Nightfall turns a well-treaded landscape into a stranger land, a lesson that so often slips from Maurice de Beaumont's grasp as he tightens his grip over the reins. The verdant trees grow hugely knotted and dripping in spidery moss.
Even here, the skies are infinitely obsidian and stars are elusive, finer than sand grains in a bottle. The silvery moon is unabashedly shy, hiding itself away behind sable clouds.
Stalking wolves lurk within the shadows, leaving flickering ember eyes to mark their presences. There is no fight between a pack of fanged-baring wolves and a Belgian draft horse carrying the wares of its master.
The harness loosens. The cart comes undone. Tipping, it crashes to the ground. The loss of his goods affords Maurice and his steed a slim opportune to bolt with their lives remained their own, into the woods.
The weather is viciously wilder in these parts. Unpredictable, even.
Without a warning, a storm unleashes a hail of ice-rocks on the helpless tradesman and his equine companion. Thunder roars. Lightning crackles. Ominous telling within the frosted winds is simply disregarded.
Right there, on the hills, a lightly cleared pathway leads to a castle, gloriously resplendent with greying marbled stones for walls and kaleidoscopic stained glass as windows. From afar, the towers seem endless in their quest to chase the unsettled skies.
The castle is a decaying labyrinth. A majestic relic stubbornly refusing to wilt in peace. Decorating its garden are roses of plethora hues, perfect and prodigious. Belle. Only a rose, one of its kind. He promised.
Well, he still has tomorrow.
Tonight, a respite from the elements, takes precedence.
"Water, fresh hay. Phillipe, this is not a feast, but it will suffice for the night," Maurice declares, leading the horse into the unguarded sables. "We will set for home at first hint of daylight, but I still have to pay respects to the host, owner of this accommodation."
Sometimes, Maurice notes, its furniture is far too human, with eyes, nose, mouth, ears carved into porcelain, metal, and wood.
Maurice de Beaumont wanders aimlessly in the foyer. The sense of a prey within the sight of a predator prickles his skin. Soon, his hunger dissipating into a phantom haunting the pits of his belly.
Squinting, he studies the candelabra on the table. His calloused fingers trailing over the forked hands. "This is extraordinary."
The hands move. The candelabra flashes a toothy smile. "Must have lost his way," it says. Impossible.
Maurice rubs his eyes twice. It is merely a candleholder. Must be the thirst clouding his vision, impairs his hearing. Yes. That explains it.
Harpsichord-strung tune, eerie and laden with despair, pulls him away from the table into the ballroom. Somehow he swears, words are uttered in warmest whispers.
"Of course, monsieur, you are welcome here."
Something is amiss. Mornings never start without the metallic chimes of singing birds intertwined with the scent of fresh varnish layer on smooth wooden boxes.
Papa's wonderful maiming of a children's melody is concerningly absent. But the stallion is here, quenching his thirst from the trough. Belle strokes his neck, quietening bushed whinnies and snorts.
Phillippe without her father is a mystery. Torn leather straps, tattered reins and a missing wagon is an alarming sight. Papa. The woods.
"Take me to him."
Belle rushes into the cottage, lifting a iron poker from the fireplace, fastening it to the saddle. Satisfied with no chances of Phillipe being in harm's way, she mounts on the horse, kicking her heel slightly.
The gnarled trunks resemble glowering faces, looming undeterred. Philippe gallops, swift as lightning splashing against darkened skies, into the foreboding forest.
Mists descend on the valley, like a hawk spreading its wings over terrified hares. Howling winds rustle tangled branches. Lush trees shiver terribly.
Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.
Belle thinks of Dante Alighieri, brimstone and suffocating sins. She presses on.
There are rules maman set that he tries to live by. Into the cupboard by ten. Move not when there is a living two-legged guest. Keep himself far from high edges. Stay clear away from Monsieur le prince at all days and nights.
But, but, but nights like this are rare. Could be counted on one hand, too. He had them once. Chip is sure of it—he had them, not imagine he did. Ten fingers, two hands. Five fingers each. Right?
Chip hops, in the elongated hallway shadows. Cloaked in agile stealth, he makes his way along the staircase. "One, two, three," he hums. "And stop." Chip giggles. "One, two, three."
In the distance, he catches the faint neigh of a horse—that is alive, four-legged—and Chip darts to the window. He leaps onto the window's ledge, careful not to incline closer to the brink.
A hooded figure dismounts the horse, tying its reins to the gates.
Another guest! How splendid. Surely, this is it. He hurries to the bottom of the staircase, stows himself in between the banisters.
"Hello? Papa? Is anyone here? Papa, where are you?" The guest calls out, worry tugs her syllables longer into an echo in the foyer.
Chip Potts pokes his snout out, enough to steal a view.
She is pretty, Chip finds. He has to tell maman. Lumière. Cogsworth. Everyone. Monsieur le prince too.
The corridors are vast, cavernous and deserted and the echoes of a tiny footstep or a muttered word carries on forever until its message, its presence is lost. For the damned, it is never vanished, continue to echo like a malformed ghost.
"Another trespasser, Cogsworth. A relative, presumably," Lumière says, tapping waxen hands on glit-bronze shoulders. "This is a she. Do you know what does this mean?" Stifling hope from creeping into his words is a foregone failure.
"It matters not of her gender," Henri says, shaking loose metallic rail-thin arms. "Monsieur le prince would not be pleased. It never ends well for them or him."
"Perhaps, she is the one," the candelabra asserts, dogged in his whim.
"Perhaps, she is like many that came before her." His rebuttal is involuntary, honed over the incompatibility of headstrong personalities. "It is madness to continue in this fruitless exercise, knowing the results would remain the same."
"She might be willing. There is a chance," Lumière bargains, wisps of smoke quivering atop his head.
The maître's optimism is admirable, even in the times of bleak certainty. Henri Cogsworth is the major-domo and in his windup appearance, he reins in the unattainable and whimsical notions. "And if she fails?"
"We must try, Henri." His name on the candelabra's lips is the closest Henri has to a frankest plea from a man who breaths suave passion and jovial rebellion.
"We do not even know how much time left we have," Henri counters, brassed cogs rolling in precise perfunctory motions.
Lumière grins, huge and hollow, "Are you not tired of this inhuman form we called our bodies, old friend?"
"We cannot keep them both." Henri sighs, not without sincere affection. "It is either the old man or his daughter," he concedes, in this battle of bushed wills.
"Thus it is set. We will keep the girl." Lumière smirks, victorious and deliberately charming. "I will fetch Monsieur le prince then."
The air is different. He takes a deep breath. It reeks of melted frost, salted maceral, and summer's bloom. This is new. Fresh. Another whiff. Iron-gall stained hands. Butter-smeared baguette. An interloper.
Have he not suffered enough—now another bandit seeks to ruin him. He trails after the scent, through the spiral staircase, up to the oubliette and hides between the shadows.
In the dark, he sees a girl. Harried, kneeling on the cold, unforgiving stone. "Hold on, Papa," she placates, bruised hands scrambling for a lock.
"This castle is alive! Belle, you must leave," his prisoner pleads, soil-tipped fingers clasping her hands tightly. "Now go, before he finds you!"
"I won't leave you," she protests, attempting to yank the iron-grated door from the floor. Her effort is rendered futile. "Who's there?" Belle shouts, yielding the candelabra as a club.
His nostril flares at this blatant act of property destruction. A growl slips from his throat, reverberating against the stone-brick walls.
"Show yourself," the girl demands, bravery wavers like the flickering flame.
Beast leaves the comfort of shadows, stepping into the dim light. He sifts through his lexicon for the vowels, consonants and syllables—the words are slippery before he could grasp and voice them. Stringing phrases together like a child learning to speak, serves nothing but to pile on his rage.
"Who are you?" Beast repeats, his throat hoarse from the disuse.
"I have come for my father," she says, failing to supress the tremble within her defiance.
Beast grunts. "Thieves deserve to rot in prisons."
She is quick to insist, seemingly forgotten her fear in the briefest of moment, "My father is not a thief."
"Tell her," Beast leers, "what you stole from me."
The prisoner is a step away from death's scythe, and chattering teeth makes for a dissatisfying answer. Beast slams his knuckled paw on the iron-bars, and roars, "Tell her."
Her glassy gaze dart to the ailing man. She drops to her knees, reaching for the prisoner's arms, vigorously scrubbing the cold from blue-tinted hands. "You're lying."
"He stole a rose," Beast snarls, his voice scrapes raw.
"Then I should be the one to suffer his punishment," she pauses, biting her lips and shame twists her courage into timid admission, "I asked him for a rose."
"No, she did not. It was me," the prisoner finally confesses between coughing fits, a valiant effort for a man half-starved and languishing in thirst. "I thought of it. She did not ask or wish for a rose."
Beast tolerates no lies, but he isn't one to oppose love martyrs and their foolish notions of chivalric deaths. The choice is inevitable. Better a breathing, healthy prisoner than one that wastes themselves away.
"You shall serve in his stead," Beast declares, "Be quick. Make your parting sorrows known." He moves closer to the petite girl, reaching over the iron lever above her head and pulls it down, unlocking the iron bars.
The prisoner rises from the prison below, on a rotting wooden platform. She rushes to embrace her father, faint weeping cawing within the room. "Papa, I love you," she says, pressing farewell kisses on his hands and purple-blue cheeks.
"Once he leaves, he will not return unless he desires eternity in my prison," Beast reminds, slashing through the tetchy reunion between close bloods.
"Eternity can spare several moments," she hisses, "or is your heart made of stone to permit such allowance?" She stares at him insolently, unalloyed distress emboldened by anger and contempt.
"You had your share of embraces. Leave now," he grumbles, not unkindly. "Before my mind is changed."
"Belle, I will return for you. Do not lose hope, ma chérie."
Beast picks the man up by the lapels of his weathered coat, heaving the former prisoner over his shoulder, and disappears to the staircase.
"I won't, papa."
Weeks later, the music still linger. The clumsy intrusion to an oblivious maiden lost to her make-belief play, reinserts itself in his dreams.
But always, always her face is a haze-tinged one—still he knows, her beauty is incomparable to any imagines he has.
Her voice, the memory of it, pilfers any waking thoughts he has; any heed he has left devoted themselves to educe the words. Scholarly lessons go untouched on mahogany desk and velvet chair gathers dust.
Phillipe hears it, the loudest, so clear as crystal-glass, in accidental, rootless walks. Bright green verdure stretches above him, with assortment of oak, cedar, fir and pie surrounds him. The azure lake glitters with sunlight gold, warming the errand summer chill.
Maybe, he reasons to none, he could try sing it aloud and dance a little. Perhaps, then the words will return, and flows unimpeded on his tongue. His servants are nowhere in sight. No witness to his conceivable humiliation.
Phillippe carols, "Toi, ma destinée—"
"Je saurai t'aimer," another voice, saccharinely feminine, harmonises with his, "tu l'as rêvé."
The mist of forgetfulness is lifted, dissipating from his memories—I will know to love you, you have dreamed it. He casts a searching gaze all around, finds her partially obscured behind a stumpy, crooked birch.
She is agonisingly, magnificently beautiful, wreathed in pixie loveliness and alluring candour. Kings and emperors would wage vague wars and improbable claims of conquest over her beauty, Phillippe muses, and thousands would die without regrets.
The abrupt quietness must be amusing.
She chuckles, windchimes vibrating in earnest. "Please excuse me, I did not wish to frighten you." Even her apology is absurdly pleasant.
It's her eyes, he notices first, above all. Deep-set, grey as silver-ash and a cluster of dandelion and cinnamon flecking her gaze. Hear ears are peculiar, somewhat pointed and leaf-shaped.
"Oh, it is not . . ." Phillippe stammers, scrambling through a plethora of fluent languages, unable to form an articulate sentence, "it is not that . . ." and his eloquence seemingly perished without a trace and he mortifyingly stumbles, "It is that you are a—"
She grins, "A stranger?"
The words stuck to the walls of his throat, like ant on a spider's web. He nods. Flushing heat curls at the base of his skull, colouring his neck in ruddy mortification. Phillippe rubs his neck, vigorous and discreet, dispelling the embarrassment.
"But you forget that we already seen each other." She strolls towards him, languid and barefooted. She is exquisitely tall, dwarfing over him without a hint of condescending belittlement.
"We have seen each other?" Phillippe splutters, scepticism squishing his brows together.
"But look, you have said it yourself: in the middle of a dream," she states, nonchalant. The corners of her rose-hued lips quirking into an unironic smile.
She takes another step forward, tucking a loose golden strand behind her ear. "Are you interested in learning the rest of the song, the words, and not just the melody?"
He nods again. Opting to limit his blabbering replies, he already proven his charismata is non-existent.
"Excellent." She offers a pallid hand, and wiggles her eyebrows, urging him to take hers. "This won't work without la danse."
"I cannot dance," he concedes, carefully intertwining his ungloved hand with her rose-tipped, elongated fingers, circles his other on her waist.
"Rubbish, everyone can dance. You are in the presence of a fine danseur," she grins, batting silken lashes coyly and hums. Her smile is cat-like and tastes like a tantalising mystery. "Mon amour, tu m'as vu au beau milieu d'un rêve."
There is magic plaiting itself into his thoughts, his dreams, clearing the fog at the edge of his tongue and he remembers it all. My love, you saw me in the middle of a dream—there have been plenty dreams of her, of them.
And now, with her merry nod, he plunges headlong into this morbid fascination taking root. "Refusons, que nos lendemains, soient mornes et gris," he starts, uncertain and bold.
"Nous attendrons l'heure de notre bonheur." Against her melody, his warbling is scratchy reeds caught in uneven breeze—but still, benign teasing or cheery mocking is absent from her sharp-stroked features.
"Toi, ma destinée." He lets her lead him in this dance of a lifetime, as her voice fills the air with soft wool and piquant wine. Sunbursts twirling along at the corners of her eyes.
"Je saurai t'aimer—"
She is awfully close, so much that he could see freckles dotted along her throat like stars strung together on a diamond necklace. The hooves of his heart stomp against the fishbone of his chest.
"—j'en ai rêvé."
It is clear now, he's ensnared in a Siren's invitation. But Philippe welcomes this ethereal temptation as it comes, eagerly and hungrily.
