“Hngh! You stinking little…!” An arm dropped away. Her head was shaved down. Everything below her knees went flying. No matter how fast she regenerated, this woman who was neither human nor thing couldn’t stand against the sheer force of numbers.
As the pieces of Carredura’s body were torn free, they melted and took on the shape of other objects: A mirror. A watch. A lantern. A mask. Sancta created by wrathful wishes long, long ago were pulled loose from her.
Carredura got smaller and smaller.
“You don’t look like much,” Riviere said. As she stooped toward Carredura, she removed her glove. “I’m going to put an end to your suffering. The same way you did for your victims.”
“You think…you think you’ve beaten me?”
“This was always how you were going to end up from the moment we found you here.”
“Well, don’t you just have it all figured out.”
“Unlike you, I take my job as an antiques dealer seriously.”
Riviere came to a stop. All that was left was the disenchantment. Then Carredura would be finished.
Yet for some reason, Carredura seemed utterly calm as she looked up at Riviere. She didn’t seem bothered by the sancta tearing her apart, taking their revenge on their creator. Instead she said, “You really used your head in this attempt to capture me, didn’t you?” Riviere was about to lay her hand on Carredura. “But you came one step short.”
Carredura’s body exploded.
Bits of pale flesh spattered around the street, taking the attacking sancta with them. They smacked against the walls of nearby houses, flew over the rooftops, went just about everywhere.
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
“Ahhh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
The bits were accompanied by laughter—a veritable storm of hilarity.
The voice leaped away from us, over the rooftops, into the sky, far beyond our reach.
“What a shame!”
Riviere was left standing alone, her hand stretched toward empty air. A voice resounded, mocking her.
“All that effort—all for nothing!”
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, triumphant. We could try to stop her, try to capture her—but she could divide her body into pieces at will. That was why she’d looked so calm to the bitter end.
Knowing how much Carredura loved to see people in pain, I was sure she must have been watching us at that moment.
Riviere looked up at the sky and said softly, “You said one step, didn’t you?” Carredura didn’t answer, so Riviere kept talking. “May I take that to mean that was your last resort?”
She was still holding the hand. Carredura’s severed hand that she had kissed, making it her own. It was still there in all its glory.
“Then maybe I should use my last resort, too.”
Carredura probably hadn’t noticed that, along with the beating she’d received from her enraged abandoned sancta, a ring had been tucked into her body.
Riviere had another of an identical design.
“This is something you sold to someone agonized by a breakup around the time I started my antiques business. A sancta that makes one that which has been torn apart.”
The customer had used the rings on herself and her former partner. As promised, the rings had certainly made them “become one.”
The result of which was that they were no longer human and promptly died.
Well, the rings still worked.
“Wha?”
As soon as Riviere placed the ring on the finger of the hand she was holding, an antiques dealer dressed all in black, someone we thought had flown away, was suddenly there.
“N-no! This can’t be! But how?”
This time, she wouldn’t be able to run away again.
Still holding Carredura’s hand, Riviere smiled. All of this was the simple result of sancta that Carredura had created.
“Your own deeds brought this on you,” she said.
Then she reached out her hand.
“Is it going to be all right?” I asked quietly.
It was long ago, back when I was spending my time with Cururunelvia as she lay on her sickbed.
I knew she didn’t have long. Once she was gone, what would happen to this country? It was obvious to see that people’s anxieties would spill over when we lost Cururunelvia. Would danger stalk the streets? Would the people despair? Would mobs form or riots break out?
“Don’t they always say it’s darkest before the dawn?” Cururunelvia asked, placing a hand on my shoulder. “We always lose track of what’s right when the world is on the cusp of changing.”
“Then I wish you’d be so kind as to live a little longer.”
“Believe me, I’d love to.” She shrugged, and the motion looked genuinely…energized. “But I think the emphasis would be on a little.” Her attempt at a joke. It was almost like she wasn’t really imagining a future in which she had died. I guess you could call her the ultimate optimist. “Well, I’ve done you all a favor—I’ve at least left you the sancta. There’s nothing to worry about!”
“But what if people misuse the sancta?”
“Then it’ll be up to you and Carredura to set it right.”
“And if there’s no fixing it?”
“Then just keep chipping away at it until it’s better. Just like how I’ve taught you, one thing at a time.”
Well, well.
“I think these days, I’m doing more for you than you are for me,” I suggested.
“Nothing of the sort! You’re still just a little chickie, Riviere!” Cururunelvia looked away from me with a snort, like a sullen child.
She told me I would do the same thing over and over. And in time, people would come to engage with sancta at the appropriate distance.
After her death, I founded Riviere Antiques to manage the sancta.
I stood quietly in front of the mirror in my shop and let my hand brush my hair. A blue ribbon bobbed on my head. Cururunelvia had given it to me from her bed.
“What’s this?” I had asked her, smiling.
“Proof that you’ve come into your own,” she said.
“Why, just the other day you told me I was still a little chick.”
“Oh? Hey, I think I feel a pout coming on. Maybe I’d better wait to give this to you.”
“It was just a joke. I would be honored to take it.”
I was thrilled to receive any kind of gift from Cururunelvia. Both of us knew there might never be another chance for her to give me anything.
So now I used this blue ribbon to hold back my hair, wearing it with pride.
“Let’s tackle this day!” I told the mirror. My reflection and I were the only ones in the shop, but I wanted us to be able to throw ourselves into our work.
The job was a series of challenges at first. Neither I nor the people of the town really understood the extent of the sancta’s powers, and there were a lot of imprecise wishes that resulted in very unusual items. Plenty of people also made selfish wishes that made life harder for someone else. Things only got more chaotic when, some time after Cururunelvia’s passing, Carredura abdicated the throne. Each time a problematic sancta appeared, I would purchase it and put it on my shelves.
So the seasons passed. Maybe I was doing something right, because more and more people began to pray for proper things. My shop, which had been doing booming business, got a lot quieter. It became just an old antiques place sitting almost unnoticed in the middle of town. People knew of it, but they didn’t know about it.
It turned out, she had been right. As time went on, the townspeople changed. Once I removed the curses that had been born in the nation’s earliest days, our land would be even more peaceful than it already was.
“Farewell, Carredura.”
Beams of sunlight came from the far side of town. Bereft of her magic and no longer able to maintain human form, Carredura had returned to being just a collection of objects, too many for me to hold in my hands. They tumbled to the ground. To my eyes, each and every one of them was glowing.
We could no longer hear Carredura’s voice. Those curses, brought to pass so long ago, were finally gone.
“It’s over,” I said.
There was just one thing left in my hands: a blue ribbon.