The Dance of the Butterflies
Chapter 4
"The Council Elect has approved the engagement between Mashiro and the Gristholm Sovereign."
Her mouth was dry and painfully so. The constriction in her throat was like a massive knot lodged in her esophagus, denying the passage of any sound. She vaguely recalled the resonating clink of the silver hairpins as they dropped onto the marble floors but she made no effort to pick them up. She dared not. The room had grown painfully still and any movement could threaten to undo that silence. Painful as it was, time seemed to have stopped, and for the moment she didn't have to think about what was to happen next. She could deal with the suspension of time; after all, knowing what the future held was far less painful than its actualization. But the twittering song of a swallow perched outside the window broke her silence far too quickly. With no pertinent need to keep still, she walked past Shizuru, to the window.
Aoi looked on nervously. "Arika," she began to say, without any idea of the words that should follow, but Shizuru shook her head and Aoi spoke no further.
Arika pressed her cool fingers upon the glass and exhaled warm breath against the surface. Her transparent reflection vanished beneath the fog that formed on the window. A dull ache took shape at the base of her neck and quickly spread up along her temples and her face flushed red as a stifling heat swelled along her ears and her cheeks.
Gristholm, Gristholm…She repeated mentally like a rhythmic chant. Gristholm…A shadowed form appeared in her mind with a striking familiarity she couldn't quite place. The memory gradually took shape as a cloud dissipated from her mind's eye, and in the clearing of her thoughts stood the image of Duke Tate McAllister.
He was from Gristholm, wasn't he? She felt troubled as she recalled how close Mashiro came to marrying the young duke. His presence in the Windbloom court had borne her with distress. But as quickly as he had arrived, he had gone, although his sudden absence had not gone unnoticed. Rumors clamored over the duke's departure with wild speculations of secret love affairs and political conspiracies. Arika had been approached on the matter on occasion by acquaintances and gossip columnists who'd buzzed around her for the next juicy tidbit, but she knew little more than anyone else. Not that she would ever admit that.
The morning of Duke McAllister's departure had been like any other. In fact, there had been no grand announcement of his leaving at all. Arika had assumed his trip had something to do with his role as diplomatic envoy for the Grand Duke. He had acted no different than his usual self-satisfied arrogance, and yet so many suitcases and crates had been loaded onto the transport dock.
He must have caught the bewildered look on her face because within moments he was just inches from her, his brazen hands lifting her chin to meet his gaze and taking her firmly by the waist like some forlorn lover.
"Will you miss me, my lovely protector?" He had uttered with suggestive playfulness.
"What are you doing?" Had been all she could muster as she took a startled step back. Yet even as she pulled away he had taken her hand and pressed a chaste kiss against it.
"Take care of her," he had then whispered as he leaned closer.
When he turned to Mashiro, the atmosphere quickly turned intimate and Arika suppressed the urge to leave them, to stomp away, the resounding clank of her shoes bursting the bubble of their closed off little world. But she didn't. She stood witness as he planted a kiss on the corner of Mashiro's lips, lingering longer than Arika would have liked.
It was hard not to miss the pink glow on Mashiro's face as she watched the duke disappear into the transport, and she wondered what it was that Mashiro was not telling her.
"He's not coming back, is he?"
"No," Mashiro had replied definitively.
"Then, the engagement?"
But Mashiro had refused to answer with no more than the shake of her head.
Arika clenched her jaw as she drew away from that memory. The visiting sovereign…it's not him, right? He was only the Grand Ducal envoy back then.
"It's not him. It can't be him, right?" She turned to Meister Shizuru for confirmation, her eyes wide and her voice somewhat strained.
Shizuru said nothing, replying with no more than a sympathetic gaze. Her lips appeared to be pursed in a half smile, and Arika swelled with resentment.
"This isn't the first time the Council Elect has given their approval," she went on after the unnerving pause. "They're always approving prospective marriage partners for her. Masaru Pisser must've approved five of them in the past year. He should have a stamp made."
"It's not going to go away this time, Arika. The situation is far more complicated," Shizuru finally replied. The tone of her voice would have soothed a baby to sleep, but Arika only grew irritated by the certainty in the Meister's words. There hadn't been a trace of doubt in her reply.
"What do you mean?" Arika demanded, her eyes glowering under her thinly veiled restraint. Aoi, who had wanted no more than to be dismissed from their presence, dropped her gaze, preferring the serenity of the marble floors.
"Gristholm has fallen into civil war. Duke McAllister staged a coup and seized control of the grand duchy."
"Why? Why would he..." Talk of Mashiro's engagement was briefly forgotten as Arika struggled to grasp this news. Her hardened expression softened into perplexity and the guarded tension in her body waned.
"Tate is the Grand Duke's younger half brother," the meister explained. "They share a father. But as he is his mother's eldest son, he heads the household to the second most powerful family in Gristholm."
"I don't understand. What does all that mean?" For Arika, putting two and two together in the arena of politics never amounted to much logic. Meister Shizuru may as well have tried to explain trigonometric derivative functions. Her grasp on the matter would not have been any less insightful.
"Like I said, it's complicated."
"Takeda Solise," Arika uttered with an absentminded expression.
Shizuru raised an impressed brown. "So you have been doing your reading. Secretary Pitzer is of the impression that your reading materials were being used as pillows."
Arika preferred to ignore the comment. Any thoughts and impressions Secretary Pitzer had about her were best buried.
"The Solise family was some kind of big shot family in the Threcian Empire before they ruled over Gristholm, right? But they got booted out or something."
Shizuru nodded. "Gristholm and the Cardair Empire were once ducal territories of the Threcian Empire. Rivaling royal families struggled for control over the Threcian Crown, so the Crowned Prince offered the two most powerful families ducal control over strategic territories."
"Like a bribe then?"
"Exactly like a bribe." Shizuru replied. "To Juren Argos IX he gave rule over the Cardair Province, and to Kaito Solise he gave Gristholm, in exchange they gave up any future claim to the Threcian throne. Not his best move, though. Within three decades the Crown lost sovereignty over both regions, and the rest is ancient history."
Arika struggled to juggle the out pour of information, not clear as to what to make of it.
"But what does any of it have to do with Mashiro?" she demanded as anger slowly returned to her. "Who cares about what happened a long time ago in some dusty old history book!"
"It matters because it didn't just happen in 'some dusty old history book,'" Shizuru replied, her eyes now vacant of their warm glow, and yet her expression had gone unchanged.
"A monarch's fate is just as affected by the past as it is by the now. Grand Duke Takeda Solise isn't just some displaced small time tyrant and Gristholm is not some mere distant duchy. We've always counted on the fact that Gristholm was neutral territory, but if the rumors are true and Solise runs off to Threcia to bargain an alliance in exchange for help in the recapture of Gristholm, then our borders are compromised. And we both know that Threcia isn't the only empire with its eyes on Windbloom."
This is stupid! This is so stupid! Arika screamed inwardly. Everyone…everything…it's all so stupid!
"I hate this!" She snapped. "I hate dukes and empires. I hate the council and Masaru. Why can't they just leave things alone? All they do is muddle things up! And that stupid duke! Why can't he bother someone else?"
She was like a child whose favorite toy had been snatched away, her eyes so close to tears. Aoi couldn't fault her for her immature outburst. She recognized all too well what it was that Arika stood to lose, and she couldn't help but ache for her. Yet as much as Arika fought back with self-indulgent tantrums, she was doing no more than grasping at straws.
"The world is watching, Arika." Shizuru explained with less disdain, trying not to betray the remorse suppressed within her voice. "And because the world is watching, this needs to happen. The council sees this. I see it. And Mashiro sees it too."
Arika's eyes grew wide as if she had been struck. "Then…"
"He bothers you, doesn't he?" It seemed to Aoi that Meister Shizuru was simply stating the obvious. It was no secret among the castle staff that Arika held a tolerant contempt for Duke McAllister. Their banter had always been playful enough, but there was genuine disdain in Arika's regard for him.
Yet she could not react. She heard the words that spilled from Meister Shizuru's lips, but they were no more than sounds disconnected from meaning. Her thoughts had trespassed into a minefield without the hope of reparation. Her bottom lip quivered as her heart grew consumed with gnawing alarm. Though she was cold and trembled as a chill shimmered up her back, her skin was damp with a thin sheen of perspiration. The trembling spread down her arms and to her fingers and within her chest, much in the same way as a ripple in water. It pushed up from the pit of her stomach bubbling up her chest and into sobs. But before they could take shape, she bit down hard on her lip stifling any sound from coming through.
"I would have said 'yes'," Mashiro had confessed to Arika in another time and another place. "If the circumstances had been right, my answer would have been 'yes'."
"You…wanted…to say yes, then?"
"It's just…he's really not so bad." She had answered, not really addressing the question, and a distant look in her eyes that forced Arika to turn away, overwhelmed by its implications. But Mashiro had not missed the look on her face as she'd looked away.
"Arika, Is that really so awful of me? Is it?"
"No," she replied absently. "But he just scares me. He's not like all the others." ...You keep a piece of him in your heart...But it was said too late. Years too late she realized, as it was Meister Shizuru's eyes she met and not Mashiro's.
Shizuru nodded. "It's okay to be afraid. Big changes are on the horizon."
Arika pressed her head against the cold window pane and dropped her gaze to the cedar gazebo overlooking the duck pond below. Mashiro stood leaning inconspicuously against the railing as the sun melted into the high-rise buildings in an orange blaze. Her robes danced in the cool breeze and her hair was swept over her face but she had not bothered to pull it back. It would have made no difference. The demands of the northern winds knew no compromise.
"That's why you need me right? To make sure those changes happen."
"Yes," Shizuru replied, taken back by her perceptive reply. "Because even though Mashiro can see what needs to be done, she still needs for you to tell her that it's okay to go through with it. That she's making the right choice."
"Choice." Arika echoed and tore her eyes away from the window, her face heavy with defeat. She brushed a tendril of hair behind her ear and remembered the pins she had dropped on the floor. She kneeled to pick them up and was about to stuff them into her pocket but thought better against it.
"They're Mashiro's," Arika explained as she placed the pins in Aoi's hand before she could speak.
She made her way to the door without a second thought, not bothering with the formalities of goodbyes, and strode forward toward the task at hand. After all, what other choice did she have?
AUTHOR'S NOTE: So this rather brief chapter took a very long time to produce…I don't blame you for being disgruntled with my negligence. Truth is that life has been pretty rough lately; a death in my family and the death of my job have made it difficult for me to feel motivated to write…So this chapter may not fall under the category of 'greatest hits.' Still, I am determined to continue to the finish, so please bear with me.
As always, your feedback is appreciated but not required.