “She then took it upon herself to summon dark magic and seek revenge.”

The woman smiled forlornly, a glint in her eye. “Tale as old as time.”

The beast continued his story, his voice gaining humanness with every sentence. He told the stranger of how he took and took from the woman who adored him, keeping her always at arm’s length. He gifted only pieces of himself to keep her craving more, until one day, the woman cracked, delved into a well of slumbering power within, and cursed him. She turned the beast’s outsides into a reflection of how his selfish behavior made her feel.

The woman listened, her eyes glazing over in thought. At the end of his story, she let out a long sigh, and said, “You made her feel beastly, then.”

The monster noticed the woman’s eyes were rimmed in silver. Evidently, she knew the suffering of being treated in a similar manner, perhaps by a beast as despicable as himself. Schooling his voice into the kindest timbre he could muster, he asked, “What is your name? How did you come to be alone in these woods?”

“Genevieve,” she said with a toothy smile, her demeanor brightening. “I often roam on my own. I’ve been warned that this is a dangerous pastime, but how else am I to discover new places, new… things.” She laughed, a teasing lilt in her voice. “And what is your name?”

“My name was once Gabriel.”

“Gabriel,” she began. His long-unuttered name on her lips sent shudders coursing down the beast’s spine. “Did you mean to be cruel, to tear that woman’s heart to tatters?”

He searched his memories, unsure of the answer. The actions he took as a man rose into recollection, and after all this time, he could now see clearly the impact each of his small cruelties had in sum. His deeds were horrific, and he was ashamed. He dug deeper, down into the place where his human heart sat shrouded in hopelessness. A festering parasite lived inside of the beating husk, housed in its chambers long before the beast was cursed. The parasite was fear.

If the beast could blush in shame, he would have. “I was afraid,” he finally admitted.

“Of what, dear friend?”

“That I would reveal my entire self, and she would recoil from what she beheld. Or, perhaps, if I had allowed myself to fall as deeply as her, her feelings would have changed, prompting her to leave me behind, broken.”

Genevieve nodded, her mouth forming a grim line. “This does not excuse how you treated her.”

“I am aware,” he grumbled.

“And how do you feel now, Gabriel?”

He laughed and the sound was so foreign that the beast nearly choked on it. “I feared being alone… and that fear led to agonizing loneliness.”

“So, shall we be done with that now?” Genevieve asked. The light did seem to live in her eyes, whirling sunbeams played in her sea-glass irises, even while cloaked by the forest’s shadow. “Perhaps we shall try living life differently,” she suggested simply. A pause. “How have you spent your cursed years?” She cocked her head, eyes meeting the beast’s yellow stare with intent.

“I have tried—” He gulped. “To speak with people. But each time I approach, they run away.”

“I have not run away.”

He huffed through leathery nostrils. “You are the first one to converse with me in over a hundred years.”

Genevieve’s eyebrows met her hairline. “Your appearance hindered all those you neared for the last one hundred years from talking with you?”

“Yes.” He felt the tears welling in his eyes; his nightly weeping ritual threatened to overcome him hours too early.

“People always fear the unfamiliar.” Genevieve shook her head in disgust at this human tendency. “When I saw you bathing, enjoying the river’s soothing waters, I could see that you were kind. Harmless.”

The beast roared with laughter and his new friend joined in, too. “Harmless,” he said incredulously.

“Is that not the truth?”

Gabriel chuckled and noticed the cadence of his voice was less bass and gravelly than it had been at the beginning of their discussion. “Indeed,” he agreed with her assessment.

She ventured, “And are you not kind?”

The beast took a moment to explore the inklings in his mind and soul—his nature. “Given the chance, I would be.”

Genevieve nodded in affirmation then reached out to wrap her hand around his. Her small clasp could only accommodate two large, gnarled fingers. Yet, her touch, the first human touch the beast had felt in an era, caused powerful emotions to writhe in his chest. A sob caught in Gabriel’s fur-cuffed throat.

“Let it out, friend.”

Gabriel wept, muscle-bunched, hairy shoulders shaking. Genevieve held his hand gently, wordlessly. Through tears, the beast imagined he saw his pebbled green knuckles turn a pale skin-tone. It could not have been, though. A beast he was and always would be.

* * * *

She surprised the two children from behind, encircling them tightly in her arms, a roar erupting from her throat. Genevieve was a monster, and she had them trapped in her grasp. Or so the game went.

Four-year-old Claude and younger, toddling Madeleine laughed as their mother tickled them, wrestling them to the ground and covering them in kisses. Their light brown skin was sun-speckled with a burst of freckles across their noses to match their mother’s.

Another set of strong fingers imitating claws reached into their huddle, clutching Claude’s stomach to solicit another peal of laughter. Their father, Gabriel, placed a kiss on each of his loves’ three cheeks. The children jumped up and wrapped themselves around his legs in retaliation. They spurred him onward, riding atop his large paws—the one beastly feature that lingered—as their foursome made their way home. A cozy cottage over the crest of a flower-dotted, sloping meadow awaited them.

As he walked, Genevieve’s arm linked in his, his beautiful children clinging to him like barnacles, Gabriel’s heart sang. He lowered his handsome, sharp-edged, alabaster face and whispered with sensual lips in his wife’s ear, “Tonight, perhaps we make a third.”

She laughed, low and rollicking, sending shivers of anticipation through his body. Gabriel beamed, tears of joy—not despair—forming at the corners of his deep brown eyes.

Dizzied by this moment of bliss, an old, familiar feeling detected an opening to rear its ugly head. Gabriel found himself acutely aware of his vulnerability, his weakness. The urge to run or be devoured tingled in his limbs. He shook his head to rid himself of the impulse, then searched for the place in his heart where his parasitic fear once resided. At times like this, it tried burrowing itself back in again. I have no need of you, he told the loathsome creature. Be gone.

His stature was still unusually tall for a man, requiring Gabriel to bend low to brush a kiss along the nape of Genevieve’s neck. He was eternally grateful for this rambling woman who had caught him naked and unawares, then decided a beast like him, despite his gruesome appearance, was worthy of her friendship… and eventually, her love.