10. Demon in a Bottle (1)
10. Demon in a Bottle (1)
Vegas had looser geographic and social boundaries than any other nation on the Columbia continent.
Strictly speaking, the official administrative territory consisted only of the capital city of Vegas. Everything beyond it belonged to the desert tribes sworn to the Vegas Margrave.
Yet no single common thread united them all under the label "desert tribes."
Some were nomads numbering in the hundreds of thousands who had roamed the desert for centuries. Others were villages of a few dozen souls, scraped together just a few years prior by salt miners.
Each tribe was distinct in scale, history, and character. No single legal code governed all of them.
One institution alone bound Vegas into a single polity: the security services of the Margrave's private army, the Black Legion.
The Black Legion was a mercenary company employed by the Vegas Margrave. Garrisoned across outposts scattered deep in the desert, its soldiers patrolled regions enrolled in the service and were ordered to eliminate any threat to the inhabitants' safety.
Collecting taxes and providing protection satisfied the most basic purpose of a state, so the entire region was referred to as the Vegas Margraviate—a nod to the nickname of the master who commanded the Black Legion.
Alamo was a village at the northernmost edge of that Margraviate. Its people made their living by lodging and trading with caravans crossing the desert.
Alamo was unremarkable, just one more trading post along the desert road. But it possessed one feature that set it apart.
A school that taught acrobatics to children.
The story began the day an old man arrived in the village carrying a newborn in his arms.
Unlike insular farming communities that shunned outsiders, the desert tribes welcomed guests. That did not mean, however, that they extended the same welcome to a suspicious visitor whose face was wrapped in bandages.
People were wary of him at first. A man who hid his face while slinking into a village could easily be a thieves' guild informant.
But the old man possessed enough erudition and dexterity to offset the suspicion. He earned the people's trust by stepping in to solve one festering problem after another around the village.
Above all, the fact that he had an infant with him did more than anything to soften their wariness. She was a lovely newborn girl with dark eyes, barely a few weeks old. The old man claimed pressing circumstances had forced him to take her in, but he tended to her more devotedly than most fathers did their own children.
A man who couldn't even keep himself afloat yet cared for a stranger's baby so tenderly—that man could never be a brigand.
Before long, the old man had earned the respect and affection of the whole village.
By the time the child turned five, the man they treated as the village sage opened a circus school. It was only then that the villagers learned he was an acrobat.
The source of his extraordinary skill and fluid movement was finally revealed.
Though called a school, it was closer to an orphanage. He gathered children who had nowhere else to go and taught them acrobatics.
Ever since the terrorist attack at the Second Circus Grand Prix, the world had been suffering from a shortage of performers. Facilities for teaching showmanship were springing up everywhere.
Rumor had it that mastering a skill could earn you a considerable fortune, so children who dreamed of a future better than pickpocketing or manual labor came knocking at the door of this impoverished school built in a remote rural village.
The old man—founder of the school and its sole instructor—looked at the newborn he had carried in his arms nine years ago, now grown tall enough to reach his chest, and felt the swift passage of time.
"So? You still mean to learn 'Taming' all the way through?"
At his words, the girl nodded.
"Yeah, Grandpa."
"I've told you to call me Master, not Grandpa."
The girl pulled a dissatisfied face. She had always called him Grandpa. Four years ago, when he opened the school, he had changed her form of address, claiming that calling him Grandpa in front of the other children might make them feel out of place.
All the children called him Master, so she had to call him that too, apparently.
After more than four years, she still hadn't gotten used to it. She forced out the unfamiliar name.
"Yeah, Master."
The old man smiled gently and shook his head.
"Yes, Master."
"Yes, Grandpa."
What a stubborn little frog.
He'd been about to scold her, but the mischievous smile on her face stopped him. The bond of having raised her himself didn't go away so easily, it seemed. No matter how he could raise his voice at other children, he simply couldn't manage it with her.
"Ella."
He called her name. Ella stroked the head of a mouse poking its nose out of her pocket and looked up at him.
"Yeah, yeah. What is it?"
Somehow she'd dropped the polite speech again. He let out a small sigh.
"Our school is poor, child. You know we can't afford to feed animals, don't you?"
"Don't worry. I'll feed them myself! I'm already doing it, aren't I?"
After a moment's thought over her confident reply, the old man nodded.
"Very well. If your heart is set on it, I'll teach you Taming."
"Yay!"
Ella let out a cheer and sat up straight in front of him, shoulders bobbing as if urging him to start the lesson already.
The old man drew out the pause until she was fidgeting and whimpering with impatience, then spoke.
"What do you think is the most necessary thing when taming an animal?"
"Um, love?"
Ella answered with the childlike candor of something straight from the heart. But she was sharp, and the moment she saw her master burst out laughing at her naiveté, she quickly changed her answer.
"Uh, no! Training!"
Ella imagined herself cracking a whip at a lion, convinced this was an answer that carried a grown-up's severity. But the old man offered something far colder than she'd imagined.
"Deception."
"De... ception?"
Ella faltered at the slightly difficult word. She'd seen it a few times in scripts—definitely meant something bad...
Just as she was about to grasp the memory, the old man supplied the answer.
"Deception. It means tricking them."
Ella's eyes went wide, and she grumbled in a sulky voice.
"Jjiksun's my friend. Why would I trick my friend?"
He smiled as he listened to her muttering. But this smile carried a slightly heavier weight than before.
"Yes. A friend. But when you first brought Jjiksun home, how did you do it?"
Ella's shoulders jerked. She stroked the mouse squirming inside her pocket and answered without confidence.
"I put him in a cage..."
"That's right. You took him by force. Did Jjiksun say he wanted to go with you?"
"N-no..."
Ella's voice shrank to a murmur. Only now did she realize that bringing Jjiksun home hadn't been friendship—it had been her own selfishness.
Seeing her wilt like that pained the old man, but he didn't stop.
"You locked that child up on your whim. Then you made him submit to you, made him cowed enough. You gave him his food piece by piece until he learned to obey you... isn't that right?"
Tears welled faintly in Ella's eyes. Had she really done something so terrible? She couldn't believe it.
"B-but if I didn't, he would've run away..."
The old man nodded at her excuse.
"That's exactly what deception is. Tell me—among the performing animals in any circus troupe, is there even one who left its parents and the wild because it wanted to join the circus? Even the clever animals that grasp the concept of performance were first taught with a tether around their necks. The friendship between a trainer and an animal is built on captivity, submission, and conditioning. Remember this, Ella. It's a contradiction every trainer must live with."
It was a heavy, dark lesson for a nine-year-old. Ella wiped her brimming tears on her sleeve and stole a glance at his face.
He found even that expression of hers endearing and let out a laugh.
"I'm not telling you to abandon Taming. I only want you to bear the responsibility. If the animals do wrong—if they attack a person, damage someone's property—you mustn't make excuses and say, 'It's something they did, what does it have to do with me?' They're your animals, the ones you tricked into following you into the world. Remember always that they are your responsibility."
"...Yeah! I understand!"
Ella was bright. Barely nine years old, yet she already read scripts and performed them with ease, which was proof enough.
Reading itself was just a matter of learning letters, but acting required the social intelligence to grasp the emotions and breathing concealed behind the lines.
Her talents weren't confined to acting. Skills of any sort, singing, nothing was beyond her. And her eye for performance was sharp.
She stood out above every other child in the school.
No. Except one.
There was a child who could be compared to Ella. He'd only arrived a few months ago, but...
Just then, a mouse shot across the room, squeaking frantically. Ella listened to the cries of the mouse that had jumped into her arms.
"Huh? What's that, Jjiksun?"
She'd let the mouse loose for a walk earlier. Now she cocked an ear, listening to it communicate something.
"Hm, I see."
She nodded, and the old man stared in astonishment.
"Ella, you understand what the mouse is saying?"
She tilted her head, as if she couldn't grasp why he was raising his voice.
"Huh? Yeah! He's my friend. Of course I do."
She'd only caught him a few days ago.
Showing him food and handling him was impressive enough, but actual communication?
The old man stood gaping for a moment before pressing further.
"All right. What did Jjiksun say?"
"Well, um..."
Ella rose carefully from her seat. She crept toward the door, then suddenly flung it open.
"He says there's someone hiding outside eavesdropping!"
Behind the door stood a boy with chestnut-brown curly hair. Three years older than Ella, he had joined the school just a few months ago.
Her eyes went round.
"Charlie? What are you doing here?"
"Me? Ah, uh, well..."
Charlie hesitated, fiddling with something inside his pocket. Inside it was an item he'd prepared days ago.
"It's..."
"I get it!"
"Huh? W-what do you get?"
"You came to spy on me! Worried that if I learn Taming, I'll get ahead of you!"
Charlie blinked at her confident declaration. He wanted to say no, that he'd come to give her a personal gift. Her birthday was only a few days away, after all.
But just as he started to speak, his eyes met those of the Master standing behind her.
The Master was strict about practice but gentle in all other matters—except when it came to boys making advances on Ella.
"R-right. You caught me."
"Hmph! Knew it right away."
Wearing an awkward expression, Charlie fled the room as if escaping.
His plan had been to catch her alone after class and give her the gift... but now that the Master had noticed, that was out of the question.
He looked for another chance, but unfortunately none came. In the end, he had to slip his present into the pile of gifts from the other children.
***
It was September. Charlie found himself remembering how, around this time every year, he used to agonize over what to get Ella for her birthday.
Last year, he'd bought her a Slagbort confectionery gift set from the souvenir shop in front of the school and sent it... The reply that she and her friends had enjoyed sharing the pastries together had left him strangely disappointed.
He smiled down at the letter written in Ella's own handwriting.
Worn and tattered from handling, he tucked it carefully back into his coat. He was lying beneath the shaded eaves of an auction house somewhere in Vegas.