Authors: Miyuki Miyabe
She reached down her shirt, and pulled up a small compact-size mirror. It was hanging around her neck on a leather strap.
“What’s this?” Meena asked, eyes wide. “Did my lucky mirror just glow?”
“Mirror?” Wataru said, rushing over to her. His Brave’s Sword glimmered again, and light spilled from the mirror.
Wait, does this mean…
“Is that the Mirror of Truth?”
Meena nodded, without looking away from the mirror. “Yes. My parents gave this to me. It’s a good luck charm that has been in my family for generations.”
Kee Keema gave Wataru a slap on the shoulder. “Now you just need to find the star sigil.”
Wataru was lucky. He didn’t even need to look for the Mirror of Truth. It had found him. Wayfinder Lau was right again. Wataru nodded.
They had just started back down the road to Gasara, when Trone stopped, hands on his hips, looking at the ground. “Looks like you won’t need to search long.”
They were standing by the ruins of the chapel. There in the sand amongst the rubble was drawn a large five-pointed star.
Just like the one on the Brave’s Sword.
Wataru stood in the middle of the sigil with Meena’s mirror hanging from his neck.
The mirror began to shine.
Though no one had ever told him to do so, Wataru drew his sword and held it over his head. He closed his eyes. The tip of the blade shone, and the sigil glimmered in response. First white, then red, and then blue. Eventually it changed back to white. Finally, the lines of the giant star-pattern in the earth glowed with a golden radiance, and disappeared.
Wataru opened his eyes.
Darkness.
It was pitch black. He was surrounded by darkness so thick he couldn’t even see the ground upon which he stood. Before him, behind him, the Brave’s Sword in his hand, even his nose—he could see nothing.
But there was light coming from the mirror on his chest. It was an odd light that stretched forward like a corridor ahead of him, yet cast no light at all on the surrounding area.
Wataru began to walk. He was alone. His feet made no noise. Outside the tunnel of light was only darkness. Maybe this was the Vale of Eternity of which Wayfinder Lau had told him.
Soon, he saw a man some distance ahead of him, down the corridor. It was Wayfinder Lau! Wataru began to run. “Master Lau!”
Wayfinder Lau did not seem to be in the best of spirits. He looked bored. “Certainly kept me waiting, didn’t you,” he said, yawning. “Didn’t think it would take quite so long for you to find the first gemstone.”
“Sorry! A lot of stuff was going on.”
“No matter, it is done.” The Wayfinder finally smiled. “A bit farther down the Corridor of Light you will find an exit. Beyond that, the real world.”
Wataru swallowed. His throat was dry with excitement.
“It will lead you to the place with the person whom you most wish to meet. There is no need to fear getting lost. Now, go.” Wayfinder Lau gave Wataru a push on the shoulder. “But do not forget. When you hear the bells ring, you must return to the corridor. Your mirror will become more agitated as well. Go back through the tunnel and run, for should it disappear, you will fall into the Vale, never to be seen in either world again.”
Wayfinder Lau cocked his jaw to one side. “I’ll leave now. I will not wait for your return. Listen to the mirror. Be careful, and listen well.”
“I understand.”
Wataru began to run forward. Soon he saw something white in the distance. The exit! There was something white there. White…
White sheets. A hospital bed.
Wataru was in a hospital. His mother was sleeping right in front of him. He stood at the head of her bed. There was another bed in the room, but it was empty.
The lights were off. Through the curtain he could see the night sky. He looked out. Streetlights burned on the road below. This was the third floor.
So it’s not the same time here and in Vision, then.
“Mom?” Wataru said. His mother was breathing heavily but quietly.
She looked unchanged from the time when he left for Vision. Maybe, thought Wataru, she looked a little thinner. There was a placard on the headboard with the name of the doctor and the date she had entered the hospital. The doctor was a specialist in internal medicine, it said. The day she had entered the hospital was the day she had left the gas on in the apartment.
It looks like somebody called an ambulance.
That was a relief. Wataru felt his legs wobble a little bit.
Thank you, whoever did that. Thank you…
I should wake Mom up, tell her what happened. That’s why I came here.
But Wataru found himself unable to speak, unable even to touch her. He was filled with sadness mingled with relief that his mother was sleeping safe and sound in the hospital. She would be okay.
There was a red flower in an empty milk jug at the head of her bed. A box of tissues. A paper bag at the foot of the bed. He looked inside to see his mother’s underclothes and her purse.
In her purse, he found a small pad of paper, an address book, and a ballpoint pen. Wataru ripped out a page of paper and wrote a short note.
—Mom. I’m okay. I’ll come home soon. Please wait for me. Wataru.
Wataru folded the note and slipped it into his mother’s hand. Then, just for a moment, he gave her hand a squeeze. She moaned and rolled in bed.
Wataru waited a moment. She didn’t wake up, and he heard a sound from somewhere behind him. The ringing of bells.
Was someone coming to visit her?
he wondered.
Grandma from Chiba, or Uncle Lou? What about Grandma and Grandpa in Odawara?
They would all be worried.
What about Dad?
When he thought of his father, all the feelings he had forgotten during his adventures in Vision came rushing back to him. His hands balled into fists, and he had to consciously remain calm until the storm in his heart went away.
He heard the bells ring again, faster this time.
Wait for me. Everything will be okay. I’ll go to the Tower. I’ll make it okay. I promise.
Wataru turned and began to run.
Wataru bent back through the tunnel of light-arriving at the chapel ruins at the symbol on the ground.
He thought he had run the whole way, but he wasn’t out of breath. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.
Nearby, Kee Keema stood atop a rocky outcropping. Alongside him was the slender silhouette of Meena, the two of them framed by the rising morning sun. Their faces were cast in shadows, making their expressions impossible to read.
Wataru silently climbed to the top of the protruding rock formation. Kee Keema and Meena looked at each other. The waterkin shook his head ever so slightly as if to say, “Best not to ask.”
“Kutz and Trone have already gone back,” Kee Keema said in a cheery but slightly affected manner. “We should go too and get ourselves some breakfast.”
The three began to walk along the outcropping. Wataru took care where he placed his feet, keeping his eyes on the ground below. The next time he looked up, the day had fully dawned.
He turned and glanced back at the barren land they had just left—the grasslands, the rocky crags. Vision. The wind whipping across the grass stung his eyes.
That’s why I’m crying…it’s the wind stinging my eyes. Or maybe it’s the beautiful view.
Not because I thought, just for a moment, how much I’d like to show it to Mom. That’s not why I’m crying. I’m not a little boy, not anymore.
Yet his cheeks were damp. Kee Keema stopped for a second and looked at him, then resumed his plodding pace forward. He motioned to Meena with his eyes as if to say “Let him cry.”
Up to this point, the cat-girl had been walking behind Wataru. Now she hastened her pace to catch up to him. “Did you see your mother?”
Wataru nodded. He wiped his face with his arm.
“I’m glad.” Meena gently patted the boy on the back.
“She was asleep, so…we couldn’t talk,” Wataru said. “I wasn’t there long enough to explain anything anyway.”
“I’m sure she understands. I’m sure she knows you were there, even if she was asleep.”
Wataru lifted his eyes to look at her. Meena shot him an encouraging smile. “That’s how mothers are. Even when they are far away, they know how their children are doing. Perk up, Wataru. If you’re sad, she’ll sense that, right?”
Wataru blinked. A final teardrop fell from his eye. “Right!”
According to the doctor’s analysis, the well water by the chapel ruins had been contaminated with a strong insecticide for repelling insects and other pests. When Wataru told him about the skeletons he had met by the altar in the underground chamber, the doctor said he would very much like to examine those bones.
“If they died by insecticide, the bones would bear traces of it. I wonder if they all died from drinking that water? That would clarify at least one aspect of Cactus Vira’s curative activities.”
“Isn’t it a bit late to worry about what happened?” Wataru asked.
“Of course,” said the doctor gravely. “No amount of investigation will bring back those who have died. But if we expose the facts about Cactus Vira, about exactly what sort of man he was, then perhaps we can prevent people from being fooled the next time some crazy guy comes along.”
Meena’s wounds were raw and exposed. The doctor administered more ointment and scolded her for not being careful. She yelped at his brusque treatment—yet, for some reason, sat there with a big smile on her face. It was like looking at a different person than the cat-girl Wataru had seen in the crowd only a few days before.
Where did she come from, I wonder? Why was she with the ankha refugees from the North? Where did she learn to move like she does? How did she
come to wear the Mirror of Truth?
Wataru had so many questions he wanted to ask that he tagged along with Kee Keema during his hospital visit later in the day.
Meena saw the look on his face when he entered the room and beamed. “You want to know my story, don’t you,” she said, anticipating his question. “One thing you should know is that originally, there were very few of my kind on the southern continent at all.”
Three hundred years ago, when Agrilius the First helped build the Northern Empire, his policies of extreme ankha-centrism drove out all the other races. Back then, in the early years after the bitter civil war, the refugees from the north to the south were even more numerous than today.
“My ancestors, too, came here at that time. More than half of the kitkin in the south are descendants of those early immigrants.”
Meena’s ancestors had settled in the mercantile country of Bog. Apparently, Meena’s great grandfather was something of a financial genius, and he had great success selling produce in bulk. As a result, their clan lived a peaceful and rich life.
“So you come from a proper house, eh?” said Kee Keema, quite impressed. Meena laughed shyly, but her smile soon disappeared. A look of sorrow crept into her eyes as she thought back upon her distant past.
“It happened during the summer when I was seven. We were living in a small house—me, my grandparents, and my parents, just the five of us—by the lake, a short distance from town. One night, we were attacked…”
Meena explained that she was too young to remember the details precisely. She only knew she had been awoken suddenly by her mother in the middle of the night and made to hide under the bed. She was not to move until her mother or father called for her, even should she hear her name. Her mother’s face was stern, and, Meena realized, very frightened.
“That’s when she gave me this,” Meena said, touching the Mirror of Truth at her neck. “She told me to take it with me, and to treasure it always. She said it was my good-luck charm. I begged her to let me stay with her, but she refused and left me alone under the bed.”
The young Meena had done as she was told. She heard footsteps, great thudding footsteps, all through the large house. She also heard people shouting, and even a scream. She was so frightened she thought she might cry out loud, but she held back her tears. She made herself as small and invisible as she could.
Wataru remembered how he had curled up under his bed when his mother had attacked that woman—his father’s lover—on the balcony. The situation was completely different, of course. Wataru had been running from a fight—there was no threat to his own life. Yet he thought he could imagine something of what Meena must have felt that night.
“Just then I heard three or four people running through the house,” Meena continued in a small voice. “It sounded like they were looking for something. They were all men, and they talked to each other in loud voices. I became even more frightened and held my breath, and hid under the bed and did not move.”
Unable to find whatever they were looking for, the intruders began breaking things and flipping over furniture. Still, Meena stayed in her hiding spot. She smelled smoke.