As Old As Time: A Twisted Tale (Twisted Tale, A) (34 page)

“Papa!”
Belle cried when she saw Maurice enter the scene.

She and the Beast watched the Enchantress and the inventor court; they watched them spend time with friends late into the night. Then they watched them wait for friends who never showed up. The couple turned from sunny and happy to nervous and angry as the flavor of the kingdom changed.

They saw her mother go to the palace….

“Mother.
Father,
” the Beast whispered.

…and entreat the king and queen for what was obviously protection and help for
les charmantes.
They saw the king and queen turn her away.

The Beast made a noise in his throat, somewhere between a whimper and a curse and a
no
, ashamed of his own parents.

They witnessed Belle come into the world—in a little too much detail for the Beast, who had to turn away in shock.

They too experienced sadness and fear as
charmantes
left, one by one, or disappeared, and the kingdom grew bleak and frightening.

They saw fever and plague come and bodies and incense burned, and a quarantine thrown up against the outside world, too little, too late.

They saw a little family fleeing a dying kingdom.

They saw a midnight rider….

“Alaric,” the Beast said mournfully.

They saw him come, again and again, to the little house in the village, often when it was dark and there was no moon—and always with a rider or two behind him. They saw Belle’s parents usher the fleeing
charmantes
inside and give Alaric some food and hot wine for the trip home. They watched
les charmantes
moving on the next night, loaded up with more food and sometimes money, heading on out to the world….

“It wasn’t just one
charmante
,” Belle said slowly. “It was…dozens. It was like…they were helping all of them…escape….That’s why there were all of those lists and tables in his notebook. He
was
smuggling.
Charmantes.
Lots of them.”

Belle noticed, also, that
she
never appeared in any of the scenes with Alaric and those he rescued. Her parents did a very good job of keeping her from witnessing any of it.

Then Alaric stopped coming. They saw a pale and waxy king and queen beg Belle’s mother for help, and her refusal…And Belle was torn between shame and wonder at a woman who saved some people and refused to help others…

…until the next scene, which showed the Enchantress back at home, waving her fingers and staring into the distance. The castle leapt into view again, and white sparks like rose petals gently fell over it, disappearing as they landed. A sleeping boy, the young prince, shifted in his sleep with a faint smile, receiving the sparks happily.

“She’s casting a spell?” Belle asked, confused.

Then it cut to her mother handing Monsieur Lévi the little mirror and clasping her hand around his, enclosing it within.

And then the mirror faded.

“It’s a…diary.”

The Beast spoke aloud first, guessing the truth of it. “My mirror just shows exactly what is going on in the present—right now. This shows her…memories.”

“She gave this to Monsieur Lévi….” Belle turned the little mirror over in her hand, a look of wonder on her face. “Like she was asking him to keep it for her, in case something happened to her. Like she
knew.

“She
was
thinking about me. She didn’t just leave and forget me….”

“She’s your mother, Belle,” the Beast said gently. “She wouldn’t have.”

The mother she had dismissed for so many years—by magic as well as inclination—had forced her way back into her daughter’s life. And she was not only a more complicated person than Belle had believed, but more
motherly.

“What was that last spell she cast? After she left the castle?” she said, dismissing the intriguing—but immediately unhelpful—new thoughts in her head.

“None of the children or babies in the castle ever got sick with the fever. Like me. I was fine,” the Beast said. “Some people said it was a miracle. Maybe it was your mother.”

“But she let your parents die,” Belle said bleakly. “I’m so sorry.”

“Now what?” the Beast asked impatiently, obviously not wanting to think about it anymore.

“
Now
we go see Papa. Hopefully he can clear all this up. Maybe when we show him this it will remind him, or free his memory, or something.”

“All right. To Belle’s father.” He held his arm out and she took it, her face growing grim as they stepped over the ashes and charcoal that had once been furniture and books.

The Beast couldn’t bear seeing her so sad. “If everything goes all right…if we break the curse and I become a…
real
king…I’ll rebuild the bookstore. I’ll make it bigger. Maybe…maybe I’ll give you your
own
bookstore.”

Belle gave him a sad, pleased smile. “Thank you. I’ll hold you to that.”

They walked quietly for a few moments, each wrapped deep in thought.

“There it is,” Belle said after a few moments. A wide smile grew on her face and her eyes brightened as it came into view: a snug little house, as comforting and…
odd
as Belle was. None of the other houses they passed had windmills, for instance.

“Very…homey,” the Beast said, trying to think of something nice to say.

“Look, a light’s on!” she said excitedly. “In the kitchen! The little table lantern! He’s home!”

When they got to the door, Belle reached up to push it open—then stopped and turned to the Beast.

“Ah…maybe you should let me go first,” she said delicately. “The last time he saw you, you threw him in a prison cell.”

The Beast immediately slumped, remembering.

“I’ll say I’m sorry,” he promised.

“Which is great,” Belle said, squeezing his paws. “But maybe I should just bring him up to date on what’s happening before you two meet again. Then I’ll come out the back and get you.”

“All right,” he grumbled. “I’ll hide in those bushes over there, behind the house.”

“Thank you,” she said, standing up on tiptoe to kiss him on the side of his muzzle. “I won’t be a minute.”

She turned and he flowed back down the path like an inky shadow, silently inserting himself among some snowy bushes to wait.

The Beast tried to listen in after Belle stepped inside, but the door was solid and there were few windows.

He growled. This was ridiculous. He was a prince, a
king
really, and here he was hiding outside in the cold. He was a beast, too, huge and thunderously strong, crouched and camouflaged like a rabbit.

If he
were
…a prince…a real one, a human one…would he get to just go inside with her on his arm? What would her father say? A prince on the arm of his daughter? What would happen then? Could they…could they marry? There was no one left in the kingdom to object to him marrying below his station.

Would Belle even like him?

Did she like him
now
?

She hadn’t pulled away when he had kissed her, before…and she had kissed
him
just now. That was something, right?

It was hard to think about the future or have thoughts that were complicated and abstract. He didn’t want to reveal this to Belle—but it was getting harder. Any quick and thoughtless instinct—
food hunger run smell good smell bad itchy scratch it
—came first, before rational thought. It was hard to ignore.

His tail lashed, its brushy fox-like fur whipping snow off the leaves, a veritable cataclysm of noise to his sensitive ears.

He settled down.

Where was she? Hadn’t she had enough time yet for a tearful reunion?

The Beast was never cold under his thick fur. But something about the little village and its empty streets made the Prince shiver. While he had never been in a shop before, he had certainly been elsewhere in the kingdom, on horseback or on inspection or parade or just out for a jaunt with his mother, and it had been a much busier, larger, happier town than this. Many more people and houses and buildings, and none of the people looked at strangers as suspiciously as they seemed to do here.

It seemed so chilly and quiet in this town…almost like an empty, haunted castle, turned inside out.

A carriage rumbled by, a black one. Then another, this one maybe almost black. Despite his superior vision, he had trouble differentiating colors. That was one of the reasons he liked his royal blue and gold jacket; they were shades he could tell apart easily and looked nice, he thought, all bold and bright.

A couple of crows flew overhead, making the lighter
caw
that differentiated them from ravens. He liked crows. They weren’t as standoffish as their larger cousins and were much smarter than the little brown songbirds he occasionally couldn’t resist snagging and gulping.

A third vehicle, an old cart, bounced and creaked its way by, driven by a sharp-eyed matron.

This was boring.

He began to whack the ground spastically with his left hind foot, like a buck rabbit.

“Where
is
she?” he growled. “This is taking too long.”

Of all the various creatures his body was a hideous amalgam of,
cat
wasn’t one of them. He had no patience for the lie-and-wait kind of hunting.

“Gah!” he finally said, tearing himself from the bushes and loping up the path to the back door. If anyone on the road was actually looking in his direction, they would have seen little; he stuck to the shadows and hid at each available opportunity: drinking well, rock, strange giant metal contraption, wall.

He pressed his ear up to the door.

Nothing.

Surprised, he gently pushed it open with the pads of his paws.

It didn’t even creak. Nothing alleviated the complete silence of the place.

The Beast entered cautiously, sniffing the air. Belle
had
been here; he caught traces of her scent. And scents of other people, too: masculine, one of which could have been her papa…but he didn’t think so.

Panicking, he dropped to all fours and leapt around the small house, smelling everything and poking into every corner. Nothing, nowhere.

He ran his claws through the fur on his head. Where could she have gone? What happened? How could she disappear?

His overwhelming instinct was to break out of the tiny, confining building and lope up and down the road, searching for her.

What would Belle do?

She would take stock of the situation and think of all the resources available to her and then make use of them in a logical and consistent manner.

“I don’t have anything…”
the Beast said aloud, thinking of their pack and the few provisions it had. Along with…

The magic mirror!

Eagerly he pulled it out of the bag he carried.
“Show me Belle!”
he commanded.

Immediately the screen fogged and cleared and showed Belle, tied up and struggling in a small space. A box, maybe. A large, padded one? It looked like she was bouncing around while a hooded assailant tried to hold her down.

What sort of box could she be put in that moved?

Cursing himself for a fool, the Beast ran out the front door of the house and looked up and down the road. Just turning around the bend, on the road away from the village, was another black carriage. It tipped dangerously onto two wheels as it went, gaining speed.

The Beast ran after it, full out, on all fours.

The carriage turned off the main road and onto one that climbed up a stark, precipitous hill. This path was twisty and turny, cutting back and forth across the stony escarpment that hid the top from the land below. Thick, stunted and gnarled trees clung to the cliffs and further caused the road to take some additional twists—yet the carriage never slowed down. The Beast himself slipped once or twice in his desperation to reach Belle, and only managed to keep from falling by grabbing onto roots and scrabbling quickly.

At the top the carriage finally slowed.

The road ended at a large stone building that reminded the Beast of his castle a little. This was ugly and squat, however, with no real windows except for high up, on the top floors only. The back side was built into the hill so that half of the construction was underground. The air around it smelled vile and sick, too human for such a remote and wild place. When the wind blew right, screams could be heard issuing thinly between the stones.

Rage once again overcame caution and he leapt—

—turning himself midair and scrambling behind a tree when someone came out of the building to meet the carriage. Several someones, by the smell of it, with hard boots and muskets.

“Ah, I see you managed to bring our little guest. Excellent. And no worse for the wear, really…”

The Prince dug his claws into his own flesh at Belle’s muffled whimpers and cries. More than anything he wanted to jump up, roaring and growling and slavering, and tear everyone from gut to throat until Belle was safe.

The Beast within him roiled.

Guns
who cares
guns make them pay
kill them
save Belle.

The Prince shut his eyes, trying to force the blood in his veins to calm. It would feel so good just to give in to it, to be free and terrible….