Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [162]
Three hundred years ago, when Agrilius the First helped build the Northern Empire, his policies of extreme ankha-centrism drove out all the other races. Back then, in the early years after the bitter civil war, the refugees from the north to the south were even more numerous than today.
“My ancestors, too, came here at that time. More than half of the kitkin in the south are descendants of those early immigrants.”
Meena’s ancestors had settled in the mercantile country of Bog. Apparently, Meena’s great grandfather was something of a financial genius, and he had great success selling produce in bulk. As a result, their clan lived a peaceful and rich life.
“So you come from a proper house, eh?” said Kee Keema, quite impressed. Meena laughed shyly, but her smile soon disappeared. A look of sorrow crept into her eyes as she thought back upon her distant past.
“It happened during the summer when I was seven. We were living in a small house—me, my grandparents, and my parents, just the five of us—by the lake, a short distance from town. One night, we were attacked…”
Meena explained that she was too young to remember the details precisely. She only knew she had been awoken suddenly by her mother in the middle of the night and made to hide under the bed. She was not to move until her mother or father called for her, even should she hear her name. Her mother’s face was stern, and, Meena realized, very frightened.
“That’s when she gave me this,” Meena said, touching the Mirror of Truth at her neck. “She told me to take it with me, and to treasure it always. She said it was my good-luck charm. I begged her to let me stay with her, but she refused and left me alone under the bed.”
The young Meena had done as she was told. She heard footsteps, great thudding footsteps, all through the large house. She also heard people shouting, and even a scream. She was so frightened she thought she might cry out loud, but she held back her tears. She made herself as small and invisible as she could.
Wataru remembered how he had curled up under his bed when his mother had attacked that woman—his father’s lover—on the balcony. The situation was completely different, of course. Wataru had been running from a fight—there was no threat to his own life. Yet he thought he could imagine something of what Meena must have felt that night.
“Just then I heard three or four people running through the house,” Meena continued in a small voice. “It sounded like they were looking for something. They were all men, and they talked to each other in loud voices. I became even more frightened and held my breath, and hid under the bed and did not move.”
Unable to find whatever they were looking for, the intruders began breaking things and flipping over furniture. Still, Meena stayed in her hiding spot. She smelled smoke.
“I crept quietly out from under the bed and looked down the hall, when I saw flame. It was all burning…”
She heard a sound from outside the house—in the distance—the ringing of bells. The fire squad!
“I went out on the balcony, where I could see the fire-cart coming toward the house. That was the first time I realized that it was already near dawn. It was bright enough for me to see the dust rising from the cart’s wheels.”
The house was soon engulfed in flames and it eventually burned to the ground. Meena was saved by the fire team, but the bodies of her grandfather and grandmother were discovered in the smoldering wreckage. Her parents were nowhere to be found.
“They told me that bandits had killed my family, stolen our money, and set fire to the house. They said I was lucky to have been saved.”
Unlike everyone else in town, they lived in a house that was far from the nearest neighbor. There were no witnesses, and the authorities were never able to figure out what happened.
“But that didn’t explain what had become of my mother and father. I was only a child, but still…it didn’t make sense. I had survived, and I knew it was because of the lucky charm my mother had given me. I knew the two