ICO: Castle in the Mist

Miyuki Miyabe ICO: Castle in the Mist

Haikasoru

Alexander O. Smith (Translator)

English translation © 2011 VIZ Media, LLC

PREFACE

THE BOOK YOU hold in your hands is a novelization of the story found in the PlayStation 2 game ICO.

Sort of.

My heartfelt thanks to the producers and creators of the game for so willingly giving me permission to write this, my first attempt at novelization. They gave me free reign with the story and world found in the game so that I might find my own path through the tale, for which I am also eternally grateful.

If you picked up this book hoping for a walkthrough of the game, look elsewhere. The order of events, solutions to puzzles, and even the layout of the castle have changed. While it is certainly not “spoiler-free,” someone who reads this book and goes on to play the game will find much there that is not here.

For those of you who have played the game and love it as much as I do, I hope you will enjoy this variation on the world of ICO as much as I have enjoyed revisiting the Castle in the Mist.

Miyuki Miyabe

June 2004

A story of an unknown place,

Told in an unknown age.

CHAPTER 1. AS THE PRIEST SAYS

1

THE LOOM HAD fallen silent. The old man had noticed the absence of its rhythmic clack-clack-clack some time before, and now he waited patiently for it to resume. He sat at an old desk, its surface worn to a golden amber from years of use, on top of which he had laid open several ancient tomes. A faint breeze coming in through the lattice window ruffled the edges of the yellowed paper and made the tips of the old man’s long white whiskers tremble.

The man cocked his head, straining to hear any sound-weeping, perhaps.

They had completed the weaving room several days earlier. All the necessary purifications had been made. The room stood waiting for her whenever she was ready to begin-no, he thought, she must begin right away. Yet Oneh had wept and shouted and cursed and would not go near it. “It’s too cruel,” she had said, clinging to the old man’s robes. “Please stop this. Do not ask this of me.”

He had no choice but to let her cry until her tears ran dry. Then he spoke to her, explaining patiently, as one talks to a child. “You knew this would come. You knew it on the day he was born.”

He had pleaded with her from sunset of the day before until well into the night. Finally, around dawn, Oneh had allowed him to lead her into the weaving room. From his study, he had heard the heavy sound of the loom’s shuttle. It was an unfamiliar sound, which made its absence even more noticeable.

The old man looked out the window at the leaves shaking in the grove. Birds were singing. The light of the sun was bright, and it warmed the room where its rays struck. Yet there were no sounds of children playing, and when the villagers shuffled out to work the fields, they did so in silence. Disconsolate sighs rose in place of the forceful thudding of hoes that echoed down the furrows. Even the hunters, the old man imagined, stopped in their chase along the tracks that ran through the mountains and exhaled long laments as they looked down upon the village in the distance.

It was the Time of the Sacrifice.

The old man was the elder of Toksa Village. He had turned seventy this year, thirteen years after inheriting the position from his father. He had only just stepped into his post, filled with ideas of how he would do the things his father had not been able to do, and the things his father had never tried to do, when the boy had been born. That unlucky child, doomed to be the Sacrifice.

At that time, the elder’s father had been deeply ill, his body and spirit greatly weakened. Even still, the night when he heard that a boy had been born to Muraj and Suzu-a boy with horns growing from his head-he had leapt from his sickbed, his face filled with a furious grief. He had rushed to the birthing place in the village and cradled the newborn child in his own arms, brushing his fingers across its soft head until he felt the horns.

Upon returning home, he summoned his son. He shut the doors and windows and shortened the wick on the lamp until the room was dim, and when he spoke, his voice was a whisper, no louder than the night breeze.

“I did not pass the mantle of elder to you readily,” he had said. “Even while I saw how the other men and women of the village regarded you with pride and trust, I held you back. I’m sure you wondered why this was at times. You were unhappy, I know, and I do not blame you for it.”

The new elder sat, unspeaking, his head hanging low. He lacked the courage to meet his father’s eyes. That night had transformed the tired, sick old man who was his father into something altogether strange and frightening.

“But know this-I did not cling to my role as elder out of a reluctance to let go. I merely wanted to spare you the burden of the Sacrifice. I was too cowardly, and put off that which I knew must come to pass sooner or later. What a fool I was. The one who rules in the Castle in the Mist sees through all our flimsy schemes. How else can we explain that just now, on the very day that my illness compels me to pass you the title of elder, a boy with horns is born to our village?”

His father’s voice trembled as though he were on the verge of tears.

In Toksa Village, it was a fact of life that every few decades, a child with horns was born. The horns were small at birth-soft, round bumps, barely noticeable beneath the infant’s fine hair.

The horned child grew up stronger and more quickly than ordinary children. His limbs grew long, his body hale. He would dash through the fields like a fawn, leap like a hare, climb like a squirrel, and swim like a fish.

While the child grew, his horns would remain much as they were at birth, sleeping beneath his hair. It was impossible to tell the horned child apart from regular children at a glance. Only his boundless energy, a voice that could be heard for miles through the forest, and eyes that glimmered with precocious wisdom set him apart.

And yet, the horns were an undeniable sign that this child was to be the Sacrifice; that one day he would have to fulfill that task dictated by the customs of the village; that he would have to go to the Castle in the Mist.

The horns were the mark of the castle’s cursed claim upon him and everyone he knew.

When the boy reached the age of thirteen, the horns would reveal their true form. Overnight they would grow, one on either side of his head, like a small ox’s, parting the hair where they jutted out and upward.

This marked the Time of the Sacrifice.

The Castle in the Mist was calling. Time was up. The child must be offered.

“The last Sacrifice was born when I was but a child,” the elder’s father told him. “The old books say that sometimes as much as one hundred years might pass after a Sacrifice is born and sent to the castle.” He winced and shook his head. “I hoped our fortune would be as good. How I prayed that your generation might come and go without seeing a Sacrifice-only to have one appear now, so early! I’m afraid that the previous Sacrifice was not potent enough.”

That was why, his father explained, the Castle in the Mist hungered again so soon.

“Still,” he continued, “time yet remains before the child born tonight reaches his thirteenth year. I can teach you all you will need to know about offering the Sacrifice. You’ll have to consult the old books our family keeps. When the boy is of age, and the Time of the Sacrifice arrives, an entourage from the temple in the capital will come and arrange everything. You merely need do as the priest says.”

Then the elder’s father grabbed his wrist with astonishing strength. “Whatever happens, you must not let the Sacrifice escape. You must not allow him to leave the village. And you must impress him with the weight of his destiny, train him in every particular until he truly accepts it and will never choose flight. You must not be lenient or frail of heart. The castle has chosen him as the Sacrifice, and about that there can be no mistake.”