The Beast Player

by Nahoko Uehashi

  As she watched, Elin explored the things she noticed in her mind.

  Its scent was not as strong as the other Royal Beasts. Was this because it was slowly approaching death, its life force gradually waning? Why did it drink water but avoid food? It had been weaned already and had been eating meat like the other Beasts until it was shot at the banquet. Why?

  At first, just as Tomura had instructed her, Elin had used the whistle whenever she entered the cage to bring the cub food, change its water and clean away its dung. She had thought that this was unavoidable. But when she left the cage and watched to see if it ate, she noticed that it began gnawing violently at its fur as soon as the paralysis wore off, almost as if it thought there was some evil creature inside and was trying to rip it out and kill it. Elin had not used the whistle since.

  The cub’s wound had already closed, and Esalu had told her that she would not be coming to tend Leelan’s wound for a week. Although Elin had pointed out that the right wing still drooped as though it hurt, the headmistress had said, “If you hurt your leg, you’d use it cautiously, too, at first. You might even limp for a while after it heals.” She had given Elin seven days to do what she liked before she came to check on the cub again, but had warned her to tell her immediately if she noticed any change in its condition.

  Seven precious days. For that time at least, Elin decided to refrain from using the whistle and devote herself to watching the cub. She could open the door and push water and food in as far as she could by hand. The cub’s urine would drain away naturally on the slanted floor. Although she didn’t like the idea of leaving the stall dirty, after some anxious consideration, she decided that a few days would not hurt. After all, Leelan did not produce much dung right now anyway.

  Soon after, the cub stopped biting itself almost entirely, although Elin was still not completely sure if this was related. As she watched the motionless figure, she tried to imagine what it was thinking. It must perceive sounds and sights quite differently from human beings. Still, we must have some things in common, too. Surely feelings such as our longing to be cuddled by our mothers and our sadness when we are left alone must be similar?

  The dark stall must remind Leelan of the warm darkness beneath its mother. If so, then wouldn’t light remind it of its mother’s absence? Wouldn’t it bring back those fearful memories of waiting alone and afraid in the nest without its mother’s body protecting it, and of being captured by the Beast Hunters?

  But without light, Leelan could not see her food. Tomura and the headmistress had said that other animals could recognize food by smell and that Royal Beasts were no exception, but Elin sensed that this was not so. Of course, smell was important, but wouldn’t being able to see it be important, too? When Elin closed her eyes, she could detect food with her nose. But it was hard to tell if it was safe to eat without seeing it. It would take courage to put it in her mouth. If, like Leelan, she were already terrified by everything around her, if any little thing startled or frightened her, wouldn’t she be even more afraid to eat something that she couldn’t see?

  When she had ignored Joeun’s scolding and gone repeatedly to watch the Royal Beasts, she had been impressed by the mother’s keen eyesight. Soaring in the heavens, it seemed to spot prey from an incredible distance and would swoop out of the sky to hurtle unerringly toward it. Then, returning to its nest where its cub waited, it would bob its head up and down with the prey gripped in its fangs and make that distinctive harp-like sound—lon, lon, lon. The cub would respond with its own cry and then devour the meat.

  What would happen if she waved the meat up and down in front of Leelan instead of just placing it on the floor inside the cage?

  Elin tried hanging the meat from the end of a broomstick and waving it through the bars, but as usual there was no response. The light from the door did not reach far enough inside the cage for Leelan to see it clearly. Placing the broom and the meat on the ground, Elin sat down and sank her chin into her hand. If only there was a bit more light…

  In the evening, the light slanting through the door reached as far as Leelan’s feet, yet the cub did not seem alarmed… Elin suddenly opened her eyes. Maybe it wasn’t afraid because even when protected beneath its mother some light would have reached its feet. Only when the mother stood up and stretched her wings would it have been exposed to light from above. For Leelan, maybe light was something that should come from below.

  When she shared this idea with Tomura who had come to check up on her, his thick eyebrows came together in a frown. “You want me to remove a board from the wall?… I can’t do that without permission.” He had stalked off grumbling to himself, but it appeared that he had indeed gotten permission for he returned that afternoon with some tools.

  “Please be as quiet as possible,” Elin said.

  “I don’t need you to tell me that.” He picked up a long iron crowbar and carefully began pulling out the nails while Elin went inside the stable and watched Leelan. After the last nail had been removed, Tomura slid one end of the crowbar between the planks and put his weight on it. There was a creaking of wood as the plank came loose and then the afternoon sun spread across the floor. Elin held her breath. The shaft of light reached up the Beast cub’s legs all the way to its belly, but although it lowered its head slightly and blinked repeatedly, it did not flinch.

  Elin let out her breath. Her hands were shaking.

  Thank goodness…

  Leelan had shown no fear. Just as she had thought, it was the angle of the light that was important. It was just a small thing, but the fact that her idea had hit the mark made her so happy she wanted to jump up and down. Quietly she went outside.

  “How did it go?” Tomura asked, tapping his boot with the end of the crowbar. The expression on Elin’s face told him the answer.

  “She’s not scared. The light comes all the way up to her belly, but she looks calm.”

  Elin beamed, and Tomura smiled back, perhaps because it was the first time he had seen her smile like this. “Really? That’s great.”

  Elin nodded. “Yes. With that much light, it will be able to see the food. I’m going to wave the meat in front of it.”

  Tomura looked exasperated. “You’re still saying that? It can detect food by the smell. It knows there’s food there but just won’t eat. That’s why we’ve been having so much trouble trying to care for it.”

  “Yes, I know… But I’m still going to try.”

  Elin went to the shed behind the dorm and got a spear that the students used for fishing. Balancing a hunk of meat on a broom handle and waving it up and down had proven quite difficult. This time she would skewer it to the end of the spear. She stuck a piece on the spear point to see how it worked and found that it was surprisingly heavy. She had difficulty waving it, and the meat slipped off as soon as the point angled slightly downwards. She would have to cut it smaller. She tried a hunk half the normal size and found that this was more doable.

  Tomura was still there when she returned to the stable. He grinned when he saw her newly invented tool. “Ah, I see what you’ve done. At least it’s better than that broom you were using.”

  Elin blushed and took the fishing spear into the stable. Tomura stood beside the door and peered inside. Although he had only removed one plank, there was enough light now that he could see Leelan from the doorway.

  The cub seemed to be used to Elin. When she came into the stable, it merely raised its head without flapping its wings. She approached the cage softly. Where should she put the spear through the bars to make the movement look natural to Leelan? How would its mother have done it? She closed her eyes and conjured up the image of the mother Beast tenderly caring for its young on the rock shelf. With the prey in its mouth, the mother had bobbed her head as if bowing deeply, dropping the food from the cub’s eye level down to its legs…

  Elin opened her eyes and pushed the fishing spear through the bars at chest height. Using the crossbar of the cage as a lever, she raised the meat to Le
elan’s eye level and then dropped it down to its feet. The cub moved its head, following it. Then it brought its face close as if to sniff it.

  Leelan’s smelling it!! This was the first time Leelan had shown any interest in food. Standing with bated breath, Elin heard a sound like that of a harp string being plucked. Lon-lon-lon.

  It’s talking! But it was different from the wild cub’s cry of joy before devouring its mother’s offering.

  The cub raised its head and looked at Elin, meeting her eyes and staring straight at her. This, too, was a first. It kept repeating that singsong call. And as it did so, it tilted its head, looking first at the meat and then at Elin.

  It’s asking me something. Elin’s pulse quickened. What could it be asking me? How should I answer it? I’ve got to do something or…

  But she did not know what to do. She stood frozen, unable to move, and as she stared at Leelan, she saw the light gradually fade from the cub’s eyes. It ceased its cries. Its eyes shifted away from the food, and it returned to the same posture as before.

  Hot tears burned inside Elin’s nose and trickled from her eyes. Leelan had spoken to her, but she had been unable to answer. If she had, Leelan might have eaten. She had been so close…

  Elin shook the spear, dropping the meat at Leelan’s feet, and then withdrew it from the cage. When she went outside, Tomura’s face was full of excitement and curiosity. “It looked like Leelan sniffed the meat.”

  Elin nodded without speaking. Tomura frowned. “And didn’t it make a strange noise?”

  Elin blinked. “Strange noise?”

  “Like a harp being plucked.”

  Elin stared at him. “But that’s how Royal Beasts communicate.”

  Tomura’s eyes widened. “What? I’ve never heard any Royal Beast make that sound before. Do they sing like that in the wild?”

  “You mean the Royal Beasts here don’t?” Elin asked in surprise.

  “No. The cubs make a noise like a baby crying and the adults make a sort of a groaning sound. But that’s the first time I’ve ever heard one make a sound like that.”

  Elin stared blankly at the stable, her mouth still partly open. The pair of Beasts she had watched on that rock ledge had frequently communicated in that singsong way. She had never imagined that the Beasts here would not. But now that she thought about it, she realized she had never heard the Beasts in the meadow or Leelan call like that… Until today.

  She stood lost in thought, absently stroking one ear. Why had the cub made that sound? And why hadn’t it done so before?

  “Hey, are you listening?”

  She started at the sound of Tomura’s voice and opened her eyes. “Oh, yes, sorry. What were you saying?”

  Tomura rolled his eyes. “I asked if Royal Beasts sing like that in the wild. You haven’t answered me yet.”

  “Oh, yes, they do. Frequently. But I wonder why the Royal Beasts here don’t,” she muttered to herself. Lowering her head, she went back into the stable, still stroking her ear.

  Leelan had turned once again into a motionless shadow. The meat lay untouched on the ground like a piece of stone. The cub must be hungry, so why wouldn’t it eat?

  Elin hunched down and rested her chin on her knees. Any creature, no matter what the species, would eat if it were starving, because not to do so would mean certain death. What on earth could be strong enough to suppress even the impulse of hunger? What was going on in the cub’s mind? What was it thinking? Humans sometimes took their own life by choice. Were there animals that could do that, too?

  But Leelan was asking me something… The cub had sniffed the meat and then looked at her and cried… as if asking her whether it was all right to eat… If she had been able to say yes, in the language of the Royal Beasts, would it have eaten?

  Elin crossed her arms on top of her knees and buried her face inside them. The Beasts communicated in a language different from that of humans; their thought patterns must be different, too. If she could understand their language and their way of thinking, maybe she could convince Leelan to eat. But that would involve tremendous effort. Could Leelan survive for as long as it would take Elin to find the key?

  Long ago, when she had lost her own mother, she had not eaten for two full days, yet she had not felt hungry. Maybe once one passed a certain point, the body’s natural instincts became so distorted that, oblivious to hunger, one gradually grew weaker, both physically and mentally, slowly disintegrating toward death like a pile of sand.

  Raising her head, she looked at the shadow huddled on the other side of the bars. Would that cub, its life upset by the tragedy that had overtaken it, die confused in this darkness, never eating, unaware that it was starving? Probably yes, as long as Elin remained unable to answer its question.

  A sharp pain shot through her breast, as if she had been stabbed with a needle, and in its wake came a hot rush of sadness. Maybe I’ll be too late.

  That night Elin skipped supper. She simply had no appetite. Curled up in her blanket, she lay on her side, but for a long time she could not sleep. When she finally dozed off, her mind was filled with dreams.

  One image ran through her brain repeatedly: the Royal Beast flying home to its young. Singing tenderly lon, lolon, lon… lon, lolon, lon, it waved a chunk of meat before its little one. The cub sang back, adoringly, then bobbed its head and attacked the meat. For some reason, it kept looking at her while it sang. Lon lon. As the sound echoed in her ears, the scene changed to Joeun’s house. Joeun was proudly showing her his harp and plucking the strings. The tone, he told her, could be changed by rubbing the strings slightly as one stroked them. He plucked a string, lon, and at that sound, Elin’s eyes flew open. For a moment, she stared into the blackness. Then, throwing off her blanket, she jumped up and dashed out of the stable.

  CHAPTER 5

  Turn of Fate

  1 THE VOICE OF THE HARP

  Propelled by the inspiration from her dream, Elin burst from the stable and raced through the dark forest to the dormitory. The moon had already set, and only the stars glimmered through the thin clouds. There was not a light to be seen in the dormitory. The black shape of the building huddled against the darkness. Everyone must be asleep by now, she thought.

  She tried the back door, but it was locked and would not budge. She paused for a moment, biting her lip. She couldn’t bang on the door to wake the dorm mother at this time of night. But when she thought of Leelan’s condition, she could not bear to wait until morning. With only the starlight to guide her, she made her way to the west side of the building. The room she shared with Yuyan was on the second floor, but the window was dark. Yuyan, too, must be asleep.

  A windbreak had been planted near the building, and a branch from one of the trees almost reached her window. Yuyan had once joked that when she and Elin became young women, boys might climb it to court them. Elin rubbed her hands together. She was a good climber. Although there were no branches to give her a foothold on the lower trunk, she had often climbed trees like this with the boys in her village.

  She slipped her feet out of her shoes and undid her sash. After tying the hem of her robe at her waist to keep it from flapping open, she wrapped one end of the sash around her right hand, put it behind the trunk and grasped the other end with her left hand. Gripping both ends firmly, she leant back and hopped onto the trunk. Then she shimmied up the tree like an inchworm, slipping the sash up the trunk and then following with her feet, over and over again. Soon she had reached the thick branch that stretched toward her window. Holding on to the trunk with her left hand, she whirled her right hand in the air to wind the sash around it and then used both hands to pull herself up onto the branch and straddle it.

  Looking along it, she saw that it was too thin at the end to bear her weight for very long. She would need to wake Yuyan up first and get her to open the window before she went that far. She broke off a long, thin branch and, holding it at arms’ length, tapped it against the window. The sound was muffled by the leaves a
t the tip, but after tapping three or four times, she saw a shadow move inside.

  “…Who’s there?” It was Yuyan. Just as Elin opened her mouth to answer, however, her friend spoke again. “Kashugan? Is that you?”

  Elin almost dropped the stick she was holding.

  “You shouldn’t be here…” Yuyan whispered hoarsely. “I mean I’m glad you like me, but we’re still at school, you know.”

  Elin’s mouth hung open as she stared at Yuyan’s shadow. Suddenly, a fit of giggles seized her. She clapped a hand over her mouth and shook so hard that she almost lost her balance. Roughly reminded of where she was, she froze, then hastily clutched the branch. This was no time to laugh. If she stayed here too long, the branch might break. She slid gingerly along it and said in a hushed voice, “Yuyan, sorry. It’s me, Elin. Open the window.”

  Yuyan stopped pleading with Kashugan abruptly and wrenched the window open.

  “Elin?”

  “Shhh!” Elin quickly hushed her. “Sorry I woke you up. Move. I’m going to jump.”

  After making sure that Yuyan was out of the way, Elin crouched like a frog on the branch, then leapt toward the window and, grabbing the ledge, propelled herself inside. Her feet hit the floor with a loud thud. The two girls remained motionless, listening intently to see if anyone on the floor below had woken up. Fortunately, there was no sound.

  “Elin! What’s going on?” Yuyan whispered.

  “I’m sorry. There’s something I need right now, but the back door was locked.”