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Fascination – Part 04

Yuki lived happily with the princess and fathered many children, but when it came time for battle, he always brought along a mysterious female warlord with golden hair. Her origins were a mystery. It was said that she was from a northern tribe of horsemen, but her hair and eyes were like those of a foreigner from far to the west, beyond the Silk Road. Her presence as she dashed through the sandy lands on her black horse, her golden hair fluttering in the wind, struck fear in the hearts of the enemy, as though she was a foreign goddess of war. She remained unmarried for the rest of her life, devoting herself solely to battle.

“I am cursed. The mandrake’s curse could come at any moment. So I will not marry. I will have no children. I will serve only as the king’s shadow.”

The woman was reported to have said this to a certain warlord, who spoke to her one night before battle.

Twenty years passed. The country, its territory now doubled in size, was enjoying a period of prosperity. There were no more wars. Then, the female warlord, who had accompanied the king like a shadow, fell ill.

She was running a high fever, and bizarre red spots, similar to the one that had sputtered from the mandrake pot and entered her mouth, appeared all over her pale body. The female warlord kept muttering that the curse had struck, but the ladies-in-waiting tending to her never learned what she meant.

The female warlord grew delirious and started having visions. Nightmares of mandrake plagued her night after night.

One day, the king came to her sickbed for a short visit. The female warlord tried to get up, but to no avail. The king gently stroked the bedridden woman’s long golden hair, now streaked with white, over and over again.

“Thank you for your service over the years,” the king said. “I am what I am today because of you.”

“It was an honor to serve you, my king. Before I met you, I was someone without aspirations, without a purpose, without a place to belong. When I met you, I made it my purpose to make you king. You were my aspiration. I lived the life I wanted.”

“Bairen…” The king trailed off, hesitated for a moment. “Are you truly my sister?”

“There is no way of knowing now.” Bairen laughed. “I simply believed what that man claiming to be my father told me. My mother was gone and there was no way to be certain, but I believed what I wanted to believe.”

“I see. Then I shall believe what I want to believe too, sister.”

“Brother… Farewell.”

“Farewell, my dear.”

Thus they bade goodbye forever. For the next twenty days, Bairen spent her days in a delirious state, but this time there were no more nightmares about the black mandrake.

She dreamed of herself as a little girl, running alone across the dry land of the north, a place she had abandoned long ago. Far away she ran, her long golden hair flowing in the wind.

After twenty days of fighting her illness, Bairen passed away. Shortly before she turned forty years old. She was given a respectful burial as a brave warlord, and entombed in the suburbs with a view of the northern lands.

The mandrake’s curse left Bairen alone as she assisted the king, and after twenty years, suddenly struck and took the woman away. Since then, there had been various tragedies involving the mandrake throughout history.

It was said that the mandrake’s signification, ‘fascination’, came from the last days of this golden-haired, goddess of war, Bairen.

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The carrots were cooked.

Rosy dusk was encroaching outside, its light softly illuminating Victorique, who was lying on the couch, wrapped in jet-black French laces. Kazuya removed the pot off the fire and placed the glistening carrots on a white plate.

“The end,” he said. “And that’s the story about the mandrake, in a faraway place a long, long time ago.”

Victorique gave a soft grunt in response and slowly rose from the couch. Barefoot, she trotted to the kitchen where Kazuya was.

In a very earnest manner, Kazuya carefully arranged the carrots on the plate.

“The battlefield was probably filthy and full of rats,” Victorique said. “No wonder she got typhoid fever.”

“Typhoid fever? Who?” Kazuya asked, surprised.

Victorique, her nose twitching, seemed enthralled by the carrot glacé, so splendidly prepared thanks to the cook’s earnest and meticulous nature. She showed no signs of answering.

“What do you mean by typhoid fever?” Kazuya repeated.

“Hmm?” Victorique eyed him curiously. “The goddess of war in the story died of typhoid fever, didn’t she?”

“Wait, really?”

Victorique held out her hands, and Kazuya quickly handed the plate of carrots to her. Gently he placed a silver fork with the handle in the shape of a swan on it. Then he picked up the book and flipped through the pages.

“There’s no mention of it anywhere,” he said.

Victorique was munching on her food.

“Hey, Victorique.”

Munch.

“Is the glacé good?”

“…Ahuh.”

Sitting on a chair, Victorique was dangling her legs as she brought the sweet glacé to her mouth. Kazuya waited patiently for her to talk.

Victorique cast him a sidelong glance. “Argh, fine,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll explain it to you, then.”

“O-Okay.”

“Bairen contracted typhoid fever on the battlefield. It’s a disease that is common in places with poor sanitation. A recent case, I believe, was during the Boer War at the turn of the last century, when the British invaded South Africa over its gold and diamond deposits. At that time, the death toll of the British army exceeded 10,000 from typhoid, while casualties in battle numbered only 8,000. Apparently, there were plenty of cases at some point in the cities of the New World too, where there were many immigrants. The red spots on Bairen’s body is a characteristic of typhoid fever.”

“Really… I didn’t know that.” Kazuya nodded.

Victorique put down her fork. “Yes, really,” she continued in her deep, husky voice. “Symptoms of typhoid fever include high fever, red spots, and delirium, a state of mind filled with hallucinations and dreams. The visions and nightmares that Bairen saw were probably a result of that.”

“I see.”

“In an asymptomatic carrier, the incubation period of typhoid bacteria could be long. Perhaps Bairen had been a carrier since her time in the North. While she was devoting herself to her brother, the bacteria remained dormant, and once she thought her brother would no longer need her help, she might have let her guard down, causing the bacteria to become active. Either way, it’s a disease that could trigger at any time. It wasn’t the mandrake’s curse.”

“Then how did the princess fall in love with Bairen’s brother?”

“The answer is simple: love. Yuki was quite the looker. Anything related to the mandrake is pure superstition.”

Victorique resumed eating the glacé. Sweetened carrots, cut into bite-size pieces, vanished into her tiny mouth. Kazuya watched her for a while.

“So you eat carrots if they’re sweet,” Kazuya said softly.

“I do.”

“You like it boiled in sugar? What about chestnut glacé?”

“I like it,” Victorique said matter-of-factly.

Kazuya gave a nod.

A square window separated the tiny candy house from the dusky landscape outside, where colorful flowers swayed in the breeze.

“Fascination,” Victorique muttered.

“Hmm?”

“It’s what the mandrake signifies. What spurred the girl, Bairen, was a longing for a world she had never seen before. Her fascination for a man who claimed to be her real father. Her affection for her beautiful brother. The thrill of battle. People are fascinated by all sorts of things, and like butterflies drawn to the fragrance of flowers, they wander the world like phantoms.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Kazuya agreed.

“Not like a dimwitted blockhead like you would understand.”

“I-I do understand. Flowers, pretty and enigmatic things…” Kazuya paused, pondering. “I know what it feels like to be thrilled about things that can’t be explained by logic. I also know that such things can influence people to make significant choices.”

“Indeed.” Victorique nodded.

Kazuya picked up a piece of glacé from the white plate. The carrot was remarkably sweet; a flavor that he could not understand filled his mouth like a sweet nightmare.

“It’s sweet!”

“That’s what makes it delicious.”

Coughing, Kazuya managed to swallow the sweet carrot. He chuckled. Victorique gave him an inquiring look.

Kazuya smiled. “To sum it up, you’re fascinated by books and sugar. I mean, you eat this stuff.”

Victorique snorted in response. She popped a carrot glacé into her mouth. A brief smile flashed across her cold, expressionless face, then vanished, as though sucked into the world beyond.

Kazuya smiled.

The wind blew.

The flowers in their beds stirred, and dark petals soared into the evening sky.