Very rarely, her brother would have fits at night. When they happened, all she could do was touch his hand. He stubbornly refused to expound on the nature of these episodes.
During times like these, the only person she could rely on was Richard. He was closer to her brother than she was. Once, when Richard was doing his duties, Brunhild tracked him down and asked him about her brother’s attacks.
“It’s as you’ve surmised,” he told her. “The fits are an aftereffect of what happened to him.”
“So you know about them, too?”
“I do. He developed those symptoms after you left the castle. It appears he has a vision of being trapped in darkness.”
“He carries the Healing Blade, doesn’t he? Why doesn’t it stop the episodes?”
“Because they aren’t a bodily ailment. Even that sword can’t heal wounds of the soul.”
“The soul…”
“They used to carry out very inhumane experiments at Etherium. They would shut kids up in the dark, too. It drove some people mad.” Richard looked up, as if he was thinking back.
“That…must have been terribly frightening for him.”
“Well, I’m sure it was. But I think being in the dark might mean something else to him…”
“What do you mean?”
“More importantly,” Richard said, not answering her question, “why are you concerned about Sigurd?”
Brunhild quickly answered, “I’m not concer—” but broke off there. The things she was doing were a clear indication of worry. “…I am being strange, aren’t I? Even though he killed my family.”
“It is odd indeed. I think it would make more sense if you were glad to see him suffer.”
“I wish I could be, but… I mean, it’s not actually his fault—if he changed because of the experiments. And besides,” she added, “if we could heal the wounds in his heart, he might go back to how he was before.”
Richard smiled at her. “I’m sure he senses your kindness.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes, he certainly does. The time is nigh when it will be rewarded.”
Richard’s words were reassuring, and they gave her courage.
“Hearing you say that, I feel like my brother really will come back.”
Brunhild decided to go out into the city of Nibelungen to buy a book. She was looking for one that explained how to cure wounds of the heart.
She changed from her fancy gown into a plain brown dress, something a city girl would wear. This felt like it fit her better.
She went around from bookstore to bookstore. But she couldn’t find any texts on wounds of the heart. All they had were books about wounds of the body. After perusing a number of shops, she finally went into a little bookstore where she found a single text that fit her criteria. It was a book on healing the hearts of children who had been neglected by their parents. Brunhild bought this and headed back to the castle.
On the way, she passed by a square in front of a church. She could hear the cheery voices of children playing.
“Let’s go, evil dragon. I, King Sigurd, will defeat you!”
They were playing dragonslayer.
Surprised, she watched. It seemed her brother was popular with the children in town.
The child pretending to be a dragon howled, and the child pretending to be the dragonslayer swung a branch standing in for a sword. These kids had probably been taken in by the church. As she watched the heartwarming sight, she saw a familiar figure.
It was her brother, Sigurd. He was passing through the square.
The children noticed him and called out. “Lord Sieg!”
They addressed him differently from normal, running up to Sigurd with friendly smiles on their faces. “Lord Sieg! Play with us, play with us!” “Let’s play dragonslayer!”
One of the children swiped at Sigurd with the stick in his hands. “Judgment!”
The stick hit Sigurd’s waist with a thunk.
Brunhild blanched. Her brother would allow no disrespect.
Sigurd glared down at the boy. He then reached for the child’s head.
Brunhild anticipated a tragedy, but what came next was not a bloody spectacle.
“Huh…?” A sound of surprise escaped her lips. She doubted her eyes.
Her brother kindly stroked the boy’s head and said, “You can’t swing weapons at people.”
That was all.
Brunhild was completely unable to believe what had just happened in front of her.
Had she mistaken someone else for Sigurd? There was no way her brother would show kindness to anyone—definitely not someone swinging a weapon at him. But this man looked and sounded exactly like her brother.
Sigurd happened to look over at her.
Their gazes met. Both siblings startled, eyes widening.
Sigurd walked over to Brunhild. She wanted to flee, but it seemed like doing so would anger him, so she stayed still.
Her brother asked, “Why are you here?”
She answered honestly, “I left to buy a book…and just happened to pass through the square on my way back.”
Summoning just a bit of courage, she asked him, “Do you like children…?”
He answered expressionlessly, “Not at all.”
“But…you stroked that boy’s head.”
“I just hit him.”
He had done no such thing. When Sigurd ran his fingers through the boy’s hair, Brunhild had felt her heart growing warm. That was how he acted during the old days.
She felt hopeful.
She had the feeling she could find the brother she’d lost.
That was when Brunhild realized Sigurd’s gaze was not on her. He was staring at the object in her hand.
“What is that book?” Sigurd snatched the book from her hands. When he found out it was about healing wounds of the heart, his voice turned cold. “It seems you still have illusions about me. I’m not going to become the brother you want. Showing a little kindness to some children doesn’t mean I remember you as a child—I have no memories of you at all.”
“…I know that.”
“It would be irritating for you to get the wrong idea, so I’ll just say it: I can treat children with compassion because I can see my boyhood self in them—the way I was at the mercy of adults and the world around me. I’m not interested in people, but children meeting cruel fates is the one thing I can’t abide by. That’s all.”
From what Brunhild had just seen, it seemed the children were attached to Sigurd. Did that mean he showed affection to the children here on a regular basis?
Then there came footsteps. Someone was racing toward them. A boy came over and clung Sigurd’s feet.
“Lord Sieg! Lord Sieg!”
The name Sieg had to be an alias Sigurd used when he was hiding his identity as king.
Sigurd crouched down to put himself at eye level with the boy who had run up to him.
“What has you in such a panic?”
The boy said, “My friend was taken away. We were playing together, but then a man came…”
Sigurd’s brows twitched. “Calm down. Tell me what happened, right from the start.”
The boy was confused and babbled a lot. But Sigurd listened to him patiently. Sometimes, he asked the boy questions that would be easy for a child to understand to get precise information out of him.
“This is the work of kidnappers who have been causing trouble in the capital lately,” he said.
“Kidnappers…?” Brunhild asked.
“It seems the remnants of the old Etherium are snatching orphans.”
Once, Etherium had tried to manifest the Power of God through inhumane human experiments. When Sigurd took the throne, he outlawed conducting extreme experiments on people, but some scholars revolted against his edict. They believed these procedures were shortcuts to manifesting the Power of God. And indeed, their greatest masterpiece—Sigurd—was the result of human experimentation, so their ideas were convincing.
The remnants had gone underground to continue their inhumane trials. Apparently, they were now kidnapping orphans to use a test subjects.
“We have to tell the knights…,” said Brunhild.
“Indeed. If I show them the royal crest, then the knights will certainly spring into action.”
Most did not value the lives of orphans, so normally, the knights would not lift a finger for them. But the knights would not be able to refuse an order from her and Sigurd. While they had disguised their identities to come into town and weren’t dressed like royalty, they could convince the knights of their identities by showing them the Siegfried family crests branded on their wrists.
“Brunhild, you contact the knights.”
Sigurd said to the boy, “Where was your friend taken from? Take me there.” Then he ran off with the child.
Brunhild hurried to the guard station, narrowly avoiding crashing into people as she ran. People gave her strange looks as she raced as fast as she could down the main way. But she couldn’t afford to worry about that. Children’s lives were on the line.
However, her attention was drawn to a certain someone.
Right as she passed by a large-framed man, she smelled something strange coming from the jute bag slung over his back.
It was the scent of a living creature.
An ordinary person wouldn’t have been able to sense it. But Brunhild’s days in the forest had made her nose sharper than most.
She came to a stop and looked back at the man.
The sack was large—exactly the size of a child.
She had a bad feeling.
Perhaps she was mistaken. Even if the scent of a living creature was wafting from the bag, that didn’t necessarily mean there was a person inside it. Besides, she was afraid to talk to the man.
Nevertheless, Brunhild summoned her courage and said to him, “You, over there.”
If she was mistaken, she could just apologize. On the off chance he had a child inside the bag, however, there would be no taking it back.
The large man stopped and turned to Brunhild. “What is it?”
He was already hostile. She became even more suspicious.
She thought about what she could say to get him to show her the contents of his sack. She decided to imitate a method she had read in an old story.