Dust stung Ico’s eyes. Even his mouth tasted of it. Ico stood, wobbling. He saw the girl, still standing at the end of the bridge, hands over her mouth. Her eyes were wide with surprise.
“It’s okay—” he started to call out, when a loud noise reached his ears.
Something was cracking. He felt a lurching vibration, and the bridge buckled beneath him. The chandelier pitched forward, sliding down the railing.
Before Ico could react, the far side of the bridge snapped, falling from its perch at the edge of the second level. Apparently, the bridge was just as worn as the brackets securing the chandelier.
With a sound that shook the very ground beneath them, half of the bridge fell to the floor, forming a slide that started on the second floor where the girl stood and ending all the way down by the double doors that led out to the green grass beyond.
Ico rode the chandelier as it slid down the fallen bridge, coursing on top of the railings like a child at play. It quickly gathered speed, flipping when it hit the bottom and sending Ico flying.
This time he fell facedown and landed on his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Dust filled the great room like mist, and in the silence, he heard the echoing plink plink of candles that flew from the chandelier and struck the ground before rolling to a stop.
Ico lay on the floor a long while, checking to make sure he still had his limbs. I’m still breathing. Nothing’s broken. I’m not bleeding. He waited until he could hear nothing moving around him before getting up. When he did, he saw that the fallen bridge formed a sturdy-looking pathway from the second floor down to where he sat. The chandelier had flipped over and fallen off to one side.
The girl was still standing where she had through the entire ordeal, hands held over her mouth in shock. Ico stood and walked to the slanting bridge to look up at her.
“Hey!” he called out. “It’s not pretty, but I think you can walk down that. Come on. Just watch where you step.”
Perhaps she was frightened, but the girl did not move. Ico climbed up the incline of the bridge, using his hands to crawl on all fours.
“If you’re scared, you can just slide down on your bottom. It’s like a slide.”
The girl shook her head. She appeared to be smiling. As if to say, That’s hardly something to suggest to a young lady.
Something touched Ico’s heart—gentle and warm—reminding him of a time long past.
“You can just take it a little bit at a time. You won’t fall,” he said, smiling and glad that she had smiled at him.
In the end, he had to help her down all the way, one eye always on the railing where the bodies in his vision had hung. He wondered if the ropes had left any marks, and it made his stomach turn.
The railing was coated in dust accumulated over the years, plus a fresh layer from the recent collapse. The stone was rough to the touch and hurt his hand.
When he finally reached the bottom with the girl, Ico brushed the dust off himself and straightened out his Mark. He picked up a candle that had fallen by his feet, thinking it might be useful later. Sticking it in his trousers, he looked around for something that might serve as a weapon to replace the extinguished torch he had left up above. Eventually, he settled on the leg of a chair. He picked it up. It was the perfect weight in his hand.
He looked over at the girl to find she had her back turned to him and was looking across the room in the direction the knight had been walking in Ico’s vision atop the chandelier. She was looking intently, concern on her face. Like she could sense something tugging at her memory there.
Quietly, Ico gave the girl’s shawl a gentle tug. She looked around and their eyes met.
Ico had many questions, many doubts, but the fresh breeze blowing in through the open double doors and the shining lawn beyond blew them from his mind and beckoned him outside.
Joining hands, they walked through the doors. Ico could feel the softness of the ground and the grass through the leather of his sandals. It gave him hope and filled him with new energy.
Around the wide lawn under the sun was a terrace and a walkway that led to a large arched bridge awaiting them.
[8]
THOUGH THE INTERIOR of the castle was a maze, out here there was nothing to stop them. Maybe it was the distance between his eyes and the sun and sky above that made him feel free. Here, high walls around the garden blocked the wind that howled incessantly in the corridors of the towers and across the high balconies.
They cut straight through the grassy courtyard, passing under a small walking bridge. There was a drawbridge here too, but it didn’t take long for Ico to figure out how to lower it, and they crossed without difficulty. A short while later, they came to a deep waterway, over which the two of them stood, casting their shadows down upon it. The water was a good distance below them and too dark for Ico to clearly make out their reflections. Still, he could see the silhouettes that they formed on the water’s surface, which somehow relieved him. If the girl had a reflection, then she wasn’t a spirit or a ghost.
A thick copper pipe ran along the wall above the waterway. The pipe climbed up the side of the walls—which were too high for even Ico to scale—twisting and bending before disappearing into the castle. The elder had taught him that they had pipes like these in the capital to carry water to the center of town, so that people wouldn’t have to dig wells or go fetch water from the river. He’d seen a number of pipes as the guards rowed him across the inlet when he first arrived at the castle, and so there must have been a number of pipes running along these walls for the convenience of people living here—but what made them all run? However it once functioned, it didn’t seem to be working now and probably hadn’t for some time.
It frustrated him to know so little about the castle. The wonders he saw here might be commonplace in the temples of the capital, but he had no way of knowing. He wondered if he would ever get the chance to find out. They returned to the center of the courtyard. The sunlight glinted off the grass, and it was hot enough to make Ico sweat. Ahead of them, stairs led to a heavy stone arch.
“Just a little more,” he said to the girl, then hurried, pulling her along. He didn’t want to get caught in such a large area surrounded by those shadow creatures.
Sweat dripped from his brow, but he reflected on how strange it was that since meeting the girl, he had felt neither hunger nor fatigue. Normally he would never have been able to run so far without stopping.
The two ran to the arch, where Ico saw what he had been hoping to find—the one place in the castle he had seen before entering its walls. They were at the front gate. Its doors were still open wide, pointing out toward the water.
“We made it!” Ico practically whooped for joy. He pointed at the gate. “Now we can get out of here!”
He felt dizzy with relief. Unable to stand still, he held both the girl’s hands and jumped for joy.
The only thing between them and the massive gate was a long path, as wide as the gate itself, covered in soft grass. Cobblestones had been laid down its center, and pairs of tall torch stands stood like sentries on either side. The torches were useless under the sun, but even so they seemed to welcome him, beckoning like outstretched arms, showing him the way out.
“Let’s go!”
Pulling on the girl’s hand, he ran. Run. Run! Ico’s mind was already ahead of him, floating somewhere near the gate. He wouldn’t let anything get in their way now. The gate was so large that even as he ran, he felt like he wasn’t getting any closer. It was like chasing after the moon. No, I’ll get there. Each step is taking me closer to escape. Closer to freedom.
The gate towered in front of them. He wondered what kind of stone had been used to build such a massive structure. From this distance, he couldn’t see any of the seams one might expect in something so large.
At the top of each of the gate’s hinges stood massive round orbs, sparkling quietly beneath the sun. He remembered catching a glimpse of one of them from the boat on his way in, reflecting
the sunlight down onto him.
Just then, the girl gave a terrified scream. Their hands were wrenched apart.
The girl had fallen on the cobblestones, tumbling to the base of one of the torch stands. Ico was moving so fast that he fell forward, tripping over his own feet. When he stood, he froze at what he saw. Still screaming, the girl was clawing at her face and body, her legs writhing in pain.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked, crawling toward the girl but unable to bring himself to touch her. She twisted and turned as though her skin was on fire. Something unseen was attacking her, invisible talons raking her body. Ico whirled around, looking for more of the shadow creatures. But there was nothing in the courtyard but the sun and the grass.
They had covered half of the distance to the main gate. If they stood up and ran, they’d be there in no time. There was salt on the wind. Just a little farther and they would be able to hear the waves.
Ico felt the wind on his cheek—not the gentle breeze blowing in from the sea, but a cold, bracing wind rushing down from the Castle in the Mist.
Ico raised his eyes and saw something gathering in the air above the girl. It was the wind—he could see it. It came together in threads, slender whips forming in thin air, then entwining. Countless tongues of lightning flashed without sound in the gathering darkness of the cloud.
Individually, the threads had no shape or color, but when they flowed together, they formed a figure there in the sky—a gathering of dark motes that absorbed the light, waxing stronger as they coalesced, giving off a brilliance that was the opposite of light.
Still on his knees, Ico braced himself. Then his hands fell to the ground and his mouth dropped open when he saw the figure coalescing above the girl. It was not a creature of smoke that appeared there. Though it took form in much the same way, its shape was far more human than any of the creatures he had seen within the castle.
A woman. She wore a wide gown that flowed around her, with elegant embroidery along the sleeves and hem. Her face was small and gaunt, with sunken cheeks and a sharp chin. Her skin was white as bone, her features glowing with the same dull gleam as the eyes of the shadow creatures. But unlike the creatures, this woman’s eyes were pools of darkness. Though she had no pupils, Ico could tell she was looking straight at him. She spread her arms like a swooping falcon, her sleeves billowing.
This was the same woman in black Ico had seen praying before the idols in his vision.
The tolling of a bell came from somewhere in the Castle in the Mist. The bell rang slow and deep, and at its signal, the massive doors of the gate behind Ico began to close, cutting off the sea wind. The girl lay still on the ground, unconscious. Ico gasped and tried to grab her. Stand up! We have to go! The gates are closing—
Then, floating above them, waves of dark mist lapping at her feet, the woman in black spoke. “Who are you?” she demanded, her voice twisting and bending through the air as though her voice itself were made of smoke. “What are you doing here?” The sound of her voice rose and fell, like a conversation overheard from beyond a wall.
Ico held his arm around the girl’s body, sheltering her. He stared up at the woman in black, his breath ragged through his open mouth. He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t move.
I shouldn’t answer her. The elder, Oneh, and every scary fairy tale he had ever heard had all told him that if you ever met a demon in the woods, even if it called you by name, you were not to answer. Answer, and it would have your soul. Instead, you must close your eyes and tell yourself that what you were seeing didn’t exist. Close your heart to it, else the demon would steal its way in.
“I see your filthy horns, boy. You are a Sacrifice. What is a Sacrifice doing leaving his stone coffin, coming all the way out here?” Even when he closed his eyes and pressed his hands over his ears, the woman’s voice wouldn’t go away.
He opened his eyes again, and they met the woman’s black gaze, two pools like fathomless swamps. Ico shivered and scrambled back. His right hand reflexively went to the Mark on his chest.
The woman’s eyes, black scars on her white face, narrowed. “What’s this?”
The bell rang, its sound echoing through the courtyard. The gates were already halfway closed now. Their shadows stretched all the way to where Ico and the girl lay on the ground.
“I see,” the woman said, nodding. “You are a particularly lucky Sacrifice. Thank your luck and leave my castle. I’ve spared your life once. Begone before I have a change of heart.”
My castle—this woman was the master of the castle?
“Wh-who—” Ico stammered, trying to stand. Then he was on his feet before the woman. “Are you the master here?” he asked, forgetting the warnings for the moment.
“Yes. I am master of the Castle in the Mist. I am queen of all who live in its shadow.”
The woman moved her right hand, lifting a finger and pointing it directly at Ico’s nose. Though what he felt now was so different, somehow the gesture reminded him of the way the girl had pointed at him when she first stepped from the cage.
The queen of the castle was incredibly thin, even down to her fingers. She wasn’t just old—she seemed almost a skeleton. The sharp nail on her outstretched finger gleamed like a slice of obsidian.
“Sacrifice. Your life is in my hands. If you do not wish to suffer the same fate as your comrades, leave. Now.”
His fear mingled with his determination, and his heart raced. He ran to the girl’s side and tried to lift her in his arms.
“Take your hands off the girl!” the queen said, her voice slicing the air. A sharp, cold wind hit Ico’s neck like a blade.
“She is not for you to touch, Sacrifice. Do you know who this girl is?”
I want to know.
He shivered and looked up at the queen. He meant to sound defiant, but his voice quavered pitifully. “It doesn’t matter who she is! She’s trapped here. She’s a Sacrifice, like me! I’m taking her with me!”
The queen’s pointed chin lifted and her face twisted. Ico’s legs turned to jelly beneath him. The queen began to laugh.
The girl moved, getting her arms beneath her and rising halfway to look up at the queen. She looked like she was going to cry.
Ico stepped to the side, kneeling by the girl. He put his hand on her shoulder and could feel her tremble. The girl was transfixed by the sight of the queen.
The queen sensed that she was being watched, and her laughter faded as she looked down at the girl. Even though she was still half lying on the ground, Ico could feel her recoil at the queen’s gaze.
The queen spoke more slowly now, weaving her words as she called to the girl. “Yorda,” she said, “my dear Yorda.”
This time, Ico flinched. His hand tensed on the girl’s shoulder and he looked at the queen. She was staring only at the girl now. As she was entranced by the queen, so too could the queen not take her eyes from her. Their eyes met.
“Did you hear what this brazen boy has said? He called you a Sacrifice! How unfathomably rude. Does he not know that you are my beloved daughter?”
Ico felt the strength leave his legs. His arms dropped to the ground.
Yorda did not reply but instead lowered her face to the ground as though she might escape the queen’s eyes. She lifted her hand to her mouth. Even her fingers trembled.
“That can’t be right,” Ico stammered. “There’s no way she’s your daughter!”
“Oh?” The queen looked at him, smiling. “You doubt my words? You are as foolish as you are headstrong!”
Ico stood quickly and charged at the queen. Laughing, she waved her bony hand at him—her slightest gesture was enough to send him tumbling across the stones.
“You should know your place, Sacrifice—and it is far, far from me.” The queen’s smile faded and her eyes glowed like black flames in the pale moonscape of her face. “I should kill you just for leading her around the castle!”
Ico stood on unsteady feet. “If she really is your daughter, w
hy did you imprison her in a cage? It doesn’t make any sense!”
The queen’s pointed chin lifted and she laughed again—a short laugh, like the bark of a dog. “The lowly Sacrifice would admonish me! What I choose to do with my daughter is none of your concern.”
Ico made to charge her again. The queen raised a clawlike nail, but Yorda stepped between them. Without a word, Yorda stretched out her arms in front of Ico, holding him back. Ico looked into her eyes and she shook her head, pleading with him.
The queen’s eyes narrowed. “Look at that. It seems Yorda pities you.” She seemed more bemused than upset. “Your luck is twofold, lowly Sacrifice. I will spare your life a second time, for Yorda’s sake. Now leave. Yet I will not suffer you to leave by the front gates through which I once walked in glory, surrounded by the cheers and admiration of my people.”
Almost as if they had been waiting for those very words, the giant gates closed fully, shaking the earth with the sound. The light that had come streaming through was cut off, casting the entire courtyard in shadow.
The tolling of the bell ceased.
“I am sure a crawler in the earth such as yourself will have no trouble finding a suitable exit. Wriggle from a crack in the wall if you must, miserable vermin. Or perhaps you would prefer to dig at the earth with your claws and escape through a tunnel of your own making? But you will find a way, and you will leave.”
Though there was no wind, Ico’s Mark stirred. The queen frowned, her eyes flashing. Ico recalled the queen frowning before when he had touched his Mark—as though she found it distasteful.
He began to walk toward the queen, placing his hand directly over the Mark and focusing all his thoughts on it. Wrapped in robes of swirling darkness, the queen stared him down. Ico glared back.