The Stranger Among the Trees
Once they had finished their meal, the servants hurried upstairs. Confirming that everyone had gone, Anastasia gathered the bowl and spoon she had used and made her way to the sink.
Fortunately the kitchen staff had also left to fetch ingredients from the storeroom, leaving the kitchen empty. Paying no mind to the water that splashed onto her clothes, Anastasia quickly washed the dishes clean, set them in a corner of the cupboard, and returned to the stairs she had come down.
The staircase Anastasia used was the servants’ stair—built so they could move about without catching the masters’ eyes. Dragging her feet, she hurried up the steps, opened the back door, and stepped out into the rear garden.
Morning sunlight poured down as the dawn mist gradually lifted.
I must hurry.
Feeling the air grow steadily warmer, Anastasia moved with quick, clumsy purpose. It was a gait the servants would openly mock if they ever saw her, yet none of them ever noticed that the shoes beneath her skirts were far too large for her feet.
“Hah… hah….”
Only after she reached the forest beyond the rear grounds did Anastasia finally stop and wipe the sweat from her brow. After a brief pause to catch her breath, she plunged straight into the trees. She had not walked far before the mansion vanished behind the dense trunks.
“Hoo…”
Only then did she remove her hat and lift her face. Morning light filtered through the leaves, scattering fragments of gold along the forest path. Anastasia slipped off her shoes and carried them in her hands.
This was the only pair she had left; she had to spare them. Clutching hat and shoes to her chest, she set off toward the place she always went. The dry leaves left from winter crumbled with a soft rustle beneath her bare feet.
On any other day she might have looked up at the sky or paused to examine newly opened flowers, but today she could not.
A new master is coming…
The words she had overheard in the kitchen circled endlessly through her mind. The servant who had spoken them so carefully had gone on to repeat everything she had heard.
The new master, they said, was a man who weighed profit carefully; he might well dismiss every servant at Edenhurst. The Countess had declared she would beg him to keep them all. Yet Anastasia knew the truth: the “all” the Countess spoke of had never included her.
What will become of me?
Her arms tightened around the shoes and hat. Despite the countless layers she wore, a chill ran through her body.
One by one she pictured every person who still lived at Edenhurst. Not one of them was unnecessary—not even the dog tied before the stables. If there existed among all the people, beasts, and objects of Edenhurst a single most useless creature…
“You snake-like wench!”
The Countess’s old roar rose in her memory, and Anastasia clutched her cheek. It had been a long time since she last received a blow, yet the place still seemed to throb. She did not resent the Countess. That the woman hated her was only natural.
As a child she had sometimes felt a flicker of bitterness, but after coming to Edenhurst and glimpsing a slightly wider world, Anastasia had come to understand. Why no one liked her. Why the Count had brought her here. And…
As the past pressed in, her body began to tremble. At last she stopped walking and sank down beside a nearby stream.
She set hat and shoes aside, then plunged her hands into the water. The cold was sharp enough to clear her head. Still, spring was spring. To have water flowing through the forest, water she could wash with—what a blessing that was. In winter she could never bathe outdoors; only after the servants had finished could she slip into the bathroom at night and scrub herself hurriedly with water that had already begun to grow cold.
Having carefully washed her face and limbs, Anastasia sat among the fallen leaves and waited for her skin to dry, eyes turned to the sky. The worries of a moment earlier returned, each one breeding another.
She might have to leave Edenhurst.
The mere thought made her skin prickle and her chest tighten with dread. She had never once imagined abandoning this beautiful land.
Even if the Countess despised her, even if Elizabeth—the Count’s eldest daughter—looked through her as though she did not exist, she still wanted to remain. Was this not the paradise she had always longed for?
The only world Anastasia knew was Edenhurst and the barren village of her childhood. She could not imagine anywhere else, and did not wish to. Besides, she remembered the words of Catherine, the Count’s second daughter.
“Poor thing. If you hadn’t been at Edenhurst you would already be dead. How could an idiot who knows nothing survive outside? You’d be lucky not to meet a terrible end or starve within a few days. Take these.”
Knowing that Anastasia still could neither read nor count and possessed no useful skill, Catherine had sighed as though the situation were hopeless and handed over a pair of shoes she herself had outgrown. Those were the very shoes lying beside Anastasia now.
It was not only Catherine. The servants, too, insisted there was nowhere in the world as fine as Edenhurst. Anastasia looked around the forest. They were surely right. Where else could such beauty exist?
She would never dare hope for a room inside the mansion. If she could only hide at the edge of this paradise and keep breathing, she would ask for nothing more…
Should I simply hide?
Edenhurst was vast. Moreover, the forest where she spent most of her time had become deserted after the Countess dismissed the gamekeeper following the Count’s death. No one entered it but Anastasia. If she lived here in secret, no one would ever find her. The proof was plain: in all these years she had never once met another soul among the trees.
For a moment she felt a spark of happiness at having found so clever a plan—then her shoulders sagged.
Spring, summer, autumn… she could survive those seasons in the forest. But winter?
Impossible. Even Edenhurst could not shield anyone from winter’s cold out of doors.
While she fretted, her skin had dried. She rose to put on her hat and retrieve her shoes, intending to return to her usual place. At that exact moment—
Rustle.
A short distance away, leaves crunched under a foot. Startled, Anastasia spun around. A man she had never seen before stood watching her.
“Ah…”
Her feet locked in place as though nailed to the earth. Frozen, she stared at the stranger who had appeared so suddenly.
His short-cropped platinum hair was neat; his face, clean and finely drawn. Between strands stirred by the breeze, delicate lids framed deep blue eyes. The sharp outer corners of those eyes gave him a cold cast, yet Anastasia thought the look suited him perfectly.
If the lines of his face were keen, the lines that ran from jaw to throat to body were broad and powerful. Anyone could see that the form beneath the expensive suit was wide and solid.
Absurdly, the thought that rose in her was simply: He is beautiful. Until this moment the only beautiful thing she had ever known was Edenhurst itself. Now, for the first time, something equal to it stood before her.
While she gazed at him, forgetting even her own danger, the man spoke.
“What are you?”
A deep bass voice, woven into the rustle of leaves in the wind. So heavy and resonant a sound seemed impossible from so finely featured a face; the mismatch struck her with a brief sense of strangeness. Yet that very gap only deepened his presence.
Anastasia’s fingertips tingled; her whole body began to tremble. How long had it been since anyone addressed her? Yet the sensation was not born merely of being spoken to. Then why…
“…!”
Suddenly she understood. Just as she was looking at him, he was looking at her. From the first moment those blue eyes had been fixed straight upon her—and in them there was none of the contempt or loathing she always met. Only curiosity.
That unfamiliar gaze made her realize exactly what kind of situation she was in.
Her eyes darted wildly away from his. Sensing her agitation, the man spoke again.
“There’s no need to be so frightened. I only wish to ask which way Edenhurst mansion lies.”
Without raising her head, Anastasia forced her hand up and pointed in the direction of the house.
“The mansion… the mansion is…”
She needed only to say, “That way,” yet it had been so long since she spoke to anyone but herself that the words tangled and would not come. Then the man moved. A single step—yet his long legs closed the distance at once, and he stood directly before her.
“Would you mind removing that hat for a moment?”
As he spoke he reached toward her. In that instant a high scream tore through the forest. While the startled man hesitated, Anastasia spun and fled deeper into the trees.
A voice called after her from behind, but she could not look back.