In fact, the differences weren’t limited to intelligence; in appearance, the sea banshee was also far removed from the depiction on the mural.
The queen on the mural, even after becoming a banshee, remained beautiful, and her form—so different from that of a human—added an extra layer of allure. The banshee in front of Everly, however, looked as if she had been pieced together from rotting, dismembered body parts, giving off a deeply unsettling sense of wrongness… The history museum had mentioned that the banshee had once been dismembered and suppressed by the townspeople, only to inexplicably return to life later. Could that be why?
Everly couldn’t make sense of it.
Lacking key pieces of information, many mysteries about Pukati’s past were beyond her understanding, and the banshee’s strange appearance was only a minor part of it.
What intrigued her most was why, during the second mayor Achilles’s tenure, there had been such a sharp increase in missing children—including the mayor’s own daughter—and why, despite the fact that his family had gained high status thanks to the banshee’s prophetic abilities, Achilles had personally led the townspeople to hunt her down. It couldn’t simply be that he had a conscience and couldn’t bear to see more children lost, could it?
Fortunately, compared to these questions, her research on the murals was clearly more fruitful.
For example, she had already guessed the trigger for the banshee’s previous outburst in front of her: it had to be blood.
The sea banshee had once witnessed her own child being brutally murdered, and perhaps because of that, she was easily provoked by the sight of blood on children. Looking back, it was likely when she saw the blood seeping from the cut at the corner of Everly’s mouth that the banshee had suddenly gone into a frenzy that day.
This reminded Everly that, if she wanted to survive longer in the banshee’s presence, she had better avoid getting injured herself.
As she thought this, Everly carefully avoided the loose stones and sharp bone fragments on the ground, meticulously searching among the corpses. Having already studied the stone platform and the offering table atop it, she had expanded her exploration to the surrounding floor to pass the long, dull hours when the banshee was awake.
The bones on the ground looked terrifying, but after spending so much time among them, Everly had grown both uncomfortable and accustomed to it. Besides, she could sometimes find all sorts of strange little things in the clothes on the corpses—glass marbles, plastic toy soldiers, wooden slingshots, tiny glass bottles used for holding sugar cubes…
Her eyes lit up when she saw one of the glass bottles. She realized she could probably make something out of these scraps she’d found on the bodies and try to send a message to the shore.
She was only a little over six months old. Even with the banshee’s milk boosting her physical abilities, the most she could do was crawl a bit faster. Expecting her to surpass the limits of her age—evolving from a four-legged crawler to a fully upright two-legged form, escaping the cave, and then crossing the sea to reach land—was asking a lot. To get back to the shore, she would still need help from people on land.
Everly knew exactly what kind of person her worthless father, Shelly, was. With his brain, he might rack his brains for ages and still never figure out that the banshee’s lair was hidden beneath the lighthouse. She needed to give the people on shore some hints.
So, Everly began her little craft project.
She first picked up the small glass bottle and studied it for a while. It wasn’t big, and it was in good condition. The cork stopper was tied to the bottle’s neck with a thin string, and even after all this time, it hadn’t rotted—its seal seemed solid.
Everly decided to make a message-in-a-bottle.
She had observed earlier that the small pool the banshee used to make her relieve herself was actually connected to the sea. If she sealed the bottle and placed it in the pool, at the right moment the water current would carry it along the low, half-finger-high channel and eventually out to the wide sea beyond the stone chamber.
As for what should go in the bottle, Everly had already thought about it. She fumbled on herself for a while and found a button on her baby clothes. “Ah ah!” she signaled to her banshee mother to use her claws to cut the thread, then slipped the button—representing herself—into the bottle. After that, she rummaged around some more and found a fallen snake scale and a pale, whitish stone unique to the lighthouse area, which she also placed into the bottle.
Everly didn’t have much strength in her little hands. Once she was done, she put the cork on the bottle, pressed it a few times with her thumb as if to secure it, then lifted her head and looked at the banshee with her big, watery eyes.
“#%￥…”
After their recent time together, the banshee’s ability to read Everly’s body language had improved dramatically. She leaned down, coiled Everly safely in the center of her tail, making sure the baby could not be harmed in any way, then took the bottle from Everly. Imitating the baby’s motions, she pressed the cork gently with the middle of her claw, carefully pushing it in.
Everly had initially worried that the banshee’s strength might accidentally break the glass, but to her surprise, the banshee completed the task quickly and perfectly. When the bottle returned to Everly’s hands, the cork was snugly sealed.
“Wah wah!” Everly knew the importance of emotional feedback. To express her excitement and approval, she reached out, grabbed the banshee’s tail, and tilted her head up, giggling at her.
The banshee’s eyes curved in response, clearly showing happiness. She curled the tip of her tail around Everly, gently bouncing the little baby up and down as if playing with her. After Everly had laughed her fill and let go, the banshee bent down, scooped the baby into her arms, and sniffed her with rare delight. Then, for the first time in many days, she voluntarily let go, placing her precious Everly back on the ground. Swiftly, the banshee crawled to the edge of the pool, turned her back to it, and tipped herself toward the water—
With a soft plop, the banshee’s massive body disappeared into the black water, sending a spray of droplets flying.
Everly was completely stunned.
She spread her legs, sitting bare-bottomed on the scrap of cloth she’d found among the bones, staring at the water for a long while, wondering what the banshee had gone to do. Her curiosity was so intense that, for a moment, she didn’t even think about her craft.
After waiting for about five minutes, there was a splash, and a curtain of dark, seaweed-like hair broke the water’s surface. Like an old woman collecting scraps, the sea banshee returned to the stone chamber carrying a tattered fishing net full of various glass bottles.
She had gone into the water to find bottles for Everly.
The banshee dropped the net as soon as she returned and hurried over to Everly, sniffing her incessantly like an addict suffering withdrawal. Everly understood her anxiety—after losing her own children, the banshee had been living in constant fear of loss, needing to hold a baby in her arms at all times. And yet, to fulfill Everly’s wish, she had overcome her instincts and left her precious charge to fetch bottles. Who could not admire such a display of maternal devotion?
Because of this, Everly did not mind the banshee’s damp, fishy embrace. She stretched out her arms and sincerely hugged the banshee’s neck, gently stroking the back of her head. The two of them stayed like that for a while, quietly hugging, and the atmosphere was warmer and more comforting than Everly had ever experienced.
After drawing enough energy from Everly, the banshee wagged her long tail excitedly, becoming lively once more. She turned back to the pool, picked up the tattered net from the ground, and carried it to Everly with a clatter of glass bottles. With a sweep of her tail, she “presented” all the bottles, piling them neatly in front of Everly.
Seeing the stack of bottles, Everly’s feelings became complicated.
The banshee only knew that the little baby wanted bottles; she had no idea that the ones she personally fetched would be filled by Everly with all kinds of clues, turned into “message bottles,” and thrown into the water to attract people on the shore to come to her rescue. The banshee truly treated Everly like her own child, while Everly’s mind was entirely focused on escape.
Everly wanted to sigh.
She really had no choice—she was human, and she couldn’t spend her whole life in the stone chamber with the banshee.
Sigh…
…
While Everly still didn’t understand why Achilles led the townspeople to kill the banshee, on the other side of the ocean, on land, the exorcist Wester had spent only one afternoon but had already uncovered the reasons behind it.
“…Do you think Achilles suddenly had a change of heart, wanting to atone for his family’s sins? No, no, no. Of course not. He’s not that noble. Look here: ‘In 1814, due to a decline in gold production, the town government invited a geology professor from Yalijifu University to survey the mines. The survey showed that Pukati Town’s underground alluvial gold deposits had been exhausted and were about to be depleted.’… Do you remember the historical museum’s record? Sheriff Patia took over the investigation of the town’s missing children and found that from 1815 onward, the disappearances of children entered a period of concentrated outbreak.”
“Y-yes… and then?” Shelly didn’t understand how the two events were connected. The grown man’s face was full of the innocent, puzzled clarity of a child.
Fortunately, Wester didn’t care whether Shelly understood. He only needed someone to listen, so he could organize the scattered information he had obtained from the town government archives in the form of dialogue.
The town museum only displayed history in a form polished and simplified by later generations; to uncover the truth of the past, other means were necessary. For that, Wester used some of his connections to gain access to the town government building’s archives and found the information he wanted—
“The gold mines were the lifeblood of Pukati. Once the mines were exhausted, the prosperous town would immediately decline. Achilles, like his father, hoped to find a new gold deposit before the old one ran dry, in order to maintain the town’s glory. So from 1815 onward, he increased the frequency of sacrifices to the banshee, which caused the spike in missing children cases at that time. Achilles wanted the banshee to find him a new gold mine—but he failed. After all, the banshee’s power was only to foresee, not to alter reality. Pukati had only four gold veins, and she was destined to be unable to fulfill Achilles’s wishes.”
“Feeding the banshee at such high frequency over time had grown her appetite. Then, at just this moment, a new sheriff from outside, Sheriff Patia, took over the investigation. Straightforward and uncompromising, he brought decades of the town’s missing children cases into the open. Obtaining sacrifices became increasingly difficult. Later, the starving banshee lost control and began hunting personally, which is why Achilles’s daughter disappeared…”
“I get it! His daughter being captured enraged Achilles. He realized the banshee’s prophetic ability was no longer useful, and wanting to rid himself of this trouble, he used his son as bait and led the townspeople to slay the banshee!” Shelly exclaimed, suddenly enlightened.
But his brilliantly intuitive deduction earned only a regretful shake of Wester’s head.
The uniquely charismatic and rebellious exorcist propped his head on his hand, lounging lazily on the velvet sofa, and tossed a stack of documents to Shelly. “No, Shelly, you’re still seeing things too superficially. Look at these government financial reports: from 1817 to 1820, the Pukati administration successively purchased a gold vein, two breweries, and a racetrack at market value… If you examine them closely, you’ll see that these were all properties of the Plos family. And given the town’s prosperity at the time, these assets were still profitable. Tell me—when do people sell large portions of their family’s fixed assets?”
Shelly thought for a moment and replied, “When they want to leave?”
Could it be that Achilles wanted to leave Pukati Town?
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Author’s Note:
Premises for the foresight ability to discover a gold mine:
There must be a gold mine that can be discovered.
In the future, someone will actually discover the gold mine.
If both conditions are met, and there are enough sacrifices, the banshee can make you the lucky person who discovers the gold mine.