The Beast That Never Was

By Caren J. Werlinger

What if Beauty was the Beast?

Lise’s father is dead, and the life of plenty and freedom that she has known as the daughter of the King’s Huntsman is gone. She must now live a life of duty to her mother and sisters, helping them to cope in their altered circumstances. But where her mother would have her wed a childhood friend to secure their future, Lise knows that is not what she longs for.

When she meets a mysterious woman in the forest, Lise feels the stirrings of emotions she cannot give voice to, but with this woman, she doesn’t have to say anything—Senna knows.

Cursed, hunted, and feared, Senna has been forced to wander from place to place for more years than she cares to remember. She gave up hope long ago that there could ever be an end to her isolation.

Odd sightings in the forest—monsters of legend come to life, old enemies back from the past, fearsome beasts on the prowl—begin to frighten the people of Lise’s village. Somehow, all of these things are connected to Senna. As the villagers’ fear grows, so does their hatred.

Senna prepares to flee, accepting what has become her fate, but Lise isn’t ready to give up her one chance for happiness. Soon, only Lise stands between the villagers and the woman she has grown to love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caren J. Werlinger
• Release date: Aug 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9780996036856

Caren J. Werlinger

Bestselling author Caren Werlinger published her first award-winning novel, Looking Through Windows, in 2008. Since then, she has published seventeen more novels, winning several more awards. In 2021, she was awarded the Alice B Medal for her body of work. Influenced by a diverse array of authors, including Rumer Godden, J.R.R. Tolkein, Ursula LeGuin, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Willa Cather and the Brontë sisters, Caren writes literary fiction that features the struggles and joys of characters readers can identify with. Her stories cover a wide range of genres: historical fiction, contemporary drama, and the award-winning Dragonmage Saga, a fantasy trilogy set in ancient Ireland. She has lived in Virginia for over thirty years where she practices physical therapy, teaches anatomy and lives with her wife and their canine fur-children.

Book preview

Books by Caren J. Werlinger

Novels:

Looking Through Windows

Miserere

In This Small Spot

Neither Present Time

Year of the Monsoon

She Sings of Old, Unhappy, Far-off Things

Turning for Home

Cast Me Gently

The Beast That Never Was

Short Stories:

Twist of the Magi

Just a Normal Christmas (part of Do You Feel What I Feel? Holiday Anthology)

The Dragonmage Saga:

Rising From the Ashes: The Chronicles of Caymin

Coming soon:

The Portal: The Chronicles of Caymin

The Standing Stones: The Chronicles of Caymin

The Beast That Never Was

Published by Corgyn Publishing, LLC.

Copyright © 2016 by Caren J. Werlinger.

All rights reserved.

e-Book ISBN: 978-0-9960368-5-6

Print ISBN: 978-0-9960368-6-3

The poem O dieses ist das Tier… by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Caren J. Werlinger

E-mail: [e-mail]

Web site: www.cjwerlinger.wordpress.com

Cover design by Patty G. Henderson

www.boulevardphotografica.yolasite.com

Book design by Maureen Cutajar

www.gopublished.com

This work is copyrighted and is licensed only for use by the original purchaser and can be copied to the original purchaser’s electronic device and its memory card for your personal use. Modifying or making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, without limit, including by email, CD, DVD, memory cards, file transfer, paper printout or any other method, constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To Beth

You saw through this beast and loved me anyway

Acknowledgments

This story was inspired by the Rilke poem translated in the frontispiece. That poem touched my heart many years ago, and I knew a novel would be born from it someday. Beauty and the Beast was my favorite fairy tale growing up. I lost count of how many times I read it. I never imagined myself a princess and never longed for a prince. And I was never Beauty when I read that story. Even from a young age, I knew I would not find love the way most people did. I always felt for the Beast, the Beast that never was, and wondered if I would ever meet the one who could love me as I am. Thankfully, I did.

My thanks to Lisa T. for her insight and feedback on this story. And I’m very grateful to Patty G. Henderson for another beautiful cover and my formatter, Maureen Cutajar, for making the inside as gorgeous as the outside.

Last, but never least, thank you to Beth. Your love is everything to me.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Author Bio

Oh, this is the beast that never was.

They knew it not and nevertheless they loved it—

its walk, its bearing, its neck,

the stillness of its gaze.

It wasn’t, but because they loved it, it was.

They always left it space.

And in that space, bright and apart,

it lifted its head slightly and scarcely needed

to be. They fed it, not with grain,

but always with the possibility of being.

And this gave the beast such strength

that from its brow sprouted a horn. One horn.

Shimmering, it drew nigh to a maiden—

and was, in the mirror and in her.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Chapter 1

A beam of moonlight danced across the small windowpane, tickling Lise’s eyelids until she woke. She lay still, listening to her youngest sister breathing next to her. In the next bed, her other two sisters slept, snoring lightly. Silently, she slid out from under the quilt. She reached for her clothes, neatly folded on the floor next to the bed, and carried them to the hall. She pulled her breeches—old ones of her father’s—up under her nightshirt and cinched them tight with one of his old belts. Tugging the nightshirt off, she slipped her shirt on, shivering as the cold material touched her skin. She folded her nightshirt and tucked it in the corner.

Creeping noiselessly down the stairs in the socks she’d worn to bed, she skipped the fourth from the bottom—the one that always creaked—and went to stir the fire. She added two logs and put the kettle on as the flames crackled, greedily licking at the new wood. She grabbed a coat off a hook and found her shoes in the pile near the door. She bit her lip as she lifted the latch, trying to keep the rusty metal from creaking. She reminded herself again to rub some fat on it to grease it. Outside, she sat on the stoop to put her shoes on.

She glanced up at the moon through the tree branches that waved feebly in the light breeze, half their leaves fallen. She sniffed. It was cool, but not cold enough for snow yet. With no need now to be quiet, Lise strode toward the barn. The cows and horses stirred at her entrance, looking at her sleepily.

No, she murmured, patting them as she passed. It’s not time for milking yet. Go back to sleep.

She went to the back of the barn, into the cheese room. Grunting under the weight, she lifted two wheels of cheese to get to one further down. She peeled back the cloth to reveal the soft, white cheese inside. Using a sharp knife, she carved out a large wedge, wrapping it in a clean cloth. She quickly covered the remainder of the cheese, and restacked the wheels she had moved. She let herself out of the barn with one more reassuring word to the animals.

Under the moon and stars once more, she jogged toward the village.

She loved being out at night, breathing the brisk air with no one to demand things of her, no one to tell her she wasn’t doing this or that properly, no one to nag at her. With three younger sisters and a mother to care for, this was the only time she felt free to do what she wished. And what she wished was to see Sabine.

The road forked and she paused. The left fork would take her the long way round, the track wide and only mildly rutted from the recent rains, the bridge probably passable. The other fork snaked through the forest, twisty and rooted. Ever since her father’s death two winters past, her mother and sisters refused to travel through the forest unless they absolutely had to.

Lise resolutely turned to the right.

The moon threw shadows as she walked. She had to walk carefully in places where the trail narrowed and twisted, winding over stones and tree roots and covered by leaves that crunched as she walked. A few owls startled her, hooting from the trees or gliding by on silent wings.

There’s nothing to be afraid of, she whispered to herself.

The trees grew thickly here, enormous old trees, surrounded by younger ones. Much of the forest was fir and pine trees that never lost their needles, but in summer, the leaves of the other trees were so dense that even at midday, it felt like twilight. Now though, the moon followed her through the gaps in the canopy.

The path she was on was little used, as most preferred to take the long way around the forest, but it was familiar to her. It led her through the heart of the forest. She found herself hurrying, despite her reminders that she had been in the forest hundreds of times with her father and that there was nothing to be afraid of.

She forced herself to slow down, and that was when she saw it—a glow, deep in the shadows, like a candle burning. She veered from the path to investigate, stumbling over roots and fallen branches.

Shining in the moonlight, a single white rose bloomed on a bush that couldn’t possibly grow here in these dense shadows. It was well off the path, by itself in a small clearing in the middle of the forest. She stepped over a fallen tree and pushed through the underbrush, a few thorns tugging at her breeches. She circled the rose bush. The scent of the bloom came to her, fragrant in the night air. She leaned close to breathe it in. Just as she reached out to touch it, she froze.

Someone was weeping.

Spinning around, she searched for the source of the crying, but it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.

Who’s there?

Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the silence of the night, broken only by the sound of crying. The last of her bravado left her and she broke into a run. Every bush snagging at her clothes felt like hands trying to grab her, and her own panting sounded like someone breathing down her back. She sprinted along the path and tripped over a tree root, falling headlong into a ditch filled with standing water. She managed to keep the cheese from falling into the muck. Sputtering, she blew mud from her mouth and nostrils. She wiped her eyes clear and climbed up the far side of the ditch, scrambling with hands and feet to get back on the trail. Without pausing to see if the sound of weeping still pursued her, she tore through the woods until she neared the village. She clutched her side as she tried to catch her breath. She turned back to the forest, but nothing stirred.

She laughed weakly at her own fears. Scared yourself silly.

Nestled in a broad valley, high enough above the river to avoid all but the worst floods, the village of Ibendorf sat. As Lise approached, all was still, everyone still abed.

She stayed in the shadows, making her way to the baker’s house. She crept to the porch and set her cheese where they would find it. As she backed away, a light flared from inside the house. She ducked behind a tree and watched as a girl came into view through the window. A girl with hair the color of gold, and a face like an angel. Lise scarcely dared to breathe as she watched Sabine feed the firebox beneath the oven. She moved out of view, and Lise shifted to keep watching. Her heart beat fast again, but not from running.

The door suddenly opened and Sabine stepped out to collect more firewood. She spied the cloth-wrapped cheese and bent to pick it up. Peering out into the darkness, she looked for whoever had left the gift. Lise hid behind her tree, wishing she were brave enough to step out and tell Sabine it was she, but she remained hidden until she heard the door close again. Only then did she step out from the shadow of the tree. With one more longing glance at where Sabine was now kneading dough at the table, she turned back home, taking the long way around this time.

An upstairs lamp was burning when she got back to the house. Lise looked down at the mud spattering her shirt, visible even in the moonlight, and made for the well instead. She lowered the bucket and drew fresh water. She braced herself for the icy plunge and scrubbed the worst of the mud off her hands and face before heading to the barn.

By the time the barn door opened behind her, she was busily milking her first cow. Cool air entered with her sisters, stirring the dust on the flagstones.

Azra, the second eldest, stopped beside her. What time did you get up?

Lise kept her head pressed to the flank of her cow and didn’t look up. I couldn’t sleep so I thought I’d get started here.

Azra’s snort communicated her doubt that that was true, but Adelheid and Isabel picked up buckets and began milking, leaving her no choice but to follow. Isabel sang while she milked, just as she did every morning. Her sweet voice calmed the cows as they munched on the feed in their bins. Lise finished her first cow and moved to another.

Bucket after bucket of the rich, warm milk was poured into large crock urns back in the cheese room. Lise lit the fire in the hearth to begin warming the room.

What happened to you? Isabel whispered when she came back to dump her bucket and saw Lise’s mud-spattered shirt.

Lise shrugged. I went for a walk and tripped in the dark.

Isabel disappeared and came back a moment later with a clean shirt tucked under own blouse. She held it out.

Change into this. I’ll wash that one later so Mama won’t see.

Lise flashed a smile at her baby sister.

I brought you some bread, too, Isabel said as Lise stepped into the corner to change her shirt.

Thank you, Lise said, her stomach rumbling with hunger at the mere mention of food.

Azra and Adelheid brought the last of their milk to pour into the urns while Lise released the cows from the stanchions and led them through the barnyard, scattering the chickens and geese, and leaving her sisters to clean the soiled straw in the stalls. She whickered to the two carthorses, herding them with the cows. She chewed her bread as she led the way up into the hilly pastureland above the farmhouse. The cows’ bells rang rhythmically as they followed her through the pale light of the early morning. Occasionally, a cow got distracted by the flowers and grasses growing beside the path, and Lise had to go back and gently nudge her along, but they were sweet-tempered creatures and willingly followed her to the lush grass growing partway up the mountain.

Lise let them wander and sat to finish her coarse, brown bread, the only kind they could afford to make now. She wished they could buy the fine, white flour Sabine’s family used to make their breads and rolls, the kind they used to eat before Father died. From here, she could see a few of the rooftops of the village, smoke rising from the chimneys by now as the folk below stirred. She knew they would be making ready for the harvest festival tomorrow. Azra and Adelheid had talked of nothing else for weeks—what they would wear, which of the young men they hoped might ask them to dance. Lise rolled her eyes and flopped back in the grass. The sun was not yet peeking over the mountains to the east, but the sky was tinted with pinks and blues, hinting at a beautiful day to come. She was tempted to disappear into the forest and spend tomorrow by herself, but her mother would not hear of it. And if she didn’t go, she wouldn’t see Sabine.

Here, all alone, Lise allowed herself to picture Sabine’s face, her beautiful face. The face she longed to touch and kiss. Laughing at her own daring for even letting herself think it, she hugged herself for a moment, and then sobered. It was sinful to think this way, to feel this way. Sometimes the priest who came to their village on his rounds cautioned them on the evils of the flesh, lecturing them about the godliness of women remaining chaste until marriage, and Lise knew he was talking to her.

She had to be more careful. Just last week, Azra had caught her watching Sabine when they brought their cheese to market. Azra saw everything, and worse, told their mother everything she had seen. No matter what, no one could ever, ever know how she felt about Sabine. Her dreams would always remain just that. With a sigh, she sat up.

If she didn’t get back soon, she would hear nothing but complaints the whole morning. She made her way back down the hillside, smiling when she saw her wet shirt hanging from a line on the back side of the barn, away from the house and her mother’s sharp eyes.

She let herself in the door in time to hear Adelheid saying, Must we bring cheese to the festival? I don’t want to smell of cheese tomorrow of all days.

Their mother, Yana, turned from the fire where she stirred a pot of porridge while a bit of bacon sizzled in the oven. And what do you think we’ll be selling if we don’t bring cheese? We’ll make more this one day than in four market days if we’re lucky.

I’ll sell the cheese, Lise offered. If she was busy at their stall, she wouldn’t have to dance or—

Oh, no you won’t, Yana said. Rhein will be looking to dance with you and I expect you to be nice to him.

She looked her eldest daughter up and down, and her prying eyes spied the remains of the mud in Lise’s hair. What in the world have you been doing? I swear by all that’s holy, if there’s dirt within a league, you will find it. So help me if you don’t manage to stay clean after your bath tonight, I’ll flay you alive. If we’re lucky, Rhein will ask you tomorrow.

Mama, I don’t want to marry Rhein.

Yana’s eyes flashed. I don’t care what you want! We’ve only just managed to keep a roof over our heads since your father died. If you were to marry, Rhein and his parents would have to help us. Woot and Vesna owe us and they know it.

Lise braced herself for what she knew was coming.

If your father were still alive, you’d all have had your choice from scores of suitors. Daughters of a King’s Huntsman are a highly desirable match. Guaranteed game on the table for the rest of your lives. Now, we’re reduced to working our hands to the bone making cheese and hoping some young man will look at you. No dowry, nothing to bring to a match. Angry tears filled Yana’s eyes. I will never understand why it was Jakob who died. Why couldn’t Woot have died instead?

Mama! Lise stared at her mother.

Don’t use that tone with me, Yana snapped as she lifted the pot off the hook. Woot only has the one son, and now he’s training to be Huntsman. Your father left me with four daughters. Four!

She slammed the pot down on the table, and bits of porridge flew through the air. The table

Reviews for The Beast That Never Was

[Tise · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5 Stars

The plot had great potential. It was good and interesting in the beginning, but I lost interest in the last part.

[Joy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I wish this was longer. It was so good! New favorite!

[Kumaresh · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A well written book, inspired by Beauty and the Beast. There characters were each well thought out and the story did not force a faux character development theme on them. Definitely worth the read.