I giggle and almost fall over. “Seriously? Guess.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Beast?”

“Good guess,” I say, patting my brother on the head. “And the beast is not actually that scary in the original story. He’s pretty sweet.” I peek my head out from behind the shrub. The beast is scratching Prince behind the ears. Aw. I hide again.

“Can you tell me the story?” Jonah asks. “I saw parts of the movie, but I don’t remember much.”

“You want me to tell you the story right now? We’re kind of in the middle of something here.”

“Shouldn’t I know what’s happening?” Jonah asks.

My nana used to read Jonah and me the original fairy tales, which are pretty different from the movies. I listened all the time. Jonah not so much. I peek out once more. The beast and Prince are playing fetch with a gardening shovel. They seem fine. I motion Jonah closer to me.

“Okay. Well, there’s a prince. And one day he gets cursed by a fairy.” I wiggle my fingers for effect.

“What did he do?”

“The story doesn’t say. But it must have been something really, really bad, because the curse is really bad. The fairy turns him into a beast. And he can’t turn back into his regular self until someone agrees to marry him just as he is — as a beast. Skip ahead a few years, and a merchant — that’s a businessperson — is lost in the forest.”

“The forest we just went through?”

“I guess so. Anyway, the merchant comes to the castle and sees a feast laid out.”

“Oh! We saw a feast laid out!”

“Not so loud,” I say, shooting another glance at the beast and shuddering. Then I feel bad. The beast seems nice, but he’s still very, very scary looking. “Right. The merchant ate the feast but the beast didn’t care. He left the feast for other people. But then the merchant went outside and picked a rose from the garden for his youngest daughter. And when the beast saw him taking the rose, he got really mad. He had left all that food for the guy, and then the guy had tried to steal from him. He threatened to kill the merchant!”

Jonah’s eyes widen. “Kill? Because he took a rose? Um … Abby …”