Nychta - The Bloodrose Kingdom

Chapter 8 - Rosemary's Secrets

Her hand touched the gem in my forehead, my head instinctively jerking back. She laughed in delight.

“That black gem definitely did save you, and you need to use it at its maximum potential.” She returned back to her table, both of her hands pressing on it to balance her weight. She looked strategical in her position.

“The people are now underestimating the crown. They are looking down on the monarchy itself, blasphemy coming off their mouths like daily prayers. They did not respect the Queen anymore, even if she was of a stronger variety from the fleas that they were. They are now thinking of rebellion, which would only make us look weaker to our natural enemy, the Gaia,”

Flashbacks of the news of Rebellion came back to me. There were news from Catquoise, its merchandising image a good target for stealing and pillaging. It sent a message to the whole kingdom: the people were now planning to overrule it. Catquoise was in chaos for a day, I remembered, with pirates in ships stealing from it without particular care for the lives of the civilians, taking whatever they can. What made it different from a normal pillaging though, is the fact that they left symbols of a monarch butterfly throughout the city. It was black and shiny too, just like the symbol of the Raven of Bloodrose. It mocked the queen in some ways, and it also symbolized another association hiding. I shivered in terror about what it could possibly be.

“And that is where you enter,” Rosemary says, holding her chin high.

“You, no, you and your gem, actually, are the ones who will uphold the crown again. Both of you will be the ones who will restore the queendom back to its former glory, from the remnants of unfounded criticisms and the lack of the people’s support. They need a shocker, then we’ll give it to them.”

Her words carried such a weight in my heart, putting pressure on me. Sure, I did really have the gem, but I was not sure if I will be able to win the Divination, much less rule the queendom after. I was just an orphan, a thief, a lucky girl who found a rare gem. I was nothing more than that.

You have me, the voice said again. It felt like a reassuring one this time, a voice that gave sense back to me, a voice that carried me back to reality. It was a steel voice that came from within me. And by this time, I was sure that it was the gem speaking. Filled with unrivaled maturity and knowledge, of wisdom and strength.

But do I deserve you? I asked.

You and every part of you it says. With that small set of words, a tide of confidence flushed all over me. This was a moment of acceptance, a moment where I finally see that I do have potential after all. The gem was to own me and I was to own it in return.

“The question lies on you,’ Rosemary says. She takes the candle by her wispy and length hands, taking it calmly. Her fingers holds it by the base. In slow movements, it made its way up to the girth of the red candle, touching it smoothly.

“You are just like this candle. Sturdy, but bendable. Filled with potential, just like this flame,” she closes her eyes and smells the aroma of the fire along with the rose-scented candle. She blows hard through her nose, the flame disappearing in an instant. Tiny wisps of black smoke appeared, spreading, and then being invisible.

“And just in an instant, a small wind can make it disappear from inside you. As easy as I just did,” she said and looks intently to my eyes. I stared back with an iron look.

“The mind is the weapon, the gem is only second. You are nothing without both, but your strength doesn’t matter without your mind in priority,” she says. I nodded in agreement. Sixteen years of existence wasn’t so bad to give me some sense of maturity. And even with the dark backdrop of Silverfang, I was still able to find some knowledge in the ways of life, even through the eyes of a petty thief. I stole for a life, and in some sense, it had taught me how nobody lives easily, and that everything had a price. It was wisdom beyond someone born with a silver spoon, and that gave me an edge. Hopefully.

“Now tell me, what gives you the right to join the Divination. Tell me what makes you a queen, and what makes you fit for my mentorship,” she says. I was not aware of every power she contained, of whatever knowledge she can give me. But her initiative and her wit is enough to tell me that she knew what she had to do. It told me that I needed to trust her, to give in to her to achieve something greater. I sat down in the chair, carefully recollecting as much as I can.

“I-I was born in the library of Silverfang. I was left by my parents, apparently because of my lack of gem. I was not deformed in any shape, no signs of injury holding me back except for the lack of The Creator’s share in my body. The librarian back then nursed me, for as long as she could. She was named Gretta, and she was calm for most of the times. I never talked to her though, for I was always busy being outside the library. There, I spent most of the days wandering, reading books, and eventually, reaching the Gray Forest.”

“The Gray Forest, the place of many wonders and terors,” Rosemary recalls.

“Candles were my only light in the Gray Forest, but I managed to reach a safe part, where I built my treehouse. It wasn’t much, just something I made with scraps and everything I can manage to make. I took some books in the library and put it there, reading every day. It had been peaceful. I had learned a lot, from reading and writing, to basic history and biology. I wasn’t stupid, and I knew that.”

“But everything changed when Gretta died. She was a widow after all, and she had no family. I was the one who buried her in the backyard of the library, with none of the people in the town having any relations with her. If I was a lone orphan, she was even worse, for she had every capability to socialize but chose instead to take refuge in her library. The condition of the place withered every year, and I was barely able to keep it intact. When the last of our supplies were empty, I chose to steal. That was where I met Eman.”

“Eman was a particularly clever and witty thief who had a gang back in Silverfang. They stole as a group, but I had always separated myself from them. I wasn’t the social type, and they knew it. Eman was my only friend back then. He helped me through a lot, after all, teaching a book girl to be a thief. It was tough, but he had all the time.”

Rosemary coughed. “This boy, Eman, did he make any advancements of sorts?”

I stumbled at that part. “Excuse me?” I say. Advancements? Did she mean, like, romantic advancements?

“You know, the teenage years is quite a risqué and particularly hard period. I’m sure it would be normal for a girl your age to be attracted to her only male friend, right?”

I tilted my head.

“W-well…” I say, unable to say anything.

Rosemary looked at me for a while. And then raised her head high and then nodded.

“A-ah. A classic case of one-sided love. I get it,” she says while smirking. This woman was testing me.

“U-uhm, anyways,” I say, to continue my story.

“Does he look good? Was he talented in anything?” she pries. I clucked my tongue in frustration. She rolls her eyes and waves her hand to make me continue my story. Was romance really her interest? It might be because of the lack of any charming people here in the library.

“Well, everything was going as it is, except for one day, at the day of the Diana of the Ice’s death, I was captured by the guards for stealing bread. It was a particularly unique day, for the guards usually did not chase me up to the Gray Forest, which only a few people dared to do. They were particularly angry at that time, determined to chase me at any cost. It might be because of the anger in the queen’s death, or something else I did not know of.”

“In the forest, I ventured into parts uncharted before. I even saw a dragon caged in one part, and then a river which I didn’t know existed before. It led to a gaping cave by the right side, another part that I did not know. I did not venture far in the forest when I went there in fear of finding something sinister in the wild. I did not need to see it myself, for the legends were enough to keep me from looking deep within it.”

“It was in that river where I found this gem, which bonded with me when I held it. I did not remember anything before I woke up, only seeing a white and infinite room which was eventually filled with black tendrils that mixed with me. Maybe it was the bond with the gem. Whatever it was, it caused me to have the gem on my forehead later on. After that, I was led into the palace, and then to the alchemist’s hut where you saw me.”

I breathed hard after that, barely catching my breath after such a long story. Rosemary was nodding her head, understanding each and every part of it. She looks at me.

“Aren’t you a tough one? Born without parents, born without a gem, born to be a thief, and then born to have no love,” she says.

I nodded my head. “Maybe I am,” I managed to say.

“You definitely are. I admire the way that you talked about it so coolly. It was like you had an unseen edge over the other participants, who are mostly raised rich and in power. You have this charm with you that gives you steel in your words and a natural command. Maybe it was the years of dread and darkness which gave you it,” she says.

It definitely was. It was those years of hardship that trained me to become like this. Call me sad or anything worse, but I know that those years gave me something not found in anyone else. I wore like a crown, like it was something to define me.

“And we can definitely use that,” Rosemary says. She grabs a drawer in the back of her table. She carefully grabs a parchment from it, along with an ink and a quill. She dips the quill.

“In this chaos, it seems really out of place that I still didn’t know your name. May I ask what it is?” she says.

I took a deep breath. Only Eman and Gretta knew my name, for they were the only ones who I regularly talked with. Not even the guards or the people back in Silverfang knew it. They only called me by “The Raven Girl”

“Machiavellian. It was the only thing my parents left me with,” I say.

“Machiavellian. It gives me goosebumps to hear it.” Rosemary says.

She dips her quill and spells the name in exquisite cursive.

“Now what shall we call you to imprint your name in everyone’s head?” she asks me.

I bit my lip, eager to hear what it was she was planning to give me.

“Ahh…” she says with a confident tone.

I looked at what she carefully wrote in the parchment.

“Machiavellian of the Raven”

The raven danced in delight in being branded

In quick and fluttering wings, she carried herself soaring through the skies

She was not caged anymore, she had wings and a power unfounded

She looked above her, and soared higher

______________________________________________________________________________________________

It was now morning, the sun greeting me energetically through the glass windows. I was laying in my own room, a brown colored large room that was beautifully designed with wood, carvings of flowers and leaves present all around it. Colors of brown, green, and red artistically decorated it, feeling soft and calming. Rosemary knew her designs.

I refreshed myself with a bottle of water that lay by the side of my bed, still cool with whatever magic Rosemary had. As I took a sip of the refreshing liquid, my parched throat quickly became soothed. I smiled.

A little bit of spoiling never hurt anybody. Even the former thief.

By the side of the water was a small piece of paper, with a calm flowery scent coming off from it. Written in skillful cursives on a pink paper was an invitation.

“Meet me in the gardens below

-Rosemary of the Books.”

We were named after our powers, and if her skills were in line with books, then I was sure that she was of a wide range of abilities. Just like how the books were never limited in scope, maybe she also possessed the same trait.

I made my way down the winding, wooden stairs, the scent of flowers still on my body after taking a flowery bath in the grand bathroom of hers by the side of my room. I wore a white dressed with patterns of flowers, a recurrent theme from Rosemary’s interests.

Sunlight was a blessing. There was just something about the sun that made me feel energized, mostly because I have never seen it before. It hit the library’s uppermost window, the beam going straight to Rosemary desk in the middle of the lowest floor. It was beautiful and entrancing, like a painting forming on its own.

At the first gaze of Rosemary’s garden, I almost thought that someone was about to be married. Hundreds of flowers were aligned properly in ledges, some of them in pots below. Some had popping colors, while some were calm and soothing to look at. The green leaves gave a proper compliment to it, another painting forming on its own.

It was a work of art, in short.

“There you are,” Rosemary says, as she rises up from her half-crouching position. She was dressed in a dress like my own, except hers had a front pocket and with the hems reaching the ground. My bare legs were present, unlike hers. She was wearing a hat adorned with a nightshade. Pretty, even for her age.

“How old were you again?” I say in response. I quickly regretted it, seeing her left eyebrow raise.

“Fifty years and another five. Why do you ask?” she says as she continues her chore. She was holding the flowers by the stem, whispering something under her breath. Another magic of some sorts, or an incantation from one of her books.

“It’s just that… you look so young,” I say. It wasn’t even a compliment, but more of an honest comment. I was not the type to suck up on anybody, after all.

“Why, thank you,” she says, her lips smiling in delight.

I take slow steps towards her, breathing in the relaxing air. I didn’t know that open fields and flowers were the medicine to a troubled heart. My imprisonment felt like years ago when I looked at the garden.

“This is my art, aside from my impeccable arrangement in the library,” she says.

I agreed with her as I nodded my head. When I looked back at the library, I saw its tall, round-ended structure, with the only window being the rooms at the top and the main window at the center of the roof. The exterior walls were carved with ravens and swirls, metals occasionally appearing in it.

“How do you feel?” she asks me.

I breathed, thinking of what to say. I was still unsure about her, about everything, really. It all happened too fast, unlike my past, stagnant life. Back then, it was to go hungry, steal, and then go hungry again. Sleep in the library, go occasionally to my treehouse, and then steal again. It was a dull pattern.

“Fine. This is so much better than being an alchemist’s rat, or a prisoner,” I say.

“Myrna would’ve liked you,” Rosemary says, continuing her chore.

I paused, remembering Myrna of the Mist losing breath right on my treetop. It was a horrible scene, with Slicer being the only good thing coming out of that.

“Y-you knew her?”

Rosemary stops her chore.

“Loved her, actually” she says, a distant look in her eyes. But she smiles again, the color back in her eyes when she teases, “just as much as you loved Eman.”

I instantly blushed at that. I turned to one of the roses, my fingers trying to skim through its beautiful features.

“Eman was… a friend. Nothing more, nothing less, I suppose,” my eyebrows moving uncontrollably in shame about the topic.

“Was this Eman boy interested in you?” she asks.

“Yes. Interested in teaching me how to knock somebody out cold, stealing without anyone noticing, and honing my tongue to be a liar,” I say as a retort. Hopefully, that will make her lose interest.

“Was he playful? Serious? What was he like,” she asks excitedly. She stopped her chore for a minute and aims her body at me, her interest at peak.

“H-he used to be very funny and charming. I don’t really know him nowadays. He quickly fades after missions, barely talks to me anymore, and comes back with a scar every time we meet. Not that we meet a lot,” I say.

“Well it looks like the boys has been busy,” Rosemary says with a wink.

I rolled my eyes.

“Eman Othert, that boy,” she says.

I jolted from shock as my eyes widened. I accidentally pricked my finger at the rose from that.

“Y-you know Eman?” I asked accidentally loudly. Now my attention was at her.

She doesn’t look at me and insteads whistles while touching her flowers. She was teasing me.

That made me felt unsure about her. Or at everything in this place. Something definitely felt out of place.

“It’s good to not know everything about something. It keeps you thrilled,” Rosemary says again as she winks at me.