As Old As Time: A Twisted Tale (Twisted Tale, A) (25 page)

“It was one person,” Cogsworth said patienty, “who had to watch as her people were…harassed and hunted down. In her own twisted way she was doing what she thought was right to protect them and save what was the rest of the kingdom. And you cannot blame an entire group for the actions of one.”

“But…”

“We are all ‘charmantes’ now!
” Lumière said, pounding a brass fist on the table. It was the first time Belle had seen serious, strong emotion in what seemed like an otherwise laid-back little guy. “It doesn’t matter anymore! It’s just as well the rest of the world has forgotten about us, because if they hadn’t people would swoop in and kill us for being tainted by the devil or lock us up in a circus!”

All of the creatures looked around at each other and then at the ground awkwardly after his outburst.

“I don’t understand,” Belle said, resting her weary head on her hands. “No one in the village where I grew up even believes in magic. The village right over there, across the river. From all of this. And my mother disappeared
after
we moved there. So it couldn’t have been some…sort of…witch hunt…right?”

“It’s a lot to take in for one night,” Mrs. Potts said kindly, waddling forward. She seemed tired, like just moving took effort.

“I think, maybe, we should
all
retire,” Lumière suggested, trying to sound like his old self again.

All the spoons, cups, mops, garden equipment, and assorted animated household things clipped and clanked and clopped stiffly down from the table, onto the chairs, and finally to the floor. Some of them weren’t moving too well at all; one of the spoons seemed so sleepy and stiff that she had to be carried by her friends. Belle wondered about that—but then Cogsworth’s face chimed. It was late. They were probably just tired, and didn’t show it the way normal people did. Maybe, like Cinderella, the magic changed at midnight.

“I just have a few more dishes,” Belle said, also getting up.

“Leave it, dear,” Mrs. Potts said. “We’ll deal with it fresh and early in the morning.”

“But the whole point was to give you all a night off!” Belle protested.

“You’ve done enough—I mean that sincerely,” the teapot said, turning this way and that but keeping her spout directed at Belle. The gesture seemed to be the equivalent of a knowing smile. “You’ve done more to bring life—and change—into these walls than anything has in the past ten years.”

Belle’s look turned dark.

“I wonder if maybe your whole kingdom was cursed long before my mother showed up. Disease…ethnic cleansing…a king and queen who didn’t care for their people…”

Mrs. Potts sighed. “It wasn’t always like that. It used to be quite a magical place, in all senses of the word. Ah, well.”

She struggled to waddle her way to the edge of the table, the end of the parade of creatures retreating back to the kitchen. With some alarm Belle reacted before she thought, gently picking up Mrs. Potts and setting her on the floor. She wasn’t sure if it was breaking some sort of unspoken code among the cursed, but it just felt right.

Mrs. Potts felt warm but unmoving in her hand—just like a real, normal teapot. If it weren’t for the twitch of her spout, Belle never would have known she was anything but.

“Thank you, my dear,” Mrs. Potts said, shuffling off into the kitchen.

Belle wondered who babysat the baby cups during the dinner party.
A nursemaid pitcher?

Sighing at how crazy her life had become in the last few days, Belle tiredly—and stiffly, too, in her own way—headed up to her room.

She held the balustrades tightly as she ascended the stairs, pulling herself along, deep in thought.

In adventure books there weren’t awkward pauses or embarrassing social scenes. In morality plays and farces there were rarely serious discussions of racial tension, mob mentality, pogroms, or plague. In scientific books there were no dinnertime revelations of a terrible matter.

Life is a strange mixture of all of these genres,
she mused,
and it doesn’t have nearly as neat and happy an ending as you often get in books.

When she got to her room, the wardrobe was asleep. Or—very still.

Belle undressed slowly and climbed into bed, head spinning with all she had learned.

A kingdom at the end of its time, corrupt with evil and disease.

A king and queen so removed they were as bad as Nero, literally doing nothing while their kingdom burned.

A curse on an eleven-year-old, delivered by an enchantress probably enraged by the treatment of her people and angry about the neglect of the kingdom as a whole.

But did the boy prince really deserve his fate?

And here was Belle, who had hurried that unhappily ever after along. Unless they found out what happened to her mother—or managed to find some equally powerful member of
les charmantes
—the Beast and his servants would be stuck that way forever, riding out the remainder of time in the forgotten castle in the middle of the woods.

Magic…always comes back on itself….

One last thought occurred to Belle before sleep finally claimed her:

What if, since her mother was the one who cast the spell, Belle was the only one who could
break
it?

Maurice looked out the window of the automatic carriage with a strange mixture of desperation, revulsion, and regret.

Regret
because despite the dire circumstances, he was being carried home by a marvel—a magical thing that figured out the way without eyes or ears and trotted along without a horse. He wished he had more time and the ability to observe it properly, poke at it, tinker with it. See if it obeyed anyone other than the Beast.

Revulsion
because when he dreamed of a world filled with carriages that could drive themselves and carts without horses, he never imagined such a sickly insectoid thing. The magical conveyance didn’t roll—it didn’t have wheels at all. Instead it creeped along on its shafts and axles, making a terrible scurrying noise. Like a giant cockroach.

And
desperation
because he had to go find someone to help him get Belle—immediately!

But who?

He didn’t really have any close friends, and he suspected that Monsieur Lévi probably wouldn’t be up to a raid on a magical castle. The man was easily twenty years older than Maurice himself.

Who was young and strong enough to help? Who could round up a posse of helpers to go after the Beast?

And then it hit him. There was only one person, really, and it should have been obvious.

As soon as the carriage turned onto the main square, Maurice started to pull at the door. He needn’t have tried so hard; it was unlocked and swung open easily, causing him to tumble out onto the wet, cold stones. The carriage thing screeched to a halt.

“Uh, good-bye, thank you,” Maurice called distractedly. He wasn’t sure what the etiquette was with a thing like that, but it never hurt to be polite.

The carriage executed a strange four-legged curtsy or bow—just the way he imagined elephants in the Far East did to let people up and down their enormous backs. Then it scuttled off in its nauseating fashion.

Snow was falling, Maurice suddenly realized. He had been so preoccupied with everything on the trip back he hadn’t even noticed. Running carefully on the slick cobblestones, he made for the pub.

It seemed as if the usual crowd had been drinking there for a while that night already; the sounds of laughter and singing spilled out into the otherwise silent town.

The wind caught the door as Maurice threw it open, slamming it loudly and theatrically. It wasn’t what he intended, but the resulting effect was useful: everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to stare.

“Help! Everyone, I need your help!”

“Maurice…?” the old barmaid asked, concerned.

“He took her and locked her in a dungeon!”

Damn his inability to speak clearly. Communication had never been one of the inventor’s strengths…and it was definitely a liability now.

“Who?”

That was LeFou, Gaston’s little friend. He wasn’t a bad sort if you could get him away from the hunter. Not that bright, but fiercely loyal and game for just about anything. Exactly the sort of man you would want along on a beast-hunting expedition.

“
Belle!
We have to go! Not a minute to lose!”

He grabbed LeFou’s hand and spun to leave, wildly checking the rack of guns and firearms and other weapons that were kept by the door. They would need to be heavily armed.

“Whoa, slow down, Maurice! Who’s got Belle locked in a…
dungeon
?”

Suddenly, Gaston was between him and LeFou. For a big man he moved surprisingly quickly. Even in Maurice’s addled state, he noticed there were odd patches of mud that had been carefully brushed off—but not entirely removed
from
—the man’s inappropriately fancy pants. Was he hunting in formal gear when he fell into a pig wallow?

A mystery for another time…

“A beast. A terrible, horrible beast!” Maurice made his arms go as wide as they could.

Gaston raised his eyebrows at the patrons at the bar, who had all turned around to listen.

“Is it a…
big
beast?” one of them asked.

“Huge!”
Maurice said, shuddering.

“But did it have sharp, cruel fangs?” another asked.

“Yes! But it spoke like a man! And walked on two feet!”

“What about…a long, ugly snout?” a third asked.

“Yes, yes!”
Maurice said, exasperated. Who cared what the Beast looked like in detail? It was dangerous and had his Belle. “Will you help me?”

“Of course,” Gaston said politely. He gestured with his chin to the barflies. “We’ll help you out.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” Maurice said with a sigh.

The inventor turned back to the door. The village was a touch-and-go place, filled with people of questionable morality, but when push came to shove, his neighbors really did…

Suddenly he found arms under his shoulders and his feet dangling off the floor.

“We’ll help you
out
!” someone cried.

The door was thrown open in front of him. Maurice was pitched out into the black cold.

“No!” he shrieked, spinning around immediately.

But the door slammed in his face.

He hit it again and again as hard as he could with his fists.

“No! I
saw it
! I saw it!” he screamed. “Will no one listen?”

Gaston stuck his head out a window to take one last look before shutting it.

“Crazy old Maurice…hmm…”

“I’m not crazy!”
Maurice shrieked. “Will
someone
help me?”

But the town was dead, everyone inside with their families or loved ones, doors and windows barred tight.

“I’ll just have to go rescue her myself,” Belle’s father said quietly, once the reality of the situation sank in. He was a dreamer, it was true—but no inventor lasted long in his or her career by giving in to dreaming. The moment something didn’t work, either due to a misunderstanding of how a metal behaved or how steam would push a certain way, you had to immediately stop and think and figure out what the cause of the problem was and start again from there. Practical, pragmatic, dogged—these were all the adjectives used to describe successful inventors.

Maurice turned around in the cold night and headed steadily for home.

He wished, however, that his wife were there to help. She was…he vaguely recalled…extremely useful and handy at times like these…even if he couldn’t exactly remember how….

Dawn was a paling of the black-and-blue sky to the east; the sun was at least an hour from rising. The fire was nothing but embers, and Belle realized she had been shocked awake by the cold on her face. She turned over in bed and saw, to her dismay, there were no more logs in the neat stack.

Immediately she felt ashamed; only two days in a castle and already she was coming to expect service, perfect and punctual!

This is no worse than home on a winter morning,
she told herself, closing her eyes and bracing herself for the quick emergence from bed that such mornings usually prompted. It was like jumping into a freezing lake.