Once Upon A Time (6) Belle, page 15
part #6 of Once Upon A Time Series
“Your eyes are brown, Annabelle.”
“Indeed they are,” I said, as my heart began the melody it would sing until the day it ceased to beat.
“Any my name is Belle.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Our story has a happy ending, but then you’ve probably known that all along.
I gave Gaspard the Heartwood as a wedding present, for it finally revealed the secret it had guarded for so long. The face of true love, which is, of course, not one face at all but two, for true love cannot happen on its own. This was what I’d been missing, the piece of the puzzle you’d think would jump right out, but is, instead, the last one you find.
True love always takes two, for it is about another more than you yourself.
The two of us were married not long after April and Dominic. Like them, we clasped hands and said our vows standing beside the vegetable garden. There wasn’t time to make me a dress as fine as April’s. But Maman gave me her favorite silk shawl. April wove a wreath of roses for my hair. Celeste baked a cake so tall it almost failed to come out of the oven door. I walked toward my true love with my father on one side of me and Grand-père Alphonse on the other. And so, surrounded by all I loved, we spoke our vows.
Afterward, Gaspard and Dominic carried out the kitchen trestle table out of doors, and, beside the stream that ran behind the house, we ate the wedding feast. Celeste had prepared. And it was here that Gaspard presented to me the only wedding gift that I had asked for: his story.
“I’d like to be able to tell you that I was once someone important,” he began. “A king or a prince, perhaps. But I was not, though my family was a noble one. We lived in the town by the sea, the same town you came from sir,” he said, turning to my father.
When I had first brought Gaspard home, he had immediately gone down on one knee before my father. There he’d asked both his forgiveness for the way he’d behaved in the Wood, and Papa’s permission to marry his daughter. My father had given both.
“All my life, I had heard tales of the Wood,” Gaspard went on. “Tales of its enchantment, tales of its power, which was said to be that of life itself. It was for these reasons that we did no hunting there, in spite of the game that was abundant. It was said that your eyes could deceive you within the boundaries of the Wood, for those whose own hearts were true could see what lived there in their own forms.
“And if you did not see truly yet took what the Wood did not wish to give, then its power would exact a terrible price.”
“No one hunts there even today,” my father said. “Though the reason you give has been lost over the years.”
“How long were you in the Wood?” Dominic asked quietly.
“I’m not certain,” Gaspard replied. “A very long time, I think. So long a time I knew no way to count it.”
“But why?” I asked.
He gave my hand a squeeze. “As punishment. For, in the arrogance of youth, I decided that the rules need not apply to me. This, in spite of the fact that my heart was far from true, for obviously it was filled with my own desires alone. One day, I shot and killed a doe. I did not know – I did not see – that she had a fawn. The grief of the child for its mother was piteous to see. Even I came to regret what I had done.
“This was the only thing that saved me, in the end, I think. The reason the power of the Wood let me live instead of simply claiming my life as payment for the doe’s. She rose up before me, and as she did, her from changed, and she became the loveliest young woman I had ever beheld. She gathered the fawn up into her arms.
“‘See the grief your thoughtless act has caused?’ she asked, the tears hot upon her cheeks. ‘Since you behave no better than a beast, you may wear the form of one. Since you refuse to use your heart to see, your eyesight will be clouded. That which pains you will be easy to see. That which you desire most will be hidden from you.
“‘And this is how you will remain until the day that one true heart, with eyes to match, finds the way to free you from this curse you now bring upon yourself.’”
“That’s why you wanted to know what the Heartwood held,” I said. “For no eyes see more truly than those of true love.”
“As you have demonstrated,” he said with a smile.
“As we both have demonstrated,” I replied.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Celeste exclaimed. “Between the two of you and April and Dominic, all this lovey-dovey carrying on is enough to turn my stomach.” By which you can see that not everything about us had changed. Celeste still had her sharp mind and equally sharp tongue. Today, however, she also had a twinkle in her eyes.
I laughed. “You only say that because you’re the oldest,” I replied. “You were supposed to get married first.”
Celeste shook her head with a smile. “I am finished with the way things are supposed to be,” she said. “And so, I think, we all are. No matter what the rest of you decide to do, I’m staying here. I like the country.”
“But you can’t stay on your own,” I protested. Papa and Maman had already announced their intention to return to the city, at least for a while.
“She won’t be alone,” April said. “I’ll stay with her, at least until Dominic comes back from sea.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Celeste said. “Without you, I’d have to do the dishes myself.”
“But what about when he comes back?” I asked.
Celeste reached across the table to take my hand. “Don’t worry about me, ma petite Belle. You and April found your way, and I am happy for you both. Now you must let me find mine. But you and Gaspard – what will you do?”
“We will go back to the great stone house in the Wood,” I replied. “There is a story there – more than one, I think – which I would like to understand before we settle anywhere else. And there is the Heartwood, too.”
“Come to us at Christmas, all of you,” Gaspard proposed. “And we will make the house that was so long a place of loneliness one of joy.” And so, after many days together and of making preparations, those of us who would make the journey through the Wood were ready to go. April stayed behind with Celeste. Papa, Maman, along with Grand-père Alphonse, Gaspard, and I set out. The path through the Wood ran as straight as ever, sane for the narrow, winding path that curved into its very heart. There was no way to miss it now.
Gaspard and I parted from my family, and rode to the great stone house in silence, with me seated before him on Corbeau. The iron gates stood open, as if welcoming us home. Every tree in the orchard was in bloom, though the days were shortening now. We left Corbeau in his stable. Then, hand in hand, we walked to where the Heartwood stood by the shore of the lake.
“Look,” I said when I saw it. “Oh, look, Gaspard.”
The blossoms of the Heartwood tree lay scattered on the ground. But in their place, its boughs were filled with fruit as ripe and golden as the sun. slowly, almost reverently, I moved to lay a hand against the bark.
“Someday,” I said softly, “this tree will die. But what it carried in its heart will never be extinguished. Its roots go too deep, the fruit it bears it too nourishing, and the promise carried on the scent of its blossoms travels too far.
“True love may not always be easy to see, but once it has been discovered it can never be lost.”
“You are as honest at the end as you were at the beginning,” my true love said.
And I put my arms around him and kissed him beneath the branches of the Heartwood Tree, feeling my heart ache at the pure joy.
Cameron Dokey, Once Upon A Time (6) Belle
