Belle's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Belle stayed in the library long after Adam left. She kept the folder of drawings on her knees and turned the pages again. The boy on the horse. The summer garden. She lost the morning in them. Sunlight crossed the floor and faded. She did not notice how the day slipped away. A sharp click broke the quiet. Belle looked up. A brass clock stood on a low shelf near her, round and polished. Its face turned toward her, and its hands twitched. She had passed it a hundred times and thought it only a clock. "Forgive me, miss," it said. Its voice was stiff and careful. "But you have been sitting here since dawn." Belle nearly dropped the folder. "You speak." "I am Cogsworth. I keep the time in this house." The clock's hands snapped to the hour. "And I fear you are spending it poorly." "I'm learning who he was," Belle said. She held up a drawing. "Learning." Cogsworth ticked, loud and impatient. "Yes. Very slow work, learning. Come with me." He would say no more. Belle set the folder down and followed the small clock as he rocked across the floor. He led her out of the library and down a cold hall she rarely walked. A tea cart rolled behind them on its own, its teapot silent, its candles unlit. No one pushed it. Belle stopped questioning what moved in this castle. Cogsworth halted before a tall door. "He keeps it in there. He watches it every night. He would not want you to see. But someone must." Belle pushed the door open. On a table under a glass dome sat a single red rose. It glowed faintly. Three petals lay on the wood beneath it. As she watched, a fourth loosened at the edge. It trembled. Then it fell. Belle's stomach dropped. "How many are left?" "Fewer than yesterday," Cogsworth said. "Fewer than the day before." His hands ticked forward. "Each petal is a day, miss. Perhaps less. When the last one falls, he stays a beast forever." Belle counted the petals still clinging to the rose. She stopped at eleven. Her hands went cold. She had spent whole days on old drawings while the flower emptied itself, petal by petal, and no one had told her. "I didn't know," she said. "He never showed me this." "He is proud," the clock answered. "And ashamed. He would rather lose than beg. But you can still act." Belle looked at the glass dome, then at the dark hall behind her. She knew now what the rose measured. Eleven petals. Eleven days, if she was lucky. Reaching for Adam slowly was no longer enough. She left the tea cart and the clock behind. Somewhere in this castle waited the locked wing he could not open, the deed he could not name. If she meant to save him, she had to go there. And she had eleven days to do it.