"Stop. Stop a minute." She stops sweeping and recoils a fraction when he approaches her. She hadn't been too loud. What could the matter be? "Do you want to stay and see their reaction?"

"Really?" she asks. His smile is so wicked and contagious she finds herself standing the broom up against the wall. "How?"

"How? Any way you like! Shrunken down to the size of an ant. Hovering in the air with the roof made see-through! Racing around the room so fast they can't see you!" Laughing at the bravado, she covers her mouth when she hears stirring above them.

"How about them just not seeing us, please?" she asks, wringing her hands as she remembers she isn't exactly fond of magic.

"Done." Done? Already? She holds her hands out in front of her and sees them plain as day. "You're invisible to them, dearie. Not us."

A roly-poly man bustles down the stairs and into the workshop, a woman close behind him and it's all the proof Belle needs to be sure they cannot see her. They walk right past them and up to the dozens of pairs of shoes on the workbench.

"Look! Look at this!" The couple join hands and waddle around in joy, and she cannot help but giggle. Bearing witness to the happiness of others, she thinks, exhaling. She clasps her hands together and listens to them, spellbound.

"Who could have done this? There's nothing, no note, nothing," the little elderly woman says.

"They even replaced the leather!" the man shouts, close to her ear, but no matter. He waddles back to his wife and kisses her. "It must have been elves!"

"That is probably our cue to leave," Rumpelstiltskin whispers to her.

"Right," she says. "Oh! Wait! If I hold something, can you make it invisible, too?"

"Whatever are you going to do now?" She pulls a lump of green up from the floor with a string attached to it and some red ribbon.

"Mistletoe," she says. "For hanging on their door. It might bring in more customers." Still high off the couples' joy she positions it on a nail without a sound. He passes under it with an impatient eyebrow. "Now I'm ready. How did you make so many? Did you freeze time or something like that?"

"No. I'm fast, dearie. When I want to be." That haughty, wicked smile has never been so close before, and Belle can't help but return it.