by K. M. Shea
Emele shook her head again but didn’t write anything on her slate.
Elle paddled down the path for a few moments, contemplating her next question and occasionally stopping to push her skirts backwards. “Will you be stuck like this forever?”
Emele smiled generously. No. There is hope.
“So the curse can be broken?” Elle said, stopping in surprise.
Yes.
“How?”
Emele smiled mysteriously and wrote nothing.
Elle raised an eyebrow. “Not your story to tell?”
Emele opened her mouth with soundless laughter.
Elle and Emele turned down a path, and Emele pointed to a stone bench. You are tired.
“I am not,” Elle stubbornly said. “But a break would be nice.”
There was barely enough room for both ladies due to their voluminous skirts. Elle tried to pat hers down as it puffed around her like a frosted cake, but it seemed to be a lost cause.
“How long have I been here?” Elle asked.
Roughly a month.
“I suspect my holiday is almost over, and I will not be your guest much longer,” Elle admitted, her eyes scanning the great trees that stretched above the hedges.
You aren’t healed yet.
“That is a fact I am painfully aware of. Soon, though, I will be healed enough that a carriage ride will only be a hurtful experience instead of an injurious one.” Elle paused, “As delightful as your company has been I would not be opposed to returning home. There are some family affairs I need to see to,” she said, staring unseeingly at the hedge in front of her as she thought of her family. Elle shook herself from her reverie and offered Emele a smile. “Do you have any family? Parents and siblings who aren’t also employed by Prince Severin?”
Emele hesitated. Yes.
“Do you miss them?”
Emele held her stick of chalk and stared at her slate. The black of her mask was a stark contrast against her pale skin in the warm sunlight. I do, she finally wrote.
“Can they visit you here?”
They can, but they won’t.
“What? Why not? Do they live too far away, or can’t they spare the time?” Elle frowned.
Neither.
“I fail to understand.”
Emele stood. Are you refreshed? If you are tired a footman can carry you back.
“I’m refreshed,” Elle said, lunging off the bench.
Emele led the way down the path. Her smiles were gone and her countenance was subdued.
Elle noted the change and thought it was best to hold her tongue.
They strolled for a while, until Elle’s good leg burned with exertion and she suspected Emele had forgotten her entirely and was deep in thought.
Elle would have stubbornly forged ahead, fresh air was a commodity for one with a broken leg, but she stopped and tilted her head. “Did you hear that?” Elle asked, narrowing her eyes.
Emele jumped at the sound of Elle’s voice and turned, finally realizing she had left Elle in her dust. What?
Elle frowned deeply. “Perhaps I was mistaken. It sounded like someone shaking a bush or branch. It was probably the wind,” Elle said, offering Emele a smile.
The ladies maid shook her head. No, we must return. I have taken us too far.
Elle and Emele turned to go when someone spoke.
“Monster.”
Emele whirled around, but Elle followed the sound of the voice and looked up.
A boy sat astride on a large tree branch that draped over the garden wall and hung above the walking trail. He was perhaps ten, and wore the pinched expression of the ignorant.
“What did you say?” Elle said, her voice was calm and her face was bland, but she started shifting her grip on her right crutch.
“That there’s a monster, a freak!” the boy said, letting go of the branch to thrust a finger at Emele.
Emele flinched.
“You’re gonna be a monster soon too, since you’re walkin’ with it,” the boy said, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
Elle lifted her right crutch off the ground. “You’re from Belvenes. Run home ‘n finish your chores ‘for your Ma discovers you’ve run off, child.”
“I’m no child!”
“Go home,” Elle said, turning her back to the boy.
“Those monsters, they’ll suck out your soul ‘n steal your voice. Everyone says so!” the boy called after Emele and Elle. “They’re cursed ‘cause they deserve it!”
The girls moved slowly to accommodate Elle’s shuffling; Emele didn’t seem to notice that Elle was carrying her right crutch instead of using it.
“They’re evil. If you stay with ‘em you’re gonna be cursed too. Monster, ogre, demon! Hey, listen!” the boy nearly pitched himself off the branch when he threw something at Emele.
Emele tensed, but Elle raised her crutch. The thrown rock bounced harmlessly off it, falling to the gravel path.
Elle turned around again and raised her eyes to stare at the boy.
He briefly hunched his shoulders up to his ears before fiercely saying, “It’s a monster!”
Elle threw her crutch. It swung through the air like a windmill blade, cracking the boy in the chest. He was tossed from the tree branch by the force of the blow and landed on the gravel covered walking path.
He coughed and gasped for breath while Elle awkwardly hobbled to him. The boy struggled to sit up, but Elle placed her crutch on his chest and pushed him back to the ground.
“First of all, her name is Emele. If you call her a monster again I shall be forced to take my remaining crutch and paddle you like your mother should have when you were little,” Elle pleasantly said as she loomed above the boy.
“Secondly, not only is it inherently rude to break into private property for the sole sake of mocking a person, but it also happens to be a punishable crime,” Elle said.
The boy paled, his eyes growing huge. “You’re gonna have me thrown in the dungeon,” he whispered.
“Nonsense.”
“But yer mad.”
“I am not mad, I am disappointed,” Elle said. “I am disappointed with you for maliciously searching out people to mock and hurt, and I am disappointed with your parents for doing such an ill job of raising you. Such actions do not speak well of your morals.”
“But they’re cursed here! They can’t talk ‘n they wear scary masks,” the boy blurted.
“And they did nothing to deserve it,” Elle said. “And I know they have done nothing to you to deserve your scorn.”
The boy’s eyes darted to Emele, who was standing some feet away, leaning against the green hedge for support. “She’s scary,” he said.
Emele flinched, as though his words were a whip.
Elle paused. She could see how the black masks and inability to speak would be terrifying, but she also recognized it was highly unlikely she was going to teach this boy otherwise. “No, she’s beautiful,” Elle firmly said, removing her crutch from the boy’s chest. “Now leave, before I call another servant to make you leave.”
The boy needed no second warning. He leaped to his feet and threw himself head first into the green hedge. He deftly shimmied through the iron spokes of the fence and fled.
Elle briefly raised her hand to shield her eyes against the glare of the sun. “Emele, I fear I have bad news,” Elle said, turning around to face her downcast maid. “I don’t see my other crutch.”
The confession made Emele smile, briefly. I will find a footman.
“I am almost certain I could hobble back to the chair.”
Emele underlined her words on the slate and added, stay, before she left.
Elle grimaced and hobbled to a stone bench, sitting in the puffing balloon of her skirts as she settled down to wait.
Chapter 4
Dressing for Crutches
Severin could still remember what it felt like to come out of the madness. It was an experience he never wished to relive, although his memories unfortunately
replayed the incident often.
When he had first come to his mind felt bandaged—like fragments of a mirror being pushed together. There was an awful, coppery taste in his mouth, and his fingers were wet.
Crouched in front of him was a beautiful woman. She wore a gown that had the same iridescence as a dragon fly’s eyes, and her lips were thinned as she stared at him in concentration. “Prince Severin, can you hear me?” she asked, her voice melodious and soothing.
Severin groaned. “What?” he said, or he tried to say. His mouth seemed to have more teeth—and bigger teeth—than he remembered having.
The woman smiled and called over her shoulder. “Please inform His Highness Prince Lucien that it worked.”
Severin groggily raised a hand to rub his eyes, but froze when he realized his hand was covered with fur and his fingers—now thicker—ended with claws that were splashed with red.
“Severin, you need to remain calm,” the woman said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You were attacked.”
Severin briefly closed his eyes, recalling the hideous witch that was waiting for him in the rose garden when he left the meeting with his brother. He remembered her speaking to him, intense pain, and then everything was a blank. “There was a witch,” Severin said, his voice rough and thick.
“Yes,” the woman agreed. “She cursed you to live as a beast, and for your household to wax away and disappear with you.”
Severin spit, trying to get the unpleasant taste out of his mouth. It was blood. There was more in his mouth and coating his teeth. He didn’t know whose it was. His stomach rolled.
The woman placed a cool hand on Severin’s head and waited for his retching to stop.
“I injured people,” Severin said, looking at the wreckage. He was still in the garden where the witch had found him, but he could smell blood. There were bodies laying on the ground and medical attendants dressed in white hustling about.
“You did. The witch’s curse stole your mind. You didn’t know what you were doing,” the woman said, her dress glowing in the moonlight. “She made you a beast in body and mind.”
“Why am I alive?”
“Your brother would not give the order for the soldiers to eliminate you. Luckily I happened to be on hand as I was intending to request an audience with you.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Angelique. I am an enchantress.”
“You saved me?”
“In a partial meaning of the word, yes. I can’t entirely undo a curse that has been laid, I’m not that powerful. But once I was at a christening and the child was in a bit of a bind, which is where I learned how to modify and weaken curses,” the enchantress explained.
“So I changed your curse. Instead of living as a complete beast, you are only one in body. Your mind is still yours, it is still human, and it will be for the rest of your life.”
Severin felt his head with his paw-like hands. He felt the angular ears, the flat nose, and the protruding muzzle of a large cat. His entire body ached and was covered with blood spattered fur.
“I was also able to stop the curse from spreading farther on your servants. They are no longer disappearing, but I’m afraid to say they cannot speak, and to save their faces I had to encase them with masks,” the enchantress continued.
“Will they ever speak again?” Severin asked, unable to keep his voice from shaking.
“Perhaps. It depends on you. I cannot entirely undo the curse, but you can.”
“How?”
“By falling in love, by another falling in love with you. Love is a powerful emotion. Working it into the curse was the easiest way out I could forge for you,” the enchantress said, smiling. Severin grasped his feline face with his hand.
“…You don’t look very happy. It might sound impossible, but allow me to assure you that love will not evade you,” the enchantress said, kneeling at Severin’s side. “…Severin?” the enchantress said when he did not respond.
When someone knocked on the door of his study, Severin startled out of the reverie that his memory of the horrific night had pitched him into. He slowly opened his cat eyes. “Enter,” he said before yawning, baring a mouth full of white teeth and fangs.
The door was flung open and in swept Burke.
“What is it?” Severin asked, pawing through a stack of papers.
Burke strolled across Severin’s study, his chest puffed with pride as he whipped out his slate and presented it—its message already inscribed—for Severin’s reading pleasure.
Our honored guest has saved the lovely Mademoiselle Emele.
“She did what?” Severin said, leaning back in his chair and giving his valet his full attention.
Burke smiled widely changing the writing on his slate before he stretched his arms out, holding the slate farther in front of him. Our guest knocked a village boy—who was insulting Mademoiselle Emele—from a tree and chased him off.
Severin’s cat ears flattened. “She defended Emele?”
Burke smugly cleaned his slate and wrote, Defended and protected. Mademoiselle Emele says the boy threw a rock at her, but our honored guest intercepted it.
“How?”
She used the same tool with which she knocked the boy from the tree. Her crutch.
“How is Emele bearing it?”
With the highest admiration for her charge.
Severin tapped his thick fingers on the table until he realized his claws were scratching the smooth surface. “Did the village urchin leave?”
The footmen combed the gardens and did not find him. Mademoiselle Emele and our guest insist the boy fled.
“The gardens are unharmed?”
The hedge at which the boy made his exit is less than perfect, they are otherwise untouched.
Severin licked his chops. “Send for Marc. I need to speak to him of security measures on the chateau grounds. I was inclined to ignore the peasants of Belvenes, but they have forgotten who I am and have overstepped their bounds. It is not necessary for my servants to take brutalities for their stupidity.”
Burke bent at the waist in a bow.
“Do not let my brother hear of this report, Burke,” Severin said.
Of course, Your Highness.
Burke bowed again and turned on his outlandish high heeled shoes to leave.
“Burke,” Severin said.
The fashionable valet turned back to face Severin.
“The intruder. What is her name again?”
Burke’s mask twitched, and he struggled to suppress the smile on his lips. Elle.
Severin waited until Burke had quitted the room before he exhaled a deep sigh. The skin between Severin’s eyes ached, and Severin pinched it, careful not to jab himself with his claws.
He hadn’t wanted to ask Burke what the girl’s name was because he knew it would raise false expectations among his staff. Burke was usually dependably silent about touchy matters, but Severin had no doubts the courtly dandy was searching out Bernadine and Heloise this very moment to share his new intelligence.
“She chased off a fellow villager. That is nothing to preen over—she’s only here in the first place because she trespassed,” Severin said to his empty study. “This changes nothing.” But Severin knew it would change everything in his servants’ eyes. Rare was the individual who was not terrified of them.
Severin stood and walked to the full length mirror that was leaned against the wall. It had an impressive, golden frame that was obnoxiously ornate, and it was quite large but otherwise utterly ordinary.
“Show me Elle,” Severin ordered.
The reflective surface of the mirror rippled like a pond before Severin’s reflection and the study faded to black. After a moment a new image crawled to the surface.
It was the girl, Elle. She was sitting on a couch, playing with the Papillon mongrel Lucien had given Severin when he first moved to Chanceux Chateau.
The loathsome dog barked playfully at Elle before he hopped on her lap—disa
ppearing in the poof of skirts.
Elle patted down her skirts to unearth the mongrel. She picked it up and held it to her chest. The dog wildly twirled his tail, rewarding Elle with a kiss.
“Emele can’t we please open a window at night?” Elle asked.
Emele fluttered past her, carrying sewing materials.
“It is sweltering in this room when I wake up in the morning,” Elle added, setting the mongrel down when it wriggled in her hands.
“Enough,” Severin said to the mirror.
The image disappeared to darkness, and within moments Severin’s ghastly reflection returned.
Severin retreated to his desk, thankful for the mirror—even if it hadn’t revealed anything particularly startling about his servant’s false hope.
The magical mirror was a useful tool for an army commander to have. On more than one occasion it had saved Severin from making bad decisions, it was one of the only reasons why Severin was comfortable leaving Lucien unguarded, and it had even saved Severin’s life once before.
It was only because of the magic mirror that the enchantress Angelique was at the palace the day Severin was attacked, after all. She wanted to inspect his mirror—which she got the chance to do after returning Severin to his right mind. She seemed disappointed when she saw it, but thanked Severin for allowing her to see it before she left.
Severin hadn’t seen her since.
Severin grimly tucked himself into his desk and pulled papers towards him. He looked up when he heard the clattering of shoes down the hallway. They didn’t stop outside his door—as he expected—and instead the footfalls continued down the hallway until they disappeared entirely.
Severin shook his head. The intruder girl might not be as stupid and ignorant as Severin first thought, but her presence was not a good thing. It gave his servants hope. False hope.
After all, Severin had tried breaking the curse before, and it hadn’t worked.
The following day Elle was in endlessly high spirits. She didn’t complain even when the footmen loaded her onto her armchair and carried her to another silent dinner.
