Rosalind's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

The suitors were gone. The garden was quiet. Rosalind stood among the roses with two strangers and no plan for what came next. She had spent her whole life inside these walls. She had never walked past the gate alone. Beyond it lay the wilds, and the fae hunted the wilds. She needed a road out, and she did not have one. She turned to the tower girl. "You came here. How?" Rapunzel touched a small braid at her wrist. "A door in a library. It only opened one way." Alice brushed gravel from her apron. "Mine put me in a hedge. I can't get back either." So neither girl could take her out. Rosalind sat on the garden bench and pressed her cold hands together. She thought of the frost past her door, the road she had never seen, the wolves the kitchen staff whispered about. She thought of her father waiting for her to break. A new voice cut across the roses. "You need a map, not a door." A girl stood in the arch where the fae suitor had left. Yellow dress. A crown of leaves in her red hair. She held a small branched candlestick like a lantern, though the sun was still up. Rosalind did not know her face. "Who let you in?" Rosalind said. "No one," the girl said. "I walked out of a book in a castle where I am kept. The book was open on a page about your gate. I am Belle. I have about six days before a curse where I live becomes permanent. I don't have time to be polite." Rosalind stared at her. "You crossed the wilds." "I crossed a page," Belle said. "That is different. But I know the wilds. I have read every map in the Beast's library. I can draw you a route." "Why would you?" "Because you are going to look for true love," Belle said. "So am I. I want to know if it works." Rosalind felt her chest tighten. She wanted to believe her. She could not afford not to. "Draw it." Belle knelt on the gravel. She pulled a folded paper from her sleeve and smoothed it flat. She drew fast, in short strokes: a river, a willow tree that leaned wrong, a clocktower that marked a safe crossing at moonrise, a fortress with towers where a princess in hiding could stay a night. She marked three places to avoid. She did not decorate anything. "Follow it in order," Belle said. "Do not sleep under the willow. It talks." She stood, took one step back toward the arch, and was gone. The candlestick was gone with her. Only the map was left, warm from her hand. Rosalind folded it and slid it into her sleeve beside the iron pins. She looked at the gate. For the first time, she saw a way through.