A Small Charred Face

by Kazuki Sakuraba

  I hurled myself toward the ground, a comet burning up and plummeting through the atmosphere. Once I was close enough, I pulled my brother close to me like a treasure. And then I looked up at the sky. I could still see many takezoku flying in the direction of the castle. They ascended along the surface of the mountain and grew distant. No one had known it would be upon us this suddenly, but the end result of the humans’ attack was that the time of our move had been moved up to that very morning. Everyone flew with whatever they could carry, without looking back, into the mountains, into the darkness, toward the forest of the past. They fled. In order to survive. They raced away as fast as they could.

  My brother and I ran down the alley, shoulders pressed up against each other. The soles of my bare feet hurt. Panting heavily, my little brother gripped my hand tightly. Frightened, he had started to cry.

  When we turned the corner heading toward my friends’ hut, we came across a group of humans running along from the opposite side. We shrank into the shadows. I looked back at the road we had just come down, but in the blink of an eye, humans had appeared there, too. They saw us and called out happily before readying their guns and bows.

  “What? Sis! What is this? Why? We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “We’re about to be killed by ignorance… This way!” I wanted to fly! But if we leaped into the sky now, we’d simply be easy targets for arrows and bullets.

  Crouch down and run! Arrows whizzed by on either side of us. My little brother seemed like he would tumble to the ground at any moment. We fled down the alley, finally arriving before my friends’ hut. Just beyond it was the boat, a handmade ship to take us away from this country. It was very nearly complete. Aah, but… I put my hand on the door, despaired, cried out. The door was locked from the inside.

  “Open up!”

  There was no answer. There was no one there.

  The humans moved to surround us. I shoved my brother behind me and blocked their path.

  “Hey! There’s two of ’em over here!” I could heard them shouting to each other. The crowd before us grew larger. The girl was in the front row, and our eyes met again. She shook her head as though uncertain, but then she looked around and readied her weapon, following the lead of her comrades. The humans just kept coming.

  At that moment, I remembered, like a revelation. My brother was small enough that he could easily fit through the round hole in the door. Instinctively, I gave up on myself. It was too late.

  “Go!” I ordered, in a quiet voice.

  “Huh?” my brother asked in reply, extremely perplexed.

  “Look, just do what I tell you! Go through the hole into the hut and out through the hole in the back door. And then—right, get on the ship! I’m sure you can do it!”

  “Huh? But—”

  “We won’t be able to make it to the mountains. There are too many humans, and the sun is rising. There’s nowhere for us to run now. So hurry up, go!”

  “But, Sis!”

  “You have to live,” I continued, my voice hoarse. “You have to live. The mountains, the darkness, the sea, they will still have a past and a present. As long as you live. As long as you just stay alive for me somewhere. Now hurry! Hurry up and go! Go already!” My roar was tinged with the exact same echo of strength as my father’s.

  My little brother yanked weakly at my cloak in protest. The humans were inching closer.

  I shoved him. Hard. I watched as the vivid blue fabric wrapping his small body slipped safely through the round hole. And then his face popped up on the other side of the hole.

  “Hey, c’mon, Sis!” he said, reaching a slender arm out toward me. He looked so worried. My tiny, adorable brother.

  “What are you doing?! Hurry up and get on the boat! You have to get on it!”

  “No!”

  “What? No?”

  “Wait!” My brother’s face shone as if he’d just hit upon a good idea. “I’ll unlock the door. So you can come in—”

  “Y-you can’t!” I panicked. “If you do, the humans will come in too. Just go. Hurry and get on the boat!”

  “No way. I can’t just leave you here. I can’t!” My brother got serious. His eyes were so clear, so kind. I heard the sound of the lock rattling.

  He can’t… If I stay here like this, I’ll kill my brother…

  I turned around. The humans were closing in for the kill. I met the girl’s eyes again. Silently, I begged her, Hurry and shoot! Shoot me! But even now a light of hesitation flickered across her face, and her arms began to tremble. She simply opened her sad eyes wide, not so much as attempting to shoot. I could hear my brother trying to get the door open. Aah…

  I closed my eyes.

  I braced myself.

  I stood blocking the round hole.

  “The ship! You have to get on it!” I ordered him one more time. Forcefully, like a king.

  But my brother was stubborn like me. “As if I could leave you. No way. I mean, you’re my sister. Hold on a sec, I’m almost—”

  “Go, my brother!” I prayed from the bottom of my heart. To the land of the future! Live for me. That was my sole desire now.

  Perhaps realizing what I was about to do, the human girl hurriedly lowered her gun. She opened her mouth wide and reached out to me. I lifted my arms, and the light-blocking fabric covering my body slowly slid to the ground. I knew that my entire body was beginning to smoke, to burn in the light of the sun. And then I vanished.

  One last time, with feeling, I called my little brother’s name.

  “Ruirui!”

  I…

  I…had a…little brother… A small…one…

  I-I don’t want to live like I’m dead anymore. Not one day, not one more day. I’m done.

  I mean, we’ve always lived on this mountain, right? So we don’t know any other way to live, you know? And they said going to a new land, living under our own power, would be a real adventure. It’ll be hard, but it’ll be a fun life. And so, like—

  I asked them to take me with them.

  And then they ended up talking about how they wanted me to come as the monarch of the settler ship.

  I had a little brother. A small one.

  Ruirui.

  You will go to the land of the future. And then you will make your kingdom and stand proudly as king. Don’t forget. A person can change their destiny. I know they can. I just know it.

  Day

  There were so many things I wanted to talk to my sister about. I was basically the runt of the royal family—“little Ruirui”—so everyone watched out for me, kept me safe, but I knew well enough that the only one in this world who really loved me in all my misshapenness was my kindhearted sister. My smart, strong sister. The apple of our father’s eye, the third princess.

  Takezoku live extremely long lives. Which was why I always thought we still had plenty of time to talk. I could just talk with her again tomorrow. Maybe next month. Even next year—or beyond that. Time didn’t matter.

  But we didn’t have any of that left. The moment of our parting came upon us suddenly. Because time just pushes forward, ever forward.

  There were so many things I wanted to talk to my sister about. You, my cherished sister. I had things to tell you. So, so many things.

  Sis…? Sis!

  Sis!

  “Ruirui!”

  With a faint scream, the figure of my sister on the other side of the round hole abruptly disappeared. I had no sooner seen a shower of gray ash erupt than I was watching her cloak sink slowly to the ground, orange and smoldering. Followed by the silver adornments, the proof that she was a noble daughter of the royal family, the hat decorated with long bamboo. It hit the ground with a clumsy jingle.

  I heard a human girl scream. I fell on my backside, still gaping. And then a strong wind blew up, bringing in something through the round
hole. A folded piece of orange paper settled on my lap.

  I picked it up with a trembling hand. Still shaking, I spread it out. Aah, my sister’s handwriting.

  Memorandum on new laws for the takezoku arrival in the land of the future!

  I remembered seeing it that night. Necessary rules and the reasons for them. Proposals for punishments. Although I didn’t really understand, I knew when I read it that it was rational and logical, the very thinking of a king, the fruit of the governance lessons we took from our father. And all I had done was burst into tears, afraid that my sister would go far away. I’d been sulking ever since, even though I loved her more than anyone.

  I never… That she would go somewhere even further away… The thought had never even entered my mind.

  Shaking fiercely, I got to my feet.

  People began throwing their bodies against the front door. I heard ferocious roars too. The lock started to give, creaking and groaning in protest.

  But I was still just standing there awkwardly. And from the other side of the round hole came the light of death for the takezoku—the pale rays of the morning sun. The light barely touched the tips of my toes, and I felt a searing pain dance across my nerves. But the pain brought me back to myself. Frightened, I inched backward.

  And then, and then…

  I heard voices from the river behind me. The voices of takezoku calling to their comrades.

  I turned around. And then…and then…

  Leaving my sister’s cloak and finely decorated hat on the other side of the door, clutching just the orange paper tightly to my chest as a memento, I became a beast moving only on the instinct to survive.

  I stumbled across the earthen floor. I fell. I groaned. I stood up, and this time, I flew. I had no control; I hit the wall, I tumbled to the ground. I ran again.

  Aah, and here the back door was locked too! Tears of dismay sprang up in my eyes. I was a crybaby. All the strength drained out of me, and I slid to the earthen floor. I could no longer move.

  I peered through the round hole and saw a large ship on the bank of the river. Takezoku wrapped in light-blocking fabric of all hues were flying in from every direction and racing onto it. The ship was about to set sail. Ah! It was slowly pulling away from the shore and heading out toward the middle of the river…

  I started to hiccup. Sis… My precious sister had told me to get on the ship. Because I probably couldn’t make it safely deeper into the mountains from here. She’d said to live. To live for her.

  But. But. Going down the river and out to sea—I couldn’t do something that terrifying! I wasn’t like my sister. I wasn’t like the magnificent third daughter of our king, the talented princess my father was so proud of. I was just the runt…

  The ship grew distant, headed downriver. I watched it go in vain.

  From outside, the cries of the humans trying to break down the door grew louder. They were flinging themselves against the door. And then it broke and fell to the ground.

  The first human was barely inside when I heard him shout, “Whoa! There’s one more! The little one in blue!” He immediately nocked an arrow and aimed at me.

  I was frozen in place with fear. It was all over. I was ready to close my eyes and give up. It was too late.

  And then, I heard the voice of my now-gone sister. I feel like you being born with that small body, the way you never really grow, I mean, there must be some kind of meaning in that… But when a door closes, a window opens, you know!

  Right. I was the runt. I was smaller than everyone.

  I covered myself tightly with my blue cloak and got to my feet. I curled myself into a ball and slipped through the round hole. I flew as hard as I could toward the ship as it slid down the shimmering river. I somersaulted and spun around three times in the air. My head spinning, I couldn’t tell which way was what. Just when I thought I’d flown too high, I was plunging into the water. Thoroughly soaked, I managed to drag myself back to the surface and clung desperately to the edge of the ship’s hull. Arrows came one after another, followed by bullets. The arrows dug into the side of the ship, and the bullets made their marks with sharp pops.

  But my survival instinct was strong.

  I gritted my teeth and flew up out of the river. I tumbled onto the deck with a loud thwack. And then a takezoku wrapped in blackout fabric ran out from the stairs leading to the ship’s hold to help me and yanked me to my feet. In the next instant, I heard an ominous noise, and several arrows plunged into the place where I had just been.

  I heard a shout of “The prince?!” in my ear. Some takezoku held me tightly to cover me. “Hey! The little prince is here! A child of the royal family!” From inside the hold came a sad commotion; it was hard to tell the difference between sobs and cheers.

  The ship picked up speed and pulled away from the shore of the river, from the mountains where we had been born and raised, from our homeland, from the past. The humans ran along the bank chasing us, some even going so far as to jump in the water. But the ship appeared to be just a little faster than they were. The settler ship built by the young takezoku slid out of the depths of the mountains, riding the current, and headed down the endless Yellow River.

  With the babbling of the river, everything gradually receded. Time. History. Tradition. The pride of the people. The royal family. Our shining memories…

  The rough houses of the common takezoku bright in the morning sun. The even rougher human settlement. Desolate wilderness. Another human settlement. Houses of a more modern build here. Expansive forest. A town with large factories. A lovely, seemingly boundless grassland. The scenery flowed by around us. Toward the bright white future.

  Up against a wall, I was unable to take even one more step.

  I had survived. Just like my sister had ordered me to. I was the only one to survive. All the strength had drained out of my body, and I simply peered out at the flowing scenery.

  I remembered what she’d said, my sister now dust and disappeared.

  You have to live. You have to live. The mountains, the darkness, the sea, they will still have a past and a present. As long as you live. As long as you just stay alive for me somewhere.

  Ruirui!

  The glittering surface of the river. The sunlight. Green grasslands spreading out on both sides of the river changed their design each time the wind blew. The colors of the Yellow River were layered, constantly in flux, shimmering and sparkling. Each and every thing I could see was marvelous and beautiful.

  I opened my eyes wide, as if seeing a vision of our new life in a distant land. I was no longer afraid of the future.

  The survival instinct…

  Back then, I had a little brother. A small one.

  You will go to the land of the future. And then you will make your kingdom and stand proudly as king. Don’t forget. A person can change their destiny. I know they can. I just know it.

  About the Author

  Kazuki Sakuraba was born in 1971. She began publishing while still in college. Her early Gosick light novels were best sellers and were translated into English, and her adult fiction is also popular and critically acclaimed. Red Girls won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 2007 and was translated into English in 2015. Watashi no otoko, a suspense novel about an incestuous relationship, won the Naoki Prize for popular fiction in 2008.

  Also by Kazuki Sakuraba

  and available from Haikasoru:

  Red Girls

  SRP: $15.99 USA / $18.99 CAN / £9.99 UK

  ISBN: 978-1-4215-7857-6

  When the outlanders abandoned a baby girl on the outskirts of a village, few imagined that she would grow up to marry into the illustrious Akakuchiba family, much less that she would develop clairvoyant abilities and become matriarch of the illustrious ironworking clan. Her daughter shocks the village further by joining a motorcycle gang and becoming a famous manga artist. The
outlanders’ granddaughter Toko—well, she’s nobody at all. A nobody worth entrusting with the secret that her grandmother was a murderer.

  This is Toko’s story.

  www.haikasoru.com