The Book of Heroes

by Miyuki Miyabe

  At the top of the dome was a small protrusion—a handle on the kettle. It was round, like the little onions her mother used to put in her stew sometimes, or like a dollop of whipped cream on a shortcake.

  Then it hit her. This is a picture-book building. In a fairy-tale town.

  A place that existed only in the imagination. A place that belonged in stories. A town that was nowhere.

  Yuriko walked, her sneakers squishing across the damp cobblestones. The feel of the stones must have been just as strange to her sneakers—which were accustomed to walking on the pavement by her school, the shopping street, and the sidewalk near her house—as this town seemed to Yuriko.

  I wonder if the nameless devout are cold with bare feet like that. She could see the lines of their bones clearly where their feet stuck out from the bottom of their robes. She hadn’t even known it was possible for people to be so thin.

  She wondered if life was hard in this place.

  She began to think that the giant’s child had a hand in building the whole, strange, marvelous town—perhaps with a little help from its father. But the town was filled with these barefooted, terribly thin guardians who watched over all the books in the world.

  Protecting the books.

  Protecting the books from something.

  Protecting something from the books.

  One part of the domed roof straight ahead of them was curled back, like a dancer’s fingertips, creating a gap between the roof and the ground beneath it. This was the entrance. Now that she was close, Yuriko realized that the dome alone was not connected to any other building.

  Steps rose in layered semi-circles from the cobblestone path toward the entrance. They were made of bronze and looked slippery. The doors at the top were surprisingly small, hinged in the middle so they folded like an accordion to one side. These too were covered with letters. Letters, letters, and more letters, all carved in relief.

  A nameless devout stood to either side of the doors. Yuriko looked up at them and gasped.

  They all have the same face!

  The monks bowed silently, and the doors opened. When one set of doors opened, she saw behind them another set of doors identical to the first. And beyond them, another set. And another. Wait a second. That doesn’t make sense. Are the walls to this place that thick? It didn’t seem like there would be any space at all inside once she had gotten through all those doors. One by one, the doors opened. Yuriko passed through them as though pushed by an invisible hand from behind. No, she was being sucked in toward the center of the dome. Her feet had left the floor and she flew through the air. The black robes of the nameless devout in front of her drew closer, then farther away. She was having trouble focusing.

  Then the smell of incense brought her back to her senses.

  This place was toying with Yuriko’s sense of distance and space. The dome had seemed large enough from the outside, but inexplicably, the inside seemed even larger.

  It’s a coliseum—an arena. The thought occurred to her suddenly. Or maybe it’s some kind of round theater? She noticed the round dais that sat in the very middle. Steps circled the dais, rising up like an inverted cone. Some kind of low walls ran down the steps, or maybe they were actual seats—she couldn’t tell, because every inch of open space on the steps was filled with black-robed nameless devout.

  “To the center, please,” the one who had walked with Yuriko said as he drew off to one side. Yuriko walked toward the circular stage. No one in the entire place so much as sniffled. It was perfectly quiet, but Yuriko could feel the gazes of the nameless devout on her.

  Her legs felt shaky again, and she found she had trouble lifting up her feet. Her toes wanted to trip on the floor and send her sprawling. She almost did fall, but still, no one said a word. She couldn’t hear a single voice, just the gentle squeaking of her sneakers on the floor.

  Directly above the circular stage hung a glass orb that looked like a large light bulb. It was high above the floor, yet still looked big—so it must have been very large indeed. Yuriko walked slowly beneath it, afraid that if she were to make some mistake here, the giant light bulb might come crashing down on top of her.

  A chill ran across her forehead.

  At the same time, the bulb above the stage began to shine.

  Now her forehead was shining too. It seemed like the light from her forehead was aimed directly at the glass sphere above her. Like a spotlight was emanating from her own head, illuminating the bulb.

  She saw the magic circle appear on the side of the giant sphere. That light reflected back down onto the stage, making the floor glow. It was another giant magic circle.

  “Allcaste!” the masses of nameless devout said as one, “step into the circle.”

  Though her teeth were chattering so loudly with fear she was afraid they might fall out of her mouth, Yuriko walked into the circle upon the floor.

  When she reached the center of the circle, it shone more brightly than before; then the light subsided, trapped inside the whorls and eddies of the pattern again, flowing along the lines of the circle. The lines went dark, and only the corners where two lines met sparkled. Then it seemed like a strip of light began to snake its way along the lines of the pattern, tracing out a figure eight.

  “Lift your eyes. There is no need for fear.” It wasn’t a chorus. The thousands, no, tens of thousands of nameless devout were talking to Yuriko with one voice, and the sound was deafening.

  Yuriko looked up. She was in the middle of the dais, the lowermost part of the amphitheater, surrounded by the nameless devout. The top row was so distant from where she stood she could barely make out the monks sitting there. But it was enough for Yuriko to see the faces of the nameless devout standing in the rows closest to her.

  They all looked the same. They weren’t triplets, or quintuplets, or anything like that. They all had the same face, the same body.

  All thousand of them, all ten thousand of them.

  All one of them. So that’s what he meant.

  Yuriko’s internal surprise meter was completely overloaded. The needle spun around so fast it broke. Yuriko stood with her mouth hanging open, looking up at the sea of black robes. Is this what it’s like to be a rock star playing the Tokyo Dome? Except her Tokyo Dome was filled with monks. And she wasn’t singing. Though some kind of hymn might have been appropriate.

  “Um…hi?” Yuriko said, her voice cracking. “N-nice to meet you.”

  As one, the sea of nameless devout bowed in reply. The robes made a sound like waves rippling. This isn’t some kind of hallucination. They’re all really there.

  “M-m-my name is Yuriko Morisaki.”

  The nameless devout bowed again, sending a shudder through the air of the dome.

  “What’s, um, your name?”

  “We are the nameless devout,” they replied.

  It was her against thousands. She felt like the strength of their voice would crush her.

  “S-sorry. Would it be okay if only one of you spoke?”

  The room fell silent. Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to say. She hoped she hadn’t inadvertently insulted them.

  Then, a single of the devout broke from one of the rows directly in front of her. Cutting down through the rows, he walked toward Yuriko. Yuriko waited in the perfect silence of the dome for him to get to her. She could hear the faint slap, slap of his bare feet on the floor as he got closer.

  The nameless devout stopped a short distance away from her and lowered his head, addressing her as “Allcaste.” She noticed his feet had stopped short of touching the magic circle on the ground. “Will this make it easier for you to speak with us?”

  The devout had the same face as the one who had brought her here, with the same dark brows. His voice was the same too.

  Yuriko nodded. “Yes, thank you.”

  The nameless devout smiled a smile that had a far more powerful effect on Yuriko than she had expected. The tension seemed to drain from her body. She felt like she could b
reathe normally for the first time since she had entered the dome.

  She looked up and saw that the masses of nameless devout were all looking down at her with the same face, the same smile.

  “We who have no name have no true individual form,” the nameless devout said, spreading the sleeves of his robes. “We can change our appearance to make your dealings with us easier, if you wish. We are very young now, I fear. You were surprised to see us this way, weren’t you?”

  Yuriko nodded.

  “I believe that when you heard we looked like monks, you pictured someone far older—like this, perhaps.”

  The nameless devout rubbed his face with his hand, and like that, he changed. His head was still bald, but now his brows were long and white, and wrinkles lined his face. His back was slightly bent, so that he stood no taller than Yuriko.

  She looked up, and sure enough the thousands of nameless devout looking down at her had all become the same old man.

  “Th-thank you,” she stammered. “I think I can get used to this face.”

  I shouldn’t look up at them. I should just focus on the one here in front of me. I’ll think of the rest of them as…as scenery.

  Not that it wasn’t an unusual and interesting experience to have tens of thousands of old men staring down at her so intently.

  “I suppose you know why I’ve come here?”

  The nameless devout nodded. “You seek your brother.”

  “Yes. My brother, Hiroki. He has become the last vessel.”

  When she said it, she felt something inside her harden. One astonishment after the other had thrown her completely off balance, but now she felt like she was finally starting to get her feet back underneath her. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’ve come to the nameless land. The place where the Hero was imprisoned. The place from which it escaped.

  “The book who sent me here said that you might be able to help,” Yuriko said, taking a step back and bowing so low her face almost touched her knees. “Please, you have to help me. Tell me what I need to do in order to find my brother.”

  There was silence. Yuriko closed her eyes tight.

  Nothing happened. Slowly, she opened her eyes again. Then she saw the old monk’s withered feet stepping onto the magic circle on the floor.

  The nameless devout put a hand on Yuriko’s head. “I am sorry for your plight,” he said in a voice that was low and gentle. “Most of the allcaste who come here are young. For only the young souls are able to find their way to this land.”

  This confirmed what she had heard from Aju and the Sage.

  “Yet even among their number, your soul is particularly small and lacking strength. You are but a girl. Your cheeks are soft, your arms thin, and your legs so weak they are barely able to hold your own weight. Yet still you would go on this quest to find your brother?”

  Yuriko looked up, and the old nameless devout stroked her head once before drawing back his hand.

  When she looked up at him again, she saw in his eyes that he was sad for her. He was truly sorrowful for her plight. All the words of sympathy and consolation she had received up to that point added together couldn’t match what she saw in the monk’s eyes that instant. It was a look more gentle than his hand on her head.

  They know about the Hero. They know about the King in Yellow. They know about the vessels. And what happened to my brother. They won’t laugh it off, they won’t not believe. I don’t have to explain anything to them. They know it all.

  The thought gave Yuriko great courage. “I am a little girl, but that doesn’t mean I’m weak,” she told the devout. His thinking was clearly a little behind the times. “We can do everything boys can do. Sometimes better. I’ll be okay. With your help, I hope!”

  She would find her brother, rescue him, and help them find the King in Yellow again—but the old nameless devout raised a bony hand to stop her.

  “Allcaste. I believe you are mistaken.”

  “Mistaken? About what?”

  “It was we who bound the Hero here in imprisonment.”

  “Yes, I know. That’s why—”

  “But now the Hero has broken free from its prison and escaped into your Circle. We do not have the power to hunt the Hero there. We are bound just as it was to this land. We are not warriors.”

  “So then who’s going to capture the Hero? Don’t we have to capture it in order to imprison it again?”

  The nameless devout shook his head. “No one can capture the Hero.”

  For a moment, all Yuriko could do was stand there, gaping.

  “All one can do is sap its power in order to pull it back into the flow. Because the Hero is a story it can be absorbed within the flow of the great story and placed upon the Great Wheels of Inculpation, which will bring it back here of its own accord. Only then might we seek to imprison it again.”

  The great wheels of incul-what? What’s that?

  “This land is the origin of stories,” the nameless devout continued, his eyes firmly on hers. This was a lecture. “Here, stories are born, emerge, and fade. It is from here that stories leave, and to here they return. The Great Wheels of Inculpation are those that speed the birth of stories—devices, if you will.”

  It was their job, the nameless devout explained, to keep pushing the wheels; their “duty” was the word he used.

  “But Aju and the Sage—and all of the books I met—they said you could help me.”

  “If it is wisdom you seek then help you we can. We might also find the map which you seek. Yet we cannot give chase to the Hero, nor hunt it down. In truth, we cannot even stand up to the Hero, for we are the inculpated.”

  There was that word again, but Yuriko didn’t have time now to wonder about what it meant. What the nameless devout was telling her was not what she had expected to hear.

  “So I’m all alone? Nobody will come with me?”

  There are so many of you!

  Though her distress was certainly clear to him, the old monk spoke just as calmly as before. “Allcaste.” He stepped forward and placed a hand on Yuriko’s shoulder. “You have many allies other than us. The books are your friends. They know that the Hero has escaped, and even now they begin their hunt. The wolves too will make their presence known to you before long. And in regions you do not yet know of there are swordsmen and sorcerers who might aid in sapping the Hero’s power.”

  Swordsmen? Sorcerers?

  Yuriko had begun to shake her head—she was starting to lose track of what he was saying—when the nameless devout shook her lightly by the shoulder. She looked up.

  “You must not despair. There are as many regions as there are stars in the heavens.”

  “What are these ‘regions’? Are they like the world where I live? There are no swordsmen and sorcerers in my neighborhood, that’s for sure.”

  The nameless devout smiled. “The place where you live is a region, yes. But there are many other regions. It is these of which I speak.”

  The nameless devout explained to her then that all of the countless stories that flowed through the Circle were each in themselves a region. “Each has their own place within the Circle, closed to the others.”

  Yuriko frowned, not quite getting it. Stories moving through the Circle?

  “You mean like books?”

  “Not only books. Though that may be their original form, many regions appear in different forms as well.”

  “Like movies? And comic books? And games?” Yuriko asked, her voice rising higher with each question. “You mean I have to go into those regions to find help?”

  “Wherever your brother’s trail leads, you must follow. Whether it stays in the real or strays into fantasy.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “You can, because you are an allcaste.”

  Yuriko touched the glyph on her forehead. Her head was swimming. The mark felt heavy against her skin. I’ve been branded.

  “You look tired. You should rest.”

  How do they
always know what I’m thinking? One more comment like that and I might just lose my temper.

  “I will show you to your quarters.”

  Then the old nameless devout lifted a hand, and another came down the stairs to the amphitheater floor. This one’s face was young, the same as the one she had first met. When she looked around, she saw that all of the nameless devout, save the old monk who had been talking to her, were young again.

  “I alone will stay in this form, so that you may know me and take comfort in it,” the lone old devout said. Then he smiled, the wrinkles deepening at the corners of his eyes.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Great Wheels

  Following the twisting paths and corridors that led from the Dome of Convocation, Yuriko passed through three stone buildings, each one a different shape and size. For a moment, she was walking outside through a garden under the weak sunlight; then she was back inside yet another building. This was the lodge where the nameless devout lived. Yuriko was to be appointed a room here with them.

  From the outside, the lodge also appeared to be made from stone, but inside she noticed rafters and posts carved from ancient, thick logs. Boards ran across the floor, the wood stained dark with age. The furniture was all wooden as well, with nothing resembling the intricately wrought metal fixtures she had seen inside the other buildings.

  Following the young devout, Yuriko climbed up the stairs to the third floor—at least she guessed it was the third floor, based on the windows and stair landings she passed on the way up. The wooden stairs creaked under her feet, but the railing was made of a cold metal that resembled the smooth black material of the portcullis at the side entrance.

  There were very few windows in the lodge, making it rather dark inside. The stairs were steep, and each step very high, so that Yuriko’s calves ached by the time they reached the top.

  “This way.”

  The nameless devout opened an iron-framed wooden door to a cell. The room was small, with a right wall made of what looked like clay. The ceiling slanted up to a triangular window at the top. The left-hand wall was a bookshelf, packed full of books.