Chapter 75 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 75: The Ship of Exile 09
The diary’s perspective was not entirely clear, and much of its content remained vague.
The connection between Franka’s life and death, the fool’s ship on the way here, and the song that had come from it, Lucita could not stop turning over in her mind. That staff of music that had drifted across the river’s surface and rested for a moment on her fingertips, as though carrying some unnamed force, had drawn her one step deeper into a vast fog.
Lucita went to Viktori's largest psychiatric sanatorium.
The Spring Tower’s badge was the only thing that could open the sanatorium’s doors. It was a remarkably useful key: anyone who held it was, at minimum, a direct descendant of a marquis, and a particularly promising one at that.
Lucita was not a noble the director had ever encountered, bearing no family crest or distinguished family name, but a single badge was enough to make the director reluctant to press the matter.
First, Lucita asked carefully about the fool's ship.
According to what the boatwoman had told her, the "passengers" of the fool's ship were people the psychiatric institutions couldn't accommodate.
That account was not entirely accurate.
The sanatorium director was a woman of a dark-haired race. Finding that Lucita also had black hair, she warmed to her somewhat. She appeared to be in her forties or fifties, with white hairs already visible at her temples.
As the director explained, the fool's ship had originated as a form of exile rooted in religious ritual.
Originally, people believed that those deemed "heretics whose souls had been corrupted by demons" could not enter the divine realm even after death. To save them, the more extreme approach was to burn them with fire; the gentler approach was to set them adrift at sea, letting the ocean cleanse their souls at the end.
"Of course," the director said with a smile, "these are all remnants of prehistoric legend. Now that we have left behind such superstition and entered the realm of science, no one still adheres to that sort of reasoning."
Talking about science in a world with magic, Lucita thought dryly.
The director went on: "The fool's ship nowadays is more a method of abandonment. Patients in the sanatorium require care fees, which many families cannot afford, or cannot continue to afford. When they can no longer pay, and also refuse to bring their family member home, the sanatorium, with municipal government permission, has no choice but to hand the person over to passing boat workers and let them fend for themselves."
"What prompts you to ask about this?"
The director wore a politely pained expression when she said "fend for themselves," but appeared to feel no particular emotional stirring. She looked up again almost immediately, continuing to smile as she chatted with Lucita.
“I happened to see one passing on the Gloire.” Lucita brushed it aside and invented a reason, something about “looking into information about the elderly relative of a friend,” and asked if she could access the records room.
The plausibility of the excuse was questionable, but the director opened the records room for her without further questions.
Lucita went in alone, declining the director's offer to accompany her.
Based on the diary's account, Franka had been held in the psychiatric institution for one month after her arrest.
Information about her life was sparse. Prison records were difficult to obtain, and the archives of what was essentially a privately run sanatorium offered a better avenue for investigation.
The records here were arranged chronologically. Lucita worked through them in order and quickly located the winter of five years ago.
On a shelf near the very back of the records room.
A records room could only hold so many files, and from the location of these files, Lucita had no doubt that if she had come a few months later, they would have been declared obsolete, destroyed, and cleared for new materials.
She quickly found the November hospitalization records, and Franka's file envelope.
Lucita pulled out the file envelope. A torn, aged scrap of writing paper fell out.
She picked it up and carefully unfolded it.
The ink of this era did not last very long. In just five years, the writing had already become somewhat faint.
She made out that it was written in the first person, probably tucked into the file by a staff member sorting records.
“Everything is almost over.
...
Menoria, Menoria, I am about to die.
At this moment, my teacher, will you forgive me?
What you taught me, integrity, courage, compassion, I have not forgotten for a single day.
I created the work I am most proud of, and yet I have not become a source of pride to you.
How I wish I could know: in your eyes, was I, who got expelled from the Jonquil Concert Hall, a disgrace that brought shame upon you?
Mother, you always wanted to bring me back to the right path, but I kept...
Mother, live well, mother, I beg you.
I beg you to still hold that precious treasure, happiness. Live on happily.
Delara, my sister. I have always hoped you would be a little braver, but looking at the way things have turned out for me, my life experiences perhaps cannot truly make yours better.
...
Yesterday there was heavy snow, like last year, but warmer than last year.
The sky after snow was so full of stars. Seen from this window, they looked like the lights of this city reflected in the Milky Way.
I want to write one more piece. Let me write one last piece.
...
Menoria, this piece is the work I am most proud of, but it will never reach a second pair of hands.
Menoria, I don’t want to, but perhaps I will have to take it to the grave with me…”
Lucita turned the paper over. On the back was a musical score covered in repeated revisions and corrections.
She studied it carefully and read the score's title: Sparks.
Lucita mouthed the word, and felt a faint trembling.
In this moment, these lines of the musical staff seemed to overlap with the staff that had drifted from the Gloire. Though the melodies were different, the composer’s heavy yet hope-laden state of mind felt almost identical, carrying the same familiar quality.
A resembling rhythm, its aftertaste lingering.
Suddenly, the sound of a door opening came from behind the shelves.
Lucita looked back. The person who entered was a short, middle-aged woman with a head of short red hair, her posture bearing a habitual deferential stoop. Her clothing suggested she was a care worker here.
She saw the paper in Lucita's hands. Her pupils contracted slightly, but she recovered quickly: "My apologies for the interruption, honored guest. I've come to retrieve a document."
Lucita noticed her expression and asked an additional question: "Are you a care worker here?"
The woman shook her head: "No. I'm the archivist responsible for the records."
"All the files here were organized by you?"
"Yes, honored guest."
"How long have you worked here?"
The woman's expression remained unchanged: "About ten years or so."
Lucita gave a mild nod of acknowledgement, watched the woman retrieve a file with perfectly natural composure, and saw her take care to close the door gently behind her as she left.
Lucita kept the diary for a full week, until she felt she had wrung everything she could from it, and then brought it back to find Lesley again.
Lesley didn’t look well. Faint shadows lay beneath her eyes, but compared to the flustered manner of their last meeting, she was far more composed today.
Lesley was not on duty in the library today. She brought Lucita directly to her own room.
The apprentice quarters were far more modest than the student rooms. The bedroom and sitting room were combined into a single small space.
She lit the hearth, poured hot water for Lucita, and dropped in a sugar cube from the sugar jar: "The lodging is humble. Please don't take offense."
Lucita didn't spend time on pleasantries but got straight to the point, taking out the diary: "I'm here to return a book, my fellow Lesley."
After Lesley had declined “Young Master” as a reciprocal form of address, Lucita had settled on a convenient, polite alternative, but today Lesley clearly had no energy to correct her.
She accepted the crumpled old notebook with an unchanged expression: "Of course."
Lucita didn't hurry to leave, and continued: "Do you know about Franka?"
She had expected Lesley to say nothing, but to her surprise Lesley answered smoothly, almost as if in relief: "She was once a reasonably well-known musician. Her work was praised for its imaginative, romantic quality. Later she committed a crime, but reportedly she converted and entered the divine realm."
"A very carefully worded answer." Lucita said. She asked the question she had asked once before: "Do you know The Overwintering Bird?"
Lesley pressed her lips together: "Young Master Lucita, have I offended you in some way?"
"So this diary really is yours. Isn't it?"
"Please don't slander me without evidence."
"Slander" was a very precise word to choose. Lesley's use of it meant she already knew what was written inside the diary.
Her words were still deflecting, but essentially she had given up the pretense.
"I have no intention of condemning anyone, Lesley." Lucita's tone softened. "In fact, I'm not descended from any great noble family. My family name is entirely obscure. I come from a small town in the south. I'm here only because I'm powerful."
Lucita reached out and extinguished the fire in the hearth. Lesley froze.
She watched, unable to look away, as Lucita took her hand, and in an instant drew her into a world without color or scent, where everything pulsed with fleeting, vanishing musical notes.
"This is the layer of sound."
Lucita's voice came from beside her. Lesley turned, and looked in the direction Lucita was pointing.
On the table, above the musical scores recorded in the diary, a continuous staff of notes leapt and flowed. Amid countless sound-waves endlessly rising and fading, against the backdrop of that colorless, bare world, it carried a steadiness that felt almost eternal.
Lesley's voice was filled with disbelief: "Who are you?"
Not even the most formidable magician in the Spring Tower, nor even the theoretical heights that their textbooks described as the upper limits of magic, could weave together a world of pure sound like this.
"Someone who, at any rate, has no intention of condemning you." Lucita said, reassuringly, and opened the diary. Inside, a page of unfamiliar paper was tucked between the leaves.
Lesley said immediately, before she could stop herself: "That page is not mine."
Having said it, she realized what she had admitted, and pressed her lips together.
Lucita gave an easy smile: "I know."
She picked up the paper and showed Lesley the back of it.
In that instant, golden notes surged and flowed in a continuous stream, carrying intertwined pain and hope, flooding into Lesley’s eyes.
She murmured: "...Sparks."
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