2. Belle to the Rescue
Belle had long since understood that her power to transport herself from her father's study to other worlds and places while reading a book had to be some form of magic, but she had been afraid to discover and research more about magic in general, to see if there was any information about her ability. If she went around asking people questions or requested that grimmoires and other magical books were to be purchased for her father's library, then people would start questioning her as to why her interests leaned towards the magical.
And she did not want to face the clerics of Avonlea's religious sect, who declared that all witches and wizards were heretics, when even though she might be the only child of Avonlea's duke and set to inherit his title and rule over the dukedom, she might still be liable under religious law to face trial. She had heard rumors of what the clerics did to accused witches and wizards, interrogating and torturing them until they either confessed or succumbed to the lash. For those who confessed, they would either be banished from the land or executed, and Belle did not want to face such options.
So she kept quiet about her ability, eventually borrowing books from her father's study to take to her room so that she could transport herself from there behind a closed, locked door. She learned nothing about her ability beyond what she discovered through trying it out, yet she knew that it was dangerous for her own welfare. Several times, she feared that her magical ability would be discovered, especially when she lost track of time while traveling and disappeared for hours from Avonlea's castle, reappearing just as everyone started looking for her.
And sometimes, the places that she traveled to weren't exactly safe, especially whenever she wound up in the middle of a fight on a battlefield, a forbidding wilderness with dangerous creatures, or a rough city with strange people following her around, but usually, she managed to avoid getting into too much danger when she could transport herself out of there if she wanted and was able to. Though she was tempted to ignore her power entirely, when she might be tempting fate too much, she still loved to travel and explore all of these strange, fascinating places. Even the danger didn't faze or frighten her as much as it used to, when she got used to handling herself in such situations. She thought that she could cope.
Then the ogres started amassing on the borders of Avonlea, and Belle realized that she would have to stay here and help her people fight them off as the duke's daughter, their leader in a crisis. She stopped traveling for a while, not certain if she wanted to be away from home, enjoying herself when everyone else was in danger and they couldn't flee like she could. Besides, she was worried by the mere presence of the ogres, when they had not been seen in the Enchanted Forest in such numbers for decades now since the Second Ogre War, and she started to wonder if something was wrong here, if there was a reason why the ogres started to come here and chose to attack Avonlea. And what if that reason had something to do with her power?
So Belle remained at her father's side, and Gaston, her fiancé, was there as well, when the final ogre attack took place, just a few miles away from the castle. "What about our forces at the western fort?" Belle asked, pointing at a spot on the large map rolled out across her father's council table, with the rest of the council surrounding them.
(She had gotten engaged to Gaston at some point when they were both barely more than children, mostly to cement some sort of alliance between her father and Gaston's father. She couldn't recall the exact details of the ceremony, and their relationship was pretty nonexistent beyond Gaston paying some attention to her, with flattery and amusement being his main goal, and Belle tolerated him for the most part, even admired some of his greater qualities whenever he showed them off, but she did not love him enough to want to be his wife. Yet she knew that it would eventually have to happen if she wanted to be a responsible leader, willing to make some personal sacrifices for the betterment of her people, and Gaston could be a great co-ruler and protector when he always liked to fight. She would just have to guide him the right way, that was all she had to do.)
"They're not going to be able to reach us in time, they're swamped." Lord Maurice said, shaking his head. "We need help and the only way we are going to get it…is through the Dark One." He murmured, blanching along with almost everyone at the table.
"The Dark One? Papa, are you sure?" Belle asked. She had heard rumors of the Dark One, everyone had. Yet she did not even know what it was supposed to be, exactly.
Once or twice, when she was young, she had asked a maid about the Dark One, and after hearing another story, she had asked, "Can you tell me if it has a name?"
"Of course it has a name, but no one speaks it out loud if they can help it. That summons the Dark One, its name." The maid had said. "I can't tell you it, and I certainly would not even write it down, if I could. No one has any right to call upon the Dark One for help unless they are truly desperate and willing to lose their soul in the bargain, and it loves to bargain. That's what everyone agrees." The maid had said, nodding wisely. "So don't worry your pretty little head, milady, you have nothing to fear from that one if you stay clear of it."
"Of course I'm not sure, but we have no choice!" Lord Maurice cried. "We must send for him if we want to survive!" He glanced around at the others before he ordered, "Gaston, please send for the clerics. We must cleanse and purify this space to ward off as much of its evil as we possibly can before we summon the Dark One here. Everyone else, take shelter, return to your rooms, hide wherever you can, and pray. Only I, Gaston, and the clerics shall be taken into account for the Dark One's evil. The rest of you shall be spared his horror if we can help it." Almost everyone in the room nodded, obeying the duke's order as they departed.
"Papa, please-" Belle started to say.
"That is an order, Belle." Lord Maurice insisted. "Go now with the rest. You are too important to me and everyone else in Avonlea to risk your life and soul." He softened. "I love you, Belle."
"I love you, too," She whispered, hugging him tightly as she realized how terrible the situation must be, if he thought that she might never see him again…she didn't want to let go. Finally, she parted from him and left the room, not looking at her father or Gaston as she raced up to her bedroom, closing and locking the door before she collapsed on the bed crying.
An hour or so later, she got up and mulled over the situation as she perceived it. Even if they were able to summon the Dark One, could they convince such an evil creature to help them destroy the ogres? She thought the Dark One might rather be on the side of the ogres, so why would it help them, then? It might bargain for something precious or valuable in return, but the Dark One was a trickster more often than not, she knew, and it might cheat them so that it wouldn't help them in the manner that they wanted it to help. So they might not even get anything in return and they might as well not have even called the Dark One in the first place-all of that fuss and sacrifice for nothing!
Belle groaned and wished that she could have stayed when they called upon the Dark One so that she could have helped in the bargaining and make sure that the Dark One didn't cheat them. Perhaps she might have caught some mistake or loophole in the bargain that the Dark One was making…it was too late now, she knew, she couldn't change any of that. They had probably already called and talked to the Dark One while she was up here, the walls were solid and soundproof enough that she wouldn't have noticed what they were doing downstairs until the walls themselves collapsed.
If only there was some way that she could guarantee that the ogres would be defeated without relying on the Dark One…suddenly, she gasped. "The western fort, the mountain pass!" She cried. It was true that the western fort, which contained over a thousand soldiers, was too far away to aid the duke's castle in a timely manner by conventional roadways, but there was a mountain pass. Technically, it wasn't a road or path, more like a dry riverbed that occasionally flooded with the thaw, but if the pass was clear or shallow enough, then the soldiers could reach them in a timely manner and help defeat the ogres! Yes!
The only problem was sending a scout or messenger to check the pass and deliver a message to the fort about the ingress with time to spare…Belle frowned to herself and realized what she had to do. She never had tried to deliberately transport herself to a specific place that wasn't in a book. Occasionally, she had wound up traveling to a different place that wasn't in the book she had been reading from, especially if the book wasn't about a specific event or place, but those had been accidents, and she had never known where (or possibly when) she would end up. But to try and target a specific place and time, especially so close to home, was something different.
Yet she had to try for everyone's sake; so she picked up a book, not really reading it, just trying to concentrate her thoughts on that mountain pass to travel there, and the physical presence of the book in her hands might calm her down enough to use her power the right way. She closed her eyes and meditated, then blinked as she felt the swirling sensation…she lost her hold on the book in the bedroom and found herself standing on the rocky slope right below the mountain pass.
Belle gasped and swayed slightly, feeling unsteady on her feet, as she usually did after her traveling, but finally she calmed down and relaxed enough to glance upward. Although she wasn't exactly dressed for the occasion, in more formal attire than might be appropriate for the terrain, she managed to climb up and soon stood at the mouth of the mountain pass. Completely dry, as she had hoped, it hadn't rained in a while and the thaw was gone…the western fort was just down below, on the other side of the mountain.
She smiled to herself, and prepared to transport herself again, this time down to the fort so that she wouldn't have to climb (or fall) down the opposite slope, but then she heard a voice cry, "What do you think you are doing, dearie? Don't you know how dangerous it would be if you fell?" It giggled.
Belle gasped and turned around, staring at…she wasn't sure. He was a strange-looking man, skin glittering like gold (or were those reptilian scales?) with shaggy, scraggly gold-encrusted brown hair with dark, almost black, eyes and a crooked, pointed smile, dressed in flamboyant clothes. He glared at her, examining her in a focused manner, and with how close he was, Belle realized that she should have heard him approach her, but she had not, so how had he gotten here? Magic?
"I don't care how dangerous it is." Belle managed to say, almost reckless. She could get out of here if she had to. "I have to go down and tell the soldiers that the pass is clear so that they can come save Avonlea from the ogres. What's your excuse? How did you get up here?" She asked.
"Excuse me, but that's my job here!" He cried, pointing at himself. "I've come to save Avonlea from the ogres and I'm being handsomely paid for it! You're not going to take my payment away from me, are you, dearie?" He sneered, menacing her. His words didn't make much sense to her, only the fact that he was threatening her on the edge of a mountainside. She kept glancing around to make sure that she wasn't too close to the edge. "You look like you're rich enough to be doing fine without it, so why even bother?" He asked.
"Because Avonlea is my home and these are my people and I'm not getting paid for it!" Belle cried. "Your excuse is pitiful. I'm rescuing them regardless, because it's my duty!"
"And your responsibility! It's your fault, you know, that the ogres are here!" He cried, getting right up close to her.
"My fault?" Belle quailed.
"That's right, the ogres are always attracted to traces of magic, and you reek of it! You stink of magic." He said as Belle frowned. "Ever since you started traveling back and forth between the realms, you've been attracting a lot of notice and attention from the wrong sorts. Take it from me, dearie, I'm one of them."
"You're lying to me." She insisted, shaking her head even as she wondered how he knew so much about her and her power. "It's not my fault. I haven't done anything worthy of notice! I might have used magic, a little bit, but I didn't do much aside from traveling. I might have traveled a lot, but I was always careful not to get caught or get into trouble and I always left as soon as I could." Her voice trailed off near the end, her confidence draining underneath his glare as her doubts surfaced. "How could I have done this?" She asked.
He grimaced. "You've been leaving holes left, right, and center, careless, reckless, ignorant and irresponsible, always a trace back to you and your home, and things have been leaking through from the other realms following after you. It was only a matter of time before they found you and Avonlea." He said, "The ogres are the least of it, you know."
"How could I…" Belle started to say, on the verge of tears, but then her foot slipped, and she started to fall. The strange-looking man reached out, quick as a flash, to grab her hand just as Belle, her mind panicking, concentrated on another spot, down near the bottom of the mountain on Avonlea's side. With that thought, the swirling sensation came again as Belle and the strange-looking man disappeared from the edge of the mountainside…
To be continued! (I'll do a bit with Rumplestiltskin's viewpoint in the next chapter, mostly the summoning scene.)