"What's so funny?" Belle wants to know.

"...Accumulating lingering pain every time someone you're trying to help uses magic doesn't sound terrible? It sounds potentially much worse than being alone in a magic castle, to me."

He snorts. "One man's pain is another's pleasure. At least that way I'd have a choice."

"It does sound like it can get very bad indeed, though." This book has a handful of illustrations, including one of a man in rather wretched apparent discomfort with an enchantress standing over him. Belle translates the caption one word at a time: "To make... a fortress... suitable... for... an enchanter," she says as she picks her way across the phrase. "The Toolkit said something about counterspells always taking at least as much channeling as the original. I don't know if this castle is a 'fortress suitable for an enchanter' or not, but it's probably close to the same power requirements. I wonder who she channeled through."

"Maybe that was why she screamed so much. It looks like the channel needs to be there when the spell is cast, and there wasn't anyone else around."

"...This having been a long time ago, are you sure all you did was run into her and laugh?"

"...She might have met my father," he says.

Belle isn't sure what this has to do with anything, so she waits.

"...So she punished you?"

"My impression of her sanity only drops over time. Did she at least include him? Has he got his own hiding castle somewhere?"

"Oh, he was dead before I ever met her," the Beast says casually.

More patient waiting-for-elaboration.

He blinks his large brown eyes at her.

"And all these books are very sure that it's bad to lose concentration on a bigger spell, though none of them will tell us how."

"There are plenty we haven't dug into yet," Belle points out, "but yes, it's something I'd like to avoid finding out the hard way."

He shrugs. "So what now, little enchantress?"

"We keep looking," she sighs, "so we'll at least have the option of disenchantment, maybe, when I've learned enough. The effects of willing channeling through another person aren't permanent, and from what you've told me, failing at breaking this curse is."

The Beast chuckles.

"Good news?" he inquires.

To channel through oneself, the enchanter approaches his (many of these books, despite their own illustrations, seem convinced that all magic users are male) Dream-world from the inside. He must make a Dream-gate at the borders of his mind, bring power through himself from whatever source he chooses, and channel it out of the gate and into the spell.

Make a Dream-gate. Ooookay. That's helpful. Or, no, there's more detail in there. Now she just has to figure out how to connect to the Sky or the Earth or the Will or the Heart. Perhaps this book has something on that, too?

He shrugs agreeably.

"You did," the Beast agrees. "And you glowed in pretty colours."

"I glowed? That's interesting." She nibbles her lip thoughtfully. "It hurt. Not that bad and not for that long, and I didn't have to concentrate through much of it, but - I'm not really optimistic that I'll be able to do anything big."

He shrugs. "You can put the next one through me if you want. See what it's like."

The Beast squirms in his enormous chair, then settles, watching her again.

"Nervous?" Belle asks. "If I find something it'll have to be little for me to be willing to try it this early in my studies, little like what I just did - doesn't hurt too bad, like a light smack."

He chuckles and shakes his head. "Not nervous, no."

"What, then? If you're having," she gestures, "extraneous emotions it's not impossible they could throw off a spell..."

He rumbles thoughtfully for a moment, then says, "Restless."

"Why's that?" No message-sending spells in this book; she grabs the next likeliest.

Snort. "Oh, I'm always restless."

"Mmm." She only needs about a third of her brain to scan indices for message spells. "What bothered you about being alone, anyway?"

"I hadn't heard a voice not my own in a century and a half when you came," he says. "I haven't touched another person in just as long." With a twist of a smile on his surprisingly expressive face, "Wrestling rosebushes just isn't the same."

Ooh, soft. Her thumb makes short absent stroking motions with the grain of the fur.

The Beast purrs some more.

"Much," he sighs. "Thank you."

"Maybe not," shrugs the Beast.

"Charlie?" she asks, stopping and looking up. "I - mm, not exactly. I love him and I want him to be happy and he's clearly not and if I were there he would be, so in the sense that I want to go back to him, I do, but if he'd died when I was six along with my mother, or if for some reason he didn't care about me, I'd be all right without him. I wouldn't choose those situations, but I'd get along fine. Having people around has never seemed terribly important to me. I might change my tune if I were alone for a hundred years, but on an ordinary day it's like - having dessert. A perfectly nice thing I'd like to do routinely that I could adjust to think nothing of if it became impossible."

He nods thoughtfully.

"I do need things to do to be happy. If I'd been cursed like you my complaint wouldn't be that I was by myself, it'd be that I couldn't read the books."

"I'd teach you, but," she nods.

"I watch the kitchen sometimes."

"I did that too. Trying to figure out where the produce and meat came from. Never figured it out, they always seem to be there already from someplace I wasn't watching."

"A few years ago a deer wandered into the garden," he recalls. "I killed it. Venison for dinner. But the rest of the time, it has to get the meat from somewhere else. Maybe the forest feeds it somehow."

"It gave me roast duck once. I haven't seen or heard any wild ducks in the area. Are the fruits and vegetables discernably seasonal? The garden doesn't have a proper vegetable plot - it's got herbs, but not ones that look tended."

The Beast snorts. "Magic," he concludes.

"Magic. She went to an awful lot of discomfort and trouble just to punish you," Belle says, shaking her head.

"Yes she did."

"I really hate to be so mistrustful, but I can't make sense of her motives at all and it's bothering me - are you sure that in a hundred years you haven't forgotten some other detail?"

"I don't know," he says, "but I don't think so. I was running - I ran into an old woman, knocked her down - she looked so angry, lying in the dust - I laughed - she got up and started shouting. I don't remember everything she said. Some of it made me think she knew my father... and of course," he gestures around them, "there's the fact that she knew to take me home."

"Home?"

"This used to be my family's castle." He snorts. "In a sense it still is, at that."

"So you're some sort of nobility?" She asks this quite neutrally.

"Some sort," he agrees. "My father was the Marquis."

"Of where? Was the castle originally -" She waves vaguely. "Hereabouts?"

"Of the forest," he says, "and some land around it. I never paid much attention to the size of the family holdings, and I don't remember our name or the name of the march anymore. I think... the castle used to be at the edge of the woods."

"I don't remember reading about a local marquis gone missing, but then, maybe you were at the opposite edge of the woods from Les Fourches, or the magic covered for the possibility that someone would go looking for you."

"I wasn't the marquis when she cursed me. Not in any way that mattered. My father died because I killed him," he sighs. "Killed him and set the castle on fire and ran away. Did you read anything about that?"

"...I read about a marquis's castle up by the source of the Sequine River that burned," she recalls. "They didn't think there was a surviving heir, though, if I remember right."

He shrugs. "In a way there wasn't. I hardly think I could claim the title after all this time."

"Perhaps not. Especially without a way to prove your identity. What did you use to look like? Do you have a portrait somewhere?"

"I was..." He frowns. "I don't remember."

"Not at all? Oh dear." She pats his paw again.

"Maybe. I need something to practice with, if I can't send Charlie a message." She tries to remember if she's seen anything like that.

The Hedge-witch had 'To Look Upon the Past', and the Discerning Enchanter had 'To See True Form or Nature'.

He nods.

She has to be able to send the spell through it somehow. She inspects windows.

Poke, poke -

It shifts slightly.

The door swings open, inviting her in.

"Was I pretty?" he asks with a snort.

"You laugh, but you were. And tall, and curly brown hair this long -" she gestures - "and smiling. You looked happy."

"I'm tall now," he observes. This is very true.

"Yes, but you were then, too."

"I wasn't this tall then," he says, but now he is definitely being silly.

"Well, you were only about my age, perhaps some of this is natural growth you had left in you," she suggests. "No, I think you'd be this tall now regardless of your previous height."

"Sometimes my ears touch the frame when I walk through a door," he snorts.

She giggles.

"At least I'm not - quite - tall enough to hit my head."

"Perhaps it would be more convenient if she'd turned you beastly enough to find walking on all fours more comfortable."

"I can do that just as easily," he shrugs. "But I like standing up."

"Why's that?"

"I don't know, I just do."

"Fair enough. Is it going to be hard, when I've disenchanted the castle, to get used to being - nonbeastly again?"

He shrugs expressively. "How would I know? I've never done it before."

"You've been human before," she points out. "...I do hope the end result doesn't involve, say, you crumbling to dust on account of being a hundred and seventeen and no longer affected by the curse?"

"If it did," he says, "I'd still like that better than the other option. But I don't think it will."

She pats his paw again.

He purrs contentedly.

"Oh - I liked it," he says. "Stung a little, but in a good way."

She tilts her head curiously. "Like -" She doesn't have a good reference for this. "Scratching an itch?" she suggests, because that can sometimes be a good tradeoff even after further scratching hurts.

"A little."

Purr purr purrrrrr.

"Why is it so cold?" exclaims Belle, huddling under the blanket and trying to find a way to handle a book that doesn't involve reaching her hand out into the chill. "And it wouldn't even give me a warm dress - it's been so cooperative about clothes until now!"

"The cold bothers me less," he says. "And my fur is warm. I think the castle has designs on us."

"Oh, lord - I do not appreciate coercion, castle - maybe I can find a warmth spell or something -" She breathes into her hands, darts them out to pull books in, and forms a tent of her blanket to retain warmth while allowing her to read.

Despite himself, he purrs.

"...It wants us to touch," he says reluctantly. "More than we have been."

"...Is that a euphemism?"

"It had better not be," he snorts.

"What are you going to do to the castle if it is, scratch up another door? That'll show it," she says with a heavy sigh. She squirms under her blanket. "Assuming it's not a euphemism what will make it stop screwing with the temperature, do you think?"

"Did I not just say?"

"Yes, I mean specifically, I've been holding your hand, will sitting next to each other on the window seat do the trick or are we talking about hugging once or snuggling all afternoon or what? If you know. Perhaps you don't."

"How would I? But snuggling is my guess."

"...You're fairly sure we can manage this without me getting clawed?"

"Of course," he says, blinking.

"I'm not all that much more durable than a book," she points out defensively, and she starts scoping out library furniture.

"I promise not to try to turn your pages," he says, flopping into his usual chair. It is quite large and comfortable, and there is plenty of room for her in his lap.

She sits sideways across his thighs. When this doesn't instantly warm the air, she sighs and leans on him, head on his shoulder.

With her curled up on top of him like this, the vibrations of his purring permeate both of them. It's an oddly soothing effect.

...The Beast laughs.

That jolts her awake. "What? What happened?"

"You talk in your sleep," he says affectionately.

"...I do? What did I say?"

"'Fruit sky winter'," he quotes.

"...That doesn't even make sense," she complains.

"No," he agrees. "It does not."

"Weird," she mutters. And she breathes in air and breathes it out as visible fog. "Well. It's still frigid in here but at least you're warm." She snuggles up comfortably.

He starts purring again.

"You're liable to send me right back to sleep," she yawns. "You sure purr a lot."

"Food tastes better when you're starving," he says.

"...That's a common saying, yes, do you just mean it's been a long time since you got to hug anybody and now it's a big deal?"

He nods his large fluffy head.

"Aww." Snuggle.

Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrsnugglesnugglepurr.

This time he manages not to laugh.

She naps for about an hour. During that time, the air starts to warm, and she unconsciously wriggles, trying to divest herself of her blanket.

That lets her get the blanket off, but then apparently she's too cold; still asleep, she wraps her now-free arms around him and settles in closer.

Eventually she wakes up. She yawns. "Is it just me or is it warmer in here?" she asks.

"It's not just you," he says.

"Here's hoping that's the only trick up its sleeve." She slides out of his lap. "Maybe it'll give me a longer dress now. And then I can just keep it on until I'm satisfied that's the last time the castle pulls this." She runs up to her room to check.

There is indeed a selection of warmer dresses available.

Excellent. She changes out of her three summery ones and comes back downstairs in a nice burgundy number, ankle- and wrist-length. And she sets about reading. "I'm sorry if any of how I reacted to that was - rude, or callous, or something," she says.

"...What do you mean?"

"I resented having to snuggle you," she points out. "I wasn't being subtle about it. Some people would take that personally, even though it had everything to do with the having to, not particularly the you."

"I resented having to snuggle you too," he says. "Even though I liked it. Actually, especially because I liked it."

"...Especially?"

"There are few things worse than being forced to do something I would have wanted to do anyway," he says, "and one of them is when someone else is being forced to help."

"If I have to be forced to do things I'd just as soon they be things I'm in favor of doing. If someone powerful commanded me to - say - study magic, that's my cue to see if they'll help me accomplish that more efficiently, not resent them for it. But I hear you about the someone-else-being-forced-to-help part."

"Mm," he rumbles. "Being forced to do something I don't want to do is another of the worse things."

"Fair enough," she says with a surprised laugh.

He snorts softly.

Study study study study. Quiet absent singing.

"...Is that comfortable?" she asks, curious.

"Yes."

Purr!

This is one heck of a mane. Inches deep. She can put her hand in halfway up her forearm to scritch his scalp. Might as well, at this point.

Ooh, he liiikes that. Purr purr purr.

She goes right on doing it. She only needs one hand to turn pages.

And the Beast goes right on purring, curling up closer until his head rests in her lap.

"...I don't know exactly," he says. "A few years. Probably more. Maybe less."

"How do you know?" she asks. "...Disenchantments are difficult. And dangerous. More so the more complicated the spell you're countering is. It could take a few years, maybe more, before I can try it on something like your curse and be reasonably sure I'm not going to kill myself trying."

"There's a rose under glass at the top of the tower in this wing," he says. "It loses petals slowly - the floor is covered in them. When the last petal falls..." He shrugs.

"Can I see it?" she asks.

"Of course. Now?"

Belle casts. She works through herself; it's a light sting, and she can tolerate it without losing hold of the spell. And with enchanter's sight on her, she looks at the rosebush that she believes to be the curse fondement.

"Year and a half," murmurs Belle. "And if it's not broken by then, I'm sent away, and no one ever finds this place again, and you're still immortal."

"I - I think I'm progressing in the enchanting books at a decent clip," she says, still staring at the rosebush even after her enchanter's sight fades out. "But this is a huge, complicated spell - and disenchanting it will be hard - and it's very specific about the kind of love, too -"

He sits down on the floor amid drifts of dessicated petals and buries his hands despairingly in his mane.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm only reading what it says - I can read very quickly - if you help me with the books in the other languages maybe I can do it, a year and a half isn't that short a time -"

"Well, we don't have much choice, do we? Except you could give up and wait it out."

"I'm going to keep working on it," says Belle.

"Thank you," he sighs.

"Sadistic overreactive psychopathic witch," mutters Belle to herself, turning to return to the library.

The Beast snorts agreement and follows.

"I can't even figure out if she wanted you to break the curse or not. Some of the parts seemed helpful - sorting people by their likelihood of being a suitable other party, the long time limit from the beginning of the curse - but - some of the parts do not, like turning you into a - whatever you are. Cat-creature. Putting the entire castle in the middle of the woods so in all these years only one person has passed the minimum threshold of likelihood."

"Maybe she couldn't decide either," he suggests.

"How come you're that picky, anyway? People get lost in these woods all the time. Even just in my lifetime and just in my village I've seen several girls about my age stumble out of the Witchwood having been lost for more than long enough for the castle to draw them in." She starts sketching a curriculum for herself that bypasses every skill not necessary for learning disenchantment. She does not need to become intimately familiar with all four power sources; she does not need to learn to channel through an unwilling subject (she wouldn't have needed that anyway), she does not have to learn a repertoire of even the most appealing spells for their own sake but only to build her own skills.

"Did any of them seem like the type to fall in love with an enormous lion-man?" he inquires.

"I didn't ask them," says Belle, "but then, if I'd stumbled out of the wood instead of getting stuck here, and someone from Dulac or wherever I wandered to asked me 'are you by chance the type to fall in love with an enormous lion-man', I would have believed myself to be conversing with the village idiot."

He laughs.

"Are you the type to fall in love with an enormous lion-man?"

"I'm the type to spend a week on learning to apply this sort of spell-sight," she says, tapping the book, "if that's the best thing to do. I really don't know about the lion-man part, but I don't think so."

"I have never been in love before. I don't know if it's difficult, but it might easily take less than a year and a half."

"It's always taken me much less than that."

"Do tell. I need all the information I can get."

"Oh, before - this," he says, "I used to fall in love at a glance or a word. It all seems very far away now. But it felt... beautiful, at the time."

"If I were the type to do that I suspect I'd know it by now." She turns a page in her notebook and begins laying out all the steps for permanent truesight. "I have already glanced at you and spoken, so perhaps I'm not so easy to love as you suggest. Or you've lost that particular facility."

"Not always the first glance or word," he corrects. "Just the right one."

"What makes it the right one?" (Note, note, note. He did have a very lovely smile, but while that would certainly help, she can't imagine falling quite in love simply by having it turned on her.)

"It's the right one when I fall in love with it," he says, tautologically.

"Yes, I mean, did this happen according to any special pattern?"

He shrugs helplessly.

"Sad," he says. "But in a good way. And it must be less sad, if the person you love also loves you."

"- How could something be sad in a good way?"

"Yes," he says. "If this works, it will mean you love me, and that will be very different."

"And presumably unambiguously a happy occasion."

"Surely you can make reasonable guesses?"

He just shrugs again.

"Fine for now. What do you want me to read?"

She turns to a page in a book about permanent spells, and hands it over. "If I'm going to do the enchanter's sight thing I need to know more about what I'm walking into."

Bell writes all of this down. "Well," she says, "if the sight spell I have in mind does what I mean for it to do, I'll have plenty of time to learn to safely disenchant myself if I want to switch later. ...If it doesn't... When you said that one book was about fake love potions did you mean the potions don't work, or that they work to generate 'fake love'?"

"They don't work," he says. "The first part was all about how dangerous real love potions are, and how it's a much better idea to sell fake ones and let people fool themselves."

"...Real love potions exist, though? They might be more or less dangerous than attempting a disenchantment, so it might be a good option to have in reserve if we run out of time."

He shrugs. "I haven't seen them in any other book; have you?"

"No, but we haven't got through all the ones in the other languages yet. Let me know when your eyes are up for more reading," Belle says.

"I could do a little more now."

She passes him another book and opens it for him.

"Then do," he says cheerfully.

"It's gonna be worse than the last spell I cast," she warns, but when he doesn't produce a last-minute objection, she relaxes into her mindscape, and composes the now-familiar spell, and sends it through the front door of his castle-mind.

Belle shuts her eyes again. "You should probably start wearing clothes. I didn't think of that."

"Does the castle not offer you clothes? It might if you ask. It does me."

"Thanks," Belle says, wrinkling her nose.

She opens one eye, then closes it again. "Never mind," she says. "It doesn't carry over to the human trueshape, it would seem."

"I'm just feeling very silly right now for not having thought of it. Of course there's no particular reason your true shape should include or be affected by clothes."

"Does it make a difference?" he asks. "To... you?"

"I'm not accustomed to being around naked people."

"You've been around a naked man for a month now," he points out. "Just a very fluffy one."

"Yes, I know. The fluff makes a difference. Your human form does not have it."

"Sorry," he says again.

"It's hardly your fault." She holds a book up so it blinkers her on that side, and resumes reading.

"...If you're not going to look at me anyway, are you going to keep the spell?"

"Well, I could look at you if you stood partly behind something," she points out.

Belle opens her eyes again. "There we go," she says.

He grins.

"You really do have a nice smile," she says, and she returns to studying.

...Well, now he's grinning even more.

She permits a few seconds more of distraction from her study, and returns her attention to enchanting.

The Beast settles into his chair and takes a nap.