The Book of Heroes

by Miyuki Miyabe

  “Very well. From this point on, that which arcs above our heads is Lady U-ri’s ‘sky.’”

  The Archdevout bowed and gently lifted the vestments of protection from U-ri’s shoulders.

  U-ri’s eyes filled with tears, and she put her hands to her face, trying in vain to hold them in.

  “You did well,” Ash said then. “You and your brother both.”

  So this is goodbye.

  “Farewell.”

  And that was their word of parting. Brief and to the point.

  From Ash, she expected nothing else.

  Epilogue

  Several days had passed since U-ri returned home and returned to being Yuriko Morisaki.

  The memories of her journey were still vivid in her mind, yet strangely, no matter how often she thought of what had happened, the sadness that had left her hollow before refused to show itself. She was protected from it, somehow, shielded in stillness and light, her heart as serene as a boat drifting on a quiet sea under a blue sky.

  She had arrived directly from the nameless land to her own room. The first person she met was her double.

  Yuriko’s double had been sitting at her desk, but when the double saw Yuriko, she stood and greeted her, spreading her arms and smiling in silence to show she knew everything that had happened, and she understood.

  Yuriko accepted her embrace, and her double hugged her tight. Her double was warm, despite being made of magic. It seemed like she was there not just to take her place in this region while U-ri traveled through magical lands but to take on Yuriko’s emotional burden. The double would carry the lingering hurt so Yuriko didn’t have to.

  Maybe that was her real purpose all along.

  Yuriko was alone in her room. She hadn’t even noticed her double leave. It was the middle of the night, so she changed and got into bed. When she awoke, her old daily routine was waiting for her, at least her routine such as it had been since Hiroki’s disappearance. Her parents still waited for her brother to return. There was an empty chair at the table and an empty room next to hers.

  Yet Yuriko felt different because she knew what had happened. She knew what had become of her brother, and where he was now.

  She knew in her heart that she just had to tell her parents what she knew somehow and everything would be better. She felt like U-ri was still there too, inside her, supporting her, though that might have only been her imagination.

  I’ll be okay.

  I think.

  An errant breeze tugged at her heart, making her sway, but she soon regained her footing.

  No. I will be okay.

  She started going to school again. There was the occasional uncomfortable silence, the occasional conversation that faltered as she walked by, but things had changed for the better. Time had passed not only for her, but for all her friends as well.

  That, or my double was really hard at work putting things right while I was gone.

  At home, Yuriko’s newfound calm was infectious, and little by little, she could feel her parents relaxing as well. They never forgot Hiroki, of course, not even for a moment. Her mother still cried a lot. There were nights when nobody slept. Yet, like a glyph lighting the darkness, Yuriko was the warm center of the household now, and gradually her family was able to pick itself up off the floor, wipe the dust off its knees, and get back to the business of living.

  If they were going to welcome Hiroki back to the family someday, there was no point letting the place fall apart in the meantime. They had to be strong. Yuriko saw it in her parents’ faces now and then, a kind of bright resolve, a determination to keep going.

  We’ll be okay.

  I think.

  Yuriko put a hand to her chest to still the flutter in her heart.

  Yuriko wondered what had become of Ichiro Minochi’s cottage and reading room, but it wasn’t the easiest thing to ask about. She couldn’t decide on the right timing to bring up the subject.

  The disappointment her mother had suffered when they went there looking for Hiroki still weighed heavily on her, and she didn’t seem eager to talk about the place. And though her father was gradually getting back into life, worrying about how he would split a worthless inheritance from an uncle who wasn’t even a blood relation was low on his list.

  She could just bring it up, but she was afraid she would be bringing back all those memories of the night they had broken in there, full of hope, searching through the darkened cottage to find only dust. How their hope had changed to despair, and their certainty had been dashed to pieces. Her parents would sink back into the funk she’d found them in, and Yuriko wanted to avoid that if at all possible.

  That, and there was a more pressing question on Yuriko’s mind. She had never found out whether her parents knew about the girl Michiru Inui. Had Michiru come to them and told them the truth? Did they know already, and they just weren’t letting on? And if they really didn’t know, should she tell them?

  The police had surely looked into Hiroki’s motives and just as surely passed on anything they had learned to her parents. Yuriko wondered how much of the truth they had really been able to uncover. Had the school been successful in keeping its own missteps out of the public eye?

  Though if they were all that successful, why would the police have come asking me questions?

  Yuriko kept to herself when she thought about these things, so her parents wouldn’t see something in her face to make them worry. When she had taken all the doubts and questions out of her heart and laid them on the table, examining each of them from every possible angle, she came to a conclusion:

  The only people who knew why Hiroki Morisaki had done what he did were Michiru Inui, Ms. Kanehashi, his teacher, and Yuriko. Her parents knew nothing. Neither did the police.

  The teachers at school who knew were pretending they didn’t. They were keeping their mouths shut. Hiroki’s classmates as well, no doubt. It wouldn’t surprise her if the school had taken action to make sure no one tattled.

  Yet Yuriko’s heart still stirred with doubt. She wanted to tell her parents. She wanted to tell them the truth, bitter though it was. She wanted them to see it as she did, to see how Hiroki had sacrificed himself for Michiru, and how close they had been.

  But would Hiroki even want that? Would he want me to tattle?

  One thing was for sure: If she did tell, there would be casualties. It could only make life more miserable for Michiru. She would blame herself again, just like she did when she had met U-ri the “book-spirit” in the school library. No matter how much her parents might try to console her, try to tell her it wasn’t her fault, she would continue to blame herself.

  Yet wasn’t Yuriko blaming herself already? Poor Michiru was doomed either way.

  And there was Ms. Kanehashi. She’d be affected too. She had already tried to take responsibility for the mess in her classroom, and it had done her no good at all. Still, she didn’t think her parents would blame Hiroki’s teacher for that. Rather, they would thank her for doing what she could to try to help. It might even help take some of the burden of guilt off her shoulders. Yuriko was in a position to help her.

  So Yuriko ruminated. Which was the right path?

  What would Hiroki want?

  To this question she could find no answer. The more she thought about it, the less certain she felt. No observation or reasoning could divine the way out of her conundrum. When the light did shine down upon Yuriko’s path, it came from an unexpected direction, on a day in early summer, with vacation not far away.

  “They really found a buyer?” Yuriko’s mother asked, stopping as she carried a plate in from the kitchen. “Somebody actually wants that dingy old place?”

  Her father had come home and sat down at the dinner table that night when he suddenly announced that someone had called wanting to buy Ichiro Minochi’s belongings.

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself, Mother,” her father replied. “No one’s buying the cottage. A man’s come inquiring about those books. Re
member the ones in the reading room?”

  His brother had called with the news that day at lunch, Yuriko’s father explained. “The buyer seemed quite eager. Wanted to make sure that we sold the entire library to him and no one else.”

  The lawyer they had put in charge of the whole affair said it didn’t sound like a bad deal.

  Yuriko sat down next to her mother and began to eat, all the while pricking up her ears to catch any scrap of information she could. Her heart was racing.

  “Were those books really all that valuable?”

  “Seems so. It’s difficult though to find a place that can appraise them, seeing as how some of them are downright ancient, and hardly any are in Japanese. Even if we hired an expert to come and do an appraisal, they wouldn’t be able to handle all of the books, and the appraisal fee would likely be out of this world.”

  The lawyer was advising that they take advantage of the opportunity. It was the easiest way to deal with the matter by far.

  “But then we’d just be taking whatever this buyer quotes us. What if one or two of those books are really worth something?” Yuriko’s mother protested. She was always worried about the bottom line. Not that there was anything wrong with that. Yuriko would rather have her worrying about the family finances than anything else.

  “It’s certainly a possibility,” her father said with a chuckle. “The buyer is a used book salesman himself. And not just any used book salesman.” He leaned across the table with an air of importance. “He’s the manager of that store in Paris where Mr. Minochi had his heart attack.”

  The store was located along the Seine. Its name, translated into Japanese, was The Bubbling Spring. The manager was a man of fifty-five by the name of Frans Culeur.

  “The lawyer showed my brother a picture of him apparently. He’s a handsome old fellow. Looks like Jean Gabin.”

  Her mother frowned. “Who’s Jean Gabin?”

  The stirring in Yuriko’s chest grew into a realization.

  Ichiro Minochi didn’t die in that bookstore. He went to the Haetlands, leaving his humanity—and his sanity—behind.

  But no one here in the Circle, in Yuri’s region, doubted the story that her great-uncle had died in Paris.

  Which means there was a very deft cover-up. And the owner of The Bubbling Spring was involved. Handsome old Frans is a wolf—and even if he isn’t, he knows about the nameless land and the Circle. How else could he have helped Minochi get away?

  And now this conspirator was trying to buy her great-uncle’s books.

  “Well, I think we should sell them to him,” Yuriko said, playing the part of the precocious child. “It would sure make those books happy. I’ll bet some of them even came from this Bubbling Spring place.”

  Her parents looked at each other.

  Yuriko went back to eating, chewing her food while she chewed on another thought. If they sold the lot of books, there would be no more reading room. The books would leave the cottage.

  Before that happens, I want to visit there again. To say goodbye.

  It wasn’t difficult. She just had to mix a little bit of untruth in with the truth.

  Hey, Mom. All that talk about the cottage last night made me remember something important…

  Did you know Hiroki went back, after we visited that one time? With a teacher from school and one of his friends—

  He told me to keep it a secret, and I guess I forgot about it. Sorry!

  I remember the teacher’s name now. Ms. Kanehashi? Maybe she knows who the friend was.

  I think it was a girl.

  Judging from her mother’s reaction, it was clear that she had no idea that Hiroki had been so close to any teacher (nor had Hiroki seen fit to tell her). Even more, the news that there had been a girl Hiroki liked enough to take on a secret summer drive through the mountains hit her like a bolt from the blue.

  Things progressed quickly after that.

  It had not been but three days since Yuriko’s confession when Ms. Kanehashi visited the Morisaki household. Yuriko had pictured the teacher as a slightly dumpy, kindly lady, but when she saw Ms. Kanehashi standing in front of the apartment door, she found she couldn’t have been more wrong. Ms. Kanehashi was light and slender and moved with a spring in her step, like a fawn. She was cute too, with freckles across the bridge of her nose.

  Yuriko wasn’t there when her parents talked to Ms. Kanehashi. She waited in her room, holding her breath and straining her ears to listen. She heard her mother crying a few times, and Ms. Kanehashi crying too.

  Hiroki’s teacher had left the school before summer vacation. The school administration had made it clear they didn’t want her to talk about what had happened. But now that she wasn’t working there anymore, all bets were off.

  It was another two days before Yuriko’s parents went with Ms. Kanehashi to meet Michiru. When they came home that evening, her parents looked exhausted, and her mother’s eyes were swollen and red from crying.

  “Finally I know what he was going through,” Yuriko’s mother said after telling her what they had heard. Her mom put one hand to her chest and began to cry again.

  “Mom, Dad? Are you mad at her?”

  Her father shook his head, but it was her mother who said, “No, we’re not angry.”

  Then she hugged Yuriko to her and whispered, “It’s so sad. So sad,” over and over.

  Finally, they know.

  Yuriko felt more peace inside her than she had in a while. She hugged her mother back.

  It’s now or never.

  “There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

  She wanted to go back to the reading room, before the books were taken away. And she wanted to go there with Ms. Kanehashi and Michiru.

  On the first weekend of summer vacation, six people piled into two cars. The Morisakis led the way, with Ms. Kanehashi, Michiru, and Michiru’s mother in the car behind them. It was a perfect summer day, and they drove out under a blue sky.

  When they arrived, Yuriko had her first experience with bushwhacking. The weeds had grown so thick around Minochi’s cottage that they had to pull out every cutter and clipper they could find just to get through.

  Surprisingly—or perhaps it wasn’t surprising at all—Michiru never recognized Yuriko as U-ri, the book-spirit that had visited her. Even in different clothes, and without U-ri’s particular speech and tone, Yuriko was sure that her face would give her away, but there was not even a glimmer of recognition in the other girl’s eyes.

  Her memory had been erased. That day in the library had never happened as far as Michiru was concerned.

  Is this another one of the Circle’s mechanisms? Yuriko wondered.

  “You’re Morisaki’s little sister, aren’t you?” The princess in her damaged tower smiled brightly at Yuriko. “It’s so nice to meet you. Morisaki always used to talk about his ‘little Yuri.’”

  Then her voice choked and she apologized, a tear rolling from one eye. Her mother reached down and wiped it from her cheek.

  Somehow, Yuriko knew this—them all being here together—was exactly what Hiroki would have wanted.

  They started on the first floor and walked together, examining the different rooms and hallways and talking about the past. They took turns speaking. Or crying. And occasionally even laughing. Until they reached the reading room.

  Whether she was scared, or just couldn’t bear the weight of her own memories, Michiru didn’t want to go into the reading room. No one else spent very long in there either, giving Yuriko plenty of time to herself.

  It was dark inside, even in the middle of the day. The dim light leaked in through the small window. Yuriko would have been able to see if any of the books were shining, even faintly, but not a single one glimmered. Nor did any of them speak a word.

  The glyph was gone from the middle of the floor. It had been neatly swept away. Yuriko guessed that Ash had been here and seen to that. Still, it hadn’t kept her from hoping that were she to stand in the reading room alone
, something would change—something miraculous might happen.

  There were no miracles today.

  The Circle was closed, as was her path to the nameless land.

  The only thing coming from the countless old books in that room now was an oppressive silence.

  She took a step toward the stepladder she had sat on during her previous visit, when something wrapped around her ankle—the same strip of black cloth she had found when she first came here with Aju.

  The way it wrapped around her foot was almost lifelike. With a shiver, she reached down to yank it off, and found it surprisingly heavy in her hands.

  What is this thing? Wait—

  Even as she held it, one edge of the cloth was turning to black dust. She watched as it spread, until the whole length of it had evaporated into fine particles.

  Yuriko suddenly realized what it was, the realization coming not from within but as though someone had thrown it into her mind from the outside.

  This is the cloth that Mr. Minochi used to hold the Book of Elem. That’s why I found it lying on the floor. Hiroki must have dropped it when he took the book.

  It had been so heavy. Perhaps some enchantment was on it. Something to distract the Hero’s gaze.

  She wondered where the book was now.

  Perhaps the Hero, now more and more Kirrick every day, had retrieved it. How much of his own fragmented body had Kirrick been able to collect?

  But all that was happening far, far away in the Haetlands.

  “Aju?” she ventured in a tiny voice. “Aju, are you there?”

  There was no response. Yuriko had been ready for this, but still, it was another disappointment. She hoped Aju hadn’t been injured during their run-in with the Hero.

  There was a noise behind her, and Yuriko whirled around, expecting to see the tiny mouse there, his whiskers twitching with pride; or the man with strands of ashen gray hair, the tattered hem of his coat dragging on the floorboards—

  Michiru was standing in the doorway, a hand on the frame, staring in at her. “Yuriko?”