1 Soul Bound
1.3 Making a Splash
1.3.2 An Allotropic Realignment
1.3.2.27 Seishin minashigo
The match was already in progress when they arrived, refereed by Melafon, the aging night guard from the orphanage that Kafana had spoken with at Antonio’s funeral. His bones might ache too much to keep up with a pack of scrimmaging twelve year olds, but his eyes were still keen. He blew sharply upon his whistle and promptly recruited Alderney and Wellington to watch the touchlines. For the most important role, the assistant referee who’d keep up with the pack and hopefully deter outright stabbing or maiming, Melafon didn’t pick Bulgaria, who’d been training the orphans and was obviously biased. He picked Tomsk, whose position as an honorary captain of the watch had given him plenty of time to practice upon hardened criminals a look that said: “yes, I know exactly what you’re thinking of doing, and your chances of getting away with it are low. Very very low.”
Bulgaria, unphased, took the opportunity of the play being paused to gather the Phantoms around him for a few words of last minute coaching and Bungo, seeing this, walked over to the rather larger lads making up the Juveniles, offering to give them some pointers.
Which, when play resumed, left Kafana alone by herself as a spectator. She could see High Master Carpenter Morelato on the other side of the pitch, along with the other staff from Enduring Edifices and the towering labourers they’d hired to haul timbers and drive wagons. Watching them cheer players with similar features to their own, it was clear that the Juveniles were their sons and daughters, still too young for formal apprenticeships, but not too young to lend their parents a hand. Or to pick up rudimentary football skills when these strange new ‘Adventurers’ had turned up nearby, offering to teach anyone interested. In arlife time only seven days had passed since Alderney had used Bungo’s new neoprene to craft Covob’s first ever football.
Inside Soul Bound, however, a whole subjective month had passed and apparently that had been enough for the spirit praised by Bulgaria to grip even those who weren’t playing. Looking at the younger orphans jumping and screaming the numbers drawn in charcoal on the player’s clothing, every time a Phantom player gained control over the ball and dribbled it a few meters further towards the Juvenile’s goal, she knew they’d see it as a betrayal if she walked over to the other side and stood next to Morelato. She’d approached the pitch from their side, and that made her theirs.
The Juvenile players had obviously been picked for height and sturdiness. They weren’t too nimble but long legs gave them speed and their stamina seemed unlimited. Their largest player, shirt #1, stayed back by their goal, but despite the heat the other ten players would tirelessly run towards wherever the ball was at that moment, then all kick at it ruthlessly until one of them gained possession, at which point that player would dribble the ball as fast as they could in a direct line towards the Phantom’s goal - a rough timber frame hung with a fisherman’s net that some workmen had cobbled together for this historic match.
The Phantoms, on the other hand, had been coached by Bulgaria on tactics as well as the rules of the game. They stayed spread out, reacting to movements of the ball and which team possessed it, but sticking to their assigned overlapping regions and roles. Shirt numbers 2 to 5 seemed primarily defensive, staying between the ball and their own goal, with the team captain (a wild lad she’d seen in the Vecci camp with Nicolo, part Lunadan perhaps?) #4 being the most successful, carefully timing his tackles for when the towering opponent was off balance just after a kick, and deftly twitching the ball away before sending it soaring over the heads of the pursuing Juvenile pack to land neatly at the feet of whichever member of the Phantoms was well away from any of the Juveniles and best positioned to make good use of it.
From there it would get passed from player to player, with the aim of getting it to the Phantoms’ other skilled player, #9 their striker, a lanky girl with scarred arms, strong legs and a wicked grin that illuminated her face every time she got an opportunity to try smashing the ball past the shovel sized hands of the Juvenile’s immense goalie.
It didn’t always reach her. Many of the Phantoms were low level and, on top of that, had the effect of the points they’d allocated in STR and DEX stats still limited by the childhood penalty multiplier. Others had been busy tending goats or engaged in orphanage chores, which limited their time to practice their accuracy and ball control skills. So Kafana was not surprised by the frequent missed passes, which allowed the Juvenile pack to catch up with the ball, or it rolling into touch which caused a whistle blast and a Juvenile being handed the ball for a throw-in.
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Even with Tomsk awarding penalty kicks any time he spotted deliberate violence, it still reminded Kafana of a battlefield, as the players (especially the Phantoms’ smaller ones) shrugged off limps and bleeding noses with the pride of warriors determined to keep standing by their shield brothers. Yet, despite that, the Phantoms kept the pressure on, with the greater advantage they gained from each period of possessing the ball being more than sufficient to outweigh the frequency with which the Juveniles won the individual skirmishes.
On her third opportunity, the Phantoms’ striker faked an intention of sending the ball towards the top left corner of the goal net, where her previous two shots had been sent, but then (once the goalie had lumbered left) she changed step at the last moment and sent it smoothly rolling into the bottom right corner of the net, beyond the reach of even the arms of a half-giant. The crowd went wild.
Melafon blew his whistle and Wellington solemnly updated a large roll of paper he’d fastened to a timber fetched for him by one of Morelato’s journeymen.
J P
0 - 0
0 - 1
Kafana cheered, along with what seemed at least 50 of the orphans. Was every one of them here, except the toddlers so young they couldn’t be trusted beyond range of the nursemaid’s supervision? Looking around she spotted a familiar face, showing a smile that contained approval for his team scoring a goal, but that was also touched with a reserve and distance which hadn’t been present before his brother died. Nicolo. She walked over to him and, without needing words to discuss it, they drew back a distance from the crowd to where they could talk privately. She gave him a hug, which he accepted tentatively at first, but then with increasing desperation until he was sobbing in her arms. She held him, stroking his hair with one hand and softly singing to him the sad lines of the Takeda lullaby until he regained control, putting back on the strong face he’d been publicly maintaining.
Nicolo: “That’s a lovely tune. But your breathing didn’t match the words I heard. Was it magic? Can you teach it to me?”
He obviously didn’t want another person asking “How are you doing?”, and she let him lead the conversation. Was that her being a coward? Perhaps a little, yet her instincts were telling her that right now he’d gain more from feeling in control. Sometimes people, even those who faced the physical threats of swords or bruising kicks with equanimity, could be stricken with a terrible sense of being vulnerable when faced with a situation in which they feared they might be pushed into expressing with words a fact they desperately didn’t want to even think about.
Kafana: “It comes from a proud island nation and was sung long long ago, in a time when the descendants of one group of people were seen as impure, tainted by their ancestry and fit only for menial work involving the corpses, the Burakumin, the hamlet people. They lived tough lives, and the song is the lament of a mother forced to leave her own child alone in order to struggle up a mountain each day, to serve in some noble’s house as nursemaid to his spoiled brats. I sang the original and, if magic translated the words so you could understand them, it came from the deities and not from me.”
Nicolo thought for a moment.
Nicolo: “Like some of the other songs you taught me? When I copy them exactly, I can phrase my breathing as you do. But if I think about the lyrics too much or try to alter them, the pattern doesn’t match and I have to develop and practice my own delivery. I’d still like to learn it, and you did promise. I’m not afraid of your purple gem, you know - I know you won’t hurt me if you enter my mind.”
Kafana: “I’d never intend to hurt you. But I’m untrained in mind magic. I was given the gem by a friend, High Master Mage Flavio, who had it from my priestly trainer, Suor Isabella, who inherited it from her father, the pharmacist Dottore. But, for certain reasons, he didn’t get an opportunity to do more than pass it onto me. Can it wait?”
He gave her a knowing look.
Nicolo: “You’re still terrible at lying, Kafana. You’d never survive as an orphan. What’s the real reason?”