Chapter 14
Disclaimer: I don't really have permission to rip this story off from Disney, but I did anyway. They own most of it.
The First Day of Spring
Belle stood as still as she could manage while trapped in the center of a circle of high stools. Mitsuko was patiently winding layer after layer of cloth around her waist, hopping from stool to stool. Belle already felt as though she couldn't breathe, but when she finally faced the full-length mirror in her room she had to admit the affect was quite stunning, if exotically bizarre to her Western eye.
Where Mitsuko had procured the kimono robe complete with its delicate embroideries, contrasting under-kimonos and obi (sash), Belle would never know, but the entire ensemble had fit her perfectly as if by magic. Mitsuko had already spent hours on Belle's hair and makeup alone. Though the onii woman had good-naturedly bemoaned the wavy consistency of Belle's brown hair, she had managed to carefully conceal it beneath a wig of luxurious black Nipponese hair, which was then piled high in an elaborate style and adorned with sparkling ornaments placed, it seemed to Belle, in random positions atop it. Belle's face was painted and powdered white, with eyes lined dark and lips a brilliant crimson. Except for her 'unfortunate' height and the startling green of her eyes, which were emphasized all the more by the pale green silk of her outer kimono, Mitsuko told Belle she looked every inch a Nipponese courtier.
"Now all I have to do is remember everything you've told me over the past few months, and I'll be fine," Belle said to Mitsuko with an anxious sigh. Due to the combination of the Beast's lessons and the near-total linguistic immersion with the servants, Belle now spoke and understood Nipponese almost fluently. Though they sometimes still conversed in Dutch, for the sake of clarity Belle and Mitsuko more often than not spoke Nipponese to one another. In fact, the only time Belle spoke Dutch with any regularity was with Dai, to whom she'd been giving lessons. She and the Beast conversed these days in either French or Nipponese, depending upon the occasion. Tonight in particular, the evening would be carefully divided between East and West. Belle would be performing sadoh, the tea ceremony, in one of the outdoor teahouses situated in the oshiro gardens nearest the blooming cherry blossom trees. The Beast would be her only guest. Belle would then perform the traditional Nipponese fan dance that Mitsuko had been coaching her in for several weeks, which was one reason Belle was so on edge. Each step and gesture had to be just so or it would throw the dance off. Belle had yet to do it without mistakes. Once that was completed, both Belle and the Beast would return to their rooms and prepare for a European-style dinner during which they would converse only in French. Belle had planned a surprise for the Beast after supper was over as well, yet another reason she was nervous. And under all of that, another form of nervous energy had taken hold and made it impossible for her to sit still for long, something she could not explain. She had never been one to pace, but alone in her room she walked back and forth, unable to stop herself.
Why is it so important to me to be perfect tonight? she asked herself, a little irritably. It's only the Beast. I see him everyday. It isn't as if he has to be impressed with me for any reason…
In another part of the oshiro, someone else was having an attack of nerves. The Beast was also pacing, his steps mirroring Belle's as he muttered last-minute instructions to himself in garbled French. He wondered how she was faring but refused to look in Nightingale's reflective side for fear that she might be dressing.
A light tap on the door startled him; once again he had not noticed the nightingale floor's song. He had been wondering since its failure to alert him to Belle's presence if it was possibly breaking down, after the years of neglect and disrepair. "Hai? Dare ga imasuka?" he called, but without the active fire of irritation behind the question that his voice had once held at every interruption. He had begun to notice recently that months of acquaintance with the spirited Belle had somehow mellowed his own sharp temper.
Sasaki-san, the evening's master of ceremonies, poked his head nervously around the corner, still recovering somewhat from the shock of not having his head figuratively bitten off. "Master? Beru-san says that she will be ready to receive you in the sakura tea pavilion momentarily. I will escort you there as soon as is convenient for you."
"Arigato, Sasaki-san. I am ready now." The Beast followed his onii servant, privately relieved to hear the nightingale floor make its customary noise as they passed over it.
A slender figure was arranging the sadoh utensils in the pavilion as Sasaki-san and the Beast approached. It was far too large to be one of the servants, but the Beast didn't think it was Belle, either. The hair was far too straight, and it was too dark as well. As they drew closer, he saw that the figure's graceful hand motions as it? she? set out the tea things were deft, but with a quickness that easily betrayed nerves. Slightly puzzled as to the figure's identity, the Beast continued to pace forward behind Sasaki-san, his eyes trained on whoever it was. More details became clear: a pale-green kimono traced all over with embroidered cherry blossoms, set off by a pink rose-colored obi. Appropriate for early spring, the Beast thought, vaguely remembering the fashions at the Emperor's court.
Sasaki-san discreetly cleared his throat, and the figure looked up. Immediately she smiled, a little uncertainly, and the fading daylight caught her eyes and lit them like sparkling gems. Emerald-green, and wide. Belle's eyes. The Beast drew in his breath sharply, and he realized in that one amazed, stunned, astonished moment that he loved her. Not only because she was beautiful, though he had thought so from their first meeting. And not only because she was arrayed in the achingly familiar garb of the women of his own country. She hardly looked like the Kirei-san he knew beneath the black hair and face paint. Yet it was Kirei-san, the Belle he knew, the person that she was no matter her clothing or hair color or name, the spirited, hot-tempered, kindhearted woman looking at him out of those leaf-green eyes that he loved with every reptilian bone in his body. The Beast stood completely frozen, unable to tear his eyes from hers.
She was the first to look away. Her eyes shifted, looking down self-consciously, and the moment was gone. The Beast blinked rapidly a few times, trying to clear his head for rational conversation.
Belle rose to her feet with a bright, nervous laugh. "Do I look so terrible that you can't do anything but stare?" she complained.
"Forgive me, Kirei-san," he returned, with a smile that was only slightly forced, "I was merely surprised at the final effect of Mitsuko-san's labors. You look wonderful."
"Arigato gozaimasu," she answered, with a correct bow for receiving an unearned compliment, "It will mean a lot when I tell her you said so."
Not quite the way I meant it, the Beast thought ruefully. Aloud, he said, "Well, your guest has arrived. Hostess, shall we begin?"
"Certainly, Honored Guest. Come this way," Belle replied, bowing again. She saw him to his place, and then carefully began the tea ceremony. To his practiced eye, she made several mistakes, but they were minor errors that did not interfere with the grace of the ceremony as a whole. When she finally handed him the tea bowl brimming with freshly whisked green tea, he thought privately that he had never smelled anything so good. As custom dictated, he took small sips as she waited patiently for him to hand the bowl back to her. Later she offered him sweet beanpaste candies to defray the bitter taste of the tea, and once he was satisfied Belle abandoned her duties as hostess and became entertainer. He watched, spellbound, as she dipped and turned and flipped her fan. Only in the last moments of the dance did she falter and drop the fan, which fell with a clatter at the Beast's front paws. He stood, picked it up, and handed it back to her. Though the thick white face paint hid it he was certain she was blushing red.
"Well, one thing's for certain, I will never be a geisha," she joked, breathing hard.
"Another thing is certain, Kirei-san," he replied, allowing her to lean against him while she caught her breath, "Geisha spend years learning to do all that they do without error before they are allowed to perform in public. You have been learning for months only. That you have come so far in such a short time is remarkable. You are to be heartily congratulated."
"Thank you." Belle smiled, a genuine European smile that showed her teeth between the red paint on her lips and made his dragon's heart take a few extra beats. For some reason, she didn't seem to want to move away from leaning against him. Or perhaps that was his imagination. However, imagination or not, they stood that way for several minutes, watching a few stray cherry blossom petals flutter down from the white trees before Sasaki-san arrived. The small onii gave a masterfully discreet cough.
Belle leaped away as though the Beast's scales suddenly burned. "Oh, Sasaki-san, I am so sorry for keeping you waiting," she apologized.
"Not at all, Beru-san, I was merely coming to fetch you so that you may prepare for dinner. If you are ready…?" He bowed deeply and ushered her away.
Setsuko-san, the senior page, appeared moments later to escort his Master to the banquet hall, which had been hastily redecorated somewhat to suit the dinner's Western theme. The Beast followed the yellow onii without watching where they were going, lost in his own thoughts and newly-rediscovered nerves about his own ordeal-by-etiquette that was to follow.
Belle used the hour in her room regaining her composure as well as her more accustomed appearance. In that time she and Mitsuko hastily swabbed off her makeup, removed her wig, redid her twisted brown hair in an elegant but deceptively simple European style, and poured her into a French dinner-and-ball gown that Belle had been working on carefully for weeks. She had sometimes made her own clothing at home, but never anything fancy. That had been her mother's job. However, with Mitsuko's help Belle had taken apart two silk kimonos without damaging the embroidery too badly and re-sewn them into a gown that she felt was worthy of the finest circles of the French court. The form-fitting bodice was made of a spring-green kimono traced with light purple embroideries of plums, with the stomacher cut from a lavender kimono embroidered with sharp gray birds that Mitsuko said were nightingales. The blooming skirt underneath was constructed of wide, alternating bands of the same two kimonos reaching from her waist to the floor. When everything was in place to her satisfaction, Belle took a deep breath and stepped from her room.
She had been expecting dinner to be awkward and full of uncomfortable silences, but to her surprise everything flowed more or less naturally. The Beast's face had been impossible to read when she arrived in her finery, but Belle thought she caught a glimpse of stunned pleasure his glinting eyes. She sank into a low curtsy, he stood on his hind legs to curve his flexible spine in a bow, and escorted her smoothly to her place at the table while continuing to walk on two legs. Belle privately wondered how much time he had spent practicing to perfect those motions. Looking back, she realized that in the past week or so she had seen him walking upright far more than in all the rest of their months of acquaintance put together. Perhaps her surprise wouldn't turn out to be such a trial for him as she had anticipated after all. But she had no time to consider this, for the first course was being served.
French conversation flowed from subject to subject without much difficulty: the gardens, the weather, the cherry blossoms, Belle's dress, the food. If the Beast took a moment or two longer to consider the words he wanted before he spoke, it mattered little. Belle caught herself wishing several times that the evening, and the easy closeness she felt to her companion, could last forever.
At last, when dessert was complete, Belle stood and made her way around the table to stand beside the Beast's chair. "Come."
"Where are we going?" He looked at her quizzically, tilting his head on its sinuous neck.
"To the main audience chamber, the two-storied one. Sasaki-san has someone to meet us there."
"For what purpose?"
Belle hid her smile at the complete bafflement in his voice. "Why, I'm going to teach you to dance!"
Author's Note: Several things to say from your humble servant. 1) I had to extend the ballroom scene to the next chapter because this one was starting to get long. 2) One thing I regret about changing the Beast's appearance is that I couldn't put him in human clothing for this scene. The anatomy of a dragon just doesn't work. 3) I have to admit that a few aspects of this chapter were borrowed from the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, though the majority of it is based on my own experiences of Japanese culture. If you want to see what a traditional Japanese female ensemble looks like you can watch the movie, but bear in mind that the fashions for geisha entertainers were made to set them apart from the rest of society. Though all women in Tokugawa Japan wore kimonos of various materials, everyone knew who was a geisha and who wasn't simply by the way they dressed and the way they wore their hair. 5) OK, enough of my prattling about Japanese fashion, and on to language notes. Dare ga imasuka means Who is it? and sakura are cherry blossoms (which in Japan usually bloom in late March, and even today it's a national pastime to go and view them. To the Japanese they have always been a metaphor for the beauty and fragility of life. Appropriate, no?)
