Bonsoir madames et messieurs et bienvenue a chapitre septieme (? is that right?) a ma...er...story! Ok, so my french is tres bad but I felt the need to try and bring a little European culture to my story. Can you tell I didn't sleep well last night? Anyway, say goodbye to Raisse for now. This is the little darling's last chapter for a while as I have discovered theres only so much you can do with a person sitting alone in a darkened room, so after her wailings in this episode she gets a rest for a bit. Which means, we get more Chip! Huzzah! In fact, this chapter starts off with him...I have big plans for this one, oh very big plans indeed!

This was a long time coming, mainly because I, being the bright spark that I am, left my notebook at work and then had a major flap worrying that it had been thrown away, but it wasn't! Yay! So yeah, thats why I've taken my time. Trudi was not available for beta-ing for this chapter so if its riddled with grammatical errors and nonsensical plot points, thats why.

UPDATE: Now revised following comments from my beta!

Chapter Sixteen: Fragmentation

"Light, damn you! Light!"

Chip rubbed the sticks together as hard as he could muster, sending bark fragments scattering in all directions. His hands were sore and blistered by now and starting to bleed. He'd been trying to start a fire for the last hour and had not produced so much as a spark. Of course, it helped little that he did not actually know how to produce flame from a mass of random plants he'd gathered from the forest floor, but a book he'd glanced through a few years back and his own stubbornness convinced him otherwise. The night was drawing in fast though, and Chip really did not want to be alone in the forest without heat and light.

He gave it one last frantic burst of energy before throwing the sticks furiously into the undergrowth. He then kicked a tree for good measure, only to reward himself with bruised toes. Defeated, tired, cold and hungry, Chip slumped down beneath the tree he'd just kicked and repeatedly slammed the back of his head on the trunk. In truth, this served no purpose but it was his way of relieving his frustration at his own stupidity.

It had been many days since he'd started. He did not precisely know how many, as he slept when he needed to sleep, ate when he was hungry and travelled regardless of the colour of the sky or the length of his shadow.

He'd started well, had made good progress in distance and his spirits has been optimistic. The princess had to be somewhere, and as long as she was somewhere, he could find her. The first few nights had been spent in taverns lining the road he chose to ride along; a main road, the one most frequently used between Lille and Montpellier. He'd arrived at each just after sunset and had an assortment of meals, varying in taste and quality. He'd drunk. He'd even taken part in a few games of Slide-thrift and Rondeau, though he hadn't known how to play either at first. Come daybreak, he'd left with a hearty breakfast inside him, ready for the day ahead.

It was only on the day he'd arrived at an inn called Chateau Lefac, owned by a rather severe-looking man by the name of Guillame de Lacey, eaten his fill and then put his hand in his bag to pay that he'd realised he had nothing left from the fair amount of coins he'd taken with him. He'd fled for his life that night, pursued by two very large men on horseback for at least five miles before he'd turned Ambrosius into a dense thicket and lost them.

Ever since then, he'd travelled day and night without the comfort of warm food or soft beds. When the sun was high, there was no shelter and little to drink, which was unfortunately the case for long periods of time when forests gave way to large flat fields of agriculture. When it was dark, he rode alone with no light or lay on grass and mud with the earth's natural bumps and lumps ensuring he did not rest well. His nutrition came from berries and seeds that he picked in the hope they weren't poisoned; his water, handfuls gulped from rivers and streams. This particular evening, one where the wind howled down the valleys and threatened to snap the stems of every flower, he had decided to attempt to start a fire and having found no flint, was making do with forest-floor mulch.

However, the pile of bracken and leaves lay unlit, he was cold and dirty and night was approaching on swift wings.

How could he have been so stupid? What was he doing? He was miles from home in search of what felt increasingly more like a phantasm. He had no idea where he was going or how he was going to get there. The Enchantress has been infuriatingly vague in her instructions; She'd said little more than that he and Raisse were joined by an unbreakablebond and that, if he closed his eyes and opened his mind, the way would be known to him. He'd ridden, foolishly thinking that he would somehow turn a corner and there she'd be, just waiting for him. She'd scowl of course and demand to know what had taken him so long, but she'd be there and alive and he'd take her home. Everything would be as it was before…except now he knew that whether he found her or not, things would never be the same again, not for him. He wasn't who he'd thought he was. There was something inside of him—he could feel it yearning to break free. Only, he was too afraid to let it. Or was he?

Suddenly, Chip had an idea. It came to him like a bolt of lightning from some sub-conscious area of his brain and was made flesh before he could properly think about it. From where he sat, he stared at the pile of leaves and twigs and willed it to catch fire.

Light, light! he screamed again, only this time with him the voice from within.

At first, nothing happened, so he narrowed his eyes and focused on nothing but the brushwood. Every notch on the twigs, every vein on every leaf, every bramble was burned into the back of his eye sockets. Then he felt it…he felt it move and shift around in his blood. He felt it flow from his core out into every extreme of his body. His head began to itch, then ache as the power built up inside his mind. More and more, until he struggled to retain focus. And then he blinked. And that was it.

When he looked at the spot again, it was alight with a small orangey-yellow flame, sending slithers of heat dancing across his face. Stunned, and not quite ready to believe what his sense were telling him, Chip moved over to the fire and put his left hand at the top of the flames. He was rewarded with a sharp burning sensation in his fingers, and a chill running down his spine as the realisation dawned on him. There was no doubt about it. He'd created fire from thin air,

As he warmed his hands, ensuring the burned fingers were turned away, the same heavy feeling of dread he'd felt after the resurrection of the princess hung over him. Of course, this was not on the same scale and nowhere near as potentially catastrophic, but it still meant that he, Chip, former tea-cup, glorified stable-boy and royal hanger-on, possessed powers he'd never seen before and should not have. He knew magic existed—he'd experienced a decade-long enchantment after all—but surely it was reserved for beings such as the Enchantress and used only to promote good and vanquish evil in mortals. What on earth was he doing with it? Why could he raise people from the dead and cause fire just by thinking about it?

He'd never been normal, he knew that now. It had started with the enchantment…maybe that was something to do with it. Maybe the presence of magic had affected him somehow, seized him and swallowed him. But, if that was the case, why had nobody else been affected? Maybe they had but never spoke of it. No, that couldn't be it. Gossip flowed from every mouth to every ear in the castle; he would have heard something by now if others had it.

He thought back to the enchantment. How he'd 'known' about the Enchantress lurking behind the castle door, how he'd wanted to warn the prince, but was too late. How, as the days wore on and despair ran rife in dusty corridors and gloomy courtyards, he'd found himself increasingly fascinated with the transformation of human to household object. Many a time, he'd followed each one around, hopping behind them on his stand and bombarding them with endless questions.

"What does it feel like to have a handle instead of hands?"

"How can you walk without feet?"

"Do you have a heart beating in your wooden chest?"

"How can you be alive without one?"

Cogsworth in particular amused him no end, especially as his body mainly consisted of a pendulum in a glass case.

"Did it hurt to knock it out of time?"

Apparently it did, for Chip had then had to endure a full half hour of shouting and then a month of nudging lost items out from underneath the castle's many sofas with his nose.

Then there had been his rescue of Belle and Maurice. He'd used Maurice's wood-chopping invention to smash his way into the cellar where they'd been locked in. Not a bad feat for a five year old, especially considering that he had been unable to pull down the lever to start it at first.

The machine had been left outside in the snow and cold weather: a true sign of the inventor's absence as he normally took exquisite care of his inventions. This meant that the controls were not only frozen but beginning to rust. Chip had jumped on it, fallen on it, pulled as hard as he could, but it had refused to budge. This was unsurprising as he'd weighed less than half a pound at the time. With the torches from the attackers growing fainter and time running out fast, he'd pleaded with the lever with everything he had. He'd seen it locking down in his mind and willed it to come true…and then it had. All of a sudden, the machine had come to life, spewing steam and smoke in all directions. A few blows on the coal, a tug on the whistle and he was off, hurtling towards the cellar with the axe at the front chopping at full speed.

The transformation…the magic that had changed wood and china to flesh, oil to blood, fabric to hair…it had buzzed around Chip for days afterwards. For a short time, he'd felt invincible. His mother had had to stop him several times from testing out his new body by jumping off the balcony into the fountain or running into the forest to take on the wolves. She'd scolded him time and again, as if bones were more fragile than porcelain. After the last particular incident, when he'd stated he wanted to ride one of the wolves like he rode Sultan, Mrs. Potts had gone straight to the prince and begged for the forest to be cleared and railings to be built where possible, but the feeling had left shortly afterwards.

The visions…the prophecies…he'd seen everything happen first as he grew up, starting with the one of Raisse that had only just come true, and continuing on and off for almost seventeen years. Mercifully, he could recall no other major incidents in that time. The nightmares and the lack of sleep had been enough.

Then, the incident at the waterfall, the arrival of the Enchantress and finally, the fire that was now merrily blazing away in front of him.

He'd done so much, though suddenly it all seemed so little. Suddenly, the question was no longer "What have I done?" but "What else can I do?"

Chip slept soundly that night, filled with new confidence and wonder in himself. The same could not be said for Raisse. As Chip was re-discovering himself by a lovely warm fire, Raisse shivered in a cold, draughty hut. She had a blanket, but it was little more than a moth-eaten rag and barely covered her legs, let alone her whole body. She was no longer tied up, that, at least, was a relief, but she may as well have been.

Terror had struck days ago but it still left her numb. She had made no sound since then, accepting her meals with slow nods of the head and Lefou's occasional attempts at kindness with weak smiles. It has been he who had removed the ropes forever, having somehow convinced the thing that she no longer posed much of a threat. It was he that helped her eat when she had no will to lift a spoon. It was he that tried to show her empathy and concern when the thing wasn't looking and for that she was more than grateful.

She spent her time offering up silent prayers to God to save her and thinking of all the times in her life when she had been happy. She'd been so happy. She'd never wanted for anything. A castle for a home, attentive servants, loving family, and the somewhat giddy notion that one day the entire kingdom would be hers. She'd never thought of herself as spoilt before now, choosing instead to describe herself as 'lucky' or 'fortunate', but now with a dark hovel for a castle and a few spiders for companions, she knew she was.

'A spoilt brat.' Wasn't that what Chip had called her? How right he had been. She'd never appreciated what she'd had until now. And now, it might be too late. Oh, she was confident she'd live through whatever it was she was being subjected to--she'd be dead by now if killing was the thing's intention--but at what cost? Too much time alone did strange things to people. She'd heard stories, many of them concerning an asylum that had once existed in the kingdom before it had been closed at the request of her mother. Mad people, crazy people, chains in filthy rooms all alone, screaming and mumbling to themselves.

She remembered travelling by coach along a country road one winter's night with her parents when they'd been forced to stop due to an obstruction in the road. The obstruction had turned out to be a cart on its side with 'Maison des Lunes' painted in sinister lettering glinting in the moonlight on one end. The doors at the back were open; the padlock ripped off and flung to one side.

She'd been instructed to stay where she was with her mother and a maid while her father and the coach driver got out to see what the matter was. They had not been gone five minutes when a face had appeared at the window. A woman's face, dark and gaunt, her skin stretched over her bones and haunted eyes that had stared straight through her. She'd rapped on the window and spoken, in a voice barely above a whisper.

"Selene…Selene…let Mamma in, sweetheart. Mamma's cold."

Raisse had shrieked and turned away, alerting her mother who'd shouted for Vincent. When they'd reached their destination, they'd discovered from the town mayor what had happened. The cart had lost a wheel and overturned, the horses had fled and the jolt had forced the doors open, allowing the handful of inmates it was carrying to escape. It took guards a week to find them all, but in that time a particularly dangerous one had been found covered in unknown blood and cradling a dead baby, crying for her own lost child.

Raisse had never forgotten that frightening event, and now held an intense fear of such institutions and losing herself like that poor woman in the road. With nothing to do but let her mind wander on minimal food and drink and no light, she wondered how long it would be before she started imagining things that did not exist. She'd never been alone in her life. She was frightened to be alone anymore. She wanted to go home. She wanted her father to protect her from the world, she wanted her mother to love her and hold her close but most of all, she realised she wanted Chip. He'd know what to do, he always did. She'd already decided that the….thing….that had done those awful things to her had not been Chip. How could it be? Chip cared for her, would never harm her. It had been an illusion, a trick by the evil being that kept her prisoner. This decision left her free to think of him—the friend she'd known all her life. His mischievous eyes, his infectious smile, the way he made her feel when she was around him…

It was he that was in her thoughts as she drifted off the sleep.