"Bellflower"

I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.

For Myaru. This story starts off with a K+ rating, but will be raised to T in the second chapter. Reasons include depictions of war and its attendant violence and some "adult" themes and suggestions. Spoilers for FE11 (Shadow Dragon) with some premonitions of FE12 (Heroes of Light and Shadow).

Maria knew herself to be fortunate. She had a roof above her head and a stone floor beneath her feet. She had shoes on those feet and a sufficient allowance of clothing, and was kept warm in the winter months and tolerably cool in the summer. She never knew hunger, as each day saw three meals placed before her. To not know hunger, or cold, to sleep each night in a bed- five million citizens of Macedon would envy her these circumstances. Perhaps twenty million souls on all of Archanea lacked such comforts. So Maria said her prayers, night and morning, with sincere gratitude for her lot in life.

"Deities above, keep safe the souls of my lord father and lady mother. Guide the king my brother, and grant him the strength and wisdom that he may lead our people to better days. For my sister I ask that her heart be filled with courage but tempered with mercy. For myself, I ask nothing more than the opportunity to serve as best I can."

The deities did not provide Maria much guidance on how she might serve them except through those prayers. Those who took care of Maria (who claimed to be tutors and governesses but were actually jailers, as Maria well knew) not allow her to study, did not allow her any books at all, in fact. Under their "care" she learned no new spells, no magical lore. Maria found this unpleasant, but it was tolerable; they could keep Maria from books, but they could not separate her from her own thoughts. She endured it the way she endured the long separations from her brother and sister, and the many journeys as she was shuttled from Dolhr to the Holy Kingdom and all around the continent.

In the height of summer, she was moved yet again, to a place called Castle Deil. Maria did not wonder at first about this relocation, but soon she heard whispers of new battles, of a rebel army on the march. But it was not safe to ask questions about the rebels, and so she kept her mouth shut and her ears at the ready.

Castle Deil was not a terrible place; the apartments that made up her prison were spacious, and she was free to roam them. The castle had once been the estate of a great noble of the Holy Kingdom, a man who resisted the Dolhr Empire and died loyal to his king. The generals of Grust and Dolhr who seized the estate had done damage to it, but even so Maria could see this had once been a grand place, filled with tapestries, fine furniture, and other lovely things. The windows were set with starbursts of colored glass and the ceilings had heraldic devices worked into them. Maria amused herself by looking up at the badges and trying to puzzle out what they all meant, and which houses they referred to. Some had been gouged out of the ceiling, and some windows had been broken, and Maria decided those had shown the arms of House Deil itself, or made reference to the fallen Holy Kingdom.

Maria's captors allowed her one hour a day in the garden for the sake of sun and fresh air; Maria knew they only did so because she was useless as a hostage if she died of consumption. Still, no matter the reason, she was grateful for it. The gardens of Castle Deil must once have been beautiful, with trees cut into shapes and hedges clipped into intricate patterns. Now the trees and hedges were becoming overgrown and wild, the fountains were stained and dry and weeds grew in the garden paths.

But the summer heat turned the beds to a riot of flowers, some familiar to Maria and others new and strange to her. She greeted the familiar ones as she might greet old friends, and made up names for the rest- shooting-stars, fire-flowers, butterfly blossoms.

Once, a very long time before, Maria had visited the pontifex Wendell at the summer estate the great scholar kept in Macedon. He took her on a tour of his lovely gardens, which boasted hundreds of magical and medicinal plants, many of them exotic and rare. Maria spent hours walking through the garden, learning the properties of the herbs that could cure burns upon the skin, restore eyesight, speed the healing of broken bones. Maria, young as she then was, found herself dazzled by the variety of flowers in the garden- azure, crimson, snow-white and sun-yellow.

"Which of these is your favorite, Master Wendell?"

"The humble bellflower is blessed, Maria," he said, and gestured to some delicate blue blossoms that quivered at the ends of thin, frail stems. "Though it trembles in the slightest breeze, it endures the rain and the sun, and even lives through the frost. The bellflower reminds us that to bow our heads in prayer before the will of the gods shall grant us the inner strength to bear our troubles."

The pontifex then had added that the leaves of the bellflower were also nourishing and would help one endure hard times, and Maria remembered it well. She found bellflowers there in the gardens of Deil, peeping out from under the stalks of larger, more colorful, flowers. When she was certain her "governess" was not watching, Maria slipped her hand down and plucked one of the leaves. It had a sharp taste, but after some thought Maria decided she liked it.

Maria knew best not to wander off; her lord brother counted on her good behavior while she was in the care of the empire. Maria proved such a docile and obedient ward that her jailers often left her unattended when she was in her apartments, and even with the threat of rebels somewhere on the horizon, they treated her so at Castle Deil. Maria wandered the high-ceiling rooms, studying every inch of her surroundings. She found many curious things, like a portrait set into one of the walls that hadn't been carried away. The face of the main figure- a great knight, it seemed- was cut to ribbons. This, Maria felt, must surely be the late Marquess Deil. Beside him stood a child close to Maria's own age, one who wore a military tunic and a sword, but was clearly a daughter, not a son. Maria looked into the determined face of this girl with hair the soft blue of bellflower petals and wondered if she perhaps had wanted to be a knight, the way Maria's older sister was a dracoknight. There were of course no war-dragons and no dracoknights this far north, and not many pegasus knights, but the knights of the Holy Kingdom often rode horses. Maybe this blue-haired girl had wanted to be a cavalier. Maria wondered if this girl had been killed along with her father, or if perhaps she had joined with the rebels. If that were the case, Maria's sister Minerva might have to fight against the blue-haired daughter of House Deil.

The world could be very cruel. Maria prayed fervently for peace that night.

-x-

Maria had a moment of good fortune the following day. She opened the drawer of one massive desk in a room that was otherwise bare and found a book wedged at the very back of the drawer.

The Storie of the Bell-flower Princesse, it said on the cover. It was not a terribly thick book, but it looked like something Maria might read- and something she might conceal in her bedroom. She slipped the prize back to her room and stared at the cover for some time. The gilt and colors both had come off the cover, and she could just make out the image of a long-haired girl leaning down from a tower window, beckoning to a faint figure below. She opened the tattered cover and found a name inscribed there.

MIDIA

"Midia," Maria said it aloud. It sounded close to "Medea," her grandmother's name. Grandmother Medea had been a strong woman, the founder of the Whitewinged Order of Macedon. Perhaps this Midia was a strong person also; as Maria considered it, she decided this must surely be the name of Marquess Deil's only daughter. Having connected the girl in the ruined portrait to a name at last, Maria began to read with a sense of kinship and connection to the lost family under whose roof she now lived.

The Storie of the Bell-flower Princesse was a romance, as Maria suspected. That was her favorite kind of story, and she felt thankful to have found it. Perhaps the deities sent the book her way as a present for her dutiful behavior.

"Once upon a time there lived a happy couple who, after some years of wedlock, were to be blessed with a child. The wife, though before in perfect health, was overcome with such a great desire to eat a salad of bellflower leaves that her husband was convinced she might sicken and die from this need. Desperate to save his wife and child, the husband searched through the village and the fields for a patch of bellflower, yet found none. At last, as the skies darkened with twilight, he spied an open gate that led to a garden, and the garden was of nothing but bellflowers..."

The colored illustration opposite the page showed the walled garden with its open gate, and the lush garden within. Maria turned the glossy page and found that someone, perhaps this Midia, had scribbled on the back of it.

"Dear Jeorge..."

It seemed to be the beginning of a letter. At the bottom of the page was written "M + J" followed by a large, messy question mark. Maria wondered about this before she resumed the story.

"As he took hold of the plant, the bell-flowers rang out with a musical cry-"

Maria shut the book without finishing the sentence. It was all she had to read, and would quickly be over with if she just consumed it like a greedy child with a plate of longed-for sweets. Instead, she vowed to measure out the story one page at a time and so savor every one. She used the colored illustrations as markers, and left off reading for the day when she reached another picture.

On the next day she resumed the tale. The poor man stood frozen in horror as a sorceress, the owner of the garden, appeared before him. He pleaded his case with her and she offered him a bargain, as sorcerers were wont to do.

"I will give to your wife as much to eat as she desires, but in return you must give to me your child."

And, as humans were wont to do in romances, the man and his wife decided to trade endless salads of bellflowers for their newborn daughter. The sorceress took the child and named her for the plant that had sustained the birth mother.

"Miss Maria? It's time for your exercises."

She slipped the book beneath her cot and went out for her daily walk. As Maria felt the sun on her face and watched the butterflies flitting above an overgrown thatch of lavender, she snatched a few more sprigs of bellflower leaf. The taste was hardly worth trading one's child for. Maria used the taste to serve as a reminder of duty, as a guard against weakness.

-x-

"And the infant grew into a lovely maiden with hair the pure color of bellflower petals. By the time Bellflower reached the age of twelve, her beauty was such that the sorceress decided her adopted daughter was too fair for the world." This also was a familiar enough tale to Maria; she wasn't terribly surprised when the sorceress locked Bellflower up in a high tower with no door, no stairway, and only a single window. "The tower held everything that Bellflower might want, every luxury and form of amusement, and yet she was not entirely happy. She sat before the small window and longed for the outside world. With out anyone to talk to, Bellflower sang aloud, hoping birds or other creatures would make her acquaintance."

Maria sympathized. To be securely locked away for one's own protection was not really something that could make one happy. And really, it was the lack of company that hurt the worst. Some days, Maria missed her brother and sister so much that it was like an ache within her bones.

"One day, the son of a king was riding through the forest. He heard the voice of Bellflower as she sang and his heart was captured by the desire to see the owner of this melodious voice. He followed her song to the base of the tower and called up to her. Bellflower, delighted to have a companion at last, wished for him to join her, but with no way for the prince to gain access to her tower it seemed that they would be frustrated."

The pair puzzled over the dilemma until Bellflower realized that her long and beautiful hair might be its solution. This was a novel enough idea that Maria was delighted by it.

"And she let down her cascade of hair, soft and blue as flower-petals, and the prince looped it around himself, and so Bellflower carried him up as easily as one might bring up water from a well."

Maria looked at the illustration of the prince ascending the tower through that improbable method. This was quite a different story than she was expecting, as Maria had anticipated some kind of magical answer to their problems- or perhaps the use of a dragon or pegasus, which would have been far easier than climbing up someone's hair. Maria tugged at her own hair, which couldn't have been more different from Bellflower's in that it was both short and brilliantly red. Still, it hurt when her hair was tangled and the governess combed it out too briskly, so she couldn't imagine what it would feel like to have a person tied to the end of it.

Maria decided not to think too much about it and left the story alone for another day. She meant to leave the next page for right before her bedtime, but now that the tale was really getting interesting, Maria had a difficult time keeping to that schedule. She distracted herself by thumbing through earlier pages and studying all the small details in the illustrations- including the things Midia had written on the blank pages.

"Lady Midia Deil. Lady Midia Menidy? Dame Midia!" It looked as though Midia had been mulling over her destiny. Menidy was another great estate of the Holy Kingdom, and perhaps young Midia had been expected to marry into that family before the wars began. These tiny traces of another girl's life made Maria feel almost as though she'd found a friend. That sense of comfort held Maria until it was finally time to read the next page of the romance.

"At first Bellflower was a little frightened, for never in her life had she seen a young man so close, but the prince began talking to her in a very friendly manner, telling her of how her singing voice had touched his heart, and so she lost her fear. She soon liked him so well that she arranged for him to come every day and be pulled up to her chamber, and there they rejoiced in one another's company."

The illustration for that page showed Bellflower and the prince chatting happily in the tower. That was a nice place to end her reading for that day, Maria decided. She felt she understood Bellflower and her loneliness quite well. That night, Maria had quite a strange dream, where her own hair flowed like a river of fire, and the blue-haired girl from the portrait climbed up it to free her from Castle Deil.

-x-

Maria was not told much about the outside world, but the servants did chatter, and so she learned that the rebels were on the very outskirts of Deil... and that her own sister Minerva was to lead her dracoknights against them.

"They say the prince who leads the rebels is something else," the chamber-maid said to the governess. "I hear he's not yet seventeen."

"Little boys don't last long, playing in a men's world," the governess replied. Maria knew that the older woman had lost her own son, a knight in the Grustian army, and so was rather bitter about the war overall. "If that's the best they can do... well, it'll be a short fight against Commander Minerva and her bunch of harpies. If they're loyal to the empire, that is. Which they ought to be."

It was always odd for Maria to see her sister through the eyes of others. She learned a fair amount that day about what her "attendants" thought of Minerva (reckless, insubordinate, possibly treacherous) and of the rebel prince, Marth of Altea (erratic, too interested in making a romantic impression on the people to keep himself out of trouble). More than one said, within Maria's hearing, that the best outcome for the battle would be to have both of these nuisances to the empire dead on the field. The terrible words weren't new to Maria, but with battle on the horizon, the hateful things she heard cut her more deeply than usual.

With great concerns weighing down her heart, Maria opened her book for the evening.

"The sorceress was not aware of her daughter's encounters with the prince, and only learned of it by accident.

'Dear Mother,' said Bellflower one day, 'why is it that my gowns are all so tight and cannot fit me?'

And then the sorceress saw that she had been deceived.

'Faithless child,' she cried. 'I thought I had removed you from the world, but you betray me nonetheless.' And she grasped Bellflower by the hair and sheared off the beautiful locks. With her magic, she cast Bellflower alone into the wilderness, that she must fend for herself in the wicked world."

Maria stared in shock at the illustration of Bellflower with her hair chopped short.

"How cruel! I thought the sorceress loved Bellflower as her own. And what does her gown growing too small have to do with any of it?"

She didn't have much time to wonder; a rap at the door was the only warning she had before guards streamed in to escort her out of the apartments. If she hadn't been holding the story-book at that moment, it would have surely been left behind and out of her reach. The guards took Maria, for her "own protection," to an inner chamber of the castle with only a slit in its high vaulted ceiling to let in the light, and there they abandoned her.

"My sister is fighting Prince Marth, if not tonight then tomorrow. Spirits above, please protect my sister. Let her do what is right... regardless of what may happen to me."

This was what it all came down to. She was locked in this cell because her own life was the one thing that kept Minerva doing the dirty work of the Dolhr Empire. And Maria knew it was dirty; she'd heard the generals of Grust and Dolhr boasting of the terrible things they'd done, things no decent man would do. Maria was glad that rebels were winning, even if everyone said it couldn't possibly last and that Prince Marth would finally step into a trap he couldn't leap out of. She hoped, deep down, that Minerva would break free from her service to the empire. Maybe if she and Prince Marth could work together, then...

Maria hardly slept that night beneath a sliver of starless sky. She turned to again prayer as sounds of battle began to echo through the solid walls of the castle. Men and women were dying out there on the castle grounds- falling by the dry fountains, falling by the overgrown trees and the among the beds of flowers. She began the Song for the Dying, sang it as many times as she could, with her voice echoing strangely against the bare walls and ceiling of her cell. All the while, her heart beat out a separate prayer- for her sister's safety. Finally, she felt she couldn't sing any more, and she knelt with her head upon the cot. Bits of dust floated in the stream of light coming from the slit in the ceiling, and she watched them for a time, feeling like there wasn't anything else she could possibly do.

"No, there has to be someone in here. I could hear singing..."

Maria turned her head as she heard someone tapping along the wall.

"Oh, here's the keyhole." The voice sounded amused.

She watched as the series of locks turned, operated by some hand from the other side of the door.

When her liberator stepped into the cell, Maria's tired eyes initially thought it was Midia of Deil, stepped out of the portrait. She quickly realized her rescuer was not a lady knight, but a boy a few years older than she was; his hair, though blue, was too brilliant to match the soft tint of bellflower blossoms. Everything about him seem to be azure, gold, and shining.

"There you are," he said, not sounding terribly surprised. "You can't be anyone but Maria."

Strange as it all was, Maria didn't feel all that surprised herself. Just as it always worked in the stories, a prince had shown up to rescue her. And she didn't feel tired any more, either, because all of a sudden, things were awfully exciting.

To Be Continued...

A/N: The fairytale Maria reads is of course derived from Rapunzel, aka Persinette. I combined several versions of the tale to get this FE-themed hybrid. The original tale was not very family-friendly...