MCDB CH 09

Chapter 4. The Moon That Fell to the Ground

Helens sprawled out on the floor of the now-clean cage. Axel had burned the old straw bed, saying it was filthy.

“If you were going to burn it, you could at least have brought me a new blanket.”

Thanks to that, Helens was now sleeping directly on the floor. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as bad as she had expected. Maybe because she had fur, or perhaps because the floor was clean enough to eat food off.

She thought of the water spirits, whose faces had become as dry and barren as a desert from their forced labor. Thanks to them cleaning the place so thoroughly, she now had a clean and hygienic cage.

“…I feel strangely guilty.”

She felt terribly sorry for them. She didn’t understand why she should feel guilty when Axel was the one who had forced them into labor.

But that man wasn’t the type to feel sorry about such things.

“The ceiling is unnecessarily high.”

Helens lay spread-eagled in the very center and stared up at the ceiling. Her bed had been in the corner, so she had never had a reason to examine the ceiling this closely. Now that she looked, she noticed a round hole in the middle.

Moonlight streamed through it.

“This thing is going to leak when it rains.”

It hadn’t rained yet, but if it did, water would obviously collect on the floor.

“Even if you had nowhere else to put me, this is a bit much.”

Helens’s life was just as unfortunate as Herin’s had been.

“This brings back old memories.”

She hadn’t been possessed for very long, but perhaps because she had already died once, her previous life felt as distant as if several years had passed.

Still, she hadn’t forgotten how difficult it had been.

Her father would smash the furniture in the house whenever he lost his temper, then he guaranteed someone else’s debt and eventually stopped coming home.

Her mother had become obsessed with religion, while her older brother had become addicted to gambling. Whenever they had the chance, they would steal and take away the money Herin had painstakingly saved.

Thinking about how she had worked relentlessly while everyone else played and slept, tears blurred her vision.

“Stop thinking about useless things and go to sleep.”

Helens closed her eyes.

Maybe because she had been thinking about the past, she had a miserable dream.

She was in Herin’s body, trapped just like Helens was.

“Ugh.”

Helens groaned softly and tossed and turned. The cold floor pressed directly against her bare skin. Shivering, she curled herself into a ball.

Her soft fur was gone.

Instead, her fingers felt smooth, bare skin.

“…?”

Even in her sleep, Helens sensed that something was strange and opened her eyes. She rubbed them absentmindedly, then froze at the unfamiliar sensation.

“T-This… h-hands! These are hands!”

They weren’t paws.

They were hands.

I thought becoming human was just a dream.

But she had really become human.

Helens hurriedly got up and looked at herself in the full-length mirror.

“I’m human!”

Human.

She really was human.

A girl with brown eyes and brown hair, who looked exactly like Carlisle, stood there.

“Did the curse break?”

Judging by the fact that she had returned to human form, that seemed to be the case.

There was just one problem.

She was completely naked.

Fortunately, this place was secluded, and there were no guards stationed nearby.

As Helens looked around with the same view she had once had as a human, she noticed the fairy-tale book lying open.

Blue moonlight rippled across its blank pages.

“Wait. Why is the moonlight blue?”

Helens looked up.

A blue moon was passing directly through the middle of the hole in the ceiling.

It wasn’t exactly a vividly blue moon as Helens had imagined.

Rather, it seemed to have a faint bluish glow.

“Wasn’t that supposed to rise tomorrow?”

Maybe it had risen the day before too? After all, the full moon became round several days before the actual full moon.

Not knowing much about the blue moon, Helens simply assumed that perhaps it became even bluer on the day it was supposed to appear.

“Words appeared.”

What was even more fascinating was that letters had appeared on the page that had previously been blank.

[The princess said, “Bring me that moon. As long as I have that moon, I will always be able to remain in human form.” Then the wise teapot servant answered, “Princess, you cannot pluck the moon yourself. But you can pick up the moon that has fallen to the ground.”]

“What does that even mean?”

It sounded like something straight out of a fairy tale.

Still, Helens memorized the passage carefully. She planned to tell Axel or Roman about it later when they came.

“But what am I supposed to do?”

She had become human.

And she was naked.

The old blanket she had at least possessed had been burned by Axel because he considered it dirty. There was absolutely nothing here that she could use to cover herself.

“Looks like I’m stuck waiting until someone comes. What happens to my plan now?”

She couldn’t simply be happy about becoming human.

Helens scratched her head irritably.

“Ah!”

Her scalp stung as though it had been scratched by a needle.

Helens let out a short scream and checked her hand to see whether she was bleeding.

“…Huh? What? What is this?!”

She had paws again.

Not hands, but those clumsy front paws.

And just as Helens went, “Wh-what…?” her vision suddenly flipped upside down.

Then, when she collapsed weakly onto the floor, she was once again in the body of a beast.

“Could it be…”

Helens looked up at the sky.

“Are you messing with me?”

She bared her fangs at the moon in irritation, only to realize that the moon was no longer blue.

“Wait. I’ve seen this in the book!”

She turned her gaze back to the book.

The words from earlier had disappeared, leaving nothing but blank pages.

Helens stared at the empty page for a long while.

“Hmmm.”

A magically enchanted book that Gallian had sent to Axel.

Words that appeared only under blue moonlight.

And the timing of the book’s arrival had been so perfect.

He had sent it right around the time the blue moon was supposed to appear.

It was practically like spoon-feeding Axel the information on how to break the curse.

“Guess blood really is thicker than water.”

“Clorette tried to poison the princess? Just what were you doing?”

“I’m sorry, Your Grace. Lady Eliza moved on her own, so we received the information too late.”

Ludwig lowered his head as though he had nothing more to say.

Duke Grace let out a weary groan and pressed his temples.

The blue moon had risen a day earlier than expected, leaving him already troubled. And now he had to hear about the trouble his daughter had caused.

“Clorette. When is that girl ever going to grow up?”

Clorette was his only daughter and the queen of the Kingdom of Ilehon.

Because he had married Clorette off to an elderly king, he had turned a blind eye to whatever she did.

Fortunately, the trouble Clorette usually caused amounted to little more than indulging in luxury and throwing extravagant parties at every opportunity.

“Eliza. Why does that girl keep doing the exact same foolish things as Clorette?”

Eliza was Clorette’s head maid.

She was intelligent and quick-witted, so despite her humble family background, the duke had given her the position of head maid.

He had placed her beside Clorette so that she could stop her whenever she caused trouble like this.

“What am I supposed to do when the two of them are being foolish together?”

“B-But weren’t you planning to eliminate the princess anyway?”

That was, of course, true.

“Didn’t it fail?”

If they had actually killed her, he would have been less angry.

Instead, they had failed to kill the princess and merely heightened her suspicion.

“The moment the Magic Tower demanded the princess, if the princess suddenly died, what do you think they would assume? They would suspect that we killed her because we didn’t want to hand her over.”

And if the cause of death turned out to be poisoning, that would only fuel their suspicions.

“Idiots.”

“Her Majesty the Queen has hated the princess ever since that incident, hasn’t she? I heard the princess can even speak now. Perhaps she acted impulsively because she couldn’t stand seeing her and hearing her speak.”

The duke knew that too.

Clorette still hadn’t forgotten that incident.

“If she had simply stayed quiet, this father of hers would have taken care of everything.”

“I don’t know if I should ask this, Your Grace, but then how were you planning to eliminate the princess? Weren’t you also planning to send her to the Magic Tower after killing her?”

“By using an aphrodisiac.”

In the middle of the festival, a beast that had lost its reason would run wild.

Someone would be scratched by its claws, and someone else might lose their life to its teeth.

“Then someone would draw a sword.”

If that someone happened to be the prince, it would be perfect.

If the prince died at the princess’s hands, it would be a gift from heaven.

On the other hand, if the prince killed the princess, they could accuse her of murdering a relative, send her somewhere on the frontier, and have her killed there.

That way, they would have a convenient excuse to give the Magic Tower.

The princess had escaped and gone on a rampage. What else could they have done but stop her?

“However, the princess will be suspicious of food now.”

They had planned to carry out their scheme tomorrow night, when the festival would be at its grandest.

But now that the princess had discovered the poisoned food, she would likely refuse food for some time.

“What if you used those bloodstains?”

“Bloodstains?”

“Yes. The bloodstains that were on the outside wall of the princess’s cage.”

Ludwig spoke meaningfully.

“I think we could make use of them.”

In the past, the blue moon had been revered as a symbol of healing.

Now, it was merely a rare phenomenon that could be seen once every ten years.

But even when legends faded, superstitions tended to endure.

People believed that a blue moon that rose and set a day earlier than expected brought a poor harvest, while a blue moon that appeared for two consecutive nights brought a plentiful harvest.

Thus, people prayed to the heavens to let them see the blue moon for one more night.

And on the second night, the blue moon rose at the appointed hour.

“Did you look at it under the moonlight?”

Helens, who had once again returned to human form, came out wrapped tightly in the blanket Axel had brought her.

When he had burned the blanket because it was dirty, Helens had protested, asking what she was supposed to cover herself with.

He hadn’t forgotten.

“Yes. I never knew my master had hidden something like this.”

Axel read the words revealed by the moonlight.

“The moon that fell to the ground.”

If they found it, they wouldn’t have to wait another ten years for the next blue moon. They could weaken the curse.

“Does that moonlight really cure diseases?”

“No.”

The fact that the blue moon had appeared for two consecutive nights meant that mana was moving in the opposite direction.

“Mana naturally has a tendency to disperse. But when mana is drawn toward a certain place and becomes concentrated, phenomena like this occur.”

A dragon, a concentrated mass of mana, must have formed where the mana had accumulated.

Though it was still probably just an egg.

“The reason your master sent this book was to tell you to find the moon that fell to the ground.”

That was right.

He had intended to tell Axel what kind of punishment he would receive and, at the same time, show him a way to temporarily escape that punishment.

He probably hadn’t expected Helens, rather than Axel himself, to discover it.

“He must have told you because he knew you could find it. Do you have any idea what it might be?”

“I have a meteorite in my safe. I should go check it.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Well, Helens had been the one who discovered the clue.

Axel readily held out his hand.

But for some reason, Helens hesitated and didn’t take it.

“Wait. Let’s go after I turn back into a beast. This body is really uncomfortable.”

“……”

Hey. You were originally human.