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“Marcella!”
Horatia cries as she jerks awake.
She finds herself lying on the cool floor of the main room of the temple. The cloying perfume of burning herbs on the altar stings her nostrils, but she is alone in the cella. Fear grips her as she shakily rises, head still swimming from the portent of disaster she witnessed.
The sea will swallow Marcella whole.
The ground rumbles ominously beneath Horatia's sandals as she dashes into the empty streets. The garden wall fresco Horatia passes, newly painted and plastered that spring, is crumbling behind her. Earthquakes arrive with the heat every summer, they say, but rarely as fierce after the festivities of Neptunalia. They alone would be nothing to fear.
When she crests the hill, Horatia must stop to catch her breath. Her chest is tight with pain, and the hazy air is difficult to breathe. From here she can see Mare Nostrum, dark and churning, boats tossed about on her waves like nothing but toys. She knows exactly where Marcella will be.
Horatia grits her teeth, clutching at the fabric of her robe, before stumbling forward once more.
When the skies choked grey with ash, and lapilli clattered like hail on rooftops and cobblestones, the seaside people knew they had to evacuate. The mountain they built their homes around was going to erupt. They packed their belongings and took to the harbor, sailing to neighboring islands to wait out the storm.
Not everyone chose to leave that night. Some remained stubbornly in their homes, praying to any god that would listen, to spare them. Some waited too long to leave, and only now rush to the remaining fishing boats in a panicked crowd.
And some, like Marcella, remained on purpose, dedicating herself to helping as many people escape the island as she can.
Horatia runs downhill to the coast as swiftly as her legs can carry her, heedless of the burning in her lungs or the sting of sweat in her eyes. A cracked column collapses in a plume of dust across the street, narrowly missing her. A fragment of marble ricochets and glances off of Horatia's head, knocking some of her braids loose from her tightly-coiled bun.
Hot blood drips from her scalp to streak down the side of her face. For a moment, Horatia thinks she glimpses an unnaturally white dog with glittering rubies for eyes standing in the wreckage before her. When she wipes the blood away with her sleeve, however, the dog has vanished.
Without warning, Horatia staggers and falls in a heap. The delayed pain lances sharp through her skull, as she's unexpectedly stricken with another of fickle Apollo's prophetic visions.
“Not now, not this–!”
Behind her eyelids, vivid images of a future disaster unfold:
Sheets of rain blowing sideways through the ruins of a city destroyed by a titanic, colorful, laughing spectre that whirls and whirls endlessly upside-down, like some mad chariot wheel.
Beneath black storm clouds, lying in a puddle, two maidens in foreign garb hold each others' hands, watching their world fall to pieces around them.
They speak in a tongue that Horatia knows not, but – she would know Marcella's voice anywhere.
As soon as her senses return to her, Horatia struggles to rise again. Her traitorous legs refuse to cooperate. Her knees buckle and she drops, limp and trembling, to the ground. Frustrated at this frail body's limits, Horatia raises her despairing gaze to the sky – only to find that all has gone black as night. There's no more time.
She's too late.
TRY AGAIN, AKEMI HOMURA?
“Abbess Madeline!”
The nun turning to face her is clad in black from head to toe – even her hair is hidden, tucked modestly beneath her black veil. Only her concerned eyes are a distinctive hue of soft, dusky rose, muted by the dimmed light of the lantern she carries. That singular color is achingly familiar.
“And you are?”
“...Honoré. I've come to seek asylum.”
A heavy silence settles over the pair of women like a dense fog. Honoré doesn't mean to sound so curt, but that name has never felt quite right on her tongue. Madeline doesn't sound entirely correct either, but whatever word she was about to utter in its place has seemingly vanished into thin air.
“...I have no relatives in Paris to take me in, no prospect of marriage, and nowhere to go,” Honoré clarifies, bowing her head to present herself in a humble manner. Her ill-fitting tunic and bare feet corroborate her sorry history. “Finding you is surely the will of the divine. I was drawn to Île-de-France by a dream in which I saw you.”
The stone walls rise forbiddingly high, blocking Honoré's view of the interior of the fabled abbey. Madeline looks vaguely troubled, her brow pinching as her gaze lingers oddly on Honoré's uncovered braids, but she soon shakes off the spell.
“We house many sisters already. Between worship, we grow our own crops, sew our own clothes, care for the infirm... Can you work for your keep? Are you willing and able?”
Honoré swallows hard as Madeline clasps her hand. Madeline's palm is weathered and callused from years of laboring for the sake of charity. By contrast, Honoré's is soft and unbroken, courtesy of her sickbed.
“My heart is weak and my constitution poor, Abbess. I collapse if I'm sent to the fields or the laundries,” Honoré confesses bitterly. “I have little time left in this world.”
A ghostly white owl perched high atop the ramparts lets out an eerie shriek, eyes glittering as red as blood. Cold dread trickles down Honoré's spine at the sound. She shivers when the white owl takes flight, winging off into the shadows.
“Do you know your letters?” Madeline, somewhat unexpectedly, does not let go of her hand. “Can you read or write?”
“...Some,” Honoré admits. Hope flutters painfully in her chest, sharp as any blade. “The church that raised us orphans bade us copy the scriptures. I have those memorized.”
“Our scriptorium could always use a new pair of hands,” Madeline says, countenance softening into a gentle smile. “As the master-scribe tells me, copying manuscripts will strain the eyesight and the wrists to their limits, but it is easy on the heart.”
“I'll do anything,” Honoré begs, sudden desperation welling hot in her eyes. “Please, have mercy. I want somewhere to call home before I am to die.”
“If you vow to make every effort to live in peace and to be holy, you need only follow me inside, Sister,” Madeline says soothingly, lacing their fingers together. “Do not cry. Everything is going to be alright. It is strange, but... Though I have lived sheltered within these walls all my life, I feel as though I've met you before as well.”
Honoré sways on her feet, stumbling from fatigue and relief as Madeline leads her past the gate and into the salvation that lies beyond. Neither of them seems willing to give up the single point of contact, of warmth, between them.
“...It must mean your arrival is indeed providence. Pray tell, for I am curious: what was the nature of the vision you were given of me?”
Madeline raises the lantern as her searching gaze sweeps over Honoré again, seeking something she does not voice.
I saw us, but as young maidens, laying at peace on a hilltop overgrown with white flowers, holding hands, just like this.
I saw us become lovers in that dream world, a place where we were blessed to grow up together.
Your absence haunted my waking hours until I could bear my ardent yearning for that illusion no longer.
I was compelled to find you before my death, to worship you as my savior, even if such blasphemy should consign my eternal soul to the fiery pits of Hell.
“I dreamed that you went to a place so far away I had no chance of finding you,” Honoré simply says. “Only now am I finally home.”
IS THIS NOT THE RESULT YOU WISHED FOR?
SUCH AN IRRATIONAL REACTION. TRY AGAIN.
“Madoka!”
Homura shivers against the cold as she waits, burying her numb fingers in the long sleeves of her informal kimono, shifting her weight from sandal to sandal. The servants' quarters are divided between a number of small, squat buildings clustered at the far end of the compound. Madoka's quarters are relatively far from her own, so the chill has already started seeping into her joints and extremities.
Finally, she hears shuffling behind the door, and looks up expectantly.
“Homura...?” A dozy head peeks through the crack of the sliding door. Behind Madoka's halo of rumpled hair, Homura sees an unmade futon on the floor, with wrinkled clothes spread out beside it. “Um, did... did I oversleep again?”
“Hurry up and get dressed!” Homura catches the edge of the door and slides it wide enough to admit herself. Madoka blinks in confusion, momentarily blinded by the brightness outdoors, then recoils from the drafty air Homura let in. “The great fire everyone spoke of yesterday, in the south end? The winds shifted! It travels this way!”
Madoka rubs her eyes and yawns. “The Hikeshi brigade will put it out before it reaches the castle,” she says with none of Homura's urgency. She smiles when she sees Homura is still wearing her ribbon, then picks up her favorite comb to begin the long work of detangling knots. “Everything will be alright.”
“No, it won't,” Homura says despairingly. She plucks the comb out of Madoka's hands, then spins her by the shoulders to face her kimono, undyed and plain by shogunate decree. “We need to leave Edo Castle before it's too late!”
“But we have work,” Madoka points out. Obediently, she slides her arms into the sleeves, then wraps the plain fabric snugly around herself. “We'll get in trouble if we just disappear.”
“Please listen to me, Madoka,” Homura pleads. In a few deft movements, she ties Madoka's obi around her waist, then pushes her toward her socks. “Come with me and I can show you!”
They emerge from the servants' quarters hand-in-hand, huddled together against the cold. A blizzard is surely on its way. A gust of wintry wind snatches the ribbon tying Homura's long hair and sends it dancing out of her reach, a sliver of tsubaki red against a backdrop of falling ash and snow.
“Oh no,” Madoka says sadly, watching the ribbon snag on a high branch. Purple and red are forbidden for the lower classes to wear, so the ribbon was their little secret, one they would pass back and forth and hide during the day. “Do you think I can climb that tree? The wind is so strong today...”
Homura isn't even looking. Her shoulders have gone rigid.
“It's too late,” is all she says.
The breath catches in Madoka's throat as she turns around, and suddenly, the ribbon is all but forgotten.
Edo Castle is already ablaze. The tenshukaku, towering stories taller than the other buildings inside the walled complex, is hemorrhaging gouts of black smoke into the sky. Thanks to the fierce winter winds, flames spread to the roof of the retainers' quarters, the square watchtowers stationed along the perimeter wall – even the wizened old pine trees in the garden where they used to have lunch together.
Beyond the castle walls, telltale plumes of smoke spiral from the surrounding districts. Shouts and chaos can be heard from the crowded streets.
“Sayaka and Hitomi could be trapped inside,” Madoka realizes with dawning horror. “And all the other servants, everyone working today – ohhh, who's going to save everyone?”
“The Hikeshi brigade,” Homura says, however unconvincingly.
“They'll try to save the castle before any of the servants,” Madoka points out as a matter of fact. A fire of this magnitude, sweeping through the wood and paper buildings of Edo, could mean the entire capital will be lost. “I, I have to do something...!”
Homura's eyes soon water from the stinging, abrasive smoke clogging the air. She rubs them until they're puffy and sore in order to clear her vision. When she looks again, she spots a handful of people staggering out of the tenshukaku. Not enough. With them is a white tomcat with a frightened, puffed-out tail, who bounds across the lawn towards Madoka.
Madoka automatically kneels to catch him, cradling the animal to her chest as she rises again. The cat purrs in relief, rubbing his cheek affectionately against her shoulder. Homura catches a glimpse of the cat's features, and shudders. The cat's hypnotic, unblinking eyes shine as red as the lost ribbon.
A youkai...?
For a moment, everything changes, like a dream is overlaid atop her sight:
She sees a Madoka clad not in a simple servant's garb, but beautiful, gauzy robes as white as clouds, her hair impossibly long and flowing like a river around her, radiating an aura of such resplendent luster that she could only be described as a goddess worthy of the Amatsukami.
She descends from the Ame-no-ukihashi, sinking towards earth -
– and then Homura's mouth curls into a cruel smile, and she catches Madoka by the wrist -
- and with the most merciless and terrible of sounds, tears her bodily in twain –
The cat leaps from Madoka's arms and bolts back in the direction of the conflagration. The building groans like a living thing as the fire consumes it. A dazed Homura tries to catch Madoka by the wrist before she can give chase, but this Madoka, her Madoka, tears herself free, eyes wild with anxiety and guilt.
“If I can just save one of them – even if it's just the cat – I, I have to try! Wait for me, Homura!”
“No!” Homura cries, panic lurching her heart into a frenzied speed. She loses one of her sandals in her rush to catch up to Madoka, and doesn't look back. “If you're going inside the tenshukaku, I'm coming with you!”
Homura manages to get close enough to grab Madoka's hand and squeeze it. Madoka flashes her one last smile of gratitude.
Then, steeling their nerves, they charge into the burning tower together.
AKEMI HOMURA, THERE IS SIMPLY NO PLEASING YOU.
A WORLD WITHOUT WITCHES ONLY HAS SO MANY OUTCOMES TO OFFER, YOU KNOW.
VERY WELL. AGAIN.
“Maude!”
The tearful little boy, scarcely more than four years old, screams as he bolts from the ship's cabin.
“Pirates! Help me, Maude!”
Captain Holloway steps through the doorway after him and watches coldly as the boy's sister – Maude, presumably – throws her arms open to catch him. Her brother clings to her frilly pink dress with both fists, wailing and snotting in a pitiful display. Holloway barely even hears him.
It's her. It's really her.
In dreams, Holloway intimately knows this girl, the girl with hair as pink as cherry blossoms and a life just as fleeting. She sells her soul to the Devil to save a friend, or a family member, or even an animal – over, and over, the dream ends in tragedy for her. Holloway is never able to convince her to change her decision.
It's frustratingly impossible to save her from herself. If someone as empathetic as Maude has the means to help, then how could she ever knowingly turn her back on those who need it?
How can Holloway ever stop trying?
Maude's got a little more spine than she looks, painted and cossetted doll that she is, but she's still defenseless. All she can do is try not to cry as the pirates raid the trader's cargo, hauling every chest, crate, and barrel abovedeck just to pillage the contents. Sprawling on the deck in a pile of useless petticoats and ribbons, Maude nevertheless shields her terrified brother from view with her body.
Holloway squints in judgement. Typical merchants. They only know how to pay others to do their fighting for them. Their sullen crew already surrendered their arms and valuables when the ship was boarded. Now they're lined against the railing with their wrists bound, dully watching their employers as they await their fate.
Even the ship's mascot, a white parrot of some crested variety with unpleasantly piercing red eyes, merely clacks his beak as he perches in wait. No one will be interfering.
“Maude, is it?” Holloway calls with bored indifference, pointing a cutlass in her direction. “Step aside, and nobody has to lose their heads. I only need one hostage for ransom, and sons are worth more pieces than daughters.”
“Leave him alone, you bully! Take me instead,” Maude demands, even though her squeaky voice wavers unconvincingly. “I-If you kidnap him, I'll... I'll tell Mother and Father not to send you a single thrupenny bit!”
Holloway's lip curls with dark amusement. As expected.
Black boots hit the deck with a thud. In but a few strides, Holloway looms menacingly over Maude, expression hardened from years of harsh living on the high seas. The cutlass slides neatly back into its sheath, beside the flintlock pistol. Maude recoils from the weaponry, shrinking in on herself.
“That eager to sacrifice yourself, fair lady?” Holloway grips her by the chin, forcing her to rise obediently to her feet. She's like some spoiled, tenderhearted pet that never needed to learn how to bite, and is now unable to figure out how. “You're coming with me. And next time, save yourself first.”
“You...” Up close, Maude's gentle eyes shine with sympathetic understanding. “You're a woman, aren't you?”
Holloway grits her teeth. “What manner of fool woman would shear her hair this short, or parade about in trousers on a pirate ship? No man worth his salt would obey a wench's orders.”
Holloway's fingers dig cruelly into Maude's arm, dragging her away from her sniffling brother and toward the gangplank. But Maude won't be dissuaded so easily. Her shaking hand presses to Holloway's smooth cheek, finding it untouched by stubble nor razor's edge. Holloway flinches away a moment too late.
“It's true...!” Her awed whisper is hushed enough that the wind and the waves vanish it. “Oh, you poor girl. You must have suffered greatly to be driven to court the gallows so. Have you carried this secret alone all this time?”
“Enough of your accursed pity, landlubber. Even pain is dear to me,” Holloway hisses in her ear. “Suffering is what makes me who I am.”
They cross the gangplank and reach the deck of the pirate ship amidst cheers and jeers from its crew. Holloway hustles Maude into her cabin, then makes a show of slamming the door behind her. Holloway throws herself into her chair, then kicks her boots up on a table covered in nautical charts, strangely exhausted and jumpy. The tiny space already feels too cramped.
Maude gathers her skirts around her and timidly sits on the edge of the swaying hammock bed, folding her hands politely on her lap. “Well, I'm your captive now, so...” She trails off with a pensive expression, gazing wide-eyed at the sparse quarters. “I suppose that means you're not the only woman aboard anymore... Holly. It's going to be alright. I hope.”
Holloway snorts. She hasn't been called that in a long, long time.
“I shall keep your secret so long as no harm comes to my family,” Maude concludes, timorous but unyielding. “I'm yours to do with as you please.”
Holloway mutters under her breath, “As if I was ever going to let you go.”
HOW FUTILE YOUR SENTIMENTALITY IS.
I SUPPOSE HUMAN VALUES REMAIN AS BAFFLING AS EVER.
ONCE AGAIN?
“Mathilda!”
Hope's hands plunge into the freezing water to grab her – and not a moment too soon. Mathilda is pulled with a gasp from the river, coughing violently and white as a sheet, but alive. Her hapless bonnet races away from her on the swift current and vanishes around the bend.
The girls collapse on the riverbank to catch their breath, fingers laced together for comfort. The summer sun beats down on them from on high, baking the cracked earth into red dust. Hope's anxious heart is still thundering as swift as a horse's hooves. There have been so many close calls on this harsh journey west. Crossing the ford is a risk every pioneer in the wagon train must take if they wish to proceed, but the thought of losing Mathilda now, after all these months of survival...
Hope could not bear such cruelty. Everything she's done thus far, she's done for Mathilda.
Hope sits up and begins stubbornly wringing water out of her sodden petticoats. Her ears are ringing with the lowing of reluctant oxen, the creak of protesting wagon wheels, the shouts of families, the braying of mules – it's so noisy. The line of covered wagons still waiting to take the plunge stretches as far down the trail as she can make out.
Hope tries not to linger on the splintered wreckage of the wagons that didn't make it, piled up like spars of driftwood along the banks, but it's impossible to ignore the ugly reality. The odds are stacked against them. As she watches, a pure white crow alights atop a ruined axle with the wheel still attached. The carrion bird cocks its head to regard her with one glittering red eye, then bobs its head, croaking a raspy note of amusement.
Hope shudders.
“What do you reckon it'll be like in Oregon?” Mathilda asks, gently breaking her from her reverie. “Tell me about the house again. Please.”
Hope smiles as Mathilda lays her head on Hope's lap. “We're going to build a little house, just for us,” she murmurs. Her fingers stroke a soothing, repetitive pattern through Mathilda's damp hair. “The government promised us a homestead no matter who we are. We'll keep chickens in the yard, and farm the land. I'll hunt for you, and you'll sew for me. Maybe we'll buy a little cart, and have a nice old mule to pull it into town, for when we stock up on flour, and sugar, and salt.”
“Just for us,” Mathilda sighs happily, closing her eyes. “No families pressuring us to marry. No one who knows we broke off our engagements back home.”
“The West will be our new home,” Hope agrees firmly. “No more tears and sadness. No more dwelling on what we had to leave behind. Look instead to the future I'm going to build with you.”
Mathilda sits up, healthy color returning to her cheeks. “I should very much like to kiss you right now,” she giggles, mischief bright in her rose-tinted eyes. “Pity we're in full view of the entirety of the Oregon Trail.”
Hope calmly unlaces the ties of her modest cap and slips it off, letting her long hair unfurl down her back. She holds the hat up as a shield to obscure both of their faces, and with a sly smile, leans in bold as brass to peck Mathilda right on the cheek.
Mathilda's face is scarlet as a sunburn when Hope refastens the laces beneath her chin, smug in her triumph.
Her dreams always start with her waking in the same bed. It's like no doctor's place she's ever seen, everything pristine and white, gleaming metal instruments and moving screens around her, but instinct tells her it's heart medicine that she ends up taking with her. She's short of breath in the labyrinthine halls of the confusingly large schoolhouse, and it's a struggle just to make her way up the stairs, let alone carry her books at the same time. Her body is so much frailer than she remembers it being.
Introducing herself in front of the class makes her so anxious she just wants to curl up in a corner and weep. Even the name she gives is wrong. Instead of Hope, here she is Homura.
Then everything just... stops. The other voices fall away until only one remains, one bastion of safety in the sea of unfamiliar things. Mathilda – no, Madoka – is here.
That means everything is going to be alright.