#beauty...

“Aren’t you going to read it?” Grace asked quietly, sounding almost as fearful as she was suddenly. She took a deep breath, and then hooked her thumbnail beneath the seal, preparing to break it. Then she froze. A single word in tiny letters was printed beneath the seal, and she lifted it closer to her face to peer at it.

Believe.

She frowned as she read it, and a slight shiver went through her, like a warning, or some kind of expectation.

“Belle?” Grace questioned.

She shook her head. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said and tugged at the seal until it broke from the paper and she could unfold the letter, swallowing hard as she did.

The message was short, and to the point. It read, “Miss French, I shall call for you at 2pm, and you must trust me, and come at once.” And it was signed with the same, strange cursive as on the envelope with a single name. Jefferson.

Without knowing why, Belle felt her eyes fill with tears, and she fought not to let them escape. There was no real reason to suspect that Jefferson’s words meant anything untoward. She slid the letter over to Grace.

The girl read silently, then said to herself, “He went through with it,” in a tone that was part question and a good deal of worried surprise.

“Went through with what?” She questioned beginning to chew her lip in worry at what might have happened. Mister Gold had said that his journey was for business. What kind of business could he possibly have had that would warrant such a comment? 

Grace shook her head, though she reached to cover Belle’s hand with her own. “It’s not my place to tell,” she said. “Wait until my papa gets here. If he doesn’t explain, then he can show you.”

The greeting was not tearful. Belle would not allow it to be despite being worked almost to a frenzy by the appointed hour. Grace, too, shifted foot to foot as the Grandfather Clock in the main entrance hall of the house chimed the hour. Belle looked toward the door which for a moment seemed to shimmer as if it lay beyond some great blaze that she could not see, and then from nowhere, a man appeared as though he had simply come fully formed into existence even as she blinked.

He was tall and slender, neatly dressed for all his clothing was of mismatched colors, set off by the patterned, purple cravat tied around his neck with the ends disappearing beneath the v of his button festooned, soft leather vest. Most curious of all - more curious even than the high collar on his long coat - was the hat he carried in his hand. A tall, top hat, a little scuffed in places, but carried as though it were either the most precious, or the most dangerous, thing in the world. He stepped forward, and behind him came another man, though not Gold. This man had the look of a tenant farmer, tidy, but clearly a man accustomed to work.

Jefferson opened his mouth to speak, instead let out a soft ‘oof’ as Grace knocked the breath from him. She ran to him and threw herself against him with a cry of, “Papa!” Then Jefferson wrapped her in his arms, and lifted her feet from the ground to hold her close, as though she were a small child and not a young lady approaching adulthood. “I’ve missed you,” she said.

“And I you, my Grace,” Jefferson said softly, then setting her down added, “But there will be time enough for this later. Now we must bring Adelram’s lady to her lord.”

“I can come too?” Grace said with great excitement.

“Indeed,” Jefferson said, and waving his free hand at the farmer, continued, “I anticipated you would; nay, you must.”

“For the same amount of people that go through have to come back,” Grace recited.

“No more, no less,” Jefferson finished, and then looking up at Belle told her, “The hat’s rules, not mine.”

Belle shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she said.

Releasing Grace, Jefferson stepped closer to her, holding out his hat in her direction. It seemed to her to be an ordinary hat, and she looked up at Jefferson and said with exaggerated patience, “It’s a hat.”

“A magic hat,” he said. “A hat that opens portals to other worlds, other places.” Belle frowned, but did not scoff or deride Jefferson for his words. He spoke with such conviction that she found herself unable to do other than believe. “When I left from here, through the hat, it was with Mister Gold. Hence…” he gestured toward the farmer who was standing now, looking awkward, cap in hand, “…who incidentally should probably be fed and given lodgings until I can return him to his home.”

“Of… of course,” Belle stammered, and nodded to the silent, ever present Dove, who led the man out of the hallway.

“Now, since we must go, and bring back Mister Gold,” he pointed in turn at each of them. “We must be three.”

The mention of bringing back her fiance rekindle Belle’s worries.

“Did something… happen?” she asked hesitantly.

Jefferson’s face became somber. “A great deal, dear lady, and you must not be alarmed at the changes you will see.”

“What is it?” she snapped. “Is he injured… ill?”

Jefferson held up his hand. “Easier to show you, Lady Belle,” he said.

Swallowing hard, she nodded, and watched as Jefferson stepped back, set his hat upon the floor, and with the flick of a wrist, set the garment spinning.

A spot of darkness appeared then, as if it had climbed out of the depths of the hat, and after a moment expanded as it became surrounded by a purple maelstrom, which looked as though it should have been accompanied by a great wind. Instead, it brought silence, as though it had sucked into itself all the sound in the world to leave nothing in the space left behind.

Jefferson held out his hand to Grace, who took it without hesitation, then offered his arm to Belle. She glanced first at Grace, who nodded, filling Belle with the courage to slip her hand into the crook of Jefferson’s arm. With no further warning then, he jumped into the dark spot in the heart of the swirling mist, pulling Belle and Grace along with him.

Belle expected a feeling of falling, instead as though in a long, slow blink, the darkness swallowed her one moment, and in the next, before her stood a large, empty room encircled with doors, each bearing a different motif. Beside her, Jefferson once more had the hat in his hand.

“Wh— what… where are we?” Belle asked, feeling quite faint as she tried to comprehend all that was happening to her and around her.

“The Hall of Doors,” Jefferson told her, then added sharply, “Grace, come away!”

The girl jumped, and snatched her hand back from the door that she was reaching for, it’s mirrored surface shimmering, as though calling to be touched.

“Where does it lead, Papa?” Grace asked, contrite as she came to take Belle’s hand.

“Nowhere we ever want to go,” he answered, leading them toward a door on which the leafy motif of a tree stood out in stark relief against the dark oak of the wood. He reached out to pull open the door and Belle gasped. Beyond the threshold she saw a rolling countryside, with a rich forest on the other side of the fields. “This way,” he told them, and stepped through. Grace tugged on Belle’s hand, pulling her through, until Belle could feel the breeze on her cheeks, and hear the soft susurration of the leaves rustling in the trees.

She turned around, expecting to see through the doorway back into the Hall of Doors, and uttered a cry of surprise as she saw only more countryside, and more forest.

“Where are we, now?” she asked.

“This is the Enchanted Forest,” Grace answered. “It’s where I was born.”

Jefferson was already striding ahead, his long legs taking him further from Belle and Grace, who encouraged her to hurry to catch up.

“Where are we going?” Belle called to him.

“Into the woods,” Jefferson called back, without slowing his pace.

Breathless by the time they reach the cottage that was just within the shadow of the trees, Belle reached out and caught hold of Jefferson’s coat, bringing him to a spinning halt and then fixing him with a stare she hadn’t used in many a month. She folded her arms across her chest.

“I’m not taking another step until you tell me what’s going on,” she said.

Jefferson took in a deep breath, that seemed to fill his entire frame and then held it, his face beginning to redden with the effort until he let it out in an explosive breath as he answered, “Very well, but… come inside. We shouldn’t talk about it out here.” He leaned toward her then, and added in a voiced whisper, “You never know who’s listening.”

He nodded then to Grace, who led the way into the little cottage. It was more spacious than Belle anticipated, and in one corner of the main room, across from the fireplace was a loom, and from the beams hung hanks of yarn of many natural colors as though they were drying.

“Welcome to my humble home,” Jefferson said with a low bow as he followed them in, and then set his hat upon the nearby table.

“I… you… live here?” Belle asked softly.

Jefferson shook his head, even as Grace began to move around the cottage, gathering the things she would need to make tea, after lighting a fire in the hearth.

“We’re hardly ever here,” he said, gesturing to Grace and himself. “Not since Rump— since Mister Gold began his… journey.”

“Journey?” Belle said. “But he’s lived at Adelram Hall for as long as I can remember, I—”

“Yes, yes,” Jefferson said, as if trying to curb impatience. “That he has, but you see, before that…”

“Before that I wasn’t even born,” she argued, “and my mother before me said—”

“—that Mister Gold has been the Lord of Adelram and its surrounds for as long as she could remember. Since she were a little girl?”

“Yes.”

Jefferson just nodded, and then picked up a scroll from the table, which he handed to Belle.  She hesitated a moment, before she began to unroll the parchment. Faster than she could have anticipated, Jefferson reached out and placed his hand over it and warned her softly, “Be very sure you wish to know, my dear lady, everything that you do not yet comprehend about your husband to be.”  Belle fixed him again with the terrible stare, and with a gesture of submission, Jefferson stepped back, hands raised, and gave her a nod. “Then read, dear lady,” he said, and went to help Grace with the tea.

Belle watched the two of them for a moment, before she returned her attention to the scroll in her hand, and began to read. It was a heartbreaking, and yet terrifying accounting of spells and dark magic - all of the things of rumor about her fiance from her own world, writ large upon the page - unbelievable and fantastical creatures, faithless pirates and evil queens, and a curse… darkness bestowed by a mystical dagger and all in service to finding—

“A son…?” she questioned, looking up to find Jefferson and Grace long since engaged in cooking a meal, and lamps lit around the cottage. Jefferson wiped his hands and came over to her, to take the scroll from her hands. He nodded wordlessly. “He never said.”

“He wouldn’t,” he said, urging her to sit, and lowering himself to straddle another chair, turned backwards, and to lean on the chair back as he spoke. “After so long, and all the things he’s done as the Dark One…”

“Dark One?” Belle echoed.

“Last in a long line of Dark One’s before him,” Jefferson answered, his eyes unfocused into memory. “He took the curse, not out of avarice or greed, as those before him had, but out of love. The love of his son - the desire to save him, save all the children from fighting in a terrible war against fearsome and merciless creatures… but it was from men that he was saving them.”  He sighed. “There’s… a prophesy,” he said, refocusing again, his eyes meeting Belle’s, “that tells of one that will use the power of the Dark One for good.”

“You think that’s Mister Gold?” Belle as much stated as asked, barely giving a thought to her acceptance of this tall tale that her fiance could be some kind of dark sorcerer from this ‘fairytale’ world.

“He was the one that gave me The Hat,” Jefferson said in answer. “I should hate him for it.”

Belle watched the intensity of loss flash across Jefferson’s eyes, to be replaced by the quiet seriousness of a no less intense emotion that she recognized well… because she felt it too.

“You love him,” she accused softly.

“Yes,” he said simply.

Silence lingered for a time between them, before Belle raised the scroll between them once more. “So… what is all this? Why bring me here? Why couldn’t you just… bring Mister Gold back to Adelram.”

Another silence, and then almost a whisper, Jefferson answered, “Because he… doesn’t remember.”

“Tell me,” Belle insisted, “everything.”

In answer, Jefferson gave her only three words. “The Blue Fairy.”

Day had barely begun when Jefferson, leaving Grace sleeping in her own bed after so long, led Belle out of the cottage and along the track between trees leading deeper into the forest.

Her head swiveled back and forth, peering into shadows cast in green and gold as rising sunlight reflected off the leaves. The woods around them were alive with the song of awakening wildlife, but hushed, as if in some kind of awe - as if they were listening, and it made her listen too.

It was faint at first, almost so faint that she missed it. It carried on the wind… an impish giggle here… a cascade of words there… a grumble and a growl before more laughter.

“Is that…?” Belle whispered, almost too afraid to ask.

“Lost to madness, I fear.” Jefferson’s morose tones pulled a knot of anguish tight in her gut, and Belle stopped to lean against the nearest tree - listening.

“…careful not to lose the way…” snatches of babbling words reached her as she waited. It did little to curb her growing fear. “…to get the thing…” a peel of laughter. “…to make the potion…” a grumble, “…to get, to bring…” a growl, “…and home before—”

The nonsense stopped abruptly, followed by a loud sniffing, and then…

“Come out, come out, wherever you are…” the singsong voice challenged. “Or maybe I should just…”

Before she knew what had happened, Belle found herself surrounded by a chill, purple mist. One minute leaning against the tree, the next… 

It was a small clearing in the wood in which she found herself, beside a fallen tree that had partially rotted and was covered in fungi of many different kinds. The ground was littered with last autumn’s leaf fall, and twigs and other debris of the winter past covered the ground. In the center of the clearing, was an area that looked burned, scorched and black with coals, but the rising sun, shining through the prism of dew caught in the budding leaves above, cast rainbows over the coals as if pointing to the fearsome dagger buried at least half way along its fluted blade in the middle of it all.

On the other side of it crouched, goblin-like on the stump of the fallen log, a creature with green-gold scales over what she could see of his exposed skin, beneath a mop of wavy hair. It… he was dressed in leather britches, with a brown, scaled waistcoat over a black shirt, the sleeves of which billowed outward as he moved his arms as if waving them over the top of the dagger in some kind of arcane incantation. His head jerked up, lizard-like and Belle found herself captivated by amber eyes that bore into her, as his head swayed side to side, as if in an attempt to capture something… elusive… recognized.

“If you’re trying to frighten me,” Belle said, pulling in the fear she felt and trying to turn it into anger, “You’re wasting your time.”

She gasped softly then and took a half step backwards as he hopped as quick as the sound of a bell, off the log to stand before her, his arms half raised in a gesture of… what she couldn’t tell. However she reacted before she could catch herself, reached out and slapped the back of his uppermost hand as if to punish an errant child.

“You stop that, right now!”

She saw him then, clearly, as if for the first time, recognizing, through the hair and the scales and the color of his eyes and his skin, the image of her fiance.

“Mister Gold?”

He took a breath, held it, and then it sighed out before he announced, “Well that was a bit of a let down!”

“That I wasn’t afraid?” she lied. “I’ve never been afraid of you. You know that.”

Jefferson had told her that the only chance was for her to reach through the madness into the mind of the man she knew, to draw him back from the precipice on which he teetered after falling foul of the wards placed on what remained of the portal the Blue Fairy’s bean had opened; the one that took Mister Gold’s son from him.

“Know…? Know…? No,” he answered, but then… “but maybe… no… it’s gone.”

“Belle,” she reminded him. “Your fiancee, remember?” she leaned down a little to peer into his strangely alluring eyes for he had lowered his head. “You made my father promise you my hand because he stole one of your roses…?”

“But,” he answered, insisting, “I’m not looking for lurve…”

“Then what do you want?” she interrupted, adding, “You seemed to be… all the times we danced together. The way you held me. The way your breath…” her throat tightened as she remembered the sensations that had woken in her when his breath ghosted over the side of her face as they turned and turned in the dance and he held her close.

“I’m looking for a caretaker,” he went on as she faltered, “for my rather large… estate.”

“Adelram Hall, yes,” she agreed.

He stepped closer then, a frown upon his face, and began to circle her, and she could almost feel his eyes on her, moving up and down, taking her in, devouring her with his gaze.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Something, I—”

Then recognition was gone again, and he giggled, trilled, the whole of his upper body wriggling in delight as he rubbed his hands together. “Something special,” he crooned. “You…”

He trailed off as she turned her gaze from him, and back to the blade in the middle of the coals. It was as though it had called to her. Words whispered in her mind, an impulse, a command. Free me.

She stepped forward, instinct warning her that she shouldn’t touch the coals in any way, even though she knew they were long since cold. She leaned down to look properly at the blade, and the carvings upon it, the word she could half read, “…tiltskin,” she whispered.

The imp-that-was-her-intended giggled then, and sang, “The queen will never win the game, for R—”

“Rumplestiltskin,” Belle breathed as she closed her hand around the hilt of the dagger and pulled.

She felt the pulse of energy go through her, as the blue light from the rainbow cast by the rising sun exploded through the clearing. Belle felt herself begin to tumble forward, toward the coals, fear gripping her suddenly as she knew she could no longer avoid the inevitable.

Then, just as she would have touched the cursed place, she felt the strength of an arm around her waist, then another at her shoulders as she was eased upright again, and the words caressed the side of her face in a breath, “Rumplestiltskin is my name.”

“No!” a discordant cry from above the fallen log broke the moment. “What have you done!”

Rumplestiltskin, for now Belle knew the name by which she should call him, released her gently from his embrace, but eased her also behind him.

“Failed,” he said, his voice steady, recognizable to her now. “Failed, failed. You failed.”

The Blue Fairy settled on the ground, in full sized, human form, and addressed, not Rumplestiltskin, but Belle who - unafraid, moved to stand beside the man to whom she was promised.

“Foolish girl!” she snapped. “Do you know what you have done? How many will now suffer at your hand?”

“You don’t know that,” Belle accused, “And from what I understand, equally as many have already suffered by your hand. You send his son from him,” Belle pointed to the coals upon the ground, “tried to cage him in madness by pinning him with this,” she raised the dagger between them, and the fairy shrank back, “into the very place of his torment?”

“Give me the dagger, Belle,” Rumplestiltskin said softly.

“You can’t do that,” Blue warned, “He will enslave you with it,”

“No,” Belle countered, remembering all she had read, and all that Jefferson had told her. “He is a slave to the dagger in anyone else’s hands. It belongs to him, and I mean to return it to him, and to keep the promise that I made.”

“I forbid it!” The Blue Fairy took a step forward then, until Belle brandished the dagger again, this time as one would ordinarily hold a knife for fighting. The fairy froze.

“No one decides me fate but me,” Belle informed her calmly, then turned, and taking the dagger by the blade, offered the hilt to Rumplestiltskin.

“It’s forever, dearie,” he warned, though with such softness as she had ever heard from him since she had met him as Mister Gold in her own world.

“My father, the people, back home… they will all be safe? Cared for?” she asked him.

“You have my word,” Rumplestiltskin said.

“Then you have mine,” Belle told him. “However this,” she gestured with her free hand around them, “plays out, whatever must be done. I will help you find your boy.” 

Rumplestiltskin reached out, and closed his hand around the hilt of the offered blade. As he took it into his possession, the clearing, the fairy, everything dissolved around them in a haze of purple mist, which cleared slowly and she found herself standing in the great hall of a castle. The room, however grand, was simply furnished, with a table, two chairs beside a roaring fireplace, and a great spinning wheel, set upon a nearby dais.

As she wondered at this, she caught sight of herself, her reflection in the glass of a cabinet that stood against the wall, to find herself dressed in the most beautiful of golden gowns. She blinked, and turned to face Rumplestiltskin, to find him smiling at her, similarly dressed in great finery, a blue and silver brocade tunic and britches.

“Care to dance, my dear?” he asked.

“But… we have no music,” she answered in wry amusement, but remembering the time before - the first time they had danced - moved toward him anyway, and closer yet as his arm slid around her, and he took her hand in his.

“Maestro,” he whispered, and from out of the very air itself, came the strains of Chopin, as if he had read her mind, her memory.

Where their hands met she felt as if a tingling passed between them, still softly, but stronger than before, and it rekindled the feeling that fizzled in her lungs, a tenderness and excitement that she would never have expected to feel from so strange a being as was this man - the Dark One, that would be her husband.

Their movements matched the gentle nature of the music, the light piano tones guiding their steps, and as before, she followed him with ease, and with delight. Then the music intensified, moving to a minor key with many crescendos. He tugged her closer, and she held fast to him. The gentle fizzle becoming an ache, a need to be subsumed by the music, by the one that held her, turned with her, pressed her close to move as one, his thighs parting hers to step, to move around the spaciousness of the great hall that still did not feel large enough to contain them, and she became lost in him.

And then…

As if a dream, the power and energy that had possessed her, possessed them both, faded as the music turned again, to fall over them as the gentle patter of rain, washing them both clean, bathing them, blessing them together, and they came slowly to a stop, she breathless, and he…

“I rather fear I forgot myself,” he said, barely above a whisper, repeating the words he had spoken to her once before, but which held so much more meaning now. “Forgive me.”