Everyone knows the song. Most grew up with it in their childhood. I have a suspicion that as soon as you read the words, you’ll be singing them in your head.

Shall we try?

            “Tale as old as time

            Song as old as rhyme…”

You did, didn’t you? And I’ll bet anything you finished it without my prompting, too. "Beauty and the Beast."

As far as it goes, the song’s true. There’s been a story of a beast in the woods and a beauty breaking the curse as long as there’s been stories about love and the woods and fearsome curses. But songs can only go so far without causing scandal, and stories are a product of their time. So it is, dear reader, with the story I am about to tell you. It is a story that was out of its time, a story that has waited a long time to be told, waiting for the world to grow out of its old fears and instinctive judgments. I’m not sure it’s the right time yet, when I hear the news of the world around me. But the world moves on, and your humble narrator grows ever older.

So follow me back to a time of forests and hunters and enchanted castles. Do yourself a favour, though: do your best to approach my story with an open mind and a heart warm and welcoming to the ideas I’m going to present.

Our story opens, as so many before, in a small, quiet village on the edge of an enormous forest. The villagers know the awesome power of the forest, but not its size, and they generally consign it to the background noise of the world. It’s there, but they don’t care enough to go look. When they do discuss the forest, it’s to tell their children not to go there for fear of the beast.

Ah yes, the beast of our story. No one knew what it looked like, precisely. No one who saw the creature lived to tell the tale. Or so they say. Let’s go take a look at the story, shall we? How shall we begin? Perhaps it is best to be traditional here. So let’s begin with…

Once upon a time (the best stories always begin that way, don’t they?), there lived a little village on the edge of an enormous forest. The forest was dark, the undergrowth thick enough that the sun couldn’t get through the leaves and branches and brambles even at the highest noon.

The villagers stayed away from the forest. “Keep out of the woods,” they warned their children. “The Beast will get you if you go into the forest.” Their village was famous for one reason only: they lived the closest to the last place the Beast of the forest had been seen. Hunters came through their village fairly frequently, seeking directions to the last sighting of the Beast so they could take the creature and secure their fame. The villagers gave the directions and took down the names as each hunter passed through; someone needed to record the dead, after all.

As with many small towns, the tavern was the heart of their society. The innkeeper and the bartender knew everyone who came through regularly and made a point to know the most recent gossip. After all, the world ran on gossip, and it was always better to know what everyone thought they knew.

Outside activity had been down when the day began. Peter the innkeeper hadn’t seen a hunter come through in several months. He chalked it up to too many deaths too close together and shrugged it off philosophically. Business would pick up again, it always did. The lure of the chase was too much for the sort who made their living and reputation on bagging the biggest animals. He shook his head a little as he readied the kitchen for those who came to eat his meals during the day. Hunters. Who could understand ‘em? They were generally the rootless sort, wanderers who didn’t understand the pleasures of a comfortable bed, a sweet woman to bed, and meals that weren’t cooked over scratch fires. He felt bad for ‘em, honestly. They didn’t know what they were missing.

Coming out into the common room, the big man hummed to himself as he began cleaning the tables. He could afford to hire hands to help him with the work, but he liked having his finger on the pulse for himself. Timothy, his partner and the bartender, had insisted on having help during the busy times, so they had two girls who worked the common room in the evening to help keep beer and food circulating and a boy who lived in the stable to care for travelers’ horses and the animals the inn kept for fresh dairy products and eggs. Otherwise, Peter and Timothy did all the work of the inn. (Except the laundry; Peter sent that out to Widow Everitt so she could have a decent source of income.)

“Good morning.” The voice was low, female, and surprisingly husky. Peter turned to look in surprise, since that didn’t sound like anyone he knew from the town. An outsider, how very curious after the weeks of silence.

This outsider was tall and slender, built like a wiry whipcord of muscle. She was watching him with interest, leaning on a long stave as she blinked the lightest blue eyes he’d ever seen. Though her stance was relaxed, Peter had the very definite feeling a predator was watching him. A wolf, maybe, with her tawny blonde hair pulled back in a no-nonsense braid that disappeared into the hood of her dark green cloak. She dressed like a hunter, now that he thought about it, all greens and browns with worn boots. When he saw the quiver on her back, he realized the stave in her hand was a longbow. When she blinked again, he shook himself out of whatever trance she’d put him into and offered a warm smile as he bustled over to her.

“Good morrow, dear lady. My apologies, I didn’t ‘ear you come in. Ye walk soft as a cat!”

“As well I should.” The tall woman stood to her full height as Peter approached her, standing a little taller than the innkeeper. That was unusual, he wasn’t used to being shorter than anyone, let alone a woman who was a stranger to these lands. Well, never mind. None of us can ‘elp the way we’re made, eh? “Have you a room I may rent for three days?”

“O’ course, m’lady.” Peter offered her a hand to shake, welcoming her to the inn. She hesitated a moment before taking it and squeezing gently as she shook his hand. The handshake was strong on its own merit, and he had the sense she was keeping her strength in check so as not to hurt him. That was a strange thought, and he dismissed it as quickly as he could. “Just one moment, lessee what I ‘ave.” He went behind his little counter, pulling his ledger out. He didn’t really need to look, not when he knew the only rooms occupied were his, Timothy’s, and the loft out in the stable where Johnny lived. He was itching with curiosity as he ran his broad finger down the carefully penned lines. Female hunters weren’t impossible or forbidden, but they were very rare. It was a strange woman who could handle the nets or string a bow with enough pull to bring down a large animal, let alone draw the bow in question. But the stave in her hand looked like a powerful bow, and there was the matter of her predatory air. She wasn’t a new huntress, not by any means. And she seemed familiar, somehow. He knew he’d never met her before in his life, but something about her height and eyes and hair seemed familiar.

“’Ere we go,” he said, stopping on the last empty line. “Ye’ll be in room twenny-one, up the stairs an’ down the hall to the left. ‘Alf payment now, the rest when ye leave. Agreeable?”

“Aye,” the lion-haired woman said with a nod. “How much for three nights?”

“Six silver.” He knew his prices were reasonable, especially since his was the only inn within a full day’s travel. “Do ye ‘ave a ‘orse?”

“Aye, and I will need to have him seen to; is that included in the price, or is that extra?”

“Nay, that’s parta the price, m’lady. Meals are extry, but two silver covers all yer meals while yer here.”

That sent the huntress’s eyebrows up a little. “Very reasonable,” she said as she fetched her little purse off her belt and placed eight silver coins on the counter.

“Name an’ occupation?” Peter asked, dipping his pen in his inkwell and giving her an expectant look.

“Johanna Griffin, huntress.”

Peter’s mouth went dry as he stared at the woman for a moment. He was looking at a legend and hadn’t realized it until she gave her name. To be fair, the stories tended to exaggerate her height, turning her into a giant who strode the earth bagging the fantastical creatures. No one knew her true last name, since she had taken the last name of Griffin after killing one of those creatures. Legend had it that she couldn’t miss when she shot with the arrows she’d fletched with griffin feathers. Legend had it that when she went to capture her quarry, she never failed. Legend…

“You’re dripping ink, innkeeper,” Johanna said, her pale eyes warm with amusement. “I daresay you know the name, then.”

“O’course, m’lady Huntress,” Peter said, sketching a quick bow as he dropped his quill back in its place. “Ev’ryone knows that name.” He pulled the quill out and began writing the information in his neat handwriting. Johanna watched, her face expressionless. When he punctuated the last sentence, he took her coin and put it in the lockbox before coming back around the counter. “Lemme show ye to yer room, Lady Huntress.”

Lady Huntress. Well, Johanna supposed that was close enough. She wasn’t always sure about the reactions to her reputation, but she would take astonished awe to dismissal. Dismissal had been too common in the years before she took the griffin, before she clawed her way up to the top of a very crowded heap. Hunters were a competitive bunch, and women were very uncommon in their ranks.

She’d stepped into the life when she was a teenager, and the choices in her life limited her to a small village with people she hated and a choice between the old rich man who was courting her and the younger inheritor of a fortune who was completely odious. She’d taken a good look at her life and asked herself, very seriously, “Are these the only two choices you have?”

The hunting life wasn’t easy. At the beginning, she’d been hungry and cold far more often than she’d been privileged enough to sleep under a roof. She’d considered giving up far more than anyone who knew her by the legend would ever understand, especially when she’d spent a week one time shivering in a blind, her hands so cold she could barely string her bow. But it was worth it. Every second spent cold and miserable was a thousand and one times better than being back in the village where she had been born, sold off like cattle to the highest bidder by the pile of shit who had contributed the seed to bring her into existence.

Closing the door as Peter the innkeeper walked away, the huntress shrugged her saddlebags off and set them on the floor by the fireplace before removing her cloak and hanging it on the peg provided for that purpose. The room was one of the nicer ones she’d seen. When he’d named the price, she’d been expecting a dump of a place, something that was only empty because even the rats wouldn’t want it. She couldn’t have been further from the truth; the room was decently sized, with a comfortable four-poster bed in the center and a quilt spread over the mattress. There was a window on the far wall, giving her an unparalleled view of the forest that was the object of her fascination with this place. Untying her hair tie and beginning to finger-comb her braid out, the tall woman walked to the window, bracing her hip on the frame as she looked out.

She’d first heard the legend of the Beast of Blackwood four years ago, when one of her guides for another hunt mentioned the creature. It was the ultimate prize for anyone who could bag it (no one knew the thing’s gender, which annoyed Johanna to no end), but the risk was high. The guides spoke of a beast with human intelligence, which set traps for hunters and killed anyone who got close enough to observe much about it. Johanna wondered how anyone knew that much, and suspected some of what was said about the beastie was as much speculation as the sorts of things said about her. Legends grew in the telling, after all.

Still, everyone agreed on one thing. The Beast of Blackwood was the prize of a lifetime, and anyone who could bag the thing would be counted the greatest hunter in a century. Her reputation was set with the griffin kill, and she’d added quite a few other fantastical beasts to her list, but this one would make or break her. She couldn’t possibly turn down the chance to have her name in the history books.

Shaking her head a little, Johanna scruffed her fingers through her hair, sending it flying everywhere in sandy waves. Her hair was the one vanity she’d admit to; she loved her hair, loved its length and weight on the back of her neck when she wore it in a braid. It would be more practical to keep it short. Kara, another female hunter, wore her hair cut very short to keep it out of the way when she was going through brambles and the like. But she needed something to hang her hat on, something to remind the rest of the world that she was female and a hunter, and she didn’t have to give up one to be the other.

Johanna had survived this long as a huntress by spending time talking and listening to the local lore about whatever she was hunting. Most of what people said was nonsense at best, and overblown nonsense at that. But at the heart of every story was a kernel of truth for those who knew how to sift out most of the nonsense, and that kernel had saved her life more than once because she knew how to listen. A tavern was the place to be, especially if she bought a few rounds for the older denizens of the town and plied them with questions. She was a little early for that right now, though, so she decided to go out and take a walk along the edge of the forest to get a sense for what she was about to walk into. From above, the forest looked beautiful and calm. But it wouldn’t be called Blackwood colloquially if it was all roses and beauty, and she wanted a good look at the place.

The edge of the forest was a bit of a walk through the small village, and Johanna felt more than a few eyes watching her with cautious interest as she walked. The breeze was a bit brisk, playing with the hem of her cloak and teasing strands of her hair into her eyes as the rest blew backwards in delighted freedom. She stopped at the top of a small knoll above the forest and looked down at it, hooking her thumbs in her belt as she studied the lay of the land.

The forest was far too large to take in at a single glance, and she could see why it had entered legend across the land. It seemed to stretch across the entire horizon. She swallowed hard, feeling apprehensive about the idea about going into the dark underbrush without an idea of where she was going. Admittedly, something as enormous as the Beast of Blackwood would leave quite a trail, but she wasn’t keen on the idea of wandering across acres and acres and miles of forest in hopes of picking up a single trail. There had been other hunters here before her; someone here would know about them, and where they were last seen.

Her resolve strengthened, Johanna walked down the short slope and approached the forest itself. On the surface, it didn’t feel like something truly dangerous. Maybe it helped that she was approaching it in daylight, and it would take on its truly dangerous characteristics under the waning midsummer moon. The underbrush was thick, but she could see very faint paths where villagers went in and came back out. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one was spying on her (old habit), the huntress walked a little ways into the forest and found where the villagers collected their firewood. There was no sign of trees cut down; it seemed the old superstitions held here. It had been the same in her village, with the elders warning against cutting down living trees. “How can a living being survive when you remove parts of itself?” they would chide the children who were given an axe for their seventh birthday. “Take the dead trees, the gifts the forest gives, and the forest will care for you in return.” Crouching a little, Johanna found the cuts in a living tree that had doubtless come from a small hand before an elder’s caught it. She smoothed her palm over the gashes, murmuring soothingly to the living wood under her hand. Pale light flickered over her skin and the tree, and after a moment of concentrated effort, the wood healed itself under her hand.

That was a part of her she’d kept very firmly out of the stories by never showing anyone else. Those who didn’t know her remarked on her wood sense, her ability to navigate woods she’d never encountered before, and she just smiled and mouthed some nonsense about sun patterns and moss on the trees. In truth, when she concentrated enough, she had enough forest magic to hear the whispers on the leaves, find the paths in the forest, and heal the damage she found. The barons and baronesses that ruled the lands in the name of the distant king and queen officially banned magic, but no one policed its use. Who would speak against a midwife’s skill when a little applied magic made sure a child was born safely and the mother survived the birth? Who would say aught against a blacksmith’s ability with iron and his skill at keeping the Fair Folk at bay? Johanna rose from her comfortable crouch, brushing her hand clean on her trouser leg as she looked around and took stock of the area around her. Her abilities were frustratingly limited. She could sense the paths, but her senses only extended to the trees and growing things. She couldn’t feel the Beast that was her quarry. She sighed; she’d been hopeful that being in the woods would give her an idea of where to start. Oh well. She knew how to do her research without relying on chancy magics.

Walking back out of the forest, the huntress knew the word had spread about her arrival. Innkeepers were the keepers of gossip and news, and a so-called legend in their midst was something they were duty-bound to tell. She didn’t mind, as long as no one interfered with her work. So she smiled and nodded as villagers looked out their windows at her or stopped in their chores to lean on brooms. Small children ran past her, little girls chasing little boys and shouting about being griffin-killers. That, more than anything else, made her laugh softly in appreciation. She hadn’t wanted to kill that griffin, but it did her heart good to see girls looking to her as an example and an inspiration. Maybe one of those girls chasing down the small dirt road would remember and decide she had more choices outside the village. There was a big world out there, and Johanna had been privileged enough to explore some of it.

The common room of the inn was about half full when Johanna walked in, the room filled with the tantalizing smell of eggs and bacon and hearty porridge. All right, that last part wasn’t particularly tantalizing. Johanna had nightmares sometimes that involved being forced to eat porridge for every meal of every day for the rest of her life.  But it was solid food, and she remembered many occasions when she would have taken the thinnest gruel out of pure starvation. ‘Stop being a snob, Pup,’ she scolded herself as she paused inside the doorway to look for a place to sit.

Peter bustled over to her, smiling welcomingly. “Welcome back, Lady,” he greeted, ushering her over to a table close to a corner. Bless him; most innkeepers had put her at something like a high table for everyone to gawp at. The corner afforded her a little privacy so she could have her back to a wall and keep from being surrounded by curious stares. She glanced around as she sat down, meeting every eye that glanced up from the feigned indifference of the true country folk. She knew they were watching her, but it fit the persona they liked to create about themselves, so she let them believe she didn’t know they were watching her intently. Instead, she asked Peter for a plate of the wonderful breakfast she could smell cooking and drew her journal out of her belt pouch as the kindly man hurried away to get her the food she wanted.

She’d been keeping this journal for the last four years, recording everything she could find about the Beast. Information on it was frustratingly sparse, mostly because those who saw it never came back, or came back with enormous blanks in their memories. Johanna suspected sorcery, of the sort that made the crowns officially outlaw magic, and she had to grudgingly admire the skill behind whoever (or whatever) was putting the blank pages in the journals of people’s memories. Still, it was very annoying. Was the Beast magical in nature, able to wipe memories with its presence as the basilisk could turn people to stone when it made eye contact? Or did a sorcerer, intent on keeping others away from his prize, protect the Beast? Either seemed likely, but if a sorcerer were behind it, he (or she, but most sorcerers she’d encountered were male) would need to have some sort of place to live, close to where the Beast prowled. A magical battle seemed likely with this beastie. She absently fingered the cord around her neck and hoped she didn’t have to use the charms she’d purchased.

“Scuse me, ma’am?”

Johanna glanced up and smiled a friendly smile at the little boy in front of her as he shifted from foot to foot. He reminded her almost painfully of her little brother and the nephews she’d seen born before she vanished from her village, and she closed her journal to give him her full attention. “Yes, how can I help you?” she asked, keeping her voice friendly and undemanding. Push village boys too far, and they could clam up for a thousand and one reasons.

“Yer the Griffin Huntress, aye?”

“Aye,” Johanna nodded. “But you can call me Johanna, if you like.”

The look on the boy’s face suggested she’d just tried to make him call a minor deity by a nickname, and she had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from laughing outright. He cleared his throat and carefully kept from answering that comment. “Are ye here to kill the Beast, Huntress?”

And there it was, the question no adult would dare ask, put out there by the clearly innocent voice of a child. Being a slight cynic, Johanna wondered which adult had put him up to it. Glancing around, she saw the most likely culprit when she spotted the young man who was either an older brother or father to the boy in front of her. It was always hard to tell in these little towns. “I am here to hunt the Beast,” she agreed, carefully not saying she was going to kill it. Being that confident in advance was a great way to turn the fates against her. She didn’t need anything else being against her, not when she was likely dealing with a sorcerer.

“Oh,” the boy breathed, his eyes wide with amazement. He turned to the man behind him and asked, “Didya hear that, Da? The Huntress is gonna kill the Beast!”

His proclamation sent a stir through the inn’s patrons who hadn’t quite been able to hear the soft conversation even with all their best efforts in eavesdropping. Tablemates turned to each other and discussed the new development in swift whispers, a few gesturing as they discussed the finer points. Johanna sighed. Well, she’d known what she was getting into when dealing with small town life. This was exactly how her village would have responded to the same thing. Peter came back then with her plate and an apologetic look as he glanced around his common room. Rising, Johanna rapped her knuckles a few times on the table. “Good people,” she called, her voice carrying over the murmurs easily. She’d learned a long time ago how to get and hold attention when she wanted it. “It is true that I have come to your lovely town to seek the Beast that holds the world in such fascination. I am given to understand many others have tried and likely perished in their attempts. I believe in being as prepared as possible…” she paused for the laughter that punctuated her comment before going on, “so I am here to learn all I can about the Beast before venturing into the woods. Everything is fair game: legends, stories your granny told you as a child, scat tracings, all of it. Anything can be helpful.” She bowed her head a little. “Thank you.”

The murmurs and whispers started up again the moment she sat down, and Johanna had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing at the image of a kicked bees nest across the common room floor. Peter set the plate in front of her and smiled encouragement. “Well spoke, Lady Huntress,” he murmured.

“Thank ye,” Johanna murmured back, then bit her tongue as she scowled down at her plate. She’d worked damned hard to clear the country out of her accent when she left her village, trying to scrub all influence out of her current persona. Still, they crept back in when she wasn’t paying attention, especially when she was surrounded by the old accent. Ah, well. She settled down to her breakfast, waiting for the first people to gather their courage to come talk to her.