Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [280]
Shivering, Meena stepped over to Wataru.
“In the real world…” the Precept-King took his hand holding the hammer and pressed it to his chest. “In the real world, nothing ever happened as I wished it. All my efforts came to nothing, all my dreams were crushed. No one understood me, and no place accepted me. My life did not love me, there can be no doubt of that. It gave me nothing. That is why I left it and came to Vision.”
The Precept-King’s feet stomped on the stone floor. “Yet even here, in Vision, my dreams were not fulfilled. Reach the Tower of Destiny?—I could not even make it from one town to the next! Here, as in the real world, nothing went as I hoped. That is why I abandoned my journey. I chose instead to align myself with the Goddess. From that moment on, I lived here.”
He chose to live here? This barren city of the gods? This beautiful, empty temple?
“The Goddess knew us for who we were. This city is concealed beneath the hem of her robes. We were the chosen ones, living above the clouds, given the high calling of defending her mirror. At last, we’d found the world in which we wished to live. We had no dealings with the lowlands, with their filth and corruption. Dela Rubesi was our paradise.”
Yet one among them didn’t understand that—he couldn’t give up the mean greed that ruled in the lowlands, and so he betrayed the oath.
The Precept-King put a bony fist to his forehead. “We lived like gods here. From this place, we looked down on the lands of Vision. We lived our days in solitude and grace. This is what I truly desired, you see. That is why they called me the Precept-King—I held in my heart a purer essence, a belief that separated me from the ignorant world’s inability to understand. Do you see?”
Wataru didn’t see. What precepts did he teach exactly? And to whom? And if he was a king, where was his kingdom?
“If you had all these great precepts,” Kee Keema said, slowly forming the words with numb lips, “and you were king of these people here, how come one of them betrayed you and ran away?”
The Precept-King made no reply, and instead stared off into space as though he had not heard the question. It was as if the question had never been asked at all. Then he sighed quietly. “Those who could not understand us were not our companions. The traitor, he did not qualify to be among us in the first place.”
“Had you noticed this before? Before he ran away?” Meena asked. “Did you see he was somehow not qualified? If so, why didn’t you do something about it earlier?”
The Precept-King frowned slightly. “I do not believe you have the right to accuse me of wrongdoing here. All of this is his fault, you see. You do not know what it is like to be betrayed and wounded like I have been.”
“Still…”
“No! That is no way to speak to a chosen one of the Goddess.”
Meena looked at Wataru. She didn’t know what to say, and she was rapidly running out of the desire to say anything. Suddenly, it occurred to Wataru that he knew why this man had abandoned his journey through Vision. He had always been like this. The only thing he held dear was his own excuses. The only things he saw were what he wanted to see. The only things he desired were those things he wanted for himself. The only one ever hurt was him. He had abandoned everything that didn’t go the way he wanted it to go, cut away everything that didn’t please him, ignoring things that didn’t make sense.
Of course he had never found a place where he belonged. No kindness could ever reach him. He would be the last to see the signs of a coming betrayal. And here, in this land of peace that he had finally found, he clung to his oath with the Goddess.
The Precept-King called himself chosen. What did that mean? Chosen for what, and for what reason? Had this place been his reward for failure?
He’s no Precept-King. He’s a Void-King. The high King of nothing. And the Goddess knew it. That’s why she made him this fake city of the gods.
Wataru’s body felt like ice, yet the thought still