She Was Nowhere

On a closer look, it was a carriage.

Chesian froze, thrown, at the sight of it tearing through the heart of the market at a terrifying speed. The road was meant for carriages, yes — but no one drove like that where the crowd pressed this thick.

"Damn it."

Understanding a beat too late, he spat the curse and shoved the zombie at his side hard toward the far edge of the street.

Clatter — clatter!

By a hair, the carriage shot past the two of them.

"Hey! There are people everywhere, and you drive a carriage through here?"

The market rose as one, all of them demanding to know whose carriage that was. Others hurried toward Chesian, who had thrown himself clear, asking if he was all right.

"Goodness — are you hurt?"

"Heavens! You were nearly run down..."

Caked in dirt, Chesian let out a hollow laugh and brushed himself off. Of all days to come in something light-colored — the clothes were ruined. His body, at least, was whole.

"Yes. I'm fine."

He spent every day putting his faith in nothing but his antibodies and meeting zombies with his bare hands. Rolling across a street was not going to be what killed him.

He offered a polite word to the people fussing over him, but his eyes never left the far side of the road.

Where is she?

He had shoved her too hard. Had the hat come off? Was she hurt?

Worry carved into his face, he searched the opposite side — and the moment he was on his feet, he was already crossing.

"Huh?"

He had pushed her that way. Of course she would be there.

He waited for the dust to thin. Then he went still.

"She's gone."

The zombie who should have been across the street — she — was not there.

The color drained from Chesian's face. He plunged into the crowd and began forcing his way through it.

Whenever he caught sight of someone who looked even a little like her, he seized them by the shoulder.

"—Ah! Who are you?"

"I'm sorry. I mistook you for someone else."

Not her.

The longer the search went on, the more expression left his face. Pale as paper, he kept tearing through the street.

"She's not here."

"Hey — why are you grabbing people!"

"Not here. Not here..."

"Has he lost his mind?"

They cursed him, and still he only ransacked every corner around him.

One by one, the shops hung out their orange lamps.

"Chesian, where are you going?"

"..."

"Chesian!"

He did not hear a word of the voices calling him.

He was still forcing his way through the crowd when the shops that had lit those lamps began to put them out.

"Hah... hah..."

Sweat poured down Chesian's face like rain. Even the moment it would have taken to push the soaked hair off his brow was a luxury he could not afford.

At some point the market emptied — people and merchants alike gone — and darkness settled over a place that had been loud with life. Alone at the center of it, Chesian stared blankly into the empty air.

"This can't be."

He could not find the zombie.

Not anywhere in the village.

Clatter, clatter—!

Alpheus drove the carriage at a furious speed. The only thought left in his head was that he had to reach the forest and confirm the truth, and he saw nothing else. He ran on without rest, as if possessed, until he had passed the nearby village and arrived at the trees.

"Duke Pancrazio!"

He came upon the knights just as they were breaking the camp they had raised in the forest and preparing to withdraw. The moment he saw them, he hauled the carriage to a stop and leapt down.

"Your Grace!"

"Welcome, Your Grace!"

The sudden appearance of Duke Pancrazio startled them, but they hurried into their greetings.

We're withdrawing. Why has he come?

An imperial command had already come down to close the case of Princess Isabel's disappearance. The Duke had no reason to set foot in this forest.

One of the knights, hesitating in the midst of his respectful bow, ventured a question.

"Your Grace, has something happened at the Imperial Palace?"

"..."

"Your Grace?"

Alpheus did not hear them. He kept walking straight ahead, and he did not stop until he stood before the bodies of Princess Isabel's escort knights and her maid.

Ah. He came to see the remains.

The knight following behind pressed in close at his side and began pointing out each corpse in turn.

"From this side: Sir Eden, Sir Cedric, Sir Jose, and Lady Lina."

"..."

"Your Grace?"

Alpheus seemed to have no interest in any of it. He swept the bodies with a blank look and turned his head at once. Without a word, he reached toward something wrapped in cloth far finer than the rest.

The moment his hand went to it, the knights' mouths fell open.

"Your Grace, a moment—!"

Too late. He was faster than their protest.

He had already drawn the covering away. The cloth fluttered to the ground.

"...This."

What lay beneath was fragments of bone.

"This is Princess Isabel?"

Everyone in the forest fell silent.

In that hush, Alpheus stared at what was before him. He did not blink.

"..."

He looked at it as if it belonged to someone else. Slowly, though, his eyes flooded red.

Remembering what Michel had said, Alpheus reached out.

What the fine cloth held was broken, ruined pieces of bone. The bones were small — slender, like those of Princess Isabel, whose frame had been slight. That must have been why they had decided these were hers.

He studied the fragments in silence, and little by little his face hardened.

"Why do their bodies still resemble what they were in life, while this is nothing but bones? It has only been a few weeks. How is it even conceivable that she would already be reduced to a skeleton?"

"They died after the transformation into zombies had already begun. But Her Highness was eaten by a zombie, and a zombie's digestion is simply that thorough..."

Alpheus slowly lowered his hand and closed it around the fragments. These bones.

"So. These pieces of bone. You are telling me they are Isabel."

He bit the words off one by one, as if chewing them before he spat them out.

"How are these a princess?"

Not a scrap of flesh clung to them. They were only bone — the common sort one might find in a derelict ruin or some remote mountain hollow.

"There isn't a single intact place a person could recognize, and yet word is going around that the search should be called off because of this?"

Even Alpheus, who knew little of bones, could tell at a glance.

"And there aren't even enough of them."

Not enough to call a complete skeleton. Their ruined state was almost beside the point. At a look, there were far too few bones for an adult body.

"How... how is this..."

He murmured it as if he could not make himself believe.

She had been the Ramirez Empire's only princess, a woman who had wanted for nothing precious in the world. Alpheus stared at the remains, devastated. He had come all the way to this forest believing it would not be her — that she could not be dead. And the rest of them, as if to laugh in his face, had already settled it: the princess was gone.

"Your Grace, there are many ears listening. These remains are Her Highness. Please take care with your forms of address."

"...Ha!"

They thrust this wreckage in front of him, told him to call it a princess, and warned him to mind his honorifics.

"Absurd. Utterly absurd."

"Your Grace, I know your feelings are running high, but your words—!"

"It is so ridiculous I cannot help but laugh."

"Your Grace!"

The knight cried out as if in protest.

"Ha — haha! This is impossible."

Alpheus laughed in short, brittle bursts. He kept muttering that it could not be, but his hand was locked tight with all his strength.

"There is nothing here of the woman I knew. Not a single feature I remember..."

The Isabel in his memory was not this. She had always been surrounded by precious things, her beautiful platinum-blonde hair glittering like jewels. She had the most poised, tender voice of anyone, and sometimes a will of iron — princess of the Ramirez Empire.

"Why... why do you call this my fiancée?"

His fiancée.

Even now, vivid as yesterday, he could see her coming into his office on a breath of flowers. The princess who lived in his memory was not some heap of rotted bone. She breathed, as if she might speak to him at any moment.

In his head, the living Isabel smiled with a dessert in her hands. Reality said otherwise. Reality said these bones were her.

After a long silence over the remains, Alpheus reached out and drew back the cloth covering the other bodies. It dropped to the ground.

The escort knights bore clear marks of having been torn apart and eaten by zombies, yet enough flesh and frame remained to know who they had been. The maid was the same. Only Princess Isabel had come back as remains so ruined one could hardly recognize a face.

"I will ask you."

Alpheus slowly lifted his gaze from the corpses to the knights watching him, their faces tight with tension.

"Who is this?"

His eyes were red, as if he had wept blood.

"..."

Not one of them dared speak first.

"Why isn't anyone answering?"

Before the despair on his face, no one had the courage to say those remains were Princess Isabel.

"Don't make me laugh."

Alpheus dragged up the Emperor's words as Michel had delivered them and ground the sentence out as if to crush it.

When he first heard it, he had believed Isabel was not dead. There had to be some mistake. He had driven hard enough to lather the horses' mouths. And at the end of that road, what waited for him was these bones.

He surged to his feet and seized the collar of the knight who still had his eyes lowered, offering no answer.

"Sir."

"..."

"I asked you whether these remains are Her Highness."

The knight could not give him an answer. He only bowed his head.