Opening the door to the village chief’s house, Armando found it strangely deserted.
At this time, Pelliot’s tutor should have been eating lunch. The village chief and Pelliot would have joined him, and Armando should have heard their voices.
But there were no signs of anyone in the living room, where the stove was, or in the dining room in the back.
“It can’t be…”
Then a voice from upstairs called out to Armando, who stood bolt upright in the entrance.
“Oh hey, Armando. Where have you been?”
Standing on the landing, the village chief looked down at Armando absentmindedly.
“Master! Has the professor already left?”
“Yes. He said he was going to leave a bit early today. We gave him a packed lunch.”
“Then—the y-young master?”
“He said he would escort him to the edge of the village. He should be back soon.” Having said this, the carefree chief disappeared back onto the second floor.
“Young master…young master Pelliot!” Shouting his name, Armando once again tumbled out the entranceway.
✦ ✦ ✦
Deep within the cave, he slowly awakened.
“Uuuughh…uuuughh…”
It felt like he had been dreaming.
It had been a warm, kind dream.
✦ ✦ ✦
He was laughing, and surrounded by many people.
There were the smells of a great feast and liquor. Bright lights.
Tables lined up in rows. Tankards smacked together over and over again.
“For the king! For Liones! Cheers! Cheers!”
He too raised a tankard and cheered in chorus.
“The eyes see through evil! The mouth speaks truth! The spirit filled with justice! The sword breaks evil!”
Cheers, cheers!
A dream of bright days.
But he no longer even understood the meaning.
✦ ✦ ✦
Another place. A sunny garden. Flowers in full bloom.
A young girl and a newborn infant looked up at him and smiled.
He reached out to hug them, but his hand passed through the air.
The illusion disappeared.
“Gui-, -la…Ze-…-al…”
The words flowed out of his mouth. Someone’s name. An important name.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Want…to meet…”
What? Who? Even he didn’t know.
He stood up vacantly, and headed to the cave’s exit.
Rays of noon sunlight shone through the tips of the evergreens’ branches.
“Hmm?”
He emerged from the cave and squinted at the sun.
✦ ✦ ✦
And then saw a rainbow.
A shining band of seven colors rose from the foot of the towering mountain.
For a time, it fluttered and swayed like a cloth. Then it disappeared, rushing up towards the heavens.
“When a rainbow bridge crosses the sky, you can meet the person you miss underneath.”
Gowther’s words from last night rose up in the back of his mind.
That Gowther had also said it was a childish fairy tale, or some writer’s make-believe, he had already forgotten.
But the words “you can meet the person you miss” remained engraved inside him.
“Uuuugh…uuuughh.”
“Meet,” he moaned again.
He started slowly walking off in the direction the rainbow had disappeared.
✦ ✦ ✦
Pelliot stamped through the forest, panting for breath.
At least this time, he had entered the forest without Armando finding out. He shouted in his mind, How do you like that?
He’s always, always getting in my way.
He nimbly hopped along the rocks, brushing away the vines and dead grass with a stick he had picked up.
“When is he going to stop treating me like a child! I’m different from when we took him in!” Pelliot griped.
He could remember the day several years ago when they first found Armando, collapsed and bloody on the outskirts of the village, and took him back to their house. But he didn’t quite understand exactly what happened afterwards that had led to Armando becoming his guardian.
At any rate, before he knew it, Armando was always by his side, and always meddling.
When he had been young enough to need help changing clothes, Pelliot was utterly dependent on him, but recently Armando had been really irritating, always following him around crying young master, young master.
In the tiny village of Ordan, every day was boring.
Adults who knew him since the day he was born. Every day and the next ceaselessly unchanging. And whenever he tried to even just head into the forest, Armando always stopped him.
It was during one of those times that he had found that stack of papers in the barn.
Pelliot knew right away that it was something his mother had left behind.
And then—he remembered.
The lullaby his mother sang while she held him on her knee when he was very young. And her voice while she read him picture books.
Even after being confined to bed from illness, whenever he crawled into her bed she would smile and tell him various stories.
And among those stories—he had the feeling he’d heard that one too.
“When a rainbow bridge crosses the sky, you can meet the person you miss underneath.”
A person far, far away from you. Even someone who had passed away.
“So Pelliot, when you see a rainbow, please remember your mama.”
Rainbows appear far off in the sky after rain, and disappear within moments.
So it’s impossible to go directly underneath one.
But yesterday, Pelliot had seen one.
A distinct rainbow band rising straight up out of the forest.
As though it were right there. Like a bridge that you could hold onto.
It must have been the rainbow his mother had told him about.
If he went to it, he was sure he would meet his mother again.
Pelliot tripped over a pile of damp dead leaves and fell down. Since it was a rocky landscape, there were bare rocks sticking out here and there, and his fall seriously hurt.
“…!” He raised his head with tears in his eyes.
Then he saw the rainbow rise up.
Just beyond the grove up ahead, soundlessly.
A shining, continuous band of seven colors wider than the breadth of a grown man stretching out both arms danced upwards towards the sky.
“?!”
But that rainbow gradually diminished—its width became narrower, and soon, showing a triangular, sword-like tip, it smoothly disappeared.
“Wh-What was…that…”
Pelliot sank onto his butt and stared at the place where the rainbow had just disappeared, his mouth wide open.
“That’s not a rainbow.”
It had definitely shone with the seven colors of a rainbow. But after having seen it closely…
“It’s not…a cloth, either. Somehow…it was thicker.”
And there had been that tapered point at the end.
“It had some kind of thin border…I think.”
Then, the direction of the wind suddenly changed. A strangely lukewarm breeze blew from the direction where the rainbow had disappeared.
“…?!” Pelliot instinctively covered his nose and mouth with his hand.
A terrible fishy reek hung in the air.
“Like dried fish…”
It smelled like the dried fish and salt picklings which merchants along the ocean far to the west of the village sometimes came to sell.
Pelliot didn’t really like that distinctive odor.
He shuddered.
It wasn’t a smell that naturally occurred in the middle of this forest.
Unlike the fresh scent of the conifers and the damp odor of the dead leaves—it was a fundamentally different smell.
“Eeeek!”
Pelliot suddenly became frightened, and clambered to his feet unsteadily. Favoring his scraped knees, he tried to return down the path he had come.
“Huh?!”
A breeze reeking of fish blew into his face again, this time from his left.
Timidly, he looked in that direction.
With a swoosh a rainbow crossed right before his eyes.
The rainbow—or rather a band of seven shining colors—streamed from left to right, weaving its way through the grove about only fifteen feet in front of him.
No. It would be more accurate to say that it was swimming.
Inspected closely, only the top red band and the bottom purple band in the long, long rainbow belt undulated. The thing swam through the air by moving those two.
The band moved outside of Pelliot’s field of vision in an instant and vanished into the depths of the forest on his right. As he’d seen, its tail was a straight, tapered triangle.
It was something long and smooth, like a snake—
“A fish? Like a mud eel…” Pelliot recalled the large, slimy fish he sometimes saw in puddles of mud in the summer.
But that thing is rounder…
No, that wasn’t the main issue. First of all, no eels were that enormous, and secondly, they didn’t float in the air. This was impossible not just for eels, but also for other fish.
“It’s a monster!”
Pelliot finally came to his senses and ran off on unsteady feet.
He dashed down the slope, sliding on the rocky surfaces and tripping on the piles of dead leaves. He had to make it back to the village somehow. He had to go where there were people.