2001 The Children of Bottle

by Ryohgo Narita

  “The woods around us. They’re just… For a coniferous forest, it’s too dense. It’s as though the trees are being forced to grow, even in places that clearly don’t get much sunlight.”

  As Maiza said this, Sylvie returned to the rear seat and looked around. The trees were so dense, they seemed to be leaning into each other. It almost felt as if they were blocking the gaps in the forest to keep people from entering.

  “…True, it is a little eerie. I wonder why it’s like that.”

  “That’s a good question… If we keep going, we may learn something.”

  “Well, I guess it might be the perfect place for Elmer.” All Sylvie could do was trust the driver’s suggestion, and she slumped back in her seat as she spoke. “If the worst villain of the alchemists on that ship was Szilard, Huey was the scariest. The weirdest one, though… That was Elmer, hands down. He startled me all over the place back then… Although he was the most fun, too.”

  “Was Huey that scary?” Maiza asked lightly. “Granted, it was hard to tell what he was thinking, but…”

  “Yes, terrifying. I think Elmer was about the only one who was really close to him.”

  “Well, Elmer did have a fearless side… He said all sorts of dubious things, such as how he’d successfully swindled Louis the Fourteenth, or how he wore a cursed diamond without losing his luck, but he was the type of fellow who might actually have done them.”

  As he spoke, Maiza stopped the car and looked ahead.

  It was something rather too perilous to be called a “small hill.”

  The slope itself was gentle, but it was a rough pile of stones, dirt, and sand. The idea of traversing it on foot was daunting enough, never mind driving over it in an ordinary car. And even if they tried to detour around it, the abnormally dense forest around them continued up the hill on both sides with the gravel road in between.

  “From what I hear, a tunnel went through the hill at this point, long ago, but… It appears there was a landslide, doesn’t it?” Maiza said. “It must have collapsed quite some time ago, but no trees have taken root in the space. That’s a great help.”

  “What do you mean, ‘a great help’? We can’t get through if it’s like this. I wonder why they don’t repair the tunnel.”

  In answer to Sylvie’s question, Maiza shrugged. “They say no one used it to begin with, since this was simply the entrance to private property up ahead. The person who owned the land may have decided not to use the tunnel at all.”

  “Hmm… Wha—? Maiza, wait just a minute!” Czes, who’d been on the verge of agreeing, spoke in mild panic from the passenger seat. “What do you mean, ‘private land’? You said Elmer was in a small village…”

  “That’s right. Apparently the village is up ahead, on that private land.” Maiza was indifferent, but Czes and Sylvie exchanged looks in the rearview mirror.

  “Ha-ha-ha. You know,” the man continued good-naturedly, “I tried to get in touch with the owner using various excuses—vegetation surveys and the like—but nothing worked. From what I hear, he’s a wealthy individual, but I have absolutely no connections in this country, so…”

  Maiza was an executive in a certain illegal organization in America, but in areas where he had no personal connections, things didn’t go as smoothly as they did at home. At that point, for the first time, Sylvie frowned, murmuring:

  “A village…on private land?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you sure you can trust this information broker of yours?”

  “Of course.”

  Maiza spoke with great confidence, and Sylvie looked at him, seeming rather appalled.

  “All right, here we go. Hold on tight.”

  Before Czes and Sylvie could ask, Go where? Maiza abruptly revved the engine.

  “Wait— Mai—”

  Czes’s yell was drowned out as the whole car shook violently.

  Grunch-grunch-grunch-grunch! Grunch-grunch-grunch! Grunch! Grunch! Grunch-grunch-grunch-grunch! Grunch-grunch! Grunch-grunch-grunch-grunch-grunch-grunch.

  The impacts formed a chain.

  Czes’s light body was jostled up, down, and side to side in the cramped car, the vibrations traveling through his hips and back until he could feel them in his stomach and lungs.

  “Waaaaaaaaaaugh!”

  “Ooh!”

  Czes screamed along with the vibrations, and Sylvie huddled down in the backseat to ride them out.

  This went on for a few minutes, until finally a particularly big jolt hit them.

  The hill had been sloping slightly downward, but partway, it dropped off entirely.

  At the bottom of the cliff was the ordinary, snow-covered gravel road. The drop was about ten feet.

  The three of them rose out of their seats slightly, and after a moment’s pause, the impact ran through them all the way up to the tops of their skulls.

 

  In that instant, from behind the rear seat—a space between the backrest and the rear panel—they heard a man scream, but the three were catching their breath and paid it no particular attention.

  “…Sometimes you get insanely reckless, Maiza,” Czes commented.

  “Well, in my line of work…”

  “Every so often, I really resent the way you do things at your own speed,” Sylvie followed.

  “No, no, I’m terribly sorry about that.”

  The pair turned aggrieved eyes on Maiza, who was nowhere near breaking out in a cold sweat.

  Deflecting their ire with a smile, Maiza turned his attention to the car’s surroundings.

  The trees were as dense as ever, and the snow covering the ground seemed significantly thinner than it had been in the open fields.

  “All right, if we go on this way, we should reach it in about three miles.”

 

  Suddenly, an angry bellow echoed from the trunk space behind the rear seat, a place intended for luggage. However, Maiza stepped on the gas as though nothing had happened. Once he was sure there was nothing wrong with the engine, he threw in the clutch and shifted into low gear.

 

  “Yes, Nile, I’m listening.”

  Answering calmly, Maiza floored the accelerator.

  “The road’s going to stay rough for a while, so be careful not to bite your tongue.”

  Even as he spoke, the spinning tires were sending plumes of snow high into the air.

 

  Some sort of dull sound came from the direction of the trunk. For just a moment, Maiza turned around with concern, but he faced forward again almost immediately and concentrated on driving.

  The man’s voice had fallen silent.

  Seen from the sidelines, the situation was far from normal, but none of the car’s passengers seemed the least bit worried. They simply pressed on through the shadows of the forest.

  Toward a village that would never appear on any map, in search of their old friend…

  People have come to the village.

  They’re riding in something strange.

  A huge metal box. It looks like a carriage, but it isn’t quite that tall.

  It actually looks like the big cart that the traders sometimes arrive in.

  The way it runs all by itself, without using horses, is like the traders, too.

  They don’t seem to be traders, though. It really doesn’t look as if they’ve brought any goods.

  The metal box stops at the entrance to the village. I am the first to notice it.

  However, the first to approach are the villagers.

  They all have weapons in hand. One by one, they surround the cart.

  Someone is going to be hurt again.

  Someone is going to be hurt, again.

  I’m sure of it. This is just like before.

  Just like five years ago, the first time
Master Elmer was killed.

  I only watch. Now, as before, I do nothing but observe the villagers filled with unease and hostility.

  Afterward, I will only send word about it.

  Because that is my duty now.

  “There it is.”

  Finally leaving the forest, the car carrying Maiza and the others advanced down a road that was a little clearer.

  Abruptly, the view opened up, and a blanket of snow spread all around them. At first they thought it was just a plain, but the road seemed to have been built deliberately straight, so they decided that it was probably fields or some sort of farmland.

  “Wheat fields, perhaps?” Maiza wondered.

  At this, Czes and Sylvie looked around. The farmland was surrounded by the forest, and it seemed to cover quite a lot of area. The snow wasn’t very deep, and the ground showed through in places.

  And, at the end of the road, in the direction the car was traveling, they could see several buildings.

  “There actually…is a village,” Czes stated.

  “Is this really private land?” Sylvie wondered.

  With their dumbfounded voices in his ears, Maiza stopped the car near what seemed to be the entrance to the settlement.

  The buildings were made of stone. From a distance, he’d thought they were farm sheds, but apparently they functioned as proper houses. He’d made the mistake because they seemed disparate from the townscapes of the rest of the country.

  Not only were the buildings themselves old, but the atmosphere of the entire village—what he could see of it—seemed somehow old-fashioned. It made him feel as if he’d wandered onto some sort of film set. He looked around, but he saw nothing more modern, and it really did seem as if he’d found his way into a movie.

  The only reason he didn’t mistake the situation for a slip through time was that…the village didn’t look like the past he and the others actually knew. There was something odd about it; it was as if, instead of occurring naturally, it had been built according to someone’s calculations…

  “It’s a larger settlement than I expected.”

  The road continued into the village, and several houses stood alongside it—apparently, it was the main street. In addition to the stone homes, wooden buildings and structures that resembled log cabins gave the street a rather patchwork atmosphere.

  “It looks like they threw this place together in a hurry. Although, it seems too outdated for that…”

  “I think it’s splendid. What a primitive atmosphere.”

  Behind Czes and Maiza, who were exchanging brief opinions, Sylvie gloomily muttered to herself:

  “That’s a pity. It doesn’t look as if they’ll have showers… I doubt they even have running water.”

  Shoulders slumping, eyes downcast, she gave a gratuitously sensual sigh.

  When Maiza replied, his tone had changed very slightly. “Sylvie, I’m afraid that may be the least of our worries.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  At his words, Sylvie looked out the window again. It was then that she noticed it: In the center of the road stood a girl in shabby clothes. She seemed nervous for some reason, and she was staring at them fixedly.

  “That girl? What about her?”

  “Around her.”

  This time Czes had spoken, but his voice held a trace of tension as well.

  Sensing something unusual in his expression, Sylvie held her breath and strained her eyes. Then she realized that although she’d assumed the girl was alone on the road, many other eyes shone there.

  As if they’d materialized from the shadows of buildings and the edges of window frames, a host of human figures were glaring at Maiza’s car from all sorts of places.

  “Hmm. I suspected that might be the case.”

  “What?”

  In response to Czes’s nervous question, Maiza adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. He seemed troubled.

  “The thing is, there are other examples of villages on private land. They often appear in connection with certain religions or illegal organizations, for example.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning there’s no telling what they’ll do to outsiders. It’s possible that they’ll simply turn us over to the police for trespassing, but if we’re unlucky—”

  Narrowing his already threadlike eyes, Maiza bluntly delivered the bottom line.

  “We’ll get an ending I’d rather not think about.”

  “Let’s run. I don’t want trouble.”

  “Wait, Czes. If Elmer is here, we’ll need to ask those people about it either way. If he’s become a member of this village and we explain the situation to them, they’ll give us a warm welcome, too.”

  Czes’s response to Maiza’s wishful thinking was stubbornly pessimistic. “And if they didn’t accept him? Or if he was never here in the first place?”

  “Someone’s coming over here.”

  “Maiza? Hey, answer my question. Look at me! Maiza!”

  Ignoring the fact that Czes was shaking him violently, their driver got out of the car alone.

  “Well, if that happens, we’ll deal with it then. We’ll run away at top speed.”

  A man was walking toward them from farther down the road, followed by several young villagers.

  He was middle-aged, with a mustache and a sharp gleam in his eyes, and he seemed rather nasty. His lean body was wrapped in thick winter gear, but the garments seemed to be composed mostly of furs with no man-made fibers in them. The young people behind him were dressed in a similar fashion, and they carried hunting rifles and metal clubs.

  The rifles were very old models. Working from his memories, Maiza determined that they were from about a century ago.

  The girl standing in the road was in their way, and the village men roughly pushed her aside as they made straight for Maiza’s car. They strode across flagstones where the snow had melted, their eyes sharp with anxiety.

  With each building the group of men passed, the owners of the eyes watching from inside emerged, and little by little the crowd approaching Maiza and the others grew.

  Some of the new figures were women, and for some reason, many held farming hoes or kitchen knives. Even at a glance, it was obvious that the group was brimming over with hostility.

  In response, without any particular sign of fear, Maiza shut the car door. He stretched, but he kept one hand behind his back, curled around the handle, so that if it came down to it, he could jump into the car at any time.

  First things first: I hope we can find a language we both speak…

  “…Who are you? You’re not a trader. How did you get here?”

  Ignoring Maiza’s worry, the whiskered man spoke. Maiza had meant to speak to him first, but the man had stopped farther away than expected.

  For the moment, Maiza was relieved that the other man was using a language he himself knew—the official language of the country—and his expression softened slightly.

  “My apologies. We’re travelers, you see.”

  If he named the person they were looking for right away, he might only make them warier. For now, Maiza decided to say they were traveling and watch how the group reacted.

  “…Travelers?”

  The mustachioed man regarded him with distrust. He glanced to the car, glaring at Maiza. His eyes held a dark light, and Maiza detected an emotion that was closer to loathing than anger.

  After giving Maiza a once-over and taking in the car behind him, the man spoke, his expression still hard.

  “Get all the passengers out here.”

  “Why?”

  “Confirmation. We’re making sure you don’t have anyone suspicious in there.”

  What standard were they planning to base their investigation on? He was concerned, but it wouldn’t be wise to argue needlessly. With that thought, Maiza gave a small sigh and signaled to Czes and Sylvie in the car.

  The moment Czes, who looked like a young boy, got out of the car, the group’s hostility eased, just
a little.

  Then, when Sylvie emerged from the backseat… The eyes of the crowd around them widened slightly.

  She stepped out of the car, pulling on her coat as she went, and directed a silent challenge at the people around her. Then, half closing her androgynous eyes, she leaned against the car door in a gentle motion.

  Sylvie’s actions softened the group’s hostility even further. Several of the men were gazing at her with very different emotions from a moment before.

  “…Is that everybody?” Only one, the man with whiskers, maintained unwavering hostility. He shot a stern look at Maiza.

  “You’re very cautious.”

  Instead of answering the question, Maiza responded ironically.

  Without letting it rile or mollify him, the mustachioed man indifferently replied, “I’m Dez Nibiru, village headman.”

  “Well, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’m—”

  Without listening to Maiza’s self-introduction, the whiskered man—Dez—looked away and continued, “We aren’t interested in outsiders, and you can’t stay here. Leave. Now.”

  “That’s rather unfriendly. We won’t ask you to put us up for the night. Can’t we simply camp somewhere?”

  “The village doesn’t have the leeway to deal with outsiders right now. We don’t want trouble. If you do something uncalled for, that demon will—”

  When he’d spoken that far, Dez faltered slightly.

  “Demon?”

  A face appeared in Maiza’s mind. It belonged to the man they’d called “the demon,” the one who’d given them immortality—a companion who should have been in distant New York now. However, even as he thought it couldn’t possibly be him, he’d asked the village headman just to make sure.

  “Nothing. Never mind, just hurry and get out of this village…no, out of this forest.”

  “What did you mean, ‘demon’?”

  Clicking his tongue irritably at Maiza’s curiosity, the man grudgingly added, “…There’s a monster here.”

  An isolated region in the middle of the forest. A monster that menaced the village.

  The occult story—or rather, a sort of folk tale or legend—had come up abruptly. However, Maiza didn’t snort at it. Instead, he listened quietly to Dez.