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Chapter Text

So utterly few stories of ruinous maledictions existed. Impatient children clamour for peculiar adventures, of faraway lands and vast seas, with only imagination to keep their fascination alight. Those who grown into adulthood, could not whittle the yearning twisting within for happy-ever afters.

This is such tale of a curse cast, whose ill fame spreads beyond the castle’s walls, spilling into the sleepless valley, into the quaint village.

The story is ever shifting, morphed by the many mouths of wandering minstrels, drunken story-weavers and misremembered ramblings.

But there are things not even time could change.

There is always a Prince. He is slenderly tall, but the hunt and chivalric pursuits hone his boyish form into a strapping warrior. Delicate gold twisted into a glistening circlet, crowning his russet mane. The frost-blue of his eyes is brilliantly mesmerizing. His gaze sweeps one into a passionate affair that so many wished to receive.

The price of immense beauty is the loss of empathy. Those are rules written before the first breath is drawn, after the last breath is released. Payments made are not necessarily binding. For there are many ways laws are bent or broken in the face of perseverance.

Once there is a beggar, or a hag, perhaps a scoundrel—all nasty names called and given—seeking sanctuary from bitter-tinted cold and storm-laden night. Her only possession is a lovely but simple red rose as trade, as gratitude for such kindness to be extended to her.

Pity to the Prince who is a boy without consideration, for he is accustomed to finer things, beautiful, distinguished things—be it people or possessions.

And so, to the astonishment of none, the Prince refuses the rose with foul countenance and harsh disgust. She is on her knees, heaping pleading words.

What is spoken between them is lost, for one bard suggests it is the words of a desperate elder woman surely to die at the hands of bleakest night.

The Prince calls for his guards to remove her, as her pleas is wasted on ignorant ears.

Surely you could have guessed next.

The aged vagrant is merely a disguise, worn by a curious Enchantress. She is emerald elegance in motion. Her hair is spun honey, sparkling in springtime finery. Some say her eyes are glowing yellow, a wolfen stare scrutinising them. Others swear by the colour of garnet, glimmering in the dark.

His apologies flow, a bursting dam that cannot take back his vulgar insults. Recognition arrives too late to the Prince who should know better.

The witch, Enchantress she is known to many, crafts her revenge. In her vengeful fury and haste, she lays her blight upon the Prince and all who served him. For the rose he vehemently declined is now the key to his salvation.

“You have been deceived by your own cold heart. A curse upon your house and all within it. Until you have found someone to love you as you are, you shall remain forever a beast.”

Days of spring, summer, autumn and winter bleed into countless years. Memories, of an opulent Prince cursed and his dutifully servants shared his fate, fade into half-forgotten folk tales.

It cannot be surmised with certainty, that the Enchantress made it so, for the commonfolk to erase this calamity from their collective minds. Perchance, it is simply nature reinserting the shortlivedness of a mortal’s existence in the face of a ludicrous hearsay.

Pretty petal by pretty petal, they fall. Wilting, withering within the glass bell-shaped urn.

The Beast—once a Prince—is drifting further into the ocean of despair and forlorn. His servants, not quite human, not entirely furniture-form, remain destitute as the forest-swallowed castle.

Down below, in the spectrally wooded valley, the curse is nothing but a fairy-tale only ushered to sleepy-eyed children and mead-stained breath drowning sorrows, seeking comfort in stories unlike their own.

Chapter Text

Life in the province is a clockwork in its musical merriment. There is still beauty in that, Belle finds, but sprightly humdrum eventually mellows to a stale, unaspiring routine.

But still, it is home. 

She buries her nose into the words and more words, until she feels the salt-tinged wind whipping against her face, and her tawny hair flailing in the breeze of white sails of pirate-commandeered ship.

Belle de Beaumont is far from hard hearing, even as she seamless devours paragraphs of exotic locales, and bizarre creatures and fascinating aborigines. Odd they call her, with laughs and easy smiles.

The Odd Girl. It is not so bad. Innocuous. Articulated with a dash of affection. Cruelty is not bred in their marrows.

Coins rattling in a rust-eaten tin impedes formulation of coherent thoughts. “Alms for the poor,” a voice beseeches, obscenely deep and scratchy as nails grinded with molasses, kills the progression of his courting strategies.

The beggar is a woman, swathed in tattered rags fraying in the fleeting wintry ardour. Underneath her cap, grime clung to matted wheat-blond hair. Her long-fingered hands are wasted on her. Her jagged fingertips deepen his revulsion.

“LeFou, is she new? Her face is one I cannot find in my memories,” Gaston says, his timbre booming in the town square. “From Cosquin?”

“Where, Gaston? My map reading is a little—”

“The next town.” Gaston sighs. “I remember all the ugly ones around here,” he murmurs, an afterthought.

She might have been a beauty once, he thinks. Misery whittles the bloom from her gaunt cheeks, smothers any light lit in her flint-flecked eyes. Alas poverty twists youth into a hollow shell.

“No, Gaston.” LeFou skips, gauche steps on the pavement, and wobbles. “That’s Agathe. She’s a,” he cups a hand over his lips, leaning closer to the tall man, “permanent fixture by the fountain.”

“Eternally begging for scraps, you mean,” Gaston corrects, pinching his nose and sneers. “We should have her remove.”

“Yes, Gaston,” LeFou echoes, tossing shillings into the cup, trailing after the war veteran.

“Her presence mars our beautiful Villeneuve.”

Fielding a certain unsolicited admiration ceases to be a challenge. A novelty overstaying its welcome.

Gaston LeGume wears his war exploits proudly in the curves of his thick muscles and broad rippling chest. With chiselled features and too-square chin, he seals his place as Villeneuve’s most talked bachelor all year round.

“Belle, lovely surprise to see you at the square early this morn,” he greets, tongue darting out touch his lower lip.

Nevertheless, he is a chore, itching at her feet for a scrap of attention, for the want of a prize wife.

“Monsieur LeGume, morning,” she says, gritted teeth curving into an abysmal smile.

“Gaston,” he corrects. “For practice before we are to wed.”  He tries to pluck her book off, attempting to remove the hindrance to her undivided sight. “How could you read this? It is monstrously thick. You could stop LeFou with this.”

“Or a door,” LeFou supplies, helpfully besotted.

“I like to read, Monsieur Gaston.” She evades his grabbing hands, tightening her grip over her book. Letters and verses swirl into jumbled sentences of blank imagination. “Is there something wrong with books or reading?” she retorts, raising an unimpressed brow.

“Books are fine, but consider this—”

“Charlot,” Agathe interrupts, dazed. “Have you seen my Charlot?” She questions, turning her all-pervading stare on them.

Slipping her book into her basket, she moves closer to the taller woman. “What can we do for you, Agathe?” Belle questions, pity softens her tongue and curves her frown to a smile.

“My Charlot. He is gone,” Agathe rambles, casting a sweeping scrutiny around the square. Tear stains clumped to her long lashes, sticking like spidery webs. “Taken from me.”

“Charlot?” Belle repeats. She tosses a side-glance at LeFou. The portly lad shrugs rotund shoulders.

Agathe nods. She is young, Belle notes, perhaps a mere few years older than her own seven and ten. Far from the spinster Gaston claims her to be.

“Do you mean Charles Kerr? He passed last summer,” Belle tries.   

“No. Charlot,” Agathe mutters. Hope scraping at the barrel of her timbre, iron nails on slate stone. Her gaze, deep-set steel, is caught in a past Belle isn’t privy to.

“Who is Charlot?” Gaston groans, smooth forehead creasing.

“He is this long,” Agathe mumbles, setting her hands apart to the newborn babe’s length. “You will know him when you see him. Taffy-coloured moppish hair. He has his father’s eyes, truly. Pale as a periwinkle petal, guileless and dreamy.”

“LeFou,” Gaston hisses, “deal with this filthy hag now.”

“R-right,” LeFou stammers, gingerly touching her arms. “Mademoiselle Argenton, there is no one here named Charlot. I ought to know, I know everyone here. Come. Monsieur Gautry has some leftover bread.”

“Now, as I was saying,” Gaston starts, the ends of his mouth quirking into a pleased smirk.

Belle makes a timely escape, brushing off his request for dinner with caustic wit. Off she goes, back to home, into the comforts of metal tinkering bouncing against the red-brick walls.

The workshop is an organised mess, compartmentalised in places only her father seems capable of deciphering. Tools and metal gears scattered across the workbench. Teeth-marked apple lays precariously over the bevelled table edge.

There is Papa, stooped, on a too-tall stool. The picture of a work-driven artistic machinist, strumming recognisable musical masterpieces into pocket-sized boxes.

“Papa, am I unusual?” she says, tiptoeing over his hunched shoulders.

“You? Strange? My own daughter?” Papa scoffs, white-streaked moustache twitching in disdain. “Never. Where did you get such notion like that?”

Belle shrugs. A deflection of sorts. “I heard from somewhere,” she says, opting to peer at the music boxes neatly lined on his work station.

Papa waves a dismissive soot-marked hand. “People are attracted to security, like butter to flies. Darling, it matters not to me, but yourself must be at peace with whoever you are. I will love you just the same.”

“Oh, papa. You flatter me like the suitors at the tavern.” Belle presses a mirthful kiss on his alabaster-flecked beard, and laughs. “Yet you are still leagues’ ahead from the lot of them.”

“Even Gaston?” Papa grins.

“Especially, Gaston.”

Her father sets the last intricately decorated music box among the piles, dusting wood chips off from his apron. “On behalf of your sweet compliments, I shall get you a gift from the ports. What do you wish for?”

“Your safe return,” she retorts, disappointingly unable to stifle a wide smirk.

“A rose it is.”

The forest is a maze, increasingly twisted, formed solely to aggravate his meagre sense of direction. In all directions, not a grazing hart wanders into the absolute green.

Phillippe whistles once, twice. Expecting an ashamed boarhound to burst from the dense evergreen. Only chirping birds answer his calls.

This exercise, a preparation made, for the weekend’s par force is a misstep, not his perfect recollection of the entirety of Livre de chasse could salvage.

On the verge of four and ten years, he is the oldest among his cousins, and still floundering in the art of yielding a bow. Father’s tongue seeks faults in every act Philippe made, a ravenous serpent in the waiting.

He forges ahead, to his north. To the feeble rustling of foliage. Closer now, he crouches on all four, sliding his bow along the grass in stealthiest movement. If there is a hart beyond the bushes, he dares not to risk its flight.

Carefully, he hazards for a peek.

The voice of a rose petal humming a feather-soft, honeyed lullaby warms the crisp air, and the breeze purrs impossibly divine. Too human too sound anything but a girl’s.

Curiosity impels recklessness in him, Phillipe pokes his head above the shrubbery.  

There is no elusive hart, but a pair of footwear-less feet. Dainty, slender-toed. Long, shapely legs that disappear into shimmering emerald filigreed-dress. Fish-bone spine tantalisingly peaked from beneath the dress.

Her face is hidden. But her hair, tousled and flaxen, hangs artfully over bare crow-arched shoulders. Her marbled-white skin undeniably smooth and her lithe form is sylphlike, as though moulded by Grecian master sculptor himself.

The girl lounges on the great, entangled willow roots. “It’s him. The prince of my dreams,” she says, so blithely innocent.

His chest tightens at her proclamation, muscles taut in dreaded anticipation. Embarrassment scratching his thoughts into blubbering inarticulateness. With his breath held, he could see the epithet ‘teen-boy voyeur’ engraved to his name, to Phillippe d’Orléans, discovered squatting among the bushes for a peep at fair maidens.

Her giggles, airy and lilting, chip his apprehension away in morsel bits.

She rises from her seat. Before her, a flutter of silver-blue butterflies shifts to a male-like form in concerto harmony.

“Your Highness,” she chuckles, curtseying. And twirls. And walks towards the butterflies. And seemingly ignores—oblivious, even—his presence. “You know, Your Majesty, I am not permitted to talk to strangers.”

The man-butterflies surround its not-quite arms around her. She leans into the embrace, heart-shaped lips curving into a bashful smile. “But you and me, we know each other,” she quips to the perpetually voiceless danseur.

“Mon amour, je t’ai vu,” she sings, each note rings magnificently, “au beau milieu d’un rêve.”

The words, melt like éclair in the gallant spring evening.  My love, I have seen you in the middle of a dream—and Phillippe could, would, already did, recall a happenstance in the dreaming land.

She grabs the sleeves of flapping wings, and dances. “Mon amour, un aussi doux rêve, est un présage d’amour.”

He hears the melody, riveting and haunting. My love, such a sweet dream, is an omen of love—the dream is ambrosial, and he feels its hook sinking marrow-deep, coiling every part of him.   

“Refusons, tous deux, que nos lendemains, soient mornes et gris,” she continues, loveliest innocence rises and swells, carries him among the airborne swans.     

There is a promise cast into the waters, reeling him like a famished trout. Let us refuse, both of us, that our hereafter be dreary and grey. It is an unspoken covenant earns his oath.

“Nous attendrons l’heure de notre bonheur.”

Phillippe steels for a fate unknown, and whatever rabbit hole he may descent into—We will await the hour of joy.The pledged fruit warrants blind faith and patience is a paramount virtue he has in abundance.

“Toi, ma destinée.”

Her tone steadfastly trills, almost dream-like—you, my destiny—snakewood bowing on silk.

“Je saurai t’aimer, j’en ai rêvé.”  

Irresistible embers flicker like fireflies, gripping his spine. I will know to love you. I have dreamed it—there is hope blooming within his ribcage, pounding against his heart.

Silence.

She is gone.

Chapter Text

Nightfall turns a well-treaded landscape into a stranger land, a lesson that so often slips from Maurice de Beaumont’s grasp as he tightens his grip over the reins. The verdant trees grow hugely knotted and dripping in spidery moss.

Even here, the skies are infinitely obsidian and stars are elusive, finer than sand grains in a bottle. The silvery moon is unabashedly shy, hiding itself away behind sable clouds.

Stalking wolves lurk within the shadows, leaving flickering ember eyes to mark their presences. There is no fight between a pack of fanged-baring wolves and a Belgian draft horse carrying the wares of its master.

The harness loosens. The cart comes undone. Tipping, it crashes to the ground. The loss of his goods affords Maurice and his steed a slim opportune to bolt with their lives remained their own, into the woods.

The weather is viciously wilder in these parts. Unpredictable, even.

Without a warning, a storm unleashes a hail of ice-rocks on the helpless tradesman and his equine companion. Thunder roars. Lightning crackles. Ominous telling within the frosted winds is simply disregarded.

Right there, on the hills, a lightly cleared pathway leads to a castle, gloriously resplendent with greying marbled stones for walls and kaleidoscopic stained glass as windows. From afar, the towers seem endless in their quest to chase the unsettled skies.

The castle is a decaying labyrinth. A majestic relic stubbornly refusing to wilt in peace. Decorating its garden are roses of plethora hues, perfect and prodigious. Belle. Only a rose, one of its kind. He promised.

Well, he still has tomorrow.

Tonight, a respite from the elements, takes precedence.

“Water, fresh hay. Phillipe, this is not a feast, but it will suffice for the night,” Maurice declares, leading the horse into the unguarded sables. “We will set for home at first hint of daylight, but I still have to pay respects to the host, owner of this accommodation.”

Sometimes, Maurice notes, its furniture is far too human, with eyes, nose, mouth, ears carved into porcelain, metal, and wood.

Maurice de Beaumont wanders aimlessly in the foyer. The sense of a prey within the sight of a predator prickles his skin. Soon, his hunger dissipating into a phantom haunting the pits of his belly.

Squinting, he studies the candelabra on the table. His calloused fingers trailing over the forked hands. “This is extraordinary.”

The hands move. The candelabra flashes a toothy smile. “Must have lost his way,” it says. Impossible.

Maurice rubs his eyes twice. It is merely a candleholder. Must be the thirst clouding his vision, impairs his hearing. Yes. That explains it.

Harpsichord-strung tune, eerie and laden with despair, pulls him away from the table into the ballroom. Somehow he swears, words are uttered in warmest whispers.

“Of course, monsieur, you are welcome here.”

Something is amiss. Mornings never start without the metallic chimes of singing birds intertwined with the scent of fresh varnish layer on smooth wooden boxes.

Papa’s wonderful maiming of a children’s melody is concerningly absent. But the stallion is here, quenching his thirst from the trough. Belle strokes his neck, quietening bushed whinnies and snorts.

Phillippe without her father is a mystery. Torn leather straps, tattered reins and a missing wagon is an alarming sight. Papa. The woods.

“Take me to him.”

Belle rushes into the cottage, lifting a iron poker from the fireplace, fastening it to the saddle. Satisfied with no chances of Phillipe being in harm’s way, she mounts on the horse, kicking her heel slightly.

Philippe gallops, swift as lightning splashing against darkened skies, into the foreboding forest. The gnarled trunks resemble glowering faces, looming undeterred.

Mists descend on the valley, like a hawk spreading its wings over terrified hares. Howling winds rustle tangled branches. Lush trees shiver terribly.

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here. 

Belle thinks of Dante Alighieri, brimstone and suffocating sins. She presses on.

There are rules maman set that he tries to live by. Into the cupboard by ten. Move not when there is a living two-legged guest. Keep himself far from high edges. Stay clear away from Monsieur le prince at all days and nights.

But, but, but nights like this are rare. Could be counted on one hand, too. He had them once. Chip is sure of it—he had them, not imagine he did. Ten fingers, two hands. Five fingers each. Right?

Chip hops, in the elongated hallway shadows. Cloaked in agile stealth, he makes his way along the staircase. “One, two, three,” he hums. “And stop.” Chip giggles. “One, two, three.”

In the distance, he catches the faint neigh of a horse—that is alive, four-legged—and Chip darts to the window. He leaps onto the window’s ledge, careful not to incline closer to the brink.

A hooded figure dismounts the horse, tying its reins to the gates.

Another guest! How splendid. Surely, this is it. He hurries to the bottom of the staircase, stows himself in between the banisters.

“Hello? Papa? Is anyone here? Papa, where are you?” The guest calls out, worry tugs her syllables longer into an echo in the foyer.

Chip pokes his snout out, enough to steal a view.

She is pretty, Chip finds. He has to tell maman. Lumière. Cogswoth. Everyone. Monsieur le prince too.

The corridors are vast, cavernous and deserted and the echoes of a tiny footstep or a muttered word carries on forever until its message, its presence is lost. For the damned, it is never vanished, continue to echo like a malformed ghost.

“Another trespasser, Cogsworth. A relative, presumably,” Lumière says, tapping waxen hands on glit-bronze shoulders. “This is a she. Do you know what does this mean?” Stifling hope from creeping into his words is a foregone failure.  

“It matters not of her gender,” Henri says, shaking loose metallic rail-thin arms. “Monsieur le prince would not be pleased. It never ends well for them or him.”

“Perhaps, she is the one,” the candelabra asserts, dogged in his whim.

“Perhaps, she is like many that came before her.” His rebuttal is involuntary, honed over the incompatibility of headstrong personalities. “It is madness to continue in this fruitless exercise, knowing the results would remain the same.”

“She might be willing. There is a chance,” Lumière bargains, wisps of smoke quivering atop his head.

The maître’s optimism is admirable, even in the times of bleak certainty. Henri Cogsworth is the major-domo and in his windup appearance, he reins in the unattainable and whimsical notions. “And if she fails?”

“We must try, Henri.” His name on the candelabra’s lips is the closest Henri has to a frankest plea from a man who breaths suave passion and jovial rebellion.

“We do not even know how much time left we have,” Henri counters, brassed cogs rolling in precise perfunctory motions.

Lumière grins, huge and hollow, “Are you not tired of this inhuman form we called our bodies, old friend?”

“We cannot keep them both.” Henri sighs, not without sincere affection. “It is either the old man or his daughter,” he concedes, in this battle of bushed wills.

“Thus it is set. We will keep the girl.” Lumière smirks, victorious and deliberately charming. “I will fetch Monsieur le prince then.”

The air is different. He takes a deep breath. It reeks of melted frost, salted mackerel, and summer’s bloom. This is new. Fresh. Another whiff. Iron-gall stained hands. Butter-smeared baguette. An interloper.

Have he not suffered enough—now another bandit seeks to ruin him. He trails after the scent, through the spiral staircase, up to the oubliette and hides between the shadows.

In the dark, he sees a girl. Harried, kneeling on the cold, unforgiving stone. “Hold on, Papa,” she placates, bruised hands scrambling for a lock.

“This castle is alive! Belle, you must leave,” his prisoner pleads, soil-tipped fingers clasping her hands tightly. “Now go, before he finds you!”

“I won’t leave you,” she protests, attempting to yank the iron-grated door from the floor. Her effort is rendered futile. “Who’s there?” Belle shouts, yielding the candelabra as a club.

His nostril flares at this blatant act of property destruction. A growl slips from his throat, reverberating against the stone-brick walls.  

“Show yourself,” the girl demands, bravery wavers like the flickering flame.

Beast leaves the comfort of shadows, stepping into the dim light. He sifts through his lexicon for the vowels, consonants and syllables—the words are slippery before he could grasp and voice them. Stringing phrases together like a child learning to speak, serves nothing but to pile on his rage.  

“Who are you?” Beast repeats, his throat hoarse from the disuse.

“I have come for my father,” she says, failing to supress the tremble within her defiance.  

Beast grunts. “Thieves deserve to rot in prisons.”

She is quick to insist, seemingly forgotten her fear in the briefest of moment, “My father is not a thief.”

“Tell her,” Beast leers, “what you stole from me.”

The prisoner is a step away from death’s scythe, and chattering teeth makes for a dissatisfying answer. Beast slams his knuckled paw on the iron-bars, and roars, “Tell her.”

Her glassy gaze dart to the ailing man. She drops to her knees, reaching for the prisoner’s arms, vigorously scrubbing the cold from blue-tinted hands. “You’re lying.”

“He stole a rose,” Beast snarls, his voice scrapes raw.

“Then I should be the one to suffer his punishment,” she pauses, biting her lips and shame twists her courage into timid admission, “I asked him for a rose.”

“No, she did not. It was me,” the prisoner finally confesses between coughing fits, a valiant effort for a man half-starved and languishing in thirst. “I thought of it. She did not ask or wish for a rose.”

Beast tolerates no lies, but he isn’t one to oppose love martyrs and their foolish notions of chivalric deaths. The choice is inevitable. Better a breathing, healthy prisoner than one that wastes themselves away.

“You shall serve in his stead,” Beast declares, “Be quick. Make your parting sorrows known.” He moves closer to the petite girl, reaching over the iron lever above her head and pulls it down, unlocking the iron bars.

The prisoner rises from the prison below, on a rotting wooden platform. She rushes to embrace her father, faint weeping cawing within the room. “Papa, I love you,” she says, pressing farewell kisses on his hands and purple-blue cheeks.

“Once he leaves, he will not return unless he desires eternity in my prison,” Beast reminds, slashing through the tetchy reunion between close bloods.

“Eternity can spare several moments,” she hisses, “or is your heart made of stone to permit such allowance?” She stares at him insolently, unalloyed distress emboldened by anger and contempt.

“You had your share of embraces. Leave now,” he grumbles, not unkindly. “Before my mind is changed.”

“Belle, I will return for you. Do not lose hope, ma chérie.”

Beast picks the man up by the lapels of his weathered coat, heaving the former prisoner over his shoulder, and disappears to the staircase.

“I won’t, papa.”

Weeks later, the music still linger. The clumsy intrusion to an oblivious maiden lost to her make-belief play, reinserts itself in his dreams.

But always, always her face is a haze-tinged one—still he knows, her beauty is incomparable to any imagines he has.

Her voice, the memory of it, pilfers any waking thoughts he has; any heed he has left devoted themselves to educe the words. Scholarly lessons go untouched on mahogany desk and velvet chair gathers dust.

Phillipe hears it, the loudest, so clear as crystal-glass, in accidental, rootless walks. Bright green verdure stretches above him, with assortment of oak, cedar, fir and pie surrounds him. The azure lake glitters with sunlight gold, warming the errand summer chill.

Maybe, he reasons to none, he could try sing it aloud and dance a little. Perhaps, then the words will return, and flows unimpeded on his tongue. His servants are nowhere in sight. No witness to his conceivable humiliation.

Phillippe carols, “Toi, ma destinée—”

“Je saurai t’aimer,” another voice, saccharinely feminine, harmonises with his, “tu l’as rêvé.”

The mist of forgetfulness is lifted, dissipating from his memories—I will know to love you, you have dreamed it. He casts a searching gaze all around, finds her partially obscured behind a stumpy, crooked birch.

She is agonisingly, magnificently beautiful, wreathed in pixie loveliness and alluring candour. Kings and emperors would wage vague wars and improbable claims of conquest over her beauty, Phillippe muses, and thousands would die without regrets.

The abrupt quietness must be amusing.

She chuckles, windchimes vibrating in earnest. “Please excuse me, I did not wish to frighten you,” she says, the cadence of a dozen accents melded together into a strange but alluring patois. Even her apology is absurdly pleasant.

It’s her eyes, he notices first, above all. Deep-set, grey as silver-ash and a cluster of dandelion and cinnamon flecking her gaze. Her ears are peculiar, somewhat pointed and leaf-shaped.

“Oh, it is not . . .” Phillippe stammers, scrambling through a plethora of fluent languages, unable to form an articulate sentence, “it is not that . . .” and his eloquence seemingly perished without a trace and he mortifyingly stumbles, “It is that you are a—”

She grins, “A stranger?”

The words stuck to the walls of his throat, like ant on a spider’s web. He nods. Flushing heat curls at the base of his skull, colouring his neck in ruddy mortification. Phillippe rubs his neck, vigorous and discreet, dispelling the embarrassment.

“But you forget that we already seen each other.” She strolls towards him, languid and barefooted. She is exquisitely tall, dwarfing over him without a hint of condescending belittlement.

“We have seen each other?” Phillippe splutters, scepticism squishing his brows together.

“But look, you have said it yourself: in the middle of a dream,” she states, nonchalant. The corners of her rose-hued lips quirking into an unironic smile.

She takes another step forward, tucking a loose golden strand behind her ear. “Are you interested in learning the rest of the song, the words, and not just the melody?”

He nods again. Opting to limit his blabbering replies, he already proven his charismata is non-existent.

“Excellent.” She offers a pallid hand, and wiggles her eyebrows, urging him to take hers. “This won’t work without la danse.”

“I cannot dance,” he concedes, carefully intertwining his ungloved hand with her rose-tipped, elongated fingers, circles his other on her waist.

“Rubbish, everyone can dance. You are in the presence of a fine danseur,” she grins, batting silken lashes coyly and hums. Her smile is cat-like and tastes like a tantalising mystery. “Mon amour, tu m’as vu au beau milieu d’un rêve.”

There is magic plaiting itself into his thoughts, his dreams, clearing the fog at the edge of his tongue and he remembers it all. My love, you saw me in the middle of a dream—there have been plenty dreams of her, of them.

And now, with her merry nod, he plunges headlong into this morbid fascination taking root. “Refusons, que nos lendemains, soient mornes et gris,” he starts, uncertain and bold.

“Nous attendrons l’heure de notre bonheur.” Against her melody, his warbling is scratchy reeds caught in uneven breeze—but still, benign teasing or cheery mocking is absent from her sharp-stroked features.

“Toi, ma destinée.” He lets her lead him in this dance of a lifetime, as her voice fills the air with soft wool and piquant wine. Sunbursts twirling along at the corners of his eyes.

“Je saurai t’aimer—”

She is awfully close, so much that he could see freckles dotted along her throat like stars strung together on a diamond necklace. The hooves of his heart stomp against the fishbone of his chest.

“—j’en ai rêvé.”     

It is clear now, he’s ensnared in a Siren’s invitation. But Philippe welcomes this ethereal temptation as it comes, eagerly and hungrily.

Chapter Text

The bedchamber is an exhibition of zenith opulence, painted in faded pastel and dull gold. Hand-painted floral arrangements flaking at intersecting corners. The arc en accolades rising from hardwood floors upwards. On the domed-ceiling, stucco framed ostentatious trompe-l’œil paintings of angels and saints—a gander to heaven.

Dust envelops the chamber in a disremembered funeral shroud. The air is heavy with ages-old mildew, sickish warmth and shrunken fauna. Moonlight illuminates the chamber in dim mellow patches through grime-discoloured windows.

“It is,” she says, dragging the syllable longer into a questioning remark, “beautiful.”

“Of course. Monsieur le prince dictated the finest room in the Château de Nivelle is to be yours,” Lumière retorts, with a flourish grin. It—he—it leaps onto the bed, sending snowflaked-dust swirling in the air.

“Enchanté, mademoiselle, Plumette at your service,” a feather duster greets, dripping in thick, sultry Parisian accent. “Do not worry, this room would be impeccably clean.” Bleached-ivory goose feathers brushing dirt off from ebony nightstand.

In the periphery of her eye, she notices a lone sinuously curved armoire. It is a dazzling piece of art, Belle finds, of gilded bronze and tortoiseshell marquetry.

“Is that alive too?” Bella questions, directing a finger at the armoire.

Cogsworth sighs, and clears its—his—its throat. “I believe she is talking to you, Madame de Garderobe.”

The wardrobe neither speaks nor moves.

“Presenting to you, Madame Clara Luisa de Garderobe, Italy’s finest opera songstress,” Cogsworth declares, tapping against the wardrobe’s hewed doorhandle.

Belle thinks, the feather duster might have gasped, or there is a flustered hitch in the mantel clock’s voice.

The armoire stirs. Its double-doors flapping open as she singsongs, “At last. A woman. Expressive eyes, I see. Proud face as well. This is excellent. She is the perfect canvas. A muse this great in these parts, so scarce.”

Belle picks a hairbrush, scraping a polite smile for it. “And you, what is your name?”

Cogsworth retorts. “That is a hair brush.”

“Not every item you see is a servant like us,” Lumière points out, unnervingly merry.  

“Oh,” Belle mumbles, setting the hairbrush back. “Sorry then.”

“Now, madame, our guest is in need of a dress,” Lumière whispers not too quietly, grins.

“And wigs,” Plumette supplies, cheery. “Madame has an impressive collection. English, Prussian, and even Russian.”

“Wigs?” Belle eyes the alleged collection, and its impressive nits colony. “Wigs won’t be necessary, although I do find them remarkable,” she hedges, “I am contend without a royal accessory.”

“Say no more, I have the perfect attire in mind,” Madame de Garderobe vows, opening her doors to pulled-out drawers and flighty moths. “Scusami,” her apologies are embossed with ardent Italian cadence.

“We leave her to your capable hands, madame,” Lumière cheers, dragging the mantle clock by its bowed pediment. “We have other matters to attend,” the candlestick adds.

“D-dress?” Belle pauses, searching an explanation among the voiceless staff, “I am flattered.” The door would not bend under her push and pull, utterly locked, imprisoning her in this lavish room.

With deft manipulations of its—her—its ornamental holders, Madame de Garderobe lays out four dresses across the four-poster bed. “Here, mademoiselle, select your poison.”

The dresses are mismatched assortment of styling, textiles, and dyes. Each one is too loose, too big on her and the fabric is scratchy underneath her fingertips.

“I do not follow,” Belle says, turning escape-intended gaze to the curtained window. Unlatching the window lock open requires the upper strength of a war veteran, with the chance of a mere budge.

Madame de Garderobe clucks its—her—its tongue, “Why, it is for tonight’s soiree.”

The reply seizes her attention. “Dinner? With who? The master of this château?”

“Monsieur le prince is a delightful host,” Plumette says, “especially when the main course is venison.”

“I will not be having dinner with, with that beast,” Belle snaps.

These are furniture. Carved from mahogany. Crafted from metals. Talking. Moving. The maître is a candlestick. The maid is a feather duster. The majordomo is a mantle clock. The wardrobe is an Italian opera singer.

This is a dream. She is not in a château, in the company of animated houseware. Yes, she is still in the sprawling mist-clouded forest, riding the exhausted stallion in circles.

She closes her eyes once. Reopens them. The ceiling is domed, decorated with cartouches and quadratura images. The air is horrendously miasmic.  

“To refuse dinner, you simply can’t,” Madame de Garderobe cautions, sharing a knowing stare with the Parisian feather duster.

“Well, I can. I am a prisoner, not a guest,” Belle stresses, steadfast. “Pretending cannot, will not erase the fact.”

In the silence that comes after when Madame Garderobe retreats to a stationary existence, and Plumette leaves to call upon more maids, she plots a myriad ways of escape. Carries them out in meticulous effort, in every crevice she could wring out her freedom from the suffocating clutches of this mausoleum.

Belle contemplates defeat in the light of her dismal discovery, entertaining the future as a withering hostage in a gilded cage.

It is until the last of her plans fails, ending in a pitiful whimper, Belle de Beaumont abandons her hopes of returning to her father, the cottage and even the gossipmongers of Villeneuve.

The kitchen bristles with steaming pots, frying pans and grilling oven. Chef Cusinier Bouche barks orders, mangled with Belgian brogue and Bèatrice Potts welcomes the mayhem of it all.

Amidst of the metal clanging and oil sizzling, Chip circles around her, squealing in glee, “Maman, there is a girl. Did you see her?”

“Yes, Chip. We know,” Bèatrice says, nudging him away from the rumbling stove. “Not yet. But tea will be served shortly.”

“Is she pretty? I think she is. Is she nice? What kind of tea does she likes?” Chip hops into the tray, twitching enthusiastically on his saucer. “Maman, do you think she likes rose tea? Or passion flower tea?”

“Not you, Chip. Not this dinner,” Bèatrice says, points her snout at the cupboard. “Go and get Oscar and Mathilde, Chip. You will have your time.”

Chip whines, “But I want to see her properly, maman.”

“And you will, just not tonight. Monsieur le prince will dine with her,” Bèatrice says, shooing her youngest child off from the saucer. “Chef Bouche, how is that venison?”

“Disastrous, Madame Potts.” Cusinier scrunches his soot-smeared face into an exaggerated despondence, poking a knife into the meat. “Monsieur le prince nearly shred the best cuts. He insisted to have them raw tonight, without cutlery,” he laments, stirring fiddlehead ferns with a giggling spatula. “Like an animal, can you believe, madame? When we have guests over.”

“Chef, the menu? Will our ingredients be enough for a lavish dining experience?” Bèatrice questions, peering over the boiling pot.

“Not at all, madame. I had my chefs scrounged the pantry, alas they came up empty. Our greens are mostly wild. Venison is courtesy of monsieur le prince’s morning hunt.”

“You will manage, Cusinier. You always do. I have faith in you,” Bèatrice compliments, beaming. In such state, beggars have no business to choose or refuse and they deal with the hand they’re dealt with.

“You are too kind, Madame Potts,” Cusinier returns, with a smile of his own. “I think the monsieur le prince is ready to receive his tea.”

With two teacups settling on the saucers, Bèatrice has them wheeled into the minor dinning room. With the flatware and crystal neatly coordinated to her liking, she sets Oscar by the monsieur le prince’s side and ushers Mathilde to the opposite end.

“Ah, monsieur le—”

“Lumière,” he bellows.

The vaulted ribcage above swallows roars and spits them out into ferocious thunders, distorting one rumble louder than before.

“I told you this was a terrible idea,” Henri hisses, “Monsieur le prince will have my head before the curse is complete. Lumière, are you listen—” The lack of witty remark from the Parisian maître is unsettling.

The candelabra is stiffly silent. His eyes are vacant gold.

“Lumière?” Henri tries.

The maître persists in embodying complete idleness.  

“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” Henri mumbles, whistling for the château valet. “Hit him as hard as you can, Chapeau. Quick.”

Chapeau raises his six arms together, about to swing, when he pauses, gives Henri a muted, but puzzling stare.

“Yes, Chapeau, I want him flying to the ground,” Henri reaffirms, exasperated. With that confirmation, the coat rack sends Lumière clanking against the scarred hardwood.

“—is well, ack,” Lumière yelps, rubbing his backside. “That much force, you could have dented me, and ruin my good looks.” He spares Chapeau a winning grin, “I do not hold that against you, Chapeau. Rest assured.”

“You’re in that trance again, Lumière,” Henri says, more of a whisper than an admittance. “Longer than usual.”

“So I am,” Lumière hedges, his joviality taut with uneasiness.  

Should he be a real human, his sweat would have soaked through his waistcoat. But he isn’t. Not completely gone yet. So little of them with each day passed. “He is in that awful foul mood.”

“All is well, Cogsworth. Put on your most confident smile and give nothing away,” the candelabra announces, puffing his chest-stem out. “Allow me to do the talking.”

The pounding of erratic footfalls  reverberates within the château, a Baroque symphony performed out of tune. Monsieur le prince descends on them both, a gargoyle leaping from a cathedral’s buttress.

He growls, “Why dinner for her?”

“We thought you might appreciate the company,” Lumière replies, smirk intact and unflinching. “It has been a while.”

“Monsieur le Prince, I play no part, not even minute, in this hopeless endeavour,” Henri interjects, words tumbling clumsily as rocks after mudslide, “The dinner, the gown, the suite in the east wing, all that was—”

“You gave her a bedroom?” Monsieur le prince thunders, his spits splatter against Henri’s bevelled glass. His foreboding shadows engulfs them all.

“Absolutely not, he gave her the suite,” Henri vehemently denies, steering both hand dials at the candelabra.

Lumière generously supplies, “But Cogsworth is to thank for the idea.”

On her wheeled tea cabinet, Madame Potts pipes from behind, “Where is the harm in trying to be civil and courteous to her, Monsieur le Prince? If not for the sake of the curse, then for yours.”

“My sake?” Monsieur le prince shoots a venomous glare at the teapot, and hisses, “She is a thief’s daughter. Her character is tainted.”

Though she is all porcelain and alabaster, her nerves are steel-iron. “You cannot judge a person by their father’s reputation, can you?”

“She will not love me,” monsieur le prince snarls, mighty fangs gleaming in the dark.

“How could you know of what is in her heart?” Madame Potts returns, with a mother’s admonishment of an unruly child. “She is not even acquainted with you.”

“Monsieur le prince, she chose to stay here. That must account for something,” Lumière adds, solemnness is a mask he seldom wears and a bizarre sight on the candelabra.

He is a hulking man, in ragged breeches and tattered satin cape, with hunching rippled shoulders and whetted claws carving shapeless circles. His form itself all but touches the arched hood of oaken doors.

Bèatrice Potts reminds him, “Gently, monsieur le prince. She is in a delicate state of mind, after her ordeal.”

“Employ kind words,” Lumière states, “an invitation to a soiree is the gateway to courtship and one paved with good intentions.”

Rolling her eyes friskily, Plumette suggests, “Be charming.”

“Sweet tone,” Cogsworth offers, beaming with enthusiasm, for one who proudly proclaimed himself as an opponent to their ludicrous plan.

“Come, join me for dinner tonight.” He huffs at the bombardment of advices, rapping a large knuckle against the wooden door and booming voice requesting through gritted fangs, “I shall wait for you in the hall.” Without waiting the requisite reply, he turns on his wheel and Cogsworth trotting after him.

His invitation is crude, as jagged beachrocks by coastline. Yet the effort, words selected and thought put into them with utmost care. It is an achievement of sorts—for speech is not favoured by monsieur le prince and articulated words proved impractical.

Later when Bèatrice reaches at the dining hall, monsieur le prince is a portrait of comical discomfort. So many full moons ago, he forsaken the necessity to use chairs, and now,  he sits still. His massive frame squeezed into the upholstered dining chair, unkempt fur spilling all over and bushy tail draped over his lap.

But there is hope slinking in those electric-blue eyes of his. It’s been too long—

Lumière hacks several uneasy coughs, before rushing through his words in one breath, “Monsieur le prince, forgive me. But the girl has declined to dining summons.”

There are no words, but grunts and roars that echo into the deep bowels of the château.

He darts, on all four, towards the grand stairway. Pounds his paws on the doors. Again. And again. And again. Straited oak splintering with each release of rage. “Dinner now,” is barely enunciated, lost to guttural fury.

“I told you no! I refused,” Belle retorts, matching his with her frustrated shrill, wrath and misery seeping out in between muffled yelling, “I rather starve before I ever dine with you.”

“Fine, starve,” Monsieur le prince raves, with a final strike on the door. “Let this castle be your tomb.” He disappears into the darkness, waning trudges signalling this retreat, probable defeat.

“So much for a romantic evening for two,” Cogsworth scoffs. Hand dials ticking in fitful apprehension. “I knew it! This won’t do.”

“Yes, Cogsworth, you made that quite clear,” Lumière retorts, embers dimming in disappointment.

“Now, what?” Plumette questions, voicing the question looping in their minds.

Bèatrice sighs. The first plunge is always the hardest. To dive into a courtship, in blind faith, when the results of previous affairs are hung on the wall as failed trophies, would scare even the bravest of hearts. And their humanity eroding, like thawing winter in spring, time is of the essence.

“We are not going to let that child sleep in famishment,” she declares.  

“What about Monsieur le prince?” Cogsworth squawks, his dials spinning faster in a rabbit’s run.

“He has fled to his sanctuary,” Lumière says, his lips bearing a broad smirk. “We have the château to ourselves.”

There is little they can do, but to let the girl waste away in a hunger strike is not an option. Their fate is yet written in stone for there is a slim chance, this malediction would come to an end without hardening them into permanent houseware.

Under the mellowed moonshine, the sombre forest beneath her stretches for miles and miles into the mist. Villeneuve is a speck obscured underneath the endless fog. Even if she could pry the windows open, the dresses and all the fabric would not hold her weight, surely that is not the ending she aspired at the start of her escape attempts.

Without a knock, the locked oak doors fling open, revealing a tea cabinet cart carrying a teapot and a teacup.

Belle laces her fingers around the hairbrush tighter, hiding her hands behind her back. A weapon is still a weapon if one yields it properly, sneakily.

“Forgive him. He is temperamental, yes,” the teapot tuts, English accent streaked her words, but the inflection is a faint one, eroded over the years. “Such generous inheritance from his father is to be blamed for it.”

“That man is a brute,” Belle dares, lowering her tone into hushes isn’t a priority. “His heart is darker than burnt coal, even an angel’s visage cannot mask it.”

“I can assure you, he is not always like that,” the teapot says, solemn and without malice. “Quite the mannered boy, like Chip.”

“But his mother, such a perfect English rose,” Madame de Garderobe chimes, dreamy. “Madame Potts here, came with her as her nursemaid.”

“He was not born a beast?” The question stumbles from her lips clumsily.

Madame Potts laughs, hearty. “On the contrary, he was born a delightful babe. The healthiest.” It—she—it pours steaming tea onto a tiny teacup, and cautions, “Do not rush, Chip.”

The teacup bears the similar patterns etched on the teapot, of blue and white underglaze. Its round rims, chipped quite close to its handle.

“Pleased to meet you! Want to see me do a trick?” Chip asks, high-pitched and far from being on the cusps of preadolescence.

“Chip,” Madame Potts warns.

“It is fine. A trick will be much appreciated,” Belle says, placating the eager teacup and its admonishing matron.

Chip takes a deep breath in, then exhales noisily—a huge bubble grows and pops loudly.

“Son,” the teapot repeats, unamused.

“That is rather,” Belle pauses, and offers an unnatural smile, “exciting. The best. I don’t think I ever seen anything like it.”

“See, maman, she likes it,” Chip replies, pride widens his grin.

“The evening is still early, dinner is salvageable,” Madame Garderobe comments, with the gusto of a reinvigorated soprano.

Madame Potts coaxes, gentle and soothing, “You will feel much better with venison in your belly and wine on your lips.”

“Or tea, if you want, I will be there too,” Chip quips, sparing a quick, pleading glance at the teapot. “Won’t I, maman? He’s there. I swear I’ll be quiet,” Chip whispers, but its volume is not Belle considers ‘quiet’, “Come, the dining hall is a feast. I can show you around, you know. It’ll be fun. Say you will go.”

Madame Potts stares at the teacup indulgently. “Only if Mademoiselle—”

“de Beaumont,” Belle supplies.

“—de Beaumont agrees to dinning,” the teapot finishes, triumphant.

“Please, please, please,” Chip begs, hedging closer to her, out from its saucer.

“All right,” Belle forfeits, “For you, I will. Lead the way, Chip.”

Minutes later, in the dimmed hall, Belle de Beaumont sits at the lone chair, facing impossibly human-like furniture.

The flame atop his head bursts brighter, as he welcomingly waves a hand around the hall. Lumière lights both bronzed arms and claps, grinning. Behind him, in the darkness, sounds rumble.

“Ma chérie, mademoiselle. It is with deepest pride and greatest pleasure that we welcome you tonight. And now, we invite you to relax.”

They meet under the pine-green coverings of sunnily shaggy trees, in between a portentous château atop wounding hills and an unlikely hustling town square of a sleepy village. Tucked away from prying eyes and eavesdropping ears.

It starts with a stray giggle in the air, and the wind tilts into a springtime’s gentle breeze. She appears, in that raiment of peridot shade, shoeless and smiling—stealing the compliments laying at the tip of his tongue.

Philippe is taller now. Not the little boy tipping his chin upwards for a glance. Not the towering willow gazing down on her. His voice cracks, fissuring into a baritone horn.

She teaches him the ways of the wild hunt. “To draw the strings of a bow, is to feel the muscles rippling within one’s arms,” she tells him. “See that antlers, twisting and nicked in odd angles, that is the buck one culls from the herd,” she says into the shell of his reddened ear.

In return, he imparts the knowledge of alphabets and letters, outlining her name in the sand. “This,” he points with the butt end of his stick at the letters, “is Circe.”

She tracks the alphabets lightly with a lithe finger. The corners of berry-hued lips curling into a cat’s smile. “These five letters spell out Circe,” she mutters, awed.

“Yes, in this is Latin or sometimes known as Roman alphabet—” The stifled screams of his name cuts through his explanation, Phillippe flits a sweeping gawk all over, finds his servants nowhere nearby. Still, he wishes not to risk anything.

“I wish to see to you again,” Phillippe says, a little reedy, and his gangly limbs gather the bow and quivers off from a low tree branch.

She slants her head sideways, quizzical brows arching above serene-touched smile. “Then so be it.”

“Will you be here?”

“I am always here,” Circe says, presses her chaste lips to his flush-tainted cheek. “For you.”

His return is a fraught-coiled journey, with worrying servants reciting meticulous curated explanations and Phillippe frantically dusting grime and dewed leaves from his breeches. Father expects the best of appearances before the court.

“There is my son, Phillippe, and at this age, his sense of direction is appalling. His mother’s son,” father announces, his voice is a leather whip across healed flesh. “I hope this tardiness wouldn’t have a reoccurrence.”

“It won’t, father,” Phillippe replies, inwardly counting the stray strands of his boothose.

“Stand straight, boy.”

Father, stands imposingly tall as the fortress wall, hooks a crooked finger underneath Phillippe’s chin, directing his averted gaze towards himself, his bearded sneer of white slash. “We do not tolerate magick users. They claimed they are healers, not warriors. Yet they would not rise to heal our sick or the festering wound of our nation.”

“Bring in the accused,” Alexandre d’Orléans commands brusquely, strapping hands digging into Phillippe’s wiry shoulders. “When you issue a punishment to these savages, you look them in the eye. Magick creatures do not deserve any mercy.”

Chapter Text

At its usual raucous hours, the tavern is home to the sun-baked weary, the exuberant youths, the hapless romantics and the downtrodden scrappers. More than a quarter of Villeneuve congregated in here than for Pere Robert’s Sunday mass.

LeFou gingerly lays out his handkerchief over the spilt mead and oozing fruit pulps, before setting an arm on the table and tentatively sips his spiced wine. Ears straining to hear Gaston above the ruckus reverberating.

“Do I not make a magnificent husband, LeFou? With me, it will be the finest cuts of meat at week’s end. A rustic château by the lake. Strong sons playing with their own miniature muskets. Pretty daughters busy with their dollhouses,” Gaston says, emptying his ale in one large rage-guided gulp.

Empty mugs growing in numbers on the sticky tabletop. Ripened apples inviting flies to a feast. On the walls, trophies of well-preserved animal heads and majestic antlers are hung in lieu of proud family crest, arranged in the shape of a certain alphabet.

Beneath the trophies, Gaston sits regally on a high-backed, heraldic armchair. “I could have it all, but no, she refused my hand in marriage,” he says, slapping his palm on the table.

“There are other girls in the village too,” LeFou informs, already spotting six admirers scattered all over the tavern. Each one eyeing Gaston in forlorn longing.

“She refused me. Me. Gaston LeGume,” Gaston continues, his dazzling white teeth in a seething snarl.

“Monsieur Plagnol’s daughter, Clementine, I think,” LeFou pauses, runs through a list of suitable adjectives and settles on, “she is pleasant to look at.”

“A great hunter has no time to spare on hares.”

“Then Clementine is not,” LeFou mumbles, dropping the line of suggestion.  

“There is only one. One, LeFou, for me. She is the prettiest girl in the village. That’s who I want,” Gaston fumes, chucking the metallic beer tankard glass on the table, knocking LeFou’s glass off. “That is who I deserved.”

“It is possible we are going about this the wrong way?” LeFou questions, uprighting his knocked glass and draining it empty. “Instead of Belle, maybe you can convince Maurice, that you are the best suitor for her.”

“I-I—help. Need help,” croaks a rasping voice, and quite easy to miss among the rowdier laughter and bawdy singing.

“Speak of the devil and the devil shall appear,” Gaston smiles.

“We have to go,” Maurice stammers, wild-eyed and sweat dripping down his chin. “Not a minute to lose.”

“Slow down, Maurice. You are not making any sense,” the tavern keeper, Thomas Martineau, advises and pushes lukewarm resin wine into Maurice’s erratic hands.

“He has Belle,” the music box maker insists, pushing the offered drink away, and grabs the tavern keeper’s ruffled dirtied shirt.

“Who has her?” Gaston inquires, curving a brawny arm over the thinner man’s shoulders, squeezes the ash-haired man into standing straight as a rod.

“A beast.” Maurice pants, shakes a finger at the air, “A horrible monstrous beast!”

More and more villagers gather around Maurice, attracted by the ramblings of an eccentric music box crafter, like drunken moths to blazing flames.

“Where is she?”

“She’s in a dungeon, god’s sake,” Maurice barks, coughing into his covered palms. “In his castle.”

“There is no grand château anywhere,” local truffle hunter, Stéphane Dalle, observes, “Not in Villeneuve, or Cosquin or even in Pourrat.”

The forest of Villeneuve is home to plenty animals, of large claws, mighty horns, ravenous packs. LeFou comes up dry on any animal that would desire a young pretty maiden such as Belle de Beaumont, let alone owns a great château.

“Maurice, you should stop ordering more mead, you cannot even tell your story straight,” assistant baker, Didier Tatou chimes, earning the amusement of his fellow tavern goers.

“My daughter could lose her life. She is in grave danger,” Maurice hisses, “Why are you laughing?” His face is a deathly pallor, distressed eyes large as China plates and voice scraping raw.

“He is crazy, Gaston,” Thomas quips, smirking.

“Too much wine, Gaston,” Stéphane teases, lips quirking to a mischievous curve.

“The beast is real! Do you understand?” Maurice clutches his heart, sudden. Extends one panicking hand, trying to grab Gaston’s shirt. Gaston moves several step backwards, away from Maurice’s grasping hands.

“I think he should—” LeFou does not finishes his sentences, rushing forward to prevent Maurice from falling face first against the unbearably filthy ground, “Monsieur de Beaumont? Call Doctor Valentini.”

Breakfast at sunrise is an eerie experience in the resounding château, and animated houseware for companion. There is a discussion of sorts, voices rising and accents matching in flaring tempers, Belle isn’t incline to listen.

“So, a tour around the château, would it be possible? Or are you two still intent on prolonging your debate on the merits of brighter cloak colours?” Belle says, cutting through her croissants and their squabbling.

“Anything to stretch that legs, mademoiselle,” Lumiere obliges, flashing an unhindered enchanting grin.

Cogsworth’s hand dials make a complete circle at the candelabra’s answer. “Preferably, when monsieur le prince is occupied,” the mantel clock babbles, his smile is frantic-tipped and a poorly disguised trepidation.

The exploration is whirlwind, along a series of twist and turns in the cobwebbed hallways and walls of framed watercolours. It is a while before silence replaces her garrulous guides, and Belle wanders in the dark.

This wing is much, much dire in its furnishings than the rest. Toppled brassed budvases and shattered ceramic vases littered the mahogany flooring, as though this entire wing is entirely forbidden from any housekeeping visit.

One portrait, exceedingly large and lavish, hung on the wall, overshadowing other paintings. Must be the royal family of this château. Yet she seems not to cross paths with them. Did the Beast is connected to their disappearance? The father was a man of sturdy bearing and strong countenances. The son had softer features and subservient shoulders. Curious is the case of the absent mother—

In her periphery, she catches the sight of a rose. Its petals, the colour of lapis blue, shimmer underneath the moonlight. She walks towards it. For the want of a thorough inspection.

The Parisian twang and English-tinted brogue bouncing against the capacious corridors. Cogsworth’s barely-contained annoyance dominates the pacifying Lumière. She slips out from this wing, into the main hall, sitting at the bottom of the grand stairway.

“Ah, mademoiselle, there you are. See, Cogsworth, she is right there. Nonsense about her going to the West Wing.”

She still persists. Drawing the oaken doors’ handle, with her returning strength, and Belle hopes it budges just a little. It doesn’t. It barely rumbles under her full weight, jerking, willing it open.

Undeterred, Belle redirects her restlessness into finding scraps of parchment and pencils. Anything so she could put the mental sketches of the château layouts into paper. She turns every surface over, searches every crevice and braves any decades-long dustballs. There is nothing. Of course, there is none.

Her captors are seasoned, she muses, fool-proofed her chambers long before she stumbles into it blindly, foolishly. She sighs, flopping on the mattress. There is not much she could do, only to abide her time until the right opportune falls on her lap.

But this absolute idleness sends her pacing aimlessly. Further and further, she slides into the apprehension of a trapped animal.

The doors creak open, briefly. Not enough for Belle to rush from her bed, to stick a hand in between. Her guest is a miniature teacup, full of easy smiles.

“Chip?” Belle questions, rising to her feet. “What are you doing here? Does anyone knows you are here?”

“No. Maman thinks I’m napping.” Chip giggles, hushed and secretive, “promise me you keep this a secret, will you?”

“My lips are sealed,” Belle promises. She gently carries the teacup off the floor and onto her bed. “What brings you to this treacherous corner of this place?”

“It is true that you came from the world outside?” Chip tentatively asks, sparing a sidelong glance at the windows. “You know, beyond the forest.”

She nods, curt.

“And your village?”

Belle remembers in crystal clarity. The autumn leaves skittered across weathered cobblestones at the first tangerine hue colouring the navy blue skies. The marketplace bustled with laughing children, beleaguered mothers, clip-clopping horses. The jocund air was ruddy, mixed with fresh fragrant flowers, hotly savoury bread and frothy-warm milk.

And so she tells Chip of these memories. Sees how his eyes widen with apt fascination. Answers his barrage of trivial questions and each answer he eagerly takes without hesitation. The stare full of adoration and innocence.

It is too human to be a mask pretended, or reproduced. And this does not point to the origins of enchanted furniture brought to living with certainty. She knows deep down—Chip is a little boy, Madame Potts is a mother turned teapot, Lumière is formerly a human maître and Cogsworth is more than an ever winding mantel clock.

“What happened here?” Belle asks, gestures a hand across the room. “You do not strike me as a born teacup. Neither do the rest of the household.”

“They don’t disclose anything to me.” Chip’s porcelain face scrunches in confusion. “I went to sleep, then the next day, poof, I am a teacup,” he declare, confidently. “But, Matthieu, my brother, said something terrible happened.”

The doors swing open once more, parting to another teacup. “Maman wants us to be back to the cupboard,” he announces, far older than five and closer to a boy at the end of blooming puberty.

“Donatien—” Chip yelps, pitifully. “Does maman know I am here, with Mademoiselle de Beaum—”

“You can call me Belle, Chip,” she says, permitting a smile. She lends an extra push, carrying Chip in her cupped hands, sets him down on the floor.

“—Belle?”

“Nuh uh, we are playing hide-and-seek. You are the last,” Donatien whispers, hopping quickly out from the bedchambers.

She waves him a farewell. “Good night, Chip.”

Chip’s white porcelain turns red, as he joins Donatien. “Night, Belle.”

She tries the doors, for the sake of confirmation. Locked. And so, only with Chip or his siblings, she might gather a chance to slip easily around the château. Interesting.

Sometimes they talk of all things fascinating to a pair of sheltered adolescents. Other times, it is idle chatter of nonconsequential matters, merely to pass the time together. Still, Phillippe feels the same—with every fingers brushing against lily-white skin and his heart dances feverishly on his ribcage. There are a hundred thoughts all trying to dictate his speech, his movements. His whole being.

There have been times he finds himself hunting for her scent, of freshly rained soil and dewy roses, like a greyhound pursuing an ancestor’s ghost. It is a while before he regains his sense and ceases to act like a bumbling fool.

They reunite in the lush green, under the midday sun’s warmth, and their bare legs dipped into the unruffled lake waters. They are flat on their back, making a game of discerning significant shapes on shifting clouds. Somewhere between Circe listing her favourite flowers (rose tops it all) and Phillippe nodding seriously, he forgets what it is he meant to say.

It is innocent at first. He presses sparrow-quick lips on hers. Unexpected. Unasked. Pulls himself away rather too quickly for anything fiercer. Sweltering red overtaking his neck, ears and cheeks.

But Circe laughs, heartily and amusedly. She leans closer, and he sees that necklace of freckles upon her throat, and wordlessly, she kisses him back, open-mouthed and gently.

It grows into something more, something uncontainable, once unleashed.

“Is this what you truly want?” Circe asks, biting her underlip. Her slender fingers rest above his breast, playing with the wide buttonholes of his teal waistcoat.

He does not waver in his reply. “Yes.”

And so, he carefully unties the laces of her lilac-filigreed dress as she pops the buttons one by one.

Chapter Text

Most days, Belle spends the time, recounting childhood stories to a captivated teacup wanting more and more tales of little pleasures in tending horses in meadowed fields and bleeping sheep for chatty companions.

It is fun, makes lonely hours less taxing, paces faster into the night.

“What do all of you do here? Before my time,” Belle asks at the teacup perching at the windowsill.

The questions bewilders Chip. But the smile returns to his blue-white underglazed features and he answers in earnest, “We clean.”

Belle chuckles, her chestnut locks shaking amusedly. “No, I mean, what do you do here when you are not cleaning. Purely for enjoyment,” she clarifies.

“Anything we can do. Some play chess. That’s just Lumière and Monsieur Cogsworth. They settle their grievances with chess. Sometimes we listen to Maestro Cadenza or Madame de Garderobe sings. Occasionally Madame Armoire will sing too.”

A chess set would certainly be entertaining if she has a worthy opponent—and she does not trust Cogsworth to relinquish the chess set, seeing how their squabbling are endless and repetitive.

Maestro Cadenza is sadly a precious luxury, with its music playing far from the confines of her bedchambers. On the other hand, there is only so much operatic solos sans musical instrument Belle could take before she decides on flinging herself against the windows.

“What about the Beast? He seems to have the whole château to his disposable,” Belle says, pitching her tone to indifference but lands on mild curiosity instead.

“I don’t know,” Chip relies, lips pouting. His frown brightens into a smile. “But Alphonse said monsieur le prince is either in his own chambers or roams the forest.”

“I see.”

“Maybe we can visit the treasure room,” Chip proposes, breaking the settling silence. He makes his way to the door, in tiny excited hops. Rattling all the exotic riches being made homes of arachnid dwellers.

The doors do not close on him. But ajar, enough for her to slip out and run. Yet how can Belle be so sure other doors are open as this one is to her at the present time? She does not bolt, recklessly.

The revelation is a confirmation of sorts. This teacup, once a boy named Chip, is the key of escaping this labyrinth prison. But it is not enough. She still has pieces of evidence to gather and form a complete puzzle.

“Why not?” is all she says, picking Chip up from the floor in cupped hands. “Lead the way, Chip.”

LeFou stumbles in the cricket-tormented dark, blind hands groping for an oil lamp and matches. Ages later, he makes do with a kerosene-doused firewood, lighting his pathway in the poky de Beaumont cottage.

Maurice mumbles. Incoherently. Ramblings of an imagined dungeon and skeletons residing in each dank cell. Twisted, gruesome bleached bones left to rot on stone-cold floors.

Docteur Valentini’s shrilled caution plays at the back of his mind, phantom spider legs crawling all over his skin. “Monsieur de Beaumont is in abysmal shape. These few days are crucial to nurse him back into good health. It is imperative that we must be vigilant. Neglect him now and he wastes away.”

A quick wash and intermittently forcing Maurice to feed of gruel in partly delirious state, LeFou locks the door behind him, rushing down the wobbly cobblestones into the long winding paths to town square.

The tavern never sleeps, even in the days of hard work and manual labour of the humdrum routine. Gaston resumes his place at the kingly armchair, flanked with the others and Didier occupies his usual spot. On Gaston’s right hand side.

Typical Didier, always in the watch for LeFou’s carelessness, and swoops in like a hungry vulture. Alas, he will never understand Gaston the way LeFou knows Gaston’s first thought when the war hero awakens from slumber.

“LeFou, what took you so long?” Didier greets, raising his mug with a wobbly hand. The mug spills over LeFou’s footwear, on top of the dried layer of vomit.

“He missed yesterday’s hunt too,” Gaston points out, displeased.

“W-well, I was busy,” LeFou replies, lies comes hard and short answers are saving graces.

Thomas wiggles his caterpillared eyebrows in a sluggishly seductive manner. “Have you been sneaking away for a dally at the meadows?”

“Who is the lucky mademoiselle?” Stéphane asks, slurring his entire words away.

“No mademoiselle at all,” LeFou sniffles, taking a cup of lukewarm wine from a passing by barmaid, “but if you know anyone, send them my way.”

He ignores their childish mockery. Good, unjudgmental help is scant in these parts and no one wants to nurse a widowed man on the brink of poverty, encased in delirium. The very few he found, are not willing without a fee.

LeFou tries his luck with the Guillermand Triplets, appealing to three sisters sharing one task for the price of good heart and improved reputation in Villeneuve—and Gaston. Claudette in red, scoffs. Amber-clothed Laurette shrugs. Paulette with affinity to green, shakes her head. All three citing full schedule on top of their barmaid duties and fulfilling seamstress orders.

“I have to leave.”

“So soon, LeFou?” Stéphane questions.

“Do not leave,” Thomas adds, slapping LeFou’s back with clammy hands and blurting a hearty laugh.  

“Busy day tomorrow,” LeFou simply says, pasting a forced smile. He shakes off the tavern keeper’s grasp from his shoulders, darting away from the intoxicated buffoons.

“This is fourth time you left early,” Gaston leers, nostril flaring at LeFou’s excuse.

LeFou scoots closer to the taller man and stage-whispers, “Once Maurice is awake and healthy, this will help you to get Belle.” The corners of his mouth quirking into a dull grin.

This semblance of a promise turns the frown on Gaston’s pleasingly handsome features to a wide smile. “Good thinking, LeFou. Excellent. You continue in your efforts.”

Easier to spread false hopes than to wrangle some kind-hearted ladies to play a caretaker without the assurance of a payment. Perhaps he could sell a few of Maurice’s possessions to fork some disbursement.

A child’s laugh echoes in the stark quiet town square, draws his attention. He searches the square, finds a honey-haired boy with water-blue eyes and Agathe. Agathe. Vagrant Agathe eats scraps and leftovers, and sleeps in a shambling hut of dried leaves and barest twigs.

Her cloak draped snuggingly over the child’s shoulders. She on her knees, humming a nursery rhyme. The boy, Hippolyte, sings happily, obliviously to his chilled breath. Hippolyte is not an abnormal fixture outside the tavern in nights like this.

Monsieur Étienne Arnault staggers out from the tavern, chases Agathe with a wine bottle shard. “Child snatcher, get away from my boy,” he yells, scooping his son from the ground and lurches back home.  

“Agathe,” LeFou says, clearing his throat and pasting the widest grin on his lips, “I think there is a way to have you off from the streets, into a warm bed tonight.”

Testing the limits of her newfound freedom is a precarious thing. A château in the hands of grim neglect offers so little. Then there is the conundrum of which item is alive, a former person, that she wishes not to yield. There is simply too much of what-if keeping her nights restless.

Even drinking from Chip is an experience Belle does not dwell on any further, beyond quenching her thirst. The slope to insanity is slippery in this château of horrors.

Here it is. The moment she spends speculating under the covers of midnight rumination. The teacup stirs excitedly within her hands, looking up at her in childish adoration.  

“Have you ever step outside the castle, Chip?” Belle questions, a sigh escaping her lips as she surveys the stark-empty foyer. The locked doors remained an untested obstacle.

“Never,” Chip says.

She cocks an astonished brow. “Not even to the garden?”

“Yes. Maman said we are too fragile,” the teacup replies. “But you came from out there. What it is like?”

She steps forward, one cautious step at a time. The majestic double doors swing open, revealing the rising vine-covered golden gates.

“Why don’t you experience it for yourself? And tell me,” she says, tying a strip of glossy ribbon around his handle, fastens it to her forearm. Chip perches on her shoulder with his base secured safely between the straps of her dress.  

Belle takes a few tentative strides into the courtyard. The crisp breeze is a brisk slap to her face, one she willingly welcomes after days of musk-tinted air within the château. Tweeting birds are not a figment of her imagine, but real and echoing cheerfully in the governing evergreen.

“This is magnifique,” Chip mutters, awed. “Look at that bird, it’s so colourful. I’ve never seen it before.”

“That’s Roselin cramoisi, or known by its Latin scientific name, Carpodacus erythrinus,” Belle supplies, laughing.

Chip tries to repeat the Latin, but mangles it with a stiff tongue and mismarked enunciation. “It is so hard.”

Belle smiles. “You will get the hang of it later, Chip. Do not fret.”

They wander too closely to the overgrown hedges, a barricade formed over long years of inattentive gardening keep, growing from the foundation of the iron-casted fences. The gates, like the doors before, part themselves like the Red Sea before Moses and his refugees.

“Are you going out there?” Chip asks, his voice squeaking as rusted hinges of derelict barn house.

“Do you want to return?”

“I want to know what is outside the gates,” the teacup whispers, a secret closely guarded spill without another thought.

Another step, then two and three more. They pass through the gates, with ease, with no guards out to corral them like a shepherd dog to grazing sheep.

Well, Belle, this is the golden fantasised opportune. She could run, and run, and never look back, never toss a curious glance over her shoulder and make her way, back to her father, back to the cottage.

And—

“Sugar cubes for your thoughts?” Chip says, breaking her out from her musing. Craven guilt slithering all over, stretching good conscience taut. To abandon this talking teacup in the forest is akin to forsaking a new-born babe to the elements. Belle sighs.

“There is a lake somewhere here. I remembered it was quite close,” is what she tells him instead, curving her lips into a smile. It is hard to begrudge this teacup of a boy, when he is so earnest in each discovery.

It is a few steps here, a few turns there and Belle cannot scrape the lingering notion of stalking eyes and glowing fangs lurking among the shaded forest. For every sudden turn of her head above her shoulder or throwing a glance at wild direction, there isn’t a single soul in sight.

“Can you swim, Belle?”

“I don’t, Chip. But I read plenty of books about swimming and the sea—”

In her periphery, Belle catches the outlines of ink-coloured, shagged fur on four legs. Wolves. A baker’s dozen. They flit through the trees, cleaving the massive shrubs with vicious ease. Closing in on her and Chip.

“On second thought, there will be other days. Let’s head back,” Belle says, picking up her pace, breaking into shorts, manic-lead strides.

The familiar stern gates are nowhere in their sight.

There is something wonderfully different with air. It crackles of delicately scarlet pomegranate, ivory yarn and razor-curved cutters—an odd mix, but it is familiar to Circe all the same.

They appear as one, scattered all over the oaken tree roots. Fair as bone china, never wickedly brittle. Delicate elegant faces painted in black and grey strips. Pretty flowers threaded into their ebony hairs—braided, chignon, ringlet.

“Didn’t think you are one to favour reading, little sister,” Clotho, the eldest, mumbles, grinning. But it feels like admonishment to Circe, one hinted at the slight lopsided grin.

“You are reading human tomes now?” Lachesis, the middle, questions. Lithe fingers plucking the leather-bound manuscript. She presses an ashen hand—miles and miles of yarn coiling around her wrists, arms and every skin exposed—against the yellowed pages, cracking its spine with a careless frown.

“I like it. They are interesting,” Circe says. Childish irascibility sits hotly on the edge of her tongue. She darts to snatch the priceless manuscript with tender hands.

Aisa, the youngest, tilts her head, raven-black ringlets spilling over her crow-arched shoulders. “The question is where did you learn?”

Circe does not tear her gaze from the tome. “From Phillippe.”

“Phillippe,” the three utter together, arching identical quizzical obsidian brows.

The synchronicity between too-alike sisters, set apart in minute details, is a mystery Circe does not care to unravel. The effect is still the same—daunting, discrediting—amplified threefold.

Aisa squints, grey suspicion twinkling in blue-flecked eyes. “Did something happen?”

“Nothing happened between him and I,” Circe replies, abrupt and coquettish.  

Clothe scoffs. “That would be convincing if you are not with child.” The spindle twirls on the flat centre of her palm, faster, glinting in gold-blue.

Denial is a friend in the hours of sisterly infantile torment. “I am not. I have no laid with any Fey yet.”

“Your child is a halfling,” Lachesis retorts, precise. She draws a metaphorical line in the air with her rod, and it lingers in flaxen-cobalt wisps, stretching longer and longer beyond the length of a human’s lifespan.

Aisa gestures her crystalline cutter in absentminded wave. Her smooth forehead creasing. “So, what about this Phillippe, who is he?”

“He is only a boy. No one important,” Circe says.

“Humans age differently than us. Faster than us,” Lachesis muses, “and once passing tens, they could sire a child.” Trifling curiosity shimmering in this display of her buoyant indifference.

“That boy you said is an acquaintance, he is five and ten, is he not? That is sensibly making him an adult in human years,” Clotho explains, in a tone that warrants no more argument.

“A halfling is impossible,” Circe protests, trepidation gnawing at this sudden, ugly revelation.

There are no signs of impending motherhood that she could discern. Even her magick is purely hers, absent is the markers of another being’s magick interfering, drawing from hers.

Aisa corrects, “Not impossible, but obscenely rare.”

Chapter Text

Belle stands frozen. Morbid fascination quells the panic wrecking her nerves. Her curved fingers tightens over the teacup’s body.

One steps out from the cloak of canopied shades. The stalking creature is unnaturally enormous, bear-like even. The hulking size does little to impede its agility, and it moves like a stalking cat. Its fur is long, and dull, and all night-black, blending into the darkness and leaving only the cherry-red glow of their blinking eyes.

Several steps forward, its face is clearer now, that of a tiger’s, and ram’s horns above its temple and curving tusks of a boar. The smell of chilled smoke is permeating the air, like overwarmed woolly blanket in summer.

In the face of danger, she seeks to commit this strange creature into her memory.

“That is not a wolf, right?”

When it roars—howls, the hails of a grief-stricken woman rustle the trees around them.

“Not at all, Chip.”

The creature leaps, springing for an attack. Belle runs. Doesn’t look back. She loses her footing. And trips. Belle falls—Chip flies off from her grip.

“Ooof,” he squeaks, landing on a bed of clustered daffodils.

She jerks the altered straps tying around Chip’s base. Quick. Her hand, trembling, picks him off from the flattened flowerbed. Hastily she grabs a thick branch nearby, brandishing it as a club.

Belle gathers herself up, knees scraping against shard-edged pebbles. Swings the club at the lunging creature. It misses her throat. Barely, scimitar-shaped fangs flashing in the fringes of her sight. Cradling Chip harder, Belle beats the creature to a skittering whimper.  

A group of darkness-furred fiends bursting from the trees all at once.

Time allows not a single thought of debate. Belle runs. Swings her club, confronting another creature—it bites, wrenching the branch out of her hand. It attempts to launch another fanged bite. Without a sound,  a force flings the creature away from them.

More and more these leonine creatures rushing after them. An endless of the horde ever gaining more distance, and their screams curdling guts and bleeding ears.

Wolves propel themselves against the creatures, ignoring both Belle and the petrified teacup. The wolves are equal in ferocity and strength, repelling the creatures further into the woods. Their favourable fortune’s tide is overturned, terribly swift. The yelps and whines of injured wolves echo within the forest.

“Eeep, Belle!”

There is a loud crack, of sinuous bark splintering. She turns, sees nothing.

“Up there.”  

Above her head, shaded among the green rooves, is that tiger-like creature. It is  humongously larger than the rest, with curved claws sinisterly glinting and golden hallowed spots marked its lissom body. The Alpha. It vaults, as the branch beneath its feet, crashes to the ground.

Belle flinches, hugging the teacup, and shields him with her back as meat-and-bone armour. She closes her eyes, expects claws shredding into her flesh, anticipates pointed teeth clamping over her neck.

Nothing comes.

The Beast emerges, catching it in mid-course. With a grunt, Beast hurls the creature against the tall trees, smashing primeval barks into smithereens. Its obsidian-furred brethren descend on him, like a pride of lions devouring its prey, tearing the velvet cape into shredded snowflakes.

He strikes, claws for claws, fangs for fangs. The creatures scurry from his blows and punches. Their gut-digging howls winding into choked sobs.

The Alpha climbs onto the Beast’s back, shiny claws sinking deeper, poises its opened jaw above his neck.

The Beast slams these night-furred creatures against each other in his formidable arms, casting them away like minute marbles. He reaches towards his spine, seizing the Alpha. Inches apart, the Alpha snarls a glass-scratched screech, the Beast is not outdone, bellows guttural growl.

Beast hurls the creature over the stone ledge. The leonine creature lands on the stone, dissipating into undiluted inky mists. Its cat-like brethren too evaporate into the air, like black smokes, leaving the battered wolves on the ground.

Chip questions, “Is he—”

The teacup gulps.

“Alive,” she says at last, finding her voice, “He breathes.”

Father summoned his presence to the ongoing council meeting. It was nothing more than a consolation to the surname Phillippe bore, with the blue blood coursing within. For decisions are made daily without his thoughts colouring them.

The council, composed of bearded men and silvered hair, was in a state of chaotic uproar. Advisers flanked his father’s sides, cutting their fellow’s arguments with arrowhead persistence.

Phillippe was an ornament, hanging on the weakling branches of the massive royal tree in the court. An interloper—a traitor—standing in a danger-whirled moat. The one tangled in Fey-sewn sheets.

“Sire, fully outlawing magic is a mistake. It’s no different than setting fire to an volatile wick. That pyre would be our graves,” quavered Claude de Marchant, the most seasoned Chevalier among his father’s men. His timbre hitched the loudest it ever achieved, and the drop was sudden as an unspoken apology offered, “Please reconsider the terms. Even the Versailles Court do not take this matter lightly, deliberating further and opting for—”

“Why should we treat them as equals?” sneered his father, an examination of sedition issued to the growing discontentment. “Magic seems to lack the benefits it promises us. All but empty sweet nothings.”

“But this will widen the existing rift between us and the magickal community,” Pierre La Roche countered, exasperation imprinted on his lined face. “We cannot afford to see them as others.”

“These Fey creatures are blessed with the power to change the world if they want,” Girard Frollo, pewter-haired with a too many-teeth grin, agreed. His eyes reflected a truly barren compassion. Frollo hissed, “Then they should be helping France to achieve glory, destroy her enemies, secure victories in battlefields. But where are they? They hide away in the woods, prancing to hearth and music, playing tricks on weary travellers, or lounging from twilight to night-time without a care.”

Alexandre d’Orléans maintained a disinterest stare at his steepled fingers. “You are awfully silent, boy. Speak up your mind.”

“M-mother believes alliance between the Fey and us is imperative to the stability of our nation,” Phillippe stumbled, words imitating a meek mouse’s whimper.

“What foolish notion have your mother filled your head with?” Father disparaged, the yellowing slash widened into his beard. “The Fey folk are dark whimsical creatures, they will never be our friends.”

His voice cracked from the sudden whiplash of his father’s cocked brow. “They have always been our friends—”

“They are the enemy, forever and always.”

Alexandre chose not to chisel his palpable disappointment off from his features. An expression made clear to the ever watchful court.

This paternal humiliation scalded salty-tears into the mounting guilt gnawing Phillippe from within. Any semblance of protest withered on the tips of his tongue. His eyes sting from the unshed hot tears distorting his gaze.

“Don’t be fooled by their pretty looks for it does not meant they have not dark hearts black as coal,” Alexandre uttered, mockery veiling his solemnness.

“Any magick-practicing persons found in Nivelle shall be condemned to a life of imprisonment. Unless they pledge to a life without magick, will be sequestered to monastery until death by natural means.”

“What about the Fey folk?” Monsieur de Marchant asked, caution lingered in his defiant stare.

The decree of Alexandre d’Orléans was absolute.

“Execute them.”

Chapeau and his six glorious-but-rail-thin arms haul the Beast with the tenderest of care across the hall, into a magnificence-shrouded bedchamber. It is exquisite everywhere. In the silk sheets, blue and gold-rimmed hems, gliding beneath her touch. In the perpetual crisp air filtering through massive stained lancet windows.

Carefully, the coat rack removes the tattered cape into the awaiting woven basket. He skitters away from the bed, allowing the senior members of the household to resume their rightful places.

Belle wipes acrid blood from his matted fur, some of his fur fall of in clumps. She tends to his wounds. Large gashes, tears from curved talons, deep into his ashen bones.

“Thank you, mademoiselle,” Madame Potts says, breaking the cacophony of rising and falling of laboured breaths. She flutters to his side, like a worried hen trapped in a teapot’s ceramic form.

“We are eternally grateful,” Lumière chimes, in an uncharacteristic solemness.

Their reverence and undiminished loyalty to this Beast, baffles Belle, even as she scours her hunches for clues. “Why do you care so much about him?”

“Monsieur le prince has been in our care for all his life,”  Cogsworth replies, his English accent taken a distant tenor and a hint of regret.

“But he has cursed you somehow,” she hedges, and the silence is grating. “Why? You did nothing.”

“You are quite right there, dear. We did absolutely nothing,” Madame Potts supplies.

The candelabra retorts, his jovial expression is darkly weak, “And that has led to this tragedy.”

“We deserved it,” the mantel clock agrees.

Shame hangs over these houseware, like a Turin shroud, thick and musty. It is clear as it is plain for even Belle, the interloper, unseasoned to the history of the château and its occupants.

“Let him rest,” the candelabra says. With that, they take their leave, reluctance in each movement, until Lumière gestures a golden arm to Belle, “After you, ma chèrie.”

Belle tosses one more look over her shoulder; the beast stirs, quivering in a feverish dream.

She receives a handsomely engrossed, lightly wrinkled parchment from his beloved boarhound. Rewards the tired hound with a piece of partially munched honeycomb.

Circe spreads the parchment on her lap. The invitation is written beautifully in iridescent gilded red and black. On the lower part, Phillippe’s swirly black script requests of—pleads for, more aptly—her presence at tomorrow’s royal ball.

“Oh, Phillippe.”

She cradles the invitation tenderly; one hand awarding light scratches between the hound’s ears.

“Of course, I will,” she says.

Circe plucks a feather from the owl, profusely offering giggle-tinted apologies as she scrawls an awkward, blocky ‘yes’ at the letterhead. Tucks the parchment underneath the canine’s leather band around its neck. “Send my regards.”

Her sisters remain indifferent to her plight, as she weaves in and out from one gown to another, seeking to compliment Phillippe in his attire. Rather, their interest lies in the reaction of her lover to his impending fatherhood—no, Phillippe is taken up by his hunts, not today, he is to travel to Marmontel for diplomacy matters.

- - -

“How will you present yourself to the mortals?” Clotho questions, flipping her spindle in between pale, slender fingers.

“I-I,” Circe stammers. Much of her time was devoted to worry of choosing the wrong gown, that she neglects to think beyond experiencing her first royal soirée.

“Marvellous, she intends to reveal herself to the courts,” Lachesis remarks, balancing her rod on the tip of her index finger. Her apricot-tinted mouth slips into a knowing smirk, matching the ones on her almost-identical sisters.

Aisa clicks her tongue. “That would be a terrible decision.”

Clotho arches a single obsidian brow. “Do you have a name prepared at least? Do not tell us that you are attending a human’s ball without an established pedigree?”

“Circe,” she answers feebly. “Just Circe.”

Clotho laughs. “Circe the peasant.”

Lachesis snorts. “With the heir of Nivelle.”

Aisa chuckles. “How scandalous.”

Their predilection towards cryptic glossa grates on her wanning patience and sisterly civility.

“Then, who am I to be for the banquet if not myself?”

Her sisters are silent. Staring. Gawking. The mirth from their grey-slate eyes vanished.

She retorts, “Circe d’Argenton of Cosquin, the viscount’s niece from the Romanian mountains,” and spins the identity in a fit of peeved indignation, adding lurid, impossible details to her mortal persona.

“These are the dark times, sister dearest,” the not-quite triplets avow. “Heed our words.”

- - -

Circe arrives at the château, on a gallant silvered mare, as dusk smears violet all over the darkening bronzed skies. He waits, veiled in silhouette and shrubs, intercepting Circe before she reaches the gates.

“You are beautiful,” he says, flushed.

“And so are you.”

He is wondrously tall—and their roles are reverse for she is the one tipping her chin to glance at his exquisitely striking features—in velvet blue. There is still an endearing gaucherie quality to his movement, even as his body hardened into well-built form.

Phillippe tugs the pins holding her hair in an updo with the tenderness of touch, carefully plucking them one-by-one until her hair hangs loosely over her shoulders, shielding her ears from sight.

“Circe, the court will have their eyes on me and please, this once, you are a human—”

She presses her finger to his lips. “I understand. I am not a Fey, but a member of nobility from Cosquin. Will that suffice your needs?” The corners of her beryl-painted mouth curving into a smile.

He smiles back.

The brilliance in his frost-blue eyes is mesmerizing.

“My love,” he starts, cupping her face in his eager, large-boned hands. Kisses her with a certain hunger, impatience-edged longing satisfied and potent ache deepens her adoration, cements her worship to the once-a-boy-now-a-man human.

Circe forgets everything else.

Chapter Text

Sunrise colours the skies in glaring crimson and florid rust, when Beast stirs from his slumber, squinting, raises a massive paw over his face.

He groans. Then his voice thunders, echoing under the domed ceiling. “What the hell were you thinking? Bringing a fragile teacup out there?”

Her immediate reply is to match his indignation. “How was I to know there are bizarre creatures around the woods?” Belle retorts, eyeing him critically. “What are they?”

Beast hacks hoarse, full-throated coughs.

“Dangerous animals. They are everywhere. Here.”

He roars, a pained howl. “That hurts.”

The oaken bed and its posters is unbelievably ornated, intricated hunting motifs carved onto the woodwork up to its tester, dwarfs even her patient’s hulking form. Despite that, her fear of him is fleeting, almost muted now by the Rennes linen swathing him completely as though he is a pompous furred babe.

She clucks her tongue, disapprovingly. “If you move not a bit, it would not hurt as much.”

“If you had not foolishly left, none of this would have passed.”

“Well, if I had some books to read, I would have never wandered aimlessly.”

He bites down another indignant, distressed growl. His nostrils flaring. Human-like eyes—astonishingly blue, crystalline, startlingly intense—narrow in an almost-glare. La duchesse rumbling as she wipes blood from his necklace of thick gashes.

“I am most welcome if you want to relive me as your nurse,” she says, squeezing the bloodied rags dry.

He grunts.

“Surely, Madame Potts can tend to your wounds, despite lacking a pair of hands.” Belle continues, daubing the rag on that cavernous tear compassionately as she would to a man, or a child. “Or Lumière, pray that his wax does not burn you.”

Beast remains still, lips curl into a displeased pout. He is the description of a disgruntled child, Belle discovers and it tickles her funny bones. The effect only ruined by the bandages all over his furs.

“I will be sure to mention about the delicateness of your injuries to Cogsworth. Perhaps his hands are much suitable than Plumette’s feathers.”

She rises to her feet—

“No, stay,” he breathes out.

She stifles a laugh threatening to rush out from her lips, arching her brow and smirks.

“Worry not, I will return to redress your wounds.”

She walks around the château, willingly blindfolded, at the behest of an animated candelabra and the protest of an apprehension-riddled mantel clock.

“Right here, ma chèrie, one step forward,” Lumière instructs, “and one more. And we are here.”

“We shouldn’t,” Cogsworth squeaks, his hand dials spinning erratically.

“We must.”

“We shan’t.”

“We have to.”

“But that’s sacred, aside from the you know where. Moreover, it’s madame la princesse’s favourite. Housekeeping only.”

“Are you willing to tell monsieur le prince that our esteemed guest got herself killed after you denied her the library he imposed on her? As he lied in bed, impaired.”

There is a pause. Hand dials clicking. Pendulum swinging in manic beats.

“No,” the mantel clock sighs, long-drawn and suffering.

“I thought so too,” Lumière says, his Parisian accent deepens with pride and wink. “Please open your blindfold,” the candelabra urges.

The bibliothèque is a sprawling beauty. Book cabinets are finely sculptured, exuding a certain taste of delicacy and luxury. Its carpentry and cornices are glided in shimmering green and yellow-gold.

“Now, ma chèrie, all these are yours to read until your heart’s content.”

Wooden planks of an almost gold hue laid on the floor, spreading to all corners of the room. A gold-plated chandelier, studded with sapphires and rubies, hangs from the ceiling, illuminating precious and precious books.

“Why?” is all she manages, unable to take her sight from the double-headed eagles formed the mahogany door handles. Upon a closer inspection, even the bookshelves are peculiar in their door handles, decorated with a book case filled with replica of books.

The green-velvet curtains are dust-specked, reflecting the striking green pained on the bookshelves. The books—brilliant, astounding, and various languages printed on their spines—are bounded in Moroccan leather and the initials C. M. monogram engraved on each book.

“No more heroic deeds, I’m afraid,” the candelabra informs, cheekily.

Still, it is not hard to miss the signs of time and disrepair. Various paintwork and gliding of cabinets are flaking. Cracks spattered across the ceiling and several panels loosening. Several sculptural elements—so often she found them decorating her chambers and even Beast’s bedchambers—are missing and the finish betraying its antiquated age. Notwithstanding, the paintings remain elusively pristine as ever.

And yet, Belle is enthralled. The bibliothèque proves to be a marvel, withstanding the seasons and the passing of time. Better than any part of the chambers within the château, even her bedchambers and the Beast’s.

In the centre wall, a gold-framed portrait of a woman hangs large. The woman sat on a seductive and languid pose on a sofa, her corn-silk, wavy hair spills over her shoulders. She’s dressed in a low-cut blue damask gown trimmed with subtle ochre embroidery; painted in bright red and gold hues, against dawn-lit windows. Thirteen pale beryl and emerald jewel-studded rings decorated her slim fingers, ashen hands caressing a white pillow and handkerchief.

There is something elegiac about her. Especially her cornflower blue eyes, reflected in the dawn-streaking sunlight. The way she is painted in both exquisiteness and melancholia, Belle thinks.

“Who is she?” Belle says, retracting a curious finger about to graze the painting.  

Neither Lumière replies her with a cheeky grin nor Cogsworth rushes to prevent a desecration. It is an eerie stillness resounding louder and persistently.

They’re frozen still as the items they are. Lifeless. Unmoving. Lumière grins, but it is a hollow, vacant one. Cogsworth frowns, yet its expression is a clear blank.

Surely, they will resume their usual comic routine. She leaves them momentarily in favour for exploring the countless paintings and tapestries adorning the bibliothèque’s walls.

There is another painting of the woman, now with a child on her lap. The boy is flaxen-haired and blue-eyed, no older than six, rendered in smiles.

She’d seen him before. The boy with his lips downturned ats its corners.

Next to it, a portrait of a dark-haired, bearded man—his features are harder, iced blue eyes glaring—standing on the left, while his child sitting at the centre, and to the boy’s right is the same woman. Beneath the painting, a motto written clear in black-and-gold; ‘vincit qui se vincit’.

The winner is who wins himself.

A tapestry on her far right, catches her sight. She peers closer, counting the number of children sewn onto the arras drapery; the boy from the previous paintings—is older now, ten and three perhaps—surrounded by five younger children, nearly all are babes saved for one son is ten; a mixed arrays of honeyed-haired daughters and russet sons.

“Did you serve them?”

She spares a sparrow-quick glimpse at her watchers—the candelabra and mantel clock are nowhere to be seen or heard.

Seeing these portraitures of the château’s long-gone residents, there are questions upon questions seeding, rooting and she can’t help but to wonder what calamity befallen on this place. And its inhabitants.

Belle had yearned many times for adventures of the peculiar kind. This place may not be the exotic Amazonian jungle, or the arid Sahara Desert. Well, Belle, you’re in the throes of a mystery, solve it.

He wakes up to a parched throat, throbbing veins, sunrays blazing against his eyelids and a dab of cool dusters pressed on his forehead.

“Belle?”

“You have been asleep for quite some time, a week or so,” his caretaker informs; her voice is gravelly arcane, resounding as echoes within a mammoth underground cave.

It is nothing close to Belle’s.

The pounding in his head recedes, decreasing as tidal waves subsiding into the ocean. His vision slowly returning, one blurry-edged clarifying at one agonising blink.

A rose, utterly treacherous. A rose, too beloved and enticing. His daughter. Foul-smelling iron-bars. Dark solitary and loathsome dungeons. Blanched remains, twisted and chained to the mossed walls.

Belle. No. He must save her, anything else be damned.

Panic seizes his chest in constricting snake-like binding, as he tries to lift himself from the hay-stuffed bedding. Maurice fares no further than his leg protruding from the wool blanket.

“You are not in any position to go anywhere, Monsieur de Beaumont,” Agathe says, in a tone that cuts his protest into smithereens.

“You d-don’t understand,” Maurice protests, desperation propels him to try sitting up. “The castle is not safe. Many died in the dungeons. Only bleached bones kept me company in that prison.”

“They would not let harm come to her. Those who died, inflicted their fates upon themselves,” Agathe answers, cryptic and impassive. She offers no more placations.

Maurice drifts back into dreary slumber, already lost to fatigue and numbness.

The teacup ambushes her again, right on time, at half-past noon in her bedchambers. Spluttering rushed apologies, trembling and eyes drooped downwards in resignation. “I understand if you don’t want to be my friend anymore,” he starts, meekly. “I heard monsieur le prince was very crossed with you and it’s all my fault.”

“The fault lies with me, Chip,” she replies, stooping lower, holds her palm out. “You didn’t walk outside the gates. You stayed on my shoulder the entire time, remember?”

“Y-yes,” he says, his handle bobbing up and down cautiously, as he hops onto her outstretched hand.

“I still like to be your friend,” she says, curving her lips into supportive smile, “can I?”

“Yes, yes, yes. You can,” he squeals, practically buzzing with happiness. “You can be my best friend.”

“Please, please, please,” the teacup implores, beaming.

“Then, it is done. You are my best friend, as I am yours.”

Chip leaps onto her bed, gleefully. Laughing, as he hits her pillows and swirls to face her, blue eyes narrowing at Belle.

“Did monsieur le prince really yell at you?”

She shakes her head, smile widening into a mischievous grin. “He didn’t, when he is in so much pain.”

They giggle in tandem.

Belle returns to the Beast on his two hind legs, out from the bed, and looking absolutely not worse for wear and the horrid lacerations are almost impossible to be seen.

She darts mindlessly towards him, running her fingers along his fur, deft hands skimming over near smooth skin, only a few felt jagged and some only shaded in light pink.

He gingerly moves himself away from her meticulous scrutiny, whispering incoherence as he swats half-heartedly her outstretched, reviewing hand once again. Leonine nose wrinkling in impatience.

“How is this possible?” tumbles out from her lips, clumsily.

Beast raises a single bushed brow, cocking his head sideways, and waves his  hand over his face in a Lumière-inspired theatrics. “The same way, this me is possible and talking utensils are real,” he retorts sardonically.

His witticism is surreal and astonishing, steals her speech and wit.

Her words return a moment not too late, and she cannot carve the grin taking hold of her mouth. “Was that a tease? You are teasing me now?”

“Perhaps.”

Belle rolls her eyes. “Very clever. Hilarious.”

“Live this way too long, you must laugh.”

He cracks a toothy grin—fearsome, curved fangs curling backwards in an embarrassed attempt to grin earnestly.

“I suppose so,” she counters, feigning an indifference in place of her own laugh prying an escape between tightly clamped lips.

This interaction, absent of constant terror gnawing her nerves and his grouched growls, is bizarre, an anomaly and—refreshingly delightful. Somehow, for once, monetarily, he ceases to be a frightening animal. Almost human.

Belle asks, “Do you have a name?”

“What?”

“I cannot keep calling you ‘The Beast’. That is rude. Disrespectful,” Belle says, pointedly. She huffs at his silence, folding her arms over her chest and her feet tapping peevishly.

It is an eternity, she thinks, before he clears his throat into his curled paw and straightens his spine.

“Adam,” he answers.

“Let us start from the beginning,” she says.

Bewilderment contorts his rather handsome features to one she could describe akin to baffled exasperation.

“Isabelle de Beaumont,” she offers, holding out a hand for him to shake. Her pale hand left hanging in the air—only drawing his attention, his blinking eyes.

She wiggles her eyebrows expectedly.

“Monsieur?”

“Adam,” he returns sheepishly, his paw covering her slender hand.

“Monsieur Adam, nice to be acquainted with you.”

Chapter Text

Minimising the increasing daily occurrences of accidental encounters with the master of the château is an arduous task. Tiptoeing on imaginary eggshells hones her vigilantism to a tiring level. Belle flees to the bibliothèque, preferring the company of a little teacup than a seven-foot hulking afflicted with such a volatile tantrum.

She’s accustomed to the faint clacking of porcelain against planked floors accompanying her footsteps. Or a barrage of questions driven by childlike awe trailing her as she walks.

It is too quiet, as she navigates through the rows and rows of shelves lining the bibliothèque’s ardently decorated high walls and panelled corners.

“Chip?” she calls out.

Sullen, dreamy silence answers her inquiry.

Belle searches for him in all possible nooks and crevices within the bibliothèque, before finding the white-blue teacup dozing outside the doors, golden handle slightly drooping as he settles comfortably on top of cobwebs.

He is asleep, almost human-like. Most staff within the château seems to have forgo sleep, only resuming greater likeness of the housewares they taken their shapes from. 

“How long have you been waiting outside here?”

Belle gathers him up on her palm; the ends of her mouth quirking into an amused smile.

“Not long,” he mumbles, bleary, tilting to a side, peeks a look through the ajar doors. “Did you find a book to read?”

“Here,” she tells him, brandishing a glit, well-worn rawhided manuscript, with its title embossed in Blackletter hand, the elegant gothic script shimmering in the parse sunlight.

He squints, pausing, narrows his eyes again, lips pursed in thought and exhales noisily.

Patience is a virtue engrained into her being—a father with plenty transitory thoughts and revolutionary musical inventions waiting to be materialised seeded patience like the air she breaths in. She waits.

Defeat is present as he stays transfixed at the book, perplexed. “What does it say?” he admits, sheepishly.

“Livre des Marveilles du Monde,” she replies, taping a finger beneath the words as she reads them aloud. “Chip, can you read?”

“No. Maman didn’t have the time to teach me. But my brothers and sister can. Then we became teacups and no one has hands, so can’t open books to read.”

“Don’t you worry, I have all the time in the world here and it is my honour to teach you to read,” she reassures. “Why didn’t you come in?”

“I’m not allowed in there.”

Belle clips the book underneath her arm, the other supporting Chip. Closes the doors behind her gently, with the bend crook of her arm tugging the handles. “Why?”

“Maman said that there are many priceless manuscripts and tomes and monsieur le prince won’t let anyone touch those books,” Chip supplies, helpfully.

“Where else you’re not allowed to?”

“Two places are no’s. The library,” he drags the syllables, then brightens at the sprawling dark ahead of them, “the West Wing. But anywhere in the château, I can go and play.”

Let it be said, Belle’s curiosity will one day doom her—and this could be the prophesied date. Or not. But boredom is fatal to her doubt. There is only so many chambers she could investigate, afore ennui erodes completely her contentment of this gilded prison.

“I plan to reconnoitre this wing, Chip. This will be my action to bear and this is your chance to spare yourself from the wrath of those who forbad our appearances here.”

“You are my best friend, I won’t let you go alone,” he replies, determinedly cheery. Courageous even.

The forbidden wing seems less terrifying than she remembers; the clutters remain as they were, shattered ceramics and scrabbled brass scattered across the scratched hallway, intricate spider-silk and adorned the multitudes of ambitiously formal paintings hung on the grim-stained walls.

Her sight settling themselves to the barely-lit corridors, Belle ventures further into the darkness. For a moment, Chip’s existence is a fleeting afterthought as her heart hammers itself against the fishbones of her spine. He too is entrapped by the foreboding stillness, trailing after them.

In the dark, the foul stench of desiccated carcases and acrid red overwhelms her senses—she pinches her nose. One step forward. And another. Gingerly. Tiptoeing.

Dusty winter morning flitters through an unclosed window, lighting sparsely on the gnarled tree vines grown inwards, creeping along the soiled carpet, spread its veined, emaciated fingers up to the walls.

A word—lair—flashes through her eyelids, as she takes in the unholy spectacle before them. No. Not lair. Chambers. Yes. That is the right—

Dank and filth paints the chambers in dark, sombre strokes.

Broken furniture strewn all over. Mirrors cracked and shattered into ragged edges. Dazed and sullen portraits, tilted and torn. Doors hung awkwardly on rusted hinges. Ancient wax encrusted on wall sconces, as though snow hardened and never melt.

Crimson velvet curtains tattered; gold embroideries ripped. Bones, gnawed with frenzy little fangs, scattered over matted piles of bed coverings and ripped fabrics.

This bedchamber oozes of violence, self-recrimination and loathing—

Her sight fills Belle with horror. Disgust crawls on her skin multi-legged, trepidation presses shivering kisses on her neck. Even so, she doesn’t flee. There is a crookedly hanging portrait, raked deep by furious claws.

It is a boy, handsome and the bluest eyes on a portrait she’d seen.

Slam. Belle jumps. Jerks around. Her fingers clenching over Chip tighter, drawing him closer to her chest.

Just a shutter, loosened by an unexpected blasting cold wind.

She exhales a relieved sigh.

Not far from the corner of her eyes, something sparkles in the dark. In front of the open window, a rose, shimmering in enchantment, sits under a bell jar raised on a pedestal.

“A rose,” Belle murmurs.

The Rose is a sparkling delicacy seems a stark contrast against this filthy, disarrayed chamber. The entirety of the Rose droops gloomily. Two fallen petals—shimmering lapis lazuli—decorating the jar’s bottom.

Bella remembers this rose. A momentarily glimpse is enough to spark a tiny dissent. Is this the rose Adam accused her father of stealing? She wants to touch it.

“That doesn’t look like it came from the gardens, right, Belle?”

“Apparently so.”

Fascinated, Belle reaches out toward the Rose, grazing the dusty bell glass. Too enraptured by this unearthly Rose, she fails to notice a creak outside the window.

“No,” Beast bellows.

The hulking figure is close, looming and fast. His face contorted into a fanged snarl, ivory sharp teeth glinting in the dead darkness.

He drops his gaze towards her hands; porcelain teacup chattering in palpable fear and—

Stops his menacing steps. Adam gulps deep, large breaths, holds his humongous paw over his face. As though he is covering himself—his distorted beastly fang face—from Chip’s view.

“I thought Lumière made it clear this is forbidden,” Adam grits, struggling to tamper the growls from rounding his words.

The thing is, Belle discovers, he is quick to anger should she retorts in fiery tones. Such temper he has, yes. So, she looks up at his human eyes, steels her nerves, and schools her face into a dull surprise.

“He did?” Belle starts. “I must have forgotten. You see I was not in possession of my full faculties earlier on. Talking candleholder is more attention grabbing than what he is saying.”

Frustration is evident as he licks his lips. A great, witty riposte, is something he does not have.

Cupped in her hands, Chip is the picture of pure awe and all his teacup-shaped fear thawing. There is unmistakeable reverence too.

His attention drifts from her face to Chip. Slowly sliding onto the teacup, his stare staying there.

His leonine features soften. Somewhat. Fascinating.

“This is the last I tolerate this blatant disregard of the rules,” Adam hisses, and his nostril flares, and his fangs glistening partly beneath his lips. “Leave.”

“Thank you for this mercy, sire,” Chip squeaks. “Now, Belle, make it for the cupboard.”

The wind lashes frosty whips against his face; the wailing of those accursed tiger-like menace reverberating through out the eternally moonlit forest. Somewhere behind the shaded green, they are lurking, stalking. Waiting for his mistake.

Prey. Predator. Harm. Safety. Once. Enough. Glimpse.

He-beast leaps far, leaps over branches. Velvet cape flow, splashing against stagnant blue streams. Blue eyes so sharp, so crystalline, unsettling, staring back at he-beast. His eyes. Paws slashing green, green leaves. Should that child be a boy, will his ears be pointed. Or leaf-shaped. His mother’s. Boy now porcelain and blue, with will hair spun like gold, or, or the hue of tawny pelt.

Search. Look. Find. Rose Witch. Forest. Years. Years.

Thoughts—many thoughts, many feelings—crowding his mind, alphabets and accents jumbled up, words slipping into a sea of loose letters.

Mademoiselle. Beaumont. Unflinching. Belle. Stare. Pretty. Unafraid. Friend—

Voices, high-pitch and gravelly baritone, echoing beneath the rustling trees. Humans. Footsteps, hooved, four-legs accompanying men. Nuisance. Ignorant.

He-beast sits, perching overhead.

Hunters. Guns. One. Gunman. Harmless.

He-beast leaves them alone.

Even now, Bèatrice Potts could not coax a civil dinner from monsieur le prince. Surely, after that ghastly ordeal shared, monsieur le prince and Belle would be kind to grace each other’s presence at the feast they’ve prepared. Hope seems so elusive, receding deeper into the horizons.

Alas, he has fled to the forest again. Always.

“It is the strangest of rose I’ve the chance to stare. Never have I seen such a blue beauty, in a rose no less,” Belle says, inattentively poking her fork into the sautéed spinach. “But the place, so dank and filthy,” she tries, more cautious than ever, “how long has he lived there? It hasn’t received Plumette’s warmly touch for sure.”

“Years. In the early years, he slept there. Then monsieur le prince could not bear it any longer,” Cogsworth replies, hushed.

Bèatrice still recalls the day those portraits received tempestuous rage and hold on—

The implication of young Mademoiselle de Beaumont’s inquiry sinks into their collective consciousness. She stepped foot there. She knew about the Rose.  

“You went to the West Wing?” Lumière questions, anticipative, disbelief.

Belle nods.

Cogsworth’s eyes widen, jaws dropped unflatteringly open. His pendulum swinging madly to and fro, and if mantel clocks could have a heart attack or faint, Cogsworth would have been on the floor, sweating and delirious.

She glances at them; the pretence of eating is dropped. “What happens when the last petal falls?”

“He remains a beast forever. And the rest of us become,” Lumière says, flames dimming, and his Parisian accent drags into a quiet sigh.

“Antiques,” Bèatrice supplies.  

“Lightly used houseware,” Plumette tells Belle.

“Rubbish. We become rubbish,” Cogsworth coughs timidly.

“How can I help?” Belle queries, almost alarmed. “There must be some way to lift the curse?”

The mantle clock visibly brightens, and hint of smile forming. “Well, there is one—”

Lumière candle-smacks him, leaving a waxy smear on the major-domo’s glass-panelled face. A threat flashing quick as flint striking a briefest spark on his bronzed countenance.  

“It is not for you to worry about, ma chérie,” the candelabra appeases, and his usual charming, winning smile is absent, just a pale imitation of it sits on his lips. “We have made our bed and we must lie in it.”

His strength returns in morsel pieces—but it is there, stubbornly unyielding, Maurice could raise himself to sit, steadies his hand as he drinks warm milk. Legs tremble as it touches the cold-kissed ground.

“I must leave,” Maurice insists, pulling a mud-caked boot over his foot.  

Agathe, his appointed caretaker, clucks her tongue in disapproval. Like the days before, she stands tall as a statuesque marbled sculpture, and in spite of grime and dirt, she cuts a menacing figure in the dark.

He makes it as far as the door, leaning against the chipped frame to gather his depleting breath. Swipes cold sweat over his brow. “I don’t expect you to understand,” he murmurs between laboured breaths.

Agathe sighs. “Unfortunately, I do, Monsieur de Beaumont.”

The moonlight coats her in oddly fragmented melancholic glow. Her silver-grey eyes, deep-set, are both vacant and ancient-weary. “I lost my child years ago.”

Her admission is a surprise for Maurice had lived the provincial streets of Villeneuve many years, and not once he witnesses this child Agathe speaks of. Nor does he remember a child with her colouring, in tattered clothes and soot-specked face, or a husband, a partner to have sire her child. Come to think of it, Maurice only recalls Agathe, alone, wandering.

“I am sorry to hear that,” he hurriedly offers.

“Don’t be. It was my own foolishness. I let my child go willingly. To let him be with his father. In hopes that his father will acknowledge him,” Agathe says, gazing at Maurice, her pale chapped lips ushering a forced smile. “My child never returned, lost to the sea.”

“What about his father?”

“He chose to deny the child ever existed. That I was a mad woman. And so—”

“Maurice,” LeFou singsongs, bursting into the cottage with twigs decorating his hair. “We tried and tried and there are no signs of Belle anywhere. But Gaston will not rest until she is safe in his—I mean, your, your,” LeFou pauses, coughing into his fist, “arms.”

“Where is Monsieur LeGume?” Maurice questions, craning his neck to look over LeFou’s round shoulders.

LeFou chews his underlip, eyes darting all over but on Maurice. “He-he went out for another round to find your daughter,” LeFou stammers, fanning his reddened neck.

Agathe stares at LeFou, hawkish and thin-lipped and judgemental eyebrows.

Her so-alike sisters came with basketful of gifts; a golden spindle, a bronzed pair of scissors and a sparkling silver rod. Though Circe cannot say the gifts are suitable for a newborn babe, but she supposes the thoughts that matters and never have her sisters are known for their generosity. Feys are whimsicality at their core.

“Where is the babe?” Clotho inquires, dropping the elegantly weaved gift basket unceremoniously on the ground.

“Pleased to meet you too, sister,” Circe retorts, beryl-painted lips curling into a smile.

“Do not act as if you do not relish in our visits,” Lachesis says, tucking her rod underneath golden waistband.

“She is just bitter that the babe has deposed her seating as our youngest,” Aisa remarks, grinning.

Circe beckons them to a crib fashioned out from gnarled tree roots and bedding made of broadly succulent leaves.

“The babe is half bad as we foreseen,” Aisa quips, throwing an exaggerated despairing sigh into her cupped hand.

“Not as ugly as we thought he ought to be,” Clotho agrees.

All three sisters, lean and dignified, taller than Circe, now looming over the basinet. Their scrutiny bears no difference as though her child is an apple to be inspected for imperfections.

“What name will you choose to bestow on the babe?” Lachesis asks, fingering the sleeping child’s blanket. She traces her index finger over its tiny palm; her expression darkens as clouds hide the sun.

“I have not consulted the father yet,” Circe says, unable to meet their puzzled stares. “He is preoccupied. His father required so much of him these days.”

Aisa tilts her head, arching a crow-black brow. “And you don’t?”

“It’s different,” Circe retorts, too swift, culling desperation from her tone.

“If you do not have a name prepared, then it shall fall to us to enlighten you with some of the most elegant names for the babe,” Clotho announces, grandly. “As the elder, I shall be the first.”

“Such as?”

“Teapot,” Clotho says, a ghostly smile curving on her lips.

“Mantel clock,” Lachesis argues, smirking.

“Not as fine as candelabra,” Aisa replies, her white teeth twisting into a grin.

“Teacup has a melodic ring to it,” Circe laughs. Earnestly, she adds, “I like Charlot the best.”