by Yusuke Kishi
“No, wait…” Satoru said calmly. “Don’t you think it’s weird? Why was the sled buried so perfectly?”
At his tone of voice, a spark of hope kindled inside me.
“Because the snow covered it?” I said.
He shook his head slowly. “It hasn’t been snowing that much. If it did, we wouldn’t have been able to follow his tracks this far.”
“Then the impact of the falling sled must have driven it into the snowdrift.”
“Even if that had happened, the snow wouldn’t have covered it so completely.”
“What are you guys talking about? Mamoru isn’t here. Who gives a damn what happened to the sled!”
“It’s important. …it means he might be okay,” Satoru said.
We fell silent at his words.
“Really?” “Why?” Maria and I asked simultaneously.
“I can only think of one reason the sled was buried here,” he said contemplatively. “It was done on purpose so no one would find it.”
“Mamoru hid it?” Maria asked, sounding hopeful.
“Or the queerats that were chasing him…”
Where would the queerats have taken him after burying the sled? I tried to look for a possible route they could have gone by.
After walking parallel to the slope for a while, I went up a gentle incline and through some bushes. There I discovered a small path running to the top of the slope.
“It looks like an animal trail.”
But there were queerat footprints on the path, along with what looked like something heavy that had been dragged along.
“What did they do to Mamoru…” Maria trailed off, as if imagining the worst.
“I think he lost consciousness and the queerats brought him with them in order to help him,” Satoru said.
“How can you tell?” I asked.
He pointed at the ground, “Look, they were avoiding the tree roots. If they had been carrying a dead body, they wouldn’t have been worried about him hitting the roots.”
Even though that explanation was not entirely convincing, it gave us a bit of encouragement.
After following the path all the way up, the footsteps suddenly vanished. After some searching, we discovered what appeared to be the remains of tracks that had been carefully smoothed over.
Twenty meters later, the footprints, as well as the marks of whatever was being dragged, reappeared. I felt that we were nearing our goal and grew a little nervous.
The tracks continued about a hundred meters into a sparse forest.
“Hey, that…!” Satoru pointed ahead.
Although it was hidden in shadow, I could see a wall of snow built up between two thick pine trees.
We crept closer and saw it was a dome-shaped structure about two meters tall.
“It’s a snow hut!” Maria suppressed a shout.
It was a snow hut like the ones we had built as kids. From the footprints on its surface, it had probably been built in the same way–first by packing the snow into a solid dome, then digging out the inside. With the pine trees supporting it on either side, it looked more durable than the ones we usually made.
“What do we do?” Satoru asked nervously.
“Let’s go in from the front.”
There was no time to discuss this. I approached the hut decisively. Maria and Satoru automatically spread out on either side of me. I didn’t think that the queerats would attack humans, but in this formation we could easily back each other up as well as avoid being attacked all at the same time.
“Is anyone there?” I asked, standing in front of the hut.
No answer. I went around to the back and saw a small opening like those you see in tea rooms. It was covered by a screen made of twigs tied together.
I peeked in through the screen.
“Satoru! Maria! He’s here!” I shouted.
They rushed over and looked into the hut.
The interior was rather large. Mamoru lay in the middle, wrapped in a woolen blanket. It was hard to see his face, but his hair was unmistakeable. His chest rose and fell slightly and he appeared to be asleep.
“I’m so relieved…” Maria covered her face and started to cry.
Mamoru’s eyes slowly opened. “Hey. You guys came.”
“Don’t give me that. We were worried sick,” Satoru said sharply, but he couldn’t help smiling.
“What in the world happened? Did you really fall down the cliff?” I asked.
Mamoru knitted his brows, looking like he was trying hard to remember.
“I see. So I did fall. I can’t really remember what happened. Every time I try, my mind gets all hazy like I have a concussion. I also hurt my leg and couldn’t walk, so Squonk had to dig me out of the snow and bring me here.”
“Who?” Maria asked, still smiling tearily.
“Squonk. Though I don’t know how to actually pronounce his name. …oh yeah, you’ve all met him a long time ago.”
“We did? When?”
There was a rustling sound behind us as the screen was pulled aside.
Startled, we turned and saw a queerat carrying a bunch of packages on his back. He seemed extremely surprised to see us.
Satoru picked up the queerat with his cantus and he dropped the packages, squealing in fright. He was wrapped in layers of clothing, including a papery thermal garment that rustled as he moved. On top of it all was a thin, dirty cape that looked incredibly familiar.
“Could he be from that time…”
“You know him?” Maria sounded surprised.
“Yeah, you were all there too. Remember how right after I entered Sage Academy, we rescued a couple queerats that fell into the canal?”
Slowly, the full memory returned to me. If I’m not mistaken, he should have the “Goat” character tattooed on its forehead… Satoru and Maria appeared to remember too.
“Put him down. Squonk saved my life,” Mamoru said.
Satoru lowered him to the ground.
“Kikikikiki… Gods. Thak you,” he bowed low to us.
“No, we should be thanking you for saving Mamoru.”
“It is nothing. Kakakakakak…ka, a god was in trouble, naturally I psssssh…should help.”
Squonk’s speech was punctuated with squeaks and grunts and difficult to understand compared to Squealer and Kiroumaru. But it was a great improvement from when we had rescued him from the canal.
“I’m grateful for your help, Squonk, but why were you following Mamoru?” Satoru sounded almost accusatory.
“I happened to be passing by and saw the tracks in the snow. I wondered if they belonged to some other grrrr…colony. Shhhhh..so I decided to go look,” Squonk said with some difficulty, drooling as he talked.
“Hm, but why were you there in the first place?” I asked
Maria interrupted before he could answer. “Does it matter? He saved Mamoru. Why are you two complaining?”
“I’m not,” I said hurriedly.
If I had pressed Squonk more at that time, maybe the outcome would have been different. But given the fact that the queerats were so good at lying that even Satoru paled in comparison, I don’t think the conclusion would have changed much.
Still, I think it would have been a good idea to ask why Squonk was inside the Holy Barrier. At the time, we were stricly forbidden from going outside the Holy Barrier. If I had known that the queerats could travel freely in and out, it would have heightened my sense of danger.
Later, when I learned the reason they could enter and leave the barrier without consequence, what surprised me was that despite having culture, queerats were still considered wild animals.
“More importantly, Mamoru, explain yourself,” Maria turned on him.
“Um…sorry.”
“‘Sorry’ isn’t an explanation. Why did you go off on your own?”
He sat up, looking like he was about to cry. “Because…I had no choice. I didn’t want to die!”
“What do you mean?” Maria frowned.
“I’m different from you guys. My cantus is fairly weak, and I have no real talents. I felt left behind.”
“That’s not true,” I said, but he ignored me.
“The Sun Prince has these cold eyes when he looks at me too. I’m already on the list of people to be disposed of. Like X, or the girl who used to be in our team. Like Saki’s sister.”
I looked accusingly at Maria.
“I didn’t tell him,” she said hurriedly.
“I know. You guys have been keeping secrets from me. Like the mirror. You didn’t want me to hear about it, right?”
“You were eavesdropping?” I asked. Everyone ignored me.
“…being disposed, the list, you’re thinking too much. It’s not going to happen,” Maria said soothingly.
“A copycat came.”
Everyone went silent at his words.
“Huh? What are you talking about? I mean…” Maria trailed off, seeing the look on Mamoru’s face.
“I saw it twice. The first was four days ago at night. I was coming home after dark and felt something tailing me. I went around a corner where there was a brazier then turned around quickly.”
“Was it there?” Satoru whispered.
“I didn’t see the actual thing. But I knew something was hiding around the corner. …the fire cast its shadow on the road. It wasn’t clear, but it was the shape of something huge.”
We swallowed, hanging on to his every word.
“I panicked and sparked the brazier. There was a blinding fireball and all the wood was burned up in an instant. But the shadow already disappeared. I ran all the way home in the dark.”
“…but are you sure you didn’t just imagine it?” Maria tried to soften her words with a smile.
“Yeah, if it really was a tainted…a copycat, it would have attacked you,” I agreed.
“No, I’m not so sure of that.” In one sentence, Satoru ruined our efforts to comfort Mamoru. “There are a lot of tales about copycats, but there’s one disturbing detail they all share. They practice tailing you first before they attack.”
Mamoru nodded, “I didn’t feel that it was going to attack me then. …but yesterday it was different.”
“Yesterday? You don’t mean…” Maria seemed to remember something.
“Yesterday after school. I was the only one who stayed behind for supplementary classes. When I was about to leave, the Sun Prince asked me to put some leftover printouts away in the storage room…”
“The one in the hallway leading to the inner yard?”
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather.
“Yeah. So I did. There weren’t that many; I think he was just looking for an excuse. I went inside the room, and when I was walking back, I felt something behind me.” Tears began to fall from his face. “There aren’t any windows there, so it was pitch black. I started walking faster. I knew I couldn’t look behind me. I knew that if I did, it would be the end. Then I heard it. Footsteps. They were almost silent, but the floor vibrated from their weight,” he sobbed. “When I stopped, so did the footsteps. I was too scared to move, then I heard what sounded like an animal breathing. It smelled like it too. I thought I was done for. I was going to be killed by a copycat. Then I think my cantus burst out of me unconsciously. The air gusted like a tornado and I heard a terrible cry behind me. I turned around…and saw it.”
“What was it?” Satoru leaned forward in anticipation.
“I only caught a glimpse of it before it melted away into the shadows. It was an unbelievably huge, white cat. There were bloodstains on the floor. It might have been hurt by the tornado.”
We were silent.
“Yesterday, I wanted to wait for Mamoru to finish his supplementary classes, but the Sun Prince told me to go home because it would take too long.” Anger flared in Maria’s eyes. “They were planning to isolate and kill him right from the start…”
“Wait. Why do they want to get rid of Mamoru? His cantus is average, and there’s nothing wrong with his personality. He’s quiet and cooperative…”
“How would I know? He saw a copycat. Twice! How can you still doubt him?”
As Satoru and Maria argued, a prickling unease began to grow in my mind.
Based on the stories Tomiko told me, there wasn’t anything strange about wanting to eliminate Mamoru. When he was being stalked by the impure cats, he had used his cantus in a dangerous way toward an unseen attacker. It showed that he might be reckless enough to attack other people if he were frightened. This involuntary confession posed another issue. His cantus couldn’t be properly controlled on a conscious level, which meant that he was at risk for becoming a karma demon in the future…
It scared me that I had unconsciously been thinking about it from the Board of Education’s point of view.
“I remembered something when I saw the copycat,” Mamoru said quietly. “I’d seen it before.”
“What are you talking about?” Satoru asked dumbly.
“I can’t remember clearly, the memory might have been erased…but I was hiding behind a storeroom in the inner courtyard. When the storeroom opened, a copycat came out.”
“I remember that!” Maria shouted. “I…was there too.”
There was a heavy silence.
Our naive plan to find Mamoru and bring him back was crushed. What would we do now? We were at a loss.
Since Mamoru’s leg might be broken, it would be impossible to bring him back right away even if we’d wanted to. So Satoru went back alone to tell the Sun Prince that Maria and I had caught a cold and gone home early.
Maria and I built another snow hut next to Mamoru’s. I had brought a sleeping bag just in case, but Maria didn’t have anything so we went to dig out Mamoru’s sled.
Luckily, Mamoru had more than enough food and daily necessities, so we brought them back on the sled and built a cook fire. We melted snow for water and made dinner for the three of us. Squonk shared some of our dried meat.
“It looks it’ll be clear tomorrow,” I said, sipping tea.
“Guess so,” Maria said, a little curtly.
“If the weather holds, Mamoru can ride the sled.”
“Ride it where?”
“Well…” I stopped.
“I’m not going back.” Mamoru raised his head.
“But-“
“I’ll be killed.”
“He’s right! He was almost killed once already,” Maria said.
“But realistically, there’s nothing else he can do but go back, right?” I tried to persuade them. “I talked with the head of the Ethics Committee, Tomiko. If we tell her…I’m sure she’ll understand.”
Actually I had absolutely no confidence in anything I just said. Tomiko might decide that Mamoru was indeed a danger to the town, and even if she didn’t, I doubted she would overrule the Board of Education’s decision just to save him.
“No, we can’t trust anyone in the town,” Maria said, point-blank. “You may be right that the Ethics Committee isn’t the one making the decision to eliminate students. But they go along with it. If they didn’t, people wouldn’t disappear. Like your sister, or the girl in our team, or X.”
I thought about the faceless boy. What would he say in this situation?
“So what will he do if he can’t go back?”
Mamoru answered, “Survive on my own.”
“What? This isn’t like going to camp, you know? You’ll have to spend the next few decades by yourself…”
“I don’t like it either. But I’ll manage somehow with my cantus.”
“Somehow…”
“I think we’ll manage.” Once again, Maria came to his rescue. “With enough practice, a person can survive alone. But he won’t be alone. I’ll be with him.”
“You can’t be serious!”
My head spun.
“Mamoru can’t do it alone. Plus, we chose each other as partners.”
Surprisingly, Mamoru disagreed. “No, you have to go back. Your parents w
ill worry.”
“Why? Don’t you want to be with me?”
“Of course I do. I’m really, really happy. But living away from the town will be difficult. I don’t have a choice since I won’t be allowed to live if I go back. But you can…”
“Don’t worry about that,” she smiled gently. “So that’s why you ran away without telling me. There’s really no one as kind as you are. But it’ll be the two of us from now on. Okay? Promise.”
Mamoru didn’t speak, but tears welled up in his eyes.
I sighed deeply. There was nothing I could say to change their minds.
That night, Maria and I made love in the snow hut.
“I won’t be able to meet you again, will I?” I asked petulantly, with my head between her breasts.
“No, we’ll definitely meet again,” she smiled as she stroked my hair. “I love you, Saki, from the bottom of my heart. But right now I’m worried about Mamoru. There’s no one else who will protect him.”
“I know, but…”
“What?”
“I’m jealous.”
“Silly,” she laughed. “From now on, Mamoru and I have to fight to survive the harsh elements of nature. I should be jealous of you.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” I apologized meekly.
“You’re forgiven,” she said, tilting my chin up and kissing me lightly.
We kissed each other deeply and passionately, like we never wanted be parted again.
That was the last time Maria and I kissed.
Chapter 4
The next morning, I returned to the village alone as a light dusting of snow fell from the sky.
Even though I used my cantus to propel the skis, I had to travel such a long distance that my legs were weak with fatigue. Thoughts of what Maria and Mamoru would do next, as well as all the unknown threats in their future weighed heavily on my mind.
I finally arrived at the dock in Oakgrove and found the place deserted. Even on Sundays there were usually a couple of people hanging around, but I thought nothing of it and simply felt lucky that there was no one to see me.
I untied Hakuren 4 and headed for home. I had used so much of my cantus to get here that I could no longer concentrate fully and my eyes were bleary with tiredness. The canoe drifted from side to side and bumped into the edges of the canal.
