The Book of Heroes (55 page)
“Sorry if I startled you.” The man grinned again and bowed. “I am an interpreter. I bring someone who wants to meet you, Yuriko.”
“Me?” Yuriko asked, pointing at her nose.
“Yes, you. He is waiting downstairs. He wants to meet only you.”
And not my parents?
That sounded suspicious.
Yuriko squinted over the chain at the man. “Who is it that wants to meet only me?”
The man replied immediately, “Actually, I’m not sure myself. But he has told me that you would know him were I to introduce him as a friend of the Man of Ash.”
Her visitor was waiting in a strange-looking van with high suspension. The sliding door opened, and she could see him looking out at her from the back seat. She knew she should never get into a strange car with a strange man, but this time seemed like an exception. A real exception. Yuriko ran up to the van.
The man was wearing a white shirt, with a brilliantly colored blanket draped over his knees. When he saw Yuriko run up, all out of breath, he smiled merrily.
He has perfect teeth too.
Those white teeth and white eyes and white shirt stood in stark contrast to the man’s dark skin.
He was a large man, with broad shoulders. His silver hair was cropped close to his scalp above a smooth forehead.
Yuriko spotted a wheelchair folded in the back of the van.
He’s old. An old man.
“This is Yuriko,” the interpreter said, running up behind her.
The man beckoned Yuriko to sit in the seat next to him, pointing with one finger to his ear several times.
He’s wearing a hearing aid.
Yuriko got into the van and sat next to him, feeling dwarfed by the man’s size. The interpreter closed the sliding door and went around to the front to sit in the driver’s seat.
Their eyes met. The old man smiled again, nodding to her two, three times. He began talking rapidly, not even waiting for the interpreter to get settled. Yuriko couldn’t make out a single thing he was saying.
“He says ‘Hello,’” the interpreter translated, as he wiped the sweat from his brow.
“Hello!” Yuriko said back, bowing her head. “You are a friend of Ash—I mean, the Man of Ash?”
The interpreter spoke again, and the old man answered. She was pretty sure he wasn’t speaking English, but other than that, she had no idea what language it was.
“Yes,” the interpreter said. “His name is Atali.”
Atali.
Yuriko had been able to make that word out in the jumble from the old man’s mouth.
“It is his ‘wolf’ name. I am sorry I do not know what that means. Do you know?”
Yuriko swallowed, nodding. She could feel the sweat on the palms of her hands.
“He knows you,” the interpreter translated.
The old man’s tone was gentler now. He looked directly at Yuriko as he talked, now in broken Japanese. “You are U-ri.
Allcaste
U-ri, yes?”
Yuriko’s eyes went wide as she stared back at him. She nodded again.
“I know of your journey. The Man of Ash told me. The other wolves call me ‘Atali Silvertooth.’”
That’s a cool name
, Yuriko thought. A wolf with silver teeth.
“I have known the Man of Ash, Dmitri, for a very long time.”
Dmitri. It seemed like years since she had last heard that name.
“Dmitri does not age. But I have grown old. I am an old man.” He laughed. “I cannot fight anymore. Nor can I hunt. That is why I now retire.”
Here the man returned to speaking his own language so he could speak more quickly. The interpreter, listening to every word and sweating profusely, nodded and occasionally asked questions. Yuriko steadied her own breath and tried to calm her wildly beating heart as she looked between the two.
“You were very brave, U-ri,” the interpreter said, turning back to Yuriko. “That is why Atali has come to you. That is why he expects so much of—expects?” The interpreter asked a quick question to Atali, then turned back to her. “Yes, expects.”
Yuriko nodded. “I see. But what does he expect?” Her pulse was racing faster now.
“If you would be so inclined, Mr. Atali has something to give you. He wants you to have it.”
With a nudge from the interpreter, Atali opened the top few buttons on his shirt, revealing an old yet still muscular chest and a pendant hanging on a chain at his neck, nestled in silver chest hair.
Atali began to remove it, but his fingers did not move as nimbly as he would have liked, and eventually the interpreter had to lean from the driver’s seat to help him.
“This is my mark.”
The pendant looked small in Atali’s large black hand. It glowed a dull silver. Yuriko saw that it was shaped like a fang.
A wolf’s fang.
“Dmitri does not know. But I have seen it in you. You are strong. Far stronger than you know.”
Atali’s hand tilted and the pendant chain began to slip. Yuriko quickly reached out to grab it as it fell.
The pendant was warm to the touch. Like it was alive.
With his other hand, the man gently grasped Yuriko’s wrist, rotating her palm upward, and placed the chain of the pendant in her hand. Atali smiled. Then he curled her fingers shut until she held the pendant tightly.
“You are strong. You have the makings of a wolf. I retire now, but this fang I pass to you. Will you take it?”
Atali had come a long way for this. He had crossed an ocean. But though his region might be a foreign land to Yuriko, they were both in the same Circle. And wolves roamed everywhere. They had access to all places.
“Where are you from, Atali?”
The man interpreted. For some reason, Atali had to think before he answered. “Homeland,” he said.
Yuriko lifted an eyebrow. Was that a country’s name?
The man squinted and smiled as though he had expected this reaction. He began to talk rapidly again, making the interpreter rush to keep up.
“Homeland is not a true country’s name. It is the name of a district formed a long time ago in the Republic of South Africa. You know in my country there was a thing called apartheid? It means ‘apart-ness.’ It was discrimination against those with black skin.”
“Yes, my brother told me all about apartheid. He saw a movie about it or something.”
Atali nodded. “It was in those days, the white people told the black people you must live here, and those places they called
bantustans
, or ‘homelands.’”
The interpreter continued, wiping at his face with a handkerchief. “A long time ago, in the Republic of South Africa, there was a story that told the white people they could do what they—what’s that? A story?” He turned back to Atali for confirmation. Atali nodded. Yuriko nodded too.
“It was a story, yes. A popular one in those times.”
It was a story. People at the time might have thought of it as a philosophy, or perhaps even the simple truth, but it was in fact a story.
“That is when I became a wolf. My desire was to hunt the book that told the story that made one man hate another because of the color of his skin. There are no homelands now. There is no apartheid.”
He smiled. “I live in Johannesburg.”
But Atali had been born a wolf in his homeland. And he had come from there to give Yuriko his fang.
“I have been searching for a successor for some time now.” Atali looked with large eyes at Yuriko. His pupils glinted jet black. They reminded her of somebody else’s eyes—the eyes of every brave man she had ever met.
“You would make a good wolf. You will journey again. You want to, yes? When you are older and stronger. You will journey to bind the Hero. I know this. That is why I have come.” The old man smiled. “I am glad to have met you. You are exactly as I imagined you to be.”
Yuriko’s vision blurred.
Why am I still crying after everything I’ve been through?
Why am I still such a little crybaby?
But these weren’t a child’s tears.
“You are strong. You journeyed well. Your journey was hard, but you saved your brother. You saved the Circle. You are strong.”
The man’s heavy hand rubbed Yuriko’s head. Atali smiled. His smile was strong and gentle. “I believe in you. I think Dmitri knows this too. He waits for you. And he will wait a long time, for he will never die. He does not grow old. But you will soon be an adult.”
Dmitri the undertaker. The Man of Ash. Ash in his black cloak.
One who is close to the dead.
He was waiting to meet Yuriko again. Waiting to walk the streets of the Haetlands with her again, where the tragic King Kirrick ruled as the Hero.
And Aju would be there too, for sure, an
aunkaui
dictionary no longer.
The silver fang glinted in Yuriko’s palm, reflecting the light in her eyes.
“Thank you.”
Yuriko gripped the pendant tightly.
The mark of the wolf, in her hand.
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