The Beast Player

by Nahoko Uehashi

  Only when its eyes closed did Elin put down her harp and shut the gate. When she picked up her harp again, expression finally returned to her face. As she met Esalu’s gaze, her eyes filled slowly with tears. Weeping soundlessly, she walked over to Esalu, and the three left the stable without uttering a word. Once outside, Esalu placed a hand on Elin’s trembling arm. “You did it, Elin,” she said huskily, then could say no more. Tears pouring from her eyes, Elin nodded.

  The three of them sat down on the grass beside the stable.

  “So, Leelan responded to your harp just as you thought she would,” Esalu murmured. She ran a hand over the instrument with the hide frame.

  “Yes… Two days ago, when I plucked the strings in the stable, Leelan looked at me as if surprised. And began making a noise that seemed like a response.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I tried answering back.”

  Esalu frowned. “But how? Could you understand the meaning of the notes?”

  Elin wiped the tears from her cheeks and shook her head. “No. But I remembered a sound that the mother Beast used to make and tried to reproduce it.” She adjusted the harp on her knee and plucked a string.

  Lon, lolon, lon… Lon, lolon, lon.

  “The mother Beast often sang like that when cuddling her cub in the nest… And when I played those notes, Leelan gave a cry that sounded like a baby asking for more attention.”

  Esalu leant forward. “You mean ‘shashasha’, right? I’ve never heard a Royal Beast make that sound. Is that what it means?”

  “I think so. Because, in the wild, the cub would rub its nose against its mother when it made that sound…”

  For the last two days, Elin had played the harp frequently in the stable, focusing her thoughts on reassuring the cub. It’s going to be okay, Leelan. You’re safe now.

  And every time, the cub had made that coaxing sound. Later, it had begun to rub its head against the bars of the enclosure, as if trying to get closer to Elin. It was at one of these moments that she had asked Tomura to enlarge the hole in the wall. Even when its whole body was bathed in light, the cub had not seemed to mind. Not only that, but whenever Elin returned after leaving the stable for meals, it had cried and flapped its wings, just as the wild cub in its nest had done when its mother returned.

  This morning, she had been stunned to see it making the same motion the wild cub had made when it wanted to be fed. Now, she had thought. I’m sure it will eat if I feed it now.

  But she could not play the harp and wave the meat on the end of a spear at the same time. She had hesitated, but if she let this moment pass, the chance might never come again. Quicker than thought, she had jumped to her feet and opened the gate. Placing a lump of fresh meat inside, and then, plucking the harp to soothe the cub, she had stepped into the enclosure. Tucking the harp under her arm for a moment, she had picked up the meat, raised it to the cub’s eye level, and then had placed it at its feet.

  Just as before, the cub’s head had followed the meat down to the ground. Smelling it, Leelan had looked at Elin and cried uncertainly. Lon, lon, lon. Elin had held her breath and plucked out the response. Lon, lolon, lon…

  A light had gleamed in Leelan’s eyes, as if the chains on its mind had sprung open. It had bit the meat ferociously, ripping off chunks and gobbling them up.

  Esalu had been listening intently, but at this she looked shocked. “Elin! How could you! Thank goodness you were spared this time, but you should never, ever go near a Beast that hasn’t been immobilized.”

  Elin winced at the violence of her tone. “Yes, I know. I thought the same thing afterwards. I’m sorry.”

  Esalu shook her head slowly and sighed. For some time, no one said a word. Only the sound of the breeze stirring the treetops could be heard in the quiet meadow.

  “…Outrageous,” Esalu whispered finally, and Elin braced herself for another scolding. But the headmistress’s expression was gentle. To her surprise, Elin saw admiration in her eyes. “You really are an outrageous child, you know,” Esalu murmured. “You’ve done something that no one has ever achieved before.”

  Much later Elin was to ask herself many times, what was the turning point? Was it the afternoon she had begged Esalu to let her care for Leelan? Or the night she had decided to use her harp to respond? Or was it…

  And every time she came to the same conclusion. There had been many turning points. Some fate had forced upon her, while for others, she had forged the path herself. But one thing was certain. That particular morning represented a major change in her life.

  3 THE DECISION

  The Beast cub first ventured out into the sun three days after it began to eat. It had been fasting so long that Elin was worried it would not be able to digest the meat, but it was blessed with good health and steadily recovered without vomiting or getting diarrhea.

  When the custodian slid back the large door to the pasture, Leelan ran out into the sunlight on slightly wobbly legs. Located in the highlands, the Kazalumu Beast Sanctuary was mostly meadow, and was bordered by a forest and a river on the far end. The main meadowland, which was the area near the stables, was dotted with large ponds formed by groundwater welling to the surface. These made perfect bathing pools for the Royal Beasts.

  Elin and the others watched from a distance as the cub approached one of these ponds on its unsteady feet. It crouched at the edge and drank, then jumped in with a vigor that made those watching gasp. Leelan, looking very pleased, splashed about so exuberantly that Elin, Tomura and even Esalu could not help grinning.

  “Royal Beasts like to keep clean,” Tomura said with a laugh. “So I guess it makes sense that having a bath would be the first thing it would do.”

  “Do you think it could drown?” Elin asked, but Tomura shook his head.

  “No, the pond’s not deep enough. You don’t need to worry.”

  Squinting against the sun, Esalu watched the cub. Finally, she nodded and said, “It looks like it’ll be all right. While it’s outside, you two go and clean that stable. I have a meeting now, but if anything happens, be sure to let me know right away.”

  After watching her stride off into the woods, Tomura turned his gaze back to Leelan. The cub splashed, and drops of water sprayed through the air, glittering like jewels in the sunlight. At last, it climbed out of the pond, drenched and dripping, and sat down in a sunny spot where it closed its eyes contentedly.

  “I feel like I’m in a dream,” Tomura said as he watched the cub. “I can hardly believe that that’s Leelan over there basking in the sun… You’re amazing, you know. And I’m not just saying that.” Startled, Elin looked up at him. “I mean, you actually did it.” He raised his eyebrows and looked down at her. “Even if, for example, you had used some secret of the Ahlyo—”

  Elin frowned. “But I never—”

  Tomura raised his hand. “Wait until I finish. What I wanted to say is that I would still respect you, even if you had known and used those secret ways.” She blinked as he continued calmly. “It’s your determination—your absolutely crazy determination—that I respect. For the last twelve days, the only thing you have thought about is Leelan. I have never seen anyone so totally focused as you.” His mouth twitched in a smile. “Not to mention your wacky ideas… Watching you made me realize that worrying about what other people think really holds back the imagination. You’re just totally oblivious to all that. You say the craziest things and never even consider whether people will laugh at you. That’s why you come up with ideas that no one else would ever dream of.”

  Not knowing how to respond, Elin stared at the ground. Tomura patted her shoulder with a large hand. “Time to get to work on that stable, don’t you think? I’ll rake out the dirty straw, and you run water over the floor, okay?”

  Elin looked up in surprise. “What? No wait. I can do the straw.”

  Tomura laughed. “It’s okay. I’m faster than you anyway.” He strode off toward the toolshed. Elin started to follow him, but then
turned to take one last look at Leelan. When she saw the cub dozing in the sun, its head nodding, she felt something warm rise from her middle and spread slowly to every corner of her body. The cub was napping in the sun… Time, which had come to a halt, had begun to move again. Elin smiled and ran to catch up with Tomura.

  The headmistress’s office was not that large. When all ten teachers gathered there, it felt quite stuffy. Esalu, however, always held meetings in this room because she found it easier to concentrate here than in the spacious dining hall.

  The entire teaching staff was already there when she entered. Some had been puzzled by the urgent summons, and Yassa, her assistant, was in the middle of explaining the situation. The faces they turned to her betrayed their excitement.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said.

  When she had sat down at her desk, Yassa asked, “How did it go? Did you let it out into the meadow?”

  “Yes. It was a little shaky on its feet, but it went out and bathed.”

  Yassa smiled broadly. “That’s wonderful!”

  Esalu turned to look at the others. “As I’m sure Yassa has just told you, Leelan has begun to eat and is recovering steadily. I called this meeting today to consult about this matter.”

  She paused for a moment, but just as she opened her mouth to continue, another teacher cut her off. It was Losa, a middle-aged man with a biting tongue that made students keep out of his way. “Before you continue, may I be allowed to speak?”

  “Of course.”

  “I know that Professor Yassa was still in the middle of explaining, but have you heard the rumor that has been circulating among the students?”

  “What rumor?”

  “That the child of the Ahlyo has used their secrets to treat Leelan. I told the students not to be ridiculous and reprimanded them severely. However, if I may be so bold as to say so, in my humble opinion, the reason such rumors arose in the first place is because you, the headmistress, entrusted that girl, who is only in the second level of middle school, with the care of a Beast cub. That was a blatant display of favoritism.”

  Esalu’s lip curled in a wry smile. “Yes, that is most certainly what sparked the rumor. But clearly, my decision was not a mistake, at least in terms of Leelan’s recovery.”

  Losa opened his mouth again, but Esalu silenced him with a wave of her hand. “Let me hear your thoughts and questions later. First, let me explain how this all came about.” The teachers sat up straight. “You’re all aware of the circumstances in which Leelan suffered physical and emotional wounds, so there’s no need to confirm those details. The cub showed an extreme aversion to light and had not taken any food or tokujisui for over a month. The situation had reached the point where the cub might have died had it continued to refuse food or drink for another two weeks. This is something that we had all discussed many times, but none of us were able to find a solution. Are you with me so far?”

  They all nodded, and she continued. “The reason I chose a girl who was only in the second level to care for Leelan is because I saw a clue to a solution within the knowledge she possessed. Not because she was Ahlyo,” Esalu said, looking pointedly at Losa, “but because she had observed Royal Beasts in the wild.”

  A murmur of voices rose from the assembly. Most of them were learning of this for the first time. Esalu looked around the room, and everyone fell silent again. “The girl, Elin, has observed Royal Beasts in the wild. In addition, she has outstanding powers of creative thinking and observation. This is something those of you who have taught her already know, and it also makes clear why Joeun, who for many years served as the headmaster of Tamuyuan, thought she was so special. I decided that if our traditional approaches had failed, we had nothing to lose by letting her try.”

  Losa scowled, but many of the other teachers were nodding, particularly those who had taught Elin.

  “The first thing Elin discovered was the reason Leelan was afraid of light. She reasoned that for a cub that was used to being in the nest with its mother, light would ordinarily come from below. Being exposed suddenly to light from above would mean that its mother was gone. She asked me if she could remove the boards at the bottom of the stable wall, and I said yes, because I thought it was an excellent idea. And it worked. Leelan was not afraid of light that gradually entered her stall from below.”

  The teachers’ faces registered surprise. Esalu nodded and continued. “Even from this one idea you can see how innovative Elin is… I’m ashamed to admit it, but until she told me she wanted to remove those boards, I had never even considered the angle of the light.”

  A rueful smile touched her eyes. “Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there is a gap in our knowledge, rather than in our ability to think creatively. Because Elin had seen Royal Beasts in the wild, she knew how a mother and cub live in the nest. We, however, don’t even know that much. We, who have been entrusted by the Yojeh to care for the Royal Beasts, simply do not know.”

  A heavy silence fell over the room.

  “But—” Yassa began.

  “Yes,” Esalu said, nodding. “There’s nothing we can do about that because we are strictly bound to follow the Royal Beast Canon. Royal Beasts are the symbol of the Yojeh’s sovereignty, and when they come under the care of humans, the Canon must be followed to the letter. Every item of their care is recorded in minute detail from what to feed them to the type of straw to use in their stalls. The Canon states that Royal Beasts must always be given tokujisui and that we must use the silent whistle when we approach them.”

  Esalu looked at each of them in turn. “That is precisely why it never occurred to us that there might be any other way of raising them. There was no room for us to discover new ideas. But Elin, who is still only in the second level, does not know the Royal Beast Canon. The Royal Beasts that she knows were those she saw in the wild when she went deep into the mountains with her foster father Joeun. So she treated Leelan not like a Beast in captivity, but like a Beast in the wild. She remembered how the cub demanded food from its mother and what made it feel safe and calm. That’s where she got her ideas.”

  She rubbed her arms. “It made my hair stand on end to see that child walk into the enclosure without using the Silent Whistle. Instead, she plucked a harp that she had altered to sound like the mother Beast. She got close enough to touch the cub when she fed it.”

  The teachers looked astonished, and Losa exclaimed, “But that’s impossible. You mean the rumor is true, then? She used the secret ways of the Ahlyo?”

  “Professor Losa,” Esalu said with an exasperated expression. “Didn’t you hear a word I said?”

  Losa looked offended. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Exactly what I said. Why do you think that I have just explained in such great detail how Elin came up with her ideas? I was demonstrating that it was not the secrets of the Ahlyo that helped her to heal Leelan. Far from it. Rather, she succeeded because she could examine the problem through the lens of her knowledge of the Beasts in the wild, without being restricted by the Royal Beast Canon as we are. Now is it clear?”

  Losa flushed bright red. “I know that. But being able to come up with an idea like imitating a mother Beast on a harp does not make one capable of actually doing it!”

  Esalu shifted her gaze ever so slightly, a sign Losa’s sharp eyes did not miss. “You see, I’m right, aren’t I? She couldn’t have done it without some special skill. There must be something behind this—something like the tricks that the Ahlyo are said to use.”

  Esalu stopped him with a movement of her hand. “Just a moment, Professor Losa. It’s perfectly natural for you to think that… Or rather, I should say that that is precisely why I called this meeting. I knew that some people would think like this.” Her expression was stern as she gazed at them. “We must urgently consult about whether or not to report to the palace the fact that Elin did not use the Silent Whistle, and that instead she found a way to communicate with a Royal Beast using a harp.”
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  The teachers looked at one another, and began talking among themselves, filling the room with the clamor of their voices. Losa waved his hand as though to cut through the noise, and declared in his shrill voice, “But there’s no question about it! We cannot possibly fail to report a matter of such grave importance.”

  Esalu thumped on her desk for silence. She waited for the clamor to recede like the tide pulling back from the shore, and then spoke. “First, think calmly about what would happen if we were to report this to the palace. Until now, we believed that the Royal Beasts would never become accustomed to man. The only method we knew by which we could control them was the silent whistle. And all it does is immobilize them. It does not communicate our intentions. Elin has overthrown these assumptions.”

  “Yes, and that’s exactly why—”

  Esalu interrupted, her voice like thunder. “Hold your tongue until you have heard me out!” Everyone jumped at the fierceness of her tone. Esalu glared at Losa, her eyes aflame. Words flowed from her as though bursting through a dike. “If we report this to the palace, naturally it will cause an uproar. I will most certainly be accused of failing to obey the tenets of the Royal Beast Canon. I would readily accept that. From the moment I adopted this course of action, I planned how to explain myself. But my greatest concern is for Elin—for this girl that we accepted into our school as our responsibility. It’s Elin who I fear for!”

  She slammed her hand on her desk. “She has done nothing wrong. Her only crime was to long, with all her heart, to cure Leelan. To do that, she spent twelve solid days and nights with that Beast cub, and because of that effort, she has done what we could not. She has achieved the impossible!