Chapter 6: The Third Suitor
A light wind had picked up when the princess finally stepped out of the temple and waved goodbye to Asui in the temple prayer-room.
The cobbled streets were icier than usual, and she used the wearing points of her wooden-soled shoes to pick a grip between the stones as she climbed the steep paving to Sato's bakery. Upon arrival in the sweet-smelling store, she bought two loaves of soft-bread and a handful of winter roots to stew, revelled in the warmth that emitted from the ovens, and congratulated herself most smugly for having the funds to avoid desiccated rock bread.
She thanked Sato, the thick-set baker boy with a blunt face, and hugged the warm bread to her stomach, giddy at the thought of eating properly for once. She decided to take a winding side-street on her way back to the castle, knowing that the narrow, leaning walls of the houses that she skirted between would provide a primitive insulation from the freezing air. Less light penetrated the meandering couloir through the tall buildings, and in the shadow her clouding breath stuck to her skin. Footsteps echoed in the hollow space, and it was only as she squeezed through a sharp passage that she noticed they lacked the wooden thunk of her own. She was being followed.
She picked up her pace, not daring to turn back, silently cursing the smoothness of her wooden soles as she slipped around corners. The tapping of her steps was mirrored by the follower, gaining speed. She weaved and ducked through the alleyways, running wherever the gradient of the ground would allow her. Her heart hammered in her chest, and her grip around the bread bag loosed as her palms began to sweat. They were getting closer.
Her cloak brushed the red stone of the walls as she leaped over a stray storage pot, revealing in its flap that the follower had broken into a sprint behind her. Fear electrified her spine and fizzled around her ribs. She was running hard now, her legs pumping mercilessly as her breaths shortened to rough pants.
The gap between them was closing. She only needed another minute to reach the square, to reach safety; she only needed that little bit more time…
They were only metres behind her now. She could hear them breathe. There was only an arm's reach between them. She summoned the last of her energy to run in a final burst, slamming a foot jarringly onto the ice… which cracked.
Her arms could barely cushion her fall as she crashed onto the ground, tumbling in the snow. A finely-shod foot stomped immediately onto one of her fallen legs, pinning it down, and she struggled through her paralysing adrenaline to turn and see whose it was.
A suitor stared down at her. Earl Monoma had pale hair and unfeeling purple eyes, and a deep and artificial disdain for the expected Lasandunian politesse. He also had a foot on her leg, and a tone of desperation spreading in his wavering voice.
"Don't move, princess" he said "I won't hurt you. Don't move."
Uraraka didn't want to have to find out whether he was telling the truth or not. He leaned down, and as she felt his breath on her neck she jammed her elbow into his stomach, hard. He staggered back, losing his grip on her foot and falling into the snow. She dropped her bread and scrambled to her feet, barely catching her breath as he sprang towards her again. Her mind raced. What was his magic?
She dodged a kick from one side, only to find herself pinned against the narrow alleyway's walls by a fist from the other. Her hands whipped up in defence, too slow to block a punch straight to the cheek that slammed into the bone under her eye. She reeled in pain, fire sizzling through her sinuses as water filled her eyes. She had never been hit so directly, so uncouthly. It was most unladylike and so, so, painful.
"I didn't want to do that." urged Monoma, face inches away from hers. His eyes seemed to spin. "Just listen to me; lis-ten to me! I just need to be near you, just within reach is all. I won't hurt you, just let me be near."
Uraraka could feel the heat radiating off his sweaty skin; oppressive. The throb of her cheek swelled under the bone, and she remembered finally what his magic was: to steal that of others. She sized him up, taking stock of the hands that trapped her against the wall. His magic would be her own, and he was skinny; she could take him.
Her hands were tight in his deadlock grip, and before she could think her plan of action through any further, she swung a leg around to hit him in the side, knocking him off balance. She twisted her wrists free and slipped from under his hands, stepping back to put some distance between them as he cursed behind her. She bowed into a defensive stance, watching with fists ready as he righted himself once more.
"What makes you think I owe you the luxury of my company?" she growled.
"That I'll die out of it!" he yelled, face contorting wretchedly "Don't you see? I'll die if I'm not near you, I'll be eaten alive!"
She tensed as he stepped nearer.
"You knew that when you took up suit for my hand. You should hide."
"You don't understand!" he shrieked, voice climbing ever higher, beginning to crack "How I can recognise you like this, how I know that I must be by your side! It's the magic of the pact: I can feel it in my blood, I feel it coursing through my veins, I know it in my soul‒that I can only be safe when I am with you, that I must be near you or- or they'll find me. They'll find me and eat me and I shall die so cold, away from you."
He took another step closer and Uraraka, constricted like a coiled spring, unleashed a punch directly at his chest. He received it with barely a stumble, responding instinctively with a strike right between her eyes that sent her flying backwards into a crate of old pottery.
"I didn't want to do that." Mumbled Monoma, looking between his curled hands and the princess, in a heap by his feet.
"Then don't" she seethed in return, the pain of the hit crackling under her brow bone.
Anger was rising through the tiny, branching veins in her hands and the heartbeat in her breast. She knew how to fight. She knew she could beat him. There was no art in the punches that he viciously flung right at her face, and she despised the way that he now looked down on her. If he wasn't going to play fair, why should she?
She let him get a little closer as she pulled herself up to sit, twisting her arms into the crate behind her. Waiting cautiously, she observed the slight pitch to his steps as his fine silk shoes slipped on the snow, and the wobble of his voice as he insisted once more that he didn't want to hurt her. She let him lean down so that his smug, pale face was before hers again, a vaguely patronising tilt on his lips, and it was then that she struck.
With all her might, she brought an earthen jar from the crate behind her crashing down on his head, using both of her hands to swing at the top of his skull. The blow landed with a splintering crash, at once satisfying and horrific.
She didn't waste any time determining whether it was the vase or Monoma's skull that had cracked; she grabbed her bread bag and dashed through the snaking alleyway as he cursed and groaned and clutched at his head behind her. She was sure she had seen blood, she thought as she raced towards the open square, she was sure that he could not follow her now.
And yet as she emerged from between the tightly packed houses, the echo of his footsteps followed. The merchants that gathered there turned to watch her as she backed away from the opening, eyes widening with alarm as Monoma appeared. A murmur rose as they saw the blood that poured down his front, and the traders stepped back as he pointed a shaking finger at Uraraka.
"Just to be near you" he gargled "Just- just to be near you-"
He came apart before he could finish his sentence. He seemed to be aware that it was coming, tensed as he felt them fall upon him. A hundred ghostly hands wrapped around his gangly limbs and tore him to pieces.
He screamed and screamed and screamed as muscle tore and tendons snapped and the blood vessels emerged in coral-like webs to burst over his silken shoes. He remained alive for far too long, and even as the air left his lungs his salty tears mixed with the blood; the light left his eyes only when an invisible set of teeth bit through his jugular and his head was pulled off of his neck. The indescribable sound of the corrugated spine being picked out of his back rang in Uraraka's ears as the fragments of him were eaten smaller and smaller, and no matter how she willed herself to turn her eyes away, they remained fixed upon him.
It was her mother. And her father. And her grandmother, and her grandfather, and her great-grandmother, and as many generations of the Uraraka lineage that she could remember, all setting upon the boy as a pack of hungry wolves. In life they had been wise and dignified, with the same wide, soft features that Ochaco had inherited from them and the gentle but firm voices of old age. Now they were barely human. Human teeth were not made to puncture so; human nails, when lovingly carved into existence by the Earth Mother, were not made to rip as they did now. The light twisted off of them in strange, curlicued wisps and their shadows danced frenetically on the bleak rock as they gorged themselves on the still-warm corpse. The ridges between the paving stones ran red with blood that meandered slowly through the cracks and down the steeply sloped streets, staining the old snow chilling carmine.
When they had finished, they stood and looked about, dazed, licking the blood from their palms, swaying slightly on the breeze. The pulsing of their inconstant forms lent them a pathetic, tender air, as if she could still reach out and touch living skin, the warmth of her parents. They turned to her, eyes pale and unseeing, and opened their mouths to whisper. The words were never spoken; the wind blew them out like candles, and the spirits were washed away. For now.
The merchants in the square looked at the remains of Monoma, and then at Uraraka. She held the bread so tight that she could hear the crust crackle.
"He was mad." She said, voice thick, looking around at the jury that formed before her "He wasn't in his right mind. He was chasing girls."
And it was true, she told herself without believing, that he was mad. He was chasing girls, and scaring them, and besides, only madmen would join the Suitor's Game.
The blank-faced traders in the square seemed to be staring her down. She gulped.
"May the earth lie softly on his bones" she said, though she didn't mean it.
The crowd echoed the phrase, and seemed content to leave their mourning at that. They calmly wandered off to their stalls, chattering once again, only the slight glaze of their eyes betraying that anything out of the ordinary had happened at all. Uraraka thought that she could recognise a few faces from that morning, when she had sat amongst them and shared their bartering shouts.
How quickly, she thought as she watched them pick up their cries again, a crowd could turn; how quickly it could save or condemn her. A group, rather than a mere collection of figures, was a being of its own, a fluctuating body with a mind beyond reason. A surge of people might not act on logic, or even emotion…
The snow. The hunger. The understanding flowering in their sunken eyes. The shame.
She shivered, and shook the memory from her head. She did not have time to dwell on such things now.
Around the market-place, the conversation had turned towards the Suitor's Game, and she listened keenly as she passed by. Each rumour was fragmented and muffled by another.
"That weaver-boy's house…"
"… so angry"
"… eyes? I'm not sure, it-"
"No, the other side…"
"… in the male temple?"
"Didn't want to-"
"… near the castle"
Ten suitors remained. And they were hidden in this city, amongst, perhaps even by her very people. Should she seek them out? What would she do if she found them? She thought of the strange boy in her bed, and wondered in which crouching house he had hidden himself away. The crowds of people were impossibly thick, and she almost felt as if she was being watched. She hurried on.
Her breath clouded in the cold, and her hands were already losing all their sensation. The first of the two suns was nearing the horizon, marking the lateness of the day. As she picked her way through the market, she found her eyes lingering on a fur coat, or a woollen hat, or a fine pair of goatskin gloves.
XXX
Uraraka was surprised to run into Midoriya and Yaoyorozu at the castle gates, calmly chatting between themselves. They straightened as she waved and walked over, and politely said their good-afternoons.
"I hope you don't mind me waiting out here for you" started Midoriya, with a sheepish glance to the side. The princess' heart twisted in her chest, between soft longing and wariness. "I just wanted to discuss the current suitor… situation."
"Ah, um, yes. Is this about Monoma?" She replied, looking carefully to Yaoyorozu, who was watching the pair closely and seemed to have no intention to go away.
"If we take him into account, four are dead; as of right now, at least."
"Four?"
Her face ached in the cold, and she could feel the places where Monoma's punches had landed beginning to swell.
"We found another just outside the castle gates not that long ago, Kaibara Sen. He seemed to be trying to climb the outer wall."
"It's most peculiar" said Yaoyorozu, who had a hand on her cheek and was deep in thought, "I'd almost think that your suitors are affected by, well, a sort of chemotaxis."
Uraraka blinked.
"Oh, I see." She said, even though it was perfectly clear that she did not.
Chemotaxis. She played over the word in her head, and was delighted by how intellectual it sounded. Yaoyorozu was frightfully clever, and though she did not always make herself easily understood, she made one completely and utterly sure of the verity of her statements on all things scientific. She had such a wonderful way with words that whenever she came to her friends with some new, increasingly outlandish idea (that fire could not burn in a place without air, that air itself was many different gases, that gases were made of tiny, tiny spheres containing lightning), they were never left with any doubt that she could be anything other than absolutely correct, and felt considerably smarter by it.
Midoriya and Uraraka looked at each other, confirming silently and secretively that neither understood this new word with a simple nod of the head, and then back at Yaoyorozu.
"How can we best implement a strategy that takes account of this new theory?" asked Midoriya, his hand placed pensively on his chin.
"Oh, really, I haven't the faintest idea," She replied "but I believe it would be best to start with simple precautions, such as locking your doors. Do you have a suggestion, Ochaco?"
She did not. She was thinking of her large, empty castle, and how alone she was in its vast halls, and how she hadn't locked a door behind her for a very, very long time. Not since the spectre of her mother had appeared at her bedside; for many nights afterwards she had sat up, still, waiting for ghostly footsteps to tread the stone again. But her nights were always silent, and lonely. What need did she have for locks, in that labyrinth of a home?
Her cheek was now tumefying with a terrible throb, sizzling in the cold. She realised that her friends were looking at her oddly.
"Ochaco, are you alright? You're developing the most spectacular bruise."
"Monoma didn't… hit you, did he?" There was a fresh tone of worry in Midoriya's voice.
He took a step towards her, taking a gloved hand off of his sword to trace the purpling lumps on her cheekbone, studying the bursts of colour on her pale skin with exquisite care. His breath tickled her eyelashes, and the warmth of his hands seeped through his thick gloves into his delicate touch. The vastness of his shadow made her feel safe, girdled in the green of his searching eyes. She remembered why she had loved him.
Something warm ran over her lips, and all of a sudden there was a severe, splitting pain between her eyes. She gasped and doubled over as the blood trickled down her chin, dripping onto her collar bone to stain the white of her dress. Midoriya withdrew his hand with a jolt, placing it steadily on her shoulder. As she looked down she noticed with alarm that there was also blood on her shoes. Monoma's blood.
"Ochaco" his voice had turned tight. There was an insistence, a hardening in his gaze that she did not recognise. It scared her a little.
She cupped a hand under her bleeding nose.
"He did. But it's fine," she said with a light chuckle "I hit him back harder."
"And he deserved far worse, I'm sure." Added Yaoyorozu, a nervous smile reappearing "You never have been one to lose a fight."
"No," she laughed in reply "I certainly haven't."
Midoriya relaxed slightly. His hand travelled back to its usual place, draped lazily on his sword.
"Well, don't hesitate to rely on us if you need to." He said "I'm always here."
"And I'm grateful for it, Izuku. I really am."
Yaoyorozu, who found herself feeling quite left out, coughed politely into her hands.
"Well," she said "I'm afraid I need to be getting back now, but I'm glad that I waited to see you. Before I go, how were your prophet-dreams last night?"
Midoriya and Uraraka both started to speak at the same time, and after a quick back and forth of you-go-first (no, you), Midoriya recounted as much of the dream as he could recollect:
"I saw my mum again." He rubbed his head sheepishly "And the sea at Abrassa. I hope it's something nice."
"Hmm, interesting. What about you, Ochaco?"
She thought of the head on the pillow next to her, and the cold against her neck. There was a mistiness about the memory that she found hard to dispel.
"Well, I'm not really sure." She concluded, the hand over her nose making her voice echo nasally "There were red eyes staring at me. A suitor, perhaps."
Her friends frowned.
"What was he doing? What were you doing?"
"I'm not sure, I was half-asleep."
"That's rather concerning. Let's discuss it at more length later." Said Yaoyorozu, beginning already to turn away. "I really do have to go now; I received an exceedingly complex order from the tinsmith's guild this morning."
"Wait, Momo! You haven't told us your dream yet!"
"I'll tell you later!" she shouted back, receding down the steep and winding streets back to the square. "Goodbye! And remember to lock your doors!"
But she did not yet know what she would tell Ochaco later. She had already analysed her dream one hundred times over, and yet did not know how to convey the image, nor whether it was possible at all. Yaoyorozu had dreamed of a royal wedding.
A/N: to address some comments:
- yes, there will be tododeku, but I thought I'd annoy people by tagging it
- so you've already worked it out! Are you sure, though? Maybe I really am cursed with people working out my mysteries far too early on.
I'm really looking forward to the next two chapters. We're currently in this strange state of I-know-and-you-don't and it's a little disheartening, really. I want you to know everything, but you have to work it out yourself. It just doesn't seem fair.
Please, tell me what you think it means, tell me what you want to be true.