Another Beauty and the BEAST story

Chapter VI

I find myself in a even more dusty part of the castle. There are shredded furniture scattered all over the room, and the temperature is low in this part of the castle for some reason. The tapestry is covered in a thin layer of frost, spiked out as if trying to impale someone. It is completely silent except for the regular sounds the floor gives away when I make myself through the labyrinth of piled, broken furniture. My excitement begins to dwindle as I walk past a shattered mirror hanging on the wall. My worried face is reflected in each of the broken shards still attached to the wall. 

I turn away from the mirror, and find myself faced with a big picture covered with a dark cloth. I slowly make my way to the picture, noticing that the frame also is covered in the spiked frost. I pull at the cloth, and it falls down, revealing the most human picture I have ever seen in my life. The painting envisions two humans, a woman and a man, staring at the painter with smiles spread across their faces. The woman is short, with her dark hair up in a complicated bride on her head. The man has his arm around her shoulder, and his light brown hair is cut short. In front of them stand two small children, both girls. The smaller one is smiling widely at the painter, her strawberry blonde hair braided into two braids hanging down her back. She has a single white strand of hair. And next to her, with a playful smile teasing in her face, stands a younger version of my captor. Her white hair is arranged in the same complicated knot as her mother, and she has one of her hands intertwined with her father's. 

The picture sucks the breath out of me, seeing this bare and human part of my captor. The happiness emerging from the painting makes me miss my mother and our little farm even more, and the pain makes my heart ache and my stomach knot. Feeling like an imposter for looking at the painting, I turn away and start walking away. At the end of the wing the wall is covered in the same victorian glass as the rest of the castle, opening up to an abandoned balcony, looking out on an overgrown garden. And on an old bedside table stands a bell jar with a snow-white rose in it. The rose's petals are covered in frost, and a few have fallen of and landed on the table's surface. 

The rose transfixes me, and I approach the rose with care. It gleams like snow in sunshine. I reach out and lifts of the jar, leaving the rose unprotected. Hypnotized, I reach out to touch it, but a sound from the balcony stops me in my tracks. A familiar figure makes it way into the wing, and her icy eyes land on me, with my hand out to touch the rose. Her sight turns cold as ice. 

I back away with my hand up in the air, scared. She jumps over to the rose, and put the jar on top, before turning her gaze to me.

"I warned you never to come here!" Else hisses. She approaches me as I continue backing away.

"Im sorry! I didn't mean any harm!" I gasp, covering my head as she starts to fling furniture out of the way.

"Do you realize what could've done? Get out! GET OUT!!" She screams, and I turn my back towards her and rush out of the room and down the staircase. On my way down I meet Lumiere and Pierre, finally noticing my absence. The see my sprint, and looks baffled. 

"Where are you going?" Lumiere yells at me as I pass them. 

"Promise or no promise, I can't stay her another minute!" I yell back at him, sprinting in despair towards the front door. Pushing the giant doors open and heading for the stables, the tears I've been fighting start making their way down my cheeks. The chilly night almost freezes them before they reach the end of my chin. 

Philippe is calmly eating from a big stock of hay when I burst through the stable doors. I don't care for his reins or saddle, but only flings myself onto his broad back and kicks his side so that he rushes out into the night in full galopp. I bury my head in his light mane, crying out all the despair locked into my body and trying to surpress the memory of rage I felt oozing out of Elsa found me with her hidden white rose. 

Philippe thunders through the dark, looming forest. He jumps over a fallen tree trunk, and I grab onto his mane just in time to prevent falling off. Without either my shoes or my coat, my body parts begin to shake with cold, and I fall down on Philippe's neck for his body warmth to keep me warm until I can find a safe village to spend the night. 

But suddenly Philippe skids to a halt, and I almost flow right over his head from the sudden stop. Startled, I look up and around us, observing the dark forest surrounding us. I don't know where we are, but I can hear a low growling nearby. And I understand why Philippe has stopped.

Wolves. 

And as the though finds it way into the top of my head, a pair of yellow, rage-filled eyes appear next to us. I don't need any more proof then that. I kick Philippes side once again, and he sprints forward through the night. The wolfs bark and begin to pursue us. 

"Come on, Philippe!" I yell, and evade a low-hanging branch heading for my head. I steer Philippe by pulling his long mane to the right and left, managing a zig-zag pattern between the trees, hopefully slowing some wolves down. But they continue to follow us, and my eyes fall on a river appearing to my right. I make an abrupt turn and forces Philippe over a fallen tree. He jumps with all his strength and gracefully flys over the tree trunk. We land in the river, the icy water not improving my already ice-cold body. The ground goes downward, and soon the water forces Philippe to swim. I slide down to the side of him, making him pull me and avoid sinking the both of us. I still have a firm grip on his mane, to make sure that the stream doesn't pull me away. 

Triumphantly some of the wolves are washed downstream, but the major part of the pack manage to follow us to the other side of the river. I pull myself back onto Philippe's back, and urge him to continue to galopp through the woods. He does so, but soon we find ourself in a clearing of the woods, surrounded by the wolves. They growl and show their sharp teeth at us, and I frantically look around to find an exit that we can escape through. There is none. 

One of the wolves, presumably the leader, lunges towards us, and Philippe rear so suddenly that I fall off and land on the cold, hard ground. Philippe backs into a tree trunk, getting his tail tangled up in the sharp low-hanging branches. I stand, and desperately try to untangle my horse from the trees, as the pack of wolves slowly near themselves to the two helpless and defenseless meals in front of them. 

And at the moment when I realize that all hope is gone, and that the both of us are going to get eaten in this clearing, one of the wolves lunge for us, and Elsa steps into the way. She raises one of her hands, not covered by gloves anymore, and a breath of ice and snow emerges from her palm and shoots the wolf out of the air. I am baffled, but the wolves take no time to be amazed by this supernatural happening. They attack her all at once, and she initiates a fight with them. The wolves claw and bite after her, but she dances out of the way most of the times and send new breaths of ice and snow their way. She creates sharp arrowheads made out of ice and hits many wolves with them, drawing blood.  But then the leader jumps for her and bites her in the shoulder, and she screams in pain and fall down to one knee. 

A single wolf makes it way to me and Philippe, not having forgotten us, and Elsa punch her hand into the ground, sending a spike of frost in every way possible, covering the ground around her like a cage. The wolves get frightened and burned by the cold ice, and flee whining in pain and fear.

I anxiously turn my gaze towards Elsa. Her braid is almost ruined, hair sticking out from it. Her simple dress is in shreds, and big parts of her bare skin is visible. Her bare feet are bleeding from running after me, and the bite on her shoulder is bleeding a big portion of blood, staining her dress and her skin. A gash across her chin makes itself visible as she turns to look at me despairingly, before sending me the slightest of a smiles, and collapsing on to the ground. 

Philippe's tail is untangled, and I turn to him and tries to get on once more before the wolves return. But my bad conscience takes over, as I imagine how she must've sprinted after me in order to save me, a simple small-time boy. I walk over to her, kneeing next to her collapsed, thin body. The blood from her wound is watering the soil around us, and her face is stuck in a painful grimace. I slowly draw my arms in under her and lift her up. She is disturbingly light, and her wound does not look too good. I whistle for Philippe, and he comes to me and lets me place Elsa's shredded body on his back. Her skin is even paler than before, probably from the loss of blood. 

If I don't hurry it'll be too late.