Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [288]
“It’s a little hard to believe, but there’s someone up there, frozen. Or rather, it’s like a lump of ice in the shape of a person.”
The three exchanged glances. Meena gasped. “The fugitive…”
So he hadn’t been able to escape the punishment of Dela Rubesi. The Goddess’s wrath had found him all the way here in Sono. But if she could do that, why would she go to the trouble of appearing before the chiefs to tell them to capture the fugitive?
Wataru frowned. “Was anything unusual found in the office? Something like a blueprint—it might be a bundle of papers, or a tube.”
“Well, it was kind of messy up there. Most of the Highlanders went down to the harbor. We don’t know where the captain is, so we needed to check out his sailship.”
“Then we’ll go to the warehouse and check it out. Is that okay?” Wataru asked, turning to the chief.
“It’s fine by me.”
Before the chief could finish, the entire branch building shook. The building itself was a simple structure of wooden planks topped by a tin roof and was quite old. The first jolt made the rafters squeak. The second and third rattled the windows out of their frames and sent shock waves through the floorboards, making it difficult to stand.
“What’s going on?!”
Wataru thought it was an earthquake. But Meena corrected him. “Tornado!” she screamed as she looked out the window.
Everyone ran outside. Meena was right. It was a tornado, and not just one; several twisting columns of air, one hundred feet high, rose all around the town. And they were moving in the same direction. Coming together. The simple, decrepit buildings in their path were shattered and smashed, scattered far and wide. The tornadoes pressed on. Toward the sea.
“That way’s the harbor, right?” Wataru shouted over the roar of the wind, pointing in the direction they were headed.
“Yeah,” the branch chief shouted back. “Those twisters’ll rip our sailships apart!”
In Wataru’s mind he replayed the scene at Triankha Hospital. The cyclone there had snatched up all those believers, leveled the thick-growing sula woods, and whisked Wataru all the way off to the Swamp of Grief on the far side of the continent. Mitsuru had done that with his wind magic.
Mitsuru’s at the harbor.
“I have to go!” Wataru shouted. Behind him, the branch building collapsed in a pile of rubble.
Running down the twisting streets of Sono toward the harbor, Wataru watched roofs ripped off warehouse homes and wooden pilings tossed and splintered. Windows broke, and rain gutters were twisted and ripped away. Things were falling and breaking everywhere. People ran out of their homes, hands over their heads, trying to escape. An old lady watched, astonished as her laundry was torn out of her hands, clothesline and all. Wataru saw her mouthing the words “My apron,” over and over. Dogs and cats were whipped into the air. Trees too. Wataru saw an oven slide up into one of the whirling vortexes.
Still the tornadoes advanced, and Wataru, Kee Keema, and Meena ran after them. Wherever the tornadoes had passed, people stood in shock and silence. As the three drew nearer to the tornadoes, the twirling winds buffeted them. Undaunted, Kee Keema forged onward, picking up a wooden door that had blown from somewhere along the way. He used it as a shield to block flying objects.
“Hang on to me!” Kee Keema shouted over the wind. Wataru hunched down, clinging to Kee Keema’s waist with both hands and putting his head against the waterkin’s broad back. Meena did the same, wrapping her tail around Wataru’s torso for good measure.
They were only a street away from the harbor now. They could see the quays from the road.
And then the wind stopped. Everything that had been lifted into the air suddenly came plummeting down. Wataru and his friends looked up into the sky over the harbor.
The tornadoes—ten in all—were floating over the sea. They were gathered near a single sailship,