Chapter 42
Note: Long chapter. :)
P.S.: Can you guess who's on the cover picture?
June 29th - Grythen
“My arm swelled to about twice the size and looked like a pig trotter. It was so funny. It hurt a lot for a few hours though,” Kismette made a face at the memory.
The doctor’s eyebrow twitched a little as he continued to scribble down messy notes. He had opened this clinic with a partner and built it up to such a good reputation that almost everyone in Grythen came to them. He didn’t want to do a slipshod job or risk getting a bad review from her, no matter how much more time she is taking compared to the normal patients. “Did they give you a cast?”
“A… a cast? What’s a cast?”
“Er,” the doctor scratched his hairy moustache. He never had to explain what a cast was. “It is something hard that wraps around your broken bone so that it heals correctly. It prevents you from displacing your bone after it has been aligned correctly.”
Kismette cocked her head to one side and began to examine her arm. Her bottom lip disappeared under her front teeth fleetingly before remembering that Annie wanted her to drop that bad habit. “But I didn’t break my arm. When someone breaks a bone in Reensville, they become deformed or disabled. Nobody knew what to do and nobody had the money to send them elsewhere. My arm looks pretty good to me now, so it couldn’t have been broken.”
“Hmm…” the doctor looked down at his notes, struggling for an explanation to his patient’s peculiar situation. “It did sound like your arm was fractured. We should do a scan. Broken bones leave scars when they heal. Are you sure you were in Reensville the whole time?”
Kismette nodded intently and gave him the straightest face she could muster. She had a feeling the doctor did not trust her story. “My matron was there. You could ask her. Is that important?”
“Oh, yes, of course. It meant you were out of the circle-the magic well’s range,” the doctor quickly replied. ”Let’s move on to our next segment now, shall we? I was requested to get your DNA for a match-up.”
“A match-up?”
The doctor sighed. He should have left ‘match-up’ out of his sentence. He didn’t like that he was having difficulty in answering most of her questions too. It made him feel unprofessional. “To match you to your, er, relatives. If there happens to be a record of any of your relatives’ DNA stored in the database, we’ll be able to link you to that person and start the search from there.”
Kismette’s face lit up. “Wow, I didn’t know you could do that! Do you have everyone’s DNA? How does mine look like?”
The doctor blinked as he tried to recall the basic explanations learnt in primary school. “Your DNA basically looks like a twisted ladder. Oh, and of course we don’t have everyone’s DNA. Come, now, I just need to swab your cheek with this.” He held up a cotton bud. “Painless and bloodless.”
Kismette knitted her brows. A twisted ladder? Like the shaky wooden ladder leaning against the barn or the metal ones that can open into an ‘A’ and stand on their own? She leaned a side of her face forward as the doctor reached towards her with the fluffy wand.
“Um. No. I need to swab the inside of your cheek.”
“Oh.” Kismette gave a small awkward laugh. “But, uh, if you don’t have everyone’s DNA, how are you going to match me to my family? How come you have some people’s DNA but not others’?”
“Well, we record the DNA of people who were arrested and from this database, there might be someone who can lead us to your family. Maybe a distant cousin or something like that,” he answered, sounding a little tired.
Kismette pressed her lips together to keep herself from chewing them, realising that perhaps it wasn’t such a good thing if they were able to find her family after all.
July 1st - Grythen
Mejaine
Why can’t I fall asleep at night?
July 2nd - Grythen
Kismette
Annie’s brows were pinched in a snobbish frown. “Your skirt is a little too short, Darling. One should learn to have more self-respect,” she spoke from her red velvet couch on the second floor landing of the Viken Manor. The main highlight of the parlour was a boring curtain of water falling from ceiling to ground.
Kismette jolted back from the acidity in Annie’s tone. She could feel her face burning as her hands flew down to her skirt in a vain attempt at pulling it longer. It had been a hot summer day. “I will dress in a more appropriate style the next time,” she lowered her head.
“Oh, don’t worry. We have our own tailors. I will inform them what style suits my daughter-in-law best and all you have to do is let him take your measurements, then sit back and relax,” Annie put on her perfunctory smile again.
Kismette sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly instead of replying. She thought about the first time she met Annie. She was such a sweet lady then, amiable and welcoming. Now, she was a bossy snob. Each meeting with her was worse than the previous one. Was this what people meant by ‘revealing one’s true colours’?
The room remained silent for a few seconds. Chairon took this opportunity to raise another issue, one of greater significance to him. “Ah, what about the code of conduct for a respectful lady, mother?”
Kismette shot him a fierce glance, but he started counting the lines on his shirt instead. Chairon was no longer on her side, it seemed.
“Yes, yes, I almost forgot this very important thing,” Annie sat a little straighter in her seat. “We, the Vikens, are well-respected by all because we know how to carry ourselves. From the day one takes our honourable name, one must draw the line between the friends one has. Especially the men,” she added upon seeing the confusion on Kismette’s face. “I will not tolerate any gossiping about any of our family members, am I clear?”
“Draw what line? My friends are all normal people and I-”
“There are many virtuous ladies in court that one can meet to chat and pick up useful skills from,” Annie interrupted curtly. “They are all from good families, so don’t worry. This can only be beneficial. As for men… your husband will more than suffice.”
“What do you mean by that?” Kismette looked at her in distaste. “I do have male friends who are not for… for whatever purposes you are thinking about!” she blurted, unable to contain herself.
Annie glowered from her throne, tilting her head up as though to give a literal display of looking down on someone. She shook her head in irritancy and made loud, disapproving sounds with her tongue. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. A country orphan indeed. Which respectful lady meets other men in isolation at night?”
Kismette looked away resolutely. Restraining her facial muscles was proving to be hard enough already. If she opened her mouth, who knew what horrible things might fall out.
July 3rd - Grythen
Evelynn
Evelynn twirled a lock of her glossy blonde hair from the nape of her neck and tugged a few times, releasing them only when it stung. She looked around in slight resentment at the plainness of her room before her mind returned to its previous thought-Chairon was getting married. And the bride would not be her.
Her attention switched to the scab on her forearm. She had fallen while walking down the stairs, distracted by something she couldn’t remember now. Or was she simply spaced out, her mind a complete blank? Oh, whatever. Like it matters. She began to pick at the edges of the scab with her nails, peeling it in earnest, knowing that it would make her bleed and probably leave an ugly scar too. But the pain felt so good. So, so good.
Chairon’s upcoming wedding loomed in her mind again upon completing the task at hand. This cannot go on. I must do something.
She marched to her dressing table to line her eyes and colour her lips. Her gaze into the mirror soon soured with discontent as she turned her face from side to side. She recalled seeing a girl with deeper cheek hollows yesterday while out shopping at the second-hand store. Her legs were thinner and longer too, and her waist was probably two inches smaller than mine.
She paused. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She wanted to be healthy too. Healthy and slim, not scrawny. She didn’t mean to be so obsessed with her food, but she couldn’t help it. She had been planning to stop this madness ever since she achieved her goal weight last week, but it never felt enough. She could never look at food the same way again, not after she knew all about the sugar and fat hidden in them.
She snapped out of her daydream, remembering that she had been preparing to leave her room. “You stupid fat bitch,” she snarled at her reflection. “No wonder Chairon doesn’t love you.”
July 10th - Grythen
Kismette
By now, Kismette had been used to receiving ‘mysterious’ gifts from Chairon through the mail, except that they were not really mysterious-if they weren’t exquisite chocolates from the finest confectionery store of that country, they were precious stones of the highest quality. Today, however, gave her a real surprise.
Hmm… She turned the small, flat parcel all over and tapped it lightly. Something dense and hard… Curious, her fingers started picking at the edges of the brown paper wrapping even before her foot kicked her front door shut.
An excited gasp escaped her lips: it was a paperback, slightly bigger than her hand with half a rainbow stretched across its entire length and the sun peeking out from behind, entitled ‘1000 Fun Facts’. Without delay, she opened the book to the first page. Instead, a note fell out:
To the royal Queen Cat,
I saw this in a bookstore and thought you’ll like it.
Sorry I landed you into trouble.
Your insolent fool
She bit her lower lip.
Her heart was doing that dance again.
July 14th - Grythen
“A penny for your thoughts.” Jeremy sat at the rim of the palace’s sundial, beside his pupil.
“Why spend a penny when you could see them all for free?” she muttered softly. Her schedule had been filled with meeting the wedding planner, training, meeting the wedding planner again, eating dinner at the Viken Manor, and meeting the wedding planner for the umpteenth time to decide on something trivial. She needed to sit here and just breathe for a while. And think.
Jeremy smiled. “But vocalising your thoughts would make you feel better, don’t you think?”
Kismette fiddled with her engagement ring and tried to smile for him too. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
“How about the first thing that comes to your mind right now?”
“What colour should my bouquet be?” she blurted. “I don’t know anything about colour coordination. I can’t get married.”
“And that is the reason you can’t get married? Come on, child, I wouldn’t tell anyone else,” he lowered his voice slightly and winked at her.
Kismette squirmed in her seat for a while and then grinned. “Annie is so horrible. I hate her.”
Jeremy chuckled at her bluntness and nodded. “Ah, yes, I hate her too. Did you notice how she always twitches her nose?”
Both of them burst into laughter with sudden camaraderie in their shared secret. “But I never saw her do anything bad to you,” Kismette piped. “Why would you hate her?”
The old man looked up at the sky as a breeze whistled through the trees. “I cannot see the reason for people grading everyone with a hierarchy and considering some others as lower life forms.”
The healer considered his words for a while before nodding her head in agreement. He could see another string of thoughts swirling around in her mind like a current that flows in a circular path. He braced himself for her next question.
“Jeremy…” she whispered, afraid that she was crossing the line, “have you ever been married? How did it feel like? Is it supposed to feel so confusing?”
He drew in a long breath. It wasn’t something he was uncomfortable to share with her, but something that still brought him pain. “I have never been married, but I almost did. My father forbade my marriage simply because she was of a low status. And the worse thing was that I could read everything my father thought about her.”
“He looked down on her not because of her character, but because of her family background. He didn’t even bothered to get to know her, the woman his son was so madly in love with. It didn’t make any sense at all to hate someone so much when you barely knew her.”
“We decided to elope. I was ready to give up everything for her. And for two long weeks, we planned our journey and met up in secret every night, discussing how we would decorate our little bakery and the names for our future children. Both of us loved children. We couldn’t decide whether we should have five or six.”
“It didn’t matter at all what my father thought. We knew what we had was too precious.”
“Then, on the night before we were setting off, she admitted that she stayed with me only for my wealth. She told me she would never leave if I refused to steal my father’s money. Of course I wouldn’t. She knew I wouldn’t. Not only did she break up with me, she told everyone in the city about our plans and how I was a foolish rich kid living in fantasy world. The deeper your love runs, the stronger your hate burns.”
“My father mocked at me and told me how he was right all along. I buried myself in my work, angry and blind. I never saw her again until a month later, until it was too late. It… it was her funeral.”
Jeremy removed his spectacles and pinched the inner corners of his eyes, trying to hold his tears back. “She… died from… stomach cancer.”
Kismette blinked back her own tears. She could think of nothing to say.
“I… I had all the money to treat her. We could always stall our plans of running away until she regained her health. She thought it would be better instead if I made up with my father. She thought cancer was something untreatable. Her family was angry at me. They said she… she cried for me in her sleep during her last days.”
“My father denied it was one of those underhand plots he was so apt in spinning in his business arena, but I refused to believe him. I have seen how he played both friends and foes alike and trusted no one. I then swore that I would never carry the family line on to break the chain of the eldest sons. Till this day, I have no idea if my father had a hand in this. His thoughts were one of the hardest to decipher; he lies even to himself, probably because he knew I would see them.”
“But I care not for my narrow-minded father. He would have disowned me anyway, if not for my capabilities in court. My greatest sorrow is that I actually believed her when she said her love for me wasn’t real. I have let her down so horribly, so completely.” His voice was barely a hoarse whisper. “My lack of faith in her shows how little I deserved her.”
The old man looked up at the sky once more, his cropped grey hair fluttering as the breeze picked up again. A familiar face seemed to be hidden behind the clouds as he continued to stare into the endless blue. “Regret is such a terrible thing, child… such a terrible thing…”
Ning: My apologies for the huge delay in updating without informing you guys beforehand! :( Time really flew for me and I didn't even realise that it has already been a month since the previous chapter. I've only had 4 non-work days since 15th May because I took up multiple jobs concurrently. Is that a valid excuse for ditching you guys without warning? No. O_O I'm really really sorry, guys. :(
Anyway, here's some tidbit for yer (I vaguely remember someone asking about this, actually, but I can't find the comment for it now so I don't know who did. ._.):
I SWEAR I DID NOTHING TO MAKE THEIR BOLTS THIS WAY! In fact, I set their turn ons and offs as lame things like stink and vampirism so that they wouldn't heart-fart each other. Coincidence much? :P This is, by the way, not related to the story. *cough*
Lastly, a quick shout-out to Emmie (cmespy15): You were right in one of your guesses about Jeremy and Annie! Which was why I couldn't tell you if you were right or wrong, lol!
Okay, I'm about to faint now. x_x Night, guys!
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