by Liz Braswell
Instead, the Enchantress let it take her and carry her home.
Weeping and exhausted, she related all that happened to Maurice while he held her. When she had no more to say, Rosalind straightened up and jerkily made the motions that cleared the house of pestilence. Then she went over to Belle’s doorway and made additional signs that hung green a moment in the air before trailing to the floor like vines. Safe.
Maurice clapped her sadly on the shoulder.
“I understand your decision to not help them—especially after hearing about Alaric,” he said quietly. “But overall I’m not sure that was the kindest thing to do.”
“They didn’t protect my people—their people. Their subjects. There are repercussions for actions. Magic comes back to you, just as the actions of people do. The bigger the person, the more their actions affect the world. If they live, perhaps they will learn that.”
“And if everyone dies, no one learns anything,” he pointed out gently.
Rosalind remained silent, but her fingers started twitching, working.
Deep in the castle in the woods, silver sparkles fell over those ignorant of the doings of enchantresses and inventors.
“The Prince is…safe?” her husband asked.
Rosalind nodded. “As are the servants, and their children.”
The couple was silent for a moment.
“If something were to happen to me…” Rosalind began slowly.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you, my dear!” Maurice said, giving her a kiss. “You can’t get the fever.”
“But…if it were…something else. Anything else,” she said, thinking. “I would want…Belle to be safe. I would want my people…to be safe.”
“I don’t know how you could do that,” Maurice said with a sigh. “You’re the most powerful sorceress left in the world…but even you can’t protect everyone.”
“I would make everyone…else…forget,” she said slowly, thinking. “Forget about me and les charmantes. We would become nothing but fairy tales, and hide forever from the eyes of men.”
“That seems sad—but pragmatic,” Maurice said, putting his arms around her waist. “Just don’t include me in the spell. I don’t care what happens to me—I never want to forget you.”
Rosalind smiled and kissed him…
…but didn’t answer.
Cogsworth and Lumière frittered at the edge of the stairs, debating nervously about going up after her.
Belle left them behind.
This part of the castle was…different. If every other room seemed a little musty, cool, dark, and abandoned, the West Wing felt like a cave. Also moist, as if a window had been left open despite the early winter weather. Strange—if not strictly unpleasant—barnlike smells assaulted her nose. Vaguely reminiscent of animals.
Belle realized she was holding her breath.
What must have once been a truly spectacular mirror framed in gold took up the entire far wall at the top of the stairs. Its silvered perfection had been destroyed long ago; shards of deadly glass stuck out like teeth in the otherwise empty frame and littered the floor. There wasn’t a single piece remaining that was as large as Belle’s hand. But all of them—every single one, from the finger-sized remainders to the tiniest gemlike droplet—reflected her face and the pale, worried look she hadn’t even known she wore.
Something was building in the back of her head, thrumming and pulsing. Fear or panic or excitement that she was about to learn something important. It was obvious she was on the right track.
Next to the mirror was a pair of monstrous wooden doors. Their bronze handles were in the form of strangely familiar demons. Belle was reluctant to place her hands over their uncomfortable and jagged forms. But she did.
A sudden gust of wind caught the doors and slammed them all the way open. Belle fell through, tumbling helplessly into the room.
At first she thought she had found a bizarrely cluttered attic: furniture was scattered around like a drunken giant had come through, smashing his way to the window. Hard chairs were knocked down and broken, soft ones were strangely unharmed but pushed together in unusual clusters. Rugs were bunched back up over themselves like something had tried to burrow beneath them. The floors beneath were scored with silver scratch marks, four in a line, like a giant claw. Streaks of dust striped tapestries that hung torn and off-kilter from splintered rods. Scattered here and there were eerily white objects: bones, picked clean.
This, Belle knew without even thinking, the lair of the Beast.
A handsome four-poster bed was the only thing in the room that seemed untouched, unused. It was sized for a young child—the rosewood poles would have been like a cage for someone like the Beast. A ten-year-old, maybe.
Ten years.
Everything had begun to happen ten years ago.
Belle’s heart started to race.
Had the Beast invaded this castle, consumed everyone alive in it, and taken this prince’s room for his own?
She jumped when another gust of wind caused the shredded curtains to suddenly whip out like angry ghosts. As clouds scuttled away from the moon outside, everything was illuminated in pale white light: besides the general disarray, there were more violent signs of destruction now made obvious. Some of the chairs were deliberately smashed. A desk lay in pieces in a corner. Side tables were torn apart, their marble tops cracked like ice.
Belle swallowed.
Were all of these things once animated, like the teapot and clock?
Had they been lively and talkative, moving and adorable—but were now stilled in a strange death?
How had it happened?
Was there some sort of war to protect the castle?
Were these soldiers, somehow killed in the battle?
Or were they just victims of the Beast’s rage?
Belle bit her lip and pushed farther into the room despite every instinct telling her to run away. But she would get no answers by remaining at the edges. And there was something comforting about the moonlight streaming in from the window. Belle made her way to the far wall, hoping for a gulp of fresh air.
She tiptoed around moldering piles of clothes that lay undisturbed by mice. She tried not to shudder at a broken-down wardrobe, a smaller version of the one who had spoken to her: this one lay silent and covered in cobwebs, its doors pulled off its hinges and drawers askew.
Past that was a portrait almost as large as the mirror in the hallway, and almost as destroyed. Great shreds of canvas and peeling oil paint hung from its elaborate frame. Four very deliberate claws had done this. Belle reached forward without thinking and tried to reposition the two largest remaining pieces, like a puzzle, to see what the subject was. It seemed to be a young man with piercing blue eyes in what looked like royal clothes….
Belle frowned. He was too old to be the last occupant of the child-sized bed in the room, but also too young to be the boy’s father. Who was it? Mystery upon mystery…
Something sparkled out the corner of her eye.
There, farther into the room, in front of the windows she was trying to reach, was a little white stone-topped table completely free from the destruction that had torn apart everything else. On it sat two things glittering in the moonlight. One was a pretty silver hand mirror.
The other was a red rose under a bell jar.
Despite their walls and doctors and priests and incense and wealth, the king and queen took ill and died.
Their son, by some twist of fate, was spared. As were all of the children in the castle. Some called it a miracle.
A year passed. The fever ran itself out, though not before taking a staggering percentage of the townspeople with it.
The time of mourning finally ended and a coronation date was set. There would be a new king and, hopefully, a new beginning for the beleaguered little kingdom.
Meanwhile, in the village, Rosalind was trying to make a dress for Belle. Sewing was not one of her talents; her fingers were covered with little ruby-red pricks
of blood and she said many un-enchantress-like things as she went. But Belle’s birthday was coming up and, as happened occasionally, Rosalind felt a need to do some sort of “normal” motherly thing for it.
Maurice had suggested several times they have a dress tailored for their daughter instead. His automated thresher had won some money at a fair and for once they had coin to spare for little luxuries—but Rosalind stubbornly refused.
And so she cursed and sewed in the lantern light—cleverly magnified by a system of mirrors and lenses—as a storm blew outside and she wrestled with something that was plaguing her subconscious.
Maurice caught her eyes flickering to the window. Not to the storm, he knew, but to what lay east of them.
“Why do you care about the coronation?” he finally asked with a sigh. “Our life there is over—you told them you were never coming back.”
“It’s just…I just…” Rosalind bit her lip. “If there’s any chance at all of saving the kingdom, of making it the way it used to be, it all rests with the Prince.”
“He has a hard road ahead of him,” Maurice said sympathetically. “And few people left to help. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if he just gave it all up and went to university instead. German princes do that all the time.”
Rosalind threw down what she was working on.
“I need to go see him. Now. Before he is made king.”
“Dear…” Maurice began.
“I need to make sure he’s not like his parents,” she said firmly. “If that land is to have any future, it needs a ruler who is kind and generous and forward-thinking and energetic and kind.”
“You said kind already.”
“I have to go,” she said, grabbing her green cloak.
Maurice didn’t even protest about the weather. Enchantresses had a way of dealing with those sorts of things.
“You’ve managed to go and escape twice already,” he said. “Remember what Frédéric said.”
“I’ll go in disguise,” she promised, giving him a quick kiss.
Maurice grabbed her hands and pressed them to his heart.
“Darling,” she said with a patient smile. “I’ll go and come back before Belle wakes up. She won’t even know I was gone. And we’ll all celebrate her birthday together.”
Then she hesitated over a pitcher of roses on the table, debating silently. Finally, she selected a glorious red blossom that surpassed perfection—but was merely average for that household.
Her husband gave her a knowing look. “Magic…always comes back on itself,” he reminded her.
“What? I know that. Who said anything about magic?” she demanded.
And then she disappeared.
Because she didn’t take the normal road, she never saw the black carriage with the thick windows that was also making its way to the castle.
The rose under the bell jar wasn’t in water, nor was it dried; it seemed to be just floating there under the glass, glistening a little in the moonlight.
Entranced, Belle drew closer. She had never seen anything like it before—were there magnets? Lodestones? How was the trick accomplished?
And even stranger, there was something familiar about the rose. Something about the color of its petals. Like she had seen it somewhere before.
The mirror lay ignored on the table; she reached out her hand and carefully lifted the glass cloche up by its top.
The rose did not fall, as she expected, nor were there invisible strings or wires connecting it to the glass. Still it floated, glittering and twirling slowly above a small pile petals that had already fallen.
Belle reached out a finger to touch it.
“NO!”
Where there had been silence a moment earlier now it was all rumble and roar, sudden and terrifying. The Beast rushed at her upon all fours.
But Belle couldn’t quite focus on him; she had to know how the trick worked.
She grabbed the rose.
Once upon a time there was a dying magical kingdom hidden deep in the forest. Inside its once-shining castle lived a young prince who had everything anyone in the world could want—but despite this, he was selfish, spoiled, and unkind.
Then, on the night before he was to be made king, an old beggar woman came to the castle and offered him a single blood-red rose in return for shelter from the bitter cold. Repulsed by her haggard appearance, the Prince sneered at the gift and turned the old woman away—although she warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for true beauty is found within.
When the Prince again dismissed her, there was loud clap of thunder and the old crone disappeared.
Standing in her place was a beautiful woman with hair as gold as the Prince’s mother’s necklace, wearing a beautiful dress all shades of the sea. She still held the rose in one hand. In the other, where she had clutched her cane, was a wand of white alder wood.
She was as brilliant as the sun, as terrible as an avenging angel.
“My—my lady,” the Prince stammered, falling to one knee. “Forgive me….”
But it was too late, for she had seen into his soul and knew what sort of person he truly was. As punishment she transformed him into a hideous beast and placed a powerful spell on the castle and those who lived there.
“There is no love in your heart at all, Prince—just like your parents, who utterly destroyed this kingdom with their selfishness and cruelty.
“You have until the eve of your twenty-first birthday to become as beautiful on the inside as you were on the outside. If you do not learn to love another—and be loved in return—by the time the last petal of this rose falls, you, your castle, and all within, will be cursed and forgotten forever.”
Ashamed of his monstrous form, the Beast concealed himself inside his castle, with a magic mirror as his only window to the outside world.
As the years passed he fell into despair and lost all hope—for who could ever learn to love a beast?
Belle stumbled in confusion. As clear as if it were occurring right there—behind her eyes—she saw the truth: the Prince who was the Beast, the spell, the rose, the Enchantress.
Her mother.
The rose was from her garden. That was why it had looked familiar.
Belle held the blossom before her face in wonder. Her mother had held it exactly ten years before, the same way.
But under her look and the light of the moon, the rose began to fall apart. The petals fell and shifted into glittering red sand that disappeared before it hit the ground. The stem dissolved inch by inch until there was nothing left.
And the Beast howled in despair.
The castle shook. There was a mighty clap, like the largest crack of lightning in the history of the world struck the tower. Strange loud noises erupted from everywhere at once; somehow familiar, they touched the very core of Belle’s soul. Something between a cracking and a crackling, but much, much bigger.
Ice.
It sounded like ice breaking across a pond, and brought with it the accompanying dread: as when a foot steps down and lines shoot out from under it into the white distance and death is in the frigid air.
Somehow Belle wouldn’t have been surprised if the whole palace began crumbling around her—but that wasn’t what was happening.
“MY ONE CHANCE!” the Beast cried. “MY ONE CHANCE AT ENDING THE CURSE. IT’S GONE. YOU’VE RUINED IT!”
She was only half paying attention to him; he was standing still and screaming and not accosting her. More immediate things were happening outside. She ran to the window.
Strange bone-white things were coming out of the ground just beyond the perimeter of the castle walls. Too angular and thick to be vines, too solid to be ice. At first Belle thought they were something like antlers or bones being forced out of the dirt by whatever forces were now at work. But they kept coming up, unending and sickly. They twisted and turned as they shot forth, whipping around and sticking to whatever solid object they touched. Once they came in contact with the wall, they
slowed. But then they grew like frost on a window, crisscrossing each other and spreading unnaturally.
Spiderwebs.
Somehow Belle knew without even wondering.
Not the ones that hung in neat circles and octagons and whatever-other-gons in bushes and on flowers with a pretty little spider sitting in the middle. The other ones—the messy ones that covered the ground and grass like snow on dewy mornings, all random peaks and valleys and impossible to see where the spider hid. Three-dimensional. Complicated.
Her mother…had liked…roses…and natural things…Belle remembered this vaguely. Her mother the Enchantress.
It made sense that she had cursed the castle with webs.
Belle turned to look at the Beast.
His eyes were empty of everything except for animal-like anger. There was no spark of intelligence or humanity left in them. He stood on all fours and bellowed madly.
Belle was paralyzed for a moment. Then instinct kicked in and she ran, pushing past him and out the door.
Without wasting a moment to look behind her, she dashed down the steps, two and three at a time, and raced through the great halls.
She had to get out of there.
“Ma chérie! Where do you go? What is happening?” Lumière plonked awkwardly out of the shadows after her.
“What have you done?” shrieked Cogsworth.
“I’m sorry,” Belle sobbed. “I’m…”
She didn’t know why she was sorry. Maybe it was because she was leaving the cute little things back with that monster, to be sealed up with him, to face his wrath once she was gone. Here she was, on her first and only adventure, and somehow she had ruined everything immediately.
She flung open the front door and ran through the courtyard, past the fountain, to the gates. A single strand of webbing as thick as her wrist had grown over them, holding them mostly closed. She reluctantly reached out to touch it.
Sticky.
Just a little.