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Chapter Four: Curiouser and Curiouser

Hotohori:

"Suzaku no miko?" The disbelieving words tumbled from my advisor's lips as if he had not considered the possibility until I mentioned it. And yet--

"The seishi have been born--or at least one of us has." I let a small smile curve irony onto my lips with the reminder. "In all my lifetime we have never been graced with a girl from another word, and suddenly we have two."

"Hai." My advisor merely nodded. "But if the Suzaku no miko is indeed resting in our dungeons--"

I did not let him finish. "They have all escaped." Barely a raised eyebrow acknowledged his surprise; it was true, of course, but I let him ponder how I might have already known. "I will find out if one of them is the Miko myself."

He only bowed again. "Hai, heika." I allowed myself an inner smile, if not an outward one. I freed my hair from its confining ceremonial crown and let my outer robe fall. My advisor was too occupied with catching it to stop me walking out the door.

I couldn't help the way my pulse started to race as I made my way to the courtyard. Suzaku no miko.... The longtime object of my childhood fantasies, and the saviour of my empire. Please, please, let her have come...!

I curled onto a bench in the courtyard to wait. I know it wouldn't be long--I could hear guards yelling in other parts of the palace. I forced my body into an indolent lounge on my chosen perch, affecting an ease I did not feel. And then I heard footsteps.

I got a good look at her before she noticed me. She was small and slight, but not a child; the older of the two foreigners, the one who had emitted Suzaku's light. Long, dark hair was mussed and tangled in faint curls down her back, her skirt was torn, and her arms were marred with scrapes and bruises. She scampered out fro mone doorway and stopped in the middle of the courtyard to look around in awe. And confusion.

She was not what I would have called beautiful, but my heart leapt at the sight of her anyway.

"That way." I answered her unspoken confusion with soft words and a finger pointed toward the exit. She started at my voice and spun toward me, poised like a rabbit for flight.

"I'm not going to call the guard," I promised hurriedly. She didn't relax, so I added a hasty, "I'm on your side! I--I heard you attacked the Emperor's palanquin. Did you?"

Her face darkened, and for a moment I feared I had lost her with my hasty, bumbling words. "No," she said simply, after a pause. "We didn't." And then she turned away to leave.

"Wait!" The word escaped before I meant it to, and I berated myself for yet acting like a fool. "Won't you tell me about where you come from?"

At least I had made her stop. "It's--it's a very long way away," she finally said. "You wouldn't believe any of it, not really." Her big dark eyes narrowed as she finally looked at me, her stance easing so subtly I was probably more aware of it than she was.

And I, determined to redeem myself, weighed my words carefully. "I heard too," I almost whispered, "that you might come all the way from another world."

That startled her. "I--you--heard that?"

I nodded, watching her, gauging her reaction. "Is it true?"

Her shining eyes dipped toward the ground, lowering with her voice. "Yes." A single word, spoken soft and musical, echoing in my blood and my heart like the most profound symphony ever composed.

My saviour--and perhaps to be my love--had arrived.

***********************************

Akane:

I had entered the land through the looking glass, and circumstances were becoming, as they had for Alice, "curiouser and curiouser." Tamahome, Miaka--that was the name of the girl from the library--and I had been all but thrown into the dungeon of the Imperial Palace, then left there.

"All right," Tamahome had demanded wearily. "I like a good adventure as much as the next guy, but this is starting to worry me. What was all that red light about?"

I had just shrugged in response, because I hadn't a better one. "I don't know."

Miaka was too busy checking out Tamahome to be much help, but this was about the point she fished some gum out of a pocket and announced, "I'm hungry!"

It was a bit of a blur from there--I never thought I'd be rescued by a piece of gum. Then again, I never thought I'd get transported to another world or thrown into a dungeon, either. Somehow that little bit of gooey sugar freaked the guard out enough that he knocked his head on the bars and fell down close enough that Tamahome could reach through and relieve him of his keys. We tried to stick together after that, but it was a big place, and when the guards started to catch up to us, we split up and ran.

That was when I wandered into the courtyard and found--or was found by--the man who knew so much.

"I heard," he whispered, "that you might come all the way from another world. Is it true?"

My heart stopped. It wasn't just that this was the kind of person who would make my heart miss a beat or two anyway, though he was probably the most stunning person I'd ever seen. It was the way he spoke that soft query with such acceptance...and such hope. I answered truthfully not only because I wouldn't have been able to plausibly deny it long anyway, but in answer to that quiet hope. I didn't want to disappoint him.

So I just said, "Yes."

I think he was about to say more. I know I hoped he was. But that was the cue for Tamahome to make a frantic reappearance, dashing in to the courtyard with a half dozen guardsmen fast on his heels.

"Akane! Run!"

I didn't--where was I going to go? The definition of a courtyard is a place with only one major exit, and while there were little doors off in different directions, we weren't likely to be any safer getting lost in them. It was through one of these little doors that Miaka wandered then, followed by the clinging scent of Chinese food. Well, at least she'd gotten her meal.

"Tamahome!" It didn't take her long to get a good look at the situation she was walking into, especially when the guards reached our companion and grabbed him by both arms. "Let him go!"

She ran at them. For ever and ever, I think I will call this move the "Miaka charge," because she did it so often, and because the first time she tried it on anyone, it usually worked. If only because the sheer absurdity of it stunned them rigid. She butted one of the guards who held Tamahome with her head, and that was the end of it--she fell down, skinning a knee and rubbing a spot on her head that would probably be sore for days to come.

That set Tamahome off. A red symbol--had I noticed that before?--blazed to life on his forehead, and he was in motion again, the way he'd fought off the street urchins and the slave traders when I'd seen him before. Imperial guardsmen went flying in all directions, and those still on their feet started forming a ring around him. Miaka was screaming something incoherent, and I was trying to figure out how to keep anybody from killing anybody else.

And then the young man I'd met in the courtyard froze everything--once again--with a commanding, stentorian, "Enough!"

Tamahome froze. Miaka wilted. The guardsmen looked up, saw who had spoken, and fell to their knees. Realisation dawned even before I heard the awestruck mutters, "It's the Emperor!"

I'm not sure why, but my body didn't seem to be communicating with my brain. Between the two of them, they were trying to figure out how I should react, when the...the Emperor...strode purposefully to stand next to me, a hand on my shoulder.

"These are to be my guests," he said simply. "They are sent from Suzaku, and no harm is to come to them."

The transformation was immediate. The same guardsmen that not long before had been chasing us, throwing things at us, swinging and generally trying to kill us now saluted smartly and filed out of the courtyard as if Tamahome, Miaka and I were as honoured as the man who had claimed us as his guests. Out of nowhere, a woman appeared and bowed slightly. "Follow me," she said quietly. "I will show you rooms."

How quickly things could change in this strange place. Perhaps it was not really so different from home at all.