The Teaspoon

The funny thing was, one of the teaspoons had not been an enchanted footman, or scullery maid. It was just a teaspoon, and had somehow gotten included in the magic when all the servants had been enchanted into household wares.

So years after everyone else had returned to their natural forms, the teaspoon remained, a shiny little exclamation point teetering all over the white tablecloth, trying to run back and forth between Belle and the former Beast and convince one of them to use him. The former Beast, or Adam von Hallisburg, Count of the East Tract, as was his now official title, didn’t like the teaspoon, though in thirty-six years of marriage, he had never told Belle that.

Today, they were eating breakfast in the morning room that looked out over the stables. Belle sipped her coffee, and sighed, contentedly. The years had turned her auburn hair to silver. Her cheeks were softer, her form rounder, and there were creases around her eyes. But those eyes held same twinkle as they regarded him over her coffee cup as they had forty-seven years before and he felt the same bemused delight that she was sitting beside him as he had the first time she had sought his company out.

For himself, he always felt a little not-at-home in his lanky, human body, with his large hands and hair that had turned an imposing iron-grey. He wasn’t happy with the way his back ached in the mornings or how his knees hurt if he spent too long walking the grounds, but Belle assured him these were the side effects of normal aging. She didn’t seem concerned by age, but it worried him. What if he died? He didn’t want her to be alone, like he had all those years.

She chatted as she enjoyed her coffee. “I’ve got to start the spring planting today. All the sprouts are coming along nicely in the greenhouse, and the almanac says we’re done with frost.” She took a second look at him, squinting. “Oh, what have you done to your poor face?”

Beast touched the bit of cotton wool on his neck with a wince. (He still thought of himself as Beast even if every morning the mirror showed him a craggy-faced man with a thick shock of grey hair, no fur or claws in sight.)

“Hand shook while I was shaving this morning.”

He didn’t add that he hadn’t been able to keep his hands from shaking for several mornings now. Old age. After so many centuries alive and alone, he was growing old, and the panic that rose up in him had sparked an anger he had not felt in many years. In fact, he’d snapped his razor in pure frustration, and then, ashamed, hid it beneath some tissue paper in the trash can so she wouldn’t see.

Belle patted him on the hand and beamed at him. “Don’t worry. It makes you look roguish.” He shook his head, chuckling.  

“Well, I’ve got to get to it.” She plonked her coffee cup down, stood up abruptly, dusting her hands off, pecked him on the cheek, and bustled out of the room. The teaspoon was sitting backwards on her shoulder, like it was watching him, he thought. Did it know he’d been angry that morning?

Beast went down to the stable yards to talk to the new gardener. The landscaping looked lovely, but the toolshed had been a disaster and it seemed she might need some guidance. He crunched over the oyster shell path, inhaling the scent of the boxwood and the roses. The shaving accident had been a frustrating moment, but it didn’t mean he was returning to his old ways. He shut his eyes briefly as he sighed.

Then something stabbed into the bottom of his foot. He opened his eyes with a yelp just in time to see the rake handle thump him square in the face. He turned around, head in his hands, blinking away the explosion of pain, and walked straight into the gardener.

“Oi, ducks, watch where you’re going!” She barked.

Beast held some of the prejudices of centuries before: as a good Frenchman, he did not care for the English. Why had someone hired one for his personal garden? Doubly irritated, Beast put down his hands and drew himself up to his full six-three. His shoulders may have stooped over the years, but he was still tall enough to loom over the short, stout woman in wellies and garden gloves standing before him.

“Why is this rake here?” He hissed through his teeth, holding his temper with difficulty.

“Well ah was using it.” She said, as if he’d asked a stupid question. “Ah didn’t ask ya great bloody feet to be clomping all over it, did ah?”

Beast felt the rage building up, but he clenched his teeth, inhaled through his nose, and said with deadly quiet, “In the future we expect all garden tools to be replaced neatly in the garden shed when they are not in use, and if they are in use, please lean them against a wall or something so people don’t walk into them.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, sniffed, picked up the rake, and walked away. “Suit yerself.”

He considered bellowing his title after her to frighten her—though who else did she think would be wandering around Count Adam von Hallisburg’s gardens in riding clothes at this hour of the morning? No, he would let it pass for now. He still felt the roiling of rage inside him, and he was not going to humiliate himself with a display of temper for a second time in the day. This one would certainly get back to Belle.

Who had hired the woman in the first place? He didn’t recall speaking to her before. That reminded him of the accounts he needed to settle before he’d need to inspect the draft team Berkley was considering buying for the fields. Still feeling his nose throbbing from the thump the rake had given him, he left the beauty of the outdoors and headed for his office.

Accounts were not his favorite. A hundred years earlier in his miserable youth he would have tossed the books out the window and gone riding, heedless of his servant’s paychecks or bills in arrears. But between his temper over the shaving and his smarting nose, he felt a strong desire to demonstrate, to himself if no one else, that he was not the same man he had been. He pulled out his pen, opened the books, and set to.  

But someone had been doctoring his books. In green ink. He stopped and squinted at the page, peering through his half-moon reader’s glasses. There—someone had slashed through that five and turned it into an eight! And here—they’d added an arm to a one and turned it into a seven! He thumbed through the books, and found pages and pages of carefully crafted errors. Who had done this? He would have to rewrite the entire accounts for the past year! Furious, he slammed the books shut, just as a maid popped her head through the door. She looked startled as he glared at her. “Uh, um, sir, Mr. Barkley’s here…”

“Oh.” Beast shifted on his feet and smiled, trying to look nonthreatening and unbothered. “Yes. Tell him I’ll be right out.”

Barkley managed the off-the-property affairs for the von Hallisburgs. Initially, after being unenchanted, Beast found that the local government, no longer a monarchy, found the presence of a former prince in their towns and villages threatening. Plus, everyone stared at him. So he hired someone, and over time, though he was no longer as recognizable or notorious, it had become a habit. Today Barkley had selected a new pair of draft horses.

Beast headed outside with a spark of pleasure; he very much enjoyed horses these days. He was not riding them to death anymore, and they weren’t afraid of him. When he was in the stables and reached his normal human hand out to pat old Butters on the flank and she swung her head around to look at him with her ears pricked and her eyes soft, he melted a little bit.

The two drafts standing in the stable yard were massive, beautiful horses; a team of chestnuts, one with a broad blaze down his face and the other with a crooked, thin one. Barkley came forward, his leathery face stretched into a grin. He knew he had found something impressive and he could see his employer could tell as well.

“Your grace, good morning!”

Beast nodded towards the horses, “And what gold mine did you find these beauties in?” He whistled silently as he looked over the firm muscles and arched necks, sides gleaming like burnished copper. The two of them headed towards the horses, the gleam of fond equestrians in their eyes.

But then everything went wrong. Instead of calmly flicking their ears forward, both horses’ heads shot up, the whites of their eyes showing. Barkely, surprised and confused, stepped forward to calm them. Beast, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, backed away, his hands up. As he retreated, the horses’ heads dropped, though they still stamped and snorted nervously, rolling their eyes at him.

Beast felt himself turn red with shame. It was him. Again. He was too frightening for horses. Was it because they could sense how angry he’d been that morning? Animals sometimes sensed who was safe and who was not. He turned away from the horses, fists clenched.

Barkley, also embarrassed, was calling explanations over his shoulder to Beast as he patted the horses down and led them together in small circles. “I’m sorry, sir, they’ve been gentle as lambs the entire time I was looking them over, sir! Never seen anything like that out of them!”

In front of Beast, too quiet for Barkley to hear, a creaky voice said, “Not too much changed after all, ah says.”

It was the gardener, standing just out of sight in the gateway between the gardens and the stable yard, her pudgy face wreathed in a wrinkly smile, an evil gleam in her eye. A shadow fell across her so that only half her face was visible and Beast felt a sudden jolt of recognition. How had he not seen it before? It was the witch, withered and diminished, but still recognizable as the one who had enchanted him centuries ago.

“Yer a great fake, you are. Ah knowed it. Ah came back to check up on ye.”

“GET AWAY FROM ME!” Beast bellowed, reaching uselessly for the sword that he never carried on his morning perambulations anyway. Behind him the horses screamed in terror, and he knew that Barkley could only see him screaming at an empty gate; couldn’t see the witch standing there, accusing him, threatening him. It wasn’t even magic she was using against him, just the angle of the doorway and somehow that made him feel even worse.

And if Barkley reported to Belle that he had gone mad again, if the maid told her how he had been upset over the accounts, if she found the snapped razor in the trashcan—his one thought was to pull the witch into the light so people could see that he was not mad, not regressing. He wasn’t this person anymore!

 But as he stretched out his hand, he could almost see the hair tufting over the back, watch his fingernails lengthen and curve into lethal weapons. He cringed away from his own hand, curling in on himself in revulsion as he saw the hair sprouting. From the doorway the witch was giggling—and suddenly there were pounding footsteps behind him.

He wheeled around, horrified, ashamed, hiding the paw behind his back.

It was Belle. She had clearly run down from their bedroom; she had one boot on and one boot off. Her grey hair was coming out of her usually tidy bun, but the flame of wrath in her eye transformed her from an elderly woman just come from gardening into a warrior. He saw she was coming for him and quailed—but instead of berating him, she threw her arms around him and spat at the witch. “You leave him alone!”

“He’s just a beast!” The witch howled. “Only ever a beast!” She started cackling, screeching, “He was snapping razors in a temper this morning, yelling at old ladies in the garden, brutalizing the horses, he deserves—”

Belle let go of Beast. She strode across the gravel, reached up and slapped the old woman right on her face, so hard that the witch spun, spit flying and nearly fell over. Belle continued to advance on her. “I still love him, do you understand? I know about the razor, I know about you terrorizing him in the garden, and I. Still. Love. Him. You have no power over him!”

And she grabbed the teaspoon that had been teetering on her shoulder, whipped it back and flung it straight at the witch’s face.

It was hardly a powerful weapon. It bounced off and landed on the ground with a plink. But when it hit, the witch froze, paralyzed. A strange sparkle rose up from the teaspoon and shimmered around her face.

“No,” gasped the witch, batting at her face. And then the sparkle sank into her skin and she began to fade away, first streakily, like smeared paint, and then a breeze curled up what was left of her and took her over the garden wall and away from the manor entirely.

Belle watched her go and turned to Beast, taking his hands and holding them up in front of him. “Look,” she said, “No fur.”

He shook his head and shut his eyes. “She’s right. I was angry all morning.” He pointed to the tiny silver teaspoon lying on the ground. “And I’ve got your teaspoon killed.”

Belle went over and picked it up. It was as still and solid as any normal teaspoon. She brought it back to him and they looked at it together. “I’m sorry,” Beast said, heavily.

Giving him an exasperated look, Belle flipped the teaspoon over her shoulder and threw her arms around him. “I loved the teaspoon because it reminded me of falling in love with you—and because it was cute. But I’m not going to forget that time because I don’t have the teaspoon, you silly goose.”

“It reminded me of how I was back then. Angry. Rude. Alone.”

Belle looked horrified. “That’s what it reminded you of? Why didn’t you say something?”

He looked away, “You liked it so much…”

“I didn’t have to keep it on my shoulder all the time. I could have left it in the kitchen.” She looked thoughtful and absentmindedly tucked a strand of his grey hair behind his ear. “I wonder if it was actually the witches’ way of keeping an eye on you and maintaining her own power.”

“It’s possible.” Beast said. “Belle, I still hope…you still want to be with me?”

“You know I do,” she said, smiling up into his face as he kissed her.

 And then after a moment, he said: “Belle, we are an elderly couple, sitting in one another’s laps in the middle of the carriage drive. For propriety’s sake—and also my leg is cramping—could we move inside?”

Laughing, she pulled him up and they went inside, their arms around each other’s waists.