I can see my face fragmented in the scratched surfaces of the bear's dead eyes.
I recognise the faded, stained white and blue sailor suit it's wearing, and I also recognise the smell of dust and mould, irritating my nose. I am in the little room in the hallway leading to the kitchen!
Closing my eyes and wishing it away is not helping. Why could the room not stay disappeared?! Why did it come back?! Did it come back?
Did I disappear?!
That last thought jolts me upright, effectively flushing the last tendrils of unconsciousness out of my mind. Shivering, I am horrified to find that I am naked; my only protection against the freezing cold is the throw from the couch in the living room, wrapped around me. It was draped over me last night, covering both of us... David and me...
"David," I say, or at least I try to say, but I have no voice, and barely a whisper makes its way out of my mouth. Experiencing an urgent need to get out of here, I lower my feet to the ground and stand, the cold immediately creeping from the bare soles of my feet up my legs, causing me to tremble more severely. I dig my fingers into the blanket, clutching it tighter around me. David is not in this room. It is only the bear and me in here.
Why is it so damned cold?
There is no sign of the storm today. Thin sunlight slants into the room through the window, but I am surprised to see some ice build up on the awnings outside it. The grass around the paving of the fountain in the garden is white with a layer of frost. It wasn't winter yesterday; there shouldn't be any frost outside; there should also not be any light spilling through this dusty window that shouldn't be here either.
On the small, scuffed desk in front of the window lies an open book, a diary, I think. It looks like one. Its pages are brittle, the writing on them barely readable. I try to make out what I can, but as if in a dream, the letters won't form into words in any language I can recognise.
Yes, like a dream. I'm dreaming! I must be! Please...
Except, in a dream, one doesn't feel the roughness of a dirty floor under your feet and the scratchy texture of a throw you'd thought was soft and warm until you had it wrapped around your naked body.
I cannot be in this room!
I turn towards the door and take the few shaky steps required to cover the distance to it. When I reach out for its knob, a debilitating fear stops me from grabbing it. My gut is wrapping itself into a tight ball in my stomach, and my breath bursts from my lungs in anxious spurts.
What if I turn that knob and the door doesn't open, or worse, it opens, and the house is gone, the warmth is not there, and all there is, is cold dark emptiness? What if there's no David on the other side of the door?!
It is plausible. It is much more likely that I fell asleep in this dusty cell of a room and dreamt of the man with warm green eyes and a startlingly lovely smile. The man with the strong arms, the beautiful voice, and the softest lips to kiss. The man I've fallen in love with.
"David!" I try to scream, but my voice is frozen; the only sound coming from my throat is the hoarse cry of a hissing goose.
The thought of never seeing David again, never holding him in my arms or hearing his laugh, is too much for me to handle, and with an anguished sob, I grab the doorknob and give it a violent twist.
The room spits me out into the corridor with enough force to crash me into the wall across from the door. I land in the abusive embrace of bongs and dongs and dings and dangs, overwhelmed by their sudden noisy presence. Sliding down to the floor, my body defensively pressed against the wall, I curl into a ball, covering my head with the throw blanket, trying and failing to hide from the noise.
It goes on and on and on, longer than it's ever rung out before, the sound ripping through every fibre of my being as I cringe away from it... and then it falls silent... too silent. It is as if all sound got sucked out of the world in a moment, and I was left in a vacuum.
"Belle."
I jerk in shock at the whisper of a voice near my ear. It is a familiar, husky, broken voice. I've heard it before. The last time I heard this voice, I was in the throes of passion, in the arms of a man with dark soulful eyes and a heart filled with sorrow... and I wasn't me.
"Belle, tu dois te lever, mon amour. Vous devez vivre."
I have no idea what he is saying. Who is he? Did I cross over to another dimension? Did I swap places with the Belle in the painting? The Belle in David's Dream? Am I now Maribelle? Does this voice belong to the man I painted? Is it David's great-grandfather? Does David even exist?
One thing is certain; I am not afraid of this man, whoever he is. His voice, though rough, is kind, and when I'd dreamed about him, he'd been so incredibly gentle. This man is not the thing that I fear. His existence here with me and the existence of that room are the things I fear. The lack of David is the thing I fear the most.
Bracing myself and gasping for air, I throw the blanket off my head to see... nothing. I'm all alone, lying in the short hallway, and the house is deathly silent; I don't even hear the clocks ticking any more. All I can hear is my own frantic breathing.
"Hello," I whisper, my voice still not able to make any proper sounds. "Where are you?"
No, this reality is not completely without sound. When I pause my loud laboured breathing, I can make out the thin, distant musical tinkle of a music box. I know that song. I know it so well, but it is missing vital notes, causing its full melody to evade me, scratching at the back of my mind. It's frustrating!
What is that song?
It grates on my nerves, stirs tears in my eyes, and reverberates painfully with the sorrow tearing at my heart. There's no warmth in this house. The kind voice saying things to me in French that I couldn't understand has gone. David is gone. There are no strong arms to hold me tightly, no warm smile or teasing laugh. I've probably gone insane, and I don't even have any clothes!
I am so cold!
I don't resist the sobs that shake my body when my eyes start to stream with blinding tears. I cry, and I cry, until my tears lubricate my throat, freeing my voice, and my sobs turn to wails filled with fear and sorrow and other emotions I cannot even begin to name.
And then the sound comes back.
It doesn't drift in gradually; it hits me in a crescendo as if it had been on mute while I was wrestling with my thoughts and fears and found its voice when I found mine. Rain, thunder, and strong wind screaming around the corners of the house.
I blink my eyes, trying to clear them to make sense of what I'm seeing as the sound of the rain intensifies suddenly and then retreats again when a door slams. A blurry figure is running towards me from the back door, and I swipe at my eyes, trying to rid them of the tears and focus my vision.
"Belle! Where were you?!" David crouches by my side and roughly pulls me into his arms. I gasp, feeling light-headed and weak with relief and confusion. I don't care that he is lacking in his usual gentleness. I can feel him!
He is wet and shaking, clinging to me, roughly stroking his hand over my hair, and his heart is beating loudly against my cheek. His heart is beating! I can hear his heart racing! He is alive, and he is here! I am definitely not just dreaming him!
While my skin recoils from the cold of his wet clothing, the rest of me doesn't care. I nestle into his chest, wrapping my arms around him, loving the way he feels against me, the movement of his muscles, the sound of his breathing.
"I've searched for you everywhere! I thought I'd lost you!" he growls, clutching me to his chest, hurting me a little in his agitation, but I don't care.
"Me too," I croak, crawling into his lap and nuzzling his neck when he loses his balance and sits down flat. He doesn't resist me, tightening his arms around me and hiding his face in my hair. Somehow, we always end up embracing each other on the floor of this hallway. This could become my happy place if I could just get rid of that evasive little room, always hanging around, always ready to grab me when I least expect it, but nowhere to be found when I am looking for it.
"Please don't ever leave me," David chokes; his arms are iron bands keeping me in place, squashed against his chest.
"Wouldn't dream of it," I whisper, knowing full well that I did just dream about being away from him, but I wasn't the one who left.
The cold finally breaks through our emotional turmoil, and rising, David lifts me in his arms and carries me down the hallway, through the foyer and up the stairs. Lying in his arms, wrapped in the throw, I marvel at the ease with which he carries me as though I weigh nothing. I may not be a particularly big girl, but I'm also not a dainty little fairy. I'm made up of the standard amount of flesh and bones.
I don't protest when he sets me down in the bathroom I always use and proceeds to fill the tub with warm water, pouring some of my foam bath liquid into the water streaming from the tap. To be honest, I don't think past much more than an all-consuming need for warmth, and I suspect that David is suffering from a similar affliction. His body is jerking so badly from the cold; I'm surprised that he had enough dexterity to make it up the stairs, especially with me in his arms.
I don't question his actions when he tears off his dripping clothing and climbs into the tub; I simply drop the blanket and join him.
At first, it burns, causing my shivers to intensify, until I'm shaking with convulsion-like tremors, but then the warmth spreads through my skin into my muscles, calming them down, as the heat flows through my limbs to my extremities.
When the warmth finally disperses the ice from our veins and defrosts our minds, we are suddenly just two people sitting in a bathtub. There are enough bubbles in here to give me the illusion that I'm dressed in a white bridal gown, but my back is leaning against David's chest, and I am increasingly becoming aware of just how naked we both are.
"Well," I finally manage to break the growing silence. "This is not awkward at all."
I can feel David chuckle rather than hear him, and I can tell by the way his fingers are clutching the sides of the tub that he is as tense as I am now. This is a lot like rolling down a hill, and when you finally land, you realise that you've rolled right into a bear's lair, and if you make one wrong move, it is going to pounce on you... it's just a lot cleaner since it involves soapy water and not dirt.
Well, to be honest, if that bear is David, he can pounce all he wants to.
"I wasn't thinking clearly," David mutters, chuckling again.
"Neither was I."
Great, now what?
"It's nice and warm in here," I say logically after a few minutes of silently listening to the slow dripping of the tap. Outside, the storm has lightened up a little bit, dimming the immediate fear of getting hit by lightning.
"It is, but... uhm..."
He doesn't have to spell it out; I get it, I'm not an idiot, and my nerve endings are very alive right now. I am fully aware of our current predicament and the possible directions it could go.
"I'll close my eyes while you get out," David finally sighs, and it sounds as though he's clenching his teeth.
"Really? I think that ship has sailed, don't you?"
"I wasn't really looking at you, I was cold, and you were half frozen, so... priorities and all that..."
I believe him. I went through the same pain, and the fear of either of us suffering hypothermia was a very real one a few minutes ago, but right now, I'm referring to a truth that has been tugging at my brain and my heart since the moment I woke up naked, wrapped only in a thin throw blanket.
"That's not the ship I mean, David. I think a lot of things happened last night. There are so many irrefutable signs..." I trail off, my stomach and my heart curling into tight, painful lumps of flesh again.
"Let's get dressed, get something to eat and talk, okay?" David whispers. He'd let go of the sides of the tub and is gently lifting the edges of my hair from the water, bundling them in his hands, wringing the worst of the water from it.
"Yes," I sigh, knowing that we have a lot to talk about, but it's a discussion I'm not looking forward to. True to its independent nature, and despite our current impossible situation, my stomach is growling loudly, spurring me into action.
Let's get it over with.
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