The Book of Heroes (8 page)

“It was a summer cottage, but apparently Mr. Minochi spent most of his time there.”

“That’s where he died?”

“No, he died on some trip. In Paris.”

Yuriko’s great-uncle had passed away in a used bookstore along the River Seine. He had just keeled over between two stacks of books and was dead before the owner even had time to call an ambulance. The cause of death was a heart attack.

“His heart had been giving him trouble from before. I guess that’s why he took the trouble to draw up a will.”

He had been to Paris several times, it seemed. And many other places around the world.

“Makes sense, seeing as how he was living alone with money to burn. When he wasn’t out traveling, he was holed up in that cottage. Didn’t much care for other people. No friends or even acquaintances, really. The only person he had talked to in the last two years was his lawyer. And that’s only because he had to, most likely. The lawyer said they hadn’t so much as gone out for a drink in all the time he knew him.”

So Yuriko’s great-uncle had been a rich hermit. That was how Mr. Minochi introduced himself, the lawyer had said.

“So his only hobby was traveling abroad?”

“No, actually. The trips were merely a means to an end. His real hobby was books, books, and more books. Old ones.”

So he’d gone around the world visiting used bookstores. When he found something he liked he bought it. Money was no object. (He spent money like it was water, Uncle Takashi said.) He bought, and bought, and bought some more. “Apparently, he had built three other houses besides this cottage just to store his finds. But those he didn’t leave to Dad.”

The cottage, too, had been left filled with books, the ones their great-uncle had loved best.

Uncle Takashi had said he was going to go check the place out. “Dad’s really not interested now that there’s no money involved. Said he wanted me to deal with it.”

“Well, thanks then,” her father had said.

“Hey, even if the place is a little run-down, if it looks usable, we should all share it. Could be a great place to get together in the summer and do barbecues.”

“If he was rich, he might’ve had some nice furniture,” her mother had said then. “Be sure you take a look.”

“Your wish is my command,” her uncle had replied.

Uncle Takashi contacted them about the place several times after that. Each report only dampened hopes further. The cottage wasn’t just old—it was a miracle the place was even standing. There was hardly any furniture, and most of the rooms were filled with junk. To say her great-uncle hadn’t ever hired a maid would be an understatement. It wasn’t even clear how he had lived there by himself. When Uncle Takashi had turned on the water, nothing but rusty brown sludge came out of the tap.

But there were books. Mountains of books. The walls of the largest room on the first floor—the reading room—were covered with shelves. That hadn’t been enough to hold all the books, though. There were piles on the floor too, Uncle Takashi told them.

“I took a look, but almost all of them were in foreign languages. Don’t even have an idea how much they’re worth.”

That was when the idea of selling them had first come up.

“We should probably get an expert to come take a look at them. I just wish the location were a little better. It’s not even a vacation home spot. Just a house sitting by itself in the middle of nowhere, nothing around at all. And once you’re halfway through the mountains, the road isn’t even paved. I don’t think it’s a public road, either, because no one seems to have been taking much care of it. The first time I got there, I had to turn around and find a hardware store in the nearest town to buy some weed cutters and a shovel. Man, that was a lot of work.”

“Guess we’d better deal with that before we try sending some book expert out there,” her father had said. “They might charge us double for the inconvenience,” he chuckled wryly. Their inheritance was looking grimmer by the moment.

How had her adopted great-uncle lived in such a place, in such a house, surrounded by so many books? What had he thought of his life? Hadn’t he been lonely?

“Hey, we should go take a look ourselves.” It was her brother who first suggested it. He worked on Dad until their mother got on board too.

“You know, I don’t trust your brother and his wife when it comes to assessing the value of things. They’re just not greedy enough. They might have completely overlooked some hidden treasure. I should go take a look at the place too. See what I can see.”

“Yeah, but Isamu and his wife went too, and they came home just as depressed as Takashi.”

Isamu was Yuriko’s other uncle, her father’s second oldest sibling. He had been married once, had gotten a divorce, and was now living with his second wife. They didn’t have any children. Since both of them worked, they were by far the most well-off of any of his siblings. “Though they do tend to spend too much,” her mother had said. “And they might have an eye for quality, but they’re so trendy. I’ll bet they wouldn’t know an antique if it bit them.”

When it came to matters of any importance, Mom’s opinion held the most weight. So when December of that year rolled around, Yuriko’s family went on a survey expedition to the cottage. It was thankfully too cold by then for snakes or much vermin, but they had still needed grass clippers to get to the place. The memory jolted Yuriko back into the present.

“You think we’ll be able to get through on that road?” she asked her parents in the front seat. “I hope it’s not totally overgrown already.”

“Don’t worry,” her father replied. “I still have your uncle’s clippers in my trunk from the last time we went. Good memory,” he added.

“I’m sure your brother’s cut a path,” her mother added quickly.

Her father had nothing to say to that.

They were driving on the expressway now. The road was empty, save for the occasional trucker. For a while, they were driving alongside a truck with pictures of all kinds of fish on the side, until it left on the next exit ramp.

The red book spoke to her.

—Sounds like my friends are still there in the cottage.

Yeah! We’re in luck.

—I remember the one your father calls “Takashi.” He was in the reading room. His wife too. But no children were with them.

Uncle Takashi had kids—Yuriko’s cousins.

They’re older than me and my brother. I doubt they go places with their parents much these days.

Her brother had been heading in that direction himself. Ever since he’d started middle school, he would make faces whenever talk came up of a family trip. Usually, he’d come up with some excuse so he wouldn’t have to go, and even when there was no escape, he made it clear he didn’t want to be there…though he always seemed happy to go out with the baseball team or friends from school.

“Daddy,” her mother said, impatient. She sometimes called Yuriko’s father that. “What happened to the cottage after all that, anyway? Does your father own it now?”

“I suppose so. I kind of lost interest myself.”

“And the paperwork is all done?”

“I think so.”

“That’s good. If Hiroki is there, at least he won’t be breaking and entering. It’s family property, after all,” her mother concluded, sounding pleased with herself. Her father looked like he was about to say something, then abandoned it and focused on driving.

—
That’s funny,
the red book said.
Your family seems to know hardly anything about the man who owned the cottage.

Well, how could they? They never met him.

—But they call him your great-uncle. Doesn’t that seem strange to you? It seems strange to me.

Yuriko thought about that for a bit.

It’s probably just because they don’t feel comfortable calling him “Ichiro” or “Mr. Minochi,” that’s all.

—That would sound like they were even more familiar with him though, oddly enough.

I guess so.

That reminded Yuriko that her grandfather had said once that they should consider his late adoptive brother to be family. It was the least they could do, seeing as how there was no one else left to remember him. Her grandmother had been worried about the grave. Who would wash it and make visits? she asked.

—He was a very solitary man.

My great-uncle, you mean?

—Yes. I was only in the cottage for three years myself, but it was immediately clear he lived alone. But,
the book added,
he didn’t seem lonely.

Even though he lived alone?

While she was waiting for his reply, Yuriko remembered something important.

Wait, didn’t you say the Hero was there at the cottage with you? Does that mean the Hero is a book too?

The book answered, his voice so faint Yuriko felt she had to press her hand harder against the cover just to hear it.

—That’s right.

So it was one of the books my great-uncle bought?

—Yes. I don’t know where he got it, if that’s what you want to know. Though one of my friends probably does.

Then how did my great-uncle manage to escape it? How come the Hero didn’t take him?

They had left the expressway and were now on a city street, under the light of streetlamps and shop signs. Though they were indistinguishable from the night sky now, Yuriko knew they were surrounded by little hills, and in the distance, mountains. The little building indicators on the car’s GPS screen had grown few and far between.

—It’s difficult to explain.

This was hardly a surprise for Yuriko by now.

—See, what we call the Hero isn’t even in this Circle.
It
’s in another place, imprisoned.

A police car pulled out of a side street, turned toward them, and passed by. Yuriko saw the officer in the passenger seat craning his neck to look inside their car. Her father drove smoothly, and her mother didn’t even seem to notice the police. Her eyes were fixed on the road ahead, like she could already see the cottage in the mountains before them, her son huddled in a dark room, only a flashlight or a candle for light, an old blanket or jacket draped over his shoulders.

—The Hero has a power other books lack. And the copies of the Hero that exist here, in your Circle, act as a conduit for that power. They’re not the Hero itself, but they’re a part of the Hero, in a manner of speaking.

So the book that Hiroki had found in Ichiro Minochi’s cottage had been a copy. Yuriko had never heard of anything so strange, or so intriguing.

So what’s the point in throwing the Hero in prison if there are copies all over the place?
Yuriko asked with all the indignant fury a fifth grader could muster.

The red book didn’t flinch.
If the Hero were free to roam, it would roam throughout the Circle, its copies multiplying freely. That we have as few copies to deal with as we do now is thanks to the fact that the Hero is imprisoned in the nameless land.

The “nameless land”?
Yuriko was pretty sure she hadn’t heard of any place like that yet. She was about to ask the book about it when the car bounced suddenly and her backpack slid off her lap. Her hand lost contact with the book.

They had just run out of paved road. Her father tensed in the driver’s seat, and her mother pushed with renewed intensity on the dashboard.

“Almost there now. Up this road, right?”

“I’m pretty sure there’s only one way to go.”

Yuriko caught herself so she wouldn’t hit her head on the back of the seat, and managed to reach down and pick her backpack up off the floor.

Outside the car, beyond the beams of the headlights, the night was pitch black. The wavering lights made it look like the trees that came looming out of the darkness were swaying their branches and dancing along the sides of the road.
Who goes there, bringing light into our mountains at such an hour? Who is it who needs light to enter our woods?
The leaves rustled. The branches swayed. Without realizing it, Yuriko shrank away from the window, her whole body tensed.

Abruptly, the silhouette of the cottage appeared in the headlights. It was like it hadn’t existed until that very moment. Like it had been an animal, sleeping until the sound of the car’s engine woke it and sent it lumbering into the light.

Where the night sky and the mountains and the forest had seemed dark, the cottage was darker still as if it had trapped inside it all the darkness from all the nights it had been left abandoned. Though the darkness in the air around it was free to leave at dawn, the darkness within the cottage was permanent. In the days and weeks it had sat there, the darkness had piled up, condensing. It looked like the weight of all that darkness had pushed Minochi’s cottage even closer to collapsing than it had been the last time they visited.

The car stopped. Her father turned off the engine.

“Time to get out, Yuriko.”

Yuriko was clutching her backpack to her chest as if it were a bulletproof vest. The last bit of overgrown road up to the house was short, but very steep, keeping them from just driving up. Her father had to use the clippers just for them to get to the cottage door. The grass and weeds and brambles had all grown tall. There was no sign that anyone had cut a path.