Eleven – Catastrophe after Catastrophe
It was strange. For some reason, the doe brought me to the Mother Tree, shook me off, and pranced away without even a look back. It was night now. I must have been riding her for two or three hours or so, but then the doe should have stopped to take a rest, shouldn't it? Instead, it just kept running until the ancient tree loomed in front of me.
In the darkness, the mind creates images solely to frighten oneself. I hadn't minded as much in other instances, because I always knew that someone or something was there to protect me. But the Tree here was entirely lifeless. The other trees that surrounded it whispered as a hot night wind blew with no consolation offered whatsoever. I hadn't realized it, but my frock was soaked through with sweat. Even though the wind brought hot dryness with it, my clothes stuck to my skin and I shivered with the chill.
I never liked being alone.
I crept toward the entrance to the Mother Tree. Surely, last time, it wasn't as small?
Every little movement startled me. From a bird shifting its position in its nest atop a tree branch to the soft whistle of tree leaves shuffling against each other, I jumped whenever I heard something even acutely louder than a night wind.
Shadows danced in the corner of my eye. The moonlight cast an eerie spell over everything.
My heart was throwing itself against my chest.
Which way again? I thought desperately. Headfirst or feetfirst?
I thought I remembered Miku saying, "Headfirst," but feetfirst had always felt safer for me. Besides, it didn't look like my head could fit into that tiny gap. (Not that my feet could either, but I had two feet, and each foot was slimmer than my head.)
I carefully lifted up the hem of my scratchy woolen dress, the one that the missionaries gave me, hoping that nobody would see my ankles when I slide in. Or for my private regions, for that matter. I already had my doubts about the feetfirst idea, but a little tweak of the rules shouldn't matter… I had broken enough already, so why not break another?
My foot edged in. By this time, my teeth were chattering and my skin was numb and I couldn't distinguish the cold (it was not cold, for it was a warm spring this year) from my so-called fear. Goosebumps prickled on my skin. I couldn't believe that it was the Mother Tree that was making me feel this way—they had it named "Mother" for a reason, right? I had never met mine, but if one were to have a mother, I supposed they'd fuss over you and cluck over you and love you for you were their child. I knew it enough from the tale of my birth.
Everything she told you might have been a lie, I reminded myself, and straightened up.
Still, the midwife was the closest resemblance to a mother that I had ever had. I had also seen chickens while I was strolling around with my horse, a beautiful white one obtained through trading, with slender feet and a braided mane. Once I came across little chicks hatching. The fuzzy white and yellow beings were cute to me, the way they ambled along, but I soon had lost interest in them. Anyhow, the mother was clucking over them, ruffling her feathers— and I supposed this was what a true mother was to be like.
Then again, many of the upper ladies, the ones I had had drinks with, the ones I had to entertain while Father discussed important things with the husbands, had little children running about underfoot, too. The mothers were languid and calm and hardly snuck a peek at their children.
Not me, I remembered thinking, proudly. If I had a mother, my mother would never be able to keep her eyes off me— I am beautiful and a princess. I would also hound her attention, day and night, so she might never busy herself with something else.
I blushed, thinking how strangely selfish that sounded.
…
I was thinking myself as selfish?
All of these thoughts passed through my head in a minute or less, for I quickly brushed aside the distraction and eased my foot in further. I could feel the rough, coarse dirt sloping downward, stones scraping against the sole of my foot.
I kept going. I couldn't find anything as a foothold. And the hole did not expand.
Maybe I should have gone in with my head first. I always had to regret my decisions after I do them.
Then my foot hit something cold and hard, shattering it. I jerked my foot back—regardless, I didn't hit the ground. Maybe it was the momentum that catapulted me forward, but I found myself suddenly falling, falling, the air whizzing all around me. The last whiff of anything real was a breathtakingly fragrant smell of crushed lavenders.
l~u~k~a
One of the scariest things about falling in darkness is that one cannot see what is around them that might break their fall or break themselves. Especially if one is falling down a tunnel that seemed never to end.
I couldn't tell whether my eyes were open and closed, but I did hope—for the sake of hoping—that I'd have a soft landing. Since I was not like a cat, that thought did not bode well with me… or rather, my body. Besides, the last time I had gone here, there had been stairs. Where were the stairs?
I also could have sworn that I smelled the lavenders before. The only thing was that I was sure faeries did not crush their lavender, what little lavender they had, and they certainly didn't dry it for use of its oil. Or maybe they did. I did not see them when I was there.
This and other worries nagged at my mind. I hated it when I could not remember something that seemed so familiar but so out of reach. Actually, that was like how I was about anything. I always wanted to win.
I wasn't sure how much time had passed, but it had to be around five minutes. Five minutes of plain falling? The heart of the faeries' home must be deep underground. Maybe they removed the steps, because I remembered something of an eternity getting down the steps, too. Then I'd fall onto a hard, dirt-packed floor, and it would just be like the way it was when I first came, except without Miku.
Except I wasn't landing.
l~u~k~a
Somewhere along the way, my eyelids drooped. "Drooped" might not be the right word, but such a hazy dizziness came over me. I didn't try to prevent it. It felt good, and eased the gnawing fear in my belly.
I tried closing my eyes, but there was no difference as when I opened or closed them. The insides of my lids were the same color of the vast, empty outside. I couldn't even see my own limbs, although I could feel that all of my body parts were still intact.
A snarling sound ripped through the silence.
I turned abruptly—as abruptly as I could—but there was nothing. My back was starting to hurt; so was my neck. This position of ever falling was getting uncomfortable and scary.
Besides, I felt like throwing up what little I ate today. Then suddenly my heel smashed into something dusty—maybe an old work of pottery—and the world around me spun several times between a glaring light hit my eyes. A faerie leaned over me, shaking me, telling me something. I didn't know what she was saying, but it made my head throb.
"Ow," I mumbled with a straight face because it was expected of me, but really, it didn't quite hurt at all.
l~u~k~a
The faerie leaning over me turned out to be one named Iroha, I found out a few hours later. Iroha said that I had fainted (something that didn't happen often, so I even had a tutor to teach me how to faint properly in a graceful way), and she found the Jar of Fear shattered when she was out to see what all the bumping around up in the Mother Tree was. So then she—I'll trace into Iroha's words here exactly—"I reached into the depths of my conscience and pulled you out, because that's how the Jar of Fear works. Sorry that you had to keep falling for some time. I was fumbling and couldn't get to you. I think you felt sleepy the first time I actually brushed you? Yeah. I'm not bragging, I saved your life!"
I hadn't said anything about her bragging, of course, partly because I did a bunch of it. I didn't understand how the Jar of Fear could kill me, but then again, I wasn't ready to try.
I was finally back.
The only problem was how I was going to stay here. How I was going to fit in. Personal experience with merpeople, had said the Elf Queen. You will camouflage into nature, and will not become visible again until a few seconds before you die. And what of Miku? I hadn't seen her.
You will camouflage into sleep and worry about it tomorrow, I snapped to myself. That's right. Tomorrow.
Maybe it was unwise for me to keep postponing events forward and forward into the future, like asking Queen Suzune about what exactly she meant about merpeople, but I was lazy inside. It was much too easy to forget about one's worries for one night and think about them tomorrow. There was always a tomorrow as far as I was concerned. That might not be actually true, but it provided comfort for my churning mind.
I have an unfinished beta project to get to, but right now I don't want to beta, just write. I passed my afternoon drawing cats.
~Unyielding Wish
