Til we shout “All is done!”
And we can get back to our lives,
But for now, let’s make a plan,
Cause to not try would be the worst.
Break this curse,
Break this curse,
Break This Curse!”
Their grand finale shook the table and then the silence that fell was deafening as every object struck their last pose and stared at him and Belle expectantly. Their voices still rang in his e
ars as he tried desperately to think of something to say back to them after their interesting performance.
“Oh, what have I done?”
He turned to look at Belle as she spoke, grateful to have a reason to look away from all the brightly colored, hopeful little faces staring at them from every direction.
“Knowing we altered your curse has given them hope, but we have no idea how we did it. Or any clue on where to start altering theirs.”
He saw the ache in her eyes as she looked away from all of her friends to face him instead. She wanted nothing more than to be able to release them from their curse, he could see that plain as day. He knew that she’d even take their curse upon herself if it meant that they’d be freed, and the unselfishness of that, of everything she was, just made him love her even more.
They had to find a way. They just had to.
He meant what he told her before. If he really was stuck here forever under this current curse with her, it was a small price to pay to be able to live out his life beside the woman he loved.
And even if finding a way to free all of the others meant taking on their curse somehow as well, Gastard was willing to do it. For Belle. With Belle.
“So, what do you know, then?” Eva asked, settling in beside them for a brainstorming session.
“Yes, tell us everything,” Mrs. Pulse nodded.
They all gathered round as he and Belle filled them in on everything from the moment she’d taken Eva’s advice the night before and headed off to see if she could leave the manor grounds and find him.
They all interrupted the story, at one point or another, to ask a clarifying question or to throw out an odd thought or theory.
“Gastard, you couldn’t get through the barrier around the manor until you passed through it with Belle, correct?” Mrs. Pulse asked.
When he confirmed, she asked him, “Can you pass through it freely now? Now that you’re like Belle? Or do you still need her to do so? And either way, once you’re back on the other side again, if you can even get there, are you still like her? Or do you get your own curse back again, instead?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t tried,” he said. “But knowing the answers to those questions would definitely give us a place to start. Belle, care to go for a walk with me toward town?”
“It would be a pleasure,” she said, grinning at him like he’d asked her out for a date around town instead of to shift into a beast and experiment with the boundaries and new rules of his new curse.
“Let’s go now,” she added. “I don’t need to wait for darkness this time. I’d rather have answers than cover of night.”
They walked out the front door together moments later. They took their shifting in stride this time and hurried to the land’s border. Gastard tried first, alone, to see if the curse would let him pass.
It did.
He walked right over the boundary like Belle could, not feeling anything that even tried to stop him. Once he was a few yards out and most definitely past any barrier, Belle followed him. He stayed a beast, just like her, as they headed toward town.
They stopped at the edge of town though, and looked to each other to decide together how far they needed to go to be sure. He felt no real need to see if the other aspect of his old curse was still there. Since he obviously couldn’t shift human on this side of the manor’s land, testing that would mean having sex with Belle out here, in their beast forms.
While the idea did appeal to him, it was more as a fun excursion to try later, when there wasn’t a manor full of nervous objects waiting on them to find out how this piece of the puzzle had gone.