Twenty Thousand

About thirty of them came.

They came running between the rows of sleeping bodies. Not field-keepers. Their footfalls were heavy. Somewhere on an arm or a shoulder or a back, they were not shaped like people.

Above them, a wing flew low.

It seemed it could not fly high. Cloth was wrapped around the base of the right wing. With every beat, the right one lagged.

“…That's the pickaxe wound,” Marlow said.

“Hasn't healed,” Drag said. “Serves him right.”

He said serves him right, but there was nothing satisfied in Drag's voice at all.

＊

The first one leapt over a row and came at Marlow.

His right arm, from the shoulder down, had become a long blade of bone.

Mirabel cut in front of him.

“Now, now. Don't touch my kiddo.”

Blade met blade. The bone was the one that broke, right at the base.

Mirabel caught the broken blade out of the air and threw it into the knee of the next man coming. He started to fall onto the row of sleepers, twisted his body at the last instant, and rolled clear of the row.

“Ahaha. Kind of you, aren't you. You don't fall on top of the sleeping ones.”

The fallen man lifted his face and spoke.

“…Those are merchandise. Damage them and they're worth less.”

Mirabel's laugh stopped for just an instant.

Then she laughed louder than before.

“Ah. Merchandise. Ahaha. I see. I see.”

The next swing took three of them down at once. She was cutting much deeper than before.

＊

Marlow had One's arm around his shoulders.

One was standing. Standing, but there was no strength in his legs. For six days his body had lived on nothing but grass sap run in through a tube.

“Can you walk.”

“I can walk. I can walk.”

“When you say it twice it's usually a lie.”

“…Caught me.”

One laughed.

Yuran and Jorun held One up from the other side. With three arms. The four of them became one mass and started moving toward the hill.

The wing came down.

Ten paces in front of them.

Kale stood on the ground with his right wing still half folded.

“Leave that behind.”

“I refuse.”

“I was not asking you.”

Kale looked past Marlow.

Drag was there.

＊

Drag had nothing in his hands.

The pickaxe he had driven into his brother's wing six days ago, and lost there. The iron on the end of the pole had been cut in two by Mirabel the day before that.

He was empty-handed.

“Give the wings back.”

“To whom.”

“To their owner.”

“The curious lion? He went home without his wings. He did not look troubled about it.”

“Whether he's troubled isn't yours to decide.”

Kale tilted his head a little.

The way he tilted it was exactly the same as Drag.

“…You don't change. You always got angry over other people's things.”

“You always wanted other people's things.”

“That's so.”

Kale spread his wings. The right one shook as if it hurt.

“Come. It's been three years.”

＊

Drag stepped in.

He was fast. The speed of a man who took hold of a water-sucker barehanded and threw it.

Kale did not fly. Maybe he could not. He swung only the left wing.

The edge of the wing struck Drag's shoulder. Every single feather was hard as a blade. Drag's uniform tore open, and three red lines ran across the gray-green skin.

Drag did not stop.

Without stopping, he locked onto his brother's waist.

The two of them rolled across the glowing grass. One step short of the row of sleepers, Drag twisted his body and turned them. He put his own back underneath his brother.

They did not fall on the row.

Kale beat the ground with his wing and flung his brother up.

Drag turned in the air and grabbed the base of his brother's right wing. The place with the cloth wrapped around it. The pickaxe wound.

Kale cried out.

It was a sound heard for the first time. It was the sound of pain.

Drag did not let go of what he had hold of. He pressed his brother into the ground and put his weight on the base of the wing.

“…Give them back.”

Kale laughed with his cheek against the ground.

“…You always were better at grappling. Throwing, and grappling.”

“I said give them back.”

“Pull now and it comes off at the root. Take it.”

Strength went into Drag's arm.

It went in, and there it stopped.

＊

It was not Drag's arm that stopped it.

It was that the field had gone dark again.

The glowing grass, lit at half the brightness it had before, went to half of that. All across the field, as far as they could see. The white veins inside tens of thousands of stems had gone thin and slow.

Then there was a sound.

Not a sound, so much as sound going away.

Twenty thousand people's breathing went shallow all together.

Roslyn's voice rang out from between the rows.

“Marlow Kane! This man's breathing is getting weaker!”

Roslyn was kneeling beside Garry Knotts. She had her hand on the old man's chest.

“A moment ago it kept the same pace as the light in the grass! Now it is half! Less than half!”

Marlow looked at the glowing grass.

He looked at the tubes cut away from One's chest.

Grass to person. Instead of food.

Person to grass. Blood, a little at a time.

Twenty thousand people's worth of field, and this one man was lighting all of it, Yuran had said.

It was not only the grass he had been lighting.

＊

One took his own arm off Marlow's shoulder.

“Hey.”

“You get it?”

“…I get it.”

“Me too. Just now, I got it.”

One was looking at the field. At the sea of light going dark.

“Nine years alone at the bottom. Not once did I mean to lower the water for anybody. Don't lower it, the floor gets wet. That was all it was.”

“One.”

“Came up top, three days later they carried me off, slept here six days. And while I was sleeping, twenty thousand people's worth of my blood was running out, was it.”

One laughed a little.

“Strange thing. First time in nine years I was some use to somebody. While the man himself was asleep.”

Marlow grabbed One's arm.

“We're going.”

“Not going.”

“You are going. You stay here and they'll haul you to the Republic's capital and you'll be grass fertilizer the rest of your life.”

“That's so.”

“Don't give me that's so!”

Marlow's voice cracked.

It was the first time in two months he had heard his own voice crack.

“You said there was nobody waiting for you. That's why you never came out of the bottom. It's different now. Willa shook your hand. You said it was the first time in eleven years anybody gave you their name.”

“I said it.”

“Then—”

“That's why I'm staying here.”

One gently took Marlow's hand off him.

“There's twenty thousand here. In this field. Not one of them has given a name. Not one of them is waited for. Same as me. Same as me nine years back.”

One turned and looked up at the hill. One lantern was swinging there. It was Willa's lantern.

“Tell the girl something for me. Thanks for the handshake, tell her.”

＊

Mirabel had lowered her blade.

None of the soldiers around them was moving. Not Drag, holding Kale down, and not Kale, held down.

Every one of them was watching One.

One walked back to the place where he had been lying. The middle of the thirty-meter ring of light. Where the grass lay flattened, hollowed into the shape of a man.

He lay down there himself.

He picked up the ends of the cut tubes himself.

“Blade lady.”

“…What is it, old man.”

“Join them up for me. My own hands can't get them in right.”

Mirabel did not move for a while.

She was looking at One with the brown eye. She was looking with the metal one too.

“…My job is taking you east, you know.”

“I know.”

“I'm going to get scolded.”

“Sorry about that. I'm sorry.”

Mirabel knelt.

With her metal fingers she lined the cut ends of the tubes up with the cut ends at One's chest. She drew her blade out thin and stroked the rims of the cuts, just barely, as if melting them.

The tubes joined.

The light came back.

From the thirty meters around One. From there, like a wave, out toward the far edge of the field. The white veins inside tens of thousands of stems grew thick and quick, one after another.

Twenty thousand people's breathing went deep all together.

Under Roslyn's hand, the old man's chest rose and fell, slow and wide.

Roslyn kept her hand on the old man's chest and looked down. Her shoulders were shaking.

Drag took his hand off his brother's wing.

＊

Kale got up.

Holding his right wing, he looked at the field for a while. At the field with its light back.

Then he looked at his brother.

“…One god's blood is enough. For tonight.”

“You're letting us go.”

“The thing I wanted lay down on its own. There is no reason to fight over it.”

Kale signaled the soldiers with one hand. The soldiers drew back.

“Go, Drag. When the sun comes up, I follow. While it's night, I won't.”

“Why.”

“Because you did not take the wing.”

Kale turned his back on his brother.

The ash-white wings on his back caught the light of the glowing grass and looked the color of bone.

“Tell that lion something from me. Someday I'll give them back. I don't know when someday is.”

＊

Marlow went to One one last time.

One had his eyes closed. He was not asleep. His chest rose and fell at the same pace as the light in the grass.

“…Hey.”

“Still here? Go. Go on, now.”

“Let me ask one thing.”

“What.”

“The name line. Yours. What do I write.”

One opened his eyes.

He looked at Marlow. At the same face.

He thought for a while. He had the face of a man thinking about nine years, and two and a half years, and eleven years.

“…One will do.”

“That's a number.”

“No. You called me it. Called by it, it's a name.”

One closed his eyes again.

“Thanks for coming to get me. For coming to get me.”

He said it twice.

This time it was not a lie.

＊

When they came back up the hill, Willa was standing there holding the lantern.

She looked behind Marlow. Drag, Mirabel, Roslyn, the twins.

She counted, and counted again.

“…What about One?”

Marlow did not answer.

Instead of answering, he put his hand on Willa's head. It was the second time.

“He said thanks for the handshake.”

Willa did not move for a while.

Then she turned and looked down over the field.

The light had come back all the way to the horizon. Twenty thousand people's worth of light. And in the middle of it, one ring brighter than all the rest.

“…There?”

“There.”

Willa raised the lantern high.

She swung it once.

She swung it twice.

The third time, she did not swing it. Instead she stood there, holding the lantern high, and stayed.

The bright ring in the middle of the field gave nothing back.

Even so, Willa did not lower the lantern until her arm shook.

End of Chapter 32