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Chapter 2 - Girl of the Wind

A sequel to Shamanic Princess, and an attempt to explain the mysteries that go unexplained in the anime. Three little girls, curious about the fate of the Neutralizer Sarah Mikadzuki, make a pact to find out--and get in way over their heads.

Chapter 2 - Girl of the Wind

Chapter 2 - Girl of the Wind


     The two months had passed, and it was now the day directly before the Festival of Wind. Everybody was in a frenzy of preparation; the masks, the dancing, the stage, the costumes, the everything else. The wind seemed to realize that its festival was approaching—it grew stronger by the day, whipping the trees about in frenzies of green and blossom, sending the ornaments dancing and glittering with its dance.
   Bright colors and flapping banners were everywhere you looked. Vibrant reds and oranges, soft pinks and greens, brilliant blues and purples, glowing whites and yellows—stripes of linen hung from every house, some luminescent, some multicolored, some embroidered with symbols. And on nearly everything, you could see the Eye of Yord, the symbol of the Throne of Yord.
   Ribbons were very much in evidence as well. Mostly red, with some orange and yellows mixed in, they flowed easily in the strengthening winds. Tied to trees, gates, doors, chimneys, and fences alike, the ribbons all streamed like long, flowing hair, following the breeze as it arrowed towards one place—the Plateau of Ribbons.
   However, for once, Lirael, Alanis, and Rana barely noticed the excitement surrounding them. True to their “oath” sworn in Lirael’s front yard, all three were on the track of Sarah Mikadzuki, doing what they did best. Lirael, as the eldest, braved the Elder’s Palace to talk to the Princesses and the Sky Tower to speak with the Neutralizers. Alanis searched closer to home, using her young charms to glean information from the elder or less-magical or wounded citizens of the Guardian World. Rana tore apart the library twice, then rummaged through her own and anybody-who-would-let-her-in’s homes in search of even a sentence about Sarah.
   “I give up,” Rana finally said on this day, laying upside-down on her bed. “Nobody else will let me in. They’re afraid I’ll tear their houses up.” She sighed exasperatedly. “Just because I accidentally[/i] broke that priceless vase in Miss Celine’s house.”
   “Same here,” Alanis sighed, pillowing her head on her arms. “Just the sight of me makes people clam up.”
   Lirael had had no more luck than either of the others. The Neutralizers had just snubbed her outright, and several Princesses had made caustic suggestions about what she could do with her time instead. In a fit of pure pique, she had even tried to obtain an audience with the Elder, but was told that the waiting list was approximately ten months, which was at least[/i] seventeen times longer than forever. Lirael had scrawled her name on the list and departed in disgust.
   “There is[/i] one more place we could try,” Lirael said thoughtfully, her brain squeezing out a useful notion from her chair. “The Plateau of Ribbons. Maybe somebody lives there who could tell us about Miss Sarah.”
   “We’ll never get in,” Rana said from her bed. “You need special permission from the Elder, or you need to be a Neutralizer with important business.”
   “Well, think[/i], Rana!” Lirael retorted. “If the Elder won’t listen to us—and we’re NOT waiting for ten more months—then we need a Neutralizer to let us in.”
   “Who’s gonna let us in?” Alanis asked gloomily.
   Lirael rolled her eyes. “We know Miss Lena. Miss Lena knows Miss Tiara. Miss Tiara is engaged to Mr. Kagetsu. Mr. Kagetsu is a Neutralizer[/i].”
   Rana flipped rightside up on her bed. “You’re right!”
   “But he won’t let us in anyway!” Alanis protested, although she raised her head as well.
   “He will if Miss Tiara tells him to,” Rana said slyly.
   “But Miss Tiara would never tell him to,” Alanis persisted.
   A sigh rose from all three. This was definitely true.
   “We’ll have to go find out,” Lirael said decisively. “Let’s go get Miss Lena.”
 
      *  *  *
 
   Most unfortunately, Mother grabbed them as they were leaving. “Where are you going? It’s time to let the banners fly!”
   “Oh no,” Lirael groaned. “Mother, we have to go see Miss Lena right away!”
   But Mother was inexorable. Slip on the masks, grab the banners, and out the door to the canyon…
   It was tradition on the day before the Festival for young children to take banners out to the canyon and run along the edges, covered by their masks. The run terminated at the Plateau of Ribbons, where the winds would snatch the banners from their hands and whirl them about in a great semi-cyclone of rainbow colors. It could be quite impressive to watch. The banners were supposedly offering-type things for the Throne of Yord. It was beyond any of the girls as to how banners could be an offering to a painting—maybe the Throne liked the show.
   Lirael, Alanis, and Rana went grumpily outside and were swept up in a small parade of the other children, all screaming and holding on tightly to their variously colored banners. Lirael held a dark purple one, Rana a dark blue one, and Alanis a light gold one.
   The mood was so overwhelming that nobody noticed that the three friends were NOT having fun with this. They lagged behind the others and relied on the flap and rustle of the other banners to hide their whispered conversation.
   “Where does Miss Tiara live, anyway?” Rana hissed beneath the shouts and snaps.
   “Miss Lena will know,” Alanis answered. She paused. “Won’t she?”
   “She will, but she might not tell us.” Lirael sighed. “Is there any other way to find out?”
   “The library won’t let me in, but you two could go look,” Rana suggested. “And if worst comes to worst, we can comb the whole Guardian World looking for her.”
   “Maybe we could trick Miss Lena,” Alanis said brightly. “Say we want to train Miss Tiara with Pearls. And then, while she’s distracted, maybe…slip in a few questions, about Mr. Kagetsu and Miss Sarah.”
   “Hello! What’re you talking about?”
   All three jumped and nearly fell off into the canyon.
   A little girl had appeared alongside them as if by magic, a flying silver banner held tightly in her hands. Large, chocolate-brown eyes glowed behind a curtain of wind-tossed lavender hair; her feet were bare beneath her long white dress.
   “Um…Pearls,” Lirael offered, rather lamely.
   “Oh, I love Pearls!” the girl exclaimed. “I could almost beat my brother!”
   Rana, Miss Grammar incarnate, pounced on this. “You mean ‘can.’ I ‘can’ almost beat my brother.”
   “No, I don’t think so.” The girl looked ahead. “Oops! We’d better hurry up. We’ve fallen behind!”
   “Ack!” The quartet leaped ahead to catch up with the main group.
 
   Lirael, Alanis, and Rana let their banners go with great relief and equally great interest in their new friend. She seemed to find joy and excitement in everything; listening to her exclaim over the beauty of the flying banners, the three girls even managed to forget their anxiety about Miss Sarah and Miss Tiara and the whole darn thing. At least, temporarily.
   Rana clapped her hands together. “All right, now that that’s over, let’s go find Miss L—”
   The crowd carried them towards the fields.
   “Ack!”
   They had forgotten this. Typically the younger Guardian World children, after letting the banners fly, would wander the fields picking flowers, playing games, practicing fighting, and so on. A festival feast followed the fieldplay—and if they were not found at the feast, then their mothers would want to know Why.
   Lirael looked about as dark as her hair, but managed to squeeze out a positive notion. “Everybody comes to the feast tonight. Including Miss Lena.”
   “And Miss Tiara and Mr. Kagetsu,” Rana added.
   “And maybe even Miss Sarah!” Alanis cried.
   “Oh? Are you interested in Sarah?” the new girl asked.
   The other three jumped.
   “Don’t you mean Miss[/i] Sarah?” Rana corrected.
   “No.”
   The trio exchanged glances. Then Lirael decided to put their situation down on the table.
   “Yes, we are interested. We’re looking for her story, but we can’t find it. None of the Princesses or Neutralizers would help us.”
   “Or the normal people,” Alanis added.
   “Or the libraries,” Rana finished glumly.
   The girl smiled. “Why, I know a lot about Sarah! What would you like to know?”
   Three jaws dropped. Six eyes fastened on their new idol. Lirael recovered her jaw and blurted out, “Where is she? Miss Sarah?”
   “On the Plateau of Ribbons,” the girl said airily.
   “Wh—”
   Rana butted in. “Who, what, when, where, why? Answer me that about Miss Sarah!”
   The girl rose to Rana’s challenge. “Sarah is Kagetsu’s younger sister and the guardian of the Throne of Yord. She is a Neutralizer, like her brother. She became the Throne’s guardian five years ago, when she was sixteen, on the Plateau, because the Throne willed it so.”
   Rana danced with impatience. “Of course I know that! Everyone knows that! We want the WHOLE story!”
   The little girl shrugged, trying unsuccessfully not to smile. “You asked me who, what, when, where, why. I answered, didn’t I?”
   “Stop splitting hairs!”
   “Like, why Miss Sarah and nobody else?” Alanis interrupted.
   “And why does nobody ever see her anymore?” Lirael added.
   The little girl shrugged again. “Nobody ever sees her because she never comes down from the Sky Tower. She is a part of the Throne of Yord now. She must stay with the Throne forever, because the Throne wanted her, and only her.”
   “Doesn’t she ever get a vacation?” Rana asked.
   “No. The Throne is her top priority. It is food, drink, family, and friend to her. Although…” A shadow passed over the girl’s face. “She misses her old family and friends very much.”
   Alanis sniffed. “I bet she does. Does the Throne ever let her come down to visit them?”
   “No.”
   “How can it stop her?” Lirael asked. “If she’s a Neutralizer, can’t she just neutralize everything it did and come down anyway?”
   “If she did that, she would permanently disrupt the lines of magic flowing from the Throne to the rest of the Guardian World. No magic would ever work right from then on. The Guardian World would fall into ruin without its magic.”
   Rana narrowed her eyes. “How do you know all this? What’s your name?”
   Just then, the feast gong rang. The girls all turned around to look, and saw the tables groaning under the weight of food. They had apparently just been translocated there; they had probably been arranged back in the main city.
   Lirael turned back to the girl, gave a small scream, and grabbed Rana’s arm.
   The girl had vanished without a trace. No sound, no spark, no gust of wind. It would take a very powerful Princess to disappear so quietly.
   A voice sounded in their ears, a whisper born on the faint breeze.
   My name? My name is Sarah…Sarah Mikadzuki.[/i]
 
      *  *  *
 
   “We mustn’t panic,” Rana repeated. “We mustn’t panic. We mustn’t panic.”
   Repeating herself was Rana’s way of panicking.
   Alanis did not repeat herself. She merely hyperventilated. “What do we do, then?!”
   Lirael snorted. “Well, duh! We go find Miss Lena and Miss Tiara and tell them we just saw…you-know-who!”
   Rana stood straighter. “Of course! That’s what we do. Lirael starts from the left side, Alanis from the right, and I’ll start in the middle. Comb the table! One of us will find them!”
   They separated.
   But it seemed that Miss Lena had not come to the feast. Nor had Miss Tiara. They were nowhere to be found.
   Lirael and Alanis met at the halfway point between the tables. “Find her?”
   “No.”
   “How about Rana?”
   They stood on their tiptoes and saw Rana going by, panicking. “Looking for Miss Lena…looking for Miss Lena…”
   “I don’t think so.”
   “There[/i] you are!”
   Lirael squeaked as a firm hand abruptly snatched her collar.
   “Where have you been, young lady? I’ve been looking for you for ten minutes now! I was afraid you’d fallen into the Canyon!”
   Lirael squeaked again as her mother shook her.
   “That was very naughty of you, Lirael! I’m taking you home right now, as punishment!”
   “And don’t think you’re escaping either, young lady,” said Alanis’ mother, swooping down on her own daughter. “For over ten minutes you’ve been missing, and nobody having a scrap of an idea of where you were! We’ve been worried sick.”
   “Mom, no!” Alanis cried. “We have to tell Miss Lena something!”
   “It’s very important!” Rana added, being hauled over by her own mother.
   “Nothing is more important than your own safety,” Rana’s mother scolded. “How could you have left us like that without so much as a message?”
   “But Mom—”
   “Don’t you ‘But Mom’ me, young lady! It’s straight to bed with you! You shall miss dinner as your punishment.”
   “But is Miss Lena here? We have to tell her—”
   “I don’t care if you have to tell her that it’s raining blue pigs and pink dogs! Whatever it is, it can and will wait until tomorrow!”
   “But Mom[/i]—”
   “What did I just say about that?”
 
      *  *  *
 
   Lirael stalked around her room for a while, although she knew that that wouldn’t do any good. She had to do something. Miss Lena had to be told. But how?
   Lirael stared out of the window. The moon was rising, big, fat, and full in the night sky. Laughs and cheers could be heard faintly from the festival area. But Miss Lena wasn’t there. She must still be at her house. How could she sneak out without Mother knowing or finding out?
   The small black-haired girl paced the floor in frustration. If she was a Princess, she could’ve done something. She could have sent her Partner to tell Miss Lena. She could have flown over on a Summoned Monster. She could have flown over under her own power. She could have turned invisible and sneaked out under Mother’s very nose.
   But she wasn’t a Princess. She was just a little four-year-old girl.
   “But you can still do something.”
   Lirael started, and whirled about.
   A young woman with long lavender hair and chocolate brown eyes was floating in her room, the folds of her plain white nightgown flowing in a breeze that was not there. Her wrists and ankles were wreathed in long white ribbons. Her face was thin and elfin, with lines of pain and grief sketched lightly around her mouth. But she was smiling, and her smile was the sweetest Lirael had ever seen.
   “Who are you?” Lirael asked dreamily.
   “My name is Sarah,” the woman said softly. She reached out. “Let me show you what you are looking for.”
   Lirael extended her own hand, but the space between her and Sarah seemed…not solid, certainly, but…it felt as if she was fighting through a thick liquid. Her mind was moving slowly as well, and the adrenaline rush the little girl would have expected from seeing Sarah never came. “Sarah…Sarah Mikadzuki?”
   “Yes.” Sarah stretched her own hand out farther as well, and their fingers touched. Clasped.
   Then Lirael’s house disappeared, and they were flying out over the Guardian World. Lirael looked down, but the fear she would have expected had been similarly suspended from her mind. Instead, a feeling of wonder began to spread through her.
   They flew up higher into the sky, flying towards the moon. Lirael was not a studious girl, but she knew her astronomy lessons, and she knew that the stars were huge balls of gas and fire, not the starry jewels they looked like. But now, these stars seemed to be the ones she had always imagined stars to be. She reached out and touched one; it jingled softly, like a wind chime. It felt warm and smooth—a perfect globe of silver.
   A rainbow spread out in front of them, stretching from the ground below high into the heavens. Sarah led her onto the rainbow, and they sat on it. The colorful band was as solid as a bridge.
   Lirael noticed the ribbons encircling Sarah again, and she decided that she didn’t like them. They weren’t like ordinary ribbons. They drifted around Sarah like…like chains[/i], Lirael thought to herself. Chains tying her to something[/i].
   “Miss Sarah,” Lirael began. Her voice echoed back to her from the stars, a chorus of fairy voices. Lirael paused, then said again, delighting to the sound of the echo, “Miss Sarah…”
   Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah…[/i]the stars sang back.
   “Just Sarah,” Sarah replied, her sweet smile returning.
   Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah…[/i]the stars repeated.
   “Yes,” Lirael said. She wanted to ask her…oh, so many things, but somehow only the least important slipped out. “What are those ribbons?”
   “These?” Sarah lifted one, and the stars repeated These, these, these…[/i] “They are the lines of magic. It is my duty to keep them flowing and steady.”
   Just then, one of the ribbons wound itself into a knot. Sarah took it and kneaded it gently, pulling, pushing, picking it apart with her fingernails. The knot unwound, and the ribbon was smooth again.
   “What are the lines of magic?” Lirael asked, suddenly dreamily curious.
   Sarah’s smile slowly turned upside down. She seemed to be thinking very hard.
   “I’m sorry,” Lirael muttered awkwardly, her ears burning. Sorry, sorry, sorry…[/i] “Should I not have asked?” Asked, asked, asked…[/i]
   “No, that’s not it,” Sarah replied. “It’s just hard…how can I put this in terms you can understand…
   “You know that the Guardian World is just one of many, many worlds in this universe, don’t you? And you know that magic flows between them all?” Lirael nodded. “Well, imagine this universe as a present.” Present, present, present…[/i]
   “A present?” Lirael considered, then inquired, “Like a book or a toy?”
   “Yes, a big, complicated, sparkling toy, tied up in a box with pretty wrapping paper. Magic is like the wrapping paper. It adds snap and flair to the present, but you could give the present just as well without it.” Without it, without it, without it…[/i]
   Lirael was stupefied. “You mean we don’t need magic?”
   Sarah laughed, and her laugh reechoed off the stars in a shower of fairy bells. “Not us. For some creatures, such as Elementals, magic is indeed necessary. But we could exist even without magic. And when the magic gets tangled…” Sarah paused. “Do you know what that means?”
   Lirael started to nod, thought for a moment, and shook her head instead.
   “Hmm.” Sarah picked another knot in her ribbons apart as she thought. “Let’s use the present analogy again. Imagine that you tied the wrapping paper into knots before you wrapped the present. Would the pattern still be the same?”
   “No,” Lirael answered. This was one thing she was sure of.
   “It’s my job to make sure nothing ties the wrapping paper up.”
   Lirael wrinkled her brow. “And the paper is magic, so…” She was getting dizzy, trying to comprehend this. “…it’s your job to make sure…” Ah, she had it. “…magic never gets tied up!”
   “That’s right!” Sarah agreed, smiling again. “When the lines of magic get tangled, they tangle up the spells people try to cast. In other words, if the lines of magic ran by themselves, no magic would do what you would think it would do. Fire would turn to water, and rocks to air. Everything would fall apart, and magic would become the only thing in the universe.”
   “And you keep that from happening?” Lirael asked, astonished. “All by yourself?”
   “Not precisely all by myself,” Sarah answered. “Why do you think our Guardian World has Princesses and Neutralizers?”
   Lirael reflected. “Business?”
   Sarah laughed heartily. “How true! But for another reason, as well. When the lines tangle, rogue magic is unleashed. Princesses seal rogue magics and hurl them back into the pattern. Neutralizers try to keep tangles from occurring by neutralizing clumps of magic.”
   “How does that help anything?”
   “The lines tangle when too much magic is concentrated in one spot. Neutralizers neutralize the magic there, which stops the lines from tangling. Watch my ribbons; I’m sure you’ll see one soon.”
   Lirael stared intently at the ribbons. And sure enough, a few minutes later, a knot formed in the ribbon, but changed its mind halfway and slid smoothly into unruffled ribbon again.
   “How weird,” Lirael said, awed, reaching out and prodding one of the ribbons gently. “But then…”
   A strong wind blew up. The stars jangled. Lirael shielded her eyes and looked quickly at Sarah. Sarah was untouched. The wind did not disturb so much as a hair on her head.
   “Sarah?!” Lirael screamed over the wind.
   “Don’t tell me your name!” Sarah shouted back. “I have to go now! The Throne is calling!”
   The rainbow faded away. Lirael was falling, falling through the sky, and the stars had become mere dots in the sky again. The ground was rushing up towards her…
 
   Lirael’s mother came upstairs shortly afterwards and found Lirael asleep, her head pillowed on her arms, still sitting in her chair but sprawled forward over her little vanity table. She was sleeping quite soundly, so soundly that she barely moved even as Mother quietly laid her in bed and pulled off her shoes. She noticed an old white ribbon caught in her daughter’s hair, so she pulled it out and laid it on the vanity table.
   Lirael slept on, unmoving.
 

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omiyage_umi on April 2, 2006, 4:18:58 PM

omiyage_umi on
omiyage_umiThis was a good chapter it sucks being little... can't friggin do anything yourself no none tells you scraps of anything, anywho It's late but I'm going to continue to read at least two more chapters.