The night deepened, and Ella still had not got out of the forest.
"..."
In the pitch dark, the moonlight barely came through the cover of the leaves. The woods were a heavy black, and the scattered patches of light were not enough to show her a way.
Ella released a fire spell, but her attainment in magic was genuinely poor, so all that rose was a small flame at her fingertip.
"...Haah..."
She fell silent, and sighed. A flame that weak could light the view directly in front of her, but it was nowhere near enough to tell one direction from another.
After thinking a moment, Ella used the little flame's light to find a low earthen slope.
She lay down on the sheltered side of it and closed her eyes to rest.
She did not know when Elos's pursuers would arrive. She knew she ought to be making the most of the time, but she was out of moves.
The forest, which ought to have been silent and deep in the night, carried a good many points of firelight tonight.
Soldiers and hastily gathered militia searched among the trees, and turned up nothing.
The agitation at the back of Elos's mind grew worse and worse. She did not know where Ella meant to go. Ella knew she was being hunted, and Ella's father had cast her off, so would Ella really go back to that village at all? Or, for that matter, might Ella already have been eaten by one of the magic beasts that rarely came out this far?
Restless, Elos sent people to Ophina Village anyway. Anywhere Ella might go could not be let slide.
A night passed and there was still no sign of her. Even with hands brought in at short notice, finding a person in the dark across a forest split in two by a road was a hard problem. Elos had not slept, and there was a faint ring of shadow under each eye.
"Damn it, are you all worthless? This many people and you can't find one cripple."
Cursing as she went, Elos sent for still more soldiers.
***
The night passed without dreams — perhaps the surroundings were too wretched to permit one. Ella opened her eyes and she was still lying there in one piece, with no limbs missing, and not dragged back by Elos.
"Hoo..."
She let out a breath.
By the weak light of early morning she pressed on, dealing with the food problem out of the beef jerky and the waterskin as she walked.
The long dress had been scraped by branches into countless small tears, until it was in rags.
"That medicine Elos gave me... it really does work. My leg doesn't hurt nearly as much."
She had been on the move for so long that her leg ought to have got worse.
Remarking on it quietly, Ella finally pushed out of the forest before dusk.
Some way off lay the village's wheat fields, a stretch of gold.
The windmill on the mill at the village's edge was still turning without a pause, and Ella staggered toward the houses.
Passing a pond, she saw herself clearly in the reflection.
Long pink hair in a tangle. Skirts in rags, with only a trace of their former finery left to make out. No light at all in the golden eyes, only exhaustion. Dirt on her face, and several cuts opened by branches. Filthy from head to foot.
"Hoo..."
She breathed deep and paid no attention to the small wounds the branches had left her. Boys like fighting and running about, after all. In either life, scratches like these did not count for anything.
Ella set her lead-filled legs moving.
"My legs are so heavy... so tired, and I think my feet have blistered... But I mustn't go to Father on my own initiative... no... should I go and see him?"
Ella wavered.
By the time she genuinely drew near the village, the sky had gone dark again.
Every household had its doors and windows shut, and only occasionally were there people gathered in a yard, talking.
Militia passed along the roadside now and then with torches, on watch against magic beasts and bandits.
Ella came furtively to the slightly larger manor at the village's centre.
She stood at the gate, not knowing whether she ought to risk exposure by knocking.
She had already settled it earlier that she would not go and see that discount dad of hers, and now, standing here, Ella wavered all the same.
If there were someone to shelter her, if she did not have to hide and dodge, it would be better on the whole.
Three knocks broke into the silence of the night.
Ella looked at the thin yard gate in front of her, lips pressed together, uneasy at heart.
The door opened, and it was Sephone who opened it.
"Big Brother Ella! You've come back?!"
Sephone's eyes were very red, and she wasn't wearing her glasses. She looked as though she had just been crying, and yet the sight of Ella filled her eyes with shock and delight together.
"Mm... I'm back."
Ella was worn to nothing. She squeezed past Sephone into the yard.
The yard was quiet, and everything seemed much as it had always been, only short one familiar person.
Ella's discount dad, in the one formal coat he owned, sat at the table drinking cup after cup, the lapels of it rumpled.
"Uncle. Big Brother Ella has come back."
Sephone came into the yard and picked her glasses up off the ground. Ella had no idea why her glasses would be lying there.
"...What did you come back for?"
After a silence, the middle-aged man in her sights got up. He walked slowly over to stand in front of Ella, and his gaze went over the rags she was wearing and the dense scratches on her skin, and he frowned.
"I..."
Ella's head went down, and for a moment she had nothing to say.
"You ran away?"
"Mm... I, I wanted to come back and see Mother."
Ella's voice was very small.
"Heh. See what? I came to an agreement with House Beaumont. By its terms, you should not be here."
The man's deep voice came at her, roughened somewhat by drink.
Since becoming a woman, Ella had lost a good deal of height, and in front of her father she looked rather like a rabbit.
Listening to what came out of his mouth, Ella's head sank lower still.
"Go back on your own. Do you hear me? Being dragged back by force would simply shame the Elliot family."
"I... don't want to..."
Ella's mouth opened. Her throat felt as though someone had it in a grip, and no words would come. Her hands closed abruptly.
The person in front of her really did not seem to hold her as anything much... The family. A down-at-heel house, dwindling away, that could not so much as afford to treat an illness — did that even count as a family?
"Uncle! You can't let Big Brother Ella go back. I told you, that castle is a pit! You're the Duke's vassal. If you would only negotiate with His Grace, this marriage contract could be voided, couldn't it?"
Sephone was trying to speak up for Ella. She looked at Ella, and then at the man who had raised both Ella and Sephone herself for years.
"Enough. My house does not welcome you. Get out. Go back where you belong."
Dean Elliot — that was the name of Ella's father. He gave the order to leave, and something unwilling went through the back of his eyes, but a lifetime of meaning what he said and keeping to his contracts turned him around all the same.
Ella closed her fists and left the yard, without so much as sitting down for a mouthful of water.
***
Meanwhile, elsewhere, a second night had come and Ella still had not been found, and Elos's fury was nearly past containing.
Anyone could feel the mana in her all but tearing its way out of her body. Nobody dared come near, for fear of being scorched by the churning elements.
Katherine, the castle's head maid, stayed at Elos's side and passed her words on to everyone else.
"This is... a scrap of cloth?"
Elos stopped walking. She had found a scrap of fabric in a clump of brush, and she knew it for Ella's.
"Finally... a lead."
Elos closed her eyes.
"This direction... so that creature really is an idiot. She knew she'd been given up on, and she still ran home."
With Ella's trail established, Elos was almost lost for words. She had assumed Ella had given up on going back to that village at all.
"Katherine. Have the worthless lot move toward Ophina Village."
She gave the order down the line, and without resting, pressed straight on.