Chapter Text
Once upon a time, there was a girl who died.
Unlike most people, however, she did not stay dead, which was what made her so unique.
But that was getting ahead of things.
In all other aspects, Ahiru seemed to be a perfectly normal teenage girl, if a bit small for her age. In actual fact, she was far from ordinary, though none who knew her at the Lakeside Orphanage would have guessed that merely from looking at her. All they would have seen was a diminutive wisp of a girl with a bright red braid that was nearly as long as she was tall, a giant cowlick that refused to be tamed, wide blue eyes, a dusting of freckles across her nose, and a smile as warm and sweet as her general disposition.
She had been in the care of the orphanage for roughly five years; prior to that, her uncle had had custody of her. Both her parents were long dead, her father having perished before her birth and her mother having died in the act of giving birth to her. Her uncle had stepped in immediately to take her in after her mother’s passing, and had raised her alone. But five years earlier, events he had not seen fit to discuss with his scared young niece had necessitated entrusting her care to the orphanage. He’d promised her that he would return soon, but as there had been no sign of his continued existence, he had been officially pronounced dead and thus Ahiru became a ward of the state. That time was nearing its end, though none yet knew it.
The end began on a day seemingly as ordinary as Ahiru herself. Everyone had just had lunch, and all the older children had been shooed out of the building to play outside while the younger ones napped. It was a bright summer day, with the sun high in a rare cloudless sky, and cool breezes to balance the warmth. Autumn was fast approaching, and so it was likely to be one of the last such days in the near future. The children seemed to know this, and set to playing outside with even more enthusiasm than usual. Many of them took to scaling the tall, shady trees that dotted the yard, and some of the ones who were inclined to bully Ahiru over various characteristics of hers decided to dare her to join them, expecting to be able to taunt her as a wimpy crybaby scaredy-cat when she predictably refused. Ahiru was not feeling predictable that day, though, and decided to be brave and take up their challenge. It was a decision more momentous than she knew at the time.
The first portion of her climb went slowly and somewhat steadily – she tried her best not to look down as she climbed ever higher, and closed her ears to the taunts and jeers of those who felt she was not ascending the tree quickly enough for their liking. Unfortunately, her refusal to listen to them also meant she did not hear the warning about a weak branch from a girl genuinely concerned for her safety, and it proved to be her downfall. Even her slight weight was enough to be the last straw for the branch, and she went hurtling back down to earth at a far faster rate than she had been climbing up. Later, she would be unsure of just how fast or slow she had perceived the fall to be while it was happening; her vague memories of it consisted mainly of a mass of screaming voices, one of which might well have been hers. She wasn’t sure about that either.
What was certain was this: her memory of the event ended when she hit the ground, her fragile neck snapping in an instant, too fast for her even to feel. She never did hear any clear accounts of what happened past that point; for those who had witnessed her fall were afterwards too traumatized and terrified to do anything but shy away from her afterwards.
The gap in her memories ended at the point when she woke up in someone’s office a little while later. She could hear the sound of adults arguing outside the closed door, and though her neck was slightly sore, she otherwise felt as well as ever. She had been laid out on a lumpy sofa riddled with coffee stains, and there was a plate of cookies sitting on the desk nearby. When the arguing adults – one man, shorter and thinner than the taller, stockier woman – finally entered the office, they found Ahiru seated on top of the desk, calmly eating one of the cookies and swinging her legs back and forth.
The woman screamed. The man fainted. Shortly thereafter, the coroner they had called arrived, only to leave almost immediately upon hearing that there had been something of a false alarm and there was no dead girl waiting to be delivered to the morgue. The only thing that delayed him leaving was his own anger at having been called out apparently for nothing, and he ranted until red in the face about childish pranks and valuable time and people who had real jobs before getting back in his car and driving off in haste. The people in charge of the orphanage then called in a doctor, an older woman who was bewildered but kind as she gave Ahiru a thorough physical examination. She pronounced her to be the very picture of health, with nary a scratch on her from her fall, much less a broken neck. The shaken orphanage staff nevertheless fed her an early dinner separate from the other children and sent her to bed early.
News of the strange incident soon traveled outside the orphanage, and the result was that slightly over a week later, Ahiru was summoned by the matron in charge as she sat with the younger children and read stories to them. (She had always preferred their company to the older ones anyway, as they were kinder to her and did not tease her quite so mercilessly about her clumsiness or her cowlick or her duck-like voice, but now none of the older children wanted to be around her, so spooked were they by how she had seemingly come back to life after her fatal plunge from the tree.) She had, it seemed, a visitor.
“Now, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, but you be sure and be on your best behavior,” the matron warned Ahiru in a stern voice as she ushered her along to where her mysterious visitor awaited her. “You’re being paid a visit by a very important person, heavens only know why, and it would not reflect well upon us if you were to incur their wrath. Do you understand me?”
“Y-yes.” Ahiru gulped and nodded her head. “Who – who is it? Is it – it’s not my uncle, is it?”
“Oh goodness no, that man is…” The matron paused, stopping herself just short of telling the girl how very dead her uncle was presumed to be. “It isn’t him. This is a much more important visitor.” She opened the door to the small sitting room the orphanage used as a waiting room for visitors, and pushed Ahiru inside. “Here you are. Be good!”
“I –” Ahiru turned to ask her another question, but the door was shut in her face, and the footsteps that moved away from it were brisk and swiftly vanished out of earshot.
“You are Ahiru?” The voice was gentle, pleasant, and female. Ahiru turned to see the source of it. It was a tall, slender woman with pale green hair arranged in an impossible elaborate updo and a kind smile on her face. She rose from her seat and moved forward to touch Ahiru’s cheek with a cool, pale hand. “You are a lovely girl.”
“N-no, no, that’s – you’re really too kind!” Ahiru blushed bright red and shook her head frantically. “I’m not nearly as pretty as you are!”
The woman laughed softly. “You are sweet to say so.” She took Ahiru’s hand in hers, and her expression became more serious. “Ahiru, I am known as Chrestomanci. Have you ever heard of me?”
“Um, no.” Ahiru shook her head again. “I – I’m really sorry, but – but I haven’t.”
“That’s all right.” Chrestomanci considered Ahiru for a moment. “I understand that you have recently had an… unusual experience?”
“Y-yeah, I guess you could say that.” Ahiru gulped. “I – I mean – I don’t remember it really well, but I fell when I was climbing a tree, and everything went dark, and then I woke up in somebody’s office and I started eating the cookies on the desk and then when the adults came in, they freaked out and now none of the older children want to come near me.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Everybody says that I died and I came back to life and they’re scared of me, but that’s impossible. Right? I-I don’t understand it.”
“You will in time.” Chrestomanci stroked Ahiru’s hair with one of her cool, pale hands. “I cannot explain it to you right now, but the time will come. Will you wait for me?”
She didn’t really understand this any more than she understood what had happened to her that fateful day, but Ahiru nodded anyway. “Y-yes. I will.”
“Good.” Chrestomanci smiled again, and this time Ahiru noticed that there was a mysterious, almost otherworldly quality to it that made her feel at once both vaguely unsettled and yet somehow calm at the same time. “I will return soon; wait and be patient, for haste will in the end only bring regret.”
She left Ahiru then, asking to be taken back to the matron’s office, and Ahiru did not catch another glimpse of her before she departed the orphanage. It would be another week before she heard anything, and what she received was a letter apologizing that she could not come to retrieve her herself, and instructing her to pack up whatever possessions she had, as she was adopting her as her ward and would be coming to live with her and her family in her castle. Enclosed also was a train ticket, bound for a village called Gold Crown. Ahiru stared at the letter and the ticket for a good long while before placing her few belongings in her shabby suitcase, her mind in a daze.
For the second time in her young life, she was being uprooted without a clear reason as to why, and she did not quite know how to feel about it yet.