For Odilia’s eighteenth birthday, Erwin prepared her a special gift: a house of her own. The location, however, was within Hikizu village where Odilia had run from four years ago.
Half-way into the forest of By’lyl, Erin asked Odilia to take his hand and to close her eyes as they trudged up the rest of the path. Odilia clenched her trunk in one fist and settled her other gloved hand into her adoptive father’s.
Odilia almost didn’t recognize the location of the house that stood before her when she opened her eyes. Instead of a traditional Kuroban house that used to be her home, a grandiose estate of the western fashion met face.
There was a front door; one that swung inwards instead of sliding across panels, wedged between the red, brick wall. Creamy cobblestones littered the path up the door in which a white picket-fence surrounded the perimeter of the house. In floral pastels, the house was surrounded by bushels of hydrangea.
Odilia slowly approached the house where in the glass windows, her own blank expression reflected as a reaction to this new architecture. However she was not looking at herself in the window, or admiring the craftsmanship of her home. What she saw as the glare of sunlight shifted, was the deep lake where seven cranes flocked.
It was the lake which was once a ditch. A ditch where the Torizora mansion used to stand before it fell to rubble. Odilia’s vision blurred and her throat constructed as she felt hot claustrophobia wrap tight around her.
“The plot was up for sale this previous summer,” Erwin explained as he stepped up next to Odilia. “I had this built thinking out of anyone, you had the right to this land.”
The smell of green grass cut crisp like winter frost as Odilia inhaled a shaky breath.
Erwin placed a hand on Odlia’s shoulder. “Happy birthday, my little nestling.” A documented paper appeared in front of Odilia’s vision. The contract for the land. Odilia didn’t take it.
The girl’s eye remained glued to the house. The glass. The reflection. “Are you leaving me here?”
“It’s been four years,” Erwin mused. “Don’t you want a home to call your own?”
Odilia clenched her teeth. “I like traveling with you.”
“I don’t suppose you want to be a doctor.”
Odilia remained silent.
A soft sigh escaped from Erwin who moved to stand besides Odilia. “If you continue traversing Kuroba with me, the people will talk. They already do.”
“So?”
Erwin glanced at Odilia who had yet to move. “They will continue talking, and although it is none of their business, they will wonder who you are and why you have not married.”
“I don’t care.”
“Well I do,” said Erwin. “I care about normality. If we don’t want to end up burning at the stake as magic users, we must try twice as hard to live a life that society deems acceptable.”
Odilia lowered her bag and finally took the contract between fists. “I left this place for a reason.” There was a hint of sadness in her voice. “Did I not throw away my previous family when I took yours?”
Erwin looked up at the house thoughtfully. “Is that how you see it?”
Odilia waved her arm in the direction of the cranes in the near distance. “I did this to my sister. My parents are gone and the people never cared about the Hakusei.”
“So did you abandon them, or did they abandon you?”
Odilia clenched her jaw. “Doesn’t matter. All I know is that I don’t belong here.” She shoved the contract back at Erwin. “If you want to abandon me like my previous family, at least take me to the Kigoguchi orphanage.
Erwin laughed, startling Odilia. The cranes flapped their wings at sensing the disruption.
“The orphanage only takes in children until the age of seventeen. Eighteen year olds leave and begin their own journey. Like a father to daughter, I want you to start your own journey too. This was once your home,” Erwin grinned at the red-bricked house. “So I think it’s fitting that your journey begins here.”
“Is this some twisted way to get me to face my past?” Odilia turned towards Erwin, a question on her face.
Erwin lifted a gloved hand and swept a lock of red hair behind Odilia’s ear. Her hair was now dyed red with magic by draining the color from the powdered mixture of saffron. It was their attempt at erasing Odilia’s past identity as the Hakusei upon Odilia’s own request. Now they looked like father and daughter. Matching ginger locks, flashing, golden eyes.
Erwin smiled. “This is my way of apologizing, one witch to another. There’s a lie I’d like to reveal.”
“A lie?”
Erwin nodded. “I have taught you everything I know about magic. It’s theory, how to wield it with a wand, how to wield it without a wand. I’ve taught you everything I know from how to levitate objects to controlling the natural elements. I’ve even taught you how to transform.”
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Odilia smiled and nodded her head. She’d grown fond of her ability to shapeshift, which she’d learned a year ago. Her ability to transform into a Steller’s sea eagle fulfilled the thrill and joy of flying.
“But…” Erwin chuckled and looked down at the tips of his shiny tailored shoes. “I could not teach you how to reverse a spell, so I told you it was impossible.”
Odilia frowned, thinking about the many destroyed objects that they’d renewed with magic. “But we’ve reversed spells before-” Odilia stopped as she caught sight of where Erwin’s gaze had now fallen: at the cranes.
“What I taught you to do was cast a spell. Not reverse the past.” Erwin sighed. “Like I said four years ago, the spell on those girls should have broken. Although I have mocked the fae multiple times, there is a reason why they are revered while us witches still stand in their shadows.”
The doctor heaved a heavy chuckle. “Our spells do not last. There is always a limit, and they always break. Typically, by midnight.”
“So-”
“So,” Erwin continued. “While we were in Byakko in the fall two years ago, I met up with an old acquaintance in hopes that they could come up with an explanation for this mystery. They had none. Spells break whether the witch wants it to or not, and it definitely breaks when the witch hopes for it. Instead, they told me what I already knew, that spells can be reversed.”
Odilia froze.
“I didn’t tell you before because there is a difference between spells breaking and spells being reversed.” Erwin looked apologetically into the girl’s eyes. “You can forgive me, can you? Because the nature of reversing a spell means the spell was never cast. That means completely removing the magic that was ever there.” Erwin clasped Odilia’s gloved hands.
“What I’m trying to say here, Odilia, what I mean is, if a witch reverses a spell, they lose their magic. You wouldn’t want to lose your magic, would you?”
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You wouldn’t want to lose your magic, would you?
Erwin Kennedy’s words swam in Odilila’s mind that night as she rolled across her bedsheets. Erwin had given her a room with a bed, but Odilia still found its tall frame uncomfortable. She wished for a futon and blankets to place on the wooden floor.
With her red hair in braids and a cotton nightgown, Odilia lay flat on her back debating the events of this day. The house was magnificent and she felt happy, appreciated by the doctor whom she could now see as her father. However he had lied to her about her magic and had even tried to abandon her here. Why couldn’t she just continue journeying with him? They could just as easily make an excuse for her following his path. She thought he was happy having her with him too.
Odilia felt confused, conflicted by all the new information. The spell on her sister and the other girls should have been broken. Spells break whether the witch wants it to or not. Erwin had said. And Odilia wanted the spell to break. Did she not? Odilia rolled over to her side and struggled to her feet. She wasn’t getting any sleep thinking.
Odilia walked to her glass window which she pushed open. The night spring breeze was sharp. The air, humid. Odilia closed her eyes and tried to relax. She opened them and counted the tiny stars in the distant sky.
An hour must have passed. Odilia couldn’t sleep, so she opened the window even wider. She closed her eyes once more, imagining feathers as her entire body began to warm as if by a fire. The rhythm of her heart quickened pace and adrenaline coursed through her veins and muscles as tendons tensed. Then the sickening feeling came and went in her stomach as she felt herself grow smaller, smaller, smaller.
Odilia opened her eyes as she spread her black wings and lept from the window into the night sky. There was no moon, but the stars sparkled and guided a path into the trees. Bushy tall greens, By’lyl, the forest Odilia once feared was no longer fearful when flight was possible. Odilia wondered if Ai had felt this way when she first flew.
The village was asleep. Midnight descended over Hikizu village as Odilia’s bird form circled above the town and glided amongst the surrounding forest. Dark shadows trailed the girl’s wings as she spun and parcored through the air. She shot through between the houses crowded together by narrow rows. Lamp lights flickered when she passed, then sputtered out. Odilia shot up high. High up her yellow beak sticking to the blanket of stars, then she flipped like an acrobat, letting momentum take her down. Below her is the lake where the cranes flocked.
Odlia dove down, down. Then she flipped onto her belly and skimmed the water, skipping across the cold, wet reflection until she reached the far shore and rested to a stop.
She was a bird dressed in a dark coat except for the thick, white stripe capping the top of her wings and the yellow of her beak and eyes. Odilia regarded her reflection as a Steller's Sea Eagle, the type of bird Erwin had identified as Odilia’s transformation on the first day she had taken flight.
The red-crowned cranes, some sleeping, some preening in the waters, reflected a white contrast around Odilia’s own dark reflection. A certain calm fell upon the girl.
An understanding.
Because in this reflection, she saw what she would never admit to Erwin Kennedy: the past that she had run from four years ago. It was that Odilia would never be accepted into a flock of her own. Not like Ai who had six others surrounding her, sharing the same fate. Odilia was completely her own. Not even Erwin who also had magic in his blood was in true kinship with Odilia. The fact that Erwin was readily able to abandon her at the village, and was a White Tailed Eagle as a bird, was proof of their false family relationship.
Odilia was a black stub of reflection in the calm waters surrounded by the graceful, long-legged cranes. Cold cynicism built up within Odilia from the pit of her stomach in mock sympathy towards Ai who even as a bird, would never be alone.
Finding resolve, Odilia prepared to leave when a white feather disrupted her reflection. When Odilia angrily looked up to the cranes, more feathers joined to flutter down next to the first feather. Odilia’s body tensed, ready to fly at any moment as she saw the cranes flutter and quiver and shed their white feathers from their bodies. Even the black tips of their wings blew in the soft wind and molted away.
Afraid, Odilia pumped every ounce of energy that she could muster into her wings and soared onto the tallest branch of a nearby beech tree. By the time Odilia had grasped what was happening to the cranes below, all the feathers were gone.
Birds flocked no more, and instead, there stood seven young women in the lake like serene naiads dressed in kimono. The kimonos were clearly too tight, the designs four years old. Mako, whose hair used to be a bob cut, energetic Kaori, Nana with her pink bow, curly haired Sakura, quiet Momo, and Ri with her yellow kimono, all of them stood reborn. Odilia released a cry as she recognized a tall, white figure with obsidian silk for hair.
Ai squinted up into the branches of the dark trees when she heard the sharp cry of a bird, but Odilia had already flown away.