Chapter 28-Awakening
Shibu's eyes opened fast, and he sat bolt upright. Then the comfy bed he found himself in did its very best to pull him back into the soft warmth of sleep.
"Good morning, Shibu? Did you sleep well, Darling?" Felice asked gently as she fluttered over to the bed with some difficulty to set a huge breakfast tray in front of her boy.
"I'm fine Mom, But King Louis and Master Chang—" Shibu began urgently.
"Calm down Little Brother." Another familiar voice said from across the bedroom that was as big as their entire house back in Amakina. "The King carried you in here himself." Cici told Shibu.
"And Master Chang gave you a potion even I've never seen before." Felice filled in quickly. "He said you'd sleep for a whole day, and he was just a few minutes off, by the looks of things."
"I have to get back." Shibu said with resolution interrupted by continuous mouthfuls of pancakes and syrup.
The ornate double doors of the bedroom were opened by two men at arms before Shibu could manage to swallow and re-load again. The soldiers snapped to rigid attention as King Louis himself walked into the room, his footsteps silenced by the thick layers of tapestry on the floor beneath the royal feet.
"Good Morning, Shibu, Did you sleep well?" King Louis asked.
Shibu nearly panicked, swallowing an entire pancake in one gulp, while trying to sit at attention in the middle of the seemingly endless feather bed!
"Yes, Your Majesty, Thank you!" Shibu replied energetically. Sitting up as straight as a board.
"Relax Boy, or you might hurt yourself!" You're off duty and that's a Royal order."
King Louis watched with a gentle smile as Shibu relaxed, seeming to tuck himself back under his breakfast tray and into the vast, comfy bed.
"I came in because I wanted to thank you for what you did day before yesterday, my boy." The King told Shibu. "You put my safety above your own. That's called loyalty in my book."
"It was nothing, Your Highness." Shibu replied with more than the required modesty. "I knew Maxim had come back for revenge. I didn't want to see you hurt." Shibu explained.
"Thank you, Squire." The King said formally. "Keep that up and we'll have a new knight around here one day soon." King Louis said in genuine good humor.
"I thought I'd also better talk to you before you hear some of the gossip going around this place." King Louis continued more seriously after a moment.
"A lot of people have heard what you did, and how you did it." King Louis remarked. "My Guards are fine men one and all, but every last one of them will talk too much if they don't drown in beer first." The King confessed to all three of his new friends.
"So the people know something about what happened." King Louis said. "They also know that you're not just a boy from Amakina anymore."
"I see, Your Majesty." Was all Shibu could manage as an answer. On the other side of the bed, Felice could see worry flicker into Shibu's pure blue eyes.
"What you are is a hero, and a noble citizen of Bonta." King Louis told Shibu looking the boy squarely in his blue eyes. "But people forget heroes in time, Shibu. And they will talk. That can't be helped." The King told him. "Now it's my turn to protect you, my Boy."
"When should I leave, your Majesty?" Shibu asked directly, trying not to sound hurt, and failing as he looked at King Louis' deeply lined face.
"Leave?!" Cici exploded in a fine fit of red-headed temper. "If we have to leave, We'll all go live in Brakmar before we ever come back to Bonta again! How dare you? Shibu saved your life and your Throne!"
King Louis flinched and drew back a ways. He didn't live to be his age, King or peasant, without a good survival instinct.
"Wait, Wait! Hear me out, please!" the King said, sounding properly frightened. "I want all of you to stay. But I can't command something like that." King Louis started once Cici, who was still as red as an Api, calmed down a bit.
"I've thought about it, and the best thing to counter all the gossip is the truth." King Louis said. "The trouble is, I don't know the truth. I never needed it to trust you with my life. I don't need it now. But I am King, and my People expect me to say something, and not lie to them. What do I tell them?" King Louis asked Felice, Shibu and Cici.
"There are some things we just don't know, King Louis." Felice said quietly. "Maybe we never will know." She went on. "Shibu is missing part of who he is, and where he came from." Felice explained.
"We never wanted to lie to him or about him." Cici replied. "So we just loved him instead." The Cra archer said with a tear in her green eyes. "I won't start lying about him now, for anyone, but I will always be his Big Sister, and love him as if he were born my Little Brother. That's all I'll ever want."
"Is that why you never certified his adoption?" King Louis asked gently.
"In part, Your Majesty." Felice confessed. "Our life together was so grand that we never had any reason to leave Amakina, until that terrible man came along with his swindling ways."
"The people in our village all feel the same way about Shibu as we do." Cici answered. "As long as most of them want to remember, our Village has had a son between all of them."
"Now I see it." King Louis said at last. "I didn't before. I'm a King who was as blind as some of his subjects are now."
Finally, King Louis looked directly at Shibu again.
"You're not leaving, Shibu. You're all staying. Even If I have to adopt Shibu myself!"
"Oh, your Majesty!" Felice replied, her state of shock showing on her face. "What will the people think, at your age?"
"Hang what they think!" King Louis said at last. "Let them gossip about a prince, if they would just as soon gossip about a Commoner! Who's King around here, anyway?"
Felice was radiant, and even Cici managed a smile. But Shibu was still quiet and reserved.
"As happy as I would be for everyone, Your Majesty, I can't live any life, prince or commoner, until I know where I come from." Shibu said quietly at last.
"Master Chang and I have been talking that over as well, My lad. And going over a lot of dusty old books, older than both of us put together." King Louis told Shibu. "Lots of them go back to the time of Ogrest, and most of them farther back than that." The King told all of them. King Louis drew a deep breath and then spoke to his friends again.
"I didn't come in here to ask you to lie. What I really came in to ask is if you might be ready for a remarkable truth." King Louis asked all three of them. "This truth might be as difficult to live with as the gossip. I wanted to give you a choice before I spoke out of turn about anything."
"If I have to choose..." Shibu said first, "I choose truth and love." The dark haired boy replied after a thoughtful moment.
"That's my little brother." Cici replied. "He's always been the youngest adult I've ever known. I'm with him. Whatever Shibu decides is for me, too." Cici told the King of Bonta.
"And that goes just as much for me," Felice said, by no means last. "I'll live in a cave on Mount Zenit, as long as the three of us are together, Royalty, Commoners, or anything else."
"That's all I wanted and expected to hear from the three of you." King Louis said with genuine admiration and heartfelt tears in his Royal blue eyes.
"Shibu, whenever you and your family are ready and rested, Master Chang would like to show you all something, or perhaps that should be some where."
"Would you come along with us, Please, Your Majesty?" Shibu asked warmly.
"I'll let you and Master Chang show me when the two of you are ready, Shibu." King Louis replied.
"For now, I have to be King, for a while at least. The Line this morning is twice as long as it was yesterday!"
Shibu took the breakfast tray from across his lap and set it down again, before the King.
"Here, Your Majesty is likely to need more energy today!"
"That's not a bad idea, Squire Shibu!" King Louis replied, snitching a taste of Shibu's pancakes! "And Felice's pancakes are still the best in all Bonta! Must get her recipe for the royal kitchens!"
Shibu giggled, and King Louis smiled.
"You all should get going. I'll see you at lunch, I promise." as King Louis got up off of his vast feather bed, and walked toward the door with a restored spring in his step. In a moment, the doors closed, and the fanfare from the throne room filled the bed chamber with a distant note of royalty.
Shibu was up and ready a moment later. He stepped behind a screen close to the bedside. There, Shibu found the same traveling clothes he had worn on the journey to Bonta. A rough but steady outfit made of soft leather, which more closely matched the unique pair of shoes Cici had crafted for him. It was simple, functional dress which lacked the refinement of the velvet pants and linen shirt. But there were some things clothes could not hide. The brown of the leather and its warm tones still set off Shibu's black hair, slightly bronzed skin tone, and pure blue eyes to perfection. The garments were the simplest and most direct expression of the Ranger within Shibu.
Also waiting over the back of the simple chair, Shibu found his bow, strung and ready to shoot,alongside his full quiver, loaded with the distinctive white and silver arrows of Bonta!
"I hope those will be enough for now, Little Brother." Cici spoke up from the other side of the screen as Shibu dressed.
"I liked those velvet pants a lot." Shibu remarked. "But you can't go jumping around in them all that much." Shibu observed casually. "This way, I'm ready for anything."
Shibu stepped silently out from behind the screen, looking every inch the Ranger he had become, as Cici dropped two gentle hands to his shoulders, her green eyes glowing with a love that needed no words.
"Spoken like a Ranger, Little Brother." Cici replied with a touch of gentle pride in Shibu. "Let's find Master Chang."
"Here, we'll use the far door." Felice told the other two. "So we don't disrupt Royal Duties."
The trio stepped out of the bed chamber, and into the servant's hallway, closing the door behind them.
