Brave Story

by Miyuki Miyabe

  A few more steps up, Wataru saw another image floating into focus in the wall. Wataru ran up the stairs. Dad. They were at the local pool on a summer day. He was teaching Wataru how to swim. He was holding on to his outstretched hands, cheering him on as he kicked his legs. His father was walking backward, leading him along. Soon Wataru would be able to cross the pool on his own. That’s it, you’ve got it!

  More images from the past splashed across the walls. It was like a movie theater built for him out of his own memories. Wataru was transfixed, watching each image intently as he climbed the spiral stair.

  Soon, Katchan made his debut. He was wearing the same preschool uniform as Wataru, a yellow bag slung over his shoulder. He was jumping all around, excited about something, tugging on Wataru’s shirt until his mother scolded him. I remember that. It was after the ceremony on the first day of school. We had just taken a photograph by the school gates.

  Wataru’s past was playing out before his eyes.

  A school trip on a rainy day. Eating lunch right before the track meet. Doing homework by the heater at Katchan’s house in the middle of winter. Bringing an abandoned kitten home, and having his mother tell him he couldn’t keep it.

  More images: Wataru crying on the balcony—he had been particularly bad, and his mother had locked him out. Going to the hospital by ambulance in the middle of the night—he had caught a cold and it got worse and turned into pneumonia. Each scene presented itself clearly. His mother in the ambulance, her face white. Katchan came to visit with his mom when Wataru was in the hospital. He remembered Katchan’s mom apologizing. Katchan’s too rambunctious for his own good. He never should have been playing soccer in the rain with your son that day.

  Playing catch with his father in the courtyard of the apartment. Here comes Mom, carrying an armful of grocery bags. Dad throws her the ball, she picks it up, tries to throw it, and it goes wild. Way wild. The glass in one of the apartment windows on the first floor breaks, and the three of them go to apologize. Dad’s teasing Mom, and she gets mad at him. They sneak away to laugh where she wouldn’t see them…

  How could there be so many memories in only eleven years? The human heart is a strange, bottomless container. Anything and everything goes in, just waiting to be taken out again someday.

  Wataru climbed further and saw an episode with Mitsuru. He was looking grim the day they met at the shrine. This is sacred ground, he told Wataru, sounding adult and knowledgeable.

  And there was the priest. Wataru was saying something to him over his shoulder, running off with his bag under his arm. That’s right. I asked him if there really were gods, why were they so lazy?

  Then he saw her—Mitsuru’s aunt. He remembered the silver bangles she wore on her arm. She was worried about Mitsuru, yet looked like a little girl herself. The resemblance to Lady Zophie was startling.

  The translucent walls of the Tower of Destiny showed him Uncle Lou too. They were lighting fireworks in the garden at his grandmother’s house in Chiba. His uncle was so tan that at night, he could have stepped behind a tree and you’d never have seen him. Only when he smiled would a row of white teeth suddenly appear, floating in the air. Wataru laughed so hard he fell over. It made him smile even now.

  But, in the next image, his uncle’s face was twisted. He was calling out to Wataru who had crawled under the bed. Come out, come out, he was saying. The pain rose in Wataru’s chest to see how sad his uncle looked. I did that. I had no idea.

  What’s that, swaying on the wall up there? It’s me. He was grabbing on to the collar of a karulakin, dangling perilously far above the ground. He had wandered into a pack of gimblewolves in the Fatal Desert. It was funny to think how little he knew of Vision back then.

  Now he was riding on Kee Keema’s cart. They were racing across the grasslands. Wataru was holding on for his life, still unused to the rolling ride. Wataru ran farther up the stairs, following the darbaba cart as it raced along the wall.

  There, the wall became suddenly dark. But it wasn’t night. Black things, too numerous to count, were swarming along the wall. Flying in a great cloud.

  It was a swarm of demonkin, so many they blocked out the sky. Long fangs jutted from skull-like faces. He could almost hear the clicking of their claws.

  This isn’t the past. This is Vision right now.

  The shock and horror of the scene made Wataru step back from the wall, his arms hanging slack by his sides. The heel of one of his boots jutted over the edge of the stairs, and he almost lost his balance, which quickly returned him to his senses.

  He hadn’t realized just how far up he’d climbed. He could no longer see the entrance below. The bottom of the tower was lost in the distance. Only the wind blowing up through the hollow center of the tower served to remind him he was still in a physical space and not some dream world. Once again he began to climb the tower. The images on the wall kept pace.

  The town of Gasara. Ramshackle barricades had been constructed everywhere out of furniture, wooden boxes, and barrels. A weary guard was standing on the watchtower, looking at the sky. Captain Ronmel led a group of Knights galloping down Main Street.

  In the distance, across the grasslands that surrounded Gasara, a black cloud appeared. As he watched, it grew and swept closer. The Knights drew their swords. As one, they lit their torches. Kee Keema was standing on a rooftop, his legs apart, axe held at the ready. Meena—there’s Meena! She was helping those who couldn’t defend themselves get into cellars and other hiding places for their safety.

  The wall twisted and the image blurred. Now he was looking at the Isle of Dragon. A steady stream of dragons were flying up from volcanoes. They looked prepared for battle, and they breathed flames that scorched the skies. Heroically, they blasted their way through the legions of demonkin, and sent them careening into the ocean screeching in pain and anger.

  At the port of Sono, boats filled with refugees slowly raised their sails. Demonkin swarmed like ugly ants over the town broken by Mitsuru’s magic. Every boat was crammed from bow to stern with people.

  All the towns and villages Wataru had seen on his journey through Vision were under attack by the demonkin. Now, at this very moment, the places he had been and the people he had met were fighting a hopeless battle. The walls of the tower burned the reality of it into his eyes.

  I have to hurry. The images of battle still tugging at him, Wataru ran up the spiral staircase. Then, quite suddenly, the stairs came to an abrupt end. Is this it? Am I at the top?

  He was in a hall, the floor of which was decorated with the same pattern he had seen so many times before, the one connecting Vision to the real world. Each point of the star was shining a different color. Wataru walked to the center of the room.

  The top part of the pattern was pointing toward a tall, elegant arch. Upon closer examination, it proved to be in the same shape as the top of the tower—two hands clasped in prayer. Perhaps this was the passageway that led to the Goddess.

  He took a step toward the arch, when he heard a voice from behind him.

  “Wataru.”

  That sweet voice. Wataru tensed and turned around. A girl was standing at the edge of the pattern.

  Where did she come from?

  “You finally get to meet me.”

  How many times had she talked to him? In the real world, and even here, in Vision. Wataru had thought she was a fairy—but he had never forgotten what she told him to do on the shore near Sakawa. “Kill the Goddess.” She had been with him all this time, and he still couldn’t tell whether she was a friend or foe. And he had never seen what she looked like.

  Wataru stared at her, too surprised to even blink. She was the spitting image of Kaori Daimatsu.

  Those slender wrists. That graceful neck. Those large, black eyes. A smile graced her exquisite face.

  “I’m glad I waited,” she was saying. “So glad! I knew you would make it. I believed in you.” Speaking gently, she walked toward him. Wataru stepped back, maintaining their dist
ance.

  The girl stopped. Her eyebrows lifted, each a delicately curved brushstroke. “What’s wrong? Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  Several questions rose in Wataru’s mind at once. He picked one. “Who are you?”

  “Me?” she asked, spreading her hands as though in dismay. “Does my appearance not please you?” She grabbed the edge of her skirt and then bent one knee, curtsying like a girl meeting her partner for the first time at a formal ball. But this was no ballroom. And she wasn’t wearing a gown. Wataru’s memory wasn’t clear on this point, but the skirt she was wearing looked like what Kaori had been wearing when he saw her outside the Daimatsu building. The plain, simple attire of a girl in middle school. The real Kaori would have been wearing it as she sat in her wheelchair. Her unfocused eyes hadn’t even registered his presence.

  Of course not. After all, her soul had been captured in the crystal city—until Wataru had freed it.

  But the Kaori Daimatsu in front of him now stepped lightly across the floor and spun. Her skirt lifted up, her legs flashing beneath it. Wataru had never seen her like this.

  Just like Kaori…and yet totally unlike her. Who is she, really?

  “You…talked to me many times.”

  The girl smiled, blushing. “You remembered?”

  “How could I forget?” He had been happy at first. Back when he thought she was a fairy. Now he felt differently. “What do you want here? Why have you been following me? What do you want me to do?”

  “So serious! You sure know how to ruin a girl’s mood.”

  “Of course,” Wataru said, clenching his fists. “How would you act if someone came to you, pretending to be someone else?”

  “So you don’t like how I look, do you. And I thought you liked her! She’s been in your heart all this time.”

  Was that true? Have I been thinking about Kaori? Me? Wataru didn’t think he had been. He had forgotten her—or was it merely that he hadn’t been conscious of his own thoughts.

  “A stolen, innocent soul,” the girl said. “Unfairly injured, the victim of a twisted fate. Yes, just like you.”

  Is that why she had been in his heart?

  Wataru braced, steadying his breath. He had figured out one thing: no matter who this mysterious voice was, no matter how closely she could read his heart or how sweetly she smiled, she was no friend.

  “I’ll ask you again,” Wataru said, his voice gaining confidence. “What do you want? Are you going to tell me to kill the Goddess again? Who are you?”

  The girl wrapped her arms around her shoulders as if to fend off a cold breeze. A thin smile still clung to her face. “You want to know who I am?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “You’re absolutely sure you want to know?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then you have to promise me something,” she said, her black eyes blazing. “Promise you won’t hate me when you see my true form. Promise you won’t push me away when you see me as I truly am.” Her tone made the words sound like less of a plea and more of a threat.

  She didn’t wait for Wataru to respond. Suddenly her body began to shrink rapidly. Wataru stared. Where Kaori had stood only moments before, now there was only a small, warped shadow on the floor. Then a slick, black arm came out of the shadow. It was thick and round as a log. A hand like a large fan groped in the air, first to the right, then the left. It was no human hand—though it bore some some similarities. Another arm followed, and together they clutched at the floor, pulling.

  “My face…” A large head emerged from the shadows.

  Wataru gasped and took a step back.

  “My true face. Does it not please you?” Only the sweet voice remained the same. But the mouth was that of a giant bullfrog. Giant lips flapped in the cool air of the tower. Eyes the size of basketballs protruded from its forehead. Ugly warts dotted its forest-green hide.

  “Well? Tell me.” As it spoke, the frog worked its arms, pulling the rest of its body out of the shadow. A thick hind leg slapped wetly against the floor. There was something oddly familiar in the pattern on its skin. It was like a wallpaper print covered with the moving, writhing figures of…

  The winged skeletal demonkin. Miniature demonkin writhed all over the skin of the giant bullfrog.

  So this is my fairy.

  “You seem surprised, dear little Wataru,” the frog said, the loose flaps of skin at its throat trembling as it spoke. “Yet this is only what you asked for. This is the truth you dragged out of me. Look well, Wataru. For this is how I truly am.”

  “Who are…”

  “Did Wayfinder Lau not tell you? Do you not know of me? Yes, the very same misfortune you bore in the real world, the same sadness, I have borne here in Vision. My name is Onba.” A dark, heavy croaking sound joined the voice of the little girl, making every word a discordant harmony in two parts. “I am the manifestation of all that is ugly, all that is unwanted, all that was cut away as unnecessary by the Goddess at the time Vision was made. I am the darkness where there is light, the negative pole.”

  The manifestation of everything unwanted…

  “My sweet, young Traveler. You who have come this far know the meaning of unwanted. What is unwanted is everything that does not meet the hopes and desires of this world, that falls short of its dreams. It is ugliness where beauty is sought, misfortune where happiness is desired, injustice where justice must be done. All the anger and greed and regret for what might have been—that is me.”

  Wataru stepped slowly backward, shaking his head, feeling Onba’s giant eyes burning into him. “No, I don’t understand.”

  “But you must!” The thick, gravelly voice gained strength, dominating the familiar voice of the girl. That’s what she really sounds like. “Pitiful child of man. I know the bitter fate you were fed in the real world, I know. That is why I approached you. I knew an unfair fate would destroy what you held precious so that you would curse the real world and come here, to Vision. I knew.”

  Indeed, the first time the sweet voice had talked to him, Wataru had been living in ignorant bliss, not even knowing about his father and Rikako Tanaka. He had no inkling that the fabric of his daily life was about to be torn in two.

  “I pity you, Wataru, I truly do. That is why I wanted to help,” Onba said, her voice suddenly switching back to the little girl.

  “Stop!” Wataru yelled suddenly. “Don’t talk to me like that!”

  Then Onba began to laugh, her eyes rolling as her voice dropped two octaves. Soon her great mouth was opened wide, bellowing with laughter. “You should know! Why is one person blessed with happiness, while another must know misfortune? Why must you suffer when it is your parents who have failed? Why you? Why not somebody else? Doesn’t it make you angry? Don’t you want to use your rage to undo this injustice?”

  Wataru merely shook his head. Onba took one lumbering step forward, closing the distance between them. “We are angry when others are given what is not given to us. We are jealous of what we possess when it is given away to others. Our bellies burn with desire and envy. This is our true nature. The negativity that is me should, by all rights, have been scattered throughout Vision, like the shards of the Mirror of Truth. We could have been broken into countless, harmless fragments living peacefully among the masses. Yet the fools wouldn’t accept the darkness in their own hearts, they wanted it out. They pretended we didn’t belong to them…that they couldn’t see us. Like the Goddess before them, they tried to banish us forever!” The great frog’s voice crescendoed into a primal howl. “Lost, wandering, we fell into the Dark. Yet the Dark gave us strength, and I was born. I returned to Vision.”

  So Onba, like the demonkin, had come to Vision from that place, that Dark that hated Vision, and would devour it if it got the chance.

  “That is why I wanted someone, a child of man. I belong in your heart. Your heart is my home.” Onba’s eyes stared at Wataru, her head tilting inquisitively. “Were you not my friend? Have you forgotten how much I h
elped you?”

  Wataru tried to control his trembling, but couldn’t. He didn’t know if he was scared or sad. If he was sad, he didn’t know why—perhaps somewhere in his heart he knew, but he couldn’t put it into words. He shook his head, shut his eyes, and clenched his fists. “I didn’t know who you were, really. I didn’t know what you wanted.”

  “Who I really am?” Onba’s voice was a low, guttural growl. “I am you. I am that unwanted thing, that dark negativity that crouches, hidden deep inside. It is only because I exist within you that you are able to talk to me in this way.”

  Something unwanted inside me? Wataru had never thought about it—he hadn’t really had time. But now that he did, he found that it was there. Deep in his heart, a part of him was furious at his misfortune. A part of him wondered, Why me?

  Just like his hate had become a double of himself, walking free, the negativity within Wataru had called out to Onba. She was the manifestation of all that wasn’t wanted, and she was coming home to him.

  “Yes, open your eyes. Overturn this world that dealt you your fate. You came here to change your fate? Why not think bigger? Here you are in the tower! Why change only yourself when you could change the entire world?”

  “And that’s what you want me to do?”

  Onba’s massive head nodded slowly. “Yes, for that is our victory! The victory of everything unwanted, at last!” Words of rage spilled out of her mucusladen mouth. A dull black tongue darted between her lips. “We want. We will have our world. We will be God and make all those who hated us and pushed us away kneel at our feet.”

  Ah, so that’s what you want.

  “Traveler! I ask you. Do you not wish to destroy the Goddess, and reign together from this Tower of Destiny? Do you not wish to hold both Vision and the real world in the palm of your hand?”

  “I do not.” Wataru’s voice was rock steady. He deliberately forced the chill running through his body to stop. “What you want is wrong.”

  Onba’s large mouth opened even wider, swallowing most of her face, and she laughed from deep in her throat with a sound like rolling thunder. “My sweet, young Traveler. Do you not understand this is your last chance? Merely nod to us here and now, and you will not have to kneel at the feet of the Goddess. No—you will stand on the very top of this tower as lord of all you survey!”