Belle Takes Flight

by RH Disney

  “You shouldn’t have tried to do it alone, Papa.”

  “It’s cedar! We chose that kind of wood because it’s sturdy and lightweight.”

  “You still should have waited for me to help you.” Belle could see the bruises already forming underneath her father’s skin. His elbow was bent at an awkward angle. “You might have broken your elbow.”

  “Nonsense. It’s just a little— Ow!”

  He grabbed his elbow in pain.

  Belle turned to Chip. “Ask Cogsworth to send for the doctor, please. Then go tell the Prince what happened.”

  Chip dashed out as Belle led her father to a chair. “Has the Prince come out?” Maurice asked. “Did you find out what happened to upset him?”

  “I don’t know all the details yet, but he’s eating Mrs. Potts’s stew, so that’s a good sign.”

  Maurice waved a hand at Belle in a shooing motion. “Go on—finish breaking whatever new spell he’s under. You don’t have to stay here with me.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Papa. Not until the doctor comes.” Belle pulled up a chair next to her father. “The Prince is probably on his way here already.”

  The doctor arrived first. He examined Maurice’s elbow and diagnosed a bad sprain. He then wrapped the arm and instructed Maurice to avoid any further heavy lifting.

  In the meantime, Chip returned and reported that when he’d arrived at the Prince’s sitting room, the Prince wasn’t there. Belle assumed this meant the Prince was on his way. But by the time the doctor left, the Prince had yet to appear.

  Where was he?

  * * *

  Belle persuaded her father to take a nap and rest his arm. She then returned to the Prince’s sitting room. Except for the absence of the Prince, everything appeared to be exactly as it was when she’d been there earlier.

  The music box was still on the mantel, and the Magic Mirror was still on the Prince’s chair….

  The Magic Mirror!

  Belle hurried over and picked it up. As she did, Chip raced in with Mrs. Potts, Cogsworth, and Lumiere. He had told them about the Prince’s disappearance.

  “Show me the Prince,” Belle told the mirror.

  The familiar green glow shimmered up the silver handle and around the frame. Her reflection disappeared and the mirror went black.

  A moment later, a tall figure stumbled into view, pushed by someone else. The figure turned, revealing—

  “The Prince!” Cogsworth cried.

  Belle’s heart dropped at the sight. Only hours earlier he’d been here, looking into the mirror with her, and now…

  Two grim guards in iron helmets appeared. One of them swung shut a door made of thick iron bars, locking the Prince inside a dungeon cell.

  “Where are you?” Belle whispered into the mirror. She knew the Prince couldn’t hear her, yet he seemed to be looking right at her, his eyes haunted.

  Behind the guards, in the shadows, appeared the silhouette of a woman in a long gown.

  “A witch?” Lumiere asked, squinting closely.

  “No…,” Belle said. The woman raised a candle she held in her hand. Light from the flame glinted off the jewels in her crown. “A queen.”

  The queen called out from the darkness, speaking in French. “I…will…NEVER…forgive you!”

  She spun away, her gown swirling with an angry whoosh. Her shoes clacked against the stone floor as she disappeared from view.

  The guards marched after her, the thunk thunk thunk of their boots echoing off the dungeon walls. The last sound was a distant clang as the cell door crashed closed.

  Then…silence.

  Belle watched the Prince slink to a corner. He slid to the floor, his slumped shoulders barely visible in the dim light coming through a barred window, high up in the cell wall.

  Worry tightened around Belle’s heart, making it difficult for her to breathe.

  “I’ll find you,” she whispered into the mirror. “I’ll find you and I’ll rescue you. I promise.”

  But how could Belle find the Prince? She was certain he’d gone to the kingdom he’d shown her in the mirror, but because she didn’t know the kingdom’s name, the mirror remained blank every time she asked it to show her where he was.

  He had to be nearby, though. How else could he have gotten there so fast on foot?

  Before Belle finished this thought, she knew the answer. She raced downstairs to the royal library. She dashed to the mantel above the room’s fireplace—but the Magic Atlas was gone. The Prince had used it to travel to the village in the mirror, which meant he could be miles and miles away.

  Belle wasn’t deterred. She found Cogsworth and Lumiere. “It seems likely he’s in France, at least,” she told them. “The queen we saw in the mirror spoke French, and she clearly knows the Prince and thinks he has wronged her somehow.” They sat down in front of a large map of the country and got to work.

  Cogsworth read off the cities and kingdoms one by one. Belle commanded the Magic Mirror to show her each place Cogsworth named, looking for any resemblance to the village the Prince had shown her.

  “Hearing the names of all these places reminds me of the journeys I took as a child with my parents,” said Lumiere. “We were troubadours, you know, and performed for crowds throughout the country.”

  “Maybe you visited the village where the Prince is being held!” Belle cried.

  Lumiere’s brow furrowed in concentration. “Je suis très desolé, Belle,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m very sorry. I was so young then. I hardly even remember their names.”

  They resumed their search, and as the evening went deep into the night, Belle became more and more frustrated. Magic wasn’t going to help her locate the Prince. She would have to figure out another way.

  She had an idea where to start….

  * * *

  Belle sat in the Prince’s chair, the music box in her hands. She held it up and studied it from every angle. The delicately painted designs were even more beautiful up close.

  The music box was the only other clue Belle had to the Prince’s disappearance. She was certain it had triggered his vision of the mysterious village in the mirror, but as much as she tried, she couldn’t decipher any meaning in its intricate geometric patterns.

  She opened the lid of the box, and the silver angel popped up. Belle wound the key on the side of the box, and music began to play. The angel spun on her spindle as the box tinkled its short, pretty tune. The music was haunting this late at night.

  Belle set the box down and picked up the Magic Mirror. “Show me the Prince,” she instructed the mirror.

  The Prince’s hunched figure appeared in the same bleak cell. A faint thread of moonlight shone through the bars of the window. Through it, a pair of jagged mountain peaks rose from the dark horizon.

  “Tell me where you are,” Belle begged in a desperate whisper. “Please.” But the Prince remained unmoving and silent. The music box’s song slowed, then stopped, and the mirror went dark once more.

  “I’ve brought you some tea, my dear! And a plate of scones, fresh from the oven.”

  At the sound of Mrs. Potts’s voice, Belle opened her eyes to find the morning sun streaming in through the window. She had fallen asleep! She leapt from the chair without thinking, and—

  CRASH!

  The Magic Mirror slid to the marble floor.

  “No!” Belle cried. She snatched up the mirror. Shards of silver clung to its frame, while the rest of the glass lay on the floor in a pile of jagged pieces. “It’s shattered.” Her voice was choked with despair.

  “I’m so sorry!” Mrs. Potts helped Belle carefully collect the pieces. “This is my fault!”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Potts,” Belle reassured her.

  Mrs. Potts handed a large shard of the broken mirror to
Belle. “Maybe the magic isn’t gone,” she said.

  “Show me the Prince,” Belle said to the shard. But the mirror displayed only her disappointed face.

  “We could glue it back together,” Mrs. Potts said hopefully.

  Belle doubted this would work. She reached down to pick up the last piece of the broken mirror—and a beam of light hit her eyes.

  The sun was bouncing off the glittery painted design on top of the music box, sending a rainbow of light into the room. Belle set down the mirror and picked up the box.

  “This all started when the Prince found this music box,” Belle told Mrs. Potts. “But I can’t figure out how it’s connected to his disappearance.”

  “Ah, yes,” Mrs. Potts said with a knowing nod. “That’s the music box Queen Adele—the Prince’s mother—received from her sister, Cecile.”

  “She had a sister?”

  Mrs. Potts nodded. “A twin. They were as close as two peas, as the saying goes.” She made room on the tea tray for the broken mirror pieces. “I’d just started as a scullery maid when the queen’s sister got married and moved away.”

  Belle studied the music box. “Does the Prince know the box came from his aunt?”

  “I couldn’t say, dear,” Mrs. Potts replied. “The Prince wasn’t yet born when his aunt Cecile left and became a queen herself, thanks to the king she married. What I do remember is that the Prince’s mother was very sad to be separated from her twin. Queen Cecile’s new kingdom was miles away, you see. Not long after she left, she sent Queen Adele this music box. It plays the sisters’ favorite tune, one they sang when they were girls.”

  Belle wound up the music box and opened the lid. The angel spun to the tinkling melody.

  “Pretty, isn’t it? I’d often hear it echoing down the castle’s hallways. Queen Adele would play it and look forward to the day she would visit Queen Cecile and introduce the Prince to his aunt and uncle.” Mrs. Potts shook her head with a wistful sigh. “Alas, our queen died before the visit could happen. The two sisters never saw each other again.”

  When Belle considered the music box, the kingdom in the mirror, and the twin queens, there was only one explanation that made sense: the kingdom in the mirror had to be where the Prince’s aunt Cecile lived. Belle was sure of it.

  “Could the queen we saw in the Magic Mirror last night be the Prince’s aunt?” Belle asked Mrs. Potts.

  “Oh, no. The Prince’s aunt Cecile died a few years ago.”

  Belle felt a pang of grief on behalf of the Prince. He’d suffered more than she realized. She remained certain there was a link, though, between the Prince’s aunt and his imprisonment.

  “What was the name of the aunt’s kingdom?” she asked Mrs. Potts.

  Mrs. Potts thought a moment. “It was south of here, I believe. Broomo, or maybe Bambou? Oh! Wait just a moment.” She hurried off and came back a few moments later carrying a large canvas. “I’d nearly forgotten about this. Queen Cecile sent it along with the music box.”

  Belle helped Mrs. Potts set the canvas down. It was a painting of an elegant royal couple—a queen seated on a throne, a king standing behind her, his hand on her shoulder.

  “This is Queen Cecile’s wedding portrait,” Mrs. Potts explained. Belle noticed the similarities between Queen Cecile and the images she’d seen of Queen Adele in paintings around the castle. “She was beautiful.” Mrs. Potts sighed. “Just like her sister.”

  Belle agreed. Like his mother, the Prince’s aunt had auburn hair and blue eyes. There was tenderness in Queen Cecile’s expression, and warmth. The king had dark features, his hair and eyes a brown so deep they were almost black. He, too, radiated compassion.

  Mrs. Potts pointed to an inscription at the bottom of the painting: Le nouveau roi et la nouvelle reine de Brumeux. “See? ‘Broomo.’ ”

  Belle realized the cook’s Irish accent had led her to mispronounce Brumeux as “Broom-oh.” Not that it mattered. When Belle returned to the map, neither Brumeux nor Broomo were on it.

  “Are you sure it was in France?” Belle asked.

  “It’s the one thing I remember for sure,” Mrs. Potts insisted. “The Prince’s mother always said they might have to cross mountains to visit each other, but at least they wouldn’t have to cross borders. Although, as I told you, the visit never happened.”

  “Here you go!” Cogsworth swept into the room, the Magic Mirror in his hand. Mrs. Potts had asked him to fix it. “Good as new!” he announced.

  The pieces of the mirror had been glued into place, but the surface was still cracked, skewing Belle’s reflection and making it appear as though her eyes were above each other instead of side by side. She wasn’t surprised when she asked the mirror to show her the Prince and nothing happened. The Magic Mirror was just a mirror now—a broken one.

  “Thank you for trying,” she told Cogsworth.

  Lumiere entered the library behind Cogsworth. “If you had let me do it—” He caught sight of the painting. “Les Collines Flous!” He pointed to the cloudy mountain peaks in the corner of the painting. “These mountains. These are Les Collines Flous.”

  Cogsworth snorted. “Who’d name a mountain range the Fuzzy Hills? It’s ridiculous!”

  “That’s why I remember the name,” insisted Lumiere. “Because it was so foggy there. It was a rare day when the sun could push its way through before it set. My parents and I performed in a little village at the base of the mountains.”

  Belle peered at the peaks more closely. There was something familiar about them. “Was the kingdom named Brumeux?” she asked Lumiere.

  “Oui! I believe so!” replied Lumiere. “Brumeux—‘misty.’ And the village was Brumeuxville.”

  “I saw those mountains through the window of the Prince’s cell,” Belle told the group. “They had jagged points, just like in the painting.”

  She returned to the map, running her finger along the southern border. “I’ve found it!” She pointed to where the words Les Collines Flous could be seen in tiny print, curved over a pair of lightly sketched peaks.

  Belle smiled in relief. She’d found the Prince.

  It would take days to get to Brumeux by carriage. But the steam balloon could travel there in less than a day—if they could get it to fly.

  As soon as Belle told her father what she had learned, they went back to work. They tested every part of the balloon several times. There were no more explosions. Everything worked just as it was supposed to. The balloon was ready.

  At dawn the next morning, two stable hands carried the balloon up to the roof of the East Wing and set it down gently. The cedar basket was now firmly attached, and the giant silk balloon cascaded over the side, waiting to be filled.

  “You remembered to pack the compass?” Maurice asked Belle. “And the telescope?”

  “Yes, Papa,” Belle assured her father. She climbed up a short ladder and stepped into the cedar basket. “They’re in the cabinet with the other tools.”

  She pointed to the small box Maurice had installed in a wall of the basket.

  “And the map?”

  “I have it right here.” She patted the front pocket of her dress.

  The stable hands filled the engine’s tank with water to give them enough power to lift off until they could reach the clouds. Belle could feel the Magic Stone heating the water, warming the wood beneath her feet.

  “I just realized there’s no protection from lightning!” Maurice exclaimed worriedly. “Or what if there’s a blizzard?”

  “It’s spring, Papa, and we’re going south,” Belle said. “I promise I won’t fly into any thunderstorms. I haven’t forgotten what you told me: once we’re up, we only need to find enough clouds to supplement our wind power.” She smiled. “I’ll make sure we only go near ‘happy’ clouds.”

  Maurice frowned. “I still thin
k I should come with you.”

  “Papa. We already decided—not with your sprained elbow.”

  “You’ve never flown a balloon before, Belle! Much less a steam balloon all alone.”

  “She won’t be alone, mon cher Maurice!” Lumiere glided through the arched stone doorway that framed the top of the East Wing staircase. “She will be accompanied by the most responsible and trustworthy member of this household!” He took a bow.

  “Thank heaven for that!” Cogsworth said as he appeared behind Lumiere, a picnic basket over his arm. “Belle would be doomed before she started if it were just you going with her.” He turned to Maurice. “Rest assured, Belle will be in the best of hands.” He flipped open the top of the picnic basket and drew back the red-and-white-checked cloth inside. “As instructed, by me, Mrs. Potts has packed the most lightweight of meals. We have a loaf of bread, two hunks of Swiss cheese—the holes make it extra light—and a tin of dried apple slices.”

  Belle reached down to take the picnic basket from Cogsworth.

  “Freshly baked biscuits, piping hot from the oven!” Mrs. Potts emerged from the archway with Chip, holding a cotton-wrapped bundle. She passed it up to Belle.

  “Thank you,” Belle said.

  Maurice licked his finger and held it up. “Wind is in the southwesterly direction,” he said. “Plenty of moisture in the air, which means a near-guaranteed chance of—”

  “Clouds!” Chip shouted, eagerly pointing to the sky over the West Wing towers, where a giant snow-white cloudbank drifted toward them. The clouds picked up speed, and a moment later, a sudden sharp wind rustled the open end of the balloon.

  “Grab it!” Maurice shouted. The stable hands reached out to snatch the ropes that connected the balloon to the cedar basket, but the silk panels had already filled with air. They poufed out, and the balloon began rising, yanking the ropes out of the stable hands’ grip.

  The boiler bounced along the stones, and Belle was thrown against the side of the basket. The excitement she’d felt earlier transformed into terror, and she was seized with dread that she’d be making the journey alone.