Kalie Rana
I was quiet and allowed Maria to finish her game of dress up. I could only assume from her joyous expression while she silently folded me into the cloth like I was origami, that this was one of her favorite aspects of being a maid for Kalie. God only knows how long it will be before I crack though.
What right do you have to say no? What, you’ve stolen one life, now you want to take away the joy of another person’s?
With that thought, I silenced any rising uncomfortability.
Just live with it. Go outside, just figure out where the hell you are.
And so, I did. I started off on my own two feet leading the way as Maria followed close behind. By the time that we were in the hallway proper, I realized that she had produced something that looked like an old-fashioned wheelchair and was following close behind me.
“If that was an option, why didn’t you tell me?”
“The great Petrel told me not to M’lady,” Maria said, averting her eyes.
“The Great Petrel?”
“Your grandmother M’lady. Did you forget?”
“Oh, of course. I’m sorry, just a little foggy still.” My Grandmother is called the Petrel? What an odd name. A title of course, but still it was not exactly something I was expecting. The other thing that I wasn’t expecting, but quickly came to realize was that while I had thought that Kalie Rana and her family were rich, I don’t quite think I understood just how rich they were. The hallway outside of my bedroom was long for sure, with many doors lining it, but it wasn’t until we left the “apartments” and entered the main house that I realized just how grand of a house this was.
While my room and the hallway it was connected to held a sort of “old european-esque” style to them, it wasn’t until we entered the main hall that things took a turn for the bizarre. Huge murals covered the walls of the hall depicting… depicting… well, I wasn’t quite sure if I was being honest. Like the mirror box in my room, there was a strong ocean motif but in the hall there were images of grand figures doing battle it seemed. A fleet travelling over the ocean. And most importantly, within the grand frescos were depictions of extreme actions that could only be explained by overactive imaginations, or by magic.
“Are you alright?” Maria approached me with the wheelchair as I stood dumbfounded by the sight of the grandeur of the hall.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“Did you want to sit down for a moment? I would be happy to—”
“I’m alright. Thank you.”
I didn’t need to be making her do more for me than she already had. I didn’t particularly deserve it after all.
In an attempt to break her attention from me, I turned and pointed where I assumed was deeper into the house. At the end of the main hall, there was a large door flanked by a pair of staircases. The door itself carried on with the same oceanic theme, but looked even more expensive than the rest of the house so far.
“What’s over there?” I asked.
“The throne room?”
“Oh, of course. I’m sorry.”
Two things. Firstly, I really needed to do a better job at not sounding completely out of depth. Secondly, this is a palace? Wait, does that mean that I’m royalty? Well that changes things a bit. Really, it means that I didn’t just steal the life of some little girl, but stole the life of an honest to goodness princess. Great, that just makes me feel even better.
It was another thing that I needed to add to the pile of things I needed to worry about. What did it really even mean to be royalty? Because Kalie was so young, it was probably fairly easy for me to just pretend to be a little girl and go from there. But, I knew, that before long, there were going to be customs and responsibilities that I would need to understand.
Thank god Kalie is so young, at least I’ll have a few years to figure out this “acting like a lady” thing, before I’m to be married off somewhere.
I had made a point of asking as few questions as possible while confined to my room. Ashreal was too sharp, and the thought of her discovering that I had replaced her little sister wasn’t a pleasant one.
“On second thought, would you mind if I sat?” It wasn’t that I was tired, far from it, I actually felt even better than before, now that I was actually out and about. But, if Maria was the one leading the way, that would keep me out of trouble.
Probably.
Maria slowed down as we approached the doors leading outside. If she wasn’t wanting to head outside, she was doing a good job of not showing it up until then. But, as she pushed me through the open palace doors, I was quick to understand why. Inside of the large house I could barely hear a thing, but outside it felt like the wind was building up toward a hurricane or something worse. The cool wind smelt strongly of salt and rain.
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The ocean? That would explain the art.
“While I don’t think I can take you up the fjord, would you want to go visit the lord’s harbor? I don’t know if any of the boats are coming in today from the mainland, but there will be a nice view of the Sea of Thorns I’m sure,” Maria needed to lean in close as she spoke, opting to speak close to my ear rather than attempt to shout over the building wind.
“Sure!” While the top of a cliff may be a good place to get a better idea of where I was, heading to somewhere like a harbor was probably the next best option. You can tell a lot about a place if you see who’s coming and going.
While it initially seemed like a good plan to head out to the harbor to get a good idea of this new world, I quickly began to regret my choice as Maria began to struggle to press through the intense wind, using me and my chair as a windbreak. The path that she took was sufficiently royal looking, a smoothly cobbled path made from the same dark stones as the rest of the house. The only thing it was missing really was any sort of greenery. The terrain that surrounded the sloped path was just as barren and made up almost entirely of sharp rocks. Thankfully, as we descended toward the water in front of us, the intensity of the wind declined as well. My biggest surprise was that besides the large palace nestled between the cliffs behind us, there was relatively little in the way of development that I could see. Maybe that was by design, hide the slums away from where any important people could see.
Before I even fully realized it, we arrived at the top of a large sharp cliff, overlooking the large harbor below. The fjord’s high cliff walls stretched around the wide inlet below. Dotted around the far shores was a smattering of houses and shacks that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a show about vikings. The harbor itself was significantly more developed, made almost entirely out of smooth black stones just like the palace. A few small boats seemed to be returning to harbor, probably fishing boats returning from their daily trawl.
Rather than heading toward the switch backing path leading down to the harbor, Maria took the much less sloped path heading along the cliffside. We weren’t particularly high over the roofs of the harbor buildings, but we still towered over the water itself. The pathway came to an end at a raised viewing platform.
“I’m sorry M’lady, but you’ll need to walk from here, unless you want to return to your room?”
While I had already learned a fair amount from this little outing, I had barely had a chance to fully take in this new land that I had found myself in. The rocky and sheer cliffs reminded me of pictures that I had seen of scandiavian cliffs, but the buildings and the few people I had seen were far from the nordic people of my old world. Even the few small fishing boats were bizarre as I got a better look at them. Sleek and single sailed, with oil colored wood, even the tiny ships were imposing in their almost venomous quality.
“I’ll stand, I want to get a better look.”
“Of course M’lady. If you need me, I’ll be here.” Maria moved around the wheel chair going from bracing it to acting as a crutch to me. I hadn’t found walking to be very difficult as we were travelling through the palace, but under the still harsh winds, it had become a difficult task. Mostly, I was just thankful that I hadn’t felt any of the precursors of my Mana sickness creeping up.
Maria helped me climb the few stone stairs that separated the pathway from the platform, and then led me to the railingless edge. I made a mental note to stand fairly far back from the edge, because while there was a small knee high bench that rimmed the platform, I wasn’t nearly confident enough that a particularly powerful gust of wind wouldn’t be able to launch this frail body off the edge. Finally, I had my opportunity to get a really solid look at the harbor below us, leading Maria over to the closest edge, she seemed a little surprised.
“You didn’t want to look out over the sea?”
“Oh,” I said, “of course! But, I thought I had seen something interesting down there. Thankfully, the ocean will still be the ocean if I look in a moment.”
“If you say so M’lady.”
Oh shit. Was that not a funny joke? Honestly, there was no telling if that would’ve qualified as a joke in my previous life either, but that was at least what I was attempting.
“I’ll just be a moment!” I said, breaking away from Maria, getting as close to the bench as I dared. From the high vantage point, the people scurrying about the harbor below were hard to make out in specific, but a few things became clear very quickly. The average person below looked much more like Kalie than they did the fair skinned Maria. I couldn’t help but breathe a slight sigh of relief.
At the very least, even if I was an actual princess, I wasn’t going to be standing out otherwise.
Continuing to watch the business on the dock, another thing became instantly clear, this world was not my own. A part of me hoped that this was all some sort of time travel or something. At the very least, then I would know what to expect at least a little bit. But, that hope was instantly smashed when I caught a glance at a wagon filled to the brim with what looked like a bunch of bright blue turkey-like birds. I was too far away from them to make out any specifics, but the moment I laid eyes on them, a weirdness alarm started going off in my head.
Hell, if that was all that I saw from that viewing platform, I could’ve at least attempted to write off all the rest of the evidence and convince myself if I waited long enough I’d be able to find a Starbucks or something. Well, that hope was dashed the moment I heard Maria gasp audibly, over the wind.
“Oh Leona above!” Maria’s hands were wrapped around her face, doing their best to hide the horror that plastered her across her face.
“What? What is it?” She couldn’t bring herself to speak, only raise a finger out over the water. Following the line of her finger, I could just barely make out the black-shine of a capsized fishing boat. It looked to be fairly far out from the harbor and the nearest of the rocky shores was still quite a distance from it. “How did that even happen? Did you see?”
“I… I did.” Maria’s words didn’t match up with the relative mundanity that I would assume a sea-fairing people would find a capsize to be.
“Well? What was it? The wind maybe?”
“A… a… Leviathan.”
Leviathan? What the hell is a leviathan?
Seemingly as an answer to my thought itself, the water around the boat began to bubble. Even though it was so far in the distance, I could just start to see the dark forms of somebody fleeing the boat before the water around them erupted. Breaching out of the water, a gigantic almost clear snake like creature swallowed the boat and the men whole. And for a single, solitary moment, I watched as the black eyes of the creature seemingly pierced into me before it descended back into the tumultuous waters.
“What in the world was—” Before I could even finish asking my question, the water exploded once again, this time however the explosion was an impact exposing the nearly invisible body of the giant serpent again. Accompanying the explosion was something that I didn’t expect.
The most beautiful song I had ever heard bracing forth from over the cliff’s edges above us.