How to Overcome Childhood (3)
Sister Flora looked unwell.
No — she looked so pale it seemed she might die at any moment.
I knew it was something I shouldn't do. But someone had to.
We laid her on a makeshift cot pieced together from old clothes and scraps of cloth. When we peeled away the blood-stiffened habit, her pure white skin was covered in dark, ugly bruises. The flesh had split open where the blows had landed. Marks of a beating. Marks of contempt and humiliation.
It hurt so much to look at. It made me so sad.
We didn't even know why she had been struck. All we could see was Sister Flora, beaten unconscious, lying there as if asleep.
She needed clothes. She needed medicine to clean the wounds. She needed food for when she woke. We knew all of that — and we had no money. We didn't know anyone who would lend us any, either. What mattered more urgently was first aid. The wounds had to be disinfected.
"…Rhea, Claudia, Ceria. You all want Sister to get better, right?"
When I asked, they nodded through their tears. Ceria clutched Sister Flora's hand and sobbed. Claudia's wolf-tribe tail hung limp. Only Rhea watched me with something dark and uneasy in her eyes.
"Then come with me. There's a general store on the edge of the village. They have medicine for wounds, and food too. I'll handle it somehow. So don't ask questions. Just do what I say. Got it?"
Even so, they must have known there was no other way. Hesitating would only make Sister suffer more. We pulled a blanket over her.
"W-wait!"
Just as we were about to hurry back toward the village, Claudia set the wolf plush her parents had left with her when they abandoned her by Sister Flora's pillow. Ceria placed the cross Sister Flora had given her for her birthday — the one she'd received after saying she wanted to become a sister herself. Only then did we turn and rush toward the village.
Our short legs shoved against the ground in a frantic rhythm. Ceria tripped clumsily and scraped her knee, but no one could stop to tend to her. She seemed to understand that too — she touched the scrape lightly, then came after us still crying.
Through the general store's window, we could see the tattooed proprietor puffing on a cigarette. Sister Flora had taught us that smoking was bad and harmful, so the children were afraid of it. I stationed Ceria, Rhea, and Claudia by the wall and forced a smile.
"You remember tag, right?"
Even if they didn't, they had to. They were sharp enough for that much. Abandoned children never had the luxury of being dense.
"…I'm going to throw the medicine and the food over the wall. Then you follow the wall around once. While the man and I are playing tag, you go back to Sister. Got it?"
"…Riel, wh-what are you talking about?!"
"Rhea, it's fine. Nothing's going to go wrong. I'm friends with the guy here. We've done this before."
"R-really?"
"Yeah. So don't worry, Ceria. Claudia, stop crying too. We're just playing a prank, like old times. Okay?"
I tried to reassure them again and again, but Rhea still looked at me with fear in her eyes. She seemed to know what I was about to do. Before Sister Flora took us in, this had been something I did often enough — so of course she would know.
"Alright. Everyone wait here."
Still, it had to be done. I carefully stepped into the general store. The other children were waiting outside, but I took my time looking around inside. Eleven years old. A frame smaller than most kids my age — maybe even a little shorter than Rhea.
The storekeeper eyed me with suspicion. A brat barging into a place where the flies outnumbered the customers, inspecting everything one by one — of course he'd be wary. This was an age when theft, robbery, even murder were ordinary. There were crime syndicates, mercenary bands, adventurers, bandit crews, guilds — everything existed in this era. So I approached the owner, hoping to put him at ease.
"Which of these is better?"
I deliberately asked, voice thick with tears. Even in times like these, a child's tears still worked. He wasn't entirely cold-hearted, at least — he started asking me things. What I was looking for. Whether I was planning to steal.
So I made something up.
"I don't know how much they cost…. I-I was going to check the prices and come back with the money. You know how it is — everyone in our village is poor. W-we don't have much money…."
The storekeeper looked like he understood. Still suspicious, he turned to search behind the counter for other medicines. That was when I slipped, very carefully, toward the spot I'd already scouted — where the salves, dried fruit, and grain sacks were. I grabbed a handful and flung it out the window.
It made a sound, so I deliberately kicked a display stand and sent everything crashing down. Without so much as glancing toward the window, the storekeeper — his brief pity converted instantly into rage — came charging out.
"You— you little bastard—!"
Honestly, I was scared.
"Hehe. Fun, right?"
But I just grinned and asked if it was fun, like it was all a game. I heard a rapid pat-pat-pat. That was probably Ceria, Claudia, and Rhea catching what I'd thrown and running.
I dodged around the display stands, weaving this way and that. My small size meant the bulky storekeeper couldn't catch me right away. Furious, he grabbed something blunt and hurled it at my head.
"You tiny little shit — repaying kindness with betrayal?!"
I hoped the others wouldn't hear a voice like that. Better that he just stay angry.
Thwack!
I snatched up a medicine bottle that had fallen nearby and threw it at his face. It arced so naturally, so cleanly, that it clipped him square and dropped. What came out of him wasn't a curse so much as a raw howl. That was better.
Grab!
He caught me by the scruff of the neck. Then he flung me roughly against the wall. Things clattered down around me. He hesitated a moment, then cleared the merchandise first.
Then—
"You little brat — who do you think you're dealing with?!"
Thud!
He stomped on me. If I got badly hurt too, I thought the whole orphanage might truly die. Or maybe the girls would end up drifting into the slums, raised as prostitutes. The thought terrified me so much that I curled up and shielded my head at least. But the storekeeper seemed to want me dead — he stomped on my head with stubborn, relentless force.
Thud — thud — thud — thud — thud!
It hurt so much I couldn't even keep my hands up. My arms went limp. The storekeeper panted for a moment, then hauled me up by my clothes and threw me out of the shop. I tumbled across the ground again and again. A rock ground into my back, and I felt blood start to run. My consciousness blurred — then cleared again.
Strangely, the night was full of moonlight. That was when I realized it. I had blacked out for a while.
And I noticed something else: a single silver coin in my pocket. The storekeeper must have put it there. The reason wasn't hard to guess. The Orthodox Church had just been through — he wouldn't have wanted word getting out that he'd done something ugly. The Pope was as powerful as the King, and the Pope was fond of children. In some ways, the Orthodox Church was closer to ordinary people than the crown ever was.
"…Ptuh."
I spat, and blood came with it. Thinking it was a runny nose, I touched my face — it was a nosebleed. Wiping it on my clothes would leave a stain I couldn't get out, so I crawled into the grass and cleaned it off with the blades.
It wasn't as if I'd never been beaten before. But this hurt especially badly. It was the first time I'd taken a beating this defenselessly.
The moment I tried to stand, my legs gave out and I collapsed. So I crawled for a while, and only when I'd grown used to the throbbing pain did I push myself up again.
I thought about going straight to the church — then worried the children would cry if they saw me like this. I headed instead to the river where we always washed, and scrubbed the blood from my clothes.
Every time the freezing water touched a wound, my body flinched. A sharp sting and a deep, throbbing ache tormented me. Even as a child, having fragments of an adult's memory was useful. Knowing how much Sister Flora had endured, how much she had suffered, made it bearable.
Sniff.
The truth was, it might not have been bearable at all. Realizing those memories didn't mean I had stopped being myself. I was a child — just a little more composed than the other kids my age.
Ripples spread across the river's surface. Soon, something red began dripping from my head. The water must have loosened a scab that had started to form. There was nothing to be done about that either, so I decided to keep soaking until the bleeding stopped. I stayed in the water until dawn. My whole body ached with cold, and my nose ran as if I'd caught a chill.
Still, the clothes dried. The blood stopped flowing. That was enough.
There were plenty of bruises and scrapes, but how many times had I gotten hurt falling during a game of tag? If I just made something up, maybe they'd believe me. I put on the dry clothes and clenched the single silver coin tight in my fist.
Only then did I wonder whether Sister Flora had managed to eat anything, whether the wounds had been cleaned at all. Rhea, at least, was someone I'd taught a few things to now and then, so I wasn't too worried. She grumbled and snapped sometimes, but she wasn't a fool.
Even so, the limp wouldn't go away, so I deliberately walked a few more times — until I'd felt the throbbing enough to endure it — and then headed back. Sister Flora, who always seemed to be waiting for us, was not outside.
I pushed open the old wooden door with a creak, and the first thing I saw was a red-haired girl rushing at me. Her eyes were red. They were swollen, too — she must have cried a great deal.
"Riel…!"
From further inside, Ceria and Claudia, who had been nursing Sister Flora, came out as well. They were the same. The only differences were that Ceria, perhaps from sheer relief, lost the strength in her legs halfway out and fell — and that Claudia's tail was as mussed as if she hadn't groomed it all day.
"Y-you've got so many wounds…. Y-you said it was tag. R-Riel…. Y-you said it'd be fine!"
Claudia looked at me, voice breaking. Ceria stayed where she had fallen, sniffling and wiping at her tears again and again.
"…Why did Sister and Riel have to get hurt? I don't understand. Why do we have to be abandoned and tormented?"
It's nothing. There's no problem.
"I just fell while playing tag. Don't worry — it doesn't hurt. The man said he'd help us. Really. We had a good talk, so don't worry too much."
When I said that, Rhea's fists began to tremble. Her eyes locked onto mine.
"Liar…. That's a lie!"
Even if it was a lie, there was nothing else I could do. The price of not finding a better excuse was simply ignoring her and walking to the bed. I was more worried about Sister Flora than about myself.
"Riel…?"
Sister Flora's lips were cracked and blistered. Scabs had formed on them. Whether she was too weak to move, or whether she had heard everything — she couldn't even lift her upper body. Tears ran from the corners of her eyes as she lay there. I pressed the silver coin I'd earned as the price of the beating into her hand.
"…I found a patron. Sister, it's true. So you can rest as much as you need."
"…Riel, no lies. Who would… for us…. No — for a heretic like me…."
"It's not a lie. You know me. I'm a good kid. Rhea, Ceria, Claudia — none of them will go hungry. So until your body heals, just rest. Please."
Sister Flora closed her eyes without another word. Tears gathered at the corners and fell. A trembling hand — dark red bruises covering what should have been pure white skin — reached toward me. That hand found my head. She stroked it once, then it fell away without strength, and she spoke.
"…I'm sorry, Riel. Because I'm a witch's daughter…. Because I'm the child of a heretic…. For taking you all in for no good reason…."
Sister Flora cried, and the children watching us from outside cried too. I couldn't cry.
If I cried, there would be no one left to protect us. I would have preferred to cry — but even as a child, the adult memories lodged in a corner of my heart made it impossible. Those "adult" memories were only from around the age of majority, and still.
"Don't worry. We're happy. We really are."
I said it like a spell.