2001 The Children of Bottle

by Ryohgo Narita

  When he happened to glance up, the companions around him were watching him, sighing with relief.

  As he watched their smiles, Elmer fell back into sleep again.

  However…just before his mind shut down, his ears caught sobs coming from somewhere on the ship. When he heard them, Elmer gave a truly sad smile.

  “You mustn’t do that, Sylvie. Smile, you’ve got to smile…”

  He murmured as if in a delirium, and this time his mind did plunge into the depths of the darkness.

  And—time passed.

  1998 December A certain village in Northern Europe

  Northern Europe The forest

  Bold and stubborn, the deep, snow-covered woods kept the village hidden.

  In this forest, the conifers grew more thickly than they should. The trees crowded against each other, as if defying the laws of nature.

  A lone shadow crawled along, weaving its way through the gaps in the trees.

  The shadow wore heavy winter gear, forming a puffy silhouette as it wandered aimlessly through the snowy forest.

  “Not good.”

  Stopping in front of an enormous tree, the figure spoke, sounding just a little troubled. The breath streaming from his mouth turned white immediately, fogging his vision slightly.

  As the frosty burst cleared, the man glanced up at the sky.

  The blue that showed through the gaps in the evergreens had acquired a faintly darker hue, hinting that it wouldn’t be long until sunset.

  “Maybe it was bum information. Come to think of it, there’s no way anyone would build a castle out here in the back of beyond.”

  As the man spoke, he lowered his gaze again and sized up his surroundings.

  The evergreens were abnormally dense, and snow peeked out from the spaces between them in a pattern of pure white stripes.

  “Well now, what to do… Should I turn back, or—?”

  Murmuring to himself, he turned, looking around at the forest. Compared to the direction he’d just come from, there seemed to be less snow up ahead. The atmosphere that hung about this forest was odd to begin with, and the thick trees blocked out the sunlight, as if night was waiting beyond them.

  After giving it a little thought, the man set off again, heading deeper into the forest.

  Almost as if he was being drawn by something…

  A person has come to the village.

  It’s a man.

  He’s wearing thick clothes, and the only part of him exposed to the air is a bit of his face.

  I’m standing at the entrance to the village when he walks up to me and says just one word:

  “Hello.”

  He’s making a strange face. Both corners of his mouth are raised, and his eyes are half-shut.

  It isn’t an expression I often see from the villagers.

  It’s the sort of expression “people from outside” sometimes wear.

  I still don’t really understand what it means.

  Correction: I must have known once. I’ve only forgotten. After all, I haven’t been able to observe one for a very long time.

  “I tell you what—it’s nippy here, isn’t it! Really and truly frigid! I’d better be grateful for this wonderful cold! If it hadn’t been so cold, this cold-weather gear would have been completely useless!”

  It’s a loud voice. A clear voice.

  “By the way, does this village have an inn or something? If it does, could you tell me where to find it? I camped in the forest yesterday, see, and then I walked all night, so I’d like to rest somewhere.”

  Inn. A facility to accommodate people from outside.

  The village doesn’t have one, so I shake my head.

  “You’re kidding! There isn’t one? That’s a problem. Is there someplace I could rest? As long as it’ll keep the wind and the rain off, anywhere’s fine. Like, say, a waterwheel shed. By the way, what’s the name of this place? I really didn’t think anyone would be living this deep in the woods. Or is there a road that leads to town on the other side of the village? Still, on the map, it looked as though this whole area was forest for several dozen miles… Talk about unreliable. I guess you really can’t trust anything you haven’t seen or heard yourself! Don’t you think so? Oh, that’s right: My name is Elmer. Elmer C. Albatross. ‘El’ for short. It’s great to meet you!”

  Words. A vast quantity of words flows into me. There are so many of them that they overwhelm my capacity for them, and I’m unable to respond well. In the space of a breath, this person has rattled off more sentences than the villagers speak in an entire day.

  Elmer.

  Of the deluge of words breaking over me, that name is the only one I manage to remember.

  “Oh, sorry, sorry! The thing is, it’s been a long time since I saw anyone else, and—I’m such a dolt—even though I was talking to a cute little kid like you, all I did was go on and on about myself! Hold on, you do understand me, right? I am using this country’s official language, technically speaking. But wait, am I wrong? Um, let’s see, getting back to the original topic, is there anywhere I can rest?”

  I do understand him. It’s just that my abilities can’t keep up.

  “I shall…take you there. Master…Elmer.”

  I respond as usual. It’s no different from the way I always act with the villagers.

  However, when I speak, Master Elmer cocks his head to one side.

  “Ah? Why are you being so formal? Oh, wait—do you waitress at a dining hall or something? Is that it?”

  Again, without waiting for my answer, Master Elmer keeps talking a blue streak.

  “I tell you what, though, the people in this village are funny. The minute I got here, everybody ran into their houses and shut the windows! Does this village not like strangers or something? Or are they getting ready for Christmas, maybe?”

  Christmas. Another unfamiliar term.

  I don’t know how to respond, so I only gaze quietly at Master Elmer’s face.

  “…What’s this, what’s this, what—what? What? Did I say something weird? If I did, I’m sorry, but…”

  “What is…Christmas?”

  I voice my question.

  That is my duty, after all.

  “……What? Don’t you know? Christmas. I see… It’s even taken root in the Far East lately, so I just assumed it would be common knowledge in these parts. Is your religion different, maybe? I guess I’ll look into that later.”

  He murmurs the last part as if to himself, then glances at my face and bursts out laughing.

  “I see, all right. Well, here’s what we’ll do, then! If the religion around here doesn’t forbid it, I’ll teach you about Christmas! Oh, Christmas is… Well, frankly, it’s a festival, a party! Everyone gets crazy and noisy together, and they eat turkey and pie and give each other presents!”

  Master Elmer’s face distorts even further.

  His voice is loud. Then he puts his hands out toward me.

  His hands touch my cheeks.

  “That’s right, we smile. When there’s a festival, everybody smiles. Smile, that’s right, smile! You know, it’s a bit strange to say this out of the blue, but kids like you are cutest when you smile, see? Well, erm, I guess it’s kind of cliché to say, but as your Christmas present, I’ll help you smile! I bet it’ll be cute, it’ll be real cute, incredibly cute! You’ll be popular with all the boys your age!”

  As he says this, Master Elmer pinches my cheeks lightly.

  I don’t put up any real resistance, and I remember something.

  The expression he is wearing is called a “smile.”

  It’s the face people make when they think something is fun.

  “Look forward to it: We’ll be having a party the day after tomorrow! Generally, at this point, you’d already be smiling, you know?”

  Little by little, I remember. What it feels like to have fun, and the memories I have in connection with it.

  I want to remember more. More, more.

  It feels as though if
I talk with this person, I’ll be able to remember lots of things. I might learn things I don’t know yet. Two days from now, during this “Christmas” festival—More, more.

  I remember one more thing.

  Is this the feeling called “anticipation”? Or should I call it “hope”—?

  That was two days ago.

  A stone-floor room.

  Sounds echoing in it.

  Splorch, blutch, skash.

  Sounds like those, over and over.

  Right now, the thing that used to be Master Elmer is lying in front of me.

  Just a thing. A clothed, human-shaped lump of meat, leaking red liquid.

  The villagers are standing around it.

  They have wooden clubs and stones in their hands, and they’re bringing them down on Master Elmer’s body by turns.

  Splorch, splat, splish.

  The dull sounds continue around us. Master Elmer doesn’t move.

  Someone is standing in front of me.

  A middle-aged man. Whiskered face. Boss. The village’s. The village headman. It’s Master Dez.

  “What were you plotting with the outsider, you damn brat?”

  So saying, Master Dez brings his club down on me.

  Pain.

  Numbness runs through me. Of its own accord, my body falls to the floor.

  “Dammit, dragging us out here where the monster might appear… You’re evil to the core, you good-for-nothing.”

  I can see Master Dez’s foot. Under his thick boot, there’s a pretty ornament made out of paper. An ornament that used to be pretty.

  Pretty. The natural way the descriptor surfaced strikes me as odd.

  When did I remember the word pretty?

  As my head fills with questions, the club comes down on it againand my body stops moving.

  “Throw it outside! Got that?!”

  Master Dez yells at the me who had been watching, sounding irritated.

  Carrying me over my shoulder, I carefully pick up the paper ornament.

  It’s made to look like a person in red clothes.

  The paper doll with a boot print on it, and Master Elmer’s huddled body.

  As I look at these two things, I feel some sort of emotion rise in my heart.

  …But I can’t remember.

  What is this feeling? When it wells up, what on earth am I supposed to do?

  I can’t remember anything. And so, in the end, there is nothing I can do.

  I want him to teach me. More, more, more, more, more…

  Just how many years has it been since I wished hard for something?

  How long has it been since it came home to me that in the end, those wishes would not come true…?

  With myself on my shoulder, I see it.

  The villagers in the room begin to get agitated about something.

  A pause.

  For the space of about two breaths, they look at one another, wordlessly.

  Then…someone brings a farming hoe down on Master Elmer’s back.

  Red.

  A spray of red.

  The hoe rises, coated in red, and the red turns into lines that begin to drip.

  In the light of the candles, the red spray looks very warm.

  Red, red, redredredredredredredredredredredredredred

  The feelings I thought I had are all dyed red, and just when my thoughts are about to stop…

  As if to make doubly sure, the blade of the hoe comes down again.

  Red. Red. Red.

  A clear memory of that color burns itself into my brain.

  I feel absolutely nauseated, but even that emotion is overwritten by the endless flood of red.

  Red.

  CHAPTER 1

  JOY ANGER SORROW FUN

  Maiza Avaro

  2001 December In a certain forest, in a certain country in Northern Europe

  “Listen, are you sure this is the right road?”

  A car with four-wheel drive was traveling through the woods. The speaker was a small boy riding in the front passenger seat.

  There was no pavement. The car was running at full speed down a rough, narrow lane covered in gravel, sending up gouts of the snow that had accumulated on the road’s surface.

  But it wasn’t snowing at the moment, and beyond the car windows, sunlight filtered down through the evergreens. However, as the car advanced, the amount of light was steadily decreasing, and as it did so…

  “It looks like we’re just heading deeper and deeper into the woods, not toward any village! And besides…there are barely any signs that other cars have ever gone this way before.”

  “We should be headed in the right direction… That said, it does look as though the road may disappear on us soon.”

  From the driver’s seat, a bespectacled man responded to the boy’s uneasy question.

  The man, whose glasses had clunky black frames, was gripping the steering wheel and smiling mildly.

  “…Well, if you say so, Maiza. It’s probably all right, but…I’ve got a really bad feeling about this forest, although I can’t put it into words.”

  “Ha-ha. You always were a worrywart, Czes.”

  “That’s not true. You’re just too easygoing.”

  The boy—Czeslaw Meyer—spoke sharply, sulking pointedly in the direction of the driver, one Maiza Avaro.

  Glancing at Czes out of the corner of his eye, Maiza kept right on smiling cheerfully.

  “When you’ve lived a long time, it makes you patient.”

  Though Maiza didn’t even look thirty, the boy spoke, undaunted:

  “I’ll be three hundred soon, too. There’s not much difference between us in age or experience anymore.”

  Put briefly, the two were what one would call immortals.

  They weren’t vampires or a type of evil spirit; they had completely undying bodies, and aside from attacks from their own kind, they had no weaknesses whatsoever.

  This was a blessing for them, now that they had reached this state, but at the same time, it was a curse. There was one way these immortals could die: by devouring one another. All they had to do to ingest another was to set their right hand upon the head of the target and clearly think:

  I will absorb all this person has.

  Simply by willing it, they could take everything about the other person and make it their own: memories, knowledge, even their ingrained experiences.

  The alchemists had killed one another as if it were a game, as if they were being made to dance on the palm of the demon who’d given them immortality. That said, most of the violence had been committed by one old man.

  Two centuries and several decades later, the group of more than thirty alchemists had been reduced to a number that could be counted on one’s fingers. However, with the death of Szilard Quates—the man who had originally begun the slaughter and had been at the heart of the disaster—the terror had gradually faded away.

  Maiza and Czes had been journeying around the world to meet with the companions who didn’t yet know about Szilard’s death. In order to escape Szilard’s clutches, the immortals had hidden themselves thoroughly.

  Now that they had learned the whereabouts of one companion, Elmer C. Albatross, they were traveling through the woods of a distant country…

  In the midst of the vibrations from the rough road, their conversation died away.

  Silence filled the car for a short while, until a woman’s voice broke it from the backseat.

  “So what sort of place is this village we’re going to? Do you think they’ll at least have showers?”

  It was a pure, transparent voice.

  On the right side of the rear seat, a woman stretched, lacing her fingers together.

  The wrists that peeked from the sleeves of her coat formed slim, smooth contours that hinted at her beauty. Soft, silken bangs swayed gently over a symmetrical face reminiscent of pumas or leopards. Her short silver hair wasn’t evenly trimmed, but this only accentuated her features.

  By general stand
ards, she fit into the “beautiful” category quite easily. However, her loveliness wasn’t the natural sort used to depict goddesses in pictures. It brimmed over with a succubine allure that seemed to have been specifically tailored to human desires.

  “Nn…”

  The woman—Sylvie Lumiere—stretched her upper body as far as she could, then sighed. She still looked rather sleepy. Anyone would have found the gesture seductive, regardless of gender, but possibly because Maiza was used to her, his expression hardly changed when he glanced at her in the rearview mirror.

  “Well, we won’t know about that until we get there,” he said.

  “Hmm… Still, do you think he’s really there? Elmer, I mean.”

  “He should be. My local information broker doesn’t spread disinformation.”

  He sounded convinced, and Sylvie didn’t press the issue. However, as if to call attention to his unease, Czes added, “But, Maiza, it’s getting darker and darker out here—and it’s not even noon yet.”

  Czes was looking downward, as if worried about what lay ahead. From behind his seat, Sylvie wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “Aww, Czes. You’re as cute as ever.”

  “Agh! Sylvie, don’t! I’m not a kid anymore!”

  “It’s fine, it’s fine! You look like a kid, and if you’re cute, you’re cute!”

  Sylvie leaned farther forward, putting her face up close to Czes’s head. Flustered, Czes blushed furiously and turned to Maiza, ignoring Sylvie.

  “I mean it, though. These woods really are creepy… With this atmosphere, you’d think there were monsters here.”

  On hearing that, Sylvie giggled and began to pet Czes’s head.

  “What are you talking about? Monsters…? Now that sounds like a little kid, if you ask me.”

  Shaking off the smooth-skinned arms that clung to him, Czes murmured darkly, “You’ve never seen a monster, Sylvie. That’s why you can say that.”

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  But before she could ask, Maiza spoke quietly, his lips drawn into a line. “It really is a bit odd, isn’t it?”

  “What’s the matter?” Sylvie asked.