Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [298]
While they were talking, the curtain of night had fallen over the grasslands. In town, torches blazed, and in the sky stars became countless scattered fragments of light.
“I…” Wataru began after a long pause. “I don’t want Mitsuru to do what he’s been doing. I don’t want him to keep hurting the people of Vision just to get to the Tower of Destiny. It’s…it’s wrong.” An image of the wreckage in Sono flashed across his mind. “But I felt like it was cowardly of me to say so. Like I was looking for some excuse to stop Mitsuru, just because I didn’t want to lose.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Kutz said softly. “That’s just an excuse you tell yourself so you can give up. If you don’t want Mitsuru to do what he’s doing, if you think what he’s doing is wrong, then you must stop him no matter what—even if he says you’re a coward.”
“Because he’s my friend?”
“No, that’s not it,” Kutz said with a sharp shake of her head. “You’re forgetting something very important.”
Wataru raised an eyebrow.
She grabbed on to Wataru’s left hand and lifted it above his head. “You’ve forgotten that you’re a Highlander.”
She gave his hand two shakes. “You swore an oath. To defend peace in Vision, to protect the word of the law. How can you just stand by and let someone destroy that peace? If you’re going to stand here and pretend you just don’t see, you’re not qualified to wear the firewyrm band.”
The red bracelet on his wrist glowed softly in the starlight. Wataru thought he could feel a warmth in it, like when he had fought for his life against Father Diamon in the Cistina Cathedral.
“It doesn’t matter that you’re a Traveler, that you might be chosen to be the sacrifice, or that you’re now in direct competition with Mitsuru. You’re a Highlander. That’s why, until the very moment you’re called by the Goddess, until the very last breath of your life, you must follow Mitsuru. You must yell until your voice is hoarse, calling him back from the chaos. You must plead with him and show him the wrong that he does—the value of those things he crushes and destroys to reach his goals. You must tell him that he is wrong, that you think he is wrong. You must stop him.”
Suddenly Wataru remembered his parting with Captain Ronmel at the observatory at Lourdes. Just as Kutz did now, he had put his hand on Wataru’s shoulder and looked him straight in the eye.
—You are a Traveler. You must follow your own course. Never forget that.
—I’m sure that Kutz the Rosethorn would say the same. She is your leader, and I would have you follow my advice as though it were hers.
He was wrong. Kutz didn’t feel the same way. She didn’t want Wataru to follow his mission to the end, she wanted him to be a Highlander.
Once again, Kutz and Ronmel were a step out of sync, yet both of them were right. And the look in their eyes when they spoke to him was exactly the same. It was funny, and at the same time, a little sad. Wataru felt his eyes sting.
The question before him now was this: Which truth do I follow? Where will I stand? Wataru looked up at Kutz and nodded slowly. She smiled and nodded back. “Then come—come with us to the north.”
“You’ve been planning this?”
“We need your help, Wataru.”
Chapter 42
A Conversation at Night
The trees that surrounded the huts of the Watchers glistened with dampness in the rainy night. Large droplets fell from the sky, smacking into the broad leaves, waking them from fitful sleep. Have to stay up. Can’t go to sleep yet. For Wayfinder Lau is still awake in his little home. The leaves of the forest rustled and shook, and waited.
Wayfinder Lau had spread several thick books out on the desk in front of him, and with a long-stemmed pen in his hand, he wrote furiously. He had pulled a lamp right next to his head and wore small, round glasses balanced on the tip of his nose.
The sound of the pen tip sliding across the paper was loud in the quiet little hut. Oil smoke rose from