Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [120]
Good morning, Wayfinder. Good morning.
“Lo, my friends,” the old man called out smiling. He leaned on the windowsill and, listening to their song, sat for a long while deep in thought.
Chapter 4
The Endless Field
Wataru continued walking in the direction he had been shown. Suddenly, and dramatically, the deep forest changed.
“Whoa!”
Before him stretched a vast field—a sea of grass as far as the eye could see. It seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon.
A refreshing breeze washed over Wataru’s face as he stood gazing out on the waving grass. Here and there, bleached rocks jutted out from the greenish towers. Here and there, the grassland dipped and rolled with little hills and valleys. In other places it was dull and flat. The sheer distance he could see was breathtaking.
—Walk toward the rising sun.
So had Wayfinder Lau instructed him. Only one sun rose in Vision’s sky, and it was quite similar to the one in the real world, except that you could look straight at it and not risk hurting your eyes. It wasn’t very bright. Wataru remembered that in Saga I, there were two suns. The story went that one of the suns burned too hot, until it threatened to destroy the very world. Not a problem here.
Wataru walked out into the field. There were no roads to speak of. Nor could he hear any birdsong. Occasionally he would spot insects, like tiny white moths, that would flutter about him. But otherwise, he had no other companions.
For a while the pleasant view lifted his spirits, but as he walked through the seemingly endless plains, he began to realize the harsh reality—or perhaps here he should say the fantasy—of his situation.
I’m going to be walking forever. I have no other means of transportation. No car, no train. Nothing to rely on but my own two legs.
Well, he thought, hoping to cheer himself up, every RPG I’ve ever played begins with the main characters walking. It didn’t work. Games were games. When he played the last dungeon of Saga II with Katchan, their characters had to walk forever through treacherous terrain, but the hero never said, “I’m tired.” Wataru and Katchan, for their part, were sitting on the floor, or lying on their sides, drinking as much cola and juice as they pleased.
The thought of a cold drink made him suddenly thirsty. It occurred to him that, though the Wayfinder had given him a lunch, he hadn’t said anything about drinks. Wataru had to find a source of water, a river, or a lake. And he had to find one soon.
He walked on a while, and when he felt he’d gone a substantial distance, he looked back over his shoulder. The forest was still close behind him, looming thick over the grassland. How depressing. I must walk slower than I thought.
He continued on in silence with no one to talk to. The sun beat down hard and hot on the unchanging field. Wataru was sweating. He forced himself to keep up the pace by counting steps, one, two, three. This seemed to help. It occurred to him that part of his unease was because he was unable to count the passing of time with any accuracy. Then again, he hadn’t wondered what time it was once since his arrival in this world. It didn’t seem to matter.
When he’d counted nearly a thousand steps, he spotted a small, round copse of trees ahead and to the left. It was as though someone up in the sky had gathered a bundle of trees and stuck them straight into the ground. The cluster of trees seemed very tall above the flat of the plain.
Wataru stopped and wiped the sweat off his forehead with a hand, and began to walk toward the woods. He counted his steps again, starting over with one. With trees growing like that, he thought, there might be water—a sort of oasis in this desert of grass.
Water…water…cool water. He repeated the words to himself like a mantra, approaching the oasis, until at last he saw something like a roof poking out between the trees. He caught a glimpse of tiles as the tree branches swayed in the wind off the grasslands. Somebody must live there.
At about fifty paces away from the stand of trees, Wataru