Cinderella and a Book for the High Priest
I needed to change into my blue robes once arriving at my chambers in the temple, but I wasn’t allowed to change on my own. Delia would throw a tantrum whenever I tried. I had to bend and extend my arms as she pulled the robes over me.
At the start, our cooperation was so poor that it would have been a lot faster for me to change on my own, which was reasonably frustrating. But lately it was going pretty smoothly. Maybe I’m finally learning to act like a rich girl now, I thought while Delia did my hair with lowered eyes.
“It was even more splendid than I imagined,” she murmured, but I had no idea what she was talking about. I said “What?” with clear confusion, and she glared at me with her light-blue eyes narrowed.
“Geez! The picture book you asked me to read first! You’re the one who said you wanted to hear my thoughts on it, Sister Myne!”
“Oh, the picture book. I just wasn’t sure what you were talking about for a moment. Thank you for your thoughts. Did you read it all the way to the end? You must have made a lot of progress with your letters.” As far as I knew, Delia was studying on her own and thus learning to read a fair bit slower than Gil. I honestly didn’t expect her to finish the whole book so quickly.
“...I had Gil help a little. He showed me the karuta.”
The thought of Delia wanting to read the book so bad that she asked her rival Gil for help made me smile. As I was grinning to myself, Rosina entered the conversation with a somewhat stern expression.
“Sister Myne, please finish your discussion post haste so that we may begin our harspiel practice. There is not much time.”
“What’s wrong, Rosina? You look a bit tense.”
“The High Priest has instructed you to perform the second song during your meeting.” Rosina’s answer explained everything. Of course me playing in front of the High Priest would make her tense.
“I suppose I will need to take practice especially seriously for a bit, then. When is the meeting?”
“After lunch,” she replied. The lack of a date made me extremely uncomfortable.
“Um, Rosina. After lunch on what day?”
“Today. The meeting is after lunch today.”
According to Fran, who read the letter sent in reply, the High Priest would soon need to travel to a nearby farming town for the Harvest Festival. He wanted to finish our meeting now while he still had the time. I appreciated the fast assistance, but I wasn’t emotionally ready to play the song yet.
“Panicking is not very graceful, Sister Myne. Please take care not to show others the fear in your heart.”
After practicing nonstop like a madwoman until third bell, I went to the High Priest’s room and assisted his paperwork until fourth bell with a completely casual expression, silently signaling to him that I wasn’t nervous about playing the song at all. Once that was done I scarfed down lunch and resumed my blisteringly intense practice with Rosina until the very last moment. I would hope that my behind-the-scenes labor is appreciated.
I was in fact getting better thanks to taking my practice seriously, but playing in front of someone still made me nervous. Especially since this time I had to play a song of my own—one I remembered from my Urano days. It was originally a romance movie’s theme song, but I changed it to a classic song I used to sing in music class. Translating the lyrics directly was a nightmare, but making up lyrics of my own was just too hard. I changed the lyrics bit by bit each practice session, and Rosina always got exasperated when I started humming out the English lyrics directly.
“You will be fine if you just stay calm,” advised Delia. “You’re better at it than I am, Sister Myne.”
“Thank you, Delia. I will do my best.”
Delia encouraged me as I went to the High Priest’s room with Fran carrying my children’s bible and the text for Cinderella, and Rosina carrying my small harspiel.
“My apologies for the short notice. Now, allow me to hear how much you have improved,” said the High Priest with a flat expression that spoke volumes about how sincere his apology really was. He gestured towards the table in the center of the room. I took my harspiel from Rosina and rested it between my thighs before taking a deep breath.
With my heart beating so hard I could feel it in my ears, I played the assigned song, then sang “Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree,” a classic children’s song. I went ahead and swapped out “chestnut tree” for a more local tree to avoid suspicion. The High Priest nodded at both songs, giving me very high praise.
“You’re quite the fast learner. Here is the next song for you to learn. And I must say, I found the song you composed to be very interesting. Prepare another for next time.”
I looked over the sheet music he gave me. It was depressingly hard, but I was mainly just relieved to have survived this encounter.
“Here you are, Rosina.” I handed Rosina my harspiel and reached out for the tea Arno had prepared. Tea always tastes better after a stressful event. The High Priest did the opposite and set his tea cup back on the table, having finished it while listening to me play.
“Now then. You said you finished your children’s bible?”
“Yes. Here is the picture book.” I looked at Fran, who nodded and smoothly presented the picture book to the High Priest. He looked at it and tapped a finger against his temple.
“This, a book? What have you done to the cover?” The High Priest largely remained expressionless when we weren’t in the hidden room, but his sharp tone made it clear he wasn’t impressed. What about that cover would make him mad?
“What have I done...? It’s just paper.”
“I can see that. Why is there a flower in the paper?”
“Um, because I put it there?”
“I could guess that. I am questioning why you put it there.” The High Priest’s voice sharpened further with frustration due to my failure to give him the answers he wanted. I had no idea why his mood was plummeting like that. Benno thought the flower would please the daughters of nobles, but maybe it was actually banned to put flowers in paper.
“I put it there because it looks cuter with a flower. Is there a problem with that?”
“Because it’s cuter...? No, that is not what I... Nevermind. Follow me.” The High Priest shook his head with sheer disbelief, then stood up and headed to the hidden room beside his bed. I stood up too, just as confused.
“Sister Myne, take this.” Fran hurriedly held out the paper with my Cinderella story written on it. I thanked him and took it from him, then followed the High Priest through the doorway.
The hidden room was as messy as ever. I went to the same bench as always. When I started moving aside the documents on the bench, I realized that they might be the legendary magic documents themselves.
“Stop. I believe I told you not to look at those.” The High Priest noticed what I was trying to do and pulled the documents out of my hand, stacking them on his desk. No doubt all the documents on his desk pertained to magic. I looked around the room, and oddly enough it felt like an entirely new place now. The High Priest furrowed his brow while bringing over his chair.
“Do not get distracted either.”
“Sorry. So... what are we doing here?”
“I was asking you how you fit a flower into paper. I won’t force the answer out of you if it’s a trade secret, but you must admit that putting flowers into paper is strange.”
“I don’t think so. You just scatter them into the pulp when swishing it around.”
“...You scatter them?” The High Priest didn’t understand me at all, not even when I wiggled my fingers to act out scattering flowers over a suketa. Only then did I realize the High Priest was only familiar with parchment, paper made from animal skin. Of course flowers in paper would be strange if you only knew how to make parchment. Wrapping flowers within a tangle of fiber just wasn’t possible with parchment.
“Well, plant paper is made in an entirely different way from parchment, so if you really want to know, you’ll probably want to watch it being made in the workshop.”
“Indeed, that would be for the best. It is impossible to glean anything from your explanations.” The High Priest gave up on getting an answer from me and crossed his legs, putting the children’s bible onto his lap. He opened the front page, and upon seeing the first illustration immediately grimaced and glared at me.
“Books are works of art. They must be beautiful, with gold and gems in their leather covers and their pages filled with color. This book has little value as art. You are wasting this high-quality art by leaving it in black and white. Add color.”
It seemed that the High Priest viewed books as works of art created by calligraphers who provide beautiful writing, artists that provide illustrations, and leather craftsmen who provide the covers. Thinking back to the books I had seen in the book room, I could understand what he was getting at.
“Adding color would be the waste here. Just how much money do you think that would cost? I’m going to use these to teach the orphanage kids to read. I would rather make more than add color to some.”
“Books are works of art, and each is one of a kind. I don’t understand what you are saying,” said the High Priest, and I wanted to shoot that right back at him. And so I did, without really thinking about it.
“I don’t understand what you are saying, High Priest. Books aren’t just works of art, they’re crystallizations of knowledge and wisdom. I’m not trying to make art to look at here, I’m trying to mass produce affordable books that everyone can read.”
“Mass produce? You intend to make people write them en masse? That could work if you teach all the orphanage children to read, but it will still take a staggering amount of time to produce that many books.” The High Priest rubbed his temples and tapped his fingers, bemused. But I was focused on printing, not the kind of mass production he was thinking of that would take forever.
“No, you’re misunderstanding. I’m going to mass produce them through printing. I’ve already made thirty picture books just like this one, and—”
“Wait just a moment.” The High Priest interrupted me, an eyebrow shot upwards. His golden eyes were opened wide in surprise as he looked at me in disbelief. “Do you mean you already have thirty books just like this one?”
“Like I said, I printed them.”
“Elaborate.” It seemed the High Priest didn’t have a grasp on what was going on in the Myne Workshop, perhaps because he’d never asked, or perhaps because Fran didn’t really understand either. I thought that Fran would have reported everything to him since we were providing income reports and paying the temple its cut, but it seemed that wasn’t the case. The High Priest was lacking such critical information I didn’t even know where to begin.
“Do you know that the Myne Workshop is producing plant paper?”
“Yes.”
“We’re making thicker paper, then cutting out letters and the black parts of art from it using a... very thin, precise knife. The resulting paper is called a stencil template.”
“You cut out the paper?” The High Priest’s tone rose in a way that made it clear just how abnormal cutting out parts of paper was. I pretended not to hear. What’s done was done.
“Then, we put the template over a blank piece of paper and roll ink onto it. Only the paper beneath the cut out parts of the template get ink on them. We move aside the finished paper and place another sheet of fresh paper beneath the template, then roll more ink onto it. That results in two identical pieces of paper. We repeat this process thirty times for each page of a book, and that’s thirty books.”
About halfway through my explanation, the High Priest had stopped reacting at all, freezing up like a crashed computer. I asked if he was listening and waved my hands in front of his eyes.
“...I am listening. I am, but...” The High Priest, having come back to life, shut his eyes tightly and let out a heavy sigh. Not even Benno reacted like that. It kinda made me worried.
“Umm. Is everything okay?”
“...You certainly have done something drastic.”
Have I really? I thought, thinking back over what I had done to make the paper. The most drastic thing I did was probably cut off the woodblocks to focus on stencils instead, but I doubted that’s what he was referring to. I couldn’t figure out what he considered so drastic. As I fell into thought, the High Priest let out yet another sigh.
“In summary, by printing you mean cutting out paper and applying ink onto fresh paper?”
“For right now, at least.”
“Cutting out paper is unthinkable in itself, but it’s also hard to believe that you are using so much ink.”
Parchment was so expensive and scarce that I guess nobody had ever cut out parts of it. Plant paper was similarly expensive, but the Myne Workshop produced it and I knew how stencil printing worked, so it didn’t seem like a waste to me. The High Priest and I would never see eye to eye on the matter given what we expected from our books, but I knew for sure that making stencils and printing books would be a better use of money than fussing over leather covers.
“Frankly,” I said, “I find it hard to believe you would spend so much money on the cover. As for the ink, it was fairly cheap since I made it out of the soot that the priests gathered for me.”
“You actually did make ink out of the soot?”
I had explained previously when he got suspicious about the soot gathering that I wanted it for ink, but it seemed he had expected me to fail. The stunned look on his face honestly threw me off.
“...Is it that surprising?”
“Of course it is.”
“Benno said that his head hurt when I gave him his book, but he immediately shifted over to calculating prices and talking about my next book, so I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”
All things considered, Benno was used to the things I did and could lessen the shock of a new invention by focusing on the profit as a merchant. The High Priest’s shock was probably a more normal reaction. As I thought that over, the High Priest slowly shook his head, then looked up at a window with a somewhat distant look in his eyes.
“...Benno might have it much harder than I thought. I can only imagine the emotional burden he must bear if you consistently invent things of this caliber.”
“Bwuh?! I mean, he’s a merchant, he wants things to sell. He does have it hard, but that’s because he goes out of his way to get involved in things. It’s not all my fault. Maybe.”
Benno himself had chosen to fight with the Parchment Guild by establishing a Plant Paper Guild, and he had chosen to compete with Leise by constructing an expensive Italian restaurant. But the High Priest just let out a dismissive “hmph” with his lips curving into a grin.
“I will have to ask Benno about this, not you. But first. Did you just say something about a next book?”
“I did. What about it?”
“Be absolutely certain to report to me before you begin making it. I would not like to be surprised in this manner again.”
If it’s something big enough to surprise you, I think you’ll be surprised no matter when I report it to you, I replied silently before holding out the sheet of paper that Fran had given me. It would be ideal for him to look it over directly.
“I was thinking of making my next picture book about Cinderella here, but what do you think?” I showed him the Cinderella story I wrote yesterday, and after skimming it the High Priest rubbed his temples.
“In what world would a rich commoner be allowed to marry a prince? Are you daft, or do you simply not understand social status?”
“I understand status, but... Well... How high in status would she have to be for you to accept this? Keeping in mind the idea is her getting lucky with marrying above her status, since that’s what people want for themselves.” If it was bad enough for him to call me daft, it would probably be better for me to look for a compromise. I asked for a middle ground and the High Priest put a hand on his chin, falling into thought.
“...When it comes to a prince, even the daughter of an archnoble would need to be quite well-raised and special. Marriage upwards is simply out of the question. Have her become his mistress instead. That would still be quite the lucky boost in status, no?”
“No no no! Where’s the romance in her becoming a mistress? The hopes, the dreams?!”
“Dreams mean nothing. Face reality.” The crux of the story was a dramatic marriage upwards, but the High Priest wouldn’t budge on the matter. That was too cruel. We read books to see dreams, not cruel reality.
“Um, what about a small-time archduke instead of a prince? Could someone of lower status marry him? Could that work as a story?”
“Hmmm. It depends on the size of his territory, but he could potentially marry beneath him. If he was willing to face the resistance of his family and other nobles, of course.” A couple defying status and overcoming resistance to successfully get married was a classic story with a classic happy end. I let out a sigh of relief, glad to have found a compromise.
“Okay, I’ll make him the son of an archduke instead.”
“Make Cinderella the daughter of a mednoble as well. Being wealthy enough. And what is with this magician? In what world would these bizarre chants result in any magical effect? Even considering your ignorance of magic, this is painful to read.”
Due to the High Priest’s thorough criticism of Cinderella, the story ended up being one without magic where the daughter of a mednoble was abused by her stepmother until a noble related to her birth mother assisted her entry into high society, where the son of a minor duke fell in love with her at first sight. There was hardly a trace of Cinderella in it anymore, but most of my readers were going to be nobles at first so I would take his advice gladly.
Oh, and as an aside, there were three tiers of nobles: laynobles, mednobles, and archnobles. They were the low rank, middle rank, and high rank of the nobility respectively. A laynoble would be too low in status to marry an archduke’s son, but it seemed that a mednoble just barely managed to cut it.
“However. You say that they lived happily ever after, but that will certainly not be the case for them.”
“What?”
It turned out that after pushing through with their marriage, the archduke father would most likely banish them from his lands. Even if he forgave them in an act of unprecedented generosity, the son would lose his right to succession and would end up in a support role for his little brother at the very best. I didn’t intend to write that part of the story, but in any case, thanks to the High Priest’s utterly merciless follow-up, the version of Cinderella I was about to write would have no happy ending at all.
This was a valuable learning experience for me. Since this is an actual fantasy world with magic and such, the people here won’t look kindly on my biased, made-up fantasy. It might be harder to write stories for my books than I thought.
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