Belle: A Retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” By Cameron Dokey (19 page)

Spreading out toward my fingertips, up my arm. It was the same sensations I experienced when a piece of wood began to share its secrets. The sensation the Heartwood had denied me for what felt like days without end, save for one moment only. The one on which the Beast and I had held it together.

“Oh, of course,” I said aloud.

“Belle?” Grand-père Alphonse said.

“The Heartwood,” I replied. “I tried so hard to see what it held within it, to find the face of true love. And all the time, I was going about it the wrong way. Looking for the wrong thing.

“It took two,” I said. “Two different people to make the Heartwood what is it.

Two different experiences, grief and joy, combined. True love never had just one face, does it? It must always have two, or it isn’t true love at all.

“That’s why I couldn’t see anything, no matter how hard I looked. I was only

looking for one thing, one face. I forgot that, to find true love, you must look with love’s eyes.”

“I think,” Grand-père Alphonse said, “that you have grown very wise all of a

sudden,
ma petite Belle
. What will you do with such wisdom, I wonder?”

“Go back,” I answered at once. “He let me go because he loved me. I see that

now. He gave me what I wanted most. He let me leave him. Now I have to go back and finish what I started. But first I must talk to Papa.”

I stood up and started for the barn.

“You are sure, Belle?” my father asked a short time later. Following my startling pronouncement in his workshop, Papa had insisted we all go back to the house. Despite my sense of urgency, I had agreed. I had left my family once without saying good-bye. I would not do so a second time.

“As sure as I can be, Papa,” I replied. “I think I understand” – I cast a quick look in Grand-père Alphonse’s direction – “that I
see
the truth now. I understand why I could not read the Heartwood before.”

“But you think you can now,” my father said.

“Yes,” I answered, just as I had in his workshop. “I do think so.” I looked around, at my family’s shocked and sober faces. “I can’t leave this unfinished. It isn’t right. But even more, going back is what is in my own heart.”

“Well, then,” my father said into the startled silence that greeted these words. “I think that you must follow your heart and go.”

“Roger, how can you say such a thing?” my mother exclaimed. “How can you let

her go into danger a second time?”

“I’m not so sure she’s going into danger,” my father said, his eyes on mine. There was not a trace of worry in them now. As if learning what I held in my heart had freed the pain he’d carried in his the whole time I’d been gone. “Perhaps she never was.”

My father shifted his gaze to April, sitting at Dominic’s side.

“I remember how April looked,” he went on quietly, “when we did not know

whether or not Dominic was coming home. Perhaps the greater danger lies in not

finishing what is started, in carrying unanswerable questions all the days of our lives.

And I think, finally, that I will put my trust in my daughter ahead of my own fear. I will put my trust in her strong heart.”

“
But he is a Beast
,” Maman protested, though I think even she knew that she had lost the argument.

“And Dominic was once a thief,” April spoke up. “Not everyone ends the same as

they begin, Maman. Papa is right. Belle’s heart is strong. Give it the chance to find its own way. Let her go.”

“Oh, very well, since I see I am outnumbered,” my mother said waspishly, but I

saw the sheen of tears on her eyes.

“Thank you,” I said as I went to kiss her. I turned to face the rest of my family.

“Thank you all.”

And so I set out to fin the heart of the Wood through no other enchantment than the strength of my will, with a power no greater than that which I carried in my heart.

I never would have made it, but for Corbeau. For it seemed to me that the Wood

did not welcome me back. I had injured one it claimed as its own. The path turned and twisted where once it had run straight. Unexpected branches kept sweeping across it, as if to knock me from the back of the horse. A cold, sharp wind blew straight into my face, although it was early summer.

But Corbeau never faltered. I laced my fingers through his mane, closed my eyes,

and held on tight. And so, throughout that long, cold night, I searched for the home of my beloved not with the eyes of the mind, but of the heart.

We came to the iron gates just at dawn.

The young woman still stood, one broken hand outstretched, but the right-hand

side, the one with the image of the young man, had completely tumbled down. It lay in pieces on the ground. At the sight of it, a terrible fear seized my heart.

“Fly,” I urged the horse. “Fly, Corbeau. Take me to him. Don’t let me be too

late.”

Through the ruined gates and along the avenue, we flew, clattering up the hill and into the courtyard.

“I’m here. I’ve come back. Where are you?” I shouted. And it seemed my heart

would break that I had never asked him for his name. I, who had been so very concerned about my own. But I would not call out for him, naming him a Beast.

I found him in the study.

He was sitting in a wingback chair, drawn up before the fireplace, the same one in which my father had fallen asleep, one upon a time. His long legs were stretched out before him. His head was thrown back. His eyes were closed. For one horrible, endless second, it seemed he did not breather. Then I saw that he had the branch of the

Heartwood clasped to his chest. In horror, I sat that the petals had begun to turn a color not a single one had ever been before: brown.

Oh, my love
, I thought.
I came so close, so very close to losing you. To not seeing
us both in time.

I knelt down beside him, placed my hand on top of his hand where it clasped the

Heartwood. The other I placed against his face, the one I’d tried so hard not so see for so long.

“I want you to look at me,” I said, willing it with all my might, with all my heart.

“Open your eyes, and look into mine. I know you can hear me. I know you can do this.”

“Please,” I said. “Don’t leave e, now that I’ve found you at last. Don’t leave me to love alone.”

I saw his eyelids flutter then. The power of the Heartwood sang up my arm. I felt his chest rise, as he pulled a single breath.

He opened his eyes, and looked straight into mine.

“One,” I said, and watched his eyes widen.

“Two.” His other hand came up, and covered mine.

“Three.” The petals of the Heartwood flushed, as if they were a young girl

blushing.

“Four.” And now I could hardly see, for the tears that filled my eyes.

“Five.”

There was a sound like a clap of thunder, the wings of wild birds, a single voice singing its favorite song on a clear, bright morning. The great stone house seemed to shake on its foundation. My gaze never faltered. I kept it steady on his, and realized that, at long last, I was seeing myself truly, reflected back through the eyes of true love.

I looked at him and saw a handsome young man with eyes of green and hair the

color of copper.

“Tell me your name, if you please,” I said. And, for the very first time, I saw him smile.

“Gaspard.”

He sat up, then drew me into his lap, and pressed his lips to mine. I felt my heart beat, five deep strokes, and I knew that it was given to him for all time. Then Gaspard drew back and gazed into my face once more.

“I can see you eyes,” he said, and his voice sounded just the same as it always

has, heart and mind combined. And in it I heard more joy than I had ever believed possible.

“Your eyes are brown, Annabelle.”

“Indeed they are,” I said, as my heart began the melody it would sing until the day it ceased to beat.

“Any my name is Belle.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Our story has a happy ending, but then you’ve probably known that all along.

I gave Gaspard the Heartwood as a wedding present, for it finally revealed the

secret it had guarded for so long. The face of true love, which is, of course, not one face at all but two, for true love cannot happen on its own. This was what I’d been missing, the piece of the puzzle you’d think would jump right out, but is, instead, the last one you find.

True love always takes two, for it is about another more than you yourself.

The two of us were married not long after April and Dominic. Like them, we

clasped hands and said our vows standing beside the vegetable garden. There wasn’t time to make me a dress as fine as April’s. But Maman gave me her favorite silk shawl. April wove a wreath of roses for my hair. Celeste baked a cake so tall it almost failed to come out of the oven door. I walked toward my true love with my father on one side of me and Grand-père Alphonse on the other. And so, surrounded by all I loved, we spoke our vows.

Afterward, Gaspard and Dominic carried out the kitchen trestle table out of doors, and, beside the stream that ran behind the house, we ate the wedding feast. Celeste had prepared. And it was here that Gaspard presented to me the only wedding gift that I had asked for: his story.

“I’d like to be able to tell you that I was once someone important,” he began. “A king or a prince, perhaps. But I was not, though my family was a noble one. We lived in the town by the sea, the same town you came from sir,” he said, turning to my father.

When I had first brought Gaspard home, he had immediately gone down on one

knee before my father. There he’d asked both his forgiveness for the way he’d behaved in the Wood, and Papa’s permission to marry his daughter. My father had given both.

“All my life, I had heard tales of the Wood,” Gaspard went on. “Tales of its

enchantment, tales of its power, which was said to be that of life itself. It was for these reasons that we did no hunting there, in spite of the game that was abundant. It was said that your eyes could deceive you within the boundaries of the Wood, for those whose own hearts were true could see what lived there in their own forms.

“And if you did not see truly yet took what the Wood did not wish to give, then its power would exact a terrible price.”

“No one hunts there even today,” my father said. “Though the reason you give has

been lost over the years.”

“How long were you in the Wood?” Dominic asked quietly.

“I’m not certain,” Gaspard replied. “A very long time, I think. So long a time I

knew no way to count it.”

“But why?” I asked.

He gave my hand a squeeze. “As punishment. For, in the arrogance of youth, I

decided that the rules need not apply to me. This, in spite of the fact that my heart was far from true, for obviously it was filled with my own desires alone. One day, I shot and killed a doe. I did not know – I did not see – that she had a fawn. The grief of the child for its mother was piteous to see. Even I came to regret what I had done.

“This was the only thing that saved me, in the end, I think. The reason the power of the Wood let me live instead of simply claiming my life as payment for the doe’s. She rose up before me, and as she did, her from changed, and she became the loveliest young woman I had ever beheld. She gathered the fawn up into her arms.

“‘See the grief your thoughtless act has caused?’ she asked, the tears hot upon her cheeks. ‘Since you behave no better than a beast, you may wear the form of one. Since you refuse to use your heart to see, your eyesight will be clouded. That which pains you will be easy to see. That which you desire most will be hidden from you.

“‘And this is how you will remain until the day that one true heart, with eyes to match, finds the way to free you from this curse you now bring upon yourself.’”

“That’s why you wanted to know what the Heartwood held,” I said. “For no eyes

see more truly than those of true love.”

“As you have demonstrated,” he said with a smile.

“As we
both
have demonstrated,” I replied.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Celeste exclaimed. “Between the two of you and April

and Dominic, all this lovey-dovey carrying on is enough to turn my stomach.”

By which you can see that not everything about us had changed. Celeste still had

her sharp mind and equally sharp tongue. Today, however, she also had a twinkle in her eyes.

I laughed. “You only say that because you’re the oldest,” I replied. “You were

supposed to get married first.”

Celeste shook her head with a smile. “I am finished with the way things are

supposed to be,” she said. “And so, I think, we all are. No matter what the rest of you decide to do, I’m staying here. I like the country.”

“But you can’t stay on your own,” I protested. Papa and Maman had already

announced their intention to return to the city, at least for a while.

“She won’t be alone,” April said. “I’ll stay with her, at least until Dominic comes back from sea.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Celeste said. “Without you, I’d have to do the

dishes myself.”

“But what about when he comes back?” I asked.

Celeste reached across the table to take my hand. “Don’t worry about me,
ma

petite Belle
. You and April found your way, and I am happy for you both. Now you must let me find mine. But you and Gaspard – what will you do?”

“We will go back to the great stone house in the Wood,” I replied. “There is a

story there – more than one, I think – which I would like to understand before we settle anywhere else. And there is the Heartwood, too.”

“Come to us at Christmas, all of you,” Gaspard proposed. “And we will make the

house that was so long a place of loneliness one of joy.”

And so, after many days together and of making preparations, those of us who

would make the journey through the Wood were ready to go. April stayed behind with Celeste. Papa, Maman, along with Grand-père Alphonse, Gaspard, and I set out. The path through the Wood ran as straight as ever, sane for the narrow, winding path that curved into its very heart. There was no way to miss it now.