l'espace d'un matin

by lovefoolmp3

Part retelling and part new, in which Belle and the Beast are very much the same, except that they are girls.

What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.

The day is ordinary. You are without your father, trying to work, and Gaston insists that you marry him.

You could never do it, you know, even if Papa doesn't mind the idea. But you-you'd sooner marry the baker's daughter than eat a single meal with him. (Of course, you could never marry her either, but the thought, though she's only ever listened wide-eyed to your talk of far-off places, feels somehow more right.)

You fumble with the doorknob and an excuse, and find a grip on both at once, though it hardly matters. He falls through the door too quickly to hear you.

When you feel certain he is gone, you step outside (for what else is there, in this town?) and settle into the grass.

Alone, Philippe appears, still carrying your father's invention. You unhitch it, search for some trace of Papa, but find nothing else. You know, then, that you must look for him, and mount Philippe with a certainty you've never dreamed of having. It is lost in the fog more easily than the moon and returns alongside it, illuminating the castle and steadying your breath.

In the newfound light, you catch sight of your father's hat, just inside the grounds. Gently, you push on the gate, and it seems to throw itself open with a force your touch could not explain. The door is less inviting. As you open it, its groans echo through the vast space, sounding almost like a voice (maybe more). You move up the grandest staircase and down the never-ending hallway, searching for someone, until a quiet creaking greets you.

Surely, then, this is someone. You walk through the now-open door and ascend the staircase behind it. No person seems to have come before, but a strange green light reveals a row of cells. There-alone in the nearest one, Papa! You rush to him, grab his trembling hands, and speak. From the emptiness, a shadow catches your eye, and a woman calls out, her voice deep and distorted. (Is it by anger or the tower walls? Some impossible instinct tells you it is neither.) His voice clear but unsteady, your father begs you to run.

Instead, you bargain with her, faceless, exchanging eternities. She sounds no older than you when her voice goes below a roar. Just beneath your horror, you feel something like curiosity. With newfound bravery, you command her to step into the light of a lone window above. The stranger complies.

"You've come to gawk as well?" she asks, and you can hardly blame her; before you stands something huge and horrible. You want badly to call her someone, but your mind slips to monster with unsettling ease.

"No," you say, more certain than you dared hope. "You know why I've come."

"You'd stay for him?" she asks. You find the courage to meet her eyes, bright blue, the most human thing about her. They look as frightened as you feel.

Papa pleads with you not to, and, for a moment, everything is silent.

"You have my word."

The Beast drags him from the castle, words unfinished.

You know what he would say, that he knows what you would say, but none of this matters. The Beast returns offering you a room, as though a mattress excuses her cruelty.

You accept it anyway. You accept the room, a lifetime as her prisoner, and even the magic. You can't accept not knowing the secrets of the West Wing.

You tiptoe up the staircase that leads to it that night, wine from a dinner eaten half-alone still warming your throat. You feel already more at home than you expected. When a rush of inexplicable cold air hits you, you lean into it, drawn to its source. Your eyes fall on a painting. Like everything here, it's been damaged, so that the woman's face is entirely obscured. Cautiously, you join the torn canvas together, but a brilliant pink glow pulls you away before you can study her.

Its origin is a rose, too small for something so bright, contained in a bell jar. Lifting the jar, you reach your hand out to it.

Without warning, the Beast's enormous shadow creeps over you, and she rushes to cover the rose once more. She growls, startling you further, but you've taught yourself already to look at her eyes: anxious, guarded. (And, yes, still human, as the rest of her face becomes as warped as the girl's.)

You apologize a thousand times, suddenly aware of how like death the cold air smells, and her voice gets louder, less like your own.

"Do you realize what you could have done?" she demands. You don't. Unanswered, she throws the one undamaged piece of furniture to the wall.

By the time she orders you to leave, you're halfway down the stairs. Even then, you can hear her destroying the room.

You feel like someone else on your way from the castle, and Philippe must know it. Past the gates, into the forest, he goes forward uncertainly, then halts. Wolves encircle you, hungry, with eyes unlike the Beast's, glinting empty yellow in the unnatural light of the snow. Desperately, you fight them off, until one is torn away by some figure in a maroon cloak.

The Beast and her sickening strength, your savior, her blood staining the snow but the wolves all gone.

(She would never find you if you left.)

Your mouth forms the shape of the name she lacks. It settles on something else, unsatisfied. You say, "Can I help?"

The Beast groans. Her permission? You can't quite tell. You drape your cloak over her and offer a hand. Clumsily, she takes it. You both know that you cannot support her, and she anchors herself to a tree until you guide Philippe to her.

(There is a moment, with the Beast so quiet on Philippe's back, that you think she might be dead. You feel nothing resembling relief.)

In the castle, she refuses to let you clean her wounds, lets out a roar that would have shaken you hours ago. Now, as everyone else jumps away from her, you lean forward.

"It won't hurt as much if you stay still," you tell her.

The Beast frowns, responds seconds too late to seem quick. A strange tenderness lies in your argument, one you've never known before. In a half-second of silence, you find that your faces are impossibly close.

(You remember scraped knees that girls were never supposed to have, feeling afraid that they'd never stop bleeding.) "Hold still," you tell her, and you press the rag against her arm. "It could sting."

She grimaces, but keeps her body still.

"Thank you," you say, once you're sure that she'll listen, "for saving my life."

Something about her softens, though she won't look at you. "You're welcome."

The bandage is still wrapped around her arm when you ask for her name.

She looks at you, puzzled. "My name?"

You nod, and she drops her eyes to the book Cogsworth brought to you.

"I'm the Beast," she says. "That's all."

"You must have a name."

A pause before she nods, just once, slow. Her voice is coarse and quiet when she says it: "Iphigénie."

"Iphigénie?" You extend your hand to her. "Belle."

Gently, she takes your hand in her paw. "Belle," she says. It's the first time you've heard her use your name, though she's known it from the first night. "It's, um, lovely to meet you."

You draw your hand back toward the book, and, for a moment, an expression you can't recognize crosses her face. Just before it fades, you realize that it was a smile.

You take her paw once more in your hand and guide it to the page before you. "Was this where we left off?" you ask her.

You don't think she looks at the page, but she nods all the same.

In spite of yourself, you smile. "'No more be grieved at that which thou hast done…'"

Seventeen hours later, Iphigénie takes your hands and asks you to close your eyes. Her low, nervous voice echoes more than usual, wherever she's taking you, and she lets go of your hands suddenly. A second later, the room fills with a light that goes pink behind your eyelids.

"All right," she says, and you feel her return to your side. "Open your eyes."

You do. Books stretch to the ceiling in impossible numbers, and in a room so filled with them, you can hardly find the words to thank her.

"It's yours," she tells you, arms spread wide. Then, hastily, she adds, "If you like it, I mean."

"Oh! Iphigénie-" (Some new emotion flickers in her eyes when you say her name.) "Thank you so much!"

You spend two weeks making a book for her in return. It's about love in unlikely places, about hope, and it barely resembles the stories you've spent your whole life loving. Strangely, it comforts you anyway.

(You hope that it comforts her too; so much as mentioning Christmas seems to upset her lately.)

And after trying all through dinner to speak, she invites you to the West Wing on Christmas Eve. An olive branch, an apology, or something. But you catch her with her paw hovering over the rose.

"Iphigénie?"

"Belle!" She jerks her paw back from the rose, covering it with the bell jar. (What was it she said, that could happen if you touched it? You had run too fast to hear.) "I wasn't expecting you!"

Tentatively, you smile. "You invited me," you tell her.

If Iphigénie had cheeks like yours, she would blush. Instead, she fumbles with her words and averts her gaze. "Oh, um, of course, I just-"

"I can go, if you'd like."

"No," she says. "You can stay."

Iphigénie gestures toward a single chair, half-covered by a tattered sheet. You take it, and she sits on the floor beside you. Even slouching, her horns are as high as your shoulders.

Silence. You say, "The painting is gone."

"Painting?" she asks, like she's not sure what you mean. Still, her eyes linger on the place where it hung.

"You must remember it," you say. "A girl with red hair. Was it yours?"

You've surprised her. "Oh," she says, "um, yes-I mean, no, it was-"

"I didn't mean-" (You didn't mean, Was it you? because it couldn't possibly be her, no matter how much her eyes make you wonder.)

"I know what you meant."

Again, silence. You say, "Merry Christmas."

"Is it?" she asks.

"It's Christmas Eve," you tell her.

"I know that," she says. "I mean, you think it's merry?"

"I'm trying to."

"Oh," she says, and a temporary kindness rests in her voice. For a moment, the two of you are quiet, and you watch the rose from the corner of your eye. A single petal falls, and new thorns grow from Iphigénie's throat when she speaks. "You shouldn't bother," she says, and it isn't cruel anymore, just helpless.

You cannot bear to face another unhappy silence. You say, "I made you a present."

"You did?" she asks. (Does some softness sneak back into her voice? Certainly it does to her eyes.)

"Of course."

Iphigénie looks back to the rose, then drops her eyes. (You wonder unwillingly whether every beautiful thing fills her with shame. If you do.) She says, "I don't have anything for you."

"You have the library," you say. Unthinkingly, you place your hand on her arm.

"Oh." Your gesture has surprised you both, and Iphigénie is momentarily without reply. At last, she says, "That's different. I'll have something."

On Christmas day, she has firewood and a promise of something better. You give her the present anyway, and she unwraps it so gently it could be glass. Seeing what it is, her touch grows softer. ("Muthoplokon," she murmurs, and you remember the word. Stolen, you know, from a book found accidentally in the hour just before dinner two nights ago. Does she remember what came before?)

"Thank you!" she says, and she reaches her arms out to you for a fraction of a second before drawing them back to herself, book still in hand.

She's still reading it three days later. (Silently, that is, and it hits you suddenly that she might not understand it the way you'd hoped she would.)

You say, "I don't mean to forgive you."

She looks up, asks, tender-voiced, "What do you mean?"

You watch her eyes, unsure of whether you should have stayed quiet. Somehow, you no longer feel afraid of her. You say, "You're still keeping me prisoner here."

"Oh."

"I can care for you." You haven't said it before, and she breathes another oh, quieter, when you do. (You wonder, had she heard it before?) Her blue eyes study your face, and you take a breath. "But I can't forgive you for that."

"You gave your word," she says. For a moment, you have yourself convinced that you hear guilt in her voice.

You say, "I know."

Her mouth opens, and you brace yourself for the apology she could never mean. But she is too unlike anyone else for you to be right. She says instead, "Thank you, again, for the book."

Iphigénie doesn't talk much about it, once she's done, but you're in the room with her when she finishes it, and her eyes search your face for an eternity. At last, she says your name, a question: "Belle?"

(Do you ask her whether she liked it? Startled, you realize how much you want her to.) At last, you hum something back, a question.

"I was- Would you-? Would you want to go to the library?"

You laugh, ask whether your book was so terrible that she wants to forget it.

"No!" Iphigénie's voice shakes the cups of tea you've emptied, and her eyes go wide. She lowers her voice, and you want to come closer, to hear her, but know that she would move away. "I mean, no. It was-wonderful, and I just- I thought, maybe, since you wrote it, you might have read this book that I have, in the library."

"Oh?"

She nods. "I haven't read it, but Lumière- I mean, I thought you could… read it with me?"

So, you sit together at the table by the window, Romeo and Juliet between you, Iphigénie afraid to meet your eyes, until you hear her laugh, something quiet and short, and you look to her unthinkingly. Before she can apologize, you laugh, too. Hers grows into something warm and deep, and your own into an unstoppable thing unexplained by Shakespeare. Without warning, a roar breaks into Iphigénie's laugh. She flinches, looks to see whether you do the same, and furrows her brow when you don't.

No, you read the rest of the scene with unconcealed affection. Slowly, Iphigénie's head sinks into her arms.

And you're there, in the library, when you think of an answer to her Christmas Day question. "I know what you can give me," you tell her.

She looks up from the poem she's been reading. (François de Malherbe. Has anyone ever read of death with such fondness? Iphigénie is smiling even before her eyes meet yours.) "You do?"

You nod. "I heard you had a ballroom," you say, "on my first night here."

"It's nothing special," she says, though you're certain that it is. "It's-I haven't used it for years, but you-" Iphigénie's voice seems unable to support such excitement, and she takes a moment before she continues. "You'd like a ball?"

The answer, of course, is yes, but you realize too late how much you're asking. You say, "If you would."

"I would," she says, and you see her smile without ever questioning what it is.

She talks anxiously with Cogsworth the moment the door shuts behind you. (Possibly, you were mistaken. You had never asked if she'd want to dance with a girl. With you.)

When you finally ask, she swears that she would, but her breath shakes (your name, whispered) when she sees you on that staircase, her huge arm unsteady when you reach for it, blue-sleeved.

You walk toward the dining room you haven't used since your first night, with the table so long you could never quite imagine an end to it, except that it is where Iphigénie sits now. Miles away from you, she takes a spoonful-a spoonful!-of soup, and you ask her to dance.

She takes your outstretched arm and follows you to the ballroom, sparkling and warm and-you're certain she must know it-a kind of romantic you've only ever read about. Uncertainly, she takes your right hand, and you pull her arm around your waist. Then, with some sweeping motion you are dancing together, and it's a feeling unlike anything you've imagined. You rest your head against her chest, feel her heartbeat and something waiting to be said, the way her whole body moves with her smile.

And she leads you, when the music slows, to the balcony shared with the West Wing. Is this when she will say it, the thing that has been waiting? She moves suddenly closer to you, says your name, and you look up, smiling.

Gently, Iphigénie asks, "Are you happy here with me?"

Something you were not expecting. You say, "Yes." (You can hardly remember being so happy, even with-)

"What is it?"

You tell her, the thought that filled you with guilt the moment you had it. Just one more time, you would like to see your father. And Iphigénie says that you can. You follow her into the West Wing, both your hands in her paws, as if you're still dancing. From just beside the two-petaled rose, Iphigénie places a silver mirror in your hands and tells you it can show you anything.

Hesitantly, you ask to see him, and, in a burst of green light, your father appears, stumbling and sick. Iphigénie's paw curls around the top of the bell jar, and she turns away from you. Quietly she says, "You must go to him."

"Iphigénie?" you ask, for she could not possibly mean what you think she does. "What did you say?"

"I release you," she says, and there is no uncertainty in it. She reaches for you for the last time, reaches for you knowing that it is. Just before her paw can touch your face, she draws it away.

Time forces you to find a goodbye. From the part of yourself still dancing with her, you settle on one, even manage to laugh. "'Oh how badly things have turned out for us,'" you say, knowing that she will know, and you thank her.

Iphigénie laughs the same way you do (but deeper, less shaky), and says, "'Go and remember me,'" with the mirror pressed into your hands.

You do not see her after taking off your gown; you have said all that you can bear to.

The woods seem smaller, now, and you find your father more easily than you dared hope, just off the path Philippe took you on. Disoriented, he does not question your presence until you are already safely inside. Regardless, you are without explanation. What was it, that could have told her to let you go? You say all you know: that she's changed somehow, and that you have too, and-

Chip falls out onto the mirror, and a pounding at the door drowns out his voice. When you open the door, a sallow-faced man greets you with a grin, then steps aside. Behind him, the asylum's carriage waits, and for a moment, you feel certain that it is for you. But your father is swept away still begging for someone to recognize the thing that only you know: The Beast is real.

Gaston knows that he can fix this, and you know that he can too, but you know also what he wants. (Why had a lifetime with the Beast seemed so much easier, before you even knew her name?) Horrified, confused, you run back to the house. There, the mirror glints, your only proof that she exists.

You weave through the crowd, finding the one space you can be seen, in the center of it all. The eye of the storm. You shout at them all to listen, and every face turns to you.

With their attention, you command her image to the mirror, and it comes forth in a flash of green. Iphigénie's roar pierces the crowd, shaking the handle of the mirror. You rush forward to answer the question they have already decided: "Is it dangerous?"

(It. How long has it been since she became Iphigénie?) You insist that she's safe, that she's kinder than she looks, kinder than anyone, but Gaston's voice cuts through it all.

And so it does when you hear it again, following the mob he's gathered. The mob that wants to kill her. They're gone, when you finally catch up, but his words (Is it love that you hear him say, utterly repulsed?) move your eyes to the roof of the castle. Gaston hovers over Iphigénie, ready to strike, and you scream for him to stop. Your words do nothing to him; he swings for Iphigénie, barely missing her as she stands. You race to the balcony outside the West Wing, then see her, still on the roof, Gaston thrown aside. You call for her, and she turns, surprised by the sound of her own name.

"Belle!" Iphigénie is beaming, for that minute, as she scales the roof, up to the balcony where you stand. She reaches for your hand, and you feel certain in some happy ending waiting for you.

Then, it's Gaston, driving a knife into her side, so that she nearly topples over. Miraculously, you pull Iphigénie onto the balcony, and she lies down.

"You came back," she murmurs, and you realize suddenly what she must have thought.

"Of course! I couldn't-" (Couldn't leave her, you mean, and your heart pounds. Increasingly, you suspect she will leave you, and soon.)

Iphigénie reaches for your face, paw stumbling like your words. Somehow, it feels comforting, though you're certain that nothing good is coming. Her expression is quickly fading, and you remember the thousand terrible things you once thought of her.

She searches for something to say (wanting more to console you than survive), fumbles with the Malherbe she'd been reading, and settles on the worst thing: "It's better," she says, "like this," and her paw drops from your face.

She is far closer to death than she ever was in the woods. You look again to her, and her head falls backward. What can you say to her now? You promise her a forever unlike the first, together, collapse onto her chest, plead for something you can't place. "I love you," you tell her at last. For a moment, you think you feel her breathe, and a light catches your eye.

You move backward, giving her space. Iphigénie's body, obscured by light and cloth, rises, her paws becoming feet, and is drawn slowly to the ground. A human rises in her place, studies herself, then turns, facing you.

"Belle," she says. Her voice is familiar, but eerily smooth. "It's me."

You reach out to find something about her you can recognize, the way her hair curled just barely at the ends, or the way her whole face would change with one touch or- Her eyes! You hadn't thought to find them in such a new face, but the woman has Iphigénie's eyes. Anxious. Hopeful. The brightest blue.

"It is you!"

She laughs, brings a hesitant hand to the side of your face.

For years, you've thought about true love's kiss. You didn't think it would feel so strange. You knew about the magic, of course. That you would be enveloped by a ribbon of light, that your hair would flow like water behind you, and you would open your eyes to a world forever changed. Secretly, even, you knew that it could only be a girl.

The only thing you didn't know, really, is this intangible, unnameable thing. It flickers from the point where your fingertips meet her face, some mesmerizing, dancing thing. And you think she feels it too.

She's beautiful, anyway, Iphigénie. You know that it shouldn't matter, that you loved her before knowing that she could ever look like this, but she is, red-haired and broad-shouldered, with those unmistakable eyes, and when you stop kissing her, you find yourself unable to look away.

She says, "You're staring."

You turn to face the rest of the castle, vines growing rapidly before your eyes. "It's remarkable," you say. "I didn't think anything could grow here."

Iphigénie makes a warm, humming sound from the back of her throat.

You look to her once more, unable to stop yourself. You say, "You're very beautiful," because you know she must wonder, with you staring.

She laughs. "I suppose."

"Have you seen-?"

"My face?" she asks. Her voice is rougher now, and an uneasy finger runs along her lips. "It's been years."

"I can't imagine."

"Of course not," she says. "You've always been beautiful."

For the first time, the word doesn't feel like a counterweight to the rest of you. You drop your voice to imitate hers. "I suppose," you say.

Again, she laughs, and her eyes dart suddenly elsewhere. You follow them. There are people racing toward you, you realize, and Iphigénie must know them, because she throws her arms around them easily when they arrive. There's something about them that you recognize, and you slowly work them out, Lumière and Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts.

(All of them say that this is a miracle.)

Lumière thanks you even, for reasons you don't know. It isn't the time to ask. Iphigénie lifts you just barely from the ground, laughing.

She's clumsier, somehow, as a human, like she's forgotten how to move, collapsing into to you maybe three times as you're dancing together. Her eyes always go wide when she does it, still afraid of hurting you. Every time, you promise her she won't.

If Papa knows about the two of you (you suspect that he does), he doesn't say anything. Instead, he tinkers with Cogsworth's pocket watch, perplexed more by this than your strange romance. Its hands continue to move with his human face rather than the passing of time, some magic that hasn't faded quite yet. "Positively wonderful," he murmurs, and Cogsworth eyes him with suspicion.

Watching them, you feel Iphigénie's arm draw you closer, her hand hold yours more tightly. (No racing heart, no lost breath, but a quiet pride, warm and secret and slow.) You realize how careful she was, before, that her paw only ever grazed your back uncertainly. You almost mention it to her, but you see her embarrassment and decide against it.

Really, you don't say much of anything in the ballroom. You have questions, thousands of them, and you're sure that she does, too, but neither of you dares speak them. For once, you're content to wait for the answers.

She only tells you about the curse after everyone is done celebrating, on a balcony unlike the balcony that existed in that same place hours ago. As she's searching your face with those same blue eyes, you laugh, or do something like it. You say, "I figured there was something."

"Oh?" she asks. You watch her fingers trace her cheek. She's smirking, you think, but her hand covers too much of her face to be sure. "You've never met a beast before?"

"Just Gaston." The strength of his name surprises you, the way it thuds in your chest. The enchantment removed his body, somehow, but not your memory of it.

Iphigénie drops her hand to the edge of the balcony and presses her lips together, a sad almost-smile.

"I'm sorry," you say. "I didn't think-"

"I know," she says, and her hand is as close to yours as it can be without touching. You close the gap, feel her flinch at your touch. Slowly, she laces your fingers together. "I never thought you-"

(She wants to say, I never thought you could be like me, but is afraid of offending you. At least, you want to say this, but are afraid of offending her.)

You ask her to go on, and she does. It ends the way you thought it would.

Still, you say, "You didn't?"

Iphigénie shakes her head. "You were too..." She searches for the right word. You know that it will be beautiful, because the word is always beautiful, except that it isn't this time. Iphigénie says, "Kind."

"Too kind?" you ask. It hadn't occurred to you.

"Look at me," she says, then realizes that this is no longer enough. She isn't the Beast anymore, just a girl, twenty-one and almost ordinary. She runs a hand through her hair, uncertain of how to go on. She settles on this: "Who I was before. I was terrible."

She was, but you can't place the relationship between the two.

Iphigénie watches you, unsure of how to continue, then says, "'Marry, that "marry" is the very theme I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet-'"

You know immediately what she means but wish still for new words from the book you've read together twice. They never come. You say, "'How stands your disposition to be married?'"

Iphigénie laughs the way she would in the early days, short and scared. "'It is an honor that I dream not of.'"

(Does she know how much you've done to avoid it yourself? You feel afraid of telling her.)

"I'm sorry," she says, voice shaky, meaning it, now, in the way you thought she never could.

You force back the absolution your mouth begs to grant her; Iphigénie does not want it. You hesitate, then say, "Thank you."

On the second night, she invites you to the West Wing. Her hand-so strangely calloused-grips yours, and she leads you there, nervous laughter echoing up the staircase.

Then, opened doors, her shaky breath, the West Wing revealed. Iphigénie steps aside. The room is transformed, healed, and without the luminous siren song of the enchanted rose. Even with unbroken furniture easily doubled, an emptiness hangs in the air. You reach for Iphigénie's hand, guiding her forward to the painting that rests half-hidden on the floor, no longer torn. You bend down to reveal it, and her fingers curl in, some reflex to pull you away. Releasing her hand, you turn the portrait to face you.

Instinctively, you reach out to touch the girl's face, for it is Iphigénie's strong jaw, her aquiline nose, her red hair, but it isn't her. Her eyes are still blue, even, exactly the same, but hold the same frightened anger you remember from those weeks when she was a monster unnamed. It seems to transform everything about her.

When you look back to Iphigénie, she can't meet your eyes. You touch her real face, this time, and you recognize the gentle uncertainty in it.

"Thank you," you whisper, and she nods, stepping backward. ("You can go anywhere you wish," you remember her saying, and realize that this is what she means now, no exceptions.)

You walk forward, past Iphigénie, past the empty pedestal where the rose should be. Her bed is the only imperfect thing, unmade, with wrinkled sheets. (Had she slept as uneasily as you, last night?) You sit on the edge, and she joins you, cheeks pink.

"How are you doing?" she asks. It's the third time since this morning, and your answer is unchanged.

"I'm overwhelmed," you tell her. "How are you?"

She thinks for a while, quiet. You've asked her as many time as she's asked you, and her answer has yet to be the same. In this moment, she says, "Relieved."

It's your favorite word yet.

For an eternity, you sit together, and Iphigénie weaves your fingers together. She's held your hands so many times, even after two days, that it has already lost the clumsiness that lingers in her walk, the hesitance in her kiss. If her instinct, before, was to hurt, it certainly now is to love.

(Your father does not know how you broke the spell.)

Iphigénie knows when you are thinking about this, says the one thing you are hoping she won't: "I know how important he is to you."

Of course, this isn't what you expect. But she means the thing you can't bear to think, at least: that she had known yesterday that you did not love her. That she could go back to knowing it, if it would help.

You refuse, but still, you do not tell your father anything more than you are certain he knows. You alternate meals with them, Iphigénie unwilling to face his questions and Papa unwilling to face her old self.

And it is at dinner with Iphigénie when, absentmindedly, you ask, "What's it like to be a princess?"

Immediately, because she knows what you mean (that you could be one, too, someday, in secret), she blushes. "You don't have to stay."

You know this; the conversation happened days ago. You and your father were welcome in the castle as long as you wished. Iphigénie's only condition was that the choice could not be hers. For the first time, you say, "Neither do you."

She laughs, still-sharp canines glinting. "You're right."

Of course, only she could go utterly unrecognized into your village, though they'd find her stranger than you, with her distaste for dresses and small talk. You're both free, in theory, but remain bound by your peculiarity.

Iphigénie reaches a hand to your hair, pushes it away from your face. "What are you thinking about?" she asks.

Half-honestly, you say, "We should go somewhere."

"Where?"

(There are places, surely, where you can exist as you are, places outside of the castle's deferential embrace.)

"I don't know," you confess.

Iphigénie pauses. Then, "We could go to the sea."

"The sea?" (The asylum is by the sea, you know, but keep yourself from saying this.)

"Or your village," she says. "They must miss you."

You laugh. "They miss someone to talk about."

"They remember you, then," she says, and her voice sounds different than you've grown used to in these weeks. Harsher, maybe.

You thought it was a gift, to be forgotten. ("I'm sorry," she says, and she means it.) Now, you wonder whether you broke the whole curse after all.

Still, when the last, late spring snow falls, Iphigénie bolts from the castle and falls back into the thin snow. She spreads out her limbs and pulls them to her body, leaping up seconds later. Jubilant, she calls your name.

Where she'd lain, a snow angel, scarcely different from the one you'd made beside her months ago. (How frightened of yourselves you both were, those afternoons.) Iphigénie crouches down toward it, not quite believing her new shape. With her long hair still covering her face, you throw a snowball at her already-wet back. She jolts, then looks to where you stand, laughing. She gathers the remaining snow in her palms and throws the snowball toward you.

Easily, you dodge it. "You need to strategize," you tell her, and she shrugs, settling back into the snow.

You walk to the tree beside her, leaning against it, and she looks up at you. Fully stretched out, her head is barely as high as your hips. Iphigénie pushes her hair behind her ears and says, "Thank you."

You don't miss the Beast the way you thought you would in the beginning. You watch her spread out on wet grass unashamed of her imprint on it, see her relief when her laugh never turns to a roar. She's comfortable in a way you can hardly recognize, and you're glad for it.

A Wednesday afternoon (the fifth one, maybe, just after the snow melts), she turns the pages of a new old book easily, fingers without claws, and looks to you with eager eyes. "Have you read this?" she asks.

You settle in beside her, watch the sunlight catch the fine hairs of her arms, the deep, whitish scars that healed far better than you could ever have expected. "What is it?" you ask her.

"Marlowe." She nudges the book nearer to you. Where both deliberate, the love is slight: who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

Hero and Leander, the favorite of your nineteen-year-old self. "Incomplete?" you ask.

Her cheeks, freckled suddenly by long days in the sun, go pink. Her confession comes out quiet: "I don't know."

"Would you read it to me?"

Already, she stumbles, still embarrassed. "I'm-I'm not very good."

But you like the sound of her voice, and you tell her so.

Iphigénie laughs. "All right," she says, and her hand strays naturally to yours. "'It lies not in our power to love or hate…'"

It's the incomplete version, the original, and you're done before the night forces you inside. When it finally does, you spend hours arguing amicably over lines of general insignificance.

On her third cup of tea, she asks how you could read something you hate so much.

"But I don't hate it!" you tell her. "It's wonderful. I just-stop laughing!"

She covers her mouth, but her eyes are still gleaming.

"I think it's good to be critical, is all."

She hums. "I was going to find something else, tomorrow, if there's anything you've been wanting to criticize."

"Surprise me."

She wakes you the next morning with a knock on your door and a book you've never heard of. Desperate for resolution, you tell her that you're going home.

You don't go with her. Even Papa stays in the castle. It's too soon for him to go back, and you understand why. None of Iphigénie's newfound certainty has spread to you, and you can't help but feel anxious when every other word you hear is your own name.

The bookstore is the only place you don't mind it. You've taken books from the castle as repayment, and they're very nearly refused until you describe their contents, unlike anything either of you has ever read. He insists that he'll return them one day and accepts them with gleaming eyes.

This is the last person from the village you speak to. You're back with Philippe before dark.

Iphigénie greets you with an embrace tighter than you would have thought possible weeks ago. "How was it?" she asks.

You hum, searching for the right word. Finally, you say, "Unchanged."

"That's-?" (She wants something simple. Comforting or stifling or sad, but it's all of these and none of them.)

"I thought it could be different," you say. "Without-everything."

She's walking toward Papa's room, you realize. They must have talked, finally, over lunch, maybe, and you feel a strange relief in the sudden change. She knocks.

"Iphigénie!" he says. "Come in!"

You look to her, confused. Iphigénie shrugs, like this is nothing, and pushes the door open. On the other side, your father is healthier even than this morning, delighted by your return.

Somehow, he maintains Iphigénie's optimism. (Were you not hurt the least, by your village? Had you invented your neighbors' attack like the peephole beside your door, an experiment in imagination that only complicated your everyday life?)

You can't bring yourself to crush a second person's hopes. You say, "It was better toward the end," which isn't a lie, and Papa knows better than to ask anything more than if he could join you for dinner.

The day is ordinary. You are with everyone you love, eating together, and Iphigénie confesses that she understands how you feel about Marlowe.

(That sometimes, she means, the most beautiful things can escape their fate.)