That Child Is Strange-13

Frank walked up to the window and saw Julia climb up the carriage. He had actually passed out on his way from the garden and was taken to a guest room by Raymond. The wound on his hand was gone. The governess. He knew it was her doing. She might have come up with some excuse to fool Raymond. That crafty woman. But, it wasn't like he could just tell on her because he was involved in that light thing too. But no matter how much goodwill the governess was showing towards him by treating his injury despite the risk, he was still wary of her. She had a very strange coloured light surrounding her, one he had never seen in his entire life- black light. As if there was no emotion at all. Until he found out the actual meaning behind that black colour, he couldn't help but keep his guard up against her. Because no matter how he looked at it, black is a colour very close to grey or maybe... something even worse.

But now wasn't the time to be worrying about such things because Raymond had given him a very good news. Lilia, Julia's nanny, had gone to her hometown for her brother's wedding and for a month at that since her hometown was quite far from the capital and she didn't get many chances to visit her family often.

So, Frank was to assist Raymond to take care of Miss Julia for a month and therefore, was freed from serving the governess.

Frank grinned as shivers of excitement ran through his spine. Though he wanted to stay away from Julia, it was a situation he couldn't avoid now (or so he told himself) and if he couldn't avoid her, why not enjoy the time he got to spend with her? (as he said while justifying himself)

He hopped around as the carriage went outside the main gate and started pacing his way towards Julia's room. He was assigned to change the blue curtains in her room to white ones for summer.

He looked at her room's door, smiling for some (?) reason, then pushed open the door and entered with the trolley filled of curtains into the room, shutting the door behind him.

A large room with a large window right in front of the door wall looking onto the gardens. The window was so large that he thought a whole man could pass through it. He looked down through the window, he saw a hidden (but well made) series of steps going down into one of the gardens. He could recognize the steps right away because the craft was very similar to the book pile Julia had made in the library.

' Is this how she sneaks out of the estate? I shouldn't tell brother Raymond about this, should I?', Frank thought as he climbed the wooden chair to remove the curtains.

He decided not to tell. But there was a problem now, the curtains were too high and he was too short. He had boasted in front of Raymond that he only needed a chair and all. But now if he went and asked for a ladder, Raymond would surely laugh at him.

' So that's why he agreed so fast to let me change the curtains!!!!', Frank shouted in his head as he gritted his teeth.

 He decided to face the challenge than admit defeat right away. As he climbed up the chair, he positioned himself below the hook and jumped up to catch it. He caught it, but severely miscalculated the strength of the hinges against his weight and brought down the whole hanging rod with himself as he fell on the table beside the window.

" Gah!!!", he cried as he rubbed his back and positioned the table back to its place.

But as he pushed the table, suddenly a hole opened up in the floor with white carpet area and a dog jumped out of the hole and the floor went back to normal. Frank, clearly shocked to see what he had just seen, remained motionless for a while as the dog slowly approached him. It was a dog with white hair and grey doe eyes. As it went near Frank, it started wagging its tail and reaching up to Frank's face, licked his cheeks. Frank, in a daze for a moment, suddenly shot up and dashed away from the dog and blushed.

" What are you doing?!?", he yelled as he wiped his cheeks.

The dog kept approaching him as he squirmed around the room escaping its tongue. Then, strangely, it stopped. Frank stopped to see what it was doing if not following him. The dog groaned a little and then spitted out a red little ball on the carpet. White carpet.

" Hey!!! That will leave stains!! Don't spit there!!", Frank cried and hurriedly picked up the red ball. He looked at it clearly.

" Is it a marble?", he mumbled as the dog now approached him more calmly." Did you accidentally swallow it? So you wanted to tell me this."

Frank smiled as the white dog now calmly sat down and let Frank pat its head.

' So soft... soft', Frank thought as he raced his fingers through the white fur.

" Julia!!", a voice called outside from the door.

The dog immediately jumped towards the table, the floor-hole opened again, the dog jumped inside and the floor-hole closed up. Frank sat there, quite amazed at the dog's training which he had somehow figured up to be given by Miss Julia. 

" Julia!! Are you inside?!?", the voice came again. Frank knew who it was, Marquis Shuzar, he had heard his voice once when following around Raymond to see the estate.

Before Frank could stand up and open the door, Lloyd pushed open the door and stood right in front of Frank. The Marquis stared down at Frank, who was in a very weird position sitting on the white carpet in the middle of the room. Frank looked up at the large figure, those piercing violet eyes looked into his blue ones. Frank felt himself being intimidated, severely at that. 

" What are you doing here?", Lloyd asked staring down at the trembling mess Frank had become now.

" I...I.. my lord, I was changing the cur.. curtains", Frank stuttered out a reply without shaking his gaze from the Marquis' eyes. He could see it, Lloyd's colour, it was copper. Copper was the colour of interest. The colour someone shows when they are interested in something.

" By breaking off the hinges?", Lloyd sneered as he pointed at the fallen rod near the window.

" I fell, my lord", Frank shouted out and looked at the rod. 

The marquis smirked and said," So far away from the window?"

Frank looked at the distance between the window and his current position, felt cold shivers throughout his body and looked back at the Marquis. Lloyd smiled.

Frank gasped. 

' What's with that 'I-know-everything-don't-try-to-be-smart-with-me' smile? Somehow it feels annoying', Frank thought as he witnessed the same 'know-all' smile of the Marquis which had successfully managed to piss off Hannah before.

Lloyd's eyes suddenly turned towards Frank's hands and he saw the red candy there. Seizing his hand immediately, Lloyd took a close looked at the candy and horrified, asked," Why do you have it? Did Julia give you this? Or did you steal it?"

Frank could see the Marquis' light changing from copper to red. Red meant kill intent and anger. He very well figured that he could not just say that a dog jumped out from the floor and spit it out and went back into the floor right before the Marquis. That would sound absolute nonsense. Even though he could just prove his words by pushing the table and opening that hole again, he still didn't know if it was a secret for Miss Julia or not. Raymond had never mentioned Miss Julia having a dog. Then clearly, she was raising it secretly, so he couldn't possibly just expose her secret. But what to tell the Marquis now when he was showing such anger so clearly. Frank took a breath in and let it go.

'It's alright, I've been lying to people for almost all of my life now, I know I can get through this one just as easily, he thought and looked at Lloyd.

" I was removing the curtains, my lord. As you can see, I'm quite short, I tried to jump and remove the curtains, but brought the whole hinge down with me. I bumped into the table when I fell and suddenly this red ball came rolling out from behind it and reached this spot. I was picking it up when my lord came in."

Frank looked at the Marquis' light. He had given a perfect lie. Most people would let him off with it. But Lloyd's red light only got darker. He snatched the red ball from Frank's hand and looked away.

"It was the last!! Damn it!! She didn't eat it!!", Lloyd yelled as he opened a drawer near the bed and took out an empty jar from there. He gritted his teeth with anger as he looked at the jar." Where is she? Where is Julia?"

Lloyd turned towards Frank and glared at him.

" She.. she went out, my lord," Frank muttered slowly.

" Out!!! Where?!? Alone?!? When?!?", Lloyd shouted holding Frank's shoulders and jerking him.

 " The.. the governess, my lord. She went to the library with the governess," Frank replied, now somewhat calm.

" For what? I think I told that woman to teach my sister, not take her out to sight-see!," Lloyd was slowly thinking a bit calmly now, but his light remained as red as ever.

" They were talking about some magic books this afternoon, my lord," Frank answered, completely calm as he had well grasped the situation now.

" Magic.... ha. Always that goddamned magic... I have to go get her," Lloyd turned around and his light changed to purple.

" Is she in some danger, my lord?" Frank couldn't help asking when he saw the violet light of worry escaping the Marquis.

Lloyd looked back at Frank, with a gaze whose meaning was very clear to Frank. It was a gaze that meant ' Should I just kill him?'.

Frank immediately stepped back. He understood right away that he could be killed with one wrong move. Lloyd's left hand was on the handle of his sword around his waist. One swing and Frank's head would go rolling. 

' He doesn't want this thing about that red ball going out, and I can't just attack him with my flames or I would be exposed. Calm down, Frank, think clearly. Show that you are not a threat to this secret or you would be killed.'

Frank thought as he looked around at the door. No escape was possible, the Marquis was blocking the door. Using the window steps or the floor hole would expose Miss Julia's secret. 

" I won't tell anyone about what happened here, my lord. So please rest assured and go freely," Frank said looking straight at the Marquis." Not even brother Raymond would hear about it."

Lloyd removed his hand from the handle of his sword and went out immediately. Frank collapsed as soon as the Marquis left. What a frightful experience it was. Anyone's legs would have given out after that. Never in his life, had Frank been this scared. Mostly he was the one who threatened his opponents, but today, he was made into the prey. So what if he couldn't use the fire, he knew he wouldn't have survived even with that. Lloyd Shuzar was way out of his league. 

' Sword! Only if I knew how to wield a sword!!,' Frank wailed in his thoughts as the strength in his legs slowly came back.

Till now, he had felt the fear of not being able to protect the people he loved, but today, he felt the fear of not being able to protect even himself. Though it wasn't like he wanted to defeat the empire's strongest swordsman who have already won a war, Lloyd that was, but still, he wanted to at least give a bit of competition to him, not just being pushed to the ground like that. That feeling of weakness and helplessness was so disgusting and pathetic to him that he never wanted to feel that again.

He stood up and began to change the curtains as it was his original work, but now his mind was somewhere else. Julia, was she alright? If the Marquis is going, then it should be fine, right? She will come back safe. 

Hannah was not at all surprised at the priest's reaction when he sensed the magic coming out of the carriage.

' It would've been much more surprising if he didn't feel it, seeing how big of an amount this squirrel is releasing,' Hannah thought as she held Julia down to block her view of the pillar. The hypnosis had mostly frozen the mob but the priest and that man in black clothes were from the temple. Only a healer's magic would work on them, any other sort of magic was pointless. Well, that was a given as they had to execute witches, who are, without a proper declaration though, at the top of the food chain among the magic users. 

The priests can sense the flow of magic, the man in the black clothes must be a priest too, seeing he wasn't under hypnosis. The priest and that black-clothed man were staring daggers at the carriage, soon they started moving towards the carriage.

'This is bad. If they come here, they will find out that this magic is Julia's doing. I can escape but what will happen to this brat,' Hannah pondered as the priests were approaching them.

'The porter's frozen too under this hypnosis, only if I could break this brat's magic, but why is it so strong?!?,' Hannah was now panicking. ' What to do... What to do... '

Tap tap.

Hannah swirled around to see who was tapping on the window. It was the Marquis. She flunged open the window immediately after seeing his face and leapt out. Never in her entire life, she thought, that she would have been this happy to see the Marquis. She looked up at him, he was leaning down from his horse to reach the window's level. 

" My lo...," Lloyd put a finger on Hannah's lips before she could say anything more.

He leaned his face close to her's and said in a whisper," Give me your hand."

Hannah stared into Lloyd's violet eyes, those strangely familiar eyes, she held out her hand almost unconsciously. He placed a small red ball on her palm and again leaning in his face close to her's, whispered," Feed her this."

As Hannah turned around to put that red candy in Julia's mouth, Lloyd's finger, which was on her lips the entire time, was left alone in the middle of the air. He looked at it and drew back his hand.

The moment the red candy disappeared in Julia's mouth, the hypnosis wore off and everybody started moving. But the priests didn't stop, though now it had disappeared, they did sense magic coming from the carriage. There was no way they would let it go just like this.

They reached the window on the side of the pillar and were about to knock when Lloyd came between the priest's hand and the glass.

" M.. Marquis, Marquis Shuzar, What are you doing here?", the priest asked with a flustered look.

" I'm travelling with my sister, she is not well, so I wanted to know if you could resolve all that mob over there, as that is the fastest way back to my estate," Lloyd said without even batting an eye.

" B.. But this ca.. carriage, there is s.. something," the priest said, trying to steal a glance into the carriage through the window.

" Inside is only my sister and her governess," Lloyd said in an annoyed tone as he glared at the priest." Father Hollen, are you? You recently invested loads in the diamond mines near Garland, right? I'm back after checking the ledger just today, there are some things I find quite interesting, like how the past few months' harvests of diamonds are only half the original one. COINCIDENTLY, it has started to decrease just by the time you invested, Father Hollen."

The Marquis smirked as the priest suddenly wobbled.

" What shall I do, Father? Shall I run a small investigation to find who has been hoarding up half of the empire's diamond profits all to himself, don't you agree, FATHER?" Lloyd smiled his 'all-know' smile as he saw the priest cower in fear. They turned around and went back to the mob. 

Lloyd looked up straight at the person who was sitting high up in the chair and was enjoying the whole show about the priest and Lloyd's conversation. He laughed out loud and passed a satisfied look at Lloyd. That was the emperor, Asterus Evanlite. Lloyd bowed once to him, then opened the carriage's door and went inside, immediately ordering the porter to drive home.

As the carriage disappeared after passing through the mob, the emperor smiled and said," Stop for today. Let the women go, she is not a witch. And make sure to pay compensation for all the damage that has been caused."

" But your Majesty!!.. ", the priest tried to protest but the guards held him back immediately.

" If an execution is what you want, Hollen, execute yourself," the emperor said as he waved his hands to the guards who brought down Sir Nico's wife and untied her hands.

Sir Nico hugged his wife and kept thanking the emperor for his benevolence. As the emperor left with the nights, he smirked and mumbled," A governess, he said, huh."

Julia was peacefully sleeping in Hannah's lap, the Marquis was sitting against them in the carriage. More than anything, he was staring holes through Hannah's face. Not being able to put up with it anymore, she said out, annoyed," What is it? Say it already!"

Lloyd didn't say anything but kept staring. Hannah felt herself being ignored and so openly at that. The Marquis had this very profound quality of pissing Hannah off. She was again going to say something but Lloyd leaned forward and put a finger on her lips again. Hannah got confused for a moment, but then Lloyd started leaning below her face. The sun's setting light made his violet eyes shine.

" Your lips, you know, they are very soft," Lloyd said as he looked at them with his finger on.

Hannah suddenly felt spurge of anger gathering inside her and she jerked off Lloyd's hand and yelled," Seriously!! For goodness' sake!! Is that all you have got to say after all this?!"

Lloyd sat back in his seat and smirked, he laughed for a while, then said," I thought I was mistaken at first, but you really don't get flustered whenever I get close to you. Any other woman would have melted to the ground by now."

" You are mistaken, my lord. I am flustered, very flustered. So much that I think I would burst with this excitement," Hannah said sarcastically as she cast an annoyed look at the Marquis.

" Isn't that anger, Miss Murray?" Lloyd laughed again and he gave her a smile.

' That 'all-know' smile again!! This bastard!! If it wasn't for Lucas, I would've very well wiped that sticky smile off your damned handsome face!!', Hannah cursed in her mind but refused to answer the Marquis any further, she was too tired to do so. 

" Where is your horse though?" Hannah asked at length, feeling drowsy.

" He went to the estate already. Dusk knows the way," Lloyd replied with a smile, which again pissed off Hannah.

As the carriage drove towards the estate, Hannah closed her eyes and never knew, when she fell asleep.