by RH Disney
CRASH!
Everything was dark. Dark and…and silky. Belle raised her arms, and her fingers poked into fabric. She was lying faceup underneath a silk panel of the balloon.
“Lumiere?” she called, her voice muffled by the fabric. “Cogsworth?” The ground beneath her was lumpy and prickly. Her dress was covered with mud and dried grass. She ran her fingers through her hair: more mud and straw. Her right shoulder ached and she felt a small scrape on her cheek, but she wasn’t bleeding and didn’t seem to be seriously injured. They’d all been thrown free of the basket, and the giant silk balloon must have floated down on top of them. Judging from what she could see around her, they’d landed in a hayfield.
She called again for her friends. There was no reply except for a tiny cheep next to her leg. The bird! Had she crushed it? Another muffled cheep. Belle spotted the blue songbird, wrapped in the twisted folds of the fabric. She scooped it up, and the bird cried out in alarm: Cheep! She noticed that one of its wings was crooked.
There was a moan from somewhere nearby. Belle gently set the bird down in some hay. “I’ll be right back,” she promised. She crawled in the direction of the moaning. “Cogsworth? Lumiere?”
“Here!” A gangly body sat up from the ground like a mummy, blue silk wrapped around its head. “I can’t get out!” Lumiere’s hands tugged at the fabric.
“Stay still a minute,” Belle said. She gently unwrapped the silk.
His ponytail had become loose, and strands of hair hung in his eyes. He brushed them away and looked around. “We’re alive!” He paused for a moment, worried. “Aren’t we?”
Before Belle could answer, there was another moan, louder than before. “Ooooooh.”
“Cogsworth!” Belle shouted. “Where are you?”
“Aaaaagh!”
Belle saw a ripple flutter through the silk. She and Lumiere approached on hands and knees and found Cogsworth on his stomach, writhing. “My foot!” he cried. “It’s gone!” He gestured toward his feet.
Belle and Lumiere crawled toward Cogsworth’s ankles and discovered something large and heavy weighing down the silk on top of his foot.
“Part of the steam balloon must have landed on it,” Belle said.
Cogsworth craned his neck to see. “It’s crushed!” he shrieked. “As good as gone!”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get it off,” Belle told him. She nodded to Lumiere, who heaved the silk-wrapped object with a grunt. Belle pulled Cogsworth’s leg free as he let out another pained groan.
Belle bent down to inspect his foot. “It isn’t crushed,” she said. “But it is swollen. It might be sprained or broken.”
“I’ll never walk again!” Cogsworth whined.
“I’m sure you will,” Belle reassured him. “We’ll find a doctor in the village.” She stood, pushing the silk up over her head with her hands. “We just need to find the edge of this so we can get out—”
“Hey! Who’s under there?” called a gravelly voice. “Are you some kind of monster invaders from the sky?”
“Hello?” Belle called back in her friendliest tone. “Can you help us? We’ve—”
“Quiet! I’ll tell you when you can speak, monsters.”
“But you just asked us—” began Lumiere.
“Quiet, I said!” This time the voice was higher, but it soon lowered again. “I’m a mighty soldier, and I’ve got a sword! I’m not afraid to use it, either!” A sharp point poked into the fabric near Belle. The songbird, near Belle’s feet, let out a fearful cheep.
“Be careful!” Belle warned. “You’ll hit the bird!”
“Bird?” This time the voice was unmistakably higher. It was not the sound of a mighty soldier—at least, not a grown-up one. “I mean,” the stranger said, the voice even lower than before, “what bird?”
“It’s a songbird,” Belle answered. “It’s injured.” She was now pretty sure it was a child they were talking to—a child trying hard to sound like an adult. “It hurt its wing when we fell. I’ll show you.” She scooped the bird from the hay and lifted the edge of the silk balloon over her head, stepping out into the foggy gray day.
Belle looked around for the mighty soldier, but the drizzle falling from the sky got in her eyes and made it difficult to see. She wiped the drops from her eyelids, blinked, and was finally able to make out a dark shape in the fog. A short dark shape, about up to her waist.
Her suspicion had been right. It was a child—a girl, about eight or nine years old. She wore a dress made of heavy burlap, decorated with hand-sewn stars. The girl’s damp, sandy hair hung in uneven chunks around her narrow, freckled face. At the sight of the bird, now cupped in both of Belle’s palms, the girl’s fierce scowl softened and her dark eyes grew big. The bird fluttered the raindrops from its good wing and cheeped.
“Aw,” cooed the girl.
Belle smiled. “Bonjour.” She held out the bird. “Would you like—”
The girl growled and raised her “sword,” a crooked branch nearly as long as she was tall. “Don’t you try to ‘good day’ me, Mademoiselle Monster from the Sky! How do I know that ‘bird’ isn’t some dragon you’ve worked your evil magic on?” The girl waved the heavy branch, throwing herself off-balance. She quickly grabbed it in both hands and planted it in the ground to steady herself. “If you want to invade my village, you’ll have to fight me first!” She yanked the branch up and stabbed it into the mud again for emphasis.
“We’re not monsters, I promise,” Belle said. “We’re people, like you. We’re from a village north of here. My father built the balloon we flew here in. That’s why you saw us come out of the sky. It wasn’t magic. Well…mostly not.”
She glanced around. Shards of wood and hunks of metal were scattered as far as she could see into the fog. The basket had clearly shattered when they hit the ground, and the boiler had been wrenched apart. She searched for the orange glow of the Magic Stone, but there wasn’t even a glimmer of it in the murky gray surrounding them.
“We’re not invaders, either,” Belle continued. “We need help.” Another muffled groan from Cogsworth rose from under the balloon. “One of my friends hurt his ankle,” she told the girl. “If you could take us to a doctor—”
“How many of you are there?” The girl’s eyes flashed. “I’ll fight an army if I have to!”
“No army,” Belle said. “Just me and my two friends, Lumiere and Cogsworth. And this little fellow.” She stepped forward and again held the bird out to the girl.
The girl instinctively took the bird in her palms, forgetting her branch, which remained upright next to her, stuck in the mud. “Aw, poor thing,” she whispered. She gently stroked its tiny head with her finger. “You’ll be all right. Granny T will fix you all up.”
“Would you like to meet my friends?” Belle asked. Before the girl could reply, Belle called over her shoulder. “You can come out!”
The lip of the balloon rose next to Belle. The girl took a step back, as if getting ready to run, and watched, tense and wary, as Lumiere and Cogsworth emerged. Cogsworth leaned on Lumiere, one arm slung around his shoulder.
“This is Monsieur Lumiere and this is Monsieur Cogsworth,” Belle told the girl, indicating the two men. “And I’m Belle. The bird doesn’t have a name, but you can name her if you want.”
The girl glanced from the men to Belle, assessing them. “Belle, huh? Really? ‘Beautiful’?” She gave Belle a dubious once-over, scowling at the mud and hay covering Belle’s arms and legs. “If you say so. I’m Elise, which just means Elise.”
“Enchanté, Elise.” Lumiere began to bow, but Cogsworth cried out in pain and Lumiere quickly straightened up. “Oops. Very sorry, mon ami.”
Belle hurried over to grab Cogsworth’s other arm. “Can you take us to a doctor, Elise?”
Elise shook her head. “No doctor in Brum
euxville.” She studied Cogsworth for a second and then nodded, coming to a decision. “All right. I’ll ask Granny T to fix him, too. She’s my grand-mère, and she can do anything.” She jerked her chin, indicating that Belle and the others should follow her.
“What about your sword?” Belle asked.
“Oh, just leave it,” Elise said. She glanced over her shoulder at Belle and gave her a sly smile. “It’s not really a sword—can’t you see that? It’s just a branch.”
The dirt roads, the straw-roofed shacks, the dark mist…it all looked exactly like what Belle had seen in the Magic Mirror. This was definitely the village the Prince had shown her.
Lumiere remembered it, too. “Ah, Brumeuxville!” he declared. He noticed Elise staring at him suspiciously. “I’ve been here, you see….”
“If you’ve been to our village,” Elise interjected, “then you should know there’s no doctor. Hasn’t been one for ages—maybe ever.”
“It was several years ago,” Lumiere said. “I was a boy, about four or five years older than you. My family and I were traveling—”
“I don’t care.” The girl marched on, picking up her pace.
Belle and Lumiere struggled to keep up with her. “Can you use your good foot, at least, mon ami?” Lumiere begged Cogsworth, who hung between Lumiere and Belle, both legs dragging behind him.
“No,” Cogsworth whimpered. “I hurt all over.”
“If you do not begin to help support some of your weight,” Lumiere warned Cogsworth, “I will collapse right here onto this filthy path, and you will fall with me.”
“It’s dreadfully low of you, Lumiere, to hit a man when he’s down,” Cogsworth sniveled.
“You are not down yet, mon ami,” Lumiere replied. “You are still up, thanks to Belle and me. But not for long.” He let out a grunt as they took another step.
Cogsworth sighed and pushed himself up on his uninjured foot. They continued, with Cogsworth alternately limping on his bad foot and smacking the boot of the other into the mud, causing Belle and Lumiere to sway and lurch. It didn’t seem to Belle to be much of an improvement over dragging him. Cogsworth weighed just as heavily on her shoulders, and she and Lumiere had to steady themselves again with every other step.
Belle distracted herself from the effort by taking in her surroundings, but the sight failed to cheer her up. The village square was a grim, pale shadow of Villeneuve’s lively town center. There was no fountain, just a moss-covered well. A scattering of empty buildings bordered the square. They might have once been shops, but they now served only as shelter for a few scruffy cats.
The villagers the three friends passed either ignored them or gave them wary, sidelong stares. Elise exchanged nods with a few, but she made no attempt to introduce the visitors. Belle tried offering friendly smiles and periodic bonjours, but the villagers just picked up their pace. Occasionally, a little boy or girl would glance at Belle, eyes wide with wonder, but almost immediately, a parent would grab the child’s hand and jerk him or her away.
“Don’t bother trying to get to know anybody,” Elise told Belle. “It’s not as if you’ll be here long. Right?”
Belle hadn’t yet told Elise why she and her friends had come. Before they’d left the hayfield, she had whispered to Cogsworth and Lumiere that they should keep the details of their mission a secret for the time being. When they’d planned the trip, Belle hadn’t thought ahead to what they’d tell any villagers they met, because she hadn’t expected to meet any. She’d assumed they’d find the Prince, rescue him, and stay long enough only to right whatever wrong he’d done—or return home immediately and decide how to right the wrong later.
Belle now realized that the rescue she’d imagined had a few missing parts.
Cogsworth let out a whimper. “Are we almost there?”
“It’s just around the corner,” Elise said. She darted ahead and disappeared around a curving lane. “The house with the red door,” she called back.
Belle, Lumiere, and Cogsworth slowly followed. When they finally reached the house, the door was open. Elise, no longer holding the bird, stood in the doorway and impatiently gestured for the group to enter.
The inside of the house was as warm and colorful as the air was cold and gray. Woven blankets with fanciful designs hung from the clay walls and covered the wooden furniture. A small loom sat in a corner, surrounded by baskets of wool. A modest fire flickered in a stone fireplace.
A slender young woman in a scarf hurried over from the stove. “Please, monsieur, have a seat.” She helped Belle and Lumiere settle Cogsworth into a rocking chair near the fire.
“These are the strangers from the sky I told you about,” Elise said. “That’s the ‘belle’ one.” She indicated Belle and then rolled her eyes. “Or so she says.”
“Bonjour, Belle,” the young woman said, taking Belle’s hand. “I’m Nicole, Elise’s mother.”
“Bonjour,” Belle replied. “This is Monsieur Lumiere.”
“Enchanté, madame,” Lumiere said with a deep bow. He realized his ponytail was still loose, and he quickly swept back his hair and retied the ribbon.
“And Monsieur Cogsworth,” Belle continued.
“You’ll excuse me if I cannot bow as well, madame.” Cogsworth nodded and gave her a half bow.
“Of course,” Nicole replied. “You are all very welcome here.” After gesturing for Lumiere and Belle to sit at the small dining table, she returned to the stove and gave a stir to the pot sitting atop it, its contents perfuming the room with a spicy scent. “Carrot and ginger soup,” she said. “It’ll warm you and your friends after your journey.”
A cheep cheep sounded behind one of the colorful tapestries, which then magically rose—and Belle realized it wasn’t a wall hanging but was attached to the ceiling to act as a room divider. A woman Maurice’s age emerged from behind it. She was tall and thin, and her dark hair was flecked with gray. In her hands she held a small round basket.
Cheep!
The bird poked its tiny beak over the top of the basket.
Elise rushed to her grandmother and took the basket. “You did it! You fixed her!”
“I made her a temporary home and bound her wing with some cloth,” the woman said. “But time and rest will heal her, not me.”
“I told you Granny T can do anything,” Elise told Belle proudly.
“My granddaughter exaggerates my skills,” the woman said. “I have to admit, though, I rarely discourage her. She’ll grow up soon enough.”
“Even when I’m a hundred, I’ll think exactly the same way about everything as I do now!” Elise protested. She moved to the hearth and sat down, holding the basket on her lap.
“I hope not,” the woman said with a smile. She turned to Belle. “I’m Granny T. Elise calls me Granny T because when she was a baby, grand-mère was too hard to say. She started calling me Gran Tine, and that became Granny T.” Granny T approached Cogsworth. “And this is the other injured party, I presume.”
“At your service, madame—or rather, at your mercy,” Cogsworth said. Granny T drew up a stool and sat down in front of him. She gently squeezed his ankle, causing Cogsworth to whimper.
“Nothing broken,” Granny T concluded. “Just a slight sprain, I believe. Easy to treat. We’ll soak it in cold water to reduce the swelling.”
A wooden shutter in the wall between the stove and the hearth swung open. A bearded man Nicole’s age, who shared Elise’s sandy hair and dark eyes, leaned through the opening. He held an armload of chopped logs, which he dropped into an iron bin on the floor. They landed with a loud clatter. Spying Belle and Lumiere, he paused. “Oh. Hello there,” he said, before pulling the shutter closed.
“That’s Papa,” Elise said.
“My son Paul,” Granny T said. “He can be a little abrupt. Don’t let it bother you.” She stoo
d up. “I’ll be right back with that water.”
She returned a few minutes later with a bucket of cold water. As she stepped inside, a beam of bright sunlight swept in past her. Belle and the others blinked.
“The sunshine’s a surprise, I know,” Nicole said.
“It usually shines by the end of the day,” Granny T explained. “If only for a couple of hours.”
“Just as I remember!” Lumiere said.
“He says he’s been here before,” Elise said.
“You may remember my family,” Lumiere said. “La Famille des Chansons. We were performers when I was a boy. I sang and played accordion.”
Granny T shook her head. “I was probably in Paris then with Paul. Nicole may remember, though. She’s lived here all her life and would have been a girl when you visited.”
“I’ve lived here all my life, too!” Elise said.
“So far,” Granny T replied with a wink. She lowered Cogsworth’s foot into the bucket. He yelped. “Even though it’s spring, the water comes down from high in the hills,” she told Cogsworth, patting his knee. “That’s what makes it so cold.” He pressed his lips together and nodded bravely.
Granny T turned to Lumiere. “So is that why you’ve come here? To see the village where your family performed? I’ll warn you, you’ll find a lot has changed over the years. Except, of course, the fog.”
“Ah, no! We have come to—” Belle reached under the table and poked Lumiere in the ribs. “That is to say, uh…” He glanced at Belle, who gave him a warning look. “We, um…”
“We’re servants,” Belle said, blurting out the first thing she could think of.
“Oui!” Lumiere exclaimed.
“We are indeed!” Cogsworth agreed, perking up a bit.
“In a mansion in a kingdom up north,” Belle continued. “Lumiere oversees the dining hall, Cogsworth runs the household staff, and I…I’m the governess. We’ve come because a friend—one of the other servants—disappeared.”
