Guardian of the Dream
(Book 3 of the Guardian of the Spirit Series)
Author: Uehashi Nahoko
Translator: Ainikki the Archivist
Epilogue - A Summer's Day
Beyond the forest was a vast plain that had been
leveled out and planted with rice. The rice was waist-high now, the stalks
green-gold and swaying in the wind. Cicadas sung their buzzing song, incessant,
as people worked in the rice fields with the hot sun blazing down on them. Weeding
the quick-growing grass from the rice paddies was a tough job.
"Can you see where we are?" Balsa asked.
"Can you see where we are?" Balsa asked.
Tanda leaned against her shoulder. He still found it difficult to walk on
his own and went everywhere with a crutch.
"Wait. Oh, it's over there. They're weeding over there next to the edge of that field."
Balsa looked where Tanda was pointing. Naka was weeding in the rice fields next to Kaya. Kaya said something, and Naka responded, working all the while. Her arms were corded muscle, and she worked quickly. Neither Naka nor Kaya seemed to realize that Tanda and Balsa were there.
"Well, this place never changes," Tanda said with a little laugh.
Balsa smiled at him.
"You're too nice. You risked your life and didn't even get much by way of thanks. I know Noshir’s your brother, but risking your life for no reward is bullshit.”
Tanda grinned. "Noshir did thank me, Balsa. It’s all right. That’s all I need from him. The cart full of eggplant and cucumbers was just a bonus.” His grin grew wider. “And I’m sure you appreciated that, yourself. Between you and Torogai, most of our vegetables are gone already.”
Tanda sat down in the shade of a tree, taking care to not damage his injured left leg. "Also, it's not like I did all that much. I mostly just got in your and Jin's way. If Yugno hadn’t freed the souls from the Flower, I would have been trapped."
Balsa leaned against the tree. "Yugno, huh. He didn't even say goodbye before leaving on another journey, and we haven't heard anything since. Who knows where he's singing these days." She sighed. "Kaya said that Yugno is like his songs; he moves the heart, but comes and goes like the wind. She’s probably right."
"I'm glad she understood that, in the end," Tanda said.
Balsa laughed. "She understood that from the beginning. But you can't help having those kinds of feelings, even if you know from the start that it’ll never work out. She fell in love with the wind passing through on its journey from far away. She was never actually in love with Yugno himself." She snorted. “Can you imagine?”
Tanda smiled. He hadn’t forgiven Yugno for seducing Kaya with his song. She’d almost been trapped, and that would have meant her death. It was impossible to forgive and forget something like that.
But there was no point in lecturing the wind. Yugno’s mercurial nature made him uniquely capable of carrying the seed of the Flower within himself. That was what Torogai had told him, anyhow.
"Wait. Oh, it's over there. They're weeding over there next to the edge of that field."
Balsa looked where Tanda was pointing. Naka was weeding in the rice fields next to Kaya. Kaya said something, and Naka responded, working all the while. Her arms were corded muscle, and she worked quickly. Neither Naka nor Kaya seemed to realize that Tanda and Balsa were there.
"Well, this place never changes," Tanda said with a little laugh.
Balsa smiled at him.
"You're too nice. You risked your life and didn't even get much by way of thanks. I know Noshir’s your brother, but risking your life for no reward is bullshit.”
Tanda grinned. "Noshir did thank me, Balsa. It’s all right. That’s all I need from him. The cart full of eggplant and cucumbers was just a bonus.” His grin grew wider. “And I’m sure you appreciated that, yourself. Between you and Torogai, most of our vegetables are gone already.”
Tanda sat down in the shade of a tree, taking care to not damage his injured left leg. "Also, it's not like I did all that much. I mostly just got in your and Jin's way. If Yugno hadn’t freed the souls from the Flower, I would have been trapped."
Balsa leaned against the tree. "Yugno, huh. He didn't even say goodbye before leaving on another journey, and we haven't heard anything since. Who knows where he's singing these days." She sighed. "Kaya said that Yugno is like his songs; he moves the heart, but comes and goes like the wind. She’s probably right."
"I'm glad she understood that, in the end," Tanda said.
Balsa laughed. "She understood that from the beginning. But you can't help having those kinds of feelings, even if you know from the start that it’ll never work out. She fell in love with the wind passing through on its journey from far away. She was never actually in love with Yugno himself." She snorted. “Can you imagine?”
Tanda smiled. He hadn’t forgiven Yugno for seducing Kaya with his song. She’d almost been trapped, and that would have meant her death. It was impossible to forgive and forget something like that.
But there was no point in lecturing the wind. Yugno’s mercurial nature made him uniquely capable of carrying the seed of the Flower within himself. That was what Torogai had told him, anyhow.
"I gave him the seed because no one else was
suitable as a host. The Flower feeds on people's dreams, but the Flower is too
heavy for normal people. Only a soul born of the Flower can shoulder
that burden.
"I didn't understand it before, but now I know why the Flower’s Guardian chose me to be Yugno’s spiritual mother. If I hadn’t been a magic weaver, or at least capable of becoming one, I wouldn’t have been suitable, either. I think he could feel that I had the strength to get caught up in other people's dreams without giving in to despair."
Tanda wondered if he had the same strength as Torogai. He suspected that he didn’t, for all that he was a magic weaver.
Torogai stared at Tanda for a while before speaking again. "Stop making that ridiculous face. Of course you’ve got strength inside of you--the same strength that I’ve got. But you're too kind. You feel too much for the dreamers, so there's a risk of you getting tangled up in their dreams and lost. Yugno is a child of extremes--dawn and dusk. But you, Tanda, are a child of high noon. You think of others first. You're like the spring sunshine.
"Yugno is enthralled by songs. He could sacrifice anyone and anything for the sake of his own singing. But you wouldn't accept the seed of a Flower that could lure people's souls to their deaths, even if it would make you unimaginably powerful."
Another pause. “You and Yugno are different. There are things that only he can do, and things that only you can do, Tanda. Some of those things are beyond me, even.”
Can Torogai see my limits, I wonder? Tanda thought. The world of magic weaving was like a bottomless pit inside a swamp. The farther down he sank into it, the darker and more dangerous it got. Swamp water carried dangers of its own--pathogens that caused fever and madness and even death, in some cases. There were some magic weavers who’d been corrupted by power; they would do anything to sink deeper into the swamp and increase their knowledge. They would sacrifice anything and anyone to get what they wanted.
Tanda wasn’t like that, and he didn’t want to be. A chill went up his spine.
"What's wrong?" Balsa asked. Until she’d spoken, Tanda hadn’t even realized she was sitting so close.
"What? Uh, nothing." Tanda sighed. "I just thought that it would get pretty lonely to drift through life, going from place to place without a real home, even for someone like Yugno."
Balsa remembered what Yugno had told her before.
Seeing the Li made me happier than I’ve ever felt in my life. But after that day, they took everything from me. I belonged to them, and could never return to my normal life.
“Yeah. It would," Balsa said quietly. She looked up at the summer sky through the leafy canopy overhead. "But that way of life makes him happy. Just like those farmers, who experience a different kind of joy when their crops sprout after being planted."
“Are you talking about Yugno and the farmers or yourself, now?” Tanda asked lightly. “Of course different ways of life make different people happy. There are drawbacks to all of them. That’s all I meant.”
Balsa nodded. “You’re right. I wasn’t just talking about Yugno and the farmers." She squinted as the sun got in her eyes. "I met Chagum and went back to Kanbal for a bit. So much has happened since then. I feel like I've finally escaped from bad luck that plagued most of my early life. Jiguro discarded everything he was to protect me. He threw away the life he was meant to live. He had to kill his friends to survive. What a cruel fate…" She shook her head. "I was always grateful, but I also felt like I’d inherited a debt that I could never repay.” She sighed. “Talk about drawbacks. It took me so long to realize that Jiguro never thought that way. The only debt I was carrying was what I’d told myself to carry."
Tanda was shocked. This was the first time Balsa had spoken about herself like this. She glanced over at him, seeming entirely at peace.
"I should have been happy that he cared for me so much. There is happiness to be found in protecting someone you love. I want to think that Jiguro felt that kind of happiness. I think he did, but I’ll never know." She shifted in her seat, looking up at the trees again.
"I know that when I was protecting Chagum, I was happy. I was risking my life for a stranger, but still, I was happy." The corners of Balsa’s lips twitched upward in a slight smile. "I've been cursing my misfortune ever since I was a kid. I didn’t even realize that I was happy protecting Chagum until just now. I’m such an idiot. I acted like I had to go around fighting and killing people because it was all I was good for. I needed an excuse to come to terms with the blood on my hands.
"But fighting makes me happy, and so does protecting people. I can’t blame that on bad luck or a cursed fate. And when I think about things I’d like to do instead, I can’t think of anything. I enjoy being a bodyguard. It’s all I ever want to be."
Balsa was aware that her desire to be a guard wasn’t exactly common. There were safer and more lucrative ways to make a living. She could be a traveling merchant, or teach at a martial arts school, or so many other things. But Balsa knew that she didn’t want to try any of those professions. She was content to be what she was. She was still enraged at the injustice done to her and Jiguro, though, and probably always would be.
As Balsa watched the sunlight filter through the leaves and make dancing shadows on the underbrush, she said, "I’ve caused so many deaths because a part of me can’t let go of the desire to fight. That desire might lead to my own death, someday. That’s my darkness, and there’s no way around it."
Tanda shook his head in denial, frowning. “You had nothing to do with Kanbal’s succession crisis. If that idiot king hadn’t decided to target you, your entire life would have been different. Your darkness, if you had it at all, would be different. Don’t keep blaming yourself for all the problems you’ve had in life. It’s not fair to you or anyone else.”
Balsa looked at Tanda and offered him a slow smile. "Maybe if I’d been born to a loving family of farmers, I’d have five or six kids by now. I might’ve been a mother. I would have other reasons to suffer, of course, and I might be complaining that if I’d only been born into a different life, I’d have more interesting and fun things to do." Balsa shooed a black fly away from her eye. "These maybes and what ifs are what I dream about when things get rough. When I wake up, I'm back to being my usual self. I can’t escape from the life I have in dreams."
Tanda closed his eyes. An outburst of cicada song enveloped them completely, like a sudden rain. "Some people don't come back from their dreams."
"Huh?"
"Like Master Torogai. She awakened from the Flower's dream, but she didn't return to her home. She became a magic weaver instead." Tanda raised his eyes and looked in the direction of the people working in the rice fields. The life he’d thrown away was over there with them.
It had been twenty-two years since he’d veered off that path, following the shining white bird of Torogai's soul as it had flown into the middle of the mountains on a dark night. Tanda closed his eyes and remembered the cloying perfume of the Flower and the swaying reflection of the fiery petals in the palace garden at twilight. The souls dreaming, trapped inside the Flower…
Thoughts were slippery; there were things that Tanda had considered in dreams that he would never think about when he was awake. If he’d been one of the dreamers trapped in the Flower, what would he have dreamed of? Would he have been able to wake up from that dream?
Why do some people have souls that are too big for their bodies? Tanda remembered asking Chagum that. Anyone could be ensnared in a dream. It might have happened to him. Torogai had told him that when he’d first found her, he was closer to dying than he’d believed.
"Magic weavers tend to have similar early experiences—they’re pushed to their absolute limit, and survive. I’m sure you weren’t aware of it, but when you were eight and found your way here, you’d pushed your own physical limitations too far. You could have died." She’d frowned at him. "Those glowing birds that you saw are beautiful, but if a normal child saw them, they'd find the light terrifying. Those birds fly between death and life, in the liminal space between. When you followed the birds, you were like the child you were chasing—the one who was lured in by a river spirit and drowned. The same thing might have happened to you, if you were unlucky."
Torogai had smiled at him then. "But you weren’t unlucky. Once you get pulled into the circle of magic weavers, it’s harder for you to die because of what you can see. In many ways, that’s what magic weaving is. You make your way between life and death, just like those birds you saw.
"Tanda. The more you learn about magic weaving, the harder it is to see anything but darkness. Because Nayugu is invisible to normal people, it's easy to think that it’s the only world that holds any power. We can take normal people, and the normal world, for granted because of that.
"But real magic weavers know the truth. Neither Nayugu nor Sagu are superior to one another—they’re equal in both power and influence. They complement one another. Someday, you’ll understand that it takes just as much strength to live as an ordinary person in the world of Sagu as it does to live as a magic weaver that can see Nayugu." She looked at Tanda with a tight frown. "Be careful. Even the strongest people can lose their way. Only magic weavers can guide souls that have flown all the way to the edge of death back to life. We who stand on the boundary between Nayugu and Sagu are the guardians of dreams."
Tanda looked out at the rice fields as the bright sunlight of high noon danced across them. Cicadas buzzed incessantly all around, loud. "It's just about time for the julso fruit to be ripe,” he said to Balsa. “It’s been a hot summer, so it’ll probably be a long winter. I'll make more cold medicine than I usually do. Will you help me gather ingredients?"
"I didn't understand it before, but now I know why the Flower’s Guardian chose me to be Yugno’s spiritual mother. If I hadn’t been a magic weaver, or at least capable of becoming one, I wouldn’t have been suitable, either. I think he could feel that I had the strength to get caught up in other people's dreams without giving in to despair."
Tanda wondered if he had the same strength as Torogai. He suspected that he didn’t, for all that he was a magic weaver.
Torogai stared at Tanda for a while before speaking again. "Stop making that ridiculous face. Of course you’ve got strength inside of you--the same strength that I’ve got. But you're too kind. You feel too much for the dreamers, so there's a risk of you getting tangled up in their dreams and lost. Yugno is a child of extremes--dawn and dusk. But you, Tanda, are a child of high noon. You think of others first. You're like the spring sunshine.
"Yugno is enthralled by songs. He could sacrifice anyone and anything for the sake of his own singing. But you wouldn't accept the seed of a Flower that could lure people's souls to their deaths, even if it would make you unimaginably powerful."
Another pause. “You and Yugno are different. There are things that only he can do, and things that only you can do, Tanda. Some of those things are beyond me, even.”
Can Torogai see my limits, I wonder? Tanda thought. The world of magic weaving was like a bottomless pit inside a swamp. The farther down he sank into it, the darker and more dangerous it got. Swamp water carried dangers of its own--pathogens that caused fever and madness and even death, in some cases. There were some magic weavers who’d been corrupted by power; they would do anything to sink deeper into the swamp and increase their knowledge. They would sacrifice anything and anyone to get what they wanted.
Tanda wasn’t like that, and he didn’t want to be. A chill went up his spine.
"What's wrong?" Balsa asked. Until she’d spoken, Tanda hadn’t even realized she was sitting so close.
"What? Uh, nothing." Tanda sighed. "I just thought that it would get pretty lonely to drift through life, going from place to place without a real home, even for someone like Yugno."
Balsa remembered what Yugno had told her before.
Seeing the Li made me happier than I’ve ever felt in my life. But after that day, they took everything from me. I belonged to them, and could never return to my normal life.
“Yeah. It would," Balsa said quietly. She looked up at the summer sky through the leafy canopy overhead. "But that way of life makes him happy. Just like those farmers, who experience a different kind of joy when their crops sprout after being planted."
“Are you talking about Yugno and the farmers or yourself, now?” Tanda asked lightly. “Of course different ways of life make different people happy. There are drawbacks to all of them. That’s all I meant.”
Balsa nodded. “You’re right. I wasn’t just talking about Yugno and the farmers." She squinted as the sun got in her eyes. "I met Chagum and went back to Kanbal for a bit. So much has happened since then. I feel like I've finally escaped from bad luck that plagued most of my early life. Jiguro discarded everything he was to protect me. He threw away the life he was meant to live. He had to kill his friends to survive. What a cruel fate…" She shook her head. "I was always grateful, but I also felt like I’d inherited a debt that I could never repay.” She sighed. “Talk about drawbacks. It took me so long to realize that Jiguro never thought that way. The only debt I was carrying was what I’d told myself to carry."
Tanda was shocked. This was the first time Balsa had spoken about herself like this. She glanced over at him, seeming entirely at peace.
"I should have been happy that he cared for me so much. There is happiness to be found in protecting someone you love. I want to think that Jiguro felt that kind of happiness. I think he did, but I’ll never know." She shifted in her seat, looking up at the trees again.
"I know that when I was protecting Chagum, I was happy. I was risking my life for a stranger, but still, I was happy." The corners of Balsa’s lips twitched upward in a slight smile. "I've been cursing my misfortune ever since I was a kid. I didn’t even realize that I was happy protecting Chagum until just now. I’m such an idiot. I acted like I had to go around fighting and killing people because it was all I was good for. I needed an excuse to come to terms with the blood on my hands.
"But fighting makes me happy, and so does protecting people. I can’t blame that on bad luck or a cursed fate. And when I think about things I’d like to do instead, I can’t think of anything. I enjoy being a bodyguard. It’s all I ever want to be."
Balsa was aware that her desire to be a guard wasn’t exactly common. There were safer and more lucrative ways to make a living. She could be a traveling merchant, or teach at a martial arts school, or so many other things. But Balsa knew that she didn’t want to try any of those professions. She was content to be what she was. She was still enraged at the injustice done to her and Jiguro, though, and probably always would be.
As Balsa watched the sunlight filter through the leaves and make dancing shadows on the underbrush, she said, "I’ve caused so many deaths because a part of me can’t let go of the desire to fight. That desire might lead to my own death, someday. That’s my darkness, and there’s no way around it."
Tanda shook his head in denial, frowning. “You had nothing to do with Kanbal’s succession crisis. If that idiot king hadn’t decided to target you, your entire life would have been different. Your darkness, if you had it at all, would be different. Don’t keep blaming yourself for all the problems you’ve had in life. It’s not fair to you or anyone else.”
Balsa looked at Tanda and offered him a slow smile. "Maybe if I’d been born to a loving family of farmers, I’d have five or six kids by now. I might’ve been a mother. I would have other reasons to suffer, of course, and I might be complaining that if I’d only been born into a different life, I’d have more interesting and fun things to do." Balsa shooed a black fly away from her eye. "These maybes and what ifs are what I dream about when things get rough. When I wake up, I'm back to being my usual self. I can’t escape from the life I have in dreams."
Tanda closed his eyes. An outburst of cicada song enveloped them completely, like a sudden rain. "Some people don't come back from their dreams."
"Huh?"
"Like Master Torogai. She awakened from the Flower's dream, but she didn't return to her home. She became a magic weaver instead." Tanda raised his eyes and looked in the direction of the people working in the rice fields. The life he’d thrown away was over there with them.
It had been twenty-two years since he’d veered off that path, following the shining white bird of Torogai's soul as it had flown into the middle of the mountains on a dark night. Tanda closed his eyes and remembered the cloying perfume of the Flower and the swaying reflection of the fiery petals in the palace garden at twilight. The souls dreaming, trapped inside the Flower…
Thoughts were slippery; there were things that Tanda had considered in dreams that he would never think about when he was awake. If he’d been one of the dreamers trapped in the Flower, what would he have dreamed of? Would he have been able to wake up from that dream?
Why do some people have souls that are too big for their bodies? Tanda remembered asking Chagum that. Anyone could be ensnared in a dream. It might have happened to him. Torogai had told him that when he’d first found her, he was closer to dying than he’d believed.
"Magic weavers tend to have similar early experiences—they’re pushed to their absolute limit, and survive. I’m sure you weren’t aware of it, but when you were eight and found your way here, you’d pushed your own physical limitations too far. You could have died." She’d frowned at him. "Those glowing birds that you saw are beautiful, but if a normal child saw them, they'd find the light terrifying. Those birds fly between death and life, in the liminal space between. When you followed the birds, you were like the child you were chasing—the one who was lured in by a river spirit and drowned. The same thing might have happened to you, if you were unlucky."
Torogai had smiled at him then. "But you weren’t unlucky. Once you get pulled into the circle of magic weavers, it’s harder for you to die because of what you can see. In many ways, that’s what magic weaving is. You make your way between life and death, just like those birds you saw.
"Tanda. The more you learn about magic weaving, the harder it is to see anything but darkness. Because Nayugu is invisible to normal people, it's easy to think that it’s the only world that holds any power. We can take normal people, and the normal world, for granted because of that.
"But real magic weavers know the truth. Neither Nayugu nor Sagu are superior to one another—they’re equal in both power and influence. They complement one another. Someday, you’ll understand that it takes just as much strength to live as an ordinary person in the world of Sagu as it does to live as a magic weaver that can see Nayugu." She looked at Tanda with a tight frown. "Be careful. Even the strongest people can lose their way. Only magic weavers can guide souls that have flown all the way to the edge of death back to life. We who stand on the boundary between Nayugu and Sagu are the guardians of dreams."
Tanda looked out at the rice fields as the bright sunlight of high noon danced across them. Cicadas buzzed incessantly all around, loud. "It's just about time for the julso fruit to be ripe,” he said to Balsa. “It’s been a hot summer, so it’ll probably be a long winter. I'll make more cold medicine than I usually do. Will you help me gather ingredients?"
"Yeah, sure. When? Right now?"
Tanda nodded. Balsa grabbed his hand and helped him stand up.
They heard a song from the direction of the rice fields. Soon, other voices joined the first. They sang in time with their work, and their song echoed upward into the summer sky.
The grass grows on a summer's day.
Really, really grows.
If the grass were rice,
we'd be rich by now.
But we don’t control the world,
and we don’t control the summer,
and we never will.
Tanda nodded. Balsa grabbed his hand and helped him stand up.
They heard a song from the direction of the rice fields. Soon, other voices joined the first. They sang in time with their work, and their song echoed upward into the summer sky.
Really, really grows.
If the grass were rice,
we'd be rich by now.
But we don’t control the world,
and we don’t control the summer,
and we never will.
This is the end of Guardian of the Dream.
The story continues in Traveler of the Void.
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