Authors: Miyuki Miyabe
Chapter 18
Mitsuru’s Whereabouts
“We should move out,” suggested Wataru to his friends.
He had told them about the Cistina statue he had seen at the cathedral. Beyond that, he had decided to keep his mouth shut.
“But what about finding Mitsuru?” Meena asked, concerned. “We’re okay staying here a little longer if it means finding him, aren’t we?”
“Sure. No problem,” said Kee Keema. “I’ve only just started talking to the people on Bricklayer Street. You won’t believe the stories I’ve heard. They really have a bad deal down there. Wouldn’t feel right just leaving them.”
“Of course I don’t mean for us to abandon them. But don’t you think it’s a bit more than the three of us can handle? We should talk to Kutz at least. And if High Chief Suluka in Bog won’t help, we should talk to Gil in Nacht. We’ll get a lot farther a lot faster that way for sure.”
Kee Keema gave Wataru a doubtful look. “It’s not like you to back down so easily.”
“It’s just…I have a bad feeling about all of this,” Wataru said. “We should leave this place as soon as we can. We’ll just have to tell Mr. Fanlon and Elza that we plan to come back as soon as we can and hope they understand.”
After dinner, the three were quietly talking in a room at the town branch. When they heard the chief’s booming voice outside their door, Meena jumped in surprise—much higher than the other night.
“Sorry to bother you while you’re resting…”
The chief strode into the room, casting sharp looks at Kee Keema and Meena where they sat on soft cushions on the floor. “Wataru, someone who sounds like that friend of yours is apparently staying just outside Lyris.”
Wataru stood. “Really? Where?”
The chief had brought a map with him. He spread it on the floor, and pointed. “North of town, there is a forest of sula trees we call the Spiritwood.”
“Sula trees?”
“Aye, a fragrant wood loved above all others by Cistina. Her scepter is carved of sula. In fact, all of the devotional objects in the cathedral are made of sula and silver alone.”
The Spiritwood was also the location of the Triankha Hospital, oldest in the Lyris area.
“An outstanding place, that is. There is something in the fragrance of the sula trees that quickens mending.”
“And that’s where Mitsuru is?” Wataru asked, suddenly concerned.
What if he’s injured?
“I haven’t heard a name, but they say he’s a sorcerer about your age, wearing a black robe. Couldn’t think of who else it might be. Don’t worry, he’s not wounded or ill. He apparently came upon the hospital while lost on the road. He’s staying there, resting awhile. He’s been asking people for news about the road—unusual for a traveling sorcerer.”
Chief Pam smiled. “It’s good fortune for you we heard something so quickly. You should leave first thing in the morning. If it turns out he’s not this Mitsuru fellow, well, you won’t be so far from Lyris that you can’t come back.”
And now they had their excuse to leave. Wataru was thrilled. He’d never been so uncomfortable in a place before—then he remembered how he had felt when his mother and Rikako Tanaka had fought on the balcony. He had been scared then too, sad and powerless. He’d been so miserable hiding under his bed, he thought he might die.
“What luck, Wataru,” Meena said, giving him a hug. Wataru snapped out of his reverie to see Chief Pam’s cold eyes drilling holes through them.
The next morning, they left the branch as early as possible so they wouldn’t have to see the chief again. A spearman stood guard alone. He smiled and said goodbye to them with a wave. As they left, he walked into the room they had been using and closed the door.
The three got into their darbaba cart and rolled away from the branch. Wataru looked back furtively so his friends wouldn’t notice. The spearman was in their room, tossing the bedding and cushions Kee Keema and Meena had been using out the window. Wataru bit his lip, and regretted looking back.
After a short time, the Spiritwood suddenly appeared before them. The area was hidden behind the hills so well that they had to check the map several times to make sure they were going the right way.
“Sula trees, eh?” Kee Keema said, craning his neck. “If they’re good enough for a fairy’s scepter, they might have a little magic in them.”
Despite Wataru’s rising joy at the possibility of meeting Mitsuru, he started to feel a nagging doubt in the pit of his stomach.
The sula trees were fragrant as described.
They had a perfume-like smell, heavy and cloying. Their trunks and branches were slender and intertwined like dancers on a stage. No flowers appeared to be blooming beneath the thick canopy of pointed leaves, so Wataru assumed that it must be the trunks themselves that smelled so strongly.
Their darbaba cart had only just entered the forest when Meena complained her nose hurt. “This smell—it’s too strong.”
“Yeah?” Kee Keema said, flaring his nostrils. “I don’t smell much.”
“We kitkin are blessed with a sense of smell a hundred times keener than yours or Wataru’s,” Meena explained. “It’s making me dizzy.”
“Dizzy? Well, you’re in luck, we
are
headed to a hospital.”
Just then they caught sight of a gray, square building through a gap in the branches that tangled above them like the outstretched fingers of a hundred ballerinas.
“Is that it?” Wataru asked, leaning forward.
“Hmm?” Kee Keema lifted his whip and pushed aside some low-hanging branches that threatened to snag the darbaba’s fur. “Ah, must be!”
It was a building of whitish gray rock, a perfect cube, standing about three stories tall. There were several windows, each lit from the inside. It being morning, this seemed odd, but then it occurred to Wataru that ever since they had entered the sula wood, the light had grown decidedly dim.
Looking up from the darbaba cart, he was startled to discover that he couldn’t see the sun at all.
How is that possible?
It had been a perfectly clear day. But here, the patches of blue sky were hazy, as though a white veil had been drawn over the heavens.
“Strange, there isn’t a fog,” Kee Keema muttered, gripping the reins. His darbaba shivered and snorted, stomping its hooves. With a little bit of coaxing, the steed took a few more steps forward before completely stopping. “Oy, oy…what’re you so scared of, then?”
Kee Keema rubbed the darbaba behind its ears. Now it wasn’t just stomping, it began stepping backward.
Meena, sitting hunched over in the cart with both hands on her nose, suddenly shot to her feet, her ears standing straight up. “Something comes!”
Wataru felt it too.
Where? Here—and there, and there.
He felt like they were being swiftly surrounded. The air moved. In front of them. Behind them. The sula trees rustled, and the thick scent assaulted them anew.
Fzzing!
Something cut through the air. The next moment, Meena fell from the cart with a shriek.
“Meena!”
The darbaba cart creaked to a halt, and Wataru jumped down onto the ground. Meena was lying next to the front wheel, face down, out cold. Her cheek was stained red with blood.
“Yowch!” Kee Keema shouted from atop the cart. “Wataru, get down!”
Wataru glanced around and saw an arrow stuck deep into the waterkin’s right shoulder. The arrow was fletched with venomously red feathers.
“They’re firing from the trees! Hide underneath the cart!” Kee Keema barked, crawling off the driver’s platform. He seemed to be moving clumsily, in slow motion.
It looks like he’s drunk—like he’s swimming through water.
“This is bad. This…”
Several sharp noises came all at once, and Wataru saw a whole quiver’s worth of arrows thwunk into the cart frame right above his head. One even came close enough to graze the tip of his nose.
“Paralytic…” Kee Keema gasped, falling to the ground like a sandbag. Unthinking, Wataru ran to him. His eyes were closed, and his long tongue hung limp through his teeth.
“No, Kee Keema! Wake up!”
Wataru felt a fiery sting in his right leg. He looked down to see an arrow protruding from his calf. For a moment he stared at it dumbly, unable to comprehend what had just happened.
Blood immediately began to seep from the wound. Wataru reached down and pulled out the arrow. To his chagrin, the flow of blood increased. His pants were soon stained a dark crimson.
The world around him began to spin. Up became down, down became up. The thick scent of the sula trees assaulted his nostrils. His tongue felt numb. He tried to move his hands, but they seemed frozen. He felt his knees begin to knock…
Then he collapsed to the forest floor, flopping over forward, like a student falling asleep on his desk after an all-night cram session. He fell across Kee Keema, feeling his own body rise with Kee Keema’s breathing.
At least he’s still alive.
Two feet in leather sandals appeared in his field of vision, just before his eyes closed. Sturdy sandals. Strong legs. “We only need the boy,” he heard a cold voice say. “Toss the other two. They’ll never be able to survive in the woods.”
Then Wataru plunged into darkness.
A low, whispering sound coming from somewhere.
Where?
Where am I?
I’m asleep. I’m lying on the floor in my living room. Mom would get so mad. “If you’re going to nap, do it on the sofa! Don’t roll about like a dog.
You’ve got a dust allergy, you know! Do you want to be sneezing the whole day?”
But I like it here—the feel of the hardwood flooring on my cheek. Cool in the summer, and right where the heater fan blows out warm air in the winter.
I can stretch here, I don’t sink in, the ceiling is so far away…
But something hurts. And what’s that noise? I wish it would go away.
Sounds like moths flying through an open window. They’re hovering around my face. I have to brush them away—lift my hand—brush them away…
“Wataru. Wataru, wake up!” came a clear voice from above him. It was a sweet voice. He remembered having heard it somewhere before. A girl’s voice.
“I said get up, Wataru, up! You have to escape! Please! You don’t know how much trouble you’re in!”
The voice made his ears throb. Wataru closed his eyes.
Escape? Why? I’m just lying on the floor in my living room…
My body hurts. This floor—this isn’t the wood floor in our apartment. My leg hurts. My right calf. An iron claw, stuck in my calf. What is that?
Something was moving by Wataru’s head.
Rustle…rustle.
He tensed, and the sleepiness faded from him in an instant. He tried to jump to his feet, and the pain in his leg flared. He looked down to see a filthy rag wrapped around his pant leg. It was stained the color of dried blood.
Suddenly it all came rushing back to him. The attack on the darbaba cart, Meena and Kee Keema, the two sandaled feet he had seen just before he passed out, the cold voice giving orders.
He was in a square room. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all that same whitish rock as the hospital he had seen in the distance.
That’s why it’s so hard and cold.
Wataru saw a single door in the room.
Looks heavy. Locked, of course.
On the opposite wall was a single small window, just high enough so that Wataru could touch it with his fingertips when he stood on his toes. Thick metal bars prevented exit.
The strange rustling sound was coming from a large amount of dried leaves spread evenly through the room. They looked like sula leaves. That peculiar scent remained, though it was somewhat stale.
“Whew, you’re awake. How do you feel? Can you walk?” The sweet voice was coming from the window. Someone was outside the bars. “It’s me, Wataru. Remember?”
The fairy! No,
he corrected himself,
the voice I
assumed
was a fairy.
“Are you really there this time? Where am I? Are Kee Keema and Meena all right? What’s going on?”
“I asked if you remembered me, Wataru,” the sweet voice said, sulking.
Wataru crawled up to the window, and lifting himself up on the wall, he raised his voice. “I’m sorry. I just—wait, have you come to save me?”
“I would if I could,” the voice said simply. “But there’s really nothing I can do.”
Wataru’s mouth opened and shut a few times, then he finally managed, “Well, at least tell me what’s going on. I was shot by this arrow and carried here…I know that, but that’s all.”
“Well, you’re right so far.”
“What about the other two?”
“How should I know?” the sweet voice said with a sigh. “So the girl with a tail, she’s your type, is she? That’s a disappointment.”
“I’m not even talking about that!” Wataru said, gritting his teeth. “Where is this place? Am I inside the hospital?”
“Yes. In the middle of the sula forest.”
“Are you captured here too?”