Chapter 68: What's Given is to Me

"The melody sounds very similar to the song you sang before."

Jeanne gently sat down on the carpet beside, hugging her knees, looking up just like a little girl gazing at the stars in the field.

"So you still remember, then? Ideally, it should be a duet, with one person singing and the other playing an instrument. However, my friends who would sing with me have all died during the Year of the Shattered Moon, so after that, I've been reduced to playing solo now and then," Salser said. "Regarding that instance in the Warren, I had just started when you abruptly cut me off me with those three words 'Screw your singing.'"

Jeanne's expression took on a subtle nuance.

"Would you like to hear it again?" he asked, reaching out to retrieve his harmonica. "Let me start with a prelude for you." As he spoke, he straightened up and settled into the deck chair, placing the harmonica to his lips.

The prelude began again with a serene melody, as if it were emanating from a distant place. Yet, shortly after, Salser halted it, his face showing a hint of awkwardness.

Can someone tell me, why does this woman suddenly bury her face in her knees and start crying...

"...How about you give it a try?" He tossed the harmonica into Jeanne's lap and turned away, lying back down on the deck chair and started counting stars.

A wonderful silence.

After a good while, he heard the hesitant sound of a harmonica—roughly at the level of a beginner, but passable. If this was her first attempt, she might actually have some talent.

"The stars in the field," Salser began to hum slowly, "The stars in the field hang high above my father's hut, my mother's sorrowful hands..."

He couldn't quite decide if he genuinely liked the folksong, especially since, upon his return from military service, his parents had already passed away. The melody had been passed down to him by a hunter from the Gacoti region, who made his living fishing and hunting birds in the local waters. The area was not only a breeding ground for fish but also a haven for countless bird flocks. The estuary's tributaries teemed with so many fish that one could practically scoop them up with bare hands. This unimaginable abundance proved invaluable during the Year of the Shattered Moon—a brutal war to conquer the entire continent—as the army secured substantial provisions from the region. It was then that a hunter, eager to ingratiate himself with the 'master Mages', gifted Salser a harmonica and distributed other peculiar trinkets among the group.

He also shared with them the local folksongs, many of which were ancient tunes that tugged at the heartstrings. Consequently, everyone took it upon themselves to look after this hunter.

The songs and the little instruments were indeed a welcome distraction at that time, as no one could predict when the war would end. Thus, they could only scatter their songs and tears along with the blood on this long and weary march. The path of war was always strewn with the bloodied remains of the fallen, while the melodies from their voices and harmonicas floated above those stains of blood. Back then, they all believed they were still very young, and death was far, far away...

"You really can't sing well."

After he finished singing, Jeanne remarked.

Salser felt a bit awkward; he indeed wasn't very good at singing.

Then he said, "Your harmonica skills could use some work too."

Jeanne tucked the harmonica into her lap and paused for a moment before saying, "I'm a beginner."

Salser mumbled to himself, speculating whether Jeanne had been secretly honing her skills during her time as a peasant girl, until he realized that the harmonica was still in her possession.

"What are you doing? That is mine."

"Now it's given to me."

"...If you were a superior in our imperial army, you'd be beaten to death."

"When you threw it to me, it meant you were giving it to me," she said.

Salser let out a sigh and reclined back into the chair.

"What are your plans for tomorrow?" he asked.

"First, you take the map I gave you and escort Viola to enroll in that school," Jeanne counted off on her fingers, "Then, you go find that nun and hand over the Magistrate's token to her; finally, you sell your sword and any other other odds and ends to get us some money."

"Why am I the only one doing anything? What about you, planning to hibernate in this room all day?"

"I need to visit the Council of Cast City to verify the intelligence in the surrounding area."

"Then why don't you sell the sword you're keeping?"

"Because it's mine."

"No, that one belongs to me as well."

"You gave it to me, so it's mine now."

"I didn't give it to you."

"When you stabbed the sword into the ground in the cell, it meant you were giving it to me."

"......"

"Alright, those are your tasks," Jeanne said as she stood up from the carpet, holding the harmonica in her hand. She stretched and yawned like someone just waking from a long sleep, took a moment to gaze at the starry sky flecked with snow, then gathered her damp golden hair. And with that, she went back to her room to sleep.

Jeanne sat down next to Viola and slipped under the blanket, lifting it just enough to make room for herself. Viola breathed softly, her eyelids tightly closed, her body leaning against Jeanne.

Jeanne noticed the pillow was slightly wet. She didn't say anything, just tenderly running her fingers through Viola's hair for a moment before enveloping her in a comforting embrace.

Silence.

Salser shuffled along the carpet in his slippers.

And the sound of water could be heard coming from the bathroom.

"You ain’t drinking my bathwater, right?" Jeanne suddenly asked him through the wall.

"No!"

The little girl in her arms let out a giggle, then quickly closed her mouth.

……

The next morning, as teacher escorted her to the 'Francis Mage Academy,' it was still snowing. Teacher walked ahead, holding her hand, and the snowflakes danced in the air, swaying gently, drifting with the light breeze around street corners, twirling on the cobblestone paths, and then slowly melting away.

In the past, when she was in that house, she would watch as people who fell into the Warren melted away like snowflakes... She wondered what that felt like?

Long ago, when she still perceived death through the eyes of a child, when it was the ultimate mystery of the adult world to her: her father truly died before her eyes, cut into pieces and boiled in a pot, only to be devoured by those transparent adults.

When her mother passed away, although she had cried, she didn't really understand why. She still went to the river to catch fish, to the small woods to pick wildflowers, and played hide and seek with the other children.

But after that incident, she truly grasped what death was.

The witch's house was like a nightmare, with cages hanging in the rooms containing dead bodies, and the kitchen storeroom filled with dismembered corpses in disarray, the stench of decay permeating the insides of the dolls, making one nauseous. But she had learned her lesson; she had seen things that most girls would never encounter in their lifetime, and she no longer asked why those people had ended up like that, because no one there would answer her questions. Although the witch allowed her to live, for a long time she couldn't sleep at night, fearing that those monsters would burst out and capture her, put her in a pot to boil her, and eat her, just like what had happened to her father.

After teacher had been following the map for a long time, he finally stopped. But for Viola, it was too brief; she wished teacher would continue to hold her hand and walk with her, because staying here gave her the feeling that she would be abandoned.

They stopped under a very beautiful white archway. Viola felt that the arch was incredibly tall and wide, taller than dozens of her stacked in a pyramid, and wider than a hundred of her walking side by side. The arch was adorned with many strange relief sculptures, but she didn't recognize any of them. It looked very much like a half of a donut covered in winter snow... but magnified many times over and also flattened.

Viola began to ponder whether this metaphor was truly appropriate.

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