Helana and the Beast (short story)

Helana and the Beast was the eleventh short story in Time Lord Fairy Tales, featuring the Twelfth Doctor.

Publisher's summary
Kept captive in a castle by a terrible beast, Helana befriends the castle's only other resident — its grumpy, grey-haired librarian. Will the Beast and the librarian turn out to be more than meets the eye?

Plot
Helana lives on the edge of a town with her father, who worked as a scientist before the corporation he worked for closed down due to a fall in profits. As a result of the closure, he has been selling his expertise to whichever companies that he can. Helana also works in the library or a shop to earn some money.

One day, Helana's father receives a message about a work offer that causes him to be away from his daughter for a few weeks. Unfortunately, her father goes missing for a few months after he leaves for work. She soon finds the message that was given to him and programmes the address printed on it into her transporter's navigational system, which takes her out of town and across the empty countryside.

The journey takes until night for Helana to arrive at her destination. She comes across a pair of large metal gates blocking the way to a massive house. After pushing one of the gates open, Helena begins to make her way to the house as a thunderstorm begins. Drenched with rainwater, Helana knocks on the door to the house.

The door is opened by a large beast who demands to know why Helana is at his house. Helana tells the beast that she is looking for her father who was supposed to be working in the house before she is lead to the house's laboratory where she finds her father. Relieved, Helana hugs her father as the beast closes the door behind them.

Helana's father explains that the beast locked him in the laboratory and ordered him to work for hum, but he cannot achieve what the beast wants due to a lack of required knowledge about genetics and DNA sequencing and if he tells the beast about this, he may be killed. Helana tells her father that she will tell the beast as he will eventually find out that her father's work is going nowhere and that there's a chance that the consequences will be worse if they tell him now. Her father agrees and they both believe that the beast has some decency within him.

When the beast returns to the laboratory, Helana tells him that her father's work cannot give him what he wants. Instead of killing them, the beast merely buries his face in his paws before telling them to stay so he has some company. Helana's father demands that his daughter be allowed to leave, but Helana argues that her father is growing old and should be allowed to return home instead of her while also being allowed to visit the house once in a while.

The beast is surprised by Helana's request to stay so that her father can leave. Helana explains that she has sensed some kindness in the beast's heart before the beast agrees to let her stay. As dawn breaks, Helana's father is brought to the transporter that brought Helana to the house. After hugging her father once more, Helana watches as he steps onto the transporter which takes him back to his home on the edge of town as Helana returns to the house with the beast.

As the days pass, Helana shares meals with the beast and talks to him as they both grow closer to each other. Eventually, Helana finds herself in the house's library where she picks out a book to read. But as she's reading, she is approached by a grey-haired man who tells her that she shouldn't be in the library.

Helana tells the man that she is just reading, to which the man replies that reading is good. She then explains to the man that she believes that the beast isn't as dangerous as he looks. Agreeing, the man says that he's busy and tells Helana that he's the librarian before asking where the laboratory is. Helana leads the librarian to the laboratory whilst telling him about her father.

Over the next few days, Helana spends her time in the library both reading and watching the librarian consulting papers before returning to the laboratory. One evening, the beast tells Helana that her father had collected a huge number of the books in the library and that he himself continued to acquire novels and works of reference until he stopped.

When Helana tells him that the librarian would be happy to help him, the beast says that there is no librarian in the house. After finishing her meal, Helana enters the library to find the librarian, but he is nowhere to be found. He isn't in the blue cabinet that is among the bookshelves either.

The librarian is in the laboratory and he tells Helana that he is trying to help her. He shows her a bottle of liquid that he has created to give the beast his salvation. Helana is told to give the beast the liquid so that he can drink it and be saved. The next evening, Helana tips the liquid that the librarian gave her into the beast's drink.

Once the beast finishes his drink, he appears to start choking as if he has been poisoned. Helana rushes to the library where she finds the librarian sitting a the table where she was reading. After bringing him over to the beast's body, the librarian hopes that he has been saved before explaining that he was caught in a time field which caused him to be transformed into a beast.

He then explains that the liquid he intended for the beast to drink was not poison, but a temporal antidote that the beast wanted Helana's father to create for him. Eventually, the antidote starts working and the beast transforms into a handsome young man who thanks Helana for saving her. Helana replies that the librarian was the one who saved him, but the librarian has disappeared, and they soon see that the blue cabinet has vanished from the library.

Characters

 * Twelfth Doctor
 * Helana
 * Helana's father
 * Beast
 * Constable

Worldbuilding
to be added

Continuity
to be added