Shigenori froze, hands in the air, and stared at her. Shigeru was laughing and telling him he could stop already.
“So pray for him. That’s the only thing we can do for him now.”
It was Shigenori’s turn to grab for her hand, but his fingers closed on air. The wolf was gone.
He shivered with foreboding and fished his phone out of his back pocket. Kotaro Mishima … Flustered, he hit the call button. He got a ring signal. It rang three times before the synthetic voice of the message center came back.
On the last day of Kotaro’s summer vacation, in a corner of West Shinjuku, Shigenori Tsuzuki stood rooted to the spot.
Mishima …
He had a vision of that face. A single-minded, cheeky punk who didn’t listen to his elders.
What’ve you gotten yourself into?
Mana opened her eyes. Something was calling her.
A little shaded lamp cast a soft glow in a corner of the room. Her friends—a colorful gathering of stuffed animals—surrounded her down pillow. She turned her head on the pillow and put a shoulder outside the light summer comforter to gaze at them, but she didn’t think one of them had woken her up.
They’re all go to sleep.
Aunt Hatsuko always put them to bed with Mana. She would address them in order. Good night, Pepe-chan. Good night, Kuu-chan. Good night, Panda-chan.
Before, whenever Mana had woken in the middle of the night, she’d begun to cry. Aunt Hatsuko would come and comfort her, but sometimes she’d be so sleepy, or cold, or worn out, that Mana learned to turn her face into the pillow and cry without making noise, because when she saw Aunt Hatsuko looking worn out and sleepy, she remembered how her mother had looked worn out and sleepy too, until one rainy night she went to bed and never woke up again. What would Mana do if Aunt Hatsuko didn’t wake up?
But Mana didn’t cry in the night anymore. Once she fell asleep, she slept soundly until morning, because she knew from Uncle Kotaro that Mama was always with her and would always be beside her.
What woke me up?
She sat up. The little light on the air conditioner glowed blue. Aunt Hatsuko had told her the air conditioner was always watching her with its little blue eye to make sure she didn’t get too hot, but Mana knew it was just a light. Ms. Sato told her all about it. That’s just electricity.
As the room came into focus, she started feeling thirsty. She put her arms around her knees and took a deep breath, and she knew.
The bodies and minds of very young children are connected by a direct circuit, one that parts naturally as they grow older. But Mana still had it, and it told her what she needed to know.
It’s Uncle.
What’s happen to him?
She felt like she did on the night her mother went to sleep forever. Something bad was happening.
Monster.
She threw off the comforter, knelt on the bed and gathered her friends —Pepe-chan and Kuu-chan and Panda-chan, with their soft round faces and gentle eyes—into her arms. She shared her nameless dread with them, and they comforted each other.
The summer sun would rise early. She would not sleep before it did.
Two titanic bodies met head-on in battle.
Kotaro felt the staggering energy unleashed as they fought. This was not a clash of fang and claw. It was a hurricane. A tsunami. An eruption. A phenomenon of nature, something people can only watch with astonishment, waiting until it subsides.
Ancient people laid the blame for nature’s ferocity at the feet of angry gods. Gods with ultimate destructive power were imagined as terrifying forms, giving rise in turn to purely malevolent deities that in turn spawned tales of numberless monsters.
All monsters are descendants of fallen gods. Now two of those descendants fought before Kotaro’s awestruck sight. He was one of them, a beast with hooked talons and a terrible stench; he too was a walker in darkness, but he could not keep his footing in the presence of that terrible howling and the whirlwind and the quaking of the earth. It was hard to even keep his eyes open.
This was Galla’s true form, the Guardian of the Third Pillar of the Tower of Inception. She had no need for puny blades. Her scythes were never really weapons. They were keys.
Fists like small mountains howled as they cut the air. The dragon’s spine was a row of blades. It moved sinuously, taking her blows and hurling them back. Its long tail hammered the ground, raising clouds of dust and rending the earth.
But the gate beyond did not waver. The world it enclosed was quiet and serene. The distant lights in the Hall of All Books shone faint and clear, like stars in a galaxy beyond the Milky Way.
Galla’s skin was obsidian. Her fangs and claws shone like drawn swords. Her whiplike tail was silhouetted against the sky as it lashed out and wrapped around the dragon’s neck. Kotaro watched, transfixed, as she pressed the attack.
At first the duelists were evenly matched, but the balance was upended when Galla shattered her opponent’s horn. The dragon had fought with spirit and power, using its torso as an undulating battering ram, but now it began to succumb to gravity. Its massive tail beat the ground erratically. Its jaws snapped, but the fangs closed on air. Galla seized her opening and tore off the dragon’s other horn. Some of its hide came away, sending a spray of bright blood into the air. The dragon’s howls turned to shrieks.
She seized her opponent by the nape of the neck. Her teeth gleamed in the darkness of the Nameless Land.
The memory was present again, as real as if Kotaro had been in that room watching, a scene he could not have witnessed in this way because he was part of it. He both saw and felt himself grasp Glitter Kitty in his claws, pull her close, and bite off her head.
Now Galla was about to dispatch the Sentinel the same way. She sank her fangs into its neck, grasped the neck with her claws and strained to tear the head from its body.
A ball rolls quickly along the grass in a park under a blue sky. It strikes a bump in the ground and vaults lightly into the air, just like Kitty’s head. How small and light it was! How high it flew! One moment it was part of her body, and an instant later just a plaything soaring through the air.
Galla tore the dragon’s head off and raised it high with a mighty cry of triumph. The decapitated corpse toppled slowly over onto its side with a shuddering crash. Galla bellowed as the crash reverberated. She was calling out, but Kotaro couldn’t understand the words. Maybe they weren’t words at all. Then he saw her howl with the Eye.
Hall of All Books, I have vanquished the Sentinel!
The lights seemed to quaver at the sound of her voice.
I am Galla, Guardian of the Third Pillar of the Tower of Inception, Mother of Auzo the Warrior. The Sentinel is fallen. Open the gate!
The Sentinel—its headless body and its head, still held high by Galla—returned to stone. The hide turned a cold ash gray as the head and body started to crumble. Thousands of years of weathering unfolded in seconds as the dragon collapsed into a pile of rubble.
Galla began to transform. As he watched, Kotaro noticed out of a corner of his eye that the shadow of her legs was shrinking. She became the Galla he knew best: long black hair, white face, inky wings, a strange and beautiful woman who was not quite human.
The lights in the fortress quavered in unison.
A stiff wind, cold and fresh as spring water, lifted Galla’s hair and swirled around Kotaro as though purifying them both. He held up his hand. It was a human hand. He had human legs. A human body.
He felt his face. It was the face he’d lived with for nineteen years. His fangs were gone. The stench of blood had vanished. He was wearing the same T-shirt and jeans he’d had on when he raced to the park to look for Mika.
“Stay where you are.” Galla spoke over her shoulder as she stood vigilant, eyes fixed on the Hall of All Books. “They will come quickly.”
K
otaro’s knees were like water. He had difficulty standing. He kept trying to get to his feet and falling over onto his hands and knees. I have to get up. Galla brought me with her. I’m a guest in the Nameless Land. I’ve got to pull myself together.
He managed somehow to crawl alongside her and come to a kneeling position. He looked toward the fortress and saw the same sight he’d witnessed when he arrived. One by one, lights separated from the Hall of All Books, gradually multiplying and forming a moving line. It was coming toward them.
“Are those guys nameless devouts too?”
Galla’s eyes narrowed. “Only the devout live and move in this land. There are no others, human or animal,” she explained. “The nameless devout are empty. There are tens of thousands, but only one. There is only one, but there are tens of thousands. That is what they say, but it is a figure of speech, and it is meaningless. Emptiness cannot be counted.”
Kotaro finally struggled to his feet. He smoothed out the wrinkles in his T-shirt and brushed off his knees. The lights were getting closer.
There was a faint sound of squeaking metal. The ground vibrated faintly, then the rumbling grew louder.
A barrier of pikes linked by shields. With a rumble deep enough to shake the soul, the gate opened inward.
There was nothing between them and the nameless devout.
The lights of the snaking procession were torches held high by figures in simple black robes, with shaven heads and pallid faces. Their bare feet beat down the dried grass. They said nothing, and they made no noise as they walked. They almost seemed unreal.
The black wave lapped toward them. When the figures were close enough to tell apart, Kotaro gasped with surprise.
They had the same face, a face that was vaguely familiar, with symmetrical placement of nose and eyes. Kitty’s cheeks. Makoto’s eyebrows. Kazumi’s mouth. U-ri’s eyes. They looked like everyone and no one, approaching in three columns like a solemn funeral procession. The wings of the gate picked up the light from their torches, casting long, barred shadows.
Galla stood motionless, waiting. Kotaro followed her lead.
The marchers stopped. He wondered how so many people could walk in perfect formation. No matter how many there were, there was only one.
Three devout faced them, one at the head of each column. The one in the center came forward and bowed slowly.
“Mistress Galla, Guardian of the Third Pillar of the Tower of Inception.” A young man’s voice. Kotaro looked up at Galla. Her pupils flickered almost imperceptibly.
“The Gate of Sorrows is open,” the youth intoned. “Why have you come to the Hall of All Books in the Nameless Land? What is your purpose here?”
She took a long step forward. “I want my son.”
“What is his name?”
“Auzo the Warrior. My only child.”
“What was his sin?”
“He violated our Precept.”
“And what would that be?”
“To be darkness.” Her voice cracked like a whip. “Auzo wanted to flee our region in search of light. He betrayed our mission as guardians of the Tower.”
Kotaro thought back to what he’d seen along that great gallery. The vastness beyond the pillars had been like the floor of an ocean, yet compared to the pure emptiness of the world of the Tower, how full of life and sound—how human, even—Galla’s region had been.
What Kotaro sensed had been real. Something human did reside in that darkness, and precisely because it was human, it could tire of darkness and long for light. Auzo had sought only to spread his wings and seek other regions.
Is that a sin?
To search for other worlds? To rebel against confinement in darkness, against being forced to be darkness?
“We are darkness,” Galla said. “We preserve the purity of the Tower where the souls of words are born. To accept darkness is our calling. To cast that calling aside is an unforgiveable sin. Auzo committed the great sin of exchanging his life for an obsession.”
The wavering light from the torches reflected off the devout’s pate as he bowed. “Yes. The one you speak of is confined in the Hall of All Books for that great sin.”
“I ask you to release him.” Galla’s voice became suddenly menacing. “We are darkness. To continue as darkness, a guardian of the Tower may choose not to merge with emptiness. That is the law of the Circle.”
“True,” the devout answered. “But there is a price. Have you a scapegoat for the sin of Auzo’s story?”
“To be sure. He is here.”
Here. Kotaro froze. He couldn’t grasp what he’d heard. Here?
Countless eyes turned toward him—Kotaro Mishima, a helpless skinny kid, marooned in a world that was real but did not exist.
The devout nodded. “Very well. We accept the scapegoat.”
Several of his fellows stepped toward Kotaro. As they approached, their thin arms were already reaching for him.
“Hey, hold on a sec,” Kotaro said nervously. “What’s going on, Galla? What’s this about a scapegoat?”
She studied the flickering lights of the castle. Her face was a mask. Her hair flowed in the wind.
The nameless devout grasped his arms and shoulders and propelled him forward through the Gate of Sorrows.
“Knock it off! What the hell is this?”
They had the same face, the same bodies and movements, the same voices.
“You are the inculpated.”
“Inculpated for the sin of living a story.”
“Time will pass for you no longer.”
“You shall remain here for eternity.”
“Come, sinner.”
“You shall turn the Great Wheels of Inculpation.”
“Stop! Let me go!” He struck out wildly, trying to break free. He was outnumbered and helpless. The devout were strong, yet trying to get a grip on them was like grasping at shadows. His flailing fists met only air. His kicks connected with nothing. The devout were emptiness personified. Behind that emptiness was a single powerful will.
“Galla, help me!”
He threw himself to the ground. His captors started dragging him along faceup by the nape of his neck and his arms and T-shirt. His heels beat the ground impotently. He clawed at the dry grass. It was useless. They dragged him faster and faster past the shadow of the gate cast by the torches.
This was the fate that had awaited him from the beginning.
“Galla, why are you doing this?” He could only cry out in desperation. The distance between them kept opening. She was a dark silhouette, blacker than the sky.
“I’m not a scapegoat! We never made a deal like this!” His vision was blurred with tears. Her answer seemed to come across a gulf of emptiness.
“I am sorry.”
She’d said that at their first meeting. Then too, her tone was clipped and monotonic, because her apology was devoid of meaning.
“I told you you would regret it. You knew this would happen. This was the only thing that could happen. You sought to live a story instead of weaving your own life, Kotaro Mishima. You pursued an obsession, you wanted to hunt evil. The final chapter of stories like yours is always here, in the Nameless Land, where you and all those like you must finally go.
“I am sorry. I chose you in the beginning. But this? This you chose yourself.”
You will regret this. She had warned him again and again. The guardian of the emptiness where words were born was the darkness of the void. The void has no need for meaning. It seeks no meaning, because the void has no heart.
He finally understood, though it was far too late. Shigenori was right. Galla was a concept. Human beings can’t resist formless things. Instead, their concepts color them and finally consume them.
We were bewitched by a demon.
Galla the warrior was a concept that transformed p
eople into something inhuman.
Kotaro kept kicking and punching futilely as they dragged him through the soft grass. His voice became a single wordless scream of rage and terror.
I wanted to do the right thing. I couldn’t let evil go unpunished. I couldn’t let murderers get away with it, that’s all it was!
He was ready to become a monster, to spend the rest of eternity in darkness. The satisfaction of harvesting some measure of justice with his own hands would be enough, even if it meant gazing eternally at his hard-won justice, and the small measure of happiness he’d managed to salvage, as though it were a distant star.
But he didn’t want to merge with emptiness, merge with the void and lose all emotion and feeling. That was a deal he never signed up for.
He’d been tricked. Conned. He, Kotaro Mishima, had been Galla’s target from the beginning. She’d needed a scapegoat, one of the inculpated to barter for her child. And Kotaro had blundered into her flame like a summer moth.
A puny, fluttering insect that wouldn’t even notice if someone crushed it.
I am sorry. Meaningless, empty words.
You will regret this. Galla’s prophecy had baffled him, drawn him on.
Bait. Everything had been bait, and he’d pursued it, gobbled it up. What a fool he’d been. A hopeless halfwit.
“Liar!”
Galla was out of sight. He pleaded with his captors. “Wait—this is all a mistake—she lied to me!”
Yes, she’d deceived him, and he had wanted her to deceive him. He’d gotten drunk on the ecstasy of avenging evil, debauching himself with vengeance. He’d had chance after chance to run, and he turned away every time. People had warned him, and he’d ignored them all.
He was in love with the story he’d woven for himself, a story that became an obsession, about a young man with the power to weigh people on the scales of his personal vision of right and wrong. He’d believed with all his heart that living that story was the only thing that gave his life meaning and purpose—
No. I was tricked into believing it.