Belle's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Belle wanted to free the Beast from his curse, but she did not know a single rule that bound him. She had lived in his castle three weeks now. He left her books outside her door. She left a candle at his. Neither of them spoke of what he was, or how he had become it. Tonight she found him in the library, staring at the cold fireplace. His clawed hands rested on his knees. His yellow eyes did not turn to her. "Tell me how it happened," Belle said. "The curse. I can't help you if I'm guessing." He growled low. "There is no helping it." "Then let me try and fail. That's mine to spend." He stood. For a moment she thought he would leave. Instead he crossed the room and pulled a cloth from a tall shape near the window. Beneath it stood a mirror in a gold frame, roses carved at its top and base. "Ask it," he said. "It shows what you wish to see. It is how she watches me." "She?" "The one who did this." Belle stepped close. Her own face looked back, then blurred. The glass cleared on an elegant castle crowned with blue towers. Roses climbed its white walls. A woman stood in a hidden garden among them, watching a single rose lose its petals. "The enchantress," the Beast said. "She counts my time by that flower. When the last petal falls, the curse holds forever. I stay this." Belle's hands went cold. "How long?" "I stopped counting." In the glass, the woman lifted her head. She looked straight out, as if she saw Belle looking back. Her mouth moved. Belle heard the words inside her own skull, quiet and clear. "He must love, and be loved in return. Before the rose is bare. There is no other door." The garden faded. The glass showed only Belle's face again. She turned to the Beast. He had backed away, shoulders low, watching her the way an animal watches a raised hand. "So that's the rule," she said. "Not a spell to unwind. Not a riddle. You have to be loved." "Now you know," he said. "And now you know it's hopeless. Look at me." Belle looked. She saw the horns and the claws and the tired eyes. She did not look away. "It isn't a book I can read to you," she said. "It isn't a task I can finish and be done. It's you and me. That's harder." He said nothing. But he did not cover the mirror again. Belle understood now what breaking the curse would cost. Not cleverness. Time she could not measure, spent on a heart that hid behind a locked west wing. She had wanted knowledge. She had it. It frightened her more than her ignorance ever had.