The headmistress sat at the desk in the very back. She was a middle-aged woman who wore the long black robes of the clergy; Kieli didn’t have any significant memories of her.
There was one more person sitting in the room on the guest couch in front of the desk — a young man who wore the robes of a priest on pilgrimage.
“Hey there, Kieli. I’m glad I could see you again.”
The priest rose with a gentle manner from the sofa and stood in front of Kieli. Kieli gaped up at him as the headmistress’s cheerful voice addressed her from behind him, “This is Mr. Joachim, from the capital. He says you’ve met before?”
The sentence did not jog her memory; she lifted her chin and scrutinized the tall man, with no idea of who he was. He looked down at her from the same eye level as a certain someone she had gotten used to looking up at during her vacation, and her heart skipped a beat. That was what finally reminded her. She didn’t remember anything other than his blue-gray eyes and that he was about as tall as Harvey, but he was the priest she had met at the transfer station.
“Oh!” she breathed, sounding silly even to herself, then, “The capital?” The first half of what the headmistress had said only just now took her by surprise; her eyes widened and she looked back up at the priest. If he was a priest from the capital, didn’t that mean he was a Church leader?
A mischievous smile lit the priest’s gentle eyes. “Surprised?”
“Yes. You didn’t seem like anyone that important at all.” She nodded honestly, but apparently she was too honest, and, over the priest’s shoulder, she saw the headmistress’s smile freeze. “K-Kieli!” Miss Hanni’s panicked whisper flew at her at an angle from behind.
“It’s all right. She’s still young.” The priest put the two women at ease with his practiced response and looked back at Kieli. “Easterbury happened to be my last stop, so I thought I would drop by and thank you for the other day.”
“You went to all that trouble?” It may have been some kind of fate, but they had only met for a few minutes in front of the station, and she didn’t even remember his face. He probably figured out her school from her uniform, but she didn’t think she’d done anything to merit his coming all this way to see her.
The priest didn’t even blush at Kieli’s question, and answered very straighforwardly, “Yes, I just had to see you one more time.” He bent down and peered worriedly into her face. “I’ve been talking with the headmistress just now, and I understand you’ve had a terrible experience. Are you all right?”
The “terrible experience” her teachers had heard was that Kieli was almost eaten, and Kieli didn’t have any such “terrible” memories, but when he asked if she was all right, she somehow got the feeling that he knew everything; he had taken her off guard and she started crying in spite of herself. Even though she hadn’t shed a single tear since it happened.
“…I’m fine…” That was all she managed to mutter as she stared at the floor; the next line wouldn’t pass her lips. I’m fine. Nobody did anything to me. If you care enough to ask me those questions, then please stop running him down.
The headmistress and Miss Hanni fell silent at Kieli’s sudden tears; and for a while, only Kieli’s stifled sobs filled the headmistress’s room. Eventually the headmistress deliberately cleared her throat and, “N-now, now. Let’s not talk of such painful experiences,” and tried to smooth everything over with a line that revealed her misunderstanding of the situation.
“Mr. Joachim has a wonderful proposition for you.”
Kieli wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her uniform and looked up. In contrast to Kieli’s dubious gaze, she could see in the headmistress’s face a sense of absolute trust for this promising young priest from the capital. She plastered a broad, good-natured educator’s smile on her face, that nevertheless left no deep impression on Kieli’s mind, then nodded importantly and said, “He says he would like to invite you to the middle school division of the seminary in the capital on a scholarship,” she informed her, clapping her hands together.
Kieli blinked, trying to take in what had just been said. She shifted her gaze to the priest, who responded with a smile and added, “I’m told you have no relatives, so, if you like, I was hoping you would come to the capital with me.”
“But why me…?”
“Oh, Kieli, isn’t that marvelous!?” Miss Hanni raised her shrill voice before Kieli could ask her question. She looked up at the ceiling, clasped her hands in front of her chest, closed her eyes, and said rapturously, “This is guidance from the Lord. He gives equal opportunities even to unfortunate girls like you.”
Kieli took her eyes off the priest and gazed expressionlessly at Miss Hanni’s rimless glasses. She wanted to ask this believer who was so honest and virtuous that she would call this unfortunate girl “unfortunate” to her face, “Miss Hanni, if God really is here, then why didn’t He give that black cat even a little food or shelter from the cold?”
Then she suddenly came up with something. Maybe God really was on their planet. And He was a man of such perfect, flawless character, that He watched over everyone equally — the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor — and never played favorites or reached His hand out to any of them. Oh, what a wonderful God. He can just drop dead.
The transfer station on the eastern edge of Easterbury parish was bustling with travelers as usual today. Railways stretched in different directions toward varying destinations — to the west, the railroad went through central Easterbury and on in the direction of Westerbury; to the east, lay the Sand Ocean that spanned the continent; and to the north, the railroad passed through the North-hairo parish and on to the Church Capital.
Kieli leaned her cheek on the cold glass of the train window and gazed indifferently at the people hurrying on and off the platforms, carrying their big bags.
She couldn’t quite believe that only a week had passed since the last time she saw this scene. The last time, Kieli and her companions had gotten off here, visited Harvey’s old house, and then headed for the abandoned railroad to the south.
It was possible that Harvey was still in the area, and that if she looked for him, she could see him. Never learning her lesson, she got her hopes up and started to fidget slightly; she made herself sick.
Just stop thinking about it already. Harvey said I’d never see him again. And now I’m going far away from here.
She had already boarded the train leaving for the capital and was waiting for departure.
Kieli didn’t want to go on to attend a seminary, so she refused the scholarship, but of course that was when it was determined that her financial aid in Easterbury would be cut off. The headmistress and Miss Hanni had not a speck of doubt that Kieli would happily go, and in the end, she couldn’t oppose her teachers’ opinions.
She wanted to hurry and be able to make her own living and decide for herself where she was going to go. She had started vaguely thinking along those lines after experiencing her journey, but now she was in a position where she had no choice but to depend on financial aid and scholarships.
And one more thing — she couldn’t completely refuse to go to the capital, because Kieli had no reason to be so set on staying in Easterbury. It wasn’t like she had any family, and Becca was gone; besides, it wasn’t like anyone would come to get her if she waited for them.…
Who was she thinking of?
I’m thinking about it again…
Just as she interrupted her own thoughts and sighed, a voice beside her said, “Here,” and a tin mug was offered to her. White steam rose slowly from it, and a sweet-smelling brown liquid swirled inside. When she looked up and accepted it in both hands, the young priest smiled and sat in the seat opposite her, a cup with a blacker liquid than hers in his hand.
“Apparently it will be a while before we depart. Drink that while we wait.”
Kieli put the warm chocolate to her mouth and tasted it a little. What a luxury! she thought. They’ve never served anything like this in the
boarding school cafeteria. Then she turned her eyes upward to look at the priest and said, “I like it.”
“If you like it, I can get you another.”
“You’re such a friendly and considerate person, Mr. Joachim.” She spoke her mind openly.
Joachim put his coffee to his own mouth and blinked. “I wonder if you’re comparing me to someone when you say that? Perhaps you know someone who is unfriendly and inconsiderate?”
“No, it’s not that,” Kieli answered vaguely and looked nowhere in particular, trying to escape his gaze. She wished he would sit more to the side. It made her strangely nervous to have him sit directly across and stare at her like that.
She took another sip from her cup and glanced back at him. He was still staring at her, and she had the feeling he was scrutinizing her for something, which made her even more uncomfortable. His smile seemed friendly at first glance, but — and maybe she was wrong — it also looked as if there was a kind of thin membrane over it, and it was difficult to tell what he was thinking.
Why would he be interested in someone like her? Inviting her to the capital just for helping him a little in front of the station was awfully nice.
At a loss for where to look, she dropped her eyes back down to the chocolate in her cup. Just then, the car shook forward and back with a clank, and she very nearly spilled her drink and stained her skirt. She didn’t need her boarding school uniform anymore, but all her personal clothes were packed in her luggage, and she ended up wearing her usual black uniform anyway.
Looking at the platform, she could see that they were doing something to the front of the train. She squinted her eyes to see what it was. “Ah!” Kieli half rose out of her seat and stuck her face to the window.
They were trying, just now, to attach an angular black car to the front passenger car of the train. It looked exactly like the Church Soldiers’ armored car that had attacked them in the abandoned mine — she was almost sure of it.
“Mr. Joachim, what are they doing?” she asked, still clinging to the window.
For his part, Joachim calmly drank his coffee, not particularly concerned. “It seems the locomotive is having trouble. Since the Church Soldiers that had been deployed in Easterbury were going back now anyway, it’s been decided that the armored car will pull the passenger train to the capital with it. It will delay our departure a little, but that car has more power; it will make up for it in speed.”
“Church Soldiers…” Kieli murmured in a tense voice, then stared at the work going on in front of them.
With the three black cars connected to the front, the ten passenger cars, and the two freight cars at the end for a total of fifteen, the train was getting to be extremely long. She spotted a few men wearing the white armor among the people working on the platform, and her heart started beating faster.
She was getting a bad feeling about all of this. Had Harvey really gotten away?
Just then, she heard the sound of metal against metal next to her seat; she started and turned around to see a man, in the same armor as the people outside, standing in the aisle. Kieli almost screamed in spite of herself; she somehow managed to swallow it back, but she staggered and her back crashed into the window.
Kieli could hardly hold herself up for the fear she felt. Right in front of her, the Church Soldier leaned toward Joachim and whispered something in his ear, then left along the aisle, his spurs clanking as he went.
Even after the footsteps disappeared behind the door to the next car, Kieli remained rigid against the window. She felt the color drain from her entire body. Church Soldiers and priests held places on opposite ends of the Church’s organization and had different jurisdictions, so until now, Kieli never made a connection between the incident in the mine and Joachim. But when she thought about it, if he was a Church leader, it wouldn’t be so strange for him to be receiving reports.
“I’ll be in the car up ahead a little ways. I’ll come back later,” Joachim said, rising from his seat as if to follow the soldier. He turned his eyes on her pallid, frozen face, and said kindly, “What’s the matter? There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Um…” Kieli managed to open her mouth, using every effort to keep her voice from shaking. “The Undying that was with me. Didn’t he escape? Could it be that you caught him?” Her efforts were in vain, and the voice that came from her throat was faint and trembling.
“Oh, neither,” Joachim answered, still smiling, and went into the aisle, leaving Kieli unable to understand his meaning. He went a little ways, then stopped, turned casually back, and with the same smile plastered on his face, but with his cheeks somehow twisted strangely, he added, “It’s all right. He’s dead.”
Kieli opened her eyes, thinking that someone was calling her.
For a second, she didn’t realize that she had been asleep. The train had already departed. Quiet music, almost drowned out by the noise inside the car, reached Kieli’s ears. She pulled the radio out of her luggage and placed it on her lap.
It didn’t look as if Joachim had come back after leaving his seat.
What did he say earlier? Dead? Undying don’t die. That’s stupid. You’re lying.
For some reason, her body had no energy, as if her nerves were paralyzed somewhere. She threw an absentminded glance out the window, still leaning an ear toward the radio. She couldn’t see the scenery outside because of the darkness that enveloped it, and instead, the black glass reflected her own face and the inside of the car, giving her a strange sense of realism, like she was looking at translucent spirits.
She felt as though someone called her again.
She moved her head a little and turned her eyes toward the aisle and the seats on the other side. Sitting in the next box were a small girl and a man who appeared to be her father; the father was engrossed in his book, and the girl was leaning on him, sleeping. At the moment, there were no signs of anyone walking down the aisle.
She tilted her head in confusion. When she returned her gaze to the window, she heard, “…li…”
This time there was no doubt about it — someone had called her. She looked around her again, then gasped, picked the radio up from her lap, and put her ear to the speaker. “Ki…li…” She heard a staticky voice call her name, so faint it almost vanished, but definitely there.
“Corp —” Kieli cried involuntarily, her voice hysterical, and stood up. On the other side of her box’s partitions, the other passengers bathed her with dubious looks.
She hurriedly dropped back into her seat, then hunched over and whispered above the radio, “Is that you, Corporal?” But she couldn’t hear a response, and when she turned up the volume, the static only got worse, causing the father across the aisle to glare at her in annoyance. The girl frowned and stirred a little in her sleep.
Holding the radio, she stood up again. The passengers had all gone back to their own seats and their own pastimes and didn’t seem to think there was anything particularly suspicious about her. Even so, she worried about the gazes of the people around her as she went quickly down the aisle toward the door to the car behind them.
The moment she opened the door and stepped out onto the pitch-dark deck, the noise from the wheels banged against her eardrums and a cutting, cold wind disturbed her hair. She hurried to close the door, then plastered herself to the train’s wall to get out of the wind, and shouted loud enough to be heard over the surrounding noise.
“Corporal. Corporal, is that you!? Can you hear me?”
She turned the radio up to its highest volume and waited a bit; a broken reply came through the static.
“…Kieli…can you hear me…?”
It had only been a few days, but she had missed the staticky voice terribly. Kieli held back the tears that were about to spill from her eyes, brought her face close to the radio, and began to speak. “Corporal, how? Did you come back?”
“…Kieli…can you hear me…? Go to the freight car…”
“Corporal?”
But the radio didn’t answer and only repeated the same line: “…Kieli…can you hear me…? Go to the freight car…” It wasn’t much of a conversation. “The freight car…?” Kieli leaned out from the deck and stared at the cars lined up behind it. She squinted into the darkness, relying on the square yellow lights that fringed the windows of the passenger cars. There were three passenger cars behind her current location, and after that, two cargo cars were stuck to the end.
“…Kieli…go to the freight car…” the radio’s voice continued, like a chant.
Gazing at the freight car she saw behind her, Kieli nodded silently. She lowered the volume on the radio, hung it from her neck, and crossed the deck to the next car.
She had not a single reason to hesitate.
When she came out onto the deck of the last passenger car, closed the door, and finally saw the freight car that came next in the dull light filtering through the small window behind her, she nevertheless felt a bit of hesitation.
The deck of the freight car in front of her was no more than a simple foothold, and most importantly, there wasn’t a door in front of her like there had been on the passenger cars. There was a big sliding door in about the middle of the sidewall for loading cargo, and it seemed that was the only entrance. Also, there was a wide space between the two cars, and it looked as if she would need to jump to get to the next one.
“…Kieli…go to the freight car…”
“I know, Corporal. It’s okay. I can get there.” The voice from the radio was still only one-way, but she said it clearly out loud in order to convince herself.
She took a deep breath and swallowed, then summoned her determination and leapt from the deck.
As the tips of her toes reached the measly little deck, she clung to the handrail with both hands, and moved to the side wall without hesitation. Her hair and clothes fluttered madly in the wind as she gradually made her way along the side wall, using the sliding door’s rail as a foothold. It was actually fortunate that she couldn’t see her feet in the darkness. If she caught sight of the train track racing under them at such a high speed, she would undoubtedly have frozen and not been able to move.
The Dead Sleep in the Wilderness Page 16
