Chapter 16

The king had visited Lotte Bishel in the middle of the day. He had a sharp impression. Strangely, Ashtie was trembling from her toes. She was not sure why she was trembling. He was not a scary person; he was her dad. He was the precious majesty of this country. He would not harm her and her mother. So, that might be an intuition. The child, however, greeted him politely, pretending to be okay.

The king looked down at the young child for a moment and pulled the arm of Ploca, who was also politely greeting him.

“Follow me,” the king said.

“Wait—”

Ploca stared at the king once, and at Ashtie once. She looked like she was not sure what to do. “Wait. What if Ashtie sees? No, wait. Why did he come all of a sudden, now?” She barely came up with an excuse to stop the king.

“Your Majesty. It’s still a day—”

“Do you refuse now?”

The king coldly cut off her words.

“That was not what I meant—”

The king pulled hard on Ploca, who was trying to speak again.

“Or, do you not want to do it in the room?”

“What?”

“Do you want to do it here?”

Ploca’s face became red and she immediately turned pale. She was already thin. Ploca, who looked very pale, shook her head desperately.

“Oh, n-no, Your Majesty.”

The king glanced down at Ploca from the crown with frosty eyes.

“If that is what you want, we can.”

“No!”

Ploca realized that she had raised her voice, and her face turned white. She knelt down right away.

“I apologize that my voice was raised, Your Majesty. Please, show your mercy… I will follow you soon, please.”

“I see.”

The king raised her up lightly with one hand. Ploca couldn’t speak more and looked down on Ashtie with anxious eyes. “Ashtie, please, wait a moment.”

The young daughter saw her mother’s eyes and understood the meaning. She thought she could wait. The child continued to think quite calmly. “Yes, it will be okay. There is no way the king, her father, treats her harshly. Yes, it will be fine.” But the look of the child was not very good.

That day, the child’s strangely uneasy intuition was correct. That may have been the beginning of a nightmare.

Her mother was a free wind. She used to talk about the life she had, wandering from place to place. When she woke up under the sunshine, or sometimes during mealtime, or even before she went to bed, her mother enjoyed telling fairytales. Ones about local folk dances, traditional music, the generous personality of people, rich food, and natural scenery.

Like that, Ashtie grew up in her room, listening to stories of places she had never been before. Her mother was always smiling happily when she told her about them. Surely, she liked that life. So, the daughter liked and enjoyed her mother’s stories more than any other fairy tales, because she felt like she was getting to know her mother.

Her mother hummed almost every day. Some of them were not from the continent Marycury–songs like the famous Butterfly Lady Lotte, or from Monterobis, or Khan, or traditional songs from small villages. The tunes were various. They were sometimes exciting, or sad enough for tears–quiet as lullabies, or the grandeur that could be played at a grand banquet.

Most of them were dance songs. Ashtie grabbed her mother’s hand and danced to the songs, ever since she could walk. Since she was a child, there were many times she fell or missed the beat.

“You are fine.”

“You are doing well.”

“All right, Ashi. Good job.”

“Like this, like this, one, two, one, two.”

And every time, her mother led her with a soft voice, and a warm smile.

Ashtie was not incredibly confident of her dance by herself, but at least, she did not lack assurance of her dance.

No, more precisely, she thought dancing was the best thing she had. All she had was a status of specious value as a princess, a noble mask, a body, and a dance from her mother. Of course, she read lots of books, but Skara was originally such a country, and if she wanted to compete for academic superiority, she thought she couldn’t follow a professional scholar. Ashtie’s idea was not wrong.

The most valuable and proud thing she had was a dance. She liked to dance most of all, and she felt she was alive when she danced. It could not be expressed in words; the feeling was full, from tiptoe to the crown. And most of all, when she saw her mother’s smile, her heart was warmed up from the corner, and she lived in hope of it and practiced dancing hard. She had sweat a lot. She had never tried so hard and been so devoted to anything else, to this day.

At nine years old, Ashtie had completely mastered four dances that dancers would learn as the basics. She showed that to her mother one day. The dance was made to the tunes of each season. She danced hard, her cheeks turning red. After finishing, she looked up at her mother. It was true that she wanted praise. The face of her mother was still not forgettable–moving, joyful, proud, loving, overwhelming. There were tears formed.

Her mother praised her daughter highly that she would dance better than any child she had seen in her free-spirit life.

It was a pleasant compliment. In fact, pleasant was not enough to express how it made her feel. Ashtie, that time, gathered all the words she knew and said thank you. She told her it was all thanks to her mother, and that she was proud and so happy, like a little bird. Her mother continued to compliment her, smile, and tell her that she loved her so much. She thought the times she spent practicing were not a waste. Her mother, with the expression, that she loved her too much, praised Ashtie in a very soft voice and kissed her sweetly on her cheeks and forehead.

There was no dance room at Lotte Bishel, but there was a mirror room, so Ploca and Ashtie used to dance in that room. One day, a new piano came.

Her mother sat on the piano chair and smiled freshly. Outside the window, the sun pushed like a gentle wave, shining in the mirrors everywhere. Under the sun, which was more beautiful than any jewel, the purple-haired lady, who hung her hair long down and put her hand on the piano, was shining.

Young Ashtie smiled happily. “I am blessed with a mother like this. I am the happiest child in the world. I am so happy. I wish time could stop at this moment,” she thought.

“Ashtie. This is what is called the piano.”

Mother’s fine, white hands moved on the keyboard as if they were swift fish and the splashing of water droplets. A delicate voice came out. She sat next to her mother, listening to a song like spring rain. She hummed along with mother. The sun, piano, song, laugh, mother–everything was perfect.

It was perfect.

Until one day, somebody opened the door and entered in.

It was a heavy step. Ashtie was not sure if the footstep sound was heavy, or the person who made that step was weak. But later, she realized that was close to a scary sound than a clump. The instincts of young Ashtie was sometimes correct. In fact, there would be no way that his footsteps could be heavy. He was a person with light steps, a heavy mood, dignity, and seriousness. And that man, like a knight on the battlefield approached the opponent with a defenseless back, wielding a sword silently—

“Ugh!”

—grabbed the hair of the lady and threw her out. Ploca collapsed, screaming.

The woman, who gracefully played the piece of dance music sitting in front of the piano, disappeared like a fantasy.

At the moment, she felt like the world was eaten by the sticky darkness. She was not sure what was going on. Ashtie could not even scream, because the fear swallowed her up. She felt like she would die if she opened her mouth. She almost bit her tongue. She felt a tingling in her teeth. Her back became stiff, and her eyes were sore. It was like she was beaten all over by fear.

But she would have been less pained than her mother on the floor. No, she only felt mental pain, but the mother felt both physical and mental pain.

As her flashback reached that far, Ashtie clenched her teeth. She was confused about whether the present was the reality or the past. But the memory continued–the screaming she would like to forget, but she should not forget, and it would never be forgotten.

“I—”

“Ah!”

Ploca breathed out a rough breath.

“—told you before—”

Vivid anger, displeasure, and insidiousness were all red and black. The king did not hide that expression.

“—to stay in your room. Are you rebelling against me?”

He supposed to be a high person, but his words and violence did not make sense and were unbelievable.

Ashtie trembled. She knew the elegance of Skara. And the one at the crest would be the king of Skara. He should have dignity even from his one gesture, his way of speaking, and one expression. “Is this really the palace in Skara, and is he really the king of Skara? What on earth did my mom do wrong? What sin has she committed to justify how he treats her?”

Ploca barely got up. She tried to pretend to be as casual as possible.

“I apologize, Your Majesty, but I have never thought of such a blasphem—”

He slapped her cheek. She was originally a skinny woman. If the king, who trained with swords, would use a little bit of his strength, she could break. But the king looked like he decided not to control his power. Ploca collapsed again from his sheer strength.

“Do not make excuses. Blasphemy? How dare you say that!”

The king scorned.

“No. Mother didn’t show any disrespect to you. She never showed that kind of behavior.” Ashtie wanted to stop him but she could not say anything. She could not stop him, either. She trembled, and her teeth chattered as if she was soaked from cold water. The child rather wanted to be faint.

“Your… Majesty!”

When her mother’s clothes were taken off, even that was impossible. The strange anxiety that the child felt when she met the king seemed to happen at the moment. But even if she pressed hard her ears with her hands, the sound was not stopping.

“Please, don’t do this. Oh, Your Majesty!”

“Shut up.”

“Your Majesty, oh, please. The child is watching.”

“I said shut up.”

“Your Majesty. Ugh.”

That night, the child had a nightmare. She couldn’t tell if reality was a nightmare or a dream was a nightmare. Her mother seemed to have been crying all night. The tears marked on the pillow.

After that, Ashtie was afraid to be forcibly raped. Fear was first, then hatred. It didn’t take long for that to happen.

The king came to Lotte Bishel. Ashtie would forget his face, and she would shake off her nightmare and take Ploca once in a while.

“Ashi. Not every man in the world behaves like His Majesty.”

It was a very faint memory of when she had said that.

When she collected the memories one by one, they were clear, but from that one day, they were stained. It was the same life: dance, laugh, peace, isolation, and contempt as usual–but really from that one day after the king had begun to visit Lotte Bishel.

And that day, her mother was raped forcibly. Ashtie listened to her screaming and crying, all over again.

And mother talked to her little daughter like so, with red eyes. It was the first time she put down her manner to the king in front of her daughter. She talked like that with a calm voice, like she was judging another equal human being.

“So, don’t worry, my baby. You just meet a good husband and have a beautiful baby, Ashi. Don’t worry. Don’t be scared. Not all men will be the same. There are many more men who are friendly and kind to their wives and children.” Ashtie understood what her mother was worried about, and what she intended to do. She knew her mother’s love. The child was not afraid of men.

But the night was terribly scary. If she thought about being forcibly raped, her whole body trembled, and she could not stop it. Terrible, cruel, and unforgettable, the nightmare was not over.

When Ploca tried to resist, the king slapped her cheeks harder, kicked her legs, and made her eventually kneel down.

Every day, her mother whispered to Ashtie that she loved her, that not all men would be like the king, but she was getting withered. She was a broken flower, her peace collapsing. Ashtie saw, heard, and felt it with her whole body.

And then, Ashtie realized completely. “My mother was pretending to be fine. She told me about her life when she was a free spirit. She taught me to dance, she laughed with me, but she was broken and held up here because of that king. Although she laughed freshly, danced beautifully, smiled charmingly, inside of her—”

“Ploca. Is that girl really my daughter?”

“—would have been broken too much,” she realized.

One day, Ashtie slept fitfully. Her dream was a mess, so she had woken up in the middle of the night. As soon as she realized her mother was not next to her, she turned pale and ran out of the room.

A faint light was coming out from the far end of the hall, Ashtie, who wanted to cry but did not run, soothed herself and walked toward that light. “Mother probably has something to think about by herself. She did not go anywhere else. She is right there.”

But Ploca was not alone.

“Your Majesty… how can you say that? She is our baby. How—”

“Do you deny my doubts?”

“Yes, I do. Ashtie-Ploca has your blood. She is Your Majesty’s daughter.”

The king laughed in vain.

“You’d say that when you can see her?”

“Your Majesty.”

“I know him.”

“…Your Majesty, no. How could—”

“I do know you.”

Hearing that, Ashtie felt like her heart sank. Her body got colder from the crown.

“That king could not be my father.”

Of course, the king never said that. But Lotte Bishel, abandoned by the king, the princess who was never taken care of by the king, and the royal concubine who was treated contemptuously by the royal family… No one dared to say that the princess was not a child of His Majesty. But there were a few palace workers who talked in whispers that the princess did not resemble the king. Every time when that happened, her mother told to Ashtie that it was nonsense and not to listen, just to let it go. Sometimes, she scolded the servant who had spoken in front of Ashtie.

“What does the king mean, now? He knows him, and knows her?”

At that time, Ashtie found one hope. In fact, it was not important to her what was true. It did not matter to her who would be the husband of her mother, and what his status was. It did not matter if he was the king of the country or the man her mother had met during her free-spirit life. The important thing was that the king was not her father.

Ashtie decided to believe that hypothesis. “I will not consider him as my father.”

“If he is my father–if he is really mother’s husband–why does he leave us so cold like this? I’d rather think he wasn’t my father. Yes, that would be better. Then, I don’t have to toss and turn to think about why he abandoned mother and me. I don’t have to worry why he forcibly takes her in front of me, or why the man who I called father was so scary. Yes, you are not my real father, you are not my mother’s real husband; that is why you treated us like this.”

To that man, the word father did not match, and she did not want to think that way about him. She felt rather relieved to think this way.

So, Ashtie thought that her stained, daily life would end now. She thought she would be happy again, as she was before.

Then, one morning, Ashtie, who was less awake and hazy, heard this:

Her mother hung herself.

People said when they suddenly faced a big loss, they could not immediately shed tears, and she found that it was true. Ashtie, with terribly normal steps, walked to the room that her mother hung herself.

The feet were droopy. Despite what she had been through, Ashtie, who was still a princess so only had a rather elegant life, saw a dead person for the first time on that day. Shock, sadness, despair… she could not express what she was feeling at that time. The purple hair was still, but it was a terrible, grisly, cruel death. Slender feet swayed in the air. Ashtie passed out.

At that time, Ashtie was thirteen years old. When she awoke, it was already dark. “Mother!” The maid spoke to Ashtie, who woke up sweating. With this situation, she seemed like she felt sympathy for the young child, and talked in a careful voice.

“We have collected Her Majesty’s body, Your Highness.”

Ashtie immediately began to weep.