Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [305]
Meena made no reply.
Chapter 44
Escape from Gasara
Wataru couldn’t summon up the strength to meet with Kee Keema right after talking to Meena. I’ll do it later, he thought. Thankfully, there were other things to keep him busy.
In the area around Gasara, there were several smaller towns that helped facilitate local trade. Refugees from these places were arriving daily at the town’s gates. Wataru, along with his fellow Highlanders, had his hands full with all the incoming traffic.
“If all this confusion continues much longer, then I’d gladly give myself up as the Halnera sacrifice just to get back a little peace and quiet,” one of the refugees said with a sideways glance at his exhausted wife. He led a small child by the hand. The simple lodgings that had been set up for refugees had only the barest necessities, yet still, many were glad to be able to bathe and eat a proper meal after four days on the road.
“You don’t have much longer to wait. Halnera will soon be over,” Wataru told them.
The man nodded slowly. “I hope so…” he said with a sigh. “You get to wondering if they really need a sacrifice. I’d think the Goddess in all her power would be able to make a Great Barrier of Light by herself. I started thinking that maybe the Goddess’s intent with this whole Halnera thing lies elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?”
“Yep. Look how we struggle and tremble just hearing that one of us is to be chosen as a sacrifice. We’re so weak. And in the end, all we care about is our own hides. That’s why there’s all this chaos. And of course, some people have tried to make a profit off it. Some have even used the confusion as a cover to do away with people they don’t like. It’s all greed, and it runs deep. Ugly stuff. That’s why the Goddess has to shake us up a little bit every now and then. She wants to remind us of our weakness, and our ugliness. She wants to make sure that we don’t fall any more in love with ourselves than we already are. That’s why she started this whole Halnera thing—at least that’s what I think.”
The thought hadn’t occurred to Wataru.
“Wouldn’t that make the Goddess a little harsh toward her own people?”
“Harsh? You bet. But, I figure she has to be strict. If she was nice all the time, nothing would ever get fixed. Words are empty. You can pass the greatest teachings of the sages down, but if all they see is prosperity day in and day out, they’ll forget what the words mean. People are forgetful creatures, you see. That’s why at least once every thousand years the Goddess has to come down and give us a jolt—something to remind us of what the teachings really mean.”
They spent so much time talking that it was late into the afternoon by the time Wataru could take a break from the refugee camps. The man’s heavy questions weighted down his already laden heart, and his feet trudged across the ground as he walked back toward the branch office.
Then he noticed something odd. People were gathered out in front of their houses and talking in hushed voices. What’s going on?
Just then Wataru turned a corner and ran into the doctor from the hospital. His medicine bag was tucked under one arm, and he was speaking with some of the townspeople. Wataru called out to him, but the man was so engrossed in his conversation he didn’t even notice.
“Hello there! Has something happened?”
“Oh, it’s you!” the doctor said, blinking eyes half-buried under thick brows. “You mean you don’t know?”
“I see people standing around…”
Everyone, including the doctor, looked at him in surprise. “You’re a Highlander, aren’t you? How can you say you don’t know! Gasara has been surrounded by a company of the Knights of Stengel for the past hour!”
Wataru gaped. “Surrounded—what’s this all about? Didn’t the guards do anything?”
“What was there to do? They saw a company of the Knights of Stengel approaching from across the grasslands, and they thought maybe they were coming for supplies or just to visit. The next thing you know, they had us all surrounded.”
“The town gate is closed,” the doctor