clothes brushed against the gluey surface of the webbing and it grabbed her like it was alive.
Belle kicked and screamed and forced herself out, entirely giving in to panic. Her dress tore with a sound that seemed to rip the world. By the time she got up and brushed herself off, the webs were already re-covering the gap, thicker, behind her. Almost as if they sensed the breach and strove to fix it.
Belle shuddered.
Phillipe, bless his horse heart, was still there. And more than ready to run himself, ears cocked and eyes rolling, at the strangeness of what was happening.
Belle grabbed his reins and leapt on his back. He didn’t need to be told twice.
In a turn and gallop that would have made his warhorse ancestors proud, Phillipe dashed into the woods. His long legs pushed hard against the ground, hooves smashing into dust everything that wound up beneath them. They were going to make it and she was going to ride triumphantly through the snow back home.
Then he stopped, rearing up. Belle was almost flung from his back—and that’s when she saw them.
Wolves.
There were, of course, still wolves left around the village where she lived. Once in a very great while, driven by hunger, they would come down out of the hills and mountains and forests to grab a sheep if a shepherd wasn’t watching properly. But unless it was sick or desperate, none would appear in broad daylight to a human on a horse—a human whom it knew probably carried a gun. Wolves were bad guys only in fairy tales and legends to scare young children at night.
These, however, didn’t look like the gray wolves she and her father had once seen trotting in the distance.
They were huge. And white. With red eyes that seemed to glow.
Seemed?
She had just fled an enchanted castle with talking furniture and a beast prince ruling them all…whom her mother had cursed.
These were not normal wolves. They were magic, too. They were trying to stop her from leaving the castle.
Belle grabbed the reins and pulled hard, spinning Phillipe the other way.
The wolves howled and bayed like nightmare creatures as they took off in pursuit.
Belle could barely hold on, much less direct Phillipe. She let him go wherever he needed to for escape and didn’t try to stop him from running over a snowy pond like it was nothing more than a field. The ice broke beneath them, with thundering waves of noise that rippled out to the banks on the far side, echoing what was occurring back at the castle.
Unheeding the danger, the wolves followed.
One of Phillipe’s hooves struck a weak spot. A moment later the horse was floundering in the freezing water, churning his front legs desperately and trying to get back up.
But several of the wolves were also caught in the shifting sheets of ice; they had lost at least two of their followers to the blackness below.
Phillipe managed to clamber to the edge of the pond and pull himself out onto solid ground. Belle gritted her teeth as the icy water sloshed in her shoes. She couldn’t feel her lower legs.
The horse threw himself forward, galloping into the forest again. Belle hunkered down, trying to avoid being knocked off by low branches or clotheslined by vines.
They burst into a clearing—and saw three more wolves already waiting for them there.
Surrounded on all sides, Phillipe began to panic in earnest, eyes rolling and making terrible shrieking noises, his eyes rolling. He bucked wildly, slashing his hooves at the enemy. Forgetting about his rider.
Belle flew off his back.
The wolves came closer and closer and snapped at his feet and legs.
Belle shook her head, which was ringing from her hard landing. Otherwise nothing seemed to be too badly damaged. She dragged herself to her wobbly feet and looked round for anything that could be used as a weapon. A large forked branch lay on the ground nearby. She grabbed it and stood with her back to the panicking horse, trying to fight off the wolves that were closing in.
“Stay back!” she ordered. “I am the daughter of an enchantress!”
The wolves didn’t think much of her declaration.
One wolf leapt at her and grabbed the branch in its teeth, pulling it out of her grip. At the same time another hurled itself into her chest, knocking her down.
Belle rolled away, trying to keep out from under Phillipe’s deadly hooves.
Another wolf stood over her, its slavering mouth inches from her face, its yellow teeth glinting like poison