Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [210]
The woman dressed in black was sitting silently in her chair. She held her hands over her face, beneath a large cowl.
Wataru stood next to her, and Lili looked up. Tears streaked her face.
“Ah,” she gasped. “You have killed him.”
The avenging specter drew his Brave’s Sword and smiled.
“I helped you, yet you killed the man I love,” Lili said, reaching out and clinging to the hem of his robe. “Why? Why did you kill my Yacom? What evil did he—did we do? We were only in love. We had finally found our true love. Why did you cut him down a like a common criminal? Why did you sink him in the lake, and leave him for the kalon to eat?”
Wataru’s phantom image readied his sword. “You are evil,” he said. Still smiling, he drove his sword through Lili Yannu’s chest. She slumped from the chair without a word onto the floor—a lifeless pile of black cloth.
Sheathing his sword, the apparition stepped closer to Wataru. Suddenly, his head snapped upright, as though waking from a daydream, and his entire body tensed with the shock of suddenly being whole again.
He found himself standing outside Lili Yannu’s hut. The door was shut tightly. Wataru was out of breath, as if he had been running at full speed. He was drenched in sweat.
It was all a nightmare.
I was seeing things. None of this really happened. If I just reach out my hand and open the door, Lili Yannu will be sitting there in that chair, knitting baby clothes out of black wool. She’s not dead. She’s not dead because I didn’t kill her.
It was the easiest thing in the world to check. All he had to do was knock on the door. Hello, is anyone home? She would open the door, and he would smile.
Well, what are you waiting for? Do it.
—I can’t.
Though he didn’t consciously think to do so, Wataru’s legs moved him away from the door.
I can’t do it. I can’t.
Back to the lakeshore. There, where I helped Jozo out of the water, my udai will still be standing, waiting for me. I’ll mount up, and go back to Tearsheaven. I’ll have the doctor take a look at me. The lake water hit my cheek. I need an antidote. Then I’ll change into a dry shirt, and go see how Sara is doing.
The door to Lili Yannu’s hut suddenly opened. Through a gap of maybe four inches came a tiny hand. Followed by an arm, then a face.
It was an infant. It was naked, with chubby round arms and legs. Its face looked like a cherub from some painting, except that its eyes were closed.
Something about it was wrong. Something was strange. This wasn’t an ordinary child. Its skin…
Its skin was gray. The color of stone. A child made of stone.
The stone-baby stepped clear of the door and turned to Wataru, its eyes still tightly shut. Wataru realized with a start that the child was blind. Then the baby opened its mouth and spoke, not with the voice of a child, but with the heavy, gravelly voice of an old man.
“Killer,” it said. “Killer without blood. Killer without tears.”
Wataru’s hair stood on end. His legs began to shake.
“When you took their lives, you took mine as well. Never will my eyes know the light of day, never will my mouth know my mother’s breast, never will my ears know her soft lullaby, never will my feet know the feel of the earth beneath them.”
Wataru stepped back, slowly shaking his head. “It wasn’t me.” His voice came in trembling fits and starts. “I didn’t kill them.”
“Your excuses are empty,” said the baby, pointing a chubby finger in accusation. “What will become of your tainted soul? What will become of my sorrow? My body is stone, my tears are dry.”
Wataru screamed. “I didn’t kill them!”
The baby’s mouth twisted into a hideous scowl. “I will take your sword, stab your body, and carve your soul from it. Your flesh will rot, your bones left bare to the wind upon the frozen ground, singing hollow curses for a hundred nights and a hundred dawns. You will never know the peace of death, and your soul will wander, forever burning in the hellfires of sin, deep within the chaotic abyss!”
Then the baby came at Wataru with unbelievable speed, crawling on its arms and