Another Beauty and the BEAST story

Chapter X

It starts with a soft knock on my door. Ever since that day in the snow, there has been some sort of sweet tension between me and Elsa, and I've been avoiding it for as long as possible. I'm not ready to face these feelings yet. I don't want to let them have their way, in fear of ruining everything. I'm afraid of finding out how deep they run, how much they're really affecting me. 

But I open the door nonetheless, and not to my surprise she stands there. She wears the same dress, the same braid and the same bare feet and iced fingertips. Her presence brings a swoop of cold air into my room, but I've never been more alive. 

"Can... Can... Won't you sit in the library?" She whispers to the floor, refusing to meet my eyes. I raise and eyebrow, intending to tease her, but change my mind. 

"Sure," Is all I say, and follow her as she hurries away down the hall. The library welcomes me with the familiar scent of books and the warmth of the fire. I pick one book from a nearby shelf and sit myself down in one of the arm chairs. And when I open the cover, my mind os overrun by emotions. I know this script, and the words of this story. It's my favorite book from home, the one I always used to read out on the porch, or wherever. I drag my shaking fingers over the well-known words, and a small piece of home returns to me. Suddenly the home-sickness threatens to make me cry. I wipe away the tears as the doors open and Elsa enters with a tray of tea and beautifully decorated cups. But when she sees me she stops in her tracks. 

"What's wrong?" She asks, and sets the tray down on a nearby table before slowly making her way towards me. 

"It's nothing... It's just... this book, it reminds me of home," I say and smile sadly. "This story is one of my favorites, and... it used to be the one thing distracting me from my chores." A weak laughter escapes me, and my voice threatens to break. 

Elsa looks at the book, studies it. Softly she takes it out of my trembling fingers and draw her own over the cover. Then she opens it and inhales the smell of it, before looking down on the letters written there. And I see some sort of sadness reflecting in her own eyes as she does so. And that is finally when I realize. Why she spends time with me in here, but never read herself. Why the books were covered in dust when she first showed me this part of the castle.

"You can't read," I exhale in a moment of realization. And when I picture it from her point of view, all the books surrounding us become enemies. Reminders, of what she could have had, but never got. Monsters, filled with in-recognizable patterns withheld from her. Only because she's different. 

She closes the book and gives it back to me. "I never learned," is all she says, breathing the answer I already know. My heart breaks for her, that she is not privileged enough to take part in the imaginary world that books take us. That even that, small and mundane pleasure, has been stolen from her. And as she turns to leave, to remain outside of humankind, I blurt out the first thought that pops into my head.

"I'll teach you!" I say, a little too excited. She stops, and turns towards me with that sadness in her facial expression. She knots her ands around each other, and opens her mouth to answer.

"It's fine, Jack. Really. I don't need to be able to read," she says sadly. And it's the way she says it that gives me the courage to continue. 

"No. Come on, Elsa. It's one of the small pleasures in life, and I can't live with knowing that someone even managed to stole that from you. Now, come here. See?" I say and walk up to her before she has a chance to flee from this. If anything, I owe her this much. What she's shown me, taught me, and made me feel is more than someone else ever will be able to teach. I have to give her something in return. 

So I point to the letters, spread out before her untrained eyes like a barrier, and show her what they mean. I invite her to join me. I read the paragraphs out loud to her, making her a part of my story-world that I fled to whenever possible. And I see her eyes lighten the way I know my own does when the story plays out like a movie inside her head, when she fights, laughs, cries and loves with the characters in the book. And that's how it starts all over again. 

So, a few weeks later, when she knocks on my door once again and asks me to have dinner with her, I say yes.