[3] Chapter 1. Reversing the Pendulum of Time (2)
The smell of oil stung her nose, but Fernciana gazed at the hut with a blank expression. She looked down at the torch she was holding with her blood-stained hand and tossed it toward the yard with a thud.
She had liberally doused the inside and outside of the hut, the yard, and even the fence with oil. Perhaps because she had done it once before, she could do it more skillfully than in that memory.
The flames that started from the torch gradually spread across the yard, engulfing the hut, the trees in the garden, everything. It was a fierce blaze as if the gates of hell had opened.
When those flames began to burn even the surrounding air, Fernciana grasped her hair that had grown almost to her feet. Her hand drawing the knife hung at her waist was hard to tell if it was familiar or not, adept or not.
Fernciana bit her lip. The hand gripping the blade tingled with pain. But there was no hesitation. Fernciana cut off her hair just like that. Hair like sapphire shredded into threads scatters. Fernciana threw that hair directly into the flames. The blaze quickly devoured and burned her hair too.
The nape of her neck felt empty. Even in her “dream,” she had no memory of cutting it, so this was the first time in her life she had hair this short. The ends of her hair barely passed her ears. Fernciana rubbed the awkward ends of her hair. Although it was the middle of the night, the blaze was so fierce it was like broad daylight. Fernciana pressed the bridge of her nose hard.
“Really… Again…”
Fernciana let out a sigh mixed with tears. The memories from the dream were so vivid it seemed like a second time, but there were things she didn’t get better at. It felt like her heart was being torn apart.
There were things she couldn’t understand even in her last “dream”. Things she still couldn’t fathom now.
Why did Seollim die?
What did he fight for? Why did Seollim die? If her mother had been kidnapped or murdered, Seollim would have surely talked about it.
But Seollim said it was Eirode, her mother’s “time”. If she really disappeared for some reason unknown to her, because it was her time, why did Seollim even bother fighting them?
For that Emerald Tabula? No matter how precious it was, was it worth risking his life for?
Fernciana lowered her head. Tears began to obscure her vision with no way to stop them, so Fernciana raised her head and looked up at the sky. The stars sparkled dazzlingly. Tears flowed down the corners of her eyes.
“Mother, Ser…”
Now she thought she understood. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a glimpse into the future either. She had returned to the past. If she came back, there must be a reason. In the last moment, she realized something was wrong. Something was wrong. She had thought it was wrong, mistaken.
If she came back, it must be to set right what was wrong.
Then is this not wrong?
Fernciana only gazed at the flames with a blank face.
Then this wasn’t wrong? Ser dying wasn’t wrong? It was necessary, the way it should be? Mother disappearing, that wasn’t wrong?
Then what in the world is wrong with me that I came back to set right?
What should I do now?
What do I do now…?
The same thoughts she had in the last moment envelop her again. Fernciana breathed slowly and spat out those thoughts mixed into each breath, letter by letter. The blaze devoured and burned all the air near her.
*
Fernciana wiped away her tears and moved her steps trudgingly. Although she vomited from seasickness several times in the process, she only brought up stomach acid as she had nothing to eat. The nape of her neck was chilly from cutting her hair up to her ears.
Fernciana took out the pendant she had tucked in her bosom. In the sky above was a moon that looked just like the shape of this pendant.
‘Then is this fake? Has it become a fragment of time?’
She definitely couldn’t sense any of the power felt until the last moment. The most reasonable deduction was that the pendant had exhausted all its power to reverse time. The “real” Emerald Tabula that still had power was probably now in the hands of the emperor…
The emperor, Fernciana held her head upon thinking that far. What she had seen in the imperial palace in the dream came to mind.
Just who was that man who looked exactly like her, only with different hair color? She couldn’t fathom why a portrait of her mother hung in the imperial palace either.
If that wasn’t just a meaningless dream, there were too many things she didn’t know and had to find out.
“Revenge…”
Fernciana stopped for a moment and looked back. There was nothing to be seen beyond the pitch-black darkness. Because she had already burned it all.
Only now she felt she understood something. Seollim did not speak of revenge. He didn’t say the emperor killed him either. He only said she had to find the Emerald Tabula.
“It wasn’t revenge…”
It wasn’t a desire for revenge. That’s not what Seollim wanted.
The one who wanted revenge was herself.
She wanted to take back her vanished mother and dead Seollim, and if she couldn’t take them back, she wanted to ruin things just the same. So those words to retrieve the Emerald Tabula had somehow sharpened inside her and…
“Ah! Really! What the heck is this?!”
Fernciana threw the pendant in a fit then hurriedly picked it up again, roughly wiping away her tears.
The spot where she cut her hair stung as if the knife had grazed it. Fernciana rubbed her exposed, chilly neck then stroked the ends of her hair with her fingers as a thought suddenly occurred to her.
Going down to the village right now was very late, and the road up to the capital probably wouldn’t be comfortable in the future either. Recalling how arduous it was in the previous dream, the tears she had wiped away seemed to well up again.
‘Should I cross-dress while I’m at it?’
Cutting her hair short, dressed in traveler’s clothes even now, and she would probably turn seventeen “this year”. With her age like this too, she felt her gender was ambiguous. Fernciana made her collar a bit stiffer and went down to the village at the foot of the mountain.
It was so late that she barely managed to open the door of an inn that was about to close and get a room. Fernciana, who had been anxious they might chase her out thinking she had run away from home, finally let out a sigh of relief and threw herself on the unfamiliar bed.
The sheet covering the bed was thin and the straw stuffed inside was coarse, but comfort was the first thing that came to mind rather than such things. Fernciana realized it had been a very long time since she last slept in a proper bed.
Before, she had been so busy burning with thoughts of infiltrating the imperial palace and taking revenge that she always slept rough or laid out a sleeping bag. She never had the leisure to casually get an inn room.
“What do I do now…?”
Although there was no basis, she wasn’t very worried about receiving the Emerald Tabula from the emperor. Didn’t the emperor hand it over to her as soon as he saw her even in the dream? Now the problem was something other than revenge or the Emerald Tabula.
That painting hanging in the imperial palace.
She couldn’t think it was someone who resembled or looked similar. Until she spent the last few months in the hut in this forest, Fernciana had always traveled the world by ship with her mother Eirode and Seollim.
She had seen countless people but never anyone with hair color similar to her mother’s or her own. Yet in the imperial palace she had never even thought to go near, there was a portrait of someone who looked exactly like her mother.
And the man who looked exactly the same as her except for hair color.
‘What was his name again? Ter… Terenciana?’
He identified himself as the 2nd prince of the empire. Why an imperial prince had a face that looked like her twin, why a painting that was clearly of her mother hung in the imperial palace, it was all utterly incomprehensible. What the prince said in surprise upon seeing her was definitely “Her Majesty the Empress”.
Well, she took after the face of her mother Eirode, so he could have mistaken her looking at that portrait. Then it goes back to square one.
Just what is her relationship with the people of the imperial palace, with her mother?
Fernciana, lying face down on the bed, untied and ransacked the luggage she had carried. She had painstakingly packed valuables and cash left by Seollim and Eirode.
But this was far from enough to buy information about the imperial family. It would probably be barely enough to cover travel expenses up to the capital.
“Ah… I wish a generous information merchant would just drop from the sky…”
Fernciana muttered as she collapsed and buried herself in the bed. And until then, she did not know. That her wish would be granted exactly as is tomorrow.