Brave Story (67 page)

Without hesitating, Wataru lifted his Brave’s Sword and aimed for the man’s arm.

The sword moved again on its own. Swiftly the tip cut a cross in the air, then returned to the center of the cross. As the blade moved, Wataru recited the words he heard in his mind.

“Great Goddess, send the power of your holy spirit into the void!”

The gem on the hilt of the sword glowed. A white light shot from the tip of the blade, straight toward the man. The bullet of light impacted the man’s right shoulder. He screamed and fell to the ground.

The startled udai galloped off, nearly trampling the fallen rider in its haste. Wataru ran to the man. His cheeks burned with excitement and exertion.
Who knew the Brave’s Sword could do this! Who knew it had such power!

The man lay on the ground, groaning, hand clapped over his wounded shoulder. His hood had slipped off in the fall, revealing his nose and unshaven chin.

“A Highlander with a mageblade…?” the man grunted, his voice tinged with bewilderment. “And a child! Who…who are you?!”

Wataru knelt by the man, hardly hearing his words. That chin. His nose. He had seen them before. They seem so familiar they looked like, like…

Impossible.

Wataru’s logical mind pushed away his instinctual understanding of what was going on, but it couldn’t stop the racing of his heart. His left hand slowly reached out toward the man’s hood.
No, don’t take it off. You don’t want to see. You’ll regret it,
said a little voice inside him. But he didn’t stop.

Wataru ripped off the hood.

The face was his father’s—the living image of Akira Mitani, right before his eyes. Those eyes, always cool and collected, sometimes seeming devoid of any feeling at all.

No way!

The man was glaring at Wataru with hatred in his eyes. His teeth were clenched as a result of the pain of his wound.

“Who are you?!” Wataru managed to ask. His tongue was numb in his mouth.

“What’s it matter who I am?” The man said, gritting his teeth. “I’m just a man. I don’t expect a kid like you to understand, but I’m not a bad man. I’m just someone doing what he can in search of happiness.”

“No. I know you who you are. You’re Yacom!”

For the first time, a shadow of fear passed over the man’s features. He turned his eyes away from Wataru.

“You’re Yacom! You abandoned your wife and Sara and ran off—or tried to run off—with Lili Yannu, now banished to the Swamp of Grief…” Wataru figured it out. “You’ve been selling those counterfeit tears to support her, haven’t you? That’s how you made the money to build her a house, isn’t it?”

Yacom’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “How do you know about me and Lili? Who told you those stories?”

“No one told me stories. I’ve met Lili myself, and I’ve met your wife Satami. I know Sara too. I know how much she misses her father. That’s all.”

Yacom, covered with mud, sat up, holding a hand over his wounded shoulder. Something Wataru had said turned the man’s eyes as dark as the water of the swamp.

“Who are you to say that? You’re just a kid,” he muttered, the fight gone from his voice. “Don’t tell me. I know what I’m doing, I know I’m being selfish. I know that.”

“Then why…”

Yacom faced him, looking so much like Akira Mitani it sent a stab of pain through Wataru’s chest.

“What you don’t know, boy, is that people have feelings that don’t obey logic. Satami’s not a bad woman. She’s a good worker, and a gentle soul. But when I met Lili I fell in love. I knew I could never go back. Once you know true love, how could you settle for anything less?”

“How do you know that your love with Satami is false, and your love with Lili is true?” Wataru asked, his voice tense.

Yacom’s mouth curled in a faint smile. “You’ll understand when you become a man.”

“I don’t want to understand!” Wataru shouted so loud it surprised him. His heart leapt in his chest, threatening to burst out of his mouth.

This isn’t my father. This is Yacom—Yacom the traveling merchant. Not Akira Mitani. He’s a different person. Even if they look the same, even if he’s doing the same thing, hurting the same people, he’s not Dad. He’s not, he’s not.

“Love is the most important thing a person can know,” Yacom said, his tone like that of a preacher giving a sermon. “If you should win love once, you’ll know it is harder than death to let go. Of course, I can guarantee you’ll never meet your true love.”

Wataru let his gaze drop to the mud beneath his feet. “What about how Satami feels? What about the love she feels for you? Isn’t that real? If what you said is true, then won’t it be harder than death itself for Satami to give up her love?”

Yacom shook his head. “Satami doesn’t love me. She was only clinging to me for a livelihood.”

“How can you just decide that?!”

“You seem to be making a lot of decisions about other people’s affairs yourself, boy.”

Wataru didn’t back down. “What about Sara, then? What about the love she has for her father?”

“That’s different. That’s the love between a parent and a child.”

“You’re a coward. You’re making up logic just to suit your own whims. Did you know that every time an udai passes by Tearsheaven, Sara runs out as fast as her little legs will carry her. She thinks it’s you coming home. Tell me you can look her in the eye and say what you just told me.”

For a moment, Yacom fell silent. Then, suddenly, his uninjured right hand moved swiftly, scooping up a clump of mud from the ground and flinging it at Wataru. The young boy ducked to the side, but the wet mud left a trail across his cheek. “Are you crazy?!”

Yacom’s eyes were blazing. Hatred shone from them, just as it had when he first drew his magegun.

“Kids…kids…kids!” Yacom shouted. “What’s so special about kids! She wouldn’t even be alive if it weren’t for me! Just being someone’s kid doesn’t give you the right to latch on to them for your whole life! Bah!” Yacom was raging now. “A life that depends on someone else is not even worth living. I’ll kill her myself, with my own hands if I have to. Satami too! If she can’t live without me, then I’ll spare her the trouble!”

Wataru felt his breath catch in his throat. His cheeks were burning.
He looks just like Dad. No, he is Dad. That voice in my ears isn’t Yacom’s, it’s his.
This is Akira Mitani talking to me, saying these things.

—I’ll never abandon you, Wataru.

—If I didn’t exist, you never would have been born.

—I’ll just pretend you weren’t born. It never happened. I wasn’t there.

—I won’t abandon you. I’ll erase you.

That’s what you want, isn’t it Wataru?

Wataru felt dizzy. His legs buckled beneath him. The anger in his heart seethed like magma, yet at the same time, it felt impossibly distant, like his mind and his heart were at opposite ends of the galaxy.

I’m going to fall.

Wataru stuck out his hands, searching for something to hold on to. There was nothing. He wobbled and lurched to one side.

“What’s wrong with you, boy?” he heard Yacom asking. His voice sounded muted, like he was hearing him from the other side of a window. It wasn’t just Yacom. Everything seemed turned down: the chill of the Swamp of Grief, the gloomy breeze; it was as though a translucent wall separated him from his surroundings. Like he was inside a fishbowl looking out at the world outside.

“You should go home,” Yacom said, a slight smile playing across his lips. “Go home and ask your dad. Ask him which one of us is right—you or me. He’ll say I’m wrong, of course. But, boy, he is lying. It’s not the truth. It’s not what he really thinks. If he had to make a decision that would affect his entire life, the only life he gets, he’d come to the same conclusion as I have. You’d be abandoned. And what of it? He gave you your life. You should be grateful for that. And if he wants to throw you out, well, you’ll just have to live with it, won’t you?”

Everything went black.

Chapter 24
A Vision of Death

Falling.
Pulled backward. Crashing into the ground straight as a board, looking up at the sky.
Standing at the edge of the water, feeling the sand underneath your feet being washed away by the waves—that’s what it feels like. Falling, falling, falling…

But Wataru didn’t fall.

He watched himself split into two.

A translucent Wataru stepped out of his body, like a soul leaving its earthly shell. The soul-Wataru stepped out on the muddy lake, turned and looked back, and smiled knowingly.

Wataru didn’t move. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. He was paralyzed, unable to move a single finger.

It was the mud.

The mud that splashed against his cheek—
its poison has begun to work on me. That’s why I’m paralyzed. And the Wataru standing in front of me, that’s an illusion, a phantom. The poison is making me see things.

The phantom took a step toward Yacom. Then, smoothly, it drew the Brave’s Sword.

Yacom was sitting in the mud, face twisted with fear. He was shouting something at it.

The ghostly Wataru raised his sword. Yacom covered his face with his own wounded arm. He began screaming for his life.

—No. I wouldn’t do that.

The sword shone in the phantom’s hands, its edge gleaming.

I don’t want to kill Yacom I don’t want to kill Dad I don’t hate Dad this
isn’t my dad this isn’t me—

Then the Brave’s Sword swung down.

One stroke, two. Yacom screamed, crawling away on all fours. The blade stuck into his back. In vain, he tried to wrest the sword away from the Wataru apparition. The sharp edge cut into his palm.

Yacom was covered in mud, his face streaked with his own blood. He trembled in fear and could barely move—yet still he tried to escape. The phantom grabbed him by the collar, and put the sword to his neck.

No!

The Brave’s Sword broke flesh and blood shot out like a fountain, splashing on the phantom’s shirt. Yacom groped desperately for some salvation, but none came. His arm dropped back down to the ground and did not move again.

The specter drew the sword from Yacom’s body. He gave it an expert flick, and blood sprayed from the blade. Casually, the sword was resheathed, and Wataru’s supernatural twin gave the corpse a swift kick in the side.

With another kick, Yacom’s body rolled deeper into the shallows. The lake water seeped into Yacom’s clothes, and finally, the weight dragged him down toward the bottom of the swamp.

The dorsal fin of a kalon broke the water’s surface. Wataru stood paralyzed as before, frozen to his core with fear. The kalon traced a wide arc around the spot where the corpse sank. A tailfin like a great scythe lifted from the water and slapped at the surface of the lake. The great fish disappeared into the watery depths, leaving an evil silvery afterimage on Wataru’s retinas.

The boy’s phantom was observing him, a kind smile on his face. Wataru wanted to shake his head, but he couldn’t move. He wanted to shout,
What have you done?
but he had no voice.

Still smiling, the apparition turned his back and began to walk away. Wataru found himself following. Even though his legs couldn’t move, even though he couldn’t walk, he was following. It was almost as if Wataru were the ghost, immaterial, floating through the air.

Where are we going?
Wataru’s doppelgänger walked steadily forward. His feet squished down in the muck of the swamp, and his head bowed.

Eventually, Lili Yannu’s hut came into view. The phantom Wataru walked toward it. He opened the door without knocking or hesitating. Then he stepped inside.

The woman dressed in black was sitting silently in her chair. She held her hands over her face, beneath a large cowl.

Wataru stood next to her, and Lili looked up. Tears streaked her face.

“Ah,” she gasped. “You have killed him.”

The avenging specter drew his Brave’s Sword and smiled.

“I helped you, yet you killed the man I love,” Lili said, reaching out and clinging to the hem of his robe. “Why? Why did you kill my Yacom? What evil did he—did we do? We were only in love. We had finally found our true love. Why did you cut him down a like a common criminal? Why did you sink him in the lake, and leave him for the kalon to eat?”

Wataru’s phantom image readied his sword. “You are evil,” he said. Still smiling, he drove his sword through Lili Yannu’s chest. She slumped from the chair without a word onto the floor—a lifeless pile of black cloth.

Sheathing his sword, the apparition stepped closer to Wataru. Suddenly, his head snapped upright, as though waking from a daydream, and his entire body tensed with the shock of suddenly being whole again.

He found himself standing outside Lili Yannu’s hut. The door was shut tightly. Wataru was out of breath, as if he had been running at full speed. He was drenched in sweat.

It was all a nightmare.