his monstrous form, the Beast concealed himself inside his castle, with a magic mirror as his only window to the outside world.
As the years passed he fell into despair and lost all hope—for who could ever learn to love a beast?
Belle stumbled in confusion. As clear as if it were occurring right there—behind her eyes—she saw the truth: the Prince who was the Beast, the spell, the rose, the Enchantress.
Her mother.
The rose was from her garden. That was why it had looked familiar.
Belle held the blossom before her face in wonder. Her mother had held it exactly ten years before, the same way.
But under her look and the light of the moon, the rose began to fall apart. The petals fell and shifted into glittering red sand that disappeared before it hit the ground. The stem dissolved inch by inch until there was nothing left.
And the Beast howled in despair.
The castle shook. There was a mighty clap, like the largest crack of lightning in the history of the world struck the tower. Strange loud noises erupted from everywhere at once; somehow familiar, they touched the very core of Belle’s soul. Something between a cracking and a crackling, but much, much bigger.
Ice.
It sounded like ice breaking across a pond, and brought with it the accompanying dread: as when a foot steps down and lines shoot out from under it into the white distance and death is in the frigid air.
Somehow Belle wouldn’t have been surprised if the whole palace began crumbling around her—but that wasn’t what was happening.
“MY ONE CHANCE!” the Beast cried. “MY ONE CHANCE AT ENDING THE CURSE. IT’S GONE. YOU’VE RUINED IT!”
She was only half paying attention to him; he was standing still and screaming and not accosting her. More immediate things were happening outside. She ran to the window.
Strange bone-white things were coming out of the ground just beyond the perimeter of the castle walls. Too angular and thick to be vines, too solid to be ice. At first Belle thought they were something like antlers or bones being forced out of the dirt by whatever forces were now at work. But they kept coming up, unending and sickly. They twisted and turned as they shot forth, whipping around and sticking to whatever solid object they touched. Once they came in contact with the wall, they slowed. But then they grew like frost on a window, crisscrossing each other and spreading unnaturally.
Spiderwebs.
Somehow Belle knew without even wondering.
Not the ones that hung in neat circles and octagons and whatever-other-gons in bushes and on flowers with a pretty little spider sitting in the middle. The other ones—the messy ones that covered the ground and grass like snow on dewy mornings, all random peaks and valleys and impossible to see where the spider hid. Three-dimensional. Complicated.
Her mother…had liked…roses…and natural things…Belle remembered this vaguely. Her mother the Enchantress.
It made sense that she had cursed the castle with webs.
Belle turned to look at the Beast.
His eyes were empty of everything except for animal-like anger. There was no spark of intelligence or humanity left in them. He stood on all fours and bellowed madly.
Belle was paralyzed for a moment. Then instinct kicked in and she ran, pushing past him and out the door.
Without wasting a moment to look behind her, she dashed down the steps, two and three at a time, and raced through the great halls.
She had to get out of there.
“Ma chérie! Where do you go? What is happening?” Lumière plonked awkwardly out of the shadows after her.
“What have you done?” shrieked Cogsworth.
“I’m sorry,” Belle sobbed. “I’m…”
She didn’t know why she was sorry. Maybe it was because she was leaving the cute little things back with that monster, to be sealed up with him, to face his wrath once she was gone. Here she was, on her first and only adventure, and somehow she had ruined everything immediately.
She flung open the front door and ran through the courtyard, past the fountain, to the gates. A single strand of webbing as thick as her wrist had grown over them, holding them mostly closed. She reluctantly reached out to touch it.
Sticky.
Just a little.
And cold.
Belle swallowed her revulsion and tried to pull it aside, but it didn’t give at all in the way she imagined a giant piece of spider silk should have. It was hard and unyielding. She pulled her hands away and scrambled underneath it instead, forcing her body through the small crack, pushing the metal bars apart with her legs. Her