Windalfr, Right Hand of Vengeance

Chapter Three

"Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again."
-The Tempest

I won. That thought amazed Louise, and she carried it in her head as she rode bareback in front of her familiar back to the Academy.

And San was her familiar again, tentatively. Louise couldn't afford to lie to herself; if she made one wrong move, San would run back to the forest and Louise would never see her again. Still, having her back was more of a victory than retrieving the Staff of Destruction and apprehending Fouquet combined.

Don't screw this up. That was another thought that went through her head on the way back. If she had learned anything from past experience, it was that her failures were many and that her victories backfired. Summoning her familiar was the first spell she had ever cast successfully, but she was so embarrassed about it–her–that she almost wished she had summoned nothing at all, and after San had run off, well, that wasn't Louise's greatest moment either.

The only thing she knew about her familiar was that San had issues. And hated mankind. And thought she was a wolf, which was ridiculous. She hoped. Oh, Founder, she hoped she hadn't summoned a werewolf. Louise would find out if San started trying to kill people next full moon. Or had an aversion to silver. Or if Louise found a way to politely, tactfully ask her if she turned into a flesh eating monster once a month.

I'll just offer her some silverware. She imagined San sitting at the dining hall eating with a fork and knife, and smiled. Between San's face paint, bone necklace, and wolfskin cloak, she'd look ridiculous in any civilized setting. But if she changed her clothes...San carried herself with a definite degree of confidence, and her cloak could act like a noble's mantle. After all, hadn't people called her Princess Mononoke?

The two of them caught up with Tabitha and Kirche in their cart shortly before they arrived at the academy. Tabitha sat in front with her book open, and Kirche lounged in the back.

"Hey, Louise," Kirche said with a wave. "Hey, Louise's familiar. Never did get your name."

"It's San," Louise replied. "How's Fouquet?"

"Not bleeding to death."

"Yes I am," Fouquet called out weekly. She must have been lying down, because Louise couldn't see her.

"She just says that for attention.

"...hate you. Hate you all."

"So, how'd you know she was Fouquet anyway?" Kirche asked.

Louise turned to face her familiar. "Well? Do you want to explain it?"

San stared intently at Tabitha's dragon. "No."

A girl of few words. "Through exercise of superior logic and reasoning, Miss Longueville being Fouquet was the only suitable explanation."

"So, basically it was a lucky guess?"

"What? No! Luck had nothing to do with it!"

"Man, I'm glad that paid off. I mean, how would that have looked otherwise if we all went into the woods, and ended up maiming the only adult there? We could have gotten suspended!"

"It was not a guess! I'm just smarter than you!"

"It's okay, Louise, I'm not judging you. I'd rather be lucky than good, too."

Louise fumed, but she didn't answer. Letting her familiar interact with Kirche, she decided, wasn't a good idea if she wanted her to hate humans less.

WWW

"Well," Headmaster Osmond said after they had returned to the academy. "That is the last time I hire someone based on their appearance. Or personality. I swear, my next secretary is going to be a golem." He sighed. "By the way, did any of you end up using the Staff of Destruction? No? Oh well. It still makes a nice conversation piece, even if it doesn't do anything." He sat down and lit his pipe.

San wrinkled her nose. She had grown more and more agitated the closer they got to civilization, and Louise had to practically hold her hand the whole way into the academy, smiling and speaking in soft tones. Kirche, for once, had taken a leaf out of Tabitha's ever open book for once and refrained from saying anything.

In the headmaster's office, San stood at Louise's side in her feral posture, legs apart, knees bent, on her toes, and leaning forward. Her eyes darted all over the room, curious, challenging, and suspicious.

"Anyway," Osmond continued. "All of you have gone far beyond my expectations by coming back alive–"

"What?"

"I mean, of capturing Fouquet alive," he said. "I thought you were just going to get the staff and come back, so well done, all three of you."

"There are four of us," Louise said.

"Yes, you three are everything this Academy wants to create out of its students," he continued as though he didn't hear her, and considering his age, he might not have been faking. "So, Kirche von Zerbst and Louise de la Valliere, I intend to petition your promotion to knighthood."

"Sweet!" Kirche said. Louise accepted the reward with more dignity, but inside she was beaming.

"And Tabitha, since you're already a knight, I've decided to award you with the Elven Medallion of Valor."

Kirche grinned and gave Tabitha a pat on the back. "Wow, Tabitha, you're an honorary elf!"

Osmond blinked. "What? No, she..."

"That is seriously hardcore," Kirche continued. "Way to go!"

"That's not what it means at all!"

"Oh," Kirche said. "So what does it mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything! I just have to get rid of three of these things a year. It's part of the school politics."

"Huh. Well, I like my idea better. Don't you, Tabitha?"

Tabitha looked up with a neutral expression which Louise had learned to translate into, "I'd rather be reading."

Colbert opened the door and stepped into the room, puffing slightly from the stairs. "The, uh, thief is secured, and the imperial court is alerted, Headmaster, and is that Louise's familiar? I'm Professor Colbert. What's your name?"

He extended his hand, a friendly greeting between equals, but the significance of that expression was lost on San, who sniffed his hand, wrinkled her nose, and glared at him.

"Her name is San," Louise replied. "San, you can trust Professor Colbert. He's nice."

San kept glaring at Colbert as he took up position on the side of the room and never took her eyes off of him. Louise repressed a sigh. Eventually, she'd teach her familiar proper etiquette.

"Anyway," Osmond continued. "Now that we have the Staff of Destruction back, the Ball of Frigg will resume as planned."

"Oh, right," Kirche said. "That's tonight, isn't it? I totally forgot about it."

"We couldn't really celebrate right after being humiliated by a thief," the headmaster continued, "but now that the Staff, and by extension, the school's honor is restored, we can all get jiggy with it, or whatever it is you kids say."

Kirche shuddered. "Not that."

Louise glanced at her familiar, who was still glaring at Colbert with those steely eyes of hers. She had a sudden image of San in a ball gown dancing with a handsome mage. She couldn't tell if her familiar would look great or ridiculous in a fancy dress. Probably the second.

"Well, now that is all settled," the headmaster said, "you're all dismissed. Have fun tonight, be safe, and stay in school. Or something. Now, Colbert, I understand you have something important for me?"

Colbert nodded vigorously. "The most important discovery of my life!"

Louise smiled as she left the headmaster's office. She valued the professor's advice, but Colbert could be remarkably childish when it came to his "discoveries," which often amounted to no more than a new way to boil water.

"What's a familiar?" San said as they descended the steps.

Louise turned. "What?"

"What's a familiar?" San said again. "Humans keep calling me that."

Louise tried to come up with an explanation that wouldn't offend her. The official explanation, that the familiar was a sort of magical servant or pet, would send San back to the forest before Louise had the chance to cry wolf.

"It means I can trust you," she said, which was technically true. "See, at one point a mage summons a familiar, which is often either a mundane animal like a frog or an owl, or a magical animal like a manticore or a dragon that the mage can...rely on."

"Do they ever summon humans?"

Louise knew that San wouldn't put herself in that category. "No."

San nodded. "Makes sense. Humans aren't trustworthy."

Louise froze. The taller girl stopped and turned to face her one stair below her so they were at eye level. "Do you trust me?" Louise asked.

San's eyes were dark brown with flecks of gold. "No." She turned away. "But I'm trying."

WWW

"The runes on her hand are identical, Headmaster," Colbert said. "That girl is Windalfr."

Osmond puffed on his pipe. The best thing about his secretary being a professional criminal was that now there was no one left to keep him from smoking. She was so fired, by the way.

"Who is?"

"Miss Valliere's familiar. She was just here. Wolfskin cloak, red face paint, necklace of teeth?"

"Oh, right. So, she's not a student here?"

"Um, no, Headmaster."

"Right, wrong uniform. I wasn't watching very carefully, but did she have a flute?"

"A flute, sir?"

"Yes, a flute. You know, like in the song. 'The right hand of God is Windalfr, the kind-hearted flute of the Lord.' Ring a bell?"

"Um, I think that part was supposed to be symbolic."

"And what of the rest of that line?" Osmond asked. "'He–or in this case, she–dominates all beasts of life, leading me through earth, sky, and water?'"

"I...don't know. If she has the power to control animals, I haven't seen it, but I haven't had the chance to study her yet."

Osmond nodded. "Well, keep your eyes open, and if you see anything interesting, be sure to not tell anyone at all."

"Not tell...but Headmaster, if that girl is Windalfr reborn, then this is huge!"

"Yes," Osmond said. "And so we should ignore it entirely and pretend it isn't happening."

Colbert furrowed his brow. "I...I don't follow."

Osmond suddenly felt very tired. Maybe he really was too old to keep smoking. Bah! He'd quit when he died, and not a second sooner. "Windalfr was the legendary familiar of Brimir. The Founder had four, Gandalfr to defend, Windalfr to watch, Myo...Myoznitnirn to advise, and, um, I forget the last one, but that's not important. Now, the mage who summoned her, Valliere, was it? I take it she's a very talented mage."

"Um, no," Colbert said. "Miss Valliere is persistent and determined, but talented, she is not."

So, Windalfr reborn without Brimir reborn. Odd. "Well, no matter. Legacy is more powerful than any spell. Are you familiar with Albion's Oliver Cromwell? A bishop, I believe, and out of the blue, he started claiming to be a void mage, and ended up conquering half of Albion. He didn't have half the claim as Valliere does. Now, imagine what would happen if those fools at the palace got a hold of such a weapon as Brimir's legacy?"

Colbert started. "What? But..."

"They'd abuse the heck out of it."

Colbert's eyes grew wide and his face paled. "But sir! She's not a weapon! She's a teenage girl! They both are!"

"Good!" Osmond said, smiling brightly. "See that they stay that way."

WWW

That night, the humans danced to the musicians' art, the light from their building shining out through their windows like the rising sun from inside a cave. San watched from the darkness.

"You can come in, if you like," Louise said, approaching her. "You might stand out, but that's not always a bad thing, and who knows? You might make a few friends."

San looked at her. Louise had changed from her normal clothes to a white dress with long gloves. If she knew more about humans, San might have understood what that meant. "I'd rather stay out here."

"I figured, but I thought I'd ask anyway." She stood next to her and looked at the building with the bright windows. "So, what do you think?" she asked. She motioned vaguely. "About this?"

It was...beautiful, in its alien way. The music, with its notes in harmony and hypnotic rhythm, and the gardens, with its sculpted bushes and enthroned flowers, were unlike anything she had ever experienced. And it was...wrong. The musicians could not compare with the cacophony of bird calls, and the delicate tulips seemed so fragile compared to the raw vitality of the wildflowers of the untamed fields.

And that's what humanity was, tame. Everything they touched became ordered, from their animals who obeyed their riders and obeyed their butchers with equal submission, to their trees carved into whatever shape pleased the humans most, to even the humans' own unnatural selves.

"I don't know," she said.

Louise looked disappointed. Disappointed! Because she didn't know for how long San had known, for how long she had been as certain about the nature of humanity as she was about the difference between good and evil. For San to not know what she thought about something human was an impossible miracle lost on the girl.

"Hey, San?" she asked. "I don't mean to be rude or anything, but how did you end up being raised by wolves?"

"When I was a baby, my...human parents trespassed through a forest that was not theirs." Admitting that she had been born of humans disgusted her, but facts didn't care how she felt. "Moro, my mother, found them there, and they tried to feed me to her to give themselves time to escape. She adopted me instead."

"Oh, San," Louise said. "I'm so sorry."

"Sorry?" she snapped. "About what? Can you imagine what sort of parents they would have been like if those humans had kept me?"

"Oh. Well, I guess that makes sense." Louise fell silent for a moment. "Is that why you hate humans so much?"

San shook her head. "No." Abandoning her was the best thing that pair of humans could have done for her, considering what they were, considering what they would have otherwise made her become. "I come from a cycle of hatred that began long before I was born." One that Ashitaka, in his beautiful, arrogant foolishness, had tried to end.

"Did you kill a lot of them?"

"I...no," she realized. "My brothers did, my mother did, but as much as I tried, I never managed to kill one." The only one that she had really wanted to kill was that human Eboshi, but she was always just out of reach. San smiled bitterly. "Sometimes I feel like I have failed at everything I ever tried." She didn't know why she said that, but it was true. She tried to kill Eboshi, Eboshi lived. She tried to save the forest, the forest was destroyed. She tried to save her mother...spirits that still hurt. Moro might have been at peace with her own passing, but San never would be.

"The only thing I ever managed to do right was saving a human's life who was about to die." It seemed like such a shame to let Ashitaka die after the humans tried so hard to kill him. She looked down a Louise whose eyes seemed to shimmer. And I've done it again, she realized. Once was a fluke, but twice was an indecipherable pattern.

Louise smiled and looked away. "You were the first thing I ever did right, too," she said. "Well, I'm going to head back to the ball. You're not going to disappear in the night again, are you?"

San smiled. "You can trust me." It wasn't like she was human or anything.

Louise stopped and looked over her shoulder at her. "Are you sure you don't want to come inside?"

San felt a sudden sense of deja vu, from when Ashitaka had gone with the humans to go to Iron town, stopping to invite her to go with him. Are you sure you don't want to come inside? But she wasn't ready then, and she wasn't ready now. "No."

Louise accepted that, but after she left, San added two more words to herself, not sure if they were a lie or a promise.

"Not yet."

WWW

In her dreams, San remembered her first hunt. She had watched only and studied as as her brothers and her invincible mother brought down a fawn that was too slow to keep up with the herd.

The meat was chewy and red, but it was strong, and San cut off chunks of it with her father's tooth that she could swallow whole. She didn't know what she expected her first hunt to be like, but she had carried that dream for so long that the dream carried her through the reality.

Reality ended when the Forest Spirit stepped into view. The Deer God was sacred and not to be crossed or even, except in the most desperate circumstances, interacted with. Would he object to the wolves eating one of his own? The rest of his herd passed by, knowing that Moro's pack would not harm them in the presence of their deity. Plants sprouted and died around his talon-like feet with each step and antlers grew out of his head like the branches of a tree. The Deer God looked San in the eyes with his too-human face.

And smiled.

WWW

a/n This is my shortest chapter so far, mostly because I cut out a lot of it. My original plan for this chapter had San going to the Ball. Louise managed to persuade Osmond to postpone the ball for a week during which she got San a fancy dressed and blackmailed Guiche into helping to teach her to dance, but that chapter fought me every word of the way. At first I thought that it fought me because it was stretching me out of my comfort zone, like forcing yourself to go jogging when you'd rather eat pizza. But then I realized that it was because the storyline was ridiculous and contrived and that San herself was not ready for that sort of thing.

So I guess the moral of that story is to not leave your comfort zone. Or to not spend a lot of time getting ready for a formal dance, because those are incredibly boring anyway.

Anyway, I ended up with a chapter about half as long as I had planned and got it published weeks after I had hoped. But looking at it from another angle, I finished the chapter in half as many words as I thought I would need...and got it published weeks after I had hoped.

One last note on the topic of eye color. The Familiar of Zero character designs are based on exaggeration, because characters are more memorable if they stand out more, so they all have unnatural hair color and huge eyes. In Princess Mononoke, the art is based in realism. The scenery is breathtaking, and the forest is based off of a real place in Japan. In reality, you can't tell what color someone's eyes are unless they're really close, so in Princess Mononoke, you hardly ever get a close look at their eyes, and when you do, you realize that their eye color is all identical, so I've taken an artistic liberty and changed that.