Intermission — Beyond the Blue Light’s Reach

1

I soon got used to driving while towing the auto-trike. Not only was this a sturdy public highway, but it was also straight and level, without any other cars on the road. All I needed to do was avoid sudden braking and keep the adjusted acceleration in mind. What I wasn’t used to was sharing my silence with this girl I had only just met.

Several hours after our departure, we were grasping desperately for a conversation topic. We were fundamentally two travelers that had been thrown together by circumstance, and neither of us was used to people. So our conversation was halting, and we both fell regretfully into an awkward silence.

All I could do was hope that it would get better in the future. Until then, we took more breaks to get away from the suffocating feeling of being trapped together. I wasn’t sure whether Nito picked up on my thought process, but I got the feeling she would probably have agreed if I’d said as much out loud.

Eventually, we came to a three-way fork in the road and I slowly brought the Kettle to a halt. A wooden stake stood in a small mound of stone in the middle of the fork with a metal sign attached to it, albeit listing to one side. It had a thick coat of rust though, so not even Nito could read it.

A glance at my watch showed it was nearly evening and the cloud cover over the mountains was tinged an orange-yellow on its underside. Rather than panic at the oncoming night, it was best to prepare for it: we needed to get our camp ready quickly. Fortunately, there was a flat space at the side of the road.

“Let’s camp here for tonight,” I suggested.

“All right.”

I drove the car onto the flat area and stopped the engine before opening the door. A soft breeze was blowing that carried with it the lingering scent and chill of spring along with a trace of warmth that hinted at summer’s approach. Green hills undulated outward around us, their waves broken up by floating islands of tawny rocks and wide stretches of white sand. There were several dark green thickets of trees in the distance, but no houses or streetlights. Once night fell, the area would be pitch black.

I got down from the car and turned to speak to Nito. Both of her hands rested on the open door and her eyelids had drifted slightly downward as she gazed out at the scenery. I had never used the phrase “tender affection” before, but Nito was truly embodying it now. The faint smile on her lips was doubtlessly worthy of that description.

To me, the scenery in front of us was nothing. I hadn’t even been in this world for a year and I was tired of it. The road stretched on, hills and mountains broke up the landscape, and the sun rose and fell, setting the sky ablaze with light. That was all though. Everything else was just changing into these crystals and forming plains of white sand.

“Do you see something unusual out there?” I asked her.

The soft expression remained on her face as she answered.

“I thought the coloring was pretty. So much so I can hardly believe the world has died.”

I took Nito’s wording of “coloring” on board and looked out again. I agreed that it was pretty, but I couldn’t feel anything else. Maybe it was an intrinsic sense painters had, or a sensitivity only they possessed. It almost felt like she was seeing a different world than I was. I couldn’t understand it, but it must have been a world full of beauty.

I was more concerned with making camp than watching the sunset. If I stood around until the red light faded then I’d be stuck in the darkness. I pulled out the wooden box of camping gear from the back seats along with my backpack and the groundsheet. A rough survey of the area revealed no signs of rocks or shrubbery. I decided to set the tent up right in front of the Kettle. If it came to it, we could use its headlights to see by.

“Um,” Nito said, “let me do something too.”

While I’d been setting up the tent, Nito had come over to help. I’d been alone the entire time I’d been traveling in this world, so making camp with help was a fresh new experience. We worked together quietly for a while until I spoke up.

“The tent’s pretty small...” I said, prompting Nito to turn around from where she was crouching inside the dome tent to look back at me. “By the way, I’ve got a question.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“How have you slept until now?”

“I laid the seat back and slept inside my car.”

Right, that works since she’s so small.

“I’ve only got the one tent, and your auto-trike’s got the meat in its seat, so...where do you want to sleep?”

Her head poked out from inside the tent and she looked solemnly up at me.

“Is there...anywhere else?”

I pointed at the tent she was crouching in, and then at the Kettle. With the box and backpack out, the back seat was completely free of luggage, and it was fairly wide. I’d slept like that myself on particularly rainy days.

Nito looked around the inside of the tent, carefully checking the floor and the roof of it before speaking with a dark look on her face.

“This...is a dismal arrangement...”

“I’d like an apology for that, if you would?”

The way she’d said it sounded like she was blaming me for the state of things.

“It was a joke. The tent is scary, so I’d prefer the car,” she said easily as she exited the tent.

The burning red sky began to fade to the indigo of night, several stars springing up across its expanse. She looked up and let out a soft cheer of delight.

2

The first thing out of my backpack was a hexagonal fire stand. Nito and I had gathered a bunch of twigs, and I lit those using a match. Once they were burning I added some mana stones. The jet-black stones—as gorgeous as gems—ordinarily went toward fueling the car. When added to a fire, though, they made a rather efficient charcoal substitute.

Suddenly, I noticed Nito looking curiously up at me.

“Keisuke, does everyone in your world live outside? Like nomads?”

“Uh, no, we don’t...?”

“Then why are your tools for it so advanced?” As she spoke, Nito pointed at the folding low table I’d put out. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a desk that can be stored in so small a space and carried so easily. I’ve never even read of one before.”

“Convenient, right?” I asked her.

“I don’t understand,” she admitted after a pause. “The uses for it are so limited, so why would someone bother to make something so costly?”

She gasped and then asked a follow-up: “Keisuke, are you rich in your world, perhaps?”

I smiled reluctantly, amazed that someone could see it like that.

“Not at all. I’m just a student. Plus, it’s not all that expensive.”

“Your world is amazing...” she said, poking at the stainless-steel table.

“Is it? I guess, when you think about it that way, it’s amazing we make stuff with limited uses that we can get hold of with pocket change,” I mused, then passed her a chopping board and collapsible knife. “Right then, you can give me a hand with cooking.”

She looked at the tools with deep interest as we got started. We ended up making a deeply tasty meal. For that, we mainly had the ingredients we’d received from Vandyke, along with Nito’s contributions to the process, to thank. Along with the raw meat, we’d also gotten canned demi-glace sauce. The only reason I found that out was because Nito read the label for me. Mixing vegetables with the meat and sauce gave us a beef stew, which Nito ate plenty of with a smile on her face.

We used the drum of water to wash up and brush our teeth, then switched to a damp towel to wipe off our faces and bodies in place of a bath. Then, after we were done with tidying away, our night was suddenly completely free.

I added wood to the fire as Nito and I sat down facing each other across it. We didn’t yet have the kind of relationship where we could joke and laugh with each other, and it was far too early to sleep. Thankfully, I found a way to break the silence before it became suffocating—the fork in the road ahead of us.

“Where shall we go from here?” I asked.

The two of us each had a final goal in mind. If we’d known which road led to our goal then we would have taken it without hesitation, but neither of us knew. We needed to decide what path to take day by day.

“Keisuke,” she asked after a long pause, “do you have any ideas?”

I shook my head. After all, I’d been utterly lost until a few days ago.

“I do have a map though,” I added.

“A map?”

The map had ended up jumbled together with everything else in the wooden box when I’d tidied up. I fetched it and offered it to Nito, spreading it out with both hands. The firelight danced on the back of the paper as she held it.

“Huh, it is a map of the area,” Nito said, studying it intently. When she was finished, she turned to me with an awfully serious expression on her face. “If you don’t have a problem with it, I’d like to go to Barcia.”

“And Barcia is...?” I asked leadingly.

“It’s the town just before this circled bridge. That’s where I’d been aiming for to begin with.”

I looked at the map when she passed it back. Sure enough, there were several small houses drawn downstream of the bridge, right where she’d said.

“I don’t mind, but is there anything in particular there?”

“Barcia has a witch.”

“A witch?”

Guess we’re in a fairytale now.

“I don’t know how your world considers witches, but here they are people who have inherited ancient magic. They often show up in children’s stories.”

“Do they really exist?”

“I think so. Everyone believes they do at least.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit vague?” I asked.

“Well... I’ve never met one...” she admitted with a rueful grin, leaving me unable to press further.

I looked back down at the map. I’d found it in that roadside truck, and the only road marked on it was the one that went past the station and over the mountains to the town and bridge. I considered whether the truck’s driver might have been going to see the witch but soon changed my mind. While their drawing of the town was a quick, almost afterthought-level sketch, they had drawn the bridge in careful, precise strokes and then circled it multiple times. There was a distinct difference in the importance they’d placed on each location.

“What happens when you meet the witch?” I asked as I folded the map.

Nito rested her chin on her knees and hunched over, looking down into the fire. The firewood crackled.

“The witch,” she said slowly, “will answer any question correctly. But only once.”

“Why?”

“Why what?” she asked back, her confused expression making me confused in turn.

“Why does the witch give you a correct answer? Actually, how?”

Nito paused.

“I wonder why,” she eventually said with a crease in her brow. “All I can tell you is that’s always been the case. Any witch in a story always answers her guests’ questions.”

“Hmm. Well, if they’re called witches, can they use witchcraft?”

“It’s called magic, strictly speaking. It did exist until two hundred years ago. It had been in decline since the advancement of steam technology. Apparently, it’s really difficult to learn.”

Magic declined as science advanced... It was a saddening thought.

“I...would have loved to see magic,” I admitted.

“So would I.” Nito smiled wistfully. “So would everyone though. There are books upon books set in the era when it still existed that use it as a story element.”

“I wonder if the witch will show us some magic if we ask?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never heard of anyone trying that.”

“Right, to Barcia then. I’ll ask her.”

“I’ll ask too then!”

She was much more energetic now that we had a destination in mind. That kind of excitement was something I hadn’t felt for quite some time.

“Do you have a question picked out to ask her?” I queried.

The question was a slip of the tongue, something I only asked because of the high spirits we were in. I cursed myself as soon as the words left my lips, worried that I shouldn’t have asked anything personal. Nito considered her words for a while before nodding.

“I want to ask if the Golden Sea exists.”

“Is that the place you said wasn’t on any maps?”

I guessed it was probably the place she’d said she was searching for when we were at Vandyke’s house. Nito pulled out a notebook that was roughly palm-sized and opened it to a specific page before offering it to me. I took it and looked at the page: the majority of the surface was covered in a striking picture all in shades of gold.

Our surroundings were relatively dark, with only the soft firelight to see by, which meant that it was hard to make anything out in the picture. From what I could tell, it did seem to be a sea. The artist had drawn it from above, looking out from a small church-like building atop a cliff. The right-hand edge held a cursive signature.

“My mom always talked about it, saying it was the most beautiful place in the world.”

Well, that’s an exaggeration.

“Take a look through,” she told me.

I did as she asked and flicked through the pages. The notebook held a cornucopia of paintings: townscapes, landscapes, animals, clock towers... All of them were vivid watercolors. It was essentially a portfolio.

“She traveled and painted when she was young. There were loads of other notebooks. She found the Golden Sea when she was on her journey.”

“Oh, okay. So she traveled all over the world and thought that was the prettiest place. That’s more persuasive.”

As I spoke, I stopped flicking through the pages. One particular image was familiar. I shifted toward the fire to get closer to the light.

“Is this that station?”

The painting showed a white station building floating atop a pool of water. White clouds were floating in the clear blue sky, but only in its reflection. The actual sky had no color to it. The composition evoked and preserved the sensation you got from being at the station—the feeling of standing with the sky stretching out beneath your feet.

“It’s the same place,” she told me with a smile. “I’m looking for the places she painted, traveling to each one, and trying to recreate her pictures.”

A moment of silence stretched between us.

“You must have really loved her,” I said.

The wording wasn’t intentional; I just said the words as they came to mind. Maybe that was inconsiderate of me. Her face pulled into a sharply pained expression, but it was quickly replaced with a smile. It was the smile of someone well used to bearing pain, one who’d known nothing else in life.

I didn’t know whether I should apologize or probe further, so I decided to remain silent. Whatever I said would probably have been superfluous. I closed the notebook and returned it.

“Then let’s head to Barcia for now. We’ll meet the witch and ask our questions. We can start on that tomorrow.”

Nito nodded. We had nothing else to talk about now, and the mood had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. We both stood. I took the lantern from my backpack and walked Nito to the Kettle. We packed all the luggage into the rear footwell and laid the seats back before spreading bedding out over them to make an impromptu bed. Nito kicked her shoes off and got up onto the seats, patting them to see how comfortable they would be to sleep on.

“Think you’ll be okay?” I asked her.

“I should be.”

“Night, then.”

“Right, good night.”

I closed the door and headed back to the campfire. I sat down on the sheeting and pulled my phone out from a pocket in my backpack. “October 17, 4:19”—time was definitely passing in the other world, but clearly at a different rate than here. I connected the charging cable to my phone and then to the lantern, before starting to crank the lantern’s small handle. As I did, the charging symbol appeared on the phone.

Nito would be asking this witch who answered a single question correctly about the Golden Sea. What do I ask? It looks like I only get one chance. I racked my brains as power trickled into the phone, but I couldn’t come up with a decent question. There was a veritable mountain of things I wanted to ask, but things I actually wanted answered were a different matter.

I stopped turning the handle, and then unlocked my phone and opened the call log. It was filled with calls that hadn’t connected to anyone. I’d been out of service since I arrived here, so obviously no matter who I called, the line had never connected. Radio waves didn’t reach between worlds, after all.

Even so, I reached out with a finger to tap an entry reading “Home.” Then I pulled my backpack into my lap and put my phone to my ear, closing my eyes. The afterimages of the flames flickered across my eyelids.