Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Beauty and the Beast belongs to the Disney corporation. I am just borrowing from their marvelous inspiration.

"Papa!" Belle called, sprinting up to the door of their house. Smoke was still drifting out of the top windows, but other than that whatever had caused the explosion seemed to be over with. Belle charged up three flights of stairs, feet hardly touching the steps in her anxiety.

Throwing open the door to the attic, where Maurice had set up his small laboratory, Belle paused. The smoke was still so thick she could see nothing. Not wanting to risk bumping anything important or worse yet, sharp, Belle waited for the smoke to clear. A particularly thick cloud blowing out the door and down the stairs made her gag and cough helplessly for several seconds. When she had her breath back, she timidly ventured "Papa? Comment ça va? Are you all right?"

A round of vehement cursing was her only reply. Still, Belle sighed with relief to find her father still alive and kicking. In fact, as the smoke finally parted the first thing she saw was him giving his latest contraption a good kick. "Why does nothing I create ever work?" he sputtered, hopping up and down and clutching his foot in pain.

Belle laughed as the last traces of her anxiety were replaced with amusement. "But so many of your inventions have worked! Remember the little dancing ballerina you made me when I was ten?" she reminded him.

"Ahhh, yes." For a moment, Maurice's face softened. Then he glanced back at his latest creation and his frown returned. "But this time, I'm really in trouble! I'll never get this thing to work by tonight!" he snarled. Belle could tell that only the memory of the pain of his last blow at the hulking machine was preventing him from kicking it again in his frustration.

"Tonight? Why tonight?"

"I've been invited to give a demonstration at the castle of the Shogun and I have to leave by dusk to get there in time, that's why! And I was so hoping to have it complete by then!" Maurice sighed, patting its dented metal side despite his recent assault on it.

"You will. And the Shogun and his court will be completely charmed by…" she stumbled, "by whatever it does."

Maurice eyed his daughter, but Belle could see that he was rapidly cooling off. "You really believe I can do it?"

"Why else would I be here, but to cheer you on as you become rich and famous with your inventions?"

"Oh, ma chèrie, you are so like your mother. Always bringing out the best in me. Now, hand me that double-headed clincher, over there. No, not that, girl, the one next to it! That's perfect. Thank you. We'll have this thing ready for the Shogun in a flash!" Suddenly filled with enthusiasm, Maurice took the tool from her, pulled on his work goggles, and rolled under the hulking machine to begin adjusting some valves. "Did you have a good time in town today?" His voice echoed hollowly from beneath his invention.

"I got a new book. And the bookseller told me a wonderful tale from outside the quarter. Papa…" she trailed off, not sure how to voice the uncertainties that had been surfacing over the past month, culminating in her most recent encounter with Getsuru and Bram. "Do you think I'm…odd?"

"A daughter raised by your mother, odd?" Maurice rolled back out from under his invention to peer at her. "Whatever would give you such a ridiculous idea?"

"Oh, I don't know. It's just that there's no one I can talk in the whole Quarter to except the bookseller. And he's often busy. As for the rest, well…they're the ones that do the talking. About me."

"I see. But let me assure you of something, ma petite. Every day you grow more like your mother. You are truly her daughter in every way. And that means that you are of noble birth, a woman of class who can easily outshine any of these merchant girls. The crème de la crème, if you will. And even if you weren't, I would still be by your side, proud of you for who you are."

Belle smiled at him through her tears. "Truly?"

"Truly. Your dear mother would have said the same, were she here today. Now, no more of those tears. We have to get this thing ready for the demonstration tomorrow!"

Suddenly her fears seemed far behind her. What had she to worry about when she had her father's love, and the memory of her mother? Determinedly, Belle picked up a wrench and went to help her father.

Hours later, Belle and her father were still working by the time Koru arrived to transport both Maurice and his invention through Nagasaki. Another hired man was to meet them at the edge of town with a different conveyance for the journey to the Shogun's capital at Edo.

Timidly, the small Nipponese man bowed at the open door to the attic. "Mishiyuru, you ready go?" he asked, looking in astonishment at the room's chaos.

"Oh, drat," Maurice grumbled, emerging from under his invention to peer at Koru through his goggles. "I shall be ready in a moment or two, Master Koru. Belle, come stand over here, chèrie. We must give this thing one last try."

Belle came to stand next to her father, wiping ineffectually at a dark smudge of grease on her chin. They had tried off and on through the day to get Maurice's invention, an automated wood-chopper, to work properly. Though all tests so far had failed, at least there had been no more explosions as dramatic as the one that morning.

After making sure that Belle and Koru were both well away from the machine, Maurice nervously flipped the switch to turn it on and backed away. The chopper rattled, rumbled, and wheezed a few times, causing Koru to wince at each new noise. The handle of the axe attached to the main body of the machine quivered, and then abruptly swung downward in an unmistakable chop. Back up it went, and down again. The dull silver blade was biting deep into the block of wood placed there for the purposes of testing. The machine ran out of power when the block was nearly severed, but the slice was much neater than if it had been cut by human hands.

Maurice shouted with joy, fairly bouncing around the room in his excitement. "It works! It works!" Belle joined in his improvised dance, and the two of them skipped about the room until guiltily remembering Koru's presence. But the little man did not seem astonished, either at the machine or their outburst. Indeed, he was laughing so hard tears were running down his cheeks, and muttering to himself in rapid Nipponese. At last, he contained himself enough to speak in his stilted Dutch, "Miracle! Miracle! Lord Shogun will be most pleased. But come! Mishiyuru late already!"

With Koru's diligent help, Maurice and Belle bundled up the invention and settled it in Koru's cart. Maurice offered to walk along behind and push, fearing the load would be too much for the tiny man, but Koru cheerfully declined. Then he insisted that Maurice ride in the rickshaw as well. Both Belle and her father protested vehemently, but finally realizing they were wasting more time Maurice relented. Belle watched in astonishment as Koru simply picked up the two poles in front of the cart and began to walk. The cart rolled easily forward with only a moment or two of strain. After making certain that Koru was truly not exerting himself too badly, Maurice turned back to wave to his daughter. "Goodbye, Belle! I shall return triumphant in a week or two! Take care of yourself while I'm gone!"

"Bonne chance! Good luck!" Belle called after him. She waved until the rickshaw was out of sight, wishing she knew the Nipponese term for good luck as well.

Maurice was well-pleased as the rickshaw rumbled quietly through the streets of the Dutch quarter. His greatest invention, working at last! He could not help feeling a bit worried about Belle, alone in the empty house for so long, but he knew she could take care of herself. After all, she had managed the entire household after her mother died so unexpectedly in Brussels two years before. Maurice had been on a trading expedition in the south of France when it happened, and had rushed home as soon as possible to find everything running smoothly and waiting for his return in spite of the gaping absence of the house's mistress. That, the servants had told him, had been Belle's doing. Though inwardly devastated at losing the person she was closest to in the world, Belle had shown her deep grief only in private. The rest of the time, she had determinedly stepped into her mother's shoes and seen to everything until her father arrived at home three weeks later. Maurice would have left her in Brussels when the offer came to travel to Japan and sell his unusual wares there, but he would have been gone over four years all told. That was much too long for any young woman to be alone in a city like Brussels. And what if she had fallen in love and wanted to marry? Maurice would have been far away and unable to look after her or give his permission to the match. So the decision had been made for Belle to accompany him. She had understood well what she was giving up, but it had ultimately been her choice. Maurice was proud of her for that. He had not been a young man when he married her mother, and now he was older still. It was good to know that Belle could make her own decisions should anything happen to him.

The rickshaw rumbled to a halt at the guard-gate that was the only legal entrance from the Dutch quarter into the main streets of Nagasaki. Of course, everyone knew that there were other, hidden, entrances, but anyone on honest business had to pass through this small wooden gate. By this time it was fully dark, a consequence of having started out much later than planned, but the gate was always kept lit through the night with two burning torches.

Maurice heard Koru joking in Nipponese with the guard who came out to inspect the cart. The man came up to Maurice and held out his hand. After a moment's confusion the old man handed the guard the summons he'd received from the Shogun, written twice: once in Nipponese and once in badly-spelled Dutch. It seemed to be enough for the guard, who read it, handed it back, and then conducted a thorough investigation of the rickshaw's contents. He whistled in astonishment at Maurice's invention, knocked on it several times with his knuckles, and poked his wicked-looking curved spear into the gaps between the chopper and the rickshaw's edges. At last, he seemed satisfied and waved them on into the city. Maurice let out his breath, astonished to discover that he'd been holding it. The guard's suspicious investigation for stowaways in the cart had put him more on edge than he cared to admit.

At any other time, being outside the Dutch quarter for the first time would have made Maurice unbearably excited. But it was dark, and there was not really much to see. He promised himself he'd memorize everything on the return journey so that he could describe the town to Belle, and then promptly settled back to sleep. Just before his eyes closed, he had the strange sensation of watching eyes. But before his exhausted brain could fully process the warning, he was fast asleep.

He was awakened by a jolt as the cart halted. Maurice sat straight up, jarred out of a dream about a warm bed back home in Brussels. Then he heard angry voices and shrank down against the metal bulk of his invention.

Koru was in the midst of a heated argument with a group of ten men, all taller than he. They were on the outskirts of Nagasaki, Maurice saw by glancing around, and it was several hours before dawn. Three of the men carried torches, and the light glittering on their angry faces made them look cruel, wolflike. They kept glancing hungrily at Maurice, as if assessing how easily they could overpower him. Maurice felt a prickle of terror at the undisguised hatred in those glances.

Koru made a furious gesture at the biggest of the men, clearly the leader. With a casual backhand blow, the leader sent the tiny porter sprawling. While Koru knelt in the dirt road, gasping and trying to regain control of himself, the rest of the men surrounded Maurice.

"Gaijin ga nai!" the leader snarled furiously. Maurice paled as he recognized the Nipponese term: No Foreigners. Before he could react, he was seized by several pairs of hands and hauled away from the cart, shrieking with terror, towards the dark forest that rose like a wall near the edge of Nagasaki.

Author's note: What will happen to Maurice? Only time will tell. I thought I'd take this opportunity to explain another nuance of Japanese pronunciation. As Koru demonstrates in his speaking of the French word Monsieur, the Japanese language does not contain the sound "see" (also sometimes spelled ci or si in English). When pronouncing foreign words, the Japanese substitute the syllable "shi" for all of these spellings.

Cheers until next time,

SamoaPhoenix9