Author's Notes:
Hey guys, just a general announcement regarding my Tsubasa fics. I'll be updating "Hated" every other day instead of every day, because I'm no longer as insane as I was a couple months ago. I'll do my best to update the rest of my Tsubasa fics weekly, including "Reversal of Fate," which I've neglected. And I have a couple more chapters planned out for this fic, which I will hopefully finish within the next two weeks or so. Thank you to everyone who has read or reviewed, and I apologize for the long time between updates.
4. The Importance of a Word
His scream tore through the bazaar. Adults stared at the growing confrontation, setting their wares on the shelves. The boy heard shouts of alarm and anger, along with other emotions he had no name for. All the while, he twisted in the air, clutching the cloak as if it offered some relief from the pain.
He felt something sticky and wet slide down his back, under his torn pajamas. He whimpered softly.
"Drop him!" a female voice shouted. The boy was surprised to hear two words he knew in such quick succession.
The man holding him up hollered back a retort. A moment later, he felt the whip carve another deep gash between his shoulder blades. The resulting scream was weak and thin, his throat aching after the shrieks it had already produced. Liquid flooded his eyes, blurring his vision. The sudden sensory deprivation left him reeling, and his struggles redoubled, clumsier than before.
More shouts. A figure approached and thrust its arms out to push the heavyset man. The shove sent the man tumbling backwards, and the meaty hand that had been locked onto the boy's pajamas released him at last.
The boy fled, sprinting across the sand with shoes full of grit. More liquid burned in his eyes, his throat constricting painfully. His back stung wherever open air touched it.
It hurts . . . he thought, tripping over someone's purse and toppling forward. Sobbing, he crawled across the sand. People parted ways for him, some with silence, others with exclamations of surprise. He ignored it all and plowed through the streets. Even this early, the bazaar overflowed with tight-packed bodies, leaving no room to move. It was all he could do to crawl under people's feet in his attempt to escape.
Hurts . . . He broke through the last pack of people and staggered forward. The clear liquid was running down his cheeks now, but he could see clearly again. His legs carried him to a shaded spot next to a building, where he collapsed, still whimpering.
The sticky fluid continued to seep into his pajamas.
He lied there for several minutes, catching his breath. Everything had happened in seconds. Only now, alone in the shade, did he have an opportunity to sort through what the events.
What did I do? he wondered, though his grasp of the language wasn't so complete that the words organized themselves in his head as such. Rather, the thought was mostly panicked curiosity, linked to the actions of the man he'd encountered a few minutes ago. Tall and wide as he'd been, his anger was terrifying to behold.
But what had triggered it? Had he done something wrong? Was it bad enough to merit the bleeding marks on his back? I did something bad, he thought. That means I'm bad.
This awakened a new pain in him, somewhere between his lungs. He was bad. He didn't deserve kind things like the cloak in his arms, or the gentle voice of the man who'd given it to him. He curled up into a tight ball in the sand, lifting the cloak to his face to stifle the strange sounds building there. He didn't want to be bad.
Can I change that? he wondered suddenly. Can I be good instead?
His breathing stabilized at the thought. Maybe there was a way. The kind man had been teaching him the names of things for several days now. Maybe he could use that to his advantage.
What did he want me to do, though? He frowned, just as he'd seen the man do numerous times since their first encounter. The mimicry gave him an idea. Maybe he wants me to say the sounds back to him. I should practice.
He opened his mouth and tried to reproduce the sounds the kind man had been offering him all week. What came out was a garbled string of nonsense. His eyebrows slanted downward in concentration, and he tried again, with similar results.
Why can't I talk? he wondered. Maybe if I tried only one word at a time.
After a moment, he decided on the word "apple." It was simple enough, and also useful. But when he tried to make his lips form the sounds, he couldn't even get the consonants out. Several attempts yielded the same result: failure. He couldn't even understand the word, and he'd been the one to say it.
Maybe I can't do it, he thought, heart squeezing painfully. Maybe I'll never be able to speak.
He curled up into a tighter ball, drawing his legs in and wrapping his arms around him. The physical pain mingled with his repeated failures, wearing him down faster than the stifling heat of the desert.
Under the midmorning sky, he fell into an uneasy sleep.
By the time Fujitaka finished the comparisons Oruha had ordered him to do, the sunrise had stretched its pink fingertips into the sky.
He stared out his window, vision blurring. When he stood, his joints cracked. His eyes found the notebook page again after a minute, and he looked down, wondering through the haze of fatigue what he was supposed to be doing. Better get ready for work, he thought, lifting his glasses off his face to wipe the lenses. Even when he put them back on, his vision improved little. The whole house seemed hazy, as if the outlines of the objects had turned to crumbling sand.
He put his notebook in his bag, not wanting to forget it after spending all night writing in it, then unwrapped the bread on the countertop so he could make breakfast.
It took him a while to work through his morning routine. By the time he reached the ruins, most of the other archeologists were inside. He caught sight of Oruha's bushy ponytail. "I finished the comparisons you wanted me to write."
She took the notebook, but didn't examine it. "Jeez, Fujitaka, you look like crap."
He wiped his glasses again. "They're all there. I've got about fifteen pages of similarities."
Oruha flipped through the notebook, pausing on each page for several moments before moving to the next. Her expression grew more intense the longer she examined them. "Excellent work, Fujitaka. I'm going to hand this off to the other archeologists. Go back home and get some sleep. You need it." Without another word, Oruha flitted off to question their colleagues.
Fujitaka slung his bag over his shoulder and headed back toward the house. His attention flitted away from him like a moth from the heat of a lantern flame. He was almost surprised when he made it back to the tiny house, as if he'd merely happened upon it.
He stepped through the heavy curtain and laid his bag on the countertop, kicking off his shoes. He collapsed on top of the single bed, barely cognizant enough to remove his glasses before he fell asleep.
In his dream, he was in the Clow Bazaar. But instead of the usual daytime crowd, the stalls were all empty, the sandy paths devoid of all life. A grave silence pressed down on him, only broken by intermittent howls of wind from the desert beyond.
Fujitaka wandered, unnerved by the empty stalls. Dust covered every surface. As if the whole city had been abandoned.
The dream shifted, the bazaar suddenly breaking off to reveal the wing-shaped ruins he'd spent weeks studying. Shadows pooled in the edges of the wings, thrown into relief by a sliver of moonlight. A single figure stood in front of the ruins, facing away from him. Fujitaka stepped forward, instinctively recognizing the rippling fabric of his old cloak. What is the boy doing all the way out here? he wondered, hurrying over to the short figure.
His hand reached out to get the boy's attention. When Fujitaka touched the fabric, though, the cloak collapsed, sand pouring out from the sides. He shot forward, just in time to see the figure crumble, features losing all semblance of humanity. His pulse pounded in his ears: bum, bum, bum . . . Bum, bum, bum . . .
Someone was knocking.
Fujitaka surfaced from his dreams, turning over in his bed before realizing he hadn't even changed his clothes. His visitor knocked again, more insistently.
He reached over to the end table, fumbling for his glasses. He cleared the grit off the lenses with his thumb, sitting up.
When the knocking didn't cease, he called out to his visitor. "Just a minute, please!"
The knocking paused long enough for Fujitaka to hear the blood pulsing through his ears. That dream was too real, he thought, shuddering. He ran a hand through his brown hair and walked over to the entrance, squinting when he saw the light slanting in through the window. Still morning.
He pushed the entryway curtain aside, lifting a hand to block the flood of light. A steady pulsing had developed in his temples. "Yes?" he asked, trying to guess who his visitor was based on their silhouette.
"You're Fujitaka-san?"
He nodded, not recognizing the voice.
"The one who brought that boy into the police station a few days ago?"
He lowered his hand, forcing his eyes to adjust to the desert sun. The man before him wore the same blue uniform as the man in charge of the police station. A gold pin on his shoulder declared his status as the city sheriff. "That's me," Fujitaka said. "Did his parents come pick him up?"
Something like surprise flitted across the black-haired man's face. "Quite the opposite. He's missing."
This brought Fujitaka out of his stupor. "Missing? Since when?"
A female voice cut in, and Fujitaka noticed a second figure standing behind the officer. "He was gone when we switched shifts this morning. It's possible he's been gone since late last night."
Fujitaka blinked. That long? And no one saw? "There must be some way to find him."
"Sir," the woman said, holding up a sheet of paper. "We apologize for the inconvenience, but you're the closest contact the boy has. We have a warrant to search your house."
He stared at the woman for a long moment, disbelief warring with concern in his mind. The woman's face remained composed, as if this was a perfectly normal command.
They think I kidnapped the boy, Fujitaka thought, stunned. He stepped aside, eyes dropping to the floor. "Go ahead," he murmured, numb. "He's not here."
The officers invaded his house, sweeping through the combined kitchen and living room with pragmatic efficiency. Fujitaka stood in the doorway, watching them tear through his things as if they belonged to someone else.
Missing. The boy is missing, and they're wasting their time here. Briefly, he wondered how many resources had been devoted to tracking down useless leads like this. The boy is only seven or eight. He has no idea where he's going, no idea where I live. I'm almost a mile from the station. I need to go find him.
The black-haired man turned his bag over, spilling his papers everywhere. Fujitaka winced. I just organized those last week, he thought. The man flipped through his pages of notes. When he was done, he dropped the tattered notebook onto the table from a foot up, letting the pages flutter helplessly. Those are my notes from the pyramids, too. "Excuse me, but I thought you were looking for the boy. Why are you rifling through my notes?"
The officer threw him a disparaging look. "It's protocol. If you've hidden the boy away in some underground bunker, we have to know about it."
"I haven't."
"Well, we'll find out, won't we?"
Fujitaka seldom felt anger. The closest he'd come in recent memory had been the disapproval he'd felt at the boy's parents for possibly abandoning him. But he could feel the fury bubbling up inside him now, merging with his frustration. "May I suggest an alternate course of action?"
The man scoffed, paging through a photo album, but the woman turned to him. "Yes?"
"The boy doesn't know his way around the city. He's probably no more than half a mile from the police station, wherever he went. I'd suggest sending officers to comb the surrounding areas—the bazaar, perhaps."
The woman glanced up at her partner, pursing her lips. "He's got a point." The other officer looked over at her, exhaling sharply. "Finish searching this house, and we can get to it."
The woman turned back to her work, peering in every cupboard to make sure the boy wasn't hiding. Fujitaka leaned against the wall, letting out a breath and telling himself to calm down.
The officers rifled through his desk, then his bedroom, then the bathroom. Fujitaka stood silent through all of it, waiting until they assessed his harmlessness before speaking. "May I leave?"
"Go ahead," the woman said. "We're done here."
Fujitaka stepped outside, throwing his cloak over his shoulders so the sand wouldn't get caught in his clothes. He headed downtown, hoping to find the boy himself, since no one else knew where to look.
As the sun rose higher in the sky, Fujitaka wondered if anyone would find the boy before he died of dehydration.
A bird flapped its wings near his face.
The boy opened his eyes, startled by the sound. The pigeon cocked its head to the side, then took to the air, rising about five feet before coming down a few meters away from him. An iridescent feather drifted down and landed next to his hand.
His back ached furiously, the dry blood making his clothes cling tight to his skin. He tugged on the fabric, wincing when he felt it pull free of the half-healed scabs.
Much better.
The sun had risen high in the sky while he'd been napping. He got to his feet and started walking again, staying where the shadows of buildings provided some shelter from the sun. Even then, the heat coming off the sand made the air shimmer with a heat mirage.
He walked, stopped, then started forward again. All the while, he tried to reproduce the sounds the kind man had been making all week. But no matter how hard he tried, all the words came out in a jumbled mass of syllables. No good, he thought, slipping between two buildings and coming out the other side. As he stepped out onto the main paths, he was greeted by a rush of activity. Unlike last night, the city was overflowing with people. Everywhere he looked, people chatted amongst themselves, their words passing with such speed and fluidity, the boy had no hope of understanding.
Even so, he listened, watching the ways their mouths moved. He watched the tug and pull of their jaw, the shapes of their lips when they made certain sounds. Some of the shifts seemed common between everyone he saw.
Was that how they were able to speak? By shaping their mouths certain ways.
Eyebrows knitting together, the boy tried again. This time, he was able to get more clarity out of the sound. The noise he made sounded almost like a word.
For a while, he just stood there, eavesdropping on every conversation that passed through his ears. Every so often, he'd recognize a word, sometimes even two or three at a time. What surprised him was how reliant these people seemed to be on such conversation. They exchanged information, responding to handfuls of words with exclamations of surprise or dismay. One person haggled over a loaf of bread, his voice rising when the old woman guarding it shook her head. Another woman knelt down beside an animal the kind man had labeled as a "cat," and started speaking to it.
The boy entertained the thought that the cat might understand the words, but in mid-conversation, the animal's tail twitched, and it flounced away. The woman who'd spoken to it moved on, grinning to herself.
He plopped down on the sand. His legs weren't sore, exactly. The oppressive heat reduced his energy, and he couldn't find much motivation to walk for extended periods. Even in the shade, the heat sapped his strength. He began to wonder how people could possibly survive here—and why anyone would want to.
For hours, he listened to the myriad of conversations. He picked up on words the kind man simply hadn't been able to teach him with the materials they'd had.
"Father, look at the camels!" one boy shouted, tugging on an older man's tunic.
The boy looked over. Despite the wide gap in the pair's ages, their features were similar, both having light blond hair and pale skin. As if the two were . . . What? he wondered, watching them closely.
Was there some name for their connection? Their matching features indicated some relation. The boy struggled to find a word that would describe their similarity.
"Father," the other boy went on, still tugging at the man's tunic. "Aren't they amazing? I've never seen them up close before."
The blond man knelt down, smiling at the boy who'd called him "Father."
He recalled the man who'd given him the cloak doing the same thing whenever he spoke. Getting down to his level. What is this? he wondered, as the man murmured something to the child. The boy responded with enthusiasm. "You mean it, Father? You really mean that?"
The boy's lips framed the word without a conscious thought, his throat constricting a little bit as the sounds traveled through it. "Fa . . . ther . . ."
That was it. That was how it was done. The boy felt a rush of excitement, and repeated the word to himself several times, trying to get a feel for the syllables. His lips tingled after the first few repetitions, unused to the strain.
His excitement dimmed when he realized the kind man wouldn't hear his words, if he didn't find him soon. And that wouldn't happen if he just sat on the side of the street like this.
The boy stood and started walking, restless despite the stifling heat. This time, he wandered for almost an hour before something caught his interest.
It was a smell, like that of the bread the kind man had brought, and it saturated the air. As the boy turned the corner, he caught sight of a dark green awning, stretched out beside a glass door. People entered the shop with empty hands and came out with paper bags full of what he could only assume to be pastries. But more alluring than the scent of bread was the sheer familiarity of this place.
This was where the man had found him.
Fujitaka knew the statistics. Children who disappeared were seldom seen again, and those who were tended to return within forty-eight hours. Taking into account the arid desert and the fact that the child had no way of communicating, the odds of recovering the boy drained away with every minute he wasn't found.
But Fujitaka persisted. If the boy could be found, he'd find him.
His search started at the southeast corner of the bazaar and spread out from there. If there was any place for a boy so young to hide, it should've been amidst those stalls. And if the boy was simply wandering, surely someone would've noticed him.
"Excuse me," he said to a dark-skinned woman. Already, he'd spoken to a dozen different vendors, hoping one might point him in the right direction.
"Would you like to buy some beads?" she asked, turning to greet him.
"Actually, I'm looking for a lost child."
A shadow fell across the woman's face. "What's he look like?"
"He's about seven or eight, with dark brown hair and brown eyes. He'll be wearing a cloak like this one." He gestured to the garment he wore, glad he'd thought to take it with him.
Recognition flashed across the woman's face. "Ah, yes."
"You've seen him?"
She nodded. "Early this morning. One of the other merchants caught him stealing fruit and chased him off."
Stealing? Fujitaka's eyebrows shot into his hairline. Another part of his mind reasoned through it. Of course. He doesn't know any better. "Can you tell me which way he went?"
The woman pointed toward one of the side streets. "He wandered off that way. But that was hours ago. Is he your son, or something?"
Fujitaka blinked. "No. No, nothing like that."
The woman cocked her head to the side in surprise. "Oh. Well, good luck finding him, anyway."
He bowed. "Thank you for your help."
"Hey, Mister," the woman said. He turned back to her. "Maybe you should get the police on this, or something."
"They're already involved." Unfortunately. He turned away and headed across the bazaar, praying the boy would have enough sense to stay in one place, wherever he was.
The side streets weren't as crowded as the bazaar, but the buildings ruined any hopes of a good vantage point. He hurried down different alleys, scanning the sands, then rubbing the grit from his glasses.
This part of the city was mostly unfamiliar to him. He'd only come here a handful of times since they'd started excavating the ruins. Oruha had taken him here once for coffee, and he'd wandered here once or twice more on those days when his workload was light. The palace stood just a few streets away, its jagged towers shooting higher into the sky than any other building. Overall, this place had a more festive edge than the bazaar.
Fujitaka crossed the street, peering down alleys as he went. Stray cats dominated these narrow passages, well-fed by tourists. Sure, they'll feed the cats, but no one goes up to a boy sitting in the rain . . .
He stopped, his mind freezing on the thought. "The rain," he murmured to himself. Something built up in his chest, like the precursor to some big revelation. That's right. The first time I saw him, he was sitting out in the rain near the bakery.
People walked around him, like a river branching around a small island. Fujitaka groaned. "I can't believe it took me this long to figure it out," he murmured, breaking into a run. People flinched away as he barreled through the streets, some with cries of shock. Of course he'd want to go somewhere familiar. And if not the police station or the bazaar, it has to be there.
He crossed another street, cutting diagonally across the road to avoid several camels. As he stepped onto the edge of the street, a discolored patch of sand caught his eye. His head whipped around, eyes scanning the area.
A single, dark-brown eye stared back at him.
"There you are," he whispered, running over to pick the brown-haired boy up. The child leaned into his arms, exhaling softly. "I've been looking everywhere for you," Fujitaka told him, not expecting a response.
The boy's arms tightened around his neck. "Sorry, Father."