Walking Over Alice's Grave - Part 3

God Gave Us Our Memories So We Might Have Roses in Winter.

J. M. Barrie

Because of the war, transport was difficult.  It was a journey of almost two months to reach Shanghai, and I had spent so much time already doing nothing.  In Domremy, I had tended the church.  I had befriended a lonely young girl, Jeanne, and her pet wolf, Blanca.  I spent many hours simply staring at the sky. It had taken so much effort, to move, to think, even to breath.

Then the war began, and there were things to do again. Not much; we faced only thieves, who hoped, presumptuously, that the war would leave us undefended.  I would not have left Domremy if there had been anything worse attacking us.  My holy powers had grown throughout my journey with Yuri.  The townsfolk and I were a match for any who sought to take advantage of us.

This war must be what Albert Simon meant, when he said that the world had a terrible fate awaiting.  I wonder more and more often these days if we made the right decision, defeating him. Perhaps his way was better?  But, no. I must be firm. I did not wash up here on the tides of fate. I am here because of the decisions we all made. Life may have infinite possibilities, but that only means my decisions and actions matter all the more. I chose to resist the use Albert Simon had for me, in changing the fate of the world.  I must now deal with the world as it is.

            The first thing I did once in Shanghai was to head to the hotel to rest.  It took me a long time to fall asleep.  This was the same hotel that Yuri, Zhuzhen, Margarete and I had stayed in soon after we’d all met for the first time.  I had struggled to sleep; a few nights earlier, I’d been cursed by Li Li, and to this day, I find myself waking from nightmares.  I dreamt I was drowning, like Li Li had, and had awoke gasping for air.  Not wanting to wake Margarete, I had walked out into the hallway.  Yuri was there.  We spent hours talking about ourselves that night, mostly about our fathers.  That was what Yuri, Li Li and I all had in common – the death of our fathers.  That was the first time I ever saw Yuri vulnerable.  Remembering it now makes my heart ache, and I cried myself to sleep.

            The next day, I headed to Zhen’s bar.  Zhen had trained both Yuri and his father in combat, by summing monsters for them to battle.  I’d watched, almost two years ago now, as Yuri had proved himself worthy, in Zhen’s eyes.  Zhen had given Yuri a crucifix, one that he said came from Yuri’s mother.  That was the crucifix Yuri gave to me, and which I had left hanging on his gravestone.

            Zhen’s daughter, Quihua, didn’t recognize me at all.  When I told her I wanted to take part in the pit fights, she was amazed, and fetched her father immediately.  He bustled out of the backroom, a worried expression on his face.

            “Who are you?” He demanded, “and how do you know about the pit fights?”

So, he hadn't recognised me either! I smiled at him. "Let me try them," I said. "Then I'll tell you.”

"You're not with the imperial army, are you?" he asked, seeming both surprised and suspicious of me.

"No."

I knew why he was worried. With the war getting worse, Zhen was afraid that he would be forced to enlist, maybe even forced to use his monsters as weapons in the war.

He shrugged.  Perhaps he was thinking that, even if I were an imperial spy, I wouldn’t last more than a few rounds against his monsters.

After a minute’s further thought he nodded at me.  "Come through here, then."

I went through the door he had indicated. As I walked passed Quihua she grabbed my arm, and whispered hurriedly, "You don't have to do this!"

"I'll be fine."

"We can't guarantee your safety!"

Zhuzhen was sitting in the pit fight room. That made life easier; I’d expected to ask Zhen where he was after beating the monsters.

"Who's this, Zhen?" Zhuzhen asked, not recognizing me at first. I smiled at him, and a look of puzzled realization crossed his face.

"She insists on trying the pit fights,” Zhen answered.  “She says she'll tell us who she is afterwards."

Zhuzhen's face cleared. "Ah," he said. "I see."

I stepped on to the platform. Zhen stood in front of me. "Are you ready?"

           

I nodded my assent.

Zhen threw a few of his weaker monsters at me first, testing the waters. I dispatched them easily.  When he saw that they weren’t causing me any trouble, he tried summoning a wind shear.  Nasty, vicious little creatures.  I focused my most powerful magic on it, the spell I thought of as advent, and it was down.

From then on, Zhen threw his strongest monsters at me. None of them challenged me.

The final enemy Zhen summoned was Tindalos, and that made me think.  We had fought Tindalos in Bistritz; it was the monstrous form of Kevin, the mayor who had tried to steal Nina’s wheat seeds, believing them to be gold dust.  Kevin was dead; we’d killed him.  And yet, here he was.  In a strange and twisted way, he’d been resurrected. 

I dispatched Tindalos, having barely broken a sweat.  Zhen stared at me. "Who are you?" He asked, finally.

From behind me, Zhuzhen asked "Haven't you guessed?"

Zhen and Quihua stared at me. I smiled back.

"It can't be…Alice?" Quihua gasped.

I nodded, and Quihua hugged me, knocking the breath out of me. "Alice!"

"Alice?" Said Zhen, still staring at me in disbelief.  "Alice Elliot?"

"Alice Hyuga,” I corrected him.  Over Quihua’s shoulder, I saw Zhuzhen smile.

When Quihua had finally had enough of hearing about Europe and Domremy, and commiserating over Yuri, Zhuzhen and I excused ourselves.

“Alice Hyuga,” he said thoughtfully, as we walked back to the inn.  "I can't say I'm surprised.   He told me once that he would marry you as soon as it was all over."

"I didn't know that," I confessed. "I was concerned that he might object."

Sometimes, in my darkest moments, I’d convinced myself that Yuri had never loved me as I loved him.  Then I felt ashamed of myself for doubting him.

"Yuri loved you,” Zhuzhen reassured me.  I blinked away a wash of tears at his use of the past tense.  Desperate to change the subject, I asked what he’d been up to.

A few hours later, over a meal in the inn, we’d finally caught up with each other.  It was only then, as darkness crept over Shanghai, that I finally got up the courage to ask him what I’d travelled nearly six thousand miles to ask.  If he’d help me to raise the dead; to bring Yuri back.

Zhuzhen sat in silence for a long time once I’d said it.  I knew what I was asking him.  Koudelka had told me what Patrick did to raise Elaine.  I’d seen myself how many people Jack had slaughtered to try to raise his mother.  I could only hope that the combined powers of Zhuzhen and I would be enough without the enhancements of murderous black magic.

 "I'm not going to stop you," he said finally. I was grateful.  It wasn’t an offer to help, but it was a start.

"I had a thought about Zhen's pit monsters…"

"No!” Zhuzhen said, suddenly, harshly.  Then, more softly “He only summons a memory of creatures he, or those he knows have fought.  If he brought any form of Yuri back, it would only be a copy of the Yuri we fought in Bistritz."

            “As long as it’s Yuri, I don’t care what state he’s in!"

He shook his head, sadly.  "It wouldn’t be Yuri, Alice.  It would be a monster in a body that looked like Yuri's."

I teared up again.  I’d known it was a stupid idea, but still, I’d dared to hope it could really be that easy

.

We sat silently for a while longer.

"…have you asked Roger for the émigré…?” Zhuzhen asked.  He seemed almost afraid of my answer.

"I’m leaving the émigré as a last resort,” I said.  “I don’t want to sacrifice anyone.  Before I do anything like that, I want to speak to Yuri, to ask what he wants me to do.”

"I see.”

"We both know souls with regrets stay on this plane, as ghosts.  If Yuri were…if Yuri had regrets, I thought he might be near his parent’s graves.  I thought you might know where they were.”

Zhuzhen thought for a moment.  "I know Ben didn’t have one,” he said, thinking out loud.

"Ben?"

"Yuri’s father, Jinpachiro. Ben was his nickname,"

"Ah. I didn’t think he would. What about Anne? She'd be buried in the village where she died, wouldn't she?"

“If she were buried.  She was torn apart by her possessed neighbours.”

"I remember Yuri telling me.  The first time he used his fusion powers was to tear them apart.”

Yuri had spent the night alone, hugging his mother’s dead body to him.  My eyes filled with tears again as I thought of that small child, and of the man he grew into, but I tried to hold them back.  Then I remembered him playing with a puppy in Fengtian, and I couldn’t hold back any longer.

Zhuzhen hugged me and murmured soothing noises. "There, there,"

I gulped. "Zhuzhen, what if I'm doing the wrong thing trying to bring him back? Maybe he’s happy in heaven with his parents."

"The kid was too young to die, Alice,” Zhuzhen said, surprising me with how strongly he seemed to feel about it.  “He was taken from us.  He should have lived a long and happy life; he deserved to.  And if we can, I want him back too.”

When I’d sobbed enough, and was able to talk, I said "My uncle Geppeto keeps telling me to keep my chin up, that I'll find someone else, that I'm still young. He doesn't seem to realise that that's not the point. I don't just want a man, or someone to love, I want Yuri!"

"I know, Alice, I know. Geppeto never saw you two together, did he?"

I shook my head.

"Well, anyone who did would realise that you were – are – meant to be together.  Some people are.”

I nodded.  I couldn’t speak.

"In my experience, there are some loves you can get over and some that you can’t.  I don’t think Yuri would have survived without you.  I don’t know if you can survive without him, but I know you’ll never move on unless you do everything you can to bring him back.”

" If I'd never known Yuri,” I began, hesitantly, “I could have had an ordinary fairly happy life. I could have married, had children, grown old and died.  It wouldn’t have been a bad life.”

I brushed tears from my eyes, and continued.  “But with Yuri, I was so…fantastically happy. Even when we were fighting for our lives, I could be happy as long as we were together. And, to me, one minute of that is worth a million of those lives I could have had.”  I sniffed. "And now…I can't go back! I can't be happy with 'happy enough'! Oh, god, I just want Yuri back.  I’d give anything to have Yuri back!"

"I know, Alice." Zhuzhen said, sympathetically.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to break down like that." I wiped my tears away with my hand, and stood up, looking through the drawers of the hotel room for a tissue.

"I was in love like you once.”

"You were?” I ask, and then I’m embarrassed at myself for sounding surprised.  Zhuzhen doesn’t notice; he is lost in thought.

"Yes. We were…very young.  I'd have been fourteen or so.  I grew up in a small village, and everyone expected me to marry the girl next door.  She was the only girl close to my age within fifty miles.  She wasn’t a bad girl; she was my happy enough.”

I watch Zhuzhen.  He is lost to me, staring back over the years to a past I never suspected.

 “A circus came to our village.  There was an acrobat, a girl my age.  I loved her the moment I saw her. That night I waited outside the circus tent, just to meet her, to speak with her. We spent a week or two like that, meeting at night.  When she told me that she felt the same way about me as I did about her, it was the single happiest moment of my life."

"What  happened?"

"We agreed to run away together; she wanted to escape the circus, and I was ashamed to let down my family.  The night we were supposed to leave…”  He trails off, his face bleak.

"What happened?"

"A monster attacked the circus in the night, they said. Killed her."

I gasped, “oh, Zhuzhen!” I couldn't think of any words good enough to express my sorrow.

"I went to see the circus owner. I decided that if I couldn't have her, I would join the circus, travel with the people she had known. But when the circus owner realized that I was the boy she’d planned to run away with, he told me that he was the one who had killed her."

"Oh, how horrible!"

"He told me it was my fault; if she hadn’t tried to leave, he would never have had to kill her.  He was insane; he pulled out a sword and tried to kill me.”

"So what did you do?"

"That was the first time I ever used magic; I didn’t know I could until that day.  I killed him.  I couldn’t stay.  I ransacked his rooms, stole all his valuables, and then stole his horse. Picked a direction and started moving. I was halfway to Shanghai before I could gather my wits about me. Then I slid off the horse and cried. Finally I picked myself up, and rode the rest of the way to Shanghai."

Neither of us speak for a moment.  “I never went home,” Zhuzhen finishes, finally.  “I couldn’t.  I couldn’t face my family, and I couldn’t bear to go back to the place where she’d died.  I still have her scarf.”

            He shows me; the scarf is knotted around his waist, hidden under his tunic.

"What was her name?" I ask.

"Abasea. She was Italian. A little younger than me, slightly shorter, dark hair, olive skin, and the most beautiful eyes you've ever seen. She had a little beauty spot, just there," he said, indicating a place high on his left cheekbone. "She had a waist I could put my hands around, and she looked half-starved, but nonetheless, she was the most beautiful creature in existence. All I wanted to do was pick her up and hide her away from the world, keep her safe and protected. She had a slight accent, and she didn't speak Chinese at all well, but we understood each other well enough. Her favourite food was apples."

"You still remember…" I said wonderingly.

"Yes," he said, "And I would have revived her in a heartbeat, if I‘d ever thought it was possible.”  He sighed. "I shall be seeing her soon anyway,"

"Zhuzhen!"

He waved a hand dismissively. "I'm getting old, Alice. I shall be glad to go."

"Zhuzhen…"

"Alice…Whenever we reached a new town, and Yuri and I went looking for better armour or stronger weapons, Yuri would always look for something to protect you, first.  If it was a choice between himself or you, he would always choose you."

"I never knew."

"I don't think he knew himself. He did it automatically. If I'd pointed it out he wouldn't have believed it, would have said it was coincidence, but it wasn't…"

We were silent again.  This conversation was not an easy one.

"Thank you," I said eventually. 

            “I don’t know where Yuri grew up,” Zhuzhen told me.  “I’m sorry.  I don’t know where Anne died.”

"It's all right.” I said. "Can you think of anywhere else we could try?"

"Have you asked Koudelka?  She’s much more powerful than I am, and she’s channeled the spirits of the dead before."

"I don't want to disturb her.  Besides, Koudelka has her ways of contacting me – she’d tell me if she knew anything." I sighed. "He's not at his grave; I would have sensed him. He's not where he died, either."

"Are you sure?"

"I've caught that train again a few times. I know it's the same one. I checked every carriage. I checked the stations we went through."

            I hadn’t known the exact moment of Yuri’s death.  I’d stopped at every station and searched for him, because I knew he could have died anywhere along the route, while I was sleeping in his arms.

"Last time Margarite was here, she told me about the Fort of Regrets – have you heard of it?"

"The Fort of Regrets? No, where is it?"

"It's on Isle St. Marguerite, just off the coast of Cannes. It's said to be where the dead who have regrets go."

"It’s worth a try,” I said, trying to sound optimistic.

"Until we think of something else,” Zhuzen said.  “Speaking of Margarite, are you going to ask her to go with you too?"

"Too? You're coming?"

"Of course! I could never pass up an opportunity like this!"

"Oh Zhuzhen, thank you,” I say. I knew he’d loved Yuri in his own way, but I’d hardly dared hope that he’d help me.  “Yes, I did want Margarite's help, but I have no idea where she is."

He blinked at me in surprised. "I thought you knew."

"Knew what?"

"She's here!"