ICO: Castle in the Mist Read Free Page B

“And I haven’t given up, either!” He disappeared from the small window.
    “What do you mean?” Ico shouted after him.
    “That’s for me to know!” came his friend’s distant reply.
    “This isn’t a game! It’s really serious! Seriously serious! You hear me, Toto?”
    “I hear you just fine. Don’t get all worked up over it, okay? See ya.”
    And with that, Toto was gone.
    For a while, Ico stood there, looking up at the empty square of night where his friend’s face had been.
    [3]
    ONEH THOUGHT IT was her tears that made it hard for her to see the thread upon the loom, but she soon realized her error. The sun is setting. Darkness pooled in the corners of the weaving room, and when she looked up, she could not see the rafters above her head.
    Oneh slid from her weaving bench, walked around to the other side of the loom, and examined the fabric. In half a day, she had only produced a finger’s length. The pattern was so muddled she had trouble making it out.
    No light was allowed in the weaving room on account of the danger of a fire; she would not be able to continue work today. She pressed her fingers to her temples and felt her head ache. She was not fatigued, really. Perhaps it was all my weeping. Oneh sighed. I don’t want to be doing this work. I didn’t raise him for this—
    That is where you are wrong, her husband, the elder, had scolded. The elder’s wife cannot be seen flouting custom. You may pity Ico, but the boy is ready. It’s your inability to let go, your tearful clinging that makes him suffer.
    She wondered how Ico was doing. Already, ten days had passed since he entered the cave. All women, even her, were forbidden to approach that place. Not once had she seen his face or heard his voice. Is he eating properly? The cave must be so dark and chilly. If he’s caught cold…
    It would be the first cold he’d ever caught in his life. Oneh had witnessed proof of Ico’s fortitude enough times to know he would be fine. He could fall from the very top of the tree onto his back and be up on his feet a moment later to open his hands and show her the chick he had plucked from its nest. His strength and skill had even gotten him in trouble—like the time when, just after his age ceremony, he had gotten into a fight with some young fishermen over Ico’s uncanny ability to swim deeper and hold his breath longer than any of them. He took on six other boys that day and came home with only a few scratches. They were fond memories. Proud memories.
    The others in the village thought Oneh’s feelings for Ico came from some deep sympathy for him and her chagrin at being the one who had to raise him though he was not her own. Even the elder thought this. But they were wrong. Ico was the light of her heart. She loved him as much as any mother could love her own child. Raising him had been a delight.
    The children understood her—they were always more aware of these things than the adults. Her own grandchildren by blood often pouted and asked her why she favored the horned boy over them.
    “Because Ico knows his place and does not talk back, and is not always wanting things or teasing other children,” she wanted to tell them, but she would refrain and say instead that she was kind to him because he was to be the Sacrifice. Then her grandchildren would smile and wink at each other, glad that they had been born normal, without horns.
    Only one other adult had seen through her admittedly thin façade—her brother, dead now for five years.
    “The boy has you enchanted, hasn’t he?” he had told her once. “Don’t forget, Oneh, why he is so pure and kind and without fault. He is not human. His soul is empty, and evil cannot cling to a void as it does to our tangled hearts. Emptiness absorbs only love and light, and reflects it back. No wonder it’s so easy for the one who must raise the horned child to love him—they see their own love reflected in his eyes.”
    He reminded Oneh that to go to the