“Not particularly. Not at all, really. It would just make my job a little bit more difficult. First I’d have to find another allcaste.”
U-ri was as shocked as she would have been had he slapped her cheek. “A-another allcaste?” she stammered.
“Another allcaste, yes. Or did you think you were the only one in the entire Circle? No wonder you thought you were so special. Technically speaking, there can be as many allcastes as there are vessels. More, even, since they only need be related to the vessels, and most people have more than one relative.”
“Well maybe we’ll just find ourselves another wolf,” Aju squeaked, baring his teeth. “There’s lots of them around. We’ll just find one who’s nicer, and kinder, and more respectful of U-ri.”
Ash didn’t seem concerned. “You could. Though I don’t think that’s your best option. Know why?” The man touched a large hand to his chest. “I know the Book of Elem inside out. I don’t know how many hairs are on my head, or how many in my eyebrows. But I know that copy well. I know exactly what’s written inside it. I know the number of words, the number of lines. I know how many times a particular word appears in a particular chapter. And I know all the names it contains. I even know the words that appear in it only once. Were it not taboo, I could recite its contents entirely from memory for you here right now. I’ve recited them to myself many times. Thankfully no one was nearby to hear. That’s why you should join me. Either that, or you’ll waste time wandering—”
The man stopped in the middle of his monologue. His mouth opened then snapped shut like a word had escaped unspoken.
He lowered his eyes and lightly shook his head in the direction of the checkout desk where Michiru lay.
“The more time you waste,” he said quietly, “the more the sadness will spread around you. The more little worlds will end, one after another.” He looked at U-ri, his voice gentle again. “You don’t like conflict, do you?”
U-ri was still thinking about what he had said—about little worlds ending. That’s exactly right. Each of us lives in our own little world. In Michiru’s, there was a Hiroki Morisaki who fought for her, who saved her. But now he was gone. Michiru’s world was crumbling apart.
“You…” Sky joined in, speaking softly. He was looking at Ash. “You have seen much sadness like this, haven’t you?”
Ash did not respond. He seemed to be ignoring the devout, as though Sky weren’t even in the room.
“In other words,” Ash went on, lightly tapping the back of his chair. “Whether we like it or not, we must join forces.”
“Well I don’t like it.” Aju bristled. “Let’s find someone else, U-ri. I’m sure there are other wolves out there who know the Book of Elem as well as this one does.”
In her heart, U-ri could hear the sound of tiny worlds breaking, crumbling into countless fragments of sorrow.
“A wolf needs an allcaste,” Ash said to her, ignoring the mouse. “In order to defeat the King in Yellow, I require that glyph on your forehead. Though a wolf might be able to thwart the King on occasion, I cannot bend it to my will, nor return it to the Hollow Book.” He chuckled. “We have to work together. You might say we share a fate. Should the King in Yellow defeat you, then I’m done for.”
U-ri looked up. “You’d join me even though I’m just a girl?”
“I’ll take a chance.”
U-ri smiled. She knew better than to think Ash had decided to trust in her. All he wants is the power of the glyph. U-ri was just the glyph’s means of transportation.
But who cares? U-ri felt a kind of resolve growing inside her. “Fine,” she said. “But mark my words, I’m going to make you glad you had a girl for your allcaste by the time we’re through.”
Ash laughed out loud. “A sore loser, I see. That’s good.” He stood. “Let’s be off.”
“To where? Do you know where to go?”
“Of course I do. I told you I knew the Book of Elem, didn’t I? We are going to my region—which happens to be the place where the Book of Elem came from.”
“Where is that? Another country? Europe, maybe?”
Ash had been walking toward the exit, but now he stopped and looked around at her. “Wait—you mean to say you don’t even know the difference between the Circle and a region?”
“No, I—”
Ash rolled his eyes skyward. “Look, it’s simple. The Circle is everything. Speaking in terms you can understand, it’s everything out to the ends of the universe. That’s the Circle.”
“I know that.”
“Well then, regions are worlds that exist within those boundaries. There are many. A countless number, in fact. This reality you live in is but one region. And Europe but an area within that region—part of the same place. My region is something entirely different from this world.”
“Then where is it?”
“The Haetlands,” he said, though his answer did her little good. “To be precise, my region is called The Haetlands Chronicle.”
U-ri looked at Aju, giving his sleek fur a pat.
The little mouse’s tail shivered. “Well, I wasn’t expecting that,” he squeaked. “U-ri, he means he’s a character in a book called The Haetlands Chronicle. He’s not a human. He exists in a story, U-ri!”
U-ri’s eyes went wide. Something the Sage had said about stories creating their own regions flashed across her mind. Every book is its own region…
“As the mouse says, I am what you would call a ‘fictional character.’ The weaver who wrote The Haetlands Chronicle created me.”
U-ri pointed at Ash. “But you’re not fictional. You’re here right now, talking to me!”
“Something wrong with that? Didn’t the Sage who gave you your glyph tell you anything?”
“Weavers create stories,” Sky breathed.
“Yes. The weaver that made me died a long time ago. Yet I still live. I’m immortal. At least, until someone writes a sequel to The Haetlands Chronicle and kills me off. Or I am devoured by the King in Yellow.” He sighed. “Roughly half of all wolves are like me. The other half are humans such as yourself. It does much credit to the human wolves, really. Their lives, like those of most weavers, are limited, after all.”
“Most weavers?” U-ri echoed. “You mean some weavers were created like you?”
“Very good. I do believe you’re catching on.”
“Ah! Because authors write stories with authors in them sometimes, right? But don’t the characters they create end when the story ends? How can they do things that aren’t in the story, or become wolves like you, or weavers, making their own stories?”
U-ri felt herself growing confused even as she spoke.
“What makes you think they can’t?” Ash asked, turning to face her. “I see. You think that the weavers write only what they wish to write, and set down their pen, and that is all. But it’s not. The region they have created is there. It continues to exist. It lives, even if all within it are fictional. That’s why,” Ash said, a gleam in his eye, “the weaving of stories is a frightening thing indeed. They are creating worlds, creating countries, creating history, creating lives. Even should their creator go away, the stories remain. Until they are returned to the nameless land, that is.”
He paused. “Actually, I said something wrong just now. We fictional characters are not immortal. Our entire region vanishes the moment that the story containing it is returned to the Great Wheels.”
He fixed his eyes on her. “U-ri, from here on out, until I say so—”
“Until you say what?”
“Until I say it, do not ask me what something is, or what it isn’t. In fact, ask nothing at all. You waste our time.”
U-ri nodded glumly.
Ash turned back toward the exit. “The field is collapsing. You’d best wake Michiru.”
U-ri spoke with Michiru alone. When Sky tried to join her, Ash violently pushed him away, ordering him to “leave that to the womenfolk.”
U-ri didn’t ask why, since she had o
nly just now promised not to. Besides, Michiru couldn’t see Sky anyway. Though she couldn’t imagine what the problem was, she resisted the urge to protest.
U-ri couldn’t tell her that Morisaki wouldn’t be coming home. She just said they didn’t know how long it would take. Michiru would have to keep herself well until then.
“You should go home now. Get some rest.”
The girl was in a daze. Ash had warned U-ri that though she could use the power of her glyph to bring humans back to consciousness and mend their wounds they would suffer some memory loss as a result. It hadn’t been a lie. When Michiru came to, she had trouble recollecting who U-ri was at first.
“I want you to try coming to school again. I’m sure your friends in class and the teachers won’t let the teasing happen again.”
“All right,” Michiru said, though she sounded doubtful.
“And…try to cheer up. Morisaki would be sad if he saw you like this.”
Michiru nodded again and left. U-ri stood in the library window and watched her walk out along the edge of the schoolyard and out the front gate onto the street beyond.
Ash announced that the envoy’s field was down, and sure enough when the bell rang again, the hall quickly filled with students. U-ri and the others walked through their midst, unheard and unseen, till they reached the middle of the schoolyard. Ash had insisted they come here.
“So these are the people Hiroki lived with.” Ash squinted, looking up at the school building.
Students poked their heads out the window, calling to friends in the yard below. A teacher in a short-sleeve shirt walked out of the building, heading for the gym. He held a clipboard with an attendance list on it over his head for a bit of shade from the warm sun.
“It’s quiet,” Aju said, sounding a bit irritated. “When you think about what happened to Hiroki—” The mouse’s pink nose trembled with anger. “And they don’t know anything about it! Even if they do, they’re not taking responsibility or being properly punished.”
Ash said nothing. The nameless devout stood still, staring up at the blue skies.
A shout went up from the school building, coming from a window on the second floor. Some of the boys were laughing and playing by the window. One stuck his arm out the window. He was holding a notebook.
“Come and get it! C’mon!”
He waved the notebook in the air outside the window, calling to someone in one of the classrooms. Not calling, teasing. The boys laughing around him were probably the bully’s friends. U-ri heard someone egging him on: “Drop it out the window! Drop it!”
Directly beneath the window was a small pond. U-ri heard another voice—a thin voice, crying for the notebook back.
“Lady U-ri,” Sky whispered, walking over to her. He blinked. “I agree with Aju. It makes me angry too.”
U-ri had no way of knowing whether the boys up there had anything to do with what had happened to Hiroki. But watching them still made her feel sick.
The teacher was returning now from the gym. He didn’t even look up at the shouting boys. He just calmly walked across the yard and back inside the school building. The boys hadn’t noticed him either.
Now U-ri caught a glimpse of a smaller boy—the owner of the notebook. His face was pale with fear. He tried to grab at the book, but someone pushed him. He fell back, out of sight.
“Wait here for me, guys,” U-ri said, running toward a stand of trees at the edge of the schoolyard. They were cherry trees, and rather large ones at that. They were more than large enough to conceal U-ri.
U-ri transformed, borrowing the shape of Officer Kashimura, the policewoman she had met at the station. She remembered the uniform and those round eyes of hers. The only thing she felt like she shouldn’t copy was the name badge on her chest—she didn’t want word of this getting back to anyone at the station.
In truth, Officer Kashimura had been a bit too motherly for U-ri’s purposes. She would have preferred someone more frightening. But all she really needed right now was the uniform. It belatedly occurred to her that she could have gone for one of the policemen she’d seen on patrol in the area—but there was no time for that now.
U-ri stepped out from behind the cherry trees and strode purposefully across the schoolyard. Looking up, she put her hands on her hips and scanned the second-story windows. The boys were still at it—though they had replaced the notebook with the notebook’s owner. Now it was the boy hanging half out the window. The color had drained from his face, and he was struggling to get back inside, but several arms pushed at him, keeping him hanging over the windowsill. The shouts of encouragement from the other boys were only growing louder.
U-ri spotted a laughing face over the boy’s shoulder. It was the boy who had been holding the notebook hostage. He had the boy in the window by his shirt collar and was busily peeling the boy’s fingers off the edge of the window.
“Time to fly! C’mon, you can do it! Hey, someone grab his legs!”
U-ri took a deep breath and shouted, “Stop that at once!”
All motion in the second-story window ceased. Several pairs of eyes turned to look down at the schoolyard, where U-ri stood in full policewoman regalia. A few new faces appeared at the window, looking out to see what was up.
“Uh-oh, it’s a cop!”
U-ri wasn’t sure who had spoken. Whoever it was, they didn’t sound all that concerned. U-ri’s anger went from a simmer to a full boil.
Still in her uniform, she touched one hand to the concealed glyph. Then she thrust her hand toward the source of her rage. Every boy except the one hanging half out the window was instantly knocked back. A breath later, there came the sound of tables and chairs crashing together from inside the classroom, and girls screaming.
“Teacher! Teacher!”
Someone was crying. So now they call the teacher. U-ri clenched her hand into a fist. The boy clinging to the window was staring at her, his mouth wide open.
U-ri undid the transformation. The policewoman vanished.
For moment, U-ri thought that a cloud had passed over the sun—then she looked up to see Ash towering behind her.
“Hardly actions befitting a lady allcaste,” he said, though there was a hint of mirth in his voice and a sparkle in his eyes as he looked up at the school building. “Were they involved with Hiroki?”
“I have no idea. I couldn’t let them to do that.”
The teacher had arrived on the scene. The boy clinging to the windowsill turned to look back toward the classroom. He flinched—the teacher was scolding him.
“It looks like he thinks it was all the boy’s fault. What are you going to do now?”
U-ri didn’t want to believe that the teacher could be so clueless—but there he was, roughly dragging the boy the others had been picking on away from the window. A man was shouting. U-ri gritted her teeth. I don’t believe this!
“Time for round two?” Ash said quietly, drawing his right-hand sword. He spun it in his hand, muttered something quickly, then pointed the sword tip directly at the window.
A wave of force shot through the air. Not just the boy’s window, but all the windows around it rattled loudly. The teacher, his hand on the boy’s neck, was flung back out of sight while the boy at the window was tossed backward into the classroom.
Teachers were nervously looking out the windows on all three floors now, a strange line of bobbing heads. U-ri watched them for moment, then turned to Ash. “Hardly actions befitting a wolf.”
“Oh? I merely thought you’d like to see my mageblade in action.” He had already sheathed his sword. The wolf smiled. “And it appears you’re making progress in understanding the use of your glyph.”
“It’s embarrassing,” U-ri said. “The people in my region aren’t all like this, you know.”
Ash thrust his hands into his pockets and nodded. “I know that quite well. I’ve been around, you know. There is evil everywhere. Sometimes big, sometimes small.”
U-ri heard a commotion from
the school building. Now the fire alarm was ringing.
“To the Haetlands,” Ash said.
U-ri turned away from the school and began to walk.
CHAPTER NINE
The Land of Fear and Loathing
Ash was able to jump from region to region at will. According to him, it was a skill every wolf possessed. “It’s basic glyph magic. No one can become a wolf without the ability to use it. You need to be able to travel between regions for the chase, after all. But it only works for me.”
With their current numbers, they would have to travel a different way. It was decided that they would first go to Minochi’s cottage. From there, they could use the magic circle on the reading room floor to travel together wherever they liked.
U-ri felt a slight dizziness during the teleportation—that always seemed to be the case when she was moving through Yuriko Morisaki’s reality. Sky gripped her hand tightly.
“Ah, you have returned!”
Even before U-ri had found her footing on the reading room floor, the low voice of the Sage welcomed them.The reading room was as dim, dusty, and quiet as always. Even though it was brimming with the presence of so many ancient books, there was a sense of calm to the place. U-ri noticed it all the more, having come directly from the noise and brightness of the outside world.
U-ri was about to say something when Ash stepped outside the magic circle, looked up toward where the Sage sat, and announced himself.
“It has been too long.”
“I see it is you,” said the Sage to the wolf.
“Yes. The chase happens within my domain, you might say.”
Quite suddenly the Sage and Ash were engaged in a deep conversation of which U-ri understood only fragments. Aju and Sky looked equally confused. The three of them stood staring, watching the wolf and the Sage talk. They spoke rapidly, Ash occasionally nodding, occasionally shooting quick glances at U-ri and Sky. The wolf and the book were using so many unfamiliar words, U-ri felt completely out of her depth. On her shoulder, Aju squeaked irritably.