Originally, they’d used a laboratory designed to look like a castle as their base. However, when they’d decided to build the village and observe Fil’s growth, they’d cut this area off from its surroundings. They’d injected the trees around it with the failed immortality liquor, creating a forest that would wither only from old age, never from any other cause.
After the village had been established, the alchemists observed the villagers as “traders.” From time to time, unexpected outsiders wandered into the forest, but the villagers seemed to be getting rid of them on their own.
Every once in a while, young people had stowed away in the truck, but they’d all been startled and awed by the outside world, and they hadn’t tried to return to the village. They’d been the sort who’d yearned for an “outside,” even though they hadn’t known whether it really existed. For them and the others who’d made it through the forest on foot and reached the world beyond, its fascination had probably been greater than their attachment to their families and birthplace.
That said, even if someone occasionally did try to return, the researchers had never let them back into the forest.
After listening to the old man’s confession, Maiza spoke quietly. His face was expressionless.
“If you mean to make amends, I think you should extend the sentiment to the villagers, too.”
“I’m well aware of that. However… Once freed, the villagers will have places to go and the family bonds they’ve created. Fil has nowhere except this village. Particularly since her life is so short.”
“But I went and promised, see. I told Fil I’d show her the whole wide world. I said I’d strike off her shackles and set her free.”
Picking up where Bilt had left off, Elmer spoke to Maiza, averting his eyes. He was speaking in a roundabout way, but Maiza immediately understood what he was after and asked him a question in return:
“In other words…you want me to extend Fil’s lives?”
“You’re so quick on the uptake, Maiza! That’s a huge help.”
“…Just for the record, I’m not making the elixir of immortality.”
“I know that, too. Even so, your knowledge could help the research along, right? Besides…we’ve got five alchemists here who’ve lived more than three hundred years each. I mean, I can’t force you, but if we all work on this together, I think we’ll probably find a way.”
Beside Maiza, who’d fallen silent, Fil went over to Bilt and began talking to him.
“Um…I don’t understand why you feel you’ve sinned, Master Bilt. I don’t know about the villagers, but I’m fine. Don’t look so sad. Please smile…”
Seeing her concern for Bilt, Maiza brooded for a while, a complicated expression on his face. Then, finally, he heaved a ponderous sigh and nodded.
“Show me your research materials, if you would.”
Several hours after Maiza had begun perusing the research materials, Elmer muttered:
“I came here because…well, I knew the people who ran this place had ties to Szilard. I’d heard a rumor that there was an alchemical facility in an old castle in the woods. I thought Szilard might come back here, y’know? If he had, I might have been able to talk the old guy around.”
“Elmer… You’re still saying that?”
“Well, if he’s dead, there’s no help for it.”
As he watched Elmer chuckle, Maiza was struck by a thought.
“Elmer. The information that you were here… You leaked it yourself, didn’t you?”
“Oh, you figured it out? Yeah, well, I thought I’d get ahold of Victor from here and see if he could put me in touch with you. He said he’d talk to the information broker about it, so I just took him up on it. Since it was you, I assumed you’d show up by yourself, but then there were four of you…”
“You were genuinely startled, weren’t you?”
“When Fil told me a ‘family of four’ had come to the village, I had no idea it was you. Thanks to that, I wasn’t able to give you a decent welcome, and I looked like a total idiot.”
Remembering when Maiza’s group had arrived at the castle, Elmer snickered to himself.
For his part, Maiza had put together a certain hypothesis from the facts he’d just learned, and he asked Elmer about it.
“…Were you trying to use my knowledge to complete this research?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
Elmer admitted the fact easily, without a shred of apparent guilt.
“If it came down to it, I thought I’d have you summon the demon again or something.”
“You say that like it’s easy…”
Maiza covered his face as if he was appalled, but even then, he was smiling. It looked like he’d resigned himself, somehow.
“Have you given up alchemy, then?”
The casual question made Elmer go quiet for a little while. He gazed into space for a few moments, then spoke with some nostalgia.
“I got into alchemy for the gold. I just wanted money.”
“That’s unexpected.”
“I figured I’d become an alchemist and make mountains of gold, then give it all away to the poor. Of course I was going to keep some back for myself, too. I thought if I did that, I’d be able to make everybody happy.”
Elmer looked a bit self-conscious, even embarrassed.
“Dumb, right? It was a fundamentally bad move, in terms of both economics and sociology, and I didn’t give the slightest consideration to the fact that the value of gold would drop or production would stop. Well, I’ve lived a long time; somewhere in there, I learned about those things, and I realized human happiness wasn’t that simple… So now I don’t have any particular attachment to alchemy.”
When he’d gotten that far, Fil and Bilt came into the room. Seeing them, Elmer raised his voice, changing the subject.
“By the way, Bilt, I’ve been wondering for a while now. What’s the male homunculus up to? I asked Fil, but she said she’s never met him.”
For a brief moment, the old man seemed startled by the question. Then, as if something made sense to him now, he nodded.
“I see… He’s completely blended in with the village, so you’ve probably met him and didn’t realize it.”
His expression growing complicated, Bilt remembered a certain man—or rather, a certain homunculus.
“He probably realized he was being used as a guinea pig, and it upset him. He gave up the experiment of his own accord, before I came to my own resolution. I think it was about fifteen years ago…He infiltrated this place, destroyed the cultivation fluid his body was in, and left. He took the ‘water,’ his catalyst, with him, and he hasn’t been back since. That said, even if he had come, without the water, we couldn’t have done anything.”
Almost as if he was reminiscing about his son, the old man took a single photograph from his coat.
“If I recall, he’s on his second body now, and he should be around fifty years old… I expect he intends to live out his natural life as a villager.”
With the expression of a man hoping for the happiness of his own child, Bilt showed the photograph to Maiza.
“See? This is him. If you happen to see him, please greet him for me.”
The photograph Bilt held out to him was of a lean young man, with sharp, distinctive eyes.
“Let’s see. It does feel as if I’ve seen him somewhere before…”
As if his curiosity had been piqued, Maiza scrutinized the man in the photo.
“Huh…? If you do this—”
As if he’d realized something, Elmer rubbed a nearby eraser lightly on the desktop, then put the eraser shavings over the mouth of the man in the picture.
Fil peeked in at it from behind them, then shrieked a name in spite of herself.
“—Master Dez!”
It can’t be.
It’s not possible… But there’s no mistake.
The old photograph Master Bilt showed us.
Its subject is, without a d
oubt, Master Dez.
If Master Dez is a created human, like me—did he know about me? If he knows we were born in the same place, why does he hate me so much?
Or… Does he hate me because we’re the same?
While I stand there, frozen, staring at the photograph, I’ve also begun to run for the village headman’s house.
The night is growing late. The snow in the village is still deep, and there aren’t many people out and about.
When they see me running, everyone I pass looks suspicious. They might use this as an excuse to hit me later. Even so, I have to make sure.
If, unlike me, there is only one of him and he’s continued to grow…then it wouldn’t have been at all odd for him to marry, or have a child, or become the village headman.
“Nn? …What’s wrong? You look tense.”
In the castle stable, Master Nile speaks to me for once.
“Are you all right? You look pale… Go ahead and rest; I’ll finish up here.”
In the castle kitchen, Mistress Sylvie smiles at me kindly.
“Maiza and the others sure are late. What do things look like over there?”
Master Czes is standing outside the castle, waiting for Master Maiza to return.
However, I don’t have the wherewithal to answer any of them properly.
For now, I want to keep all my attention focused on the self that is running through the village.
The snow trips me up in places, but I keep making for the village headman’s house.
The moment I reach the house, I begin pounding on the door. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything with this much force before. Fierce pain runs through my fists, but now isn’t the time to worry about it.
It feels like an eternity before the door opens.
Then, when it does open—
“Huh? Fil… What is it? Why are you so upset?”
The person who appears from beyond the door is not Master Dez, but Master Feldt.
“U-um! Master Dez! Where is Master Dez?!”
“Father went to draw water from the well—”
“Thank you!”
Master Feldt looks perplexed, but I don’t have the time to explain.
The cold smile Master Dez showed me that afternoon… That unease has become an enormous anxiety raging in me.
Run, run, run—I’m not sure if I’m running from the anxiety rampaging inside me, or if I’m chasing down the cause behind it…
“Hey, Fil. Don’t even think about grilling the village chief over this.”
I hear Master Elmer’s voice. The me that’s with him murmurs, “No, sir” in a small voice… But as far as the me in the village is concerned, it’s too late.
There was a small well on the edge of the village. It had been dug deep, and it almost never froze over completely; the ice on its surface could be broken easily by dropping the bucket onto it. The village was far from the river, and so the well was an important reservoir, something at the very center of the villagers’ lives.
A lone man was standing in front of it. The man with an arrogant-looking mustache stood before the well, quietly gazing down at the water.
He didn’t move a single step. It was as if he was waiting for someone.
And then… The “someone” he was waiting for appeared.
“Master Dez.”
At the sound of a girl’s voice, the village headman turned. The girl stood there, out of breath.
“I was waiting for you. You took longer than I thought you would.”
The headman gazed at Fil’s face as if he’d grown restless with impatience. Then he muttered:
“So you know, huh? Finally. Or should I say you remembered?”
He grinned. In his right hand, he held a small bottle.
“You went to the outside with the trader, didn’t you? To that place: our cradle, and our grave.”
“…That bottle…”
“Right. It’s the glass bottle where you and I got our start. The only difference between us is which of those two bottles we were born from. That’s all it is.”
Speaking with some self-contempt, Dez held the bottle up for Fil to see.
“In other words, this is ‘me.’ Didn’t you hear from old man Bilt? It’s my true form, the catalyst to make more of me. My soul.”
Fil had absolutely no idea what Dez was trying to do. As if he’d realized this, Dez slowly began to twist the bottle’s cap. He was wearing that cold smile.
“For example.”
As if explaining a science experiment, he lectured Fil in a decidedly exaggerated way.
“When this water, my ‘will,’ is injected into an empty body, ‘I’ am the result… Now, what do you think will happen if I pour this water into the well and make villagers that are already living drink it?”
“…!”
Up until now, only empty bodies created in the cultivation liquid had been given the will-infused water. If ordinary humans drank it… What would happen to them?
“I tested it once before, on my father-in-law—in other words, the previous village headman—when he was dying of old age. The answer is ‘a struggle.’ Both wills fight for control of the body. Interesting, isn’t it? In other words, a brain that exists in this world as solid matter fights head-on with our minds, which are from another dimension. That isn’t alchemy anymore; it’s the realm of mediums and magic. Don’t you think so? A mind that has taken control is able to take all the other’s knowledge and experience for itself. Doesn’t that sound a lot like the system the immortals up at the castle have, the system of devouring each other?”
Why did Dez know that? It struck Fil as odd, but after a little thought, she realized that Sylvie had told Feldt all about it. It wouldn’t have been at all strange for Dez, his father, to have heard.
“And, I hate to break it to you, but I can’t imagine I’ll lose to the lot in this village, the sort of people who just get swept along by the world around them… Although I suppose it is a gamble.”
When she heard that, Fil finally realized what the man was about to do.
“No…”
“I’m sick of being shut up in this wretched little village. It might have been better if I’d just kept living the way I was, knowing nothing, but those outsider demons gave me a glimmer of hope. There’s a great big world outside this forest! It’s definitely there!”
With crazed, bloodshot eyes, the village chief—or the man who had been the village chief—went on quietly, intensely.
“I was thinking. Going out into the world with only my own life would feel really unsafe. However, if all seventy-six people who live in this village became ‘me’—that would make for enough power to handle the outside world, too, wouldn’t you say?”
The girl looked shocked, but before long, she got a firm grip on her heart again and spoke, slowly but firmly.
“—I won’t let you do it.”
“Oh? And what exactly is scum like you going to keep me from doing?”
Dez sounded entertained, but the girl told him in no uncertain terms what she meant.
“Steal the villagers’ minds… I’ll never let you do that.”
Half-afraid, but with a strong resolve in her eyes, Fil took a step forward.
“I see. That’s great.”
With absolutely no hesitation or worry, Dez began opening the bottle.
“Stopppp!”
With a cry that was almost a scream, Fil rushed at Dez. In an attempt to snatch the bottle from his right hand, she jumped as hard as she could.
In response, as if he’d been waiting for this very thing, Dez put his left hand into his jacket, pulled out a gleaming silver knife, and slashed diagonally at Fil’s arm.
A flash. Fil’s face twisted with a hot sensation of wrongness, and a moment later, her expression shifted into a grimace of pain.
“Good-for-nothing.”
As Dez glared at her, his eyes full of hatred, several drops of red mist struck his face.
“Waaaaaaaa
aaah—!”
…But Fil didn’t stop. Without checking her momentum, she rammed into Dez with her whole body.
“Hunh?!”
The girl didn’t weigh much, and the body blow should have done almost nothing, but the ground around the well was frozen, and Dez’s feet slipped.
They fell together, beside the well, and began struggling fiercely.
Without the composure to act rationally, the girl howled like a wild animal—
…Several minutes later.
When the villagers who’d heard the uproar came to look, they saw…
…the figure of the “witch” they’d scorned, believing she was their inferior.
Her body was dappled with something red…and she was straddling another, fallen figure: the corpse of Dez Nibiru, the village headman. There was a silver knife stuck in his neck.
I wasn’t trying to save the villagers.
On the contrary. I hate them.
But, more than that…I couldn’t stand the idea of losing this world.
And so… And so I killed the headman. I killed Master Dez—no, I killed Dez!
I don’t regret it. I’ll never regret it, ever.
I finally remembered an emotion.
The emotion called “anger.” The emotion called “fear,” too.
I acted in obedience to those emotions.
I won’t let him break this world. Not my world.
This village, this forest, is the only place for me.
I know. I understand. I did it all of my own free will.
“Ee… Yeeee!”
And so, I have no regrets.
2001 The Children of Bottle Page 15
