Belle tripped over a root.

She regained her balance (but not her dignity) and turned slightly to face the speaker.

"Still fighting for True Love. Even to the bitter end." This last part was accompanied by an enthusiastic arm gesture, but the tone in her voice was more than a little mocking, a voice Belle had certainly never expected to hear again.

"How did you find me?" Belle queried, mistrust etched across her face.

The dark haired woman, dressed as elegantly as she had been upon their first meeting, merely raised her eyebrow and flicked her gaze towards a man stood by a horse, who glared defiantly back. Even stood like that, imposing yet fearful, Belle recognized the man that had shoved her from the cart, and she blinked in shock. But her gaze was drawn to what was before the man (Claus, or Claude?) - an iron cage set upon wheels, with space just enough for a person to comfortably sit in, but not stand.

If they were any taller than Belle, that is.

She was dragged back from her musings to the present when rough hands grabbed her shoulders and started to physically drag her, her boots digging furrows into the earth. Her book fell, unnoticed, to the ground, as the men forced her towards the cage. Terror surged through her as she began to struggle. "N… no, what are you, what are you doing? I can save him! Just let me go to him..." Belle's breath hitched, her voice dragging up in pitch as the man squeezed his arms around her stomach to silence her, her feet lifting inches from the ground. Her own arm reached out toward the woman in red, begging for help, for mercy or freedom. She was granted none as Claus-Claude helped the man shove her into the cage. That... Belle snarled at him as he slammed the door shut with a smirk, locking her in.

She vaguely heard the woman claiming Rumpelstiltskin to be a monster 'beyond saving' (something about a lifetime of pain and misery), but it all fell on deaf ears. Belle grasped the bars with gloved hands and shook them, chanting under her breath "I'll never stop fighting for him" to a back that was already turned, the witch's horse inching forward, desperate to be away. One of the guards hit her shoulder with the flat of his sword to silence her, and she stepped back from the bars (the top of her head brushing her new roof).

Belle realized, belatedly, that her book was no longer in her hand as the cage began to move. As her cast-iron carriage trundled over twisted roots and broken branches (she stumbled again (this time not her fault as the world began to move around her), falling to her knees) she spotted it abandoned in the dirt, clearly having already been trodden on by the ignorant fool she'd sent to the lake. Such a ridiculous idea, she thought in hindsight, to conceal a dagger among the pages of a book. And it was such a beautiful thing... Oh well. At least she still had the one Mulan had given her hidden in her boot.

It wouldn't be much use, though. The men each had their own swords, and while Belle wouldn't kill them, the woman on the horse would probably let them kill her. If she couldn't beat them alone, she would just have to call for help. Because really, how far away could Phillip and Mulan possibly be?

As it turned out, it was quite far indeed.