A Note from the Author of Beauty
During the last few years we’ve all been made increasingly aware of the destruction of habitat that’s been going on all over the world—in rain forests, wetlands, deserts, the high tundra. When I drive from Denver down to Santa Fe, I see the river valley where I grew up now packed with houses cheek by jowl. There used to be cattail swamps along there, and I remember lying for hours in the tall grass looking for whatever it was that sounded exactly like a plumber’s plunger being squished. The bird was a least bittern, but there aren’t any swamp birds there anymore because the swamps have all been drained and the trees cut down to build a golf course.
It seems to me sometimes that all beauty is dying. Which makes me hope that perhaps it isn’t dead but only sleeping. And that makes me think of Sleeping Beauty and wonder if she, Beauty that is, might not be a metaphor for what is happening to the world at large: perfect Beauty born, Beauty cursed with death, Beauty dying—but with the magical hope of being reawakened, maybe by love.
The result of all this is Beauty, a novel of the human spirit, a book-length faery tale, a meditation on various questions of religion—or maybe just a prayer.…
Praise for Beauty
“A fascinating story … This adult fairy tale entertains and delivers a message in the best tradition of the fantasy classics.”
—The Denver Post
“Rich, multitudinous, witty, metaphysical, continually surprising, Beauty is a feast.”
—Locus
“Tepper is a wise and compassionate narrator, and when it comes to spinning a yarn that you don’t ever want to stop reading, there are few better spinners than she is.”
—The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
“An inventive, sometimes outrageous, shamelessly allegorical, and irresistible retelling of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ … told with contemporary frankness, great zest, and unbridled imagination.”
—Booklist
All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
BEAUTY
A Bantam Spectra Book / published by arrangement with Doubleday
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Doubleday edition published 1991
Bantam edition / April 1992
SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1991 by Sheri S. Tepper.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Doubleday, 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036
eISBN: 978-0-307-57193-9
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
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Contents
Cover
A Note from the Author of Beauty
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
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
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Dedication
Excerpt from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
Foreword
[In the pages that follow, there are certain interpolations written by me, Carabosse, the fairy of clocks, keeper of the secrets of time. When I stand on the bridge above my Forever Pool, I see all past and future things reflected, near or far, dim or plain. If I invite others to stand beside me, they too may see.
That which we do, we do because we see.
This journal is written by Beauty, daughter of the Duke of Westfaire, recipient of many pleasant gifts. Though it is regrettable that no one gave her the gift of intelligence (a gift not highly valued in Faery) she has a practicality that often makes up for that lack.
Intelligent or not, she is the coffer that hides our treasure.
Intelligent or not, Beauty is all our hope.]
The Journal
of
Beauty
daughter of
The Duke of Westfaire
Getting started on this writing, I cut five different quills and ruined them all. Father Raymond finally cut this one for me. I told him he must, since he gave me the book as a reward for good progress in Latin, rhetoric, and composition, and for going a whole month without complaining. Now I have a place to write all the things I cannot say to anyone, except to Father Raymond, and sometimes he is too busy to listen. It is my intention to tell the story of my entire life so when I am aged I can read it and remember everything. Old people often do not remember things. I know because I have asked them, at least the ones around here, and they usually say something like, “Beauty, for heaven’s sake, child, I just don’t remember.”
If I had a mother I would ask her. I never knew my mother. That is probably as good a place to start as any.
1
My Life in Westfaire
ST. RICHARD OF CHICHESTER’S DAY, APRIL, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1347
I never knew my mother. My father never speaks of her, though my aunts, his half sisters, make up for his silence with a loquacity which is as continuous as it is malicious. The aunts speak no good of her, whoever she was and whatever has happened to her, specifics which they avoid, however much ill they find to mutter about else. I have always thought they would not waste so much breath on her if she were dead, therefore she is probably alive, somewhere. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, Father Raymond says, but that only applies to dead people.
When I was very young I used to ask about
