Read Online Belle: A Retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” By Cameron Dokey by Unknown - Free Book Online

you do to postpone it, the future always shows up at your
    door. The fact that our door was changing wouldn’t make one bit of difference.
    We got up early on the morning of our departure. It would be a day and a half of
    travel overall, according to my father. And we knew the first day’s travel would be the longest, for we must be clear of the Wood by nightfall.
    I should probably explain about the Wood, shouldn’t I?
    In fact, considering the importance it came to have for all of us, most especially for me, perhaps I should have mentioned it long before now. But that would have been cheating, putting the middle and the end of my story before its start. Introducing you to it now means we enter the Wood together.
    The town of my birth looks out toward the sea, curving as if in one slow smile
    along the coastline. But at its back, snuggled up against it like a cat seeking warmth in winter, lies a great green swath. For as long as anyone can remember, people have simply called it “the Wood.” You can traverse it in a day if you go straight through, but it take three whole days to ride around it.
    In spite of this difference, most travelers take the long way around. You can
    probably guess why. There are tales about what happens beneath the boughs of the Wood
    – as many as there are trees in the Wood itself. Growing up, my sisters and I heard many of them. Tales of the Wood were our second-favorite bedtime stories, just after the ones we had once made up ourselves about Monsieur LeGrand.
    There was the tale of a stand of trees with bark as pale as pearls and leaves of
    such a color that, when they fell from the branches in autumn, it was like watching a shower of the finest gold. The nursemaid who told us this claimed if you found these trees and stood beneath them as the wind blew, you would come away with your pockets filled with golden coins.
    We heard of places in the Wood where the snow fell all year long, sweet as sugar
    on the tongue, and places where winter never came at all. Places filled with the voices of birds too numerous to count and places where it was so quiet that you could hear the sap run and the trees themselves grow taller.
    And finally there were the tales of the Wood’s dark places, tales that kept us up at night, tales that could only be told in a whisper, for to speak them any louder might invite the dark into the room with you. It goes without saying that my sisters and I loved these tales the best.
    And the one we loved the very most, which kept us from falling asleep the
    longest, was the tale of a monster dwelling in the most secret heart of the Wood.
    It was no ordinary monster, of course. This monster could command the elements.
    Bend time so as to never grow old. Shape light and dark, becoming visible or invisible at will. The only thing the monster could not do was no doubt the thing it wanted most: It could not leave the Wood.
    This last part was all that kept Celeste, April, and me from complete and utter
    terror. As it was, the first time we heard the tale of the monster in the Wood, we lay awake for three nights running. On the fourth day, Maman dismissed the nursemaid
    who’d seen fit to tell us the story in the first place. It was Papa who tucked us into bed that night, and as he did so, he soothed away our fears.
    It’s not so much that what they say is truthful, Papa assured us in his quiet, steady voice, but that certain kinds of stories have the ability to teach us truths about ourselves.
    There was no real monster living in the heart of the Wood. Rather, the story was a way to think about the monster that might dwell in our own hearts. That was the monster we should fear the most, or so my father said.
    Papa’s explanation made it easier to fall asleep at night, but I wasn’t altogether sure I accepted it.
    Any child can tell you that monsters are as real as you an I are. So why shouldn’t the tales be true? Why shouldn’t there be a monster dwelling in the Wood’s most