The Tale of the Moon and the Crows
“AHAHAHA! Hey, why are you grabbing your sword? You even know how to use that thing?!”
“Easy there, you’ll cut your hand, heh heh heh.”
“So all you seniors knew!”
When I asked senior Jake—who was now even squeezing out tears—he nodded, still chuckling away.
“If there’s a sound coming from the trees in the middle of the night, it’s obviously a crow! You’ve been on duty for over a year and you still didn’t know that?!”
“How was I supposed to know something like that!”
If there was a strange noise at night, of course your first thought should be an intruder!
“Sigh.”
It was a bird, not a person. The tension that had wound tight inside me unraveled a beat too late, and a sigh slipped out.
Senior Jake, his face still brimming with laughter, grabbed my shoulder and planted me back down in front of the bonfire.
“Wow, isn’t our youngest impressive? What spirit!”
“This senior is truly moved by your courage, rookie. Heh heh!”
The seniors, still cackling like idiots, looked utterly ridiculous.
But just as the back alleys obeyed the law of the strong, in the action squad seniority was law. So the arrow of my anger naturally flew toward the most harmless flying creature of all.
“If it’s a bird, it should sleep at night like a proper bird. Why is it flying around causing a commotion in the dead of night?”
“The crows that live in the Bernheim Empire, especially around Knox, are nocturnal. You didn’t know?”
“You’re teasing me again.”
I wasn’t falling for it twice. When I narrowed my eyes in suspicion, senior Jake clutched his chest as if the world had wronged him.
“Wow, this kid’s framing an innocent man. Hubert senior, please teach this rookie who doesn’t know how to respect his seniors a proper lesson.”
“Ahem. Rookie, where did you say your hometown was again?”
Why were so many people suddenly asking about Runelk Eins’s official birthplace these days?
“Lovenhaven. It’s a border town on the Crollin Kingdom side.”
“Then it’s possible you wouldn’t know. This Hubert Sauer, a Knox native, will explain it to you.”
Shrugging his shoulders and putting on airs, senior Hubert wiggled his finger and spoke.
“What Jake said about the crows around here being nocturnal is true. It’s not entirely clear why crows, which are normally diurnal, became nocturnal only in the Bernheim Empire. And while I don’t know about Lovenhaven, at least here in Knox we don’t carelessly chase crows away.”
“Even if they peck at the crops or loiter around the fruit trees?”
“That’s for the farmers to mind. In any case, in Knox, crows are considered a good omen.”
“A good omen?”
Those cunning thieves that liked to caw and scare people, and even stole shiny jewels?
When I asked back skeptically, every senior pointed at his own chest in unison. It was where the Knox crest was embroidered.
“Can’t you tell by looking at this? The moon, the stars, the crow. They’re all symbols of Knox.”
“The moon, the stars, the crow…?”
I felt like I had heard this somewhere before. As I scratched my head at the strange sense of déjà vu, senior Hubert continued his lecture.
“Now look. This moon symbolizes our leader, His Grace the Duke of Knox, and the star floating in the middle represents the seven executives.”
“I heard that much when I first joined Knox, so I know the basics.”
“Then recite every star’s name starting from the First Star, you brat.”
“Well, that’s…”
Of course I had them all memorized.
First Star: Legien
Second Star: Karensis
Third Star: Noelrn
Fourth Star: Adila
Fifth Star: Oren — brightest of all, farthest from the moon, guide for lost merchants
Sixth Star: Ruena
Seventh Star: Frien
Each star that symbolized an executive and the department they oversaw had names that were not only ridiculously difficult but also carried specific traits—position, brightness, color, and more.
For example, the Fifth Star Oren, which represented commerce and finance, was the farthest from the moon among the seven yet also the brightest. It was the star that guided merchants who had lost their way during their travels.
“How can anyone memorize all of that? Never mind the moon and stars. What about the crow?”
My counterattack left senior Hubert flustered. He cleared his throat and passed the burden to senior Bono like a mana bomb.
“Bono, you explain.”
“Me? I don’t really know either. Jake, don’t you?”
“Wouldn’t it be that the Knox family watches over the empire even on the darkest nights? Something like that.”
“Ooh! Not bad!”
“Heh heh, I do have an exceptional memory, don’t I.”
They were praising each other, but it ultimately meant none of them knew the exact meaning.
Senior Hubert must have noticed my gaze had gone ice-cold, because he shamelessly brought up the earlier topic again.
“Anyway, rookie, you can’t go freezing up like that just because of a crow.”
“Crows are… a bit creepy, okay.”
It wasn’t only because of the daytime nightmare. In the memories that remained from after I turned ten, I had always hated crows.
“Why?”
“They just look gross.”
“Look at this kid. Then how do you send letters?”
“Letters? I’ve never sent any.”
You needed someone to exchange them with. I had neither family to check in on nor close friends.
There was no one who even knew my real identity as Helena Morton.
Ah, by now Edward probably knows.
Writing a letter to the man who was searching with burning eyes for his former friend—the traitor who had killed his father—would be far too much like something Killian Knox would do.
Yet the surroundings had grown strangely quiet. The seniors who had been chattering noisily had all shut their mouths and were now staring at me with pitying eyes.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Was not having anyone to send letters to really that pathetic?
At least senior Bono recovered his usual mischievous expression first. He pointed beyond the Knox castle wall where the outpost stood and said,
“Knox uses crows as messenger birds, not pigeons. If you go to the eastern side of the outer wall, you’ll see a tall tower. That’s the Crow Tower. Once you get a lover someday, you’ll be in and out of there all the time.”
“I see.”
There was no chance I would ever have a lover. At least not until I safely escaped Killian Knox’s grasp.
To my indifferent reply, senior Jake—who had been muttering “still just a kid”—suddenly slapped his knee.
“Rookie, since you’re not from around here, maybe you don’t even know that fairy tale?”
“Fairy tale?”
“You know how every kingdom or empire has a founding myth. The Knox ducal house has one too.”
“Wow, that was my favorite story when I was little.”
Senior Hubert stroked his bushy beard, eyes misty with nostalgia.
“Since you don’t seem to know it, this senior will tell you. Long ago, there was a time when only the moon hung in the sky.”
But one day a darkness rotten to its very core, not knowing its place, dared to covet the seat of the moon…
“Wait, senior Jake.”
“This is the best part! Why interrupt?!”
“Does that story end with the crow warning of danger?”
“Huh? How did you know?”
Exactly. How did I know?
It was definitely a story I had heard in the nightmare I dreamed during the day.
Was it not just a simple nightmare?
I tried to separate dream from real memory within the nightmare that still lingered vividly. At the same time a headache throbbed at my temples, but I ignored it. It was a symptom that always followed whenever I tried to recall anything from before the age of ten, when the massacre occurred.
Mom definitely used to tell me old stories before bed.
In memories hazy as if wrapped in thick fog, the soft touch of a warm blanket and the warmth of my mother’s body slowly rose.
Then that fairy tale was…
Ting.
“Didn’t you seniors hear that sound just now?”
“Sound? What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
“I’m sure I heard something like a bell.”
“Aish, why are you scaring us like that!”
Senior Jake shrank his large frame and scanned the surroundings. These were the same people who had noticed the tiny noise a crow made even while chatting loudly. There was no way they could have missed such a clear bell.
“You idiot! The youngest is just messing with you!”
“Rookie, you sneaky bastard! Is this revenge for earlier?!”
But I had no leisure to soothe senior Jake as he grumbled at me.
Was it not real, but something that rang inside my head?
I tried to remember what the bell meant, yet the throbbing headache only grew worse. The door to memory that had briefly cracked open seemed to have slammed shut again.
“I must have misheard. But I remember my mother telling me that story about the crow and the moon when I was very young.”
It was a faint memory I had barely caught before the bell sounded.
“Really? Isn’t Lovenhaven quite far from here? How did your mother know that tale?”
“I wonder.”
I stared in the direction of the messenger tower hidden behind the high castle walls and answered.
How did my mom know the Knox fairy tale?