Looking into his pale eyes, Bell saw an emptiness that shook her. “This is not a place for you either,” she whispered.
Beast closed his eyes and kept them shut. “This is exactly where I belong. And this is exactly where I will stay.”
Silence stretched out between them, long and drawn out. He didn’t open his eyes again.
“But I am here now, and as far as I know, I won’t be leaving for the rest of my life. Can we not be friends?” Bell hated the strand of begging that lined her words, but she was at a loss as to how to keep it out. Whatever she told herself, she was desperate for someone to talk to.
“I am not someone to be friends with. There is a reason my name is the Beast, and I bear my scars as an example. No matter how nice you seem to be, I am not. It’s best to leave me alone.”
Irritation started boiling in her stomach at his stubbornness. “I couldn’t care less what your name is. I’m named after a deadly plant. Beast sounds decidedly better to me than that! I’m here just as surely as you are, and this will be a more pleasurable experience if you don’t run scared from any room I enter! Besides, we have to share Fluffy!” she snapped at him.
Beast seemed shocked by her words, his mouth parted a fraction. Bell realized her hands were on her hips, and she lowered them, waiting for him to reply. There was none. Unsurprised Bell tried again. “I’m not asking us to be inseparable; I am asking only that we are amiable companions. I need interaction with someone who has two legs and can answer me back in English.”
Straightening to attention as if bracing for a blow, Beast looked Bell in the face for the first time since the night in the library. “Alright. We may try to be companions.”
A wide smile broke across her face. “Good. Join me on my walk.” She finished packing the cheese and bread and turned to him. He hadn’t moved and had an odd expression on his face. “Come!”
For a second, she thought he wasn’t going to follow her, but after a moment’s hesitation, he started towards the door. Passing into the sunlight, Bell looked around. “Where’s Fluffy?” she asked, her brow furrowed. She had become accustomed to his presence on her walks.
Raising his eyes to the heavens, Beast sighed in exasperation. “He refused to listen and insisted on being let out this morning to run around and wreak havoc. Who knows where he is by now.” He glanced at Bell, surprised when she let out a soft laugh. He quirked one eyebrow at her.
Turning to the right to follow the path she liked, Bell took a moment to answer. “I’m just picturing him running about, digging up perfect flower beds and rolling around crushing the herbs in the back. This place needs a little mess.”
“It is immaculate,” he grimaced.
“Not necessarily true. The library is well-loved, and I assume that’s because you spend too much time there, and the magic can’t keep up.” She cut her eyes towards him when he didn’t answer.
Beast remained silent for so long Bell started to feel uncomfortable. It seemed like he was out of practice speaking to another and was trying to remember how to keep the flow of conversation going.
“I spend most of my time there, yes.”
“In the chair that I keep stealing,” Bell smirked mischievously.
He grinned back at her. Bell hadn’t seen him smile yet, and she decided that it suited him. His face lit up, glowing with a burst of inner sunshine. His scarring seemed less harsh, less painful, less noticeable than when they had been in the library the first night.
“Yes, in the chair, you keep stealing. I tend to stay there.” They traipsed along in silence, enjoying the bright sunshine splashing down around them.
“I’ve been wondering for a while – is it always like this?” Bell asked, gesturing around at the grounds.
Beast took his time before responding. “Yes. It is always this perfect, no matter what. The grounds are perfect, the house is perfect, the weather is perfect. Everything is perfect.” There was no pleasure in his response, only cold resignation. He had his eyes locked forward, a slight crease in his brow.
“How long have you been here, Beast?” Bell probed, her curiosity bubbling over before she could catch herself.
Watching him flinch again, Bell was prepared for him not to answer, and an apology was already forming on her lips when he started talking. “I don’t know. Too long. Long enough to hate this perfect, beautiful prison.”
The last thing Bell wanted to do was ostracize him, now that they had formed a small truce. She was too lonely to go back to how it had been before with Beast nothing more than a shadow that popped in and out without rhyme or reason. But she had already started asking the questions that had been consuming her, and if Beast hadn’t stopped her yet, she didn’t see any harm in asking another.
“How do you not know how long you’ve been here?”
Glancing at her, Bell could see the pity in his eyes. “You don’t know, do you? You just stumbled in here, and traded places with your father, and didn’t ask any questions?”
Bristling with indignation, Bell bit her lip, determined to keep her smart retort unsaid as they walked into the grove of trees.
Beast took the blanket from her arms and spread it out on the soft grass before relieving her of the basket. She stood there mutinously for a moment before settling down. His last comment rankled; he had made her feel like a child being reprimanded. It was all fine and dandy that he thought she was silly, but he hadn’t been there. He hadn’t been searching for Papa, he hadn’t fallen over a cliff, he hadn’t woken up in a strange room. But the small voice in the back of her head reminded her that she hadn’t asked the Fae any questions, and she really didn’t know anything about this place.
Once they had both started eating, Bell responded as if several minutes hadn’t interrupted them. “No, I really didn’t have time to ask questions.” She kept her eyes fixed firmly on her plate, unwilling to see pity written across his face again.
He took so long to respond that she was about to repeat herself when he spoke. “You should have asked questions, Belladonna. Then maybe you would have chosen differently.”
“I would not have left my father, no matter the answers,” she snapped. She could feel his eyes on her, but she refused to look.
“It’s not wrong to think of yourself first and chose what is best for you, not another.”
Bell could tell he was serious, but she couldn’t imagine leaving her father to rot here, getting sicker and sicker. “The Fae couldn’t have said anything that would have changed my mind. This was not a moment to be selfish, and I could never have chosen myself over Papa. Now could you please answer my question instead of trying to convince me I ought to have?”
“Time doesn’t behave here. The days begin and end, yes, but time doesn’t pass in any other way. It is always this day, no matter how many times it has been this day. Outside this bubble, time behaves normally, but one day here could be ten days outside, or twenty, or even years. Even if time did behave normally, I wouldn’t be able to tell you how long I’ve been here. I lost count years ago. Decades ago, really.”
By the end of his explanation, Bell had raised her head, gaping at him in horror. She wasn’t surprised to hear that time didn’t obey the laws of nature; she had deduced as much already. No, what horrified her was that Beast was telling her he had lost count decades ago. Decades. Why, he didn’t seem to be much older than she, and yet he had been trapped here for that long?
“How old are you? You don’t look much older than I am!”
A wry smile twisted his mouth into an ugly slash. “As I said, time doesn’t behave here. I am exactly as old as I was when I arrived, and yet I’ve lived every day of my sentence in purgatory.”
It took her whirring brain several seconds to process what he had said. “You’ve – you’ve not aged while you’ve been here?” she stuttered.
Sad blue eyes met hers. “No. I’m afraid not.”
The air whooshed out of her lungs as if she had been punched. “Oh.”
He continued in
a soft voice. “You can’t get sick here, you can’t get seriously injured. You could jump from the top of the stairs onto the floor below, and you would walk away with only some bruising. Things can cause pain, and they will, but you won’t succumb to any injury. You can’t die.” There was such finality in the last sentence Bell knew, without having to ask, that he had tried to die. Tried very hard and been disappointed. “That’s why you were brought here initially. Your injuries were so severe that there was no other way to keep you alive. I heard Sidero giving orders when they brought you.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“What?” he asked, lost by her apparent change in topic.
Twisting her napkin between her fingers, she clarified. “It wouldn’t have mattered. If I had asked, and the Fae had told me exactly what you just said, I would still have traded places with Papa. He doesn’t deserve to be here. I would have made the same decision.” She glanced up into his face just in time to see something flicker in his eyes.
“That is incredibly selfless of you. And incredibly foolish.”
Bell shook her head. No matter what happened, no matter what fate awaited her, she would never regret trading places. Her father didn’t belong here – he was too old, too sick. Her heart ached for him, for her sisters, for the comfort of her small cottage, but she would never regret saving her father.
She was spared from forming a response by a great crashing of brush and Fluffy running at them full speed. A moment before he collided into her, she felt a steady hand grasp her upper arm and pull her, so she was sprawling across Beast’s lap, safe from being knocked over.
Laughter bubbled out as Bell tried to fend off the enthusiastic dog who was intent on licking every available piece of flesh she had exposed.
“For goodness sake, move!” Beast growling, trying to get Fluffy off of them. “Oof!” he gasped as the dog stepped on him.
Pushing the enthusiastic pup off, Bell rose, reaching her hand out to Beast automatically. She was surprised when he grabbed it, accepting the offer of help. His hand engulfed hers, enveloping it in warmth. Bell noticed that even his palms were covered in thick mutilations of skin. She shuddered, noticing once again how chilled she was in this place. He snatched his hand from hers and turned away.
“I think it’s time to head inside,” he said, starting back down the path without her.
Even with his hasty departure, their picnic seemed to have broken some unspoken boundary between Bell and Beast. He was always standoffish with her, never comfortable in her presence, but Bell was happy with any company, even the quiet, brooding type.
Bell couldn’t remember how long she’d been at the Palace, and she also couldn’t remember when she’d lost count. But each day when she rose, she missed Papa more and more. What had started as a twinge of homesickness was growing heavier with every day that passed.
Bell was staring, listless, into the library hearth one evening when Beast interrupted her thoughts. “You miss your father.” It wasn’t a question, just an observation.
Drawing her eyes away from the dancing flames and the memories she could almost see within their depths, she admitted. “Yes, I do. I miss him terribly.”
Beast looked at her, his eyes probing. For a moment, Bell was uncomfortable, sure he could see deep inside her and knew something she didn’t. “I am sorry, Belladonna. I wish I could help.”
It was the use of her full name in such a painful moment that drew her from her thoughts. “You can call me Bell. There’s no need to use Belladonna.”
Adjusting his position in the chair, he put the book he had been reading down. “There is power in the true name of any being. Knowing someone’s real name means knowing what they are. You,” he reached over and tapped her arm, “have an incredibly powerful name. It’s also happens to be very beautiful.”
Bell blushed at the compliment and hoped that the firelight would hide her reddened cheeks. She never received compliments and had no practice responding. Her sisters were the ones that were admired for their beauty and minds – Bell had always been in the shadows too engrossed in her books to seek out such praises. She steadily avoided his eyes. “Our mother hated our names, but Papa named all of us. I almost feel like he cursed us, but I would never tell him so. It would break his heart.”
“Cursed?”
Bell could tell by his tone he was genuinely interested. “I agree with you; names have power. Papa named all three of us after plants, but there are also fairy tales that we were told that have to do with our names. I always thought they were enchanting, but the older I got, the truer they became, and the darker I thought they were. Papa knew the stories, so I always thought it weird he still chose what he did.”
Beast’s eyes seemed to gaze into her being. In the soft glow of the fire, his scarring seemed less harsh, softened by the flickering light. For a moment, Bell could see the handsome man he could have been, and her heart gave a twist. She wondered for the hundredth time what had happened to make the handsome face so marred.
“Do you want to hear the story of my name?” Bell was surprised to hear the offer come out of her mouth.
Before she could retract it, he said, “I would.”
Fixing her eyes on the flames in the hearth, she began, seeing the characters acting out their parts in the dancing tendrils of light.
It’s always been known that there’s another world parallel to ours. The kingdom of magic – of Fae and Spirits, Beings too wild for our imaginations to understand. The veil separates the two, ensuring the safety of all. But in wild places, far from prying eyes, sometimes the veil slips or rips, and the worlds meet, kissing softly.
More often than not, the Beings from the other kingdom slip through for a time, walking among the humans unseen. Even while traveling in our world, magic Beings aren’t noticed. The most that is shown is a shadow moving out of the corner of your eye, or a sudden coldness with no source.
Deep in the forest where the world was still wild, an old woman lived with her foundling daughter. The town folk called her a witch, but their fear didn’t stop them from visiting her in an emergency. She was merely a herbalist, but she did nothing to correct the rumors. They kept everyone away. Her desire for solitude stemmed less from her own fear of attack for being different and more from worries for her daughter’s safety.
Beautiful in the way of wild things, the old witch knew that any warm-blooded man would desire her daughter. Although the girl dreamed of romance and true love, her mother knew that no matter what any man promised, her daughter would never be accepted by the town. She had spent too long in the forest and was too wild. No man would ever tame her, and any that tried would eventually grow tired of the efforts. It was just a matter of time before she was called a witch and shunned – or worse.
It was the girl’s job to gather the plants her mother needed to create the draughts and potions the townsfolk came to buy. One day her mother sent her out to collect supplies. Having spent her whole life among the ancient trunks, the girl did not fear the rustles of the forest. Deeper and deeper, she wandered, looking for the specific berry her mother needed. Suddenly, she stumbled upon a clearing she had never seen before. In the center of the grove, a small bush grew with tiny purple berries. She approached, kneeling to better examine the plant.
It took just a few moments of close inspection for her to recognize it. In the back of her mother’s massive tome of plants and their uses, there was a section she wasn’t allowed to look at. Curious, as children often are, she had spent hours reading about the plants when the old woman was gone.
Most were deadly plants, killing those who ingested them in painful and grisly ways. But there was one plant that had captured the young girl’s attention – belladonna – and it sat before her now. It, too, was a deadly poison. But it had other uses as well – when brewed correctly, one could place a drop in each eye to see what others could not. There were no further explanations, but the power of the berry had always captivated her. What w
ould the plant allow her to see? Would she see the magic beings everyone believed resided parallel, separated by a thin barrier? Was there something else out there?
Deciding in a breath, she plucked a sprig of the plant and hid it in her dress pocket away from the rest of the herbs. She returned to their cabin, keeping her discovery to herself, knowing her mother would take the plant away if she found it.
As luck would have it, her mother was leaving the next morning to go to market and sell her wares; the three-day affair would give the girl a chance to try to stew the berries. The following day she waited for her mother to fade out of sight before running to the book, flipping it to the back. By dusk, the potion was ready. Opening her eyes wide, she dripped a single drop in each eye. Blinking rapidly at the stinging sensation, she prayed she had stewed them correctly.
Once her sight cleared, she was disappointed to see that nothing looked different. She headed outside. Stopping in awe, she saw It on the edge of the path into the forest, Its head cocked, inspecting. More beautiful than any man could be, she knew that the creature was a true Fae. He was pale and shimmered against the backdrop of the trees. As if pulled by a current, she approached until she stood in wonder before him. With ice-cold fingers, he brushed her cheek.
From that day on, the girl used every opportunity to take the drops. Once her eyes had been opened to the Others she could not close them, enchanted by what she could see. Each moment she spent looking, she withdrew slightly more from her world. Worried, her mother watched her daughter start wasting away before her eyes but was helpless as to what to do. No matter what concoction she poured down her daughter's throat, she continued to grow thinner and thinner; in just the right light, she even looked like the edges of her body were blurring away.
The girl often dreamt of what she had seen, unwilling to give up even a moment of magic. Every day the Fae man and all the other magical beasts called to her. Each morning she opened her eyes, ready to start her day. But today she opened her eyes only to blackness - she couldn’t see. Fumbling for the dropper she kept in her pocket at all times she dribbled the fluid into her open eyes with shaking hands.
Rose Bound Magic Page 5