51.

Her family often teased her for being a dreamer. They were warriors, all of them, and rarely stopped to think before swinging a sword. They were coarse and direct, their laughter was loud and their steps heavy. She always looked odd amongst them too small, too quiet, and too beautiful. Of course they doted on her she was their lovely little princess, yet she did feel sometimes that they didn't think of her as a human being, but as a sort of domestic pet, rather: a pretty kitten, or something like that. It was difficult for her to blend in with them from the very early days of her life she felt she was somehow a bit brighter than most of the adults around her. Sometimes, staring at the sky at night or sitting by her window listening to the rain (she loved to do that) she would get a feeling that the world is a much greater and complicated place than it seemed at the first glance, that it is a mystery to be explored. Yet she could never explain that feeling to any of the people close to her. When she'd mention it, they would just say: 'But of course the world is big, you should just cross the mountains to see how vast the next plane is, little Belle', and they would toss her hair, and walk away smiling at the 'silly little princess'. She couldn't make them understand that she meant something beyond mountains and planes and forests. She felt frustrated at not being able to explain herself. At first she thought the problem was with her she was weird. Then she discovered books and realized that there were other people in the world who knew what she meant, and had similar feelings and thoughts. Only none of them happened to be members of her family. So she read more and more, talking to the people on the pages rather than to her family, and gradually came to think of herself as an essentially lonely person.

She was not naïve, she knew that books are books, and the stories in them are made up. She never expected her life to suddenly become like one of the stories she loved so much. She did not dream of adventures really happening to her, and she did not expect a handsome prince or a dark stranger to enter her life and change it.

Yet, when it happened, it seemed like a completely natural thing.

Her father was fighting the ogres, and he was losing the war - the kingdom was about to fall. And, though distrustful of all magic, he saw no other option but to call on the Light One - the most powerful wizard in the world, who was also known as the Ogre Slayer, for he took no pity on these monsters. When he came, she had no idea what to expect - she thought all wizards were old slightly crazy gentlemen with long white beards. So when He came, she was surprised - he was not very young, that was true, but he was handsome and dashing in his leather coat, and his hair was of beautiful silver color, and he had most wonderful eyes - dark, kind and warm, just like chocolate. He appeared suddenly in a locked room, and everyone was a bit scared, but she was just curious: he looked like a person from one of her books, and she immediately wanted to know him better.

The ogres were defeated in one instant, it seemed. He smiled wryly and said: "Well, congratulations on your little war", and was about to leave, adding, upon being asked, that he needed no reward for his services. But as he spoke he gave her a long and longing look, and suddenly she saw in his dark eyes something that belied his assured manner. It was sadness, sadness so deep and old that her compassion was sparkled as well as her curiosity. She stopped him, surprising her father, and asked him to stay with them and rest and celebrate the victory. He looked grateful and mildly surprised at her offer, as if nothing like that happened to him before. But he accepted, and they walked hand in hand into the dining chamber, and nobody questioned the fact that they sat alongside at the table. And they talked, and talked, oblivious of the curious glances from people around - they never saw their princess so animated and they certainly never expected a wizard to share her excitement.

He stayed after dinner, and they walked in the garden, and she was mesmerized by his old and tired face, by his mild yet sarcastic manner of speech, by his habit to speak lightly of serious matters and joke with deadpan expression, by his quiet laugh, by his kindness, by his strong features and by his gleaming hair and by his sad, sad dark eyes. He had very long lashes - ridiculously long for a man, they looked almost odd on the face of a knight. And he had beautiful hands, soft and dry and warm, and when he touched her cheek with his fingertips and smiled tenderly at one of her over-enthusiastic remarks, she blushed and knew that something incredible and wonderful and scary happened to her.

She fell in love.

She fell in love with a powerful wizard, a light knight whom the whole country admired. And, incredibly and wonderfully and scarily, he fell in love with her.

She did have a fiancée, a nice enough lad from the circle of her father's knights. But this engagement sort of dissolved once it became apparent that the Light One himself wants to marry her. Her father was exited - such a connection was highly desirable. Naturally he had no objections to the wedding, and it took place rather soon: her husband-to-be did not want to wait. "I have waited my whole life for you, and do not want to lose any more time", he said. She did wonder how old he was, at that - she suspected that life of the Light One was longer that ordinary human's, but she never came to asking; she was sure there'd be plenty of time for talking once they started living together.

Their wedding was a grand affair - everybody who mattered came, even the Evil Queen Snow White, a very powerful witch: obviously there was some mutual respect between magicians, light as well as dark ones.

Her husband crafted a beautiful wedding dress for her, white with lace made of purest and lightest gold; he wore a golden mantle. But when he took her home after the wedding she found that his house was very humble - not much more than a peasant's hut. She wondered mildly why the greatest wizard in the land lives so modestly, and he explained that he was a poor peasant once in his youth, and wanted to stay in touch with his roots. Also, he didn't want to scare off people who came to seek his help with external magnificence. She admired his reasons, and she didn't mind a lot of housework she had to deal with: she was a princess, at that meant she was brought up to do all kinds of things.

She got pregnant very soon after the wedding, and her husband was overjoyed. He surrounded her with care and love and when the child - a boy whom they called Neal - was born, he doted on the baby, as she never expected any man would. But then her husband was not an ordinary man, so she was not really surprised.

They had a very good life - very cozy, very tender, and almost too domesticated for a man who left home to fight every day, after all. She was very proud of him, but deep in her heart she would have had to admit that she wasn't overly worried about him: with his magical powers no harm could befall him even in the harshest of battles.

Sometimes, sitting by her son's crib, watching the dust dance in the sunbeam, listening to cattle whistling and birds singing outside, waiting for the sounds of the horse's huffs to tell her that her husband is back home from his errands, she was struck by the slight feeling of unreality of all that. Everything happened so quickly, as if they lived in a fairy tale. A knight came and saw a princess, they fell in love, they married and bang - they live happily ever after. The end. No drama, no heartbreaks, no obstacles to overcome, no dragons to defeat - no... adventures that a girl might expect when she marries a warrior and a wizard.

Her life was wonderful and full of love and light. But it wasn't very exiting.

And her husband, though full of love and caring for her, remained a mystery to her.

Yes, that was the thing that gnawed at her heart and brought on rare moments of uneasiness. Her husband was a very... closed man. She knew - she felt - that there were many, many things in his life, in his past, of which he never told her. He never told her of his elder son: she knew he already had a child, but the boy died and she never knew how. She was sure it was nothing sinister, her husband was too good a man to have ugly secrets; if he kept something from her she knew it was to protect her - he didn't want her to worry or to be upset. But still it saddened her, for his silence meant that one thing that she wanted first and foremost since the moment she saw him eluded her. She wanted to know him fully, to know the reason for that sadness in his eyes. And he never told her, and she cared for him too much to ask: she didn't want to upsets him by showing that she was not completely happy.

So he kept his silence, and she kept seeing his sadness and ached at his secrets. She wondered what and why he isn't telling her; she was sure that she would have helped if she knew what shadows his soul. But she also respected his silence: he was a man and a wizard; he was entitled to his secrets.

And she was sure that he would tell his wife everything when he is ready.

There was plenty of time for that.

And there was one other thing that kept her from ever calling her life boring or unexciting - a thing she would be too modest to mention even to her mother, let alone her friends, though she didn't have many friends, their life was rather lonely. And that thing was the way she felt about her husband when they were sharing a bed - and the way he changed when he was making love to her.

When night fell, the mild, kind and slightly pompous knight-errant that people knew disappeared, and a man only she knew came into being, and wonderful wildness possessed him. He was still gentle and caring, but there was such passion, such intensity in everything he did to her that her head swam and her heart blossomed. On the wedding night he even shocked her slightly - he ravished her body, he fell on his knees to kiss her feet and her legs and... other places, and she blushed and she gasped and she felt as if her body is on fire and is about to melt in his arms, and when he kissed her all over and caressed her breasts and kissed her on the mouth and she tasted her own taste on his lips she wondered how she is still whole and hadn't exploded, and then he caressed her with his fingers, and she felt she had exploded, and then he took her and it started all over again, the trembling and the heat and the madness, and when everything was over she saw tears in his eyes and he kept saying her name, "Belle, Belle, Belle, my beautiful Belle", again and again in his deep husky voice, and she cried with him not even knowing why.

And at night, when they were together like that, she felt that she touches his secrets - that this man who loves her so wildly and needs her so desperately is the man he really is, and then she knew she knows him, after all. And for that knowledge, not just for the pleasures his gave her, she loved him, and told herself many times over as she thought about him when he was absent or when she looked at him, sitting by the fire with his cup of tea - he loved tea: "I would follow him everywhere, wherever he goes. Forever". And if he were present he would look at her sideways, as if reading her thoughts, and give her a quick smile, and sun would flicker on the silver in his hair and on his long lashes.

And then she'd blush and think, irrationally: "This is too good to be true".

But it was true and it was a blissfully happy life until one day when a sleazy little man came to see her husband when he was away, and insistent on waiting, and when her husband came he was distinctly uneasy to see this little man. They sent her away to talk alone, and she felt sure that this man is connected with the secrets her husband keeps from her. And then the man left, and her husband was not himself - he was edgy, and troubled, and all his inner sadness became apparent. He spoke to her of a hard choice that he has to make to save the country - to save everything that they have, and she truly couldn't understand what worries him: he was a hero, all the choices he made were always the right ones. She told him something to that effect, and he looked at her with such deep, unimaginable regret, and gentle pity, as if she were a little girl, not a mother of his child and said: "It's not as simple as that". And she wanted to ask him: "What is it that troubles you so?" But she didn't dare, she wanted to lighten the moment and offered him some tea instead, and he dropped his favorite cup and chipped it, and somehow that upset him even more. She told him: "It is nothing, it is just chipped. We can fix it!", and he lowered his head and she could have sworn there were tears in his eyes.

He cleaned his sword very thoroughly, and he dressed with unusual care before he went on his errand and before leaving he kissed her on the lips so strongly and with such despair that for the first time in all their life together she felt worried about him - she was mortally afraid something might happen to him.

And she waited and waited while he was gone, and their son slept peacefully in his crib, and she couldn't calm herself down with anything that usually worked: reading, or knitting, or sewing. She just paced the house, coming up to the door every next minute, waiting for him to come back.

And then he magically reappeared in the yard, which he didn't do often, not wishing to abuse magic for ordinary everyday things, she almost cried with relief: he was back, he was safe, everything was fine again!

But then she saw his face, and horror gripped her heart. She hardly recognized him: his face was ashen, all life gone from him, and his eyes were dark and flat, and his steps heavy as he approached her and just gazed at her with unbearable regret and sadness.

"I have made the right choice", he said barely audibly. "I am sorry".

And with these words he fell on his knees in front of her, and embraced her, and his shoulders shook as he wept, and she caressed his head, running her fingers through his hair, and thought with cold and inexplicable clarity: "It is over. Everything is over".

And storm clouds gathered at the horizon as she looked up through her own tears, and their son woke in his crib and started to cry.