Chapter 257: Fina Finds the Bear’s Picture Book

Chapter 257:
Fina Finds the Bear’s Picture Book

 

FINA STOOD BY THE DOOR, pouting, with Shuri standing behind her. Had something happened? I decided to greet them now that I was home before getting to whatever the problem was.

“Fina, Shuri, I’m home!” I said.

“Welcome back, Yuna,” said Fina, her pout momentarily changing into a smile. “No—wait, I mean, I can’t believe you, Yuna! What is this?!”

From behind her, Shuri gave me a regular greeting, but it was drowned out by Fina’s yell.

Fina marched over to me and placed a picture book in front of me. It was a copy of the book I’d drawn for Princess Flora—a duplicate I’d given to the orphans.

“What about this?” I asked.

“What about—don’t give me that!!! This little girl is me, isn’t it?!” She pointed accusingly at the cartoony little girl in the book.

The girl was riding on the back of the bear. Sure, I’d used Fina as the model for the girl and myself for the bear, but why was she bringing it up now? I was surprised Fina didn’t know about the picture book ‘till now.

“The kids wanted me to read to them, so I did...and then I noticed the girl looked a lot like me...” Fina still seemed a little upset.

If she hadn’t known about the picture books, how had she figured out that I’d drawn them? I asked her, but…

“Yuna, the picture book is literally about stuff that we did together.”

Oh, uh. Well. True. The first volume was about the bear and Fina meeting, and how the two searched for medicinal herbs to help Fina’s sick mother. It got to the part where Fina brought the herbs home. I’d put together the book to chronicle the events, but with a picture-book twist.

The second volume was about the girl’s mother getting sicker. The girl has the bear look for a rainbow flower droplet that’s rumored to cure illnesses. Once the bear hears about that, she searches for the flower and helps the girl cure the mother. As far as the casting went, the little girl was Fina, the sickly mother was Tiermina, and the bear was me.

I’d based it all, of course, on the time I’d cured Tiermina for Fina. Since I couldn’t actually write about my magic, I’d substituted a healing flower, but that’s what you get for writing a roman á clef…people in the know immediately could see that it was me and Fina.

Of course, Fina would realize it too. Still, I had a secret plan for getting Fina off my trail about the books. “This book isn’t actually about anyone real. Look, it says so right here.”

I opened up the book to the final page using my bear puppets and pointed to a certain line.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

It was all nice and squared away. I could claim that the girl in the book and Fina had nothing to do with each other.

“But this is exactly the same ribbon as the one I wear…!”

(Well, I had modeled the character after Fina.)

“Plus, there are all these details about my life…!”

(I mean, the book really was about something that Fina and I had experienced.)

“There’s no way this isn’t me!!!”

That classic disclaimer wasn’t going to work with Fina, huh? I mean, the book was modeled off of her, so I didn’t really have a way to talk myself out of this.

Fina sighed. “Why did you draw a book like this in the first place?!”

“I did it for Princess Flora.”

“For Princess Flora…?” When I mentioned the princess, Fina’s tone softened. “If you wrote it for her, then what’s this book doing in the orphanage?”

I told her the whole story, starting with how I’d drawn it for Princess Flora. From there, I talked about how the book had become all the rage in the castle because the princess had been carrying it around, and how enough people clamored for it that they did a print run.

“The king and Ellelaura asked for it, so I couldn’t say no.” If all else fails, just blame it on the royals. Sure, I’d drawn the thing, but I wasn’t exaggerating by saying that it was really the king and Ellelaura who had distributed it (in the castle) by making copies.

Of course, Fina went silent when I mentioned the king and Ellelaura. Sorry for being so mean, Fina.

“I had them print out more copies,” I said, “so I could bring them back to the orphans.”

“A lot of people have this book?” she asked anxiously.

A lot? That seemed like a stretch. “It’s just some of the people in the castle who have it.”

Maybe the books were spreading around, but they’d only go to people with kids. That wasn’t as many as Fina thought.

She didn’t seem to agree. “I won’t be able to go to the castle anymore,” she said, bowing her head.

I bit back a kinda mean barb—“What, were you planning a trip there?”—and thought it over. In the past, Fina would’ve probably never thought a commoner like her would go to the castle, but now she had an expectation she’d be going there in the future. I mean, if she went to the capital with me again, she was probably right about that.

“It’ll be fine,” I said. “No one will realize it’s you.”

There weren’t a lot of people who’d even read the book and I’d cartoonified her. Plus, no one would know the plot had to do with her unless they were her family.

“But the kids were all ‘This looks like you, Fina!’”

There wasn’t much anyone could do about the kids closest to her noticing.

Tiermina, who had been listening in, came to my aid. “She drew you so cutely, dear. Won’t you forgive her?”

“Mom…?”

“What a cute book this is!” Tiermina flipped through the pages. “So if this little girl is Fina, I suppose that the mom is me?”

She stopped flipping on the last page, where the girl and her mom were smiling together. The mom looked so happy after drinking the medicine the little girl had brought. “You drew me so cutely too! And my, Fina, just look at this picture of you!”

“It’s nice, Mom, but aren’t you embarrassed?”

“Maybe if she’d drawn me badly, but how could I be mad at such cute drawings?”

“But...she turned our story into a book.”

“It is a little embarrassing, but not enough to be upset about.”

Fina’s anger steadily subsided as her mom talked to her. But still…

“The little girl looks just like me. Why did you make yourself into a real bear, Yuna? If you’re drawing me, it’s unfair that you’re not drawing yourself.”

I couldn’t tell her I’d done that because I hated drawing myself, so I tried to sweep it under the rug. “That’s because Princess Flora thinks bears are, uh…ever-so-interesting! Don’t you remember, Fina? She was just bonkers for bears!”

“Okay...”

“So, I made myself one.”

Fina seemed convinced when I brought Princess Flora into it—no comments there. “Um…okay. But tell me next time you draw another one, okay?”

“Are you okay with me drawing more?”

“Not really, but the kids seem to like it. But please, don’t let more people have it.”

“All right. I won’t. If the king or Ellelaura try to spread it around, I’ll use magic on them to stop them if I have to.” They were the most likely to distribute the book further.

“Uh, Yuna. Please try not to spread it around,” Fina rephrased.

“I’m kidding! But I’ll tell them not to.” After that, Fina seemed satisfied.

Cool, I’d gotten Fina’s permission to draw the third volume. I figured that’d be the end of it, but someone else came on the attack next.

“It’s unfair that only Fina and Mom get to be in the books,” Shuri piped up. She’d been silent until now. “I wanna be a drawing too!”

Fina seemed thrown off by Shuri saying that it was unfair. I never would’ve thought Shuri would be upset because she wasn’t in a book…although she seemed more upset that she was the only one left out. “Did you want me to draw you, Shuri?”

Shuri nodded slightly. Her sister and mother were both in it, so she was being left out. Plus, Shuri was still young, so it probably hurt a lot more.

“Sorry. I didn’t leave you out on purpose. I was writing about how I met Fina. That’s why the story went like that. Next time, I’ll draw you too.”

“Really?!” she said, beaming.

“Yeah, you’ll be in it for sure,” I promised, and Shuri brightened up even more.

If I were going to draw a third volume, it’d probably be about heading to the capital with Fina and Noa, but I’d have to rethink that if I wanted to put Shuri in. Maybe I’d write about the sisters playing with the bear. Or maybe I could introduce Gentz and make it about a wedding? But how would I rope the bear into that story?

Hmm…maybe I’d take Shuri along to the capital? But could three people really fit on the bear in the book? Maybe I’d add more bears? Seemed like I had some thinking to do.

After we finished talking about the book, I asked Fina to tell me more about what had happened with Ellelaura and Zelef.