“Whatever do you want to know that for?”
Toto’s eyes glimmered in the dusk. “The priest from the capital is real important, right?” The boy’s voice was filled with hope. “If the priest says I could do something, then even the elder couldn’t tell me not to do it-right?”
Oneh smiled cautiously and took a step toward the window. “Toto, are you planning to do something the elder doesn’t want you to do?”
“No, ’course not!” He shook his head vigorously. “I just wanted to know how close the priest is.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know,” Oneh lied.
“But I was just talking to Ico, and he seemed to know a lot about the priest, so I thought-”
Oneh walked up to the window. “Toto! You were talking to Ico?”
“Huh?” Toto blinked. “Er, I guess, yeah,” he stammered.
“You went to the cave? How did you talk to him without the guard seeing you?”
“I climbed a tree and went from branch to branch. Then I jumped down onto that little rocky hill and crawled across the rock until I reached the window on top.”
Oneh shook her head. This was not the first time she had heard of Toto’s acrobatics. He and Ico were the talk of the other children in the village for their daring antics.
“Was he well?”
“I guess. Pretty bored, though, locked up there all by himself.”
Oneh nodded, turning her head from the window to hide the tears welling in her eyes.
“You angry, Mistress Oneh?” Toto asked timidly.
“How could I be mad at Ico’s best friend going to pay him a visit? I’m sure he needed the company. Thank you.”
Toto’s smile returned to his face. “You know, I was trying to get him to run away,” he admitted. “But Ico said he wouldn’t. He said the whole village would be in trouble if he did. That’s why I’m going to the castle with him.”
“What?” Oneh said. “Toto, you can’t go to the Castle in the Mist!”
“Yeah, that’s what Ico said. He says if the priest found out there’d be ‘trouble,’ whatever that means.” Toto frowned. “Since when did Ico become such a field mouse? And how am I supposed to wait until my age ceremony before I get to know what any of this is all about? What kind of friend keeps secrets like that?”
Oneh understood how the boy felt all too well. She too had felt abandoned when her husband had taken Ico over the Forbidden Mountains and returned with a secret that only the two of them shared. The elder had never been a talkative man, but now it was as if he had sealed his lips with wax. And Ico is in the cave…lost to me.
“I would tell you,” she said, “but the truth is, I don’t know much myself. The elder says all we need to know is that protecting our village’s custom is a sacred and very, very important task. We mustn’t go against the elder’s word. That includes you, Toto.”
Toto snorted, puffing out his cheeks. “Yeah, but the priest outranks the elder, doesn’t he? So what he says goes. That’s why I was thinking I could ask him to take me to the castle.”
It took a moment for Oneh to find her voice. “So that’s why you wanted to know where he was,” she said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Did Ico not mention the trouble there would be if the priest knew what you intended?”
Toto shrugged. “Well, sure, if I tried to sneak after him. But if I got his permission…”
Oneh shook her head. How could she expect a mere child to understand when it was so hard for her?
“I really don’t think the priest will let you go, Toto.”
“Never know unless you ask.”
Oneh tried a different tack. “Perhaps-but it shouldn’t be you who goes.”
“Huh?”
“I will go with Ico to the Castle in the Mist. I’ll ask the priest to let me join him.”
“You don’t wanna go all that way, Mistress Oneh. You’d probably break somethin’ just getting to that old castle.”
“Even so,” Oneh insisted, “it’s no place for a child. I’m sure the priest would agree.”
“Then I’m sneaking after you,” Toto said.
“You must not!” Oneh reached out through the window and placed a hand on Toto’s head. “You cannot.”
“I can too.”
“I’ll tell your father.”
“No fair – ” Toto began. Then he shrank away. “Someone’s coming!”
Oneh stuck her head out the window and saw a torch approaching through the darkness. Someone from the village was coming for her.
“Run, Toto. Quick!”
“I’ll do better than that!” Toto grabbed the window frame and scampered up the side of the hut onto the thatched roof. “They won’t find me up here.”
Toto’s words were just trailing off when Oneh saw the torch swing in a small half circle, and a voice called out, “Mistress Oneh, that you there?”
“Yes,” she replied, shutting the window and turning to open the door.
“Sorry I was so late in getting out here,” the man from the village said once she had made her way outside. He was a muscular man dressed in hunter’s garb, with a short sword at his waist and a bow and quiver slung across his broad back. Oneh recognized him as the head of the hunters in the village. His skill with a bow was such that he could pierce an apple hanging from a tree on the far side of the river with his first arrow.
The weaving room had been hastily constructed in a patch of cleared forest outside of the village. There may be animals around when night falls, so I’ll be sending a hunter, her husband had told her. But Oneh knew the truth. The armed men were sent to make sure she didn’t try to escape.
The sole purpose of the weaving room was for her to make the Mark that would be worn by the Sacrifice.
The Mark was little more than a simple tunic that went on over Ico’s clothes, but it was woven with a special pattern detailed in the pages of that old book Oneh had received from her husband. It was not difficult to make if she followed the instructions.
“Will you be returning directly home?”
“At once, yes.” Oneh held the roll of paper to her chest and closed the door to the small hut behind her. The torch sputtered and a bright spark drifted through the air, crossing her path.
The man walked ahead of her slowly. “I was late in coming because one of the hunters was hurt in the mountains today.”
“My! I hope he was not hurt too badly?”
“He fell from a ledge, broke both his legs,” the hunter replied, his voice even. “Even if he mends, he will not hunt again. It’s not certain he’ll even walk.”
The hunter’s name was familiar. He was a boy who had just undergone the age ceremony this past spring. Oneh shook her head. “Such misfortune…”
“He was inexperienced,” the hunter said. “When you’re climbing, you must never look toward the mountains in the north-even if the view is clear. I told him this myself many times, but he did not listen.”
Oneh tensed. “The Forbidden Mountains?”
“Indeed,” the hunter said.
“What does one see…up there?”
“Nothing, most times. But every child knows you’re not supposed to look. There’s always the chance that you might see something.”
“So what did he see?”
The man replied that he did not know.
“But how-”
He shrugged. “The boy’s been muttering all kinds of nonsense. I’m afraid he hit his head too.”
For a moment, Oneh closed her eyes.
“Besides, even if he did see something and managed to keep his wits, he’s not supposed to talk about what he saw. That’s how I was raised, and that’s what I would do in his place. Did you know that my father was lead huntsman in his day? He told me about a man who went up into the mountains looking for a bird to shoot for his supper. Said he looked too long toward the mountains in the north.” The man paused. “His body made the trip back, but his mind never returned.”