Warning: This chapter contains mentions of animals being hunted for sport and a non-graphic description of an animal caught in a snare.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to albalark who was not only a beta, but a teacher of precious English lessons (in so many pretty colours) and disassembly_rsn whose history knowledge I envy, and who helped me revise a lot of the backstory. You two made this insanely better, I hope you know how much I appreciate your help. I also thank the lovely anarion who, once again, acted as a beta for my header.

Disclaimers: I own nothing. The 'skeleton' of this story comes from the novel Là où la mer commence by Dominique Demers, which I adore. It's a new take on the very well known story Beauty and the Beast and I borrowed a lot from it. Still, no knowledge of the novel is required to understand and appreciate this story. As for the Sherlock stuff, well you know where that comes from, and the title is from a poem by E.E. Cummings.

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Sherlock Holmes was twenty-eight years old in the spring when Harriet Watson got off a ship coming from England to visit her cousin. By then, the young Holmes had long grown into his body, his lean torso now proportioned to his long limbs. His grey eyes, high cheekbones and full lips, although still very unconventional, had developed some kind of harmony under the still wild dark curls. It didn't make sense; if examined individually his features should've looked ridiculous on any man, but the sum of them worked for him and, as for his mother before him, no other words suited him better than 'stunningly beautiful'. A few young women who had been to school with him and teased him relentlessly were now getting weak in the knees every time they heard his deep voice, a rumble not unlike the thunder on a July storm.

Harriet Watson's cousin was well liked in Sainte-Cécile; he was a very powerful man and had worked hard for the establishment of the sawmill in the village, which had helped its development considerably. Harriet stayed for a whole season; she was a rich woman coming from a very rich family, and her only obligation was the management of the family's wealth, which left her with plenty of time to devote to her favourite pastime: hunting. She applied herself to the activity with obsession and savagery, and she had decided to temporarily leave her wife Clara with her younger brother after hearing about the abundance of game in America.

The only thing known about Harriet (other than the greatness of her wealth) was how skilled she was as a hunter. The gossips said that when she was twelve years old, while hunting rabbit with her father in France, a wild boar had charged at her. The young girl hadn't even screamed, she had shouldered her gun and had cold-bloodedly waited for the boar to approach. Only then, a gunshot had echoed through the trees and the beast had collapsed a few feet away from Harriet. They had brought back the carcass and, during the following years, plenty of heads had been added to their walls.

Harriet was not a very feminine woman and someone seeing her for the first time could have easily mistaken her for a man. She was of medium height and had a muscular body, sculpted by many years of hunting around the globe. Her hair was shorter than usual for a woman and she could usually be seen wearing men's clothing because she considered it more convenient when hunting.

Harriet's cousin was very proud to show her around the land and take her to the best hunting spots. At dawn, he brought her to Salty Swamp to see the white-tailed deer leaving the forest to graze on the bank and then, when the tide was low, they hunted the napping seals on the rocks in Pig Bay. Harriet seemed insatiable; she demanded to be taken at sea to splash the water with porpoise blood and, when they came back, they trapped enough foxes to dress a whole family with the furs. Harry Watson couldn't believe her eyes, even in her wildest dreams she had never known such abundance. Before returning to England, she bought a large chunk of land covering everything from East Birches Bay to Spruce Cape and hired a dozen men to build a large manor. The land was so far away from the busy part of town and the main road, that only the family living in Sailboat Bay - the Holmes - would be able to see part of the manor. It looked as though Harriet Watson wanted to hide.

Harriet came back to Sainte-Cécile in the end of the following summer. On that day, the fog was so dense that no one saw the ship approaching until it was almost in the port, emerging from the fog like a lost ghost. The word was quick to spread and very soon the curious villagers were fussing around and gathering close to the port to see what was happening. At first, only crates and suitcases were taken out and piled outside by a few servants. The process took so long, it looked like the Englishwoman had packed up her whole country, and only when the sun had started descending did the unpacking end. Usually, the villagers would've returned home by then, but the atmosphere was so eerie and sinister, with the fog and the gulls circling the port, it seemed like everyone was rooted to the spot and unwilling to go home.

Harriet finally emerged, walking slowly and staggering a little before strengthening her steps, her back rigid despite the heavy charge she was carrying. In her arms was an inanimate body - a woman's body - wrapped in muslin. Her lifeless face was framed by blazing red hair floating in the wind and whipping her pale cheeks. Harriet was bringing back her wife's cadaver; she had died two days ago as the ship was sailing along the estuary. The darkness couldn't mask the bloodstains on the material covering the deceased, the young woman had lost a lot of blood before dying and Harriet had kept her close to her for the remainder of the voyage.

Behind Harriet, a younger man was walking. Her brother. Even from far away, Sherlock could see he was of medium height, had a strong body hidden under a thin black coat and was wearing a long red scarf around his neck despite the nice weather. As he and Harry got closer and the rumour of the red haired lady's death started to circulate among the villagers, the scene got clearer.

The brother was wearing a mask.

It was a leather mask, supple and thin, tied at the back of his head and covering his face from the lower part of his forehead to the tip of his upper lips. On the left side of the uncovered part of his forehead, some ravaged skin could be glimpsed, disappearing under the mask. His hair was abundant and not quite brown nor blonde: fawn. His most noticeable feature despite the mask was his eyes. They were blue and seemed to be burning, consuming his whole face. Not a sound could be heard among the townspeople until one of them expressed what most of them were thinking.

"The man is a monster!" he screamed, fright tainting his voice as Harriet took a few steps in his direction. He took a few steps back to put more distance between himself and Harriet Watson, and especially between himself and the corpse Harriet was carrying.

"Get a good look!" she said. "Look at him because it's the last time you'll be seeing him," she added while gesturing towards her brother with her chin.

She looked around, her eyes heavy with threats.

"You are forbidden to come on my grounds. Those who will risk it will regret it," she added and, with one last threatening glare at the crowd, she was gone, her masked brother following.

For a while after moving to Sainte-Cécile, the Englishwoman never ceased to fuel the rumour mill. She often received merchandise from Québec City or from overseas and such a deployment of wealth irritated the townspeople who mostly had very modest lifestyles. Harriet hunted almost constantly and as soon as winter came, she installed snares.

At that time, Martha was renting her second house to a nice couple of married gentlemen, Sebastian Moran and Jim Moriarty, who had moved in about two years ago with their housekeeper, Marie Turner. She and Martha had become close friends and often invited each other over for tea, Moran and Moriarty sometimes joining them. Both of them had been part of the team assembled to build Harriet Watson's manor, so as far as gossip went they were considered experts, even if their knowledge on the subject was quite limited. Harriet had been away during the construction so there wasn't much to tell. At first.

On a cold December morning, Moran witnessed a troubling scene. Harriet Watson (who insisted on being called Harry) had asked him to help check her numerous snares for small game. They had already found three hares when they stumbled upon a magnificent red fox.

"A beautiful creature," Moran told the villagers gathered in his and Moriarty's living room that afternoon, "with fur so dense and so bright, that from afar I thought it was on fire."

Harry had knelt in the snow beside the fox and opened the trap, liberating the crushed paw. The animal had fought for a long time, but was now exhausted, taking a few deep breaths that made its red fur rise and fall slowly before finally succumbing to the wound. She stayed beside the animal for a long time, gazing at it as though unsure what to do next.

"Clara," she breathed softly. Only a few crows answered, then it was silent again.

Moran understood that something crucial was taking place before his eyes. He had seen Harry come out of the ship with her wife's body in her arms and he supposed that in the woman's mind, the red fur and Clara's red hair were tangling. The animal before her eyes wasn't an animal anymore.

"Clara!" she roared in such a desperate voice that even the forest seemed shaken.

Once again silence fell, surrounding them. Harry started caressing and massaging the fox, as if trying to bring it back to life. She pressed her face in the red mane, feeling the remaining heat in the animal's stomach.

"She looked completely lost, it was quite sad," Moran told his riveted audience.

Harry Watson finally emerged from her trance-like state, but refused to let go of the fox. She brought it back to her manor, ignoring Moran who stayed back for a while before returning home. In the following days, he learned from a servant that Harry had stuffed the animal by herself, awkwardly but affectionately. After the incident, she didn't stop hunting, but she lost some of her enthusiasm. She asked for Moran and Moriarty's help to build a large enclosure in which she started keeping red foxes, which enraged the villagers. Harry wasn't killing the foxes to sell their furs and she wasn't skewering them, which meant she was protecting the animals. For a farmer, there was no worse enemy than those little sneaky and smart beasts who could empty a henhouse in less time than it took for a farmer to notice their presence. The enclosure was solid for the moment, but no villager doubted that one day the foxes would manage to damage their prison and escape to wreak havoc.

In the following winter and spring, people started talking about the disfigured brother. Once in a while, someone reported having seen him wandering the capes or walking along the shores at ungodly hours, his red scarf floating behind him. Two pilots had seen him in a small rowboat being carried along by the tide. On a full moon night, he had been seen perched on top of a cliff while a couple of sparrowhawks had flown in wide circles around him. It was around that time that townspeople started whispering that the Watson boy must've been damned if even birds of prey were scared to reach their nests when he was around. It didn't help when he was spotted hunting rats, shattering their heads on rocks before putting them in a leather bag. This, more than anything else, made the villagers talk. It fuelled their imagination with images of the young man cackling evilly, his mouth twisted under the mask before grabbing a rodent in his dirty hands (in some of the stories, he even had claws) and biting its head off. The townspeople started calling him The Beast and the nickname stuck.

Sherlock, who was barely noticed anymore when he was sneaking around, was aware of what people were saying about the man with the mask and the more he heard, the more he wanted to meet him, or at least see him. He started wandering around the Watsons' grounds at all hours of the day and night, hoping to run into the mysterious young man and getting more annoyed every day that passed without even the slightest sight of him. It didn't take long before Martha started noticing what was going on, it was quite easy to deduce when she noticed Sherlock sneaking out more often than usual and the hungry look he got in his eyes every time The Beast was mentioned. She tried to warn him, reminding him of what Harry had said after she had gotten out of the boat, but Sherlock was stubborn. While he assured his aunt that he was being careful, he never stopped roaming around Spruce Cape, his long coat always billowing behind him.

On a foggy April night, Sherlock felt particularly brave and decided to get closer, wandering around the foxes' enclosure he had heard so much about. As he approached, he heard yapping and barking through which Harry Watson's furious cries could be heard. Sherlock ran as silently as he could and hid behind a particularly big tree from which he could see the scene. Foxes were running around, the enclosure door had been opened and beside it stood Harry Watson, her face red with fury as she tightly clutched a red scarf. She was frantically looking around, probably trying to locate the scarf's owner. Realizing the young man might still be around, Sherlock started looking for him, moving from tree to tree in order to escape Harry's scrutinizing gaze.

He heard a twig snap to his left and he looked. There stood the Watson brother, standing straight with his back flat against a tree trunk. Sherlock stared and the other man stared back before pressing a single index finger to his lips, the tip of his finger faintly brushing the leather of the mask. Sherlock nodded to signal he understood, but he kept staring, unable to detach his eyes from Watson's serious gaze, not caring anymore that an angry hunter was close by. The moment only lasted about a minute, but it seemed infinitely longer and after what felt like ages, the masked Watson looked around him one last time and started running towards the manor, making very little noise as he jumped over obstacles and swerved to avoid the small piles of snow that hadn't melted yet. Even after he had disappeared into the night, it took a few minutes before Sherlock could shake himself out of his stunned state and run back home.

From that day on, Harry Watson stopped keeping foxes in the enclosure and Martha, who had heard Moran's tale of what he called The Fox Incident, speculated that the Englishwoman was done grieving. Sherlock's thoughts went to young man who had waited until the right moment to free the animals and his eyes twinkled with curiosity. He was intrigued by the contrast between the man hunting rats – the one villagers caller The Beast – and the man who had been kind enough to wait until his sister was done mourning to open the enclosure and free the animals. More than ever, he wanted to meet him.

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If you want to see the timeline and map I made for this story, you can also read this on LiveJournal or AO3 where my username is ellie_hell.