The Winds of the Past [Rune Factory 4]

Chapter 47

“Are you ready, My Lady?” I asked as we disembarked from the airship near Leon Karnak. She nodded apprehensively, and I gave her hand a squeeze. “Good. Then let’s go.”

We approached the tower slowly, both of us fearing what we might find. As always, there was no one—human or monster—in sight. The monsters that populated the tower always avoided the ground level, though I had yet to comprehend why.

Standing before the massive, tightly sealed door at the base of the tower, we gazed up at the names written in the ancient script near the top once again. “I would think the most likely place for her to have buried the first page would be right here, below our names. Will you help me look for it, My Lady?”

“Of course,” she replied, kneeling on the ground before the door and starting to dig.

After digging for some time, I hit something solid. “It’s here!” I exclaimed, scraping the earth away from around the chest. “Damn. I’m shaking so hard, I can’t pick it up.”

“Do you want me to get it for you?” she asked.

“No, but thank you. I need to finish this myself. Just give me a minute.” I steeled my nerves and steadied my hands, then carefully picked up the small chest. When I opened it, there was another page inside. Feeling shaky again, I lifted the paper out of the chest. Handing the chest to Avani, I looked at that solitary page. I saw that in the bottom corner was a dot—this, then, as we had surmised, was the first page.

I took a deep breath and glanced up at her. “All right. Here we go. It says… Dear ‘you’ who lies sleeping within the tower—‘she’ who broke her promise to you has vanished. For at last ‘she’ found herself a loving husband, and was reborn as ‘me’. Because of this, I wish now to put an end to the heartache and pain between ‘you’ and ‘she’ by dedicating this story to you. That way when you finally awaken one day, you’ll know all that transpired. Then, dear man, you will know that you have been freed from our childish promise. I’m sorry that I couldn’t keep it, after all. Fare thee well.” I felt tears pricking my eyes as I looked at the text that came next. “Then she adds a post-script, saying that at the suggestion of a friend, she plans to publish a book... the title of which is The Recipe for Happiness.”

Avani gasped. “That—isn’t that the book…?”

“Yes, that’s the book I translated not long after we started seeing each other. She also says that she hopes one day I find it—that she’s certain I will do so—and that she’s writing it in the old script that we learned together as children. She says that she hopes I’ll enjoy reading it all the more because of that. Then she says… she says ‘To you, my dear man, through the passage of years, centuries, even millennia… I send you my wish upon a star, for you were my first love, though not my last.’” I set the page back in the chest, and Avani gently closed the lid. “The Recipe for Happiness. It was the story of a happily married couple. And I remember… how I could sense the joy overflowing from the author through her words.”

“Then that means….”

“It means that ‘she’ really did disappear here. She broke her promise and found someone else. She didn’t die miserable and alone—she… she had a happy life, after all.” Joy and relief filled me, the excess flowing from my eyes as tears. I sighed, leaning against the door and closing my eyes for a moment. “A wish upon a star….”

“Wasn’t that… wasn’t that part of the hint to find the last page?” Avani asked.

I opened my eyes and looked at her in surprise. “Yes, now you mention it. You’re right.” I laughed. “How could I have forgotten about that? Wishing on stars. It was a charm from my childhood—a kind of magic to send a wish to the heavens. The first page started with that dot, and then point by point she turned it into a star. I remember it now—it was supposed to make your wish come true. Everything—the story, the symbols, the locations… all of it was her gift to me, to both of us, so that our wishes might come true. It was… her blessing.”