Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [382]
The town doctor was busy. Even if there had been two of him, he would still not be able to get everything done. Meena, who had so recently been fending off demonkin with a frying pan, was helping as a nurse.
She didn’t want to stop. She was afraid she might start to think about everything that had happened recently. She kept her mind on the task at hand, and she was grateful that she was needed to deal with emergency after emergency. A child crying over there, an injured man moaning over here. Where’re the bandages? Where’s the salve?
“Meena!” Bubuho stood at the entrance to the grand tent. “Over here. Granny wants to speak with you.”
Meena wove through the cots, sometimes stepping over people to get to the door.
“I wish I had five or six more hands, they’ve got me so busy. Does Granny need me right away?”
“Ask her yourself—she’s right outside,” Bubuho said, a gentle look in his eyes. “And you need to rest. Even just to catch your breath. I can see the worry swimming in your eyes.”
Meena stepped outside. Granny had pulled out a small table and chair where she now sat. She was gazing into the depths of her crystal ball.
Evening had come while Meena was busy tending to patients. The darkening pink of dusk stretched above her head. The evil black shadows of the demonkin were nowhere to be seen.
Wataru saved us. He went to the Goddess and wished the demonkin away.
—Later, Meena.
She remembered his words as they stood next to the walls of Solebria.
It had been a promise, one he kept.
What about Wataru’s wish? Was this the end Wataru wanted for his journey? All the questions she had desperately tried to keep from asking were now welling up inside.
Meena reprimanded herself. She pushed aside all the other questions, finding the one that resonated the strongest, shaking her heart.
Will I ever see Wataru again?
Then she shook her head. It’s my own fault. He’s from the real world. He was a Traveler.
Granny noticed her footsteps, and hunching over even further, she looked around. “Ah, you’ve come.” Granny gave the crystal ball a light pat with her fingers. She extended her hand toward Meena. “You will not need to look into the ball to see. Here, lend me a hand.”
Meena took Granny’s withered hand in hers. The old woman tugged at her, leading her farther away from the great tent. Then she looked up. “Do you see?”
Meena’s gaze turned skyward. Even the beauty of the sunset failed to stir her. “Granny, there’s nothing. Just…nothing.”
“It is disappearing,” the old woman said, pointing a finger at a quarter of the sky.
There hung a pinpoint of sharp red light. It had been there for weeks. For Meena, sometimes it had seemed even more evil than the demonkin.
But now the Blood Star’s light was fading. Even as she watched, it was absorbed into the night sky.
Halnera was ending.
The next thousand years for Vision were beginning.
At the edge of the Swamp of Grief, Shin Suxin took off his glasses and began to massage his knotted shoulders with the palm of his hand. While in Tearsheaven, the gatekeeper stopped sweeping up the remains of the demonkin for a moment and looked up into the sky. By her mother Satami’s bed, Sara put a hand on the window.
The dragons were returning to their island. The wounded Jozo sat nestled between his parents, looking up through a crack in the rocks.
Lady Zophie, reunited at last with General Adja’s troops, lifted the heavy canvas flap of her pavilion and watched the sky. In her mind’s eye, she could still see Mitsuru’s profile as he stood in the Crystal Palace.
In the remains of the sula woods where the Triankha Hospital had once stood, a quiet wind blew. Small animals ran over and under the fallen branches. Nearby, a waterkin looked up at the twilight sky from the driver’s seat of his darbaba cart.
Halnera had ended.
The Great Barrier of Light was remade anew. May the Goddess reign in eternity.
“Meena, Meena!” It was Puck calling her. She looked around to see him jumping to and fro by the side of the great circus tent.