Chapter 7
Disclaimer: Disney--yes. Me--no.
Two days later, dusk
Belle stared at the shaken Koru in horror. "What? I thought you said the monster's castle was impossible to find!" Koru looked at her in confusion, and she realized that she had spoken in French in her distress. She translated her words into Dutch for the tiny man.
"Stories say impossible. I say nothing so foolish," he reminded her. "And there is accursed oshiro before us."
As this was undeniably true, Belle did not say anything for several seconds. Then she ventured, "Is it possible…could my father be…inside that dreadful place?"
"Afraid no doubt is possible." At Belle's puzzled expression, Koru rephrased. "He is there. And we can go no further."
"Why not? If we know where he is, then we can—"
"Ah, Medemoseru is brave to suggest such thing. Noble's thought. But we cannot enter. Those who enter, never return." Koru tugged on her sleeve. "Come. Must go back now."
"But—" Tears gathered in Belle's eyes at the thought of her beloved father, gone. Gone forever. Like her mother. Something hardened inside Belle at that thought. Her mother had been taken sick so suddenly, there had been almost no time to even send for the doctor before she was beyond anyone's help. All Belle could do for her was hold her hand and pray as she died.
Belle hadn't had the chance to save her mother. She could not give up the slender hope that she could save what was left of her family, not now that they were so close.
She took a step towards that massive, silent gate. "I'll go in and find him."
"No!" Koru seized her arm to hold her back. "Medemoseru cannot!"
"I must!" Belle shook him off and spun to face him. His eyes were narrowed, and there were a few tears leaking out of them. Belle wiped away her own tears and stood strong. "My father is my only family. All that's left. If there's a chance he might still be alive, I have to rescue him. I have no choice."
The little porter studied her face carefully. At last, he said softly, "Medemoseru is all fire-passion and wood-stubborn. Needs water to balance her nature." He held up his hand to silence her protests. "But if she feels she must go, then she must. I shall await here."
"Thank you, Koru. You've been…a good friend," Belle said, trying to sound braver than she felt. She held out a hand to shake. Koru took it and bowed deeply over it instead. If he had been a Frenchman, Belle got the sense that he would have kissed her hand to wish her luck. But the bow was enough to convey the same.
Belle turned away and nervously started towards the gate.
Approaching the portcullis was hard for Belle, but actually touching it was harder. At last, she screwed up her courage and put her fingertips on the wood. It felt solid enough. After all she'd heard about the elusiveness of the oshiro, she'd half-expected it to melt away like a mirage. Putting both hands on the rounded beam nearest her head, Belle peered through the grating. The castle stretched above her, white and imposing. To either side of the smoothly-raked sand courtyard, she could see glimpses of elaborate, well-kept gardens with neat paths running through them. Belle shuddered involuntarily. No untended garden looked that neat and in order, and gardens such as those must require work every day to maintain their perfection. Clearly this place was still inhabited by someone. Or something. She shivered again, and began glancing about for a way to get through the gate. It looked as if it could withstand a siege, and the openings between the beams were too small for her to squeeze through. Belle stepped back to get a wider angle of the problem.
And the gate moved. On nearly silent hinges it wound upward on its own, while Belle nervously glanced at the covered gate house to see if she could spot a face. There seemed to be no one there.
When the gate was fully open, Belle screwed up her courage and darted through, praying that the heavy, pointed tips of the vertical beams were not about to come crashing down on her. Nothing of the kind happened, but when she was fully inside the castle courtyard the gate quietly lowered again as it had been before. Belle stared at it, then waved to Koru through the grating. She thought he might have raised a hand in reply, but couldn't be sure through her tears.
Brushing the tears away, Belle glanced left and right at the entrances to the gardens. Her father was likely not there, and she might spend hours wandering the paths if she went that way. She turned and surveyed the castle itself. It looked even more imposing and impenetrable from the courtyard than it did from outside the gate.
Well, you're here now, Belle thought unhappily to herself, and no way out. Nowhere to go but in. She took a deep breath, and made her feet begin walking forward.
The main doors to the oshiro were closed, but large and thick as they were Belle found that they opened smoothly when she pulled. She peered timidly around the door, half-hoping and half-fearing she might see someone. Neither her fears nor her hopes were answered. There was no one there. Only silence, and a long, dark hallway, greeted her.
"Bonjour? Papa?" Belle called. If her father was here, he would understand and answer her. Let anyone else who heard wonder what she was saying. But her voice simply echoed back to her from the empty hallway.
Belle stepped inside and swung the doors gently shut behind her, almost glad of the gentle crunch they made when they came together. The hush in the oshiro was oppressive, as bad as the silence when she had first returned to their home in the Dutch quarter the morning after her father left with Koru and his invention. How long ago that seems! Belle thought a bit wryly.
There was a single step up from the small ante way onto the main, polished floor of the hall. Belle removed her shoes and stepped onto the wood in her stocking feet, remembering from her favorite book that the Nipponese considered it good manners to do so. It felt odd to her, and she paused to wriggle her toes experimentally a few times, testing the smoothed grain of the wood before moving on down the darkening hallway.
Here and there Belle wandered, meeting no one, and in a very short space of time she was completely lost. She passed reception halls, tea rooms, rooms filled with dusty samurai armor, and rooms for a thousand other functions without ever passing the same thing twice that she could remember. She kept calling for her Papa, eventually only to make some noise in the silence-choked castle. Several times she thought she heard footsteps just around the corner, but when she hurried ahead there was never anyone there. Once she heard an odd scrabbling noise, like claws on wood, behind her. When she turned to look, the hallway she had just come down was blocked by a paper screen wall that had not been there moments before. This unnerved her so badly that she took the next several turns without noticing where she was going, her only thought being to get away from that moving wall. When she paused to take in her surroundings, she noticed a tiny flicker of light around the next corner.
"Wait!" Belle called in Dutch, rushing forward. "Please! I'm looking for—" She rounded the corner, only to discover the light was already fading down a corridor she knew she had never seen before. Instead of wood or paper, it was lined in stone and seemed to lead into the depths of the castle. Hoping to catch up with the light-bearer, Belle fairly flew down the hallway, turning corners without a pause, until she nearly rushed headlong into a dead-end. Glancing around, she saw a wooden trapdoor set into the floor. Lifting it was heavy work, but when she'd finally swung it open and called "Papa?" a dearly familiar voice answered with a feeble "Belle? Is that you?"
"Papa!" Belle nearly fell off the ladder leading down from the trapdoor in her eagerness to reach him. She found herself in a rounded room with several doors with barred windows, and realized she must be in a dungeon of some kind. A rustle of movement came from a cell on the left, and her father appeared at the bars.
"Belle? How did you find me, ma petite?"
"Oh, Papa." Belle surveyed her father in the feeble light from a guttering lamp hanging near the ladder. He was at least as bad off as Koru, covered with bruises, but he wasn't bleeding and had were no broken bones that she could see. "You look terrible. How are we going to get you out of there? Who did this to you?"
"Belle, you have to get out while you still…" Maurice trailed off with a gasp of horror. His eyes focused on something behind Belle, and he turned even paler, if that was possible. "Run! Now!"
Belle spun just as the lamp's flame was extinguished by a huff of air. In the complete blackness that followed she heard a scraping sound, along with a series of soft, metallic chinks that reminded her of the clanking of chain mail. Then the lamp abruptly came back on, appearing as if from nowhere. In its shadows, out of the direct light, a figure sat where there had been nothing before. Belle could see little of it, except for the reflection of light off of scales and claws, and a pair of burning eyes.
"Who are you?" she demanded, struggling to keep her voice from shaking too badly.
"I think that question is better put to you," a snarling, throaty voice answered. Though the accent was heavily Nipponese, whatever sat in the shadows spoke better Dutch even than Getsuru.
"I'm…" Belle stopped, and knitted her brow. "Why should I tell you who I am? It's not important. But if you're the one who's imprisoned my father, please let him out. Can't you see he's badly hurt? What kind of monster are you?"
"I am the master of this oshiro. I answer to no one. Your father should not have trespassed here," the voice snapped, but Belle thought she detected a hint of surprise behind the growl.
"I'd do anything to free him," she declared. "I'll even take his place, if you'll let him go."
"Belle!" gasped Maurice from behind her. "You don't know what you're saying! Please, sir," he added to the figure, "forgive her. She is young, and often impulsive—"
The creature in the shadows had shifted at Belle's words. Now she could see a patch of brilliant red scales, and a long, lithe shape like a massive serpent with four legs. A dragon? Here? The thought came to her unbidden. The shadow spoke again, ignoring Maurice completely and addressing Belle. "You would take your father's place?"
"If I were to take his place here, would you release him? Give him safe passage out of your castle and to my guide, who is waiting at the gate?" Belle asked, hoping she was not pushing too hard.
The scaled shadow considered for a moment. "I believe that is reasonable. Very well; if you take your father's place, then he goes free and unharmed out of my oshiro. But in exchange, you must promise to stay here forever."
Belle shuddered at his words. Spend the rest of her life in this silent place, never to see a human soul again? How could she bear it? She had no choice, not if she wanted to save her father. Still—
"Could you…could you come into the light?" she asked quietly.
"I could. But I am not sure that is wise," the voice rumbled. "Still, since you ask, I will oblige you." There was a slithery sound of scales on stone, and a large paw tipped with five, long, wicked-looking silver claws appeared in the lamplight. It was followed by a thick, stunted leg that was splayed for walking on all fours and trying to support a body standing upright. Another leg followed, along with a long, scaly white belly, two smaller front legs, and a red-scaled tail with a flame-shaped tip. Last of all the head came clear, and Belle could not help gasping. Surrounded by a brilliant gold crest was a scarlet lizard's head made for biting and tearing with razor-sharp ivory teeth. But it was the eyes that arrested her, for she had never seen a pair like them. They were slit-pupiled like a cat's, and their color was fire: golden on the outer edges, shifting through red and orange and white, with traces of deep azure-blue at the very core. Their expression was impossible to read, but looking into them, Belle somehow got the impression of immense sadness behind their impenetrable, shifting depths. She blinked, and the moment, the feeling, was over.
Standing to its full height, which would have been its length had it been walking properly, the creature had to be at least seven feet, perhaps nine or ten if the tail was included. As if satisfied that the desired impression had been made, the dragon, the Beast, dropped lightly to all fours, which brought its head a foot or so below Belle's.
"Well?" it said, so softly that its voice sounded like distant thunder rather than the full storm. "Have we a bargain?"
"No, Belle! Don't do this!" Maurice cried, breaking her silent contemplation. She glanced back at him. He was pressed against the bars of his prison, desperate to stop her, and she could not prevent the tears from gathering at the sight.
She took her father's hand, squeezing it hard and desperate. Then she closed her eyes, and made her decision.
"We have a bargain."
Author's note: And so our future lovers have met and clashed for the first time. (shivers with excitement) I doubt it will be the last! I hope all of you are enjoying this process as much as I have so far! Thanks to all who have reviewed, it's helped a lot.
SamoaPhoenix9
