Author's note:  Beauty continues her narration of the events following her mission to the wizards' gathering, and things are starting to escalate – the end is near…

Disclaimer/claimer:  I think we all know which things belong to me and which don't, so let us simply dispense with these novelties and commence with this tale, my rendition of Beauty and the Beast.

The very next morning, I bade goodbye to the 'Bremin Town Musicians' and rode off on my re-transformed Sprytian horse, Elenette whizzing along with us.  But I wasn't planning on riding all the way to Trantharis: oh no, I had altered my scheme drastically now.  I needed to get to Casilimoor quickly, and I would not waste time traveling!  So we rode a little way off from the house, and then I reined us in to a stop.  I looked at Elenette for a moment, raising my eyebrows and taking a deep breath. 

"Here goes nothing." I said, and even though the phrase seemed despicably cliché, nothing at that moment could have been better suited to the situation.  I closed my eyes and turned my head up towards the cloudy gray skies, hoping and praying for the best, as I said softly, "I wish that we three – Elenette, this Spryte, and me – were in Casilimoor, in Basilisk-Head, with my father."

There was a peculiar whooshing sound, like the sound of a violent autumn wind blowing through the branches of trees filled with dried leaves, all-too-familiar, and something very much like that exact thing swirled around me, tearing as my hair, tunic, and cloak.  I felt as if I was about to be knocked off of my mount, but kept my eyes closed and held on to the reins for dear life, hoping that I would keep my seat.  Then, all at once, it stopped, and I felt that the air around me was close and warm, as if it was one of the first days of spring, and I sensed life pulsing all about me: people, and animals, and there were buildings and cobblestone streets and flying buttresses and market stalls—

And I was back in Casilimoor!

My eyes flew open and I stared around myself in astonishment.  I stood in the middle of a narrow, still road: a passageway placed between two large, fashionable houses, which towered massively above me, and on either side of both my shoulders, there hovered two tiny globes of light that looked like stars, my Sprytes.  I was back in Casilimoor.  My wish had been granted. 

But I took no more time to ponder on this.  I knew what I was here to do – what I needed to do.  So I grimly turned on one booted heel and set off down the alley, taking long, purposeful strides, never mind that I seemed quite tomboyish at the moment indeed. 

When I rounded the corner, I saw a plaque on the wall at my side: golden, and proclaiming that this was the house of Master Doran Laclarien.  Without a moment's pause, I went right to its door, put my hand on its knob, and briskly entered the house, my cloak whooshing and swirling behind me.  Elenette and her companion followed easily, whizzing along in my wake. 

I ran up the winding staircase that led out of the dark foyer room that I had just entered from the street and came into a large drawing room of sorts, which – from what I could hear – was a-flurry with activity. 

My every sense raging with indignation, concern, and even rage, I thrust aside the heavy evergreen velvet curtains that separated this room from the stairwell and glared ahead of myself. 

A dignified, older-looking manservant with a powdered wig and starched black dress clothing spotted me there first, and his face instantly registered both question and surprise.  Next after him, a matronly maidservant saw me and stopped her bustling progress across the room, causing a tittery, pale young serving girl to bump up against her, and then she also saw me standing in the doorway. 

I smiled coolly, caustically – cruelly, almost.  I could only imagine the shock they were feeling upon seeing such a strange personage in this apparently rather opulent home: a vision of a wizard-like woman with long, blonde hair flying out of its waist-length braid, face pale and stony with glaring eyes of blue, garbed in a bard's attire of green wool.

However, their reactions gave me nowhere near the strange satisfaction as those of the next two people who caught sight of me.

Nelisia and Tizirra, my stepmother and stepsister who had so long held me in enmity, were just entering the room, velvet and ermine and gold and diamonds flung all about them as expensive, exotic-smelling perfume flowed in the air about them. 

I stood where I was and let my eyes settle on them.  Nelisia saw me, enacted what is known as a 'double-take', and then stopped dead, looking paralyzed and about to choke on some invisible inhibition to her breathing passages, her face going stark white underneath its powder. 

Tizirra reacted differently from her mother: she stopped as well, but she did not look as if she had seen a spirit arisen from the grave.  Her eyes narrowed and flashed as she peered at me, seeming as if she was trying to decide whether what she was seeing was reality or not.  She looked, as I remembered quite well, like a cat that was about to pounce, claws unsheathed and ready to commence a battle.

"Good afternoon, Baroness, Tizirra." I said, coolly. "Going to a cotillion, I presume?"

That loosened Nelisia's tongue.  She ceased to be a living statue and sank backwards, away from me, still staring at me as if she could believe her eyes.  "Beauty – Arielle?" She said my real name hastily, as if she hadn't meant to say the oh-so-abominable nickname.  Tizirra just kept on staring.

I didn't release either of them from my gaze.

"Where is my father?"

Tizirra stepped forward, coming at me, hissing incredulously, "Arielle – how did you get here?  Why aren't you dead, torn apart by that Beast?"

"It's a long story." I replied, still imperturbably.  I couldn't believe the words that I heard coming out of my own mouth – couldn't believe my very own actions.  Who was doing this?  I couldn't be handling this scenario: not me!  It seemed as if someone else – someone calculating, someone aloof and entirely confident of herself, someone powerful to an inestimable degree – had taken over my entire being.  And yet…this was I. 

I gestured with my head, sharply, to a velvet-upholstered bench that had been placed up against the wall nearby, and said, "Sit."

A tense, quivering moment fraught with tight, simmering emotions of fear, defiance, and anger passed by, and then Nelisia gathered her skirts in both of her hands and blew over to the bench, sitting quickly.  I repeated the movement of my head for Tizirra, staring her straight in the eyes. 

"Please join her, sister mine."

She obeyed, but very reluctantly.  I instantly saw that she already suspected something of the change in me – of the magic and enchantment that I had learned, the new side of myself.  But that didn't really matter right now.  I stepped into the room, taking dead center of the gleaming marble floor, and eyed the pair for a moment before I commanded the servants, without taking my gaze off of either of the two finely-dressed ladies in front of me, "Please go, and close the doors behind you."

I heard their footsteps click off across the floor, and then a moment later, the doors slid shut.  Then, and only then, did I address my companions.

"Where is my father?"

The tone in my voice was dreadful: stern and ominous and powerful, compelling in a way that I hadn't imagined that it could be.  Nelisia started and raised her eyes from the floor to me.  I noticed that her ringed fingers were twisting her deep crimson velvet skirts agitatedly in her lap.  Gently, I began to tap my booted foot on the floor, folding my arms over my chest and waiting.  Finally, Tizirra bolted up from her seat and burst out at me, "He's up in his blasted room – sick!  There, is that good enough of an answer for you?  Now will you let us go?"

"How long has he been sick?"

My question was pointed as a dagger's tip.

"Arielle, this isn't the time for this," Nelisia began, and I saw that her momentary fear had begun to slide away, replaced by the familiar cat-like gleam that was so flawlessly duplicated in her daughter's features. "We are going to be rather late now, you know—"

I laughed, coldly and scornfully.

"Oh yes, of course – late!" I took a few pacing steps to the side, casually and almost contemplatively.  Then I rounded on them, eyes blazing and muscles taut.

"You go to your party, and enjoy yourselves.  But remember this, Baroness," I told her, letting my voice become hard and measured and even as I held her eyes relentlessly in mine, "You will not go anywhere near my father.  You, and your daughter, will stay away from him.  You will not go near him."

I punctuated each of the words in that last sentence firmly and authoritatively.  Then I turned around and quickly left the room, finding my way to the door that I knew would lead up into the further regions of the house, and to my father.  Elenette and her companion reappeared, having hidden themselves behind the flames of a few of the candles that had been placed in brass sconces about the drawing room, and they lit the dark staircase as I ran up it. 

Within moments, I had reached the sick man's room, and I burst in without ceremony, running to the bedside.  My father lay stretched out there, pale and emaciated and weak looking.  I felt a whimpering cry burst out of me and I fell to my knees beside the bed, grabbing his limp hand in mine and holding it to me. 

"Papa!" I cried, tears forming out of nowhere and beginning to course in torrents down my cheeks. 

How could I have done this?  I had neglected my father, the only person besides the Beast to ever show me any sort of love or kindness – and now he was sick and alone!  I held his hand close to me, clinging to it as if it was the only thing that bound him to life, and wept then, absolutely and utterly devastated with this turn of events.  My entire enchantress's commanding power flowed out of me, leaving me a broken and terrified shell of a child who was paralyzed with fear at seeing her father in such a state.

But tears weren't going to help me – I knew how to save him now.  I had the power to bring him back, and I would.  Silently rallying all of my strengths, I scrubbed the tears off of my face with the back of my hand, and then I concentrated.

From the depths I call you back,

Give now to you what you did lack –

Sickness, be gone; leave this soul,

Return to the darkness and let him be whole!

There was a strange sensation in my fingertips then, a feeling like something was being pulled ever-so-carefully and slowly out of my being, and suddenly, my father breathed in deeply and his eyes fluttered open, coming to rest on my face dazedly.  I gazed at him, wondering if he would recognize me after his long, terrible illness. 

He did.

*                       *                       *

I stayed there in Basilisk-Head for a week after my father's recovery, making sure that he recovered fully from his illness and that my stepmother and sister stayed safely away from him.  My anger towards them slowly lessened and transformed instead into mere hurt, which was seldom remembered but bitter and deep when I did think of it.  I didn't see much of them, however, and so my father and I were left to spend the week quite happily together. 

I found out that it had indeed been Nelisia and Tizirra's idea to return to Casilimoor, after I had left, and that my father was now running a small business in the repair of household objects such as clocks, music boxes, and other odd items.  He was doing well in this, but the income that he brought in was not half what was needed to satisfy the demands of the Baroness and her daughter.  But now I was home, he said, and they could do anything they liked – it didn't matter to him anymore.

We did not speak of the Beast or my life with him all that week; every time that Papa came close to asking about it, I gently forbore to tell him anything.  I didn't want to tell him that I was actually very happy there, that my life was utterly content and that the Beast was really not the monster that he remembered, until I was certain that he could indeed accept such a revelation.

Then, late one afternoon, as we walked arm in arm along the high cliffs that composed the edge of the large, sprawling emerald lawn of the Laclarien family home in Basilisk-Head, Papa finally asked the question that I had been long expecting.

"Arielle, my sweetest – you know that I cherish you very highly, do you not?" he asked, turning from his contemplation of the setting sun – which had set the sky aflame with a myriad of bright, exotic colours: fuchsia, tangerine, gold, and scarlet, and more – to look at me. "You know that I love you more than life itself?"

I regarded him for a moment, quietly, before replying.

"Yes, Papa.  You know I do."

"Then…" he said, slowly and thoughtfully, but tenderly, "if this is so, I want you to tell me the truth – the absolute, unguarded truth, and nothing less."

I knew very well what was coming as he paused and looked at me steadily, his eyes gazing, straight and unwavering, into mine.

"Arielle…what is it like – in that castle…with the Beast?"

Silence fell over us, and I wound my arm about his again, and we walked on.  I was without words for several long moments as I considered my answer.  I had been trying to decide how I would tell him the truth all during my visit, and now that I was faced with the actual question – the answer to which my father desired nothing less than the absolute truth… 

Finally, I rallied my mental strengths and looked up, meeting his gaze calmly.

"My life there…is very good." I said, softly. "I am treated as if I were a princess, and I have everything that I could ever want."

This was not enough.

"And what of him?  What of the Beast?"

Oh fates, I don't want to say this!

But I must.

"He is…very kind to me.  I could not ask for a better friend." I paused and looked off into the distance, my mind flying back to the castle that I now knew as my home, to the memories of the Beast and everything about him.

About us.

"He isn't the monster that you met, Papa.  He was very cold and guarded when I first came, even angry, perhaps…but something had happened to him, Papa…I don't know what, but something, and it was what made him so unkind and unfeeling…but now…now he's different."

"He has changed."

I nodded, feeling miserable.  I must seem like such a traitor to him: I had learned to accept – to forgive – the monster that had threatened my father's life and then forced me to live as a prisoner in a place where I would never see another human again.  And now I must tell my father that I could not stay here with him, that I must instead return.  Could there be any worse sort of betrayal?  I hardly knew! 

But then, Papa's arm came around my shoulders and he stopped me, turning me towards him, and he tipped my chin backwards with one finger, looking into my eyes.

"Arielle, dearest, please – I can see the conflict in your eyes, the tears which threaten to fall.  Don't do this to yourself.  Look at me, and tell me – are you happy with this Beast?"

I nodded, choking on a sob, and Papa drew me into his arms, tenderly holding me close as he stroked my hair and back.  "Then it's all right – everything is fine," he said. "You have found your happiness, your joy, and even if I cannot understand how or why, I must believe you and accept what you tell me, and give you my blessing."

Then he paused and regarded me thoughtfully. 

"But if he has changed at all, my dear, it must be because of you."

*                       *                       *

I know you are out there…where is it, where have you taken it?  You cannot hide forever…I will find you…

GIVE IT BACK!

I awoke screaming.

Whirling around in bed, I looked to the table nearby, upon which the Book of Hours rested: a white stream of pale moonlight falling down upon its leather covers from the window above.  Its golden bindings seemed to glow eerily.

Then a shadow passed across the window: something flickered darkly outside in the night air, and I threw myself forwards, grabbing the Book and holding it against my heaving chest as I stared out that window with wide eyes.

Something – someone – was coming for the Book.

Where are you?  You can't hide from me…

I'm going to get you…

"Try."

*                       *                       *                       *                       *                       *

Author's note:  The Book of Hours has been taken from its thieving keeper, Arielle is far from her home dealing with an evil stepmother and stepsister, and what on earth is going on with the Beast?  Next update to come soon – please r&r !  @à--- for all those who have commented so far.