Title: Spirit of the Wind
Chapter Nine: The Black-Heart Butterfly Author: Kitty Malfoy
A/N: OK HERE IT IS! I'VE DECIDED TO CONTINUE THIS STORY! EVENSTARPRINCESS WAS VERY STUBBORN! BUT PLEASE, I NEED MORE REVIEWS THIS TIME!
Disclaimer: Anything HP related belongs to J.K Rowling, though everything else is mine. Except for this chapter, which contains roughly a short story copyrighted to Mercedes Lackey, from her book 'Sword of Ice and other Tales of Valdemer', though I have changed it a bit.
~*~ _-The Story-_
The trader examined the sample of wool cloth with pleasure and delight. It was soft as a puff of down, warm and light as a purring kitten, and a lovely shade of blue-gray. He'd never seen such cloth, nor anything of so fine a weave. Plush was the word he'd put to it, and he was already calculating his profits. He already had a customer in mind, a man of wealth and power - Baron Munn. The Baron made no attempt to conceal his fondness for luxuries, and he was a good, if choosy customer.
"It will be hard to find customers for so unusual a weave, but I can take all you have at ten sickles a bolt," he said with a condescending smile as if he were doing the rustics a favor.
But the village headman only shook his head sorrowfully. "Oh, Trader Gencan, that giving a mood we're not in," he said, just as condescendingly, and sighed. "It's been a hard year, that it had. We need so many thins, so many things, or there'll be no wool for next year, for we'll have had to eat our goats to stay alive." His voice hardened as he bent to the bargaining. "Thirty sickles it'll have to be, or nothing at all."
"What?!" Gencan yelped, taken by surprise. Why - that was exactly what he'd expected to sell the stuff for! These mudfoots weren't nearly so dense as they looked!
And neither was his former competitor from whom he'd stolen - ah - acquired this trade route. Perhaps this was why he had not fought to retain it..
There was nothing worse than a tradesman who knew the value of his goods!
He bent to the bargaining with a will, and sweated until he'd brought them down to something reasonable. Something a man could make a decent profit on. Sixteen sickles a bolt was one sickle more than he'd wanted to pay, but at least it allowed him a profit margin..
They had just settled on that price, when he happened to look out the window and froze in surprise at what he saw wandering by.
"Who is that?" he gasped, wondering if he had somehow stumbled on a creature like one of the fabled sirens. The headman followed his gaze and smiled.
"Our lovely butterfly," he said, with a smile of pure pleasure. "That's our butterfly."
"She's your daughter, then?" the trader replied, unable to take his eyes from the girl.
But the headman laughed. "No. Oh, no, Trader. In a way, she belongs to the whole village."
Now Gencan spared him a sharp glance. "The village? What's that supposed to mean?"
But now the headman frowned, just a little. The girl drifted out of sight, and Gencan was able to gather his scattered wits about him again. "It's a strange story, Trader," the headman said at last. "And not an altogether happy one."
Gencan pursed his lips and nodded sagely. "Well, then," he replied. "What say we drink to our bargain and you can tell me her story." He signaled to his servant to bring in the wine. "Nothing makes a bitter story more palatable than a goo wine!"
He poured the headman a cup of the strong, smooth wine, then settled in to listen with as good a will as he'd bargained.
~*~
Leaving his caravan in the charge of his most trusted assistant, he rode out that very night, pushing for the Baron's home. Eight days later he was kneeling, forehead to the floor, before Baron Munn. The cost of a private audience had been steep, but the results of this audience could make him wealthy beyond the income bought by any trade route, He would be able to retire and hire others to lead his caravans while he directed them like a great lord with his retainers.
Baron Munn sucked at a plum pit, and looked down at him out of one half-lidded eye. The Baron was a massive, bulky man, but his face and limbs showed only the barest hint of the fat of soft living. He had been called "The Bull of the Sun" and he looked like his namesake in every way, down to the expression in his face. "Rise," he said a last, waving a hand languidly. "State your business."
Gencan only removed his forehead from the floor so that he could watch the baron's expression. "I thank the great and wise Baron Munn for granting me an audience," he said with every token of humility. "I am not worthy to scrape the bottoms of the great one's"
"Fine, fine," the Baron interrupted. "Get on with it." He selected another fruit and bit into it, licking the juice from his fingers.
"I have come to tell you of a young woman, Great Lord," Gencan said, quickly.
Baron Munn looked up from his half-eaten peach, pale eyes bright with interest.
"She is barely thirteen summers old," Gencan continued, "And just coming into full bloom of woman hood. Her hair is the white of snow, of clearest ice, a waterfall of molten silver. Her eyes are the black of a night sky, of the finest obsidian. Her skin is as flawless as cream from your prized cattle. Her face and her form are as perfect as that of a young goddess."
The Baron was truly interested now; he licked his lips and set his fruit aside. Oh, he was feigning indifference, but Gencan had not been a trader all hi life without learning how to read people. He played his winning card.
"She has the mind and heart of a child of no more than eight years. So she is now and so she shall remain all of her life. Innocent, simple, trusting, and loving! She cannot know a lie, cannot tell one. She cannot understand any but the simplest of commands, or do more than care for herself as a child would. Her needs are those of a child, and she will do anything she is told to do by an adult."
Baron Munn straightened in his throne-like chair. Gencan watched as the light of interest and curiosity in his eyes turned to the flames of desire, a desire that turned his strong face into a caricature of himself. Now he looked even more like a bull - a bull scenting a heifer. And Gencan knew that the whispered rumors he had heard about the Baron were true.
Baron Munn composed himself after a moment pulling a mask of indifference over his features. He stared at Gencan as if he were deciding on what he meant to order for dinner. But his ragged breathing gave him away.
"Tell me where this girl is, Trader," the Baron said, harshly. "I will send my people to see if all you have told me is the truth. If it is true, and I may have her, you will be rewarded. If you lie," he continued, "I will make you my slave. My emasculated, deaf, and dumb slave."
Gencan's mouth was suddenly very dry. "It is all true, Great Lord, I swear it!" He ran his tongue over his lips, and tried to keep from trembling with fear as he was lead away to wait.
In twenty days, the spies returned. Their reports of the girl were even more enthusiastic than the trader's. Baron Munn, in a fit of joy and generosity, rewarded the trader with gold, gems, and spices from the South. Spices so rare that Gencan had never tasted them, and could not resist trying them in his own celebratory feast.
Gencan died that night, a rich and happy man, never knowing that he had been poisoned by those spices from the South at the Baron's orders. There were other rich, powerful men who had the same appetites that the Baron had. The Baron did not intend Gencan to increase his profits by selling his knowledge to them as well. Gencan's own people, and all the Baron's spies save one, followed the trader into the arm of Lady Death.
Guided by his remaining spy, the Baron led a handpicked company of men into the mountain lands. Baron Munn did not trust any man to steal his girl for him. There was too much chance that she could be sold to another, taken away or tampered with.
~*~
The late wind had a bite to it, here in the mountains. It whipped up the canyons and fled crying over the village with a hundred mournful voice, circling around the goat pens until the goats added their own plaintive bleats to the wind's cries.
And yet, compared to the mountains above, the village itself was relatively calm, protected by the mountains themselves and the trees that had been planted to shelter it from the biting winds. The villagers were used to the winds, used to the deceptive cries. There was no reason to stop work from being done, not even a reason for the children to stop their games. People simply wrapped themselves and their children a little tighter in their coats and narrowed their eyes against the blast. It was not even a reason to keep Mikhal from taking the older children up into the slopes for their daily lessons in herbcraft and woodcraft.
But all work stopped when young Deke, the Watch Boy come pounding up the dirt street, arms and legs flailing, yelling that soldiers were coming- -fast, on horseback- -and lots of them. -
The headman listened to Deke's breathless gasps of warning. His mind roiled with shock and confusion. Soldiers? he thought desperately Why? Who would be sending soldiers? There's no reason for soldiers to come here! As the leader of the village, he was the decision-maker; he had to do something and quickly.
It was too late to get the people out of the village. He'd protect what he could.
"Run as fast as you can, Deke, up where the wild apples grow," he said. "Tell Mikhal to hide the children, and you stay with 'em. Don't you come back. You tell him not to bring the younglings back 'till he thinks it's safe and the soldiers are long gone. You tell him - tell him - we don't want to know where they are." He grabbed the boy's shoulder and shook him once, and Deke's eyes got even bigger.
"You understand?" he said fiercely. "You understand?"
The boy's chin quivered, his eyes so big they filled his face. He nodded, bobbing his head on his thin little neck.
"Good!" the headman let him go. 'Now go! Run!"
Deke was off, pelting away as fast as he could go, fear adding to his speed. As he vanished, the headman heard the pounding of hooves, and turned to see the first of the soldiers riding into the village. He stepped out to meet them.
Mikhal was the oldest man in the village; no one knew exactly how old he was, and he didn't even know himself. He was the village teacher and had been for more than forty years. Not the kind of teacher that taught in the ways of books and classrooms, but in the things a youngling in a mountain village needed, the ways of the mountains, the wild things, and the goats. Today, he'd brought the children up to pick the last of the wild apples, making a game of it, but making sure they learned as well, and not just the acts, but the reasons behind them. Seeing that they took only half the apples on the trees, and none at all from the ground - telling them how the wild things, the ones that stayed awake for the winter, would need what they left.
But that lesson was shattered when Deke came pelting up the mountain path.
Mikhal listened carefully to Deke and saw the sense in the headman's orders. Calmly, methodically, and without any fuss, he gathered up the children, including the childlike butterfly, and led them away, down paths that only he and the goats knew.
Then, down paths only he and the wild things knew. Only then did he tell them in simple words they could understand, why he had hidden them away, and why they must stay hidden.
~*~
Even the wind shuddered away from the scream, a shriek of agony that went on and on forever before it finally died to a sobbing whimper. The headman's wide sagged back into the arms that held her firmly erect.
Baron Munn handed the hot iron back to the Captain of his Household Cavalry, and turned back to the headman. Four men held him tightly, forcing him to kneel in the dirt but holding his head up by the hair so that he could not avoid watching.
"Now," the Baron said pleasantly. "Tell me where the girl is. No more lies. No sending my men off on wild goat chases to look where she isn't"
"I don't know! I swear it!" the headman sobbed desperately. "I told old Mikhal to hide them all, and I don't know where he went! No one knows, no one can know, he's gone where only the wild things are! Please, you must believe me!"
The man wept, great, racking sobs that shook his body.
"Oh, I do believe you," Munn said and smiled. "But one of these others may know what you don't."
He waved a hand at the villagers gathered under the swords of his men. They winced away.
"So, in case there is someone who knows, this entertainment will go on until I am certain that you are correct. And when your dear wife can bear no more, I shall choose someone else."
He signaled to his Captain, who handed him the iron, reheated to whiteness. "As pleasant a diversion as this is, my objective is still the same. I want the girl."
The headman's wife began to scream again, before the white-hot iron even touched her.
~*~
Hands on her ears, the girl crouched on her haunches, rocking back and forth. She tried to shut everything, words, thoughts, all-
"They killed Headman Cracy and his wife last night," Deke sobbed his voice full of anguish. "Hurt 'em real bad afore they killed 'em." Deke hugged his skinny arms to his chest, pausing now and then to wipe his nose and eyes with the back of his hand.
"They started on my pap and mam this morning!" Deke continued, his face screwing up into a mask of grief and bewilderment. "Why they like that, Mikhal?" the boy sobbed, finally flinging himself into Mikhal's arms. "Why they gotta hurt and kill people? We never done nothin'! Why they gotta hurt my mam and pap?"
Mikhal pulled the boy to him, holding him close to his chest in a sheltering embrace. While the boy sobbed, Mikhal cursed under his breath.
The girl knew why. Mikhal cursed himself for sending Deke to spy on the village. Mikhal thought he should have gone himself.
"It's 'cause they're bad, Deke," Mikhal murmured between curses. "It's 'cause they want what we got, an' just cause they like to hurt folks an' this' a good excuse to make somebody hurt. None of it's our doin', Deke. None of it."
The old man kept his voice high enough for the other children to hear. He was a teacher; even in the midst of terror, he would teach.
"Ain't none of it our fault," he said, and the girl felt his eyes probing the darkness, looking for her. "We just gotta get through this, an' make sure it don't happen again."
They hurted Momma Cracy an' Poppa Cracy, hurted 'em an kilt 'em. The girl's thoughts were filled with confusion, terror, and anguish. They hurted 'em, but it's 'cause they want me. They gonna hurt Deke's momma and poppa, they gonna hurt everybody till they get me!
She rocked back and forth, tears burning down her cheeks, trying to work out reasons and answers. But there were no reasons, and she had never in her life touched minds like these. Mikhal was right. Mikhal was right.
But these horrible people wanted her. These people were all her family, every adult was her Momma and Poppa, every youngling a brother of sister. They all loved her, and she loved them all. It was all she had ever known, that love, that cherishing.
They're getting hurted, an' it's cause of me! She buried her face in her arms, and faced the inescapable. If-if I go to 'em, they might hurt me...if I don't, they gonna hurt everybody, an' maybe kilt 'em too.
Her traumatized mind kept trying to resolve the questions, and finally she groped her way through the fog to an answer, and a decision.
She loved them. They loved her. They were being hurt because of her. She could not bear that. And there was only one way to stop the hurt.
She slipped away, as quietly as a mouse, running down to the village to make the bad man stop.
~*~
Baron Munn stared at the lovely girl, completely enthralled. She was more beautiful than he dreamed, more vulnerable and tender, and her terror only served to make her lovelier in his eyes. That terror fed the hunger within him in a way that even the dying pain of her elders had not done.
She was perfect in every way.
She cowered at his feet, where she had thrown herself, weeping, placing herself between him and the woman he had been torturing, trying to hold him off with her soft little hands. Hands like fluttering doves, like white butterflies.
He took her face in his hands, carefully and raised her eyes to his. Even weeping could not make her eyes less than lovely.
Her eyes were as black as the sky during a storm, as bottomless as a well.
He ran a hand over her molten silver hair. "What is your name, little dove?"
"K-K-Kirone," she choked out, silver tears coursing sweetly down her cheeks.
~*~*~*~*~
Kirone paused in her narrative and looked at him - studying his face. Millions of emotions played across his strong features. Mainly shock and fear - not for himself but for what she went through. She took a deep breath steadying herself and continued...
~*~*~*~*~
He smiled.
He ordered the Muggle villagers to make a cage in which he would carry her back to his home. He ordered it to be carved and painted and lined in layers of the villages' fine wool, to keep her warm and sheltered and safe. He also put some small spells on it in case she had any magic blood in her. People tended to lash out with an untrained gift when terrified.
He had captured the butterfly. Now he would bring his prize, his Kirone, back to his barony for all to see, see and lust after, but never to touch. Only he would savor that touch, at his leisure, and savor what came after touching.
The villagers made his cage in a day and a night, all of them laboring until they dropped from exhaustion. He left as soon as it was completed, under cover of the first snow of winter.
Behind him, the remaining villagers could only gather to mourn their dead, and to pray for their special daughter. They had no illusions about what was to befall; her beauty would serve to enchant him only for so long - and when it palled, he would feed his desires in other ways. They prayed, then, for something, someone, to send her a quick release - through rescue, or painless death.
When the stranger rode into the village, it seemed that their prayers had been answered. He was atop a broomstick, which caused the Muggle villagers to believe that he was god-sent. He himself was garbed in pristine white, his face rather handsome beneath silver hair. But most startling of all were his green eyes, filled with knowledge, sorrow, and understanding.
He listened carefully to their story with a troubled and angry face.
"I can stop them," he said, in a clear, edged voice, as sweet as spring water and as sharp as a blade of ice. "I can stop them. But the danger is great, and there is a chance that Kirone will not survive."
"Better than live a life as that man's toy!" Mikhal snarled bitterly. Behind him, the rest of the villagers nodded or spoke their agreement. Some wept, but all agreed. Baron Munn's actions had left them with no illusions.
"Go to the Mt. Fuji pass then, as soon as the snow stops," the stranger told them.
And then he flew away.
That night, the light snow turned into a full winter storm, a blizzard the likes of which no one, not even Mikhal, had ever seen. Snow fell so thickly and heavily that it was a struggle just to get from house to house within the village.
Then it became too cold to snow; the wind strengthened, and whipped the snow already fallen into huge drifts. The cold grew deeper and deeper.
The blizzard lasted until moonrise the next night, then died.
At first light, the Muggle villagers put on their snowshoes, loaded up their sleds, and followed old Mikhal along the goat-tracks to the pass.
They found the Baron and his guards, frozen, as if they had been struck down by a cold more deadly than any man could imagine, and all in a single moment. They found the Baron with his hands frozen to the bars of the locked cage, his dead eyes staring into it, as if he had seen something he could not understand.
But Kirone was gone, without a trace.
They never found her.
_-End Story-_
"Do you know what the baron saw? He saw me change into the sorcerer's stone. The stranger was Nicholas Flammel. He used a spell to create the storm and he came to rescue me." Kirone said off handly. Draco pulled her into his lap, and held her tightly. Only then did she let one sweet tear roll down her pale alabaster face, and drop onto the sleeve of her robes. "I'm so sorry, Kinoki. I didn't know........it must have been horrible."
Kirone wiped the tearstain from her face, and ruffled his hair with her free hand absentmindedly. "Kinoki now, is it? I like that one.......- hmm- not many people do know. It was a period in my life where I had not fully evolved and Dumbledore and Nic were just starting to accelerate my growth. I didn't want to leave my first 'family' alone so Nic and I created the Black Heart Butterfly to remind the Muggle villagers of me."
Draco's face took on a look of bewilderment and admiration and he examined the little creatures perched on his Kinoki's finger.
Each wing was no larger than his two thumbnails together. The wings were the color of molten silver, with an oblong black spot on either side of the creature's slender body. The marks, when seen with the wings fully opened, made the shape of a heart.
~*******~*******~*******~*******~*******~
Done! R & R! Remember what happened the last time you didn't, lol.
Kitty Malfoy (^ ^)
Chapter Nine: The Black-Heart Butterfly Author: Kitty Malfoy
A/N: OK HERE IT IS! I'VE DECIDED TO CONTINUE THIS STORY! EVENSTARPRINCESS WAS VERY STUBBORN! BUT PLEASE, I NEED MORE REVIEWS THIS TIME!
Disclaimer: Anything HP related belongs to J.K Rowling, though everything else is mine. Except for this chapter, which contains roughly a short story copyrighted to Mercedes Lackey, from her book 'Sword of Ice and other Tales of Valdemer', though I have changed it a bit.
~*~ _-The Story-_
The trader examined the sample of wool cloth with pleasure and delight. It was soft as a puff of down, warm and light as a purring kitten, and a lovely shade of blue-gray. He'd never seen such cloth, nor anything of so fine a weave. Plush was the word he'd put to it, and he was already calculating his profits. He already had a customer in mind, a man of wealth and power - Baron Munn. The Baron made no attempt to conceal his fondness for luxuries, and he was a good, if choosy customer.
"It will be hard to find customers for so unusual a weave, but I can take all you have at ten sickles a bolt," he said with a condescending smile as if he were doing the rustics a favor.
But the village headman only shook his head sorrowfully. "Oh, Trader Gencan, that giving a mood we're not in," he said, just as condescendingly, and sighed. "It's been a hard year, that it had. We need so many thins, so many things, or there'll be no wool for next year, for we'll have had to eat our goats to stay alive." His voice hardened as he bent to the bargaining. "Thirty sickles it'll have to be, or nothing at all."
"What?!" Gencan yelped, taken by surprise. Why - that was exactly what he'd expected to sell the stuff for! These mudfoots weren't nearly so dense as they looked!
And neither was his former competitor from whom he'd stolen - ah - acquired this trade route. Perhaps this was why he had not fought to retain it..
There was nothing worse than a tradesman who knew the value of his goods!
He bent to the bargaining with a will, and sweated until he'd brought them down to something reasonable. Something a man could make a decent profit on. Sixteen sickles a bolt was one sickle more than he'd wanted to pay, but at least it allowed him a profit margin..
They had just settled on that price, when he happened to look out the window and froze in surprise at what he saw wandering by.
"Who is that?" he gasped, wondering if he had somehow stumbled on a creature like one of the fabled sirens. The headman followed his gaze and smiled.
"Our lovely butterfly," he said, with a smile of pure pleasure. "That's our butterfly."
"She's your daughter, then?" the trader replied, unable to take his eyes from the girl.
But the headman laughed. "No. Oh, no, Trader. In a way, she belongs to the whole village."
Now Gencan spared him a sharp glance. "The village? What's that supposed to mean?"
But now the headman frowned, just a little. The girl drifted out of sight, and Gencan was able to gather his scattered wits about him again. "It's a strange story, Trader," the headman said at last. "And not an altogether happy one."
Gencan pursed his lips and nodded sagely. "Well, then," he replied. "What say we drink to our bargain and you can tell me her story." He signaled to his servant to bring in the wine. "Nothing makes a bitter story more palatable than a goo wine!"
He poured the headman a cup of the strong, smooth wine, then settled in to listen with as good a will as he'd bargained.
~*~
Leaving his caravan in the charge of his most trusted assistant, he rode out that very night, pushing for the Baron's home. Eight days later he was kneeling, forehead to the floor, before Baron Munn. The cost of a private audience had been steep, but the results of this audience could make him wealthy beyond the income bought by any trade route, He would be able to retire and hire others to lead his caravans while he directed them like a great lord with his retainers.
Baron Munn sucked at a plum pit, and looked down at him out of one half-lidded eye. The Baron was a massive, bulky man, but his face and limbs showed only the barest hint of the fat of soft living. He had been called "The Bull of the Sun" and he looked like his namesake in every way, down to the expression in his face. "Rise," he said a last, waving a hand languidly. "State your business."
Gencan only removed his forehead from the floor so that he could watch the baron's expression. "I thank the great and wise Baron Munn for granting me an audience," he said with every token of humility. "I am not worthy to scrape the bottoms of the great one's"
"Fine, fine," the Baron interrupted. "Get on with it." He selected another fruit and bit into it, licking the juice from his fingers.
"I have come to tell you of a young woman, Great Lord," Gencan said, quickly.
Baron Munn looked up from his half-eaten peach, pale eyes bright with interest.
"She is barely thirteen summers old," Gencan continued, "And just coming into full bloom of woman hood. Her hair is the white of snow, of clearest ice, a waterfall of molten silver. Her eyes are the black of a night sky, of the finest obsidian. Her skin is as flawless as cream from your prized cattle. Her face and her form are as perfect as that of a young goddess."
The Baron was truly interested now; he licked his lips and set his fruit aside. Oh, he was feigning indifference, but Gencan had not been a trader all hi life without learning how to read people. He played his winning card.
"She has the mind and heart of a child of no more than eight years. So she is now and so she shall remain all of her life. Innocent, simple, trusting, and loving! She cannot know a lie, cannot tell one. She cannot understand any but the simplest of commands, or do more than care for herself as a child would. Her needs are those of a child, and she will do anything she is told to do by an adult."
Baron Munn straightened in his throne-like chair. Gencan watched as the light of interest and curiosity in his eyes turned to the flames of desire, a desire that turned his strong face into a caricature of himself. Now he looked even more like a bull - a bull scenting a heifer. And Gencan knew that the whispered rumors he had heard about the Baron were true.
Baron Munn composed himself after a moment pulling a mask of indifference over his features. He stared at Gencan as if he were deciding on what he meant to order for dinner. But his ragged breathing gave him away.
"Tell me where this girl is, Trader," the Baron said, harshly. "I will send my people to see if all you have told me is the truth. If it is true, and I may have her, you will be rewarded. If you lie," he continued, "I will make you my slave. My emasculated, deaf, and dumb slave."
Gencan's mouth was suddenly very dry. "It is all true, Great Lord, I swear it!" He ran his tongue over his lips, and tried to keep from trembling with fear as he was lead away to wait.
In twenty days, the spies returned. Their reports of the girl were even more enthusiastic than the trader's. Baron Munn, in a fit of joy and generosity, rewarded the trader with gold, gems, and spices from the South. Spices so rare that Gencan had never tasted them, and could not resist trying them in his own celebratory feast.
Gencan died that night, a rich and happy man, never knowing that he had been poisoned by those spices from the South at the Baron's orders. There were other rich, powerful men who had the same appetites that the Baron had. The Baron did not intend Gencan to increase his profits by selling his knowledge to them as well. Gencan's own people, and all the Baron's spies save one, followed the trader into the arm of Lady Death.
Guided by his remaining spy, the Baron led a handpicked company of men into the mountain lands. Baron Munn did not trust any man to steal his girl for him. There was too much chance that she could be sold to another, taken away or tampered with.
~*~
The late wind had a bite to it, here in the mountains. It whipped up the canyons and fled crying over the village with a hundred mournful voice, circling around the goat pens until the goats added their own plaintive bleats to the wind's cries.
And yet, compared to the mountains above, the village itself was relatively calm, protected by the mountains themselves and the trees that had been planted to shelter it from the biting winds. The villagers were used to the winds, used to the deceptive cries. There was no reason to stop work from being done, not even a reason for the children to stop their games. People simply wrapped themselves and their children a little tighter in their coats and narrowed their eyes against the blast. It was not even a reason to keep Mikhal from taking the older children up into the slopes for their daily lessons in herbcraft and woodcraft.
But all work stopped when young Deke, the Watch Boy come pounding up the dirt street, arms and legs flailing, yelling that soldiers were coming- -fast, on horseback- -and lots of them. -
The headman listened to Deke's breathless gasps of warning. His mind roiled with shock and confusion. Soldiers? he thought desperately Why? Who would be sending soldiers? There's no reason for soldiers to come here! As the leader of the village, he was the decision-maker; he had to do something and quickly.
It was too late to get the people out of the village. He'd protect what he could.
"Run as fast as you can, Deke, up where the wild apples grow," he said. "Tell Mikhal to hide the children, and you stay with 'em. Don't you come back. You tell him not to bring the younglings back 'till he thinks it's safe and the soldiers are long gone. You tell him - tell him - we don't want to know where they are." He grabbed the boy's shoulder and shook him once, and Deke's eyes got even bigger.
"You understand?" he said fiercely. "You understand?"
The boy's chin quivered, his eyes so big they filled his face. He nodded, bobbing his head on his thin little neck.
"Good!" the headman let him go. 'Now go! Run!"
Deke was off, pelting away as fast as he could go, fear adding to his speed. As he vanished, the headman heard the pounding of hooves, and turned to see the first of the soldiers riding into the village. He stepped out to meet them.
Mikhal was the oldest man in the village; no one knew exactly how old he was, and he didn't even know himself. He was the village teacher and had been for more than forty years. Not the kind of teacher that taught in the ways of books and classrooms, but in the things a youngling in a mountain village needed, the ways of the mountains, the wild things, and the goats. Today, he'd brought the children up to pick the last of the wild apples, making a game of it, but making sure they learned as well, and not just the acts, but the reasons behind them. Seeing that they took only half the apples on the trees, and none at all from the ground - telling them how the wild things, the ones that stayed awake for the winter, would need what they left.
But that lesson was shattered when Deke came pelting up the mountain path.
Mikhal listened carefully to Deke and saw the sense in the headman's orders. Calmly, methodically, and without any fuss, he gathered up the children, including the childlike butterfly, and led them away, down paths that only he and the goats knew.
Then, down paths only he and the wild things knew. Only then did he tell them in simple words they could understand, why he had hidden them away, and why they must stay hidden.
~*~
Even the wind shuddered away from the scream, a shriek of agony that went on and on forever before it finally died to a sobbing whimper. The headman's wide sagged back into the arms that held her firmly erect.
Baron Munn handed the hot iron back to the Captain of his Household Cavalry, and turned back to the headman. Four men held him tightly, forcing him to kneel in the dirt but holding his head up by the hair so that he could not avoid watching.
"Now," the Baron said pleasantly. "Tell me where the girl is. No more lies. No sending my men off on wild goat chases to look where she isn't"
"I don't know! I swear it!" the headman sobbed desperately. "I told old Mikhal to hide them all, and I don't know where he went! No one knows, no one can know, he's gone where only the wild things are! Please, you must believe me!"
The man wept, great, racking sobs that shook his body.
"Oh, I do believe you," Munn said and smiled. "But one of these others may know what you don't."
He waved a hand at the villagers gathered under the swords of his men. They winced away.
"So, in case there is someone who knows, this entertainment will go on until I am certain that you are correct. And when your dear wife can bear no more, I shall choose someone else."
He signaled to his Captain, who handed him the iron, reheated to whiteness. "As pleasant a diversion as this is, my objective is still the same. I want the girl."
The headman's wife began to scream again, before the white-hot iron even touched her.
~*~
Hands on her ears, the girl crouched on her haunches, rocking back and forth. She tried to shut everything, words, thoughts, all-
"They killed Headman Cracy and his wife last night," Deke sobbed his voice full of anguish. "Hurt 'em real bad afore they killed 'em." Deke hugged his skinny arms to his chest, pausing now and then to wipe his nose and eyes with the back of his hand.
"They started on my pap and mam this morning!" Deke continued, his face screwing up into a mask of grief and bewilderment. "Why they like that, Mikhal?" the boy sobbed, finally flinging himself into Mikhal's arms. "Why they gotta hurt and kill people? We never done nothin'! Why they gotta hurt my mam and pap?"
Mikhal pulled the boy to him, holding him close to his chest in a sheltering embrace. While the boy sobbed, Mikhal cursed under his breath.
The girl knew why. Mikhal cursed himself for sending Deke to spy on the village. Mikhal thought he should have gone himself.
"It's 'cause they're bad, Deke," Mikhal murmured between curses. "It's 'cause they want what we got, an' just cause they like to hurt folks an' this' a good excuse to make somebody hurt. None of it's our doin', Deke. None of it."
The old man kept his voice high enough for the other children to hear. He was a teacher; even in the midst of terror, he would teach.
"Ain't none of it our fault," he said, and the girl felt his eyes probing the darkness, looking for her. "We just gotta get through this, an' make sure it don't happen again."
They hurted Momma Cracy an' Poppa Cracy, hurted 'em an kilt 'em. The girl's thoughts were filled with confusion, terror, and anguish. They hurted 'em, but it's 'cause they want me. They gonna hurt Deke's momma and poppa, they gonna hurt everybody till they get me!
She rocked back and forth, tears burning down her cheeks, trying to work out reasons and answers. But there were no reasons, and she had never in her life touched minds like these. Mikhal was right. Mikhal was right.
But these horrible people wanted her. These people were all her family, every adult was her Momma and Poppa, every youngling a brother of sister. They all loved her, and she loved them all. It was all she had ever known, that love, that cherishing.
They're getting hurted, an' it's cause of me! She buried her face in her arms, and faced the inescapable. If-if I go to 'em, they might hurt me...if I don't, they gonna hurt everybody, an' maybe kilt 'em too.
Her traumatized mind kept trying to resolve the questions, and finally she groped her way through the fog to an answer, and a decision.
She loved them. They loved her. They were being hurt because of her. She could not bear that. And there was only one way to stop the hurt.
She slipped away, as quietly as a mouse, running down to the village to make the bad man stop.
~*~
Baron Munn stared at the lovely girl, completely enthralled. She was more beautiful than he dreamed, more vulnerable and tender, and her terror only served to make her lovelier in his eyes. That terror fed the hunger within him in a way that even the dying pain of her elders had not done.
She was perfect in every way.
She cowered at his feet, where she had thrown herself, weeping, placing herself between him and the woman he had been torturing, trying to hold him off with her soft little hands. Hands like fluttering doves, like white butterflies.
He took her face in his hands, carefully and raised her eyes to his. Even weeping could not make her eyes less than lovely.
Her eyes were as black as the sky during a storm, as bottomless as a well.
He ran a hand over her molten silver hair. "What is your name, little dove?"
"K-K-Kirone," she choked out, silver tears coursing sweetly down her cheeks.
~*~*~*~*~
Kirone paused in her narrative and looked at him - studying his face. Millions of emotions played across his strong features. Mainly shock and fear - not for himself but for what she went through. She took a deep breath steadying herself and continued...
~*~*~*~*~
He smiled.
He ordered the Muggle villagers to make a cage in which he would carry her back to his home. He ordered it to be carved and painted and lined in layers of the villages' fine wool, to keep her warm and sheltered and safe. He also put some small spells on it in case she had any magic blood in her. People tended to lash out with an untrained gift when terrified.
He had captured the butterfly. Now he would bring his prize, his Kirone, back to his barony for all to see, see and lust after, but never to touch. Only he would savor that touch, at his leisure, and savor what came after touching.
The villagers made his cage in a day and a night, all of them laboring until they dropped from exhaustion. He left as soon as it was completed, under cover of the first snow of winter.
Behind him, the remaining villagers could only gather to mourn their dead, and to pray for their special daughter. They had no illusions about what was to befall; her beauty would serve to enchant him only for so long - and when it palled, he would feed his desires in other ways. They prayed, then, for something, someone, to send her a quick release - through rescue, or painless death.
When the stranger rode into the village, it seemed that their prayers had been answered. He was atop a broomstick, which caused the Muggle villagers to believe that he was god-sent. He himself was garbed in pristine white, his face rather handsome beneath silver hair. But most startling of all were his green eyes, filled with knowledge, sorrow, and understanding.
He listened carefully to their story with a troubled and angry face.
"I can stop them," he said, in a clear, edged voice, as sweet as spring water and as sharp as a blade of ice. "I can stop them. But the danger is great, and there is a chance that Kirone will not survive."
"Better than live a life as that man's toy!" Mikhal snarled bitterly. Behind him, the rest of the villagers nodded or spoke their agreement. Some wept, but all agreed. Baron Munn's actions had left them with no illusions.
"Go to the Mt. Fuji pass then, as soon as the snow stops," the stranger told them.
And then he flew away.
That night, the light snow turned into a full winter storm, a blizzard the likes of which no one, not even Mikhal, had ever seen. Snow fell so thickly and heavily that it was a struggle just to get from house to house within the village.
Then it became too cold to snow; the wind strengthened, and whipped the snow already fallen into huge drifts. The cold grew deeper and deeper.
The blizzard lasted until moonrise the next night, then died.
At first light, the Muggle villagers put on their snowshoes, loaded up their sleds, and followed old Mikhal along the goat-tracks to the pass.
They found the Baron and his guards, frozen, as if they had been struck down by a cold more deadly than any man could imagine, and all in a single moment. They found the Baron with his hands frozen to the bars of the locked cage, his dead eyes staring into it, as if he had seen something he could not understand.
But Kirone was gone, without a trace.
They never found her.
_-End Story-_
"Do you know what the baron saw? He saw me change into the sorcerer's stone. The stranger was Nicholas Flammel. He used a spell to create the storm and he came to rescue me." Kirone said off handly. Draco pulled her into his lap, and held her tightly. Only then did she let one sweet tear roll down her pale alabaster face, and drop onto the sleeve of her robes. "I'm so sorry, Kinoki. I didn't know........it must have been horrible."
Kirone wiped the tearstain from her face, and ruffled his hair with her free hand absentmindedly. "Kinoki now, is it? I like that one.......- hmm- not many people do know. It was a period in my life where I had not fully evolved and Dumbledore and Nic were just starting to accelerate my growth. I didn't want to leave my first 'family' alone so Nic and I created the Black Heart Butterfly to remind the Muggle villagers of me."
Draco's face took on a look of bewilderment and admiration and he examined the little creatures perched on his Kinoki's finger.
Each wing was no larger than his two thumbnails together. The wings were the color of molten silver, with an oblong black spot on either side of the creature's slender body. The marks, when seen with the wings fully opened, made the shape of a heart.
~*******~*******~*******~*******~*******~
Done! R & R! Remember what happened the last time you didn't, lol.
Kitty Malfoy (^ ^)