As Old As Time: A Twisted Tale (Twisted Tale, A)

by Liz Braswell

“Belle!”

  He stuck as much of his face as he could fit through the narrow bars in the door. Then he pulled away as a paroxysm of coughing overcame him.

  “Oh, Papa….”

  Belle reached through the bars and he clasped her hands eagerly. She gasped in shock.

  “Papa! Your hands are so cold—we have to get you out of here!”

  Maurice, despite his pallor, gave her an ironic look. “Belle, my dear, I think my health is the least of our issues right now. Listen, please: go get help.”

  “Absolutely not! I won’t leave you!”

  “Belle, you have to get out of here! I mean it! Run!”

  And then it was as if the shadows themselves suddenly congealed and took form beside her.

  Something black and clawed grabbed Belle’s shoulder and spun her around.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” the shadow roared.

  But, a part of her noticed, it didn’t threaten her. Not outright, anyway.

  “Who’s there?” she demanded, squinting into the gloom. “Who are you?”

  “I am the master of this castle. And once again, I demand to know what you are doing here!”

  “I’ve come for my father,” Belle said, a little spark of anger igniting within her. “Let him out. He’s sick and he’s done nothing wrong.”

  “He shouldn’t have trespassed!”

  The voice sounded petulant. Not diabolical.

  It gave Belle hope, how human it seemed. In all of her fairy tales and adventure books—the ones with the heroes who were clever rather than strong—this was how you outwitted an opponent. By finding a chink in his armor, a personality flaw to exploit. Then you got him to show off his power by turning into a tiny (and easily stompable) mouse, or slitting open his own stomach.

  All she needed was a flaw, and time.

  “Is there nothing we can do? I can pay you…” She thought back to their house, full of bits of metal, books, dust, and occasionally food. “Something,” she finished, a little lamely.

  The voice roared with laughter. “I am the master of all that you see. What could you give me that I don’t already own?”

  Belle looked around desperately.

  “Me,” she said without thinking.

  “Belle, no!” Maurice shouted.

  “Me. Take me,” she repeated, with a deep breath. “I’ll be your prisoner. Just let my father go.”

  She would think of something eventually. All the heroes did.

  “Belle, no! I forbid it!”

  “I agree to this,” the voice finally said. “But you must promise to stay here forever.”

  Wind roared in Belle’s ears as this strange tipping point in her life suddenly rose before her, consumed her, and passed by. Just a few hours before she had avoided an ambush wedding and dreamed about what life would be like far from the village when her father won money at the fair.

  And now she was trading all those possible futures for a life behind bars in a haunted castle.

  She needed to see what she was up against. All the heroes in her stories were granted that, at least—a last request.

  “Come into the light,” she ordered.

  The voice chuckled nastily.

  With the complete silence of a terrible predator, something dragged itself into the orange glow of the little candelabrum.

  Belle caught her breath in shock.

  Disparate parts of creatures that didn’t belong together were combined in one horrible body: a monstrous clawed foot, bigger than that of a bear’s or a lion’s; a narrow waist; a massive chest. An even more massive neck. Thick, matted brown hair…a cloak.

  It wore a ragged purple cloak with a gold pin clasped at its neck. Torn blue pants hung in tatters down legs like a giant dog’s.

  It had a face the size of an oven. A shiny black nose, flaring and wet. Tusks that protruded out of its skull like a mistake. Startlingly blue eyes…with intelligence behind them…

  Wet, hot breath and slavering tongue.

  Belle fell back despite herself. If it was entirely an animal, she might have been able to deal with it. Like a dog. If it was a demon or ghost, she would have at least known where she stood with her opponent. She had read many, many stories about those sorts of things.

  But this…

  Some sort of monstrous, sick, half-human, half beast…

  Belle forced her head up, though she could not look the thing in the eye.

  “I give you my word.”

  She said it slowly…doling out each syllable with weight.

  “No, Belle!” her father cried. “I won’t let you do this!”

  “DONE!” the Beast roared.

  Moving faster than something of that size should have been able to—and in utter silence—the Beast flowed forward and opened the cell door with a single swipe of his massive paw.

  Maurice ran forward to his daughter.

  “No, Belle, listen to me—I’m old, I’ve lived my life!”

  But the Beast grabbed him and began to bound down the stairs, pulling the old man with him.

  And Belle sank to the floor and began to weep.

  Maurice dutifully told Rosalind everything about the growing violence toward les charmantes and how he couldn’t find the midwife—despite knowing what would come of it. From the widening of her eyes upon hearing about Vashti’s disappearance to a cool narrowing of their mossy green pupils at the news of Josepha and her tavern, Maurice could have easily predicted each facial tic and where it would all lead.

  “I must find her,” Rosalind announced, standing up with the awkward slowness her rounding belly and strange joint pains gave her. Her eyes darted seriously around the room, searching for things: a cloak, a walking stick, maybe…“There are too many of these ‘disappearances’ lately. I will get to the bottom of this now…”

  “Rosalind—” her husband said firmly.

  “You cannot stop me!” she cried, eyes flaring and cheeks flushing pink. Some women grew calm and peaceful during pregnancy; Rosalind seemed to become more of what she already was: fiercely happy, fiercely angry, fiercely productive. “Vashti was godmother to my cousin! She is like family!”

  “I’m not going to try and stop you,” Maurice said. “I am merely urging caution. You are…well known…for what you do. This doesn’t seem like the safest place for people who wield magic anymore. Going around knocking on doors and demanding information out of people might not be a good idea. It would draw too much attention to yourself.”

  “I was not going to knock on doors and demand information,” Rosalind said, with such hauteur it was obvious that had been precisely her plan. “We…who do what we do have much more subtle means of procuring information.”

  Maurice waited patiently.

  “I…shall go to Monsieur Lévi,” she said after a moment of quick thinking. “With his books and scrying glasses, he should make short work of this.”

  “That is an excellent plan. Just be…discreet.”

  “Of course, it’s an excellent plan. And yes, I shall be discreet!” she snapped, magicking a cloak around her shoulders in exasperation.

  Slapping her swollen feet on the uneven, hard cobbles of the kingdom’s best-kept roads was more tiring and strenuous than she had imagined. Still, thousands upon thousands of mothers and grandmothers before her had labored in the fields and gardens and hunted in the woods and still had perfectly healthy children. She would not complain.

  Monsieur Lévi’s shop did not need to be in the center of town. Those who wanted to visit him managed to find him. Even if his shop was never in the same location twice.

  “I don’t have time for this,” Rosalind said, blowing quickly out her puckered lips, trying to calm her heart. She closed her eyes, shook her head to clear the universe of silliness, then strode forward to the closest shop door.

  Whatever the sign had advertised outside, the interior was filled with paper and glass. Piles of books and clusters of scrolls competed for space with polished silver hand mirrors, ti
ny square windows sized for a doll’s house, and bowls like small stone ponds with perfectly still water—water that stayed still, despite the door-slamming and bell-jingling at Rosalind’s dramatic entrance.

  None of it was ordered; all of it looked like it had been pulled from the empty shelves around the room quite recently.

  “Rosalind!” the shopkeeper said with a twinkle in his eye as he turned to greet her. He had been polishing a lens and continued to do so, breathing on it to fog the surface. The man was thin, and probably ancient, but didn’t look a day over seventy. Scruffy hair grew around his pate and off the end of his pointy chin. “How are things?”

  Despite the urgency of her quest, Rosalind was distracted by the state of the place.

  “Monsieur Lévi, what is going on here? Are you closing?”

  “Well, the way things are headed…I’d rather disappear myself before someone else disappears me. It’s time for me and the old girl”—he looked around the shop lovingly—“to pick up and move on.”

  “No, no,” Rosalind said. “Things aren’t so bad!

  “…are they?” she added, less sure.

  “Bad enough,” Lévi said bleakly. “They just shut down the Midnight Market…everyone is worried about safety and pogroms. Florent was found on a doorstep, black-and-blue and beaten to within an inch of his life. And I believe the only reason my shop has escaped the rocks and arson other places have endured is because of our tendency…to move….”

  Rosalind let this news sink in and churn through her recently sluggish mind. “Stay and fight, then. We can change it before it gets worse.”

  Lévi gave a dry chuckle. “Spoken like a beautiful, spirited young lady who will change the world one way or another. My dear, I am old.” He leaned forward on his counter for emphasis. “And…I have seen this sort of thing before. And I have seen it happen again. I do not know if I shall survive the times after next. But while there is life, there is hope. And with life, and hope, go I…and the books they will no doubt be trying to burn soon. Hopefully we’ll find someplace where that nasty fever everyone is talking about hasn’t reached yet. I don’t know if I could survive an illness like that at this age.”

  “Oh, you’ll live forever,” Rosalind said with a dismissive wave and a smile. “But where else in Europe have you experienced this sort of thing before? Are there other places where magic is still strong?”

  “You don’t need to be a witch to have them hate you,” he said lightly. “Now, how may I help you? I just got in an absolutely delicious stack of not-strictly-accurate historical fictions about the late Republic. Er, Roman, that is…far from serious, but good for a cozy evening in front of the fire. What do you say?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not here for books this time,” Rosalind said sadly, looking around at the luscious stacks. “I’m here for a reading. I mean, the other kind of reading.”

  Lévi’s face seemed to tighten away from her, toward the back of his head, as if all his features were trying to escape. He turned pale.

  “Things must be dire indeed, if the great Rosalind comes to me for such a thing.”

  “Vashti is missing,” Rosalind said, unconsciously putting a hand on her belly. “I wanted her for a midwife. Maurice found her apartment empty, her dinner still on the table. I suspect the worst.”

  “Very well,” Lévi said with a sigh. He carefully put down the moon-shaped lens he was working on.

  “What is that?” she asked, curious.

  “Oh, just a little idea I have,” he said as he rummaged through a recently packed box. “Something to let me do my thing while blending in with the natives. Ah, this one will do.”

  He pulled out a silver hand mirror, the sort a gentleman might own, with a not-very-ornate handle and simple, bold lines around the reflecting surface. “Here, you hold it and ask. You knew her better. She was…not much of a reader. The usual kind of reader.”

  Rosalind took the mirror. It was heavier than it looked, or she was weaker than she expected; it caused her hand to dip.

  “Show me Vashti,” she ordered.

  Lévi peered over her shoulder, curious.

  Nothing happened.

  The mirror remained a mirror, reflecting her face with just a hint of fog. Her nose, Rosalind noticed distractedly, was red and unattractive in its current state.

  “Mirror,” she said, more loudly this time. “Show me Vashti. Where is she?”

  The gleaming surface did fog this time. But it revealed nothing beyond a matte, stark black. Eventually this, too, dissipated and it went back to being a mirror.

  “It’s not working,” Rosalind said stubbornly, holding the mirror out to its maker.

  “Rosalind,” Lévi said softly. “She is gone. You know that.”

  Rosalind bit her lip, determined not to cry. Her face felt huge, as if all the tears she was keeping back were filling up her skull and her eyes and forehead. If Vashti was dead, there was nothing she could do now.

  The Enchantress thrust the mirror into Lévi’s hands and turned away, sobbing and retching. Her morning sickness, magically gone on the first day of her second trimester, suddenly came back with a vengeance.

  “Oh, Rose,” Lévi said sadly without looking at the mirror. He put an arm around her.

  “She would…she would never have just left her home that way. She would put her things in order. Her family has been here for centuries as healers…she would have known she was going to die…of something natural. Something has happened to her, Lévi. Someone has done something to her.”

  The bookseller didn’t say anything but watched her quietly, seeing the change on her face that reflected the emotions roiling within her.

  “She will be avenged. I will have justice,” Rosalind growled, torn between throwing up, being comforted, and destroying everything in a great inferno. “This isn’t the dark ages!”

  “Every age has its darkness,” Lévi said quietly. “Rosalind. Take your family and move far away from here. I mean it. You’re not safe. None of us are. I myself am going to the New World. I think they’re mostly done with their witch trials there. And Providence is supposed to be a city of great religious freedom.”

  Rosalind’s mind spun. She was the greatest enchantress in these magic-poor times, but she didn’t have the power or ability to defeat the anonymous, loosely connected bands of ruffians and hatemongers who seemed to be taking over the kingdom. Once she found them, she could turn them all into pigs or stones or insects, of course.

  Rosalind thought. “I shall go to the king and queen. They are the only ones who can stop this. They must. Surely unrest and crime have to be a threat to the kingdom. Even…even despite what happened to their guards. They have to see this can’t go on.”

  “And how will you get in to see them?” Lévi said curiously.

  “Their…son. The little prince. I did not attend the christening,” she said, warming to the plan even as she thought of it. It felt right. Ancient. Grand. “I will come bearing some sort of charm or blessing to bestow. Just like we used to, in the old days, when there was newborn royalty.”

  Lévi sighed. “It’s not a bad idea. Just don’t expect too much. And maybe have an escape plan ready.”

  He looked around at his half-packed boxes and then at Rosalind’s belly, which she was holding with both hands.

  Outfitted in the most impressive, angelic, and magicked outfit she could manage, Rosalind walked into the castle with head held high, alder wand gripped firmly in her right hand. The guards stepped aside as she approached; she ignored the distrustful look in their eyes.

  In the throne room the young king and queen sat with their princeling—well, the toddler was held by his wet nurse—all three in deep shades of matching velvet.

  “Your Highnesses,” Rosalind said with a mild head nod—generally unacceptable as a way of greeting royalty, but, after all, she was an enchantress.

  “Enchantress,” the queen said in an equally neutral tone. Her features were beautiful, if harsh:
white-blond hair and razor-sharp cheekbones, ice-blue eyes. Motherhood had softened her looks not at all.

  “This is an unusual visit,” the king said with a smile that did not reach his eyes. He had long dark-brown hair drawn back into a ponytail, with the front part curled over his forehead in a way that was currently very fashionable. Neither one wore a crown, for it was not considered modern. But they were each covered in sparkling pins and jeweled brooches, golden buckles, and rich, rich cloth.

  “I have come to offer a blessing on your child, the royal prince,” Rosalind began, turning to him.

  “That will not be necessary,” the king said languidly. “These are modern times. We appreciate your sentiment and allow your presence out of respect for ancient traditions, but your blessing is no more than words, your charm no more than meaningless well-wishing.”

  Rosalind stared hard at the king, trying not to show how taken aback she was. In this kingdom! The last refuge of ancient traditions and les charmantes.

  Magic was being forced out of the world entirely. She shivered—was this really the end?

  “In that case, let me attend to the other issue I came here for,” she said, spreading her hands and now lowering her eyes. “I beg your intercession on behalf of my people. They are being harassed, beaten, sometimes murdered. Let their persecution come to an end and defend your innocent citizens.”

  “And which citizens would that be, Enchantress?” the king asked mockingly. “The good and natural citizens of this kingdom? Or are you allying yourself with some of the more unpatriotic and unnatural creatures who dwell in our fair land, threatening our citizens and disrupting our peaceful life?”

  Rosalind ground her teeth, trying to keep the look of a mild petitioner. Trying to control the anger Maurice always warned her about. She looked around the room but the servants and royal entourage all seemed to be doing a very good job of not paying attention to what was going on. The Prince was playing with a ball that looked like it was made out of real gold.

  She took a deep breath. “If I may be so bold, what unpatriotic creatures? Who has been threatening you?”

  “Their existence is threat enough,” the queen said. “They—you—all have abilities which make our muskets and swords seem like toys. And they show no hesitation at using these powers at the slightest provocation…as if this is some medieval fairy tale and not the age of laws and reason!”