Didi
I.
Didi had arrived at their home at a time of family crisis.
It was around dawn that the sleeping village of Bahlia appeared before her: dream-like and frosted, seemingly fogged in glass. It somehow retained a perfect likeness to that of a village inside of a snow globe that her mother, Josefina, had still kept among her possessions upon departing this world. In fact, the resemblance was strikingly uncanny. This was not to say that the village inside the snow globe had been any feat of incredible craftsmanship. On the contrary, Didi had always viewed it as a rather crude representation of something that could only have existed in the clumsy, underdeveloped imagination of its Maker, who, himself, may have had a rather peculiar sense of humor.
And yet, seeing the actual village of Bahlia now much closer up and before her very eyes, it became clear that the snow globe had been no fruit of the semi-infertile imagination, for, in fact, this raggedy old settlement upon which she gaped had conceivably been the original that spawned the imitation. Nevertheless, this village appeared no less crude and no more inspiring than its smaller-scale rendering had been. In this respect, the painstaking precision invoked in the exact re-creation of Bahlia seemed, in equal parts, both impressive and wasteful. What sort of imbecile would dedicate the skills of his craft to the reconstruction of such a mediocrity? She contemplated this for a moment before abandoning the thought altogether; to pursue a solution to this query seemed a dreadfully pointless exercise. She couldn’t help but wonder if deciding to come here hadn’t been a terrible mistake. But, then again, she had traveled all the way here from Vasalla to find her half-father. There could be no mistake in seeking to do so.
Or could there?
She remembered now that day back in Vasalla after the funeral when she had found the snow globe among Josefina’s belongings. Immediately, Didi had thought to herself, “Good god! Why did she hold on to this unsightly thing?” She wondered what could have possessed her mother, a woman of what she liked to consider reasonably refined tastes, to keep an item that could only have been made for the very purpose of its own cosmically ironic or kitsch value, together with her fine knitted shawls imported from Saruyama, her expensive jewelry, antique vases, and dinnerware. The snow globe, however, was an object for which Josefina had always, for some reason, seemed to harbor a great fascination, to the point that she would stare into it languorously for hours on end. It was a kind of unhealthy preoccupation that had always remained beyond Didi’s comprehension, as well as that of her half-father, Guni, who—upon having, suddenly and without invitation, taken on the role of her guardian if only to gain immediate access to Josefina’s belongings—simply told Didi to hold on to the snow globe as a keepsake. So, she kept it safely among her belongings, while Guni sold off Josefina’s shawls, jewelry, and antiques at the estate auction. He promised Didi that he would put the inheritance money to good use, but never bothered to explain any further.
Naturally, she should have known better than to trust him.
Now, overlooking Bahlia from a clifftop above, Didi patted her horse on the head. The poor guy must have been exhausted from the long night of riding. Their breaks had been few these past couple of weeks, for she had ridden in constant fear of being robbed, attacked, or murdered. The horse had served her well though and performed his role with greater honor than even most people were capable. She had, in fact, only become acquainted with this horse very recently, but it soon began to feel to her as though a bond had been forged between them, the strength of which she would otherwise be hard-pressed to find in any of her human relationships. She assumed that the source of this bond had something to do with their shared feeling of not being needed, of not even being wanted. He was an old horse who was useful to no one but her; similarly, she was a young woman whose thoughts, aspirations and opinions had very little value to anyone but this horse whose migration she had quite carefully guided.
In spite of this mutualistic relationship, the horse would certainly have been incapable of understanding that with the recent conferment of new obligations upon Didi, both financial and otherwise, the standard appraisal of her existence by her fellow humans had even managed to drop below zero to a sustained negative value. With the weight of the debts that had gathered on her shoulders, she had transformed from an ordinary unwanted daughter to a living and breathing and roaming liability. Thus, from the perspective of any human who placed the slightest value on his or her own self-determination, she was an object to be avoided—for there could be no doubt that all upon whom she descended would share in her burdens equally. This was simply the way of things.
As a natural consequence of this, there had been very little for her to leave behind in Vasalla. There were few people who would miss her, if any at all. And so, now, at the end of her sudden migration to the lands in the south, one could possibly say that she had been born anew—that all the pain, the abandonment, the loss had been shed with the skin of her former existence. Perhaps the same could be said for the horse.
This was a comforting thought.
After gaining control of the inheritance money, Guni had disappeared from Didi’s life altogether, leaving her once again to fend for herself. She buried the snow globe deep at the bottom of a chest where she kept Josefina’s remaining odds and ends and almost immediately forgot about the hideous little thing. At that point, thoughts of the snow globe would only have served to be distracting; her concerns were of a more pragmatic nature. For one thing, she had no money for rent, so the only option available was to move out of her lodgings and work as a live-in maid at the house of Josefina’s former employers, as she waited for her half-father to come through with her share of the inheritance. However, it seemed that Guni had taken flight for one reason or the other, leaving the saloon he owned in the charge of one of his apprentice barkeeps. Didi waited two full years for him to return with her money, but didn’t receive so much as a message from him. And when Guni finally stumbled back into town only to die immediately in the middle of the street of a runny nose, the mystery of what had happened to that inheritance money didn’t make itself any clearer. On the contrary, Didi only managed to find, among his scant belongings, the draft of a letter that he’d written in which he’d promised to use the inheritance money to pay off the long-standing interest on a debt to a man named Anup.
Anup.
The name had a reputation all its own: Anup.
Now, just the thought of that man brought a shiver down her spine. Didi’s horse bucked suddenly. “Easy…easy…” She whispered to him gently, “He’s nowhere in sight. I’m told Anup’s presence is announced by the music of a military march, some sort of awe-inducing anthem composed in his honor by the Vasallan Football Club. The drumbeats are what people speak of most, for they are the most portentous element of his approach. But surely what he gains in the sense of dread it creates he loses in his ability to surprise his intended victims. Either way, we should have fair warning if he manages to find us. Anyway, we’ll get moving again soon. Just need to rest up a bit…” She stretched her arms out and yawned, hoping silently, as she did so, that Bahlia would make for an effective hiding place. If Anup had the support of the Greater Kaiiba-8 Football Association, surely he could find her no matter where she was, unless she left Kaiiba altogether. In any case, before she could even worry about that, there was the small matter of finding the home of her half-father. Certainly, this would be no simple task, to say nothing of what should unfold upon their first meeting. He could very well send her on her way. This would not be an unreasonable reaction and, naturally, not one that she was not already used to. Regardless of what should transpire, the first order of business was to get out of broad daylight before Anup or his men had a chance to track her location. She stretched once again and yawned.
When Anup’s underlings had first arrived in Vasalla to collect on Guni’s debts, there had been nothing sufficient in Didi’s savings to pay them off after all the co
sts incurred by Guni’s funeral. It seemed that Guni had owed a rather hefty sum for reasons undetermined. After seizing control of Guni’s remaining assets, including his saloon, Anup’s men demanded the remaining balance from Didi, as she was his only surviving relative. Unable to pay, she offered instead to work off the debt as a hostess at the pub. The men were satisfied with this arrangement and agreed to the terms. For a few months, it seemed like the matter was on its way to being settled. Didi naturally didn’t enjoy attending to the men of the saloon, but felt that this was the only way she could be assured that there would be no further trouble for her. It certainly seemed so…until Anup himself actually descended upon the town.
The horse’s posterior now gave utterance to a flatulent howl that echoed hauntingly through the valley before her. Its echo was grandiose and daring, its scent foul, albeit liberating; yet she knew that this majestic gastrointestinal call to nature would also give away their position to those who were tracking her. It was hard to envision what lengths they were willing to go to in order to find her, or for that matter, how long the affair would remain unsettled before they finally gave up altogether. Beyond this, she simply couldn’t comprehend the depths of the obligations which had now been thrust upon her. Just how far does an obligation extend and just how much does it encompass beyond that which can simply be settled through monetary means?
Anup apparently had a rather singular point of view when it came to this question, as he had been extremely dissatisfied with the way his men had handled the situation and was quick to exact his violent retribution on them, but not before extending the obligations of Guni’s debts to Didi herself. He made it clear that what he sought was not simply the remittance of this sum, but something more—presumably something she did not wish to know about. It was difficult to know what nature of obligation that Guni had had outstanding to Anup, for there existed many species and sub-species thereof—obligations which lived and breathed and roamed just as much as the hosts who bore them and which were, thus, inclined to biodifferentiate through adaptation in the same manner as any other parasitic organism. In this case, the import and ambiguity of this nameless and unsatisfied obligation imbued it with a certain ominous quality before which none could help but tremble.
Fortunately for Didi, she had been away from the saloon when Anup had transferred these unsatisfied liabilities to her charge. This prompted one of the elderly regulars of the bar, upon spotting her in the street, to run up to her and inform her immediately of these new developments. He advised her to grab what she could and take flight. At first, she hadn’t had any idea where she could escape to, but the old man recommended that she visit her other half-father in Bahlia, for he was the sort of chap who would not feel the slightest bit put upon by the obligations of his half-daughter. In fact, he might just accept them with a measure of earnest gratitude. And so the old man brought her back to his house, drew up a map to Bahlia and offered up one of his elder horses on the condition that she set the old palomino free upon arrival. He added, “…and tell Raju and Yuri that Eihachiro sends his best!” And so Didi left the town of Vasalla by horse in the middle of the night.
In the darkness of a pitch black sky, she left in her wake the balmy air, the sugar plantations, and the warm breezes. She knew that before long these would be replaced by the frozen chilly air of the areas to the south. The snow and that dreadful Karakaze! The lands to the south were known for being treacherous.
She’d experienced it once before, while on caravan with her mother, uncle and aunt through the Absconditus-21 mountain range. They’d traveled around for days wrapped in blankets inside the covered wagon telling stories and jokes. Her uncle had a knack for coin tricks which he never explained how to do despite Didi’s endless pleadings. But it wasn’t long before the good-natured spirit that had prevailed throughout the trip was suddenly dampened when Josefina’s reasons for having partaken became clear and it was revealed that their joining the caravan had actually been motivated by her desire to pass Didi off on her relatives. In the end, Josefina’s pleas had been fruitless and the two of them returned together against the gusts of the freezing Karakaze wind to Vasalla on foot. And it was on that return journey that Didi suddenly began to sense that the Karakaze seemed to be filling her with a kind of emptiness, if such a thing could be said to happen. That is to say, she didn’t feel drained of any sort of fulfillment, but on the contrary, a void had seemingly gained access to her insides, spreading throughout her system to supplant what had existed with a blank nothingness. Her memory had been wiped clean to the extent that she couldn’t quite remember what it was exactly that she was missing, despite this notion that gnawed at her that, doubtlessly, something simply had to be. To her, the Karakaze was that very void—a medium through which meaning could be both drawn and erased in broad sweeping strokes that expressed themselves in gusts and swirls. Semblance was a side effect of its traversal through the landscape, for the Karakaze was something more than simply that which traversed. It was an invisible canvas, one that folded inward upon itself at the corners to flap vehemently in the pull of its own vacuum. And as it entered her system, although invade would be a more fitting word, a shudder of despair ran through her body at its frozen caress. She could feel its beckon to courtship. And that horrible chill had forever crystallized in her memory that feeling of being unwanted by a woman who was willing to even keep a laughable old snow globe in her possession over her own daughter: a snow globe that, whenever Didi looked at it, made it seem impossible for her to escape the faint, yet unsettling feeling that this wretched object carried a greater intrinsic importance than her very existence. Could it have had some special meaning? Was it the very expression of the life her mother fantasized about—a life free from obligations, from the burdens of responsibility and devotion to her only child? Or, could all of this simply have been some misappraisal on Didi’s part, an overreaction that simply came about because she let her imagination run wild? Whatever her mother’s reasons may have been, Didi couldn’t help but feel jealous of the snow globe after her mother’s death, to feel a bitter hatred for it; yet not just a hatred, but rather a kind of obsession with it, for it was almost mystifyingly calculated in its poor craftsmanship as though it had been fashioned with the intent to deceive. And if this were the case, it was not just her mother, but even Didi herself, who was on the receiving end of its varied and intricate deceptions. It was an idol of false promises. Of broken dreams.
And yet, on that first night of riding, upon dismounting from her horse, Didi reached into her travel bag only to realize that she’d inadvertently packed the snow globe, as well. She sighed as she felt past it with her hand to look for the map. That night, she sat by the fire, studying rough, uneven lines that weaved through non-existent territories and land formations to meet obtusely at points, annotated by illegible descriptions. The map was anything but accurate, but left with no other source of guidance by which to abide, she could only trust it insofar as it would provide a template by which she could plot her course. Roasting some nuts she’d received from the local O-bousan, words of caution loomed lastingly in her mind, “Stick to the main roads that the traders take. It’s not safe for a girl your age to venture too far into the wilderness...”
Didi, however, was less concerned with the wild beasts out there. Those she could handle. It was Anup and his men that she feared. More specifically, it was this unknown, nameless obligation that scared her most, for she did not know what she was expected to do in order to satisfy it. The only logical recourse was escape. And abidingly, the only effective way to avert detection was to go against the O-bousan’s well-meaning advice and avoid the main roads altogether. It would take longer to get to Bahlia, but she knew she’d arrive eventually.
And so, by firelight that first night, she mapped out a winding course just north of the main roads. And early the next morning, she set off once again, following the exact route she’d plotted.
II.
The main roads, which Didi sought so desperately to avoid, had been established shortly after Bunnu-5 had come into power, but the frequency of their use had increased not so long after he succumbed to his ongoing bout with Swimmer’s Ear, two and a half years earlier. His successor, who went by the name of Keisuke-610, was the flamboyant and eccentric nephew of Bunnu-5 and a strong proponent of opening the kingdom to foreign trade, which, in spite of his intentions, ended up doing a great deal more to improve the quality of life of his people than to serve his own selfish whims.
To wit, his craving for “those divine Mumta fragrances and soaps” impelled him to open trade with the Kingdom of Mumtaz, allowing for an influx of theretofore unknown technology and cultural advances, such as steam power and indoor plumbing, which made everyday life more convenient—for starters, no more outhouses to contend with in the dead of winter!—and paved the way for greater industrial yield per man-hour.
Of course, in order to increase the number of man-hours available to be utilized, the labor force had to expand. This, however, was rather difficult to do, given the conditions of living prevalent under the Kaiiban caste system. And so, at the urging of his ministers, Keisuke called for a census to be performed in order to gain a better idea as to the availability of able-body laborers, as well as the conditions of living of all his people, particularly those of lower castes. Using these results, he was able to institute a kind of national lottery system for lower castes with prizes ranging from Mumta soaps to Civil Service jobs. “Clean, clean, clean your way to happiness and fortune!” became his slogan to the masses. And so, with the inception of the lottery system, the Mumta soaps became increasingly popular among the lower classes. They, in fact, came to be seen as auspicious objects for the prosperity of those who had, until now, lived in abject squalor. And so, the lottery served not only to collect funding to support public utility programs, but also to create a labor force of well-groomed men and women to keep these programs going. That is, only if they were lucky enough to win these sought-after civil service positions, but of course, that only caused them to keep buying in to the lottery system. To top it all off, these initiatives created a demand for Mumta soaps, which helped to bolster the already burgeoning economy.
In order to meet the new demand for consumer products and open the door to trade with other kingdoms, Keisuke-610 also became hailed as a friend of industry by granting special charters allowing for the formation of enterprises that could be granted the status of limited liability corporations, for the purposes of protecting entrepreneurs against the liquidation of their assets and the government itself against the financial risk of the ventures that it sought to contract from these organizations. Keisuke-610’s abiding interests were with the Mumta. He had grown up with a great fondness for them and wanted to bring an influx of their goods to his land, but didn’t have enough resources to do it without the help of private investors. These charters gave him the wherewithal to do it, while at the same time, providing a much-needed boost to the economy. They also allowed for the exploration and acquisition of resources and materials available solely in other lands outside of the immediate area. One of the largest import-export operations, the Kaiiba-East Mumtaz Company, had hired a fleet of ships to seek out resources in both charted and uncharted territories. Accordingly, the corporation’s merchant ships were accompanied by a whole fleet of Royal Navy ships, manned with garrisons charged with the responsibility of assessing the defenses of civilizations with whom they came in contact and, if the circumstances allowed for it, to “offer these weakened and vulnerable souls the protection of His Excellency the King Keisuke-610.”
After mounting numerous successful campaigns throughout the neighboring areas, the influence of Keisuke had spread from the Eastern shore to the West and even out as far as to the Isle of Deposed Kings. Throughout these lands, the glory of Kaiiba was recognized by all. And so, one day, a group of old men in top hats and tuxedos appeared before the doors of the castle requesting an audience with the king. Upon meeting with him, they recommended that he standardize the currency throughout the kingdom, advancing the notion that the money would have a greater aesthetic quality with his own likeness on each coin. Enthralled by the idea, Keisuke-610 made it so and it wasn’t long before the market was flooded with new currency, which despite some initial bumps and pangs of consumer uneasiness, had lastingly good effects upon the market and gave way to a proliferation in trade between different areas. The trade routes were paved over and travel between villages became much easier than ever before. Needless to say, Keisuke-610’s inadvertent reforms made him incredibly popular with his people to the point that artists from all over the kingdom were offering their services to adorn anything within plain sight with his stunning likeness. Keisuke-610 was naturally too hesitant to decline for fear of discouraging the artists from achieving their creative visions.
And so, his likeness could be seen on street corners, posters, statues, coins, the sides of wagons, hanging from banners, on fences, as murals inside doghouses, engraved into silverware, shaved into sheep, on boxes containing shaving utensils, branded into cattle, on the signs for banks, embossed on hospital linens, in the newspapers, as signs hanging over printing presses, carved into the caves under Coral Canyons, etched into the trees at the Dancing Spider orchards, painted on the side of factories, posted on the walls of police stations, on hotel stationary, on cloth diapers…just to name a few.
The prevalence of his likeness, along with his remarkable sense of fashion, and knack for diplomacy went a long way in earning him a nickname that he never tired of hearing: “Charismatic K!”
III.
In the cold and quiet dawn, as she looked upon Bahlia, Didi leaned forward and lazily rested her head facedown against the mane of the horse, as she let her arms hang down around his neck. These sleepless few weeks on the road had finally started to catch up with her. The horse brayed impatiently, causing her to tilt her head and look down at a coin she had been keeping clenched in her palm all this time. It was a bronze coin with the effeminate, yet proud face of Charismatic K on it. She wondered momentarily if this village from her mother’s snow globe would accept this currency. But there could be no question that they would. She could see large ice sculptures of him on either side of the entry gates. And yet, she couldn’t seem to dismiss the nagging feeling from her mind that the village, itself, was, in fact, some kind of illusion. This had been her immediate inclination upon her first sight of Bahlia on the horizon.
She now found herself remembering something the O-bousan had said to her when she had gone to pay him the money for Guni’s funeral. She’d asked him what had happened to her mother after she’d died. Where did she go? She made no mention of Guni. There were enough people like him out there that she didn’t really need to know what had become of him, specifically. But her mother…well, there was simply one Josefina. God wouldn’t dare make another. And yet, the O-bousan smiled calmly at her and assured her that her mother’s energy must be preserved somewhere in the Universe. Somewhere. Elements of her matter had decomposed and recombined with other things. Her body heat had dispersed into the atmosphere, into an ether, as it were, as the life crept slowly out of her body, until it became One with all that surrounded it. And these were just the ephemeral things about her mother. It was that which was infinite that mattered most: her soul. Her soul, after all, was to be reincarnated in the form of new life somewhere. Somewhere in the Universe, Mama’s soul was still intact, existing maybe as the baby to another Mama…or perhaps as an annual rainy season flower, or maybe even as a bacterium adapted to subsist in deep sea high pressure vents of hot sulfur. Needless to say, Josefina, or rather elements of her, were, for better or worse, out there in the world and, even after her death, it was Didi who was left to deal with them—to pick up the pieces, wherever it was that she happened to find them. And she could sense those pieces all around her. Sometimes in t
he dry air that brushed against her skin, brisk and full of energy, or in the impetuous and impatient call to attention of the legions of crows that swooped down from the highest branches to pick up discarded bits of food along the side of the highway in the early morning, perhaps in the unquenchable fervor of the river rapids that hit the rocks, releasing a white spray that settled to a fine mist through which she imagined she could once again see the woman herself in all those fleeting moments that passed too quickly to register in a lasting and meaningful sense, those characteristics, those elements that comprised Her, Josefina—she, in her alluring and captivating grandeur, her soulful and poetic reserve, her infinite sadness. Moments that dissolved all too quickly in air with the mist. Didi couldn’t be sure that the O-bousan had said what he did because he actually believed it, or because he wanted to believe it, or if he was simply saying it to comfort her. Whatever they may have been, his reasons for telling her such things were no longer important.
And when she had first seen the village from the snow globe materialize upon the horizon as she approached Bahlia, she couldn’t, initially, help but wonder if it was not simply a mirage, perhaps yet another remnant of the departed Josefina. The snow globe, after all, was in Didi’s travel bag—presumably this vast apparition had come into existence before her as an extension of the snow globe itself: projected outward from its glass dome through tiny microscopic gaps in the fabric of the bag and subsequently imposed upon the surrounding reality as a manifestation of Josefina’s endless fantasies. At first, this phenomenon impressed Didi sufficiently to arrest temporarily her hatred for this accursed heirloom. Yet, as she drew closer to the village, she found that this was not the case at all and that the reality was far less heartening than that which had existed in fanciful reverie. In viewing the village from a distance, she had mistakenly understood the causality in reverse, when, in fact, the crude, mediocre village of Bahlia had inspired the crude and mediocre replica within the glass dome. She supposed these sorts of disappointments were inevitable, but this was nothing new. In a similar fashion, she had wanted to believe, as the O-bousan had proclaimed to, that her mother was still somewhere out there, existing as reformulated Matter, but right now, it was difficult for Didi to think that her mother, even when she was still alive, had been anything but a poorly-crafted representation of a being that solely existed in the imagination.
But…no!
She could not allow herself to view the matter this way! Doing so would benefit no one.
She sat straight up on the horse, taking a deep breath of fresh air, as she put the coin back in her pocket. This was no time to give in to cynicism when a new day was right there before her for the taking. Disillusionment aside, there was still room to entertain possibility. And to do so was the only way to quell that lingering and encumbering sense of despondency that had a tendency to rise up and sap her will. For now, the snow globe would be whatever she decided it could be. She could dictate the terms of the reality however she saw fit; perhaps this meant that she was some sort of delusional fantasist like Josefina had been, but this sense of whimsy now allowed her to greet the rising sun with an undiminished sense of hope. Enough of this feeling sorry for oneself! She had arrived: the very thought of this now brought a hot tear to her eye and a warm smile to her face. Yes, she would embrace open possibility over closed cynical musing. There could be no other way to feel a sense of affirmation about her life in the days to come. Until now, she had been afraid…but now her fear was gone. It was time to look ahead instead of behind.
Looking at the village now, she decided that if the snow globe was projecting anything before her now, it was, doubtlessly, her irremediable and unshakable destiny. Perhaps, the model inside had always, in fact, been a representation of her fate. Back when she was young, having seen the snow globe before ever having had the chance to see real snow, to imagine that she would one day enter such a world seemed beyond her comprehension. Yet now, at the start of this wondrous new day, she rode down the side of the cliff and into the village, fully convinced that she was, in fact, riding into a kind of legerdemain fabricated by someone no longer present to watch His plans come to fruition.
She decided to make a quick pass through the village and move east, as the map indicated, just beyond it to the red ‘X’ that marked her destiny. The horse’s trot was, of course, muffled by the snow, which now piled high, but not so high as to prove burdensome. The roads winded and crossed at the marketplace before forking into a series of tiny alleyways and side streets that branched into plazas with statues of Charismatic K in a pose of triumph on a horse, or Charismatic K with an inspired expression looking at an apple that he held before his face, or Charismatic K saving children from a burning orphanage.
Someone had cleared the snow over the manholes so that workers from the utility company—presumably winners of Charismatic K’s lottery—could get in for an ongoing renovation project. A few of them stood around the manhole in front of the print shop, breathing warm air into their cupped hands and rubbing them together in the brisk air. It reminded her of that morning watching a few of the carnies warming themselves by a fire in a metal trash can next to the glass chamber that enclosed the green-bubbled Ethereal Scapegoat, as her mother tried to negotiate the terms of the proposed sale: “The sign said you were looking for a dog-faced woman…would you settle for a hairy little dwarf-girl? This magnificent specimen here is-” She rode faster, casting the echoes of this voice behind her, as she glanced ahead at the workers, who simply looked back at her in silent curiosity. Snow piled up to the windows of the print shop behind them.
It was pure and luminous and untouched!
After a few more turns, she found the East Gate, which was less a gate, and more precisely a break in the stone walls that fortified the east side of the village. On each side, she could see the back of another set of ice sculptures of Charismatic K. She pulled the horse into a sprint and sped through to find a vast snowy landscape spreading itself out before her. There were a number of houses scattered about the white expanse that stretched to the rocky snow-covered peaks of the newly formed Absconditus-011235 mountain range which jutted awkwardly up from odd precipices and bizarrely shaped rock formations nearby to progressively tower outward to dizzying and imposing heights in the far horizon.
The map had shown this whole area to be farmland, but it seemed now that the mountains had advanced upon the town since Eihachiro had been here. Is this town being consumed by those mountains? She contemplated the question for a moment before deciding it best to forget such matters and enjoy the beautiful view. The snow globe certainly didn’t show this side of the village. Quite a shame, as it was rather beautiful. She was annoyed by that, but at the same time, pleasantly surprised. Never before had she seen such a beautiful snowy landscape.
A peculiar sensation filled her body. Her trip was coming to an end and part of her was excited. Part of her scared. But for some reason, she also felt a hint of sadness, though she couldn’t understand exactly why. She didn’t miss Vasalla really. She certainly wasn’t as disappointed by Bahlia as she thought she would be. Even the Karakaze had been strangely absent throughout the trip, as though hiding behind a tree or beneath a rock, lying in wait menacingly, as it simply watched her pass. If anything, it had been an uneventful journey. And yet, during all that time spent traveling, as she sped from the warm, moist air of Vasalla in a southeasterly direction through the plains, across rivers, through the forest in Neha, and finally into the frozen air of Greater Kaiiba-8, she found nothing more fulfilling, more satisfying than the very anticipation of arriving at the home of her half-father. However, now, as she was moments from it, she felt that once dizzying energy slowly draining from her as the life had from the landscape when she’d traversed from areas of plentiful and prosperous foliage to those of limited and dormant vegetation. When she left, the branches had been brimming with leaves of a vibrant green, but now staring at the trees aro
und her on this barren landscape, she felt her insides cave-in as though something very vital keeping the other organs in place had suddenly deflated, or had perhaps been tugged out. It was a strange mix of feelings: the anticipation and the arrival. There was a certain enchantment, a certain pain, even a certain emptiness to it, but she would not let such bewildering contradictions taint this glorious moment, for there was still much left to anticipate, beyond the destination itself. It was natural to feel anxious, but, in such instances, it was best to focus on the excitement over the fear.
She slowed down as she approached the house that had been marked on her map with a red X. It was a simple, brown, three-story structure with a tiny overhanging roof over the front door, which Didi couldn’t help but think added a whole element to the building that made it look like some kind of immense pastry. But then again, she hadn’t eaten anything since lunchtime the day before. With this, she took a piece of Meiso bread that the O-bousan had given her from out of her pouch and broke it in half, taking a bit while feeding the horse the rest.
After dismounting, she untied the saddle and gave the horse the rest of its feed. As she removed the reins, the horse whinnied and bucked in response before bolting in the direction of the mountains. Watching the horse take off like that, Didi couldn’t understand why Eihachiro had told her to set him free, or where the horse could possibly go in this terrible cold, unless it had a destiny of its own to fulfill. After all, he was very old—perhaps he was going somewhere to die, though she couldn’t be sure. She wondered if he knew instinctively where to go and what to do now that he was free, but dismissed the thought quickly. After all, how could he?
Who ever does?
She watched the horse from behind for a long time, waving a tearful goodbye, before she turned back to look at the house. She knew now that she no longer had the option to turn back. Her cautious sensibilities were abandoning her, fleeing at a wild pace, one might say, for the mountains. What else could they do, after all? What more could she possibly have to lose? In a sense, she too, felt free.
She walked slowly to the pastry house. The hour was early, so she felt that it might have been presumptuous to knock. She stopped short of the front door, tightening the blankets around her shoulders. Though the path to the doorstep had been cleared, the snow was piled up on the doorstep to her knees, causing her to wonder what the purpose of clearing the pathway had served.
She contemplated this quietly as she waited outside the door for someone inside to notice her.
IV.