“I got my revenge, girl, and I got it good. You see, one night I was furious, and so consumed by your father’s success, and his ruination of so many of my plans, that I did something I rarely do. I lost control.
I found myself in Shade Woods. I calmed down, once I realized my predicament, and shortly found a castle, which provided shelter for the night.” He waved his hand. “There was food and a burning fire, and I must say I was impressed by the wealth displayed. It was dark, so I did not explore, and at any rate, there was no one there. In the morning, I found my horse saddled just outside the front door, and had just mounted to leave when the beast appeared.”
Manwaring stopped now, his eyes expressing a hint of panic; an honest expression that shocked her more than anything he had said so far. He looked sideways at Helen and continued, “As big as a house, he roared and lashed about accusing me of stealing. He held me by my throat and asked if I had a daughter.”
He faced Helen, his mouth curled in distaste. “I admitted I did have a daughter, which he requested I bring as payment. I immediately thought of you as a substitute, girl. Of course, you would take some, hmm, breaking in, but I knew you’d be just the thing for his ferocious appetite.”
“What?” She gasped, unable to believe the half-truths spilling out of his mouth, for how could such a beast exist?
“In short, girl, you have two choices. You may go to the beast to pay my debt, which of course will cost your life, but then there’s not much left to it anyway is there?” He smirked, a slight twitch to his eye the only clue he was scared. “Or I can sell you to Mr. Wytcham, who’s had his eye on you for the past while. He might not pay as well now that you look like an insect, but I really can’t be bothered with you anymore.”
She weighed his words knowing he hadn’t really given her a choice.
“Well, girl? You must decide now, you know. I don’t have all day.”
She looked up, her spark of defiance so long gone, that she wondered if she’d ever had it. But a choice – any choice – was something, and she would make it. “I will go to the beast.”
“Hah!” Manwaring gleefully slapped his knee. “Of course you will. Even I have to admit Mr. Wytcham might be worse than death, the old devil.” He grinned to himself, then looked back at her. “Well off you go then. You’ll have to walk.”
“I don’t –”
“What was that?” He leaned closer, his face cold, his momentary amusement gone.
“Wh…which direction do I go?” She whispered her last request, and with a sneer, he pointed to the east and the two day walk to her death.
“And don’t think about doubling back, girlie. If I see you again, I’ll cart you off to Wytcham before you can sneeze, you hear?”
Truth. She nodded, standing in the doorway, willing herself to have the strength to start. She stopped, the smell of curiosity too much to resist, and she had to know. “What if I had died?”
He laughed. “I would have delivered your warm corpse to his castle gate. Well come on now, go on.” He gave her back a push as she stepped forward.
With a sigh of acceptance, Helen walked toward her death, grateful that at least this time she could choose her fate.
The Counter Curse
Stella opened Helen’s bedroom door and slipped inside, quietly closing it behind her. Her steps quiet, she made her way across the plush carpet and –
“Stella, how do I break the curse?”
“Great dragon’s dung! Helen!”
Helen was sitting cross legged on her bed looking as if she had not slept all night. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I may never get my skin back, I jumped so far out of it.” She didn’t smile though. “Helen, the curse is not something anyone expects you to break, least of all, the master.”
“He is my best friend, Stella. I must try.”
Stella folded a scarf, then undid it and refolded it again. “Have you considered your future?”
“What?”
“Helen, as much as it pains me to admit this, we cannot keep you here forever.”
“But…I don’t understand. Why would you want me to leave?”
Stella sighed, her words deliberate. “We don’t want you to leave. We know it is best for you if you leave.”
“I have given my word to Luke that I will not leave. At least for now.”
Stella’s head shook. “Promises mean nothing here.”
“They do to me. I will not leave in the foreseeable future. And if I am to stay, the least I can do is break the curse.”
“I do not think you will never leave here, Helen.” Stella put her hands on her hips. “He would never allow you to stay here forever.”
Helen waved her off. “I know that, but for now… Stella, I’m going to try anyway, so you might as well help me as much as you can. It’s worth trying, isn’t it?”
Stella smiled. “Helen, you have changed so much since coming here, you know. You used to be such a timid sweet little thing, and now here you are bossing me about like Seraphina.”
“What? Take that back!” Helen teased and Stella grinned.
“Alright, never as bad as her. But you have to admit, you’ve got a lot more confidence now than you used to.”
“Does that mean you’ll help me?”
“It is a great sacrifice and will require more of you than you can even know.”
“Tell me.”
She sighed. “We have had the counter curse memorized from the very first, you know.” She stopped refolding the scarf and chanted:
“To help in true kindness
To make in true compassion,
To care in true friendship,
To love in true faith.”
There was a silence as Helen thought through the words. “Do you have any idea what it means?”
“The staff talks about it sometimes, or used to. Most of us think it involves tasks of some kind. But the truth is, we gave up long ago. I am probably the most optimistic of us all, but I cannot really pretend it will ever happen.”
Helen watched the warring emotions on her friend’s face. “Stella, I do not mean to give you false hope, but I must try. You see that, don’t you?”
“You must marry him.” They turned to look at Susan, who had entered the room, a towel draped over one arm. “You should tell her the worst first if she’s going to be resolved about it.”
Helen looked at Stella, her eyebrows high, and Stella nodded.
“Some of us think that’s part of it. You must marry him as a beast and you must do so with true and real love in your heart for it to work. And he must love you back, of course, although that wouldn’t be the problem.”
“It wouldn’t? You think he…that is…”
Susan frowned and began to count with her fingers. “You have not run away, you talk to him as if he’s human, you have not once made assumptions of his wealth or power, at least to his face, and more than once I have seen you touch him. For the master and in his form I imagine it is easy enough to fall in love with someone like yourself.”
Helen looked to Stella who shrugged. “And if that’s not enough, you have only the weather to prove it. I have never seen so many days of sunshine in a row, and that’s a fact.”
Helen shook her head to clear it, coming back to the problem. “I couldn’t possibly marry a beast, though, that is…unnatural and…”
“We think it’s symbolic. There is more to it than that, but that is our best guess.”
“Because you can’t talk about it?”
“No, because some things you have to figure out yourself to really understand.”
Susan set her towel down and faced her. “Perhaps it’s our turn to tell you a story. One much more dark and twisted than any of yours.” She sat on the settee next to Helen, while Stella watched, her face grim.
“Once there was a woman who was beautiful.”
Helen protested. “Luke would say that was cliché.”
Stella and Susa
n exchanged a glance. “But it was true. She had dark hair and dark eyes and it wasn’t until you looked very closely that you realized they sparkled with something sinister.”
Stella snorted. “Of course if you were that close, you had better be dead or in her good graces. She loved our master. Possibly as much as she was capable of. He spurned her for another and she cursed him.”
Helen looked between them. “But I know this already. Luke has already explained.”
Susan gave her a look full of pity. “What you don’t know is that she came. Much like the other women that have come.”
Stella shook her head. “She threw open the doors and walked in as if she owned the place.”
Susan continued. “Yes, and when she saw the master, she laughed and as you can imagine the weather was something to see. She was surprisingly smart with her plan, though. She waited and was polite and quiet. She never bothered him, never tried to talk, just carefully sat and ate at dinner and then did who knows what during the day.”
Stella grimaced. “We’re not sure what, because we took pains to avoid her.”
“We took turns waiting on her.” Susan shivered. “It was horrible, for we were sure she would turn us into something at the first mistake.”
“And then what happened?”
“One day, when his anger had turned into a thick fog, she knocked on the door of the den. She told him that she made the curse on purpose so that only she could break it, but it was up to him to accept that. He said it was impossible, that he still loved Genevieve, but Catherine said she loved him anyway and if only he could open his heart and marry her, the curse would be ended.”
Helen blew out a breath. “Were you there? Did you see her say this?”
Stella shrugged. “This was the first time she had approached him. You bet your buttons we eavesdropped on the whole thing.”
Susan nodded. “He walked right up to her, his nose a breath away from her forehead and just kept walking until he had forced her into the front hall. Then he said, “You offer only another damned eternity in exchange for this one. Get out.”
“What did she do?” Helen’s wide eyes looked between them both.
“I’ve never seen her scared before, but I’d swear she was. But then she said, ‘I hear you’ve been looking, asking about the counter curse, but there’s no one that can help you break this curse. No one but me.’ And then she left. That fog stayed until the next guest. Paulette was it? Or Stacy?”
“Angelica, remember she lasted twelve minutes, and then it was Stacy.”
“Oh right.”
Helen sat back. “So you think from the conversation that he must marry someone in his beast form?”
“Well, that is what she said ‘marry her’, but you know, I’ve always wondered if she might be lying. I wish you had been there, your knack would have come in handy.”
“Oh Stella, you’re only proving how we don’t actually know anything.” Susan turned to Helen, her hands clenched in the towel. “The point is, Helen, we know a little more from her visit. There must at least be true love from both him and the girl, and since his heart is Genevieve’s and she is gone, presumably forever, we feel it is impossible, regardless of his feelings for you.”
Helen thought a moment. “And what of the counter curse? What does it mean?”
Stella frowned, “Some of us, like Susan, think it has to be Genevieve, that the tasks are specific to her, which is why the other…guests are a waste of time. Others believe the woman would need to perform tasks, which may or may not include marriage. Obviously she would help him in some way, and then make something, I suppose. Caring about him and then loving him, but we don’t even know how. They could be very specific tasks we haven’t even guessed at.”
Susan sighed and picked up her towel this time to fold it properly once more.
“I disagree.”
All three looked up at the new voice to see Ben in the door. At their gaze, he blushed, his face turning pink.
“And why is that, Ben?” Helen smiled at him, but he only turned red as he walked forward to hand her a letter.
“I think our master is required to do some of the counter curse too. In fact, I have done some studying on the subject, and I believe that he must do the first and third lines, while the young woman does the second and fourth lines.”
“You mean, he must help and care, and she must make something and then love him?”
“Something like that, yes. I’m of the belief that Genevieve isn’t actually necessary, that the counter curse is thankfully vague enough to allow another to take the role.”
“But why would that matter? And Ben, why haven’t you said anything?” Stella had moved closer, Ben’s eyes following her.
“No one’s really gotten close before, so it never came up. Besides, I didn’t find the sorcerer until a few years back and no one was coming anymore.”
Stella smiled at him. “So you saved it for a rainy day.” His smile grew as their heads moved closer together.
“I’m going to dump this pitcher of water over the pair of you and then it’ll really be a rainy day.” Susan raised her eyebrows at them, as they sheepishly moved apart. Helen giggled as Ben turned pink once more, then left with a bow for Helen and a look for Stella.
Susan exchanged a glance with Helen as she shook her head.
“So, what’s the plan then, Miss Helen?” Stella came forward, and Susan stopped her tasks to watch for the answer.
Helen shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps I will start by talking to Luke.”
Stella blew out a breath as Susan raised her eyebrows. “That’s brave of you, miss. He doesn’t like to talk of the curse much.”
Susan corrected. “At all.”
Helen nodded as she stood. “I know, but he’s the only one who might know the answers to our questions.” She walked out of the room, her steps followed by her maid’s frustrated but hopeful faces.
Lady Catherine
Helen knocked on the door of his den and waited for his “Enter.” Instead, the door opened, and he stared down at her with a hint of a growl on his bushy face.
“I…what…” She hesitated.
“You smell wrong.”
“I do? But…what?”
“You smell of apprehension and curiosity and stubbornness, and I don’t like it.”
“Well, I can’t help that I sometimes get stubborn, Luke.”
“You weren’t stubborn when you first came here.”
Exasperated, she threw up her hands. “Of course I wasn’t. I wasn’t anything when I first came here.”
He growled and turned to walk back into his den.
Helen followed. “Luke, you changed all that with your friendship, and –”
“Food.”
“Ok, food, and a home and –”
“What do you want?”
Startled at his tone, she stepped back. “Luke, I – ”
“What do you want, Helen?” His voice was quieter, but still intense.
“I want to help.”
He sighed and turned to face her. “You have helped more than you know, and it is enough.”
She held out her hand to touch his enormous face and he tilted his head into it. “I asked your servants about the curse.”
He huffed a breath into her face and she sneezed.
“Don’t be angry, Luke. How could I do otherwise?”
He stood up and backed away. “There is nothing you can do and if you try you will only bring more pain and sorrow to an already painful existence.”
“But how could you expect me not to at least try?” Her hands lifted, pleading. “How can I not help you as you helped me?”
“How could you be so naïve as to think it would work this time. It has never worked before and just because you are…” He stopped. “It will never work, Helen.” He growled and she backed up.
“Luke, please. I –”
“ENOUGH!” His voice roared, his breath blowing her hair back – now he
r eyes were wide with fear. “Get. Out.”
Her face stricken, Helen turned and ran and ran until she found the blue garden. There she curled her arms around her knees and wept into them, her frustration and worry releasing with each drop.
After a little time, an arm came to rest about her shoulders, and she cringed, but didn’t move away. “Love is always tested, Helen, even in your beautiful stories where adventure ends in romance.”
“But it isn’t love, Susan, he’s only upset that I would try when he’s used to failure. I understand that, but I haven’t experienced those failures, so I still hope. Surely he can see that?”
“Are you sure it isn’t love? Are you sure that isn’t exactly what’s tearing you apart at this moment?”
Helen shook her head. “I’m sure of nothing, Susan. Nothing, except I would do anything to keep his friendship, even give up my hope of ending his curse.”
Susan held her a little longer in silence, the weight of the cursed years feeling heavier as she realized she had no choice but to give them up.
***
The next morning, Helen walked down the path which was wet from a misting of rain. Slowly she made her way to the blue garden, absently looking behind her for Luke. Biting her lip, she turned back to the path, inwardly chiding herself. He had come with her almost from the first, surely she could not begrudge him one day to himself. She kicked the gravel feeling lonely and confused, but as she entered the garden, she couldn’t help but take a deep breath and start a smile. Heedless of the damp bench, she sat, closing her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she smelled the perfume of the lilies and when she opened them, jumped.
Barely a hands span away stood a woman. She had no expression, instead seeming content to watch Helen. Her hair was silver with trails of white, and her dress matched, sparkling in the sunlight. She moved to sit next to Helen, her eyes unnaturally dark.
“Good day. I hope you do not mind my intrusion.”
Her voice was soft and her manner so easy that Helen immediately hurried to say, “You are very welcome.”
The Unbreakable Curse: A Beauty & the Beast Retelling Page 13
