Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [358]
Now that’s the Tower of Destiny.
At its very top, where the fingers met, the Goddess awaited.
For a while, Wataru stared up at the tower, forgetting even to blink. It was so beautiful he felt that even to approach it would be sacrilege, yet its elegant form beckoned to him. Come, it said. Here is what you seek.
He slowly began to walk. Wataru’s image was reflected countless times in every direction in the walls of the crystal houses and in the crystal street below his feet. He walked, and his crystalline image walked together with him.
It was not long before he noticed that some of the buildings in the city were beginning to look familiar. He remembered having seen that particular shape of roof, or that particular corner. I know these places.
That’s it! This street here is Gasara. And there, those flat, connecting roofs are from Tearsheaven. Now that he noticed it, it was all he could see, and he began to run in his excitement. What’s that? Off to his right stood a cluster of huts just like the ones in the Village of the Watchers. That warehouse with the broken, hanging rain gutter—that’s from Sono. There was a corral from Maquiba. In the distance, he spotted a building just like the National Observatory in Lourdes, surrounded by the residences of starseers-in-training. Even the eerie form of the Triankha Hospital looked stunningly beautiful, its forbidding walls transformed into pure crystal. This magnificent city in the sky was a collection of all the towns and villages Wataru had traveled since he came to Vision, brought here, rebuilt. The only differences were that everything was made of crystal, and here, Wataru was alone.
Just walking through the city was like a reenactment of his journey. He saw himself reflected in the walls of the house from Tearsheaven. He remembered talking with the girl Sara. Next he climbed a steep street that reminded him of Sono. He could almost smell the sea in the air. And Bricklayer Street in Lyris! Here too, the doors to Fanlon’s workshop were tightly shut.
There was only one road he could actually take, and that led toward the tower. There was no risk of getting lost. Wataru walked quietly through the great crystal reproduction of his memories. The farther he walked, the deeper into the city he went, yet he never seemed any closer to the Tower of Destiny. Whenever he looked up at it, it stood alone, dominating the horizon, as far away as when he first laid eyes upon it.
He passed under a small bridge. This brought him to one of the corridor houses he had seen in Tearsheaven. He remembered his surprise when the kind mayor had led him through a house with no furniture—a house built purely for walking through.
He passed through one house, and into another, then another. Was this the way he had gone when he visited Sara’s mother, lying ill in that hospital room?
But the place where he emerged was no hospital. It was an empty, square room. Something was there, though: a small box attached to one of the walls near the far corner. It was a bird cage, made of solid crystal.
A white bird sat upon a perch in the cage. Wataru approached, touching the cage with his finger.
The bird was about the size of a canary, without so much as a spot on its pure white wings. Its round eyes were the startling blue of the ocean.
The bird twittered and hopped over near to where Wataru’s finger was touching the cage. It was staring at him. Then it tilted its head, flapped its wings, and tried to land on Wataru’s finger.
“You want out?”
The bird chirped. It’s answering me.
“Okay. Hang on.”
The door was held by a slender bar no larger than Wataru’s fingernail. He pushed it up with the tip of one finger, and the door swung open without a sound. The white bird took a hesitant hop out, resting briefly on top of the door. Then up it flew, going in a circle above Wataru’s head, before landing neatly on his right shoulder.
Surprised, Wataru took a step backward. The bird was practically weightless, yet it felt warm through the fabric of his shirt.
A scene unfolded in the back of Wataru