by Liz Braswell
What they ran into outside was hard to fathom.
It was dusk and difficult to make out anything clearly in the gloaming. Dozens of people were running around the asylum’s formal great lawn in various stages of dress and distress. Guards were chasing after them, alternately wheedling them coyly to come back or screaming viciously and aiming at their heads with truncheons. It was a scene of hellish chaos, as painted by Brugel or Bosch.
In the near distance, angry lights flickered, coming closer.
Is that…Gaston? Leading the villagers?
“What’s going on?”
One of their pursuers had caught up to them—but just as he was about to lay a hand on Belle he became as transfixed by the odd scene as she.
Maurice took that opportunity to turn and land a blow squarely on the man’s sternum; he doubled over and the inventor hit him again in the jaw. With that, he fell unconscious.
“You big bully,” Maurice growled. “You’re only used to picking on the weak.”
“Aunt! Aunt Foufou!”
Belle recognized LeFou among the torch-carrying villagers. Some of the others were also looking for family members amongst the escaped patients. Everyone else seemed to be out for blood; there were muskets and actual pitchforks in their hands. The look in their eyes was frightening, magnified by the torchlight.
“Let’s…go around this,” Belle suggested. Whatever was happening it would most certainly not end well for her. Nothing involving Gaston and the villagers ever seemed to.
The little family stuck close to the asylum, running alongside it and trying to keep out of everyone’s way. Unless her father had a better plan, Belle’s idea was simply to get to the road or the stables and either steal a carriage—or just keep going.
But when they rounded the corner, they ran almost bodily into D’Arque, who was waiting for them.
D’Arque carried a small musket and smiled grimly.
Belle, Maurice, and Rosalind turned to go back the other way but there were three big guards armed with truncheons bearing down on them with all the ominous finality of a checkmate.
“D’Arque! What is wrong with you?” Maurice demanded, turning back around.
“You mean Frédéric,” Rosalind said wearily. “Do you remember now? Frédéric D’Arque?”
Maurice looked confused. His eyes batted in strange blinks. Something not quite natural was going on in his mind. “Frédéric…” he said slowly. “My old friend…Frédéric. D’Arque? How did I…how did I forget who you were?”
“He is—or was—a charmante,” Rosalind said. “My own spell made you forget.”
“No longer one of your kind, thank you very much,” D’Arque said with a nasty smile and a nastier little bow. “I managed to cut the impurities out of myself years ago.”
“But…how did you manage all this?” Maurice asked slowly. “All of these people…From here, and our home…How did you get—kidnap, I mean—all these people?”
“I had the full support of the king and queen,” D’Arque said, drawing himself up haughtily. “They wanted to rid themselves of the charmante problem, but for more…strategic reasons than myself; they considered your kind a threat to their power. Once they heard of my own theories and opinion on the matter, they gave me a generous stipend, the funds to buy the old asylum, and the manpower to collect my subjects and patients.”
“You were behind the disappearances from the beginning,” Rosalind said flatly. “You kidnapped and killed Vashti.”
“I didn’t kill her,” D’Arque corrected. “She took her own life, here, eventually. Sometimes they do that.”
Belle watched her mother’s jaw drop, her hands slowly gripping and ungripping some object she obviously no longer had.
A wand, maybe?
“Frédéric…” Maurice said slowly. “I don’t understand. We were friends.…How could you do this?”
“My apologies for borrowing your innocent self and pure daughter,” he said, lowering his eyes almost convincingly. “I was after larger prey, as it were. You were just the bait.”
Belle’s eyes widened. “Beast. Oh, no…”
“Yes. I made the connection after Gaston told me about Maurice’s ‘beast in the woods.’ It was the little princeling from the forgotten fairy tale kingdom, all grown up. If not into a man, precisely.”
Rosalind narrowed her eyes. “Whatever has happened to him, it is not his fault. Leave him be.”
“I cannot let a marauding monster go free in our countryside,” D’Arque said, clucking his tongue. “And who are you telling me to leave something be—you who go marching around, cursing princes and changing les naturels into something they are not? What gave you that right?”
Rosalind looked pained. “I made mistakes. I would correct them….Killing the Prince solves nothing.”
Belle’s curiosity made her speak up, despite all that was going on. “Monsieur Lévi said something about you promising not to touch me,” she said accusingly.
“Ah, yes, well,” D’Arque said, shrugging. “Lévi was one of the least harmful charmantes, and careful not to ever practice magic in the village. In return for his not…exposing my operations, I agreed that neither I nor any of my associates would bother you.”
“But you kidnapped me and my father!” Belle snapped. “And Monsieur Lévi!”
“Well, regrettable as breaking my word is, it was for a good purpose. And only to a charmante. It means nothing—like promises to a bird. I needed to make sure he didn’t help either Belle or the Beast…So I figured it would be best to keep him safely out of the way.”
“Promises to a bird?” Maurice asked in disgust. “Frédéric, we were friends. You came to Belle’s christening!”
“What?” Belle asked involuntarily. Her mind raced. If he was close enough to be at her christening…“You were all friends…
“You killed Alaric Potts.”
At that, for the first time, D’Arque looked bothered, shaken out of his smugness.
“You knew he was helping to rescue les charmantes out of the kingdom…bringing them to Maman and Papa. Or maybe you didn’t know what he was doing with them until you killed him. And when you found out, you went after Maman.”
D’Arque shifted nervously, irritably, from foot to foot on his expensive, old-fashioned heels. “I never intended to hurt any man—any human. Least of all my old friend. His betrayal was beyond enraging—and dangerous.”
“HIS betrayal?” Belle demanded. “You turned on your best friends! All of them!”
“He turned on his race!” D’Arque hissed. “Why would someone born innocent, born pure, help les charmantes? He knew how dangerous they were!”
“We are going to go now,” Maurice said carefully. “And you are going to just let us go. I think you know just how precisely vile you are, Frédéric. You’re a smart man. You always have been. You know this is the way it needs to end. Good-bye.”
And Maurice put his arms around his wife’s waist and his hand in his daughter’s and turned around very deliberately to go.
“You are incorrect, old friend,” D’Arque said, his voice cracking. Belle heard him cock his musket with a terrifyingly quiet click.
They turned back to the doctor. He had the gun carefully balanced on his forearm and was sighting down it with one eye closed. No mere gesture was this—he was aiming to kill if he had to.
Belle started to open her mouth, thinking of all sorts of reasonable and pitiable things to say, logic and begging…
And that’s when the Beast came tearing out of the crowd, leaping at D’Arque’s throat.
“Beast!” Belle cried.
At no point during any of her time in the castle had she seen him look like this. He was slavering—literally slavering, foam and spittle coming off his curved ivory teeth. His lips were pulled back, revealing black animal-like gums. His eyes were still the unusual bright blue, but there was no trace of anything human or remotely intelligent in them. He was mad as a dog with hydrocephalus.<
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D’Arque got off one shot before the Beast landed on his chest, knocking him to the ground. And Belle couldn’t tell where the bullet had gone—if it was actually into the Beast, he didn’t so much as twitch.
He crouched on the old man and lifted his claws high, prepared to rend him from limb to limb with the relish of a long-starved lion.
“Wait!”
Belle ran forward, pulling out of her parents’ grip and running to him.
“Belle, no!” her father cried.
The Prince, while keeping the lower half of his body perfectly still, twisted in a weasel-like and inhuman way to regard Belle. He sniffed the air around her, his wet nose and tongue coming dangerously close to her cheeks.
She held very still.
“Beast, it’s me,” she said, slowly putting a hand out.
He regarded it suspiciously.
Belle bit her lip and gently touched his hot, furry arm.
“Remember? It’s Belle. I’m Belle. I read you stories.”
“Belle,” the Beast said gruffly, in a voice that was barely intelligible.
D’Arque took that inopportune moment to move, trying to scrabble out from underneath his captor.
The Beast let out a roar and cuffed his prey on the side of the head to silence him.
“No!” Belle said, loudly and firmly. “Stop.”
The Beast growled.
“If you kill him, it will make you a murderer. And you aren’t a murderer or a beast.”
He looked at her with large eyes, impossible to read. Were they uncomprehending, or thinking?
His claws twitched.
“Come back to me,” Belle pleaded. “Come back to me. I know you’re there. Please, come back.”
The Beast blinked.
Belle made herself look into his eyes, to hold him there.
And he looked back. Wide-eyed but blank.
“Please,” she whispered. “For me.”
She reached out slowly and touched his mane, just above his horn. His nose twitched. Gently she stroked the little wavy lock there, smoothing it behind his ear the way she would a stray bit of her own hair.
The Beast’s paw snapped up and grabbed her wrist.
Belle couldn’t help wincing: his grip was as solid and strong and unyielding as stone. But he wasn’t bearing down, or trying to crush her. He just…held her arm there.
“Belle,” he whispered, almost a croak.
“You promised to give me my bookstore back,” she said, trying not to cry. “You promised me. So I could read more stories about Jack. So I could read them…to you.…”
The Beast’s mouth opened strangely, his pointy teeth suddenly seeming too large and out of place inside of lips trying to form words it couldn’t remember.
Then he suddenly shook himself—like a spooked cat or dog.
He looked down at Belle, his eyes now bright with intelligence.
“I did promise,” he said, his voice growing stronger and more human. “And…a king keeps his promises.”
Belle almost sobbed with relief.
Then the Beast leapt up and lifted the old man as well, setting him violently on his feet.
“The girl you kidnapped just saved your life,” he growled. “Thank her.”
“Oh, I do,” D’Arque said, brushing himself off.
Belle was instantly suspicious of his calm and…almost theatrical demeanor. She glanced behind her. The villagers had gathered behind them and were watching everything. LeFou gave her a curious look. But Gaston was nowhere to be seen.
“I thank her very much for her human inclinations toward mercy and pity,” the head of the asylum continued. “None of which you…naturally have.” Then he raised his voice, directly addressing the crowd. “You see? This is what I have been protecting you all from for all of these years. The wild, crazed, and powerful beasts that sometimes have human form.”
He gave Rosalind a purposeful look.
“Despite their…familiar appearances, those born of magic and the supernatural are not human and have none of the temperance, compassion, logic, or morality that we men and women do. All these years I have been trying to corral these creatures, cure them of their supernatural insanity, protect you from them. Can you imagine a world in which they are free to rampage and do as they will?”
“You, too, were one of les charmantes,” Maurice shouted. “You could tell the future, Frédéric. You’re killing your own.”
“Not anymore. Not one of my own,” D’Arque said with a vile grin. He pushed his hair back—his wig back—to reveal a skull brutally scarred and pitted as if bone itself had been broken and removed like a jigsaw puzzle.
Belle, her father, and her mother looked with horror. People in the crowd gasped in disgust.
“You see?” D’Arque replaced his wig. “I have removed the unnatural part of me that led to improper visions.”
“You have removed something of yourself, too, Frédéric,” Maurice said sadly. “You were never this mad before. Never this full of hate.”
“But what about Belle?” someone from the crowd demanded. “There’s nothing supernatural about her. You kidnapped her! And tortured her!”
“He tortured all of us!”
This was spat by the wheezing Monsieur Boulanger senior. He leaned heavily on the shoulders of his son and daughter, both of whom looked angry and ashamed.
There was a palpable shift among the crowd. The patients, clearly differentiated in their thin, pale garments, began to move forward, a similar murder in all of their eyes.
The orderlies, nurses, and thugs employed by D’Arque responded immediately, hunkering down and brandishing their truncheons.
Suddenly, one of the patients shot forward with a scream, making right for D’Arque.
Two orderlies immediately leapt in his way, bringing their clubs down on his neck and back with a sickening, fleshy thud.
A dozen muskets were raised, readied, and cocked. The villagers, who had been angry without real direction before, now had a focus for their rage. They began to move menacingly forward.
“I warn you, my guards are well-trained,” D’Arque said.
“Guards? This is no house for the weak-minded,” Monsieur LeClerc said in disgust. “My donations have been going to a…grizzly carnal house. You are an obscenity, Monsieur D’Arque.”
“You aren’t seeing the big picture,” D’Arque spoke calmly, as if they would all understand in time. “These people are dangerous…”
“HOW IS MY FATHER DANGEROUS?” Boulanger’s daughter demanded. She pulled her sleeves up her own meaty bakers’ arms and advanced on him. “You said he was a danger to himself and others! We believed you!”
An orderly put himself firmly in her way.
“And my aunt!” LeFou spat. “She went in a little kooky and now she doesn’t even know me!”
He had a pair of small flintlock pistols—and was no unskilled shooter.
“People…” Belle began uncertainly.
“You swore,” Monseiur Lévi called, coming out of the crowd to stand with Belle and her family. “You swore you would never go after Belle. You’re a monster who breaks his word on top of everything else.”
“I had to be sure Belle was pure of her mother’s foul disease,” D’Arque answered primly. “And honestly, she was bait to lure in the…the…”
Belle—and everyone else—waited for him to finish his statement, which was accompanied by a strange, wide-eyed look of surprise on his face.
His body jerked oddly.
“I—uhhh…”
Blood began to pool out of his stomach and onto his shirt.
He fell forward, revealing Gaston and his dripping hunting machete.
“I found LeFou’s aunt. Sitting in her own fouled sheets,” Gaston growled into the dying man’s ear as he slumped.
Then he stood up, chest out, a grim look of satisfaction on his face.
“I have vanquished the villain who has been preying on our town and its innocent loo
nies,” he announced loudly to the crowd. “Come, let us lock up the Beast as we agreed and put an end to this.”
No one moved or said anything. Even the escaped patients among the townspeople were shocked into silence, seeing their captor so violently dispatched in front of their eyes. A few people looked at each other uncomfortably.
“There’s only one way to end this terrible story on a less somber note,” Gaston said with a sad smile. He spun to face Belle and dropped to one knee with a grin. “Let’s make this the most romantic happily ever after ever.
“Belle, will you marry me?”
Belle blinked at Gaston. So did the Prince, who, having been in full beast form a moment ago, was so surprised he didn’t seem to even want to tear the hunter from limb to limb. LeFou might have shaken his head and looked away out of embarrassment for his friend, but that was the only immediate reaction from anyone.
No one made any move to grab the Beast, or shoot him, or lock him up.
Belle tried to focus on those things. She made herself think about all the bad things that weren’t happening at that moment, that could have been happening, instead of just the sick theatrical demonstration from a very confused man and how she was now the center of everyone’s attention.
Including…Monsieur Lévi. Who was looking at her interestedly. Like he was fascinated to see what she would do next. Like he trusted her and knew whatever it was, it would be the right thing.
She could hear a rushing in her ears. It had been a while since she had eaten.
“Gaston, did you burn down Monsieur Lévi’s bookshop?”
It was strange how her voice carried. She didn’t speak loudly, only clearly. And yet her precise words rang out like she had shouted the accusation.
Gaston’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“What? Yes! But I was looking for Maurice. D’Arque told me he might be there. And also he had said that Lévi was…not a nice person.”
But even as he said these words he looked confused, realizing how ridiculous they sounded.
“He was dangerous, really….”
Belle just kept gazing at him.
“Well, his books are dangerous!” Gaston persisted. “They turned you into what you are—a foolish girl who doesn’t want to marry me! Me, Gaston! Every girl in the village wants to marry me! And, also, they’re a fire hazard….”