ICO: Castle in the Mist

  “Don’t thank me. Say you’ll come!”

  “I can’t.”

  Toto shook his head. “You’re a lot of things, Ico, but I never figured you for a coward.”

  “Think of what will happen to the village if I run. Without a Sacrifice, the Castle in the Mist would grow angry.”

  Not just the village. The capital too would be destroyed, all in the space of a night. No, he thought, there probably wouldn’t even be time to blink.

  “So what if the castle gets angry?” Toto asked, growing angry himself. “What’s so scary about the castle anyway? My parents won’t ever talk to me about it—Mom practically covers her ears and runs when I ask questions.”

  It wasn’t that Toto’s parents didn’t want to talk about it—they were forbidden to talk about it. It was part of their custom, because they knew that the Castle in the Mist was always wary. Not even a curse could be whispered under the breath. And the castle suffered no one to challenge its authority. No one.

  “When you turn fifteen, they’ll hold the ceremony for you,” Ico told him. “You’ll learn what it means then. The elder will tell you everything.”

  “That’s great,” Toto said, a bit too loud, “but I want to know now! How do they expect me to just sit here and accept it until they think I’m ready? Once they take you off to the castle, you know you’re not coming back, right? Well, that doesn’t work for me. I’m not going to just stand around and let that happen.”

  “But, Toto, I am the Sacrifice.”

  “Because you got horns growing out of your head? Why does that make you anything? Who thought all this crap up anyway?”

  It’s just the way it is, Ico wanted to say, but he held himself back.

  “You know something, don’t you?” Toto’s voice suddenly grew much quieter. “Tell me, Ico. I have to know.”

  Ico slumped. Hadn’t the elder told him—in a tone that left no room for interpretation—not to speak of what he knew, of what he had seen?

  It was already several days ago that Ico’s horns had grown suddenly in the space of a night and the elder had taken him over the Forbidden Mountains. They had ridden on horseback for three days to the north, going where not even the hunters dared tread. They saw no one on the road, no birds flying overhead, no rabbits in the underbrush, no tracks of foxes in the soft mud left by rains the day before.

  Why were the mountains forbidden? Why did no one come this way? Why were there no birds or animals to be seen? All of Ico’s questions melted like a springtime snow when they reached the top of the pass and he saw what lay on the other side.

  “I brought you here to show you the horror the Castle in the Mist has wrought, the depth of its rage—and the true meaning of your sacrifice,” the elder told him. “Only the Sacrifice can quell the castle’s wrath and prevent this tragedy from happening again. Look well upon it. Carve the sight deep within your heart. Then fulfill your duty and do not think of flight.”

  The elder’s words still rang in his ears.

  Ico had known he was to be the Sacrifice since he was a child. He had been raised for this purpose and none other.

  Ico’s daily life had been no different from that of any other child in the village. When he was bad, he was scolded; when he was good, he was praised. He tended the fields and the animals. He learned how to read and write, he swam in the rivers and climbed in the trees. The days went by quickly, and he slept soundly at night. Before his horns poked out from beneath his hair, even Ico often forgot they were there at all.

  And yet, he knew that he was the Sacrifice, that he was different from the other children. The elder told him that often, almost every day. What he had seen across the Forbidden Mountains, however, had a greater impact on Ico than any words. It made him painfully aware, beyond a doubt, of the weight of his burden. Ico reached up, absentmindedly brushing the tip of one of his horns with a finger. Here was the proof that he was the one chosen to prevent calamity, to save his people.

  How could I run from that?

  On the trip home from the mountains, Ico’s resolve had become as hard as steel. Whereas his duty as the Sacrifice had only been something vague before, a role in a distant play, now it took a clear and definite shape. He never noticed the tears the elder shed as he hurried his horse ahead of him on the path. When they returned to the village, Ico had moved into the cave without being asked.

  “I got it!” Toto shouted from the window, jarring Ico from his reverie.

  “What? What is it?”

  “I’m coming with you, Ico. I’m going to the castle!”

  Ico jumped up, standing against the wall directly beneath the window. “You’re not going anywhere! If the priest found out, they’d lock you up. Probably the rest of your family too. You really want that to happen?”

  Toto gulped. “Why would they do that? Who says I can’t see the castle? If only the Sacrifice is allowed to go, what about the priest? Does he have to throw himself in jail?”

  “Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

  “Why do I even bother?” Toto grumbled. “You’re not even on your own side.”

  Ico shook his head. He looked up at his friend’s face, beet red with anger, and suddenly he felt the tension leave his shoulders, and he laughed out loud.

  Toto’s a good person. A good friend. And I’ll never be able to see him again once I leave.

  That thought made him feel lonelier than any other.

  A good friend…Which is exactly why I must go to the castle.

  “Toto,” he said after a moment of silence, “I know what will happen if the castle gets angry. But I can’t tell you. I can’t go against custom. It’s just like when they say we’re not supposed to swim in the deep water on days when the west wind blows or ride into the mountains without trimming our horse’s hooves. It just is, and you’ll have to wait for your ceremony to know why.” Ico’s voice was calm and even. “It’s true, though, that when the Sacrifice goes to the castle, the danger is gone. And you know I won’t die, right?”

  “Sure, but you’ll never come back. What’s the difference?”

  “It makes a big difference to me!” Ico said with a grin. “The elder told me that after the Sacrifice goes to the Castle in the Mist, they become a part of the castle—they live forever.”

  Ico wasn’t lying. The elder really had told him that. It had surprised him at first when he learned that being the Sacrifice didn’t actually mean going to your death.

  “So you’re going to live forever?” Toto lifted an eyebrow. “You’re just going to live at the castle? That’s it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  The conversation was quickly entering an area where Ico felt less sure he was right. In fact, he didn’t know what he would be doing once he arrived at the castle. He suspected the elder didn’t know either.

  As it was, from the moment he had heard he wasn’t going to die, his curiosity about the Castle in the Mist had grown. What would happen there? What did it mean to “become a part of the castle”?

  Toto wasn’t buying any of it. “How does the elder know what’s going to happen to you? It’s not like he was ever the Sacrifice.”

  “The priests told him.”

  “So the priests know what’s going to happen to you?”

  “Of course. They’re big scholars in the capital, you know,” Ico explained, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “But, Toto, you have to promise me that when the priest comes to the village you won’t go asking him all kinds of questions. I wasn’t just trying to scare you—they really will lock you up. And I don’t want that happening because of me. If you try to do something when they come for me, they might punish the whole village.”

  “Fine,” Toto said at last, but his expression made it clear he wasn’t happy with the arrangement.

  “Good,” Ico said. “I’m glad.” And he meant it. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Well, don’t think you’ve seen the last of me yet,” Toto called out. “And I haven’t
given up, either!” He disappeared from the small window.

  “What do you mean?” Ico shouted after him.

  “That’s for me to know!” came his friend’s distant reply.

  “This isn’t a game! It’s really serious! Seriously serious! You hear me, Toto?”

  “I hear you just fine. Don’t get all worked up over it, okay? See ya.”

  And with that, Toto was gone.

  For a while, Ico stood there, looking up at the empty square of night where his friend’s face had been.

  [3]

  ONEH THOUGHT IT was her tears that made it hard for her to see the thread upon the loom, but she soon realized her error. The sun is setting. Darkness pooled in the corners of the weaving room, and when she looked up, she could not see the rafters above her head.

  Oneh slid from her weaving bench, walked around to the other side of the loom, and examined the fabric. In half a day, she had only produced a finger’s length. The pattern was so muddled she had trouble making it out.

  No light was allowed in the weaving room on account of the danger of a fire; she would not be able to continue work today. She pressed her fingers to her temples and felt her head ache. She was not fatigued, really. Perhaps it was all my weeping. Oneh sighed. I don’t want to be doing this work. I didn’t raise him for this—

  That is where you are wrong, her husband, the elder, had scolded. The elder’s wife cannot be seen flouting custom. You may pity Ico, but the boy is ready. It’s your inability to let go, your tearful clinging that makes him suffer.

  She wondered how Ico was doing. Already, ten days had passed since he entered the cave. All women, even her, were forbidden to approach that place. Not once had she seen his face or heard his voice. Is he eating properly? The cave must be so dark and chilly. If he’s caught cold…

  It would be the first cold he’d ever caught in his life. Oneh had witnessed proof of Ico’s fortitude enough times to know he would be fine. He could fall from the very top of the tree onto his back and be up on his feet a moment later to open his hands and show her the chick he had plucked from its nest. His strength and skill had even gotten him in trouble—like the time when, just after his age ceremony, he had gotten into a fight with some young fishermen over Ico’s uncanny ability to swim deeper and hold his breath longer than any of them. He took on six other boys that day and came home with only a few scratches. They were fond memories. Proud memories.

  The others in the village thought Oneh’s feelings for Ico came from some deep sympathy for him and her chagrin at being the one who had to raise him though he was not her own. Even the elder thought this. But they were wrong. Ico was the light of her heart. She loved him as much as any mother could love her own child. Raising him had been a delight.

  The children understood her—they were always more aware of these things than the adults. Her own grandchildren by blood often pouted and asked her why she favored the horned boy over them.

  “Because Ico knows his place and does not talk back, and is not always wanting things or teasing other children,” she wanted to tell them, but she would refrain and say instead that she was kind to him because he was to be the Sacrifice. Then her grandchildren would smile and wink at each other, glad that they had been born normal, without horns.

  Only one other adult had seen through her admittedly thin façade—her brother, dead now for five years.

  “The boy has you enchanted, hasn’t he?” he had told her once. “Don’t forget, Oneh, why he is so pure and kind and without fault. He is not human. His soul is empty, and evil cannot cling to a void as it does to our tangled hearts. Emptiness absorbs only love and light, and reflects it back. No wonder it’s so easy for the one who must raise the horned child to love him—they see their own love reflected in his eyes.”

  He reminded Oneh that to go to the Castle in the Mist was no tragedy for the boy. “The boy’s soul has resided in the castle since the very day he was born. He returns to the castle to reclaim it and be whole for the first time in his life.”

  Oneh had been born to a merchant house in the capital. She was well educated, and her childhood had been easy. Her brother, six years her elder, had attended seminary in the capital and received the qualifications to become an ordained priest by the age of twenty-two, yet just before the ceremony he had withdrawn his application and left city life for the countryside. His teachers and parents both were violently opposed, but her brother hadn’t listened. He rented a small house in a small town, where he earned his keep by teaching the local children how to read and write, never took a wife, spent his evenings steeped in ancient books, and lived a life of austerity. He never once returned home, not even for a visit. Their parents’ opinion of him had softened over the years, and several times they sent a messenger to attempt reconciliation, but he had always refused them, gently, but firmly.

  It was a year after her brother had left that Oneh went to be married in Toksa Village. She was seventeen years old. She had other siblings, but she had always been closest to her gentle, studious brother. That was why, near to the time of her wedding, she snuck out of the house and together with a maidservant visited her brother’s village. Marriage meant she would be leaving their family, and she wanted to tell him goodbye.

  Her brother was overjoyed to see her. She found her brother’s home startlingly poor, yet the brightness in his face warmed her heart. He made her a simple meal that night. There was only water to drink, but it was cool and refreshing.

  “Off to Toksa, eh?” her brother asked.

  “I know it’s far,” she told him. “Farther from the capital than I’ve ever been. But the land is fertile, the water clean, and it is close to both the sea and the mountains, where there is food for the taking. The people in Toksa want for little.”

  “So I’ve heard,” her brother nodded, looking at her with eyes like still pools of water. “Tell me, how did this marriage come about?”

  Oneh didn’t know the details. As her parents’ daughter, it was her duty to do as they bade.

  “I’m guessing,” her brother said, “that our father suggested the union. You mentioned that the man who will become your husband is the son of the village elder?”

  “He is. Which means that, one day, I will be the elder’s wife.” Though the thought of traveling to an unknown place to wed a complete stranger made her nervous, she felt some pride in knowing that she was to be a person of standing in her new home.

  “Tell me,” her brother said then, “have you heard of the role that the elder of Toksa must play in their local custom—a custom not observed anywhere else?”

  Oneh shook her head. Her brother turned his gaze away from her to the rough, mud-plastered walls of his home.

  “Brother?” Oneh said after he had been silent for some time.

  When he spoke again, his voice was as calm as before, but it seemed to her that a shadow had come over his eyes. His eyes had always betrayed his emotions. That had been true since they were children.

  “You know I would never object to your being married. Toksa is a peaceful, prosperous place, as you say. You needn’t be worried about a thing.”

  “But—”

  “You are strong, Oneh. Stronger than your parents think. And you have wisdom far beyond your years. You will make a good wife.”

  She knew her brother meant what he said, but to hear such sudden praise made Oneh all the more uneasy. “What is this custom you speak of?” she asked.

  “I was wrong to say anything,” her brother replied, his smile weak. “I did not mean to concern my lovely sister with trifling matters so soon before she is to be married. There is no cause for alarm. All villages have their customs. That is all I meant.”

  Her brother’s smile did not fade, but the darkness in his eyes grew deeper. Oneh knew that he had something else to say, as she also knew it was better not to ask so many questions at times like these. Her brother was an honest man. If there were something she needed to know, he would tell her when the time
was right.

  “Toksa is a beautiful, bountiful place,” her brother said, speaking slowly. “That is its reward, you might say.”

  Oneh didn’t understand. She was about to ask him after all, when he smiled broadly and turned to face her. “You must write,” he said.

  “I’d like that.”

  “I know you couldn’t have from home, not with everyone watching over your shoulder. But in your new home, no one will think twice about a sister corresponding with her distant brother.”

  Oneh nodded, smiling.

  “And if your lord husband should become jealous, just tell him you write to your peculiar brother in the capital. Tell him all I do is read books, that the dust from between their pages collects in my hair, and I delight in nothing more than walking between library shelves, my long sleeves dragging upon the floor behind me.”

  Oneh laughed. “I will tell him that you are a renowned scholar. That the seminary begged you to become a priest—no, the high priest.”

  “Ahh,” her brother exclaimed, “that is why you are my favorite sister.” He laughed out loud then, but even that merry sound did not drive the sadness from his eyes.

  Their correspondence began soon after. They did not write often— all together, her brother’s letters fit easily inside a single parchment box. He wrote mostly concerning Oneh’s living arrangements, the weather, and how the crops were faring that year.

  Once Oneh became a mother, he wanted to know everything about her children. Oneh sent detailed reports, and in return, her brother would tell her about the children he taught in his village and the fascinating books he had read. Sometimes he would talk about his studies or write humorously of the latest fashions in the capital. But not once did they correspond regarding the custom of Toksa Village he had alluded to that night.

  Not until that day, thirteen years ago, when Ico was born and Oneh’s husband told her everything. Overcome with emotion when she rubbed her hand across the baby’s head and felt those round protrusions that would one day be horns, she wrote another letter to her brother that very night.