The Book of Heroes (25 page)

“No normal fire would have burned a book so completely without catching fire to the whole place,” Aju noted.

“Lady U-ri,” said a voice behind her. It was Sky. He had been so quiet, she had forgotten he was there. “I found the place where the book burned. The stench of sorcery lingers in the air.”

U-ri let Sky lead her to the spot. The sign at the end of the shelf read Home and Living.

At first glance she could see nothing strange, but when she got closer she found where a part of the shelf had melted, warping from the heat. The ash had left a faint black residue. She touched it. The surface of the shelf felt rough under her fingertip.

“Let me take a look,” Aju squeaked, crawling up to her shoulder and hopping onto the bookshelf.

At once, all the books around them screamed. Loud—incredibly loud—a bloodcurdling chorus of terror. U-ri staggered away from the shelf. She had just been about to ask a question, and in her surprise, she bit her tongue.

“W-what is it? What’s wrong?”

Even the female voice that had been talking to her before was shrieking. U-ri felt like her ears would burst. She clapped her hands over them.

In a flash, Sky stepped forward, plucked Aju off the shelf, and thrust him into his pocket. His eyes were as wide as hers.

Gradually, the screaming faded. The pitch dropped, the sound becoming thinner and more pointed, until it was finally over. Through the ringing in her ears, U-ri was just able to make out a sound like a frightened child, whimpering.

“What was that?” Quick as a whip, she turned to Sky. “What did you just do?”

Sky took a step back, his hand tightly clenched around the little mouse in his pocket.

“Stop grabbing Aju like that, you’ll squish him! Let him out. Let him go now!”

“It’s okay, U-ri,” came Aju’s voice, muffled by Sky’s black robes. “I’m fine. And…I’m sorry. Sorry for scaring everyone like that! I wasn’t thinking.”

Sky released his grip on the mouse, and Aju scrambled up, poking his nose out from the pocket.

“What do you mean?”

It was the female voice that answered. “Lady U-ri. The King in Yellow has touched that one. He bears the Yellow Sign. He was in the presence of the Hero!”

So that’s what frightened the books?

“Yes. I’m really sorry.” The color had completely drained from Aju’s pointed ears. “I knew I had to be careful—I just completely forgot. It’s fine if I’m in the vestments or here in Sky’s robes.”

But it hadn’t been fine when Aju jumped onto the bookshelf and touched it directly.

“But why didn’t the books in the cottage seem to mind?”

“Because they’re a tough crowd. Sages and sorcerers, the lot of ’em. But the books here, they’re more like regular people. They can’t take my, er, aura. The King in Yellow’s aura, that is.”

So what was that about the Yellow Sign?

Sky lightly touched U-ri’s sleeve. “I will tell you about it later. Please forgive us. Both of us. I should have been more careful too.”

He looked so apologetic that U-ri found she couldn’t make herself get upset. Swallowing her unease, she looked up.

“Are you all okay?”

“Yes,” the female voice replied, sounding short of breath. “I am sorry you had to witness that.”

“Do you know what the book that burned was? Its title or anything?”

The books on this row of shelves seem to be organized by category—this particular spot held mostly how-to books and other practical guides.

She looked at some of the books near where the burned book had been with titles like
First-Aid Techniques You Should Know
and
Getting Healthy with Vinegar
.

“I’m sorry, Lady U-ri, but most of these books do not have names.”

“What do you mean? They all have titles, don’t they?”

“Yes, but for the most part, we do not know each other’s titles. They have little meaning for us. Nor does a book’s title have anything to do with its name,” the book told her, sounding a bit surprised—as if this were supposed to be common knowledge.

U-ri resisted the urge to make a snappy comeback. “Okay, well, I guess I’ll just look it up.”

U-ri checked the catalog numbers of the books to either side of the gap on the shelf. The one in between would be the missing book. She could search for it on the library computer. U-ri cut across the aisles, heading for one of the booths where computers had been set up for visitors’ use.

It didn’t take long for her to find it.

Hidden Dangers or Hidden Rewards? Making the Most of Household Cleaners
.

That’s a funny title,
U-ri thought.
At least the subject matter’s pretty clear.
“Why would anyone go out of their way to burn up a book like that with magic?”

“I wish we knew,” the female voice lamented. “Yet I can tell you with absolute certainty that it
was
the Book of Elem that burned it. I sensed its presence when it happened.”

Which meant that Hiroki had burned it. Or the King in Yellow acting through him.

“It was Hiroki,” Aju whispered from Sky’s pocket. “I bet he just wanted to try out his magic.”

So he had been testing his newfound power, given to him by the Book of Elem? That was certainly possible, but it still didn’t explain why he had chosen a book about household cleaners.

“If he wanted to do a test, why didn’t he do it on a book at home?” Yuriko muttered, clicking on the terminal keys, trying to find out more about the book. She scrolled down to view the rest of the entry.

Sky touched U-ri’s sleeve. He was gesturing with his eyes toward the booth next to her. A middle-aged man was standing there frozen, like he was about to sit down. His eyes were open wide, and he was staring at her booth.

Oops! I forgot—I’m still invisible. He must’ve seen the keys typing and the screen scrolling all by themselves!

U-ri stood up and stepped slowly away from the booth. The man stared at the computer, frowning. Then, gingerly, he took a step closer and lightly touched the keyboard with one finger.

“Yikes. That was close! I totally forgot.”

“It’s easier than you might think,” Aju squeaked merrily. It seemed his mood had recovered from the excitement before.

U-ri hid behind a nearby shelf and crossed her arms. “I think we’ve found out just about everything we’re going to from this place.”

“I am truly sorry we could not be more of a help to you,
allcaste
,” the female voice apologized.

“That’s quite all right,” U-ri said, smiling. “I’m still figuring this whole thing out myself.”

“Will you go to the library at the school?” She meant the library at Kibogaoka Middle School. “You may yet find books there that can aid you in your search. Though I am afraid many of them are infants yet, they may well know something of your brother, or at least the other students.”

“You’re right. I’ll check it out. Thanks!”

She left the library. Just outside the front lobby there was a public phone which she used to call the police station. U-ri gave her name as Shinako Ito. When there was no reaction, U-ri breathed a sigh of relief. She was half expecting something like, “What, you again? Weren’t you just here a week ago?”
Looks like my disguise just might work after all.
She told the person who answered that she was investigating the murder of the boy at Kibogaoka, and after she had been transferred several times, someone told her to come down to the station.

U-ri was increasingly aware that her disguise was more than just that—it was a complete transformation. She never would have been able to talk to people on the phone like this a week ago. It was incredibly convenient, as she needed access to the grown-up world to get things done, but also kind of scary. With all this business of being other people, she was afraid again that she might lose her real self.

“We can teleport there,” Aju suggested. “I’ll say the spell.”

U-ri walked over to hide behind some bushes outside the library. Aju slipped out of Sky’s pocket and hopped over to U-ri’s shoulder. “You ready?”

“No, I’m not ready. You have to explain something to me first. What was the book in there talking about when she said that most books don’t have names?”

Aju glanced back at the library, his nose twitching. “Well, for one, we books usually don’t need to tell each other apart, really. See, there’s not that many kinds of stories out there, when you get down to it. Only ten, to be exact. Of course, there are many more times that number of books in the Circle. Still, you can trace any of the stories in them back to the ten basic types we call the ‘originals.’”

Aju stroked his whiskers as he got into telling his story. “Now people give books titles ’cause it’s helpful for them to sort books, and they can use the titles to talk about what’s in them. But all those titles have absolutely nothing to do with the ten originals. Which is why we don’t bother keeping track of them. Knowing what original story type a book is fashioned after is enough for us, and we can tell that just by looking.

“Now,” Aju mused, “it might be a different story if all the books got some kind of official numbers when they first appeared in the world—but that’s not how the system works. And frankly, we books could care less. It’s not like we have to introduce ourselves to each other like people do. We could just float namelessly through the Circle and never be the worse for it. And there’s another reason why most books don’t bother with names.”

It turned out that most of the books written, collated, and printed by human hands—about 99.9 percent—had extremely short lives. They did not remain in the Circle for long. The Great Wheels of Inculpation dragged them back to the nameless land, then sent them back out into the Circle, where they found a mind or a heart willing to make another book of them. And of those new books, 99.9 percent wouldn’t last long either. And it wasn’t just books. Anything that had a story to it was subject to this endless recycling.

It occurred then to U-ri that people were much the same. They all had names, but for 99.9 percent of them, it wouldn’t matter in the long run.
Because they just don’t make any difference, and another would be there to replace them as soon as they left.

It was a troubling thought.
That has to be wrong,
U-ri told herself.
Human lives were each valuable, weren’t they?

U-ri humphed loudly—loud enough, she hoped, to drive the thought right out of her head. “So, if you have a proper name, Aju, that means you’re different from the other 99.9 percent of books?”

The Great Wheels wouldn’t take him back anytime soon—his journey through the Circle was intended to be long. That was why he had been given a name.

“I am pretty old,” Aju said with evident pride. Despite being a tiny field mouse, he was clearly capable of strutting. Aju’s whiskers stuck out straight from the sides of his face.

“And you’re forgetting to tell me something,” U-ri said, her voice growing more serious. “What’s this Yellow Sign the books were talking about?”

Aju wrung his little forelimbs together atop U-ri’s shoulder. “Well, if I were to tell you honestly—”

“Which you will.”

“U-ri, I could tell you but I don’t think you’d like it. That is, I don’t think you’d like
me
.” The mouse stuck his nose into the fold at her collar, his pride deflating like a leaky balloon. Shivering, he explained, “You see, it’s a story of my failure. How I was too weak to save Hiroki, too weak to stop them. How I couldn’t fight the Book of Elem. And I don’t mean that I fought him and lost. No, I barely even tried. I was no match for the book.”

U-ri stood speechless for a moment, unsure of how to respond.

Sky walked over to her, his bare feet padding softly on the grass. “The Book of Elem is a copy containing a portion of the King in Yellow’s hideous strength.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Master Aju could not sway your brother’s heart in the face of such power. That is to say, Master Aju’s abilities as a book were impaired by the Book of Elem.”

U-ri gently picked up Aju in the palm of her hand, placing him back in her chest pocket.

“I’m sure you did what you could, Aju.”

“Only at the very beginning. It wasn’t long before I couldn’t do anything at all.”

It had been like being stuck inside a giant glass box, he told her. He could see everything going on around him, but there was no sound. Nor could his voice reach anyone. He could have made all the noise he wanted to, and still he remained impossibly distant from Hiroki.

“Kinda chokes me up just thinking about it.” Aju sniffled and began to mutter “sorry” again and again as he rubbed his forepaws together. It tickled. U-ri burst out laughing. “You’re too cute, Aju.”

Sky’s expression softened. “This entrapment of a book’s powers is what the books called the ‘Yellow Sign,’” he explained. Its effect lasted a long time—and was enough to send younger, innocent books into fits of terror.

“This is partially due to the fact that a fragment of the King in Yellow’s power remains in that mark and partially because it is believed that, through the Yellow Sign, the King in Yellow might continue to exert its influence on the book, changing it forever.”

U-ri put a hand to her mouth, and gulped. “You mean Aju might be under the influence of the King in Yellow…permanently?”

Aju jabbed her cheek with his nose. “I was not! I’m fine. Totally fine. Absolutely! I’m no copy of the King and I never will be!”

If U-ri could have seen him where he was on her shoulder, she was sure she would have caught him baring his teeth. “The Sage gave me a clean bill of health. He guaranteed it. I talked to him while you were in the nameless land, you know. And he said I was just fine.”

If it’s good enough for the Sage, it’s good enough for me,
U-ri decided. The Sage was probably right, and worrying about it now would only be a waste of time.

“All right, all right. It’s too bad, though. If the Yellow Sign had changed you, that might have given us some clue to help find the King in Yellow,” U-ri said, half jokingly.

“It did not and it would not!” Aju shrieked. “I didn’t change one bit, I swear it!”