Chapter Eight: Missing Princess
They'd managed to find a decent doctor in Astana even without Ursula to guide them. He had praised the efficacy of the healing barriers, then confirmed Yuna's diagnosis, though it looked to Nina as though he wanted to contradict it, simply on principle. Meanwhile, Yuna had been packed off to one of the holding cells in the Carronade facility. They bought some dresses and sundries for Elina, then gathered a quick dinner, after which they turned in for the night.
For once the battered tent was foregone. After all, they'd paid for a room at the inn to keep their spare things while they went to Astana Base, so they might as well make full use of their money. Also, the inn baths were desperately welcomed after their two journeys through things rotten. An order was worked out for their trips - the baths were made to accommodate multiple guests, so they tripled up. When this was decided, Ershin made her announcement.
"Deis says, 'Although I'm sure you'll miss my lovely tones, I'll not be talking myself for a while yet. Hope you can survive.'"
Ryu looked up. "Why?"
"She says, it is a secret." With that, she walked out. Nina followed for a few steps, then was obliged to call her back for help in carrying Elina down the hall.
Once there, Ershin handled the mechanics while Nina spoke cheerfully of the imitation jade tiles and patrolling soldier statuettes. She rubbed a bar of soap between her hands to make tremendous bubble confections, which were displayed without a single smile from Elina who had once without fail giggled crazily at the sight of the foamy peaks. Ershin laughed instead, a sad attempt to fill the gap of Elina's silence. When they were decent, Ershin left them for a few minutes and returned with a wheeled bed, which greatly eased the return trip.
A-Tur stood watch outside the inn room, tearing into a large trout. Nobody had connected him with the tales of destruction in Chedo, to Ryu's evident relief. "How are you?" Nina asked him. He looked up and nodded in response.
The room seemed comprised of corners. In one was a pile of the books from Astana Base, all but the ones describing what had been done to Elina - they needed those as evidence for the eventual trial, said the thaumaturgist, and nobody had much desire to look through them anyway - and the slim one that contained apparently a sketchy account of the attempts on Fou-Lu's life - more evidence, and only Ryu had dared look, skimming through with an expression of rapt horror before handing it over.
In another corner Scias and Ryu cleaned their swords and made small talk. The rest of their bedrolls were laid out in the third, and the single proper bed occupied the fourth. With Cray's help, they transported Elina onto it. While the boys gathered their bathing things Ershin went over to the pile of books and began to shuffle through the pages of the one on top of the stack.
When the door closed, Nina bent over and closed her sister's eyes. At least now it looked as if she could just be sleeping. She worked her fingers between Elina's hands and grasped them in her own. Maybe, thought Nina, if she were pulled up by her hands, pulled up till her shoulders strained, she'd wake up - it had worked when they were children. She tried this. Of course, it didn't work now.
"I thought if you could just come back," she said at last, "then everything else would take care of itself."
She got an answer, but it wasn't from Elina. "Deis says you cannot get something for nothing."
"I know. I know. It's a bit hard to believe she is alive." She traced the lines on Elina's palms. "I mean, if I heard her talk, even if she didn't remember anything, I'd know for sure. But I've been wondering if this isn't some trick of Yuna's." Remember, never again. He can never do anything like this again. "If he found someone with yellow hair and legs half gone and dressed her up as my sister. It sounds stupid, I know, but..."
"She says it's only to be expected."
"At home… they probably don't even know she died."
"She says then they are saved some grief. They will need it all if she does not recover."
She turned. "Ershin!"
The lights in Ershin's eyes blinked. "What is the matter?"
"Nothing. Nothing. But she's got to get better, otherwise what was the point of her coming back at all?" No answer. She returned to her tracing. "I wonder who it was who brought her back. I want to thank her. It must have been terribly difficult."
"Ha ha ha ha!"
Nina stopped, her fingers poised over Elina's pulse. "What?" It was all she could do to keep it from being a snap worthy of Ursula.
"Deis says it was obviously Ryu - who, by the way, is of the male persuasion, as you no doubt are aware."
Nina looked back to her for a moment, then back to Elina. No, that couldn't be - it was too pat, too neat a solution. "Ryu? He told me he wished he could have saved her. But if he had then why would he -"
She heard Ershin come up beside her. "She says, he may not have known he was doing it. She says his power was so great that when he created new bodies for the Endless he may not have kept watch on where all of it went. As Yuna attempted to transform your sister into an Endless, she might have seemed to be one without the discernment that comes with experience, and therefore the power began to reconstruct her as she was. She says we can only hope that he did not also include in his mass restoration such things as the false Endless on the Island of Fire.
"She says also that when he cast out the powers of the Endless some must have remained behind to finish the job. Hence, the healing barriers."
"But… what about you, Deis? Aren't you -"
"She says, it is difficult to reconstruct a body when there is nothing to build on."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"She says there is nothing for you to be sorry about."
As Ryu lay on his bedroll he saw Cray and Nina slumped on either side of the bed and Ershin continuing to read by lamplight. So far, Ershin had reported, there was nothing of note.
When they'd gotten back, when Cray had opened the door he'd seen Nina standing at it, looking first at Cray and then past him. When she'd seen Ryu she'd come out smiling and thrown herself on him, nearly knocking him over. When he struggled back up, she said "Thank you." Like a fool he had asked what she was thanking him for, and now he thought he'd rather not have known. If he really had revived Nina's sister by accident, who knew what miracles he could have worked on purpose?
I should have given it some time, thought it over before I went casting out this and sealing off that. Or was being rash what I needed to do, to do the right thing?
The more Ryu thought it over in retrospect, the less it looked like the right thing.
Sure, I wouldn't want people beating down my door, praying to me, thinking I can solve all their problems, but at least I could've tried to set more things right before I tossed out the best way I could do it. I could've - I don't know, blown apart the Carronade. Just done something.
"You're right," said the Yorae Dragon. "You could've done something."
"I'm dreaming, aren't I?"
"Well, what else could it be? Dreaming or insane. Not so very many choices there." The Yorae Dragon laughed and tossed back his head; his hair was burnished gold and as Ryu watched, it changed - flick-flick-flick - between a short ponytail like his own and long and loose like Fou-Lu's. "You don't want me," he was saying now. "First you throw away my power, and now you won't even put my mind back together." They stood in the pit where he had first met Nina. Between them was the chest from which he'd obtained clothes. Now it contained ones far finer, purple and red silks with a wide belt laid on top. Fou-Lu's clothes.
The Yorae Dragon said, "Was it the hair? Do you have something against yellow hair"
He delved into the chest and ran his fingers through the silks. "It wasn't the hair. Nina's blond too, you know."
"Oh, yes. Nina, Nina, little mourning dove." The Yorae Dragon laughed again. "I can see now. I understand. People aren't much for being inflicted with accounts of other people's romances, are they? Especially if they've yet to make real their own. It's just so - embarrassing."
"What do you mean 'if they've yet to make real'-"
"You know as much as I do." He shrugged. "I'm a figment of your subconscious, Ryu, nothing more. Just keep that in mind and you'll do fine. But I thought the little dove said her heart belonged to Cray."
He remembered being so surprised at her words that he'd forgotten to mind the fishing line, which had snapped and thrown him to the ground. "I never said she actually liked me that way."
"Yes, I know - I would know. One-sided love is so messy." The Yorae Dragon grimaced. "I'd hoped never to be mixed up in that sort of thing. Loving the dead is quite bad enough."
"Do you think I wanted to be"
"Of course you wouldn't. But there it is."
He was out of that pit now, and standing in another one, the one formed when he had become the Kaiser Dragon and blown apart Rasso's strongest summoning, Rasso himself, and a number of Imperial troops before Nina drew him to a halt. The dead villagers of Chek crowded around him - the dead for who he had been angry enough to become Kaiser. They all bore bleeding gashes, torn-up clothes, and blackened eyes, and they all jumped and laughed and spun and danced about like the children they seemed to be.
"I missed my friends," said the medium Rhem, who had been spared by virtue of being occupied by Deis and traveling with them at the time. She stood on the edge of the flock, clearly distinguishable in her pointed hat and goggles. "So they all came back to cheer me up. Aren't I the lucky one?"
"Time is running out," said the Abbess, standing beside Rhem. "Five or six more days and her physical body will be restored. When the healing is completed, the Yorae Dragon's power will have no more reason to stay, and the pathways will close. In your current condition you will not be able to reopen them. If you will truly save the Princess Elina, then you must do it quickly. You know what to do."
"No, I don't," he told her. "I don't."
"Young people!" she said. "They never learn."
"Why, with all else thou hath not shied away from? Why didst thou refrain from sending us home?" said P'ung Ryong, standing on the roof of his tower. He was in the form of a Wyndian, and both clothes and wings were ragged and bloodied. "Why hast thou instead knocked us down to earth and left us to ourselves? What didst thou expect us to do? Chop wood?" He jumped into the gondola beside the Oracle of Wind and flew away.
In the Gold Plains, Cray's mother Tarhn danced around the great rock favored by birds. Ch'o Ryong stood, watching her, her Woren's tail moving idly, and spoke without turning around. "As I and my compatriots hath said, we hath stood witness to the fate of the world. But none of us gave a thought to what must happen after." Tarhn swayed and spun. The birds chattered.
In an oasis in the desert, Sa Ryong drank from his cupped hands. Grit was entrenched in his clothes, in his scalp and fingernails. A blue-capped bird roasted on a spit placed over a fire burning near a wrecked sandflier. He offered Ryu another handful; Ryu declined. "If I am careful with this place," he said, "'twill last me the rest of my mortal days. I always didst wonder what 'twas like for thy mortal hermits."
"I didn't do this for you to rot in the desert for the rest of your life."
And all three were with him and they said to him, "Then, what didst thou expect us to become?"
In Chedo the people hailed him and scattered flowers in his path. As he neared the castle, General Rhun rushed out of the gates. Blood still trickled down the front of his uniform from the injuries A-Tur had dealt to him. Such a waste. "There you are. I apologize for any inconvenience caused you, young dragon," he said. "The First Emperor has been waiting for you."
A-Tur and Won-Qu, draped in garlands, raced each other through the castle, their joyous howls echoing toward him. He ran after them, not stopping to think that he was walking in nothing but darkness, for if he did he might fall. Down stair after stair until he arrived in the darkened gardens of the inner castle; there was no sign of Won-Qu or A-Tur.
"I couldna stand t'see ye look so sad!" Mami cried from inside the throne room. "That be better, then?" And inside the throne room Fou-Lu laughed and laughed. Ryu hung back for a moment, then rushed through.
As he entered and ran up the carpet, the voices and the laughter stopped. Lying just below one of the blue-green lamps lined up on either side of the great stairs was the Thirteenth Emperor's headless body - he was another person Ryu had never seen. As for the living there was only Fou-Lu, clad in full Imperial garb and seated on the throne, holding Mami's bell.
Fou-Lu threw the bell at him and it nearly struck him in the head. "These art but fleeting sentiments!" Fou-Lu declared, and the beads strung onto his headdress swayed as he shook his head. "They mean nothing! Come, come hither, thou who art me."
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" said Ryu as he backed away. "Do you know what this means for you? Do you?"
"Yes" said Fou-Lu. He stood up and advanced down the stairs. "Yes, I doth know that very well. Why else would I proceed? Come to me!"
Ryu woke then and sat up before he opened his eyes. His forehead collided with something. He discovered, when he finally did open his eyes, that it was the end of A-Tur's muzzle. "Sorry."
"'Tis nothing, Young Master." Once he'd backed far enough away to avoid another collision, A-Tur dipped his head low. "You find your dreams troubling?"
He rubbed his forehead. "You could say that, yeah. Fou-Lu… he's dying."
"I know."
"What do you mean-"
"I didst hear your discourse outside the village. But you need not worry, Young Master."
"He's dying. He's getting drawn into me." Ryu flung out his arms and nearly struck A-Tur again; he hastily withdrew them. "What's there not to worry about?"
"Ere his rest, as long as we hath existed, we wert aware that this might come to pass." It couldn't be right, thought Ryu. It couldn't be right that anyone could talk about something like this and be so serene at the same time. "He is reunited with his other half, as was his wish. Even if he that I knew ceases to exist, he will live on in you."
He shook his head. "You're just saying that to make me feel better, aren't you? What part of him? His memories? His way of talking? His dress sense? Not what holds it together, that's the most important part."
A-Tur had no answer for that. "Wilt thou mind if I rest awhile?"
"Of course not. Everyone has to, once in a while."
"I didst not, till recently."
"That's just it, isn't it? It's probably catching up with you. Good night, A-Tur."
"Good night, Young Master."
Now he found it obscene, just like the serenity. Why do you act like it's not any different? It's just that now there's a young master instead of an old one? "No. Stop that. Please. I'm nobody's master."
"Not even of yourself, then?"
"Not even of myself."
"The filter's on, right?" She cringed at the voice - it was so high and cute. If the others heard it like this they'd never let her live it down.
"The filter is activated, Deis. You seem to have retained locomotive and vocalization skills."
"Well, I did have that kid to practice on."
"Indeed. Maturity of your current habitation is not projected for approximately six more days at current rate of growth."
"Great."
"I join you in your joy."
"I was being sarcastic."
"So you were."
"You're annoying as ever. I think I'm going to miss you."
"As will I."
AUTHOR'S NOTES: There. That wasn't so bad, was it? If you've made it this far, do go a bit further, click "submit review," and give me a piece of your mind.
To Saikan:You're right -I'll try to work on that.