Of Beasts and Belle

by J E Mueller

  "Did the magic always hide the titles?" I asked curiously.

  Nadia frowned. "What? No." She walked over and saw exactly what I saw. "That's new."

  "Have you looked in here since all this nonsense happened?" I glanced her way, already guessing at the answer.

  "I have, but I guess I didn't take the titles into consideration. That screams to me they have the answers." Nadia gave a fierce growl as she banged on the cabinet with all her might but nothing happened.

  I gingerly placed a hand on it, the magic felt so intense, unlike anything I had ever encountered. "I don't think there's an easy way around it right now."

  Nadia knocked over things on the open shelf by her, cursing everything under the sun.

  "Well, excuse you, brat." I declared.

  She turned toward me, fire in her eyes. "What did you call me?"

  I motioned to the things on the floor. "What was that about? Destroying things is not going to get you anywhere!"

  "They're fine! I've explained that already," she hissed.

  I crossed my arms. "So, just because you can get away with it, that makes it all right?"

  Nadia growled and stormed out of the room without another word.

  I didn't follow her. She could throw a tantrum well enough on her own. Instead, I turned my attention back toward the locked cabinet. The intensity of the magical flow reminded me of an electrical current. It seemed to go in a continuous circuit, leaving no gaps. I wondered if there was a way to simply turn it off. That was essentially what the caster of the spell did. They pulled a thread of magic in such a perfect way to create the structure, flow, and strength. All they would do to end it, was to find the beginning of their thread and release it.

  I placed my hand on the cabinet once more. The hum of magic flowing was its own song. Something about the melody it gave off seemed ancient. The song came to me in words and instruments I had never heard before. Until one note stood out. A hum that reminded me in a small way of my magic when it listened.

  I wasn't sure how long I stood there listening, following the flow from beginning to end over and over listening for that one note. Finally, I was able to tell exactly what measure and beat it was coming in on and gave it a small tug. The cabinet clicked, opening for me.

  Surprised wasn't the right word for how I felt. It felt almost like an invasion of privacy unlocking someone's private things. These were for Nadia to see, not me. I closed the cabinet, trying to remember what the thread felt like and push what bit of magic I could into it. The spell seemed to not need much help to get it going again. The original song picked up.

  Now how to tell the crabby princess what I had discovered.

  I found Nadia back in her room writing some things into a journal. She gave me a tired look before closing it. Before I could get a word in, she started talking.

  “I’m done with this magic business for today. No more word of it,” she declared.

  I nodded slowly. “If you wish.” It sounded like she needed a break, and it wasn’t as if anything was suddenly going to change between now and later. Tomorrow would bring the same thing.

  “Come, I have a new plan for the remainder of the afternoon.” She got up and stepped around me, not waiting to see if I followed.

  I was too curious not to follow. This would eventually get me into trouble but for now, I stayed close behind.

  Nadia didn’t go far. Stopping a door down and opening it. She motioned for me to enter ahead of her. I couldn’t imagine why but shrugged and saw something that I hadn’t expected. The center of attention was easily the table stocked high with board games, figurines, paint, and what looked like role playing books. I turned as Nadia closed the door behind her.

  “You will speak of this to no one,” she declared.

  “Why? Too snooty to admit you have fun once in a while?” I smirked, a bit more amused than I should have been.

  “You have no idea what expectations there are of me,” she threw back angrily.

  “Then change them,” I suggested simply.

  “It doesn't work that way.” She glared back.

  “Why not? If I’ve gathered enough of the story correctly, you’re in charge. Why can’t a ruler have a little fun and personality?”

  “That is not how things work!” she shouted back.

  “Why?” I crossed my arms, waiting for her to reply.

  Nadia didn’t have an answer. Instead, she sat down in a huff.

  “If this nonsense can go on, I think you have every right to change things, to let some personality show. The world owes you that much,” I suggested softly.

  Nadia sighed. “Just get over here and shut up about it.” There was no malice in her words. I wondered if she would consider it. For now though, I wasn’t going to push the subject any further.

  Instead, I grabbed the guide labeled handbook. “It’s been awhile since I’ve played one of these. Could be fun.”

  She pulled some papers out with a nod. I had to smile. There were some layers to break here, but she recognized one thing we had in common. Maybe tomorrow she’d feel a little less helpless about this enchantment mess. Maybe.

  Chapter 7

  The week flowed by swiftly. For the first few days, I humored her on games and mindless fun. It felt like she needed to just be able to socialize with someone who treated her as, well, human. I was partly surprised to see that the staff didn’t try to do more for her, but it seemed they held their predicament against her. I quickly started to see how much everyone talked behind her back, how fast laughter and conversation fell when she so much as walked by.

  It angered me more than I expected it to. Fools the lot of them. If they were innocent of crimes, they would not be trapped here as well. Whatever punishment Nadia was meant to live out, whatever task she was to complete, they were party to the reason she was here. What could they have changed, I wondered. No answers really came. I had heard, and seen for myself that she was a brat. I hadn’t exactly gotten the entire why. Was she just spoiled? A child with no guidance? Maybe even a child with the wrong guidance.

  Finally, I had to put my foot down, maybe six or seven days into my stay.

  “What happened to your parents? The actual story, not the cliff-notes business,” I asked bluntly as I flipped through the letters laying on the table from our last board game. I was sitting on the floor and had to lean back in order to try and stretch my spine.

  At first, she looked offended before relenting with a sigh. For a moment she didn’t say anything as she looked over the letters in front of us and to the words I had been making.

  Finally, she gave in. “I had heard my parents were wed as a sort of power move. It wasn’t a love match, but both gained from it.” Nadia shrugged, mimicking my movements and spelling out random words with the letters she found. “I don’t actually know the truth behind my mother's downfall. Someone said poison. Someone said a curse. Either way, she was gone and no one knew exactly from who, or why. Even the obituary let the mystery continue.”

  Nadia reshuffled the tiles she had been using and started to create new words. “Father was exceedingly hard to read for months after mother’s passing. Not that he was ever an open person to begin with, but things were very different. He started to really drill on histories, on wars, and battle strategies. I thought he had just taken a special interest in my studies. I didn’t realize for some time that he was planning for a war.”

  She shook her head, shoving the pieces more toward my side of the table. “Of course something like that can’t be won without slowly building allegiances and allies. There needed to be a common ground, a thing they all desired to win. With so many kingdoms not just around this continent, but around the globe, that would be very difficult to accomplish.” Nadia gave me a tired look and shrugged.

  “What did he find?” I asked, enthralled by the story.

  “Oh, you know. What vexes men the most?” She laughed without humor. “The what hardly matters, it’s the how. Still, one explai
ns the other.” Nadia got up to pace the small room. “While I attended school, tutoring, gatherings, balls, and all that fancy formal nonsense, I hardly had a clue exactly what father was up to. All the events and gatherings were to test the waters. To find those like minded folk. It never occured to me their drabblings were little more than ideal daydreams. I wasn’t expecting anything I heard to really mean much.”

  Nadia stopped at the window. She moved the curtain just enough to see out, the dying rays of sun giving her features more of a reddish hue. “It was, of course, power they were seeking. How boring. Wonderfully predictable. The evildoers always want power, jewels, people lusting after them. This group found a way to temporarily remove one’s magic. Sort of borrowing it for several hours while leaving the victim a mess. More of a vegatative state. They had no memories of the incident, just terrible headaches that lasted a few days…”

  I waited but no more came. “Surely you weren’t party to this?”

  At first she didn’t reply, then she shrugged. “While I didn’t participate, I didn’t put a stop to it either. What did it matter? People are just pawns for the rich and clever.”

  A shiver ran through me. For once, I understood exactly why she was being punished.

  The time crept by before she finally said anything more. “I was mostly right. We are all capable of being pawns.” She turned from the curtain and looked at me with exhaustion lining her face. “Probably would have been better to defend the pawns than to become one.”

  “You can still do that,” I stated softly, not entirely sure how.

  “Hard to when you’re trapped in a magical nightmare.”

  I couldn’t stand the look of tired defeat on her face. “Well, let’s try that cabinet once more. I figured something out with it.”

  “You did?” she asked with an odd amount of hopeful confusion, like a child realizing the mysterious presents that appeared overnight under the tree were for them.

  I nodded. “Let’s give it a try. Even if the books aren’t helpful, at least it’ll be something new in this nonsense.”

  Nadia followed me to the office, staying quiet the entire time. I immediately went over to the cabinet and laid my hand on it, listening once more to how the magic flowed. The tune was easy to spot, and I still remembered it well enough, only having to give the entire tune one listen through. Not terribly surprising considering how much I listened to it that last time.

  When I was finally able to pull the thread and the cabinet clicked open I heard Nadia gasp. I looked over, the astonishment on her face like none I’ve seen before. Slowly, she walked over to the cabinet. I was expecting her to grab the books, but instead she pulled out a locket inside and flipped it open. Since she was right next to me, it was hard to miss the picture inside. It looked like her and her mother from when Nadia was a small child.

  I didn’t know what to say. Even less when a few tears freely fell from her eyes. She didn’t wipe them away. Instead, she put the locket on and then grabbed the books. “We’ll only have a few hours before they vanish back inside.”

  “Then we’ll open it again,” I replied with a confident smile. “It’s not impossible.”

  Nadia nodded. “I like that plan.” With that, she led the way out, a hopeful smile lighting her face.

  ——Marcus——

  It took the better part of the week to get the crew over. It felt like it took twice the time to explain everything, but in reality, it took maybe twenty minutes. We all stared at one another for a moment. The guys were on the sofa while I paced, not sure what else to do with all my energy.

  “So, you’re saying your sister is trapped in a magical castle, surrounded by wolves, and putting any of this online instantly gets deleted?” Stan asked skeptically.

  “Yep. Go for it. Put all the details wherever you like,” I replied confidently.

  I wasn’t offended that they all whipped out their phones and did just that. It was a natural response in our forums. Someone presented a radical theory, and we’d all test it. Test it over, and over, and over. There was only one way to prove the point and they were doing it perfectly for me.

  Richard glared at his phone. “Okay, so you’re right. It won’t post anywhere. Not even my personal blog. Now what?”

  “It’s not like we’re capable of storming a castle,” Stan agreed, eyeing the others in the group for better ideas.

  Jon finally spoke, irritated with the same results the others had gotten. “This is beyond us. If something so large scale is going on, officials somewhere know.”

  “I agree.” I meant it too. There was no conceivable way the higher ups didn’t know about this nonsense. “However, I’m confident it has to do with the people who were stuck there. This doesn’t involve my sister, so there has to be a way to get her out. The powers that be must have a way to free her. They’d have to have a backup plan in case something like this happened.”

  “I don’t know man.” Stan sighed stretching out his arms. “Think about it. You don’t even know how you wound up there. If they had control over the situation, I don’t think that would happen.”

  “Could be a technical, magical type of fail?” I suggested, not having actually thought much on that particular fact.

  Richard shook his head. “I can’t imagine something this big being perfect, but I’ve got a feeling it’s out of their hands.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to try,” Jon agreed with me. “But, if that doesn’t work, then what? We need a sound backup plan.”

  The sad truth was, I had enough time to think of one. “Well, if worse comes to worse, this area is a huge hunting community. If we gather enough people we can probably take on the wolves and storm the castle.”

  “This is also a very small community,” Richard pointed out.

  “Very small minded,” Jon agreed.

  “Yeah? And?” I motioned vaguely, not seeing the point.

  “The spell is there for a reason, we probably don’t want to mess with it.” Stan glanced at the others who nodded back. “If we get small minded people involved, we don’t know what they’ll do. They could hurt the staff, which, ultimately, if they’re objects are probably already getting the raw end of the deal.”

  “Yeah, I bet they wouldn’t care. Smash the ‘evil’ magic to bits.” Jon nodded in agreement.

  “Probably hunt the beast too. Not sure what she did wrong, but I’d be pissed too if I was forced to be a creature that couldn’t even text.” Richard shrugged.

  I hated that they sounded right. “Fine. Back to the drawing board. We’ll leave that as a last ditch solution.”

  Hopefully we wouldn’t need a backup plan. The way my luck was going, we were going to need several.

  ——Astrid——

  The books weren’t helpful. We only read one a piece before the night demanded we sleep. We returned daily, me re-opening the cabinet until all was read. While the stories were cute old fairy tales, neither of us were interested in princes saving the day. I preferred a variety of characters in my narrative, but there was no changing classic literature.

  At one point, Nadia had me read the book she had just finished. It was a cute retelling, a princess saved from a high tower, but I wasn’t seeing anything that could relate to her entrapment.

  “I wonder if this one is based on a similar Daeum situation,” I mused, setting the story aside as I finished.

  Nadia tilted her head to the side as she considered the idea. “Maybe. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just called them witches of darkness at some point. I wonder why the witch would want to steal away a baby though.”

  “That is a good question. I can’t imagine for anything good. Unless it was to train them to be a badass warrior of light.” I smirked.

  “You read too much nonsense.” Nadia rolled her eyes at me.

  “Wonderful nonsense though!” I replied as Nadia sighed and reshuffled through the stack of books.

  I glanced back at the one she had given me and wondered if I was missi
ng something here. A witch made a deal with a farmer with a failing field to let him have a portion of her crops in exchange for the next child he conceived. The farmer and his family would have died without the crops. It was really the farmer’s fault, he was warned that the new field was no good, but still he persisted.

  The story went on and the child had a good life, but the farmer wanted vengeance for essentially losing a child. The child wins out, getting to keep her life and winning her freedom thanks to an unexpected love helping to save the day.

  None of that called out to me here.

  “Thoughts on what next?” I asked Nadia.

  “I’ve read too much today. Let’s do something fun.” She thought for a moment. “I can’t think of anything new though.”

  “What about something not new?” I asked, a sly smile easing it’s way to the surface.

  “What now?” she asked, clearly confused.

  “Well, you got to do the whole princess thing. I’m sure you learned cool things and did fun things us plebeians will never experience.”

  Nadia considered this for a moment. “Really, there are ways for normal people to do all I have, but I see your point. It wouldn’t be normal.” She nodded to herself as she considered the options. “Archery, fencing, portrait painting, music lessons, dancing lessons, and balls…”

  “Perfect! Let's try some archery!” I declared getting up to stretch.

  “Do you have any idea how difficult it’ll be to attempt that in this form?” Nadia looked disgusted by the idea.

  “Challenge accepted. Let’s see if we can have an archery mastering beast!” I laughed and she sighed reluctantly.

  “I guess that would be something new.” She shook her head as she got up to lead the way out of the room and toward the stairs.

  I hummed happily to myself as I followed. Nadia, while still not overly hopeful, was actually starting to lighten up about things. I wasn’t sure about anyone else though. In fact, it seemed that most of the staff was rather apprehensive and unsure of me. That didn’t bother me though. That was oddly common in my life.