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

by Liz Braswell

  Most of the castle’s staff had gathered in the courtyard to watch and help: a strange collection of objects, furniture, and bric-a-brac scattered on the snowy ground. Some wore tatters of cloth like scarves, hearkening back to when they were human. Lumière and Mrs. Potts stood together, out of the way; the little candelabrum had an arm held comfortingly around her rounded middle. A pile of potentially useful—and inanimate—ancient weaponry lay nearby.

  The Beast howled and threw himself at the biggest, most fragile-looking pane in the webbing. There was a strange noise like a gong as the material bowed with his weight—and then immediately straightened again.

  The Beast flung himself at the window a second time, claws out to try and scratch it.

  The noise that made caused Belle and everyone watching to cover their ears and shriek to down out the terrible sound.

  “War hammer,” the Beast ordered.

  Cogsworth directed a whole phalanx of little creatures to run forward and hand him the ancient thing.

  With a mighty cry like a titan of old, the Beast took and swung the hammer around his head three times before letting it crash into the pane.

  Something happened.

  Little cracks and rivulets appeared, jagged and strange, all over the crystalline sheet—but not like ice or anything else natural. It started and stopped and branched out in ways that fooled the eye. In each new shard that was formed as a result of the subdividing, a new scene from Belle’s mother’s memory appeared. Sometimes it was the same memory, off by a fraction of a second, or from a slightly different point of view.

  The Beast roared, raised the hammer, and hit it again.

  A grating, splintering sound tinkled through the air. More cracks appeared.

  The shards shattered into more shards.

  Each, Belle suddenly noticed, was framed by a quickly growing white border of webbing.

  “Wait!” she cried out, grabbing his arm and stopping him before he hit again.

  He paused, confused.

  “It’s just reinforcing itself,” she said, pointing. “Every time you smash it!”

  Indeed it was true: the bone-white runners snaked along all of the broken pieces, thickening at junctions and throwing out more threads to protect what was left.

  The Beast howled in rage and threw the hammer down. Everyone flinched. “Cogsworth, get the suits of armor,” Belle ordered.

  “Right away!” The little clock waddled off. Almost immediately the suits came marching through, in a way which would have terrified Belle if she hadn’t known better. These had probably been palace guards before they were turned—even if they were unnatural golems now.

  “All right. Beast—as soon as you hit it, step out of the way,” Belle ordered. “As soon as he’s done, one of you rush forward and lunge, striking the glass—or whatever it is—straight on with the tip of your sword, to knock it out. Go!”

  The courtyard soon sounded with a strange, regular, mechanical tone: the whoomph bang of the war hammer, the metallic tap of a sword point slamming into the place he had just hit. It was all as precise and perfect as a cuckoo clock from the Black Forest.

  The first shard popped out and landed on the snowy ground beyond the gates.

  Lumière, Cogsworth, and Mrs. Potts cheered.

  “Keep it going!” Belle ordered. “Faster!”

  The suits of armor moved more quickly now, the last one who struck quickly marching out of the way to the back of the line while the next one hit.

  The Beast huffed and grunted. Something that was either drool or sweat flew off his head as he swung the hammer.

  More shards popped out. More threads grew back, but they were weak and thin and frangible, like spun sugar.

  They would only have a few seconds to push themselves through before the way was barred again. Belle made sure she was ready. She was wearing the fur-trimmed robe—it had made the wardrobe so happy when she took it—and held tight to a giant hooded cloak for the Beast and a satchel of supplies, including the magic mirror.

  The Beast bared his teeth and growled, slamming all of his strength into the window.

  There was a strange slowing down of time; Belle saw the hammer connect to the jagged teeth and white threads that made up what was now a lacey pane—then, suddenly, the face of the hammer was through, and there was a noise like an explosion, like a bonfire gone bad, like a cannon had ripped through the courtyard. Crystals and sticky bits of cold white twigs flew everywhere and cut where they landed.

  “NOW!” Lumière cried.

  Shielding her face with her arm, Belle dove through the hole. The jagged shards sliced through her clothing and the cold immediately moved in where blood began to seep out.

  She rolled out of the way on the hard ground as fast as she could. The Beast was right behind her. With a roar that echoed through the whole pine valley he crashed through like a demon madly destroying a stained-glass window in a church.

  Unlike her, he landed on all four feet, and immediately shook off the bits of crystal and webbing that came with him.

  Belle turned to look back: the bone-white webs were growing faster than ever, making terrible little slithery noises in the stone and snow. Almost like they were angry about the breach. As she watched, Cogsworth, Lumière, and Mrs. Potts became blurry and dim when the panes re-formed themselves. Lumière gave a little wave that she could just see because of the flame that twinkled at the end of his arm.

  “Good luck!” she heard them call.

  And then all was silent. Snow was falling again.

  Belle stood up and adjusted her pack, trying not to be overwhelmed with how utterly sad the scene before her was. She, the one who brought down the curse, had now escaped, leaving everyone inside to their fate. She could run away now if she wanted, she could run as far as she could, to Paris even, and pretend none of this had ever happened. And because of the curse, it would be like it never happened. She could forget the kingdom had ever existed.

  She waved, hoping the little creatures sealed inside the glass and bone chrysalis could see her, and tried not to cry.

  The Beast saw her.

  “I’ll come back. Whatever happens,” he promised. “I’m…king now. I need to share the fate of my people.”

  Somehow that only made Belle want to cry more.

  “You aren’t out of danger yourself,” the Beast reminded her gravely. “You’re in the middle of the woods with a beast as the curse grows stronger. I won’t be able to control it forever.”

  Belle had a sudden vision of her body, and blood-stained snow, like something out of a fairy tale gone wrong. She shook her head.

  “No. You would never hurt me.”

  The Beast gave a wan smile…and then leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.

  “I would kill myself first,” he whispered.

  The two began to walk silently though the falling snow, their tracks back to the castle covered up like an icy wave over the sand.

  The prisoner sagged on the operating table, waiting for her next session.

  Of the many, many thoughts that she had lost over the years, to time, to darkness, to pain, at least one remained: why?

  He had actually managed to accomplish quite a bit of what he set out to do initially, using every physical ‘remedy’ he could think of. He injected her blood with iron. He opened her belly and placed lodestones there. He made his knives very sharp and cut open her head and tried to root around for the source of her power. He forced draughts down her throat that he insisted weren’t potions but scientifically formulated elixirs guaranteed to grab the magic and render it inactive.

  Through trial and error, through hints gleaned from elsewhere—i.e., more torture, of others—he had done what hadn’t been achieved since the Dark Ages.

  He had removed almost all of her magic.

  She could feel it. Couldn’t he, with his instruments and devices, his measuring calipers and graduated beakers, see it as well?

  With a week’s time and all h
er strength, she might, just might, be able to turn her hair color. Or fix a single feather on the broken wing of a sparrow. Or enchant a cup of tea to stop a consumptive’s cough for an hour or so.

  There was almost no major transformative magic left in her, and no death magic to begin with. She wasn’t an illusionist.

  He had won.

  So why was he still doing it?

  There was a commotion somewhere in the dark; muffled screams and thuds, the pounding of boots thrusting back against some surprisingly limber and angry captive.

  When she had first been kidnapped, years ago, people were brought in every week—sometimes several at a time. Some didn’t even merit torture. They were brought down through the dungeon door, past all the cells and through the black door at the end of the hall, never to be seen again, never to be brought to the same prep room or same operating tables she was. But these days new victims were rare.

  The noise of the fight came closer. Fleshy, softened thunks and thuds seemed to indicate this victim wasn’t going along quietly.

  “Villains! Ruffians!” he swore.

  Her heart froze.

  She knew that voice.

  The prisoner strained to turn her head as far as the plate holding her neck would let her go, to look through the open door. She could see, despite every part of her praying for it not to be—and a tiny, selfish part of her wishing it was—a stout middle-aged man, straining and struggling among the three hooded thugs who sought to drag him in.

  He had barely aged at all in the years since she had seen him. His hair was all gray now, to be sure, but his cheeks were as ruddy and round as they ever were.

  With a gasp that scraped her lungs raw, she realized he even still had those rounded marks around his eyes from the ridiculous ugly goggles he always wore.

  One of the thugs got a solid blow in, a knee to Maurice’s side. He went slack, all the breath knocked out of him. As he tried to recover his head lolled to the side. And then he saw her.

  His look was one of slowly dawning horror.

  But not, she realized after a heartbreaking moment, one of recognition.

  He didn’t know his own wife. The matted, dried blood in the wreck of her hair, the scars on her brow and her gaunt cheeks—it made a mask of her ruined face. Her body, limp and twisted from the dreadful labors exercised upon it in this terrible prison…none of it was familiar.

  Also, there was that stupid forget spell she had enacted to protect her family.

  She felt a sob beginning in her dry, empty bosom.

  “Maurice,” she croaked one last time, as loudly as she could.

  His eyes widened.

  “Rosalind?” he murmured.

  Then his face went red in a mask of rage and fury.

  “ROSALIND!”

  He thrust out with arms that were thick from picking up heavy pieces of metal and machinery. He kicked with legs used to pushing carts stacked with bricks and ingots when Phillipe wouldn’t cooperate.

  Whirling like a berserker, Maurice broke free and crawled into the operating room, to Rosalind.

  He didn’t waste a moment touching her cheek gently or tenderly stroking her brow; he immediately put his meaty hands around the bar that held her neck down and began to try and pry it off.

  For just a moment Rosalind wondered if she wasn’t dreaming again. Like she used to when she was first thrown into the dungeon; when in the dark her fantasies became real and she could have sworn that she was actually with Maurice and Belle again and her cell was nothing but a nightmare.

  The tiny details she observed while he tried to free her proved reality, however. There was a scar by his left eye that hadn’t been there the last time she had seen him. Was his hair a little thinner up front? And maybe there were a few extra pounds around his belly…maybe he was managing all right for himself, eating well as a man should at his age, enjoying himself….

  And then a leather-covered baton came down cleanly onto the base of Maurice’s neck.

  He fell unconscious immediately, slumping to the ground like an actor in a mummery.

  “No,” Rosalind croaked, choking.

  Now that he was inert, the thugs—none too gently—picked him up and carried him off like a corpse, his torso swinging lifelessly between them.

  “No!” Rosalind put all her effort into trying to scream. “He has no magic!” She tried to think of the right words, words these monsters would understand. “He is…not a charmante! He is pure! Innocent! LET HIM BE!”

  But the door on the far side of the room opened and clanged shut, leaving her more alone than ever.

  Coming back to the village through the snow, under the dark cloudy skies, Belle felt like she had been away for a lifetime. She had, in fact, never left the village by herself before this. There were a couple of overnight trips to fairs with her father, and once or twice during mushroom season they got swept up in the fury and spent a few nights in the forest, gathering morels and truffles and camping out. But that was all, and always with Papa.

  She gazed at the snug little houses and their lights and felt around the recesses of her heart carefully, seeing if she felt any different. It was a lovely little place, despite the provincialism of its inhabitants. A clean and safe and pretty place to grow up. But…even as framed as it was from a distance, as perfect as any terribly twee landscape painting, Belle felt nothing but a slight twinge of future nostalgia. No sadness, no missing it yet. The village was like an egg—she had developed there, she had been imprisoned there, she was trying to break free. But it had a pretty shell.

  “So you’re from here?” the Beast grunted from beneath his hood.

  “Yes, but further on—over there, outside town. You can’t see our house, it’s hidden by the hill,” she said, pointing.

  Belle looked back at the dark forest out of which they had come. Because of its shape and the depth of the valley, she couldn’t see even the highest points of the castle.

  “It’s like it’s already gone,” she murmured.

  “Maybe it wasn’t meant to be,” the Beast said softly, immediately understanding what she meant. “Maybe we were always meant to disappear, one way or another.”

  They were silent for a moment and the snow fell.

  “Come on,” Belle said, shaking herself, refusing to give in to melancholy. “We should go see Papa first. Oh, won’t he be so amazed to hear about everything?”

  “We go see the bookseller first,” her companion corrected gently but firmly.

  “But Papa will be so worried about me!”

  “Belle. We have little time. The castle was sinking—you saw it. Let’s break the curse first and then have our happy reunions.”

  Belle’s head drooped. He was right. If she hadn’t been so impulsive and grabby to begin with, none of this would have happened. Except for her father, she had never really had to think about anyone else before or put anyone’s needs above her own.

  “All right. First Lévi, and then my papa.”

  They decided to go the more direct route across the river since they had no horse or cart. The bridge was out, the swollen, semi-frozen river swallowing it in rounded mounds of ice and rushing water. But a rope gondola was tied where the current remained swift and, while Belle worried for a moment about their combined weight, the tiny boat only dipped a little as the Beast embarked. He had obviously never seen such a thing before but as soon as she lifted the rope he got the idea and easily pulled them across, with no more effort than if he were reeling in an empty hook and line.

  “Smoke,” he said, frowning, when they were halfway across.

  “Mmm,” Belle sighed. “Everyone’s in for the night, all warm and cozy.”

  An icy wind blew down the river, skimming the water like a dragonfly during the summer. Without a word the Beast stood closer to Belle, between her and the cold. He radiated warmth, rather like a cow or a goat—but smelled much better. She almost regretted it when they stepped off the little raft and onto the gravelly path of the vi
llage proper.

  Most of the shops had closed early for the cold, dark day. The streets were almost entirely empty. Still the Beast kept out of the meager light, slinking predatorily from shadow to shadow, hiding behind lampposts and signs. Belle wasn’t sure if she should be delighted or disappointed that the few people they passed failed to recognize her. All she was doing was wearing a different—albeit new and fancy—cloak. It was like the villagers couldn’t see past the red on her hood.

  As she pondered this, she saw drifts of the smoke that the Beast had smelled—and it wasn’t normal wood smoke. It hung in the air, transparent and gray, as if from a fire that had been out for a while but still smoldered. The scent wasn’t bad at all; in fact, there was something strangely familiar about it.

  “It’s not time for the Christmas bonfire,” Belle said, puzzled. She headed off the main street to the right, where the bookshop was. The smoke grew thicker.

  When they turned the corner she finally saw the source of the smoke.

  Belle sank to her knees in the street with a cry.

  There was almost nothing left to Monsieur Levi’s bookstore but four blackened walls, a smoking roof, and rubble and ashes.

  Monsieur Lévi! And all of those books…

  The fire had brushed the nearby buildings, but except for some singed roofs the little houses were fine. A few old people were sweeping and tidying up nearby; it looked like the blaze had occurred more than a day before. Strange black ashes, as thin and flat as the petals of some ugly tropical flower, fluttered easily with the slightest breath. They covered the plaza and gathered in corners, whirling around and around themselves.

  On some, a few words could still be seen.

  The town is covered in books, Belle thought, nearly sick with sadness. In the only way it could be.

  One tightly bundled villager hurried by and without thinking Belle grabbed his coat. The Beast was obviously torn for a moment, but his need to hide finally outweighed his desire to comfort Belle. He slipped into the dark shadows of a nearby doorway.

  “Monsieur,” Belle cried. “What happened here?”