Thanks so much for the kind reviews, everyone! (Princess Tiannah, you were quite spot-on with yours.)

IV

Belle stormed through the garden like a madwoman, dashing down the garden paths and along the mirror-smooth pond, which were as still as ever. She did not even know exactly what she was looking for, what to take out her unbearable anxiety on – until she caught sight of the roses. Panting, she threw herself down on her knees by the rose beds. She wanted to tear the flowers out by the roots and fling them across the garden, the Master's damn roses; to then find a sturdy stick and crack the heads off the statues one by one, the Master's damn statues. But she couldn't. The roses bent obligingly when she tore at their heads, but were anchored solidly in the earth, deeper than she could dig; the statues endured the beating with patient, dull thuds but stayed intact. With a shriek of pure fury and frustration she flung the stick back into the bushes and darted back to the house, through the small door into the larder. She grabbed a plate off the nearest kitchen shelf and threw it on the floor with all her might – with a loud clang it skittered away unbroken, the Master's damn plate. Breathing heavily she leaned with both hands on the kitchen counter, trying to compose herself when her eye fell on the large kitchen scissors and another idea occurred to her. Holding her breath, she held up a curling lock of her own hair and cut – but the hair, thought soft and flexible between her fingers, resisted the blades like copperwire. She turned the scissors around in her hand and without hesitation drove the sharpest point of one of the blades down into the fingertip of her other hand. She pressed down long and hard, although it hurt so much that her eyes watered. But when she lifted the blade, there was just the briefest dimple in her fingertip that smoothed out without a drop of blood. The Master's damn caretaker.

I could have known, it kept going through her head. Oh, I could have known it was so clear if only I had put the signs together, so why didn't I why didn't I why didn't I? It was always night in the house, and always day in the garden, and it had come to feel almost as if she was the master of her own time. If she went into the garden and back into the house again, it was as if a day had passed. If she did it again, another day was gone. But she had been fooling herself. She had seen the erratically jumping seasons at the tip of the ash tree's branch but relied on her own feeling that no more than a few years could have passed; she had been fooled by the fact that neither her hair nor nails had grown and her face had not changed one bit, even when her dress had aged so quickly and had fallen apart around her. It had taken the rose to prove it: everything that was brought in from outside seemed to disintegrate and die, obeying another set of rules, except for the things that were the master's property and lived by his clock – including herself. But what was his clock? What was happening outside her bubble, to her loved ones who were not suspended in time?

In the end, there was nothing to do but wait for the Master to return. All these thoughts going round and round in her head was driving her crazy. She needed to shout them at someone. She needed him to answer her questions. So she waited for him at the table in his red dining room. He didn't come.

Although her anger had kept her alert at first, as time passed by in the gloomy, darkened room she found her chin sinking down on her chest again and again, until she startled awake with her head resting on her arms on the table, and her back stiff and cramped. Hunger drove her to the kitchen; when she returned, the dining room was still empty.

In her imagination, Belle would leave the Dark Castle as it was, not dusting another stick of furniture until the Master returned. Her side of their "deal" would be null and void until she could demand an explanation of him and take a stand for once in her life. But in reality, she found herself going back to work before very long because she desperately needed the distraction, which was better than sitting in the red dining room rapping her fingers on the table top, with nothing to occupy her but her thoughts. What if he isn't coming back? It shot through her head. Her prime source of concern was the rose. Offering her that "gift" was so unlike him; he had never done anything remotely like it before. What if it had been his twisted, grotesque version of a farewell? What if this was his true sport, the reason he had brought her here: to let her grown dependent on him and then go away one day when the mood struck him, leaving her here to haunt the castle by herself until she had become a shrieking lunatic? Maybe he had done it before, to countless other girls. Who did the clothes in her wardrobe belong to, after all? The dress she was wearing at that very moment? A cold shiver ran down her back. Beast. Beast. Beast. Her father had told her so. She had been naïve, thinking herself miserable before when in fact it had only been the build-up to this.

The most humiliating thing of all, which she could barely admit even to herself, was that she had been so sure that, in his own way, he had come to like her – she had thought she saw it the night he was at his spinning wheel, the moment of hesitation before he gave her the rose. Part of her still hoped and wished fervently that the Master would come back, and she hated herself for it. There was nothing more desperately pathetic than a captive yearning for her captor. These thoughts tortured her, along with nightmares of girls – girls like her – who had been banished to remote corners of the castle until now and had waited until the Master was gone to come claim her, crawl into her room and drag her wailing from her bed as soon as she had closed her eyes. The only thing that helped was to wash the dark thoughts away with heavy buckets of water, drawn from the echoing well in the very bottom of the castle, scrubbing every marble floor in the Dark Castle until her whole body ached.

When she came into the dining room, exhausted, to find the Master's familiar figure at his usual place at the head of the dining table as if he had never left, she stood reeling for several moments. Perversely, there was a flicker of joy at the sight of his back, the now-familiar slope of his shoulders, the messy locks of his hair. He was back.

The tremor in her voice was equal parts resentment and relief when she finally said hoarsely: "You've come back."

He did not turn to look at her. "Keenly observed, dearie."

She edged around slowly to face him. He reclined in his seat like always, and yet he seemed different – reluctant to talk to her.

"You've never been away this long before."

"How would you know how long I've ever been away?" he asked softly.

If Belle had been calmer she would have noticed the tension in in his voice, and known that he was ready to snap. But her shock and relief were fading away slowly, pushed aside by her rising anger. "No, I wouldn't," she said sharply. "You've made sure of that."

He didn't respond.

"Why did you give me that rose?" she asked bluntly.

"I suppose I thought it was time you knew the truth, dearie," he said. "The truth is what you said you wanted."

"So tell me the truth," she said, her voice rising. "Stop playing your coward's games, hiding behind your locked doors and vague allusions – "

It was the word "coward" that was the trigger. He reared unexpectedly out of his seat, his dark eyes alive with a sudden fury to match her own. "You want me to tell you?" he snarled, advancing towards her. "Do you want me to show you?" In spite of herself, she shrank back as he reached down and pulled a small hand mirror out of his belt. "Look then!" He grabbed her wrist, holding it like a vice while she wrenched to pull free. For his slight frame he was shockingly strong as he pushed the mirror's handle roughly into her hand. "Isn't a picture worth a thousand words? Look. Look!" And into the mirror's reflection he snapped: "Maurice's castle."

Before Belle's eyes, the mirror's reflection changed. Her own pale, wild-eyed face dissolved like a rippling pond and in its place came a picture that was vaguely familiar, like something half-remembered from a dream. There was a sloping hill, at the foot of which stretched a wide plane through which a river wound and turned. Amidst the trees on the hillside, there were – clearly visible and growing closer and closer – the skeletal ruins of a castle. Belle could discern the foundations of toppled towers; the great hall, with the roof caved in; the crumbling remains of walls, large stones scattered among the long grass. For a moment Belle was aghast, recognizing the ravaged remains of her childhood home in the poor skeleton that remained of it. Then fury took over once again. She no longer feared the Master.

"You said you would protect them from the ogres!" she shouted. "We made a deal!"

"I did," he said coldly. "They lived in peace and safety. And when your father died and there was no successor –"

"What?" she said. "They left the castle?" Her eyes were drawn irresistibly back to the mirror again even as his words hit her. When your father died…

"No, he was succeeded by his nephew, who – well, he died in a hunting accident, but his son lived to a ripe old age, and his son after him, and his son after him…" When she didn't respond, he said: "I kept the castle and your measly little town safe for as long as they existed, Belle. I went beyond our deal; they were spared from famine and wars that plagued the rest of the kingdom. But it was abandoned a long, long time ago."

Rationally, she knew he was speaking the truth. Tree branches poked through the holes in the roof of the large hall; the walls looked like they had collapsed in on themselves of sheer age. This was the ravage of time, not an attack. Nevertheless, she could not stop tears from springing to her eyes. The sight of her grief only seemed to enrage him more. ""I TOLD you our deal was forever!" he roared. "And you said I had your word!"

Belle didn't answer. She couldn't.

"What?" he sneered; his voice was almost lackadaisical suddenly, but she could hear it shaking with rage. "Did you assume that I'd let you go home for the holidays, as soon as you'd gained my trust? That you'd be spending every Sunday with your adoring daddy and that fine fellow Gaston, dragging your feet when it was time to come back here to serve the beast your father hated?"

"But I never – I never got to see any of them again," Belle said with an effort. She could not stop clutching the mirror with both hands, so hard she was afraid it would shatter. "They are all gone and I never saw any of them again."

"Not true, strictly speaking."

Belle looked up with a jerk. "What do you mean?"

He made an expansive arm gesture. "I mean I did effect one last reunion."

"What are you talking about?"

"The rose," he said, "was not, so to say, born a rose."

Belle felt faint. "Who, then? Who was it?"

"Why – your adoring betrothed."

"So what happened to him?" she rasped.

"Well, what happened to the rose?" he said impatiently. "You watched it wither and die." He shrugged.

"But Gaston – the rose – that was not so long ago -"

"Outside this walls, that was a long, long time ago," he said emphatically. "I made sure of that. He never stopped looking for you, you know. He was middle-aged when I let him find me – almost elderly, in fact – but still as pompous as ever." Sardonically, he mimed unsheathing a sword and thundered in a deep voice: "I am Sir Gaston, and you, beast, have taken-"

"Stop that," she said, her voice rising to a shout again. "Don't say that!"

But he continued relentlessly, like a man demented who cannot stop himself once he has started. "And it's not like you're altogether forgotten. The local peasant children still talk about you, you know. The legend of the young girl who was captured by the evil beast who was cruel to her, locked her in a tower and tortured her with scourges and fire until she threw herself off the tower, and came back to haunt the ruins of her father's castle…"

Anger almost blinded her. She wanted to kick him, punch him everywhere she could reach. "I will kill you!" she screamed at him as he stepped back from her lightly. "Beast! You beast! You have left me with nothing to lose!" But he laughed shrilly and shouted over her: "Try! You can try all you want, dearie, you wouldn't be the first! But there is no killing the Dark One."

Before she could react he snatched the long, tapered spindle from his spinning wheel, tossed it up and caught it deftly with one hand – and drove it deep, as far as it would go, into his own chest. The expression in his eyes was a curious mixture of pain and desperate triumph when, without taking his eyes off her, he pulled it out again slowly. There was not a smear of blood on it. "As you can see, dearie, you're stuck with me."

There was a long, shocked moment where they just stood staring at each other, still breathing heavily. The fight seemed to have drained unexpectedly from the Master, as with slow movements he finally replaced the spindle and then lowered his eyes, fingering the small hole left in the breast of his tunic. "You'll have to darn that," he said, almost absent-mindedly. He slowly wandered out of the dining room, towards his study. He left Belle frozen, with the mirror still clutched in her hands.

Belle spent an eternity sitting up in her bed with the hand mirror, staring at the remnants of a world that no longer existed. She recalled, while her memory still served her, Gaston's tall silhouette, the shoulders she'd sat on to pick apples. He had been a bit dull, she had to admit to herself, terribly stubborn, and given to pompousness. But he had been an essentially good-hearted man; the fact that he had never stopped looking for her sounded just like him. And although Belle had never been in love with him, she knew he would have made a decent husband. They would eventually have grown to love each other in the comfortable, uncomplicated way that comes from living together for many years.

She grieved for the maid who had brushed her hair every morning; for the brown-and-white dappled horse she had ridden; for the cook in his white apron and all the stable boys, the gardener with his wide-rimmed hat, the elderly knights who had pinched her cheeks. But most of all she grieved for her father, the soft white fur collar on his coat that she would rest her head on when she sat on his lap as a little girl; the red crown she would knock from his head when she crept up behind him and put on her own head, after which he would laugh his deep laugh and kneel down to pledge fealty to her. His stocky figure that would bring a stab of endearment and love at the most unexpected times, seen from her bedroom window as he strolled through the garden by himself with his hands behind his back, thinking himself unseen as he bent down to sniff the flowers. He had loved flowers so much.

For the second time, the Master was seated at his usual place at the dining table. And for the second time she stood unseen in the doorway for a long time, torn to the very core of her being. What should she do? But despite everything, there was only one thing she could do. The Master was the only other living creature in what passed for her life. She went in and, for the first time, sat down across from him. He avoided her eyes, and she was the first one to speak.

"I should have died centuries ago," she said. "I'm a ghost. You made me into a ghost. I should be dead; you killed me as effectively as if you had killed me with your own hands."

"I thought about it," he said slowly. "To leave, and let this castle catch up with the centuries and put you out of your misery while I was elsewhere, doing other things. You would have been less than dust by the time I returned – like that blasted rose." He laughed mirthlessly. "It would have been the coward's way out."

"But you didn't kill me."

He didn't respond.

"Will you ever?"

Slowly, barely perceptibly, he shook his head.

"You just can't let me go, can you?" Belle took a deep breath. "You kept me here until everyone I had ever known was dead and the world had forgotten about me. Why? Was it to hurt me? Or because you didn't think I could ever like you as long as there were other people I loved, and hoped to see again someday?"

He was quiet for a long time. "Maybe both," he finally said.

"Did you give me the rose because it amused you to know that I was watching Gaston die? Or to bring us together one last time?"

He bent his head. "Maybe both."

Belle stood up. "I hate you," she said. "Let there be no mistake about it. But I am stuck in a period in time that no longer exists, and the only soul in the whole wide world to have been there, too, is you."

"I know."

With a monumental effort she wrung out her next words. "There doesn't seem to be anything for me to do but get us breakfast. I, for one, am starving."

They ate opposite each other in silence. No matter how inevitable this uneasy truce was, however, there was a cold, bitter seed of hatred that had taken root in Belle's stomach and would not go away.