The hay is sweet-smelling, cushioning her from the hard ground, but its edges prickle at Anthy's arms uncomfortably as she moves towards wakefulness. The walls of her house are familiar, but wrong. She shouldn't be here, she knows, but she can't bring herself to leave. There is silence outside the door and still she doesn't dare open it.
Her brother sleeps quietly on the ground next to her and he shouldn't be here either, but she's grateful that he is. She sits beside him and doesn't look at the door and doesn't try to think about anything - the world outside stays silent so it's not very hard.
She cannot say how long it is before she leaves the house - days, weeks, months. She has the strangest feeling that the sun only sets because it occurs to her that it should, but she knows that if her brother were awake she would be embarrassed to tell him of the silly, childish notion. At some point it occurs to her that she should be hungry and she realizes that she is; there is no food in the house.
The path through the forest seems especially clear today and it's not long before she finds the village, just as she remembers it. Windows are cracked open to invite the cool breeze, which stirs the white sheets hung on clothes lines, making them flutter and dance. Even so, she doesn't meet one person as she walks the street.
The baker's house is empty, but there's bread on the counter anyway. It's no longer hot to the touch, but still fresh enough that the smell of it clings to the air around her. Anthy hesitates for a moment, unsure if she should take it without asking, but then her stomach growls and her mind's made up. She cuts herself a modest piece and hopes that the baker won't mind too much when they return.
The village is silent the whole way back.
She never sees any people when she leaves the house and that's something of a relief. Nothing frightens her more than the thought of opening the door to see the crowd returned. She doesn't mind the quiet so much anymore; at least it's peaceful enough for her brother to sleep.
Sometimes she sees shadows playing along the walls in the spaces where the people should be. The shadows don't ask anything of her or bother her most of the time. Sometimes she stops to listen to their stories before it occurs to her that she should be getting back.
She develops a conscious aversion to the town square. She is as certain that she must not go there as she is that the stones that pave the ground are a clean white, uneven and asymmetrical, just as they have always been. There is a power in the superstition, she understands. She takes the long way round to avoid it.
Her brother doesn't understand her apprehension; he is as drawn to the square as she is afraid of it. She has to beg him not to go there, clinging to his arm like a child. For a moment, his face creases in irritation at her. And then he bends to one knee, wiping the tears from her eyes. "Not today then," he says. He never promises 'not tomorrow'.
The coffin is heavy on the white stone at the town square. It sits peculiarly out of place, like the mourners had abandoned it half way through the funeral. It gleams, polished and unscuffed, like this had only happened moments ago. She pries her hands under the lid and it lifts for her as she knew it would; the weight isn't real, after all. Her brother will not wait forever and she doesn't know what will happen then. For tonight, though she doesn't want to, she shoulders her burden again. She climbs the stairs to heaven alone; her precious, shining memories wait for her at the top, along with the price she pays to keep them.
Her world is a storybook. Everything functions according to a precise set of rules, a role to play - predictable, comforting. Everything moves inexorably toward a set conclusion.
"Is it the coffin that scares you?" Akio asks and Anthy goes cold at the words. "There's no one in it, you know." There's almost a mocking undercurrent to what he certainly means to be a comfort. She knows that he would not have been able to lift the lid alone.
"I know," she says anyway. After all, they are both in their house together.
Akio looks upon the castle in the sky with wonder as she leads him up the staircase and then at her with something resembling the love and adoration she remembers. From this moment, it is not hers any longer. She'd always intended it for him anyway, hadn't she; she doesn't know why it bothers her.
He looks at the doorway at the end of the long walkway and doesn't see the coffin. "What's on the other side of that?"
"You don't remember?" she asks and then feels badly for saying it.
Akio doesn't seem to notice, pulling at the door. It doesn't move.
Akio becomes obsessed with the door - a piece of his castle locked off to even him. There is nothing that Anthy can do for him. The castle is his now and the lid is too heavy for her to lift alone.
The people start to fill the spaces in the world where the shadows don't live. Anthy sometimes wishes they wouldn't, but her brother needs them; what is a prince if there are no people, no hierarchies, no princesses. Anthy doesn't always know where he finds them. Sometimes he lets her help, lets her choose. Sometimes he uses her memory because that's all he requires of her. She never leaves; she's afraid her world might disappear if she did.
"I couldn't do it without you," Akio tells her, reassuring, when she wonders at his interest in all these people. She wonders what it costs him to admit this to her.
The shadows tell their stories to anyone who will listen. Anthy doesn't always remember which of them are true.
There is an appeal to the ritual of the duels - a superstitious sort of power. Anthy relishes in being the object of power in her own way. They are, still, her brother's - as much as the castle is his; evidence of his design is all over them. They offer him a vain sort of honour, no more tangible than the promise of eternity behind a sealed door, but more immediate. Anthy wonders if they are the means or the end.
Akio collects people in abundance, far more than he needs. As long as he gives them a reason to remain, most of them aren't concerned with leaving.
He would fill every hall with the plain and the unimportant if it would help him weed out just one more who matters.
Anthy does not like the duelists often - shallow, grasping dreamers that many of them are. She likes some less than others. There is one, one cycle, that she particularly loathes and she takes steps to be rid of him sooner than the ritual meets its completion.
Akio is furious with her and she is afraid. It is not the first time that she is scared of her brother, but it is the first time that she understands that fear.
She learns to be subtle from that point. Careful. There must be enough players for Akio's game, but it doesn't really matter who wins; none of them ever succeed, curled and broken on the floor while her brother batters at eternity with a sword. She learns the weight of a properly timed smile or an unpleasant memory.
She finds she prefers it like this, with the duelists fighting for her instead of just over her. As long as Akio can see the evidence of his own control in the world around him, it's fine. She wouldn't take that from him anyway; she has stolen him away from the world, but she dares not steal any more of him away from himself. She can live with these small moves - a stone making ripples on a pond without smearing the sun's reflection. It's fine. She's fine.
Her world is a spider web. Things stick there - the dead, memories, time - to feed the things that designed it. Spiders, Anthy knows, do not stick to their own webs. She reminds herself of this frequently. She is not stuck.
Anthy understands Akio's fascination with adolescence, why he chooses to suspend time within that moment. There's a logic to the school, to the comings and goings of groups of people, to their world moving with the times even as it remains separate from them, but that's not the reason. He likes the volatility of it. The unrealized potential and peaking emotion and vulnerability and growing understanding.
She does not ask why he does not choose to remain in adolescence while the world around him does. She knows the answer.
Orphans often make for good heroes. It's like the less connections a person has to the world, the more use stories have for them. Stories love orphans.
Akio loves orphans too. Orphans and runaways and people dissatisfied with the life they inhabit. They can come and go and reality doesn't flinch for missing them. Memory will make allowances for them if they steer it toward the path of least resistance.
They call it 'Ohtori' now. She likes the rhythm of the word, even as she's indifferent to the man it was named for - kindly, but prone to speaking to her like she is a child. He doesn't remember that he had once dueled for her just as none of them ever do. Akio wastes nothing and no one, uses even the forgotten and the dead until they're all used up. Anthy is different than any of them; Akio still can't do it without her.
The planetarium projector is a curiosity. Not for the technology inside it - she doesn't understand it, but it doesn't matter. It is at once elegant and lumbering, marvelous and abominable.
Akio adores it. He marvels at its lights and images the way he once gazed at the castle. He spends days in a false night sky under his command.
Anthy stares up at the sky above Ohtori from her balcony and wonders how the true heavens compare.
Akio's car is another one of his treasures. Anthy suspects that he prefers it over the horses because animals have always liked her better; it's a cruel enough thought that she almost confesses it aloud. He takes her for a ride when he first brings it to Ohtori, talking to her with a childish enthusiasm about how the engine works. She holds that moment to her heart on later rides, when the car becomes part of the game; it is for that moment alone that the car continues to run without fuel or need for repair. If Akio ever notices, he doesn't acknowledge it.
Akio tolerates her friendship with Chu-Chu because he finds it 'cute' - the way she dresses him up, the way she speaks to him like he's a person. Akio rarely means 'cute' as a compliment even when he says it as one.
Anthy doesn't know if Chu-Chu is someone she's conjured for herself or a real thing that's slipped through the cracks in her world. She doesn't know if the distinction matters anymore.
Akio's borrowed sword clashes uselessly against the door again. Anthy doesn't know where the duelist it belonged to is anymore, lost track of them sometime ago. She can't bring herself to care.
Dios stares up at her from the walkway - the ghost of the prince she killed to keep her brother. His gaze never wavers from where she's suspended in the air, an unflinching and dispassionate regard. "Have you ever looked down at your academy from this height?" he asks, as if making idle conversation. She doesn't bother because she knows what she'd see; her whole world is a coffin now.
Anthy's brother has always been drawn to people at their lowest. Who better to save? Who could be more deserving of all that he gave and gave to a world that could only ever need him?
Akio still gathers them to him - the heartbroken, the helpless, the hopeless. And they are equally compelled by Akio's power and promise. Moth and flame indistinguishable.
Who is it that Akio's trying to save now, Anthy wonders.
Her world is a greenhouse. Things that would never survive in the harshness of the outside world can flourish there. It may be artificial and enclosed, but really, the life they might glimpse beyond the glass would be so much worse to endure. She reminds herself of this frequently and tries to understand.
She enters the castle alone. Akio would be angry if he knew, but Akio isn't here. Her memories catch and tug in strange places and she knows Akio is working his charms and that soon it will begin again.
This castle is the one place where the prince of her memories is eternal - pristine in white, untouched by time or cruelty, even if he must loathe her now. He is always in his castle just as she is always in Ohtori, the two of them bound by her sacrifice.
Except that, this time, he's not. "Where did you go?" She doesn't expect an answer, but she gets one.
That Moment tears itself free from the tangle of her memories, crisp and clear, flung before Dios and a young girl and a coffin.
In an instant, she is furious, betrayed. She wants to take her brother's precious castle and shake it apart like a child's toy. "Why?" she asks and it's all the questions she wants to ask and none of them.
In time, she calms. It's not like it matters; anyone can play Akios's game, but only he ever really wins. One little girl won't make any difference.