SALP Chapter 4

"Oh, really? What's good about the kingdom being restored?"

"I don't know either?"

"Anyway it must be good, right? Since it's our homeland."

"But our homeland is Roas?"

So Lanthe didn't know much either. She only knew from adults that she was a troublemaker who resembled her mother, whose face she couldn't remember.

"Fool! What's good about our kingdom being restored? We won't have to hide in a small land. We can live freely in a wider, more abundant world."

The village chief's clever daughter had said such things once, but Lanthe couldn't understand her words either.

"I like things now, though?"

Right now I'm already free and the world is wide enough and abundant. Even if I run around all day I can't see all of the village and forest. The livestock keep bearing young, and the berries growing in the forest grow back immediately even after the villagers pick them all.

Lanthe couldn't understand the hearts of people who loved a kingdom they'd never seen. She couldn't understand at all why she should care about a destroyed kingdom.

Lanthe loved Roas. She loved every day in the forest village where reindeer and rabbits and goats lived.

"Lanthe, let's play! Let's go sledding!"

"Vigo! Did you already finish lunch?"

Yes, and most of all because lovely Vigo was there...

"Yeah. I brought wild strawberry pie for a snack too. My mom made it this morning."

The adorable little one, who'd been like an angel.

Vigo was a boy the same age as Lanthe who lived next door. He was short with slightly upturned eyes like a kitten—very cute. His black curly hair that showed chocolate tones in sunlight was pretty too.

His eyes were the same violet as any Raphlish, but the black hair was his alone. Only much later did she learn he'd been a child secretly abandoned at the village entrance.

"Vigo's house's pie is really delicious! I want to eat it every single day!"

"I'll bring it every day. Let's eat together."

"Yay! Hehe!"

Lanthe and Vigo were together every day.

She'd thought they would be together forever.

"Let's go! Swoosh!"

"L-Lanthe. Going down the hill too fast is dangerous."

"My sled is faster than a reindeer! Swooosh!"

"No, you brats came up the mountain again? Auntie told you kids not to come up the mountain! What if wolves carry you off!"

"Big trouble! An ugly witch appeared!"

"A-Aunt Louise, I'm sorry."

"Bleh! Try to catch me!"

"That girl's going to get caught by the ugly witch and have her bottom spanked raw, just watch!"

"S-sorry, Auntie. I asked her to play, so please don't scold Lanthe."

"You can forget about tasty cookies today, you brats!"

"Nooo! Defeat the wicked witch! Swooosh!"

Lanthe was a troublemaker who didn't listen, but Vigo was a kind and gentle child. He was smaller than her and slower at running, so he often got caught by Aunt Louise and scolded as the representative.

But the next day Vigo would climb over the fence again to play together.

"Lanthe, let's play!"

"Come here for a second. I have a present."

"A present?"

One day Lanthe revealed to Vigo her long-hidden secret.

"Th-the snow angel is moving!"

"Cute, right?"

It was a slightly special snowman Lanthe had created.

"It's a sparkling, dancing angel. How is it?"

A cute snow angel that glowed like snow in sunlight, fluttering its two wings and spinning round and round by itself.

"H-how did you do it? How are you controlling it?"

No wonder Vigo's eyes grew huge with surprise. She'd been the same at first.

At first Lanthe had made ordinary snow angels like everyone else. Winged snowmen that Raphlish made whenever snow piled up, thinking of their homeland. Though she didn't particularly like the angel people believed in, snow angels were so pretty that even alone she would make tiny snow angels and play when snow accumulated.

The strange thing happened when she turned seven. When Lanthe made a fist-sized snow angel and hummed a tune in good spirits, the snow angel fluttered its wings and swayed in a dance as if alive.

"When I sing, the little snow angel dances. But when it melts in sunlight it returns to heaven, just like other snow angels."

"Are you a witch, Lanthe?"

"I'm not a witch! The angel just dances because it likes me!"

Lanthe raised her voice sharply in fierce denial.

She was not a witch who cast magic. Greed for and pursuit of mysterious arts was what outside-world people did, never Raphlish. Aunt Louise feared that the magic Penmarkians studied was used to harm humans. She taught that with just the ordinary talents god gave humans there were infinite possibilities, that wonderful things could be accomplished just by living earnestly with kind hearts.

So Lanthe was secretly worried. That this might be bad magic. That she might be a demon's child who cast wicked magic. That her birth parents, whose faces she couldn't remember, might actually have been demons.

"This is a secret, okay? I only showed you. You know that, right?"

"R-really?"

"You absolutely can't tell anyone."

"Okay. I'll keep the secret."

"It's definitely a secret?"

"But... it's really pretty and cute. The little snow angel."

"Right? Hehe!"

Good Vigo kept his promise well.

Their secret was kept firmly until they turned ten.

But after that... after that, she didn't know. Whether Vigo continued keeping the promise, or whether he'd spilled all of Lanthe's secrets to someone.

Because the last time Lanthe and Vigo were together was a winter day in the year they both turned ten.

"Kids! Vigo got captured by a witch from the outside world!"

"What?"

"A witch from the outside world crossed the river last night! An ugly witch with lips red as blood captured Vigo and took him across the river!"

"I saw it too! Vigo took the witch's hand and followed her!"

The village was thrown into chaos.

Vigo had disappeared. Children who'd witnessed the incident all said humans from outside the village had taken him.

"Wahhh! I'll go bring Vigo back!"

Lanthe felt like her world was collapsing. When she'd lost her parents she'd been an infant who didn't know what parting meant, but now at ten it was different.

So this is what parting is—your chest tearing apart.

'Demons from the outside world took away my precious friend.'

But Raphlish must not go beyond Roas. The demons and witches of the outside world, the terrifying Penmarkians who hunted and devoured foreigners, would enslave or kill them.

"You children must absolutely not even go near the riverside."

"You must return home before sunset. Absolutely!"

Adults enforced discipline on the children even more strictly.

Lanthe had other friends too, but sometimes loneliness as if she'd been left alone in the world suffocated her.

'I miss Vigo. Why did he follow the witch? He promised we'd always play together just the two of us...'

Still, Lanthe loved Roas. It was the hometown that had given birth to and raised her. A world with Aunt Louise who loved her, a warm home, and memories of playing with Vigo.

She waited for the day Vigo would return to their hometown.

"Please return Vigo. I'll be a good child. Please."

Praying desperately every time she woke and every time she slept.

As ten fleeting years passed.

"Soon Roas will be destroyed. Those who can leave should take refuge."

The season of fire in Lanthe's nineteenth year.

The elderly prophet warned that the village would be destroyed.

But then the number who decided to escape the village didn't reach half of half the total population. Those who had difficulty moving, or whose children were too young to make the harsh journey, had no choice at all. Leave or stay. Either way was a gamble with their lives.

Lanthe remained in the village. She wanted to protect Aunt Louise, and she was waiting for Vigo.

But in the end Roas blazed into ash.

The hometown Vigo would return to disappeared.

The village chief and Aunt Louise and the village elders who'd bravely blocked them saying We have no princess! lost their lives first, brutally. Black and blood-red death swept through Roas. The demons who'd invaded from the outside world were more terrible than anything she'd heard.

"Aunt Louise...!"

Our old kingdom of Raphlang was also destroyed in a single day, they said, right?

Now Roas is being destroyed too.

Lanthe couldn't even cry, staggering in a daze, struck across the cheek and falling.

"It's dangerous here, so please board the carriage quickly, Your Highness."

Then for a moment she came to her senses at the voice of some woman dragging her away.

"His Majesty Derek will protect you."

Is she insane...?

"You'll live safely, protected as a precious woman."

Is she insane...?

Killing us and then saying she'll protect me. Looking closely, she's the same kind of human as me. Not a demon or witch but an insane person. In the first place, a person with their mind properly attached wouldn't even think of harming others carelessly.

Dragged to Newbella, Lanthe was imprisoned in a place called a palace, glittering only on the outside.

She woke from nightmares every night. Each time she thought of Aunt Louise and recited the prayers she'd been taught.

But praying and singing never once showed her the light within. Her heart never became peaceful at all.

The gray clouds hanging over Lanthe's head only grew thicker day by day. As if gray clouds made from the ash remaining after burning the small village were simply waiting for the moment to descend and cover her.