Chapter Text
i. spring
Dusk was falling, the sun already molten and dimming gently on its slow sink down into the ocean, when Yuuri rode into the little town on the southern coast. As he turned over his shoulder to follow its path, his first thought was This is where I die.
He thought this mainly because the very second his attention wandered away from the road and toward the sunset, his horse had begun to buck and shy beneath him, startled by a boy juggling on the street corner. Only this boy was juggling fire—or so it appeared to Yuuri when he whipped his head around, already half out of the saddle, scanning the area for the possible cause of the accident that could for all he knew soon lead to his untimely death—cascading flames in vivid shades of orange and yellow and green, leaping so quickly through the air between the boy’s hands it was almost as if they were alive.
Yuuri had taken a tumble off a horse a few times before, but only ever in the meadow outside his village that his father used sometimes as a practice yard when Yuuri was a boy, all soft grass and springy ground, perfect to break a fall. And he had learned to ride on old Kumo, a gentle grey gelding who had seen everything and was impossible to surprise, so every little accident had been his own fault, the consequence of poor balance or a shaky seat or nerves.
The years since then had given him more than enough opportunities to practice, of course, and he had been journeying from town to town astride this particular chestnut mare for a year now, about—long enough to trust her with his life, but Yuuri knew her blood did tend to run on the hotter side of warm, and this was a cobbled, unfamiliar road it would have been all too easy to crack his head on, should he fall.
Ever since he left his home village to see more of the world, he had been keeping a mental list of all the dangers he might encounter, warning himself to beware of highwaymen, hurricanes, earthquakes, wild bears in the mountains, perhaps even a war. That list had only grown longer with every season that passed, and while he had been fortunate enough to avoid any serious threats to his life thus far, he had never allowed himself to believe for even a second that he would always be so lucky. And perhaps this was it—his luck running out, at last.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, girl, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you—hey. Hey, now.”
That was the juggling boy, his flames vanished into the air, the crowd around him drawing cautiously backwards as he approached. Don’t come near, Yuuri thought, still with that strange clarity that he had heard possessed people nearing the end of life. You might get kicked, and die too.
But if there was any danger to his own life, the juggling boy appeared to be either unaware of it or ignoring it entirely; there was no fear in his stance, or in his steps, or in the quiet voice he was using to talk to Ringo—easy, easy.
It was then, after some considerable delay, that Yuuri remembered he might do a number of things to help avert his dying, at least in the current situation.
“Don’t worry, I’m fine! Or, well, mostly fine…” Squeezing his legs in to keep his seat, Yuuri reached down to touch his horse’s mane and then her neck, rubbing in soothing motions with one hand while the other held the rein. “Whoa, Ringo! Steady. Steady. You’re not going to throw me, are you? Your oldest, dearest friend?”
Between the two of them they managed to calm the horse down and convince her not to bolt, though it did take a few long minutes during which the bystanders dispersed and the sun sank about a quarter of the way below the horizon. The boy held her head as Yuuri dismounted, and they led her to the seawall by the side of the road, where Yuuri passed him a horse treat to make amends with before leaning heavily against the stones, huffing and puffing to catch his breath.
“There, girl. I really am sorry.” The boy offered his hand to Ringo with the palm flat and the treat laid in the very center. When he turned to regard Yuuri, his face was flushed, sheepish. “We don’t get many riders down this way this time of year.”
“Don’t be sorry. I wasn’t paying attention either; it usually takes a lot to startle her.” Remembering the little flames, and how quickly they had arced through the air as the boy tossed them from hand to hand, Yuuri added, “You were putting on quite the show for the children there.”
“Thank you. I like making them laugh,” the boy said, chuckling as Ringo pushed her nose into his palm, all earlier slights seemingly forgiven. “You’re a mage too, then? Those are some potent charms you’ve put on her tack.”
He must have felt it when he touched the reins, Yuuri realized—charms for comfort and protection and preservation from wear and tear, stitched into the leather of saddle and bridle, spelled onto the iron buckles. He’d laid them all himself before setting out, and had been careful since to maintain them at the turn of every moon. Immediately he felt his cheeks warm up, unsure whether to be proud or embarrassed.
“My name is Yuuri Katsuki.” Even as he said it he was aware that it didn’t exactly answer the question. “Are you the town wizard? Celestino Cialdini?”
Yuuri had grown up among wizards, but in his travels he’d quickly found that small towns and villages tended to have only one. Most mages, especially those that had been trained in spellcraft at the royal university, flocked instead to the big cities in search of fortune or renown, finding employ in noble houses or in the direct service of the king. That was why it had been easy, all things considered, to remember Celestino Cialdini, the one name his mother had encouraged him to seek out if he ever found himself in the south.
That made the boy grin, showing all his teeth. “Me, the town wizard? No, I’m just the apprentice. Phichit’s the name.” He lifted his arm and pointed up the road, past Yuuri. “Celestino’s the Master Lightkeeper. If you’re all right to go up there with me, I can introduce you to him.”
Yuuri followed the pointing hand with his eyes, up and up toward the lighthouse on the cliff above the town. How incredibly tall it was, he thought, from this distance. How grand, in a strange and somber way, that single white tower and all around it so much nothing, standing like a soldier in the fading light.
“Lead the way,” he said to Phichit, and straightened up, taking Ringo’s rein in hand. It was uphill, but not far to walk, and it would be easier this way to address any further surprises.
The Master Lightkeeper and his apprentice, as it turned out, lived in a stone cottage that looked as though it had been nested by hand in the high grass at the top of the cliff, flanked on the seaward side by the lighthouse and on the inland side by a storage shed, and beyond that a stable where Ringo was now billeted next to Chailai, Phichit’s own aging mare. It had no hedges, no lawn, only a rambling garden plot out back where a few cucumber vines were persisting stubbornly, and constellations and constellations of wild dandelions studding every patch of ground where Yuuri thought to step.
The Master Lightkeeper himself, Yuuri soon found, had something of his home in him too—something that was at once austere and overgrown in his broad build and strong jaw and incongruously long, curling hair that looked for all the world like it belonged on the head of a princess in a fairytale. Everything about Celestino seemed to loom just as the tower did, even as they sat together at the dining table in the cottage with Phichit in between them, and he had a way especially of folding his arms and regarding Yuuri with such unwavering, inscrutable attention that made him want to pull the hood of his cloak down over his face, hiding.
But all Celestino had said when they entered was, “Tell me,” and so Yuuri told them about how he was the son of the innkeeper at Hasetsu, and how he had left the village at the turn of his eighteenth year to make his way in the world and study other magic. He told them where he had been in the year since, up mountains and down rivers and in and out of the biggest cities in the kingdom, and the mages he had met and all the arts they had shown him, herblore and beast-speech and illusion-casting and star-reading and the rest—and how at the end of it all, he’d remembered he had not yet been to the sea, and that his mother had given him a name to call, should he ever pass this way.
“You don’t need to go out of your way to instruct me if you have other duties, sir. I promise I won’t be in the way; mostly I just want to observe the work you do.” Yuuri’s palms had begun to go clammy as he talked, and he pressed them together in his lap to warm them. “And I can earn my keep around town, even if I don’t have many skills to offer.”
At that Yuuri saw Celestino’s brows draw together in a frown, and Phichit cock his head curiously, birdlike, like they were both on the verge of asking him a question he wasn’t certain he knew how to answer. But then he blinked and took a breath, and when he looked at them again it had passed—or maybe it had been nothing at all, just his imagination, and maybe nerves.
“You’re welcome to stay, of course. I never could refuse Hiroko anything, and my apprentice would certainly benefit from a tempering presence.” Celestino turned to his pupil then, pointedly, making an ushering gesture with his hand at one of the doors. “Give Master Katsuki the spare bed in your room, Phichit. You can avoid any accidents between here and there, I trust?”
Phichit’s grin gleamed like a half-moon then, wild and wicked all across his face, but he was already rising, slinging Yuuri’s pack solicitously over one shoulder before he could protest. “I can at least promise you they won’t be fatal.”
The room was larger than expected—it had been intended, perhaps, to be shared among some previous lightkeeper’s children—and cluttered in a way that made it look lived-in, books and loose sheaves of paper spread out across the one unused bed, a cloak dangling half off the bedpost like it had been tossed there and left to hang however it fell. Phichit set Yuuri’s pack down onto the floor and swept in to clear the space for him instantly, scooping all the mess up in his arms at once and dropping it right back down again onto his own bed, letting what appeared to be the majority of his worldly possessions sprawl like overgrowth across the mattress, because where he himself would sleep was apparently a problem for another time.
Yuuri followed him inside more slowly, shedding his own cloak and draping it over the footboard. Unpacking the rest of his belongings was easy by now after so much practice, clothes in the empty drawer Phichit said was his to use, spellbook and journal and quill on the side table. Everything else could stay where it was until such time as it was needed; there was no need to be so free with his own things, in a room that didn’t belong to him. And anyway other things were already drawing his curiosity away from the unpacking—the three spheres of light that had begun to glow gently overhead as the night closed in around them, and the wide window in the far wall.
“Are those yours?”
“The first spell I ever learned,” Phichit said. With a flick of his wrist he beckoned one of the werelights down from the rafters, spinning it round and round like a ball on the tip of his finger. “They don’t take much from me, and they’re safer than candles.”
A light mage, then. Yuuri had met a few of those the summer past, serving in a temple he’d stopped at briefly to pay respects during his brief sojourn in the royal city. Needless to say, their conversations had been largely ritual exchanges—perfunctory, solemn, and necessarily brief. Nothing at all like Phichit, with his easy laughter and his juggling tricks, and yet the disparity wasn’t unwelcome, for all it came as a surprise.
“Do you want to look at the view?” Phichit opened his hand and floated the light back up. Somehow he’d heard exactly the question Yuuri had been about to ask next. “Go on. It’s a little warmer at night these days.”
So Yuuri did, lifting the latch and letting the window swing wide, and what he saw when he peered out of it was the high grass running up around the stone base of the lighthouse, and part of the white tower looming upward and out of sight, and beyond that the ocean, dark as ink.
“It more or less keeps itself. Master Celestino’s enchanted the whole tower, but the beacon is his finest work. It lights up on its own at night, and when a storm comes, and you can see it out on the water for leagues.” For all their banter, Phichit spoke of his master with so much pride when he was out of earshot. He’d crossed the room to stand beside Yuuri, resting his elbows against the sill and leaning out a little to catch the night breeze. “So we really only stay here because we like to, and because he doesn’t want me causing any accidents.”
His voice dropped on the last word, rumbling out of him in imitation of Celestino—a poor impression on the whole, Yuuri thought, but maybe that was the very reason it made him laugh. “How do you spend your days, then?”
“Reading. Walking. Going into town.” Phichit shrugged. “We help weatherproof the boats and such, read the winds for the fishermen. A little healing as well, here and there. You won’t lack for things to do, Yuuri.”
Hasetsu had been much the same, the magic built brick by brick into the walls of houses, sewn stitch by stitch into every cloak and boot—and while Yuuri had loved it from the first, that had not stopped him from wondering what more there might be, out in the wide world. What place there might be for him that was not simply the place where he’d been born. Phichit’s days, too, sounded like they were governed by an ordinary enough routine, prosaic and familiar, and yet his dark eyes were sparkling when they caught Yuuri’s sidelong, as if to say they were on the verge of a great adventure, and Yuuri simply did not know it yet.
He’d write to his mother after supper tonight, if only to tell her that he had found the wizard she’d told him to seek out, and of his inkling that there were other peculiar things still to be found here that would have to wait until his next letter. For now maybe it was enough to be here, on the lookout for those things, watching and listening. Waiting for the stars to come out over the ocean, inclining his head inquiringly when Phichit nudged the point of his shoulder against his upper arm.
“Look up,” he said, and Yuuri obeyed, and looked—just in time to see a beam of bright white blossom of its own accord in the highest window of the lighthouse, shining out onto the darkening water below.