An Angel Without Wings

It was Keith Paragon.

“Haa, so it wasn’t a ghost after all!”

Not that he looked any better than one. His face had gone ashen, and his eyes were open in a bleary squint with no focus left in them. A rope dangled loose at one wrist. And…

“He’s barefoot?!”

Well, of course. A sleeping man could hardly bend down, work his feet into his shoes and tie the laces. The March thaw had left the ground sodden and cold, and his neat toes were frozen an angry red.

She reached out to catch hold of him as he staggered away.

— Smack!

“He knocked it away?”

For someone who wasn’t even conscious (?), Keith knocked her hand roughly aside and went tottering on his way. She could tell it was an unconscious reflex, but it was absurd all the same.

Pai stared blankly after his retreating back, then shook her head hard to snap herself out of it.

Do I force him awake? Will he even wake up? Or do I sling him over my shoulder, carry him back and tie his arms and legs to the bed?

Halfway through drafting that savage script in her head, she realized something.

“Wait— wait a second. This direction is…”

She had taken him for a rudderless ship drifting with no destination, but he was walking quite straight toward somewhere in particular.

“That’s the Black Forest.”

The Black Forest lay straight up from the White Castle, at one o’clock. It sprawled dense and vast over a gentle slope, running on naturally into the Nuwa Mountains, and at the mouth of those mountains the Great Labyrinth slept.

“Paragon!”

As the mouth of the forest came into sight, Pai finally took hold of his shoulder by force. Her wrist was seized in the same instant; he turned and made to throw her over his shoulder.

But he was not the only one with instincts. Pai read the movement reflexively too, and in an instant she had a man far bigger than herself up in the air and slammed him down into the ground.

“…!”

— Thud! With that dull, heavy sound, Keith sprawled flat on the ground.

“Whoops.”

To slam the Regent Duke into the earth, of all things! She looked quickly around her.

“Ahem. Nobody saw that, right?”

“…”

“Pardon me a moment, Your Grace.”

She swept Keith up into a princess carry.

“Oof, he’s heavier than he looks.”

A body woven out of muscle with not an ounce of surplus flesh was bound to weigh more than it looked.

She picked up her pace. There was nothing strange about lovers keeping each other’s company at night, but a woman hauling around a man who might have fainted or might be asleep looked suspicious by any reckoning. She reached the bedroom quickly without being caught by anyone, and set Keith down on the bed with something closer to a toss.

— Whump…

“Now what do I do.”

Where the rope with the binding magic on it was kept, she had no idea; Keith had always been the one to fetch it out and set it ready. And she could hardly rummage through another person’s room as she pleased.

“An ordinary rope won’t be any good, though.”

As she rubbed her chin and puzzled over it, her eye fell on his feet, caked thick with mud.

“…First things first, let’s wash those feet.”

Even a wandering knight’s shabby notions of hygiene would not stretch to grit rolling around in the bedsheets. First the filth beaten off with a towel, then water fetched in a basin, a good hard scrubbing with a creamy lather of soap, a rinse, and a fresh towel to finish.

“Huff, huff. Phew.”

Only once she had rolled the dirty sheet up and bundled it at the foot of the bed did she get her breath back.

“That was definitely a workout.”

Some three hours remained until daybreak. Pai dragged a chair over and sat down at the bedside.

“…”

Arms crossed and legs crossed, comfortable as anything, she gazed at Keith Paragon, asleep and dead to the world.

“…This is fun.”

Just looking at his sleeping face was fun.

“It’s soooo much fun I’m losing track of the time.”

Thinking this was her chance, she studied the man’s face closely. She remembered his face ten years from now, and it was not greatly changed from the one in front of her. The line running from his rounded forehead down to his nose was steep as the Nuwa Mountains, and under neat brows his eye sockets were carved deep. And those jet-black lashes.

“…”

Yes. It was exactly as she remembered. Not a hair different from the way he had looked bleeding and dying in her arms.

Which made it all the more chilling.

Which made her chest ache all the more.

Which made it all the more…

“I’ll protect you. No matter what.”

She rubbed at the reddened, wet rims of her eyes as she whispered it. And before she knew it her hand was reaching out toward the man’s cheek…

Keith, my baby…

He heard the sound of the wind.

Baby, come here…

No. It was his mother’s voice.

My baby. My poor baby.

In fact, he did not remember his mother’s voice. Only hair black as blackberries soaked in water, and the cold feel of it. The calluses at her fingertips, the scent of well-ripened apricots…

He remembered her in pieces. She was a collection of shards that shone like glass, and she existed inside him as an idea. And an idea has no voice.

Come here…

Even so, he ‘knew’ that it was his mother’s voice. The voice woke him the way water fills the inside of an ear. He walked through the darkness. To meet his mother.

This way…

Mother, he called, in vain. His mother did not answer. It felt like shouting at a wall. But he knew she was waiting beyond the wall, so he could not stop going forward.

He stretched his hand out beyond the darkness, desperate, aching, yet he could go no further; he struck a black wall. A wall like his mother’s hair. A wall soft and cold.

He opened his eyes. Some sort of angel…

“Eeek!”

“Huh—!”

At the angel’s scream he drew in a breath himself. The hand that had been on the point of touching his face was snatched hurriedly back.

“D— did you sleep well?”

Even the voice that wound about his ear was sweet as fresh cream. The angel looked down at him and smiled awkwardly.

“Good morning.”

“…”

Consciousness had come back to him, but his head answered a beat late. As his focus caught and his vision cleared, he realized that the woman in front of him was not an angel without wings but Pai. His face went hot at the embarrassing mistake, though only for a moment.

“Why is Miss Pai in my room…”

A cold realization prickled across the back of his neck. A groan crushed flat by self-loathing forced its way out between his teeth.

“Did I… slip out of the castle in my sleep again?”

“Yes. I found you.”

His head felt as though it would burst. Half of the severed rope, still tied to the bedpost, came into view. The rest of it should have still been on his own wrist, but there was nothing there at all.

Pai noticed where he was looking and explained.

“The bit that was dangling, I untied and threw away.”

“…I’m sorry. It must have given you a fright.”

“It’s all right. You told me beforehand that you had that condition. And the hour was so very late — luckily I don’t think anyone but me saw.”

He had been keeping his gaze deliberately turned aside; now he suddenly asked.

“But why was Miss Pai outside at that hour.”

“I couldn’t sleep, so I was out for a light walk.”

“I see.”

Keith cleared his throat and fiddled with the clean bedding.

“So… you stayed beside me until I woke.”

“Mm, yes. Two birds with one stone? I still couldn’t get to sleep.”

“When I’ve wandered off like that and lie down again I usually do sleep deeply, but… Haa. So that Enri fellow shoved his own job off onto you.”

“Mr. Enri?”

Pai tilted her head, not seeing why Enri had been brought into it.

“Mr. Enri has to leave the moment day breaks. It seemed a bit much to wake him.”

“What do you mean? Was it not him who moved me?”

“No? I moved you.”

“Sorry?”

He whipped around to look at Pai in shock, then hurriedly turned his head away again at the sight of her in her nightgown.

Of course. If she had been tossing and turning, unable to sleep, and had gone out to walk, she would have thrown a robe over her nightgown and nothing more. Had she put something thick on? It might be March with the snow melting, but the small hours at the White Castle were brutal. If she caught a cold…

No, that’s not what matters right now.

Even Enri had a hard time moving him when he was unconscious. For a woman to carry him on her own was impossible without some kind of implement.

He wet his parched lips with his tongue and asked.

“…How?”

“…Like this?”

As though it were nothing much at all, Pai dragged over a plump pillow and cradled it in a princess carry.

“Kh— kaff.”

Keith coughed as though something had gone down the wrong way, and turned his face from her.