Pierrot's Song

Chapter 4 - A Puzzle Solved-1

Chapter 4 A Puzzle SolvedAutumn’s cloak descended swiftly on the land, making their return journey to Andon a cold affair. Mina’s thoughts turned often to Eulalia, the final princess, making a journey like this alone, her child growing inside her. So little time had passed since Mina had first left her home, yet her whole perception of the world had changed. Summer’s golden light had slipped away along with her innocence of the darkness at the heart of Litonya. Mina didn’t question whether it might fall to her to expose what was wrong with her homeland. People were suffering and she could never turn her back on such knowledge. If she was capable of acting, she would. The first step would be to heal the broken, and she was sure the means to do so was almost within her grasp now. Her thoughts had lingered so long on the key mask, she was eager to get back to it and see if her theory was correct.

Their reception, when they finally reached Andon, was muted. Paolo and Dario were no different, still lost in their own worlds, and Mama had dark circles under her eyes, her steps slow and dragging. Mina could see she was worn out from caring for the two men. Papa was caught up, as usual, in running the orchard, but her mother whispered of how he had been helping more around the house, so when Mina sought a quiet word with him away from the usual household chaos, she set aside an impulse to tell him off. Instead, when she found him, as she had expected, in the orchard, she asked for a history lesson.

‘Let’s pretend—just pretend, mind you!—I didn’t pay enough attention in history class,’ she began, standing behind her father as he carefully pruned and shaped one of his beloved apple trees, silver knife flashing with his quick movements. ‘What can you tell me about King Ambrosi?’

The most renowned of Litonya’s royalty, Ambrosi had re-established the royal line after the entire royal family was wiped out during a terrible plague, which, fortunately, had been contained within the country’s capital. This was all Mina remembered, although she knew he was the ancestor of the current king, Udolfi.

‘Ambrosi? He was the one who became king after the plague. He’d married into the royal family … Princess Savina? Siena? Something like that. I wasn’t much for book learning. Anyway, she died, and the rest of the royals did too.’

Well practiced, Papa sliced several branches in a row, the knife moving on even before each branch hit the ground. ‘After the plague wiped out half the court, Ambrosi didn’t want to rule—it wasn’t his birthright, didn’t feel right about it, and he was heartbroken.’

More branches fell. Mina recognised he was restoring the tree to a bowl shape, to encourage new growth. He knew exactly what he was doing, but Mina still felt the same vague unease she had felt as a small child, as though the tree would not recover from this careful savagery.

‘So, he was only royalty through marriage? I don’t think I knew that.’

Papa leaned in and checked the branches for signs of rot or infestation, his eyes and fingers skimming over the tree swiftly. ‘That bit’s always been kept quiet. Doesn’t look so good for the current lot, that the line was broken. It’s not like a secret, really, just … purposely forgotten?’

I wonder what else was purposefully forgotten, Mina thought.

‘But he was the only one left from the royal family, even if he wasn’t blood,’ Papa continued. ‘Someone had to restore the kingdom after the plague. And he was very popular, by all accounts, so I don’t think there were any real objections.’

‘Where did he come from?’

Papa snipped a twig and waved it through the air in front of her. ‘It’s a mystery,’ he said, drawing out the final word. ‘But even if he wasn’t born royalty, he acted like it. He established the artisan guilds in memory of Savina, because she loved the arts. Music, painting, all of it.’ He started to bundle together the fallen branches.

‘What about the Council of Muses? Did he set that up too?’

Papa handed some branches to Mina. ‘Probably. I don’t know. Why does it matter? It’s a long time ago.’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Take these to the shed,’ Papa said. ‘I’ll see if any are good for grafting. We’ll burn the rest. Always good to get rid of the deadwood. It’s like poison for the tree.’

She was almost out of the orchard when Papa called out, ‘Saveria! That was her name. Not Savina. Princess Saveria. Memory’s not what it used to be …’

Mina was not surprised. The story of the princesses, and the cave, was at the heart of all this, she was sure, although she couldn’t see how it connected to the players’ dark acts. As she walked home, she thought about her father’s question. Why did something from so long ago matter? Perhaps it didn’t. She had to fix what was in front of her now. Trying to find answers in the past might be a waste of time when there were people waiting for her help to restore their dreams and lives in the present. But no matter when a story begins, she thought, there is always a time before.

‘We are all shaped by the past,’ she whispered to herself. ‘It lies at the heart of every story.’

Leaving the branches at the shed, Mina went in search of the key mask, her heart pounding. For now, the past must wait. Her hopes rested in the present.

~

‘Another cave?’ Luka asked. ‘Haven’t we had enough of caves to last a lifetime?’

Mina flashed him a grin over her shoulder as she led the way down another stone staircase. ‘I thought you liked the dark.’

‘Not when it’s this crowded,’ he muttered, but not so she could hear. Behind him Dario stumbled on the crude steps and whimpered. Sofia calmed him with gentle words. At the back, Jal stayed silent. Luka wondered if he was thinking about his father. If what they were about to do worked, Jal’s family would be restored. Luka had a feeling it would. He had already seen enough examples of Mina’s abilities to know if a solution was possible, she would find it.

Ahead of Mina, Paolo strode down the steps confidently, the stairs as familiar to him as his family. It had been his idea, really, to come here. They had been debating where best to attempt the restoration of the gold threads, away from prying villagers.

‘Where could we go where no one would see us?’ Sofia had asked.

‘The dark!’ Paolo had bounced up and down with excitement, laughing at his own words. It had only taken Mina a moment to realise he meant the caves they had explored endlessly as children.

He’s right about it being dark, Luka thought. Unlike the cavern of the princesses, there were no torches or great bowls of flame here, only the small lanterns they each carried. Lisette had stayed behind at Mina’s house. When she had heard they were to descend a dark, narrow staircase, Luka had seen the bow in her shoulders and the twitching in her fingers that signalled fear, and hadn’t been surprised when she declined to come.

Up ahead Paolo sang wordlessly, the song given a backbeat by their footsteps. Both sounds were dulled by the walls of stone. Time was impossible to measure in the darkness, but Mina had warned them the cave she sought was near the base of the cliff, so the descent would be long. Luka could barely see his feet on the treacherous steps because the surrounding darkness seemed to swallow the meagre lamplight.

There was a pervasive, familiar scent, not unpleasant; it took Luka a while to realise it was the smell of a road after long-awaited rain—water on stone. He tried to avoid touching the walls, which glistened in the weak glow of the lanterns, but the stairs were steep and rough. When he stumbled, he reached out to steady himself and discovered the walls were not damp, as he’d expected. On closer inspection he realised the shimmer was within the rock, not on the surface.

‘Keep moving,’ Sofia urged him from behind, right before Dario smacked into his back and nearly caused him to tumble down the stairs. Somehow Luka managed to stay upright. Sofia grabbed Dario and leaned back, halting his forward momentum long enough for Luka to regain his balance.

Resuming his descent, and caught up in watching his steps, he nearly missed the moment when Mina and her brother disappeared, but looked up just in time to see Mina slipping through a narrow crack in the wall. He checked that those behind him had seen the change in direction, then squeezed his way through the narrow gap. Looking back a moment later, he saw Sofia helping Dario bend to avoid hitting his head.

‘These were our caves,’ Mina explained. ‘Everyone uses the stairs, but somehow no one ever found these.’

‘Probably because you have to be child-sized to get in,’ Sofia said wryly, rubbing her own head.

Paolo continued to lead the way through a series of three caves, his dread-locked head casting strange shadows in the dim light. Each cave they passed through was more sizeable than the last and set slightly lower. Fortunately for Sofia and Dario, the tallest of the party, the entrance to each was also larger than the one before. Finally, Paolo skipped through a gap the size of a normal doorway. A few steps behind, still following Mina, Luka stepped through and stopped dead. Dario once more stumbled into him. Their gaze was drawn upward. Sofia moved around them, then she too stopped, captivated. Quick on his feet, Jal also sidestepped the bottleneck and moved around Luka into the dimly lit space.

No one spoke. The cave stretched before them, massive and beautiful. Almost as one Mina, Luka, and Sofia held up their lanterns and blew them out. There was no need for their pitiful light here. Scattered across the arcing ceiling were endless pinpricks of radiance in soft, pulsing blue. Their glow illuminated walls of stone that seemed to have dripped into place, giving the impression of running water in the frozen stone. Stalactites ranging in size from a hand’s length to a person clung to the highest reaches of the ceiling. Scattered among them, endless tiny threads swayed in a non-existent breeze. At the end of each was a tiny, glowing dot, not bright enough to give real light, but together the effect was of a rippling ceiling of sapphire stars. Water trickled down the limestone walls here and there, carving rivers in the stone, the movement so slow as to be undetectable. These wet patches created a shimmering effect across the surface of the pearlescent stone. On the other side of the cavern, beyond a flat area as big as Andon’s town square, a pool of perfectly still water reflected the glowing ceiling, the blue luminescence of the cave’s stars blurring together on its glassy surface like a beautiful painting.

Luka had been to many divinas in his life, but he had never felt such a sense of entering sanctified ground as he did here. The awed silence told him the others felt it too. After the longest pause, without a word they all walked forward to where the rock seemed flattest, beside the underwater pool. Their footsteps echoed through the secret cave as they formed a circle. Even Dario and Paolo instinctively positioned themselves at equal distance from the others. Luka looked at Dario, directly opposite him, and saw his twitches had stilled. He appeared normal, like the man he had been before the players broke his thread. If they succeeded, that is exactly what he would be.

‘What are they?’ Jal finally whispered, looking up.

‘Glowworms. They’ve always been here.’ Mina spoke normally. ‘Well, at least since we found this cave.’ Luka remembered this had been her playground. She would have shed her awe long ago.

Mina reached into the pouch hanging from an embroidered silk belt at her waist and pulled out the key mask, then nodded to Luka. Instantly his throat tightened and felt dry. He opened then shut his mouth. He wanted to tell himself his sudden reluctance to fulfil Mina’s plan was because he doubted his abilities, but his unerring ethical core would not let him turn away from the truth. He didn’t want to do this. If he did, and Mina’s theory was correct, Dario would be restored. Though Luka didn’t doubt there was something real between him and Mina, he had seen her with Dario before the players broke his thread. Luka had recognised the intensity of her feelings for the tall player, her gut-wrenching pain when he was broken. The part of him from which he drew Pierrot whispered in a voice of despair that he would never win in this wrangle for Mina’s heart.