The Bellcrier

The line of falling grass was straight.

It did not bend. It did not waver. A single line splitting the sea of glowing grass, reaching toward them.

The cry came again.

Like a bell rung underwater. Closer this time. The ground shivered faintly under the soles of their feet.

“What is that.”

“We call it a bellcrier,” said Jorun, the one facing forward. “The Republic's watchdog. There are eight of them on the border.”

“How do we fight it.”

“You don't. If it finds you, you run.”

“Can we outrun it?”

Yuran, facing backward, shook his head.

“No chance. That thing eats grain. It follows the smell of grain. With a hundred-odd cylinders of seawater on the wagon and a woman who runs on grain walking beside it, there's no outrunning anything.”

＊

Mirabel had gone out in front of the wagon.

She was yawning. The same face she'd had when she said she was getting hungry.

Partway through, it changed.

“…Huh.”

Mirabel looked at her own left hand. She bent the metal fingers one by one.

They bent slowly.

“Ahh. So that's how it is. Ahaha, how unpleasant.”

“What. What's wrong.”

“It's drinking me.”

Mirabel was laughing. Laughing, but her voice had gone thin.

“That thing pulls grain from a distance. The closer it gets, the harder it pulls. I told you half of me is made of grain, didn't I.”

“…You did.”

“So. Worst possible match.”

＊

The sea of grass split.

What came out of it was large.

Twice the height of the wagon. As long as three wagons lined up end to end. It lay low against the ground, with more legs than anyone could count.

Its body was transparent. A shell like hundreds of hard plates layered together, and deep inside each plate a white light pulsed slowly. The same color as the light in Central's corridors.

It had no head.

Where a head should have been there was one large opening. The rim of the opening spread slowly, then closed. Each time, the bell sounded.

Both horses panicked at once.

Drag caught the reins and held them down. Holding them, he shouted toward the back of the wagon.

“Scribe! Get off! Get away from the wagon!”

Still clutching her stack of paper, Roslyn tumbled out of the wagon bed.

＊

The bellcrier opened its mouth toward Mirabel.

Her body was pulled forward. Her feet slid in the sand. The woman who, days ago, had stopped without sliding a single step.

The wound in her side, where the twins had torn her, opened again.

Something black seeped out and hung in the air.

Hanging there, it drew out into a thin thread and was sucked into the bellcrier's opening.

“Nngh, ahh… this might be, ah, a little bad.”

Mirabel extended the blade in her left arm.

It didn't come all the way out. It stopped at half its usual length.

Marlow had a hand pressed to the left side of his belt.

The little leather pouch was moving inside the belt.

The grain in the pouch was being pulled toward the bellcrier, pushing the leather out from the inside.

“…It's after my grain too.”

“Course it is. You've got ninety-nine of them, kiddo. From where it's standing, that's a bag of dinner.”

Marlow looked at the bellcrier.

No head. No eyes. It follows the smell of grain, the twins had said.

It goes where there is more grain.

＊

Marlow ran.

In the opposite direction from the wagon. Into the glowing grass.

“Marlow?!”

Willa's voice cracked behind him.

He didn't look back. He yanked the pouch out of his belt, untied the cord, grabbed about ten grains in his palm, and scattered them behind him as he ran.

The bellcrier's opening turned toward him.

He knew it had turned. It had no head, and he knew. He heard hundreds of legs change direction all at once.

The force dragging Mirabel's body vanished.

The bellcrier came.

It was fast. Flattening the grass, shaking the ground, coming straight on.

Marlow ran. With legs that had climbed the wall for thirty days, with a body that felt no pain, shoving the glowing grass apart.

Every ten paces, he scattered ten grains.

Each time he scattered, the bellcrier stopped for a moment. It stopped, pressed its opening to the ground, and drank the grain up. Then it came again.

The pouch got lighter.

Ninety-nine became eighty-nine. Became seventy-nine.

The bell rang at his back.

Too close.

He turned and the transparent shell was right in front of him. The white light deep inside the shell pulsed slowly. The opening spread.

Marlow's belt was pulled forward. Pouch and all.

He clenched the pouch. He didn't let go.

His whole body was dragged toward the opening.

＊

Light came in from the side.

It wasn't light. It was a blade.

Mirabel was in the air above the grass.

While the bellcrier had its opening turned on Marlow, there was no force drinking Mirabel. By exactly that much, the blade had extended. To its usual length. A little longer than usual.

“Kiddo, down!”

Marlow went down.

The blade passed over his head.

A line opened in the bellcrier's shell. One line. Perfectly straight. From the rim of the opening to the tail of the shell.

Hundreds of plates slid apart along that line.

White light burst out of the gap. For one instant it lit the sea of grass like noon, and then it went out.

The bell stopped in the middle of its sound.

The bellcrier fell in two pieces.

Grain spilled out of the shell.

Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. Black grain spread in a rough layer across the glowing grass.

The twenty Marlow had scattered were mixed in there too. Which was which, there was no telling anymore.

＊

Mirabel landed beside Marlow.

Her breath was ragged. She had a hand on her side. Something black dripped between her fingers.

Then she looked at Marlow.

She crouched down, brought her face close, and stared at him with the brown eye and the metal one both.

“…What.”

“Kiddo, you just made yourself bait and ran.”

“Not bait. A decoy.”

“Same thing. You took the grain and ran in front of that thing to pull it off me.”

“Otherwise it would have drunk you dry.”

Mirabel went quiet.

A woman who had lived two hundred and ten years went quiet.

Then, all at once, she said it out loud.

“I'm in love!”

“…What?”

“In love! Just now, in love! That's decided! Kiddo, I have fallen for you!”

“Hold on. What are you talking about.”

“Two hundred and ten years and you're the first one who ever ran in front of me! Everybody hides behind me! Ahahahaha!”

Mirabel grabbed Marlow by both shoulders and shook him. With the metal hand and the other one.

“Decided, decided. It's decided now. I'm not taking it back.”

“Take it back. Right now.”

“Nooope.”

Out beyond the glowing grass, Willa could be seen running toward them.

＊

Willa ran up and stopped in front of Marlow.

She looked at Mirabel, looked at Marlow, and then hit Marlow in the chest with her fist.

“Idiot!”

“Doesn't hurt.”

“I know that! I'm hitting you because I know that!”

She hit him again.

“Why do you go off alone! Why do you run without saying anything! I thought, I thought I was getting left behind again!”

The third time, she didn't hit him.

She opened her fist, took hold of Marlow's shirt, and pressed her face into his chest.

Her shoulders were shaking.

Marlow didn't know what to do.

Three years he had lived with this kid. Eaten with her, walked the market with her, watched the sunset from the top of the aqueduct with her.

Even so, he didn't know what a person was supposed to do at a time like this.

He didn't know, so he raised a hand and put it on Willa's head.

Her red-brown hair had half come loose from its tie.

In three years, it was the first time he had put a hand on that head.

“…I'm sorry.”

“You should be. You really should be.”

“Next time I'll say something before I run.”

“Don't run at all, is the thing.”

Mirabel watched it from beside them.

The brown eye had gone a little gentle.

“…Ahh. I see. Like a parent and kid.”

It was said in a small voice. A voice meant for nobody to hear.

＊

Back at the wagon, Roslyn was sitting down in the sand.

Still holding her stack of paper, shaking. She tried to write, and the hand holding the pen shook too much to make letters.

Without a word, Drag took off his coat.

He took it off and laid it over Roslyn's shoulders.

He said nothing. Roslyn said nothing either.

For a while Roslyn held the collar of the coat with both hands.

Then she took the pen up again and wrote one line.

Marlow couldn't see what she wrote.

When she was done, Roslyn laid a sheet of paper over that line and hid it. It was the first time Marlow had seen a recordkeeper hide her own record.

＊

They went past the wreck of the bellcrier and pushed south another half day.

The sea of glowing grass ended there.

They came out on top of a hill.

They looked down, and every one of them stopped the wagon.

It was farmland.

Fields marked off in squares, running to the horizon. In every plot, glowing grass had been planted.

And between the grass, people were laid out in rows.

Lying down. In a line. Hundreds of lines. Heads all set the same way, arms at their sides.

They looked as if they were sleeping.

From each one's chest ran a single thin tube, and each tube was sunk into the roots of the glowing grass.

The white thread inside the stems pulsed. At the same rate as the rise and fall of a human chest.

“I told you the Republic doesn't keep cattle, didn't I.”

Mirabel said it quietly, there on the hill. Her usual laugh was gone.

“I said it keeps people.”

Willa took hold of Marlow's sleeve. This time with both hands.

Marlow started to count the rows in the field, and stopped.

He stopped counting, and it wasn't because there were too many.

The nearest row. Just below the hill.

It was because he could see the face of the man lying there, joined to a tube.

White hair. A thin body. The left eyebrow broken in the middle. Two fine scars on the right side of the jaw.

It was the man who, eight days ago, had spread both arms to his first wind in nine years and then stopped, embarrassed.

End of Chapter 30