JMJ

THREE

For a long time he lay there. He would not have known how long if the clock that was his body did not tell him. He never allowed himself to chime after the first hour, but the passage of time if he let it would read upon his face, and even that was not necessary for he could always sense the time in his mind as if his old pocket watch had lodged itself in his brain. He could not express how much he despised the irony in that. Some sick joke on his habits. It was not fair!

Hours went by, and during that time everything remained silent. No sobbing resounded. No more roaring from the Master. Just his thoughts and the ticking of his body and the creaks and moans of any great structure of man from the castle surrounding him, save they sounded far more weary and ominous than they ever had in the past.

Cogsworth did fall asleep from time to time somehow but awoke the last time from such dreamless slumber to a different sound amidst the dreary scene. That sound he had never considered more welcoming in all his life. It was the trotting and panting of the dog.

"Biscuit!" he cried, sitting quite upright for the first time, and at last scrambling to his feet with the help of the rail he looked down the steps.

The dog barked, or at least it sounded like the dog. It did not look like Biscuit any longer, and Cogsworth could not help but moan.

The dog seemed equally as upset, but for a different reason. He was quite confused about the situation, not of himself, truly, but of the strange inanimate object that sounded like a human he had known before around the castle. He ran up the stairs to investigate, for he had already found quite a number of mysteries quite similar in nature.

He sniffed and barked and toppled over what used to be the head of the household.

"Stop, stop, stop that at once!" Cogsworth ordered. "Off!"

He fell over onto his face. "Ack!"

"Down!" He snapped, his voice muffled by the floor. "Sit."

The dog obeyed and Cogsworth lifted his head.

"Good dog," he grumbled. "Now!"

As he reached for the rail again to pull himself up, Cogsworth saw that the dog was leaving him back down the steps again.

"Wait!" he cried despite himself. "Bad dog! Come back!"

Biscuit did not seem to notice.

"Biscuit!" Cogsworth called. "Biscuit! Sit! Idiotic dog! Come! Halt! Down! Shake! Roll over! Fetch!"

With an abrupt halt Biscuit looked back and cocked what served for his faceless head.

"Yes! Yes, come, Biscuit! Fetch!"

Biscuit barked happily and bounded around in Cogsworth's direction.

Except, he would have nothing to give to the dog after he trotted back up the steps.

Cogsworth looked around. Of course the landing as the rest of the staircase and the whole castle floor for that matter was completely free of anything but the smallest speck of dust, and even that was rare.

Well, no matter.

"Good dog! Good dog!" Cogsworth kept saying, chuckling the while. "Most excellent dog!"

All he really wanted was the dog to return. He had spent nearly three days on that landing, and the loneliness and the feeling of being such a captive there he could not abide any longer. Even the company of the dog seemed better than what he had been doing previously.

However Biscuit did not see it in quite the same light. Upon discovering the tragedy of Cogsworth having nothing to throw, the dog first sniffed around to see if he could fix this dilemma for the most excellent of games that this usually anything but playful sort of person desired so much to play now. Alas, he found nothing and thus resumed to his mission downstairs.

"No!" wailed Cogsworth, quite envious of the ease with which the dog walked up and down the stairs whereas he had trouble even getting to his feet. "Wait! Biscuit! Come back!"

At these mournful cries, Biscuit could not help but take some pity, and at the bottom step he sat down and looked back at Cogsworth with another far more sympathetic cock of his head. He barked then as indication that Cogsworth had better just come down stairs then if he was so upset. He had not smelled hurt or sick or anything. He was perfectly capable even he did not quite smell or look the way he was supposed to.

Naturally, Cogsworth did not understand, and continued to yell after the dog until he was quite out of sight down on the corridor.

"Stupid creature," he muttered to himself as he banged his hand against the rail.

He stood in silence a moment, staring out with longing where the dog had disappeared. Then he looked at the stairs, and a look of determination finally took hold of him.

"If the dog can do it, then so can I!" he declared.

He had barely stepped more than a few paces before in his new form, but at last he felt that he could not bear one minute more upon this horrid landing. He stepped with firm slow footsteps and peered down. Each step was about the same height as Cogsworth! Well, at least half his height anyway. Either way it did not look at all easy, and the length of the stairs from the landing to the floor seemed to go on forever. What not but a few days before would have taken him less than thirty seconds to fly down now might take him a half hour if only because he dared not climb down quickly.

But then the dog had always been small and could run up and down the stairs faster than anyone else could in the entire castle save maybe the cat who was smaller still.

With this thought in mind he encouraged himself enough to go into action, yet not daring to climb down face first, he turned around. With hands upon the landing floor he stuck his feet out behind, which he found to not be at all as hard as he thought it would be. After about four of five steps he felt rather pleased with himself, and in celebration he turned around to see how many steps he had left.

Five minutes, he thought. At the most at this rate.

Then he would be at the bottom.

He turned backward again, climbed down a few more steps at a little faster rate, but after about the fifth step from that first pause, he slipped and fell.

"Hngh?"

Svip!

"Yah!"

Clank!

"Ack!"

Plunk!

"Ooff!"

Bonk!

"Ow!"

Dong! Dong!

"Eeeeek!"

Smack!

He moaned miserably, face first on the floor.

Fifty-seven seconds exactly for one thing according to the clock and …

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, echoed in his head again once the pendulum had readjusted from his fall.

Sore, angry, and thinking that he could not be more wretched than any other person in all the world, he did not care to get up again. And there he remained wondering if it was beyond hope to tell himself that this all could still be a dream and that he was lying in bed sick and delirious. It would be far better than lying on the floor as an inanimate object, except for the fact that he was not inanimate and that he could think and feel and see and touch almost as if he was alive, but objects can have no life. It was … it was ...

"A splendid lunacy," he told the floor.

Then he heard something else. A squeak of a wheel, and with it, the echo of a voice.

Lifting his head and pushing himself off the floor as far as his hands could push him up without being on his feet, he saw a cart coming toward him. The voices, there were two, could not be made out, but one of them did sound very much like emphatic voice of Lumiere however distorted it sounded in the empty, ominous castle. The other voice sounded soft and mild and could be the voice of any of the hundreds and thousands of other servants that could possibly be with him. Yet to Cogsworth's dismay, he saw no human figures. No one was pushing the cart, and he could see it quite clearly wreathed in the glow of candlelight near blinding after the dark misery of the staircase shadowed in grotesque, marble creatures.

Cogsworth remained in his position until the cart came to a stop by his side, and he turned his head up to the top of the cart where the light came from. He lifted one hand over his eyes and squinted into the dark shape of the cart trim silhouetted above.

"Bon après-midi, monsieur," said Lumiere in the manner of an enthusiastic coachman. "Your carriage awaits!"

"Lumiere …?" croaked Cogsworth with uncertainty. "Lumiere, is that you?"

The face that looked over the side was less comforting than that of the dog's except perhaps that there was an actual face to see, but the welcoming smile was what made it more discomfiting than it otherwise would have been.

"Cogsworth!" exclaimed Lumiere, "Voila, c'est vous! I should have known it was you! We were wondering what had happened to you."

"Have you seen anyone else, Monsieur Cogsworth?" asked the other voice; this one from the cart itself, and Cogsworth did now recognize his voice as one named Eloi Charrette. "Down this way, I mean."

Leaving the sight of Lumiere and the Cart, Cogsworth stared out in front of him with large swollen eyes at the now vacant corridor. After a moment or two Cogsworth then let his face sink very slowly again into the floor. Here he began to cry. Banging his fist upon the floor and wiping the tears from his eyes with his other hand, he sobbed, "It's not fair! It's just not fair! It's true after all, isn't it!? Why couldn't it have been a dream!? Why couldn't I have been delirious with some fever!? What have we done to deserve this?! It's not fair! It's all over!" He pounded the floor some more, and a pool of water formed around his face.

A sound of clattering metal sounded beside him, and suddenly Lumiere was helping Cogsworth to his feet. Cogsworth really had not the will to protest at the moment, and merely apathetically allowed himself to be set upright.

"There, there, Cogsworth," said Lumiere. "It's not the end of the world."

"Not the end of the—!"

Lumiere did not let him finish as he told the Cart to lower the makeshift pulley that they had created.

"What do you mean it's not the—!" Cogsworth tried again, but here Lumiere took hold of the thin rope and bouncing onto the spoons tied together for the platform, pulled Cogsworth with him. As soon as they were set, Eloi pulled them up, and they were on top before Cogsworth knew it in his flustered state.

"Allons-y!" said Lumiere almost cheerful in manner.

"Don't you dare be optimistic about this, Lumiere!" snapped Cogsworth leaping off the platform and nearly falling off onto the floor again. "Ack!" Clearing away from the edge of the cart, he thrust what could stand for a finger out at Lumiere. "There's nothing to be optimistic about! This is a curse worse than death itself! Look at us! Look at you! You're a candlestick!"

The most deep and avid frown Lumiere gave Cogsworth kept him from going on any further, and he at once regretted his behavior despite it all. With a heavy sigh he knew that Lumiere was just as upset about the situation as he was, but unlike Cogsworth he was done losing his head over it.

"I'm sorry," said Cogsworth, looking away, and the Cart started up.

Lumiere shrugged and smiled broadly as he caught Cogsworth from falling off again in the lurch forward. "Think nothing of it. We're all in the boat together in this."

"Everyone?" asked Cogsworth miserably.

"The whole castle," said Lumiere. "Though no one except for you has tried the grand staircases yet." He chuckled just a little. "Judging by your position on the floor your attempt didn't work too well."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Cogsworth demanded. "Besides. I was coming down. Not going up, and I did get down." He paused. "What are you two doing anyway?"

"Since you've been gone, a lot of us have gathered in the kitchens," said Lumiere. "We've managed to help almost everyone out of the servants' quarters. Some couldn't open their doors, and the stairs are difficult as you yourself know. But some are still stuck down there. And some of us, like myself, have been helping those of us who have turned into carts because they can move the fastest, to find anyone else."

"Hmm," murmured Cogsworth. "It all sounds quite practical so far. At least as practical as this can possibly be."

"Some have it far worse off than you," said Lumiere.

"Humph!" was all Cogsworth could say to that.

"Mais oui, it is getting organized," Lumiere agreed then. "Mrs. Potts has that way about her that can get almost anyone motivated."

"Are all the children—?"

"Everyone."

"What about the people outside?" asked Cogsworth. "The groundskeepers — well, its winter … the stable hands then."

"Someone did manage to get in through the door before we closed it," said Eloi. "He came all the way from the outside of the stables."

"Such will power!" Lumiere exclaimed.

"Everyone," whispered Cogsworth sounding quite desolate.

"Everyone," said Lumiere.

Cogsworth shuddered. "What about the people in the village?"

"We don't know how far this curse has gone for sure," Lumiere admitted, "but Monsieur Pavé who came in from the stables says that he thought he heard someone ride down the road."

"Are you sure?" asked Cogsworth. "Perhaps the whole world has entered into this madness. It's like that story in which that princess turned into the oven in the middle of the wood only is it possible that anyone has not turned into some sort of household item!?"

"Well, for one thing," said Lumiere, "everything on the grounds is free from snow and everything outside the wall is at least four feet deep with it."

"Of course! They shoveled it all!" snapped Cogsworth. "The grounds … keepers …" He clicked the roof of his mouth and paused. "Yes, naturally."

"And when could they have done that?" said Lumiere. "It was snowing so hard just before things happened."

Considering this a moment, Cogsworth sighed. "Fine the grounds are cursed too then. Satisfied?"

"The Master's not a household item," said M. Charrette shuddering a little so that the wheels of his otherwise wooden body clattered.

Oh, the Master. How could he have forgotten the Master?

"Yes …" said Cogsworth sadly. "The Master. Oh! … but the poor Master Adam … I don't know if I can say his fate is not worse than ours."

Down the party of three strode on in the direction of the library. Every room was checked down the corridor along the way. The Cart stopped at each. Lumiere and, after a few doors, Cogsworth too opened the doors, but the rooms were empty. The library too proved vacant, but it was of interest to note that the library had not been altogether changed as most of the rest of the house had. Later when things became clearer to the servants their main hypothesis for this was that the Master did not care much about the library, but then that did not explain the state of the ballroom which was almost untouched as well. The main hypothesis for the ballroom remaining intact was just to torture the Master.

At the time however, Lumiere, Charrette, and Cogsworth having found no other servant along this way returned to the kitchens.

"Have you seen him then?" asked Cogsworth on the way back suddenly.

"Who?" asked Lumiere.

"The Master? Who else? I didn't know he came down stairs, except once," Cogsworth said. "And he only came down long enough to … well, silence the mourners."

"He's come to have dinner," said Lumiere. "He still has to eat."

A squeamish feeling overtook Cogsworth a moment as he realized that he had not eaten in days and did not feel the least bit hungry, but clearing his throat he returned to the conversation at hand.

"But how did he come down if not by the stairs?" asked Cogsworth.

"We think by the window," said Lumiere. "He came in through the front door."

Cogsworth started. "The window!? So can the Master fly now too!?"

"He probably climbed, of course," said Lumiere.

"Of course!" snapped Cogsworth in return. "I still say you're being too optimistic about this."

"Would you prefer if I was more like you?"

"Perish the thought!"

"Right, we can't have two people nagging about something that can't be helped right now."

Eloi sighed.

"I am not nagging, I'm lamenting," said Cogsworth. "There's a difference."

"You're lamenting is blaming everyone else for your problem."

"Pardon?" muttered Eloi who did not like the direction this conversation was going.

But neither Lumiere nor Cogsworth seemed to hear him as their talk became a full blown argument.