The image of the elder’s face loomed in Ico’s mind. He could hear Oneh’s voice in his ears. We will be waiting for you to come home.
So I’m supposed to go home…but how?
He felt a slight vibration, no more than the quivering of a feather in the wind. The sarcophagus was swaying.
At first, he thought he was imagining it. He hadn’t eaten anything since the small meal that morning. Maybe I’m already starting to tremble with hunger. Maybe I’m getting dizzy.
But the rocking only grew stronger, and he was forced to admit it wasn’t him-the stone sarcophagus around him was shaking.
The sarcophagus shook up, down, and to the sides with increasing violence. Hands bound to the wooden frame, Ico tensed his legs and swallowed against the fear. A low rumble accompanied the growing vibrations, filling his ears. It seemed as though the entire hall around him shook. Even the air keened with the tremors.
Soon, the rocking motion became more than the sarcophagus could withstand, and the wooden frame broke off the back. The mechanism the priest had used to slide Ico’s sarcophagus into its cavity worked in reverse, spitting the sarcophagus out. It smashed onto the floor, cracking open the lid and sending Ico flying into the open air. His body rose, the world spun around him, and the next instant he crashed onto the cold stones of the floor. His right horn struck the floor, giving off a hollow clink, before everything faded to black.
Rain was falling outside, a downpour.
Ico was climbing a tower so high it made him dizzy. Looking up from the bottom, the top was lost in shadows.
A stone staircase wound around the inside wall of the tower, as ancient and decrepit as the tower itself. The staircase had a rail at about Ico’s eye level, with spearlike spikes protruding all along its top.
Thunder rumbled, and Ico flinched. Night had fallen and a storm had blown in, though Ico couldn’t be sure when.
Halfway up the tower, Ico ran out of breath. It was cold. A ragged curtain hung in the window ahead of him, flapping in the driving wind of the storm. The frigid air blowing in through the window and the cold stones of the wall chilled Ico to the marrow.
Lightning flashed, bright in Ico’s eyes-but in that moment of illumination, he spotted something hanging far above him. One hand pressed cautiously against the wall for support, he peered into the darkness. What is it? The dark silhouette resembled a birdcage, but it would hold a bird far larger than any Ico had ever seen. It seemed to be suspended from the ceiling of the tower. Stepping quickly, Ico resumed his climb. In another two or three circles around the tower he would reach the cage.
The closer he came, the more unusual the cage seemed. Though fowl in Toksa were allowed to roam freely, nightingales, said to have the power to ward off evil spirits, and stormfeathers, who sang upon the altar at festival time and were said to augur the future, were often kept in intricately woven cages of long, delicate reeds and young willow branches. It was not uncommon for the beauty of the cage to rival that of the bird’s song.
There was nothing elegant about this cage. It seemed to be made of black iron, and it looked immensely heavy. The chain upon which it hung was thicker than Ico’s arm, and the spaces between its thick bars were scarcely a hand’s breadth apart. Thorns of steel sprouted in a circle from its bottom edge, their function less to prevent whatever was inside from escaping than to discourage rescue.
The cage swayed slowly in the strong wind. Ico ran higher. He was only a few steps from being able to see what was inside when he noticed something dripping from the bottom of the cage. He stopped and pressed up against the railing to get a closer look. Is that…water? Drip, drip. Drip. The drops fell steadily to the floor of the tower, leaving dark circles on the stone. No, not dark, Ico realized. Black. Whatever it was that dripped from the cage, it was blacker than pitch, the color of melted shadow.
Something’s in there!
The thick drops reminded Ico of the hunters as they returned to the village, prey lashed across their saddles, blood dripping past the horses’ hooves. Something was alive inside the cage, and it was oozing black blood.
Thunder rumbled outside, as if to warn Ico from climbing higher. Still, he continued up. The bottom of the cage was at eye level now. He craned his neck to look inside…and saw nothing. It was empty.
Wait…
Something moved in a shadowed corner of the cage, though it was too dark to make out what.
Is someone in there?
Ico froze as a dark figure lifted its head and faced him. The figure was slender, graceful, like a shadow cast on the night of the full moon. The outlines were hard to make out in the darkness, but the figure was moving, silently. Ico could just discern the arch of a neckline and the curve of a shoulder.
Biting back the scream that rose in his throat, Ico retreated against the wall behind him, feeling the firm stone behind his shoulders and back. He was no longer sure that the figure was looking at him-he couldn’t see any mouth or eyes. Yet Ico felt its gaze upon him.
Lightning flashed and thunder roared, limning the silhouette in the cage.
There’s someone there. Looking right at me.
With his eyes fixed on the vision in front of him, Ico never noticed the black shadow spreading on the very wall against which he had sought shelter. The shadow formed near his left fingertip and spread quickly, until it was large enough to swallow him whole.
By the time he jerked away from the cold against his back, it was too late. The shadow had begun to emerge from the wall, engulfing Ico like living quicksand. Ico felt himself being pulled backward, sucked in-he flailed, grabbing for anything he might reach, but his hands closed on air. The black shape in the birdcage watched him. At the last moment, he realized that it was the black blood dripping from the cage that had seeped into the tower, climbed the wall, and engulfed him-yet there was nothing he could do about it now.
Ico opened his eyes.
It was a dream. I was only dreaming.
Ico was lying facedown, flat against the floor, arms and legs spread wide. For a while, he was content to lie there. He didn’t want to move until he understood at least a little of what had happened to him, or where he was.
I’m still in the castle.
He sat up and looked around, checking himself for injuries and finding none. He stood and tried stretching his legs. He performed a little jump. Nothing hurt; he felt as healthy as he always did.
As he took in his surroundings, he spotted the stone sarcophagus lying like an overturned wheelbarrow a short distance from where he had awoken. Its lid and metal hinges were broken. Ico picked up a piece of the shattered stone. It was rough and cold.
The sarcophagus no longer glowed.
It’s dead, Ico thought. The sarcophagus had opened its mouth and swallowed him whole-but Ico had been poison to it. It had spit him out, but not before suffering a lethal dose. What was poison to the sarcophagus might also be poison to the Castle in the Mist. The Mark rippled across his chest and back, though no discernible wind blew in the great hall. As the Mark was his, so too was he the Sacrifice-his horns were proof enough of that. Yet the sarcophagus had broken, failing to hold him.
What does it mean?
The countless stone sarcophagi set in their alcoves were as quiet as they had been when Ico first saw them. All were in their places, save the one that had held him.
Thin light spilled in through a small window. It didn’t seem as though much time had passed since he had been knocked out; the rain and thunder had been an invention of his dream. Yet his memory of the black silhouette in the cage was as clear as though he had seen it with his eyes. Was that the master of the castle? Did the master show himself to frighten me?