Seirei no Moribito - Volume 1 - Chapter 3.9

CHAPTER IX: A DIFFERENT DESTINY 

On midsummer’s day, they camped a little way from the spring. Tanda fixed Chagum’s dislocated shoulder, immobilizing it in a makeshift sling, then rubbed a strong-smelling ointment on his side, where he had bruised it when Rarunga flung him onto the riverbank. 
“I outdid myself, didn’t I?” Balsa said with a laugh as Tanda treated the cut on her back. 
Tanda snorted. “We all did.” 
They heard Jin’s voice and looked up to see the Hunters returning with two plump pheasants and several dormice for their meal. Noticing that Chagum was awake, Jin and Zen knelt before him, trembling, their heads bowed low. “Your Highness!” They could not look him in the eye. 
Chagum frowned. “I’m no longer a prince,” he muttered. “So there’s no need to treat me like one.” I wish that I could ask them what my father’s orders were, he thought suddenly. Did he really tell them to kill me? But this thought was gradually replaced by the feeling that it did not matter anymore. He was deeply tired, not only in body but in his very soul. 
The birds the Hunters caught had been tossed casually on the ground. His glance fell upon their lifeless carcasses, and a shudder ran through him. Tanda, who was holding his wrist to take his pulse, followed his gaze. “To eat or be eaten, to escape or be taken,” he whispered and then looked at Chagum. “A matter of utmost importance to the one concerned, yet it happens all the time and we don’t even notice.” 
Chagum’s eyes filled with tears. Balsa wrapped her arm around his shoulder and whispered, “I’m so glad you survived. I’m so glad we made it in time.” 
Her words filled his heart with a warmth that spread to every corner of his body. I didn’t “survive,” he thought. You saved me. This realization hit him forcefully. Even he, who had known firsthand the egg’s desire to live, had found it hard to sacrifice himself to save it. Yet these people had willingly confronted terror for his sake. As a prince, he had taken it for granted that he should be protected, but now he knew how precious this protection was. He wrapped his good arm around Balsa’s neck and hugged her tightly. 
“Thank you,” he said. He could find no other words to say. He looked at Tanda, then at the Hunters, and said again, “Thank you.” At that moment, the tension that had gripped him for the last eight months finally melted away. It’s over, he thought. 
Neither he nor Balsa could know that another fate was quietly but surely approaching. 
 
The next morning, they slept to their heart’s content and only put out the fire and set off on their journey once the sun had fully risen. To their surprise, they were met a little before noon by a troop of soldiers climbing up the mountain path. Torogai walked in front, and her face brightened at the sight of Balsa and her companions. 
Jin and Zen hurried over to Mon, who led the soldiers, and told him what had happened the previous day. For a brief moment, Mon’s face was suffused with deep joy, but at the sight of Chagum approaching, he prostrated himself on the ground. With a clanking of armor, the other soldiers followed suit. Mon, who had shed his role as head of the Hunters and resumed his role as a member of the palace guard, addressed Chagum with downcast eyes. 
“I beg your leave to express our joy that we have found you safe and well,” he said formally. “How profound is our gratitude that you have saved the water god and thereby delivered our country from drought. It is a great honor to witness the return of our sacred founder, Torugaru. The tale of your glorious heroism will be told for generations to come, Your Highness, Crown Prince.” 
Chagum’s eyes widened in shock at the title. Balsa, Tanda, Jin, and Zen also looked at Mon in startled surprise. 
“Did you address me as the Crown Prince?” Chagum automatically slipped into the commanding tones of royalty. 
“Yes, Your Highness. I am afraid that I am the bearer of sad tidings. The night before last, your illustrious brother, the Crown Prince Sagum, passed away from illness. The Mikado has officially declared the Second Prince, Chagum, to be the next Crown Prince and heir to the throne. While, to our great regret, we were unable to protect you previously, we stand ready now to accompany Your Highness to the palace.” 
Chagum felt a profound sorrow rise from deep in his heart. It was not grief at his brother’s death; they had been raised separately, and the few times they met, Sagum had treated him with disdain. Chagum had never thought of him as anything but a stranger. But with his death, a new destiny fastened itself around him like a cloak of steel, tightening inexorably. Thoughts and feelings raced through his mind. I can see my mother … This means that someday I will be the Mikado. But for some reason everything seemed cold and distant. His strongest, most immediate emotion was unbearable sadness. 
He looked up at Balsa. She was gazing straight at him. To the soldiers’ shock, the Crown Prince suddenly threw his arms around this grimy, bloodstained stranger and burst into tears, wailing as though his heart would break. “I don’t want to go! I don’t want to be the stupid Crown Prince! I want to stay with you and Tanda forever!” He hugged her fiercely. Balsa stood motionless, weeping soundlessly, tears streaking one after the other down her cheeks. Then, unable to restrain herself any longer, she suddenly scooped him up in her arms, hugged him tightly, and buried her face in his shoulder. She stood this way for a few moments, then slowly lowered him to the ground. 
“Will you run away with me then, Chagum?” she said huskily. The soldiers tensed, and she laughed. “How about it? Shall I show them what I can do?” 
Chagum looked up at her, hiccupping. He knew what she was trying to say. He stepped back from her slowly and looked at Tanda, then at Torogai. Knowing what Chagum must be going through, Tanda’s face twisted sadly; it was such a cruel fate for a boy of only twelve to confront. But no one could help him. Tanda clenched his fists tightly. 
Chagum closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, trying to suppress his hiccups. The fragrance of the trees filled him, fresh and invigorating. He no longer smelled of shigu salua. No matter how hard he tried, he would never again see Nayugu. The egg of Nyunga Ro Im was gone…. He knew inside that a certain period of his life had ended. Through no desire of his own, he had become the Moribito, the Guardian of the Spirit; and so too he would now be made Crown Prince. He was furious with whatever it was that was moving him against his will, yet at the same time, he felt a strange clarity. It was similar to the feeling he had experienced in the wide, cool world of Nayugu, a feeling that would remain in his heart for the rest of his life. 
He raised his eyes and, still hiccupping slightly, looked at Balsa. “It’s all right,” he said. “Save that for some other child.” Then he grinned mischievously and added, “Maybe it will be yours and Tanda’s.” 
Balsa and Tanda started in surprise. Torogai threw her head back and laughed heartily. “Well done, lad! Well done! You’re brilliant. That’s the way to tell them.” When she had her laughter under control again, she added, “You’re more mature than any of these adults here, that’s for sure.” 
Her words made him very happy. 

 
They continued down the mountain, following the Aoyumi River to the capital. Compared to their previous journey, it was a very peaceful trip, but their hearts were heavy. They camped twice on their way to the capital, and Chagum told Mon he wished to share his campfire with Balsa and her companions. He would permit only Jin, Zen, and Mon to join them. Mon bowed his head in assent. 
Conversation around the campfire centered on Nyunga Ro Im and Rarunga. “Do you think that the nahji has already carried the egg to the sea?” Chagum asked. 
Tanda nodded. “Yes. The nahji’s wings are strong. There’s a Yakoo song that goes like this.” He sang, 
“In a single day, the nahji flies 
from the Misty Blue Mountains to the sea. 
Would that I had the wings of the nahji.” 
“Tanda,” Chagum exclaimed. “You have a good voice!” 
“Don’t be silly,” Tanda said gruffly, blushing. If Chagum realized it was a love song, he would be bound to tease him again, and Tanda had had quite enough of that. But Chagum did not appear to notice. 
“So the egg must be at the bottom of the sea by now,” he continued. “I wonder when Nyunga Ro Im will hatch.” 
“I don’t know,” Balsa said, “but it better start producing clouds soon or this year’s harvest will be a disaster. After all the trouble it caused us, it better do a good job as Nyunga Ro Im.” Everyone nodded fervently. 
“Do you think that Rarunga lives for hundreds of years?” Chagum asked. “And does it only eat Nyunga Ro Im’s eggs?” 
Torogai, who was lying on her side, her head pillowed on her arm, snorted. “Not likely. How could it survive if that’s all it ate? It must live on something else instead. Those eggs are probably a special treat that it gets once a century. Still, I don’t know for sure — I never even found out how Nyunga Ro Im got that egg inside you. Who knows? Maybe the Nyunga Ro Im that lays its eggs every hundred years in Sagu only exists on this peninsula, and there are other Nyunga Ro Im that protect their eggs in different ways in other parts of the world.” 
Chagum’s expression suddenly grew serious. He looked at Torogai and said, “I think I know why Nyunga Ro Im picked me.” 
Torogai sat up abruptly. “Really?” 
“Well, I can’t say for certain. But while the egg was guiding me to the spring, I had a dream — a very strange dream. I think I must have seen what the soul of Nyunga Ro Im was dreaming.” Searching for words, he haltingly described the river of life that he had felt flowing through him. “Maybe Nyunga Ro Im chose me because it saw that I was protected by so many other lives. It must have felt that my life was the strongest, one that would protect the egg and give it the best chance of surviving…. But I don’t know how it laid the egg inside me.” 
Torogai pondered this for a while and then nodded. “I see. Hmm. You might be right. Previous Guardians must have been in similar positions or had similar strength. You know, we Yakoo believe that children of eleven or twelve have the strongest life force. The souls of children under seven are not yet firmly rooted in this world, and so they die easily. And at the age of fourteen or fifteen, people’s bodies are preparing to give birth to the next generation, and their energy is channeled into that. Maybe Nyunga Ro Im’s egg is planted by the rain or something, but regardless of how it does it, the spirit picks a child with a strong life force to guard it. Of course, this is just a guess.” She sighed, threw herself onto her back, and stretched out her arms and legs. “Oh, dear. I’ve lived seventy years and there’s still so much I don’t know about this world! Drat! The heavens and earth turn so slowly, as if they didn’t care. Hey, you there, you good-for-nothing apprentice! You’d better give up the idea of being a magic weaver. Nothing could be more frustrating!” 
Tanda smiled wryly. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It will take me at least another fifty years to come to that realization. I’ll stick with it a little longer.” 
Mon and Jin exchanged glances. They had never dreamed that they would one day be sitting around a campfire with people like this. Just as Torogai and her companions lived in their own world, so Jin and Mon were bound to a world that would not let them go, one to which they would return as soon as they entered the capital tomorrow. 
Balsa nudged Chagum and pointed upward. The night sky, so high it seemed it would swallow them, was spangled with stars that looked like silver grains of sand. Until a moment ago, it had been clear, but now a wisp of cloud scudded across it, slender and delicate as a breath on a snowy morning. 
 
At evening on the following day, they reached Yamakage Bridge, which only the royal family and their retainers could cross. Balsa and her companions stopped at the foot of the bridge and watched an ox-drawn carriage pull up in front of Chagum. He turned and looked back at Balsa. 
“Balsa,” he said, “Call me Chagum. Say ‘Farewell, Chagum.’ ” 
Balsa smiled faintly. “Farewell, Chagum,” she said. 
He clenched his teeth. “Thank you. And good-bye. Balsa, Tanda, Master Torogai … Thank you.” 
Then he turned abruptly and bent his head to climb into the carriage. It rolled forward, the sound of its wheels echoing in the valley below. The summer sun flashed on its fittings as it slowly disappeared into the golden light of sunset.