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

by Liz Braswell

  “Alaric Potts. The stablemaster. Your favorite servant. Out of all of us,” Mrs. Potts said slowly and calmly.

  “Yes. What happened to him? Why did he leave? My parents said he just abandoned you and his job. Possibly because of me.”

  “Because of you…? It’s been over a decade since his disappearance and you’re just asking that question now?”

  Thus far, Belle’s only view of the housekeeper was of a lovely, fat little animated teapot, sympathetic, motherly, and kind.

  The tone she used now was not that of a housekeeper or anyone sympathetic to anything. It was a dignified older lady filled with righteous affrontment.

  “I was a child. A lot was going on,” the Beast said defensively. “The plague, my parents…”

  “I see. Yet…now is the first time it has occurred to you to inquire what happened to a wayward servant? A favorite wayward servant?” she persisted, trilling her consonants. “LET ME TELL YOU about Alaric Potts.”

  She hopped up to the Beast so violently that her lid clacked up and down. Belle was tempted to reach out and steady it so it didn’t fly off and break. But she was paralyzed by the woman’s anger.

  “Alaric Potts was the most kind, honorable, decent, caring man I ever met,” Mrs. Potts declared. A little puff of steam came out of her spout after each adjective. “Sometimes too kind. He didn’t believe in treating anyone differently, whether he was a prince or a gnome. He loved me and Chip and everyone in our family—everyone in the castle. He loved you, Master, almost as much as his real son. And he loved his job in the stables. He loved those horses.

  “I don’t know what happened the night he never came home. I never found out. No one did. He was just gone, into thin air like everyone else. But through the plague and this wretched curse for over ten years, I’ve put on a brave face for our son who lost his father. Surely you can sympathize with that, can’t you?”

  Belle risked a glance at the Beast. He looked shocked…and perhaps a little guilty.

  “And then…blurble…to come…blorb ten years later…glug…and ask me…”

  Mrs. Potts was quite literally boiling over.

  Belle was horrified and unsure what to do. Deadly hot tea began to bubble up through the teakettle’s spout and out her top.

  The Beast also looked taken aback and moved slightly away.

  Eventually Mrs. Potts grew silent, shuddering and bubbling until she seemed to calm down.

  She stopped moving entirely, in fact. Completely frozen.

  After a moment, Belle began to grow worried.

  “Mrs. Potts…?” she said tentatively.

  Belle looked over at the Beast—he was also alarmed. The teapot looked like…just a teapot now. There was nothing at all animated about her.

  And then she suddenly shook to life again, as if nothing at all had happened.

  “I…I need to go rest. This is just too much,” she cried, spinning around and hopping off, spout in the air. Trying to retain her dignity. Belle and the Beast watched her hop down onto a chair and then to the floor and back to the pantry, her ringing clip-clop diminishing until they could hear her hopping up onto a shelf.

  The stove busied itself, loudly stirring something it probably didn’t need to, casting angry ember eyes at the couple.

  Everything else was awkwardly silent.

  “I just…I always thought it was my fault,” the Beast finally said halfheartedly. He sank down into the closest chair. It staggered under his weight, readjusting itself on bent, fat little legs. “I was too ashamed to talk to anyone. I didn’t even think to talk to her or Chip. I was afraid they would hate me. I didn’t think about what they felt. Losing him.”

  He ran a large, ungainly paw through the fur on the top of his head. Belle thought about the portrait in the West Wing; his real hair would have been a dark blond now.

  She put a hand on his shoulder.

  “I think you can explain that to her later, when she’s calmed down,” she said soothingly.

  “Maybe your mother was right,” he whispered. “I never thought of most of the servants as anything other than…things. Things that made my life easier. That’s why she did this to me.”

  “Perhaps.” She still didn’t like the use of real people for a morality lesson, however.

  The Beast growled at her.

  Then Belle saw the sheepish look on his face and realized that the sound had not come from his mouth. He put a defensive paw over his belly.

  “Actually, I’m kind of hungry, too,” she realized. Her stomach felt emptier than usual and there was a slight dizziness in her head. She had successfully ignored it while working.

  “We were supposed to come down here to talk about dinner,” the Beast said plaintively.

  “Well…” Belle looked over at the stove. “Maybe…we should make dinner. For ourselves.”

  He stared at her.

  Belle put her hands on her hips. “You were just saying: these servants have been waiting on you hand and foot all their lives….And the last ten years they haven’t even been human for it! They still serve you, make you dinner, clean the castle…all while they’re spoons and mops and teacups and whatever. And they are only those things because of your curse. Maybe it’s time you eased up on them a little, huh?”

  The Beast opened and closed his mouth a few times, obviously stunned into speechlessness by the strangeness of the suggestion.

  “I don’t know how to make dinner,” he finally admitted.

  “I will help you. We’ll do it together,” Belle said, going over to the washbasin.

  “Cooking. Reading. Is there anything you can’t do?”

  Belle grabbed his big paw and shoved it into the water as well. “Oh yes, I’m a veritable domestic demigoddess,” she said archly. “You should see me turn invisible and walk on water. Come on, let’s get you an apron.”

  There probably wasn’t any real point in making him wear something over his fur and ragged clothes. Still, she tied a tablecloth up and around his neck, trying not to make him look ridiculous.

  Actually, if the thick white cloth had leather straps, he could easily be Hephaestus or one of his titan helpers working the forge on Olympus.

  But they were going to make ratatouille, not swords for heroes.

  “…And buckwheat crepes, and an onion tart, and coq au…um…Riesling, in a skillet,” she added thoughtfully, looking at the time. The clock in the kitchen didn’t talk, thankfully. “We don’t have time for a true coq au vin or cassoulet. Oooh, and a tarte tatin for dessert!”

  The Beast looked skeptical.

  She turned, regretfully, to the stove. “I…guess we’ll have to use your services,” she said apologetically. “There’s no other heating source in here.”

  “My skills are yours to command, Mademoiselle,” the chef said with a lowering of his pipes. “But only once. Otherwise, nobody touches my stuff in this kitchen.”

  “Unless you’re too drunk to do it without hurting yourself,” something called from the back pantry.

  “MAYBE IT’S YOU WHO DRIVES ME TO DRINK!” the stove shot back. “YOU AND YOUR OVERUSE OF CUMIN!”

  “All right. Beast,” Belle said quickly. “Let’s get you peeling some apples.”

  She thought handling something dangerous and manly like a knife would be more interesting for him than trying to work with something fiddly like pastry dough. And at first he did seem excited. But he clutched the little paring blade awkwardly in his paw—which, despite its five “fingers,” was nowhere near as nimble as a human hand. He struck at the apples in little jabs, trying to put what passed for his thumb on the back of the handle. He obviously had skill in whittling at some point.

  But after two and a half apples—and three cuts he tried to hide from her—the Beast gave up, throwing the knife on the table so hard that it stuck deep into the wood.

  “This is useless!” he growled. “This knife is too small. These apples are too soft. I can’t do this.”

  “All righ
t…” Belle said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s have you mix up some dough. That should be fun!”

  She found the largest bowl she could and tried to measure out correct amounts of everything; it was hard to keep to scale. But the Beast was delighted by the process of rubbing the butter into the flour; he could use his big, ungainly paws to mash them together. And he only tried to lick the bits off his fingers when she wasn’t looking.

  They worked for a while in companionable silence. She wondered if this would have been what it was like if her mother had been around during her childhood. The two of them cooking side by side, Belle, a tinier version of her mother, maybe both of them with matching kerchiefs in their hair…

  Of course she had cooked with her father. But would it have been different? Would it have been the same?

  “So…everyone…who’s…not a…prince…can do this?” the Beast asked, breaking the silence.

  “More or less,” Belle said with a shrug. “My father can. I think generally girls are taught more than boys…but most people can fend for themselves.”

  “Because you get married and cook for your husbands,” the Beast said, showing what he knew almost like he had read it in a book somewhere. A Spoiled Prince’s Guide to Life Among Peasants.

  “Sure. Yes. Cook for our husbands.” Belle slammed a cleaver down on a chicken leg, separating the drumstick from the thigh in one stroke. “Good little wives.”

  The Beast’s eyes widened at her unexpected violence.

  “What did…what did I say?”

  “Oh…nothing,” Belle said with a sigh. “I don’t want to be a good little wife. I want adventure. I want…to be the hero in the story. But everyone else just wants me to…get married, obey my husband, have seven or eight kids, wash his socks…YOUR SOCKS ARE DISGUSTING, GASTON!”

  She whacked off another leg.

  If her mother had been around, would she have been home for the would-be wedding? Would the Enchantress have turned them all into pigs for accosting and embarrassing her daughter?

  “Gaston? The…hunter you mentioned before?” the Beast asked meekly.

  “A wedding ambusher. A surprise groom. An utter clown.” Saying this aloud made her stop. Clown. That was exactly correct—why hadn’t she thought of that before? Hiring a band, getting a cake, and throwing a surprise wedding wasn’t normal or romantic. Especially since she didn’t return any of Gaston’s affection. He couldn’t even seem to see that. The whole thing was creepy and bizarre. And, in some ways, not that far removed from throwing someone into your own private prison for trespassing on your property.

  “He’s the big man in town,” she said more calmly, putting the cleaver down for a moment. “Everyone wants to marry him. He’s tall, handsome, strong, deadly with a shot, has these absolutely amazing blue eyes, is always the life of parties…”

  The Beast stopped mixing for a moment to regard her. She noticed that there was a telltale fluff of flour on his muzzle. He saw where her eyes went and discreetly flicked out his long pink tongue to take care of it.

  Belle shook her head and rolled her eyes.

  “But,” he began, confused, “if he’s so…handsome and perfect and everyone else wants to marry him, why doesn’t he marry someone else? Someone who wants to marry him?”

  She smiled, blushing, and turned back to the chicken. “This is going to sound positively vain, but he thinks I’m the prettiest girl in town. He doesn’t want me…he wants, you know, the prettiest girl in town. He feels he deserves it, because he’s the handsomest man in town.”

  The Beast looked down at his big ugly paws covered in dough and then up at her again.

  “You are…pretty,” he said gruffly. “So don’t you want to marry the handsomest man? Don’t you deserve it?”

  “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?” Belle asked, putting her hands on her hips—carefully, so the chicken juice wouldn’t get all over her. “He’s dumb, he’s arrogant, he’s self-centered, he kills a lot of things, he’s loud, he doesn’t read…”

  “I don’t read, either,” the Beast mumbled, looking into the bowl.

  Belle sighed.

  “I’m also big,” he continued, even more softly. “And loud.”

  “And apparently self-centered enough to make this all about yourself, instead of me, which is whom we were talking about,” Belle said with a not-quite-serious glare.

  The Beast immediately looked contrite.

  “betyouwouldhavemadeaprettybride,” he added under his breath, working at the dough, pretending to use all his concentration.

  Belle laughed. “Thank you.” She hadn’t even really thought of that point—had Gaston arranged some flowers or a veil for her as well? She couldn’t imagine him not caring how the prettiest bride in town would look next to the most handsome groom. It was funny to imagine him speaking with the hatmaker, maybe figuring out what to order…

  “DAMMIT!”

  Her thoughts were cut off by an explosion from the Beast: he had grabbed the bowl of dough and now threw the whole thing to the ground, smashing it into a thousand tiny clay pieces. The pâte brisée stayed as one ugly lump on the floor—splatted so thin she could almost see the design of the stones below it.

  The Beast was roiling, in full beast mode, on two legs but about to drop down to four, his face contorted in a snarl that almost made her afraid.

  “What just happened?” she asked slowly.

  “I JUST TURNED TO GET SOME MORE BUTTER AND IT TIPPED!” he howled. “It was my…paw! It got caught! STUPID! I shouldn’t be doing this!”

  “You’re right. You shouldn’t be doing this. You shouldn’t be acting like a big spoiled child who throws a tantrum whenever things don’t go his way. How old are you? Twenty? A twenty-year-old prince acting like this?”

  “I’M NOT A PRINCE. I’M A BEAST!” he roared at her. His hot breath gusted over her like the fetid wind of a rotten summer—or one of her father’s steam experiments gone horribly wrong and getting ready to blow up.

  “Really? Then why do you bother trying at all?”

  She reached up and tugged on his cloak’s golden clasp. “Why do you bother wearing any clothes? Or living inside? Or fighting your curse? Why not just give up and become a real, total beast?”

  His mouth moved silently, gaping like a fish—whether to keep from biting her or out of being unable to find the right words she wasn’t sure.

  “IT’S HARD!” he finally shouted.

  “Of course it’s hard. You’ve never cooked before,” Belle said crisply. “I suppose being a prince also means you can do everything perfectly on the first try?”

  She turned and walked back to the chicken and prepared to begin working on it again.

  The Beast was silent.

  He started to lean over and peel the dough up off the floor.

  “Don’t you dare put that back in another bowl,” Belle said without looking at him.

  “I wasn’t!” the Beast said immediately.

  “I was just…going to go get a new bowl,” he added quickly.

  Belle couldn’t quite hide her grin as he shuffled awkwardly over to the dustbin.

  Two hours later the kitchen was full of complex, amazing smells. Belle felt slightly drunk from the warmth, the scents, the complete exhaustion. Making dinner with a beast was hard work. And then making him clean up even harder. He didn’t protest, but handled an inanimate mop even more awkwardly than a beast with malformed hands should, having never touched anything like it before.

  Belle wiped her brow. It was kind of amazing to cook in a kitchen like this. She never had any particular desire to pursue a more culinary life; food was fuel to be enjoyed in between books. But if I had to cook, boy, a kitchen like this would be amazing. The space…the ingredients…the size of the stove…

  “Just what on earth is going on?” Cogsworth demanded, stomping into the room as giantly as his little padded wooden feet would allow. He stopped as soon as he saw the Beast, who was ripping o
ff his apron. “Oh, master, I’m so sorry, I was just…”

  Lumière was close behind.

  “Well, well, what have we here?” The candelabrum made a noise like he was taking a great sniff. Belle wondered if he—if any of them—could smell. Or taste. They could obviously see, but how much of the rest of their lives were deadened by the curse? “Chicken? Mushrooms? Love?”

  His flame flickered like he was waggling his eyebrows. Cogsworth hit him.

  Belle smiled. “Your master and I made dinner for ourselves tonight.”

  Cogsworth spluttered. “That’s highly—”

  “—enterprising of you,” Lumière said with a bow, cocking a questioning eye at the Beast.

  “It wasn’t my idea. But we did it,” the Beast said proudly.

  “Well, then, we shall leave you to it,” Lumière said, ushering Cogsworth out with a wave of his flaming hand. “A night off! What shall we do?”

  “…Cribbage, perhaps?”

  Belle watched the two of them go almost fondly, then checked the dining room.

  It was stark and formal-looking. Despite her insistence they do it all themselves, someone had set either end of the very long table with a full dinner service. The Beast looked at Belle. She gave him a smile and shook her head, gathering up all the spoons and forks and plates in one gentle sweep to bring them next to each other.

  When they went into the kitchen to fetch the food, they found Mrs. Potts laying everything out on a tray to bring in. She spun around guiltily.

  “Mrs. Potts,” Belle said, gently chastising. “We’re serving ourselves tonight. You deserve a break.”

  “Oh, I was just, I felt bad about before, I just…” she sputtered. “You’ve got an excellent skill with cooking, my dear! This is all amazing!”

  “If a bit élémentaire,” the stove called out helpfully.

  To the Beast’s credit, when he lifted the lid of the coq and inhaled its glorious scent—and a fair bit of steam—into his wide, animal nostrils, he did not reach in his paw and scoop up a mouthful. It looked like he sorely wanted to. Instead he put the lid back down—maybe a trifle harder than was needed. Belle smiled her approval. She was busy gathering up all the other dishes, balancing the onion tart awkwardly on one arm.