There was an absolutely amazing-looking cake—the only thing Belle was really sad to leave behind. It had three tiers and its white and pink fondant perfectly matched everything else. Crowning the top was a tiny wedding couple, which she would have tossed aside, unexamined, in her haste to get to the cake underneath. Monsieur Boulanger might have been irksome in person but his skills as a baker were definitely in top form that day.
There was also a disappointed would-be groom sitting splay-legged in the pig wallow.
She hadn’t meant to push him that hard. But having done so, she wasn’t precisely displeased with the results.
The noise behind her was terrific: the squeaking of the blond triplets; the squonkings of the tuba and accordion, which now had no purpose; the not-quite sotto voce assurances of LeFou to Gaston; the apologetic titterings of the priest.
The priest.
For some reason his presence upset Belle the most.
She could almost dismiss the ridiculous band, the cake, the table, and everything else as all the accoutrements of a love-smitten madman—but a priest meant Gaston was deadly serious. He had every intention of “’til-death-do-they-part” marrying her.
“Amor does not vincit omnia, you ignorant man,” Belle muttered, “…when the woman doesn’t amat you back!”
She took a quick, undignified step aside to hide behind a scrub oak, then peeped out from behind it. Her heart sank. Besides the main characters in the wedding party, it looked like all the rest of town had shown up to bear witness to Gaston’s triumphant day. There was the silversmith, Monsieur LeClerc; Monsieur Hebert, the wigmaker and haberdasher; Madame Baudette, the couturier…the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker—everyone was there.
Everyone except for Monsieur Lévi.
His absence was extremely notable. He knew the kind of boy she would eventually marry, if she married.
And it certainly wasn’t Gaston.
Absent, also, was her father, of course, who was on his way to the fair. And her mother—but Belle hadn’t seen her since she was a baby, so that part wasn’t really so surprising.
Drifts of conversation came to her as the breeze shifted.
“Terrible, but is it really surprising? That girl isn’t right in the head….”
“Turning down Gaston? The most handsome, eligible bachelor in town?”
“Stupid hussy. I’d give my right pinky to wear his ring.”
“Who does she think she is?”
“Does she think she can do better?”
“Maybe she’ll try Dupuis’s son instead—you know, the simple one who counts pebbles all day. More to her taste.”
Belle balled up her fists and threw herself against the tree trunk in rage. None of them thought she was good enough for Gaston, the town’s favorite son…the most handsome boy, with the bluest eyes and best physique, the best shot with a gun…
No one ever asked if he was good enough for her.
That was just the way the townspeople were.
On the one hand, they did nothing—had done nothing—but gossip endlessly about Belle and her father. How odd they were. How odd she was. Always reading. No friends. No suitors.
How Maurice rarely came to the pub for a drink. How he didn’t have a respectable trade. How his wife had disappeared.
How, some whispered, he consorted with the devil down in his basement.
Her father had finally put an end to that rumor by inviting a select few to come by and inspect his house for evidence of demonic shenanigans. They had been carefully chosen: Monsieur LeClerc, who knew a bit about technology and metal, and Madame Bussard, the town gossip, sure to spread the news of what she had seen. What they saw were the half-built contraptions and engines of someone they immediately assumed was a madman. Later, Belle wasn’t sure if she preferred the fear the villagers exhibited before this experiment, or the pity and ridicule after.
But on the other hand, there was Gaston, who, despite Belle’s strangeness, came after her with the relentlessness of a crazed hunting dog after a boar. It wasn’t that he overlooked the oddity of the father and daughter; it was more like it was irrelevant compared to Belle’s status as prettiest girl in town.
Plus he felt he could fix her. Make her normal. His overwhelming masculinity and presence would exorcise her desire to read and think and be alone.
Was there a tiny part of Belle just a little bit tickled to be the center of attention of such a handsome boy, the town favorite?
Of course. Yes.
That cake looked like Boulanger had spent a lot of time on it.
But she would trade it all in immediately for being left alone…for being treated by Gaston the same way the rest of the town treated her.
The crowd looked so tiny from up where she was. Belle backed away from the tree, watching the wedding party grow even smaller. In the strange, honey-like softening of the afternoon sunlight, the scene looked both more brilliant and less real—like a miniature painting. She held up her thumb and managed to block out everything with its tip, erasing everyone from the landscape.
It was like what she did when she read.
As soon as she opened a book, this little town disappeared into a vast map of countries both real and imagined.
The people down below, cleaning up from the non-wedding and erased by her thumb tip, didn’t think anything interesting or important lay beyond the next bend in the river. They had no curiosity about the new lands beyond the sea or the ancient lands to the east. They had no regard for the recent discovery that other planets had moons just like the one that smiled down at them.
Belle wanted more. She wanted to see more. She wanted to travel to the lands she had read about, where people ate with delicate sticks, not forks.
At the very least, she wanted to be carried there in her imagination.
Belle lowered her thumb, and the townspeople reappeared.
She plopped herself down on the grass, defeated.
The truth was…reading wasn’t enough anymore.
It wasn’t enough to catch a glimpse of these lands and ideas through the small window of the pages she turned. She wanted to step through and feel the yellow waters of the Yangtze herself, to hear the celestial music of foreign pipes, to taste the foods described by adventurers who traveled purposefully into the areas on maps labeled Here there be tygres.
Looking to the west, where the late afternoon was drawing to a dark close, she didn’t see the endless landscape that often set her dreaming.
Instead she saw thick black clouds that stretched to the heights of the sky, roiling and boiling with wind and winking with lightning. Fine. It suited her mood. She clenched her fists unconsciously, wishing she could bring the storm faster, like a wizard or enchantress in one of her books. She wished she could stand on top of the hill in the midst of the winds and the thunder, untouched, alone, as all the would-be wedding guests fled for the safety of their homes.
And then she remembered her father, who was somewhere out on the road, heading to the fair.
Guiltily, she unclenched her fists and forced her shoulders to relax—as if she really did have some control over the weather.
She rolled over onto her stomach and scanned the road as best she could, but either he was already too far into the forest or the dust in the air had obscured him and Phillipe and the cart.
She sighed and desultorily picked a dandelion. Under a protective tarp on that cart was her father’s masterpiece, his finest invention. When fueled up and working properly, it could split a pile of logs in half the time it took two men. An amazing achievement, sure to win a prize.