I own nothing.
"…Let it be heard. I am one yet many. What I speak is our tale. However, this is a small world, sealed by glass and cork, with no one to hear. None shall lay eyes upon it, and my entire tale shall be sealed away, set adrift in the sea of my heart until it disappears along with the seaweed…"
-Clair vauxof Bernard, EP7
-0-0-0-
Yasuda Sayo often had occasion to go to the Director of the Fukuin House over her own loneliness.
You see, the Fukuin House was a sad place for those children (mostly girls, but there were some boys there as well) who had no relatives, or had no relatives who were willing to take care of them. It was natural that a small child, upon realizing her situation, would be sad. After all, her parents were dead, and as for the rest of her family, either they were dead, or they had simply decided that she was not worth the burden. Surely that must have been how it was for Sayo. She was so frail and puny that she was too much a burden for her poor family, so they gave her over to this sad house. It was only natural that she would be sad, though she knew she should not blame her family for giving up such a frail kid like her.
The Director taught her how to see angels.
"I know your sadness, Sayo. It must surely be imprinted upon your soul. But you must understand that you are never alone. We live in a world full of angels, Sayo. They are always praying for your happiness."
"A world full of angels? But why can't I see them…"
"Oh, child, you only look at the world with your eyes. Once you try to see an angel with your eyes, you never will see them; the touch of human eyes will burn an angel's skin. You must instead look with the eyes of your heart."
"…M-my heart…"
"Yes, Sayo. God looks down on us all from golden heaven. The whole world is filled with God's love. You see it manifested in the small blessings of daily life. God is here with us, but if you try to look at the world with naught but your rational eyes, you will never 'see' God, nor will you see His angels.
"It is with your heart that you believe in God, and with the eyes of your heart, you will quietly understand. Your will not 'look'; you shall 'see', and the love of your heart will give them shape.
With the eyes of her heart, Sayo saw many things. But sometimes, she wondered why she only ever saw witches, and never angels.
-0-0-0-
There was something wrong about her.
Oh, Sayo wasn't a good servant, she knew that. She was much too young and frail and clumsy to ever be a good servant, and she was dragging the other girls down with her. That must be why they always called her 'Yasu' instead of Sayo or her blessed name Shannon, even when they knew that she hated being called by the surname-given name amalgamation that many of them used. That must be why they would leave her in the chapel to find her missing supplies by herself even when it was growing dark and she was so scared of being scolded that her hands were shaking. That must be why they always looked at her so coldly and treated her like she was a burden. She was a burden after all.
And that must have been why Madam was so impatient with her, because Sayo was such a poor servant. Madam was a strict taskmaster, a perfectionist; she demanded nothing less than the best. And the dignity of the Ushiromiya family was such a weighty thing that of course Madam didn't want it sullied by something so small as a clumsy servant. Of course Madam was so impatient with her. Who wouldn't be?
She would have to find a way to get better. Kumasawa-san and Genji-sama, they were the kindest of all to her, and they told her that she would get better as she got older. But until then, Sayo knew that she would just have to work harder than everyone else so that they could see that she really was taking this seriously.
"Geez, why did we get stuck with this stupid kid?"
"This is sloppy work. Clean it again. Don't stop until you get it right!"
"Yasu! Quit dawdling! What, did you forget your key again?! What's Madam going to say?!"
"God, why did we get stuck with her?"
(Sayo had the feeling, sometimes, that nothing she did would ever be good enough. That even if she was perfect, they would still think she was stupid and clumsy and sloppy and not-good-enough, they would never see her as anything but that. She told herself to forget it, that of course they would see that she could do a good job if she could just figure out how to do a good job. It wasn't their faults, after all, that she was so clumsy and careless.)
And she knew it must have looked like she was getting special treatment. After all, Sayo was working as a servant to the Ushiromiya family, the most prestigious appointment a dependent of the Fukuin House could receive, several years earlier than most children could expect, and even though she was supposed to give her schoolwork the most focus, she was still receiving full pay. She couldn't even do most of a servant's chores! On top of that, she had been given a room by herself when everyone else had to share a room on Rokkenjima with one or two other servants, and the senior servants, Kumasawa-san and Genji-sama, both seemed to go easy on her in ways they didn't go easy on any of the other girls from the Fukuin House. Sayo had always been warned that when people didn't get equal shares, resentment would follow. But she wasn't being given special treatment, really. She had to work just as hard as everyone else, and Madam came down on her twice as hard. It just looked like she was being treated better than the other girls.
There was something wrong with her in other ways, too.
Sayo sat on the edge of her bed, flicking long strands of pale hair away from her shoulders. It was so empty, this room, in comparison to the one she'd had at the Fukuin House, the one she still used on the weekends, but she did not long for the place where she had been brought up. The sense of alienation and isolation from others had been just as strong there. No one wanted to play with Sayo, that strange and sickly little kid who was always so feeble and given to dark dreams. They could sense the wrongness about her, she guessed.
Sayo didn't feel like a girl should. She knew what girls were supposed to be like, of course. They were supposed to be graceful and pretty, delicate and yet quick-witted, clever enough to live their lives without stumbling. That was what a proper girl, a proper woman, was supposed to be like.
And yet, Sayo wasn't anything like that. She didn't look good in a dress; the fabric inevitably sat wrong on her shoulders and around her hips. The bones stuck out too much from her elbows and her wrists and her knees. She wasn't graceful; everybody already knew that. Sayo was such a clumsy servant, so no one was surprised when she proved to be utterly graceless as a girl, too. And Sayo wasn't pretty like Milady or some of the older girls. She had long, lank blonde hair that was already, slowly but surely, starting to turn some dank, mousy shade of brown from spending most of her day inside. Her limbs were disproportionately slender in comparison to the rest of her body; there was no strength in them at all, and she tired so quickly. Sayo wasn't clever or quick-witted at all, either; how could she lose stuff as often as she did if she had a good head on her shoulders?
(Sayo told herself that the witch Beatrice was pranking her on account of her carelessness. The witch who lived in the darkness between patches of light just waited for someone to lay down a key or a broom and take their eyes off of it. If they did that for even one second, Beatrice would open up a portal to her shadow world and take the forgotten thing for her own. Sayo had seen her do it, in the chapel.
It was easier to tell herself that than to admit just how careless she was. It was easier for Sayo to pretend that she was being picked on by a witch—who had since become Sayo's uneasy friend—than to admit that she frequently mislaid objects and couldn't spot them afterwards even when they were there in plain sight. If she tied her keys to bits of string in her pockets, it was easier to pretend to believe what Kumasawa-san had told her, that the string was like a spider web and repel the witch, than to admit that she was so thoughtless that she needed to tie her belongings down.)
That was what Shannon was for, Sayo supposed.
Though she was a young girl and, in her situation, it would have been perfectly understandable for her to create and believe in imaginary friends, Sayo never harbored any illusions about exactly what Shannon was. If she indulged in illusions, she was always careful never to stick her head below the surface of the water; if Sayo was afraid of anything, she was afraid of drowning.
Shannon was not an imaginary friend so much as she was an image. It would not be until many years later that Sayo remembered her as bearing the appearance she did as a teenager, but as a child, Sayo did indeed imagine Shannon as being what Sayo might look like when she was older. But different. Shannon was pretty, and calm and confident and self-assured. Shannon was graceful and competent, always kind, never spiteful or mean-spirited. She never mislaid keys; she always did a good job on the dusting. She went to bed early and rose before dawn. She was never tired or lazy, never gossiped or treated others rudely. Shannon was the model servant, beloved by all. She was the ideal girl, the ideal woman. She was everything Sayo was not, everything Sayo longed to be.
Sayo conjured Shannon's image beside her, the shade upon whom she had bestowed her blessed name, and imagined what she could be.
And wished that, for one moment, she could feel comfortable in her skin.
-0-0-0-
Sayo had hoped that, when the servant girls who had served alongside her when she started were to leave, she could make a good impression upon the girls who came afterwards. (And Sayo said girls because, really, Madam seemed to prefer female servants and had instructed Genji to choose them over the boys. The number of boys who had been selected from the Fukuin House in all the time that the orphanage and the Ushiromiya family had had their arrangement could be counted on one hand.) Kumasawa-san had always encouraged Sayo to work hard for this reason. Whenever the little girl was sad or depressed, Kumasawa-san told her that the girls who came to Rokkenjima in the future, even those who were older than her, would look up to Sayo if she could just give off the impression of a calm, competent servant. Even Genji-sama told Sayo that it was her responsibility to help the new girls.
For that reason, among others, Sayo had worked hard. She had been very careful not to lose sight of things and give Beatrice any reason to play keep-away with her belongings. She had always been careful to be as thorough as she could be in her cleaning (And if she did occasionally do a slapdash job, she told herself she would do better tomorrow). Sayo had tried so hard to be what Shannon was, to gain the respect of Madam and Krauss-sama and Master, to gain the respect of the other girls from the Fukuin House.
"…Don't call me Yasu! I hate being called that."
One of the girls, Sanon, spared her a backwards glance, but there was only scorn in her gaze.
Sayo had wanted to make a good impression on the new girls who were coming, but that could not be. The older girls had already gotten these two new ones believing that she was a clumsy, dim-witted kid who lost things all the time and couldn't do anything right—Sayo couldn't help but feel a little sad that they had never gotten past their first impression of her (But why would I even want to be friends with them?). Shannon just told her to forget it and move on without holding any grudges. Sayo would try for that.
On top of that, the new girls weren't exactly the cream of the crop. There was not a hint of nervousness in Asune or Berune, not a trace of the gravity that servants of the Ushiromiya family should have been possessed of. Sayo had sometimes heard rumors that unsuitable kids could pass the adults' inspections by behaving the way they knew they wanted the Ushiromiya family's prospective servants to behave. It was uncharitable of her, she knew, but she wondered if Berune and Asune had done that.
And of course, they didn't take Sayo seriously at all, not about being diligent, nor about the Witch. They were instead all too ready to mock the way Kinzo wailed Beatrice's name and giggle behind their hands at Sayo's seriousness.
"Who does she think she's kidding? Shina and Hoshi told me all about her; she's the most forgetful girl the Ushiromiya family's ever taken on as a servant! We're way better than Yasu."
Then, one day, Berune left her master key ring lying on a bed, and completely forgot about it.
Sayo swallowed hard on the angry lump in her throat when she saw it. She knew she shouldn't be angry, not with Berune—if she was to be angry with anyone, let it be with herself. If Berune couldn't take her job as a servant of the Ushiromiya family seriously, it was Sayo's responsibility to make her see how important this was, and if Berune persisted in being careless, it was Sayo's fault. Sayo hadn't wanted to be as harsh with Berune and Asune as the older girls had been with her, but it seemed that the soft touch wasn't doing any good.
Berune really needed to be taught a lesson…
It was ironic to think that it had been in the chapel that Sayo had first been tempted by the Witch's power. Objects disappearing and reappearing so far from their natural place that they could not possibly have gotten there by accident. Was it the prank of a human, or the magic of a Witch? Beatrice, dressed all in red, sneering demonically, hovered over Berune's shoulder and winked at Sayo.
Come on. You know you want to do it. Give them a taste of what it's like to be the one who loses things. You'd wanted to do it to Runon that one time. She glared at you afterwards, grinding her teeth after being humiliated in front of Genji-sama. Even though it was her own fault, she blamed you in her heart and treated you cruelly for days. In spite of all her ill treatment of you, you couldn't help but feel a little satisfied that it was someone else being scolded for once.
The thoughts were uncharitable. But they weren't about to go away.
Hiding the whole key ring would be too obvious; Sayo had learned from her mystery novels that small tricks were better. While Berune and Asune's backs were turned, she slid one of the keys off of the key ring and stowed it in her pocket. It wasn't easy; the ring was stiff and Sayo had always had trouble with them. But somehow, she was able to get the key off without Berune noticing.
It felt…
It felt good.
The hairs on Sayo's arms and the back of her neck all stood on end. Her skin prickled; she felt as though jolts of electricity were replacing the blood in her veins. Not once had Sayo ever tried to influence the world in this way before, and it felt better than she could have imagined. As Berune realized that her key was gone, and she wheeled around to accuse Sayo, Sayo merely stared at her calmly, and projected out the thought: I was not responsible. The Witch, Beatrice-sama, has taken your key as punishment for your carelessness and your lack of respect.
Yasuda Sayo did not take your key.
Was this what it was like to use magic? To have power over people who trampled on her (No, no, no, that was an unkind thought)? Asune watched on skeptically, but Berune's expression gradually changed from one of anger… to fear. She was afraid of Beatrice. If Sayo tried hard enough, she could believe that Berune was afraid of her. And well she should be.
Beatrice-sama has taken your key, as punishment for your carelessness and your disrespect of her name and her power.
After all, Yasuda Sayo had just become a Witch. Yasuda Sayo had just become Beatrice.
Lying alone in the dark of her room, listening to the rain drum on the roof and splatter against the windows, Sayo made some alterations to her characters. She was rather bored of being a servant. Once, long ago, she had aspired to be like Shannon, to be the model servant, the model woman. She was rather bored of being a human, too. The gray days all ran together; schoolwork, chores, schoolwork, chores. They were occasionally (or rather more often than the word 'occasionally' implied) punctuated by being yelled at by Madam.
In reality, Sayo was still a servant. She knew that. She knew it wasn't going to change any time soon, that there wasn't anything she could do to change it. It was in her best interests to aspire to be like that image of herself she had always affixed Shannon's name to. But a servant's work was so boring. There was nothing fulfilling about it, when Sayo never received any acknowledgement or praise of her hard work. Madam never noticed that she was working hard, never praised her; she only noticed mistakes, and yelled at Sayo over those. She could clean the whole mansion by herself without anyone else's help, and Madam would never notice. But if she forgot to dust one windowsill, she'd be shouted at until her ears rang.
Sayo had tasted magic. She had touched the world, instead of just watching it pass her by. For one moment, for one breathtaking moment, she had felt powerful. As a servant, Sayo would never have any of her efforts acknowledged, nor have any of her hard work praised. But maybe as a Witch, if she could convince others of her presence, her power, things could be different…
Smiling wistfully, Sayo summoned up Shannon's image to sit on the bed beside her. "I… I'm sorry, Shannon. I guess I can't become like you after all."
She still wanted to be liked and loved as a servant, but that wasn't where the lion's share of Sayo's efforts was going to go anymore.
And she wasn't just going to have Beatrice as a friend; Sayo was going to be Beatrice. She would still keep Shannon, and the old Beatrice, who would have to be nameless for now. They were her friends, after all, even if they were only characters she had made up. There was love in their creations, and how could she throw that away?
But 'Beatrice' would need a new look. Beatrice's big sister-like friend would keep her appearance, that of the demoness with the blood-red dress and golden curls; Sayo didn't want to steal that from her. Now, the Beatrice whom Sayo was to be needed to look different from the old Beatrice, very different, so that the two would not be confused for one another.
Sayo shut her eyes, and imagined swimming amongst a pitch-black sea of stars and planets and comets with glittering tails as she thought of what she would become.
Sayo hit upon a solution from all the stories she had heard of Beatrice from Kumasawa-san. She was seen as a white shadow haunting the halls of the Rokkenjima mansion at night. A white specter… Beatrice would be a Witch who was like a ghost, dressed all in white.
She would have an elegant white dress, and a strong, noble look to her face. She would be lovely, beautiful, even, but her mouth would quickly curl into a sneer as the tell of her mercurial nature. The tone she took would often be rude and overly direct. Beatrice was, after all, like a queen, answerable to no one; why should Beatrice speak in submissive tones?
This new Beatrice would be tall and graceful. She would have vivid blue eyes, not like Sayo's dishwater blue-gray eyes. Her hair would be shining white, not like Sayo's fading-to-brown blonde hair. For all of her rudeness, she would possess all of a lady's graces. She would be possessed of a terrible dignity to match the reputation of the Witch who had given Kinzo all of his gold and captured his mind in the throes of obsession.
And she would have immense power, if others would just believe in her.
To become Beatrice was as being reborn.
"Let us modify the world."
"Oh, I am one yet many."
Now, the form of her magic would have to change. It was Beatrice's friend who made small items disappear and then reappear in places they could not have gotten to by accident. Sayo imagined gold butterflies, appropriate for a Witch who had given Ushiromiya Kinzo ten tons of gold. Sayo would keep a Witch's traditional weaknesses, spider webs and mirrors. It seemed only fair that a Witch should have weaknesses, and a mirror really was a weakness. She didn't like mirrors. No matter how much she pretended, they always showed her pitiful self.
The home of Beatrice now was to be the VIP room on the second floor of the mansion.
Sayo would spend many nights imagining the sort of world Beatrice lived in.
Beatrice was her secret, her best-loved secret. As Beatrice, she was powerful. She was not a hapless, timid servant whom everyone looked down upon, but a powerful Witch. She could make even the most stalwart tremble. And others would know of her. Pranks on the servants who took the night shift were the best. But it wasn't mean-spirited. Because she wasn't Shannon, the kind and lonely servant who just wanted to do her best and have her hard work acknowledged. She was Beatrice, the fickle, thousand-year-old Witch who ruled Rokkenjima's night. If all she decided to do to a servant was pull a harmless prank on them, they should be glad. They all knew the stories of worse that had happened. Everyone knew the story of the servant who had fallen from a cliff and died, long ago.
And when someone spoke the name of Beatrice with terrified reverence, Sayo smiled.