The Book of Heroes

  “What? You can’t do that!”

  The book tensed, dug in its heels (or would have if it had them), and fought against Yuriko’s grip. Yuriko tore angrily at the book. Still, the pages wouldn’t open. You opened up easily enough yesterday!

  “You can’t do that!” she fumed. “You’re…a…book!”

  “You can’t save him,” the book said. His voice wasn’t singing anymore. There were no more gentle vibrations either. “No one who the Hero takes can be saved. Not by a person.”

  “Well I can. Just tell me where he is and we’ll save him! I’ll get the police and the firemen, and Dad and Mom!”

  “Ridiculous! What can adults do? They can’t get near the Hero. They can’t even leave this world!”

  There he goes again. Talking in riddles.

  “Fine, whatever, I don’t care. Just let me read you. What I need to know is written in you, isn’t it?”

  Yuriko struggled with the book there in her brother’s neatly tidied-up room, in the pool of pale white light that spilled in through the window from the streetlamp outside. When she thought about it later, she couldn’t remember exactly how she had struggled with the book, but she had. At the time it felt more like she was fighting not with a book but with a boy—a boy just about the same age as her brother.

  Of course, that was a losing battle. She had never actually fought with her brother, but her arms were shorter, and her feet were slower. Luckily for Yuriko, though, girls have a secret weapon when it comes to fights.

  Yuriko bared her teeth and bit into the book’s jacket. She heard the red book yelp and slip out of her hands, turning over in the air to land, pages up, on the floor.

  Out of breath, Yuriko scooped up the book. The book looked like it was sagging in shock. She could clearly see her own teeth marks on one corner of its cover. A perfect little semicircle. She had always been proud of her teeth.

  “Now that was a very mean thing to do,” the book moaned.

  “You’re the one who’s mean!”

  “Look, even if you got me open, you still couldn’t read me. You can’t even read the letters on my cover.”

  She had to admit he was right.

  “I never took you for someone so fierce, little miss. I guess it’s true what they say. Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The red book chuckled and then groaned. He sounded less surprised by the whole thing than hurt. Just like a real person. “You may have very sharp teeth, but you’re just a little girl. You can’t save your brother. Now be good for a change and dry your tears and blow your nose, and get to bed. You’ll feel better in the morning, and pretty soon you can go back to school. That’s how you do it. Just live life the same way you always have. It’ll be hard at first, but that’s what you have to do.”

  That was the last thing Yuriko wanted to hear. She might have had her temper back under control, but she was still just as angry, and it was bubbling up inside her.

  “I can’t just pretend everything is normal.”

  “You have to try.”

  “If I go back to school they’ll pick on me again.”

  “You’ll find some who won’t. They’ll be your allies.”

  “Oh what do you know? You’re just a book.”

  For a moment it was quiet in the room. Then the book spoke again, his tone somewhat different than before. “I get it. You just don’t want to go back to school. That’s why you wanted to go help your brother. It was just an excuse to play hooky.”

  Yuriko went to throw the book on the floor again, but her hand stopped in midair. She stood there, holding the book over her head. An unbearable sadness washed over her, and her eyes burned with shame. Yuriko lowered her hand and gently slid the book back onto Hiroki’s bookshelf.

  “There, there. That’s the way,” the book said, sounding satisfied. “Good night, miss. Get some rest.”

  I’ll let go of the book and just walk out of the room. We’re done here.

  Wait. No we’re not.

  “Is there really no way I can help my brother? Are you sure none of the grown-ups can do it? My parents and the police can’t help?”

  “That’s right, they can’t.”

  “And I can’t help either because I’m a little girl? So who could? Who else is there? Isn’t there anybody who could help my brother?”

  “What would you do if I told you?”

  “If there is, I’m going to go to them and ask them to help my brother.”

  I would go and ask, and they would listen.

  “If you know, you have to tell me. Where can I find someone who can help my brother?”

  Yuriko wasn’t looking at the clock, so she didn’t know how much time passed before the book answered, but it seemed like an eternity. “Nowhere here. An otherplace.” There was something in his voice that sounded sterner, more solemn than before. “You would have to leave your world in order to find someone who can help your brother, little miss.”

  How am I supposed to do that?

  “Is that what you were talking about when you said adults couldn’t even leave this world?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But I’m a kid…so I can?” If I can, I’m going. “Where is this other place? Is it in another country? Would I have to take an airplane?”

  “Not just any other place, an otherplace. A place outside this Circle you’re in.”

  The book began to explain. Circle meant this world. And not “world” like in “world history,” or even “world map,” or the other worlds that Yuriko was familiar with. It meant something bigger, much bigger.

  “You could walk to the farthest corner of Earth, or the most distant star, and that would still be inside your Circle as we see it. Your world, or to be more precise, the story of your world is all inside this Circle, and nowhere else.”

  This wasn’t very helpful. But Yuriko had found one thing to seize hold of.

  “But if I really, really want to go, um, outside my Circle, I can, right? Would you take me there?”

  “Well, you are a child…” the book muttered. “And because you’re a child,” the book said, a little more loudly, “you can make this kind of immense decision. The kind of decision that might change your life. The kind you can never take back.”

  She couldn’t tell whether the book was rolling his eyes or was genuinely impressed with her.

  “But I suppose there’s no helping it, after all it was my fault for talking to you in the first place. I have a responsibility.”

  Something deep in Yuriko’s chest tightened, but for the first time in a long while it wasn’t thanks to sadness or anger.

  “Thank you! Thank you so much.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. This isn’t going to be easy. And I won’t be able to do it by myself,” the red book admitted. “That’s why I need to take you to my friends first. And besides,” the book added quietly, “that’s where the Way In is, anyway.”

  “So we have to find your friends? Where? A bookstore, maybe? A library? You’re pretty old so…maybe a used bookstore?”

  The red book chuckled. “You’re pretty funny, miss. Maybe you’ve forgotten?”

  Forgotten? Forgotten what?

  “Do you really think your brother picked up a book like me, with all the strange things written inside me, at the local bookstore? Think about it. Try to remember. How long ago was it? It was still cold outside. You and your brother were all wrapped up in your thick coats. Remember going to a place where there were books like me, so many you could hardly count them?”

  Yuriko picked the book back up off the shelf and sat down so she could think better. When it was still cold? Wearing coats? With my brother—

  “And all of us went, our whole family?”

  “That’s right.”

  White breath puffing in the air. A place with so many books you couldn’t count them.

  Yuriko’s mouth hung open. “You mean my uncle’s cottage!”

  “Well, to be precise, he’s your father’s uncle, which mak
es him your great-uncle.”

  It had been the first Sunday of December the year before. The whole family had piled in the car.

  “I remember he had this incredible reading room there—it was like a whole library inside.”

  “And that’s where I was,” the red book said softly. “The Hero was there too.”

  But Yuriko was too busy thinking and remembering to hear his whispers. Where was her great-uncle’s vacation home, anyway? It couldn’t have been far, since they went there and came back in the same day, but it had been in the mountains—she remembered that well. And they had driven on some dirt roads to get there. She remembered her mother gasping at every bump.

  “How am I supposed to get all the way up there by myself? I don’t even know the address or the road.”

  “Well then,” the red book said, and she imagined a twinkle in his eyes. “This is your first test.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Hermit’s Library

  Kids can think up great lies. They’re just not very great at telling them. In order to tell a really good lie, Yuriko knew, you first have to believe in it yourself. Emboldened by the red book’s encouragement, Yuriko spent the next thirty minutes getting ready. It was easy to come up with a suitable lie, but hard to make a convincing performance of it.

  It didn’t take much for her to wake her parents. Neither of them had slept particularly well since her brother’s disappearance. It was only recently that they even bothered with sleeping in their bedroom. For a while, they had just nodded off wherever they happened to be—in the living room, in a chair, or on the sofa. They had left the front door unlocked and would jump up and run outside at the slightest sound in the hope that Hiroki had come home at last. Finally, the police had told them they couldn’t keep on like that forever, and they had begun sleeping properly again.

  When Yuriko began her lie, her mother’s expression changed almost immediately. She wasn’t surprised or angry. A mix of joy and regret crept over her thin features. Why hadn’t she thought of it herself sooner?

  “I completely forgot about it myself, Mom,” Yuriko was saying. “He could hide out at our great-uncle’s summer cottage for weeks without anyone knowing.”

  “That’s right. Yuriko’s right,” her mother said as she shook her father by the shoulder with her left hand. Her right was around Yuriko’s shoulder. “I’ll bet Hiroki’s at the cottage!”

  “How would he get all the way out there?” her father groaned, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “He doesn’t have a car. He’s only in middle school.” He wasn’t buying it, but Yuriko detected a glimmer in his eye. He wanted it to be true; he just wasn’t letting himself get his hopes up.

  “Hiroki’s always done what he wants to once he sets his mind on something. And he’s smart too. And clever. I’m sure there are lots of ways he could have gotten out there. He could’ve hitchhiked.”

  Her mom was sitting on the edge of the bed, ready to leave that very instant.

  “Just wait,” her father said. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “Well I can’t just sit around here doing nothing. Can you? What if he’s out there?”

  “Shouldn’t we tell someone we’re going?”

  “Who would we tell? The police?” A dark cloud passed over her mother’s face. “Not if I have anything to say about it,” she practically shouted. “We’re finding Hiroki ourselves, as a family. We can tell the police later!”

  Gradually, her mother’s enthusiasm nudged her father into action. It was the usual pattern of events whenever big things got decided in the Morisaki household.

  “Fine, okay. We’ll go. Yuriko—”

  “I’m going too!”

  “Of course. We have to take Yuriko,” her mother agreed. “I won’t split up this family again,” she added, the words catching in her throat.

  Forty-five minutes later, the three remaining members of the Morisaki household had piled into the car and driven out into the quiet city streets. Packing had taken them all of fifteen minutes (her father had to stop her mother before too long, as she packed a change of clothes for her brother, and food, and cold medicine in case he had caught a cold, and medicine for diarrhea…). The remaining half hour they had spent figuring out the exact address of the cottage and how they would get there.

  They had only been to her great-uncle’s place once. They hadn’t thought they would have a reason to go back. When her great-uncle had died, the family had decided to leave the handling of his affairs to the lawyers. So her father couldn’t remember where he had stashed the year-old memo with the cottage’s address on it. At first, when he couldn’t find it, he’d suggested they call his father to find out, but Yuriko’s mother refused. She didn’t want to have to explain to him why they wanted to know. “He’d probably call the police. I know he would,” she said. Yuriko’s grandparents on her father’s side of the family had always been cold to Hiroki, she explained. When her father started defending them, Yuriko had to butt in to stop them. In the end, it was Yuriko who found the memo tucked away in one of her mother’s many places where she was in the habit of “keeping things for just in case.”

  Her parents sat in the front. Whenever they went out someplace in the car, her brother always sat behind the driver’s seat, and she would sit behind the passenger seat. Now it was just her in the back seat. On her knees, she carried a pink backpack inside of which was the red book.

  —Good work, little miss.

  Yuriko stuck her right hand into the top of the backpack and laid her palm across the book’s cover. She could hear his voice like she had in Hiroki’s room.

  You know, she aimed her thoughts toward the book, when I was telling them, I started believing it myself. I really started to think maybe he was out there in the cottage.

  —Unfortunately, that’s impossible, the book replied. Your brother’s disappearance has left a hole in you, I know, but don’t fill it with empty hope. What matters now is whether my friends are still there in the cottage or not.

  What do you mean? You said that’s where they were.

  —Try asking your father. Ask if any of his relatives came to the cottage and did something with the books.

  Yuriko pulled her hand out of the backpack. She leaned forward.

  “Dad? Remember when we went to visit the cottage? Do you think anyone went in there after us to clean up?”

  Her father’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror. “If they have, I haven’t heard about it.”

  “So it’s all there just like it was? Remember all those books? It was like a library…You think they’re all still there?”

  “I should think so, Yuriko. If somebody did anything, my father or your Uncle Takashi would have told me.”

  Takashi was one of her father’s two brothers, the oldest in her father’s family.

  “Weren’t they saying that they couldn’t find a buyer for the house?” her mother asked. She had a hand on the dashboard, like she was trying to push the car to go just a little bit faster. “It’s just so remote out there. There wasn’t even a proper road. And the building was getting pretty old.”

  Yuriko remembered Uncle Takashi saying that if the location were just a little better, or the place in a little better shape, it might make sense for them to put money into renovations and make it a summer cottage the whole family could enjoy. “But not like it is now,” he had said. “The place is a bona fide ruin.”

  “Those books, though—Takashi was talking about showing them to a specialist at some point. There were so many of them there, one or two might actually be worth something,” Yuriko’s mother said. “Did your brother ever say anything about them, Yuriko?”

  Her mother was sharp. Yuriko shook her head. “Nope. But I remember he was pretty impressed with how many there were, and how our great-uncle must have collected them all by himself.”

  That was true. When her brother had seen the reading room at the cottage, he had wanted to stay in there for hours. He said he thought there
must be books from all over the world there. Check it out, little Yuri. Here’s one in English, and here’s one in French, and I’ve never even seen this language before. This one looks like it might be hundreds of years old.

  “Hiroki always was fond of reading,” her mother said in a soft voice.

  “Come to think of it, it’s been almost five months since we were there. I wonder if the place is locked?” her father muttered, suddenly worried.

  “If it were locked, he would’ve just broken in through a window,” her mother said, urging Yuriko’s father to drive faster. He shifted his grip on the wheel. Yuriko stuck her hand back inside her backpack.

  Mom really thinks he’s there waiting for us.

  —There’s nothing you can do about that. She’s his mother.

  But it’s my fault.

  —If you’re going to wimp out now because you’re afraid of hurting your mother’s feelings, you’ll never make it where we’re going. Besides, the red book added, you should get some sleep.

  How can I possibly sleep? I’m not even sleepy.

  —Then tell me what you know about the owner of the cottage, your great-uncle.

  You mean you don’t know? Didn’t my great-uncle buy you?

  —I want to know what you know. So I can put what you know and what I know together. You don’t have to explain it to me, just try to remember by yourself. I’ll hear.

  Yuriko leaned back in her seat and started to remember everything she could about her great-uncle.

  The first time she had even heard about him had been about a year ago, in the summer, when the weather was still warm. They had been sitting around the dinner table when her father suddenly said, “You know, it seems I have an uncle.”

  Her father’s father—Yuriko’s grandfather—was an only child. He had no siblings. So how could a great-uncle suddenly appear out of nowhere?

  “The circumstances are a little complicated. My parents never mentioned it to us until now,” her father explained to her mother, who was just as shocked as the children were.

  Apparently, from the time Yuriko’s grandfather was in fourth grade to the time he was in eleventh grade, he had an adopted brother.