I own nothing.
I.
Beatrice Castiglioni, known as Bice to her friends and lately known only as Bice or a Japanese word she knew to mean 'lady', had never expected to live the sort of life she did now. In Italy, she had rebelled against the standards her parents set down for her, had not been the proper Italian lady they expected her to be. At times, she suspected that had they known the full extent of the way she had failed to live up to their standards, they would have disowned her and cast her out on the streets, only child or no.
In Japan, they would be even more scandalized. Here she was, the lover of a rich man with a wife and children, no respectable husband in sight. She lived in isolation, sequestered away in a big house in Odawara, where the only hint of the outside world she ever got was the yard, and walled in as it was, she saw nothing of the outside except for the patch of blue sky above her.
Maybe it was more like how she'd known her life in Italy would turn out than she'd expected.
"Do you believe we'll meet again in the next life?"
Kinzo's visits were Bice's greatest pleasure. Speaking with Kinzo was the only time she could converse with someone who spoke a language she understood. Bice remembered the circles she'd run in back in Italy, remembered all of her friends and how she had traveled back and forth to see them. Her social circle had shrunk. (Sometimes, she wondered what would happen to her if Kinzo died or decided that he was no longer in love with her or that he didn't want to take care of the child she carried.)
(She had never imagined herself pregnant and unmarried, either.)
Bice stared at him out from under her eyelashes as she stirred her tea with her spoon. The August heat made her feel weak and light-headed, in addition to the sense of ungainliness she'd been entertaining for months now. Her aching shoulders fairly screamed in pain.
"Do you mean in heaven?" Bice replied, edging the hints of a smile as she brought her cup to her lips. She did not remind herself of all the church had to say on adultery, would not do that. If she'd done that, how would she have been able to have sex with any of the men she'd had in Italy? (Bice counted herself thankful that Kinzo had never wanted to know the specifics of her past.) Still, she couldn't shake the feeling of wanting a confessor.
Kinzo shook his head forcefully. There was that strange gleam in his eyes again, never quite rising to the surface, but lurking at the edges, barely noticeable, always present. "No, I mean in the next life. Do you think we'll find each other there?"
She cast a long look at him, considering her reply. A flat 'no' certainly wouldn't do, as much as she longed to be able to be blunt enough to say so. "…I was raised a good, Catholic girl, Kinzo," Bice said after a few long moments. That was what Kinzo thought she was, after all: a good Catholic girl. If he only knew. (It was probably better that he didn't.) "I don't believe in reincarnation."
Though he did have some passing fascination with the occult, Kinzo had never struck Bice as being a particularly spiritual or religious person. She knew from exchanging knowledge of various "scandalous" topics with her cohorts in Italy that Hinduism and Buddhism both believed in reincarnation. Bice was less sure of herself when it came to Shinto, and Kinzo never seemed to want to discuss religion anyways. He could have just been one of those people who held to certain precepts of his faith without being particularly devout.
The gleam in Kinzo's eyes grew stronger. "I do." And there was that impassioned tone she heard him take occasionally. "I know you'll find your way back to me in the next life."
Bice stirred her tea with her spoon, and didn't look at him.
Actually, Bice had had a question for Kinzo today. She would have wanted to know if it would be alright for her to leave the house he had set aside for her from time to time. Suffocation seemed imminent, sequestered away in this house as she was, with only a narrow strip of blue sky. Bice would wear a kerchief over her hair so its color wouldn't be so conspicuous; he needn't worry about her…
It seemed pointless.
Not for the first time, Bice thought of her position if things were to go wrong. She was unmarried and pregnant, thousands of miles from home. She had no money, no contacts. She could barely string a sentence together in Japanese, and though she was sure that those of the occupying government spoke English, Bice doubted that the daughter of one of Mussolini's officials would be welcome. In her situation, if she did by chance make it home to her surviving kin, they would be more likely to disown her than take her in.
As sweat pooled in the high, stiff collar of her blouse, Bice smiled brightly, and did not disagree with him.
II.
Sometimes, though not as often as she used to, Beatrice wondered what her real name was.
It couldn't possibly be 'Beatrice.' Everyone told her that 'Beatrice' was the name of a thousand-year-old witch, and she was only ten. Everyone told her that she was a witch, but she was only a little girl, really! Someone must have made a mistake and gotten her real name mixed up with Beatrice's.
But with the life she had, Beatrice could see nothing to do except abide by the name everyone used for her. She was the Golden Witch, Beatrice, reborn in mortal flesh. The woman whom everyone called Beatrice was a thousand years old and had lent to Kinzo a vast fortune in gold. The Golden Witch, though not a creature of flesh, had met an untimely death. Kinzo told Beatrice that he had bound the Witch's soul to a homunculus in the event of her death. She just hadn't remembered who she was yet.
Was that really true?
Beatrice didn't feel like a witch. She didn't feel like anything but a little girl. What was everyone else seeing that she could not?
Maybe, if ever she could see the world beyond the fence, she might know.
Beatrice lived in a pretty house in the middle of a dense forest. There was a lovely garden and arbor, a yard for her to play in, and surrounding all of this, there was a wrought-iron fence that stretched so high that, at times, Beatrice could not see the long spikes at the top for the branches of the trees overhead. She had never known the world. Not the world beyond the fence.
Though Kumasawa told her that hiding was naughty, sometimes Beatrice would slip out of her pretty house and hide. When she did so, inevitably Beatrice walked away from the manicured lawn and well-kept garden to the untended areas closer to the fence, where tall trees and overgrown bushes grew—the forest was trying to overtake her home, you see. Beatrice sat at the fence, usually beneath a hydrangea bush of a cedar tree, pressing her little hands against the iron bars. What was it like, outside of the fence? Beatrice's world was small; she could only imagine how vast the world outside must have been. If she strained her ears, she could hear a faint, rhythmic roaring. After much wheedling, she had persuaded Genji to tell her what it was. It was the sound of the sea.
Beatrice wanted to see the sea.
Kinzo told her that the forest was full of wolves, wolves being terrible creatures with burning eyes and giant teeth who would swallow up little girls who strayed into the forest. He told her this every time when he left her, when Beatrice would follow him to the gate and beg to be allowed to go with him. The world was a perilous place, he always told her. She was far too good, far too small and fragile for the world. This was the only place where she would be safe. It would be the only place where she could ever hope to remember who she was.
It was Kinzo who most believed that Beatrice was the Golden Witch, reborn in mortal flesh. He told her this so many times that the number ran together in Beatrice's head. She was the Golden Witch, she just didn't know it yet, and hadn't remembered. If it took him the rest of his life, Kinzo would help her remember.
And Kinzo did a multitude of things that he told Beatrice would help her remember who she really was. She had blood pricked out of her fingertips for use in rituals. Kinzo would mutter spells over her and give Beatrice instructions for things she needed to do in his absence that he said would help her. Beatrice had spent many a lonely night standing on the thirteenth step of a staircase at midnight and many lonely mornings chanting very specific invocations to some being that might grant her memory back.
Kumasawa would lay out dresses and jewelry clearly belonging to grown women on her bed and ask Beatrice if she recognized any of them. The cook, having been informed of the Golden Witch's favorite foods, would cook that woman's favorites and Beatrice would be watched to see if she recognized any of the dishes laid out before her. Favorite perfumes would be waved under her nose. Favorite pieces of music would be put on the record player. Beatrice recognized none of it.
Lately, Kinzo had had her reading letters.
Beatrice stared at the papers set out before her. These were letters supposed to have been written by the Golden Witch. All of them were in English, a language that Beatrice did not know and could neither read nor write in; neither could she speak or understand the language. Kinzo wanted her to read all of them. He said that if she could understand them without having first been taught English, it would be a clear sign that her memories were coming back.
The young girl sighed heavily. She understood nothing of what had been set before her; it was nothing more than a set of incomprehensible squiggles that were apparently supposed to form something very much like one of her books.
Everyone told her that she was the Golden Witch reborn in mortal flesh. Everyone told her that she was Beatrice.
She didn't feel like Beatrice, though. She was supposed to be the mortal vessel of a thousand-year-old witch, but she felt like nothing but a little girl. She didn't understand who she was supposed to be.
III.
The dress didn't fit right, not at first. Its current owner was rather shorter than the last, after all. Kumasawa was surprisingly handy with a needle, though, and she had been able to make alterations. The dress was still a little baggy, but at least the skirt didn't drag on the ground anymore.
Yasuda Sayo did what she rarely did, and stared into a mirror, at her reflection.
She didn't like wearing this dress. It was her mother's, and Kinzo had wanted to use her mother as a replacement for another woman, and had wanted to use her as someone to forgive him for his sins (As though she could ever forgive him for sins perpetrated against another). Sayo could never be a replacement for her own mother. Besides, she had been, by all outward appearances, a servant for all of her life. This dress seemed too ornate for a servant of the Ushiromiya family.
But I'm not really a servant, am I? I am trapped in this life, but I control all of their fates. I have every sort of power over them… Every power except the power to make them believe in my existence.
Heh. I look like a little girl playing dress up with her mother's clothes, wearing this dress.
This isn't a game.
Her hair was already secured under a neat skullcap. As she slipped the blonde wig on over the cap, she stared at her reflection again, and frowned deeply.
In the end, Kinzo had gotten his wish. It seemed a rather steep injustice that his wish should be granted when the wishes of so many others had gone unfulfilled, but there it was. With this, Beatrice had truly resurrected.
But he was not there to see it. As Beatrice stepped out into the dark, shadowy halls of the Ushiromiya mansion, prepared to haunt this place for the first time as a fully-realized Witch, she thought that that was for the best. Kinzo hadn't really deserved to see this day come to pass, after all. Not after everything he'd done. (And not after everything that had been done to her.)