Chapter 19
Disclaimer: Anything in this story that isn't specifically copyrighted by Disney belongs to me!
Belle paced in the dark like a caged animal. The men and Dai stayed in a corner, out of her way. None of them spoke. It was as if they all had the same sense that the oppressive darkness around them could not be lifted by mere sound. Back and forth, back and forth Belle went, passing the Beast's knife from hand to hand almost without realizing what she was doing. At last she gave up and slumped against the nearest wall, clenching her teeth to keep from breaking that terrible, protective silence with a scream of rage and frustration.
And the wall behind her gave. Just a little, but enough for her to notice. Belle spun and began running her fingers over the well-laid blocks. There! A single large stone set at about waist height shifted under her touch, just slightly. She wriggled it a bit more. It wobbled, seemed to tremble under her hand, and then a tiny pinprick of morning light came piercing into their dark prison like a golden arrow.
Her companions were at her side in an instant.
"Oh, well done, Mistress Bella!" the bookseller whispered, breaking the silence at last now that the darkness was being pushed away. "Can it be removed?"
"Not sure." Koru had replaced Belle's hands on the stone with his. "Must be done carefully, or gatehouse may collapse."
"Collapse?" gasped Maurice. In the dim light Belle saw him glance nervously at the ceiling.
"Each piece important," Koru explained, still running his hands gently over the stone as if caressing it. "Remove wrong stone, entire bridge, house, castle will fall, Father told me. Father was master stonemason."
"Was?" Belle repeated, hearing the familiar edge in his voice that she often heard in her own and in her father's voices when they spoke of her mother. "What happened to him?"
Koru looked away for a moment, his fingers pausing on the stone. When he spoke, it was in Nipponese, for Belle's ears only. "Entombed in his own masterpiece."
"Entombed?" Belle was not certain she had heard correctly.
"He designed and built a magnificent bridge for my family's home province lord." Koru's voice was low. "When it was complete, the daimyo decreed that no one should ever have a bridge so splendid again. So my father and the rest of the workers were shut away alive inside special compartments within the stone of the bridge. Their bones guard it now, for all time. I was barely more than a child, and Father had no time to teach me more than the basics of his trade. I swore when he died that I would never follow his footsteps, though as the eldest son in the family it was my duty. So I came to Nagasaki, made my living as a porter. I have not looked back. Until today."
"Koru, I'm…so sorry. I never meant to lead you to painful memories," Belle whispered, shocked by the horrible image that Koru had presented to her.
Koru waved one hand at her, a gesture of dismissal. "It is long past, now. I have made my peace with my father's spirit at last, by speaking of his death. And now, he will help us to escape by the knowledge he was able to give me."
In the end, it took all five of them, Dai included, to remove the stone according to Koru's precise specifications. His father taught him well for such a short time, Belle reflected as they stared at the opening they had made. Then they made a discovery. The opening was too small for any of them to slip through except Belle, the thinnest of the humans, and of course Dai.
"Allez, ma petite," Maurice urged in French when Belle hesitated, "We'll be fine here. You must save your Beast from Getsuru's treachery."
Belle gave him one last quick hug, and followed Dai through the opening and into the sun. Both of them gave themselves only a few seconds to adjust to the light before Belle swung the little onii to her shoulders and began sprinting towards the oshiro keep. They smelled the heavy smoke billowing from the upper windows before they had gone ten steps.
The Beast had smelled smoke and distantly heard shouts, but had not realized what they meant until the nightingale floor sang with an unfamiliar, heavy tread. As a man in soot-blackened samurai costume thrust the doors to his suite open, the Beast dimly realized two things: his oshiro was under attack, and that the onii hadn't had the time to warn him because they were busy either battling men or flames. He didn't blame them for that. It spared him issuing any orders not to fight back, to allow the men to penetrate their defenses so that his own wretched life might be ended at last. The servants at least deserved a chance to defend themselves, even if it meant they had to believe they were defending their master.
"So." The samurai spoke, his voice calm and cultured, "I find you at last, hiding in your lair like a coward and allowing your little demons to fight for you. Prepare yourself for combat, monster."
The Beast sighed miserably. "You may wish for combat, samurai, but I shall not oblige you. Do as you will. I will not resist."
Even through the armor, the samurai seemed taken aback. "Then you will not fight for the possession of the Prince's sword? The sword that you unjustly stole when you murdered him ten years ago?"
Now it was the Beast's turn to be taken aback. So that was the story that had spread? That he, the first son of the Tokugawa house, had been murdered by the Beast…himself? The irony was a bitter tang in his mouth. Still, protocol demanded that he give an answer: "I say before you now that I did not murder the Shogun's son, and that I am the rightful possessor of the sword Nightingale."
The samurai actually had the nerve to scoff. "You wish me to believe that you rightfully won that sword? It belongs to me now, and I will defeat you with it!" So saying, he seized Nightingale from its stand and unsheathed it. The Beast surged forward, growling at the dishonor to the sword to be touched by one who was not its master, but then he abruptly quieted as a realization struck him.
He knew now that the moment had come. The moment that he believed should have arrived ten years earlier when the yuurei held Nightingale in one hand and her cursed rose in the other. The moment when he would be slain with his own sword. He had thought then that he had nothing to lose, having been stripped of his own true body, but he had been wrong. Life without Belle, his Kirei-san, at his side, whatever shape he himself might be in, was truly not worth living. And so he fixed his eyes on his beloved Nightingale, silently asking for one more vision of Belle so that he might die with her before his eyes.
And as the curved blade came back in the samurai's hand, the mirror-bright side clouded for just a moment, then cleared again. In that brief, brief flash of vision the Beast saw, clear as crystal: Belle, sliding through a hole in the oshiro gatehouse wall. And he heard, in his ears alone, her father's voice as it said, in French: "Go on, my little one. We'll be fine here. You must save your Beast from Getsuru's treachery."
His heart leaped, for he knew that the sword, like an honorable samurai, never lied. His mind fixed on one detail and one detail alone: his Kirei-san had returned after all! Abruptly his eye caught the steely metal glitter coming towards him, and he remembered where he was. As Nightingale descended towards his chest, he whipped himself out from under it and onto his attacker's chest with a speed he had not known that he possessed. Within seconds they were flat on the floor with the Beast on top.
"You dare to touch a katana blade that you have not rightfully won." His voice was a snake's poisonous hiss, low and dangerous. "You will die for dishonoring Nightingale." It was impossible to tell, in that moment, whether the smoke filling the room was from the burning oshiro or his own burning fury.
It seemed only seconds before Belle and Dai had reached the main doors of the oshiro. The thick, elegantly carved wood had been smashed beyond repair by Getsuru and his men. Belle privately regretted the destruction of all the beautiful things of the Beast's castle, but she had no time to mourn for inanimate objects when there were lives at stake. Together, she and Dai made their way through the smoke-filled corridors, both searching desperately for some sign that the ones they sought still lived.
They reached the kitchen first. Shouts and men's shrieks told them that the onii there were holding their own. Dai hesitated when Belle moved to continue her own search.
"Go!" Belle ordered in Nipponese as he took a step towards her. "Find Mitsuko-san and the other servants, rescue them if you can."
"But I--"
"Go! Dai, I owe you a great debt for all you've done. I promise to repay you if I can someday. But now your mother needs you more. Itte kudasai! Go on!"
She and Dai stared at one another for another heartbeat, reaffirming friendship and loyalty with their eyes alone. Then Dai bowed deeply: the bow of humble servant to his lady Mistress. "Good fortune, Beru-sama! Save the Master!" he called, and then hurried as fast as his small legs could manage for the kitchen. Belle sprinted away down the corridor in the opposite direction, her legs already beginning to ache.
Up and down the maze of corridors she went, choking on occasional puffs of smoke, eyes stinging, heart feeling as though it were about to burst from her chest with anxiety. She resisted the urge to call out for the Beast; she did not want to alert Getsuru or his men to her presence if any of them happened to be about as well. At last, she rounded a corner and heard a welcome answering nightingale song from the floorboards. From behind the closed double doors at the far end of the hall came a man's cries, the voice all too familiar, and guttural reptilian snarls that were even more familiar. Ears ringing from all three sounds, Belle raced for the doors as fast as her exhausted legs could carry her.
Author's Note: Language note: "Itte kudasai" is the polite command form for "go". Don't know how to do impolite!
Culture Note/Further Reading Recommendation: I am not sure if such things actually happened in Old Japan, but I borrowed the idea of entombing master architectural designers live inside their masterpieces, as happened to Koru's father, from Lian Hearn's masterful novel Across the Nightingale Floor. I do know for a fact that similar things have happened in various cultures throughout history to prevent duplication of architectural feats. The book I took the idea from is set in a fictional version of Tokugawa-period Japan and is about a group of assassins with supernatural powers. If you are enjoying my story for the Japanese elements you may also enjoy Ms. Hearn's trilogy of books that Across the Nightingale Floor begins. (Warning! Contains lots of extramarital sex and other graphic images!)
But the nightingale floor itself is not fictional, for those who are interested. I have walked across the one at Nijo Castle in Kyoto (my inspiration for both the gardens and the inner "look" of the Beast's oshiro), and while I didn't think it sounded like a nightingale or any other kind of bird, the squeaks certainly were very piercing. The outer appearance of my oshiro is based on Osaka Castle in Osaka, Japan. There are lots of pictures on the web of both castles from a variety of sources, if you care to do an image search on Google or your own personal favorite online search engine.
And now I'm sure you're all anxious to find out what happens to our intrepid heroes, so…the next update is rapidly forthcoming!
Jya Matashita,
SamoaPheonix9
