A Story for Staying Awake
a brief foray into Genso Suikoden

Mithrigil Galtirglin

In his old age and affluence, Shu had taken to certain inevitable excesses. He bought himself a surname, and he bought his daughters husbands (and, to a lesser extent, his son a wife), and he bought himself and his wife, Apple, a massive, opulent bed. This bed was something out of the days before butlers had their own rooms, before a bed was a mostly-private thing. It was great enough to sleep four, sprawled out like starfish and still out of each others' reach. The blankets, when folded, piled waist-high. A swarm of pillows, packed together like suckling kittens, dominated the upper half so thoroughly that the carved headboard was nearly lost among them. At Apple's insistence, these were the colors of autumn, the rich reds and golds that had become the banner of the Bastion clan. The canopies and testers were the black navy blue not found in nature and approximated closest in that hazy juncture between sea and night sky. In the summers, all was silk; in the cooler months, twill and velvet. Despite all this, Shus' most loved thing about this bed continued to be his wife, curled against him in it; after that, he liked most the steadiness of the mattress and frame, which, despite all their ostentatious finery, were somewhat unyielding and silent.

So when the door creaked open, and a small, redheaded boy tiptoed in, Shu heard every step. He woke slowly, though--he was an old man--and by the time said little boy had neared the great bed Shu still appeared to be asleep in it. (For her part, Apple could sleep through anything. She did not stir when Shu propped himself up to regard the very small intruder and ask: )

"Again?"

The child nodded, his face screwed up into a telling wince. "I know there's no sense in waiting up for father," he muttered, because he was not good at whispering. "But I don't want to fall asleep here and wake up there." The boy, as stated, had gently red hair which was rather long and tended to be curly when it was clean, and he was in that doubtful state between six and eight years, his eyes too calm for the former and his face too round for the latter.

Shu excised himself from the covers and edged off the bed. In the scant light from the hall, the boy's eyes were puffy-rimmed and rather hopeful. "A story, then?" Shu asked, already sliding into his hall-slippers. "To bide the time until he gets back?"

Again the boy nodded, not brightening any. "Not a story for sleeping. A story for staying awake."

Once his slippers were on, Shu swept the boy up in his arms (in part, to prove he still could) and set off down for the guest-rooms. "Whatever Oren wants," he said, patting the boy's hair.

They looked nothing alike, which was only appropriate; the child was of as pure Toran stock as possible, pale and wide-eyed. Shu had been dark before the grey set in, and, while noble in his own right, his eyes and skin were decidedly not of Toran. Oren's nightgown was austere in comparison to Shu's (which was more in keeping with that massive bed), and the child's feet were encased in too-large socks, patterned in blue on blue. He nestled into Shu's shoulder and hair as he was carried. Perhaps that length of hair was all the two held in common.

Because the notion of a stuffed animal meant something entirely different to a Silverberg, there was no such thing in Oren's guest room. Oren slept--or, rather, declined to sleep--without a doll or companion. He eschewed even the blanket from his cradle. Shu deposited the boy on the guest-bed and sat down, leaving the door open and the lamps on. The child was quiet and plainly tired, but: "A story for staying awake, you say?"

"For staying awake," Oren repeated, biting back a yawn.

Smiling, Shu planned, smoothed the covers, and began:

"Not so long ago, but still longer than I can remember, there lived a boy and his baby sister. The brother was very sad, because his mother and father had died; the baby sister was too little to understand."

Oren curled in closer. He felt this part of the story, because he had also been too young to understand when his mother died. "How did they die?"

"They were killed by wolves," Shu said. "But the boy's life could still be happy, of so the boy thought. They had an uncle and an aunt, who lived in a far away place, in a castle of old stones."

"Like my house," Oren said.

"Yes. So the brother and sister went to live with this uncle. Now this uncle was not a nice man. He was not so old, but he was very tall, and very strong, and very, very smart. He was a hunter, and all the animals in the forest were afraid of him. Some say that the monsters turned invisible just to escape the uncle's notice. Others say that the uncle himself made them invisible, so that they would be more exciting to chase. But either way, when the brother and the baby sister came to that house, no matter how often the wolves outside howled, or the falcons screeched, or the holly-elves chirred and danced, the boy never saw any monsters.

"In time, the boy stopped being sad, and became angry instead. Because the aunt had gone away, and the baby sister was too young to talk to, the boy had to listen to the uncle or else go mad from boredom. And every time he heard a wolf outside, a knot inside the boy's heart tangled and tightened, until it wound through his bones and crept into his throat and made him say, one night at dinner, 'My lord uncle, I want you to teach me to hunt.'

"The uncle put down his knife and looked the boy in the eyes, and the boy looked back long enough to tell that his uncle's eyes were the same grey as the old stone. 'Why do you want to learn?' the uncle said.

"'I want to kill the wolf that killed my parents,' the boy replied.

"'You will have to kill many other wolves,' said the uncle, 'and many things which are not wolves.'

"'I will do that,' said the boy."

Oren was rapt, his eyes less forced-awake. Shu marked this, and ruffled the boy's hair, and went on.

"So the uncle did as he promised, and taught the boy to hunt. They did not use the castle woods, for the animals there, as you'll recall, were either invisible or afraid or both. Instead, the uncle took the boy to many distant woods afoul with monsters, and to many distant rivers with water-fiends, and to plains, where they could shoot the flying beasts to earth. And the boy learned not to question the words of his uncle, for on these journeys the boy became very cunning, and very strong.

"Many years passed, and the boy's baby sister was not a baby any more. She learned of how her parents had been killed by wolves, and she became angry as well, and when the same knots as her brother's began to coil around her heart, she was also moved to say, 'I want you to teach me to hunt.' But she did not say it to the uncle; she said it to her brother.

"The boy--who was a young man now, I suppose--told his sister, 'I will teach you when I have truly learned.'

"'But when will that be?' the sister asked.

"'When I kill the wolf that killed our parents,' he answered.

"But the sister was still angry. 'But it is not enough to kill just that wolf. We must rid the world of wolves, so that no one else's parents are killed by one.'

"The young man told her, 'No, uncle makes it quite clear; if there are no wolves at all, then there will be no one to prevent the deer from taking over the forests.'

"'People can do that,' said the girl.

"The young man considered this. He thought his little sister very smart. But he still did not question the wisdom of his uncle, and when next they were hunting together, this is what happened:

"The young man and the uncle were in a distant province, in a place where many fences had been built. The animals on these plains were not wolves, but akin to sheep, as if many great farms had all been destroyed at once. And here the young man asked his uncle, 'Why can people not do the job that wolves do? Why can't we be the ones to keep the deer from overrunning the forest?'

"'Watch,' said the uncle, pointing, 'and do not kill.'

"The uncle was pointing at a pair of rams, who had broken off from the herd. They were quarrelling, and their horns were slick with sweat and anger. Because he did not speak the language of sheep, the young man did not know why they were fighting. But in one jagged motion, one of the rams bucked, and his forelegs had claws instead of hooves, and his horns had become teeth, and he tore the throat out of the other ram, then howled in triumph. The ram had become a wolf, with fur as white as wool where it was not bloodstained, and the herd around him scattered in fear. He was alone.

"The uncle explained, 'It would be the same, if humans were to police the deer. We would become wolves.'

"The young man did not question this, and they resumed their hunting lesson.

"A few more years passed, and the young man was a hunter in his own right, recognized by the king as his uncle's apprentice. The uncle, moreover, had become famous for his skill. The uncle and the young man often did not return to the castle of old stones for months at a time, because they were doing the king's bidding.

"A great hunt was planned, but the young man was not involved in the planning. When the time came for it, he followed his uncle, and they went north, to where the castle of old stones was. 'In the blackest of night, at the turning of the moon, we are to hunt in this forest,' said the uncle. And because the young man had become so powerful, having never disobeyed or questioned his uncle, he went along with this.

"The young man could hear the creatures of the wood, but not see them. He had become such a good hunter, though, that all he needed to do was aim toward the sound, and soon the howls and chirrs and footfalls grew sparser and sparser. By the time the sun had risen, the woods were silent, and the uncle said that it was time to gather the game.

"Now the young man marked his arrows in grey, the color of the stone and his uncle's eyes. But when he came upon his first arrow, in the heart of a woman, he backed away in fear. And the next, the same; an old man. And the next, and the next, all people, no wolves, no game. Through his tears, he asked, 'Uncle, what have I done?'

"'You have killed the invisible creatures of the castle wood,' the uncle said.

"'But they are people!' said the young man. 'They are human!'

"The uncle pried one of his own red arrows out of the heart of his wife, the young man's aunt. 'I told you that you would have to kill things which are not wolves,' he said. 'You said that you would.' And at that, the uncle sharpened his claws on the nearest tree, and stalked back toward the castle of old stones.

"The young man ran after him, drawing his bow and stringing another arrow, but instead of shooting the wolf-that-was-his-uncle, the young man found himself about to bite."

"…So the boy became a wolf too?" Oren yawned, staring weakly up from the pillows.

"He did," Shu said. "But he was so afraid of this that before he could attack his uncle, he ran away and never came back. He pretended to be a human for as long as he could, but he was a wolf, and he knew it all along."

"And the uncle?"

"The uncle ran away too, but in a different way. He stayed where he was, and sometimes pretended to be human, but he mostly just prowled this forest, chasing invisible monsters and turning them human again."

Oren nodded. Halfway through the nod, he looked back, over Shu's legs toward the door. "--Father," he said.

Shu turned around, and sure enough, Lucian Silverberg was leaning in the door, looking thoroughly dissatisfied. "Some story," he said, crossing his arms. "You trying to give my boy nightmares?"

"Yes," Shu said. "It's what he asked for."

Lucian stalked in, then leant over the bed to gather up his son. "Then why didn't you tell him the real story?" He cradled the boy close to his evening-dress, and ran a hand through his hair, but did not smile.

Shu rose as well, and settled into his slippers. "Because it is more important that he be afraid of what the story means, than what the story is."

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