The figure was a ray of light amidst the darkness.
"I'm fading." The voice had no tone, no color. It was a dying sound without identity. "You are the only one who can hear me. You are too small, too puny; and yet, you may be able to mend what's been torn."
"Who are you?"
"You already know the answer."
"Are you him?" LeFou tried to touch the figure. His arm trembled, all the way from the tip of his fingers to his shoulder. "Is it really you?"
His finger heart went through the figure as if it was steam.
It grunted in pain, with the luminesce that formed its body starting to dwindle.
LeFou retreated his hand back to his chest.
It burned as if he had touched fire.
"Time runs short. Soon there will be nothing left." The voice said. "Unless you act."
"What are you talking about? I don't understand."
"There's no need for you to do so." The voice spoke with authority. "You must only do as I say."
"And why should I listen to you? I don't even know who, or what you are." LeFou exclaimed. "Perhaps you're not real. This is a dream, my dream, and you're just part of it."
"And how do you know this is not your death?"
It was a cruel remark than plunged LeFou into a mist of doubt.
"This is no time to discuss the nature of our space." The voice was only a whisper. "I can do no more than I already am. Their lives are fragile, as is mine."
"Whose lives?" The answer came to him. "No. What have you done to them!?"
"It's not what's been done, but what will be done to them what matters." Light began to engulf the darkness. "I'm weak, as are you, but soon you will heal. When you do, come to me."
"Wait!"
"Come to me. This you shall remember. For now, it's time for you to …"
Wake up.
The sunlight that pierced through the windows hurt his eyes. Once his sight adjusted to reality, his surroundings became clearer.
The first thing LeFou saw was the wooden roof above him.
He tried to move his arms, but it was as if the blanket covering him was made of lead. His movements awoke his dormant wounds.
He hissed as the renewed pain traveled through his body.
"He woke up!"
The next thing he knew, a man appeared next to him. He put his hands on LeFou's shoulders and gently pressed him against the bed.
"LeFou, don't move. Everything's alright, you're safe now." He said, struggling to keep LeFou still.
"Where's Stanley?" The question came to LeFou more as a reflex than a thought.
He could tell by the look on Peré Robert's face that he had not an answer prepared.
LeFou's imagination began to weave the worst of outcomes.
"He's wounded, but alive." Peré Robert said with trembling voice. He held LeFou's hand as if he was comforting an agonizing man. He cocked his head to his right. "He's resting, over there. You should do the same for now."
"No, I can't. I must go."
"Say again?"
"To the forest. It's waiting for me."
Peré Robert stared at LeFou. There was uncertainty and pity in his eyes.
Another man approached him.
His expression was stern.
His sleeves were rolled up.
Dry blood had turned them brown.
"He's rambling. It's most likely a reaction of the stress he went in." He was cleaning his hands with his apron. "Best we leave these two alone for now, Peré Robert."
The Peré let go of LeFou's hand.
"How are they, doctor?"
"Alive. This one got away with a few bruises, but the other… " He sighed. "Well, he's out of harm's way now. As long as the wound doesn't get infected, he should recover."
"I see." Peré Robert said with relief.
"Wolves bites are a nasty business, but they aren't uncommon to the men around here." The doctor stopped looking at LeFou and turned his attention to Stanley. "But the bite of that beast... Had it dug its fangs a little deeper, and pulled a little stronger, it wouldn't be a wound I'm treating, but a missing limb."
LeFou felt a void in his stomach. He moved in his bed, but his body couldn't break free from the embrace of the blankets.
Defeated, he turned his head on the pillow and looked at Stanley with the corner of his eye. All he could see was his figure, as he laid on his own bed, still and rigid like a fallen statue.
"Poor men." Peré Robert said.
LeFou heard regret in his voice.
A collective shouting came from the outside. A moment later, the door of the clinic was slammed open.
"Peré Robert!" A man shrieked. LeFou needn't see him to know he was desperate. "It attacked again. Tom and Dick managed to take it down, but…"
The man started to cry.
It was a pathetic, childish sobbing.
"My chickens, my chickens…."
"How can it be? The beast was dead." It was seldom that LeFou had heard Peré Robert so disconcerted. He even dared to say he was afraid. "We made sure of it."
"Be it as it may, we'd better go see for ourselves." The doctor suggested, hiding a charged gun inside the pocket of his apron. "Let's go, Peré. Don't worry about these two; they'll be fine."
It was with no little reluctance that Peré Robert parted together with the doctor.
LeFou watched them leave. Once they were gone, he realized how tired he truly was. The news of the wolf had shaken his senses, but they quickly became dull with exhaustion.
"Stanley?" He asked, waiting for an answer that never came.
He tried again, but the result was the same.
"Stanley?" The last attempt was no different.
Disheartened, he succumbed to sleep again.
But before he vanished, he said one more name.
"Gaston?"
When he closed his eyes, most of what the voice told him was erased from his mind.
Only one phrase continued to haunt his dreams.
Come to me, LeFou.
The next time he woke up, a little girl welcomed him with a wide grin.
"He opened his eyes!" She cheered. "Dad, Uncle Tom!"
LeFou saw the two men answering to her calling. Tom's face softened with relief, almost to the point of tears, while Dick picked his daughter up and carried her in his arms.
"I told you he would, girl. There was no need to be so worried." He said, smiling. "Don't doubt your old man so easily."
"That's a terrible piece of advice. Take you father's words with a pinch of salt, kid." Tom said. "Or with a ton of it, in his case."
"Shut your hole before I make you, Tom." Dick ordered, holding his daughter with one hand and pointing at Tom with the other. "Stupid twit."
"No wonder the girl has such colorful language." LeFou said. His throat was dry and his voice was hoarse.
In any other circumstances, as jest of the sort would have earned him a friendly but hurting punch in the arm by any of the two men.
Their jolly reactions, free of any menacing undertone, were something new to LeFou.
He laughed together with them, until his mind jolted to more important matters.
"Stanley?" He sat down on the bed as if he had woken up from a nightmare.
Tom, Dick and his daughter took a step back, surprised by his reaction. They looked at each other before looking back at LeFou.
"He hasn't woken up." It was unnatural to hear Tom so solemn. Dick's sympathy was just as disturbing.
Whatever relief, or the hope it, vanished in that moment for LeFou.
With a strength he didn't know he had left , he pulled the blankets off of him and stood up for the first time in days.
His kneecaps, tired and unused to holding his weight, gave in and made him fall to the floor. He would have crashed his mouth against it if his hands hadn't gotten in the way at the last moment. The pain that exploded in his wrists and elbows expanded throughout all his body, quickly and completely, like a spark in gun powder.
He had to swallow a scream.
LeFou stayed in that position until Tom got him back on his feet. He held him by the arm with a strong but gentle grip.
He helped him walk towards the bed where Stanley slept, with Dick and his daughter following behind.
Stanley's eyes were closed.
He had the same peaceful expression so common among the dead.
LeFou had seen it before, but it had always been in the faces of strangers fallen in the battlefield.
To see it on Stanley was almost more than he could endure.
Tom looked away. LeFou felt him shiver with every breath he took.
It wouldn't be long before LeFou was reduced to the same condition, one he doubted he could ever recover.
"The doctor said there may be a way to help him wake up." Dick wiped his eyes with his sleeve. His daughter, evidently perplexed, looked at her father and Tom with a raised eyebrow. "He said it was guaranteed to work, but neither of us have the courage to attempt it."
"Tell me." LeFou said, with a lump in his throat. He was kneeling next to Stanley, caressing his hair with one hand and holding his unwounded arm with the other.
"He said that the only thing that can wake him up." Dick smiled at LeFou. "Is a kiss of true love."
LeFou didn't understand what was happening until he felt the arm under his hand move. Before he knew it, Stanley grabbed him by the nape, and joined their lips together in kiss that lased little more than an instant.
"Who would say it?" Stanley winked and pinched LeFou's cheek. "It worked! Who needs medicine when you have the power of love. Right, Lef?"
Dick exploded in a fit of laughter.
His daughter was as confused as before.
Tom turned his and looked at LeFou. It had never been his intention to hide his crying, but to avoid LeFou seeing him laugh before the jest was complete.
LeFou's face became crimson, with a bizarre mix of anger and happiness boiling deep inside him. Though the later was the dominant emotion by a large amount, LeFou let Stanley know what he thought of his tricks.
He snatched the pillow from under Stanley's head and began to slam it all over his body, with the only exception being his wounded arm.
"Stop it,Lef! It hurts." Stanley pleaded overdramatically.
"Hurt? What about me? Aren't your stupid jests hurtful?" LeFou said in between gasps, with tears of relief dripping from his chin. "You childish, inconsiderate,…."
"I'm happy to see you're fine." Stanley said from behind his healthy arm, which shielded him from LeFou's attacks.
It wasn't a mockery, but an earnest feeling.
It only caused LeFou to cry louder, and hit him harder.
Dick watched them, very entertained. His daughter, while still not understanding why Uncle Stanley had tricked monsieur LeFou, was now pleasantly smiling on her father's arms.
Tom kept laughing at their successful prank until he choked.
LeFou turned his attacks towards him, and he only spared Dick because of the child.
"What's going on here?" Said the doctor, drawn into the scene by the ongoing scandal. "LeFou, you're awake again! But, why are you hitting Stanley? Put that pillow down! Tom, Dick, do something!"
"Oh, I will." Dick grinned. "I'll watch."
It took the doctor half an hour to get everything back to normal. The only reason he managed to do so was because LeFou suddenly plumetted on the floor.
This time, Tom and Dick helped, and together they carried him back to his bed.
When LeFou came back to his senses again, it was nightfall.
"LeFou? Are you awake?" Stanley asked from his bed.
"No, I talk in my sleep." He scoffed.
Stanley laughed.
"I meant it, you know." His voice broke midsentence. LeFou didn't look at him, knowing Stanley's discomfort at someone watching him cry. "I'm glad to see you're fine."
"I'm glad to see you're fine too." LeFou wished they were closer so he could embrace him. "For a moment, I thought I'd lost you. I-"
"It's alright, you didn't." Stanley continued after LeFou couldn't find the words. "I'm still here."
"Yes." LeFou swallowed and nodded in his bed.
He was tired.
His eyelids betrayed him. Stanley could tell by the bumbling answers he recieved that LeFou was falling asleep.
"Until tomorrow, Lef." It was the last thing he said to LeFou that night. "Everything's alright. We can both rest now."
Stanley's words lulled LeFou into a gentle sleep.
But his dreams became corrupted by an intruding chanting that LeFou had come to know so well.
It turned his peace into restlessness.
Come to me, LeFou.
Come to me.
LeFou didn't feel the days pass by.
His recovery was a prolonged sleep with sporadic hours of consciousness. They happened mostly in the afternoon and at night.
Stanley would keep him company in those short hours. It was him whom did most of the talking, with LeFou answering mostly with grunts and nods of his head.
His conversational skills weren't at the top of their game, but his constant exhaustion didn't prevent LeFou from noticing that, unlike him, Stanley's recovery wasn't being as peaceful.
"I don't get it." Complained the doctor one day, while he changed Stanley's bandages for the second time that afternoon. "Why doesn't it stop bleeding?"
Stanley would always joke about his wound. Not once LeFou had heard him complain.
LeFou attributed Stanley's high spirits to the constants visitors they both received.
On the few moments he was awake, enough to have some hint of his surroundings, LeFou often saw Tom and Dick sitting on Stanley's bed.
Sometimes, their wives would accompany them and bring flowers.
Tom and Dick would also bring gifts of their own.
When the doctor was too busy to keep an eye on them, they'd sneak beer into clinic and a deck of cards.
They'd played together with Stanley for hours, until they were out of beer or the doctor chased them out.
Tom and Dick always tried to make LeFou join the game, but they desisted after several times of LeFou not being able to stay awake for one round.
Stanley also urged them to leave LeFou in peace, claiming he needed to rest.
Much to LeFou's surprise, Tom and Dick accepted his terms with little complain.
They'd also bet more coin and lose it more often than usual, judging by the growing size of Stanley's coin purse.
Stanley would get mad at them, saying that if he discovered they were losing on purpose, he'd fill their dirty mouths with coins and forced them to eat them.
"Why would we ever be so kind to you?" Tom asked one time, after losing more money than his wife would have approved. "' 'Tis blasphemy! Villain, I'm not thy mother!"
"Tom, no. No more of your Shakespearean dialect. It was funny for a few days, but now you just sound like an idiot." Dick complained, ready to smack Tom in the head.
"Even more than usual. It's that bad." Stanley said, earning a feint punch to the face from Tom.
At other times, Peré Robert came to see them. His visits were too quiet in comparison with the uproars that Tom and Dick caused.
He'd speak little, with most of his conversation focused in informing Stanley and LeFou, if he happened to be awake, of what was happening in the village.
From the scraps LeFou had picked up, and from what Staley told him in their brief nocturnal conversations, the wolf had been quartered, burned, and his ashes buried in a spot far away from the village's skirts.
When the villagers had first found it dead next to Stanley and LeFou's unconscious bodies, some of them had wished for its head to be hung on the tavern's wall. They claimed it would be a symbol of Stanley's and LeFou's bravery. Leading this group were Tom, Dick and their respective wives.
The other group, helmed by Peré Robert, had spoken against the idea, arguing that the corpse of such unnatural beast should be nowhere near their homes.
They had bickered about it like children for hours, until the moment the wolf's body moved anew and devoured a farmer's chickens.
The aftermath had been a gory scene.
According to the Peré, the stains of blood were still in the market. No amount of water and soap could wash them away, and the farmers had deemed that spot as a forbidden place to sell.
To complicate things, the village hadn't received any news from the castle.
The villagers grew more restless every day.
Some of the villagers were planning to venture into the forest and search for their missing royals, but not even this daring group could disregard the looming danger of the monstrous wolves.
They hadn't attacked the village yet, but some claimed their howling could be heard deep at night, coming from the forest like a bad omen.
The fear of losing their monarchs filled them with despair, but the fear of losing their families while they were away froze their blood.
They planned much, but acted little.
Soon, their discussions transformed into disputes that threatened to divide them.
"If the children hadn't spoken reason into their parents, we'd had stopped being a community long ago. Can you believe it?" Peré Robert said that day, with pride in his voice. LeFou, trapped between his dream and reality, could hear him from afar. "They said that we shouldn't let fear make us act in a foolish, violent way. I was surprised when I heard them say that, but I was more surprised when they told me who had taught it to them."
"What can I say? I'm so wise it'd be a waste if I didn't share my wisdom with younger generations. Call me Stanley, mentor of the young."
"Your humbleness is truly inspiring."
"I know, right? Careful, it might mesmerize you."
The Peré laughed together with Stanley, but the conversation ended abruptly. After a numb silence, Peré Robert stood so quickly that his chair slammed flat on the floor.
LeFou tried to move, but only his mind was awake.
The Peré's screams filled the room.
The doctor came running, looking pale and anguished, as if his clinic had been set on fire.
The Peré said something to him.
"Again?" The doctor sighed. "I'll get new bandages."
Stanley didn't make a sound.
"Stanley?" LeFou asked, aware that the words wouldn't leave his mouth. It didn't matter. He lost nothing by trying. "Are you alright?
His heart thumped with joy when he received an answer.
"He is not, but you are. That's what matters."
Disappointment filled him with bitterness.
"Who are you?"
"Have you forgotten me?"
"No. How can I forget someone I don't know?"
"Your body healed quickly, but your mind is still wounded. You even forgot my command." The voice had no emotion. "Perhaps I was too kind with my petition. I won't be making that mistake again."
"Wait. I know you." LeFou said. "You always intrude in my dreams, and turn them into nightmares. You keep telling me to come to you."
"Yes." The voice, emotionless and cold, had a trace of approval. "Come now."
"Why should I?"
"Do their lives don't matter to you?"
"What do you want of them, you-" LeFou had not a name for the voice. "What do you want from me? Even if I did as you say, even if I trusted you, there's nothing I could do. I'm just a weak man."
"True, but strength of body or heart is not what I seek. It's you."
"Then you seek for the wrong thing."
"What you think is of no relevance." The voice said,not allowing a reply. "Weak man, you have much to do. Come to me. This time, you will not forget. I'll make sure of that."
LeFou felt a touch.
It threw him into a pit of bleakness he could only escape by waking up.
Even then, the echo of the contact stayed with him.
He scrubbed his eyes until they became bloodshot, but he couldn't make the lingering sensation go away.
Chiseled in his mind and eyelids, the command was too present for LeFou to ignore, no matter how much he tried.
It was a pestering, agitating thought he soon began to resent.
"Monsieur LeFou?"
He saw only a blurred, small figure standing next to him.
"You're awake again!" The girl clapped in joy. She tilted her head and, gently, she rested her hand on his arm. "Why do you look so scared? Were you having a nightmare?"
He stood silent.
"There, there." Said the girl with a pretended maternal tone. She left, and returned with a glass of water LeFou gulped down in two sips. "It was only a dream. Dad says it's silly to be afraid of dreams."
"Why are you here?" It wasn't LeFou's intention to sound so stern.
When his eyesight cleared, he saw the girl flinch at his tone.
She looked down, twisting a piece of paper in her hands.
"I was just…, father and Uncle Tom are busy discussing with the other grownups, so I thought it would be a good time to give you this." The girl offered LeFou the paper. "I was going to leave it here, so you could read it when you woke up. But you can read it now! It's the first time I write something all by myself, but I don't think I did a bad job."
LeFou frowned, leaving the gift on the girl's hands.
I don't care. How many times must I say it? I can't read.
He was tempted to say it out loud.
He was wasting his time with the child's nonsense. Something important had to be done, and the girl was meddling.
Something in LeFou's expression must have told the girl of his feelings.
For a moment, he saw tears in her eyes, but her initial sadness was swiftly replaced with a scowl that was a reminiscence of her father's.
"I'll leave then!" She squashed the paper and stomped her way towards the door.
LeFou was glad to see her out of his way.
The coldness of his thoughts started to melt before she left for good.
Once his mind cleared from the fog of bitterness the voice had left behind, he felt a twinge of shame.
When had he become so unapproachable?
It had never been in his nature.
Not even the war had changed that.
He wouldn't let some petty thoughts to succeed where the hardest time of his life had failed.
Fearing the change that could happen in him, LeFou found traces of his former mood and stopped the girl with the loudest voice he could mutter.
"Wait."
A fit of cough followed.
He wondered how long it had been since he had last tried to speak louder than a whisper.
The girl heard him.
She glared at him over her shoulder.
LeFou gestured at her, indicating her to return to his side.
The prideful look in her eyes made LeFou think she would ignore him and leave.
It took her a moment of deliberation, but eventually, the girl returned to LeFou. She folded her arms and looked away. The paper on her hands was now little more than a wrinkled bundle.
"What?" She demanded.
Slowly, LeFou took the paper from her hands.
"I'm sorry." He smiled at her. "Thank you."
It was all it took for the girl to leave behind her angry façade.
"Don't be sorry, read it!" She urged LeFou as she giggled. "Go on!"
"I don't know how." LeFou said as gently he could.
The girl looked disappointed at first, but it was only for a moment. She nodded at LeFou in understanding.
"I didn't know how to read either, until Belle taught me." She said. "It's not difficult. You could learn, and then you could read it, Monsieur LeFou. Maybe Belle could teach you too, or Uncle Stanley, once he gets better."
LeFou flinched at the sound of his name.
He turned his head so quickly he almost strained his neck.
Stanley was in a deep sleep.
LeFou wondered if that was how Stanley felt every time he looked at him, so profoundly lost in his dreams that only the movement of his chest were proof he was still alive.
LeFou couldn't see his wounded arm.
Maybe that was for the better.
"He'll be fine." The girl reassured him. She too looked at Stanley. When she looked at LeFou again, there was doubt in her expression. "Right, Monsieur LeFou?"
LeFou said nothing.
He couldn't answer what he didn't know, what he didn't want to hear.
Come to me.
He shuddered.
To know the voice had left a mark so firmly carved in him that it resurged with every beating of his heart filled him with horror.
Yet, he dared not to disobey it.
There was also a part of him that wished to comply. If something good was to come out of doing as the voice commanded, it was the chance to know what had been of Belle and the rest.
He owed her and her father that much.
LeFou had no way to know if he would achieve anything. The answer to that question was as feeble and uncertain as Stanley's recovery.
But what other choice did he have?
Stanley's words came to LeFou.
They helped him see his decision of following the command as something he chose, not something that had been imposed to him.
"Girl, listen. I need you to do me favor."
"Do you want more water?"
"I must go to the forest." He explained to her. "But no one must notice when I do."
"Why?" The girl was as curious as confused. "But you needn't go alone! I don't know for sure what the adults always talk about, but they're planning to go to the forest soon too. A big group of them. You could join in. Father and Uncle Tom will be going as well."
So, whatever reason the children had spoken into their parents, it was finally starting to fade. Tom and Dick would hasten its decay.
LeFou knew there was little time before they finally acted.
"I need to go alone. Tonight." Judging by the sunlight, there were only a few hours left. "But I can't go by foot. I'll need a horse, some food and water too."
LeFou had none of them.
His horse had been lost amidst the battle in the Prince's castle, and it had been weeks since he had last provided his home with a decent food suply.
LeFou sighed. He hadn't realized how much of an empty space he had made out of Belle's house.
It was barely more than a place to spend the night.
It wasn't for nothing he had become so dependent on the tavern to feed him every day.
He would have left the village for good if it hadn't been for…
LeFou looked at Stanley again. He remembered the many things they still didn't know about each other.
Meanwhile, the girl stared at him with a pensive look.
As if punched in the face, LeFou understood how ridiculous was what he asked for.
Dick and his wife were not the strictest of parents, but they wouldn't laugh at the sight of their child assaulting her mother's kitchen and stealing one of his father's steeds.
What had he been thinking?
He doubted he had been thinking at all.
To involve a child in whatever was happening to him was -
Come to me.
LeFou closed his eyes and rested his forehead on his hand. It didn't hurt, but the restlessness of the thought dizzied him.
Come to me.
"Ah, LeFou! At last." The doctor greeted as he came into the room. "Child, what are you doing here? Do not disturb my patient with your nonsense! Move along now."
Far from being intimidated, the girl stuck her tongue out to the doctor and made a run for it before he had a chance to react.
She slammed the door behind her.
Stanley grunted in his sleep, but he didn't wake up.
"I swear, the apple never falls far from the tree." The doctor complained as he walked towards LeFou. "LeFou, calm down. You look as if you had bled all your blood. Lay down and rest, my friend."
"After all this time, the last thing I want is to lay down." LeFou said. "Don't worry about me. How's Stanley?"
The doctor's smile froze in his lips and shattered. An indifferent face soon covered whatever emotion he had allowed to leak.
"He heals, but not properly." He saw no point in sugar coating the truth. "The wound isn't infected. It should be scarring by now, but every time a scab starts to form, it reopens anew, as fresh as the moment the wolf bit him. I've tried everything to close it; sewing it, cauterizing it…but nothing works."
Stanley hadn't said anything about it. If he had ever complained about the pain, only Tom and Dick had been his witnesses.
LeFou clenched his jaw.
"Those methods are not gentle on the body. Stanley endures them well, but if I continue to force the wound closed, I may cause him permanent damage." The doctor nodded at LeFou. "The bandages have been working fine for now, though."
It was a sad comfort, and they both knew it.
"I'll get you something to help you relax. Rest, LeFou. Focus on your own healing now." Aware he had said more than enough, the doctor prepared to leave the room. "Worrying will not help you, or him."
He left LeFou alone with his thoughts.
There was a time where that would have been comforting, but now, it was just a chance for the command to resound louder in his head.
Come to me
Come to me, LeFou.
"No."
"What?"
"Stanley needs me here. I won't leave him."
"The fate of that man means nothing."
"It does for me."
"A noble sentiment, but stupid in nature."
"Call it as you wish. I won't go anywhere."
"So you'll hold the hand of a sick man until he dies, when you could be doing something to prevent it?"
"Silence. I won't fall for your tricks."
"It is no trick. Come to me, and you may find a way to help this man you care so much about."
"Now you're just telling me what I wish to hear. You don't care about Stanley at all, you're simply trying to make me believe you do, so I can act as your puppet and do as you tell me."
"True, I don't care about him. But what I speak is no lie; come to me and he may live. This I promise you."
"I don't even know your name, and you expect me to believe in your promises? You take me for a bigger fool than I am."
"Then may death take you too, coward. And when it takes him first, together with the rest of us, know that the outcome could have been different, but you chose to do nothing. Like you always have."
LeFou could taste the anger of its departure.
It woke him up. He had no way of telling when he had fallen sleep again.
The windows showed him the silver light of a starry sky.
His nose itched. When he attempted to scratch it, he discovered a small paper ball on his clenched hand.
He unfolded it without making a sound.
He expected to find incomprehensible letters, but he found a drawing instead.
Drawn with a skill only a mother could praise, LeFou discovered the image of a horse.
She had done it.
Not knowing if it was right to feel pride for the what the girl had accomplished, LeFou sat on the bed.
It wasn't too late to act, he thought.
There was only something that stopped him.
Someone.
Without a previous warning, Stanley hissed and hugged his wounded arm.
He twitched in his bed like fish out of water.
LeFou noticed the great effort he made in keeping his pain as quiet as possible.
He liked to think it was the first time it happened, but he knew this was a routine for Stanley.
That settled it.
He wasn't going to back down.
"LeFou!" Stanley stopped moving when he saw LeFou leaving the bed. He grabbed his wounded arm by the shoulder. "Don't scare me like that. Go back to sleep, we'll talk tomorrow, alright? I must tell you about… LeFou? Where are you going? Wait, LeFou!"
LeFou knew he would try to go after him. He looked at him one last time before opening the clinic's door and disappearing into the night.
Stanley was trying to get up, but the pain of his wound overcame his efforts.
"LeFou, wait for me."
"Stanley." He muttered. He turned around and ran away, feeling his determination waver at the sight of Stanley trying so hard to go after him.
Outside, waiting for him with the reins attached to a post, there was a horse with a small satchel hanging from the riding chair.
LeFou mounted it and kicked the animal on its sides.
The horse neighed and stood on its hinder legs, before trotting away as fast as it could.
Soon, LeFou left Villeneuve behind. The further he went, the more his village became a small spot in the distance.
"So, you changed you mind after all. Let's waste no more time, then. Venture into the forest. Come to me, LeFou. "
"But where? The forest is too big."
"Follow my lead. "
"I see nothing."
"That not necessary. You'll feel it, like an invisible thread you can sense. Follow it blindly, and you will reach me. Don't hesitate, and don't be scared. I'll try to keep you from harm's way as best as I can."
"I… I'll try."
"For now, that's good enough."
The voice left him, but her command stayed.
LeFou felt it pulling him closer to the forest, like a trapping melody of the sailor's tales.
As the horse trotted by the first trees that formed the forest, LeFou looked over his shoulder, and wondered if Stanley was still calling for him