Set in the same universe as Arcadia, which is a rustic fantasy AU where technology (especially weaponized technology, electronics, aircraft etc) has been outlawed and confiscated/destroyed starting an unknown number of years ago. But sometimes things are hidden well enough that they survive, even if it sometimes means hiding in plain sight.
The White Wizard
"Ryou, I want to play." Amane tugged on her brother's sleeve as they walked through the forest, making their way through the trees when there was no path to guide them. Nobody ever went out this far—there was no reason to, nothing to walk towards, but Ryou liked the quiet. Here, he could imagine himself in a whole different world. Amane could understand.
He looked down at her, smiling. "What would you like to play? A game?"
There was a rock in the center of their path and she kicked it, off into the trees. Sullenly, she replied, "the walking game."
"How about an exploring game?" Ryou was always handy with a new game or contest to pass the time—something the others in his class could play together, all of them included, or in his sister's case, something to keep her motivated. When a jar overturned, who could pick up the most beads; when they were walking, who saw the most sparrows, building castles and figurines out of sticks and snow and anything they could find, and having them go on adventures. "Two daring explorers, off on a quest, to find…"
"The magic flower!" She didn't miss a beat. "It grows in the forest, and if you make tea brewed with its petals it can cure anything."
"Why do we want the flower? We're not sick, so who is it for?"
Amane was looking between the rows of trees—it was far too early in the season for things to be flowering, but the leaves were thicker and fuller here—occasionally reaching out to inspect a leaf, or run her fingers over the bark of a tree. There was a mark on that one, a cairn, signifying that they had been here before. "It's for the garden."
"What a practical quest," Ryou said, shrugging and following her. "We must not be very busy adventurers, to take on such a quest."
She made a face at him. "You're not busy. Mother says you spend too much time out here, hiding. But father spends too much time inside so I think you're even."
They came to the bank of a little stream. To one side were wooden posts where Ryou supposed a bridge once was—one still with its paint, bright red—and when Amane made to step out onto a rock, he reached out instinctively for her hand. "We should go back."
She didn't know, but it was the farthest away from their home he'd ever gone. He'd never crossed the river—he was ashamed to be so afraid of such a silly thing, and for someone who liked exploring so much he wasn't sure why he drew the line here. His schoolmates and family were afraid of leaving the village, and he feared going beyond his own known boundaries. "But we have to find the flower," she said.
She tugged on his hand again. "Come on, Ryou. Let's go just a little bit further."
He helped her cross the river, stepping from rock to rock so their shoes stayed dry. "Only for a little while. Even knights on quests can't be late for dinner."
The trees on the other side of the stream were thinner but still very tall, and only several deep, and beyond that were remnants of a wall that had since fallen away. In places the bricks were stacked waist-high, sometimes a little higher, but Ryou couldn't see any signs of a gate. He put both hands on top of the wall, tracing the outline of each brick, noting the regular size and shape. One of the bricks came loose in his hand, and he put it back, feeling almost guilty. Amane hardly noticed, charging forward through a gap in the wall.
"Ryou!"
In an instant he was past the wall and at her side. She wasn't hurt, like he had first thought when he heard her gasp like that. Her hand reached up to his sleeve and tugged on it. "Look."
In front of them stretched a field of grass and at its farthest edge was a structure unlike anything Ryou had ever seen. The ground seemed to rise up around it, reclaiming it, but he could see bits of white peeking out through the dirt and rubble. There were three white turrets all together, surrounding a central pillar in a rusty red color.
He'd never seen anything so massive. Now that he was looking around the field he could see the occasional bits of things, jagged pieces of metal and rock, poking up through the grass like tombstones, and then through his awe Ryou remembered.
The pamphlets, passed around from child to child in school. The lectures, given every now and then, about what to do when you found something forbidden. Bits of plastic in perfect square shapes, cables and wires and the manuals to make them work. People still talked about the time a new house was built and the owner found several batteries in the churned-up ground. It was bad luck, everyone said so, and clucked their teeth.
Ryou wanted to turn back. He was not ready for something like this. And yet, he couldn't move—not until Amane pulled him forward, her hand still clutching his sleeve. "Ryou, we found a castle," she said. "I bet the flower's in there."
"Amane, we have to go." Ryou started guiding her back towards the wall, repeating himself when she protested that she wanted to stay and explore. He didn't know what to tell her. He wasn't firm like his father or persuasive like his mother. How could he explain to her that they had just committed, were still committing, the gravest sin one could ever make? That he was awestruck, and terrified, and still wanted to explore every inch of this place they had found? "We can be explorers tomorrow."
That evening, when Amane chattered on about white castles and magic flowers, his parents laughed and Ryou sighed with relief, and when dinner was done and his sister went to her room to sleep—without complaint, the walking had tired her out—Ryou went down to join his father.
Out of all the houses in the village, theirs was unique. Decades ago, a photographer had lived there, and built a basement darkroom that their house was built around. Ryou closed the trapdoor behind him and made his way downstairs.
His father had finished excavating the basement when Ryou was Amane's age—preserving the equipment, fixtures, and finishes took up much of his time. There was a shelf full of books, and another with their own notes and findings. At his wife's insistence, they had tested out the photographer's equipment, and so there were baby pictures of both himself and Amane displayed inside the room.
Ryou nodded at his father, who was reading a book. He set it aside on a table near his chair, next to the lit candle and the defunct desk lamp. "You said if we went out far enough, we would find something—you were right. Amane's white castle is real. I couldn't even tell you what it was, but it was old, and bigger than anything we could ever make.
"Domino used to be home to some powerful people," he said, picking up the book and patting its spine gently, like he used to pat Ryou on the head. "It makes sense that exceptions would be made, places overlooked."
The book was an old travel guide, the gloss completely gone from the colorful cover. "Will we go back soon? I can take your bicycle in to get repaired; it would make getting there a lot faster."
"Then Amane couldn't come with us."
"She shouldn't!" The outburst even surprised himself, but Ryou didn't back down. "Not until we know it's safe. No, I know, I know—not all technology is dangerous. But it felt like we were trespassing."
It was the message repeated over and over during his time in this room. Not everything forbidden is dangerous. The past is not something to hide or forget. And now, the time had come for their lessons to be put into practice. He wanted to show his father their castle.
He felt almost shy, leading the way through the woods. There was no noise except the sound of their footsteps—occasionally the birds would sing out to each other, but despite his mind running over with things to talk about Ryou couldn't say a word to his father.
"Is this the river?"
His father reached out to help him cross, and Ryou coughed nervously, taking his hand. "Yeah. It's not much farther."
They passed the trees and the crumbling brick wall, and when they stood in the field together, facing the castle with the white minarets, Ryou looked up, watching his father's face.
"That's no castle," he said. "It's something better."
They got to work, setting down the bags they had brought with them and each bringing out a blank notebook and pencil. His father was much better at sketching than he was; there was already a rough representation of the structure taking shape on the first page. Shrugging off the warning to stay where they could see each other, and to not disturb the site—guiltily, he remembered pulling the brick loose from the site the other day—Ryou crouched down near one of the metal pieces that jutted out of the ground, copying the printed letters and numbers where they were still visible. "50 Hz…" he mumbled to himself, sketching out the places where dials must have been, the knobs and buttons since fallen away. Ryou paced around it, giving his best guess at its size and moved on to the next one. When he caught up to his father, they swapped notebooks, Ryou smiling broadly at the approval of his work.
"Can we go see it up close now?"
Both of their eyes were shining with excitement. "Yes. Let's go."
"How could something so big stay hidden for so long?" Ryou asked. He had taken back his notebook and stuck his pencil into the loops of the tie pulling back his hair.
"There must have been a reason. Maybe simple oversight—with no more electronic communication, any authorities wouldn't have been as thorough. Maybe someone important lived here, or maybe the wall kept people out. There's nothing else out here, so nobody ever needs to come here. Certainly, most people in the village don't want to."
When they got closer, Ryou could see that beneath much of the grass was the occasional piece of something else, maybe concrete, that each stalk was growing up and through. Little jagged cracks zigzagged their way like some sort of path. In some places the grass gave way to stalks and bushes, some in several neat rows beside the base of the castle. He recognized radishes and celery.
He gripped his father's arm tightly. "That's somebody's vegetable garden. Someone lives here."
"And they don't take kindly to intruders!" A girl rose up from behind a thick hedge, a long-handled trowel in one hand. She looked younger than Ryou but older than Amane, and from the way she held the trowel he feared she might throw it at them at any moment. "If you think you can report us and get away with it, you're dead wrong."
"We won't report you," Ryou said, his hands up, urging her gently to calm down. If they were guests, Ryou thought they might as well be polite. "We're interested in this place, and what it can tell us about the past."
"Oh." She studied them intently for a moment, scrunching up her freckled nose. "Wait here," she ordered. "I'm going to get my grandfather." Like an afterthought, she continued, "I'm Rebecca Hopkins."
"Ryou Bakura," he said, but she was already heading inside, underneath an archway where a door used to be and disappearing into the compound. When she returned, it was with an elderly man dressed in a neat but threadbare suit.
Ryou hardly expected his father to make the first move, but his words were even more surprising. "…Professor Arthur Hopkins?" He let out a surprised, pleased laugh, reaching out his hand for a hearty shake. "I was one of your students! You taught me everything I know about conservation, and I've tried my best to keep in practice, and pass the knowledge down to my son."
While they were talking, Rebecca eyed Ryou curiously. The trowel was gone, but her hands were still smudged with dirt in several places. "Where do you live? Domino?"
He nodded. "And you live in there?"
"It looks roomy, but that's mostly the support beams and scaffolding. Some of it's not safe—one of the tunnels and pipelines collapsed a year ago. I wanted to live in the ship itself, but it's hard to get around since its facing up like that. The pods even have some fuel still in them, if you'd believe it."
He nodded again, doing his best to follow along. His fingers itched for his pencil, to start writing everything down, but when she saw it Rebecca laughed. "Put that silly thing away. We've already analyzed everything. Would you like to see?"
Inside it was cool and dark; only a patch of sunlight came in through the arched doorway. Repurposed metal racks against one wall supported a variety of plates and bowls, a vanity mirror, books, and an old teddy bear. She picked up one of the books as they passed by, but didn't show it to Ryou. "We only use the front of the compound, and keep the rest of it preserved. Much of the service structures don't exist anymore—repair and fueling equipment, that sort of thing."
They passed into a tunnel, several rooms branching off on either side. At the end of the tunnel was a set of metal doors, half-open. "You've never been inside an elevator, have you?" Rebecca's voice was smug. "It doesn't work anymore, but you can have a look. Press one of the buttons, that's fun."
He poked his head inside, gingerly stepping into the carriage, the floor creaking underneath his feet. Hardly caring what Rebecca might say, he reached for his notebook to copy down what he was seeing. It wasn't like he could forget any of this anyways, but his mother would appreciate it.
"If we want to get to the shuttle, we have to take the stairs. This way."
It took him a moment for his eyes to get adjusted to the dark. The steps were outlined with stripes of yellow, and with every floor they climbed a number had been stenciled onto the wall. At the top of the stairs was a door, which took them outside, facing another set of stairs that wrapped around the elevator shaft.
"Isn't this a much better look from up here? She's called the Millennium," Rebecca said, pointing to where the word was stenciled onto one of the white wings. "Based on what we found inside, we think she was used to maintain satellites for Kaiba Corporation." Rebecca sat down on one of the steps and opened the book in her lap.
Compared to how he felt looking at the spaceship for the first time, looking at the glossy photographs she showed him brought that same sense of incredible awe. Ryou was dizzy from it. He pointed to one of the pictures, leaning in to see it better. "People built this?" It was unthinkable; families struggled just to mend their fences.
"And flew them into space." The next photo was of a swirled blue sphere. Rebecca tapped one corner of it with her finger. "That's about where we are. I've checked it with the maps."
Ryou felt his mouth going dry. "My sister thought this was a castle."
She laughed, and turned the page. "More like a tower for wizards. I want to learn everything I can about these things, and maybe one day rebuild them all. Computers," she said, sighing. "Video games. Music."
"Do you have any other books I can read?"
Like kindred spirits, her smile matched his. "What do you want? Novels, textbooks? My grandpa has a lot of old archaeology papers."
He turned to the next page. "Anything except travel guides."
As the days went on there was less and less in the village for him. Ryou waited, patiently and quietly, to be finished with his studies so he could return to his home, and later, his castle. His classmates, though never more than acquaintances, knew him well enough to see these changes. Even his mood was different. It was impossible to go back to feigning indifference after his eyes had been opened to what he could accomplish.
Professor Hopkins was pleased to have a new pupil. Rebecca was still bossy, but his mother had devised a plan for winning her over. Whenever he saw her he would bring a basket of eggs, or some cherries now that they were in season, and then even she had begun to look forward to his frequent visits. Even his father had noticed his newfound passion.
They were walking back home through the forest, side by side. "When can we bring Amane? I think she would be good friends with Rebecca."
"I think so too. They both need more friends their own age," his father answered. He looked down at Ryou, frowning. "But I'm worried that she's too young. Your mother and I have talked about this—when Amane goes to school this Autumn, we can't have her telling the others about the archive in the basement, or about where the Hopkins live. You were much older than she was when you found out about everything. Amane is simply too young to understand."
Ryou watched a pair of birds fly back to their nest. All he wanted was to have this responsibility, this attention, and now that he had it all he thought about was his sister. How unfair that they all couldn't just fly away and be free of all these fears.
He shook his head, and carried on. "Imagine," Ryou said, "if every family was hiding the same secret. If everyone had forbidden things inside their homes and nobody really meant it when they denounced the old technology. Or maybe then, we'd all be even more willing to turn on each other, to preserve the treasures that each of us are protecting."
He looked up, puzzled, when his father grasped his shoulder tightly with one hand. "Ryou, I'm not worried about the things, the books and photographs. I'm worried about our family…about keeping you and Amane safe. I'm worried about how our lives will change if the secret is ever discovered. I worry that, if the space shuttle is discovered and the villagers try to burn it down, accelerants might cause the entire forest to catch fire. Ryou—you are much more important to me than anything."
When they started walking again, Ryou went a little bit ahead, so that no one could see the smile that brightened up his entire face.
It was in the late afternoon, and what would normally be a sunny day was dreary and gray, the clouds rumbling with thunder. The roof of the school was tiled and occasionally they could hear the raindrops; the other students would giggle nervously at each other whenever lightning sounded, far away.
The river that ran through the center of town would be angry and quick today, and the ground muddy and wet—not a day for visiting the Hopkins'. When classes were finished for the day he stuck around for a minute, chatting with the others as they darted outside one by one. It was easy, to talk about rain.
There was a crowd on the bridge, at least a dozen people leaning over and shouting at something below. Falls were rare, but not unheard of, and dangerous. Ryou went over towards the railing, the town's shop owner making room for him. "What's happened?" he asked.
The old man's hair was dripping with rain. "A little boy fell into the river, and two women tried to rescue him and got pulled in after him. They're trying to block the river a little farther down—the current could take them miles away, and that's if they can even swim."
He looked over the railing at the three shapes in the water, clutching each other and a stuck branch in the center of the swollen river. He took one step back, then another. That's my mother, he wanted to say, but then a clap of thunder swept through the village and he ran as fast as he could, like the lightning was in his own footsteps.
He had to get his father. Surely he knew how to swim—or maybe there was a piece of technology that could help, that they had kept for just this purpose. He flew over the path, puddles of rainwater splashing around his ankles, until he got to the house, out of breath.
Amane was sitting at the table coloring in a picture, their father standing behind her watching the drawing. Not bothering to wipe his shoes or face of the rain, he stumbled in, rasping, "Three people fell into the river…mother's down there. You have to help, or she could…she could—" He fought a minute to catch his breath. "What's going to happen to them?"
His father was already buttoning up his coat. "I won't let anything bad happen," he said, looking Ryou in the eyes, "just stay inside, and we'll be right back—both of us."
Ryou watched him run out into the rain before shutting the front door firmly behind him. "Amane?" he called, looking back over his shoulder; her place at the table was empty. "Do you want me to heat up some tea for you?"
"…Amane?" He picked up the sheet of paper with one hand and held it up to look at the drawing; beyond it he could see the back door, cracked open. She had drawn two figures with white hair, and three tall spires in the background. There was a flower in the front, only half-finished, with big, red petals shaped like hearts. "Oh no…"
He set out into the forest after her.
Her short hair had long since gotten soaked from the rain, now it just clung to her face and dripped water into her eyes. Amane squinted through the rain, trying to look out for the cairns and to remember what they meant.
Her legs ached, but she pressed forward; when they found their flower any pain could be done away with, however trifling. And then they would all thank her, because she had done her part like the others had too.
When she had walked this path before there were plenty of birds and squirrels, this time only the occasional worm came out of the ground to see her. She jumped over one, landing in a puddle and getting mud over her feet and legs. The water would see to that, she figured, and kept going.
She thought she heard Ryou's voice once, but ignored it. If she couldn't come with him on his quests to the white castle, then he was disinvited from this one. She knew where they were going; she heard them talk about it. There had to be something she could do that nobody else could.
Amane stumbled through the forest, spotting a cairn and following it, turning right and heading deeper into the woods. She had always been a little frightened of the tall trees, but this time things just looked wet. It was hard to be scared when the branches drooped so low and waterlogged; it reminded Amane of her own hair.
Through a break in the trees she could see the little stream. The water was churning a little faster now, swollen by the rainwater, but she hopped across, using the wet rocks as stepping stones, and climbed back up the banks until she was on the other side. Her palms were muddy and wet, blades of grass sticking to her legs and itching. She looked back behind her, to see the path she had taken, and saw Ryou on the other side of the river, his chest heaving, rain matting his long, white hair.
"Amane, please come back!" He held out his arms towards her.
She ran, her legs pumping as fast as they could towards her castle. She didn't look back to see if he was chasing after her, Amane just ran. She darted through the gap in the wall and kept going, the tall field grass whipping around her legs. Through the rain, set off by stormy clouds, she could see the welcoming white spires. She couldn't help but smile at that; she made it.
Her feet tangled under a root and she went tumbling down, landing on her side in the middle of the field. She clutched at her knee, scraped raw by the fall, crying because it was so stupid, and what was she doing, out here in the middle of nowhere in the rain? She felt foolish, and ashamed that Ryou had come out after her. They should all be inside and warm. She just wanted to help, couldn't they see that?
She felt arms pulling her up, and then one was tucked underneath her stinging knees, and she was lifted up. Ryou… she turned a little, murmuring at him. Instead of being carried back like she expected he was walking forwards, towards the structure. They were going inside? She tried to turn her head, blinking back the raindrops.
Ryou moved as quickly as he could through the rest of the field, the wet grass brushing against his legs and the mud squelching against his shoes. Amane was shivering, and she kept twisting in his grasp, seeking out his warmth but then turning away against his soaking-wet sweater.
He passed the grass, then the rows of vegetables Rebecca tended, before they were standing before the outer shell of the compound. "Wake up, Amane," he whispered, shaking her gently. "We're here. We made it."
She murmured at him again, rain beading down over one cheek and dripping down her chin. He shifted her and with his free hand he made a fist and hammered it against the closed door. When it opened a moment later, Rebecca stood there in the alcove, her eyes wide when she took them in.
"Please help us," Ryou said, slumping against one wall. Rebecca nodded, and helped them inside. They laid Amane down on the couch, Ryou wringing out his hair over the doormat as Rebecca ran for spare blankets.
"Grandpa!" she shouted, shouting again before Arthur Hopkins appeared in the front room. For once Rebecca was looking to be told what to do next, holding three things at once and looking utterly lost. "What should we do?"
"They need dry clothes. And heat—let's bring up the fire, we don't have to worry about someone seeing a smoke trail in this weather." Rebecca ran back and forth with every command, disappearing into rooms and coming back out with an old dress of hers and a thick bathrobe for Ryou. When he saw it, he held up his hands, protesting.
"But that's an artifact! It's part of the site—I can't wear it!"
"Oh yes you will," Rebecca said, pushing it at him. "I only wish I had thought of this trick before, maybe grandpa would have let me wear a spacesuit. It never would have fit, though."
Amane was watching her through sleepy, half-open eyes. Rebecca wrapped an old, patched quilt around her. "I'm Rebecca," she said, repositioning a pillow underneath her head. "Ryou has told me so much about you, and tomorrow you're going to tell me everything about him, okay? I'm counting on you."
Amane smiled, snuggling underneath her blanket. On an impulse, Rebecca reached for the bookshelf and picked up the teddy bear, handing it to Amane. She looked at it closely for a moment before hugging it to her chest, her fingers tracing over the velvet panels of the skirted jumper it wore, the red fabric curving out like a row of hearts.
"But I don't want to go back! Another ten minutes?"
Their mother looked down at Amane, smiling. "The sooner we leave today, the sooner we can come back tomorrow, right?" She was carrying a big picnic basket over one arm—empty, after the lunch they had shared with the Hopkins family.
It was an ingenious solution to their dilemma—the four of them would take walks through the forest on the pretense of outdoor lunches, or family walks for bird-watching or berry-picking. It might come to a stop with the end of summer, when both the children would be going to school, but for now, they couldn't be happier. If they were known for anything in the village anymore, it was for being a close-knit, always together family.
Amane ran through the field, laughing, Rebecca and Ryou chasing her. "Don't trip!" Ryou shouted.
Rebecca turned towards him, scoffing. "The last time she tripped, it was over a power cord that led to an underground transformer cabinet—there was a plastic binder in there! And a flashlight! Amane, trip over something again!"
They left the field, waving, Amane lifting up the arm of her teddy bear to wave goodbye at the towers of the shuttle. "Say goodbye, Rosie," she instructed, linking the fingers of her other hand through Ryou's, swinging their arms as they walked home.
The End.
Author's Notes:
1. The title, The White Wizard is a reference to White Wizard Bakura, the form Ryou takes in the Monster World portion of the 'Season 0' Anime series.
2. Arcadia, the original story in this AU, features Yugi Moto discovering an airplane, while this story deals with artifacts concerning spaceflight. The shop owner Ryou speaks to is meant to be Sugoroku.
3. Thank you for reading and please review, I value and treasure each one.