“Stop pretending to be me!” she shrieked hysterically. “What are you talking about? I am you.” The mirror laughed madly. “I said stop! You just drop dead!” “Go ahead and kill me, if you can. You’re me. I can’t die.” “Shut up!” Holding up the shoe she’d automatically picked up from the floor, this time Beatrix hurled it at the mirror. With a snap, cracks ran through the mirror in a circle around the center where it had hit, but she could still hear the laughter coming from somewhere, not stopping. “You should just die. It’s not like there’s any fun waiting for you if you live. You can dress yourself up in these silly clothes, but it’ll only make you feel empty. You should just die, if you can. I mean, you’re tired of it all now, aren’t you…?” In the cracked mirror, her own hideously deformed face kept on cackling and cackling and cackling, egging her on. You should just die. You should just die. Father Sigri had left the priest in charge of his home (practically left him to his own devices there, actually) and told him to use whatever things in the house he needed, so whenever he visited he helped himself to the coffee and brewed himself a cup for a little break before he went home. It was a modest house overall, but coffee was the one thing its owner had splurged on. It was quite good stuff. Incidentally, Father Sigri had dislocated his shoulder the previous night tripping down the stairs or some such thing, and the Council of Elders, which was presently down from eleven men to six, was frowning on him for getting himself hurt when they were so shorthanded. Apparently those old men didn’t have the imagination to harbor the same basic doubt he did, which was whether Father Sigri could really have managed to dislocate his shoulder from a simple tumble down the steps. Hey, look what I found. Casually peeking into the living room cabinets, he discovered a bottle of brandy. Although Church doctrine didn’t prohibit alcohol, it did tend to prescribe moderation. However, he know Father Sigri had a habit of taking brandy in his coffee, so he got a little urge to try it out himself. Although this house was very modest for someone of its owner’s lineage and status, to the young priest, who had naturally never owned his own home, the sofa in the living room was plenty luxurious. He sank his body into the choicest part of it and sipped his brandied coffee like the very Father himself. ……This really doesn’t taste good. It was a bizarre flavor: bitterness multiplied by more bitterness. He couldn’t fathom why the man drank this stuff voluntarily. Now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Father Sigri wear a pleasant look on his face while he drank it. Aside from the brandied coffee ritual that must be some sort of ascetic practice, the only impressions of the Father in his mind were of him constantly working. He’d tried playing high-society man, but all it did was…make him feel kind of empty. He was putting his cup down with a sigh when a sudden CRASH from overhead sent him reflexively leaping to his feet. His heart leaping along with the rest of him, he burst out of the room to see what was happening. “M-Mr. Yoshiu!” called the guard in a panic, leaning over the railing of the second-floor hall. He ran up the stairs, joined the guard, and dashed to her room. When he reached the doorway, shock brought him up short. She was standing in the middle of the room in front of the mirror, a pair of scissors raised in one hand. The mirror had cracks in it like the spokes of a wheel, and shards of glass lay scattered everywhere. Too late, he realized his mistake. She hadn’t shown any signs of dangerous behavior recently (setting the selfishness aside), and he’d let his guard down far enough to hand her scissors, of all things—which was obviously beyond the limits of what it was permissible to allow a hostage. A section of her soft blond curls was lopped off just below the chin, lying in tufts at her feet. Her formerly beautiful haircut was half-butchered horribly. A stream of blood poured from her neck. “Wh-what are you doing?!” he called from where he stood faltering in the doorway. She turned sluggishly toward him with a vaguely unsettled gaze. The blood flowing from her neck was dyeing her pale slip a bright red, but the blood around the cut itself had transformed into a black liquid like coal tar and was already beginning to close the wound. “I can’t die…” she said, tilting her head as if this confused her. “W-well, obviously! I mean, not that that would normally be obvious!” What am I even saying?! “Aha-ha!” Without warning, she burst out laughing and dropped the scissors to the floor with a clatter. “Ahaha, hahaha, hohohohaha…” As the priest and guard looked on in horror, she crumpled weakly to the hair- and glass-covered floor like a puppetmaster’s doll after its strings had been cut and just kept on laughing and laughing in a toneless, scratchy voice just like a broken doll. It was Kieli’s fifth day in the capital when she was allowed to see Beatrix. That priest named Yoshiu who was acting as her caretaker took her out to Father Sigri’s private residence in one of the capital’s ordinary residential districts. When Kieli suspiciously asked the priest why she had permission to see Beatrix all of a sudden, the priest answered in his usual half-fearful way. “You see, she’s beyond our control…I’ll tell you right now: We didn’t do anything to her, all right?” Kieli didn’t really understand what he was talking about, but it sounded rather like some sort of excuse. Father Sigri’s residence was a surprisingly normal house. It was more than fancy enough by Kieli’s standards, of course, but it wasn’t garishly overembellished either. It was probably a lot humbler than the high priest of Easterbury parish’s house. “This is the house where you were born, you know.” Kieli hadn’t registered that aspect of things until she heard him say it. She put a hand on the railing of the staircase, feeling a tangle of different emotions. It was cool and well polished; it seemed to fit her hand. There were almost no decorations, but she saw a relatively large number of paintings on the walls and wondered where that touch had come from. Was it Father Sigri, or did that show her mother’s tastes? Whee! Thinking she heard a whooping child run by behind her, Kieli turned. But there was nothing there other than the thin sandy sunbeams filtering into the entryway and the paintings on the walls. Lots of things live in this house, huh… Up the stairs across from the entrance was a semicircular corridor. The priest unlocked the door to a room on one side all the way at the far end. “She might be dangerous, so please be careful,” the priest warned as he half-shoved Kieli into the doorway. Something about him gave her the impression that he was ready to run away any second. Kieli’s heart pounded violently. Ever since they’d ended up parting after that fight at the bar on the parish border, she’d missed Beatrix so much, and she’d wanted to apologize, and she’d been so worried all along for her safety. She wanted to make up with her and talk about lots of things. So much had happened since then; she wanted Beatrix to listen to all of it. Kieli just knew she hadn’t changed a bit, and she’d get exasperated and say What are you, an idiot? and be sarcastic at her sometimes, but all the while she’d be listening to Kieli sympathetically. Kieli wanted to talk to her about Harvey and the Corporal, too. She couldn’t handle all her unease on her own anymore, but she knew she could go to Beatrix about it. Now she finally got to see her. Beatrix— The curtains were drawn and the room was poorly lit. Kieli’s eyes had adjusted to the natural light in the entryway; now a sort of greenish afterimage seemed burned into her field of vision, and she couldn’t make anything out right away. As her vision adjusted, she gasped at the state of the room. Cast-off garments and clothes boxes and liquor bottles were scattered every which way all over the room. Several of the paintings on the walls were askew, and several more had come unhooked and crashed to the floor. Shards of a broken mirror lay strewn in the very center of the room. O ye prisoners bound for another planet, plow the wilderness… Kieli heard a light crooning that didn’t really jell together into a melody coming from the bed. There was someone lying in the bed. Her golden hair was hacked off unevenly on one side and hardened into clumps by the blood covering it; her slip was stained rust-red and immodestly disarranged, the hem barely covering her at the bottom and the straps falling off her shoulders; she was singing brokenly, sometimes breaking into abrupt giggles; and she waved her slim fingers lightly in the air in a drunken circle-like shape. The unsteady singing permeated the dimness of the room. “Beatrix…?” Kieli called in a raspy voice. Beatrix’s eyes roamed the air—she was still singing under her breath—before turning in this direction. Kieli waited nervously until after a beat she drawled, “So, who are you? A new maid?” “Beatrix,” Kieli said again, a little lower this time, but in a clearer voice. At that call, Beatrix’s finger stopped short where it had been drawing aimless circles in the air, and the woman’s eyes turned toward her again, this time properly looking. Her blue eyes blinked hard once, then twice. The beautiful woman with the ice-blue eyes hadn’t changed a bit, and fondness swelled in Kieli’s heart. She’d missed her for so long and wanted to apologize… “Beatrix…!” She started to run toward her, eyes swimming. “Get out!” What looked like a slipper came flying through the air straight for her. Kieli couldn’t dodge in time, and it scraped past her cheek to hit the priest standing behind her square in the face. He cried out even louder than Kieli had. “Wh-what?!” There wasn’t even a split second for Kieli to grasp the situation before clothes and boxes and everything else Beatrix could get her hands on were hurled violently her way. Peeling off the skirt or whatever it was that had landed on her head, Kieli said, “Beatrix! Wh-what’s gotten into you?” “Get out! Go on, get out!” Objects were fired in her direction at random until she couldn’t take it anymore and retreated temporarily to the shadow of the doorway. As soon as she peeked back inside, guarding her head with her arm, the other slipper hurtled toward her. Batting away the slipper as it struck her arm, Kieli cried, “Beatrix, come on, it’s me! What’s wrong?” “You came to get mad and yell at me, right? Don’t lie to me; I know you did!” “Yell at you…? What are you talking about?” “Look out!” In the same instant that the priest grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back, a pair of scissors embedded itself blades-first into the doorjamb she’d been peering around just a split second ago. That made a chill run up her spine. For a moment, Beatrix stopped in her tracks, looking surprised herself. Kieli took advantage of that momentary window to shake off the priest’s hands and dash into the room. Beatrix, apparently afraid of her, pulled a blanket over her head and burrowed beneath the bedclothes. Kieli heard a muffled voice from one end of the blanket shout, “Stay away! I said stay away!” “What…?” Beatrix was misbehaving and making a scene like a little kid. For a short while Kieli stood still at the bedside, flabbergasted. She’d worried like crazy, and she’d been so excited to finally meet her again, her heart racing as she’d come all the way out here, and now…She slowly began to feel an actual swell of rage in her chest. “What the heck does that mean? I don’t even understand what you’re saying! Let’s really talk about this, Beatrix!” “No!” Beatrix shrieked and fought back as Kieli tried to rip away the blanket. This is just crazy. Now Kieli was starting to want to cry, too. Why are we playing tug-of-war like little kids?! Beatrix’s hand grazed her cheek, trying to yank the blanket back, and one nail gouged away a tiny bit of skin. “Ow!” Kieli blurted softly, and then Beatrix cried out, a little surprised “Ah—” too. They both stopped moving for a moment and stared at each other. Kieli bit her lip hard. Whack! She slapped Beatrix back hard on the cheek. Beatrix stayed there, frozen, gaping at Kieli as though she couldn’t process the fact that she’d been slapped. “Wh-why…” Panting heavily, Kieli gasped out, “Why are we—why are we doing this? It’s stupid! I’m mad! Yeah, I’m mad! I worried about you for so long, and I missed you, a- and I’ve felt just as alone as you ever since I got here…! And now—what—what is this?! You’ve been buying up all the clothes in town and getting drunk and throwing stuff everywhere and not even caring how I felt all this time?!” The tears finally spilled over; she couldn’t hold out anymore. She felt stupid and ridiculous and pathetic for crying through her shouting like this, but that only made it harder to stop. Still hugging the blanket to her chest, Beatrix gaped at her. “Aren’t you…aren’t you mad at me for telling them about you…?” she asked, sounding nervous. This time it was Kieli’s turn to gape, tears still streaming down her face. “Huh? Why would I be mad?” “B-because then they dragged you out here, right?! Then you couldn’t look for Ephraim! I-I just kind of didn’t care about anything anymore, and I told them everything about you without thinking about it, and then I heard they were going to go get you, and I realized I’d really blown it, and I felt bad, but it was too late…” Her face was a crumpled mess as she talked, and soon she was wailing like a toddler, too. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” “What are you talking about? I did find Harvey. I got to see him. Harvey’s been worried about you all this time, too, you know. And the Corporal, too! We were all worried, okay?” When Kieli hugged her golden head in both hands where the hair that had been her point of pride was so painfully shaggy now and drew her face close, Beatrix blinked at her with tear-filled eyes. “You got to see Ephraim…?” “Yeah, I did. I really did.” Beatrix’s eyes widened in disbelief, and then she started sobbing again, soaking her face even more with tears. “Oh. That’s good…that’s really good…” “Yeah. Yeah.” Kieli nodded, crying herself. They both leaned in close, until they bumped foreheads. “What were you thinking, doing this to your hair? This is such a waste! What are you, an idiot?!” Kieli said, delivering the same line she’d expected to hear from Beatrix sort of angrily through her tears. Then Beatrix got angry through her own tears the same way and cried, “You’re the one who’s an idiot! This is all your fault for running off without telling anyone!” “That was because you lied to me!” The glared at each other, both scowling. The priest was standing petrified in the doorway of the room, as if he just couldn’t make any response to these two girls crying one minute and quarreling the next. They held each other’s glares for several seconds. And then… “Aaaa!” “Aaaaaaa, Beatrix!” Their faces both crumpled again and they started clutching each other and sobbing without a scrap of dignity. They cried and cried until they’d cried themselves out. When Kieli cradled Beatrix’s head of disheveled hair, the scent of perfumed oil wafted from it, mixed with the faint scent of blood. It was the same old Beatrix scent, and it really hadn’t changed at all. “And listen to this! What do you think he said the first time he saw my face? He said ‘Who are you?’!” “Aha-ha, that sounds just like him.” “Hey, it’s not funny!” Kieli gave a look of real hurt, which Beatrix laughed off without constraint. She told Beatrix all about the things that had happened since she’d left the bar on her own and headed for Gate Town, sometimes in order, sometimes jumping back and forth. Lounging on the big bed together hugging pillows, almost like roommates staying up at night chatting, somehow. There was a guard outside the room, and for Kieli this was still smack-dab in the middle of enemy territory, and they couldn’t contact Harvey or the Corporal…She had heaps of problems, but for the first time since she’d come to the capital, she felt at ease. “And he forgot my birthday again when I turned seventeen, too! I mean, do you remember what happened back in South-hairo? He forgot my birthday the year I first met you, too, and wandered off somewhere…” Before she knew it, she was rattling off more of her mounting pile of grievances, increasingly bad-mouthing Harvey. As soon as she started talking about birthdays, though, Beatrix took on a stupefied look. “…You forgot, too, didn’t you, Beatrix? And you said you’d celebrate it with me this year, too!” When Kieli gave her a look dripping with suspicion, Beatrix cried, “Wh-what?! No, no, of course I remembered!” in obvious panic, flopped down on the mattress with a thump, and began doing something or other with her hands. “Wait just a second.” Since they’d ended up lying with their heads pointed in opposite directions, Kieli had a view of Beatrix’s bare feet and couldn’t see her face. “What are you doing?” “No peeking.” “Hmph.” Kieli lifted her head and tried to peek, and got a pillow thrown in her face for it. “Sheesh,” she huffed, flumping back down in the bed again. It had been so long since she’d spent time unwinding like this that a comfortable sleepiness came over her. She hadn’t really been able to get much sleep during her stay at the Preaching Department tower. O ye prisoners bound for another planet, plow the wilderness and grow wheat And then God shall appear All the land belongs to God, wheat is an offering unto God Beatrix’s soft crooning reached Kieli’s ears as she started to nod off. It was the same song she’d been singing earlier. Dozing with one cheek pressed to the pillow, Kieli listened to her clear voice. She wasn’t sure why, but the more she listened, the more she felt a dim pang of nostalgia. It’s almost as if someone sang this for me once, a long time ago… “What song is that? I feel like I’ve heard it before…” Prisoners bound for another planet—Harvey had once told her that the ones who’d developed this planet’s wilderness weren’t believers like the holy book taught; they were prisoners sent here back when this was an exile planet, long before the Church was established here. Harvey… Unease flickered again in her heart as she remembered him. …But I know he’ll come, no matter what… When she’d brought it up with Beatrix, her friend had been confident. He said he’d come to get you, right? “No matter what.” So he’ll come. Kieli hadn’t known how Beatrix could be so completely sure about that, and she hadn’t been able to wipe away the worry. When her expression stayed gloomy, Beatrix poked her forehead and laughed a little. He isn’t the kind of guy who uses self-confident words like that. Ever. To the point where it’s a pain in the ass for the rest of us. (Kieli had to admit that she had a point there.) He said “no matter what,” and he says that about once every six blue moons, so he’ll come, no matter what. Kieli clung to those words, shutting her eyes and clasping her hands in front of her chest almost in prayer. “Kieli, give me your arm.” She opened her eyes at the sound of Beatrix’s voice. The woman had still been working on something while Kieli thought, and her feet were still the first thing to greet Kieli’s eyes. Then, without getting up, she wriggled around like a sandworm until her head was facing the same direction as Kieli’s. Kieli stared blankly as Beatrix took her arm and tied something around her wrist. “Hmm? What’s this?” “A good-luck charm. It’s your birthday present. It’s to make sure you get to see Ephraim…and this thing seriously answers prayer, you know! Because it’s got my vengeful undead hatred in it.” She proclaimed this with proud satisfaction. I’d rather you didn’t put your vengeful hatred in it, though…Lifting her left hand in front of her, Kieli stared with wide eyes at the bracelet-like thing tied around her wrist. A copper-colored stone apparently torn from one of Beatrix’s earrings dangled from a cord braided out of strands of her chopped-off blond hair. “Th-thanks…I like it. It’s handmade…” Her eyes still smarted from crying them out earlier, but they started tearing up anyway. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d gotten a birthday present, let alone a handmade one. She’d been thrilled when she said her thanks, but Beatrix scowled unhappily anyway. “Well, excuse me for giving you something handmade. I never spend money on presents for people, okay?! It’s a matter of policy,” she said, as if that was something to brag about for some reason. Kieli burst out laughing with the tears still in her eyes. Laughing and crying, she squeezed her other hand tightly around the charm and the wrist it was tied around. “Okay, then I’ll give you something, too!” Kieli flipped over and edged closer to her, pressing her forehead to Beatrix’s. Beatrix blinked. “You don’t need to give anything. It’s not my birthday.” “Then I’m giving you something on your next birthday, no matter what! On the day in the middle of summer.” “…You just decided that day on your own!” Beatrix said, her cheek twitching, but then her expression relaxed and she smiled tolerantly. “Well, not that I mind.” “Then let’s definitely celebrate. It’s a promise, okay?” “Okay, okay.” “You promise. No matter what.” “No matter what.” Lying on the bed, they pressed their foreheads together and agreed on it. Now, Kieli believed in the words “no matter what.” Maybe there weren’t really any “no matter whats” in this world, but right now, she believed that there were with all her heart. She hadn’t felt so at ease during the night in a long time. Not long after that conversation, before many more words had even been spoken, Kieli fell asleep next to her friend. There were lots and lots of things left she wanted to talk about, but all of a sudden the sleepiness swept over her. But that was okay. She knew that even if she slept tonight, they could talk again tomorrow, and the day after that, and whenever they wanted, from now on.
Chapter 109
20 min read