Finally caught up! Please go to chapter 19 if you haven't read those chapters already! The next chapter should be on the 21st of this month!
"Children going missing?" Syaoran asks, eyebrows furrowing as he frowns.
The man nods, sighing as he looks down at his lap.
"Yeah, for a few months now- just like in the old legend. No one can move out of there this season. We just hope it doesn't get closer to us." He says, swallowing, "It's a bad thing to happen but no one wants to go and help when their own kid could be at risk."
Fai is apparently listening though he still directs the child in his lap because he smiles, looking up.
"Well there's nothing to fear then! We'll go help! We don't have any children to lose and it's only right as guests to do what we can to help our hosts!" The mage declares excitedly.
The barkeep looks him up and down even as his child cheers the blonde man on.
"You think that five foreigners, dressed like you are and without horses are going to be able to get to Spirit, let alone fight the ghost who's taking the kids?" The man asks, laughing a little.
"Well good luck with that- you'll be dead before you're half-way there." He mocks.
"I think we'll be just fine." Fai retorts, smiling back as if he hadn't heard the suggestion that we're in over our heads.
"No use wasting my time talking to dead men." The man laughs as if we aren't being serious and stands from the table, "You foreigners really are optimistic." He chuckles, not meanly as he goes back to the bar to take over from his wife again.
"Come on, Roth, time for you to ge to bed." He calls to his son who sighs grumpily but thanks Fai, slips off his lap and takes his instrument back.
The boy stomps over to his mother who guides him upstairs with a hand on his back, ignoring his glances back at our table.
"Fai-san," Syaoran whispers, "We don't even have money to pay for the drinks- how are we going to get there without horses?" He asks.
"Don't worry! We'll be just fine!" The blonde man says, "I have a plan."
Fai's plan finds the half-awake princess seated at one of the more rowdy tables in the room, wrapped in his coat to keep her warm while away from the fire and with a handful of cards and coins, begrudgingly given for Fai's performance and for his insistence that his daughter just wanted to try playing the game.
He walks back to the table slowly, talking to the barkeep first who laughs and nods, and then briefly greeting a few of the other people here who are watching him.
Syaoran watches Sakura fretfully, brow creased as she cluelessly does what the men tell her to, blindly giving out cards and swapping them.
"Fai-san, she doesn't know how to play!" Syaoran tells him worriedly as he sits back down, grinning.
The mage laughs, waving the boy's concern off.
"Oh- don't worry about that. She'll be just fine. Chun-yan-chan said that she's very lucky." He says.
And like that there's a cry which comes up from that table. Sakura blinks sleepily, cards splayed out in front of her. I can't see what they are but I presume from the reactoins of the others around the table that they must be good. A pile of coins is pushed towards her and one of them asks her a question. She turns back to Fai who flashes he a thumbs up and then nods. They switch dealers and the princess stares at the cards she's given blankly.
The game continues on for a few more short rounds, Sakura collecting more and more coins until one of the men stands and points at her.
"She must be cheating!" He shouts, "No matter how many games we play she always wins with the best cards!"
There's a hush which comes over the entire tavern as everyone turns to look.
The princess looks at him confusedly but calmly, blinking out of time as her brows furrow.
"Which are the best cards?" She asks into the silence.
There's a few titters of laughter.
The man flushes and Fai cuts in before he can properly start yelling at her.
"She couldn't have been cheating- you've all been watching her hands, haven't you? You know that she didn't." He says.
The man pales.
Dishes are set on our table by the distracted cook.
"But-" The man argues.
"If you have any complaints then you can direct them to this man here." Fai says, grinning as he points to our table, to Kurogane who has just taken a bite of his food and is not happy to have attention directed at him.
"What do you want?" He growls, glaring at everyone in the room.
The men decide that they must have been mistaken fairly quickly and Fai smiles, holding out a hand as he sweeps the piles of coins into his pockets.
"Thank you for letting her play." He says, tilting his head to the side, sweetly.
The men do not shake his hand.
"Well done, Sakura-chan. You did very well." Fai says, ruffling her hair a little.
"But- I still don't really understand the rules." She murmurs.
We eat quietly, Syaoran and Sakura very sleepy, Mokona stealing bites when our table isn't being looked at too closely, and Kurogane focused on his food.
Fai pays with Sakura's winnings and we're lead to rooms upstairs.
I sit on one of the couches, watching the fire dance opposite.
In the morning everything feels a little bit clearer.
I can still feel the lingering cold despite the scratchy blanket that someone's put over me and my body aches from sleeping on a couch but I'm dry and the coals are still glowing slightly.
I warm myself in front of it, taking off my shoes and sighing.
The room itself is not too small, two beds tucked away in the corners of the room, a window between them showing blue skies, no clouds in sight yet, and a small wooden table with a burned out candle. Sakura and Syaoran are in them, Mokona tucked into the princess' arms. All three seem to be asleep still. Their shoes are beside their beds and Fai's coats are draped, one over each of them.
I turn my gaze away, put my shoes and socks in front of the dying fire to dry and walk to the door.
The handle turns quietly, cool to the touch, and I step into the hallway.
The floor is heavily worn, slight gaps showing light from below. It creaks as I walk on it.
Another burned out candle sits in its dish on the windowsill at the end of the corridor, a shelf of snow on the other side. It lets in a dim light.
I follow the light inside the house to a stairway, the one we had come up last night, and down behind the bar.
There's talking from the kitchen, blurred by the walls, and even though there's only a curtain pulled across the entrance I knock on the wall next to it.
The voices stop and I hear a few steps, louder than my own barefoot ones.
"Come in." Someone says after a moment and I do.
The kitchen is pleasantly warm as the curtain swings shut again behind me.
It's made of the same wood as the rest of the house, as the table and chairs we were using yesterday. The fire in this room is out completely but the oven in the corner emanates heat and I can smell the bread baking. Kurogane is talking to the barkeep as he sets about lighting a fire in the fireplace.
The ninja nods in greeting and other man says good morning, focused on his task.
Fai is helping the barkeep's wife make some kind of soup, I think, chopping up vegetables without seeming to need to look. They both greet me more enthusiastically despite the woman's raise of her eyebrows as she catches sight of me.
"This is Elizabeth. Why don't you come over and help, Eliza-chan?" Asks Fai, offering me a knife.
I take it and stand opposite them.
"I'm afraid they won't be as neatly cut as Fai-san's." I say as the man rolls a few round vegetables over to me.
"Don't worry about it. I'm Emma- it's not usual that people staying with us help us out. Thank you." She seems a lot happier this morning, at the very least she's more willing to talk though she does eye my clothes with a slight wrinkle in her nose.
"I- we were wondering if there might be somewhere where we could get some clothes. As you can tell we aren't all so suited to this weather- it turned quickly." I say, adding on the last part against her skeptical expression.
Emma nods, looking at the bundle of leaves she is chopping rather than me.
"Roth needs to pick up today's delivery. He'll show you on his way into town." She says.
The two go back to chatting, Fai occasionally trying to ask my input but the conversation slipping every time he does.
When everything is chopped I head back upstairs to put my shoes back on, pleasantly dry. The room has a chill to it now with the fire completely dark. Sakura has rolled over and Mokona has managed to worm their way out to nestle between her head and neck.
The quiet is nice after the not quite companionship of the kitchen.
Despite the somewhat cold demeanor of Emma, breakfast turns out to be pretty good. It's warm and filling and we sit in front of the fire in the kitchen and eat thick slices of bread dipped in the soup that's not entirely cooked on the stove.
Roth is delighted to see that Fai is still here and even more so when he's asked to take us all into town.
Fai pays the barkeep in a pile of dull coins as Emma bundles their son up in far more appropriate clothing than any one of us except Fai is wearing, passing him a small sack of coins and a piece of paper.
I try and enjoy the heat while we're here, sticking close to the fireplace, all having been lit for a while now and burning hot.
Sooner than any of us would like we are ushered out the door though.
Kurogane grumbles as Fai tells us that it's not too cold really, wearing only his blue undercoat over his clothes.
"Tell us that when you're wearing what we are." He complains.
Fai just laughs.
The journey takes what feels like a long time, the sun moving slowly through the sky as we trudge on through snow which quickly soaks my shoes again.
The boy has been telling us about the inn that we stayed at and his family and the games he likes to play in the summer months with his friends from the village school for most of the journey. Fai nods the whole time, making interested noises.
He stops briefly, humming a little and then saying that he doesn't know what else to tell us.
That is when Syaoran, who has been nodding along with Fai the whole time though Roth was not at all paying attention to him, straightens up.
"Could you tell us about the legend about children disappearing? Your dad mentioned it last night but he didn't tell us anything about what happened. Do you know anything about it?" He asks.
Roth's eyes light up as he turns to face the boy.
"Yes! I know so many things about it! Dad doesn't like talking about it in front of me because he thinks I'll get upset but I'm not a coward." The child, who can only be about seven or eight, declares.
"Can you tell us about it?" Syaoran repeats, leaning down a little as we walk.
The boy nods, skipping a little as he begins.
"It started one hundred years ago. There was a beautiful princess with hair made of gold who everybody loved because she was so kind and beautiful. Then one day a bird came down and gave her a feather and told her that it was a strong feather with magical powers and that if the princess used the powers she would be powerful too. And then- and then the princess took the feather and she used it to kill the king and queen. And then she was the queen, because she killed the old one, and then all the crops died because she'd done something evil and all the children started to run away from their families and go to the castle and they never came back again and now no one goes to the castle because the evil queen will take them." He says, stopping for breath only occasionally.
"But not me because I'm so strong and brave." Roth reassures us, clenching his fists and trying to look tough in his many, many layers of clothing.
"Ohhh! So strong!" Coos Fai.
I hear the muffled voice of Mokona from inside Syaoran's cloak and the boy panics briefly, eyes going wide as he stops and tries to shove Mokona deeper inside his clothing.
Luckily Roth isn't very perceptive.
The snow continues to hold off as we walk. I watch the clouds slowly converge on us and am glad when the amount of buildings increases and we come to a stop in front of a large misty window stocked with some very extravagant dresses if only for being inside again and hopefully the chance to get some new boots which don't soak through immediately.
A bell above the door jingles as we step through.
"Just a minute!" Call out two voices in unison.
The shop is warm and filled with racks upon racks of dresses and skirts and trousers and coats and shirts.
I see a shelf full of sturdy looking boots to the left of the window but stay where I am, trying to guess which ones might be my size.
"Oh! You must be freezing! Travellers?" Two girls who must be younger than me walk over to us quickly. They are wearing dresses a lot more toned down than most of the ones on their rails which I can see, one in brown and one in an olive tone, with stiff aprons over the front, flecks of thread clinging to them.
One grabs Syaoran's arm and the other Sakura's, sweeping them apart.
"Come along." The girl towing Sakura along says, gesturing in my direction in a way which feels somewhat rude. I follow, having to speed up to keep pace with her despite the fact that she's shorter than me.
"Yeah. The weather changed quicker than we were expecting." Syaoran says, stuttering slightly.
"Now. What first?" The pale girl ponders, tapping her lip as she releases Sakura in front of a mirror and turns her around so we're both facing the same direction. She moves me in line with her, hands strong on my shoulders as she pushes them back and lifts my chin slightly.
She looks us up and down, hair barely moving from the almost severe bun that she has it in.
"Hmmm. You are dressed even worse than your friends. We'll have to get that sorted out." Her gaze falls to our shoes and she grimaces.
"Shoes first clearly- I don't know how you haven't lost toes." She says and then bustles away to the curtain that they'd both appeared from.
I look at Sakura who looks back at me confusedly, tilting her head.
"Huh?" She asks, brain still catching up with what had just happened.
Moments later the girl appears with a set of towels and two stools. She puts them down heavily and gestures to them.
"I'm Marie. Shoes please?" She asks and we follow quickly.
It's a relief to sit down honestly and be able to dry my feet. I pass her a very damp shoe, wrinkling my nose.
"Sorry." I say, unable to stop myself and she shakes her head, snorting.
"Nonsense. I'll get everything sorted out." She says and is gone again, taking one of Sakura's shoes too.
"Huh?" The princess repeats. I can't help but agree.