~Chapter One~

Skirts whirled in the air. "Oh, grandmama," cried Lianna, who was clad in a long, lovely pink skirt, "These skirts are simply magnificent! A thousand times, thank you!" "Yes," agreed Katrina, following Lianna's example and dancing round in a skirt of sky blue. "Of course, of course darlings," said an old lady, warming herself by the large brick fireplace, inside which blazed a brilliant fire, knitting a pair of stockings and enjoying the young girls' reverie all at once. "Aren't they lovely, Sasha?" Katrina asked of the quiet girl in a corner, "Are they not the most lovely presents you have ever seen?" Sasha looked up from her book, Romeo and Juliet, and answered in the words she had just read, "'I will look to like, if looking liking move,'" she quoted. "Goodness me," said old Grandma Crotchett, "Sasha, are you in a book yet again? Why do you persist in such things? Filling a young girl's mind with the strangest ideas when she should be dancing with her step-sisters! It is not right for a woman to read!" Grandmother finished the well-known speech with a relish; and, as often as Sasha had heard it, she still paid no attention. "Books are my friends, Grandmama," she said patiently. "When I read of fairies and princess', I feel as though I'm the heroine; When I read Shakespeare, I come alive. Please, you cannot take them away from me?" "I can, I will, and I shall, the first chance I get, Sasha." Grandma Crotchett was often more strict with Sasha than with Katrina and Lianna, for reasons of her own. Hopefully, the reader will be able to comprehend those reasons ere long.

"Sasha, Sasha? Ah, where is my Sasha?" a woman's voice was heard asking. "Coming, mama," and from thence the exited the aforesaid name, leaving her torn and loved book on the chair on which she had been seated. As graceful as the deer which roamed the forest behind behind the family's small home, Sasha skipped down the hall, and ran smack into- her step-father. "Oh, the world I would give to be that princess I was reading about the other night," murmured Sasha under her breath. She had never had a good relationship with anyone, let alone her step-father; excepting her papa, of course. And her step-father was a far, far cry from Sasha's real papa.

Introduction

"I guess I must begin as all fairy stories begin," began an old woman in the corner of a library, with children around her as though in a trance. Boys and girls of all ages had been coming and sitting with rapt attention for the past two hours, coming to make fun, but staying to listen.

"Yes," the woman continued, "and the way most fairy stories begin is with the phrase, 'Once upon a time.' But I suppose that would not be a true statement. And so this story is no longer a 'once upon a time.'"

Sasha stood, secretly watching her little brother and sister spellbound by the older woman, behind a metal bookcase. Though the fourteen-year-old hated to admit it, she loved fairy tales, so she let herself be pulled into the story. An open copy of Beauty and the Beast lay open on her lap. She glanced down at the words now and then, but after a while, she simply sat, involved in the dramatic tale, and laid her head against the wall. And she began to imagine...