Twisted Fairy Tales - Beauty and the Beast

Chapter 14: A Look to the Sticking Place

Anglet, Aquitaine, France: Le village de la terre verte. March 10th, 1896.

Belle had finally managed to get her father through the rough patch and he was sleeping most of the day now without coughing, but a fever was still taking over his body and threatening the grave if she didn't keep watch. Taking a cold, damp towel to his forehead she began petting it back into his hairline, hoping that if his hair was damp it would help make her job a bit easier, not that there was much hair there to help anyway. The fire was going strong this evening unlike the last few where she struggled to keep it alight. Sitting on the floor next to the couch where her father lay she took up her post day and night, even sleeping in her mother's old armchair that nobody had sat in since she passed.

Belle's herbs were two thirds of the way depleted, but it should be more then enough for her to cure her father enough for him to travel, by her estimate they could leave this place in three days time, a little later then she was planning, but her father was also sicker then she had planned as well. While her father slept she packed up their most valuable items into satchels to attach to Philippe and hopefully some trunks if she could manage to fix the cart in time. She did not want to be away from the castle for to long, already missing all of her friends and Griffith dearly.

Her father started in again on his coughing and she helped him to sit up and drink a fourth of the glass of water she handed him before letting him lay down again. "How are you feeling Papa?"

"Better Belle, I should be fine soon, don't worry any more then you already have, my dear, I should be tending to you after your ordeal."

"Now Papa, I have already told you that it wasn't an ordeal, sure it might have been at first and it was hard to be away from you for so long, but Griffith and his staff have become so much more then a beast and his objects to me, they have become family and I love them just as I love you."

"That beast was awful and I'm sorry you had to go through that Belle, I should never have let you make that deal." As usual her father didn't hear her side of the story and she was left to just placate him until he fell asleep. When he was better she would try again and make him see reason.

A banging on the door startled them both. She could hear people slowly file into their yard yelling at them, calling out to the house saying an insane person lived there, which made her blood run cold. They had finally come for her father. She dreaded this day from coming as they had always called him a crackpot, but she never thought they would actually haul him away as he had never harmed anyone. Then she thought to his ramblings and realized that if he had been speaking about that she had been kidnapped by Griffith then it would make him seem even worse then they already thought of him. She was surprised that they hadn't carted him off sooner.

Running to the door and trying to hold it closed against the pounding she yelled out for the mob to go away. "We can't do that Belle, you should know by now that your father is a loony old man and if not we will prove it to you."

"Yeah he has been spreading stories of a beast who locked you away in his tower! Obviously that's not true." Lefou yelled out next. She tried to keep the door closed against the mob, but Gaston just pulled the old door off its hinges and threw it to the men behind him. Dragging her out onto the porch with him with one hand he forced her to leave her post as guard in the doorway. No one took advantage of this, but it left Maurice at their mercy just feet away from her.

"Look at every one here, Belle. They are all upset with your father as they have dealt with his craziness for years. Out of kindness to you, and the memory of your mother, they have done nothing, but now he has finally proved himself dangerous. They can't live with this anymore and you need to see that." Gaston yelled out more to the townsfolk then to her, even though she was the one his words were addressing. It was a show for him and everyone had come to see Gaston as the main event. Maurice came to the door, bundled in a blanket and was met with the jeers of his former peers and townsfolk. These were the same people who had once enjoyed his scientific tricks, but that was long ago and they had became afraid of what they didn't understand.