Once Upon A Time (6) Belle, page 6
part #6 of Once Upon A Time Series
Neither my sisters nor I had ever left the protection of the city walls. We did so now, in single file. Just as my horse stepped through the gate, the sun came up. I pulled back on the reins in surprise.
For instead of the blue of the ocean to which I was accustomed, I found myself looking out into a waving sea of green, flecked with rose and gold. And so it was that I saw the Wood for the very first time, while it looked to hold the greatest promise: at dawn.
Unexpectedly, I felt my heart lift. Perhaps Papa is right, I thought. Perhaps all may yet be well after all.
Then I put my heels to my horse and followed my family toward whatever lay in store.
“Where is the heart of the Wood, Grand-père Alphonse?” I asked several hours later. “Do you know?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I though I saw him smile.
The two of us were now riding at the head of the party, instead of bringing up the rear in single file as we had been before. Beyond the city gate, the narrow streets of the city opened out into a great causeway that ran the length of the wall, making it easier for the large wagons of trade caravans to navigate. Something about all that space just plain went to my head, as far as I can tell.
Having spurred my horse on once, I had done so again, moving forward to the front of the line. Hardly my usual position, but why shouldn’t I go first? We were beginning a new life. Surely, the old order of things need not apply.
It was exciting to feel the wind in my face and to know my eyes were the first to gaze upon whatever was to come. After a few moments, Grand-père Alphonse joined me, for even once we entered the Wood, the path stayed broad enough for the two of us to travel side by side. Besides that, it made good sense for Grand-père Alphonse to take the lead. He was the only one who actually knew where we were going.
Not that any of us could have gotten lost. The path ran as straight as that of an arrow. The trees grew so close along the roadway that I could have reached out and brushed them with my fingertips. I inhaled deeply, tasting the sharp scent of pine at the back of my throat.
“You are thinking of the story,” Grand-père Alphonse said.
“I suppose I am,” I answered with a smile. “Perhaps I’m simply being childish.
We’ve heard dozens of stories over the years, but I never thought I’d actually set foot inside the Wood itself. That makes the tales feel…different, somehow.”
“I know just what you mean,” Grand-père Alphonse said with a nod. “I felt the same way myself, the first time I came here, as if all the tales were going to come to life around me.”
“Well, if they’re going to do that.” Celeste piped up behind us, “why not look for the grove that rains down golden coins? If we gathered some of those, we could go back home where we belong.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to find the heart of the Wood,” I said into the charged silence that followed my sister’s words. There was no home to go back to, even if we could. After all that happened, who was to say where we belonged?
“I only asked Grand-père Alphonse if he knew where it was.”
“I do not,” Grand-père Alphonse said simply. He twisted in his saddle to look back at Celeste. “And I think that we are safe enough, Celeste. No road leads to the heart of the Wood, as far as I know. It is a place that gives up its secrets only when it chooses.
That’s what I’ve heard said, anyhow.”
“Well, I, for one, hope it keep them to itself,” remarked my mother as Grand-père Alphonse faced forward again. “Things are bad enough without monsters popping up to frighten us.”
As if the Wood understood her words, a sudden wind swept through the trees, followed by an absolute stillness, which even momentarily muffled the sounds of our horses’ hooves.
“I think,” my father said carefully, “that we have had quite enough talk of monsters.”
We rode in silence for a while. I kept my eyes trained on the path, each one of my sense heightened.
“There is another tale of the Wood that I could tell you, if you like,” Grand-père Alphonse offered, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had fallen upon us all. “One that I think will appeal to you especially, Belle.” Celeste gave an unladylike snort. “In that case, it must be about a piece of wood.” I swiveled in my saddle to stick out my tongue.
“As a matter of fact, you’re right,” Grand-père Alphonse answered with a chuckle. “But there’s something for you, too, Celeste, for it’s also a tale of love.”
“That would make it for April, then,” Celeste contradicted.
“That will do, Celeste,” my mother interjected. “What is this tale that you would tell us, Alphonse?”
“It is the story of the Heartwood Tree. Do you not know it?”
“I do not,” replied Maman .
“Well, I will tell it to you,” Grand-père Alphonse said. And this is the tale that he told us as we rode.
CHAPTER TEN
“Once upon a time there lived a young husband and wife. Though they had been married less than a year’s time, it seemed they had known each other forever, for they had been childhood sweethearts and loved each other almost all of their lives.
“The couple often took walks beside a glistening lake, and when they paused to look at their reflections in the water, even as their eyes beheld two individual people, they felt they were seeing just one being, so closely were their two hearts joined.”
“So this is a tale of true love, then,” April spoke for the first time.
“It is,” Grand-père Alphonse agreed, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. “And so I would like to tell you this couple lived happily ever after. That they lived long and prosperous lives together. But they did not.
“Not long after their wedding, the wife became sick with an illness that had no cure. She grew very frail and died in her husband’s arms. His grief was so intense that it caused others pain to behold it, for there is something truly terrible about a love that is snatched away too soon.”
Grand-père Alphonse paused to take a breath, and in the silence I could almost hear Dominic Boudreaux’s name whispered through the treetops. Had he met a watery grave? I yanked myself back to the present at the sound of Grand-père Alphonse’s voice.
“The young widower chose his wife’s gravesite with great care,” Grand-père Alphonse continued. “He buried her beside the lake where they had so loved to walk.
And over her heart, he planted her favorite tree: a pink-blossomed dogwood.
“When this was done, the young man sat down upon the grave that now contained all he held dear, and wept for eight full days and seven full nights until his heart was empty and his eyes were dry.
“And then the young man put his head down on the earth, just as he had once set it on the pillow beside his wife’s, and went to sleep, no longer caring if he awoke the next morning.”
“What a strange, sad story this is, Alphonse,” commented my mother.
“It is,” Grand-père Alphonse said with a nod. “But it is also full of wonder. For on the eighth night, as the young man slept, a strange event transpired. The dogwood tree took root, then grew into something else entirely.
“For it was a tree unlike any other: nurtured by the bones of true love below it, and watered by the tears of heartfelt grief above it. And so, when the new day dawned, and the widower opened his eyes, he found himself lying beneath the boughs of a ten-foot tree.
“As he gazed upon it, the tree burst into bloom, and its branched bore flowers such as no one had ever seen before. Some carried blooms of a white more pure than winter’s first snowfall, while others bore those as red as freshly spilled blood.
“Though startled, the young man understood at once: The white blossoms were the symbol of his grief, sprung form the bones of his beloved. And the red were the symbol of his love, borne from his own heart.
“No sooner did he comprehend this than a wind came up, streaming through the branches over his head, raining petals down upon him. As they mingled together, the petals formed a third color: a pink precisely the same shade as the first blush of dawn.
“The widower rose to his feet, gathered as many of the soft, delicate petals as he could, and set off for home. There, he placed them in a clear glass jar and set the jar on the windowsill beside his bed, so the petals would be the first thing he would see when he awoke each morning.
“One new day dawned, and then another, and so, first days, then weeks, then months, and, finally, years went by. But no matter how much time passed, the petals always remained true and never faded.
“And in this way, the husband was comforted. For it seemed to him that, though he could no longer hear her laughter, no longer reach out and take her by the hand as he had once loved to do, his wife had not completely left him. Her love still kept pace with his. It sill walked the earth beside him though she could not.
“Her love was in the sound of the wind as it danced through the treetops, the sound the brook made, running swift and high. It was in the busy talk of chickadees on a cold morning and the call of a single raven just at nightfall. But most of all, it was in the petals in the jar on the windowsill – petals that retained the same color as the day he had first gathered them.
“And so he called the tree that had started as one thing but blossomed into another, the Heartwood Tree. And he decreed that no one must cut its boughs. For, like love, the gifts the Heartwood has to offer cannot be forced. They must be given freely, or not at all. For anything less is no true gift.
“The man never married again, but spent his days living quietly by the lakeside.
When he died peacefully in his sleep, he was buried beneath the Heartwood Tree, alongside his wife. Never once, in all those years, did the tree shed more than its petals.
All heeded the young widower’s words, none daring to cut the Heartwood’s limbs.
“For it is whispered that when the Heartwood Tree gives itself as last, letting loose a branch of its own accord, it will be to one with the heart to see what lies within the wood. To see what the husband and wife grew together out of their joy and sorrow combined: the face of true love.”
We rode for some distance, none of us speaking. But the Wood around us was far from silent. It seemed to whisper secrets to itself.
“I told you it was going to be a story about wood,” Celeste said at last, breaking the long silence.
“Oh, Celeste,” April protested, but I could hear the laughter in her voice.
I laughed too, though my heart was beating as if I’d run all the way from town. I knew why Grand-père Alphonse had told the story. What better hands for a piece of the Heartwood Tree to fall into than my own?
If only such a tale were true, I thought. If I could hold a piece of the Heartwood in my hand, then I might see the face inside it. The face of the one person who would see me as I am, Beautiful or not, and cherish me for it.
My true love.
“Oh, Celeste’s just afraid the tree wouldn’t share its secrets with her,” I teased.
“Or if it did, it would be by a branch falling on her head.”
“Well, maybe that’s how it works,” April said. “The branch conks you on the head, and then you see visions.”
“You two are absolutely impossible,” Celeste cried. She kicked her heels against her horse’s flanks, urging him forward, through the narrow gap between Grand-père Alphonse and me.
“Oh, no you don’t!” I called. “I like being first, and I intend to stay there.”
“You’ll have to catch me, too then!” April suddenly exclaimed as she followed Celeste’s example.
I thumped my heels against my horse’s sides again. And so, inspired by a story of loss and redemption, my sisters and I raced toward whatever the future might bring.
We left the Wood just at nightfall.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The second part of our journey was swift, for the road continued fine and even and soon brought us into the countryside. The landscape was one of tiny valleys nestled between gently rolling hills. The hills would be a soft golden color in the summer, Grand-père Alphonse told us. At the moment they were covered with light green fuzz, which would turn into a green so bright I would bring tears to our eyes. Or so Grand-père Alphonse promised, anyway.
Half a day’s travel along the winding country road brought us, at last, to our new home.
Papa had said there was a stream on our new land, and we heard it long before we ever saw it. At first, it was no more than a teasing whisper of water, always just out of sight, as if it were playing hide-and-seek with us. But soon we caught glimpses of it snaking through the hills. Gradually, it grew closer, and the whisper became a murmur and, finally, a pure, clear song of liquid flowing over stones.
The stream greeted us as we rounded the bend and the view opened up. The house that was to be our new home was some distance from the main road, though plainly visible from it, nestled against the base of a small hill. The stream flowed toward the house, then made a quick, darting curve behind it, as if hurrying to get wherever it was going. The barn sat to one side of the house.
The house itself was faced in weathered gray shingles and had a roof of sod. I had never seen such a thing before. The front windows sparkled in the midday sunlight and between them, in an unexpected burst of color, was a bright blue door.
For several moments, no one spoke.
“It doesn’t have a dirt floor, doe sit?” Celeste inquired.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Celeste,” my mother exclaimed.
“It’s not that far-fetched,” my sister protested, “There’s grass on the roof.”
“That is an old trick,” said Grand-père Alphonse. “It keeps the house warm in the winter and cool in the summer. There’s hay in the walls for the same reason.”
“It looks a snug and cheerful place,” my father said.
“I hope that you will find it so,” Grand-père Alphonse replied. “But to answer your question, Celeste, the floors are made of wood.”
“Thank goodness for that,” my sister said. “At least there will be something that I recognize.”
“Oh, hush, Celeste,” I said, as I swung down from my horse. “You’re not being clever, just unhelpful.”
Grand-père Alphonse dismounted, then turned and held one hand up to my oldest sister.
“She is nervous,” he said calmly. “Which is perfectly reasonable. Come inside, all of you, and see your new home.”
Grand-père Alphonse stayed several weeks, helping us unpack and arrange our belongings – the few treasures we could not bear to leave behind – and grow accustomed to our new surroundings.
Maman still had her favorite chair, the one in which she sat to work her fancy embroidery. This was placed in the room to the left of the short set of central stairs, for Maman had decreed that this would be the living room. Though, when you got right down to it, the room on the right would have done just as well, for the two rooms were precisely the same size. We had discovered almost at once that our new home had been built along strict symmetrical lines.
Maman’s chair went nearest the fireplace, with the great, round freestanding hoop for holding her linen to the right of the chair, and the basket that held her needles and skeins of silk on the left. Papa had made them both as a gift for their first anniversary, many years ago.
April brought with her an elaborately carved chest of sandalwood that had been a gift from Dominic following his first voyage as captain of the April Dawn. I had no idea if it was empty, or if she had placed other treasures inside. Celeste had her dressing table with its stool of padded silk, and the ivory-backed brushed with which she gave her hair its one hundred and one strokes both morning and night.
As for me, I had a chest, as well, fashioned of hemlock wood. I had made it myself. After it was finished, I had rubbed it gently with linseed oil to make it shine.
Hemlock is a soft wood, so the chest had to be treated carefully, but I loved it golden color.
Inside the chest, I had carefully placed the canvas bundle that contained my carving tools, some treasured pieces of uncarved wood, and as many of my father’s woodworking tools as the chest would hold. Grand-père Alphonse and I had schemed together on this, for Papa had decided that, now that he would be without his workshop, he would leave behind all but his most basic carpentry tools.
But I knew how important it was to Papa to work with his hands. I simply could not imagine him without a project of some kind. And I was afraid that, without a task to occupy his hands and mind, my father would worry himself into an illness, for I had only to look at him to see how the last few months had taken their toll.
At the back of the firs floor, behind the central stair, were two more rooms, a kitchen and a pantry. The upstairs was divided into two long, narrow rooms that ran from the front of the house to the back, as opposed to the downstairs rooms, which were side to side.
One of these would serve as a bedroom for my parents, the other, for my sisters and me. Maman had actually given us permission to place our beds in whatever position we liked, though we had selected our places in order of birth. Old habits are hard to shake.
Celeste placed her bed in the center of the long wall that divided the two rooms, with her dressing table alongside. April tucked hers under the eaves. That left me to place mine precisely where I would have chosen, had I been allowed to go first: beneath the center window along the outside wall. During the day, I could look out and see the hills rolling away toward the Wood. At night, I could look out and see the stars.
Those first weeks, we kept busy, putting all thoughts of the city resolutely from our minds as we moved furniture and supplies, arranging and rearranging them as we learned how to make this strange new house our own.
It was Papa and Grand-père Alphonse, both of whom had grown up without servants, who showed the rest of us how to build a fire in the wood stove in the kitchen, how to bank it at night so that it would not go out, and then how to stoke it up once more the following morning.
