The Book of Heroes (22 page)

Stunned, U-ri watched the back of the truck race away. Its exhaust swirled through the air around them.

“We’re in the middle of the street!” Aju cried.

Not that U-ri needed him to tell her that. The electrical pole she had been aiming for was to her back. There was the sign for the clinic on it.

“I told you, it’s hard to get the distances just right at first.”

“What’s the matter? It’s not like the cars can hit us.”

The young devout got his footing and spread his arms wide. Blinking, he looked down to make sure he hadn’t been crushed. Then he looked up, and his eyes opened wide. His jaw went slack and he gasped.

“What is it?” U-ri looked up. Dawn had broken and it was already well into morning. The spring sky was blue, with a few puffy clouds bobbing peacefully along like bits of dandelion fluff. “What are you looking at?”

The young devout didn’t answer, so U-ri reached out and touched his arm. He still didn’t look at her, so she gave him a gentle shake. He stood there, still, looking up into the sky. “What—what is it, Lady U-ri?”

“What do you mean? It’s the sky. What’s so strange about that?”

“The sky…” the young devout muttered. “No, it is surely the heavens! But why is it such a blue color?”

U-ri blinked. “Don’t they have a sky in the nameless land—”

Oh, that’s right. It’s always cloudy there. And covered in mist.
“You’ve never seen a blue sky before, have you!”

Eyes still wide, he looked at U-ri. Then he jabbed a finger above her head. “What do you mean ‘sky’? Is there a blue sky up there? All I see are the heavens, Lady U-ri.”

U-ri finally realized what the problem was.
They must not use the word
sky
in the nameless land.
Now that she thought about it, she realized that the pillar in the center of one of the Great Wheels and the clouds over their heads had both been called “heaven.”

“Here we call the heavens
sky
,” she told him. “This is a blue sky.” She pointed upward.

“It’s so…beautiful,” the young devout breathed, enchanted by the scene above him, its blue reflected in his eyes.

Of course, they were in the middle of the city, full of trucks and cars going this way and that.
That’s not a
real
blue sky,
U-ri thought, frowning at the brownish haze that clung to the horizon.

It reminded her of something her brother had said once. There was a sky color they called “azure blue” in more difficult books than the ones she read. It was the kind of deep, rich blue she and her brother would never see in their city—maybe not even in their country. There was probably only a few places in the world left where you could see a real azure blue sky.

Still, the sky here seemed to be more than enough for her servant. Even standing here in the exhaust from the big truck, this smoggy sky was enough to impress someone who had been trapped for so long in the nameless land.

“I’ve got it,” U-ri said suddenly. “Sky!”

“What’s that?” Aju asked. The nameless devout was still too busy staring up, the springtime sun in his face, to notice. His eyes were closed and he had begun to gently sway back and forth.

“That’s your name now, servant.”

The young devout blinked and looked at her. “What? Did you say something, Lady U-ri?”

“Yes, your name will be Sky. I can’t keep calling you ‘servant’ forever.”

She thought it might be nice to shake his hand and make a formal occasion out of it, when another giant truck rumbled
through
them. Exhaust swirled around their heads.

“U-ri? Sky?” Aju whimpered. “Can we please get out of this road?”

The front door was locked. U-ri didn’t have a key. It was in her backpack, which she had left somewhere in Mr. Minochi’s cottage.

“So what do we do now?”

U-ri ignored Aju’s question. She bit her lip, then pressed the button on the intercom by the door.

Ding dong.

She heard footsteps approaching from the other side. Someone in slippers was running for the door.

“Let’s step back a little,” U-ri said, pulling Sky back with her.

“Yes?”

The door opened. It was her mother. There was a video camera on the intercom, but she hadn’t bothered looking at it.
That hasn’t changed at least.
She still thinks my brother might be coming home.

“Who’s there?” Still in slippers, her mother walked to the door and leaned out to look down the hall. “Who’s there? Hiroki?”

Now she was outside, running down the hallway. That too was the same as always. She would go all the way down to the elevators to check, hoping that Hiroki had finally come home.

“Now’s our chance,” U-ri said, slipping inside the apartment. The door began to close slowly behind her. Sky hurriedly followed her in.

“Does your mom always run out like that?”

“Yeah. Her eyes were pretty red again too. I bet she’s not sleeping much.”

U-ri felt the pain in her chest, but she gritted her teeth against it. She couldn’t cry now. That wasn’t why she came back. She hadn’t become an
allcaste
for this.

“At least she got a lot of rest at the cottage,” Aju said, trying to make her feel better.

She went inside and peeked into the living room. The television was on but no one was there.
Maybe my double is at school?
She decided to check her own room first.

Behind her, Sky was looking wide-eyed at everything. Even his pupils seemed bigger than usual. Everything was new to him, the colors, the sounds, the furniture—and above all, the electrical appliances. He shrank away from the TV, cowered by the refrigerator, and jumped when the washing machine clunked as it switched cycles.

“You’ll get used to it in no time,” Aju told him. “It’s not magic, but it’s almost as useful.”

“I see…” Sky said, his voice a reverent whisper.

U-ri knocked on the door to her room. Even though she was still wrapped in the vestments, her knuckles made a satisfying noise.

“Yes?” she heard her own voice say. The door opened, then, “Welcome home!”

U-ri’s double bowed when she saw her. She didn’t seem surprised at all to see Aju and Sky.
Maybe she can’t even see them—

Wait, how can she see me? Maybe because she’s magic, she can see through the magic of the vestments?

“Hi,” U-ri replied, feeling like she should say something more to mark the occasion but unable to think of anything appropriate.

Her double was standing by the desk. One of U-ri’s textbooks and a page of notes in someone else’s handwriting sat side by side.

“Are you—” U-ri began, then stopped. “I mean, am I going to school?”

Her double shook her head. “You didn’t want to go back, so neither did I, Master.”

“Master? Oh, right. You can just call me ‘U-ri.’”

“Right, U-ri.”

“Where did those notes come from?”

“Kana and Sayuri took them for us.”

Just hearing her friends’ names made U-ri’s eyes burn with tears, but she held them back. “Right, Kana’s my best friend. And Sayuri and I are really good friends too. Did you thank them?”

“You didn’t want to see them, so we did not meet. Your mother brought the notes home for us.”

That sounds like something Yuriko would have done,
U-ri thought. Her double was right. “Okay. Just, I might change my mind in the future and want to meet them. I mean, could you meet them for me?”

“Of course.”

Suddenly, U-ri felt uneasy. “I don’t want you getting too close to them, though. They’re
my
friends.”

“U-ri, U-ri, U-ri,” Aju cut in. “She’s your double, a magical puppet. She can’t really be
friends
with another person, not like you can.”

U-ri figured he was probably right, but somehow she couldn’t make herself feel it. U-ri plucked Aju up in her fingers. Extending her arm, she held him out, away from the folds of her robe. “Can you see this?”

“That’s a book, transformed by magic.”

So she can see it—and she knows what it really is.

“How about Sky, can you see him?”

Her double smiled. “Of course I can see him. U-ri, I am your double—a true duplicate. Until the enchantment on me is broken, I am you. So you don’t need to tell me anything you know—because I already know it.”

That’s why nothing surprises her.

“And Aju was a little wrong. Even though I cannot be friends with another person, I am close to one person—you.”

Her double reached out a finger and gently rubbed Aju’s tiny head. He squeaked just like a mouse.

U-ri felt the strength go out of her. Placing Aju on her shoulder, she sat down on the bed. Sky stood at the foot of the bed, his back straight. The perfect model of a servant.

“So, what happened after I left?”

It had been three days in the real world since Yuriko and her parents had come home from Mr. Minochi’s cottage in the mountains. “Your parents told the police about it. They said they had gone to take a look but hadn’t found Hiroki. And there was no sign he’d been there.”

Even so, the police had agreed to keep an eye on Mr. Minochi’s cottage in the future.

“Well, I’m grateful for that, I guess—but that will make protecting the magic circle a little harder.” As soon as U-ri said it, it struck her as a particularly grown-up sort of thing to say. —
I
have
changed.

Yuriko hadn’t been going to school. She studied at home from the notes that her friends had taken for her. Her parents had been talking with the teachers about possibly switching schools, but nothing had been decided yet.

“Everything is the same at home. I think your mother’s a little tired.”

“She still cleans Hiroki’s room every day?”

“She cleans it and sits in there for about an hour. She’s usually crying, so I go in there sometimes and give her a hug, and cry with her.”

“Thank you—” U-ri began, then she laughed. “Why am I thanking myself?” she wondered out loud.

“That’s quite all right, U-ri,” her double said with a smile.

She’s awfully nice for a magical puppet.
U-ri was glad. When she thought about it, it made sense that she should get along well with a copy of herself. She wondered if anyone had ever tried it before. Maybe she was the first ever in this world.

“Well,” U-ri said after a while, “I suppose I’ll be making this room my headquarters from now on.”

She stood up from the bed, crossed her arms, and looked around.
I’m home. I’m finally home. This is my world.

“You know, I could really use a bath. Even a shower.”

“You’re not hungry, or tired?”

“I got magic for that—and I don’t have a whole lot of time. But I really need to clean up.”

Aju had been keeping quiet while the two talked, but now he piped up. “Let’s magic you up so you’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed first,” he suggested. “Then you can let your double wear the vestments while you take a bath. Sound good?”

“Yeah, but we normally don’t take a bath in the morning in my house. Mom will wonder what’s up.”

“That’s okay—I went to sleep early last night with a headache,” her double told her. “I didn’t take a bath—she’ll just think you’re making up for that.”

“Great—could you go talk to Mom for me?”

Her double left the room, and Aju scrambled up higher until he was sitting on top of U-ri’s head. “All right, repeat after me!” the little mouse said in a chipper voice.

U-ri began reciting the spell quietly so her mother wouldn’t hear. The spell to get rid of hunger and weariness was a happy-sounding one, with lots of
pa
’s and
pi
’s that made her giggle.

Her double returned. U-ri wedged her chair under the doorknob just in case anyone tried to open the door, then took off the vestments of protection.

She wasn’t weak like she had been before. In fact, she felt better than ever.

Except she stank of sweat and was covered in grime. Even her fingernails had dirt under them.
Dirt from the nameless land,
she thought, and her heart thumped in her chest.

She finished taking off the robes, but now she quickly looked around—
that’s right, I can’t see Sky anymore.

“Sky, where are you?”

Aju stuck his head out from beneath the vestments of protection draped over her arm. “He’s standing right by the bed. Quick, cover up your double before someone sees both of you standing here like this.”