“I’m afraid so. She’s part of everyone’s story, unfortunately.”
“Is she dangerous?” Belle asked, warily looking around.
“Highly,” said the countess. “She’s completely deranged. She has silvery blond hair and dark skin, and usually wears white. Avoid her at all costs.”
“I will,” Belle said, with a shiver.
A servant walked by bearing a fresh plate of macarons. The countess took it from him. “Enough of unpleasant topics. Here, child, do have another sweet.”
“Thank you, my lady, but I can’t,” Belle said. “I’m expected for dinner. I must be getting back.”
Out here on the terrace, away from the music and dancing, Belle was becoming aware that time had passed. Mrs. Potts was readying a meal for her.
“I’m sorry to see you go, Belle. I enjoyed meeting you,” the countess said.
“I enjoyed meeting you, too,” said Belle. “Thank you for this magical ball. For allowing me to be part of Nevermore, if only for an evening.”
“You can be part of Nevermore again, child. It’s your story. Return to it whenever you wish,” the countess said.
Then she gathered Belle into her arms and hugged her tightly. As she released her, one of her rings snagged in a tendril of Belle’s hair, pulling out several long strands.
“Oh! Ow!” Belle said, wincing.
“My poor girl. I’m so sorry,” said the countess.
“It’s nothing,” Belle assured her. “Please don’t worry about it.”
“Monsieur Henri will show you out,” the countess said as the handsome young duke appeared.
As Belle and Henri walked away, the countess removed the strands of Belle’s hair from her ring and wrapped them around her finger. Her eyes glittered as she did, and her smile darkened.
Henri escorted Belle back through the mansion’s front doors and down its steps, and then he walked her back up the long drive. The book was right where Belle had left it, near the gate, its pages still shimmering. All she had to do was step through it and she’d be back in the Beast’s castle.
“I’m sorry you have to go,” Henri said. “Did you enjoy your evening?”
“So much,” Belle said.
“Then you’ll come back?”
Was it an invitation or a demand? Belle couldn’t decide, and Henri didn’t give her time to.
“You have friends here. Remember that,” he said. “I’m one of them.”
“Thank you,” said Belle. “Thank you for everything.” Then, with a last good-bye, she stepped out of Nevermore.
She was through the shimmering pages so quickly, she didn’t see Henri smile—or hear his voice as he whispered, “We’ll be waiting for you.”
“BELLE!” A VOICE SHOUTED from the library. “Belle, are you in here?”
It was Chip.
“Coming!” Belle shouted back. She looked down at herself, relieved to see that she was again wearing her blue work dress and her sturdy brown boots. Only seconds ago, she’d stepped out of Nevermore. As she had, the cover had slammed shut and the book had shrunk back to its normal size.
“Belle!”
Belle quickly picked the book up off the floor and placed it back on the table where she’d found it. She started for the door, but before she got to it, she heard a different voice.
It’s a special book. Very special. It contains many stories. But this story? Ah, Belle, this one I’m writing just for you.
Belle whirled around. It felt as if the countess had been standing right behind her, her words a cold breath on Belle’s neck. But no one was there.
Belle’s eyes fell on Nevermore again. Without fully knowing why, she dashed back across the room and grabbed the book. Then she opened a drawer in the desk, shoved the book inside, and closed the drawer again.
“Belle, where are you?”
“I’m here, Chip!” she called out, hurrying from the workroom. Chip was waiting for her by the library’s doors.
“Dinner’s ready! I looked all over for you!”
Belle pointed behind her. “I was back there. In a workroom. I found…”
“What, Belle? You found what?” Chip asked.
A magical book, she almost said. But then she didn’t.
“This!” she said, pulling a dust rag out of her pocket. “Come on, Chip. Let’s go downstairs.”
Chip zoomed ahead of her. He was out of the library and down the stairs in no time.
Belle lagged behind, feeling bad that she’d told him a fib. She hadn’t meant to. The words had just popped out of her mouth before she could stop them.
Now she realized why: because she didn’t want to share the book.
Turn Nevermore’s pages if you wish, or close its cover. The choice is yours, Henri had said.
The last choice Belle had made all on her own was to trade her freedom for her father’s. It had been a hard and irrevocable one, and had made her a captive in the Beast’s castle. Even before that fateful day, life in Villeneuve had offered her few choices. But now this enchanted book had appeared, filled with fascinating people. The decision to return to it—or not—was hers and hers alone, and she wanted to keep it that way.
“Belle, come on!”
Chip was bellowing for her from the bottom of the stairs now.
“Cuisinier made tomato soup and toasted cheese sandwiches! They’re going to get cold!” Chip yelled.
Belle’s stomach growled. Toasted cheese sandwiches were her favorite, and it had been hours since she’d eaten. She found that in addition to being hungry, she was sore and weary. It had been a long day.
“I’ll be right there!” she shouted.
She pulled the heavy library doors closed behind her and hurried down the stairs, looking forward to the warmth of the kitchen, to company and conversation, and to dinner.
Nevermore was, for the moment, forgotten. It lay in the desk drawer, in the small, dusty room. In the darkness.
But had anyone been standing in the room, near the desk, they might’ve smelled the scent of roses.
And heard a woman laughing.
ALONE IN HIS STUDY, long after his dinner had been brought to him and cleared away again, the Beast sat at his desk and recalled each moment that he had gotten to spend with Belle.
He pictured her at breakfast, her eyes bright and attentive, keen to get on with the day’s activities. And later, in the library, disheveled, a coil of hair fallen out of her bun, trying not to laugh at his clumsy antics. He remembered her reciting lines from The Faerie Queene with him in her beautiful voice, a voice that lifted him out of himself and his accursed castle to a world where he was a good and noble prince—not a hideous beast.
Each of these scenes was a lovely tableau he felt lucky to have experienced, and thinking of them now made his heart quicken and brought a smile to his lips. He tried his best to simply savor these memories, but each one succumbed to a creeping regret that darkened it like a stormy sky.
The brief moments of happiness were quickly silenced, as always, as he looked around the enchanted castle. He couldn’t help feeling that the broken pieces of his world were solely his fault.
His selfishness and arrogance had caused all of this. As he looked at the wilting rose on top of his broad desk, the joy he’d felt only moments ago disappeared. A familiar, piercing anguish took its place.
There was a knock at the door. It was Lumiere. The Beast bade him enter.
“Is there anything else you require tonight before retiring, master?”
“I—I thought we might go skating tomorrow.”
Lumiere’s eyebrows shot up. “Skating, master? You? You’ve never skated in your life!”
“Belle mentioned that she has skated before. Back in her village. I thought she might like to try it here. How hard can it be?”
“On the backside? Very,” said Lumiere. “Nonetheless, I shall arrange it. Anything else?”
“No,” said the Beast. Then, haltingly, “Thank you, Lumiere. For asking.”
“Of course,” said Lumiere, with a bow. “Good night, master.”
He left the room, pulling the door closed behind him. Just as it was about to click shut, the Beast called out to him. “Lumiere…wait!”
“Master?” he said, opening the door again.
“Actually, there is something else…” the Beast began awkwardly.
“A cup of warm milk, perhaps?”
“Is Belle happy? Is she comfortable? The library—is she enjoying the library?” the Beast asked, all in a rush.
“Enjoying it?” Lumiere said, laughing. “I believe she’d move her bed into it if she could.”
“Did you see her today?” asked the Beast. “Smiling when I tried to clean a window. Laughing when I decided to wear the mop bucket on my head.” He shook his head, still mortified at the memory, but a small grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “You’ve become her friends. She likes your company.”
“It was you who delighted her today, master,” Lumiere pointed out.
The Beast looked away. “How I’ve longed to hear those words. I’d started to think I never would.” His eyes sought Lumiere’s. “Do you think she would ever be my friend? Has she softened toward me at all?”
Lumiere thought before answering. “Well, you were a terribly funny sight today,” he said at length, underscoring the fact that anyone—fond of the Beast or not—would have laughed at the pandemonium in the library.
“Which is a tactful way of saying she hasn’t,” the Beast said, his heart sinking.
“These things happen slowly. Perhaps in time, master,” said Lumiere.
“Something we have very little of,” sighed the Beast, glancing at the rose. In the dim candlelight, it looked more fragile than ever.
“Very little,” Lumiere agreed. He tried his best to muster a brave smile, but his efforts couldn’t mask the toll the enchantment was taking on him.
In the early days, Lumiere’s human form had shone through his candlestick body, particularly in moments like this. But his humanity was diminishing further every day. His movements were becoming stiff, his flames dim.
The Beast rarely admitted it, but he cared a great deal for Lumiere and the rest of his servants. He was watching them fade away into inanimate objects—imprisoned, in their own way, just like Belle—and it was all his fault.
He was the one who’d brought the terrible enchantment on himself, his servants, and his castle. And he was the one who would have to undo it—if he could.
With deep remorse, the Beast remembered the beggar woman who’d come to his castle the night of the ball, how she’d asked for his help and offered him a rose in return. How he’d laughed at her.
He looked at that same rose now, under the glass cloche. The Enchantress had put it there, declaring that her curse could only be broken if he learned to love and was loved in return—by the time the last petal fell. If he did not, he would stay a beast forever, and those he’d doomed to suffer with him would die.
Many petals had fallen from the rose, but a few still remained.
“Do you think Belle will discover how the curse can be broken?” Lumiere asked, following the Beast’s gaze.
“She hasn’t guessed the truth yet, and we can’t tell her. The Enchantress forbade it.”
“I wish we could tell her,” Lumiere said with a sigh. “It would certainly make things easier.”
The Beast gently touched the glass protecting the rose. “Even if we could, what good would it do?” he asked, his voice heavy with sadness. “Look at me, Lumiere. Belle could never love me. She could only ever pity me.”
“That is not true,” Lumiere said. “Love—real love—sees with the heart, master. Not with the eyes.”
The Beast looked at him skeptically. “How do you know that?”
“Because I’m in love with a woman who’s a feather duster,” said Lumiere. “That’s how.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t. But I hope you will one day. You deserve that. Everyone deserves that.”
The Beast gave him a quizzical look. “Everyone deserves to fall in love with a feather duster?”
Lumiere chuckled. “Show Belle who you are, master. Who you really are. Show her your heart.”
And then he bade the Beast good night.
Alone again, the Beast turned back to his desk, struggling with the riot of emotions their conversation had unleashed.
He’d suffer the consequences of the Enchantress’s curse if he could trade himself for those in the castle. Freeing Belle would shatter their only chance of ever becoming human again.
Long ago, in the early days of his enchantment, the Beast had grieved for himself and for all that he’d lost. Now, he grieved for others. His servants weren’t the ones who’d been arrogant and cruel, yet they were paying the price. And Chip, little Chip. He was only a boy. Would his life end before it had even begun?
The Beast groaned. He gazed at the rose again and its frail, tenuous beauty that still shone amidst such darkness. He moved closer, searching for something in its radiance. A bit of solace, perhaps. Of forgiveness. Of hope.
Another petal fell.
“OH!” GASPED BELLE, grabbing the Beast’s arm as a mottled bird erupted from the snowy brush ahead of them, its wings beating the air.
“It’s only a quail,” the Beast said, smiling. He patted her hand, which she quickly withdrew, a bit embarrassed to have been startled so badly by a bird.
“There’s nothing on these grounds you need to fear,” the Beast continued. “At least in the daytime, when the wolves stay well in the woods.”
Belle remembered the Beast fighting off an entire pack of wolves, and she couldn’t help imagining that she’d be safe with him at any time of the day or night—anywhere.
The wintry outing had been the Beast’s idea. He’d come downstairs after breakfast, announced that he was in need of some exercise, and asked Belle if she’d like to accompany him on a walk to the pond. Belle had jumped at the chance.
“We don’t have much farther to go,” the Beast said now, as they clambered over a stone wall.
Belle paused on top of the wall for a few seconds and took in the scene around her. It was breathtaking: a bleak winter landscape, but starkly beautiful, too. And despite the barren fields, the leafless oaks and snow-choked grasses, it was so full of life. Just this morning, she’d seen a falcon and two hawks in addition to the quail. There’d also been a red fox chasing a hare across the far field, and a lustrous mink poking around an icy brook.
“You seem lost in thought,” the Beast said, snapping her out of her reverie. “You must have found a good book in the library.”
His words startled Belle. She knew he couldn’t be talking about Nevermore…could he?
“I-I did.” She smiled, quickly recovering. “In fact, I found several hundred.”
The Beast laughed, and Belle decided that there was no way he knew about the comtesse des Terres des Morts’s magical book. She’d been careful to put it well out of sight. It was curious to her how possessive she’d become of it.
“Are you going to stay up there all day?” the Beast asked.
“Quite possibly,” Belle said. “The view is lovely from here.”
“Hmm. That would be a shame. You’d miss seeing the pond, which is even lovelier.”
Belle was about to climb down when she scented something in the air.
“Do you smell smoke?”
“I think I do.”
It couldn’t be coming from any of the castle’s fireplaces, Belle reasoned. We’re too far away.
She sniffed the air again. “And chocolate?”
“Is that what that is?” the Beast said, his eyes twinkling with mischief.
Belle looked down at him suspiciously. “What’s going on?”
The Beast grinned. “Come down and I’ll show you!” he said, holding out his paw.
Belle took it and jumped off the wall.
As soon as she was on the
ground, the Beast released her hand and loped off.
“Slow down!” Belle shouted. “I can’t run as fast as you!”
“Good!” the Beast called over his shoulder. “That means more chocolate for me!”
“Oh, you cheater!” Belle cried, tearing after him, her blue cloak flaring out behind her.
“All right, I’ll slow down,” the Beast said. He turned around and ran backward, and still Belle couldn’t catch up with him. He made a face at her. Crossed his eyes, stuck his tongue out.
Belle stopped. She laughed in disbelief.
The Beast, too busy clowning to pay attention to his surroundings, didn’t see the downed tree limb behind him, half-buried in the snow.
He tripped over it, went flying, and landed with a whump in a deep drift.
Belle burst into laughter. She couldn’t stop. She laughed so hard she had to wipe tears out of her eyes.
Will he get angry again? she wondered. Or has he learned to laugh at himself?
She soon had her answer.
The Beast sat up. He shook the snow off his head. “I meant to do that,” he said, with a grin.
“Of course you did,” said Belle. She broke into a run again and sped past him. She could see the frozen pond in the distance through a line of trees.
“I’m letting you win, you know!” he called after her.
“Ha!” she called back.
She kept on running, across the field, through the trees, their bare-branched limbs a web of black against the gray sky. The ground crested as she neared the water, then dipped down.
As Belle reached the crest, she saw what had scented the air so deliciously.
A smile lit up her face.
With a cry of delight, she sped down the hill.
AT THE EDGE OF THE FROZEN POND, a fire crackled in a big iron brazier.
Next to it stood two chairs fitted with cushions and draped with thick woolen throws. The pond had been shoveled free of snow. Three familiar figures were busy setting a small, collapsible table with a steaming pot of hot chocolate, cups and saucers, and a platter of beignets. A basket rested on the ground near the table.
Beauty and the Beast: Lost in a Book Page 6
