Five Enchanted Roses: A Collection of Beauty and the Beast Stories

by Kaycee Browning

  The wulver froze at her touch as though struck to the heart. Then, with no further word, he slipped his hand from her grasp and fled the room. Bonnie stood where he left her, wondering if she would ever see him again.

  In the morning the horse—her father’s cousin’s horse, the very same she had ridden to the castle so long ago—awaited her, its saddlebags full of gifts, just as the wulver had promised.

  Bonnie, clad in her old gown and shawl once more, approached the horse in some surprise. “What will our cousin say when he finds you are missing?” she whispered, taking hold of the bridle and stroking the animal’s broad cheek.

  She looked back toward the castle one last time. Something moved in one of the upper windows, and she knew the wulver had pulled back the curtain to watch her departure. As soon as he realized she had seen him, he released the curtain and disappeared from her view.

  But she was free to go. Free! And here was the horse, ready to carry her back to her family. How could she refuse such a chance?

  Help us . . .

  The memory of the child’s voice lingered in her mind. Bonnie mounted the horse and, from that high vantage, looked around at the castle yard, even at the small garden where the rosebush stood brown, its final rose fading fast.

  “I’ll come back,” she whispered, promising herself, promising the wulver. Promising that poor withering rose. The promise still on her lips, she urged her horse through the gate and away into the forest.

  Chapter 13

  ONCE BONNIE HAD traveled far enough from the castle to step from the forest into the open heath not many miles from home, she found herself strangely apprehensive. That morning she had been too focused on the wulver’s melancholy to fully grasp the fact that she was returning to her family. Now the reality dawned, and she considered the many questions they were sure to ask. How was she to explain the complicated relationship she shared with the wulver? She couldn’t help but think of his pensive look the night before.

  You’re going to see your family again! she scolded herself. He’s released you! There’s no reason to feel . . . Her thoughts trailed off. No reason to feel what? Bereft? Lonely? Rejected?

  For one breathless moment she considered turning back. But what sort of person longs to return to her captor instead of her family? she asked herself uncomfortably and continued homeward.

  As she rode on, finding the road and covering the miles that separated her from home, she remembered suddenly her long-ago fear of leaving home, of going away to school and returning as a different person. How desperately her child self had longed to keep her family together, to allow for no change.

  But now her worst fear had come to pass—she was no longer the Bonnie who had ridden away in the dead of night. She was a new person. Would her family be able to understand?

  Suddenly she glimpsed the crofter’s cottage ahead. As the sun shone down from high above, she saw the familiar dooryard showing the first signs of spring. She saw Maisie out with the chickens, her back to the road, as yet unaware of her sister’s approach.

  “Maisie!” Bonnie called.

  Her sister spun about, spilling chicken feed from her basket as she did so. She recognized the figure on horseback at once, dropped her basket—much to the delight of the chickens—and ran down the road, crying out, “Bonnie! Bonnie!”

  Bonnie leapt from her horse and fell into her sister’s embrace, and the two of them laughed and wept. “Our cousin came by yesterday,” Maisie said, wiping tears from her eyes suddenly and shaking her head. “He said his horse had run off and wondered if it had come here. I remembered how it returned to us with the message from you all those months ago, and I . . . I started to hope . . .”

  She laughed then, and Bonnie did as well. By that time, others had heard the commotion in the road, and Mr. Alleway’s joyful shout carried through the air. Bonnie found herself wrapped in her father’s arms and felt him plant a kiss on the top of her head. “Oh, my Bonnie lass!” he exclaimed.

  Soon she was surrounded by all of them—Sorcha, Calum, her father, Maisie—and smothered in their affection. As though from a distance, she heard Sorcha’s firm voice declaring, “Settle down! Settle down, all! We must get Bonnie inside, and she’s not to answer a single question until she’s had a chance to catch her breath and down a cup of warm milk!”

  “There are gifts in the saddle bags,” Bonnie managed to interrupt. Calum attended to the horse while Bonnie was practically carried inside. “How are you all?” she asked as she settled onto the stool Sorcha pulled forward for her, close to the peat fire.

  “We all want to know about you,” her father insisted, drawing another seat close to hers and taking her hand as though he would never let go.

  “Do tell us!” Maisie pleaded, closing in on Bonnie’s other side. “How did you escape?”

  “I didn’t,” Bonnie said. “He . . . let me leave.”

  “The wulver?” Maisie persisted. “Was he indeed a wulver?” She winced at her father’s sharp glance and said, “I’m sorry, Da! I just want to know.”

  “Yes,” Bonnie answered, patting her sister’s hand. “Yes, he was indeed a wulver. But—”

  “What did he want of you?”

  “Now, now!” said Sorcha sharply, pressing the promised cup of milk into her sister’s hands. “I thought I said no questions?”

  “It’s all right,” Bonnie said, though she hated the question. She knew she had been brought to the castle for a particular purpose. She knew it even as she had always known, from the moment she first glimpsed the rose her father brought to her and first determined to pay his debt. The visions she had seen all those years were a promise of some kind . . . a promise she had failed to fulfill.

  Realizing her family still waited for her to answer Maisie’s question—even Sorcha, whose curiosity overrode her insistence that they allow Bonnie to rest—Bonnie whispered, “I think he’s lonely.”

  “Isn’t that just typical Bonnie,” Sorcha said. “Held captive by a wolfish monster, and all she can say is I think he’s lonely.” She shook her head, trying to be scornful but not quite succeeding. Not even Sorcha could completely hide her relief and gladness over her sister’s safe return.

  “Tell us everything,” Maisie pleaded.

  This was what Bonnie had most dreaded about her return. “I don’t know where to begin,” she said honestly. “It wasn’t at all like I expected.” She furrowed her brows.

  “Did he mistreat you?” This from her father, spoken with great dread. Bonnie realized suddenly the guilt he must have suffered all these long months. She knew too well how painful guilt could be, how torturous.

  She quickly shook her head, smiling at her father, wishing to soothe his pain. “Not at all! Indeed, he was kind to me. He became a friend. I don’t know . . .” She paused, taking in the heartbreak in Mr. Alleway’s face, heartbreak scarcely alleviated by the sight of his daughter returned to him. “I am sorry I ran off without telling you,” she said. “I couldn’t think what else to do. I couldn’t bear to let you suffer for another of my mistakes.”

  “We were worried sick!” Sorcha scolded, taking a seat on a stool across the fire. “Goodness knows how long we looked for you. The horse finally wandered its way back here with your note in the saddle.” Her jaw twitched. “’Twas a foolish act, Bonnie.”

  “But brave,” Calum said, entering the cottage in time to hear the last of Sorcha’s tirade. He laid a hand on Bonnie’s shoulder and squeezed.

  The family stayed long about the fire that night, simply relishing being together with their reclaimed sister and daughter. Bonnie felt a strange combination of gladness and guilt, and her vagueness caused several awkward lapses in the conversation. She was glad to be home, but . . .

  . . . just as she had feared, home was no longer the same. And neither was she.

  It would be unfair, she knew, to expect her family’s lives to stop simply because she was gone. But she was unprepared for everything to be so different. She felt as though
she’d been left behind while everyone went on with their lives without her. They spoke of people she didn’t know, of events she hadn’t attended. Even jokes passed over her head as they laughed about things she hadn’t witnessed. Can so much change in a matter of months?

  She disliked talking about the beast—not because she found it painful, as her family’s attitude seemed to suggest, but because she felt she was breaking the beast’s trust by doing so. She owed him nothing. At least, most people would think so. Yet she had given him her friendship, and to discuss him behind his back seemed wrong in her mind.

  She looked at one of the low windows, where the wulver’s rose still rested, propped up in the broken cup. Miraculously, it remained in bloom, even after all this time! But even this rose, like those at the castle, had begun to brown about the edges. Soon it too would crumble into dust.

  Sometimes during the next few days, for brief moments as she did her chores or laughed at something Calum said, Bonnie forgot she had ever been away from home. She could pretend that her life was the same as it had been before. But a brief glimpse of the rose on the windowsill was enough to bring her back.

  She couldn’t look at it without thinking of him.

  Bonnie wondered again why the loss of a single, insignificant rose had enraged the wulver so much that he would tear her away from her family. She knew him well enough to be certain that such behavior was unusual for him. So what about this rose would drive him to make such a blindly wrathful decision?

  She touched the flower gently, but the slight pressure was enough to cause another petal to fall.

  Help us!

  As the petal drifted to the floor, the child’s voice assaulted Bonnie’s mind with sudden desperation. She recoiled with the swiftness of one who has accidentally touched a hot fire iron. Knowledge tickled the back of her mind, as if her heart knew something her head did not yet comprehend.

  “Calum?” An unfamiliar feminine voice drifted in through the front door, and Bonnie turned in surprise.

  Calum, who had just been stoking up the peat fire in the middle of the cottage, spun about suddenly. He had just removed his wide-brimmed hat upon stepping through the door, and Bonnie watched as he hastily grabbed for it now. “That’ll be Abigail, come for her wool,” he said, tugging the brim of his hat low, as though to hide his ugly face.

  Bonnie followed her brother to the door and found a pretty, dark-haired young woman standing in the yard and carrying an empty basket.

  “Good morn, Abigail,” Calum said, touching the brim of his hat respectfully. “Allow me to introduce my sister Bonnie.”

  “Guid mornin’, Bonnie,” the girl said pleasantly to Bonnie, but her attention quickly returned to Calum. She blushed just the slightest bit. “Mum said I’d need to get a bit extra today. I hope it’s all right? We have much spinning to do before market day.”

  “Of course.” Calum’s words were all politeness but almost stiff. Bonnie watched as he led Abigail out to the barn and then saw her on her way with a basketful of sheep’s wool sheared but a few days before.

  Calum seemed pensive when he came back inside. He stood by the front window and watched Abigail walk away until she disappeared around a curve in the path.

  “Why don’t you talk to her, Calum?” Bonnie asked, watching her brother carefully. “She’s lovely. And I think she would welcome more conversation than you were offering!”

  Calum grimaced and turned away, removing his hat and hanging it on a peg.

  “What is it?” Bonnie asked, though she already suspected the answer.

  “I guess I don’t think a woman could like me, not when I look . . . like this.” Calum turned to Bonnie, and she saw his scarred face clearly by the light coming through the window.

  Once more she felt the sorrow in her heart that so often assaulted her when she looked closely at her brother. Yet she saw no resentment in his eyes. He had forgiven her long ago; she doubted he even remembered the part she had played in his disfiguring.

  “Calum,” she said softly, “you are a wonderful man. And I say it not because you’re my brother but because it’s the truth!”

  He answered her smile with a tentative one of his own, the right side of his mouth curling at the corner, the left side merely twisting. “So you’re saying you think a fine woman such as Abigail could look past . . . this?” He indicated his face with a wave of one hand.

  “Of course,” Bonnie replied confidently. “When someone is good and kind and honorable, it doesn’t matter what he looks like. Love can see past all that. It can . . .”

  “It can what?”

  Bonnie looked away. “I . . . Never mind. But try for Abigail, will you? I need . . . I need some air.”

  With this, she slipped from the cottage and began to run. Out from the yard she sped, out through the gate. She followed the same path she had trod on her first night in this country so many years ago, up to the top of the not-too-distant hill where the jagged rock jutted to the sky. She placed her hand on this rock, resting against it to catch her breath.

  “What have I done?” she whispered. Then, setting her jaw, she climbed up onto the rock even as she had on that first night, standing there in the wind and the sun, gazing out to the far forest.

  She felt again the pulse of darkness, even though the sun was bright. And she thought of the wulver, whom she had left behind. Alone in the midst of that darkness. In the midst of that evil.

  “Oh, what have I done?” Bonnie asked herself.

  She focused on that distant forest, her mind searching for something. Perhaps for the visions, perhaps for the voice. Perhaps for some sense of the wulver himself, calling out to her from across the miles.

  She heard nothing. But she felt the power of that darkness, and it frightened her, even here, even in the safety of her family’s home and land.

  Help us, the child had pleaded. And what had she done instead? She had abandoned them. The wulver. The child. All of them. Given the first opportunity, she had fled, though she knew—she knew, Heaven help her!—that she had always been meant to go to the castle, to rescue them from that darkness somehow.

  Suddenly she turned and leapt from the stone, flying back down the hill and on to her family’s cottage. She saw Maisie in the yard, tending to the chickens even as she’d been when Bonnie first returned.

  “Maisie!” Bonnie cried. “I have to leave. I must go back to the castle!”

  “What?” Maisie turned to her, horror written clearly across her face. “Bonnie, what are you saying?”

  But Bonnie hadn’t time to explain. She darted into the cottage and, on an impulse, snatched up the wilting rose from its cup. Tucking it into the bodice of her gown, she darted back into the yard and gave her sister a quick embrace. “Tell the others I’ve gone,” she said. “Tell them there is something I must do, something I should have done long ago. I know now, you see . . . I know, Maisie! And I’m going to make it all right!”

  “Bonnie, you’ve gone off your head,” Maisie said, trying to catch her sister’s hand as Bonnie pulled away. “Wait until Da comes back from the fields, at least! Wait until Sorcha—”

  “I can’t wait!” Bonnie said. “I love you, Maisie. I love all of you! But I must go.”

  Maisie’s eyes brimmed with tears. Then suddenly she sprang forward, caught Bonnie in a last tight hug, and whispered fiercely in her ear: “Hurry, Seònaid!”

  Bonnie’s heart stopped for an instant. “What did you say?”

  “I told you to hurry.” Maisie frowned. “Why did I say that?”

  “And you called me . . . you called me Seònaid.” Bonnie breathed faster. “You never call me that. Only one person calls me that.” I have to get back! “I must go. Say a prayer for me, Maisie,” Bonnie told her. “Say a great many prayers!”

  Then she turned and ran on foot down the road. She had no horse, but this could not stop her. She would run the whole way there if necessary, the yellow rose tucked close to her heart.

  Chapter 14r />
  SHE SHOULD NOT have been able to run that whole long distance, all those endless miles. But it seemed to Bonnie as though angels took hold of her arms and carried her along, giving her miraculous strength and endurance beyond her own ability. With every step she took, she felt her heart beating a wordless prayer, and she could only trust that God in His heaven heard and understood and made the path clear before her.

  Night had fallen long before she drew near to the forest, a starless night pulsing with evil far stronger than she had ever before experienced. Indeed, even as she left the road behind and scrambled up an incline to the forest’s edge, she suddenly stopped as though she’d struck a wall.

  “No!” she cried out, pressing into what appeared to be empty air . . . empty air that resisted her, striking her again and again with nausea and despair. “No, let me in!”

  What was that fleeting shadow she glimpsed in the trees? A lithe woman’s form? A bent and hobbling hag? No, just a deeper shadow . . .

  But the darkness fought her, and she could not push through. And her beast lay beyond, in peril. Perhaps dead!

  Bonnie looked down at the rose she had taken from the cup on the windowsill. Several of its petals had fallen since she began her mad run, and what remained could scarcely be called a rose anymore. But those last remaining petals were still bright gold like sunshine, and the sight of them gave her hope.

  Her heart trembled with terror, however, when a woman’s laugh, cruel and cold, rolled out from the depths of the forest to strike her with a redoubled force of wickedness, driving her to her knees. This, however, was a dreadful mistake on the part of whoever sought to keep her out. For Bonnie pressed her hands together, cupping the shredded rose between them, and boldly cried out the same prayer which had comforted her so many times over the years:

  “Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night!”