As Old As Time: A Twisted Tale (Twisted Tale, A) Read Free Page A

some cow had given birth to a calf with two tails.
    No, even that would be too exciting to happen in this place.
    She sighed and stepped into the bookstore, fixing a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
    “Good morning, Monsieur Lévi.”
    “Good morning, Belle!” the old man said brightly. He always had a kind smile for her, and was always glad to see her, no matter how many times she visited. “How is your father doing?”
    “Oh, he’s putting the last touches on a steam-powered log chopper for the fair,” she said, spinning daintily on her toes to look around the shelves. Her brown ponytail lifted behind her and for a moment she almost felt like a child.
    “Wonderful!” Lévi said, his mouth breaking into a big toothy grin. “He’s a man who deserves a prize. Or some recognition of his genius!”
    “You’re the only person here who thinks so,” Belle said with a sad smile. “Everyone else thinks he’s crazy, or wasting his time.”
    “Everyone thought I was crazy for opening a bookstore here, of all places,” Lévi said with a smile, pushing his spectacles up his nose and looking at her over them. “But it’s certainly quiet without so many customers. I can get quite a lot of reading done.”
    Belle gave him a smile back, the half-sarcastic one that she was famous—or infamous—for.
    “Speaking of reading—”
    “Nothing new this week, I’m afraid,” he said with a sigh. “Unless you’d like to read one of these religious pamphlets that Madame de Fanatique ordered.”
    “Are they philosophical?” she asked, desperate for anything. “Like, responses to Voltaire? Or Diderot? I wouldn’t mind reading opposing views.”
    “Ah, no. They’re the usual sort. Not even any songs or hymns. Really fairly boring. I also have some…rather morbid…treatises for Monsieur D’ Arque to pick up and take back to the, ah, asylum,” he said, mouth pinched in extreme distaste. “But I’m afraid I can’t let you even touch those. He’s very particular.”
    Belle sighed. “All right. I guess I’ll just borrow one of the old ones, maybe?”
    “Feel free,” Lévi said with a smile, indicating his whole shop. “Any book.”
    She would have to make it a good one. Life would be even sleepier and quieter with her father gone. She saw nothing between now and his return other than bright, cold autumn days, feeding the livestock, and the occasional disappointing long walk to the village.
    Belle needed something fantastic, something exciting to last her until her papa got back—or until life finally began to happen.

Whether by chance or not, Maurice began to see the pretty girl with the blond hair everywhere: attending to magical fixes of ordinary things for farmers and shopkeepers, distributing bespelled roses to cure this and that ailment, laughing with friends, spending time at the tavern chatting with Josepha or, more likely, reading a book by herself.
    He always managed to pick her out of the crowd, though she didn’t always have blond hair.
    Or green eyes.
    Or that height.
    Or that color skin.
    It was bewitching.
    But even
more
marvelous than that was the way she would chat with other boys—then turn away. Maurice was stunned that they didn’t run after her.
    His friends began to call him “moon-eyed.” Frédéric pestered him to find a nice normal girl instead. One without powers. Alaric, on the other hand, encouraged him to actually go up and talk to her. To introduce himself. To let her know that he existed.
    But as it turned out, Maurice didn’t have to.
    One day he went to the tavern early, by himself, bringing in little pieces of metal he had been working on to fiddle with as he sat there. At first glance they looked like a forged-nail bar puzzle a country gentleman might play with while having a drink, but the pieces were much stranger-looking: a tiny bit of tarnished copper pipe and a dull gray metal blob he was trying to fit into it.
    He was still staring owlishly at the smallest end of