Beauty and the Beast

The Enchanted Mirror

Winter deepened around the castle, and with it, the routines Belle and the Beast had built together grew warmer and more comfortable. They read in the library every afternoon — she aloud, he's listening and occasionally asking questions that revealed how deeply he had absorbed every word. They walked the gardens in the mornings. In the evenings, they played chess, a game the Beast had taught her and now regretted because she was alarmingly good at it.

The servants vibrated with cautious, fragile hope. Another petal had fallen from the rose. There were only five left.

One afternoon, the Beast came to find Belle in the library and asked her to follow him to a room she hadn't yet visited — a small, round chamber near the top of the central tower. On a velvet pedestal in the center of the room sat a hand mirror with an ornate golden frame. The Beast picked it up with surprising care and held it out to her.

"This was the enchantress's other gift," he said. "It shows you whatever you wish to see."

Belle took the mirror slowly. It felt warm in her hands. "Anything?"

"Anything." He hesitated. "I thought — if you wished to see your father..."

She looked up at him quickly. Something in her chest contracted. He had thought of her father. He had brought her here for her sake, not his own.

She looked into the mirror and said softly, "Show me my father."

The glass clouded, then cleared. Maurice appeared — not in the village, not safe by his fire, but in the forest, stumbling through deep snow, coat soaked through, lantern barely lit. He was searching. Calling her name. His face was grey with cold and desperate with love.

The mirror trembled in Belle's hands. A tear fell onto the glass and the image rippled.

"He's ill," she whispered. "He's lost." She looked up at the Beast, and the grief in her eyes was a physical thing.

The Beast said nothing. He stood very still, and something behind his eyes moved through several complicated stages of feeling that he had not experienced in a very long time.