Belle steels herself as she stands up to formally toast the assembly before the ball begins. Her stomach is tied in knots, though she tells herself it does not matter. They are celebrating their deliverance. She could be staggering drunk and speak nothing but gibberish, and the crowd would no doubt cheer her tonight.
But, her words will be remembered tomorrow. They will be cut and dissected. Gaston and Maurice will both remember it if she shames them. So, she forces a joyous, welcoming smile and holds up her goblet, readying the words she has prepared.
As she opens her mouth to speak, a high, mocking titter cuts through the room. The sound of it unnerves Belle. The words of her carefully memorized speech scatter like dry leaves. She stutters, turning red.
The crowd turns towards the source of the laughter. A figure lies, propped up on his side, over the great lintel at the entryway.
He cannot be there. The lintel is broad but Belle cannot imagine how he has managed to prop himself up there, especially in such a position. And how did he get there? Lord Maurice's table looks down on the hall. How did none of them see this man climbing up there? It is not possible.
But, worse than that, Belle, who has felt as if the fabric of the world is fraying around her for . . . she cannot say how long. It seems as though it has been coming undone for years, for lifetimes, but she can only remember this weighing on her for a single day—Belle feel as if the fraying threads are being torn apart entirely. The unknown beyond rears up, dark and terrifying.
The figure giggles again. The sound is high and inhuman. He—it—Belle isn't sure which—is partly hidden in a hooded cloak. Beneath that it wears strange, tight-fitting clothes of dragon hide. Its body is like a man's, but nothing about it seems human.
"Lord Maurice, is that your master of ceremonies? Well, that was rather a letdown." The creature swings its legs over the side, posed like a child kicking his feet as he sits on a wall. Then, he pushes himself off and lands lightly on the floor, as easily as a cat.
An aisle has cleared for him, people instinctively getting out of his way, and he walks down it. He comes slowly, though there is a jauntiness in his step, a cheerful energy at odds with the menace that breathes off him. He leaps lightly up to the dais where the high table is set. Ignoring Belle, he bows flamboyantly to the lord. "Lord Maurice, allow me to introduce myself." He rises up, pulling away his cloak. It swirls like the cape of a street performer, a grand piece of theatricality.
But, the creature beneath the cloak needs no showman's tricks to make the assembly gasp and back away. Belle, standing at the edge of the dais, has no place to go but over the edge and it is still all she can do to keep from taking that step. In form, he is like a man. But, his skin is lumpy and scaled, like the thick, pebbly hide of certain trolls or of the monster beasts, crocodiles they are called, she has seen in books. His eyes, as he turns and regards the crowd, are lizard's eyes, bright yellow and brown. The hands, lightly gripping the discarded cloak, end in stained, brown claws with fishhook curves. He gives them a smile of benevolent madness, showing rotting colored fangs.
With a flick of his wrists, he tosses the cloak aside. It bursts into flames then vanishes without leaving even ashes behind.
"I am the Dark One," he announces flamboyantly. "And I have come to save you from your curse."
Gaston rises at this, though Maurice remains seated, eyes grim. "You're too late, demon," Gaston says. "The land is saved already—with no help from you."
The creature, the Dark One, titters. "Oh, I wouldn't call it saved. I don't suppose you recall the details, do you? How your enemies were driven back? How your miserable lives were spared? And all the rest of it. No?
"Then, let me tell you. I suppose some of you have noticed the absence of poor, sick Lady Rosamonde. She's not here because her health took a sudden turn for the dead." He struck a theatrical, mocking pose. "But, do not mourn her, my children. She gave her life to save you all. It just so happens she did a very bad job of it—isn't it so, Lord Maurice?"
Maurice's face might have been carved in stone. Very slowly, he nodded. "It's true. Rosamonde died. To save us."
"Yes, yes, my condolences. Which is why it falls to me to save you from her well-intentioned bit of providence."
Gaston looked from Maurice to the Dark One. "Save. . . ? What do you mean? The Ogres are defeated?" He looked at Maurice uncertainly. "Aren't they, my lord?"
It was the Dark One who answered. "Oh, I wouldn't say defeated. More like dead of old age. It's a very long, boring story but, centuries before even I was born, Lady Rosamonde's family became the guardians of a certain piece of very old magic, a curse. The curse has the power to reshape a land, trapping it in time, and closing its borders to any outsiders. Which she did. Of course, being a gentle, kind lady—" he said it mockingly, "—she didn't reshape your lands in any great, terrible ways. The damages the Ogres did have been undone, your storehouses are full to bursting, and no one goes to bed hungry or afraid.
"But, you're still trapped in time. You're celebrating the Ogres defeat tonight, just as you have the night before, and the night before that, and every night for . . . well, let's just call it longer than you can imagine, and leave it at that."
Belle sees disbelief on the faces around her, but every word echoes in her with the sound of truth. She remembers Lady Rosamonde's words the night before . . . was it the night before? How can she have forgotten them?
You and your son will live.
And . . . things fracture in her mind. She remembers a man who was there. But, not there. Not last night. Not the night before. But, she has met him before, spoken with him.
She remembers how he hated her, though she still doesn't understand why.
Gaston starts to say something. She looks at him and feels sickened. Last night, when they first knew they were going to live. He summoned her to help him celebrate. He was drunk, though not too drunk for what he wanted. She remembers barely being able to endure his touch yet forcing herself to smile and laugh, as she always did, to do everything he wanted and more, ignoring the voices screaming inside her.
He is not vile, she tells herself. She has known true vileness. Drunkenness makes him crude, and there are times she can barely remember what it is like to crave that kind of human touch. But, she doesn't loathe herself for what she does with him. Or she shouldn't.
But, how many times has she relived that? How many more times must she? How can she, now she knows?
Bae, she says his name silently, like a talisman. For Bae's sake, she must endure. She must survive. Because his survival has always depended on hers.
Whatever Gaston is about to say is cut off by Lord Maurice. "It's true," he says. "What this creature is saying. Rosamonde gave her life to enact the curse, to save us. It has been the same day, playing over and over again. For years, I think." He looked at the Dark One. "But, even if I knew how to break it, what happens then? The Ogres are still out there. Our homes were in ruins, our food nearly gone, before she cast it. How can we survive without it?"
"Ah, now, that's where I come in," the Dark One said. "I can save you. I can protect your little land. What the curse has fixed will stay fixed. You'll still have the food and other supplies. The Ogres stay gone. I can also give you some protection from new enemies scattered around and help you find your footing in the bright, new future your about to find yourselves in—for a price."
Belle knows then. It's in the way Lord Maurice doesn't look at her, in the cruel way the Dark One smiles, watching her out of the corner of his eyes. All of this, his appearance in the hall, his theatrical posing, it's only an act. Maurice and this creature have already made their agreement. This is just a show, to explain to everyone else why their world is about to change—and what they are about to do.
And this creature hates her and wants her harm.
And he knows—the night they met, she saw it—he knows what will harm her. Her life, her death, those are nothing. There is only one thing that matters—only one thing she has let matter since she found out what being sold to Killian Jones means—
The terror has already risen up before the doors beneath the lintel where the creature perched open. Two of Maurice's guards come in. They are bringing a smaller figure between them, a little boy who has no choice but to run to keep up as they drag him along, a hand on each arm.
"No," Belle whispers. She looks first at Gaston. He is surprised, but she can see him nodding, seeing the advantage of it. Though Belle has kept her promise and never asked her father's name, Baelfire is a threat to Gaston's inheritance. She looks at Lord Maurice. There is some regret in his face, maybe even grief, but he has already made his choice. Worse, he is sharing a look of understanding with Gaston. He wants Bae gone as well.
"No!" Belle shouts it, desperate for words to change his mind. "My lord, you can't—"
The Dark One laughs. "Oh, I think you'll find he can, dearie." He points a long, clawed finger at the boy. "I want him."
"Mama?" Bae's voice is frightened. The guards are forcing him onto the dais, towards the creature who has bargained for him.
Belle puts herself between them, wrapping her arms around Bae. "No, you can't have him. Maurice has no right to him. He's my son, and I won't give him to you."
"Oh, you'd let all these people suffer for eternity rather than cut your apron strings, is that it?" the Dark One sneers. "Everyone else can go to blazes as long as you're all right, is that it?"
Gaston was walking towards her but he watches the Dark One. "Good sir," he says. "Forgive her. She's only a woman, after all. You can't expect her to understand these necessities.
"Belle," Gaston takes her gently but firmly by the arms, trying to pull her away from Bae. "He's right. This is for the best."
Belle tries to shove Gaston off, never letting go of Bae. "No. Gaston, please. He's my son. You can't—" She searches her mind for arguments, bargains, anything she could offer Gaston to keep him from doing this. But, there is nothing. He and Maurice want Bae gone. They had always wanted him gone.
Bae clings to her. "Mama?" he says, afraid. "What do they mean? Where are they taking me? Don't leave me, Mama!"
Don't leave me.
She will get no pity from Maurice or Gaston. There is only one person left to appeal to.
Belle turns to the Dark One. "I won't leave him," she says. "If you take him, you take me as well."
The creature scowls. "And what am I supposed to do with you?"
The disdain—the disgust—in the creature's voice should silence Belle's fears. But, the question itself—and the answer every man who's asked it in the years since her husband's death—makes her cold and sick inside. Human men have been bad enough. She looks at this creature and wonders how he will answer it, what he will do with her.
What will he do to her son? What can he want with a small child?
There are answers pressing in on her that she doesn't want to think of. Even if this creature allows her to come, how can she protect Bae from him? She will only be trading one powerless slavery for another. What can she do?
How can she abandon her son? Whatever this creature means to do to him, however powerless she may be to stop him, she cannot let Bae face it alone, even if that is the only thing she can do.
"Do whatever you want," she tells the Dark One. "But, don't take him away from me."
"Belle—" Gaston begins, exasperated. But, he gives her up as a lost cause and turns his attention to the Dark One. "The lady is mine," he says. "She's my companion, as we say here."
The creature tittered again. "I didn't ask, dearie. I'm not looking for love." He laughed again, unable to say the word with a straight face. "If she comes, it will be to scrub my stairs and wash the laundry. I've no other use for her."
"You heard him, Belle," Gaston said. "I forbid this. You can't possibly—"
She hears the bored exasperation in his voice. He acts as if she is an unreasonable child, as if Bae's life is nothing more than a plaything and she's the spoiled child who won't put away her toys.
"No one decides my fate but me, Gaston," she tells him coldly, as if she is a queen and Gaston is a lowly peasant who presumed too much. It is such a lie. She thinks of Hordor, of Jones, of Maurice and Gaston, all twisting her life for their own ends.
But, there were choices. And she accepted them. Faced with the same choices all over again . . . Belle doesn't know if she would have the strength to do what she did before. But, she would pray to be able to, to choose as she did before. She accepts this choice, now. She looks this creature, the Dark One, in the eye and says, "I will go with you." Her voice does not allow for argument.
Naturally, he argues. "It's forever, dearie," he says, scowling.
She is ready to scream. At him. At Gaston. At Lord Maurice who can sacrifice her son in this way. But, that will not help Bae. "Then, I will go with you forever," she tells him.
The creature scowls at her a moment longer. Then, his face turns as cruel and amused as a cat that realizes the thing annoying it is a mouse that is trying to crawl inside its fangs. He laughs. "Deal."
Only then does Lord Maurice protest. "Belle. Belle, you cannot do this. Belle, please. You can't go with this . . . beast."
She looks at him. It is as if he is only now understanding what has been going on in front of him, what she has offered, what the creature has accepted. He looks distraught.
Does it matter to him, what happens to her? Are the hints she's heard true? She knows he has never loved Baelfire, no more than he would love a mule born to a prize blood mare—less, since the mare would never have been able to cling to her foal despite all efforts to take it away. The mare would certainly never defend the union that had created it.
But . . . does she matter to him? At least, a little?
Does it matter to her if she does? Did he really think, if he took Bae away from her, she would just accept the loss and go on? As if her memory of her son and the husband she loved can be wiped away if Maurice can only find the right bit of magic to clean the muck of the past that clings to her?
It doesn't matter, she reminds herself. None of it matters. "My lord, Gaston, it's been decided."
The creature, still looking at her with cruel, hungry eyes, nods. "You know – she's right. The deal is struck. Oh! Congratulations on your brave, new world. I hope you enjoy it."
He snaps his fingers, and Lord Maurice's court vanishes in a cloud of purple smoke.