I'd Do Anything for Warmth
A day has passed.
In the meantime, I did what living things do. I ate, washed my body, voided waste, and slept. Three-tenths of a human life is memory of exactly this, so there is nothing left to flinch at now. Doing it with my own hands was a first, but Rebecca's memories were there, and it was not difficult at all.
Setting those small matters aside, the place I occupy is a basement that lets in not a single point of light. By its layout, it has been spread wider than a city of any real size. And outside this underground den lies grassland that is nearly desert.
In the season when the rain comes heavy, grass grows. In the season that dries to the cracking point, nothing moves but withered grass and sand. There is also a deep canyon, one that looks as though a long erosion carved it. When I was human, this was a view I only ever met in foreign films: red sand and stone, high cliffs stacked layer on layer, a river running between them. And a mountain of rock, risen high.
Small villages sit scattered around that mountain, but they are only entrances. The true body of the place lies underneath the rock. I would like to go out and see it for myself, just once, but that will be difficult for a while.
Hieronymus came in the morning, gave his greeting, and left. He has not come back since, so I have nothing to do. Joanna seems to have decided to devote herself to tending me; she stays fastened to my side like a maid.
Last night was quite entertaining. The moment I lay down on the bed and fell asleep, she returned to her own room. The mirror must have been left alone for some time; she wiped the clouded glass until it was clean. Then she studied her own face before it in careful detail, or turned upside down and did push-ups — on both hands, then on one, then on her fingers. It was fascinating to watch.
After she had moved just enough for a light sweat to rise, Joanna left the room. She went to where the warriors are trained and called aside a man I took to be an instructor, and she learned how to fight. Whether her body had been greatly strengthened in the way it moved, or the gift had always been in her, she followed the instructor's movements with little trouble.
Faced with growth you could see after a single day, the instructor at last failed to hold himself back and asked who she was. Joanna, for her part, was delighted to an almost uncanny degree.
"By Lady Rebecca's blessing, I have become like this. Once, I was a gray-haired old woman, more dead than alive."
She opened her hands and held them out before the man who instructed her, showing them off. Desire turned in his eyes.
"Lady Rebecca — you mean the one who came by yesterday's rite?"
"Yes. That is her, exactly."
But Joanna boasted no further than that. She returned to her room instead. Her steps on the way back were so light that the boasting must have pleased her. I find it difficult to understand. Feelings, though, are not something you reach by understanding. Who is going to understand my cold?
Afterward Joanna went into her room and slept, so there was nothing I could see but myself. Then she came in ahead of anyone else, fed me, washed me, and arrayed me cleanly, and only then did Hieronymus appear — to offer a greeting, and leave.
Ah.
I know morning has come because they ring a bell six times inside this underground city to declare it. Ring a bell in a place buried like this, and won't it give them away? They will manage, I suppose. Sleep has its patterns, and once those break, a person breaks easily; in a space like this, announcing the hour at a precise moment must matter. And so the morning passed.
Noon was long gone, and the cold had me wondering whether I ought to step out of the room, when the door burst open and a child came in.
A small girl, silver-haired, with no mask and no robe shadowing her head. Her light, though, is quite large, and strong. Unlike the size of that light, the warmth is not so plentiful. Strange.
"Well now. You're the great being Hieronymus keeps hidden so tight, are you? I am Hyukeshuni. A paltry witch, just as I appear."
What deserves particular attention is the enormous staff in one of her hands. Strangely, it is shaped as if a human skull and spine had been drawn out whole and made into the thing. It looks less like a fake than like real bone. She has just introduced herself as a witch, so perhaps a bizarre tool is only proper. I do think a witch ought to carry a broom, but the world is different; that staff may well be the standard magical implement here.
As she drew near, Joanna stepped in front of me as if to shield me. So I caught the hem of Joanna's clothes and tugged, lightly.
"Lady Rebecca?"
"Please step aside."
"Yes."
She bowed her head and drew back at once, without even one second of thought, and honestly, it put me in a poor mood. Cults are all like that. I rose from the bed and walked up to the little witch. She is half a head shorter than I am.
"Hello. I'm Rebecca Rolf."
"Oho. I didn't think you would greet me! But this is strange. That is the name of the flesh you are wearing, not the name of your own self, is it not?"
She is looking at me with sharp eyes. The shape of her is a little girl, but the way she speaks, and the air around her, belong to someone old. Is she falsifying her age? It seems to have gone past anti-aging, though if she is a witch, that is not so odd. Old fairy tales called a witch an old woman with a hooked nose and a wart on her face, but as the ages passed, pretty girls took that place as well.
"Not having one would be a problem. So I use this body's name. Is there a difference?"
"There is a difference. There is very much a difference. A name is what defines the existence itself. Just as you do not die when the flesh is ruined — the essence is different!"
Can't a person live without a name? A name is necessary because other people exist. If you are alone, you don't need anything of the sort. There is no need to tell yourself from anyone else. It is, in short, an idea that belongs to social creatures. This may be a world in which names matter just that much, so I can't be certain. There is still a great deal I don't know.
"If what you want is the name of the true self, apart from that flesh — can you tell it?"
I remember the name I had when I was human. I can read it. Strangely, I cannot let another person hear it. Even if I try to write it with my hand, I can't.
"How?" I ask.
Does Hyukeshuni know? I want to tell her, and I cannot. Or else every one of these memories is false. False from the beginning, so the name I might give does not exist. There is only the feeling that a name is there. Then what is this cold? Who am I?
The questions are there. Unfortunately, they do not bring any confusion of the self. Before that can happen, the chill that grows colder without end eats my existence away.
I am so cold I could go mad — and if there is room to sit and worry over that, then shut up and go find warmth!
If the essence of life is instinct, then instinct is crying only this, right now. And so I can look at Hyukeshuni in front of me without wavering, and ask.
"Now that is a troublesome question. You have a name, and no way to tell it? Or is it that a human mouth cannot even pronounce the thing?"
"The first."
At that, Hyukeshuni let out a short sound, almost a groan. Why? She takes on a strangely shut, rejecting air.
"You do make things difficult for me. And who, I wonder, would look at you and call you a god. Then — can you write it?"
Hyukeshuni flicked her hand, and a small feather flew from behind her into her palm. A quill? A classic tool. She held it out, and I took it. A strange energy flickered at the tip, but when I touch strange things — things like me — I come prepared in all sorts of ways. I sat down on the floor to hold it and use it.
But the pen will not move. I cannot draw the shapes. Recording the letters called Hangul is impossible. Trying to carry them over into the script of this side does not work either. Through memory I can use their language, and yet I cannot match the two one to one. I cannot even write it the way it sounds.
"How strange. I can't."
"Some manner of restriction, then. An ill thing, for you. Dragged of a sudden into a world like this."
She says it with her eyes alight, watching me. There is a will in her to see straight through the one she faces. This question, in other words, is a question meant to search me out.
So.
Do I need to lie?
I don't.
"I'm glad I came. I am a very, very, very cold sea."
I begin slowly. The last time I said it all at once, Hyukeshuni looked at me the way you look at a person who will not stop talking. So: slowly, at my ease, as if singing, with a measure in the words.
"I am always looking up at the lights above the sky, waiting for the moment one of them falls. When my luck is good, now and then, a light full of unhappy memories comes to me. And then a very little warmth arrives."
That is all of you. Every living thing carries one light in its chest, and the light holds warmth. Hyukeshuni understands me. I can see fear settling, faint, across her eyes. Yes. I am telling her that I am looking at all of you, right now, as food.
It is natural for prey to be afraid in front of a predator. I have no intention of killing you. But if killing comes along with the getting of warmth, I will do it, and I will not hesitate.
"I like that warmth. I like it so, so, so much. The cold that grows endlessly colder falters, just for a moment."
This is my drive. Know the root principle, and I ought to be easy to understand.
"So I need warmth. For warmth, I will do anything. Dragged into a world like this, you say? Yes. You fished me up all at once. But there is so much warmth, right here in front of my eyes. Thank you."
I gave my thanks first of all. It may even be the little grace one says before a meal. Hehe.
"If a name is what shows an existence, then all of this is my name."
At my words, a smile fills Hyukeshuni's face. I know it is not a true smile. There are people who laugh when they are too afraid. They force it, to take the edge off a stress that has gone too far. People are simple. Laugh, and they judge that this must be a situation for laughter, and the body supplies the effects of laughing on its own. They are not laughing because something is funny. They can laugh because they are laughing.
"Was that the answer you wanted?"
Hyukeshuni did not answer. But she was hiding behind the smile, shaking with fear, and the terror — too much for the laugh to hold — spilled over very small, and came out as words.
The reaction of someone who has called up a wicked god? I am a beast, at most. I haven't much intelligence. My particular abilities are too poor to call a god's, and I don't have the majesty that makes a person bow the moment they see me. I am a pet that eats a little too much. Raise me the way you would a beast in a zoo, and I will be glad. If I can only have warmth, I could even be the zoo's mascot!
So.
"Don't be afraid, Hyukeshuni."
I let myself become a wild animal slowly opening its heart, and set my hand against her cheek.
"Because no one did anything bad."
Being fished up — I truly do not think of it as a bad thing.