Sugar Apple Fairytale - Volume 7 - Chapter 2.2

Who is this lady?

Paying no attention to the bewildered crafters, Lulu turned to Challe, who was leaning against the wall.

“You’re the obsidian fairy, I take it? I’ve been waiting for you.”

“So you’re the one who summoned me. Why did you call for me? Who are you?”

“I am Lulu Leaf Lean. I called for you because I wanted to meet you, of course.”

This beautiful lady summoned Challe… Why? Who is she? Is she connected to him?

Anne felt a sudden swell of questions she wanted answers to, but she was so overwhelmed by Lulu’s strange intensity that not one left her lips.

Exasperated, Hugh stepped between the queen and Lulu on one side and the crafters on the other.

“You all need an orderly explanation. Your Majesty, if I may have your permission, I will explain everything to them in detail.”

“Yes. Please do so, Viscount.”

Seeming bewildered by the fairy’s conduct, the queen nodded, visibly relieved by Hugh’s words.

“Well then, could I ask you to leave us, please? Go upstairs, teacher of mine.”

Hugh turned to Lulu and politely urged her to leave.

“The unworthy pupil would turn away his teacher?”

“Only out of consideration. I do not ask that you go up alone. Wouldn’t it be acceptable to go upstairs with the man you summoned? I’m assuming you’d at least like to speak with him, since you said you wanted to meet him.”

“I see. The unworthy pupil is being tactful.”

Hugh bowed courteously as Lulu sneered.

Everyone stared in wonder at this exchange. The Silver Sugar Viscount was affording every courtesy to a fairy. Despite his title, he was bowing to a fairy, a being who should be in a subservient position in the Kingdom of Highland.

Who is this fairy who can make the Silver Sugar Viscount bow?

“Well then, follow me, Obsidian.”

Lulu commanded Challe as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Then she turned around and placed a foot on the first step. Challe immediately followed. Anne quickly grabbed the sleeve of Challe’s jacket.

“Challe, wait! Don’t go alone! What if something happens?”

“Don’t worry. I doubt she’s capable of doing anything to me.”

That might be true, but Anne was still anxious about Challe going alone. She suddenly felt as if she was being abandoned.

“Don’t worry, little girl. I won’t do anything untoward with your obsidian stone.”

Lulu smiled at Anne, then walked briskly up the stairs. Challe followed after her. Anne’s hand fell away from his sleeve.

She felt helpless. It was a loneliness such as she had never experienced before. Challe was just going to an upper floor in the same building. There likely wouldn’t be any danger. Normally, she would have thought nothing of it.

She barely understood her emotions. She wondered if she was just feeling helpless because she was nervous about coming to the royal castle. But she had a sense that this was something else.

As soon as Lulu and Challe disappeared to an upper floor of the spire, Hugh turned back to the candy crafters. His demeanor calm, he slowly came up in front of them.

“First, I suppose I need to explain to you who Lulu Leaf Lean is. Listen carefully, candy crafters.”

Anne was startled. Her mind, which had been scattered with worry about Challe, suddenly snapped back into focus.

That’s right, I was summoned here as a candy crafter. I’m here to do a job.

“You all are Lulu’s chosen successors.”

Successors. The expressions on the faces of the candy crafters changed at the weight of the word.

The Cocoon Tower was four stories tall.

The space on the second floor closely resembled a candy crafter’s workshop. There was a workbench with a stone slab affixed to it, barrels for silver sugar and cold water, and a variety of tools, such as spatulas and knives. It had a small furnace and a stone mill. The air smelled sweetly of silver sugar.

Lulu bypassed that second floor and continued up to the third. This level was less spacious than the second and appeared to be a living space. It had a bed, a clothing trunk, a washbasin, and other items for daily living.

From there, the spiral staircase led to the top floor. It was a small, round room and would be crowded with only five or six occupants. The space was mostly unfurnished and felt empty. It was a bright room. Looking up, Challe saw that cloudy white glass had been set into the conical apex of the spire. A circle of light was coming down from overhead.

“Only the windows up here open.”

As she said this, Lulu placed a hand against one of the small, irregularly spaced windows and pushed it open.

The cool, moist breeze of late winter blew into the spire. Lulu stood by the window, letting her hair flutter in the breeze and narrowing her eyes. She seemed to enjoy the feeling. The single wing on her back stretched pleasantly and shivered.

“How about you get to the point and explain who you are already?” Challe asked, standing outside the circle of light in the center of the room.

Lulu looked amused and approached Challe with an expression like she was holding back a smile. “I heard about you from the Silver Sugar Viscount,” she said. “You’re a bit of obsidian named Challe Fenn Challe. Have you met the other two? Do you know where they are? Were the other two even born in the first place?”

“What other two?”

“The opal and the diamond. Your brother stones.”

Challe felt a chill, as if a sharp blade had suddenly been thrust before his eyes. He quickly took a step back, away from Lulu.

“Why do you know about that?”

“I’ve known about it for five hundred years. You were the stones on the sword that King Riselva always carried. I often gazed at you while I was by King Riselva’s side, you see. And your name rang a bell when I heard it come out of the Silver Sugar Viscount’s mouth. I recognized it as the sound of one of those three stones.”

“Riselva? You mean the last fairy king, Riselva Cyril Sash?”

“Yes, him.”

Lulu nodded casually.

“I was born from a large tree. The man who looked at me and drew me into this world was King Riselva himself. After that, I served King Riselva for over a century. Of course, that was almost five hundred years ago.”

It can’t be. She’s been alive for over six hundred years?

Challe had met fairies who had lived for one or two hundred years’ time. In fact, Challe himself was over one hundred years old. But it was rare to meet a fairy older than that.

Fairies born from trees were plant spirits, and their lifespans were typically measured in decades or centuries. Given their abilities, it was even possible for them to live a thousand years. Their lives might be shorter than gem fairies’, but they were still quite long.

But even fairies born from gemstones and fairies born from trees could have their lives cut short by various misfortunes. Living several hundred years without encountering fatal illness, accident, or malice was a difficult feat indeed.

“If I’d just been tossed out into the wide world, I would have lost my life after about a hundred years at best. In fact, I would have been extraordinarily lucky to have made it that far if I’d led a normal life. But I fell into the hands of the human king Cedric and was imprisoned. For better or worse, being captured lent a certain stability to my life. They locked me away in here with great care, you see. I’ve been alive for over six hundred years. But that seems to have weakened my body in a way, and just four months ago, I found myself bedridden. That threw the royal family into a mad rush. They seemed to realize that there were limits to even my life. That’s why we summoned you all.”

Lulu reached out to Challe and touched his cheek.

“Your coloring is different, but you are indeed one of the stones selected by King Riselva. You look a lot like him.”

Challe let her do as she pleased. He felt no discomfort at the way she touched him. She seemed to be revisiting old memories.

“It was a month ago, maybe? You caused some sort of uproar? The human soldiers left for a fortress in the wilderness. I heard about the incident from Marguerite and the Silver Sugar Viscount. The affair concerned fairies, so I heard all sorts of things about it, and your name came up in the stories. Challe Fenn Challe, they said. I was surprised. I knew that it was the name of a fairy born from one of those three stones. I wanted to meet you so badly I couldn’t stand it.”

It was a strange sensation, being touched by Lulu.

The fingers of a fairy who had lived six hundred years and who had memories of the last fairy king, Riselva, reminded him of an enormous tree, one that had slowly accumulated many memories over the course of its life. It made him strangely calm.

“I assumed that it would be impossible for me to meet with you, but then my chance came. The royal family decided they would summon candy crafters to be my successors, so as to preserve my techniques. Among the candidates was the girl candy crafter who travels with you. When I heard the news, I was jumping for joy, on the inside, at least. That’s why I ordered the Silver Sugar Viscount to summon her and have her bring you along as well. The humans thought this was strange, but I explained it away. I told them that I wanted to take this opportunity to see you since I had heard tales of your beauty.”

“Now that you’ve met me, what do you intend to do?”

“Nothing at all. I simply wanted to meet you. To meet one of the people to whom King Riselva entrusted the future of the fairies. Have you met the other two?”

“One of them. The opal.”

“What is his name? What became of him?”

“His name was Lafalle Fenn Lafalle. He’s dead.”

Lulu frowned.

“And what of the diamond?”

“Not born yet, it seems. Their time has come, but they haven’t been born, is what Lafalle said. They’re still a stone, and I don’t know where they are.”

“I see. That means you’re alone, Obsidian.”

Lulu pulled her hand away from Challe’s cheek. She walked over near the window and leaned back against the wall, crossing her legs. She gazed outside through the small window and mumbled wearily.

“But I believe it fortunate for me to meet even one of you. It brings back memories of King Riselva. Fond memories.”

“What was Riselva expecting from the three stones? Did he hope that the fairies born from them would wage a war to restore the fairy kingdom?”

Challe thought back to his conversation with Lafalle. He had said that they needed to follow Riselva’s will and wage war to take back the fairy world. But Challe had not been willing to go along with that idea.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that Riselva had hoped for something different, something more.

If Lulu had indeed served Riselva, there was a possibility that she had heard something from him.

Ever since they had been summoned to the royal castle, Challe had felt that his destiny was unfolding. If meeting Anne, who held the key to his fate, had set things in motion, he now sought the grounds he needed to probe further into his own destiny. Whatever Riselva had wanted from him had to be connected to Challe’s fate.

But Lulu simply shook her head.

“I don’t know what King Riselva was expecting from the three stones. Despite our meeting, I can’t tell you what he wanted or why, or what he was hoping for, unfortunately. I’m simply a silver sugar fairy. A fairy who served the fairy king by making sugar candy. I wasn’t even the head silver sugar fairy.”

“A silver sugar fairy?”

It was the first time Challe had heard those words.

“Fairies who make sugar candy are called silver sugar fairies. Five hundred years ago, there were dozens of us. About twenty silver sugar fairies were imprisoned here with me. Water fairies, plant fairies, there were all kinds. But they all vanished when they reached the ends of their lives. A hundred years ago, my final companion vanished, and I was ultimately left here alone. I am the very last of my kind.”

Fairies were the first to discover the method for refining silver sugar and the first to make sugar candy.

They made the energy of the beautiful “essence” of silver sugar their own, and they used it to extend their lives. The fairies’ intuition for sugar candy was so acute that the humans were no match for them, and the techniques that they’d cultivated for making sugar candy far surpassed any known to the humans.

The fairies who served the fairy king and made those candies were known as silver sugar fairies.

Five hundred years ago, Ancestor King Cedric and the fairy king clashed. The fairy king was defeated, and in the aftermath, the humans pursued, captured, and enslaved the fairies. In their hatred, the humans condemned the fairy king’s closest subjects to an even worse fate than slavery, tracking down and killing them one by one.

The silver sugar fairies were no exception.

However, Ancestor King Cedric did not wish to lose the candy making techniques that the silver sugar fairies possessed. So he decided to protect the silver sugar fairies from the anger and hatred of the people who wanted them dead.

Cedric placed twenty silver sugar fairies who had served the fairy king under his protection and sheltered them in Lewiston Castle, which was a small, inconspicuous castle at the time.

“Lulu Leaf Lean is the last of those silver sugar fairies.”

The queen had left the duty of explaining all this to Hugh before leaving the Cocoon Tower.

Hugh had taken a seat on the stone staircase, and after settling in, he had ordered the crafters to relax as well. The crafters’ nerves had settled once the queen left, and they’d gathered around Hugh to listen carefully to him.

“That’s got to be a legend, right? I can’t believe that that fairy has been alive for five hundred years,” Stella Knox said soberly. His gray eyes looked rather astute.

“You’d better believe it. To hear her tell it, she served the fairy king for one hundred years. After the fairy king’s death, she spent five hundred years here. That works out to her being alive for nearly six hundred years.”

“Nonsense,” Stella mumbled, snorting laughter. He wasn’t the least bit afraid of the Silver Sugar Viscount. He had a sharp tongue and great confidence in himself. That was the impression the young man gave off.

Killean cast a piercing glare at Stella. “You’re being rude to the Viscount,” he said.

“How? All that rubbish isn’t the truth, is it?”

Killean and Stella glared at each other for a moment, but Hugh himself ignored Stella’s impertinent attitude.

“Successive generations of kings have inherited the silver sugar fairies. The supervision and care of the silver sugar fairies does not fall under the king’s purview. But only the closest members of the royal family can be allowed to know about the silver sugar fairies. For that reason, responsibility for all matters related to silver sugar fairies has been assumed by the queens who marry into the family. Do you doubt that the royal line has been unbroken for the past five hundred years?”

“I do not doubt your words, Viscount!”

The one who answered him, almost reflexively, was John Killean. Everyone turned toward the sound of his voice, and Killean made a startled face. Then he deliberately cleared his throat and said defensively, “Well, what I mean is…considering the lifespan of a fairy, I don’t think we can say that it’s impossible. Though five or six hundred years is an extraordinarily long time.”

Hugh nodded. “It is extraordinary. And in fact, during the past five hundred years, the rest of the twenty silver sugar fairies who were here reached the ends of their lives and vanished. The only one left is Lulu, who was born from an enormous tree and who has an especially long lifespan. However, even her life is not eternal. Four months ago, she fell bedridden, which made that fact very clear to the royal family.”

Anne looked up at the ceiling, as if trying to find Lulu, who had disappeared upstairs with Challe.

That beautiful woman was a silver sugar fairy who had served the fairy king depicted on the ceiling of the Church of Saint Lewiston Bell. The story had a miraculous quality to it, as if an apparition had flown down out of the mural and materialized.

Anne didn’t doubt Hugh’s words like Stella did, but it still didn’t seem real to her.

“The fairies were the first people in the world to refine silver sugar and make candy out of it. They extended their lives using silver sugar, the only food they can taste. The intuition that they have for silver sugar and sugar candy is many times sharper than humans’. We humans first tried our hands at making sugar candy five hundred years ago. We started by watching and imitating what the fairies were doing. Despite lacking any special intuition for silver sugar or sugar candy, we nonetheless fumbled our way into candy crafting techniques. However, even after five hundred years, humanity has yet to attain the level of mastery that the fairies possessed.”

Hugh slowly took a deep breath, then asked everyone a question.

“When was the position of Silver Sugar Viscount created, and for what purpose? Is there anyone here who knows?”

The next instant, someone gave a clear and intelligent answer.

“The position was created one hundred years ago, around the same time that the Millsland family took their place as the royal family of Highland. The purpose of this was to allow the royal family to retain the best candy crafter in the country so they could secure the greatest good fortune for their nation. By the way, I believe that the title of Silver Sugar Master was created about ten years after that, which was also when they started holding the Royal Candy Fair.”

It had been Keith who answered.

“I’d expect nothing less from a graduate of the State Church Independent School. Oh, that’s right—Killean is a graduate of the seminary, and Knox and Keith are both graduates of the Independent School, huh? Lots of intellectuals here.”

The seminary was a school that the State Church had established in order to train future members of the clergy. Commoners and nobility alike could attend. However, one had to pass a difficult examination to enter and receive an advanced education. In contrast, the State Church Independent School had been founded so that the priests could provide a more general education to the populace. Tuition was very costly, so only the children of the nobility and wealthy merchants could afford it, but it was also an exclusive school that required great academic aptitude for entry.

Anne knew nothing of that world—she had even skipped out on Sunday school. She was impressed by Keith’s knowledge.

The other two people Hugh had called intellectuals probably already knew everything Keith had said, and Elliott also looked like he had known it as a matter of course. Anne seemed to be the only one lacking such knowledge.

Hugh had probably anticipated that and formulated his question to allow Anne to hear the answer.

“It’s as Keith just said. That is the official reason.”

Elliott frowned suspiciously. “Official? Is there another reason, Viscount?”

“There is. That reason is her—it’s the existence of Lulu Leaf Lean. Cedric hid twenty silver sugar fairies in Lewiston Castle and forced them to make sugar candy. The three sons of Cedric honored the dying wish of their father and king and continued to protect them. Then when the Millsland royal family assumed the throne, they gained the right to protect the silver sugar fairies themselves. The fairies made beautiful sugar candies that were beyond anything humans could create. And the Millsland royal family alone benefited from the good fortune those sugar candies invited.”

Anne felt uncomfortable about Hugh’s use of the word protect.

She knew about the cruelty of the Millsland royal family and how they had completely eliminated the Chamber family and the Alburn family during their reign. They were cruel even to their own brethren. She didn’t believe that those same rulers could have ever truly appreciated the artistry of the silver sugar fairies, much less have been their benevolent protectors.

Anne reasoned that the Millsland royal family had hidden the fairies away in order to take control of the beautiful sugar candies that they made and monopolize the good fortune that the sweets invited.

Calling it protection might sound good, but the truth was that the fairies had been captured and imprisoned.

Otherwise, there’s no reason why Lulu would only have one wing…

Hugh continued.

“However, the silver sugar fairies reached the ends of their lives one by one, and their numbers dwindled. Finally, a hundred years ago, the last one other than Lulu passed. At that point, the Millsland royal family contacted the most outstanding candy crafter in the kingdom and decided that Lulu would teach them in order to preserve the skills and knowledge that she possessed. The fairies’ sugar candy techniques were the special privilege of the Millsland royal family. To keep them from being used by outsiders, they fettered the crafter who’d learned them by granting him the rank of viscount. That’s why the position of Silver Sugar Viscount was created. Ever since then, the person who becomes Silver Sugar Viscount has taken an oath of secrecy about Lulu’s existence, swearing that they will not teach anyone the techniques they have learned from her. I, too, learned from Lulu. And Keith’s father, Edward Powell, the former Silver Sugar Viscount, certainly knew Lulu as well.”

Keith frowned and shook his head. “This is the first I’ve heard of any of this…,” he said.

“Of course it is,” Hugh replied. “The former Silver Sugar Viscount must have taken the same vow. That’s how far the royal family went to keep the fairies’ techniques a secret. But when Lulu became bedridden four months ago, the royal family finally started to show some concern for her. After all, if she dies, then all the knowledge and skills that she possesses will be lost. I’ve learned from her, of course, but if I alone am the successor to that knowledge, it will be lost forever if something happens to me. It’s a disconcerting situation. We need more people to inherit her knowledge. The royal family decided to take it one step further. They’ve chosen to gather several candidates for Silver Sugar Viscount and teach them Lulu’s techniques so that they can be her successors.”

The knowledge and techniques of a silver sugar fairy who’s lived for six hundred years…

Long ago, when Anne was young, her mother, Emma, had told her all sorts of old stories to put her to sleep. The ones that had left a special impression were the tales about fairies.

The fairies were the first in the world to make sugar candy.

Emma had always whispered that into Anne’s ear, as if she was confiding some important secret. Anne got the feeling that a hidden truth was being revealed to her, a truth hidden in the old nursery stories, one that even Emma hadn’t known.

What is the fairies’ sugar candy like? How do they make it?

She ached with the desire to learn something new, something unknown.

Hugh looked around at the five candy crafters he had gathered.

“The task of cultivating Lulu’s successors was entrusted to the queen. Acting on her orders, I selected the candy crafters who are likely to be able to learn the skills and techniques. You five are the chosen successors. Now that you’ve heard all this, you have a duty to become her successors. To become Lulu’s pupils.”

“A fairy’s pupils?” Stella looked stunned, as though he had heard something unbelievable. “Why become pupils to the fairy? If someone’s going to teach us, it should be you.”

“I have not mastered the techniques to the same degree she has. It would be impossible for me to teach you.”

“That may be true, but are we really supposed to call a fairy master?” Stella objected. “Normally, that would be unthinkable. I’m not happy about the idea.”

“You haven’t forgotten, have you, Stella Knox?” Hugh cut him off with a menacing smile. “I’m sure that the queen told you to leave if you weren’t prepared for this. And none of you did. Every single one of you has already assumed this responsibility. I won’t entertain any complaints. You will become the fairy’s pupils. That is your task.”