I
once read about an author who had cut something like 50,000 words while working
on her 70,000-word novel, and I thought, “Ick!” How horrible to have written so
much that would never make it into print. Blech. And now, here I am, reworking
my own novel (again) and cutting scenes like mad.
Including
my prologue.
I
am unreasoningly attached to my prologue. I think my book has started with the
sentence “I was not the first” since approximately forever ago. Doesn’t it just
sound marvelous? Doesn’t it just make you want to read on? Isn’t it absolutely
perfect? (The answer here is “yes.”) And yet, it’s being chopped. For reasons
that don’t need exploring at this juncture (because that would be nearly a
novel itself), the prologue is saying, “Adios.”
So,
as a grand farewell, I’m posting it here. *Sniff sniff.* Goodbye, prologue, I’ll
miss you.
I was not the first. Yes, I was the
Beauty, the breaker of the curse, the one they write the stories about. Just
not the first. But the story is much simpler that way, confined and clear. The
storytellers have forgotten—or perhaps they never knew—that life is rarely so
simple, so neat. So they weeded and thinned and told you a story of roses and
terrible bargains and a single lonely girl with the power to break a spell with
three simple words. If only it had been that easy.
I cannot blame them for their
story, but you should hear the rest of it.
The first young woman to meet the
Beast was named Sarah. In rather fairy tale fashion, she was collecting berries
in the forest—perhaps even singing to the woodland creatures—when she lost her
way. Back then, there were no rumors about magic in the woods, and the only
dangers she knew of were easily avoided by watching where she stepped and
listening for bears. When she discovered the faint track that led to the
Beast’s home, I imagine she felt no foreboding or fear. She would have followed
it until a clearing opened before her and she came upon a modest home—no great
castle like the stories say—surrounded by a magnificent garden, dazzling with
the colors of its summer blooms. I think she must have been surprised; she
couldn’t have known that anyone was living here, so deep within the woods. I
imagine it was nothing more than curiosity and friendliness that brought her to
stand before the big oak door. Nothing would have hinted to her what was behind
that door. So Sarah lifted her hand and knocked.
But as I said, this is not her
story. It is not really the others’ story either, though I will tell you what I
know of them. But without their stories, I sometimes think, mine would not
exist. Were they the necessary ingredients, added one by one, to a potion so
potent that it could break a terrible curse? Were they simmering together for
years until finally the magic was ready for me to bottle? Without the others,
would the spell still have been broken by the irresistible mix of beauty and
beast? I cannot know what might have been. I cannot know the way the story
might have been told, in the hands of another storyteller, at a different time,
with different secrets kept or shared.
What I do know is this: This is not
their story, but in a way it is. Sarah, Kerrienna, Juliet, Alara, all of them.
It is their story, and my father’s and my sisters’. But, most of all, my story.
The story of a Beauty and her Beast.
