Blade and Poetry

Maybe I misunderstood something. When I insisted on taking the task, Ryan's eyes seemed to have a pleading look of persuasion.But he quickly returned to normal, and turned back into a personable and unmistakable gentleman. He told me the precautions for this trip in detail, and then stood up to see me off.

"The lives of soldiers are the first priority." He said. "If you find that you are not capable, I will not blame you for the failure of the mission."

I said to him, "I know. The country doesn't let her fighters die in vain, does it?"

Ryan didn't answer my question, and asked me to look up relevant information about Puguo.

Regarding Pu Guo, I have actually read many books in the school library.There is actually very little information about Pu country that I have access to there. Even though it is one of Columdunan's neighboring countries, there are only a few entries in the history books about the disputes between the two countries.The golden age lasted for 70 years, during which the artillery fire has never stopped, and the territory of all countries in the world has changed to some extent.If it is said that Columbus and Pu Guo had quarrels at that time, it is not a rare thing.I recently found the only surviving battle records that said that at the end of the Golden Age, that is, during the period from 788 to 803 in the new calendar, there was a war between Puguo and Columdunan—but compared to the melee situation of various countries at that time, the history books The record on the website is very short, and the wind and waves are much calmer in comparison.

It was only after I received Mr. Lane’s advice that I should study some knowledge about Puguo’s modern society in advance, but the school library was temporarily closed due to the holiday, so I immediately thought of another place with a rich collection of books.

When the front hooves of the winged horse landed on the flat ground I was familiar with, my heart was somewhat touched.I haven't been back to this place for many years.Since I left it at the age of 13, I have quietly come back several times to look at it from a distance-just to see the manor; when I went to Hoftas to go to school, I never went back pass.

The weather was fine, so I dismounted from my winged horse and jumped in front of the man waiting outside the manor.He has grown a lot taller than the last time I saw him, and he is almost equal to my height now.

"How are you doing, Redmonton?"

I looked at him and asked.He was dressed neatly, with a flaxen shirt, vest and cane, and his curly hair swirled in the wind.He stood still and looked at me bitterly, then suddenly came over and gave me a hug.

"You haven't come back for so many years!" He said, and hit my back hard a few times, occasionally hitting my head with the cane. "I thought it was an impostor when I got your letter."

I broke free from his arms and pointed at the dozing winged horse, "Can't horses be brought into the manor?"

"No," he sensed that I was deliberately making things difficult, so he said in a low voice, "I have already dismissed the idlers here. But the horse is too obvious, I suggest you let it graze here .”

I tied up the horse according to his method, and the horse closed its eyelids and began to gnaw the neatly trimmed grass blades on the ground slowly.Redmonton led me inward, and kept saying, "Of course I'm in very good shape. I'm going to college this year, and I'm planning to go to Hoftas. Not Bowery—" Although my mother wants me to read Bowei."

I took a look at his profile, and suddenly felt that time was going back, and I was a little dazed.

"It's a pity you're six years younger than me," I said, "otherwise your dear brother would have kept you by his side to teach."

"You don't," he complained, making me laugh and cry. "When I was a child, you only urged me to have bad ideas, and you never came home when I grew up. My mother always refused to let me into the library, or I was soft-hearted. She was relieved by her talent and allowed me to use the key for a day. You have to thank me, Vicente, or she would have—”

"Oh, Mrs. Sean," I lowered my head and grabbed his decent cane, "Is she still as beautiful as she was back then?"

He paused for a moment, removed his stick from my palm, and said, "It's still beautiful."

Then he calmed down, took me to a familiar small building, and opened its door with a key.He was in front, stepped half a foot into the door, and suddenly turned around and asked me, "What was my mother like back then?"

I folded my arms and waited at the door with him.The dust in the building is not thick, and it can be seen that it has been cleaned recently, but there is still a stuffy atmosphere of gathering old books inside, and we waited for the fresh air to flow in.

"You mean before you were two years old?" I asked.

"I don't remember what happened at that time," his chin lightly tapped the neckline, "you can only tell me. Mother—she shouldn't be the kind of person who can tell about the past."

"Okay." I said. "While you have time."

We've never actually talked about it, or at any time have we stood side by side like today and talked about something calmly.He was too young before, and in the period after his father passed, everything seemed too rushed.

"She lived up to her reputation in those days," I said. "When my father was alive, Mrs. Sean was as lively as any affectionate and carefree beauty. When my father was away busy with his duties, she looked up at the manor. Waiting, tending flowers and plants, baking snacks, and occasionally visiting me in the room. She is not a qualified magician, but her father is very good at swordsmanship. She probably admires him—and loves him very much. She I don't care about anything else. She never gave me any instruction when I was a child. We probably just met each other every day, and then she came to check my homework for knife skills.

"She always told me that I must grow up to be like my father in the future. I think what she said made sense-until my father died in the line of duty, the warmth between me and her that was originally maintained by my father was gone. I was completely wiped out by the long grayness brought about by his death. You were only two years old at the time, and you might not feel anything. Her temperament changed drastically that year, and her sole focus suddenly fell on me. She ordered me to report to My father is so advanced that he wants me to cultivate his habits and hobbies, abide by the rules he believes in, and wants me to learn a set of sword techniques that are in his style. I play the piano, paint, play chess, roll dice, and practice more swords—— I was actually very envious of you at the time, and you could walk up and down the room freely, and kept saying childish things. Mrs. Xiao En poured all her efforts into me at that time, just wanting to create a perfect, living You know what happened after that... I was ten years old."

Redmonton moved his lips, as if something was suffocating under his thin skin.He grabbed my hand and said, "Vicente—"

I had a lot of childish fights with Redmonton.He didn't seem to like me very much under the influence of adults at the time, but he still couldn't help coming over to play with me.His inconsistency healed himself when he was ten years old, and we were suddenly able to talk properly, but by then I had moved out for a few years.

"When she found out that I was a magician, she looked desperate," I recalled Mrs. Sean's pale face. "She couldn't understand that my mood was similar to hers. She just vented her sadness in the harshest language, tearing up the A couple of spellbooks that I had a hard time picking up. She hasn't given me any motherly favors since then and turned to you. That's when I figured out that she never loved her children - she will always love only my father."

"She may have changed..." Redmonton said.

"Did you know your original name wasn't Redmonton?" I said, "You were originally Scott Sean until you were two years old."

"I don't mind it that much—I'm proud to inherit my father's name," he whispered, "and my mother didn't instill in me any idea of ​​'being a father' after that. The road after becoming a swordsman It's all my choice."

I stared at the older child standing beside me, and suddenly felt a lot of emotion in my heart.

"Looks like she loves you too," I said. "That's good."

Redmonton's eye circles turned a little red.

He opened his mouth, and suddenly said firmly and shortly, "Come back, Vicente."

My eyes stayed on the toes of his shoes, then turned back to the top of his head, and reached out to touch his hair.That's what I used to do when I was a kid, though it used to annoy him then.

"I've been removed from the family tree, Redmond," I said. "I broke with Mrs. Sean the year my grandfather died, and you seemed to have a good time watching it."

I saw that the little gentleman's tears were about to flow out immediately after I said this, so I panicked secretly and stopped teasing him: "Don't be afraid that I will starve to death outside, my grandfather left it for me, right?" If you don’t have any inheritance, the library should be counted there—it’s a pity that the library was built in Mrs. Shawn’s manor, and she forbids me to come back to visit. Can’t I still come to see you from time to time?” I couldn’t help but add more words He said, "Besides, you are 17 years old."

He was so angry that he turned his back, and just as the old smell in the small building had almost dissipated, he walked up the stairs with slow steps.I knew I was wrong, and followed silently. When he turned around, I couldn't see the appearance of the man who was about to cry.

He pointed forward and said to me, "Look."

The scene in that room is still fresh in my memory: twenty or so rows of bookshelves folded diagonally, two large windows, a skylight, a small round table of lacquered wood, and two opposite armchairs.I touched their surfaces carefully and found that they still had the temperature of the light.

"Aren't you coming in?" I called to Redmonton at the door.

"I'll wait for you here," he said.

"Don't shy away from the will," I said, "Hurry up, come and help me find things related to Puguo—preferably in terms of customs and social structure."

He accompanied me up and down without complaint, making his face ashen.A dozen books were stacked on the top of the small table in a short while. I sat and copied quickly on the notebook, and he sat across from me to watch me write.

"Do you know the cause of your father's death?" He asked while I was flipping through the book.

"I only know that he died in the line of duty." I said, "I don't even know his specific position very well, and Mrs. Xiao En never mentioned it to me."

"Father's relics haven't been found yet." Redmonton's tone sounded a little depressed, "I don't know what it is, my mother won't tell me——could any relics be left in the study?"

"I can't guess," I said. "It's not like Mrs. Sean's dresser."

I picked up another book to read, and I heard Redmonton ask again, "Do you know what happened to that thief?"

"She was caught by Sean's side, and she went to jail," I replied as I wrote, "and died."

"Didn't tell where the relic went?"

"say to me.

Redmonton may have realized something and stopped asking questions about the man.But despite this, Rosalind's face still appeared in front of my eyes.

I should have not thought of her for a long time.The person who has been with me for almost my whole childhood - when I was born, she must have been 19 years old, with a quick mind and a bit of magic, as a valet and a friend, filled my lack of "mother" all blanks.She takes good care of me, wakes me up, knits some interesting gadgets for me, sneaks to the kitchen to cook for me when I am hungry occasionally, reads fantasy stories to me before going to bed, and even uses her own wages to secretly give I buy sugar.For a while after my father died, the only bright lights in my life were the bedtime stories she read to me.At that time, she was also as good to me as she was in the past, unlike most people who alienated me with Mrs. Sean's attitude.

She was 27 when I was eight.We had already developed a deep relationship, and I was more dependent on her than my biological mother-if I was dependent on anyone at the time.

I said to her, "You don't want to get married in the future, okay?"

She smiled and asked me, "Why?"

I said very naively: "If you have a child of your own one day, you won't love me as much as you do now."

She was still smiling in front of me, but her eyes were shining, as if they were overflowing with tears.

"Okay," she said. "I assure you, you are my only child."

In fact, Mrs. Xiao En was changing the people who worked in the manor at that time, and many old people who had worked for many years were transferred out.I was afraid that Rosalind would leave too, and I often raised my concerns with her.

"Don't worry," Rosalind said to me at the time, "in case I'm transferred or fired, you can still use the butterfly book to contact me. You just need to remember my butterfly shape and don't confuse it with other people's Just fine."

I was very worried at the time, and I drew her butterflies in the drawing book more than a hundred times, so that I might be able to remember the details of her butterflies clearly ten or twenty years later.It is tender green, with light yellow at the ends of its wings, and it looks like three willow tassels on each side.

I don't like to remember the rest.For example, how she walked out of my father's study with a key and a bag of things, and cast an amnesia spell on me who rushed out the door with a face full of panic.Her behavior still alarmed some people, so she had to flee outside for a short time.My memories of that time are all messed up, the existence of her and the things she was associated with completely disappeared from there.I cooperated with the doctor's treatment and forced all kinds of memories to break free from the suppression of the curse.The doctor's hair was gray, with a few brown spots on his forehead, and he kept saying regretfully, "But it's okay, after you have experienced this once, you can memorize the solution to the Amnesia Curse..."

"Vicente? Vicente!" I was pulled out of my memory by a voice close at hand.

Only then did Redmonton's nervous expression ease a little, and he leaned his upper body back in the chair: "I see you suddenly stopped moving."

I signaled him that it was nothing serious, calmed down, and continued to make some notes.When the sun was setting, we each carried a stack of books and walked around, returning them one by one to the old place.However, at this moment, I accidentally caught a glimpse of a book spine that I had neglected before, and my heart sank.

As quietly as I could, I told Redmonton that I was going to take one more look to see if anyone had escaped and asked him to wait outside.So he leaned against the door on the second floor, closing his eyes in boredom.

I held my breath and touched the spine of the book, watching it being pulled out from the squeezed book little by little.The spine of the book is pure black, only the cover, which is gradually exposed to the air, reveals two big gilt characters: "Fusion".

I stared at the gap on the shelf behind it and began to flip through my vague memories of years ago-I am almost sure that the last time I entered this library when I was 13 years old, my grandfather never had this "Fusion" on his shelf. "of.

Its content is actually the same as the banned book I saw in third grade.

I was about to close it and put it back in its original place, but saw a half-folded paper slipped between the last page and the cover, it was yellowish, and the ink was faintly seeping through the back of the paper, which looked a little old.

"Aren't you alright, Vicente?" Redmonton urged me at the door. "Watch out for Mother Chagang."

"Here we come," I said, and then I sorted out the last book, stuffing the piece of paper in my inner pocket.I have a hunch that it might not be an ordinary piece of paper—since it is sandwiched in this book, maybe it will write something not simple.

Redmonton walked with me for a while. We walked outside the manor against the setting sun, and he untied the winged horse for me.The grass near the horse was so bald that we all ignored it.

"Mother says Puguo is not a good place," said Redmonton, handing me the reins. "I keep hearing her mention that. Anyway, be careful, Vicente."

I grabbed the reins and put my other hand around his shoulder.

"It's always 'Vicente', 'Vicente'," I teased him. "Shouldn't you call me my dear brother?"

He shook off my hand, gesticulating to pick me with his cane, and then gave me a hug.

"Well, dear brother," said he, "I wish you a safe journey again."