Brave Story (68 page)

I was seeing things. None of this really happened. If I just reach out my hand and open the door, Lili Yannu will be sitting there in that chair, knitting baby clothes out of black wool. She’s not dead. She’s not dead because I didn’t kill her.

It was the easiest thing in the world to check. All he had to do was knock on the door.
Hello, is anyone home?
She would open the door, and he would smile.

Well, what are you waiting for? Do it.

—
I can’t.

Though he didn’t consciously think to do so, Wataru’s legs moved him away from the door.

I can’t do it. I can’t.

Back to the lakeshore. There, where I helped Jozo out of the water, my udai will still be standing, waiting for me. I’ll mount up, and go back to Tearsheaven.
I’ll have the doctor take a look at me. The lake water hit my cheek. I need an antidote. Then I’ll change into a dry shirt, and go see how Sara is doing.

The door to Lili Yannu’s hut suddenly opened. Through a gap of maybe four inches came a tiny hand. Followed by an arm, then a face.

It was an infant. It was naked, with chubby round arms and legs. Its face looked like a cherub from some painting, except that its eyes were closed.

Something about it was wrong. Something was strange. This wasn’t an ordinary child. Its skin…

Its skin was gray. The color of stone.
A child made of stone.

The stone-baby stepped clear of the door and turned to Wataru, its eyes still tightly shut. Wataru realized with a start that the child was blind. Then the baby opened its mouth and spoke, not with the voice of a child, but with the heavy, gravelly voice of an old man.

“Killer,” it said. “Killer without blood. Killer without tears.”

Wataru’s hair stood on end. His legs began to shake.

“When you took their lives, you took mine as well. Never will my eyes know the light of day, never will my mouth know my mother’s breast, never will my ears know her soft lullaby, never will my feet know the feel of the earth beneath them.”

Wataru stepped back, slowly shaking his head. “It wasn’t me.” His voice came in trembling fits and starts. “I didn’t kill them.”

“Your excuses are empty,” said the baby, pointing a chubby finger in accusation. “What will become of your tainted soul? What will become of my sorrow? My body is stone, my tears are dry.”

Wataru screamed. “I didn’t kill them!”

The baby’s mouth twisted into a hideous scowl. “I will take your sword, stab your body, and carve your soul from it. Your flesh will rot, your bones left bare to the wind upon the frozen ground, singing hollow curses for a hundred nights and a hundred dawns. You will never know the peace of death, and your soul will wander, forever burning in the hellfires of sin, deep within the chaotic abyss!”

Then the baby came at Wataru with unbelievable speed, crawling on its arms and legs. Wataru turned and ran.

No matter how far or how fast he ran, when he looked over his shoulder, there the stone-baby was, speeding after him. Wataru tripped and clawed his way back to his feet. And when he looked back over his shoulder again, for an instant he saw people in the air above the child’s face. Yacom, Lili Yannu, Satami were there. So was his father, and his mother. And Rikako, and countless others. Everyone who had ever hated or cursed someone was there. Everyone who had ever wounded another, or kicked another when he was down…

And there, in the crowd, he saw his own face.

Wataru ran. He ran past his udai, standing stiffly by the water’s edge. He ran past Yacom’s cart, filled with glass jars of swamp water. He ran and ran, and as he ran, he noticed the dorsal fin of a kalon cutting through the surface of the lake, keeping pace with him.

It knows there’s prey to be had. It’s waiting for the stone-baby to catch me, knock me to the ground, and throw me in the water.
Wataru ran and ran on, tears of fright streaming down his face, his breath harsh and ragged in his throat.

Before long, a white mist began to creep through the swamp around him. The ground under his feet, the black water of the swamp—all were soon covered in a gauzy white veil. Wataru ran, swimming through the thickening mist. He looked over his shoulder and could no longer see the baby behind him.

I can’t stop now. I have to run.

Yet his feet were slowing. His knees bent, and buckled down to the ground. He couldn’t stand.

No. No! I have to run.

Wataru felt his soul inside him, quivering with fright, screaming for help. It was the last thing he heard before blacking out. Darkness crept under the blanket of the white mist. Soon blankness filled everything, and Wataru lay there, face down, utterly drained. He was asleep.

Croak… Croak…

From somewhere came the sound of a frog.

Crrrrroak. Wataru… Crrrrroak…

What’s a frog doing in a place like this?

Crrrroak. Wataru? Can you hear me?

The voice was sweet. He had heard it many times before.
I know who that is.

Crrrroak. Don’t worry. You saw what happened. You did the right thing.
You did what you had to do.

Sometimes ending a life is the right thing to do. The people you killed were evil, Wataru. You were right…

“No!” Wataru shouted. “I didn’t kill them!”

He cupped a hand over his mouth, gasping for breath. He was shaking uncontrollably.
Where am I? What is this place? Where’s that stone-baby?

“You okay?” came a voice from right beside him. Wataru shouted again. He tried to run but only fell, rolling off something and onto a hard floor.

“Oy, oy, calm down there. You’ve had quite the nightmare. But you are awake now. You’re safe.”

Wataru opened his eyes to see a pair of concerned dark eyes staring back at him.

Chapter 25
The Blood Star

The man leaning over Wataru was young and wore a gray robe like the one donned by the priest in Lyris.
But the sleeves were longer, and the hem was shorter, making it look somewhat more practical.

“Well now, how’s your fever?” he said, reaching out a hand to touch Wataru’s forehead. His face broke into a smile. “Very well, it seems to have gone down! Glad I had my analgesics with me. I was worried there for a bit.”

They were in a small room with one door. Wataru lay upon a simple bed, with a thin blanket and a hard pillow. He was also quite grateful for a fluffy, warm comforter.

“Where am I? Who are you?”

The young man smiled and lowered his head. “My name is Shin Suxin. I am a researcher at the National Observatory in Sasaya.”

“Nice to meet you,” Wataru managed. “You saved me, didn’t you? I owe you my thanks.”

“Not at all. Hungry? I don’t have much, but some warm soup should do you good.”

The man took a few steps to a small stove in the corner of the room. The only other furniture in the room was a small desk piled with books and a simple chair. The walls were covered with shelves; these too were crammed with books. Some of the books had drifted off the shelves into a pile on the floor, leaving only a narrow corridor between the bed and the stove.

Wataru guessed he was in another hut. The roof was high, and there was a sort of loft halfway up. A ladder next to the desk provided access.

The National Observatory in Sasaya?
Wataru thought back to all that Kee Keema had told him about Vision during their journey to Gasara.

“Are you by any chance a starseer, Mr. Suxin?”

The man nodded. “Yep. In training, that is. And please, call me Shin. Here you go, drink up.”

A bowl filled with deliciously fragrant soup sat upon the tray Shin carried from the stove. “My instructor, Dr. Baksan, always says that a starseer should not be locked up in his observatory. He should travel, get to know the land, its seasons, and its crops. Only then may he look to the stars for guidance. That is the true path to knowledge.”

This was the reason, he explained, most students spent a good portion of the year scattered across the southern continent. “Some choose a particular region for their observations. Others have their fate determined by Dr. Baksan. He’s a tough nut, our instructor. If there’s anything fishy with your observations, he’ll flunk you in a heartbeat,” Shin said, seeming perfectly happy regardless. For a moment, Wataru saw the face of Yutaro Miyahara, star student from his class back in the real world transposed over the face of the young researcher standing over him.
He’s like Yutaro. He’s not some bookworm driven to study. He actually likes it…

A great sense of nostalgia, combined with homesickness, and a desire to see his friends again filled Wataru. Even though he knew this was hardly the time, the feelings—and the questions—were impossible to stop.
What am I doing here? What’s the whole point of this anyway?

“Ah, sorry there,” Shin said, looking concerned. “Here I go running off at the mouth and you’ve only just awoken after three days asleep. I’ve been here alone for more than a year now, and the only conversation I get is from darbaba drivers. I’m a bit starved for chitchat, you might say. Now, drink your soup ’fore it gets cold.”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Wataru shook his head, trying to hold back the tears.
I can’t cry in front of him. He’s worried enough as it is.
“Was I really asleep for three days?” Wataru asked, cradling the bowl of soup in his hands.

“You sure were. You had a heavy dose of swamp poison running through you. I thought you’d had it.”

“Um…where am I?”

Shin waved a finger and answered his question with another question. “You don’t remember at all?”

To his regret, he remembered everything that happened in the Swamp of Grief. Yet, it all felt unreal, like a passing dream, and many of the details were blurry. But still, he remembered what he had done. That was burned into his heart.

“You know the town of Tearsheaven?”

Wataru nodded.

“Well, I found you by the marsh on the opposite side of Tearshaven from the Swamp of Grief. This observation hut we’re in now is on the edge of that marsh.”

Wataru noticed for the first time that the light streaming through the simple striped curtains was a shade of pink. It was evening.

“About three days ago, right around this time, I came upon an udai wandering lost a little ways behind my hut. He was wearing a saddle, and paddles for walking in the marshes, so I started thinking someone had gotten lost out there. I went out, and found you lying near the path to the swamp.”

Though it made his stomach ache with fear, Wataru asked, “Did you find anyone else? Maybe an udai with a cart?”

Shin shook his head. “Nothing of the sort. Were you with someone?”

“No…”

“Right. Oh, by the way, that lost udai I found, I passed it off to a darbaba driver who came through here the other day. I’ve no food to feed such an animal, you see. He’s since gone to Sonn—that’s the village nearest to here. There are handlers there who will know how to take care of the thing. They’ll be expecting you to come pick it back up when you’re well.”

Wataru slowly sipped his soup. From the smell he thought it had to be delicious, but it tasted like sand in his mouth.

Where had Yacom’s udai gone if it wasn’t in the swamp?
Maybe he’s alive.
Maybe he rode off somewhere with his bottles filled with swamp water.
Maybe the horrible images burned into Wataru’s mind were mere illusion, a nightmare shown him by the swamp poison. That would mean Lili Yannu was still alive, and the horrible stone-baby never existed.

That had to be it.
He wanted it to be.
There wasn’t a bone in my body that had wanted to kill Yacom. I may have been angry at him, and frightened.
He was so like Dad.
And more. He had been brutally honest, saying things Wataru could never imagine his father saying, even though he feared they might be true.
But I never wanted to kill him. I can’t do that sort of thing. I’m not that kind of person.

But then, when he thought about it, it occurred to him that he had done many things he never would have believed possible since coming to Vision. He had done battle with monsters—tests that took him to the limits of his strength and wit. Twice he had almost been executed, and twice he hadn’t shed a tear, or uttered a single cry for mercy. All the while, the Brave’s Sword hung at his side…

Maybe he had become a different person—ever since he had passed the test at the Cave of Trials. From that point on, he wasn’t Wataru. He was a Traveler; stronger, braver, and smarter than Wataru.

If I had to, couldn’t I kill someone, really? Isn’t this the brave Wataru I always wanted to become? Isn’t that why I’m wielding a Brave’s Sword?

Yacom was a bad person, an evil person. The depth of Lili’s evil might have been lesser than his, but still she had hurt others by acting out of pure self-interest.
What if it wasn’t an illusion? What if it were true? Would I really have to blame myself?