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Beauty and his Beast [MultiFormat]
eBook by Vera Nazarian
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eBook Category: Fantasy
eBook Description: One of the heedless young ladies of the court persuaded Beauty to pick her a flower from the Queen's garden, but neither of them would ever have guessed how this would change his life.
eBook Publisher: Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, Published: Sword & Sorceress 8, 1991
Fictionwise Release Date: November 2009
10 Reader Ratings:
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [33 KB]
, ePub (EPUB) [40 KB]
, Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [15 KB]
, Portable Document Format (PDF) [185 KB]
, Palm Doc (PDB) [16 KB]
, Microsoft Reader (LIT) [68 KB]
, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [86 KB]
, hiebook (KML) [69 KB]
, Sony Reader (LRF) [54 KB]
, iSilo (PDB) [13 KB]
, Mobipocket (PRC) [17 KB]
, Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [51 KB]
, OEBFF Format (IMP) [27 KB]
Words: 4776
Reading time: 13-19 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
"...strange, poignant, and exquisite."--Marion Zimmer Bradley
She would watch them, sideways out of her cold clear eyes, the lovers walking with hands and gazes entwined, among rose-briars and thick verdant foliage of the gardens. These were her gardens, and they, the ardent young trespassers, were now and then made aware of her, when she allowed it to be. It was but a reminder, lest they forget, that this marvelous idyll, this wonder of a natural Eden, was but a small place within her abode, a place she chose to share. And the lovers, many of whom often came here at a whim, knew in the back of their minds that upon any random turn of the meandering path, beyond any thicket revealing a secret niche, they might come upon her, grimly horrendous and shadowy, the dark queen they all came to know as the Beast.
The gardens - lustrous eyelashes around a glittering eye - sprung forth in abundance to encompass the palace of the queen. This queen, an oddity, was of such an acutely noble ancient lineage that due to an unpredictable genetic quirk she had been born a monster. She was, at the age of twenty-three, and at the time of her coronation, exactly six-and-a-half feet tall, hunchbacked, her muscular and fleshy hominid body covered head to toe by a thick growth of dark bristly hair - including the face - and her head was misshapen and oversized like a boulder. The head grew sable hair which fell in a fearful mane from the scalp to her waist. Her facial features were hardly humanoid, indistinguishable - indeed, no one ever ventured close enough to try - but her eyes, those were bright, coldly intelligent, human.
When she spoke, her voice also was frighteningly human, rich and deep and plush as ermine. It carried also tones of remarkable education - faultless really, except for the occasional moments when a hollow wheezing would overcome her - for the queen suffered from a chronic and inborn lung ailment.
The queen inherited her full rank at the moment of her father's death, then proceeded to institute major changes. The now-deceased king had been a grim shadowy man - although physically normal by all means, as human beings go. In his day, the kingdom lay under the miserly clutches of gloom and decay, under a strict control. With his passing, the gloom and decadence suddenly took a different form, emerging as creative energy. A new pulse-beat was given to the land by the beast-queen. But the control remained. For she was strong, strong as a Minotaur, by the sheer force of her will contained in the horrendous body.
Brought up and educated as a normal girl-child of her position, the Beast with the given name Vinnaea (which no one cared to use behind her back) held a fine court in her opulent palace. She was a connoisseur of the Arts and Sciences, patron to those who excelled in such. And she was above all, a subtle lover of beauty.
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