CHAPTER 6

HOW MANY MORE STEPS TO THE LIGHT MARKING THE WAY?

It wasn’t as if there were any clear-cut boundaries between the seasons, but the day after the Colonization Days break, the air took on a definite winter feel, with no room for a single bit of autumn to sneak in.

“Finished.”

Kieli gave the mound of earth a light pat with both hands and paused for breath. Rubbing her fingers together after the cold outside air and digging in the ground had thoroughly frozen them, she turned to look beside her.

“I’m sorry it’s not very good.”

An emaciated black cat sat next to Kieli as she crouched on the ground. It didn’t react to her voice; it only stared at the little mountain of earth in front of it. Its gray eyes matched the winter sky; she couldn’t read whether they were exasperated or angry, or maybe happy.

Kieli faced forward again and, side by side with the black cat, looked down at the ground at her feet. There was a humble grave in a corner of the courtyard, made simply by digging a shallow hole and refilling it with earth. Hugging her knees, she closed her eyes for a brief moment and offered a prayer for the small life.

“Kieli, what are you slacking off around here for? Are you trying to make me do all the cleaning?” a sharp voice snapped behind her. Still squatting, she turned around to see her freckled classmate standing in the school passage. She was pushing a cart piled high with thick books.

When she saw her, Kieli remembered that, oh yeah, school was over for the day. She wiped her dirty hands on her skirt and stood up. She didn’t see any reason to hurry, so she walked at a normal pace (though, thanks to a certain somebody, she got the feeling her normal pace had quickened quite a bit) back to the outside hallway. When she got there, Zilla, who had been waiting in total annoyance, glanced at the courtyard and asked, “What is that?”

“A cat. It was dead,” Kieli answered in short sentences as she took over pushing the cart.

She found the cat frozen to death in the shadows of the hall this morning, on her way back to class after the combination winter term opening ceremonies and morning worship service in the auditorium. She skipped her afternoon classes, found a little spade in the shed, and buried it in a corner of the courtyard where no one would step on it.

Zilla looked cynically at the tiny grave, then took on a somewhat joking tone and snickered. “Don’t tell me it was a cat you used to summon a demon?”

Kieli didn’t change her expression; she only glanced sideways at her classmate and started pushing the cart toward the building on the other side of the hall.

“What? Talk back. You’re no fun!” Temporarily left behind, Zilla complained selfishly and went after Kieli. Kieli thought, Oh so she wanted me to talk back, but she didn’t feel like responding and so kept pushing the cart in silence.

Just then, she felt something coil around her feet. When she looked down, the black cat rubbed against her legs and meowed. After that, it circled once around Kieli and disappeared.

“Did you hear something?”

As Zilla looked around suspiciously, Kieli gave a vague, “Hmm,” and smiled to herself as she looked down at the cart and kept walking. So he liked it? I’m glad.

She got the feeling this was the first time in days that she had smiled a little. But she had shed all her emotions since the incident at the mine. It had gotten to be a pain to converse with people, so she only spoke in broken sentences.

The soldiers brought her back to the boarding school on the last day of the Colonization Days holiday.

The headmistress and Miss Hanni had already heard the story that an Undying had tricked her and taken her to the abandoned mine, and the Church Soldiers had rescued her just as he was about to eat her head first; Kieli didn’t know what explanation she had been given, but apparently that’s how Miss Hanni understood it. She greeted Kieli with an embrace, accompanied by her self-intoxicated laments and overreactions, as a pitiable student who had gone through a terrifying experience that must have scarred her emotionally. She wished it had been the Church history teacher who greeted her. It must have been awful, Kieli. Of course you don’t have to write a report.

But instead, Miss Hanni told her that she needed to forget those sinful, sinful memories of associating with an Undying as soon as possible, so she was to keep the incident a secret, of course from the other students, but also from the other teachers. Her Church history teacher remained ignorant of the reason she hadn’t been able to write a report, so on her first day of the winter term, Kieli was forced to stand in the hall for an hour, only to be released after receiving an oh-so-generous three-day extension to write twice as long a report. Like she could write twice as much in three days.

Kieli yawned and looked up at the clock on her writing desk; it was almost time for the date to change.

She put her pen down on the report paper, which remained blank even after several hours, and breathed a little sigh. She noticed that the lazy idea of going to bed was about to overcome her, and suddenly became aware of the reality that her daily routine had returned.

In comparison to the few days of her trip, with each day packed full of events, she spent her life at the boarding school by leaving everything to momentum, with no major differences between today and tomorrow — no, her daily routine hadn’t returned. When she got back, there was something missing from that routine.

“Becca, I’m going to bed,” she said tentatively, as she cleaned up her desk like she did every day, turning to look at the beds against the wall, like she did every day, and addressing her roommate, like she did every day.

Good night, Kieli.

The bright soprano voice no longer answered. The lower of the metal bunk beds was arranged with Kieli’s bedding about halfway complete; the top bunk was empty, and dust lay thick on the flattened mattress. The selfish, free-spirited roomate who would lie there pretending to read a book and sometimes talk to Kieli, demanding a reaction to everything, heedless of the fact that Kieli was trying to do her homework, was no longer there.

The double room that she lived in by herself was strangely big and empty.

“……”

She froze for a while with her head still turned toward the bed, then slowly brought her downcast gaze back to her desk. Her eyes stopped on the old radio she had placed on the corner of her desk. It was dented in places, its coating had almost completely peeled off, and there were signs that the speaker had been torn and reattached many times. She reached out, pulled it closer, and turned it on. After a smart little burst of static, music flowed from the speakers at a low volume and filled the room.

Since Kieli had first met the radio, it had always been set to the same frequency — not a legitimate channel, but a guerrilla one, known only to those who knew to look for it. It was possible that the tuner itself was broken. But she was afraid of losing the faint waves from this channel, so she didn’t even think of experimenting with it.

She wondered who had first turned it to this frequency. She had no trouble imagining a red-haired man sitting cross-legged on the seat of a train, adjusting the tuner as the voice from the radio urged him on. Just a little higher, higher; argh, you went too far, you moron. I told you just a little, Herbie.

The radio only carried melodies from some far-off place now; it would no longer talk to her in its low, staticky voice, in its rough but kind tone. And she would never again look at those long fingers that turned the tuner from the seat diagonally across as they lit a cigarette, moving in slight annoyance at the effort involved; and those hands would never again reach out to her.

She wondered why she had been afraid, even for an instant, and avoided that hand that tried to touch her cheek at the abandoned station, and her mind filled with thoughts she would never regret enough. Even though she was painfully aware that Harvey blamed himself more than anyone. Even though she knew that that big, warm hand that held hers at the carnival didn’t exist for the sake of war anymore.

She pursed her lips and pushed back the feelings that welled up inside her.

She was sure Harvey had escaped safely and would be looking out over the Sand Ocean in the far east as if he was tired of it about now. When he hears the “all aboard,” he’ll stoop down to pick up his bag, and walk over to the boat landing at his usual fast pace — if only he would look back and call out to me. “I’m gonna leave you behind, Kieli. What are you doing? Is the ocean that unusual?”

“No, don’t think about it…” she muttered, exhausted, and dropped her head onto the desk. She pressed her forehead against the radio; its cold touch cooled her temples and somehow she managed to hold back her tears.

My short journey is over. Good-bye, Kieli. You’ll never see me again.…

In the end, it turned out that Kieli would never have to write her report.

She had fallen asleep in that position the previous night, and when she woke up in the morning, red marks from the radio clearly showed on half of her face, so she had just decided to independently cancel her lectures when Miss Hanni summoned her. She didn’t know if it was because she had skipped her afternoon classes the day before, or if they had somehow discovered her attempt to be absent today, but anyway, she was sure that if they were taking her to the headmistress’s office this early in the morning, it must be that she could no longer receive financial aid and they were kicking her out of the school. These were the thoughts that filled her head as she followed Miss Hanni through the door to the headmistress’s office. She completely forgot to be polite and say “excuse me.”

The headmistress sat at the desk in the very back. She was a middle-aged woman who wore the long black robes of the clergy; Kieli didn’t have any significant memories of her.

There was one more person sitting in the room on the guest couch in front of the desk — a young man who wore the robes of a priest on pilgrimage.

“Hey there, Kieli. I’m glad I could see you again.”

The priest rose with a gentle manner from the sofa and stood in front of Kieli. Kieli gaped up at him as the headmistress’s cheerful voice addressed her from behind him, “This is Mr. Joachim, from the capital. He says you’ve met before?”

The sentence did not jog her memory; she lifted her chin and scrutinized the tall man, with no idea of who he was. He looked down at her from the same eye level as a certain someone she had gotten used to looking up at during her vacation, and her heart skipped a beat. That was what finally reminded her. She didn’t remember anything other than his blue-gray eyes and that he was about as tall as Harvey, but he was the priest she had met at the transfer station.

“Oh!” she breathed, sounding silly even to herself, then, “The capital?” The first half of what the headmistress had said only just now took her by surprise; her eyes widened and she looked back up at the priest. If he was a priest from the capital, didn’t that mean he was a Church leader?

A mischievous smile lit the priest’s gentle eyes. “Surprised?”

“Yes. You didn’t seem like anyone that important at all.” She nodded honestly, but apparently she was too honest, and, over the priest’s shoulder, she saw the headmistress’s smile freeze. “K-Kieli!” Miss Hanni’s panicked whisper flew at her at an angle from behind.

“It’s all right. She’s still young.” The priest put the two women at ease with his practiced response and looked back at Kieli. “Easterbury happened to be my last stop, so I thought I would drop by and thank you for the other day.”

“You went to all that trouble?” It may have been some kind of fate, but they had only met for a few minutes in front of the station, and she didn’t even remember his face. He probably figured out her school from her uniform, but she didn’t think she’d done anything to merit his coming all this way to see her.

The priest didn’t even blush at Kieli’s question, and answered very straighforwardly, “Yes, I just had to see you one more time.” He bent down and peered worriedly into her face. “I’ve been talking with the headmistress just now, and I understand you’ve had a terrible experience. Are you all right?”

The “terrible experience” her teachers had heard was that Kieli was almost eaten, and Kieli didn’t have any such “terrible” memories, but when he asked if she was all right, she somehow got the feeling that he knew everything; he had taken her off guard and she started crying in spite of herself. Even though she hadn’t shed a single tear since it happened.

“…I’m fine…” That was all she managed to mutter as she stared at the floor; the next line wouldn’t pass her lips. I’m fine. Nobody did anything to me. If you care enough to ask me those questions, then please stop running him down.

The headmistress and Miss Hanni fell silent at Kieli’s sudden tears; and for a while, only Kieli’s stifled sobs filled the headmistress’s room. Eventually the headmistress deliberately cleared her throat and, “N-now, now. Let’s not talk of such painful experiences,” and tried to smooth everything over with a line that revealed her misunderstanding of the situation.

“Mr. Joachim has a wonderful proposition for you.”

Kieli wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her uniform and looked up. In contrast to Kieli’s dubious gaze, she could see in the headmistress’s face a sense of absolute trust for this promising young priest from the capital. She plastered a broad, good-natured educator’s smile on her face, that nevertheless left no deep impression on Kieli’s mind, then nodded importantly and said, “He says he would like to invite you to the middle school division of the seminary in the capital on a scholarship,” she informed her, clapping her hands together.

Kieli blinked, trying to take in what had just been said. She shifted her gaze to the priest, who responded with a smile and added, “I’m told you have no relatives, so, if you like, I was hoping you would come to the capital with me.”

“But why me…?”

“Oh, Kieli, isn’t that marvelous!?” Miss Hanni raised her shrill voice before Kieli could ask her question. She looked up at the ceiling, clasped her hands in front of her chest, closed her eyes, and said rapturously, “This is guidance from the Lord. He gives equal opportunities even to unfortunate girls like you.”

Kieli took her eyes off the priest and gazed expressionlessly at Miss Hanni’s rimless glasses. She wanted to ask this believer who was so honest and virtuous that she would call this unfortunate girl “unfortunate” to her face, “Miss Hanni, if God really is here, then why didn’t He give that black cat even a little food or shelter from the cold?”

Then she suddenly came up with something. Maybe God really was on their planet. And He was a man of such perfect, flawless character, that He watched over everyone equally — the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor — and never played favorites or reached His hand out to any of them. Oh, what a wonderful God. He can just drop dead.

The transfer station on the eastern edge of Easterbury parish was bustling with travelers as usual today. Railways stretched in different directions toward varying destinations — to the west, the railroad went through central Easterbury and on in the direction of Westerbury; to the east, lay the Sand Ocean that spanned the continent; and to the north, the railroad passed through the North-hairo parish and on to the Church Capital.

Kieli leaned her cheek on the cold glass of the train window and gazed indifferently at the people hurrying on and off the platforms, carrying their big bags.

She couldn’t quite believe that only a week had passed since the last time she saw this scene. The last time, Kieli and her companions had gotten off here, visited Harvey’s old house, and then headed for the abandoned railroad to the south.

It was possible that Harvey was still in the area, and that if she looked for him, she could see him. Never learning her lesson, she got her hopes up and started to fidget slightly; she made herself sick.

Just stop thinking about it already. Harvey said I’d never see him again. And now I’m going far away from here.

She had already boarded the train leaving for the capital and was waiting for departure.

Kieli didn’t want to go on to attend a seminary, so she refused the scholarship, but of course that was when it was determined that her financial aid in Easterbury would be cut off. The headmistress and Miss Hanni had not a speck of doubt that Kieli would happily go, and in the end, she couldn’t oppose her teachers’ opinions.

She wanted to hurry and be able to make her own living and decide for herself where she was going to go. She had started vaguely thinking along those lines after experiencing her journey, but now she was in a position where she had no choice but to depend on financial aid and scholarships.

And one more thing — she couldn’t completely refuse to go to the capital, because Kieli had no reason to be so set on staying in Easterbury. It wasn’t like she had any family, and Becca was gone; besides, it wasn’t like anyone would come to get her if she waited for them.…

Who was she thinking of?

I’m thinking about it again…

Just as she interrupted her own thoughts and sighed, a voice beside her said, “Here,” and a tin mug was offered to her. White steam rose slowly from it, and a sweet-smelling brown liquid swirled inside. When she looked up and accepted it in both hands, the young priest smiled and sat in the seat opposite her, a cup with a blacker liquid than hers in his hand.

“Apparently it will be a while before we depart. Drink that while we wait.”

Kieli put the warm chocolate to her mouth and tasted it a little. What a luxury! she thought. They’ve never served anything like this in the boarding school cafeteria. Then she turned her eyes upward to look at the priest and said, “I like it.”

“If you like it, I can get you another.”

“You’re such a friendly and considerate person, Mr. Joachim.” She spoke her mind openly.

Joachim put his coffee to his own mouth and blinked. “I wonder if you’re comparing me to someone when you say that? Perhaps you know someone who is unfriendly and inconsiderate?”

“No, it’s not that,” Kieli answered vaguely and looked nowhere in particular, trying to escape his gaze. She wished he would sit more to the side. It made her strangely nervous to have him sit directly across and stare at her like that.

She took another sip from her cup and glanced back at him. He was still staring at her, and she had the feeling he was scrutinizing her for something, which made her even more uncomfortable. His smile seemed friendly at first glance, but — and maybe she was wrong — it also looked as if there was a kind of thin membrane over it, and it was difficult to tell what he was thinking.

Why would he be interested in someone like her? Inviting her to the capital just for helping him a little in front of the station was awfully nice.

At a loss for where to look, she dropped her eyes back down to the chocolate in her cup. Just then, the car shook forward and back with a clank, and she very nearly spilled her drink and stained her skirt. She didn’t need her boarding school uniform anymore, but all her personal clothes were packed in her luggage, and she ended up wearing her usual black uniform anyway.

Looking at the platform, she could see that they were doing something to the front of the train. She squinted her eyes to see what it was. “Ah!” Kieli half rose out of her seat and stuck her face to the window.

They were trying, just now, to attach an angular black car to the front passenger car of the train. It looked exactly like the Church Soldiers’ armored car that had attacked them in the abandoned mine — she was almost sure of it.

“Mr. Joachim, what are they doing?” she asked, still clinging to the window.

For his part, Joachim calmly drank his coffee, not particularly concerned. “It seems the locomotive is having trouble. Since the Church Soldiers that had been deployed in Easterbury were going back now anyway, it’s been decided that the armored car will pull the passenger train to the capital with it. It will delay our departure a little, but that car has more power; it will make up for it in speed.”

“Church Soldiers…” Kieli murmured in a tense voice, then stared at the work going on in front of them.

With the three black cars connected to the front, the ten passenger cars, and the two freight cars at the end for a total of fifteen, the train was getting to be extremely long. She spotted a few men wearing the white armor among the people working on the platform, and her heart started beating faster.

She was getting a bad feeling about all of this. Had Harvey really gotten away?

Just then, she heard the sound of metal against metal next to her seat; she started and turned around to see a man, in the same armor as the people outside, standing in the aisle. Kieli almost screamed in spite of herself; she somehow managed to swallow it back, but she staggered and her back crashed into the window.

Kieli could hardly hold herself up for the fear she felt. Right in front of her, the Church Soldier leaned toward Joachim and whispered something in his ear, then left along the aisle, his spurs clanking as he went.

Even after the footsteps disappeared behind the door to the next car, Kieli remained rigid against the window. She felt the color drain from her entire body. Church Soldiers and priests held places on opposite ends of the Church’s organization and had different jurisdictions, so until now, Kieli never made a connection between the incident in the mine and Joachim. But when she thought about it, if he was a Church leader, it wouldn’t be so strange for him to be receiving reports.

“I’ll be in the car up ahead a little ways. I’ll come back later,” Joachim said, rising from his seat as if to follow the soldier. He turned his eyes on her pallid, frozen face, and said kindly, “What’s the matter? There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Um…” Kieli managed to open her mouth, using every effort to keep her voice from shaking. “The Undying that was with me. Didn’t he escape? Could it be that you caught him?” Her efforts were in vain, and the voice that came from her throat was faint and trembling.

“Oh, neither,” Joachim answered, still smiling, and went into the aisle, leaving Kieli unable to understand his meaning. He went a little ways, then stopped, turned casually back, and with the same smile plastered on his face, but with his cheeks somehow twisted strangely, he added, “It’s all right. He’s dead.”

Kieli opened her eyes, thinking that someone was calling her.

For a second, she didn’t realize that she had been asleep. The train had already departed. Quiet music, almost drowned out by the noise inside the car, reached Kieli’s ears. She pulled the radio out of her luggage and placed it on her lap.

It didn’t look as if Joachim had come back after leaving his seat.

What did he say earlier? Dead? Undying don’t die. That’s stupid. You’re lying.

For some reason, her body had no energy, as if her nerves were paralyzed somewhere. She threw an absentminded glance out the window, still leaning an ear toward the radio. She couldn’t see the scenery outside because of the darkness that enveloped it, and instead, the black glass reflected her own face and the inside of the car, giving her a strange sense of realism, like she was looking at translucent spirits.

She felt as though someone called her again.

She moved her head a little and turned her eyes toward the aisle and the seats on the other side. Sitting in the next box were a small girl and a man who appeared to be her father; the father was engrossed in his book, and the girl was leaning on him, sleeping. At the moment, there were no signs of anyone walking down the aisle.

She tilted her head in confusion. When she returned her gaze to the window, she heard, “…li…”

This time there was no doubt about it — someone had called her. She looked around her again, then gasped, picked the radio up from her lap, and put her ear to the speaker. “Ki…li…” She heard a staticky voice call her name, so faint it almost vanished, but definitely there.

“Corp —” Kieli cried involuntarily, her voice hysterical, and stood up. On the other side of her box’s partitions, the other passengers bathed her with dubious looks.

She hurriedly dropped back into her seat, then hunched over and whispered above the radio, “Is that you, Corporal?” But she couldn’t hear a response, and when she turned up the volume, the static only got worse, causing the father across the aisle to glare at her in annoyance. The girl frowned and stirred a little in her sleep.

Holding the radio, she stood up again. The passengers had all gone back to their own seats and their own pastimes and didn’t seem to think there was anything particularly suspicious about her. Even so, she worried about the gazes of the people around her as she went quickly down the aisle toward the door to the car behind them.

The moment she opened the door and stepped out onto the pitch-dark deck, the noise from the wheels banged against her eardrums and a cutting, cold wind disturbed her hair. She hurried to close the door, then plastered herself to the train’s wall to get out of the wind, and shouted loud enough to be heard over the surrounding noise.

“Corporal. Corporal, is that you!? Can you hear me?”

She turned the radio up to its highest volume and waited a bit; a broken reply came through the static.

“…Kieli…can you hear me…?”

It had only been a few days, but she had missed the staticky voice terribly. Kieli held back the tears that were about to spill from her eyes, brought her face close to the radio, and began to speak. “Corporal, how? Did you come back?”

“…Kieli…can you hear me…? Go to the freight car…”

“Corporal?”

But the radio didn’t answer and only repeated the same line: “…Kieli…can you hear me…? Go to the freight car…” It wasn’t much of a conversation. “The freight car…?” Kieli leaned out from the deck and stared at the cars lined up behind it. She squinted into the darkness, relying on the square yellow lights that fringed the windows of the passenger cars. There were three passenger cars behind her current location, and after that, two cargo cars were stuck to the end.

“…Kieli…go to the freight car…” the radio’s voice continued, like a chant.

Gazing at the freight car she saw behind her, Kieli nodded silently. She lowered the volume on the radio, hung it from her neck, and crossed the deck to the next car.

She had not a single reason to hesitate.

When she came out onto the deck of the last passenger car, closed the door, and finally saw the freight car that came next in the dull light filtering through the small window behind her, she nevertheless felt a bit of hesitation.

The deck of the freight car in front of her was no more than a simple foothold, and most importantly, there wasn’t a door in front of her like there had been on the passenger cars. There was a big sliding door in about the middle of the sidewall for loading cargo, and it seemed that was the only entrance. Also, there was a wide space between the two cars, and it looked as if she would need to jump to get to the next one.

“…Kieli…go to the freight car…”

“I know, Corporal. It’s okay. I can get there.” The voice from the radio was still only one-way, but she said it clearly out loud in order to convince herself.

She took a deep breath and swallowed, then summoned her determination and leapt from the deck.

As the tips of her toes reached the measly little deck, she clung to the handrail with both hands, and moved to the side wall without hesitation. Her hair and clothes fluttered madly in the wind as she gradually made her way along the side wall, using the sliding door’s rail as a foothold. It was actually fortunate that she couldn’t see her feet in the darkness. If she caught sight of the train track racing under them at such a high speed, she would undoubtedly have frozen and not been able to move.

“Just a little further…”

She reached out and somehow managed to grab the lock lever on the sliding door. When she opened it, wind filled her skirt and it puffed up around her.

The bottom of her shoes left her foothold.

“Ah!” The wind immediately carried her short involuntary scream away, and her body was blown backward as if following it.

Just in the nick of time, a hand suddenly reached through the opening in the door and grabbed her wrist. Except for her one arm, her body floated in the air for one second, then she was yanked forward and tumbled into the freight car, falling facedown onto the chest of the hand’s owner.

She knew instantly whose hand it was, of course. Slender but rough, powerful, big hands.

“Harvey, Harvey!” she repeated the name ecstatically as she hurried to get up; “Har — !” Then, when she raised her face and saw him, Kieli’s expression froze.

There in front of her was indeed the copper-haired young man she had longed to see. But there was no emotion on his face, and his eyes of the same color were empty, looking nowhere.

“…Harvey?”

Kieli watched in blank amazement as the dark green ghost of a soldier slowly emerged from his body and disappeared into the radio, as if it was sucking him in. That instant, Harvey’s neck, which had somehow kept itself straight until then, dropped to an unnatural angle; he lost his strength and fell over.

Kieli wound up catching his massive weight, and, unable to support it completely, she was pushed down and fell onto her posterior. The copper head that leaned against her slid from Kieli’s shoulder to the floor with a dull thud.

“…Eh…?” As she sat there motionless, she looked down at Harvey’s body collapsed on the floor, and Kieli’s breath stopped. She timidly reached out and tried touching his cheek. She automatically pulled her hand back at its chilling cold and its strange texture, and her fingers left a dent where they’d touched him.

He felt exactly like a corpse.

“…N…o.”

“Calm down, Kieli. Don’t be alarmed. Listen carefully.” Kieli was about to panic; it was the voice from the radio hanging around her neck that kept her tied to reality. Before she realized, it had stopped its one-way chant and now actually addressed her.

“Corporal, Corporal,” she brought her face to the radio, clinging to it with both hands. “Harvey’s, why, how…”

“I possessed him and moved him here. Damn, do you know how hard it was? You can’t walk with a body like that. It’s great that I snuck onto the train, but it’s gonna be impossible to walk around anymore. That’s why I rode the guerrilla station’s frequency and sent my voice to you.”

“I don’t understand. I don’t understand what you’re saying!” Kieli raised her voice, more and more confused at his sudden explanation. The force of her shout brought her tears overflowing with it, and all the feelings she had been forcing back flooded out in a jumble.

“Never mind that, Harvey’s not moving. How did he get like this? I want to talk to Harvey. I wanted to see him one more time…”

“I told you to calm down! Crying’s not gonna help anything!” The radio raised his voice to match hers, spitting his staticky features at Kieli from the speaker at point-blank range and causing her to pull back. Still sobbing uncontrollably, she earnestly wiped her tears and listened carefully, trying to understand what he was telling her.

“In his current condition, Herbie is just a corpse. We’re gonna get his heart’s core back. Most likely, he has it. The one commanding the Church Soldiers.”

“He…? Who…?”

“The guy you boarded the train with. I saw you both from the platform’s shadow. So my hunch was right. Damn, we should have been more cautious about him.”

“Joachim…?” she almost continued but stopped herself.

“I haven’t told you this before, Kieli, but it’s something I heard from Herbie once. The Church isn’t after the Undying because they’re criminals of war or because their existence goes against God or anything like that. That’s just what they tell the believers. The Undyings’ cores are the last fruits of the energy civilization from before the War, and those guys just want the technology and resources from them.”

“That’s why they…?”

His story shocked her, but while she listened, she regained some of her composure and looked down again at Harvey’s body lying next to her. His right leg and shoulder were completely gone, and as if that wasn’t horrible enough, his shirt was open to reveal a hole gouged carelessly in his chest, coal-tar-like blood staining his clothes.

She saw in him the image of the Undying that was killed in front of her seven years ago, when her grandmother was still alive.

“…How can they? So cruel…”

The tears she had once stifled threatened to overflow again, and she bit her lip. She reached out both hands and embraced his head, his hair reeking of coal-tar blood. When she asked him before, he said with a calm expression that he could ignore the pain. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, being torn up like this.

“Kieli, you can cry later. Can you do it? Or you can pretend you don’t know anything, and just go back to the passenger car. You have that choice. If you do, I won’t say anything.”

“Are you saying that because you think I’d do that?” she asked through her tears. The radio readily replied, “I called you because I don’t.” Kieli smiled just a little and carefully placed Harvey’s head on the floor. She didn’t think that he would feel any cold, but she took off her coat and laid it over him anyway. She gently closed both of his empty eyes with the palm of her hand, leaned close, and quietly whispered, “Wait for me.”

She took on a stiff expression, made sure the radio hung from her neck, and stood up.

“Guards,” Kieli whispered, peeking into the passenger car from the small window in the door, and ducked back down onto the deck. Two Church Soldiers stood in front of the door leading from the first passenger car to the Church’s car. Kieli was clinging to the deck on the opposite end. The passengers all sat normally, riding the train, but apparently no one had the courage to sit directly in front of Church Soldiers, and they all seemed to bundle in the back.

“Well, that figures,” the radio answered beneath her chin, then, as if tired of thinking about it, “Well, how are we gonna do this?”

“We’ll get there from above,” Kieli said, without waiting for him to continue, and looked up at the roof of the passenger car. A simple work ladder was installed in the wall, and it seemed as though she could climb up from there. She placed her foot on it without hesitating.

“Hey, are you serious? This is dangerous.”

“But there’s no other way,” she answered lightly, climbing the ladder. When she stuck her face out on the roof, a sudden gust hit her. “Wait a second…” She ducked down for a minute to get out of the wind and retied the cord on the radio so it would be too short for the wind to throw it around.

Then she braced herself, scrambled up onto the roof, and started to crawl along it on her belly. The fierce, skin-piercing headwind blasted mercilessly at her hair and skirt; and her hands and feet, which had frozen instantly, almost slipped countless times. She resolved that when this was over, she would stop wearing skirts, and she would cut her hair short to keep it out of the way.

“You okay, Kieli?” came the radio’s muffled voice from under her stomach.

“Yeah. Just a little further…” The wind sent her answer flying behind them.

As she frantically moved onward, her fingers caught the edge of the roof on the other side. She used all the strength in her arms to pull her body forward and practically slid down the simple ladder to the front deck below.

That instant, the back of the Church Soldier’s head that she saw through the small window into the passenger car abruptly turned around; she screamed inwardly and plastered herself to the wall. She waited a while, pushing back her heart as it tried to jump out of her and holding her breath. After a little bit, she looked and saw that the soldier in the window had his back to her again.

“Whew. All’s clear. Let’s go.”

“You’re pretty incredible, you know that…?” the radio said, impressed.

“How do you mean?” Kieli answered briefly, already starting her next move. She thought she sounded kind of like Harvey, if she did say so herself. Harvey’s frank tone, his voice with its controlled pitch — a low voice that purred a little in his throat and sounded a little staticky. She wanted to hear that voice one more time. She got the feeling that desire was connected to the risks she was currently taking that surprised even her.

The darkness of night enveloped her surroundings, and only the rushing wind, the roar of the wheels, and the sharp vibrations under her feet conveyed to her that the scenery on either side of her was passing by very quickly.

There was a black iron door in front of her. The roof was higher than on the passenger cars, and it stood as if to block her way.

She checked the window behind her, ducked down, jumped across the deck, and clung to the door on the other side. This door had a window, too, but at Kieli’s height, she couldn’t see inside it. She could only just barely tell that there was no one to be seen on the other side. She grabbed the lever and tried pulling it; the door was heavy, but she managed to move it, and when she had it open just far enough to fit herself through, she slipped inside.

The door gave in to its weight and closed on its own, and the roar from outside instantly went quiet.

There was one more deck on the inside. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling; it illuminated the narrow space, swinging with the vibrations of the train. There was a small door to her left, but it looked like it led to a bathroom. The door to the next car was farther ahead, slightly to the right. This time, she could see through the small window by standing tiptoe.

A narrow aisle went up to the door on the other side. Dull electric lights lit the aisle at equal intervals, and doors lined the left wall at those same intervals. It looked like they were private rooms.

She quietly opened and closed the door into the car and stepped into the aisle.

That instant, she heard voices from the room closest to her and instinctively made as if to escape, but once she turned on her heels, she realized that they were just having a friendly chat that had nothing to do with her. She peered through the room’s window and saw three or four soldiers wearing only half their armor, sitting and talking. She stole past, suppressing her leaping heartbeat.

The next room appeared to be for storage; boxes of all sizes lay in disordered stacks in the gloom.

She was about to pass that room, too, when, without warning, she heard the sound of the door opening behind her. She just barely caught her scream and swallowed it as it reached her throat, and at once jumped into the storage room. Clutching the radio, she fastened herself to the inside wall. Armored footsteps with spurs approached.…

Humans must be a pretty hopeless bunch if there are guys that would pay enough for this rock for me to buy a sandship with it. And after you destroyed most of them in a war you started yourselves. You used to be rolling in them.

Lying on the simple bed in his dimly lit room, Joachim gazed at the black stone he carried in one hand, a bored expression on his face. It was a rough, black rock, about the size of a grown man’s fist, but looking at it closely, it was easy to tell that this was no ordinary stone. Sockets for connections to all sorts of organic cables, from thick veins to capillaries, lined one side, and the amber light imprisoned inside blinked on and off like a heartbeat.

Inside the amber was the true form of the Undying’s power source, and organic cables connected it to their blood vessels and organic tissue, furnishing them with semipermanent energy and extraordinary healing abilities.

The few records from before the War contained the somewhat plausible explanation that there were special minute particles containing cell-repairing functions included in the blood the core sent through the body, and whenever they activated, they turned into a black tarlike substance — but the technology to manufacture them, the research facilities, and even the materials used to make them were all lost in that long, ridiculous War, so it wasn’t like there was any way to reproduce them, whether they knew how they worked or not.

“You’re pathetic, Ephraim,” he murmured with a smirk, throwing the core unceremoniously into the air and catching it again. He derived pleasure from the thought that the higher-ups would probably scream if they saw him treating it the way he was.

“Well, think of it as providing for my peaceful life and be happy. I guess I could goof off for thirty years. Maybe I’ll go ahead and shoot for building a spaceship? We do have the time to travel infinite space for eternity, after all.”

The thought he so casually put into words strangely caught his fancy, and he grinned to himself for a while, but he erased the smile without warning. He narrowed his eyes and glared at the stone in his hand.

“Hey, what’s the deal, Ephraim? Your toy really pisses me off. I’m sitting right in front of her, and she looks right through me. That little girl doesn’t think about anything but you.”

A girl who shows no signs of rejection toward Undying — he had thought she’d help him relieve some boredom, but it was taking more time to win her over than he expected. She was so attached to Ephraim, so what’s her problem with me? That’s no fun. She pisses me off. Ephraim, that little girl, the higher-ups — every single one of them does nothing but piss me off.

The annoyance in his stomach reached an abrupt climax, and he bolted upright, raised the core above his head, and flung it against the wall (if the higher-ups saw it, they would undoubtedly faint). The core hit the shutters drawn over the car window, denting them some, and fell onto the flooring.

The black stone shook slightly, rattling with the floor’s vibrations. He glared down at it and spat, “Serves you right.” Then, as he swore to himself at the feeling that this had been an extremely empty victory, spurred footsteps approached from outside in the aisle. The footsteps stopped in front of his room, and he heard a knock, along with a soldier’s muffled voice.

“Joachim.”

“Ugh, annoying…” he spat, sending a sideways scowl at the door as he picked up the core, stuffed it halfheartedly into the coat he had taken off, and got up from his seat.

“Keep up the good work. What’s the matter?” By the time he opened the door in response, he had stuck on his “kind and trustworthy young Church leader candidate” face.

The soldier standing in the door hesitated inside his mask, then said, “The young lady you brought with you has disappeared from the passenger car.…”

“Disappeared?”

“Yes. She’s not there,” he said as if he was just asking someone to hit him. Joachim managed to keep himself from obliging, pushed the soldier out of the way, and flew out of the room. That little girl!

“…Whew. That took years off my life,” the radio in her arms grumbled once the sounds of hurried footsteps running by, then the door to the next car opening and closing, had died down. “You’re already dead,” Kieli replied simply, then stood up, looked through the small window to make sure no one was there, and set out into the aisle again.

From the distance of the voices, she figured that the room the Church Soldier had visited and Joachim had just left was the one farthest down. She ignored the doors in between and ran at once to that room, going at a trot so that her feet wouldn’t make any noise.

Peering through the small window, she saw that it looked like the other rooms, but somewhat fancier, with a desk, a chair, and a simple bed. She checked the doors to the other cars on her right and left again, then slipped inside and closed the door behind her.

She instinctively held her breath as she scanned the inside of the dimly lit room. There was a big Boston bag and a trunk crammed under the bed, but there wasn’t anything else worth mentioning that might be called luggage. She glanced back through the window behind her, stepped farther inside the room, knelt on the floor, and pulled the bags out from under the bed.

She rummaged through the Boston bag first, but all that was inside were clothes, books, and daily necessities. Next she was about to open the trunk, but stopped.

“It’s locked,” she muttered, not sure what to do.

“Kieli, lift me up a little.”

After thinking about the significance of the unfriendly instructions, she took the radio in both hands and raised it up a bit. The speaker released a more reserved shock wave than usual, but it still made a fairly loud kaboom, denting the front of the trunk.

“Pretty handy, eh? I might have what it takes to be a thief.”

“All you did was break it…”

Half-exasperated at the boast, Kieli stuck her hands and the toes of her shoes in the gap made when the trunk twisted, and used all her strength to pry it open. She had no right to tell off the radio; she was using a pretty violent method herself.

“Is that it?” the radio asked in a somewhat eager voice, the minute they peered into the trunk.

There was a sturdy-looking metal case inside. Her heart pounded with anticipation as Kieli picked it up in both hands, but her hopes immediately came crashing down. The case was unlocked, and it was empty. And yet there was space for a round object about ten centimeters in diameter inside, and it was clearly for keeping the core inside.

“If you think about it, it’s not necessarily in his luggage. He might always keep it on him.”

“Then how do I get it back?”

There was a pause after her question. “So it’s hopeless…” came the radio’s dejected voice. Kieli sighed, too, and sat down on the bed. This was no time to be taking a break, but she had no idea what she should do next. She was so ready to help Harvey, but in the end, there was nothing she could do. She bit her lip, resenting her powerlessness.

As she clenched her fist, it grabbed something.

“Wha…?”

She dropped her gaze down beside her and saw the coat Joachim had been wearing, left in an unceremonious heap on his bed. Something tugged at her consciousness, and she instinctively picked it up.

A black thing rolled out onto the bed.

“…There it is,” she muttered in shock after a minute of speechlessness. Just like the Undying’s heart she had seen when she was small, it was a black stone containing a dull amber-colored light.

“What’s it doing there…?” The radio, too, sounded deflated.

Kieli reached out with shaking hands and picked it up. It was profoundly heavy in her hands, and conveyed a warmth in time with the blinking of the amber light. In its warmth and touch, she could definitely feel the owner of the hand that held hers on the way back from the carnival. “Treat it with more respect…” she murmured hoarsely, holding it to her heart.

“Hurry. Let’s go back.”

“Yeah.”

She nodded at the radio’s voice and hurried to stand up.

Suddenly the private room’s door opened violently. She froze, half-sitting, and turned her head to see Joachim standing there with several armored Church Soldiers behind him.

“My, my. We have quite the little thief here, I see.”

Joachim cast his eyes on what was in Kieli’s hands and grinned. Still smiling, one of his cheeks twitched. Kieli fixed a glare on the man and forced the core into her skirt pocket. Bear with it a little, Harvey, she apologized inwardly.

“Give it back.”

“Why should I give it to you? This is Harvey’s.”

“You’re a good girl, so give it back before you get hurt. Do you know just how valuable that stone is?”

Joachim held out his hand and took a step forward. Kieli took a step back. That went on for only a few steps before her back hit the wall. “Kieli. Lure him closer,” the radio whispered in a voice only Kieli could hear, then added one more thing. “Hold your ground.”

Kieli turned her eyes upward to gaze at Joachim and waited firmly against the wall. The young priest plastered a smile, but a strangely twisted one, on his face and approached slowly.

“There’s a good girl.”

His extended fingers touched Kieli’s cheek — and in an instant, the radio’s speaker roared, releasing an earsplitting ball of high-pitched sound.

A shock wave of maximum output hit Joachim directly in the face and blew him to the wall in the aisle outside, taking the soldiers behind with him. The recoil blasted Kieli backward; her back hit the wall, knocking the wind out of her, and she coughed violently.

“Run!”

At the same time the radio gave its instructions, she kicked the wall and flew from the room, still coughing. Not even glancing at the pile of people lying against the wall, she turned right and ran to the door that led to the car behind them.

By the time she heard an angry voice behind her yelling, “After her!” she had already passed over the deck.

One side of his head heard a soldier’s voice yell, “After her!” and hurried footsteps. He sensed someone crouching diagonally above him. Then he heard a gasp of, “It’s no good. He’s dead!”

Joachim suddenly opened his eye.

“Eep!” the soldier that had been peering into his face yelped, falling back onto his rear end. Joachim lifted the top half of his body as if nothing was wrong. The two soldiers he had taken into the wall with him were unconscious and not moving. They might have died with the impact, but he didn’t care.

He touched his face with one hand and heard an unpleasant squishing sound; pieces of flesh stuck to his hand. “Kieli. Now you’ve done it…”

When he spoke, air whistled through his cheek where the flesh had fallen off.

He staggered to his feet. The soldier beside him must have been paralyzed with fear; he remained on the ground, looking up at him, his teeth chattering. Joachim glanced expressionlessly at the shameful sight and snatched the carbonization gun from the soldier’s hands.

Metallic footsteps chased after her. Kieli ran down the aisles of the passenger cars, occasionally turning back to look behind her.

The passengers, curious, started up to see what all the commotion was about, but when they saw the gun-wielding soldiers following Kieli, they gave short screams and ducked back into the shadows of their seats. She wanted to have the radio shoot out another shock wave to buy them some distance, but she couldn’t afford to hurt the innocent passengers, so at any rate, she had no choice but to get out of the passenger cars as fast as she could.

This time, when she got out onto the deck of the last passenger car, she didn’t have time to think about being scared and jumped to the freight car, using the sliding door’s rail as footing to edge along the side wall as she did the first time she’d come.

Church Soldiers appeared on the passenger car’s deck. When she caught sight of them out of the corner of her eye, Kieli was already sliding into the freight car through the opening in the door.

She closed the sliding door, using a nearby piece of iron to block the door in what little way she could. She didn’t take the time to catch her breath as she turned and ran to Harvey, hidden in the shadows of the cargo. Kneeling beside him, she tore her coat off of him, and, not surprisingly, Harvey lay there exactly as before, showing no signs of even turning in his sleep.

She pulled the core impatiently from her skirt, held it in both hands, and gazed at it for a while.

“Corporal, will this really help him? Will Harvey come back?”

“We won’t know unless we try. If it doesn’t work, we’ll deal with it then.”

Kieli gulped and nodded silently. She slowly moved the core near the hole in Harvey’s chest. She thought, if it didn’t work, then this time, she wouldn’t mind dying with him. But she knew Harvey would get mad if he found out she’d said it.

Even so, she couldn’t help her hands’ shaking, and they became more unsteady as she timidly pushed the core where it was supposed to go.

She got the feeling that the amber light within the stone blinked a little bit brighter than usual. She involuntarily held the breath she had inhaled and watched over him, as if in prayer.

But that was it.

“It didn’t work…?” came the radio’s discouraged voice.

“We don’t know yet. I’m sure…” Kieli murmured, trying to reassure herself, but she couldn’t even convince herself, and her voice trailed off. She hung her head and bit her lip.

A sense of despair spread throughout her heart. It really was useless to pray to God. If only the devil would show up, she would gladly make a pact with him.

Just then, an angry muffled voice yelling, “Open up!” and the sound of violent pounding on the door echoed from the other side of the wall. She heard a gunshot; smoke rose from one spot, and the door caved in. Three soldiers trampled down the twisted iron and came into the car, one after another.

Still on one knee, Kieli turned her body around and shielded Harvey. The radio’s speaker roared. A shock wave hit the last soldier to try to get through the door, and he let out a low scream as he lost his balance and went flying into the darkness outside. No time passed before the second shock wave swelled around the radio.

But instead of a second shock wave, the speaker only let out a forlorn puff of air before spouting black smoke. “Sorry, Kieli. I forced too much power earl…” The radio’s voice cut off abruptly with a short tearing of static.

“Corporal…” Kieli dropped her gaze to the radio for an instant, but, sensing someone, she immediately raised her face again.

When the remaining two soldiers entered her vision, approaching with their guns trained on her, she kicked the floor and tackled one of them in the abdomen, with no fear for the consequences. She wasn’t able to knock him down, but she kept going and got his chest, grabbing his carbonization gun by the barrel and hugging it to her.

“Why you, little girl!”

An armored glove grabbed her and hung her up by her arm; her feet floated in the air. “Let go!” she screamed, and kicked the soldier in the shin as hard as she could, but his hard armor didn’t budge. She only succeeded in numbing her own leg.

“Hey, take a look at this.” The other soldier had approached the cargo and now turned his voice, muffled through his mask, to his partner. “Isn’t that the Undying we killed at the abandoned mine? How did she bring his corpse in here?” he said in surprise as he looked down at the body lying in the shadows of the cargo and casually poked the copper-colored head with his toe.

“Stop it!” Kieli shouted, flailing her legs all the more furiously. “Don’t touch him! Don’t touch Harvey!”

“Stop struggling!” an irritated voice spat at her from above, and she felt a dull shock on the side of her head. Her vision went dark for a second, and by the time she realized that something had hit her, she had been flung violently to the floor.

Trying to keep her head from reeling, she sent a look of uncontrolled hostility at the soldiers.

“Uwaaahh!” the soldier by the cargo suddenly cried out in shock.

Kieli turned her head in surprise to see the corpse suddenly move and tackle the soldier with his shoulder. Knocked backward, the soldier slid along the floor to the open doorway and flew outside, taking the twisted iron door with him. His muffled scream shrank in an instant and disappeared beyond the darkness.

“Y-you bastard!” Taken aback, the other soldier panicked and turned his gun on Harvey, but by then Harvey was already making his next move. He snatched up the gun the other soldier had thrown down in his left hand, used the floor as support and, still lying on the ground, pulled the trigger.

A dull gunshot rang out, reverberating against the walls and ceiling. The shot hit the soldier in the chest, knocking him back to the opposite wall; he collapsed against it and stopped moving.

The series of actions took place in the blink of an eye, while Kieli sat on the floor gaping, her hands on her temples. She noticed that Harvey had stopped moving where he was, exhausted; she gasped and pulled herself together.

“Harvey!”

Harvey had thrown the carbonization gun away from him and was merely lying listlessly on the floor, as if he really had been dead there the whole time. He made no sign of even twitching in response to her voice. “Harvey, wake up…” Almost in tears from the anxiety that came welling up inside her again, she crawled toward him on her hands.

“Wake up. Come on, please…” When she knelt beside him and brought her pleading face to his, “Wah!”

The left arm that had been flung to the floor abruptly moved and yanked Kieli’s neck closer. It took Kieli by surprise, and she collapsed into his chest.

Before her eyes, the core blinked its amber light, and had started a weak, but definite, pulse. The coal-tar blood wrapped around the torn organic cables at a sluggish speed, putting them back together.

“Where…are we…?” she heard a voice above her head that spoke haltingly, as if still somewhat lacking in strength. Kieli’s head was fixed in place, but she lifted it a little to look up at Harvey’s chin.

“The Church Soldiers’ train. The Corporal brought you here. Then we got your core back together, and…” She became more and more inarticulate as she started to explain, then Harvey’s hand, still wrapped around her neck, touched her temple; she stopped talking and blinked. The spot where the soldier hit her was a little warm, but it hurt so little that even she had forgotten it for a minute.

“Oh, I’m fine. It’s just a bump…”

“Shut up. What are you doing?” Harvey curtly rejected her attempt to dismiss her pain. “Look, you. Why do always end up sticking your nose into everything? This girl has no idea how I felt when I sent her back…” The last part trailed off, as if he was talking to himself, and she didn’t hear most of it. She only felt the strength of his arm that held her so tightly she almost couldn’t breathe and the faint warmth of his body; Kieli pressed her face into the chest of his tobacco-scented shirt and closed her eyes for a bit.

“Kieli…”

Joachim walked slowly down the aisles of the passenger cars, the carbonization gun dangling from one hand. Sometimes he tottered on his feet. With half of his vision and hearing blown away, his senses were unclear, as if there was a membrane over them. It was possible that half of his brain had been blown away as well.

To the right and left of his blurred vision, humans watched him in fear; their stares got on his nerves. There were even brats who started crying — how irritating. He would kill them all later.

But right now, this group of insects didn’t matter — his only prey was the little girl on the other side.

“Kieli…” Joachim muttered her name like a curse and kept walking.

“Grab on.” Kieli jumped onto the deck from the freight car’s side wall, then hurriedly offered a hand to Harvey, coming behind her. She dragged his large body onto the deck using both arms, then breathed a sigh of relief. At any rate, Harvey was still in no condition to stand, and even in the short time they spent walking along the side wall, he almost fell from the foothold dozens of times.

They had left the first freight car and moved onto the deck of the freight car behind it. The plan was to detach the last freight car. Harvey by himself would be one thing, but it would be reckless for him to jump off holding Kieli at this speed. Kieli would be too much baggage for Harvey in his current state.

“Kieli, hold me up a little more. Sorry for the trouble.”

As soon as he crawled up onto the deck, Harvey leaned over the edge of the car and started looking for the coupler’s release lever. Kieli didn’t need him to tell her — she clung to Harvey’s back to make sure he didn’t slip and fall off. The radio stuck between them was still broken, and Kieli felt something missing in the lack of the Corporal’s complaints.

“If we walk as far as the transfer station and slip into the crowd, we can escape,” Harvey spoke quickly as he reached for the release lever on the other side of the coupler. Kieli got the feeling he had asked her something after that, but the sounds of the wheels and wind drowned out his voice. “What?” Kieli asked, leaning close.

He turned his head halfway around, “Do you want to go east or west?”

“Eh?” Kieli gazed back at him blankly. “…The Sand Ocean. I want to see what it’s like to ride a boat,” she answered after a small pause. Harvey smiled and said in his usual light tone, “All right. I’ll get you on a boat.”

After taking a few seconds to process the meaning of that statement, Kieli brightened and asked over his shoulder, “Really? You’ll take me with you?”

“What are you talking about? There’s nothing we can do about it now. I at least have to take responsibility for making you a wanted criminal,” Harvey started to say as he resumed the act of pulling the lever but cut himself off in the middle. “…That’s not what I mean. Correction.” He stopped his hands, turned around one more time, made a face as if he was thinking of what to say for a second, then said again, “Will you come with me, Kieli?”

Kieli didn’t hesitate to give a big nod, and buried her cheek in his back in front of her.

“Kieli…!” That was when a voice calling her name, like a curse, came flying with the wind from ahead.

The sense of urgency that had begun to leave the two of them came rushing back. Still grabbing the back of Harvey’s coat, Kieli twisted her body and peered toward the front of the train from the shadows of the side wall. A man with the appearance of a priest was coming toward them along the side of the car ahead of them, the sleeves of his long robe fluttering in the wind.

Her eyes barely met his blue-gray one. “Kieli, I won’t let you get away…” The man smiled, his eyes glaring. Only, there was only one eye — in fact, half his head was split, and she could see something reddish-black and pulpy through his sunken skull.

“Harvey…!” His ghastly appearance gave Kieli chills, and she drew her head back. When she did, she heard a short metallic sound by Harvey’s hands, and the tightly clenched fists of the couplers came free.

“It’s okay. Hurry over there.”

At Harvey’s urging, Kieli jumped over to the rear freight car and — “Hurry” — immediately turned around to lend him a hand, but she grabbed only empty air. Harvey stayed crouched on the deck, making no attempt to jump over.

There was the clunk of a heavy shock, and the cars started to separate.

“Harvey! No. Why!?”

“Go on ahead for a sec. I have some minor business with that idiot.”

“No! You’re lying! I’m staying with you!” Kieli wailed and tried to go back, but his sharp cry of, “Stay there!” and his strong arms held her back. Harvey brought his face close to hers and whispered in a quiet, low voice, “We’ll get on a boat, Kieli. I promise.”

She felt as if the howl of the wind, the thunder of the wheels, and all the sounds blowing violently around them stopped for a brief moment. His copper eyes almost touched her, and she felt his long sigh on her lips.

The next instant, he pushed her shoulders, and she flew back onto the rear car. The scene before her, Harvey’s face as he watched her go, rapidly grew farther away. The wind came flying back again, drowning out her cry so that it didn’t even reach her own ears.

“Damn it! Kieli!” Joachim had made it from the side wall to the deck. He spat and fired a shot at the train tracks to vent his frustration. The separated car was already far away, disappearing on the other side of the darkness.

“Stop the train! Now!”

There were no longer any soldiers following him — a fact which made him even angrier — and when he turned on his heels, bellowing, an arm suddenly appeared from behind him and wrapped itself around his neck — from the shadow of the opposite wall! Damn it, every single one of them!

He twisted his face in rage and looked behind him. Nothing came into the half of his vision that remained, so he turned his neck even farther and heard the sound of a sinew snapping. Then finally he could see the person behind him.

“Yo, Joachim. I hear you took real good care of Kieli.”

“Ephraim! Why you…how…!?”

Over his shoulder, he saw those loathsome copper-colored eyes. He thought he’d killed him, but the bastard went and came back to life, as if he didn’t know when to quit. Joachim didn’t even bother to hide his annoyance.

“What were you planning to do with her?”

“Heh. You sure are attached to her. That little girl’s just gonna die soon, anyway,” he retorted, spitting; the other man narrowed his eyes in displeasure. It was a strangely pleasant feeling to make someone he despised feel miserable, and Joachim cackled.

“I feel so sorry for you when you’re disappointed, so I took her for you. You should be grateful. But I don’t need her anymore. She’s not as much fun as I thought she’d be. What will I do? Should I catch her and kill her? Or sell her to slave traders…?” He only intended to string together whatever offensive things came to mind, but as he talked, he started to mean it more and more. He was about to say as many more things as he could come up with when a voice interrupted.

“That’s enough. Stop talking.”

The other man suddenly did something he never would have expected. He reached over Joachim’s shoulder, grabbed his gun, turned it 180 degrees, and pulled the trigger — it was like he was ignoring the possibility that the shot would go right through and hit him, too.

“You bastard . . !”

The shock blasted through the center of Joachim’s body, and he flew backward. He took the enemy behind with him, and they were both thrown off the deck, tangled together, into the rushing darkness.

“Guh…”

In the pitch darkness, the cold sensation of the ground under Harvey’s cheek confirmed to him that, somehow, he was still living on this earth.

After being tossed out like a scrap of paper blown around in the wind and then rammed into the ground, he somersaulted quite a distance until his whole body crashed thoroughly into the face of a rock. He had exhausted the willpower to block the pain, but, perhaps fortunately, he didn’t have many nerves left with which to feel it; his whole body was heavy as if paralyzed, and all he felt was a throbbing in the core of his brain.

He gritted his teeth and pulled himself up. He tried to support himself with his right arm, but couldn’t find it and collapsed to the earth, shoulder-first. He had taken the shot that pierced Joachim, and his right arm had been cut off partway through the upper arm and had gone off somewhere. And he thought he had just barely dodged it.

Harvey managed to pick himself up with his left arm and looked out over the darkness around him. He could vaguely make out the shadow of someone lying a few meters ahead, and he dragged his body close to it. The priestly man lay there, his head and limbs bent in what were originally impossible directions. Smoke rose from the middle of his chest, and the smell of burning wafted around him.

He took another step, and the tip of his shoe kicked something.

When he dropped his gaze and strained his eyes, he saw a black stone on the ground, the size of a fist. Half of its surface smoldered after turning to carbon, and inside, an amber light blinked feebly. He stooped and reached out his hand to pick it up —

That instant, Joachim’s arm flashed in the corner of his vision, and the hand that reached from it grabbed his wrist with an abnormally strong grip.

“— !”

He started and froze in place, but the next instant, there was a small fizzle, and the light inside the core disappeared before his eyes.

Just past his outstretched fingertips, the stone was reduced to cinders and crumbled.

He raised his eyes and saw that Joachim had stopped moving, his one remaining blue-gray eye wide open, glaring at him.

“Moron…” he murmured, and peeled Joachim’s fingers off his wrist. His finger marks left a distinct bruise, and for no good reason he was firmly convinced it wouldn’t disappear for a while.

After that, he tried with a grunt to raise his upper body, but his energy drained away instantaneously, and he crumpled on the spot.

Once he had lowered his hips, there was no getting them back up. There was a heavy, hot mass of something in the center of his head, and he felt that if he closed his eyes, this time he really would be able to sleep, and, lured by the whisper of, “You can sleep now,” he started to close his eyelids.

Suddenly, he remembered something important.

“Oh yeah, I made a promise…”

He staggered to his feet. He couldn’t see the train track. And he’d lost sight of which direction to go. He didn’t even know if he could make it there. Even so, he started to walk in the direction where he thought he might see a light somewhere. It was no more than a hunch, but he could clearly see in his brain the sand-colored light of the sky that shone through the ceiling of the abandoned mine, and he got the feeling that if he went to it, she would take his hand and pull him out of the long, long flow of time that he had drifted through alone.