Kingdom Hearts fic: All Strange Wonders - Chapter 14

[mistressofmuses]

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“I think we’ll take both the empty shop and that abandoned mansion,” Riku said. “I don’t have time to find a different third location to move to. If all of our entrances are blown, then we need to move all of them, and it would be best to just move them in one go.”

Kairi still looked extremely uncomfortable with the idea of moving her physical location. “What if we just hid the Traverse Town entrance behind a misdirection spell? Or… plastered over the door or something?”

“You felt how strong the Warlock of the Wasteland and his fire spirit are. The best spell work of my life wouldn’t stand up to them if they were really trying to get in. No, the best thing we can do is get as far away from them as we can.”

‘All of our entrances’ he says, Sora thought a bit unkindly. Clearly he isn’t worried about one in particular. Despite everything, Riku was still trying to facilitate his courtship with Tae. Sora wasn’t proud of the fact that he was annoyed by it, though he had kept from lashing out about it again.

“The other two shouldn’t be difficult. I’ll have to go to the mansion to do some preliminary work, since I’d mostly taken it out of the running. That can be the new location for the Radiant Garden entrance. And the new area for the moving castle is ready. A few changes, and the Twilight Town shop can be your new ‘real’ home.”

Riku glanced balefully at the counter where the bowl of speed spell packets had been. Then he sighed and started pulling out the ingredients again. Sora fell back into the pattern of helping to put the spells together, though it was definitely a relief to stop after six instead of seventy.

Since Sora was going with Riku to the mansion, that meant they took the bird as well. She didn’t like being separated from Sora.

The speed spells meant they were there in only a few minutes. The strangely shortened miles-long steps seemed even more disorienting than the previous times, as the random flashes were of places he’d seen before. The hills just to the north of Twilight Town. The common in the center of town, where Sora had seen Riku for the first time on the spring equinox, the clock tower rising above it. The road out west, past the dormitory where Roxas lived. The forest, old trees shadowing the path.

And then the mansion.

It was about how Sora remembered it. The building was in shabby condition, with peeling paint and water damage. One of the upper story windows was cracked, though not shattered. A few dusty curtains were visible inside.

“Don’t you have to buy the mansion before we can do anything?” Sora asked.

“Just doing a few quick things. Not like there are current owners to be bothered by it. Once it’s ready, we’ll go back into town and I’ll make it official.”

Riku pulled a stick of chalk out of a pocket, and marked several strange symbols onto the door. They formed a rough circle, connected by arrows and curving lines.

With a wave of his hand, the door unlatched, and he made similar marks on the inside of the door. He had Sora hold a measuring tape, and drew more glyphs on the floor of the entryway at specific intervals.

The bird watched silently.

“It is a bit of a shame that this whole mansion will just be a place for a door to let out. The mansion will still be here, of course, it’s just that the door will lead to Kairi’s new location instead, the way all the doors lead to her now. I suppose you could sneak in through a window.”

“So why not move her here?”

“That shop is actually two main buildings. There’s the shop itself, and a house behind it. Moving her to the house will be easier; it’s more similar to the building she’s in now. Plus that shop will give us perfect cover. The storefront really will just be a storefront. If someone comes looking, it doesn’t look overtly magical.”

Sora made a noncommittal noise. It was uncomfortable to hear the house he’d grown up in talked about so casually. Not that it bothered him to think of Riku or Kairi living in his home, but he hated that he couldn’t even tell them about it.

“There.” Riku straightened up, and stretched his arms with a pop. “I think that’s about it. Now for step two.”

Riku pulled a small jar of a silvery liquid out of a pocket, and unscrewed the lid. He handed that and a thin paintbrush to Sora. “Now, Assistant, if you would please trace very carefully over the chalk symbols.”

That seemed like the sort of thing the sorcerer himself should be doing, but Sora took the jar and the brush. “Does it matter what order I do it in?”

“No. Just don’t miss one.”

Sora did as he’d been asked, while Riku wandered around the rooms that branched off from the entryway. Apparently, according to the king and the Warlock, he had some powers of his own, so he whispered softly to the glyphs he was tracing. “You’re going to be so secure, and safe, and it’s going to be so easy to settle all the right magic into place.” He didn’t know enough about what they were doing to know whether he was saying the right things, but he figured it couldn’t hurt.

He was a little jealous of Riku getting to explore the mansion. This was the house that all of the kids in Twilight Town claimed to have somehow snuck into, and made up increasingly improbable stories about being chased by ghosts and skeletons and monsters, all trying to one-up each other. As far as he knew, no one had really ever been inside. Now he was, and he couldn’t even look around.

Finally the glyphs and symbols were done, all covered over in the glittering liquid. He handed the brush and the jar back to Riku, who tightened the lid and returned it to his pocket.

“What is that stuff?”

“Moondust,” Riku said. “Or, at least reconstituted moonlight, which is about as close as you can get. If you do it right, it’s a perfectly functional substitute. It makes a fantastic spell base.”

Leaving the mansion gave Sora an odd feeling, knowing that next time the door they’d just exited from wouldn’t lead back into the same building at all.

Riku paused. “Last thing.” He took a little paper packet from his pocket, reached up to some of the flaking paint from the doorframe, and carefully scraped some into the paper before folding it up.

Then came another speed spell, and a trip into Twilight Town. They had to take a couple steps past it, then back, so that they could end the spell back in the square. The bird ruffled her feathers, claws digging into Sora’s shoulder. He nearly fell on his face again, getting the last of the shuddering too-far steps out.

Riku left Sora and the bird in the square while he went in to speak with the solicitor in charge of selling the mansion. Sora tried not to look around. He thought he saw Olette at the other end of the common, probably on a delivery. There wasn’t any risk that she’d recognize him, but he didn’t want her to see him at all. If she didn’t notice him, he could pretend she wouldn’t think he was a stranger.

Riku returned sooner than Sora had expected.

“I think the solicitor was more relieved to be rid of that place than he meant to let on. I bargained him down by almost a fourth of the price he’d originally given me.” Riku turned toward the main road through Twilight Town. “Let’s finish up the preparations at the shop.”

Sora followed, feeling subdued. Riku didn’t seem to notice, remarking on things the entire walk, from the hollyhocks outside one of the restaurants, to the toys on display in a shop window.

When they reached the shop that had once been Key and Blade, Riku unlocked the door with a key he pulled from his pocket. The shop looked just like it had when Sora left, while also completely different. The sign above the door had been removed, the painted shop name on the window scrubbed away. It had been mostly cleaned out, any merchandise sold off or stored away, leaving only the bare bones of built-in shelves and sales counters.

Sora stared at the spot at one of the counters where he used to do finish work, filing and polishing the blades or shaping the keys he’d put up for sale. Riku walked past it, though he paused and ran a finger over the surface of the counter. His finger left a streak in the metal filings and dust. He brushed some of it into a little paper packet, then continued walking.

Riku led the way into the back room, used in the past for storage, and into the small courtyard that led to the house. It was the house’s door that was already marked up with symbols like the ones Riku had chalked at the mansion.

Sora stared at the door for a moment, and glanced up at the second story. That window led to what used to be his bedroom. Not anymore. Riku watched him for a moment, and then rummaged in a pocket until he found the tape measure. He held it out to Sora.

“I have to make some adjustments inside the house,” Riku said. “Take some measurements in the courtyard. I don’t want to accidentally overlap something when we move.”

Sora wasn’t sure what measurements he was supposed to take, but he started with the length and width of it, the space between the house and the little tool shed and the back door of the shop, the width of the paving stone pathway… He tried to pretend this was someplace he’d never been, like the mansion in the woods. Not a place he had every detail of memorized.

The bird seemed to recognize his dismal mood, gently reaching over to groom at the spikes of his hair.

He expected that Riku would send him inside the house next, to trace over the chalk markings with his ‘reconstituted moonlight’, but when Riku came back, Sora saw the marks were already shimmering.

Riku was refolding the same little paper packet that he’d put the metal shavings in. “Back to the castle?” he asked.

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Another pair of speed spells later, and they were back at the castle’s moving entrance.

Riku wasted no time in starting to mark up the inside of the room, symbols and patterns similar to the ones he’d left in the places they were moving to. Sora followed along, tracing over the chalk in silver.

“If you wanted to say some, I don’t know, comforting words while you do that, it wouldn’t be a bad thing,” said Kairi.

Sora had done that in the mansion, but no one except the bird had been watching. Feeling a little self-conscious, he still murmured the same sorts of things. That they were going to be safe, and everything would go well, and this would protect them from danger. He hoped all of this was true, or that in some small way he was helping to make it true.

Riku was mixing three sets of powders, setting them out in bowls on the kitchen counter. “First, we’ll do the two doors that aren’t likely to cause problems. We’ll save the move from Traverse Town to Twilight Town for last. I think we’ll all be too exhausted after that to do anything else.”

Kairi nodded.

In one clear area on the floor, Riku chalked a neat five-pointed star. He picked up the silver-bladed shovel from where it leaned against the bookshelf. He stepped over to the fireplace and set the shovel down. Then he reached down to where Kairi was sitting. Carefully not burning himself, he grabbed a pinch of the ash next to her. “Last ingredient. Are you ready?”

“If we have to.”

Riku split the pinch of ash between the points of the star he’d drawn. Then he went to the door and pulled the dial off the wall, setting it into the center of the drawn star.

“Assistant, please bring me the three bowls from the kitchen.”

Sora did, setting them outside of the star, and kneeling next to Riku. The three mixtures looked nearly identical, but he noticed one had what looked like ground herbs mixed in, one had little metal filings, and one had flakes of cream-colored paint. That explained the weird samples that Riku had taken.

Riku dipped a paintbrush—maybe the same one Sora had been using—into the first bowl, the one with flecks of paint from the mansion. Instead of coated in powder, the brush came out wet with something that looked an awful lot like thick paint.

He carefully lowered the brush to the dial for the door, and over the gold that used to signify Radiant Garden, he painted a smooth layer of cream.

Sora felt something then, like the castle and the air inside it all spasmed.

With a flick of his wrist, the brush was clean, and Riku dipped the brush into the bowl with herbs mixed in. It came out wet again, and Riku painted over the green section of the dial with a pleasant, soft purple.

This time there was a much bigger shudder from the castle. Not as bad as when the Warlock had attacked, but more than a twitch.

“Felt that one,” Kairi grumbled.

Riku shook the brush again to clean it, then took a deep breath. “Well, this last one is the one you’ll feel a lot more.” He repeated dipping the brush into the third bowl. This time when he painted over the blue section that used to mean Traverse Town, it was red.

There was a lurch and a strange feeling of suspension, like they were being dangled over some impossible precipice. Sora could feel the floor under his knees, but that didn’t help to ground him at all.

Riku got to his feet and carefully crossed over to Kairi. He picked up the shovel, and laid the blade flat at her feet.

“You know this part could kill me,” she said. Her tone was deceptively mild, even though it was obvious she was actually distressed about it.

“Look on the bright side,” Riku said, smiling up at her. “It could be me it kills.”

Kairi stood up, and stepped off the stone of the hearth and onto the silver blade.

Sora barely dared to breathe, still fighting back that feeling of being about to fall, and somehow knowing that if Kairi did, this could end very badly for all of them.

“One circle widdershins,” Riku said, bracing the shovel with one hand on the handle, and the other low on the shaft near the blade.

Then he lifted it, and Kairi with it.

Sora had wondered idly what exactly Kairi was made of. Whether she was as weightless as fire, or made of something more substantial, like her more human form implied. Judging by the strain in Riku’s shoulders as he struggled to hold it and her level, she was heavier than nothing.

She slowly crouched down, gripping at the edges of the shovel blade with fingers that weren’t quite solid enough to get a good grip. Sora remembered her delight at being able to lift a small stick of wood, how proud she’d been that she’d practiced enough to do that, and realized he was terribly glad for anything that could help her hang on right now.

Riku began to turn counterclockwise, slowly, struggling not to let the shovel tilt or fall.

Kairi’s face had blanched to a pure, bright white, her eyes wide and frightened. Sora had never seen Kairi look like that before, but it was somehow familiar all the same.

Then it was done, Riku’s careful circle complete, and he finally let the shovel blade sink back to the fireplace.

The lurching feeling that had started with the red paint finally completed, an overwhelming sense of vertigo that would have sent Sora to his knees if he hadn’t already been kneeling. It was like the entire castle had been jerked in one direction, while Sora was pulled in the other.

The room itself changed a bit, like it had shrugged itself into a new space. The ceiling was a bit higher, and the kitchen a bit wider. The hearth, including Sora’s small additions, stayed roughly the same, but the shape of the fireplace against the wall was different. And Sora could see the faint trace of his childhood home in the new architecture of the building: the bend of his stairs to the upper floor; how his mother’s kitchen would have been laid out, had it opened onto the living space; the ghost of his living room ceiling, as it had looked every day of his life.

When his vision stopped spinning, he looked over at Riku and Kairi. Kairi was flickering in a way that reminded him of someone gasping for breath, while Riku looked to be leaning his entire weight on the silver-bladed shovel.

Then Riku began to laugh. It was the kind of slow, tired laugh that could easily tip over the edge into hysteria. “We did it,” he said. “Didn’t kill either of us this time.”

“We both made it,” Kairi agreed. “Please, let’s never move me again.”

“Only to keep you safe,” Riku murmured.

Her voice was equally soft when she said, “I know.”

Sora pushed himself upright, and his vision swam again. He didn’t know how he could be, but he felt almost as exhausted as they looked.

This unintentionally seemed to break the moment between Riku and Kairi. Riku used the shovel to push himself all the way upright, then dropped it with a clang.

Staggering back to the five-pointed star, Riku scooped up the dial with its new colors, nearly toppling over in the process. He reattached it to the wall, then stumbled his way toward the stairs.

“I’m going to bed.” His voice was hazy and slurred. “Do not try to go through any of the doors until I’m awake.” He stared up the stairs for a moment as if he wasn’t sure he could make it.

Sora rushed over to help, shoving his shoulder under Riku’s free arm. Riku accepted the offer by leaning most of his weight on Sora, who staggered a bit, but was able to stay standing. It took a couple tries before they figured out how to get up the stairs together.

Riku groped blindly for the doorknob to his room, finally finding it and sending them nearly tumbling through. Sora pivoted them so that when Riku fell, it was onto his bed instead of the floor.

The bird swooped in above their heads, landing on one of Riku’s bedposts. She’d been so quiet during the moving ceremony, Sora had almost forgotten about her for a moment. But while she’d kept her promise to be nice to Riku, she never let Sora go anywhere alone with him.

The soft exhale when Riku fell back onto the mattress sounded almost like a laugh, still with that tinge of hysteria from before. “Thank you,” he slurred. “Might not have made it without you.”

“To bed? Yeah, maybe not.” Sora wasn’t sure if that was really what he’d meant, or if Riku was talking about something to do with moving the doors. Riku wasn’t in any shape to clarify.

He was already most of the way asleep, as Sora pulled the side of the comforter over him. The curtains for the window were open, but the early evening sunlight certainly didn’t seem to bother Riku any, so Sora left them alone.

The bird took off and flew back into the hall and down the stairs. As Sora closed Riku’s door behind him, he could already hear a faint snore.

The castle room felt vaguely wrong when Sora paused at the base of the stairs. Looking around, he realized it was the angle of the light from the kitchen window. It was more direct than the light that came in this time of day in Traverse Town.

Sora stepped up to the window for his first look at what was outside now. The quiet little business district of Traverse Town was gone, replaced by the little courtyard between his house and the shop.

Riku had told him not to go outside yet, but that wasn’t really much of a temptation. He’d just seen the empty shop, and didn’t need to visit it again.

Despite how little he’d done compared to Riku and Kairi, he was still exhausted. Kairi’s glow was still dimmer than normal, and she was lying down, reclining on her logs. When he sat in the chair next to her, she still looked up at him with a tired smile.

Sora smiled back. He was sorry she’d been so scared about the move, but relieved that everything had worked out all right in the end. He started to drift a little, eyelids growing heavy. His vision blurred, Kairi’s outline looking less distinct. The image of Kairi, wide-eyed and flickering white, stuck with him. He’d seen something like that before.

“Kairi, were you ever a falling star?” he asked, stifling a yawn.

“Oh,” she said. “If you know that, then I’m allowed to talk about it.”

“You really were?” He forced his eyes open just a little more.

“Yes. I fell, oh, a few years ago. But I didn’t want to die.”

“And Riku caught you.” That part wasn’t a question, now.

How much Kairi had known about stars. How upset she’d been that he could have caught a falling star, and how upset Riku had been in turn.

Riku drunkenly singing about being unable to hold a star, and Kairi sarcastically remarking that he had.

The poem he’d been looking for. The curse, embedded within another poem on the same topic.

“Riku caught me. I didn’t want to die, and I asked him to save me.” Her voice grew sad, or maybe just wistful. “He asked how, and I suggested the contract.”

“But now you want out of it?”

“I don’t think it’s doing either of us much good anymore.” She curled in on herself a little tighter. “We’re paying for it, both of us, every day. And with the Warlock of the Wasteland walking around, well… neither of us want to become that.”

“I don’t think you would,” Sora said. Even knowing the Warlock had made a similar bargain at one point, he couldn’t imagine either Riku or Kairi being like that.

“I don’t want us to ever have the chance.”

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