Twisted Fairy Tales - Beauty and the Beast

Chapter 8: Preparations and New Beginning

Aquitaine, France, La forêt de Coeur noir et vert de la Terre: Le Château de la bête.

February 8th, 1896

"You can do it Griffith. We have been practicing for a little more then two weeks now."

"Belle, I'm not sure if this is a good idea, I might mess up."

"Only if you believe you will, but I shall have enough belief for us both, now Mr. Poe is a wonderfully dark writer and poet and I think you will like his stories. How about you read this one?" she said pointing to one of her favorites. He reluctantly agreed and began to read to her, the first time without her help as they now sat in their respective armchairs in front of the fire in the library.

"During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was --but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me --upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain --upon the bleak walls --upon the vacant eye-like windows --upon a few rank sedges --and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees --with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium --the bitter lapse into everyday life --the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart --an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it --I paused to think --what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by the dwelling, and gazed down --but with a shudder even more thrilling than before --upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows."

"The Master is doin' a wonderful job at readin'. I am so proud." Mrs. Potts said from her spot on the balcony.

"The master shouldn't be wasting his time with such drivel." Cogsworth said, arms crossed and nose in the air, before Mrs. Potts smacked him on the back with her handle.

"Ah Cogs, have a heart, the master is trying to win the heart of his fair maiden." Lumiere piped in as he held onto Babbette.

"I vould be much fairer then she if vee were human again." Babbette started turning her feathers in a circle under her as if she were dancing, managing to make a perfect circle in the dust.

"Thats enough, Bab, were not human yet and theres still a chance not to be." Mrs. Potts hopped over to the two lovers and separated them, not happy with their display in front of Chip earlier in the week.

"Thats right, the Master needs to put down the books and sweep her off her feet. He needs to take her in his arms and tell her he loves her before proposing." Cogsworth said, the hands on his face getting tightly wound, before moving them back into proper position for a mustache. He always hated the mid morning and afternoon.