Free Belle: A Retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” By Cameron Dokey by Unknown Page B

to our new surroundings.
    Maman still had her favorite chair, the one in which she sat to work her fancy
    embroidery. This was placed in the room to the left of the short set of central stairs, for Maman had decreed that this would be the living room. Though, when you got right
    down to it, the room on the right would have done just as well, for the two rooms were precisely the same size. We had discovered almost at once that our new home had been built along strict symmetrical lines.
    Maman’s chair went nearest the fireplace, with the great, round freestanding hoop for holding her linen to the right of the chair, and the basket that held her needles and skeins of silk on the left. Papa had made them both as a gift for their first anniversary, many years ago.
    April brought with her an elaborately carved chest of sandalwood that had been a
    gift from Dominic following his first voyage as captain of the April Dawn . I had no idea if it was empty, or if she had placed other treasures inside. Celeste had her dressing table with its stool of padded silk, and the ivory-backed brushed with which she gave her hair its one hundred and one strokes both morning and night.
    As for me, I had a chest, as well, fashioned of hemlock wood. I had made it
    myself. After it was finished, I had rubbed it gently with linseed oil to make it shine.
    Hemlock is a soft wood, so the chest had to be treated carefully, but I loved it golden color.
    Inside the chest, I had carefully placed the canvas bundle that contained my
    carving tools, some treasured pieces of uncarved wood, and as many of my father’s woodworking tools as the chest would hold. Grand-père Alphonse and I had schemed
    together on this, for Papa had decided that, now that he would be without his workshop, he would leave behind all but his most basic carpentry tools.
    But I knew how important it was to Papa to work with his hands. I simply could
    not imagine him without a project of some kind. And I was afraid that, without a task to occupy his hands and mind, my father would worry himself into an illness, for I had only to look at him to see how the last few months had taken their toll.
    At the back of the firs floor, behind the central stair, were two more rooms, a
    kitchen and a pantry. The upstairs was divided into two long, narrow rooms that ran from the front of the house to the back, as opposed to the downstairs rooms, which were side to side.
    One of these would serve as a bedroom for my parents, the other, for my sisters
    and me. Maman had actually given us permission to place our beds in whatever position we liked, though we had selected our places in order of birth. Old habits are hard to shake.
    Celeste placed her bed in the center of the long wall that divided the two rooms, with her dressing table alongside. April tucked hers under the eaves. That left me to place mine precisely where I would have chosen, had I been allowed to go first: beneath the center window along the outside wall. During the day, I could look out and see the hills rolling away toward the Wood. At night, I could look out and see the stars.
    Those first weeks, we kept busy, putting all thoughts of the city resolutely from our minds as we moved furniture and supplies, arranging and rearranging them as we learned how to make this strange new house our own.
    It was Papa and Grand-père Alphonse, both of whom had grown up without
    servants, who showed the rest of us how to build a fire in the wood stove in the kitchen, how to bank it at night so that it would not go out, and then how to stoke it up once more the following morning.
    I learned to tell – by how fast water dried on my hand – whether the oven was a
    fast oven, hot enough to bake a pie, or had cooled down enough to be called medium, just right for bread or rolls. Last was the slow oven to be used for things like custard, which would curdle if it got too hot too fast, but which could stay in a cooler for a long time.
    Celeste caught on to