Esther had just gotten the girls settled in their bedroom and was about to start reading their favourite book to them again when there was a knock at the door. Unfortunately, when she came downstairs and answered it, Gaston was the one standing on the doorstep.

"Gaston, this really isn't a good time," she tried to say, but he barged in anyway.

"It's always a good time for me. Now, Esther, there's not a girl in town who wouldn't want to be in your shoes. This is the day-" He caught sight of himself in the mirror and stopped to pick something out of his teeth and grin at his reflection, "Ah. This is the day your dreams come true."

Esther could do nothing but stare at him sceptically. "And which dreams would those be?"

"The ones involving a picture like this…" He sat down at the table and put his muddy feet up on it. "A rustic hunting lodge, my latest kill roasting over the fire, and my little wife, massaging my feet while the little ones play on the floor with the dogs. We'll have six or seven."

"Six or seven dogs?"

"No, Esther! Strapping boys like me."

"Right," she said, trying not to look horrified at the thought.

"And do you know who that little wife will be?"

She tried to move away from him. "Who?"

"You, Esther!" He cornered her against the wall. His entire physical presence was so overwhelming that she had to rationally beat down a shoot of fear that sprung up in her heart and tell herself that he wasn't likely to try anything too untoward.

"What?" She ducked under his arms and made for the door, either planning to use it for herself or for him. But again, he pushed forward until she was once again trapped between him and a solid vertical surface.

"Say that you'll marry me," he asked, still without losing a breath of his unshakeable confidence. He leaned in with obvious intent to kiss her but her hand scrabbling behind her had found the door handle.

"No!" She said forcefully before letting the door open and Gaston tumble out past her.

As she shut the door again, she could hear him cursing to Lefou as they walked back towards the village. With several deep breaths, Esther let out a sigh of utter relief. That was a close one.

Esther was weeding the garden around the cottage the next day when Phillipe came running into view. The horse looked terrified and it took nearly a minute just to calm him down.

"What is it? Where's Sarah? Why isn't she with you?"

Her mind raced and she realised that there was a strong chance that something terrible had happened. She ran back into the house.

"Alice, Melanie, I have to leave you guys here on your own for a while, okay? I need you to go to Vera in town and tell her that it's an emergency and that I need her to look after you until I get back, okay?"

"Why is it an emergency?" Melanie asked.

Alice nodded. "Where's Mother?"

"Don't worry about it for now, just do as I say." Esther kissed them both on the foreheads before jumping on Phillipe and riding off into the forest.

After several hours of searching, it seemed as though there was no hope, and that they were simply very lost. But then Phillipe reared and took off on his own, and when he finally came to a stop, it was outside a tall pair of black iron gates.

Behind the gates was a castle impossible in nature and size but real in presence and the fear it planted in her heart.

"What…?" Esther muttered, confused, as she stepped inside and made her way to the front door. It opened of its own accord. "Sarah?" She went inside and found herself in a grand entrance hall, with a high ceiling and a grand staircase. It was dimly lit but obviously well cared for. "Sarah?"

"Another one! This one's even better than the first one!"

"Shhh!"

"No!"

"Shut up!"

"Ow!"

Esther spun around to see – of all the absurd things in the world – a small clock whacking a candlestick with one of its small wooden arms.

"Are you alive? Or am I dreaming?" Esther asked them, and the two household objects froze. After a few moments, she frowned at them. "I heard you talking - I think – and I definitely saw you fighting, so don't play dead with me."

The candlestick moved from its stationary position and winked at her, making her jump. It, along with the clock, had a tiny face! How wonderfully ridiculous.

"Are you real? Or am I going crazy?" She asked it.

"You're not crazy, don't worry," the clock chimed in comfortingly, "We are most definitely real. Just as he is most definitely the only person who could still be a pervert despite being a candlestick."

"Hey!" The candlestick protested.

The clock just rolled its eyes. "You know I mean that with the utmost fondness, Jack."

"You have names too?"

"Of course we do! I'm the Doctor, and this is Jack," the clock said proudly.

"Have you seen my sister? She's blonde, like me, and she's called Sarah."

The candlestick frowned. "Yeah, but we can't tell you where she is. The mistress would probably throw us both in the fireplace."

"We can so tell you," the clock argued, and then smiled at her. "She's in the tower." A wooden arm pointed out a direction for her. "That way. But as a warning, if you run into the mistress of the castle, my advice would be to run. Rather fast. And rather…away from here."

"Okay, thank you." Esther smiled gratefully at them, not entirely convinced that she was still sane and talking to household objects, but deciding to worry about it later. Right now, she had to find her sister, apparently before this 'mistress of the castle' turned up. If the clock had advised her to run, it could mean that she was dangerous.

She ran up the stairs of the tower, but it was so high that she almost gave up when her legs screamed at her to stop. But then she reached the end of the steps and saw a familiar hand and arm poking out from the bars of a nearby cell.

"Sarah!" Within a second she was at the door, grabbing her sister's hand.

"Esther, no," Sarah said desperately, eyes wide with a horror and sheer terror that confused and worried Esther, "You shouldn't have come, she'll imprison you as well, go back to the girls!"

"No, I have to get you out of here!"

"What are you doing here?!" A thunderous voice made Esther jump and turn around, only to see a figure in the shadows.

"Oh no," Sarah breathed hopelessly.

Esther ignored her and instead lifted her chin. "I'm here to rescue my sister."

The figure laughed, a cruel chilling laugh that shook Esther to the bone and sent a chill down her spine. "And how is that working out for you? Do you really think that you will be permitted to leave?"

"Are you the mistress of the castle?"

"Yes. I don't need to ask how you came to be here, no doubt the Doctor and his perverted candlestick of a friend told you where to go. Morons, the pair of them. As if you would ever get in and out without my knowledge."

"Please! There must be something you want," Esther insisted, "Sarah has children, two girls at home who need their mother!"

"How touching." The woman's voice made it clear that she thought it anything but.

"What about an exchange? I'll take her place. Let her go back home and I'll be your prisoner instead."

It was a long shot to say the least, and probably not likely to work because she could just have both of them for prisoners, but Esther had to try, and could see no other alternatives to offer up.

For some reason, it made the woman in the shadows freeze. "You would do that?"

"Yes, of course I would!"

"Esther, no!"

"Please, let her go home and I'll stay," Esther pleaded.

"Forever?"

"…yes."

"Alright then. We have a deal." The woman fell silent while Esther threw back the bolt on the door of the cell and let her sister stumble out. "You, crying one, you can go. And by can, I mean will. Rex, Owen, escort her out." There was a snap of her fingers and two nearby suits of armour took Sarah by each arm and began to march her down the stairs.

Esther remained kneeling on the floor, simultaneously too relieved and too filled with dread to speak immediately. Eventually, all she said was, "Thank you." The woman didn't respond so she tried something else. "Can you step into the light? I can't see you."

She thought she heard a sneer. "Why would you want to?" The figure turned around. "Follow me."

"But…the cell is here."

"You're going to be here for the rest of your life, do you want to have a room or a cell?"

"…a room," Esther said quietly, following her, bewildered.

"Exactly."

They descended the stairs in silence and left the tower. With a little more light, Esther could see her captor slightly better. She wore a black velvet gown that flowed down to the floor, with long sleeves. She looked far too thin to be healthy. Dark hair cut short didn't quite brush the tops of her shoulders.

After reaching the entrance hall, they climbed the grand staircase wordlessly. The corridor they ended up in was quite brightly lit, enough so that Esther could see that the woman's black locks of hair were knotted and looked as they had been cut with little care for appearance. And her skin…the little she could see of it was bone white. Was she very ill?

Eventually, they came to a stop. That was when the woman turned around, and Esther gasped. It went beyond illness – she didn't look as though she should be alive. The tiny, thin arms and the visible sternum and upper ribcage were bad enough, but they were nothing in comparison to the face. The face of pale skin pulled over high cheekbones and dark shadows around the eyes. The eyes that were awful because they were both the most alive thing about her as well as the most utterly terrifying.

Esther had seen dead people who looked healthier.

"Yes, yes, I'm hideous and more or less inhuman to look at, oddly enough I am aware and you might as well get used to it," the woman snapped, "This is your room, so get in and stop wasting my time." She shoved Esther through the door with strength that didn't seem possible for someone of her stature. "I will be having dinner at seven, you may join me if you wish, assuming you want to eat."

The door slammed shut, and Esther listened as the sound of her clicking shoes disappeared down the corridor. That was when she sat down on the bed and very quietly began to cry. All in one day, she had lost her family and freedom. And this horror of a woman, with a face like death and nightmares, would seem to be her only human companionship.

"You know, it's not so bad here, once you get used to it," the nearby wardrobe said comfortingly, making her jump nearly a foot in the air.

"I should have known that you could talk too," Esther said, forcing herself to not gape. "Do you have a name as well?"

"I'm Gwen, and that's Rhys, my husband," the wardrobe told her cheerfully enough, her door opening to indicate the bedside table, who opened one of his drawers in greeting.

"Nice to make your acquaintance," Esther said, her voice shaking a little. "Is all the furniture here like you?"

"If you mean bloody enchanted, then yes," Rhys put in rather irritably. The blonde laughed, but quickly sobered when she remembered that she was a prisoner in the castle for the rest of her life.

Unsurprisingly, Esther did not come to dinner. The mistress's fingernails tapped on the table in a way that sounded impatient.

"Did you ask her to come, or tell her to come?" Jack inquired curiously. She frowned.

"I asked her. I knew that she wouldn't."

"Why did you do it? Take the offer of the exchange? You could have kept them both."

"Her sister was irritating," she said, voice full of scorn and distaste, "She cried too much and it carried all the way down from the tower. But this…Esther, she's different. Brave, compassionate."

"Easy on the eyes too," Jack added, "Though I doubt you noticed."

"Of course I noticed, how could I miss it?" She asked wryly, her mouth twisting in an odd smile. "She's beautiful. Far too beautiful."

"Oh…do you think she could break the curse?" Jack was only surprised for a moment. After all, he was hardly discriminative in his own tastes. But it seemed to be the wrong thing to say, because her face darkened.

"Unlikely. I said that she was attractive, not that I was in love with her. Besides, there is the problem of…preferences in companionship. It is not likely that hers lie where mine do."

"I could ask?"

"No!" The woman growled. "You will do nothing of the sort. Leave both of us be."

Jack sighed. "I'm just trying to help, Marion."

Marion looked at him with those eyes that terrified so many. Not him. He didn't scare easily, and in them he could see her humanity, the part of her that was still alive underneath her cursed form and all the anger.

"I know." For one impossible moment he thought that she was going to thank him, but instead she just rolled her eyes. "But your help is not needed." She got up from the table.

"You've barely touched your food."

"I'm not hungry."

Bored and famished, Esther ducked her head out of her room. Her plain brown shoes padded down the carpeted corridor until she came to a halt when she realised she had no idea how to navigate the castle and that she'd only get lost. Also, was she allowed to leave her room? The frightening woman hadn't said.

"Hello again!"

She started and looked down to see the clock at her feet. "Hello. Do you know the way to the kitchen?"

"Course I do. Follow me," he replied, and hopped off down the corridor while she followed. "So, what's your name, then?"

"I'm Esther. How about you?"

"They call me the Doctor."

"A clock called 'the Doctor'? That doesn't make any kind of sense," Esther said, wanting to frown but finding herself grinning instead.

The clock laughed a little. "It's a long story."

They eventually got to the kitchen, where they were told to go on to the main dining room. They did, and found a meal enough for five people on the table, though with only one place set.

"We figured you would get hungry," a kind teapot who introduced herself as Miss Smith said from her cart next to the table, "Help yourself."

"Thank you," Esther said, awed by their kindness, "I am very hungry." She sat down and began taking a bit of all the dishes, piling it all onto her plate. "So, if this place is enchanted, has it always been like this? Is she a witch?"

"No!" Several of them replied rather forcefully.

Esther lifted her eyebrows. "Okay, not a witch. What's…wrong…with her?"

"That's absolutely none of your business."

Everyone in the room – Esther and the household objects alike – jumped as the mistress of the castle stepped inside and sat herself at the opposite end of the dining table without another word. When everyone continued to stare, she just turned her attention to Jack the candlestick, who was in the middle of the table trying to look like a truly inanimate object.

"What, I don't get some of the food as well?" A plate was hurriedly placed in front of her and she smirked before serving herself.

"Thought you weren't hungry," Jack said to her.

"My appetite returned unexpectedly," she told him, shrugging, "I figured that you lot, soft-hearted as you are, would have prepared something for her. I saw no reason not to join you."

"What's your name?" Esther asked her suddenly, only able to look at her for a second before bringing her eyes back to her food.

"Yours is Esther, yes?" When the blonde nodded, the woman replied, "Mine is Marion."

"And…you aren't angry that I left my room?"

Marion shrugged again and spread her hands in a gesture of disinterest. "You are free to move about the castle as you wish, so long as you stay away from the West Wing."

Esther blinked. "Why, what's in the West Wing?"

"Again, nothing that is any of your business. But if you go there, I will be very angry indeed, which believe me is something you don't wish to see."

"I thought I already had."

"No, you really haven't," Marion told her with a dark smile that sent a shiver down Esther's back, "You're not a prisoner here, exactly. Think of yourself more as a guest who is not permitted to leave. If that at all makes sense. Euphemistic and a technicality, but more pleasant, surely."

"This castle is enchanted, isn't it?"

Marion paused, and then went back to sipping her drink. "Yes, it is. No need to ask what gave it away." She shot a look at the animated teapot, clock and candlestick, and for a moment, Esther thought she saw a tiny twinkle in her eyes and almost wanted to laugh, but didn't.

"So, you're not a witch, but you do control the enchantment, don't you?" It was, after all, the only explanation as far as Esther could see, given that the castle was hers and the living objects her servants.

The dark haired woman frowned. "No. No one controls it, it simply exists and there is nothing anyone can do about it."

Jack the candlestick started coughing a word that sounded like 'rose' but Marion's arm swept him off the table and onto the floor within a second, effectively shutting him up.