The Beastly Bride

When I was six, I had just learned to read when my dad took us all to live in France for a year. We had very few books in English, and I was desperate for more. So were my parents, I guess; my father went down to the American Library and bought some old volumes they were clearing off the shelves. I glommed onto a pale blue clothbound volume with a broken spine (published in London before I was born), a retelling of Greek myths mostly taken from the Roman poet Ovid’s collection, Metamorphoses. Checking the title page now, I see it was called Men and Gods, by Rex Warner — but I just thought of it as My Blue Greek Book, and I read it over and over. I loved the tragedies the best.

For The Beastly Bride I have turned back to one of my favorites, the terrible story of Actaeon. Several Ancient Greek writers wrote their own versions of Actaeon’s story, each offering a different rationale for his cruel punishment. In some of them, it’s because he was intentionally spying on the goddess Artemis to see her naked. In Ovid, he is just a poor luckless guy who wanders into the wrong place at the wrong time.

In all of them, the young prince Actaeon is an enthusiastic hunter.

None of them mentions any sister.

THE WHITE DOE: THREE POEMS Jeannine Hall Gailey

THE WHITE DOE MOURNS HER CHILDHOOD

Kept safe in a home made of stone
with no windows
with no glass to catch the light
or sun streaming in,
I grew paler each year, as pale as the moon,
as pale as doves, and soft to my own touch.
Until I’m fifteen, and betrothed,
I must hide from the light:
from the company of trees,
of birds, of others I hear through the walls,
the horses’ whinnies, the song of day,
although I creep out at night, while the bats sing and
sweep.

No company, for fear they might open the door,
just books, and my paintings, and jewelry, and mirrors.
A quiet life, not merry, lonely and slow.
Not even sure if it was death or just sorrow or lies
that kept me imprisoned in a world of darkness,
a world of candlelight; the uncertain glow of fire
my only hint of what the sun might hold for me.
When a young man swore he loved me
just from a picture he saw (fell in love
with a picture, that foolish child)
and would not listen to my mother’s entreaties
but swung my door open, wounding me with light,
I bounded into the forest, turned into a white doe.
Cursed during the day, unable to speak,
this new body darting like moonlight through
unfamiliar woods,
this young hunter kept pursuing me,
not safe even in this form from his love;
he shot me with an arrow not far from the water
and I bleed, and I sleep, and wait for my own death.
Oh if I was only safe, back in my room,
where the darkness embraced me, and kept me alive.
This cruel brightness descended,
the fury of sunbeams on my delicate skin.
Forbid him, mother, from touching me now
as the sun sets, as my human form returns.
He may not mourn me, whose selfish desire doomed me
to this.

THE WHITE DOE’S LOVE SONG

You may not touch me;
you may not enter.
If you swing open my door
I will turn into a white doe.
I will leap through the woods faster than water
and you shall not have me.
Young man, I cannot face this sun
in human form, the sun burns me,
cursed as a child to hide in the dark,
the shadows my friend, the cooing of night birds
my only companion. But here, in this body,
I cannot speak, I cannot sing,
another kind of prison, first the windowless castle,
now this body, these four legs.
And you, so greedy to have me,
my portrait on your wall,
think long about how you will slow me down
will you shoot me, will you hunt me,
will you open the door,
will you wound me with brightness
unwelcome and hard?
Sunbeams on human skin, arrows on deer hide,
either way, you menace, with your young man’s desires,
so foolish, so hasty, entranced by your own thoughts.

You don’t know the real me,
just a pale girl on a wall,
who never speaks, who doesn’t dream,
who never escapes your fantasy of her.
So fall ill for love of me, come to the woods,
seek me there and hurt me, and maim me,
clutch my neck as you wilclass="underline"
you will not have me, a trophy for your wall.

THE WHITE DOE DECIDES

If she cannot have the sun, she will have freedom. She jumps through snatching hands and cutting tree branches, blindly. She does not believe she ever slept well. The villagers call her a ghost, accuse her of spooking the hunt. She keeps time with rabbits and egrets, eats flowers, green hostas, and white lilies. Alone, alone, all this time pursued by vain princes. Finally she lies down beside the water, the moon rises, and she becomes herself again. She grabs a bleeding ankle, wanders back to an empty bed, hair tangled and skin scratched by briars, a different princess from before. When the sun rises she will be animal again, she will leap up, wild heart beating against her thin hide. It gets easier every day, having four legs, heeding the morning glory’s old song, the strange warmth of sun on her neck. This is better than a palace, she thinks, to run faster than she’s ever run, to outpace her old fears, the hands that would hold her down. Her feet nothing but flashes, blue eyes still human and shadowy, peering through white pine.

JEANNINE HALL GAILEY is the author of Becoming the Villainess. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. In 2007, she was awarded a Washington State Artist Trust GAP Grant and a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. She is currently working on two manuscripts, one about Japanese folktales of animal transformation and another on the inner lives of sleeping princesses. Her Web site is www.webbish6.com.

Author’s Note

I’ve always been fascinated by stories of transforming women, from Greek mythology’s Daphne and Ovid’s Philomel to changelings and shape-shifters in folk tales, science fiction, and comic books. It seemed to me these tales connected women to unearthly powers and magical abilities, while also communicating man’s uncertainty and, sometimes, squeamishness toward women’s “otherness.” After all, a lot of the magical transformations — like the dragon-woman Melusine’s — happen around childbirth and other womanly rituals.

“The White Doe” is a French fairy tale that I always thought had a terrible ending for the poor princess — first a random prince falls in love with her picture, then he curses her by opening the door to her tower (though everyone warns him not to) and exposing her to sunlight for the first time, which leads to her transformation to deer form, then he shoots her with an arrow while she is in magical white doe form. and she still marries him! I thought I might let the princess voice some ambivalence toward her princely suitor and toward her “curses,” first being locked in a tower away from the sun, then being in animal form. It’s always fun to rewrite fairy tales with an eye toward giving those poor princesses a bit more freedom and authority.