28

The brightness and crisp freshness of the day, the blinding cold sunlight, the stinging wind at the waterfront. The straining of her eyesight, the wish to see through the waves under which the ship disappeared. The straining of her heart, the effort to connect it with the heart of the man that is gone into a different world. The panicked, frenzied voices of people around her. The rush towards the mines. The astonishment at the reading instructions for the spell he left, the realization that he wished her to enact it. The weight of worried looks, the expectant eyes turned upon her by people who depended on her to protect them. The pang of terror, the doubt – she cannot do it, how can she, she has no magic, why did he think that she does? The brief memory of his face, sad and wise, his soft words: 'I just know'. The sudden relief; of course he knew she can do this spell, he knows everything about magic and about her. The concentration required to perform the spell – the need to give her mind and heart to something that she wants to protect – to something that she loves. Easiest thing in the world, that: she just pictures his face, the look of love in his melancholy eyes, and instantly her soul fills with tenderness and longing and faith and hope, and his eyes seem to smile at her, gently, and she almost feels his soft touch – his fingertips on her cheek… People around her give a cheer – the spell worked. She did it. She did well – she did not let them down.

She did not let him down.

Well, there are two ways to look at that. She did what he wished of her, she performed a small and, as it happened, easy technical task. In that sense, she definitely helped him.

Yet she let him go to a faraway land to die alone.

She failed him, dismally.

All her love, all her stubborn belief in them, all her promises to fight for him – all that came to nothing. She was not there for him when he needed her; she could not even remember him on her own, without magical potions drank from enchanted cups! Just how weak and pitiful was that? All these hopes, all these tears, all these childish well-wishing convictions – and still he was snatched from her, yet again, and still he was left alone with his sorrows and pain. Still she cannot help him to face his biggest ordeal. Yes, she managed to break through his defenses, she made him believe in their love, she made it glow stronger then ever. Yet will in help him, when he is there, far away from her, fighting the shadowy evil? Or will it just bring him more pain – will it burden him with regrets for her, with compassion to her plight; will it distract him from his task with wishing to return to her?

Women must not hold back soldiers that come into battle; women must look at them proudly, with dry eyes, showing belief in their courage, so that fighting warriors would not be upset by the memory of tear-stained faces of the loved ones they left behind. Women must not cry 'I love you!' to their retreating backs: the memory of love can destroy courage. She knows these things – she learned them long ago, growing up in the military castle. Yet she also knows that in battle the faith in woman's love could be the only thing that can sustain man's courage. Man must know of the woman's love for him, but not of her pain at being abandoned.

How do women reconcile these things? How do you inspire courage without showing your loss? How can a man go and fight knowing that his death will be yours? Yet how can you let him go without letting him know just how immense your love is?

She does not know if she did this right. She can only hope she did.

Another hopeless hope to sustain. She is a true master of the art of hoping.

People of the town are grateful to her; they give her hugs, they slap her shoulder, they clasp her hand, they smile encouragingly. Granny gives her a rare compassionate look, and offers to take her into the café for a drink and a chat. Doctor Hopper is eager to give her some helpful words. The dwarfs are ready to keep her company. She is grateful, she smiles, but she declines all offers with quiet politeness also learned in the past – at the time when she was a princess.

She cannot be around these happy people – she cannot stand their good mood. She needs to be left alone. She speaks the phrase, mentally, and is chilled by the turn of thought: she needs to be left alone, to try and come to terms with the fact that she is alone now. That he is gone.

She needs time and space to herself to realize just how timeless and empty her world is.

She walks back through the town, blind to the sunlight. All her efforts are directed at walking with firm assurance; back straight, head held high. The door to his shop is in sight – it is very close. Just a hundred more feet; just a couple more steps.

Soon, very soon there will be no one to witness her grief, her pain, her weakness.

She pushes at the door with trembling fingers, and hears a gentle sound of the bell as it opens. She walks in, and shuts the door.

The shop is quiet and dark; a single ray of sunlight breaks through the blinds. Dust dances in it, as it always does.

She stands with her back pressed to the door, listening to the silence of the place.

She is alone, at last.

She is alone.

Alone.

He is gone.

The reality of his absence hits her like a dead weight – it comes from all sides, crushing her brittle confidence, deflating all her hopes, wiping away the exultation of that moment on the pier when she broke through to him and fully believed that her love has the power to hold him safe; her knees buckle, and she slowly slips down onto the floor, her back resting against the door, her eyes staring at the familiar room, this room where everything is his and is him, but seeing only the emptiness.

He is gone.

She will never see him again. Oh yes, she told him that she will, and she told herself, but in her heart of hearts she knows something is wrong with that. Some magic happened when she said the words, but there is an odd feeling about it.

He always told her, always stressed how important small nuances of every thing were, how many things depended on fine points of every deal. She accused him once of playing words and people alike, but she knew he was right. Words were important.

And she just said the wrong words.

He is gone to die, and she cannot help him. She will see him again – that's how magic works, but God knows just how she will see him.

She sees a flash of an image, silly and naïve and crushingly tragic, like an illustration from one of her childish books about knights and princesses, an image of him in a casket, face cold and lifeless, eyes closed, lips set, skin pale as wax, hands folded on his chest, and of herself, the bereft princess, leaning to kiss his unmoving lips, dropping tears on his eyelids, touching his hair, seeing him for the last time.

A loud, hysterical sob escapes her lips, and she covers her face with hands. Oh, what a fool, what a silly romantic she is! 'You read too many books, dearie', he told her once. How right he was.

Will his companions bring his body back to her if he dies? Will any of them think of that – will any of them care for him, and for her, enough to remember about them among other troubles? She doubts it. They will have other, more important things to do then to remember that the Dark One is loved, and missed, and, for her, irreplaceable.

There is no need and no point to hold a brave face now, when she is alone – she can cry all she wants, no one will notice or care. So she cries – bitterly, loudly, sobbing, just as she did in his castle when she wanted to attract his attention, only this time her despair is real, and he will not rush into the room screaming that 'This crying must stop'. She had lost him before, she spent years away from him, with no real hope of reunion, and she never felt such grief – such heart-breaking loss – her pain was never so strong as to crush her chest and to rake her entire body. Was that because she was younger and naïve and believed in happy endings? Was that because back then he was just an idea to her – just a promise of happiness, and now she knew this happiness, and lost it? He was real now, so very real, he was warm and loving and sad and difficult, and he touched her and kissed her, just an hour ago, she could still taste his lips, they made love, this very morning, while she was still not herself, and then he left her, saying he has some business in town, and kissed her swollen lips, and said 'Rest some more, sleepy-head, we'll meet at the shop later', and she held her hand against his cheek, and he smiled sadly, and kissed her palm, and she did not know what made him sad, for she was not herself yet, so she just let him go, and snuggled deeper into their bed, pressing her face to his pillow, breathing in his smell, and took her time going to the shower, wishing that his smell and touch and the sweat of their love-making would cling to her skin that much longer, touching the sticky dampness on her loins with a smile of contentment and mischief, why, o why did she go to the stupid shower, she might have still had a part of him on her body?..

She is not just sobbing now – she howls, like an animal in pain, arms wrapped around herself, clutching her own shoulders, trying to fight unearthly coldness that came upon her now, when she knows he will never embrace her again.

She cries till her throat is sore and her head starts aching.

'This crying – it must stop, Belle… This crying must stop…'

He'd never speak to her again. She would never hear his voice. His giggle. His snarls. The catching of his breath as he spoke her name.

She feels completely exhausted – spent. Empty. Like this shop. Like her life without him.

Finally, slowly, with a lot of effort, as if she were an old woman, she makes herself stand up from the floor. The light in the room changed – a long time must have passed. She straightens her skirt, which became very crumpled, takes a tentative step across the floor, and then kicks off her shoes: he loved when she wore high hills, but she cannot move on them now – she will simply fall, her legs barely hold her. Barefoot, she walks slowly into the back room; she needs to wash her face.

Their unfinished drinks and Bae's scarf are still on the table. Her cup, still with the dregs of memory potion in it. His glass, untouched. She will have to clean these things – he would have hated the mess if he saw it. But she can do it later.

Her eyes move to his camp bed – the bed on which she slept on the first day of her return, just after the curse broke; the bed on which they first made love. Her heart clenches, and she makes herself look away. She cannot think about it now, she will just collapse again, and he would not want that. He would want her to be strong and smiling and happy. He would not need to see her tears to know how much she loves him. He knows how much she loves him, and would know it till his dying moment. That much she achieved, at least.

She walks to the sink, and looks at herself in the mirror. She looks awful – hair undone, eyes puffy and red, cheeks feverish, lips bitten. He would not have liked that, either – he would have been upset by that. 'My beautiful Belle', he called her, acknowledging that her beauty is important to him – she liked the honesty of that. She opens the tap with cold water and spends a long time washing her face, and then smoothing her hair.

While she does that, a new resolution forms in her head.

She must look, act and behave as if he is coming back any moment now. She must not upset him, in any way – not with her tears, not with mess on the table, not with her sorrow. She let him go wishing that he carried the knowledge of her love with him. She must stay here and wait for him, despite all her forebodings, sustained with the knowledge of his love for her. This is how these things work – you have to trust each other; you have to believe the best, and you have to do your best to make-believe that the person you miss is here, with you.

She will not bring up the image of the deserted land that her life if without him. She would avert her eyes from darkness. She will look into her heart, instead, and see the light of love that now connects them so strongly, she will fight the coldness with its' warm glow.

She will stay here, in the shop. There is no point leaving it, going back to the house; she might drop there tomorrow for some fresh clothes, but for now she has all that she needs right here. She will stay in the shop, because the shop is his place – he will come here when he comes back; and he will come back – she will have to believe it. She believed in so many impossible things throughout her life that she'd manage to believe in that, too.

She notices that her hands are clenched into fists, nails digging into palms. There is dull pain in her chest, and she knows it will never go now, but she can live with that. That pain is also a sign of his continuing presence in her life, and she would not want it to stop, ever.

Behind the window, dusk descends upon the town – it is getting late. She feels incredibly, deadly tired: it has been a long day. She should just rest now – she should get some sleep. In the morning, she will see things clearer. In the morning, she will clean the table, and open the shop. He would want her to.

He would want her to carry on for him.

She sits on the bed, and runs her hand across the pillow, then picks it up and brings it to her face, inhaling. She can smell him – he spent so many nights here that his smell lingers even though the pillow-cover is clean.

She closes her eyes and sits there for a long time, embracing the pillow, not thinking much, just calming down. Then she lays down on her side, still holding the pillow, and curls into a ball, as she did when she was a little girl.

She can almost feel his hand, stroking her hair and forehead. Behind her closed eyelids she can see his face, smiling a little smile, looking at her with love and gentleness, making her feel at once a woman he cherishes and a child he protects.

Silly, silly girl, to give herself in to despair so deeply, thinking she'd never see him again. She will see him again. She will, she will, she will…

She can see him any moment if she just looks into her heart: that's where he lives, and that's where he will live, forever.

She drifts into deep, exhausted slumber, and the only snippet of a dream that visits her is an image of his weary and sad face, and of her hand reaching to touch his cheek