The Book of Heroes

by Miyuki Miyabe

  “So, you mean my brother was angry at someone?”

  The room was silent.

  Maybe I’m running ahead again, Yuriko thought to herself, despondent. When the Sage spoke again, he did not answer her question directly, but instead observed, “Those who live in this Circle, including yourself, seem to always think of the Hero as something good and beautiful. They point at the Hero’s light parts, and call it so. Which is why, when it falls to us to explain the truth of the Hero as I do to you now, there is always this confusion, this inability to understand at first.”

  He was probably right. Yuriko felt like things had only gotten more and more confused in her head since she started talking to the books.

  “Yeah…” she agreed.

  “Then let us call it by a different name. The good of the Hero shall be called the ‘hero’ as you have always thought of it. And the dark side of the Hero, that which is evil, shall be called the ‘King in Yellow.’”

  The King in Yellow?

  Next to her, Aju repeated the words. The King in Yellow.

  Suddenly, an image sprang into Yuriko’s head. The strange silhouette she had seen in Hiroki’s room did have a crown like a king’s, and a cape—though it had been too dark for her to see what color it was.

  “A long while before you were born, more than a century ago, there was a weaver in this Circle.”

  “That’s a person who writes the stories,” Aju explained.

  “You mean an author?”

  “Something like that.”

  “This weaver, his name was Chambers, got as close to the truth of the Hero as a human being can get,” the Sage continued, “and he wrote about it in a book titled The King in Yellow.”

  It wasn’t a novel, as Yuriko had expected. In the book, the weaver had described a play.

  “Those who knew of the play shunned it, saying it would lead any who read it to their ruination. But while there were those who feared it—and rightly so—there were many others who sought it out.”

  “So this King in Yellow book was another copy of the Hero, right?”

  “Correct. One of the most powerful copies of all.”

  Then she sensed that the Sage was smiling. He was pleased with her. He’s tough when he’s scolding me, she thought, but sometimes he can be nice.

  “That is why, when we talk about the darker side of the Hero, we sometimes call it the King in Yellow.”

  Yuriko made a mental note of this. It certainly would be easier having two ways to talk about the Hero, she could tell.

  “Notice, Yuriko, that the Hero changes its shape depending on who views it. In a sense, it becomes that for which they search. That is why the Hero will not always appear as a king. Nor will he always be shrouded in yellow. The Hero appeared in royal regalia when you saw it because that is what your brother wished to see. Your brother must have felt that a cape and a crown were appropriate garb for something of great power.”

  Yuriko thought back, trying to remember the comics and books and movies her brother liked. “I think you’re right,” she told the Sage.

  It was difficult for Yuriko to imagine some powerful person who didn’t look like the king she had seen in Hiroki’s room. He certainly wouldn’t look like the prime minister—that would just be a regular old man in a suit. What about a general in a uniform? No, the king sprang to mind much easier than that. Now that she thought about it, kings were everywhere. In the picture books their mother used to read to them, in the video games her brother always played.

  “I think I get it,” Yuriko said slowly. “So the King in Yellow was what made my brother do what he did.”

  The King in Yellow and its evil, terrible power.

  “Now, Yuriko, I want you to consider something else for me. Imagine you were stripped of your freedom, locked in one place for an impossibly long time. What would you want the most?”

  Yuriko didn’t have to think about that one too hard. “I’d want to be free,” she answered almost immediately.

  “This too, the King in Yellow wanted. Yet to become free, it needed more power. Power to break the bonds that held it. The King in Yellow gets this power by using its copies throughout the Circle to possess a vessel. Not even the nameless devout can prevent this from happening.”

  “Why not? Can’t they just gather up all the copies?”

  “All of the copies in the entire Circle?”

  “Sure.”

  “That would take an unimaginable amount of time. And it would be in vain.”

  “Why?”

  “Men hide the copies,” the Sage said. “And make copies of the copies. Over and over.”

  Yuriko frowned. A wrinkle crossed her pale forehead as she sat there in the darkened reading room surrounded by mountains of books. “Then can’t you just pick up the Hero wherever it is? Not just turn off the faucet, I mean, but pick up all the water and the bucket with it?”

  There was a pause, and then the Sage replied, his tone soft again, “But that would mean taking all the good that the Hero had done out of the Circle as well.”

  “Then, can’t you just collect the bad ones?”

  “What is good, and what is evil? Where do you draw the line between the two?”

  Now Yuriko was getting a little upset. I’m just in fifth grade, you know. They haven’t taught us difficult things like that yet.

  “There are some who, even though they may touch a copy, do not become vessels. Some who are entranced by a copy, and yet do good by it. Others realize the danger that a copy represents and roam the world, seeking to find them and hide them away.”

  Yuriko looked to Aju, hoping he could make some sense out of this, but her friend was silent. If the red book had eyes, they were looking away.

  “In any case,” the Sage was saying, “it is impossible to stop the stories from cycling through the Circle. What did I tell you at the beginning? The Circle and the story are one. Lose the story, and the Circle will disappear. To put it another way, it would mean that all culture and civilization would vanish from the world.”

  Leaving only the world as it is. With people, living as animals.

  Once she had figured it out, Yuriko agreed that sounded like a very bad thing.

  “So the King in Yellow gathers power through its copies,” the Sage continued, “and so it has for a very long time. One vessel leaves, and another appears to take its place. All of them work to give more power to the King in Yellow.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “What do you think?”

  To be honest, Yuriko was having trouble thinking of anything. Her heart and her head were so full of thoughts and emotions tugging her this way and that, she was having trouble picking one to follow. Anger rose in her, then left just as quickly, leaving her feeling like she wanted to cry. She was exhausted.

  From behind her, another book said something in a soft, sweet, feminine voice. Yuriko turned around.

  “What was that? Could you say that again?”

  “Battle,” the voice said. “Conflict.”

  War, thought Yuriko. She means war. “You mean the people who the King in Yellow possesses want to start wars?” Yuriko asked loudly, looking between the deep green glow of the Sage and the faint purple light of the book with the soft, sweet voice.

  “There are many wars now in your Circle,” the Sage pointed out.

  “Not in Japan.”

  “I said in your Circle.”

  Yuriko knew that much. It was in the newspapers and on the nightly news.

  “And by conflict, I did not mean only wars,” the female voice said. “People take lives. They fight with other people. All of these are forms of conflict.”

  “So are crimes conflict too? Like murder?”

  “They are,” the female voice said, trembling with sorrow. “There is conflict even in the taking of a single life.”

  Like Hiroki had done when he stabbed a boy to death and wounded another.

  “Whenever a vessel creates conflict,” the
Sage said, “The King in Yellow’s power increases. It grows over years, decades, centuries—until it has enough to break free. Enough power to destroy an entire planet.”

  To generate such power took a very long time, the Sage explained, and a very great number of vessels were used and discarded along the way.

  “No matter how high the tower, if you continue to climb, eventually, you will reach the top. No matter how deep the chasm, if it keeps raining, it will eventually fill to the brim.”

  Yuriko finally understood. The last vessel was the one who gave the King in Yellow the final bit of power it needed to break its bonds.

  “Yes, that is the last vessel. The Summoner. And when its bonds are broken, and it is free, the King in Yellow borrows this last vessel’s body that it might manifest itself within the Circle. Your brother,” the Sage said softly, “has become the King in Yellow.”

  Yuriko buried her face in her hands. Her body was trembling, even in the magical warmth of the reading room.

  “So, Hiroki…”

  All around her, the books winked and blinked, their many shades of color covering her like a blanket, protecting her.

  “…Where is he? If he’s in the Circle, does that mean he’s here, in this world?”

  No one answered.

  “You mean you don’t know?” Yuriko asked with a sigh of despair. “You have no idea? Not even a hint?”

  “I’m sorry,” the sweet female voice whispered.

  “We cannot be sure that the King in Yellow still uses your brother’s form,” the Sage said quietly. “As the last vessel, the boy may already have been consumed.”

  “Aw, you didn’t have to tell her that,” Aju protested. “Think of the poor girl.”

  “As you thought of her when you brought her here, Aju?”

  Aju fell into a sullen silence.

  “You asked about a hint?” the Sage said. “A hint, we do not have. But I know where you can find one.”

  Yuriko looked up so quickly her ponytail made an audible slap against her back. “Really?”

  “Were you to visit the nameless land, the devout there might be able to teach you something. Perhaps they will even aid your cause…and perhaps you will be able to aid theirs.”

  Yuriko remembered something Aju had said. “I’m…qualified, right?”

  “Yes, because you are of the same flesh as the last vessel.”

  And because I’m a child.

  “Why can’t adults leave the Circle, again?”

  “Because adults carry within them the stain of too many stories. Were they to step into the nameless land, they would not be able to maintain their current form. They would likely not even be able to remain as people.”

  Yuriko didn’t understand all of this, but the gist of it seemed clear enough—it had to be her. Her mother or father couldn’t go. Neither could the police or the army.

  “Or, you could just leave it be, Yuriko, and do nothing.”

  Yuriko’s eyes went wide with surprise. What did he just say?

  “You are still young. And weak. You need not take on this burden.”

  “But if I don’t, won’t the world be destroyed?”

  “No, this Circle will be destroyed.”

  “What’s the difference what you call it?”

  “If the Circle is destroyed, another will take its place. And Yuriko, this Circle will not die immediately. It still has time. Enough time, perhaps, for you to become an adult, grow old, live a full life. You must not forget, Yuriko, it is the Hero that has broken free of its bonds. A story that combines both the good hero, as you know it, and the King in Yellow. When the Hero appears in your Circle, it will not appear only as the great evil that is the king. There will be a great good to match it.”

  So her Circle wouldn’t be destroyed just like that. “There’s going to be a war, isn’t there. A war between good and evil.”

  The Sage winked twice as if to nod. “Yes. And many people will be involved in that war. You will not be fighting it alone. Even if you do fight, you can wait until you are grown to do so.”

  Then Aju glimmered brightly in the darkness, trying to catch her eye. “Little miss. I thought you should know that there are people in the Circle who have already sensed that the Hero is free. Grown-ups too, not children. It won’t be long before they act.”

  “Who? What kind of people?”

  “People who have traveled the world looking for copies. Remember what the Sage said? They are those people who seek out the copies so they can hide them.”

  “And those who seek to study the copies and learn the true nature of the Hero,” the Sage added. “And those who would use that knowledge as a fortress to defend this Circle from the King in Yellow.”

  These people would follow the Hero’s every move, the Sage told her, and acquire the knowledge they needed to hunt down the King in Yellow. “We call these people the ‘wolves.’ Because they have keen noses, sharp fangs, and swift legs that never tire.”

  “So,” Aju added as brightly as he could muster, “you could just leave the fighting to them, little miss. You don’t have to do this.”

  Yuriko mulled over what the two books had said, weighing their words against each other. Her heart was racing so fast, she found it hard to even think clearly, but she did what she could to focus. She combed the tangles out of her disheveled hair with her fingers and sniffled. Somewhere along the line, she had gotten a runny nose.

  “Will these ‘wolves’ save my brother?” she asked at last. That was where all her thoughts led—to her brother.

  Neither the Sage nor Aju replied. Even the book with the sweet female voice was quiet.

  “They won’t, will they,” Yuriko said, answering her own question. “Why would they go out of their way to do that?”

  And besides, if they waited any longer, they might run out of time.

  “I have to go. I have to go save my brother,” she said with finality, and a shiver ran through her. At the same time, a shiver also ran through every book in the reading room, like a collective sigh.

  “So, that is the way of it, then,” the Sage said, his voice echoing. Yuriko looked up. “You’re already part of the Hero’s story.”

  Me? Part of the Hero?

  “Do not forget, child. Make yourself remember. Say it to yourself in the morning when you wake and at night when you lay down to rest: the Hero and the King in Yellow are two sides of the same coin.”

  “Are you sure about this?” Aju asked, his earlier confidence gone. “She’s just a little girl.”

  “We will send Yuriko to the nameless land.”

  “But—”

  “It’s okay, Aju,” Yuriko said, gently stroking the book’s cover. “I’ll do my best. And I won’t be alone. I’m sure I’ll find someone to help me in the nameless land, and even if I don’t, I’m sure I’ll come across the wolves while I’m looking for my brother. They’ll help me for sure.”

  Even if I have to start my journey alone.

  “Wait, I know!” Aju shouted. “Why don’t you look for the wolves here first? I’m sure that Minochi had encounters with wolves. Maybe some of them even visited.”

  “You think so?” Yuriko asked, feeling a light of hope go on inside her. “You mean one of Mr. Minochi’s friends?”

  “Yet we do not know who might be, or where,” the Sage responded. “Minochi was wary of the wolves. He would not have invited one here to his home.” There had been some visitors who might have been wolves, the Sage explained, but her great-uncle had always turned them away at the door.

  “Maybe he took down an address or something,” Aju suggested, unwilling to give up so easily. “He might have gotten a phone number!”

  “Like in an address book?”

  “Right! Seen one anywhere?”

  Yuriko had not. If her great-uncle did have anything of the sort, she supposed he’d probably have had it with him when he collapsed in Paris. Yuriko had no idea who might have it now.

  “Then you shou
ld start by trying to find that. You could wake up your parents and ask them.”

  Yuriko hesitated. It seemed like a good idea. But if she woke up her parents, she would have to try to explain the whole story to them. That would take forever.

  “Aju, do you think you could explain it to my parents for me?”

  “Of course!” Aju said enthusiastically, but the Sage cut him off.

  “Even were the girl’s parents to see the truth with their eyes and hear the truth with their ears, they would not believe it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Aju, calm yourself and think about it for a moment. I believe you already know why.”

  Placed in the same position as Yuriko had been, adults would doubt before they believed. They would doubt their own eyes and ears—and their sanity.

  There was a long pause before Aju glumly agreed. “You’re right.”

  It was as the Sage said.

  Yuriko closed her eyes and then stood up from the stepladder. “I haven’t come this far just to sit around and do nothing.”

  “Then first, Yuriko, we must fashion your replica.”

  “A replica?”

  “Were you to leave your parents here alone, would they not be worried about you?”

  They sure would. But how…? “What exactly do you mean by ‘fashion your replica’?”

  “It is best you see it for yourself,” the Sage replied. He then called out “Vagesta?” and a book answered from Yuriko’s left side, from a shelf at just about the height of her head.

  “Step toward me, miss,” said a soft female voice, “and hold out both hands in front of you, if you would. I will fly to you, so please catch me.”

  Yuriko stuck out her hands, and a black, velvety book fell into them.

  “Let us begin,” the book said. “First, I’ll need a strand of your hair.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Nameless Land

  Before she even opened her eyes, Yuriko felt a slight breeze against her skin. It brushed across her forehead, lifting up her bangs.

  And the smells—there was dirt and grass, and something else. A smell she had never encountered in the city where she lived. An unfamiliar smell.