Kindred

Chapter Four

Note: This update, along with my other updated fics, is a bit later than I would have liked. Unfortunately my health is poor at the moment and I'm on extended bed rest for a while, and I find it hard to write while on bed rest. Hopefully I won't be stuck like this for long.

Also, here is my obligatory Kindle novel plug, so that if I do have to go off grid for a while you might still have something to read until I come back.

US link: dp/B07BGSPPBY

UK link: . /dp/B07BGSPPBY

PS note: Aspects of this fic deal with locality, but I am working from a self-created canon that while some countries have the same names as ones IRL, they have radically different histories and land mass. So Belle's France is not the France that experienced the revolution.

…..

I want adventure in the great white somewhere...

It was hard to believe she had been so naive back then. Once the beast regained his human form and proposed, she had thought that her great adventure, which had started in the crumbling manor with the enchanted crockery, was going to kick into high gear.

She hadn't thought it would end right there.

Even though Prince Adam's branch of the royal family was supposedly in exile, once he was human again the advisers running the kingdom for the ten-year-old boy king were suddenly very concerned about him marrying a peasant girl.

Officially his royal highness Adam is permitted to marry any woman he chooses, so long as she is chaste and without blemish on her character, but do understand that any children born of this union are possible heirs to the throne and the people of our great nation do not look favourably on mixing the blood in this way.

The many, many letters they had been sent from the capital were just polite enough to insult Belle without causing any real friction, a skill they had no doubt polished in the royal court. Thanks to their meddling, it had taken three years for them to marry, and they didn't dare risk a pregnancy yet. They rarely left the manor, they needed to inform the capital whenever they wanted to leave, and Adam was so often writing long letters and meeting with advisers that Belle had nothing to do but wander the building trying not to get in the way.

Even the manors' staff, who had been so kind and friendly to her when her husband was a monster, were so bogged down with the work that came with hosting constant visitors that they were brusque with her, and though she knew they meant no unkindness she couldn't help but be hurt by it.

"It comes with the territory, dear," Mrs Potts told her once, in between tiredly juggling loads of laundry and pulling down drapes. "These people have more responsibilities than rights, and you're one of them now."

"It doesn't feel like it," Belle mumbled back.

"It should get easier with time," Mrs Potts assured her, and then she was gone.

She had so much time she managed to read every book in the library twice over. It was the closest to adventure that she was ever likely to get now.

…..

"Knock knock," Rapunzel sang from the doorway. "Is anyone alive in here?"

Belle looked up, and was shocked to see that somehow between coming to the library that morning and Rapunzel popping in to check on her, the sun had set and the moon was high in the sky.

"Oh," she mumbled, closing her book. "I was supposed to be on dishes today..."

"It's no problem, Jasmine skipped her last turn so she did them," Rapunzel shrugged. "We left you a plate on the stove."

Belle only realized then that her stomach was growling.

"It must have been a very good book," Rapunzel said as they walked to the kitchen together.

"Yes, it was fascinating," Belle enthused, nimbly stepping over Rapunzel's trailing hair. "It's funny, the story I came across was very old and supposedly from far in the south, but it sounds a lot like how Ella met her husband..."

Ella was still in the kitchen when they came in, and she looked up as her name was spoken. A few of the girls had lingered by the heat of the stove. Tiana went to grab Belle's plate from the oven.

"What's this about my husband?" Ella asked.

"Oh, I was just telling Rapunzel about a story I read, it sounds very like what happened to you," Belle explained as Tiana placed her dinner in front of her.

"Goodness, I didn't think they'd be writing about it already," Ella laughed softly.

"No, that's the thing. It's a very old story, it predates your kingdom. And mine, for that matter. A courtesan had her shoe stolen by an eagle that dropped it in the lap of an emperor. He supposedly tried it on every woman in the empire before he found the right one, and married her."

"That does sound similar," Ella agreed, an amused smile dancing across her face. "Perhaps that's where my fairy godmother got the idea..."

"I had a nursemaid who told me a story like that," Snow piped up. "I can't remember much of it, but the shoes were made of gold. Silver and gold fell on the girl from the tree that housed her mother's spirit."

"Really?" Belle gasped. "What are the chances your nursemaid read this same story and changed it a bit?"

"Not very likely," Snow replied. "Gerda was such a dear but she wasn't terribly bright."

"There's a story the eunuchs tell the emperor's children at night," Mulan said, turning her stool away from the fire. "It's pretty much the same, but it's a magical fish that gives the girl a magnificent silk dress. The shoes were said to be the size of a teacup."

"A teacup?" Aurora said as her elegant nose wrinkled in distaste. "Why on earth would they be so small?"

"Foot binding," Mulan shrugged. "I assume they practiced it when the story was written. I don't know why they leave it in now though."

"I heard a story once," Jasmine drawled. She had forgone the rickety stools to lay one of her many hooked rugs by the fire. "There was no dress and no shoes. The djinn just covered her in actual silver and gold and jewels. I assume that besides that, she was naked."

"That's a risky move," Tiana laughed.

"It worked, though," Jasmine said with a sultry grin.

"All of these stories were created in very different places," said Belle. "Really, what are the chances that they'd end up so similar?"

"Mama told me once all people have a common thread, no matter where they come from," Tiana mused. "Suppose the same goes for people's stories."

They do, don't they?

…..

Within an hour of the conversation in the kitchen, Belle was gathering supplies. She had read enough books to understand the basics of book-binding, and the castle had no shortage of quills, ink and paper.

Along with Ella's story, she discovered that her own story wasn't a once-off. Across the world there were tales of maidens marrying lions, bears, dragons, hideously deformed men, even a seagull. Most of them ended with the maiden curing her beast with the power of love, though the seagull story ended with the bride running away and having her fingers chopped off by her father.

When the books in the castle library ran out of stories, she asked her fellow princesses for their own fireside tales.

Aurora's stories were similar to the books Belle had read when she lived in the village, but with more exotic details. She spoke of an old woman called Baba Yaga who lived in a hut with chicken's legs and could do good or evil, depending on who encountered her. There was also a magical bird made of fire that often popped up to help the heroes of the story, even when said heroes were trying to kidnap the bird.

Ella knew very few stories, although she had been well read as a child her father had focused highly on her education regarding history and math, and when he died and she was left with her stepmother she was worked so hard she collapsed exhausted into bed every night. She supposed she wouldn't have been allowed to read for pleasure even if she had wanted to. She did, however, remember one story a schoolteacher had told a crowd of small children in the market square; the tale of how Reynard the Fox held his own funeral to bring his enemies out to mourn him.

Jasmine was a goldmine of stories. Her early childhood had been spent in the harem with her mother and her father's other concubines, and they often told stories to pass the time. They were fantastical epics, peppered with djinn hiding in lamps and rings and holding up the four corners of the earth,sea voyages plagued by monsters and unreasonable tasks handed down by unsympathetic caliphs. The stories often ran into each other so that by the time Jasmine had finished one, another had begun. Some of them were pretty bawdy as well, to the point that Belle often left Jasmine's room with a bright red face.

Rapunzel really only knew three stories, as three books written for children were all she had access to in her tower. One was a charming tale about a little girl in a red cloak pursued by a tricky wolf, another was about a boy and a girl captured by a witch after being caught eating her house (ironic considering whose tower she had been held in at the time she read it) and a very strange tale of a housekeeper who accidentally ate two chickens she was preparing for her master's guest and tricked the master into scaring away the guest with a butcher knife.

Mulan's stories featured many animals, but none more present than the dragon. The dragons of her land were very different from the dragons Belle was familiar with, benevolent snakelike creatures that bestowed great gifts on mortals they deemed worthy. She told a very amusing tale about the animals of the zodiac racing for a place in the heavens, how the rat had tricked the cat into missing the race and how they had been enemies ever since.

Merida's stories, when she could be kept inside for long enough to tell them, were full of war and murder. She discovered that the people of Merida's lands were distrustful of fairies and employed a long list of superstitions to keep them at bay (which explained the iron horseshoe Merida had hanging over her doorway). Water spirits disguised as horses tricked people into getting on their backs and then galloped into the depths, drowning their victim, and a man could be bound by a magical taboo that brought death if he violated it.

Strange as Merida's tales were, Tiana's were even stranger. They were supposedly passed down by a spider, Anansi, who was an intelligent trickster often set against the other animals. He fought the figure of death itself in some of the tales, and Tiana's stories were very concerned with death, what lay beyond it and people who could hop back and forth between the two. She spoke sometimes of the 'shadow man' but she was reluctant to go into details.

Snow's stories were as sweet as she herself was, because she had just been a child when she was told of them. She was the first to tell of an old saint who left gifts for good children in winter, and a spring festival celebrated with floral crowns, painted eggs and a spirit that made the trees and plants bloom. She told a tale similar to her own, though the person who fell into the enchanted sleep was an old man rather than a young princess.

Anna told the tales before Elsa could get a word in edgeways. Frost giants and troll-infested forests, a god that created thunder by riding a chariot through the clouds, underground cave systems teeming with goblins who could be warded off by singing at them. Anna was eager to tell these stories, though she sometimes got distracted and forgot what she was trying to say, so documenting her stories could was a long process.

Elsa managed to tell one story, late at night when everyone else was in bed and Belle was still in the library. It was a sad tale of a boy who caught a shard of enchanted glass in his eye that lead to him being spirited away by an evil queen of snow, and how his childhood friend traveled to the ends of the earth to find him and bring him back. It was the most words Belle had ever heard Elsa speak at once.

Pocahontas was hard to pin down, but once Belle did she talked readily enough. Her stories were fascinating, the world was full of spirits of men, plants and animals, and they could be called on for aid providing you knew how to reach them. Men practiced medicine to change their shapes to those of animals, and an enemy could still hurt you after death if you disrespected his remains. Women changed into trees and mountains and rivers and hosted their children's children on the wealth of their bodies.

There were enough stories to fill three books, and by the time Belle had those books written and began a fourth the other girls had thought of more stories.

"You'd get many more stories from our subjects," Ariel mentioned as she reached the end of her ocean tales. "Eels are excellent storytellers, everyone knows. Though I'd have to translate for you. There are things in the bottom of the sea not even the bravest mermaid has seen."

"What kind of things?" Belle asked.

Ariel's stories were the most outlandish yet, because her people had been so isolated from the surface world and the sea was full of the most alien creatures and places.

"There's a giant at the centre of the earth, they say," Ariel whispered, leaning in close enough to make Belle blush. "If a mortal lays eyes on it, they lose their minds. It is sleeping now, but one day it will wake up, and then..."

"And then what?"

"No idea," she shrugged. "So you'd have to ask yourself, I can't remember."

"I'm not allowed to leave the grounds, unfortunately," Belle grumbled.

"You can if it's a diplomatic assignment," Ariel told her. "That's the first thing I learned. Eric isn't allowed travel as he pleases, but I can as long as I'm trying to improve relations with other nations. I can write to your council to ask for you to visit."

Even after all this time, the solution to all of Belle's problems could be found within a book, even if that book was one she was writing herself.