Father and Monsieur Picoux talked about business the rest of the night. Papa had readily agreed to journey to Libor which meant our family would be separated for the first time since Mama’s death.
At night, I dreamt of the terrible rumours the citizens of Beaulieu used to tell about Bora Les. When I woke up early the next morning, I was startled by a pair of bright green eyes pressed up against my face.
I released a bellowing scream and creased the bed sheets into a deep crater of fabric only to find Lem with his charcoal hair masking the upper half of his face.
The boy was crouched low to the wooden floor boards and I eased out of the bed slowly.
“Lem,” I whispered under my breath. “What’s going on?”
He made the sign for silence and quickly jumped to his feet. The boy ran out of the bedroom and I scrambled after.
When I found him hovering at the entrance of the Picoux’s home, the boy frantically waved his hand before quickly vanishing through the door.
The creaky floorboards lining the Picoux’s hallway screeched resentfully as my bare feet pounded the surface. I wrenched the door open and shut it swiftly after I had squeezed through.
“Lem-” I croaked, but again the boy crossed his bladed hands in front of his throat.
That’s when I saw her.
It was the break of dawn in Dusek, stillness lingering with the inversion of night. There was a girl scuttling along the shadows of the wooden buildings. She was cloaked in drab, dark colours and whipped past us without giving any inclination that she saw me.
The imaginary boy cocked his head to the side in interest and I found my body tilt over the tops of my toes.
Follow? Lem drew his fists across his body and I clutched to the porch of the Picoux home. My fingernails embedded into the groves as my feet inched towards the street.
I leapt off the front porch. My feet prickled and Lem’s black hair flashed in the corner of my vision as we chased the thin shadow of the girl.
What on earth was she doing this early?
The girl was keeping deliberately close to the secrecy of the shadows and I leapt into one just as we came within a fifteen-foot radius of her. Lem skidded to a stop beside me, his chest heaving as the green of his iridescent eyes flashed from me to the girl.
She veered to the right at the edge of a forest of sunflowers, but delayed in going further. The golden blooms bobbed in unison as the morning winds began to pick up. The girl’s chin glanced the neck of her dusty cloak and I caught a glimpse of the coils of fire her hood had masked.
I crouched low in the shade of a wooden barrel and the girl shouldered one of the sunflower stalks aside, disappearing between them.
Lem and I looked at one another, shrugging in unison before deciding that we had no reason to stop now. The nine-foot-tall giants easily swayed aside, and I nearly ran the girl over when she suddenly rounded a sunflower stalk in front of me.
My bare feet dug themselves into two rivets along the ground, my breath lodged inside my throat.
Her eyes came up a few inches above my head, but she was thin. Sunlight glimmered between the sunflowers and the girl’s sleepy eyes glowed turquoise up close. Each of her large coils of red hair jittered and her hands tugged at the cloak knotted in front of her neck.
“Were you following me?” she asked in a soft voice that was tight with fear.
“Ah, I just moved here. We-” I glanced at Lem but shook my head and gingerly shifted my gaze back to the girl. “I saw you running.”
Her porcelain brow crumpled as she tugged at a single curl bouncing along her forehead. When my gaze shifted to the corner of my vision Lem had disappeared, and all that remained in the sunflower field was myself and the girl.
“My name is Cosette,” she whispered and faced me with the back of her cloak once more. “You can follow if that’s what you mean to do.”
She paused and I noticed the tiny doll’s hand that Cosette held behind her, the open palm staring up at me.
The sun’s waxing light filtered through the sunflower leaves and created a vibrant patchwork of colour along her skin. My creaking limb rose to meet hers, and then we were off, our feet smacking delightfully along the soft dirt.
The sunflower forest thinned until we emerged in front of a towering house that coughed out great white clouds of smoke from several chimneys. The girl pounded her fist on the door of the smoking building.
"Cosette!" The door swung open to reveal Gerard’s father in the entrance.
Instead of making any attempt at a formal greeting, my eyes immediately fell downwards and rested on his boots. I wasn't looking for anything, however, I noticed a long, albeit rusty sword propped up against the door behind the enormous man. My gaze darted back up before he kicked the warped thing out of sight.
"What're you doing here at this hour? You shouldn’t be this close to the forest without any suitable company."
He glanced dismissively at me and I averted my eyes again.
"Everyone’s asleep," Cosette chirped. “And I needed some water for my flower, Grandpapa.” She removed her hood and the bouncing red curls rippled down her back.
"O' course." The old man laughed heartily, tussling her fiery hair. "Let's see if the well hasn't frozen over yet."
I highly doubted that Cosette was Gaston’s actual granddaughter since Monsieur Picoux had mentioned that he had no children, but they seemed close. At the very least he liked her a great deal more than me.
Mystified, I stumbled after Cosette and the old man to what looked like a stocky wall of old, faded bricks, no taller than my waist.
However, as we neared it, I soon found a well covered from top to bottom in green and grey moss that hung down from the circular mouth. A halo of wildflowers grew around it's faded grey walls winding themselves deep in the crevices.
The sound of droplets echoed back as the old man leaned over the edge. Our bodies pressed against the rim.
"Eh, stand back now." Gaston waved us off, taking a sharp step back. “These bricks aren't as sturdy as they used to be."
At the edge of the black pit a piece crumbled from the wall and fell into the unseen water below.
Gaston smiled as he pulled on a rope that had been hanging over the edge. "There," he grunted and placed the leaky bucket at our feet, "take as much as yer’ hearts desire."
Using the hand that was not fixed to mine, Cosette exposed a vase hiding inside her cloak, the small bud of a rose hooked on the corner. Water sprinkled the grass and I released her hand so she could dunk the wooden cup inside.
"Go ahead," the old man motioned to me.
Cupping his hands and dipping them into the crystal water, he held them up to his lips and drank enthusiastically, beads of it running down his chin and clinging to the whiskers of his long white beard.
I shook my head and frowned. "It'll make me sick, who knows what's down there!"
The man laughed after taking another great gulp of the water and wiped his face on a dirty, cream coloured sleeve.
"The springs are enchanted here; the water is clean." The old man winked at us. Cosette’s mouth parted into an ‘o’ of amazement, but I was sceptical at best.
All little girls are told faerie tales from a young age, and they slowly grow out of believing. I had just grown up a little more than all of them.
"I used to believe in magic." My eyes unfocused, but the white rose sat at the very centre of my vision. "My mother told a lot of stories; that I was being looked after by the faeries, that they would protect me. After she died, I met a boy I thought she had sent."
"Was the boy magic like your mother said?" Cosette asked, an impassioned waver in her voice.
I stared wistfully at the white rose in her vase until I could stand its allure no long and snarled at the velvet petals.
"There's no such thing," I answered and crossed my arms over my chest.
I wasn't stupid, it was hypocritical for me to see Lem and yet deny it was magic, but like Belle, most of me thought things like magic didn't exist.
I caught a look of despair on Cosette's expressive face before she pouted imploringly at the old man.
"That’s some harsh thinking, girl," he whispered. "But if you'd believe anything from an old troll like me, believe this: there is magic, and it breathes and lives here like you and me."
A twinkling light came into his eyes with the rays of the rising sun, mischievous and youthful despite his wrinkled face. "There's something magical about yer story, real or no."
I tried to convince myself the old grump didn't know anything, but the way he looked at me brought back memories of a time when magic had bloomed in my heart.
And I didn’t like it.
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