Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [199]
“I’m sorry, Mag,” the woman in the bed said in a fragile voice. Her head never left the pillow. “I have gotten much better, but still…”
“Never you mind about that. The last thing you want to do is trouble yourself, Satami. The only medicine in this world better than one made from our tears is time itself.”
The mayor sat Sara on the bed and patted her on the head. “Well now,” the mayor continued with a smile, “I’m off to show our little guest here around. Listen to what the doctor says, and rest up well. Agreed?”
Wataru followed the mayor back to his offices. When he sat down he noticed that the mayor’s eyes were as dark as the little girl Sara’s had been.
“Now, Wataru,” the mayor began. “The woman you met on the shore of the lake in the Swamp of Grief is named Lili Yannu. Three months ago, for various reasons, I cast her out of this village. She may not return until I, and the rest of the residents, permit it. Nor may she go elsewhere. There is no other town that would take in a castaway from Tearsheaven.”
“What crime did she commit to have this happen to her?”
Mayor Mag sighed. The fin on top of his head wobbled to the side. “Before I tell you that, I should tell you a bit about the history of Tearsheaven.”
As it turned out, Tearsheaven was known as the Town of Sorrow long before the formation of the United Southern Nations.
“There is little different in our lives here from that of other places. What is different is that all of the residents here once lived elsewhere. They only came here because, at some point in their life, they knew such sadness that they wished to die. You see, here, they have a chance to heal. This town serves as a sort of hospital for the heart, you might say. Those who live here stay only until their illness is cured. That is why our houses and furnishings are so simple.”
Once their sorrow was cured, residents could leave anytime. “And we never see them again,” the mayor explained. “The reasons for our residents’ sorrows are many. Some lost those whom they loved, or were betrayed by those whom they trusted. We do not inquire too deeply about these matters. We only live together, help each other, and wait until time heals our wounds. Some leave after only half a year, others after ten. The depth of each sorrow is different.”
The start of the local industry, making tears out of rainwater, was a relatively recent event.
“We began producing tears in earnest only thirty years ago. The mayor before myself, a bright fellow, was the one who noticed the purity of the local rainfall, and he realized also the value of simple labor that still requires constant attention in the mending of sorrows.”
Once the production of tears became the local industry, the town’s buildings were remodeled to look the way they did now. In Arikita, the tears sold for an incredible price, and so the town grew quite well off as a result.
“No one knows exactly why the water that falls here is so pure, though the great starseers in Sasaya claim that winds sweep the white mist enshrouding the Undoor Highlands far to the south all the way here, where it falls as rain.”
Undoor Highlands: home to the mysterious Special Administrative State of Dela Rubesi. Bastion of belief in the Old God.
“No matter how pure the rainwater, you must distill it to make the tears. Through this purification process, the water becomes even clearer, and that which is impure is left behind. These impurities we take to a place not far from our village, a dark swamp where neither fish nor bird choose to live: the Swamp of Grief.”
So that lake was like their trashcan. Wataru remembered the cold feel of the mud, the utterly still water. He shivered.
“And that’s our town,” Mayor Mag continued. “All our residents are, in a way, visitors. We know our population down to the single person. And we have one rule that is more important than any other. Since everyone is here to mend themselves of some sadness, we must look out for one another, encourage one another, and give one another space to heal.