When the Woods told the Beast Prince his new bride had arrived, he had expected to meet some foreign princess curious about his monstrous features, or maybe a witch seeking access to the Woods’ magic. He didn’t expect a very determined-looking miller’s daughter.

She poked and jiggled the straw between her teeth and examined a bit of mutton skewered on the tip, then flicked the straw away. “Look, it’s a win-win. You marry me, and we take this show on the road.”

“This show,” said the Beast Prince, scratching his cheek with a claw. “You mean me.”

“Yes, I mean you! But you’re not the only one, I got a whole stable of performers chompin’ at the bit to get out there and wow the kingdom at large.”

He wrinkled his snout. “Stable? It’s some kind of animal show?”

She waved her hand as if at a fly. “No, stable is biz talk, ignore it, it’s how I talk and who I am, sue me, can’t help it, I grew up in the biz, you know.”

“Didn’t you say you were the miller’s daughter?”

“Well, Beastie, now I think it’s my turn to be offended! Sure, dad crushes grass into dust for a living. And so did his dad before him, and his dad before him.” She pulled a pipe and pouch from the pocket of her worn cloak. “And you know somethin’? I’ll betcha a hundred gold pieces my brother’s gonna wind up cranking that stone just like the rest of ’em.” She sprinkled shredded tobacco from the pouch into the pipe. “And that’s fine, people gotta make a livin’! Times are tough. Just the other day I heard a story ’bout a foundryman, on his way to deliver a stack of ingots? Listen to this…” She plucked a candle from a sconce on the wall and used it to light her pipe. “This guy, his cart gets stuck in the mud, he jumps down to help the horses pull it out, slips in the mud, and crack!” She slapped her hands together. “Horse steps on his hand—like a bunch o’ grapes. His right hand, y’see, the good one, not the ‘satanic’ one. Well, now his good hand’s a mess, so he’s gotta learn to do everything with the devil’s hand, see, which means now nobody trusts him, and he can’t hold more than a damn walking stick.”

The Beast Prince stared. His back had started to ache. He didn’t normally spend so much time in the sitting rooms of this castle, and the chairs didn’t conform to his body’s quadrupedal shape; he only sat like that to put this guest at ease.

It was his first sit-in guest since his exile. Visitors usually shouted curses from their wagons, or stood at the bottom of the front steps just long enough to get a good look before running back into the woods.

But this young woman was in the door before he had pulled it completely open, swinging her hands and saying, “Beastie, you don’t know me, but you’ll be happy I came! Have I got a proposition for you!”

She’d stepped into the middle of the grand foyer, lit by a yellow spotlight of setting sun that shone through the grime of broken windows, and she turned to him and lowered the hood of her cloak. The Beast Prince raised his paws to block the blow of the electric bolt or whipping wind that might blast from her sleeves.

But none came.

There was nothing evil in the young woman’s face. She smiled through crooked teeth, but there was something in that smile, and something in her pale green eyes, that was disarming. She had the look of a merchant counting money at the end of a good day.

Now those green eyes held his in the flickering light of the cobwebbed sitting room. The candles crackled as the layers of dust burned away from their tips.

“Just tragic,” she said. “Needless to say, the guy’s foundry business, well, foundered. His production slowed, he’s got no sons to take over, and being a lefty now his wife’s too scared of him to try for a son! So, what does his story have in common with yours?”

The Beast Prince thought. “People are scared of me?”

“Sure, absolutely, and that’s a real shame. My heart goes out to you. Touched by the devil and all that.”

“It was a witch.”

“Beastie, I gotta tell ya, to all the pointy-headed boil lancers in that village, and even the villages beyond—hell, this whole damn kingdom—a witch and the devil are the same thing. And you wanna know the real tragedy of it?”

He rubbed his back with a paw. “Would you mind if I sat on the floor?”

“Make yourself comfortable, this is your place! And I promise I’ll be outta your hair in a minute. But first, tell me, do you wanna know the real tragedy?”

“What?” The Beast Prince settled onto his stomach on the stone floor, and felt his spine realign itself. “I mean, yes, I do. What is it?”

“The real tragedy is that they lump you in with those monsters, too. Witch, devil, and Beastie, all the same to those foot lickers. But I know you’re not evil. Hell, I’m not even convinced witches are all that evil; I agree with some of their stances on women’s rights—but don’t tell the villagers I said that.” She winked and puffed her pipe again, but it had gone out, so she took the candle to light it again.

The Beast Prince watched a drop of wax fall and solidify on the cold floor. “But what do the foundryman and I have in common?”

“Ah, see? You don’t miss a trick. That attention to detail will take you far! Puts you one-up on the rest of those leather sniffers.” She held her hands as if presenting a painting. “What you have in common with the left-handed foundryman is: a lack of insurance.”

“Insurance?”

“Think about it. No sons, basically no wife, and no business. What’s he got to fall back on? Alone in the world, and nowhere to reach for support. Fell flat on his face.”

“So you propose we marry so I have… support?”

“Don’t think of it as support so much as representation. We tour the land with a group of other hand-picked young talent, and show you off to all the apple-heads who’ll pay—and let me tell you, they’ll all pay—and they’ll learn you’re not such a scary guy. They’ll like you. You might even get another shot at princedom!”

“But… why do we have to be married?”

“Legitimacy! If they see the big, dangerous Beastie’s got a wife, they’ll think, well, he must be doin’ something right! We have a big ceremony at whatever church’ll have us—don’t worry, there isn’t a church in the world that’ll turn down a bribe. We make a big deal of the whole thing, get all the town criers screamin’ scandal about it to everyone.”

“We can’t do that, they’ll trap us in the church and set it ablaze!”

“Ah, no, we’d get ’em on a legal technicality—you are still royalty, after all, are you not?”

“I don’t think so. My parents were the ones who put me in exile here.”

She tisked and picked a bit of tobacco from her lip. “Backstabbers to save their own royal faces. I know the type—the biz is full of ’em. But you were just caught in the crossfire! The witch who turned you only did it to get at the King. And it worked! The King—your own dad—flipped his crown and sent you away to clean the supposed stain,” she made bunny ears with her fingers, “on his reputation. Disgusting.”

His head rose, showing teeth. “You can’t speak that way about my father!”

“Sure I can. And you should too, Beastie. For the first time since your little accident, someone has come to help you.” She made a fist and grinned. “Are you gonna answer the call?”

The Beast Prince lowered his heavy head onto the stone and billowed dust with a sigh from his snout.

She held the pipe in her teeth and watched his eyes.

Finally he shrugged. “Okay, what do I need to do?”

“Fantastic! You won’t regret this! First, I’ll need a down payment on my services to get things rolling with the church.”

“If we’re getting married, isn’t it you who pays me the dowry?”

“Wow, I propose marriage and a successful life in showbiz to a damn werewolf, and now he wants to get conventional on me?”

“Okay, okay,” he pushed himself to his feet and stretched his back. “Wait here, I’ll fetch it.”

“Take your time.” She listened to his claws scrape down the corridor.

A “tsst” came from across the foyer. She saw the man’s face in a broken windowpane. She scowled and shooed him away.

He gave a thumbs-up with a mangled right hand and ducked back out of view.

The vineyards stretched healthy green stripes across the faces of the hills, but among them was a scab where the grapes had shriveled on their bunches like little lungs squeezed shut.

From atop a hill, the boy stared down at the blighted vines. His father would be unable to contribute to the royal wine barrels, and the vineyard would be razed.

Crows circled and dove at a shape that walked the withered rows. From afar, the boy heard it speak: “The vines can live again.”

“The grapes are to be offered at the harvest fair tomorrow,” said the boy. “My father is ruined.”

The shape stepped from the rows—a scarecrow in clothes fatigued by years of wind, rain, sun, and snow. Under the rippled hat brim its eyes shone like polished garnets.

“You may have the wealth of a hundred harvests,” it said.

Hope fluttered in the boy’s chest.

“But something must be given before something is received.”

“Anything,” said the boy.

The scarecrow took hold of the boy’s head, and with a small sickle carved a line around his crown, lifted the lid and scooped his brain and his eyes. His vision went black. Cool air blew into the cavity and whistled through his ears.

The scarecrow removed its hat and lifted a fat bunch of red grapes from its cranium, its eyes emptied of their garnets. The sockets were paneless windows, into which nestled the boy’s blue eyes as they lowered with his brain into their new container.

In turn, the boy’s head received the grapes; two bulbous members of the bunch filled his sockets and shone with dark juice in the yellow evening light.

“Touch every leaf,” said the scarecrow.

The boy set to work, blindly anointing each leaf with a sweet tear from his new eyes.

In the morning the father awoke to a field of luxuriant vines, but still not a single grape hung from them. He found his cart was missing. To save his son the shame of arriving cart-less and empty-handed, he walked to the fair alone.

When he arrived, he found his cart and his son surrounded by mountains of luscious grapes that reached even above the colored flags strung across the beams of the stalls. The boy sat among the piles, staring into the distance and wearing on his face the only smile in sight.

Villagers glowered from nearby stalls of gourds, fresh bread, corn of all colors, woven baskets and furniture, handcrafted tools, jars of jam and honey, and barrels of dried beans and herbs. Children approached to marvel at the grapes, but their parents quickly snatched them away as if from piles of moldering corpses.

“My boy,” said the father, stepping over grape-full crates near bursting on the ground. “It is a miracle.”

“Miracle, my eye!” said the butcher, tossing aside the bunches of grapes tumbling onto his table of salted meats. “The child is touched by the devil!”

The woodcarver worried over a toy horse stained with juice from grapes fallen into his chests. He spat into a kerchief and wiped the figurine. “Indeed, from what sulfur-smelling hole have you dug this ‘miracle’?”

The father put a hand upon his son’s shoulder and said quietly, “My son, what terrible magic was summoned for this?”

The boy smiled up at the father and a drop of juice ran down his cheek.

The father trembled. “I have gained prosperity, and lost my son!”

Fanfare chopped his voice away, and a mass of members of the court came down the alley. The King himself stepped to the front. All bowed, including the father and still-grinning son.

The King eyed them suspiciously. Even the jewels in his crown paled next to the light and color of the grapes. “Only yesterday your farm was a spot of blight,” said he. “Now you must answer for this… diabolical reversal of fortune.”

“Your Highness,” said the boy, “before you declare us heretics, please taste of our grapes.”

The King paused. Then he snapped his fingers. A set of bells jingled through the members of the court until a jester emerged.

The King pointed. “Jester, taste a grape.”

The jester approached with caution. He plucked a grape, examined it at length, put it into his mouth, and slowly bit down. “Sire…” He chewed. “My mind can invent neither quip nor jape, so awestruck am I by this delectable grape!”

The King hesitated, then chose and ate a grape. Misgiving melted from his face. He demanded that all of the court’s wine barrels be filled with only the juice of those grapes.

Having won the King’s favor, the father and son spent the fair selling their surplus to the decreasingly suspicious villagers. The boy stared at nothing and felt his way among the bunches, packing more crates while his father counted coins with quivering hands.

When the day dimmed, the last of the customers approached—a man in weather-worn clothes, with a strange old face but familiar blue eyes.

At the sight of those eyes, the father fell to his knees.

The man said, “Your son made a great sacrifice for this fortune.”

“Please, replace his sacrifice with my own,” said the father. “He must not suffer my failings.”

“Very well.” The man removed his hat.

In the following years, the vineyard flourished under the boy’s care. He often stopped atop the hill to admire the healthy green stripes stretched across the land. His blue eyes drank with sadness the plentiful view that his father could no longer see.

The father kept watch among the vines below, night and day, through all weather. Crows gathered like never before, but they left the vines untouched, favoring the juicier grapes of the father’s eyes.