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

by Liz Braswell

  Tears coursed down Belle’s cheeks. Was it better to never have had a mother—or to have one and lose one?

  The Beast shook himself. “What remained of the court fled in droves after that…what good is an empty kingdom with no one to rule? What political use is a ten-year-old orphan prince in a backwards land?”

  “Beast…” Belle said softly, squeezing his giant arm.

  He sighed deeply.

  “We mourned for a year, as was customary. And then it was time for my coronation. And the night before…”

  “My mother showed up, and turned you into the Beast,” Belle finished softly.

  “Turned me into?” The Beast chuckled with despair. “You and your mother think I was well on my way to becoming one all on my own. As unfair as it was to do this to an eleven-year-old boy…why would she come the night before my coronation? She was testing me, to see if I would be as terrible a ruler as my parents. And I failed that test.”

  Belle opened her mouth to say that it still wasn’t a fair thing to do to a child. But…seen from a different angle, the larger picture, it began to make sense. The previous king and queen had turned a prosperous, happy kingdom into an empty nightmare where people were dying in the streets of plague or were beaten and “disappeared” for being different.

  Maybe her mother was just doing what she thought would protect the little that was left.

  Still, it seemed a rather harsh burden for one so young.

  “I know they were terrible rulers. Even as a child I sometimes felt like they weren’t doing the right things. They turned away petitioners…their own subjects, whose houses were taken from them or were being vandalized…poor folk who were repeatedly beaten by the same thugs who always went unpunished…Sometimes they acted like the tyrants in stories my nurse read to me.

  “That’s why I lost my temper last night. I know you’re right about them, but…They’re dead.” His voice was beginning to degrade into a growl. “Their mistakes are overrr. Can’t everyone just leave them alone now?”

  The growl turned into a roar. He opened his mouth and howled, his tusks and teeth bare, his eyes closed. It was angry and mournful and chilling all at once—like nothing Belle had ever heard before. Like something ancient and large and lonely that haunted the woods, forever looking for something it was missing.

  It had begun to snow again, she noticed, and his hot breath melted the timid flakes all around his giant head like some magical beast who breathed fire.

  Belle gazed at the haunted, unkempt gardens and the mournful ancient cemetery. The air suddenly felt bitterly cold: the flakes became larger and stranger-looking. Ashes, Belle suddenly realized as she touched one with her finger and it remained, unmelting. Ashes from some dreadful, world-ending fire, signs of a war that consumed the land, a vision of everything ending.

  Two tyrants who behaved like they had never been taught right and wrong ruling their playbox kingdom hidden in the woods of France…and her own mother, who decided to take it upon herself to punish them and test their child. Everyone behaving like little gods.

  She took a deep breath. “I am so sorry, Beast.”

  He gave a sad smile. “I used to have a name—a real name, before all this.”

  “What was it?”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” he said, shaking his head. “Even if…even if I turned back into a person, I’ll never be that person again.”

  “Oh…” Belle felt the tears welling up in her eyes and bit her lip.

  “No, it’s not so bad,” the Beast said quietly, putting his paw on top of her hand. To comfort her. “Not…all change is bad. You’re making me realize that.”

  Belle felt like crying for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate. She realized that even if she hadn’t been the one to mess up everything with the rose, even if it wasn’t her own mother who laid the curse, she would still have done all she could to help him. It was a strange feeling; she never really had the opportunity to help anyone before, except for her father.

  Belle put her hand on top of his paw and squeezed.

  “We’ll figure this all out. Together,” she promised.

  The Beast looked down at her in wonder for a moment. Then he put his other arm around her. She leaned into his warm side, and he didn’t pull away.

  The tavern, so lively not that long ago, was now gloomy and cold. It was the hour for dark things: far past midnight but not close enough to dawn for any hope of light. A fire was still burning in the enormous fireplace, banked low, more chastised and sullen than cheery.

  Three lonely figures gathered around the single illuminated table, heads and shoulders bent close despite the absence of anyone around to hear.

  Gaston was there, of course, his giant profile unmistakable. And next to him was his equally recognizable friend LeFou, who was sipping somewhat nervously at a tankard of cidre. The third man was thin, with taut, papery skin barely covering his skeleton. He seemed as ancient as a real mummy, but there was nothing frail in the way he held himself over the fancy cordial Gaston had poured. His hair was long in back but without a ribbon confining it, the locks strangely neat and greasy. He had all of his teeth—or a very fine set of someone else’s—that showed clearly whenever he talked or smiled, which was rare.

  There was an odd smell about him, too—not from him, but a miasma around his clothes, his cloak, his hat. Something that reminded one a little too much of dangerous chemicals, vomit and decay, of urine and years. Gaston tried to move his head away without seeming impolite.

  “I don’t usually leave the asylum during the week—much less the middle of the night, but they said you’d make it worth my while,” the old man said, completely frozen otherwise. He didn’t even play with the base of the glass where his yellow fingers rested.

  “Of course, Monsieur D’Arque,” Gaston said as politely as he could. He wasn’t used to dealing with refined gentlemen. Not that he needed to, most of the time. He pulled a small sack of coins from his coat and tossed it on the table.

  At first D’Arque looked repulsed—either at the gesture or the size of the sack, it was hard to tell which. Then he reached out with a not-so-tentative hand and pulled the laces apart. His eyes glowed the same gold as whatever he found in there and a horrid smile formed on his lips.

  “I’m…listening.”

  “It’s like this,” Gaston said, as if presenting a tricky and serious situation, like the capturing of an enemy castle. “I’ve got my heart set on marrying Belle, but she needs a little persuasion.”

  “A little persuasion? She turned you down flat,” LeFou pointed out.

  Gaston picked up the tankard of cidre and shoved it at his friend’s mouth. LeFou burbled in protest but drank.

  “Everyone knows her father’s a lunatic…” the hunter continued, waving his hand nonchalantly.

  “Be careful using that word,” D’Arque said with a delicate menace. “Maurice is utterly harmless.”

  Gaston pounded his fists on the table in exasperation.

  “He was in here tonight raving about some beast that is keeping Belle locked up in a castle!”

  D’Arque’s eyes flickered and he frowned slightly. Otherwise, he made no motion.

  “Surely he was jesting.”

  “He seemed pretty serious to all of us,” LeFou said, shaking his head. “Going on about what a big beast it was…with fangs and—”

  “He said it could talk,” Gaston interrupted, shrugging. “Like a man.”

  “How very unusual,” D’Arque said, leaning forward. “A talking beast. Do tell me more.”

  “Oh, what does it matter?” the hunter roared. “The point is he is insane, and Belle would do anything to keep him from being locked up.”

  “Yeah, even marry him,” LeFou said, rolling his eyes. Gaston glowered but didn’t disagree.

  “I see,” D’Arque said with glittering smile. “Well, normally I would hesitate at the whole idea of throwing an innocent man into the asylum unless his beautiful daughter mar
ries you. Even for gold. But you’ve piqued my curiosity….All right, I shall do it.”

  “Excellent! Let’s drink to it!” Gaston raised his giant beer tankard for a toast and white foam spilled over the top. LeFou held up his smaller mug of cidre. D’Arque lifted his own delicate cordial glass, a glint of malice in his eye….

  After a few minutes of sitting quietly but companionably in the falling snow, the Beast rose and offered his arm to her for the way back.

  “While we’re out here…why don’t you show me the stables?” Belle ventured.

  The Beast looked at her, surprised.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know…I just have this feeling…the disappearance of Alaric Potts….A vision that was shown to me last night involved a rider. I don’t think it was a coincidence. Even if it wasn’t Alaric, maybe it was something else connected to horses. And since this is the only stable we can get to, well, maybe it will spark something.”

  “What did the rider look like in the vision?” the Beast asked curiously.

  “It was hard to tell—it was night, and dark. He obviously knew my family. A skinny man, tall, a little bowlegged…”

  “That sounds like him, I think,” the Beast said, a little doubtfully. “But I was a child. Everyone was tall.”

  Belle laughed. “It’s hard to imagine you being small.”

  The Beast smiled self-consciously…and then his ears twitched. He turned, spotting what Belle would have missed: a tiny brown bird tucked deep and snug inside a ragged untrimmed topiary. While it was unclear if the Prince’s beast form came from a cat or a dog or some sort of primordial aurochs, he definitely looked like he was twitching his tail, entranced by the little sparrow.

  Belle slapped him delicately on the wrist.

  The Beast shook himself and kept walking—but he gave her a rueful sideways grin.

  The stables were just outside of the main collection of towers and turrets that made up the castle but still inside the grounds’ outer walls. They were also the first buildings—beside’s Belle’s apartment—being tentatively covered by the glacial spiderwebs. One main line of webbing had made its way to the corner of the ancient stone edifice and branched out into multiple strands, each slowly creeping up to the roof.

  Belle tried not to panic. Without her knowing precisely what would happen, the webs still spoke of an eventual, and eerie, end to things.

  In the vee of two forking strands was another pane of ice, like the one in her window. She paused to see if a vision would appear.

  She was not disappointed.

  It appeared to be a scene at a tavern, of all places—though the complete silence made the otherwise festive scene seem sad and spooky. Maurice was there, toasting two other men. One had an easy smile and a sloshing beer, the other had a thin smile and bright black eyes that seemed to burn unhealthily, like tiny coals.

  “Do you see—” she started to say, but a cloud passed from the sun, the light changed, and the vision faded. They weren’t strong in the daylight, apparently.

  The Beast had opened the large double doors to the mews and gone in. Belle followed quickly, glad to be out of the cold. It smelled musty and old inside: no fresh tang of horse manure or newly dried hay. All of the silage and feed had crumbled to beige dust years ago, and had since been pilfered by rodents.

  “So you haven’t been in here in ten years,” Belle said, looking in each of the stalls.

  “Only to set them free,” the Beast sighed. “Before that I was also here very rarely. When Alaric…disappeared, my parents eventually hired a replacement who didn’t think stables were the proper place for a prince. The horses were already saddled and brought out front for my rides. I missed being here. It was always so warm, and friendly, and the horses were so soft, and I thought it smelled nice….” But he twitched his nose unhappily.

  “What was the name of your favorite horse?” Belle asked, poking at a feed trough.

  “Lightning. He was big, and fast, and beautiful.”

  But he seemed distracted as he said it.

  There was a small space set aside for the stablemaster and furnished with a large table for working on equipment. All sorts of tools and whips and little bags of medicines were arranged on shelves nearby. Belle poked through everything, unsure what she was looking for. For all she—or anyone—knew, Alaric had been knocked on the head and dragged off when he went down to the tavern for a pint. It might have had nothing to do with les charmantes.

  Nothing looked out of order—it was all just very dusty.

  “Well, I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t know if this is getting us anywhere….”

  The Beast began to snort in big sniffs, moving his head back and forth. Alarmed, Belle backed out of the way.

  “If you’re hunting rats, I don’t want to know.”

  “No…What’s that smell?” the Beast said, wrinkling his giant nose. “It smells like…I don’t know what it smells like.”

  Belle closed her eyes to concentrate. The Vintner’s Guide to Precisely Categorizing the Wines of France mentioned all sorts of incredibly nuanced aromas in very expensive wine: slate, bark, cherries, strange herbs, all of which she had to imagine, since cidre and local vin ordinaire were all they had in the village.

  She could detect hints of hay, and cold dust, and rat, but that was about it.

  “It just smells musty to me,” she admitted.

  “No, it’s like…rot? Old rot?”

  The Beast pushed her aside, gently, as he sort of slithered his way around the cold, stony space, moving his head like a snake or a bloodhound. Belle almost didn’t want to watch; it was entirely inhuman.

  “Over here,” the Beast said, pointing to a corner in the largest stall. He began to scrabble at the dirt-packed floor like a pig rooting for truffles.

  “Uh, I don’t think…”

  But then she looked at the room again, with a more discerning eye. Where he was digging, the floor was uneven, and higher than the area around it. The stones in the wall near the floor were chipped in places, like a shovel had accidentally struck in a mad attempt to mine out that part of the stables.

  The dirt wasn’t as hard-packed as in the other stalls, either; it didn’t take a lot of force for the Beast’s claws to tear it up.

  Then one of his claws snagged on something, with a terrible-sounding rip.

  Belle jumped at the noise.

  The Beast held up his paw: trailing off of it was a strip of fabric. It was blue and lightweight, woven…not the sort of heavy canvas one would expect to find in a hard-working part of the castle. Not part of a saddle, or a basket, or a blanket…

  It was a piece of clothing.

  “Keep digging,” Belle whispered, trying not to guess what was buried under the dirt.

  The Beast threw the cloth aside and redoubled his effort, pulling up clods of dirt like a badger. Belle found herself unconsciously leaning slightly forward to see, despite her reluctance.

  He suddenly sat back, finished.

  With much gentler, slower motions he swept the now-loosened dirt away.

  “There,” he said sadly.

  Belle leaned over his shoulder to look…

  And nearly screamed.

  There, at the bottom of a low trench, lay a half-rotted, dry and bony corpse.

  Belle realized after a moment that she had never actually fainted.

  Heroines in books—and even sometimes heroes—always had violent reactions to finding skeletons or dead bodies.

  But after she got over the initial fright of seeing the ivory skull bulging through the papery skin and the eye sockets and the whole thing in its rotted clothes, well, she found she was more than a little curious. She had never been this close to a body this far gone before.

  The Beast’s face had turned to a terrible look, somewhere between a grimace and a snarl, his teeth all bared and his lips pulled back.

  He leaned over the corpse, searching the body with claws retracted. After a moment
he pulled up what he had been apparently looking for: a belt buckle, bits of the leather still clinging to it. A horse’s head had been worked into the upper part of the clasp.

  “This is…Alaric Potts,” the Beast said thickly. “My parents presented this to him when he got married…”

  Belle covered her mouth. For a moment she did feel like fainting. It was one thing to see a random corpse, and quite another to realize that the person they had been talking about just minutes before was here, reduced to bone and sinew, long, long deceased. This body had been the Beast’s favorite servant, father to the little teacup…

  “They told me he ran away. Because of me!”

  The Beast howled mournfully for a second time that afternoon. Belle had to cover her ears; his cry echoed inside the stables like nothing she had ever heard before.

  When he finally quieted, he put the belt buckle back on the body—delicately, as if laying an amulet or sword on the body of an ancient king like Beowulf.

  “But…but why was he…” Belle wanted to say buried there, but it was fairly obvious that it wasn’t a sanctioned—or known about—burial.

  The Beast, showing no reticence despite his sadness—and maybe exhibiting a touch of anger—reached into the trench and carefully pulled the body out. As it twisted toward the floor, a knife could plainly be seen sticking out of his sternum.

  Belle steadied herself.

  “Murder,” she whispered. “Plain, simple murder.”

  The Beast eyed the body speculatively. “Not simple,” he finally said. “Stabbed from the front. Either a second person held his arms behind him, to keep him from fighting, or…he was killed by someone he knew. And didn’t expect it.”

  Belle knelt by the body, mind whirling. She still couldn’t tell if this was the rider from her vision. “What kind of knife is that?” she asked.

  With less delicacy than she would have liked, the Beast pulled the metal thing out of Alaric’s body.