by Liz Braswell
And cold.
Belle swallowed her revulsion and tried to pull it aside, but it didn’t give at all in the way she imagined a giant piece of spider silk should have. It was hard and unyielding. She pulled her hands away and scrambled underneath it instead, forcing her body through the small crack, pushing the metal bars apart with her legs. Her clothes brushed against the gluey surface of the webbing and it grabbed her like it was alive.
Belle kicked and screamed and forced herself out, entirely giving in to panic. Her dress tore with a sound that seemed to rip the world. By the time she got up and brushed herself off, the webs were already re-covering the gap, thicker, behind her. Almost as if they sensed the breach and strove to fix it.
Belle shuddered.
Phillipe, bless his horse heart, was still there. And more than ready to run himself, ears cocked and eyes rolling, at the strangeness of what was happening.
Belle grabbed his reins and leapt on his back. He didn’t need to be told twice.
In a turn and gallop that would have made his warhorse ancestors proud, Phillipe dashed into the woods. His long legs pushed hard against the ground, hooves smashing into dust everything that wound up beneath them. They were going to make it and she was going to ride triumphantly through the snow back home.
Then he stopped, rearing up. Belle was almost flung from his back—and that’s when she saw them.
Wolves.
There were, of course, still wolves left around the village where she lived. Once in a very great while, driven by hunger, they would come down out of the hills and mountains and forests to grab a sheep if a shepherd wasn’t watching properly. But unless it was sick or desperate, none would appear in broad daylight to a human on a horse—a human whom it knew probably carried a gun. Wolves were bad guys only in fairy tales and legends to scare young children at night.
These, however, didn’t look like the gray wolves she and her father had once seen trotting in the distance.
They were huge. And white. With red eyes that seemed to glow.
Seemed?
She had just fled an enchanted castle with talking furniture and a beast prince ruling them all…whom her mother had cursed.
These were not normal wolves. They were magic, too. They were trying to stop her from leaving the castle.
Belle grabbed the reins and pulled hard, spinning Phillipe the other way.
The wolves howled and bayed like nightmare creatures as they took off in pursuit.
Belle could barely hold on, much less direct Phillipe. She let him go wherever he needed to for escape and didn’t try to stop him from running over a snowy pond like it was nothing more than a field. The ice broke beneath them, with thundering waves of noise that rippled out to the banks on the far side, echoing what was occurring back at the castle.
Unheeding the danger, the wolves followed.
One of Phillipe’s hooves struck a weak spot. A moment later the horse was floundering in the freezing water, churning his front legs desperately and trying to get back up.
But several of the wolves were also caught in the shifting sheets of ice; they had lost at least two of their followers to the blackness below.
Phillipe managed to clamber to the edge of the pond and pull himself out onto solid ground. Belle gritted her teeth as the icy water sloshed in her shoes. She couldn’t feel her lower legs.
The horse threw himself forward, galloping into the forest again. Belle hunkered down, trying to avoid being knocked off by low branches or clotheslined by vines.
They burst into a clearing—and saw three more wolves already waiting for them there.
Surrounded on all sides, Phillipe began to panic in earnest, eyes rolling and making terrible shrieking noises, his eyes rolling. He bucked wildly, slashing his hooves at the enemy. Forgetting about his rider.
Belle flew off his back.
The wolves came closer and closer and snapped at his feet and legs.
Belle shook her head, which was ringing from her hard landing. Otherwise nothing seemed to be too badly damaged. She dragged herself to her wobbly feet and looked round for anything that could be used as a weapon. A large forked branch lay on the ground nearby. She grabbed it and stood with her back to the panicking horse, trying to fight off the wolves that were closing in.
“Stay back!” she ordered. “I am the daughter of an enchantress!”
The wolves didn’t think much of her declaration.
One wolf leapt at her and grabbed the branch in its teeth, pulling it out of her grip. At the same time another hurled itself into her chest, knocking her down.
Belle rolled away, trying to keep out from under Phillipe’s deadly hooves.
Another wolf stood over her, its slavering mouth inches from her face, its yellow teeth glinting like poison in the moonlight. It snarled and opened wide, ready to tear her to pieces.
Belle turned her face aside and covered her head with her hands, waiting for the finishing bite.
And suddenly the weight was off her.
She peeped through her fingers to look.
The Beast was there, throwing the wolf he had picked off of her to one side. He roared and howled, louder than the pack. The rest of the wolves leapt to attack him. One lunged at his leg, another at his shoulder.
In movements that were too quick to follow, the Beast shifted from two feet to four, shaking the wolves off him like water.
But he bled from ugly wounds where they fell away.
Belle crawled to the safety of a large tree and hid behind its enormous roots.
The Beast was saving her?
He stood for a moment, silhouetted against the moonlight, claws out. They were longer than a bear’s and glittered ivory—and ruby from raking through the belly of a wolf.
Then he was all shadows and blurry movement again, throwing himself among the remaining wolves like a reaver.
With yelps that didn’t sound properly doglike at all, the wolves began to sense the battle had turned. The Beast grabbed one of the last and flung it against a tree like a sack of apples. There was an ugly wet-sounding crack as it crumpled to a heap right in front of Belle. She flinched at its closeness.
Without a signal or a noise, the wolves admitted defeat and loped into the shadows, disappearing back to wherever they had come from.
Belle looked up at the Beast, who was on two legs now, growling a final warning. His fur was torn and one ear didn’t look quite right. His stance, never normal to begin with, looked more misshapen and awkward than before. There was a small pool of blood forming in the dirt below his right forepaw.
He opened his mouth to say something to her…
…and then, slowly, like a falling tree, collapsed at her feet.
Belle stayed as still as a rabbit, looking with wide eyes upon the scene before her, replaying in her mind what had just happened.
The Beast—the big, malformed, and grotesque thing that lay unconscious in a patch of its own blood before her—had imprisoned her father just for trespassing and then traded Maurice’s life for hers like some sort of medieval despot. He was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good creature.
And yet…he had saved her from the wolves.
Snow began to fall.
Belle suddenly had no idea how long she had been sitting there, frozen.
Phillipe’s reins were caught up in strangler vines across the clearing. He chuffed unhappily, pacing back and forth. The lingering scent of wolves and death were making him crazy.
Belle blinked the snowflakes out of her eyes. Now that the shock of the battle was wearing off, she was beginning to feel things again—including how numb and aching her wet feet were. If she stayed out much longer, she wouldn’t be able to walk. She would freeze.
Slowly she rose, stomping her feet, trying to work feeling back into them. Then she stumbled across the clearing to Phillipe and worked the ropes out of their snarl with stiff, unhelpful fingers. Murmuring calming words, she managed to get the giant horse to back up
and slowly turn around.
The bodies of the wolves—and the Beast—were lifeless mounds gradually whitening in the rapidly increasing snow. She turned to go.
The Beast would freeze if she left him there.
He had saved her life.
Cursing, she led the nervous Phillipe over the carcasses and piles of bloody innards. He did not shy away from the Beast as she was afraid he might; something about his body was less terrifying than those of the wolves.
With a lot of difficulty—Phillipe had no desire to kneel in the snowy, bloody muck—and a strained back, Belle managed to shove the Beast onto the horse so his head and hind limbs dangled off opposite sides. As loathe as she was to touch him, his fur didn’t smell as bad or as…animal-like as she expected. It had a faintly wild, barnlike whiff to it but was neither greasy nor dirty. She idly wondered if he licked himself clean like a cat or dove into ponds like a dog.
But now, where to?
As she looked around the woods through whirling drifts of snow, she realized she had no idea where she was. She had just made Phillipe run through woods, willy-nilly. Belle frowned and stared at the sky but, of course, there were no stars. Between the gloom and the snow there was no way to find any familiar landmarks.
She couldn’t stop shivering.
The toes of her shoes, she saw, had hardened with ice and were dusted with hoarfrost—echoing the webs that had crawled up outside the castle. She felt like one of the luckless peasant girls in some Russian hagiography, left to fend for her family in deep Siberian snows.
Ever a logical girl, she didn’t like where the hints all around were leading her.
Apparently, I’m the daughter of an enchantress, she thought. So…maybe I can enchant?
She closed her eyes and imagined warm. Sunny skies, still clouds and snow swept away.
Nothing.
She clenched her fists hard and imagined fire, even at the risk of it consuming the tree in front of her. MAKE IT BURN!
She opened her eyes.
Nothing.
“I command you, winds!” she shouted imperiously. “Take me home!…”
“…please?” she added after a moment.
Nothing.
With aching slowness she turned Phillipe and his burden around and followed their tracks back to the castle.
It was very hard going. Belle tried not to panic about not being able to feel her feet anymore, tried to put away little fairy tale horror stories she had read about girls freezing in the wilderness.
I’m the daughter of an enchantress, she told herself to bolster her courage. Also just to taste the feeling of it. That had been her mother in the visions, whose role in Belle’s broken memories was merely that of a pretty face and loving smile and soft lap. There was nothing magical about her, beyond the extra layers of warmth that nostalgia and loss applied to fond remembrances.
When they finally made it back to the castle, she saw with a shock that all the perimeter walls were now shrouded in white, thick ribby drifts. Strands were still growing up out of the ground—much more slowly now, but with a frightening relentlessness.
Where she had squeezed out through the gates there were now many more ropes of webbing. But when she reached out to try to push them, they broke off in her hand, shattering. Belle was shocked, before she realized the truth of it: they were there to keep the Beast in, not out.
A few deft swipes and they were gone. She threw the gates open and led Phillipe in. When the gates clanged shut behind her, the webbing had already begun to grow back.
A funny, sad little scene greeted her at the door to the castle: Cogsworth, Lumière, and—was that a dust mop?—drooped in despair, looking out into the night. Lumière had a carefully placed candle-hand on Cogsworth’s back in sympathy.
They all gawped and jumped as soon as they saw her.
“Get him inside. He needs a fire and bandages,” Belle ordered. “Right away.”
“Certainement,” Lumière said briskly, marching off.
“First aid immediately, of course!” Cogsworth added, looking grim.
All sorts of little creatures and animated bric-a-brac came to life that Belle hadn’t seen earlier, whisking and scampering this way and that to help out. She caught sight of Mrs. Potts, steaming with purpose, ordering the lesser kitchenware to help out with boiling water and hot towels.
Once the Beast was inside and being tended to, Belle reluctantly returned to the courtyard.
“Thank you, old friend,” she said to Phillipe, patting his soft nose. “Now go home. Go to Papa.”
She led him to the gates, shuddering at the sight of the icy webbing that was slowly continuing to spread. After both of them carefully stepped through she gave his flanks a firm but friendly slap.
The horse neighed, then trotted off into the woods, toward home.
Belle felt a pang. But she had made her decision.
“I need some rope,” she said to Cogsworth as she entered the study, shaking herself into action.
“Yes, of course, right away,” the little clock said. “What?”
“I’m not letting him free until I get some answers,” Belle said, gritting her teeth. “Help me tie him up.”
“Tie up? The master?” Cogsworth stuttered.
“He threw my father into a cold prison cell, then took me in his place! I think tying him up in front of a warm roaring fire is plenty generous, considering!” she snapped.
The little clock started to protest, but Belle simply glared at him.
“Yes…I can see your point….” Cogsworth boggled. “All right…PANTRY? Storage? You’re needed….”
He waddled off, still gaping about the inappropriateness of the whole thing.
Belle watched the castle busy itself, a little surprised at her quick acceptance of the whole thing. From discovering the existence of an enchanted castle to ordering its occupants around like she had been doing it her entire life—it all had taken less than the span of a day. She wondered for a moment what would have happened if she had never gone up the stairs to the forbidden West Wing. Would she have remained a prisoner of the Beast? Or would she have become the queen of this place?
She never did see the library….
Belle didn’t trust the silverware and oversaw each of the knots as it was being tied and pulled. Sometimes when they ran out of money for metal, her father had to cobble his inventions together with leather thongs and rope. She was good at lacing things tightly.
Mrs. Potts had a cart of hot tea and brandy wheeled in—along with a dish of broth and a covered tureen of what, from the smell, Belle was pretty sure the Beast ate on a regular basis. Meat. Not cooked much.
Belle took it upon herself to help wash his wounds; except for an animated mop and broom, there wasn’t really anyone large enough or with strong prehensile digits to gently dab a wound and then ring out the cloth in boiling hot water.
Could my mother have just healed him, with a snap of her fingers?
Belle tried to remember some incident from her childhood where she was hurt, but it was always just Maurice bandaging her wounds or putting salves on them or giving her a kiss to make it feel better. She couldn’t remember her mother doing anything. Or being there at all, really.
Belle helped herself to some tea in between, putting in plenty of sugar. They never had enough of it at home; here there was a whole pyramid of shining brown lumps.
Do enchantresses drink tea? Or did my mother only have tisanes and wild concoctions made from forest things? She hadn’t seemed like a woodsy sort in the vision. The dress she wore when she turned back into herself was a little showy but otherwise quite fashionable. As if a modern, well-to-do lady wanted to impress a snobby prince with her enchantress-ness.
Sorceresses with bustles, witches with frothy white wigs…Belle drowsily tried to figure out what a modern wizard would look like.
Eventually, she must have dozed off, kneeling on the floor with her body resting against the giant chair the Beast was lying
in and tied to. When she woke, the Beast’s eyelids were fluttering open.
Funny, Belle thought. He has eyelashes.
The moment of drowsy calm didn’t last.
As soon as he was fully awake, the Beast roared and strained to get up and then roared again when he realized he couldn’t.
“Hush!” Belle chastised. “The entire castle can hear you.”
“WHY AM I RESTRAINED? WHAT DO—arrrgh!” He fell back into the chair, one of his wounds having pressed against the rope when he strained. He bit his lip and whimpered like a dog.
“Thank you for saving me from the wolves,” Belle said mildly. But she was a little leery; it wouldn’t take many more attempts like that for the Beast to break free. One of the ropes grew taut and frayed as he struggled.
“If you’re thanking me, why have you tied me up?” he grumbled.
This was the Beast she could reason with; it was a tone of voice she recognized from before. Human but grumpy.
“Let’s see.” She ticked off reasons on her fingers. “Because you made my father your prisoner. Because you then made me your personal prisoner. Because you are cursed, and I feel like maybe with reason. And also I have questions.”
“Doesn’t matter. Tie me up or not. I’m trapped here forever, in this,” the Beast mumbled.
He began to lick one of his wounds moodily.
“Stop that,” Belle said, lightly slapping his arm.
The Beast jumped. “Ow!”
“Please.” Belle rolled her eyes. “I saw what the wolves did to you. That hurt?”
He remained grouchily quiet. In the flickering light of the fire the Beast looked both more monstrous and more human. His head was massive—massive—and not, on second look, canine or wolfish as one would expect of a loup garou. It was more like a bull with longer fur; his horns went a long way toward completing that image. But his eyebrows were large and expressive, and if one didn’t look too closely one could mistake the lower part of his mane for a beard. His eyes remained intelligent and unreadable in the orange light.
“Wait,” he suddenly said. “How did you know I was cursed?”
“When I touched the rose…sorry!”
The Beast had immediately wilted, somehow becoming small in the giant chair. His brow furrowed in pain and something like a whimper might have escaped around his mighty tusks.
