As Old As Time: A Twisted Tale (Twisted Tale, A) (17 page)

It was strange to say it aloud.

She had these new images in her head of a woman maybe ten years older than Belle herself was now. She wondered at the cross of sublime, angelic determination and spitfire anger that had caused her to test and then curse a boy prince.

Rash
—that was the word Belle would have chosen to use for a woman who did things like that.

Oh,
a tiny voice in her mind said,
you mean things like marching into a haunted castle and trading your life for your father’s. Acting without thinking about consequences.

She waved her hand as if to physically brush the thought away.

“Your mother?” the Beast repeated, still dumbfounded. He scrabbled in his chair like a restless dog. “Are
you
an enchantress, too?” he asked eagerly. “Can you free me from this?”

“I’m
not
an enchantress,” Belle said softly. She was surprised at how much it bothered her to see the Beast’s look of disappointment. “Up until today I didn’t believe such things as
enchantresses
existed. Or curses. Or enchanted castles.”

As she said this a pair of silver demitasse spoons marched out and, using a cloth napkin they held like a sheet to be folded, delicately wiped up some spilled tea before marching away again.

“Well—but—where is she? Is your mother at home? Can we go see her?”

He was leaning forward eagerly, hopefully.

“I…never knew my mother,” she admitted. “I have no idea where she is. She left us years ago. I’d love to see her again. Especially now that it turns out she’s an enchantress. I have a lot of questions I’d like answered.”

“Why are you here then?” the Beast growled. “If your mother came and cursed me, isn’t it unusual that
you also
show up at my castle’s door—ten years later?”

“Well, yes,” Belle agreed. “But I’m here only because of my father. Phillipe—the horse—came back without him and I went out to search.”

“You’re lying. You could have come to make sure the curse would come true.”

Belle raised an eyebrow at him. “I am
no
t lying. I’m not sure what the point of me doing that would be. After, you know, bringing you back to the castle so you wouldn’t freeze to death.”

The Beast, chagrined, didn’t say anything.

“What…what do we do now?” he finally asked in a small voice.

Belle looked at him in surprise.

He threw out his hands as best he could, indicating the room, or the castle, or the world.

“We’re…stuck here. Forever. The…spiderwebs will cover the whole castle soon. Completing the curse.”

Belle looked up at the ceiling, at the walls, hoping an answer or something would materialize. The corners of the room were shadowy and angles leapt back and forth as the fire danced and cast eerie lights. She realized, with a slow blink of her eyes, that her overwhelming feeling at that moment wasn’t fear. It was exhaustion. It was being overwhelmed. It was her brain, the one that her father always praised her for, suddenly being overtaxed and overfull.

All she wanted to do was to sit quietly in a corner and
think
. Think about the wisps of ideas she had about her mother.

For instance, she had somehow always thought of her mother as having auburn hair.

Sort of like her own hair but redder.
Not
blond. Why had she gotten it so wrong? Isn’t the first thing a child describes about a parent the hair color? She had no idea what it smelled like, either. She couldn’t summon a single sensory image of her mother holding her; all her mind did was shortcut the memory by alluding to loving scenes in books she had read: everything from nursery rhymes to fairy tales to picaresques.

The picture she had in her head now, of angelic retribution, didn’t exactly conform to what she thought her mother—
any
mother—would be like. She wasn’t a mother at all in the scene; she was a woman, a person, doing things that had nothing to do with Belle.

Nothing to do with me. She never had anything to do with me.

She rubbed her temples and glanced over at the Beast.

She
should
have been afraid. He was a big, violent beast who could easily kill her a dozen different ways. But he had saved her life from the wolves. Surely he didn’t mean to hurt her? And he spoke like a mostly normal human. Something that could be reasoned with.

She thought about Gaston, the only other big beastlike thing she knew who spoke.

He would have been a lot slower on the uptake about everything. Their conversation would have been a
lot
longer and more frustrating. And he would have tried to marry her at some point. He was human and utterly impossible to communicate or negotiate with.

With a sigh Belle got up and began to untie the ropes.

The Beast stayed still until she was finished, being careful not to move at all while following her movements with his wide—and suspicious—eyes.

“What…why are you doing that?”

She shrugged. “As you say, nothing much matters anymore. We’re here for…a while, at least. May as well trust each other.”

When she was finished, he flexed his claws experimentally. As he rose out of the chair, he winced, grinding his teeth at the pain from his wounds.

“If we
could
find my mother,” Belle said slowly, thinking, “if she’s not dead, or something. Maybe she could reverse the curse.”

“How would we find her?” the Beast grumbled, massaging one paw with the other.

“Do you still have the mirror—the one she gave you?” Even as she asked, she remembered the other thing on the table with the rose. The ornate silver hand mirror, lying there so innocently. “That lets you see everywhere?”

“The magic mirror,” the Beast said, eyebrows raising. “Yes! We could consult it!”

“Great, let’s go consult the
magic mirror
,” she repeated, unable to believe she was saying those words aloud. “Why not. And maybe afterwards we can go visit the witch in her woods and break off a bit of her candy house for a snack.”

The Beast looked at her, confused, his eyebrows rising even higher, like dark clouds above his blue eyes.

“Never mind,” Belle said with a sigh. “It was a joke.”

For the second time Belle found herself going up the stairs to the forbidden wing. Her feelings were entirely different now: she was exhausted and unafraid. The whisperings of shadows and creakings of animated suits of armors held no terror against the whirl of images and thoughts in her head: blond and green and lightning-colored thoughts with her mother’s face, again and again, that look of disappointment and triumph that wasn’t altogether pleasing.

The Beast hesitated a moment at the demon-handled doors of his room. It made Belle think of a scene from some book in which a boy, somewhat embarrassed, showed his family home or private room to a girl he liked. Fear of disappointing the guest, fear she would discover something uncouth about the host.

Like there could be anything worse than torn-up furniture “nests” and bones everywhere,
Belle thought wryly.

He let her go first, which was chivalrous although unwonted. The room was cold and the curtains still flapping. Not inviting in the slightest.

“What picture is this?” she asked, indicating the carefully mangled one, the portrait of the young man with blue eyes.

The Beast deflated, his giant shoulders hunching over his neck and head.

“It’s me.”

He reached out a delicate claw and pulled all the strips of canvas back into place. The Prince was revealed yet again: tall and handsome and arrogantly looking into the viewers’ eyes, challenging them to keep looking.

“The Enchantress put a spell on it so it would age
with
me—and show me how I would look if I was still human. If I hadn’t failed her test. I’m…always reminded of who I
could
have been.”

Belle cocked her head and really looked at the picture. It was painted by a consummate artist; the velvet on the Prince’s jacket looked soft and furry enough to touch.
But those eyes…

“I’m not so sure it should make you feel bad,” she finally said. “The man in that picture looks contemptuous. Self-important.”

The Beast looked at her, shocked.

“Well, he
does,
” she said, waving a hand to indicate the Prince’s face. “It’s supposed to show what you would look like on the outside. But does it show how you really are
now,
on the inside?”

The Beast dropped the canvas strips in disgust and swung away, muttering something about “meaningless words.” Belle almost smiled despite their circumstances. There were moments when she almost
enjoyed
talking with the Beast…poking at him gently…

She followed him over to the table. The wind had dropped and now everything was strangely still; there wasn’t enough breeze to flutter a single rose petal. The Beast took one sharp breath upon seeing the destroyed flower, then made himself look away.

Belle felt her heart sink. It really
was
all her fault. Maybe he only had a few more weeks until the curse was complete anyway—but those would have been a few more weeks of hope. And who knows? Maybe the magic would have sent someone, some nice peasant girl, to lift the hex. Maybe her mother had a plan that wouldn’t have kept this poor beast in his damned state forever.

With far more gentleness than she would have guessed those massive paws were capable of, he picked up the mirror and cradled it lovingly. At first it seemed like no more than a fancy princess’s vanity object, decorated with roses and what looked like abstract beastly faces on it.

“What can it do?” Belle asked politely.

“Oh, it can show me anything,” the Beast said eagerly. “Anything real. I’ve seen mountains in the Far East that are always covered in snow, and Paris at Christmastime with all of the lights and festivals and markets.”

Belle pushed a stray bit of hair back behind her ear. “You can see the entire world in that?”

“Yes. Look!” He held it out for her.

At first, there was nothing but the silvery surface—and her own skeptical face. Belle couldn’t help fixing another stray lock of hair neatly behind her ear. She had rarely examined herself in such a fine glass and wasn’t thrilled with how a few blocked pores looked in its illuminative depths. And was that a tiny scar next to her eye? She had never noticed it….

“Mirror, show me Paris,” the Beast commanded.

Mists fogged the image like he had breathed on it. When they cleared, Belle was so surprised she was glad she wasn’t the one holding the mirror—she might have dropped it.

As real as if it were happening right in front of her through a window, she could see shining carriages hurtling through cobbled streets, fancy ladies and gentlemen dressed in fashions she had only read about, buildings and shops and fountains and streets like the entire world was filled with them.
So many people!
From aristocratic doyennes attended by uniformed maids to merchants with smart but patched hats…

…to waifs, beggars, little hungry kids with feral eyes, dodging amongst everyone, trying to earn a few pennies…or steal them…

Belle was speechless. If she had a mirror like this, she might not ever have bothered to read. She could see an entire world full of stories, right here.

Then she realized she was leaning in, trying to hear what people were saying, to smell their perfumes, to feel the city air on her face.

Nothing.

It was a strangely cold experience despite the beauty of the picture.

“This is my favorite thing,” the Beast said sadly. “My only thing. I can see the world I am missing—the life I would have had.”

Belle frowned as he took the mirror back to look in it himself.

“But…if you have this mirror, and you know what you need to break the spell, why didn’t you use it to help you?” she asked. “You could have used it to find a girl, maybe…Or…”

With a snarl the Beast shoved the mirror back in her face.

“Mirror, show me the red-headed boy!”

The image changed. Now it was of a child whose hands were grotesque: like a lobster, with only two large thick fingers on each hand and a thumb. He was behind bars that he gripped with his awkward digits, and stood in a tub of water. In front of him people were laughing and jeering and—in the case of one “gentleman”—poking at his claws with a cane.

The saddest thing was not the restrained violence of the scene but how resigned the boy looked; how empty his eyes were, how he could see this was his lot in life forever.

“If they do this to a child, what do you think they will do to a beast?”

Belle bit her lip. She had no answer. Besides the meanness and small-mindedness of the townspeople, she had never seen any real cruelty. At least not outside a book.

She wanted to touch the boy’s cheek. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to…

The Beast took the mirror away.

“Just like that stupid hunter in that village over the river probably wants to put my pelt on his floor like a rug,” he muttered.

“Gaston?” Belle asked, shocked. “You mean Gaston?”

“I don’t know anyone’s names. Can’t hear anything,” he said, shaking the mirror. “He always comes into the forest and shoots anything large, pretty, or different-looking. Or just
moving.
Other hunters come and go, getting deer or birds…for meat…I have no problem with that. But this man—he just wants to kill and stuff everything. He doesn’t need the meat.”

Belle decided to file the way the Beast said “meat” later to think about more fully. He was a several-hundred-pound beast and obviously didn’t eat toast to keep his weight up.

“If I tried to leave the castle, they’d do that. Tie me up and make me a display at a circus…
if I was lucky,”
the Beast continued. “So I watch the world from here. It’s safer.”

“Safer, except that’s no way to break the spell,” Belle pointed out.

The Beast shrugged impatiently. “You want to find your mother?”

“Yes, yes,” Belle said. “Let’s see.”

“Mirror, show me the Enchantress who put this curse upon me!”

The image faded and the mirror became foggy—a strange gray that didn’t reflect, a silver that wasn’t shiny.