Chapter 208: I’m Truly a Fool
Lily wrapped her wet hair in a towel and admitted, in the privacy of her own room, what she had said in public she would never admit.
The shower was fantastic.
Standing under the cold water after a day in the hot summer sun had the specific quality of relief that she had previously associated with the moment just before sleep — the body abandoning something it had been holding since morning. The castle bathroom smelled like Soraya’s paint and clean stone, and the grasslike surface under her feet was softer than tile had any right to be.
She had told His Highness that building a shower to take a better bath was exactly what she would expect from a lord’s excessive devotion to luxury.
She had meant it at the time.
“Traitor!”
She lifted the hair from her eyes. Mystery Moon was sitting upright in the middle of her bed like a very accusatory piece of furniture, one finger pointed. “You said you didn’t believe in the ball theory, and now you’re the first one to evolve. You’re a huge liar.”
“I still don’t believe everything is made of balls,” Lily said. She sat on her edge of the bed and took Mystery Moon’s hand, which was the fastest way to stop the pointing. “How could it be? Rocks? Steel? You’re telling me solid rock is just a pile of tiny balls and doesn’t collapse into sand? Explain that to me.”
“But Nightingale said your magic changed —”
“His Highness explained it.” Lily shrugged, or gave the version of a shrug that worked while also toweling her hair. “You don’t have to accept the whole theory. You have to understand your own ability deeply. Really look at it from the inside until it shows you something new.” She paused. “That’s what he said, anyway.”
Mystery Moon’s lower lip extended by approximately three millimeters. “I’ve been trying. Magnetic fields are invisible. The microscope doesn’t help. What am I supposed to look at?”
“I don’t know.” Lily lay back on the pillow. “Ask Anna.”
Silence.
“Anna is very busy,” Mystery Moon said, eventually. “All the machines in the town —”
“Then find her when she’s not working.” Lily closed her eyes. “After dinner. When she goes to the courtyard. Ask her to let you watch the bath water heat, and ask her questions while you do it.” She opened one eye. “She’s not going to be annoyed at you. She answers questions. That’s what she does.”
Mystery Moon lay down on her side. “She’ll say complicated things.”
“She will.”
“Things I won’t understand.”
“Probably.”
“So what’s the use?”
“Write down what you don’t understand,” Lily said. “Then ask about those parts separately. That’s how class works. His Highness talks about things none of us understand, and then we figure out which parts we don’t understand and ask about those, and eventually some of it starts to make sense.” She reached for the candle. “Start with the compass. Why does it point north? That’s your ability, north is your ability — start there.”
“He said we’re inside a huge magnetic field,” Mystery Moon said, slowly. “That the earth itself is a magnet. So my ability is — responding to the earth?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Lily was genuinely tired now. “Tell me tomorrow.”
“What if she explains it with more complicated things?”
“Then you write those down too.” Lily pinched the candle out. “Go to sleep.”
The next morning, Lily did not go to the kitchen.
She went to the microscope.
The new task from His Highness was specific: before the textbook arrived, she was to catalogue the microscopic world. Sketch everything she could see. The shapes, the sizes, the movement patterns. She could not yet write, but she could draw, and his instruction had been explicit: drawing was sufficient.
She drew for most of the morning. The transparent-bodied creatures with the hair-oars. The squared ones with the internal chambers. The very small ones that moved too fast to draw and had to be approximated from memory. She labeled each sketch with a letter and made a separate key describing what it did: direction of movement, speed relative to the others, what happened when two of them met.
By midday she had twelve pages.
She put the pencil down and rubbed her hand and looked at what she had produced: a catalog of things that had existed before any of them knew they existed, hidden in the water they walked past every day.
I’ve been in there with them, she thought. Every time I kept food fresh, I was doing something to them, and I never knew what.
She picked up the pencil and added a thirteenth page.
On it she drew the mothers: eight-paired tentacles, round body, the arrangement she had seen in the fog of the water drop. She drew one and then drew more of them and drew the ordinary microorganisms changing as the contact spread. She drew the rows. She drew the salute.
She did not know what to call what she was looking at.
But she wrote at the top of the page, carefully, the letters she had learned: mine.
Mystery Moon returned that evening with the expression of a person who has encountered something large and is still deciding which direction to approach it from.
“She said a lot,” Mystery Moon said, falling onto the bed facedown. “I didn’t understand most of it.”
“Did you write it down?”
A pause. “Some of it.”
“What did you write?”
“She said the magnetic field is everywhere. That the compass works because we live inside the field of the whole earth. That moving charged particles create a magnetic field around them. That a changing magnetic field creates electricity.” Mystery Moon turned her head sideways to be able to speak more clearly. “She said my ability might be responding to the earth’s field instead of creating one. Or both. She said it was hard to know without more testing.”
“That’s more than you had this morning.”
“I still don’t understand most of it.” She was quiet for a moment. “Am I stupid?”
Lily considered the honest answer, and delivered it. “A little.”
“Traitor.”
“You asked.”
Mystery Moon rolled over and stared at the ceiling. “I want to be useful,” she said, quietly. Not complaint — something more earnest than that. “I want to do something that helps. Not just — hold metal things in place. Something.”
“You will,” Lily said. “Keep asking.”
She meant it. She had seen enough of how the learning worked here, how His Highness moved from a question to an experiment to something practical that existed in the world where before it had only been a thought. Mystery Moon’s ability was going to be useful. She did not know how yet. That was the whole point of the asking.
“Blow the candle,” she said.
Mystery Moon climbed to the foot of the bed and blew it out.
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Chapter 208 “I’m truly a fool”
After wrapping her wet hair into a towel, Lily went back to her room.
Although she had previous accused the Prince of excessively pursuing pleasure, she had to admit, this bathroom thing was indeed… fantastic. Standing underneath the shower and enjoying the ice-cold well water that was washing over her body, sweeping away the sticky and hot feeling of the scorching sun, gave the body a sense of being reborn after a busy day.
However, being so carefree after the shower, she felt a hint of a guilty conscience. During the whole day, she had never restraint herself, instead she had given her sharp tongue free reign. But she now had to ask herself, whether or not she should go to His Highness and apologize.
“Traitor!”
“What?” Lily lifted the hair glued to her front head.
“You obviously do not believe in that ball theory, but now you are the first to evolve your ability,” Mystery Moon kneeled on the bed, with her upper body upright and her hand pointing at Lily, “You are a huge liar!”
Lily rolled her eyes, “Eh, I still do not believe that everything is formed out of small balls… how could that be?”
“But Nightingale sister had said that your magic has condensed.”
“That has nothing to do with those balls,” She shrugged her shoulders and climbed into the bed grasping Mystery Moon’s hand. “His Royal Highness said that to evolve your magic you don’t have to accept the theory of the balls, as long as you are able to understand your own magic deeply, it is possible that a fundamental change can happen to your magic.”
“Really?” Mystery Moon pouted.
“Anyway, that is what he’d said.”
In the Witch Cooperation Association, Mystery Moon had never been taken seriously, which resulting in her constant lack of self-confidence, was what Lily thought. Which was the complete opposite to how they treated me, after all in times of food shortage having the ability to preserve food is very important. But now I can finally understand your feelings, because since we’ve entered Border Town, my ability had become like chicken ribs, completely useless.
She had constantly been afraid of being kicked out of the town, but the result was contrary to her concerns. His Royal Highness, the Prince, although he never assigned any additional task to her, his attitude to her and the other witches wasn’t much different.
Perhaps that was also the reason why Mystery Moon had changed, from being cautious out of a feeling of inferiority, to now becoming more and more daring. More than half of her cowering was because Cara had never actually paid any attention to her, even going so far as banning her from using her ability in the camp.
“That…” The Mystery Moon frowned, “How will I ever be able to understand my ability, ah? His Highness had said that the magnetic fields are invisible, even the microscope aren’t help with it, ah.”
“Don’t ask me; I also don’t understand mine,” Lily yawned, “In fact, I only know how my ability looks like, but what His Royal Highness said about those cells, bacteria, fungi… I don’t understand any of that. He also said that he would write a textbook for me,” she confessed helplessly, “Spare me, I can’t even read the words.”
“I also want to become more powerful,” Mystery Moon rolled over the bed, ”I also want to do more things for His Royal Highness ah!”
Lily sighed, you’re obviously older, but you’re behaving as if you’re even younger than I am, really now… “Maybe you should go and ask sister Anna.”
“Ask her?” She suddenly stopped rolling.
“Yes, you are afraid to even waste the tiniest bit of His Highness time, so the next best thing would be to go ask sister Anna,” said Lily, “Within the whole town, with the exception of His Highness Roland, she is the one who will know the most.”
“But Anna is very busy too, I heard that all the machines in the town are manufactured by her,” Mystery Moon said hesitatingly.
“So you have to find her and ask during her free time, like after dinner, or ask her to help with heating up the bath water, or even just invite her to take a bath, don’t you have plenty time to ask?” The little girl made some suggestions.
“What you said… seems to be quite reasonable,” Mystery Moon’s eyes lit up.
“Then let’s get some sleep; we have to get up early tomorrow.” Lily finally untied the towel around her hair, and wiped away the hairs that have fallen into her face. Then finally, she laid her head on the pillow. “You’re the one who’s going to blow the candle.”
“Well, okay.” Mystery Moon climbed to the end of the bed and blew the candle out, “Goodnight.”
…
The next day, Lily did not go as she usually did to the kitchen or wheat warehouse to practice her ability, but instead sat down at the table and began to learn how to use the microscope.
This was the new task given to her by His Highness. Before the arrival of the textbook, she should fully understand the types and shapes of the various kinds of cells and fungi and record their differences. It didn’t matter if she couldn’t write, painting pictures would also be sufficient.
And according to His Royal Highness, Anna was also trying to enlarge the microscope’s magnification, in case she could achieve a magnification effect of 400 times, then she could see even the smaller microorganism and bacteria.
In the future, her practice content was no longer to keep food fresh. But to try to diversify the body of the mothers and their replicas. Regarding this point, Lily had some problems with comprehending it. Fortunately, His Highness had given her some ideas on what to practice, such as commanding them to mimic the appearance of a single cell, or to use her consciousness to destroy or improve the cells. Of course, this would only be possible if she had a full understanding of all kind of the microscopic life forms. Although Lily did not know if she could achieve this, she at least had to try.
What’s more, exploring the unknown world was an interesting thing in itself.
She’d worked on it until the evening, at which time Mystery Moon returned with a dejected expression.
“What happened?” Lily asked curiously, “What did Anna say?”
“She had said a lot,” Mystery Moon threw herself onto the bed, “but I could not understand a word of it. She said that the magnetic field is everywhere and that the reason the compass can indicate direction was because we are inside of a huge magnetic field. Does that mean that my ability is of no use at all? Not to mention the principle of the magnetic field, and the interdependence between moving charged balls and magnetic forces, and that the magnetic field can produce electricity… does all this mean that if I cannot understand the ball theory I also can not progress?” She mumbled softly. “Say, am I too stupid?”
“Somewhat,” Lily bluntly answered.
“Traitor!”
…
Wendy was delighted that another sister of the Witch Union had gained a new ability.
And Lily’s evolution increased also increased the enthusiasm of the other witches, this evening after the end of the course, several people stayed behind and constantly pestered Scroll with questions, even Maggie, after hearing that she could increase her ability by learning, just squatted down on the chandelier and listened honestly.
There was only one person who was exception.
When she went to the back of the room, with her “Natural Science Theoretical Foundation” book under the arm, she saw Nightingale lying on the table, focusing on something else.
Wendy knew that whatever it was had nothing to do with learning.
So, she asked, “What are you doing?”
“Distributing fish, do you want one to eat?” Said the Nightingale, while letting a fish dangling out of her mouth, “I just got them from the kitchen.”
“So many?” Wendy was surprised to see the table piled up with golden brown grilled fish, from where a delicious honey odor assaulted her nostrils.
“Well, the chef saw that I came every day, so he just baked all the rest, anyway, this food can be contained for a long time.” She took out a small bag and put the fish into it. On top of the table already laid five or six similar bags, each of them stuffed to the state of bulging.
Wendy suddenly understood what Nightingale was doing; she was preparing rations. The Witch Cooperation Association always had to be prepared to leave the town at a moment’s notice, so they always had to have enough rations and to distribute among themselves, and they would carry their rations within those bags. Along the way, no matter how hungry they became, they could only eat their provisioned rations, in order to avoid a situation where their amount of food became insufficient. But since their arrival at
Border Town, with its stable supply of regular meals, together with regular afternoon tea, none of the sisters had continued with it.
Of course, for Nightingale, rather than preparing food, it would be more appropriate to call it preparing snacks.
“Do not you read the book?”
“I wouldn’t understand it anyway, just alone from hearing those theories and theorems my head already becomes dizzy,” Nightingale swallowed the dried fish, then laughingly said, “Moreover, my ability is already enough, it doesn’t matter to me if I won’t be able to further evolve it.”
So, it was like that.
Compared to her former self, at present Nightingale’s eyes are sparkling. Within them, there is no reluctance or hesitation, only her incomparable nature. Lost people cannot make such an expression, Wendy thought, Nightingale must have found her goal.
Whenever Nightingale has decided on her goal, her firm side,which came from her noble background, would show itself; this was also the case when she had faced Cara.
But Wendy did not ask about it, because she truly believed that she would one day see the answer with her own eyes.