Fir Tree Castle was a spear blade rising from the Daeier Plateau. Cold and desolate, it gleamed sharply, standing alone. Its lord was also called the King of Fir Trees. They had neither a territory broad enough, nor wealth, nor a large population to justify calling themselves a king, yet no one could say the name did not suit them. By origin, they were minor lords who had sworn loyalty to the Kingdom of Northern Maer. At the same time, they ruled the famed elite Daeier spearmen.
When the King of Fir Trees, Jaeim Daeier, fell in battle and his wife Rosia became lord, the family had three sons, yet none of them succeeded him, and all vanished in turn. As the years passed, only one grandson and one granddaughter remained to the aging Rosia. Jaeim Daeier, who shared his grandfather’s name, and Kyprosa Daeier, named by her father after the hinoki cypress.
The hinoki cypress was a tree that symbolized graves, death, and eternal suffering, so people clicked their tongues and called it strange. Kyprosa’s life was worse than her name. Her father left the castle after being called a madman, and her mother abandoned her newborn daughter and returned to her own family. Her grandmother, the lord, hated her and let her grow up among the maids as a kitchen drudge.
On the day her father, who had left the castle, sent her younger sister Ochidna back, Rosia flew into a rage and ordered the baby to be thrown away. Kyprosa went out alone in the middle of the night. She tried to find the baby abandoned in the forest, but before she knew it, she had lost her way. It was a time when a deadly cold was approaching. She walked and walked, yet not a single hunter’s hut appeared. Instead, the starlight gradually faded, and a high cliff blocked her path. She had taken the wrong road entirely. At this rate, she would freeze to death before she could save the baby.
Half resigned, Kyprosa walked along the cliff. Then she found a narrow crevice, barely wide enough for an adult to squeeze into. Whatever lay inside, it had to be better than the cutting wind outside, so she went in. The entrance was tight, but as she felt her way forward with her hands along the sides, the space suddenly opened up. Lights shone all around, and Kyprosa doubted her own eyes. Was this all a dream she was having as she collapsed from cold and exhaustion, dying?
Whether it was or not, inside the cave was a round hall built of purgatory-colored marble. The light came from lamps hung along the walls. Kyprosa walked one full circle of the hall, then found an arched exit and went through it. Passing down a corridor, she emerged into a room and gasped. It was her bedroom. More astonishing still, though it was clearly the same place, the scene was completely different. A fire blazed in the fireplace, and on the bed lay a warm goose-feather quilt. On top of it was a blue velvet dress she had never worn before.
As Kyprosa hesitated and touched the dress, there was a knock at the door. Her body stiffened as if she had been caught stealing. At first, she did not even recognize who had entered. He neither looked surprised to see her nor hesitated, but came over, sat beside her, and patted her head.
“Where have you been until now, Rosa. If you go out alone in this cold and lose your way, it will be a disaster.”
Who was this man. Who could speak so gently to her?
Kyprosa studied his face closely. Then a portrait hanging in the castle came to mind. He looked exactly like the portrait said to have been painted before Great-uncle Landry died. At a loss for words, blinking her eyes, Kyprosa finally realized who he was. Her father, Raeven, who was said to resemble Great-uncle Landry more than anyone.
Why was her father, who had left the castle when she was just born, here? She did not know, but seeing how kind he was, warmth spread through her body without her noticing, as if even her shoulders straightened. Her father looked down at the dress in her hands and smiled.
“The old woman in the sewing room said she was in a hurry, but it’s already finished. Why don’t you try it on?”
Kyprosa quickly shook her head. Such a fine dress did not seem like it would suit her, it felt strange that the sewing room granny would make clothes for her, and more than anything, she felt that if she did such a thing, the dream would shatter. Even if it was a dream, she did not want to wake up yet.
Before long, father and daughter left the room and went downstairs. Raeven held Kyprosa’s hand the entire way down. The warmth of his hand was so unfamiliar and so painfully moving that Kyprosa clung tightly to it the whole time.
Downstairs, she was startled once again. It was the second time, so she was able to anticipate it more quickly. Her mother was sitting on a chair, then stood up, hugged Kyprosa, retied her hair, and hurried her along. The three of them went to the dining hall, and there were Uncle Siardric, who had died, Uncle Den, who had run away, and even her grandfather, who had died before Kyprosa was born. Grandmother Rosia seated Kyprosa beside her, smoothed her clothes, then smiled warmly and said,
“How is my granddaughter so pretty.”
Never before had a banquet at Fir Tree Castle been so lively. Her father was making plans to go hunting tomorrow with Uncle Siardric, and Uncle Den cracked some kind of joke, got scolded by Grandfather, then glanced at Kyprosa for help. Kyprosa did not even know what she said, but Grandfather soon burst out laughing.
Kyprosa wondered if she had ever laughed so much in a single day. Then, the moment the image of the cold, silent Fir Tree Castle came to mind, she understood where she was. It was Shadow Castle. The place written about in the journal her father had left behind.
Shadow Castle, said to exist somewhere deep in the forest, was a place where everything happened in reverse of Fir Tree Castle. That meant Grandfather had not died in battle, Grandmother had never become lord, her father had not left, and her uncles had not died. And all of them loved Kyprosa.
She had never imagined wishing for such a thing, yet she had never known it could feel this good. It felt so good that she nearly resolved to stay here and live. At that moment, someone opened the door and entered the banquet hall.
This time, it was someone she knew. Aunt Elma. She was holding a baby in her arms. Uncle Siardric quickly stood and approached, and Elma handed him the baby, saying,
“He’s fussy even after eating his fill. I think he wants his father.”
Since Uncle Siardric had not died, it was not strange at all that Elma had another baby. But as Kyprosa looked closely at the child, she felt as though she was forgetting something important. What was it?
Ah. She remembered. Kyprosa looked at her father.
“Dad, where is Ochidna?”
Raeven slowly tilted his head. To the right. Then he said,
“Ochidna? Who is that?”
The realization came slowly. As the warm noise filled the banquet hall again, Kyprosa stood up. She pushed her chair back little by little and moved away from the table. Her feet felt as though they would not move, yet before she knew it, she was at the entrance.
In the journal Kyprosa had read, her father had tried to find Shadow Castle. When he could not find it, there were traces of obsessive research, as if he had tried to summon it with magic instead. Perhaps because her father had summoned it then, Kyprosa had been able to enter this place now. If so, her father must have come here as well. Where had he gone?
Had her father seen the same thing here as Kyprosa? Had this scenery made him happy as well? If not, was that why he had not stayed? Or had he stayed, but simply could not be seen by Kyprosa?
If that were truly the case, then where could he be said to exist?
Kyprosa understood how her father must have felt wanting to find Shadow Castle. She would have felt the same. Fir Tree Castle was bleak, and Rosia, who governed the domain and commanded the spearmen, had no time to care for her son. He must have resented her. But would staying in Shadow Castle solve everything? Kyprosa could tell it would not, simply from the fact that she could not find the real Raeven, the mad Raeven, here.
Shadow Castle was not real. What happened there was not the truth.
In Shadow Castle, Ochidna would never be born. Her father would never leave the castle and meet another woman. But if Kyprosa stayed here, then in the real world, Ochidna, abandoned in the forest, would die and vanish. The night before, Kyprosa had risked her life to leave the castle to find Ochidna. It was not a resolve she could abandon so easily.
Leaving Shadow Castle was easy. Because it was the same as Fir Tree Castle, she could follow the familiar paths straight to the gate. As Kyprosa went out alone into the forest as she had the night before, she thought of the bed with the rosy glow of the hearth fire and the blue velvet dress laid upon it. That dress, which she would never wear again, would it remain there forever? Or would a shadow girl who belonged to that place wear it and be happy?
Snow had fallen, and the forest shone white. So much so that she could not understand why she had lost her way the day before. As if someone were guiding her, Kyprosa soon heard a baby crying. At the same time, she heard wolves howling in the distance. She was not afraid. As she hurried forward, she saw a basket with a baby inside some distance away. She ran. As her cloak brushed against the fir branches, frozen snow shattered and fell. Please let her not have frozen to death. Please let her be alive.
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