Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [281]
His uncle had been furious, Wataru remembered, and the man had been mad too. Yet the man’s anger was simply indignant rage at being yelled at, with no understanding of why.
To him, Wataru hadn’t even existed. In his world, there was no boy lying there on the ground. Wataru was just an obstacle in his path. That’s why, when he stepped on Wataru’s hand, he kept going. It was like he had tripped on an empty can, or stomped on a plastic shopping bag in the street. If he had ever visited Vision, Wataru thought, he would make a great Precept-King. And he would be satisfied, down to the very bottom of his heart.
Wataru shook his head. I’m thinking too much.
“Your hair…” Wataru said quietly. “What made it white? Was it fear at the Goddess’s punishment of your city?”
The Precept-King’s face had returned to the expression it held when Wataru first saw him: he looked bored to death. His mouth opened slowly. “I wished it to be this way. I did not need youth. Youth, and the immaturity that comes with it, were not fitting for one chosen.”
Wataru had nothing else left to ask.
Kee Keema and Meena looked frozen solid. Wataru stood, his eyes still on the Precept-King’s face. “Let’s go.”
“But, Wataru…”
“No, he wants to stay here. We don’t have the right to tell him otherwise.”
“Yes, go,” the Precept-King said, smiling slowly. Then, with great gravitas, he lifted his hammer over his shoulder and turned toward the Mirror of Truth. “My last task lies before me. I must break this mirror. All of the fragments we brought here will return again to fragments. And they will spread throughout Vision. There, they will wait until they can find new Travelers. This is as the Goddess desires it to be.”
The Precept-King closed his eyes as if in prayer. “When this is done, the Goddess will mete out her final punishment. You had best hurry, lest it find you too.” Then his eyes turned toward Wataru one last time. “Go. Finish your journey. Do what we could not.”
For that one brief moment, Wataru thought he could see the mask drop, revealing the man’s true face. It was a lonely face—the face of a man who had resolved to change his fate, who had come all this way…for this. A lonely Traveler.
Wataru felt tears rise in his eyes. I can’t leave you here, after all. Don’t make me do it.
But the Precept-King saw what he was thinking. “Go,” he commanded before Wataru could protest again. “And be wary of evil.” Then he fell silent and turned to the task at hand, mustering all the strength he had left in his thin arms to lift his hammer.
Wataru slowly shuffled backward. Unconciously, Meena tugged on his arm. Then it was like a thread snapped. Wataru began to run. Together, the three of them dashed up the stairs and out of the hall, turning only once at the arched entrance to catch a final glimpse of the Precept-King. It was an image which would be forever burned in Wataru’s memory. The face of the Precept-King blended for moment with that of the young man in Tokyo. Maybe they don’t look so alike after all. Maybe it’s just me throwing them together in my head.
Their pace quickened the farther away they got from the mirror room. Even if the destruction of the city hadn’t been imminent, they would have run just as fast. They felt like if they didn’t run, if they didn’t get away, then the weight of what they had left behind would draw them in, like a sinking ship, and they would drown in this place.
“There you are!” Jozo was jumping up and down. “I was getting worried. You do what you came to do?”
“Y-yeah,” said Wataru. While they had been under the surface, it seemed that the city had grown even colder. His lips were frozen shut.
“I was afraid you weren’t going to make it in time! We’re flying now—hang on!”
“Make it in time? What’s wrong, Jozo?”
With his crimson wingtip, Jozo pointed toward a corner of the sky. “Look