Why Won't You Answer

Alpheus's face twisted as he stared at the knight he had seized by the collar—the man who still could not bring himself to answer.

"Why won't you answer?"

"……."

"How dare you tell me that the most precious princess in this empire is this. These rotting shards of bone, reeking of decay."

"……Your Grace."

The knights watched him, pity written plain across their faces.

"Answer me. Answer!"

Half out of his mind, Alpheus grabbed them by the collar one after another and demanded a reply. Not one of them could give it. His eyes gone blood-red, he lunged at them as if he meant to tear the words out of their throats.

"Why won't you answer? Why!"

Still they could not. It had never been a simple question. What Alpheus wanted—what he was begging someone, anyone, to say—was that these remains were not Isabel. The knights knew the truth, and they could not offer him even an empty lie. So they turned their faces away and kept their mouths shut tight.

How can he look so perfectly fine when his own fiancée has vanished?

There had been a time when the knights murmured just that among themselves, watching Alpheus hold his composure without fail. Word had come that his fiancée was gone, and still he had commanded the scene with unnerving calm, never once letting his feelings show. But looking at him now, half-mad, they understood that every one of those thoughts had been wrong.

The reason Duke Pancrazio had endured with such cold clarity until this moment—

The belief that the princess was still alive.

That single faith was all that had kept him from coming undone. It was the one thing he had been able to hold.

"No. This can't be."

"No. It isn't……."

Alpheus, who had always seemed unbreakable, now clutched those gruesome shards of bone to his chest, his face contorted past recognition, shaking his head again and again. The knights bowed their heads in silence and pretended they had not heard him mutter.

In the heart of a bleak, deserted forest, a man sat leaning against a tree with a cloth gathered in his arms.

Duke Pancrazio. Every time the knights tried to move the princess's remains, he bared his teeth and barred their way. They understood what drove him. Whispering among themselves, they changed their plan: they would take her remains to the imperial palace at first light.

The Emperor himself had required only that the remains be brought by tomorrow, and faced with Alpheus in that state, not one of the knights could bring himself to insist they leave at once.

For a long while he sat against the tree, staring at nothing. Then, as if he had found something in that forest where hardly a thread of light could enter, he rose unsteadily to his feet. He set the cloth wrapped around the princess's bones upon the ground as carefully as if it were glass about to shatter, stepped away for a moment, and came back.

He sank down with a soft thud. In his hand was a single beautiful flower, a vivid blue that seemed almost to glow.

Kneeling unsteadily before the cloth that held the remains, Alpheus laid the flower upon them, gazed at it in silence, and let out a short, breathless laugh.

"A flower. What nonsense."

It had been an impulse—the way, the instant he saw that blue-glowing bloom, he thought of Isabel's eyes. He had never cared much for flowers. And yet, cut and set down like this, the thing held the gaze in a way he could not quite name.

"The longer I look, the lovelier it seems……."

With the flower he had picked resting upon her remains, he watched it for a time without a word, and then slowly bowed his head.

I think I understand, a little, why you loved them.

"Shall we go and see the flowers?"

He closed his eyes as if he were speaking to Isabel, and went on.

"You like flowers. I know you do."

Seven years of engagement, and he had known nothing about her. Not that she loved flowers. Not that she had collected statues for his sake. Not that she had given names to her flowerpots.

"And after we've seen them, you must tell me…… how it was you came to name those pots."

In his mind, the Isabel who still lived and breathed smiled and nodded. Alpheus fell silent. He stared blankly at that nodding figure, and then he opened his eyes.

"……."

The illusion broke.

The black, cold forest spread open before him, as if to demand that he face what was real. He shut his eyes the way a man flees. And with them closed, Isabel was there again, watching him with that quiet smile.

"……I……"

In truth, Alpheus still did not know what to call the feeling that had thrown his heart into such disorder. There was only one thing he truly regretted.

"I'm sorry."

That he had never once apologized to her properly.

If he were honest, he had disliked the princess. From the very beginning theirs had been a bond the Emperor forced upon him in order to keep him bound, and that had made her all the harder to look upon with any kindness.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry……."

For a long time the hollow apology, offered to no one at all, echoed through the trees.

Suddenly Furball shoved me. He tried to push me without so much as a warning, and at first I braced, meaning to hold my ground.

If Furball is pushing me, he must have a reason.

Something in the air felt wrong. I let my strength go and toppled backward the way he pushed me.

"Cough—cough!"

"Waaah!"

The humans shouted and hacked. The small one, the child, burst into noisy sobs. Furball's face was lost behind the press of them.

Furball?

I turned my head and found something enormous barreling toward us. Looking closer, I saw a white-haired man driving a team of pitch-black horses at a brutal pace.

What is that?

A carriage. What the man was driving was a carriage. It shot past right in front of me, and I caught the emblem carved into its side. In that instant the carriage seemed to pass in a crawl, and the mark lodged in my eyes as if it had been branded there.

For a moment I thought I saw eyes like jewels, and the white hair that framed them. I didn't know what any of it was. I couldn't understand a word of what it was saying to me. And yet, strangely, only one thought remained.

I have to go.

Every instinct I had was telling me to chase it. I didn't even know what it was. The only thought left in my head was that I had to follow, and so I ran.

"She must be mad!"

"Watch where you're going!"

I ran, and I kept running. Whatever I collided with raised its voice and shouted, but I stared straight ahead as if something had taken hold of me. That thing. Yes.

The carriage.

I tore after nothing but the track it had left, but the gap only widened. However fast I was, however strong, a carriage was more than I could match. Worse, the place was packed with humans, and their acrid stench and the smell of their goods wiped the trail clean. Even a nose as sharp as mine could hardly find it. All I could do was hunt the marks left on the ground and follow those.

The carriage. That emblem, crowded with circles. Where have I seen it? Where……

I thought about the emblem as I chased it. Strangely, nothing came to me clearly. I knew it. And yet I didn't.

Then what was that memory just now? Does it have something to do with the emblem?

That strange man with the white hair, like a white ant. Just the sight of him—

Look. It hurts here again.

The human who made my stomach ache. The white ant. I rubbed at the dull pain—heart or belly, I couldn't tell which—and lifted my head.

Huh? This place……

I had been chasing the carriage blindly, furiously, and somehow I had reached the forest I had passed through earlier with Furball. ……Furball. Furball?!

That's right—Furball!

Heavens. Oh, heavens. I had left Furball behind in that terrifying mass of humans and their huge heads!

I hesitated a moment, then made up my mind. I had come this far; I would find the carriage and hurry back.

I'm sorry, Furball.

I apologized inwardly and went on at a careful pace, scanning the surroundings as I searched. There was no one but the animals, so I began to practice aloud the name that seemed to belong to Furball. Cher.

"Teh—"

Cher. I was certain it was Cher. So why did my mouth only produce teh?

"Teh, tehh— teh!"

I pinched my own lips and stretched them long, then tried prying them open. Something was wrong with this body; even a single sound refused to come easily. So while my eyes hunted hard for any trace of the carriage, my mouth worked feverishly at Cher. I must have repeated the same sound a hundred times.

"Teh, teh— ch…… Cher—"

My eyes went round. Once I managed it, the rest came more easily.

"Cher, chehr— —er."

A little more practice and I thought I might have it. I was about to keep going when I found the wheel tracks, shut my mouth, and stopped.

Somewhere around here, I think.

But the tracks broke off partway. The search for the carriage began all over again.

How long did I wander?

By the time I noticed, the forest had gone pitch-dark, and I was running with a smile toward the carriage that had finally shown itself between the trees.

"Neeeigh!"

Beasts were hitched to it. Horses. They took one look at me and, as if frightened, began to cry out.

Shh.

"H-hiih."

The horses held my gaze a moment, then quietly turned their heads aside. Only then could I approach the carriage with no one in my way.

I feel as if I've seen this somewhere before.

I circled the carriage again and again, then traced with my fingers the emblem that stirred something strange in me just to look at it.

Why does this mark feel so familiar?

What a chain of strange things this day had been. I was staring blankly at the emblem when a man's voice rang at my ear.

The white ant again. I frowned and tried to understand, but I couldn't make sense of it at all.

I didn't understand his words, but they were far too cold. Just hearing them made me shake like a quaking aspen.

I'm strong. So why do I become so endlessly small before the man in that memory?

Lost in a feeling I couldn't understand, I had no idea how long I stood there looking at the carriage. Then came a rustle. At the sense of someone behind me, I turned, slowly.

It was a being white from head to toe. As if he meant to claim every scrap of light that fell into this black forest, he shone—white, and glittering—but I couldn't look closely enough to see him.

My head hurts.

A stab of pain. The ache that had been throbbing there since earlier flared, sudden and fierce. The moment I faced him it hurt as if my skull would split, and my vision reeled. The hand I had set against the carriage trembled in fine, helpless shakes.

"Isabel?"

Who are you?