Chapter 2: The Castle, The Bird
Inside the castle's outer walls, the musicians, guardsmen and palanquin bearers were paid the three silver florets that they were due for their days work, and each slinked away to celebrate the rest of the festival day with their respective groups. Iida, the redhead and the pink girl were the only ones to remain when the rest of the parade had dissipated.
Uraraka kept a firm grip on the wood of her seat as she stepped off of the grounded palanquin, feeling her magic tingle under her fingertips as she ensured that she had returned its gravity. She had nullified its weight during the parade so that her bearers had less to carry, and did not want it to float off into the wind.
Looking it over a few times, Iida gave her a reassuring nod, before extending a hand to pull herself up with. She took it, and once she was stood with legs stiff from having sat so long, watched it carefully for a moment to make sure that it stayed on the ground. Kirishima and Ashido watched in confusion, bewildered by the focus lavished on the palanquin, and the fantasmin, seemingly unaware of any tension, hopped jauntily off to twitter at the boy's side.
"Uh, your highness, is there anything that we could do to help?" ventured the girl, who had noticed Uraraka breathe a sigh of relief.
She sprung back around, seemingly caught off-guard, and quickly flipped her veil over and behind her head to properly see who she was addressing. For the first time that day, her bark-brown eyes and short umber hair caught the light of the outside world, and the girl that she was talking to seemed taken aback by it. She looked so… plain.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to keep you waiting. I just didn't want it to fly off, is all."
The pink girl's coal black eyes stared, somewhat muddled by her statement. Seeing that she didn't understand, Uraraka explained herself.
"Oh, uh, that's my magic, you see: taking away things' weight. Anyway, I don't want to waste your time, miss…?"
"Ashido. Mina Ashido, your highness."
Uraraka connected the name on the stage to the face, and turned now to Ashido's business partner, who was playing at pulling silly faces with the fantasmin.
"I take it that means that you're Kirishima?"
"Uh, yes," said Kirishima, distracted from his game with the bird "I'm Kirishima Eiijiro, your highness."
There was an awkward silence. Uraraka, in her many-layered robe of glistening red and gold, backed by the grand and imposing silhouette of Lasandu castle, stood facing the foreign teens wordlessly.
"Um, there's really no need for you to call me your highness," she said uncertainly "and, I'm sorry that you're in this mess too. If you can tell me how to take care of the bird, I'd be most grateful to you."
"That's alright." Ashido kicked back to life "Katsu-babe always has been a bit of a hothead."
The fantasmin growled in outrage. Uraraka had not known that it could make such a noise.
"Which kinda brings me onto an important point," Ashido continued, looking pointedly at the bird "fantasmins are fiercely loyal to their masters, and they tend to take after them a lot. It's not something that's easy to understand. They're connected by something, like… their souls are aligned, or something. I dunno. This one is just as unruly as its master. It's going to take a while for it to warm to you, I think."
"But like, they're intelligent, so it'll understand if you talk to it, ask it to sing for you, that sort of thing." Added Kirishima "That would probably help it like you more, just explaining what's going on and talking to it, you know?"
"Oh, and you've gotta feed it the same as a human, maybe even more. No raw meat or anything, and leave it alone to eat or it will bite. It's pretty secretive, but I don't think that there's much you can do about it."
The two looked at each other and then back down at the bird, which was pecking at the paving stones with its enormous beak.
"That's about it." she concluded.
"Thank you for your help." Said Uraraka, beginning to fish in her enormous sleeves for her coin-purse "Uhm, since you've been so accommodating, and since I know that this must all be very stressful, won't you take the same compensation as the rest of the people who have helped me?"
Six silver florets gleamed invitingly in her palms. Kirishima looked nervously at the money and back at the fantasmin, before slowly reaching out-
And being slapped back by Ashido.
"Are you nuts? You want to take her money after Baku-babe specifically gave it to her as a gift?" she hissed.
"It's our only source of income, Mina." He shot back.
"We're not beggars, Eiji-"
"Please, take it." Interrupted Uraraka "I insist."
They cautiously took their three coins each, looking with wonder at the pearly shine of the pure silver.
"Why?"
Ashido pocketed her coins and studied Uraraka suspiciously.
"I mean no disrespect, but why would you insist like that?"
Uraraka looked gravely at her. A light wind whirled by, jingling the bells on her golden crown.
"Because I think that your friend is going to die."
Her hands darted out, one gently cupping the girl's smooth pink cheek, the other resting firmly on Kirishima's angular shoulder. Before they could protest, she let her magic surge through, floating them up, over the castle walls, and into the city below.
XXX
The details of the city guard had been discussed, and Iida had left, and suddenly Uraraka was all alone again. Alone but for the fantasmin.
It chirped and clicked patiently as she guided it through the snow-covered court, footsteps echoing against the empty stone. The wind moaned through the stone arches, lined with bare vines, as they passed into an enclosed garden that led to the castle door.
The garden was small and square, outlined by unimpressive borders and a crumbling colonnade, and marked in the centre by a slender, towering finko palm. Its purple bark was pale and smooth, stripped by the constant airstream, and its withered leaves, moth-eaten, sheltered a single glistening finko fruit. The green prize swayed gently on its branch as the fantasmin stopped to peck about the trunk.
"Uhm, please don't do that." Said Uraraka, feeling herself rather silly for addressing the strange creature so properly "I've been waiting all winter for that to ripen."
The fantasmin stopped. It swivelled slowly around, creaking and shuffling, and fixed her with a long, inscrutable stare. Its red eyes swam with something more than animal, more than human; prophetic, knowing. They were deep and clear and in them she saw the crimson pools that had spilled from her suitor's head. So slowly, so agonisingly slowly…
She ripped her gaze away. The fantasmin, seemingly unbothered by the interaction, bounced away to inspect the borders, where little green shoots and tillering spikelets peeked unconfidently out of the soil.
"That one's wheat." Uraraka said, watching as it poked its golden beak here and there "And that one's parsnip, and that's…" She frowned for a moment as her eyes fell upon a leafier sprout "Well, whatever it is, it's edible, which is the most important thing."
The bird turned and clicked at her again, cocking its head, questioning. Did it want to know more, or did it simply not understand?
"It's… I know it's not normal to grow those kinds of things in a royal garden, okay? We did have fire lilies and dew-vines and all those lovely flowers that you would expect to see back when things were- I mean, back when my parents were alive. But then the famine hit, and the royal grain reserve was all handed out, and I had to eat what I grew or starve. So all the blossoms of the summertime are gone, and when winter has passed I might eat my fill again."
The fantasmin twittered at her in response. Its voice conveyed no discernible meaning, and yet its melodious tone was enough to put her at ease. She could work out whether it understood her later, then. She watched as it scanned the dark earth, shivering.
"Shall we get into the warm?"
She walked to the grand castle doors, and the bird soon followed.
The towering doors were of thick, dark, oak, as wide and as tall as a merchant ship, dwarfing the pair before them. Ancient patterns of suns and moons and thousands upon thousands of glittering gilt stars were intricately carved in the knotted wood, a miniature universe unfolding under the fantasmin's enraptured gaze. Uraraka reached out a hand and placed it steadily on the door, feeling the patterned woodwork shift under her touch as she searched for something.
"Got it."
She slipped a nimble finger under a moon that protruded only slightly more than the rest, revealing a small hole, and extended her hand as far in as she could go. Making sure that the pads of her fingers were firmly in place at the end of the hidden hole, cool against the metal mechanism of the lock, she once more sent magic bubbling from behind her shoulders, down the veins in her arms and into the iron plates. The sound of laboured clunking groaned from behind the door as she floated the latch, setting off a series of spinning cogs that whirred and whined as they strenuously worked the doors open.
With the door slightly ajar, Uraraka pulled her hand out and heaved the door wide enough to step through. She looked back at the mimic-bird; it said nothing.
Could it even say anything at all?
"At least I never have to worry about leaving the keys!" she joked rigidly.
She was met with dead silence from the bird and decided, in order to save herself the embarrassment, not to try comedy again.
Entering the cool halls of the castle, making sure that the fantasmin had followed, she shut the door behind her.
The halls were vast, cold, and empty. There were no dancing candle-lights, no bustling servants, no laughter; it was as dark and as impassive as a prison. No opulent furniture proclaimed its former glory, no great portraits on the wall spoke of the great Uraraka heritage. All was clean and bare. A corridor coiled endlessly onwards, snaking upwards and around spiralling staircases past countless closed doors.
"This way"
They passed three grand doors as they wove through the labyrinthine passages of the castle, before finally coming to a halt at one that was stained with deep red lacquer. The hinges grunted as she slowly heaved the heavy doors open.
"This" said Uraraka as she stepped in "is – was – the treasury."
Without her explanation, it would have been hard to tell. Of course, it was spacious, august, dignified; it was a room with perfect posture, a graceful and understated air. But understatement was not what usually characterised a treasure vault, nor the vacant racks on the walls or the cobwebs in the hollowed-out coin jars that were scattered about. No hint of luxury could be found here. The only purposeful pieces of furniture in the whole sprawling room were a clothing stand and rickety-looking table in the corner, upon-which sat a book and an unlit lantern.
In a single swift step, she came to face the clothing stand and began to fluidly disrobe. The fantasmin cooed with interest as first the glittering gold crown came off, the miniature bells still gently tinkling as they were placed on the mannequin, and then the delicate white veil, then, in a quick and elegant motion, the ribbon fastenings of her robes were loosed and all seven layers of rich, woven fabric removed. Each item was put carefully in place, until finally the clothing stand was resplendent with gold and red, and the princess stood shivering in her simple peasant's shift dress.
The bird looked her up and down, taking in the worn ties fastened tight around her bosom, the patches at the end of her long hem, and the thick wooden soles of her shoes, and concluded with an unimpressed sigh. Out of her festival clothing, she looked no different to any other low-born girl: no veil now hid her round cheeks, red from the cold, no wide sleeve now disguised her calloused fingers.
Under the scrutinising gaze of the mimic-bird, Uraraka felt almost as though she had deceived it.
"It's all I have." She said, voice straining somewhere between protest and insecurity.
The fantasmin seemed not to care. It looked her over yet again and then busied itself with peering into as many empty money-jars as it could fit its enormous beak into. Uraraka watched it shuffle about a bit, and, with a sigh of resignation, went to the table where her account-book lay open. The numbers were already deep in the red, and as she accounted for the costs of the palanquin bearers, the musicians and the other expenses of the parade, the state of her finances appeared ever more dismal. Finally marking the six silver florets that she had given to Ashido and Kirishima, she realised with a gasp that the results of her calculations could go no lower: she had no silver left.
She flicked desperately through the neat pages of numbers and turned her pockets inside-out by searching, but, try as she might, she still found that the accounts were true. She was destitute. Mathematically, factually, destitute. She stared miserably at the two bronze cullets, the last of her money, in her hand, as if hoping that the intensity of her look might cause them spontaneously to multiply. They remained small, tarnished, and distinctly unduplicated in her palm.
From the centre of the room there came a reverberating thunk as the fantasmin knocked over a porcelain money-jar, drawing her attention away.
"Please don't do that." She sighed, somewhat exasperated "Believe me, you won't find anything in them."
The fantasmin, beak still buried in the hollow receptacle, eyed her critically.
'It's going to take a while for it to warm to you, I think.'
Ashido's advice rang in her ears. She could already tell that the bird did not trust her one bit, and she decidedly disliked the feeling of talking to no reply. A feeling of dread was building in her as it dawned upon her that, with another mouth to feed and no money, she might have to starve again. Her thirteenth unlucky suitor would take her to the grave with him.
Once again, she looked up to find the fantasmin's garnet-red eyes studying her intensely. She shifted restlessly, unconfident in what it would find from its judgement.
"Shall we move on, then?" Uraraka asked. She was unsure of what she would do if it refused. Much to her relief, it hopped towards the door, and she picked the unlit lantern from the tabletop as they resumed their journey through the castle.
They wove around ancient pillars, over criss-crossing staircases and through halls and arches that spilt paths like the points of a star. In some places the floor was thick with dust, and in others a constant draft blew through the cracks in the stone. They proceeded in silence; her regular gait closely followed by the fantasmin's uncertain shuffle.
As they entered another great hallway, the second pair of footsteps stopped. Uraraka turned back to see what had happened, and saw that the bird had stopped to peck curiously at the tallest, grandest set of doors in all the castle.
They were varnished in the deep blue of the night, and held by thick golden clasps. A large golden lock, glowing with an eerie blue light, shut them fast, and cobalt-coloured plasma spilled from under the sill, pooling and then evaporating with the rhythmic swell and ebb of magic. A faint thrumming hum issued from whatever was behind them, and the whole structure seemed to vibrate subtly with enchantment.
The fantasmin cocked its head, disquisitive.
"Those are the doors to the hall of stars." She explained "It's a chapel, for getting married or holding ceremonies and such, and it's called what it is because of the myth about its ceiling."
She went to stand next to the bird, and pointed at the gaps in the doors where slivers of light slipped through.
"They say that there's ancient magic in it, and that if two people who truly love each other stand under it, it will light up with stars as if you were under the open solstice sky itself."
They stood in silence, watching the pale energy flicker and flow like liquid flame. Uraraka laughed a little, more out of wretchedness than amusement.
"I'm probably not going to see it in my lifetime. Just another joy that the plague-curse brought with it" she said bitterly "If any of my suitors survive, I'll be marrying a stranger, and if not… Well, it's locked with ancient magic anyhow."
She ran her thumb over the cold engraving of the lock, feeling the metal dip and curve as the ancient runes written there glided under her fingers. The words had worn down slightly over the last two years, smoothed by her wandering hands.
'Pacem In Oblivionem' – peace in forgetting. The message, she thought, was about as clear as dirt. Why did the ancients never bother to make their meanings clearer? What good was a poetic line if she could not understand it? She resented the lofty, gnomic tone that it took. With instructions so unclear, how could she ever be expected to get rid of it?
A knock resounded from the end of the hall. A burst of light flashed behind the doors of the hall of stars as Uraraka whipped around excitedly. Despite herself, her heart was racing. She looked down at the fantasmin with a barely-repressed grin.
"That's Izuku!"
XXX
Knight Izuku Midoriya, with his affable demeanour and casually fluffed green hair, did not immediately give the impression of an expert combatant. Talk flowed easily between him and Uraraka, standing in the doorway, as his sharp sword hung lazily in its scabbard at his side. He smiled utterly without restraint as they talked, and yet there was something in his earnestness that betrayed no weakness by it. The princess listened, blushing a little, faintly dazed, as he talked passionately about the letter that he had just received from his mentor. She waited for him to finish speaking, and then tackled the subject that they both needed to broach.
"So, was the patrol all right?"
Izuku faltered.
"I found a second suitor. He was hiding in an old mill-house."
"Who?"
"I- we can't tell… The spirits ate the eyes right out of him."
They shuddered quietly at the thought.
"Iida's asking any relatives of the suitors to identify him. But most of them are probably busy trying to hide those suitors, so we'll just have to see who turns up. Which reminds me…"
"Hm?" Uraraka pulled on her sleeves, suddenly self-conscious.
"Apparently you've taken on a thirteenth."
"Oh, uh, yes. Katsuki Bakugou, an Abrassan. He left me this mimic-bird." She said, opening the door a little more to reveal the fantasmin sulking in an alcove behind her.
"Bakugou?"
He stiffened; pepper-green eyes wide with shock.
"And he was an Abrassan?"
"Yes. Why, did you know him?"
"We trained with the same knight's formation in Capcana, under All Might. We didn't get along the best." He peered into the open doorway, and Uraraka moved slightly so that he could see the bird better. "But the last I heard, he was-"
Before he could finish, the fantasmin exploded into squawks and growls of outrage for its master and stomped out of the shelter of the alcove to snap loudly at Izuku. He reached for his sword, and instinctively Uraraka reached out to grab the bird back. This proved not to be the best course of action, for the enormous bird then turned on her, hissing and jabbing with its beak. It took several minutes of slow encouragement and placation to coax the thing back into a state of semi-cordiality.
"Apparently they take after their owners." She chuckled.
Izuku eyed it warily, evidently quite perturbed.
"That makes… a lot of sense."
Uraraka waited for him to elaborate but, finding that he did not, continued:
"Will you be at Momo's Dreamer's-Night celebrations tonight?"
"Oh, no, sorry. I would! I really would love to but I already promised Melissa that I would go to the blacksmith's guild's one. She invited me so early on, and I could hardly refuse." He rambled.
Inside, the princess crumbled a little. She had so been looking forward to catching up with him after the havoc of the official celebrations, and thus far her day had completely refused to go according to plan. Still, she smiled.
"That's alright. Say hello to her for me, will you?"
"Of course! Of course, yes, but I'd better be off now, if that's alright."
"Oh wait, before you go-"
Uraraka reached into her pocket and felt her heart plummet as her hands closed around her last cold coins.
"Gods, Izuku, I'm sorry, I- I was going to give you festival money but I don't have it any more. I'm so sorry, I know you've been patrolling all day and it's terrible of me to give out like this-"
"It's fine" he soothed, warmth radiating from every freckle on his soft face "I think everyone needs a break during festival-time."
She knew that he was being well-meaning, but his altruism was at this point devastating. What ever would he think of her now?
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely, I'm sure."
She smiled defeatedly.
"Well then, may the Earth Mother bring you sweet dreams tonight." She said
"And to you to" he replied gaily, about-turning neatly on the spot and marching off with the perfect knightly posture that she had always known him to have.
She watched him disappear behind the main gates and turned to the fantasmin, who seemed rather to have changed moods. It wiggled facetiously, whistling a tune that was known across the land, in teaching yards and washer's wells.
Ochako's got a cru-ush.
XXX
Uraraka spent the afternoon in her room, weaving. It had taken her a while to climb up all of the twisting tower stairs with a fantasmin in tow, and she was none too pleased when the bird clucked disappointedly at her chamber.
The room, as it was at the top of a tower, was circular, with the only wooden flooring in the whole castle, and smooth rock walls that leaned in towards the ceiling. A threadbare carpet covered the widest part of the floor at the centre, where the lack of furniture was most conspicuous, and the only other signs of habitation were a dark, carved canopy bed, a weaving loom, and a grand whisper-oak wardrobe. Two wide windows let in the murky mountain-top light, and through them the valley, blanketed by cloud, appeared as an endless snowfield. The two white suns that came for spring hung bleakly in the sky.
"You could at least pretend to like it." The princess said "We are at the highest point in all the land, after all."
The mimic-bird rolled its eyes and hopped onto the great rug, shivering. Uraraka watched it, contemplating its thin woven covering, and headed to her wardrobe to get it something warmer. After searching through her unhelpful collection consisting of a nightgown, a thin cloak, and another worn-out peasant's gown, she resorted to reaching for the top shelf.
"Blast. I'm not tall enough." She mumbled, half to herself, half to the fantasmin.
She wrapped her fingers firmly around her ankles and floated herself just enough to grab a fluffy white wrap before alighting and gingerly holding it out to the bird.
"It's a goat skin. Finest quality, as well. Angora goats are fairly rare these days."
The fantasmin nipped at it cautiously.
"If you're going to take it, please don't do that. I did the stitching around the edges myself."
It begrudgingly took the blanket off her and huddled itself in the warm. Uraraka went to sit at her loom, aware that the bird was watching her from the corner of its ruby-red eyes. Ignoring it, she gently touched the many brightly-coloured strings of her half-completed weaving work, magically floating them so that they slowly intertwined as she passed the wooden shuttle passed back and forth with a rhythmical clunk. This continued as she gradually built up the tapestry of curling finko-palm leaves and hanging stars, for quite some time, until she remembered the fantasmin again. It had busied itself in methodically unpicking clumps of hair from the goat skin. She stopped.
"Um, if you're that bored, could you sing for me?" she ventured "Please?"
It dropped its blanket and began to jauntily whistle. She dropped her shuttle as soon as she recognised what it was singing.
Make your bed for broad, dear lady,
Make your bed for broad and wide…
"Not that! Anything but that one."
It insisted on finishing its verse, growing only bolder and louder as it stared at her dead-on. She grew flustered, desperate to stop it.
"Look, how about this one instead:" she scrambled.
"Earth Mother, he loves another,
Whatever shall I do?
Come summertime the sun shall shine,
And I shall love anew-"
The fantasmin cut her short, huffing stridently. It dropped its previous tune and started the new song from the beginning. It sung almost admonishingly, the notes on the ends of the lines slightly different. Uraraka listened closely, now noticing how it tapped its hidden feet as a rhythm-count. Was it… correcting her?
She exploratorily hummed the tune again, but only got halfway through the first line before it cut in, louder.
The rest of the afternoon was occupied by a whistling-match of sorts, in which Uraraka would attempt to sing or hum increasingly obscure shepherds' songs and confuse the bird. Invariably, it was familiar enough with the basics of harmony or of traditional Lasandunian song structure to angrily correct her, and would twitter with delight when she found herself out-maneuvered. She was often struck with the thought, listening to it sing with its fantastic hollow voice, that she should be embarrassed to sing so poorly before another, and yet she had already fallen into such comfort in its presence that she abandoned such inhibitions and let loose. By the time the sun had set and the last finko leaf on the tapestry had been rendered in purple thread, both parties had exhausted their whistling capabilities and were quite at peace with one another.
A murky fog rolled in behind the windows as darkness fell, and the princess remembered with a jolt that she had places to be tonight. She stood, examined her work, stretched satisfactorily, and went to get the unlit lantern and her cloak. She turned to the mimic-bird as she secured the velveteen ribbons of the cloak around her neck.
"Are you going to come to Momo's Dreamer's Night party with me? It's fun, I promise." She said
It clicked and hopped after her.