The Girl Who Learned What Freedom Was
by Kai Cheng Thom
He gave her a library so she’d know he was the sensitive kind of Beast – not one of those monsters who’d kidnap a girl, blackmail her into staying, brutally ravish her then eat her for dinner without a second thought. This, clearly, was the romantic kind of hostage situation, the type of abduction that was a prelude to romance.
And I know, dear one, if it were you in that type of a “soft kidnapping”-slash-“aggressive seduction”— you’d probably know better than to fall for it. You’d see right through the whole thing in three seconds flat, no doubt. You have to remember, though, that all of this happened in the context of a land far away in a time long ago. Young ladies didn’t have access to the type of education and awareness that we have nowadays; and truth be told, sometimes even the fiercest of contemporary feminists is tempted by the charms of the right Beast just waiting to be redeemed, no?
So the girl had a library for the first time in her life, and a large, lovely one at that – a vast, magical space with vaulted dome ceilings and stained-glass windows, gold moldings on the walls in an art deco style, thick Oriental carpets and seemingly endless vistas of rosewood shelves that smelled heavenly in the mornings. What uncharted glory, to a naïve bookworm who’d spent her whole life in dusty towns where the bookmobile only came once a week!
Yes, dear one, her heart softened when he flung open the heavy double doors and declared the library a “place just for you and all your day-dreaming.” What else could it do? The heart is a foolish muscle, so easily swayed by slightest machinations. Anyway, she was trapped there, wasn’t she? Promised to the Beast? Why shouldn’t she at least enjoy what amenities were available?
There was just one shelf in a far corner of the library, full of slender black-spined tomes, that the Beast asked her, kindly enough, not to peruse. Those particular books, he said, covered some very personal family history that was too private to share at the moment. And the girl wanted to respect the Beast’s boundaries, so she acquiesced to his wishes in this regard.
The Beast himself wasn’t so bad either, when you got right down to it. Not a cruel slavering ogre, more like the biggest, hairiest softboi in the world with an extra fang or two dozen. He liked vintage wines. He had a dark and troubled childhood that he only ever hinted at– a tasteful amount, not so much that it seemed he was intentionally cultivating an air of mystery.
He frequently cried when he read her his poetry aloud, and in those moments he really didn’t seem so threatening at all, more like an enormous mopey puppy dog with giant, pleading eyes. It was really rather endearing when she didn’t think about the fact that he’d threatened to messily devour her entire family, slowly, ensuring they stayed alive for as long as possible during the process, if she didn’t agree to stay with him in his enchanted palace for the rest of her natural life.
She got to thinking, what if he wasn’t really a Beast born, but rather one made by the world around him? What if all he really needed was the proper education, the chance to blossom into the prince he was meant to be? She knew how silly that would sound if she said it aloud, but there was no harm in trying, was there?
***
The girl consulted the great library that the Beast had given her, which was enchanted and allowed the user to summon texts from across the great expanse of time and space. She pulled out feminist tracts, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto, she studied obscure zines from the Riot Grrl era, Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider and many other tomes of power and wisdom that were previously unimaginable to her. She shared these ideas with the Beast, who was in fact already familiar with some of them, but found new perspective and depth there through conversation and debate. And so, girl and Beast both had their consciousnesses raised, and they came to a greater awareness of the systemic narratives that had conspired to entrap them both – he, in the damning role of oppressor, and she, in the impossible role of simultaneous redeemer and damsel in distress.
“I’ve been a fool!” the Beast cried out one rainy afternoon beneath the stained-glass dome of the library ceiling. “I’ve been a fool, and a brute, and a chauvinist pig. I can see now that I’ve done you a terrible wrong, and I am remorseful, deeply remorseful, from the bottom of my heart.” And the girl felt a wild triumph in her chest, strangely hotter and more ferocious than she’d thought it would be. Shouldn’t transforming her kidnapper from Beast to prince feel sweeter, lighter, more airily angelic?
“I’m so glad, so very glad, Beast,” she said to him. “I know it’s not too late for you. You can change, I can see that you already are changing. And someday, you’ll make a fine prince.”
The Beast’s great dark eyes filled with tears. “I knew it, I knew you were the one,” he said. “After all of that, it was you who finally showed me the way. It’s because you understand, isn’t it? You know what it means to be a monster.”
The girl’s blood seemed to turn to ice within her veins. A dull roaring filled her ears, and for just a moment, all of time seemed to stop, before proceeding shakily once again. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said in a voice that seemed not quite her own.
“I-I meant no offense,” stammered the Beast. “It’s just that – well – your, er, difference from the other girls, I believe it has granted you a rather unique insight to the nature of –”
“Yes, I understand what you mean,” the girl gritted out. “And yes, I see why you might think that, and well, I suppose you might be right…”
“Oh good,” said the Beast, looking relieved. “We were having such a profound moment, and I hope to heaven I didn’t spoil it –”
“Not at all –”
“Thank goodness.” And then the Beast kissed her. A kiss about redemption and salvation. A kiss about aurochs and angels, about the irrepressible longing of all living things to be made good once again. A kiss about the little boy who lives in all male batterer’s hearts, full of terrors and entitlements and not the slightest clue about the impact of their behaviors on other people’s souls. A kiss about what happens when you’ve let the darkness in and now it won’t come out, and then suddenly, a light appears in the form of another person and all you can hope for is that they find you and heal you and turn you into the kind of human that you so desperately want to become.
Sometimes, I wonder – what has feminism taught you about all that, dear one?
***
In all the excitement, she never got a chance to ask: What had he meant, exactly, by the other girls?
***
So the Beast and the girl made plans to break the curse, to leave the enchanted palace once and for all. The kisses seemed to be working, little by little: The Beast’s physical form was gradually reverting to something more and more human. Yet his fangs remained stubbornly intact, and his eyes still glowed golden in the night. He thought that a change of scenery, getting out into the real world, might help things along, and the girl was both delighted and disturbed by the idea. On the one hand, freedom! On the other hand, she wasn’t really sure what freedom was anymore. Wasn’t she free already, now that the Beast had turned over a new leaf? Now that she was choosing to stay? How would she know when freedom arrived?
One day, the Beast went on a trip to view some real estate – they would need a new home, after all, if they were going to leave the enchanted palace. The girl felt both relieved and anxious about his absence. She wasn’t sure why.
“I’ll miss you every day I’m away,” he told her as they kissed goodbye. “And I swear to you, I’ll return before the sun sets on the third day, on my very life.”
“Oh, take your time,” the girl said, airily. “I’m sure I’ll find something to do on my own. Books to read, you know.”
“Yes, of course,” said the Beast with a sly smile. “Always reading. Another thing that sets you apart from other girls. Well, please enjoy the full range of the library’s offerings while I’m away – except for that one shelf, of course.”
“Yes…” said the girl. “That one shelf…though we do know each other so well now, don’t we? I’m sure nothing in there would shock me.”
“Please, my love” said the Beast seriously, “I know your compassion is boundless. But I ask you to humor me and refrain from reading any of those books. It is of the utmost importance to me.”
“Of course,” said the girl. “I promise.” And she waved the Beast goodbye.
Dear one, you know what happens next.
***
I won’t bore you with the minutiae of the girl’s thought process – her insecurities, her cravings, her obsessions, the secret shameful longings and childhood traumas that led her to do what she did. I’m sure you can imagine it, dear one. Suffice to say: She wanted to know what was in those books. She wasn’t an angel after all, no saint, this girl who’d chosen to try and redeem a Beast. A better girl might have known better, this is what she thought to herself as she walked through the gardens to the library with single-minded purpose.
She held out until the evening of the third day to do it, pretending that she was still debating with herself. It made her feel like a better person to agonize over the internal conflict of whether or not her actions were justifiable. She wondered if the Beast had felt this way when he took her from her family, when he cried as he read her his poetry.
She entered the library and went right to the forbidden shelf. The black leather-bound books sat in their place, serene. Tempting. She chose one at random and pulled it out, nearly dropping it in surprise: The leather was warm in her hand. She could feel a faint pulse beneath the surface.
Too far to go back now. She turned the book over, opened it up, and started to read. Inside was a fairy tale, written seemingly by hand on thick vellum in black ink. It was the story of a mermaid who was chosen to leave the sea and join a cruel prince on land, to teach him a lesson about following the song of his heart. In so doing, the mermaid made a terrible sacrifice, giving up her fish tail and scales. Yet the prince was ungrateful and eventually came to scorn the mermaid, who was then trapped forever as an uncanny creature caught between the land and the sea.
The girl shuddered and put the book down. She reached for another, and found it was also warm, also had a pulse. This second book’s cover was worn and tattered, as though it was much older than the first. It told the story of a woman in a faraway land whose husband came home from a war so broken that he changed into an enormous bear that terrorized the entire village. Every day the woman cooked her former husband’s favorite foods and brought them to him, determined that her courageous and devoted love would save him and change him back. Yet the bear’s hunger overcame him, and he devoured his wife whole.
The girl took another book from the shelf, then another and another. One by one she read them all. Here are just a few of the tales that she read:
A great king was driven mad and turned into a monster by grief following the death of his beloved wife, the most beautiful woman in all the lands. The king then turned his eyes upon his similarly beautiful daughter, determined to marry her and reclaim his lost humanity. In horror, the princess skinned a donkey and stitched its hide to her own flesh, marring her beauty forever and denying the king his gruesome wedding.
A father sold his daughter into marriage with a lord who was rumored to be depraved and cruel. Yet the daughter was pleasantly surprised to find that her new husband was a beautiful young man. For some time, they lived in happiness. Yet each night, the daughter found herself plagued by terrible nightmares of being ravished by an enormous snake. Every morning, she would awaken to find herself alone in bed, her husband having gone off to work his lands. Finally she went to bed early one night and waited for her husband to join her. When she felt him do so in the dark, she struck a match and lit a lamp – discovering then that her husband himself was the serpent, for he took the form of man during the day and the form of snake in the night.
In the sea there lived a pod of seal spirits who could shed their skins and turn into human women on land. One day, a cunning man stole the skin of one of the seal spirits, thereby forcing her to marry him and spend the rest of their days together. Every morning, the seal spirit begged the man to return her skin. Every time, he refused, because, he said, the seal spirit was a part of the sea and to keep her with him always was to possess the freedom of the ocean itself.
A young woman was sent into the woods as a sacrifice to the demon who lived within. Every year, the demon demanded a fresh sacrifice, each time hoping that the pure soul of the one sent to him would save him from his own evil and deliver him unto grace. Yet none of the sacrifices ever seemed to be quite pure enough…
“I asked you not to read these books,” said the Beast who had come home early. At the sound of his voice, the girl’s blood seemed, once again, to turn to ice. “They were private and you promised to keep them that way. You’ve crossed my boundaries and broken my trust.”
“Trust?” The girl asked shakily. “Trust? Are you seriously asking me about trust when you’ve been keeping these – hiding these – things here this whole time?” She gestured furiously at the books that had piled up around her. “I know what these are,” she said. “How many have there been? Just how old are you, exactly? Has this been your plan all along? Am I supposed to become one of them too?”
The Beast’s eyes welled up with tears. “Of course not,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “None of this was ever supposed to happen, not to any of them. Each of them was supposed to be the one, and I really believed it, every time. But you – you’re the only one who’s ever come so far, who’s actually managed to change me partway back to human. And it’s because you’re different than them! Because of who you are. Because you know what it’s like to be a mons –”
“For god’s sake, shut up,” said the girl. “Are you serious with this? It was their fault because they weren’t special enough for you? It isn’t someone else’s responsibility to make you human again! You’re the one who has to make the change!”
“It was a responsibility you seemed happy enough to take when it was fun for you,” said the Beast in a soft, silken voice.
“No,” said the girl. “You don’t get to tell me that. You forced me to come here!”
“Oho,” said the Beast, “you want to talk? You want everything out in the open? Let’s bring everything out into the open. I’m over ten thousand years old, and I can tell what a woman is feeling. You liked playing redeemer and changemaker, didn’t you? Felt good, didn’t it? It gives you power, rescuing me. It gives you purpose. Rescuing someone isn’t so different from controlling them, from owning them, is it? We’re the same, you and I. And that’s why you love me. You understand what goes on inside of a Beast.”
“No,” said the girl. “You don’t have a clue about who or what I am.”
“You’re a monster,” said the Beast, “a creature trapped halfway between one world and another, and it’s love that you need to make you real. That’s what you need, and it’s what I need. That’s why I chose you, after ten thousand years of choosing normal women. And it can still happen, my love. For both of us. I can forgive you crossing my boundaries, if you can forgive me keeping a secret. All you need to do is choose me in return.”
“No,” said the girl for the third and final time. “I’m getting out of here. I am leaving and you are going to let me be free.”
“You don’t know what freedom is,” said the Beast. “And this is my curse: I can never let you go.”
The girl felt the ice inside of her crack, melt, and come to a boil. Heat rushed through her entire body. “I know what freedom is,” she said softly. “It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve finally figured it out.” And she picked up one of the books, seized a handful of vellum pages, twisted, and pulled with all her might.
“Stop!” cried the Beast, lunging forward, but he seemed to be struck by a terrible pain and fell to his knees. The girl looked down and saw that where the book was torn, blood flowed between the pages. A warm wind blew up, and she thought she heard the sound of faint voices whispering, thank you. Good-bye.
She picked up another book and ripped that one open. Then another. Then another. Blood ran in rivulets over her hands and arms, dripping down her body and pooling at her feet as the Beast screamed and screamed and the wind rose higher, singing in the voices of women.
What do you think modern feminism would have to say about that, dear one?
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Kai Cheng Thom is an author, performer, somatic coach, and conflict resolution practitioner based in tkaronto/Toronto. She is the author of six award-winning books in various genres, including the Canadian bestseller Falling Back In Love With Being Human and the Publishing Triangle Award-winning essay collection I HOPE WE CHOOSE LOVE. Kai Cheng is a noted theorist and writer on Transformative Justice and the role of revolutionary love in social change work, as well as an expert in trauma healing and collective change methods.
Instagram: @kaichengthom
Bluesky: @razorfemme