Midnight Jamboree Part Three
"Keep your coats on, I have an announcement," Haru informed the children as they came into the schoolhouse by twos and threes.
"Is something wrong?" Seto asked worriedly as he paused in unwinding a threadbare scarf from around his neck.
"Nothing for you to worry about," she promised with a warm smile, mentally counting down to the last children to put in an appearance.
It had taken her surprisingly little time to get used to Baron sitting in on her lessons and making insights as he saw fit, but he'd decided to have a meeting with his friends this morning.
'Or just alone time. The five of them must be pretty close by now.'
Once Yugi and Anzu had entered the building, it was time to put her plan into action.
"Keep your coats on, we're about to get started. All right, class," she said in her most business-like tone. "As I'm sure at least some of you were aware of, I've had many complaints about the snowball fight I had you do for homework the day the Bureau arrived in Sleepy Hollow."
"Yubaba's just a grumpy old hag," Ryuji muttered under his breath.
Haru pretended not to hear that since she was in full agreement. "Regardless of the fact that the elders were the ones that insisted I end the school day early, or that I would have received more complaints if I had sent everyone straight home, I was still forced to promise no more unsupervised snowball fights."
"Aww," Miho mourned sadly. "That was a lot of fun, though!"
Seto's blue eyes, however, lit up wickedly as he flicked his eyes down to the winter apparel he still had on. "You said 'unsupervised'," he hinted with a wide grin, which his teacher wickedly returned.
"That's right. As soon as everyone's warmed up enough, I'm taking all of you outside so that we can act out the Trojan War. It will make the story easier to remember."
"We get to play war?!" Mokuba asked excitedly, making the other children chime in with as much enthusiasm.
"Yes, yes," Haru laughed, glad that they were more than willing to play along as she laid a hand on a small sack on the teacher's desk. "But first, we'll need to get through the backstory of the Trojan War. Who wants to be Prince Paris?"
"I will!" Seto volunteered happily, coming forward when she beckoned him.
'I was hoping he wouldn't pick this role. Oh well.' "The story has a lot of twists and turns, so I'll try to keep to the point," Haru explained before beginning. "Once, very long ago, Eris, the goddess of discord, was not happy with the other gods because she was the only one not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis since she sewed chaos wherever she went. Proving true to her calling, she came to the wedding anyway and bearing a golden apple with the inscription 'to the fairest'." She took the most yellow apple she could find in her father's stores out of the bag and set it on the table for emphasis.
"Why does this sound like Sleeping Beauty?" Anzu tried to whisper to Yugi.
"That happens with older stories," Haru answered without batting an eyelash, making the young girl flinch at being overheard. "Things get mixed, retold, even forgotten; it's the natural course of any story that isn't written down immediately. As you can imagine, more than one goddess tried to claim the apple for her own. Hera, the queen of the gods and goddess of marriage and family." That had taken some creativity, but Haru carefully pulled out of the sack a crown woven from dry branches and set it behind and to the left of the apple. "Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare." She'd been forced to settle for her own little dagger for this one, setting it behind and to the right of the apple. "Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty," Haru said a little more reverently than before.
Not because she felt any attachment to the goddess, but because she was carefully setting her own mother's hand mirror directly behind the apple. It was a simple one with a brass handle and backing, but she loved it all the same. With all of the items out on display, she turned back to the class, who were definitely paying attention thanks to the visual aids. "At first the goddesses went to Zeus to decide the matter, but he knew that no matter who he chose, he'd have two goddesses angry at him."
"Wait, isn't Zeus the king of the gods?" Yugi asked suddenly. "Shouldn't he have picked his wife?"
Haru forced herself to bite down several comments but didn't think it was her place to explain why Zeus wouldn't be too worried about his wife's feelings to someone so young. "He'd still have two goddesses angry at him, and he wasn't interested," Haru sidestepped the question, clapping one hand down on Seto's shoulder. "So to get out of any personal trouble, Zeus commanded that Prince Paris of Troy would the be one to decide on the fairest. But even he had trouble deciding which one deserved the apple-"
"Miss Haru?" Seto asked nervously. "I'm not so sure about this, anymore."
"That's all right. Would someone else like to be Prince Paris?" Haru asked aloud. "Once the fighting starts, you can't switch out of roles anymore."
"I'll do it!" Ryuji hollered, running to the front of the classroom and almost nudging Seto out of the way so that Haru's hand rested on his shoulder instead. "I can judge a beauty contest!"
Seto looked mad about the nudge, but he caught the wink Haru gave him. It confused him enough to diffuse the possible fight.
"There will be enough roles for everyone, we'll get you something else," she promised, especially since she had a good feeling about who would get the other roles. "Since even Paris had trouble deciding which one was the fairest, it more or less turned into the contest of 'which goddess can offer the best bribe'." Haru raised her hand over each item to explain what they meant other than the goddess herself. "Hera offered to make Paris a king over a greater land than his father's. Aphrodite promised him the most beautiful woman in the world for his wife-"
"I pick number two!" Ryuji interrupted without thinking.
"Hold your horses, you have to hear all the options," Haru half-heartedly scolded. "Athena offered to make Paris unmatched in battle with great wisdom. Are you sure of your choice?"
"Absolutely," Ryuji insisted while nodding happily. "Can I pick her out?"
"Only if she agrees to play along," Haru sighed. "And yes, Paris picked Aphrodite."
"Smart man," the cocky preteen grinned before turning to Yugi and Jonouchi's sister. "Shizuka, you're the most beautiful woman in the whole world!"
Haru had always been struck with how different the girl looked from her two brothers. She was a few years older than Yugi, a few younger than Jonouchi, but it was hard to see her face when she covered it with both mittens in mortification as everyone turned to look at her.
Anzu had always liked Shizuka, so she hurriedly stood in front of the older girl. "No, I'll do it," she volunteered with a stubborn glint in her eye. "She doesn't want to do it."
"Oh, come on," Ryuji tried to protest, but Haru squeezed his shoulder warningly.
"I did say only if she agreed. All right, Anzu; you are Helen, queen of Sparta, and unfortunately already married."
The girl gave a quick look to her best friend, who blushed rosy red at the silent request.
"Again, this is all in the name of fun and education," Haru repeated herself since Yugi's crush on his best friend wasn't really a secret to anyone in town. "If you'd rather not-"
"I'll do it," he managed to stammer, walking over to stand in front of his sister and beside his friend. "I'll be the king of Sparta."
"Excellent. Your name is Menelaus, and you gained an oath from the other kings in Greece to defend the marriage of Helen before getting married. She had a lot of suitors, so it was the only way to keep the rejected ones from breaking out into war."
The poor boy blushed even harder.
Haru walked forward through the children to gently press a hand to encourage Anzu to walk back to the teacher's desk with her. "Stories have differed over the years about whether or not Helen was willing to switch husbands, but since Aphrodite's son Eros could make mortals fall in love with anyone he wanted with one arrow, it's reasonable to think that Helen didn't put up too much of a fight when Paris stole her away to Troy."
Ryuji didn't look too happy about the switch-up, but at least had the attitude of someone who was going to go along with it. He even tried to put his arm around Anzu, but she elbowed the slightly older boy hard in the gut for his efforts.
"That's where we stand. The city of Troy against the united forces of Greece. Line up everyone that doesn't have a part!"
Since Haru really did try to make the students at least respect her, she didn't raise a fuss when she saw some of the students further down the line hurriedly switch places when they saw where they would fall in the pattern of 'Greece, Troy, Greece, Troy.'
She only intervened when no one other than Seto and Mokuba were willing to be Trojans, but that might have been just because Yugi was leading the Greeks.
"All right; first thing we need to do is build a snow fort that will be Troy, but we can make do with a snow wall. Let's get to work!" Haru announced while ushering the children toward the door.
"Even the Greeks?" Shizuka asked, since she had been one of the first to make sure to be Greek.
"If we all work on it, we can get to the fighting faster," Haru pointed out with a warm grin. "We can even take a break inside the schoolhouse after finishing the wall if we need to warm up."
That seemed to cheer the children up enough to get right to work once Haru showed them where she had already marked the proposed wall with sticks shoved into the snow. She knew she could have easily gotten away with only monitoring the children, but her father and brother had given her a permanent distaste for people that stood around demanding work to be done without so much as offering to help.
After a while, she heard horses galloping up the small hill the schoolhouse was on, making her briefly pause while packing on more snow to the wall that had already reached her knees.
"Oh ho, what are you up to this time, Haru?" Toto asked with a wide grin as both he and his mount panted small clouds into being from the cold.
"We're going to reenact the Trojan War," she informed him. "The elders let me keep the loophole of 'supervised snowball fights'."
Muta broke out in an even broader grin than the one he already had, nearly jumping off his sturdy horse to start scooping fresh snow into his hands. "Not without me, you're not!"
"Or me!" Toto added as he also jumped off his horse to start collecting snow.
"Oh dear, they're ten years old again," Pelia sighed as she and Tara also dismounted.
"I'll take these two acting like ten-year-olds any day of the week," Haru grumbled as she packed another block of snow together before adding it to the wall. "Where's Baron?"
"Your uncle wanted a private word with him," Tara informed her as she adjusted her mittens and also started collecting snow. "Likely over Mai's wedding, since there's precious little else that he deems worthy to talk about."
"Oh, don't worry," Haru assured her with an eyeroll as she packed another snow brick good and tight. "As soon as the wedding's over, he'll start talking about grandchildren."
"No need to be that accurate," Toto grumbled as he and Muta seemed to get into a competition of who could add the most snow to the wall.
"Miss Haru, they're not students," Miho pointed out in the middle of rolling a large snowball to add to the wall.
"Maybe not but pay attention to their dialogue when we get started. I can promise that the Greeks and Trojans were probably fighting about the same as these two," Haru promised, smiling wide at her new friends.
"It also decreases the chance of a third party joining the fight," Pelia pointed out with an indulgent grin, focusing her energy on using loose snow to glue the bricks together. "We could have been the Persians, or the Egyptians out to loot Troy."
"What does 'loot' mean?" Mokuba asked as he struggled with his armful of packed snow.
"It means you burn down someone's house and take all their stuff," Seto informed him without blinking, laying his offering of snow on the wall before helping his brother.
"I see you're teaching them all the important words," Toto teased the schoolteacher with a wide grin, making her laugh.
"I'm pretty sure he didn't pick that up from me, but excellently done," she crooned, sparing a moment to affectionately rub Seto's head through his knitted hat.
He looked up at her with a brief, timid smile before straightening his face and resuming his work on the wall.
Haru couldn't blame him for that. The orphans' keeper was a strict man that had no patience for emotional attachments.
"I picked it up from Gozaburo," Seto admitted under his breath, but his darkened mood made it clear that he didn't want to talk about the context.
Haru sighed and started gathering snow for another brick.
Before much longer, there was the sound of more hoofbeats, but more than one more horse could have produced.
Haru looked up and groaned unhappily.
"What is going on here?!" her uncle demanded now that the wall was about chest high thanks to all the extra help.
"An object lesson. Did you need something, Uncle?" Haru forced herself to ask more politely than she felt, even as she waved happily at Baron who was riding up behind him.
His green eyes lit up happily at the sight of her, even though it had only been maybe an hour or so since he had dropped her off at the school since she had needed to start the fire and prep for this lesson.
"We need to talk alone," he growled at her, jumping off his horse and marching up to her.
"No grabbing," she said sternly, taking a few steps back and intentionally holding her arms where he couldn't easily get at them even as he tried to make the attempt. "I'll walk into the woods a bit and you can tell me what's wrong."
Kame looked enraged at this one more defiance from her, but at least he was giving a side glance at the stony faces of her new friends before sullenly following her a fair distance from the children and the schoolhouse.
"What is important enough to interrupt me during school time?" she whispered to him angrily. "I know it doesn't look like it to you, but I am teaching them history."
"Whatever it is you did to the Baron, reverse it!" he demanded just as softly, glaring at her as if he knew she was the source of all his problems.
Haru quirked an eyebrow at him. "Stop being friends with him? I don't think he'll tolerate that."
Kame growled a bit louder while rolling his eyes heavenward. "I don't care about you 'being friends' with him but convince him he doesn't need you to go to my daughter's wedding."
Haru gaped. "What?" she asked in a normal voice, forgetting that her students weren't that far away.
"Shh!" he insisted while looking behind him, as if he feared the suddenly silent children were going to tell their parents about the disagreement.
Despite everyone knowing that Haru and her uncle rarely agreed on anything.
"I've tried to convince him that I had good reasons to bar you from any festivities in my home, but he is refusing to accept any of them! He won't go unless you do."
"Oh, for crying out loud!" Haru groaned, batting away his hand when he tried to stifle her dismay. "I'll talk to him. Baron, can I borrow you, and guys, would you make sure kids can still see over the wall?!" she called out.
"We're working on stepping blocks!" Muta reported as Baron more than happily jogged to her side.
Since she wasn't sure she could keep up with whispering, she dragged him by the elbow a bit deeper into the woods. They were still in sight of the schoolhouse, and she could tell that her uncle was following her, but she couldn't be bothered to care.
As soon as she and Baron were a bit better out of earshot, she wheeled around on him. "My friend, I know what and why you're doing this, but I'm going to ask you to stop."
"Doing what?" he asked a little too innocently.
"Don't play dumb, Baron. It doesn't suit you," Haru ordered crossly. "The only thing different from All Hallow's Eve and every other social event I've been forced to attend is Jonouchi's stunt on the dance floor."
"Forced?" Kame interrupted with surprise.
"What, you think I enjoy being ignored or belittled by everyone in town without being able to walk away?" she snapped at him before turning her attention back to her new friend. "Baron, I don't even have a relationship with Mai to salvage. Between our fathers constantly fighting and us growing into very different people, we never had a chance to be close. I'm fine with that, and I doubt Mai feels any other way."
"Have you never asked her?" Baron asked with surprise.
"You haven't really seen how she acts when we're in the same room. Believe me, Mai's probably over the moon that I won't be around to ruin her wedding by pointing out how a Headless Horseman isn't exactly a story appropriate for a wedding."
Baron suddenly turned his head to Kame in surprise. "Even weddings?!"
"It's part of our culture," he defended himself hotly.
"See?!" Haru demanded while flinging an arm at her uncle. "They're more than happy to get rid of me instead of not talking about the local ghost for one day. I've been looking forward to a nice quiet evening by the fire, cuddling Yuki and rereading one of my books or doing some mending while everyone else leaves me out of their disdain."
The fire in Baron's eyes dampened at the last part of her sentence. "Then I'll stay and read a book with you. Perhaps we can even exchange; I have a few that I don't imagine you've read."
"That sounds wonderful!" Haru agreed eagerly, only dampening her enthusiasm when her uncle gave a pointed cough. "But I'll still be blamed if you don't go," she added regretfully. "We don't get many nobles around here, as I'm sure you've guessed. Mai would never forgive or let me forget that I robbed her of the chance to brag that a baron attended her wedding."
One side of Baron's mouth twitched, but he was just able to suppress the 'but you won't be around long enough for that to matter' that was dying to pass his lips. "You are still her kin," he stated in a tone that wasn't to be fought against. "If it isn't important for her own flesh and blood to attend, why should a baron matter?"
"Because blood doesn't equal money or power," Haru responded a little sadly.
"Haru, you take that back!" Kame demanded as he stomped closer.
"Why? I've never mattered to you," Haru pointed out without much emotion.
He looked infuriated at being called out. "Maybe if you could be a pleasant person-" he started yelling before Baron pointedly stepped between them.
"Despite my personal opinion on her likeability," the lord said in a low, level voice while maintaining eye contact, "What efforts have you made to find out how pleasant she is?"
That actually stopped him cold. His brow furrowed as he frantically tried to think of something. "… I've let her come to my parties!"
"But how much time have you spent with her without berating her?"
"Baron, please just let this go," Haru begged tiredly, turning him around to face her instead. "It's just a party to anyone that isn't the bride or groom. Is this really a hill to die on?"
"Yes," he responded without a thought. "I couldn't live with myself if I was having fun while a dear friend was spending the day alone because everyone else values 'culture' over a living person," he added while glaring behind him at Kame, who actually flinched at the tone.
"Baron. I really don't want to go," she tried a little helplessly. "Please, I'll get blamed again if you don't show up, and I already told you what normally happens at these sorts of things."
"Well, that's the easiest thing in the world to correct!" he assured her while using his glove to wipe away her tears of frustration. "Would you consider going with me? I promise that none of that nonsense will happen on my watch."
Haru blinked in surprise at the offer. "Are you sure?" she couldn't resist asking.
His grin deepened. "Few things would give me greater pleasure. I could teach you to dance, and I'm certain that us stepping out of the festivities long enough for 'culture' to perform its duties is a respectable compromise."
Haru thought it over, wishing that she had been allowed to step out by herself, but her uncle had never been that keen on his niece wandering around his home without supervision. No one else wanted to miss out on the ghost story they themselves fabricated to explain her nightly excursions the handful of times she was almost caught.
Being able to talk to someone at one of the parties would be infinitely better than someone who could just spare her a minute or two before their own partner dragged them away. Not to mention that she'd suspected for years that the reason she was such a poor dancer was because no one was willing to help her get any better.
"A lot of the women would want to dance with you," she felt obligated to point out.
"They have their own dance partners," he rejected dismissively. "I'll exchange as often as they've exchanged with you over the years."
She had already mentioned to him that anyone of age other than herself either had a sweetheart or a spouse, and that they most certainly didn't share other than Jonouchi's prank.
That took care of the last of her objections. The idea of spending a night dancing with Baron made her heart feel like a feather instead of the usual brick. Haru sighed in defeat before locking eyes with Kame. "It looks like the decision is yours, Uncle. For reasons of his own, Baron's decided we're a package deal, and I can't convince him otherwise."
He was giving the pair of them a completely baffled look, like he couldn't believe what was right in front of him. After struggling to find a reason to say no, he finally growled and threw his hands up in the air. "Oh, all right! She can come, but I'll hold you responsible if she acts out again."
"Did you make sure the wedding is not on a full moon this time?" Haru asked almost impishly. "Or at least not at night?"
"Haru!" he bellowed again, making Baron take another protective stance in front of her.
"If I bring it up now, you can't say you didn't get fair warning if there's another incident," she pointed out before forcing herself to take on a remorseful expression. "Mr. Rogers might not have disappeared if I had spoken up sooner." 'Lies. Well, maybe not.'
That cut her uncle short, but he'd apparently had enough of that for one day. "I'll have to recheck the schedule," he grumbled before turning on his heel to walk back to his waiting horse.
"Of course, you understand how much of the day is swallowed up by the night during winter months," Baron added, making the man flinch before marching away even faster. "But do you think the Horseman would show up again?" he asked the young woman a bit more softly.
"Doubtful," Haru responded without batting an eyelash. "Like I've said before, hibernation is a strange habit for a real ghost." She had to beat away the mental image of crashing her cousin's wedding in all her headless glory to take Baron's hands between her own. "I don't agree with your methods, but… thank you for standing up for me. It's been too long since someone was willing to do that for me."
"About five and a half years?" he asked pointedly, though in a sympathetic tone.
"Roughly," she agreed as her heart pounded painfully. Her arms twitched toward him, but the brunette hurriedly put them behind her so that she didn't hug him on impulse. "So, shall we go see how close the children are?"
He seemed a bit disappointed as he eyed her arms but held out one of his own in a gentlemanly gesture. "I suppose we can see if Muta and Toto have finished arguing who is going to be on which side."
"I said 'the children', didn't I?" Haru smirked at him, deciding that it had to be all right to link arms with him if he was all right with it. "Which side are you planning to join?"
"I could ask you the same thing," he countered as they began walking back up the hill to the schoolhouse.
"I'm the narrator, and everyone knows narrators are impartial," Haru countered, though she was nibbling her lower lip in thought. "I might step in every now and again, though. I want the fight to last about ten minutes since that will feel like ten years to them. I don't want to go into too much detail over the nastier things that happened during the Trojan war."
"Agreed," Baron stated, though still not saying whether or not he was going to join the snowball fight.
As that day, and the winter progressed, Haru couldn't help but feel happy that regardless of what she did, Baron made sure that he was a part of it.