by Yusuke Kishi
It was made of clear glass about five centimeters across and looked like a small galaxy. In the background were faint golden threads in woven geometric designs and different images seemed to float up to the surface. I saw small bamboo stalks, that upon closer inspection also had tiny leaves and intricate red fruit. Next to it, pencils, cups, flowers and other familiar items floated by. And under all of these was a “purity mask”.
“Purity masks” are masks made of damp clay and white chalk that children wear during the Demon Chasing festival. It resembles a human face but has no expression or individuality. But this mask was different. As I stared, I somehow saw my own face in it.
Lying in the canoe with my eyes closed, I felt the glass disc through the charm.
I turned quietly and peeked at Satoru. He was using his backpack as a pillow and seemed completely relaxed, rocking with the rhythm of the boat. Judging from his even breathing, he seemed to be dozing.
Although sticking your nose into things you’re not supposed to see is a bad habit, at times it helps to calm me down. I opened the charm and took out the glass disc.
The light reflecting off the glass might attract attention from the others so I cupped the disc in my hand and looked into it.
How should I describe the uneasy feeling I had then?
That is, at first glance it seemed indefinably different. But I had looked at it enough that its composition was branded into my brain. But since I wanted the comfort it provided, I stared at it as if I wanted to eat it.
No. There was something different. It wasn’t just my imagination that made originally perfectly balanced bamboo stalks seem crooked. Rather, it was the geometric designs in the back that were askew.
Then, when I focused on the purity mask, a shiver ran through my body.
It was melting… It was such a tiny change, and the result still looked like me, but the purity mask seemed to be slowly changing into a karma demon’s face.
Instinctively, I threw the disc away from me, into the lake.
Hearing the splash, Satoru raised his head.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing,” I said, forcing a smile. “Shouldn’t we get going?”
“Yeah.”
Satoru called out a loud signal to the other canoes and we set off again.
What was happening to the face?
The feeling weighed heavily on me. Why was that face melting?
No, was it really melting? Doubt washed over me. Was it my imagination? Just an illusion caused by accumulated mental fatigue?
I suddenly regretted throwing the glass disc into the water. If I could just get another look at it, I’m sure it’d be back to normal.
No, it wouldn’t. The chill I felt when I had seen it wasn’t just my imagination. The face in the glass disc was indeed crumbling.
Then, why was that face, my face, changing? No, wait. That wasn’t my face. The resemblance was just a coincidence since the charms were given out at random.
…but, was that really true? I stopped rowing and thought.
Although it looked unintentional, could the truth be that it had already been decided which charm each child would get? If not, then there was no need for us to line up in seat order and receive the charms one by one. They could have just passed the box around and had us each take one.
“Hey, Saki! Row properly,” Satoru complained.
…given this theory, then the contents of each charm were different. The fact that the purity mask in my charm looked like me was no coincidence. Would the purity mask in every glass disc resemble the student it belonged to?
“Sakiiii”
“Alright, alright. I heard you.”
I stuck my paddle in the water and lost myself in thought again.
Even so, what was it for? Every face was in a student’s likeness. Was there some sort of meaning behind it?
No matter how hard I thought, I couldn’t come up with an answer. All I could think of was that since they had put so much effort into this, then the charm wasn’t just a charm, there must be something else to it.
Ever since we had run into the false minoshiro, my attitude toward the adults has changed completely. I suspected all their instructions to us were secret ways of screening us.
…even the charm could be a tool in controlling us. Saying that it protects against karma demons was just an excuse.
I dipped my handkerchief into the lake and put it on my head. Cold water ran down my forehead and evaporated before it got to my cheeks. I barely noticed, still deep in thought.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to ask the false minoshiro what the truth about karma demons was. But like the fiends, they seemed to be a real threat.
I began to understand. It was just a feeling, an instinct that I couldn’t put into words yet.
Got it. Could the charm possibly be a karma demon detector? It could warn us if there was danger.
If we were near a karma demon.
Or…
“Saki!”
My train of thought was broken by Satoru’s shout. For a second, I thought he was getting angry with me for how I was rowing but I quickly realized that wasn’t the case.
A shadow flew over my head. I looked up and realized with a jolt that it was the crow from before. It let out a long cry and wheeled around, going back the way it came.
I turned around and scores of boats filled my vision, speeding toward us at full sail. At the center was a huge warship, at least three times longer than our canoe. The gunwhale was filled to the brim with queerat soldiers.
“Saki…” Satoru’s sigh was filled with resignation. “We’ve been caught. Look, there’s Kiroumaru.”
We held each other’s hands and waited for the queerat ship to approach. Satoru’s hand was damp with sweat. Mine probably was too.
We stared silently at the scenery of Kasumiga Bay. The canoes sped across the lake much quicker than when we had been rowing them.
The three canoes were tied with thick ropes to the queerat warship. A group of strange triangular sails were raised as the ship sped forward across the water.
“I didn’t know their ships were so advanced,” Satoru said.
“Could it be that they’re more advanced in this area than humans?”
“Well we have cantus. We don’t need sails to propel a ship, right?”
No matter how big your sails are, there has to be a limit on how fast you can go. There’s no such limitation with cantus.
“That’s true…” Satoru crossed his arms and looked off into the hazy mountains.
“Who cares about the queerats. About what we were talking about earlier…”
“Yeah,” Satoru pulled out the charm from his collar.
“Check it.”
Satoru opened it without hesitation.
“Have you looked at it before?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Who hasn’t taken a peek at it?” He raised the disc to his eyes.
“So?”
Satoru’s face went pale.
“Let me see.”
“No,” he said, grasping the disc so hard his knuckles went white.
“Is something different about it?’
“Yeah.”
Satoru didn’t elaborate, but I felt a little better. At least mine wasn’t the only one that had changed.
“Could it have melted because of the heat?” I asked without conviction.
“No matter how hot it is or how weak the material is, it’s impossible. Plus it’s been in the sachet the whole time and hidden from the sun.”
“Then why?”
“I dunno,” his expression darkened. “Whatever it is, it can’t be good…”
He fell silent looking at the opposite bank.
“I guess throwing it away is the best thing to do.”
“Huh?”
Without a second’s pause, he took off the charm and threw it in the lake. Dragged down by the weight of the glass disc, the cotton sachet sank slowly into the water.
&nbs
p; “Wait, what are you doing?”
“It’s fine, you did it too, Saki.”
“Why?”
“If they find out when we get back, something bad might happen. The fact that the purity mask is melting is definitely a bad sign. Check Shun and the others. If there’s any change, have them throw it away.”
“But then we’ll have no warning when a karma demon comes.”
“We’ll just have to deal with it when it comes then. We don’t even know what a karma demon really is,” Satoru said, his arms crossed.
“How will we explain it though? It’s easy if it’s just one person, but if a whole bunch of people lose their charms at the same time, it’s too suspicious.”
“Yeah. You’re right…no, actually, it’s fine! We can just say the Ground Spiders took them from us when we were captured. That way, Shun and them can say that they were captured too.”
As expected of someone who was always up to no good. I complied, throwing the rest of my charm overboard. Come to think about it, there would have been no way to explain why only the glass disc had been thrown away instead of the entire charm. Without anything to weigh it down, my sachet floated on the water until it drifted out of sight.
As it disappeared, the queerat ship was arriving at its destination, our canoes in tow.
A Giant Hornet soldier disembarked and untied the ropes. The ropes were simply looped through a ring on the end of the canoes but you couldn’t undo them from our side.
A remarkably large queerat appeared at the stern of the warship. Kiroumaru had arrived. Although his shoulder and back had been hurt in yesterday’s explosion and were covered in bandages, he still moved around briskly, apparently unaffected by the injuries.
“How do you feel?”
“The trip was quite pleasant, thanks to you,” I said.
Kiroumaru’s wolf-like smiled reached all the way to his ears.
“Look over there. where the sun’s light dances on the water. That is the northern boundary of the Tone River. …I apologize, but we cannot get any closer. ”
“Don’t worry. We can make it on our own from here.”
Thanks to the queerats towing us with their warship, we were able to cross the huge lake in around three hours. It would have been impossible to make it before sundown if we had to row ourselves.
But I wondered why they couldn’t go any farther. Satoru looked a little dubious as well, but said nothing.
“Gods. Gods,” Squealer appeared behind Kiroumaru. “This is where we truly part. I will pray for your safe journey.”
I wasn’t sure how to feel about this. Of course, he appeared to be worried about us. But I suspected that he had been on Kiroumaru’s orders all along. First to lead us through the forest, and then to disclose our location.
“…you too. Take care. It’ll be great if you can rebuild your colony,” I squashed my suspicions and tried to reply sincerely.
As we set off, I heard Kiroumaru’s voice behind me.
“I have a request.”
“What is it?” Satoru asked.
“Once you return, please do not divulge that I towed your canoes.”
“Why?” It was an honest question.
“I can’t say, but if this were revealed then I would be sentenced to death,” Kiroumaru said, his eyes glinting with a seriousness he had not shown even in battle.
“I understand. I’ll keep it a secret,” Satoru said quietly.
I didn’t know whether it was because we had rested and regained our strength, or due to the swift currents, but the canoes traveled steadily down the river. When we looked back, the warship was already a speck in the distance.
“Kiroumaru risked his life to help us,” I said more to myself than to Satoru.
“Yeah. I’m sure he received orders from the Committee to restrain us,” he sounded rather proud that his theory had been correct. “That’s definitely also the reason he turned back where he did. The ship’s sails are visible from far away, so if there happened to be someone watching, they would know that he had his ignored orders and helped us.”
“But why…?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Satoru smiled as if mocking me for not understanding something so simple. “Because we saved him yesterday. If I hadn’t dealt with the blowdogs, Kiroumaru would be as dead as Rijin right now.”
“Hey!” Shun shouted in front.
“Hey! We’re leaving now!” Satoru shouted back.
Hearing his voice suddenly opened a dam inside me. It was as if the past three days were no more than a dream, and we were just rowing down the river to in summer camp.
“Hey, Saki! What’s wrong? Hey…” Satoru sounded confused as I continued to cry, and then started laughing at the same time.
My meltdown went on for ten minutes. We soon reached the other canoes and it spread to Maria as well, turning into uncontrollable mayhem.
When I had finally cried to my heart’s content, I felt much better (though the boys seemed rather tired). We entered the northern reaches of the Tone River and started going downstream. After that it was smooth sailing all the way back to the village…or that’s what I would like to say, but in reality all sorts of troublesome situations kept popping up. First, we had no experience navigating down a river without our cantus. And as our mental and physical fatigue reached its peak, the sun started setting making it hard to see. And the straw that broke the camel’s back was our canoe sinking from smashing too often into the rocks and each other. It was a miracle that no one died.
When the dark curtain of night fell, the river changed again. The starlight shimmered on its obsidian surface, giving the illusion that we were frozen in place, but the roar of the water made it seem like the gentle current was becoming more violent.
I felt this instinctive discomfort. It was a feeling going back before I was born, an ancient memory left over from our cave-dwelling ancestors.
Exploring this feeling more carefully, I would say that it was a need to return home as soon as possible. Satoru and I both felt a strong anxiety toward something that awaited our return. Be that as it may, given our physical conditions right now, it would be suicidal to continue down the river at night. We had no choice but to make camp, but couldn’t find a good spot for a long time. I remembered a dry riverbed we had passed by right before the sun set and felt a flicker of annoyance. Everyone had wanted keep going as far as we could, so we continued on without stopping even though we already knew that it was impossible to get back to town even if we rowed nonstop. We should have stopped then.
We were exhausted when we finally found a place to set up the tents. It was so close to the river that if the water rose just a little we would be immersed, and the rocks were too uneven to make a nice bed. So needless to say, it was not a great spot.
We used the last of our strength to set up the three tents by hand. We dug holes for the tentpoles and covered them with canvas, tying it in place with leather straps. Somehow we couldn’t get it to look as good as it did on the first day of camp.
“Weird. Why can’t we get it right?” Satoru grumbled tiredly.
“We used our cantus that time,” Shun said, still struggling with the tent.
Come to think of it, he was right. That was just three days ago but it felt more like an eternity.
“Satoru, you still can’t use your cantus?” I asked, grasping for a ray of hope.
He shook his head. “Umm. I’m too tired to concentrate, but if it’s just a little, I think i can manage.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?” Maria interrupted, completely lost.
I told them about how I remembered Satoru’s mantra and managed to hypnotize him and restore his cantus.
“I see! So if we know our mantra, we’ll be able to get our power back,” Shun said excitedly. “That monk completely got us with his bluff. His hypnosis was no big deal! Even Saki could undo it.”
Saying ‘even Saki’ was unnecessary.
“But do you guys even know your man
tra? I only happened to know Satoru’s by chance,” I looked around at them.
It was dark but I could still make out their expressions.
“I know mine,” Shun said.
“Eh? How?”
“I remembered it using various methods. But no matter how many times I chanted it in my mind, my cantus wouldn’t come back. I guess you still need the hypnosis to release it.”
Our mantras had been stolen; in other words, the goal of the hypnotic suggestion was to make us forget it, so the fact that Shun managed to remember it on his own is astonishing. Shun’s explanation was that he had various mnemonic devices so that if he ever forgot his mantra, he would be able to rediscover it.
“I can’t remember mine though,” Maria said dejectedly.
“Did you write it down anywhere?”
Maria, Mamoru and I looked at each other.
“I did.” I remembered that I had carved it on a charm and hidden it under the floorboards.
“Me too.”
“Me too…it’s in my diary.”
Each syllable of our mantra was sacred, so we were forbidden to let anyone else know what it was. Strictly speaking we weren’t even supposed to write it down. But the three of us didn’t trust something so important to just our memories and had all recorded it in some form. And Satoru and I showing each other our mantra was so egregious as to be unthinkable for any other team. In hindsight, this was further proof that our group was made up of special students.
“Then we’ll be fine. When we get back to the village, Satoru and I will show them that we can use our cantus. That way they wouldn’t think that we had it sealed. The rest of you can say you’re too tired and go back home. Then after you’ve found your mantra, find Saki and she’ll restore your cantus.”
Shun’s words cleared away all my worries in an instant. Although I wasn’t happy that Rijin had been killed by the queerats, I couldn’t deny the fact that dead men tell no tales.
We cheered up considerably at this. With Satoru levitating the canvas, we set up the three tents. We gathered dried branches, built a fire, and cooked a meal of rice gruel. The food was even more tasteless than the dinner we had made the first day we arrived, but it seemed like the most delicious thing in the world.
