IBTRFL Chapter 39

Aer steadied her breathing and fixed her gaze on the tree ahead. The trunk was thicker than the marble columns of the grandest cathedral she'd ever seen.

Her footing was not what it should be, and her body was not at its best. Even so, something in her said she could cut it.

She dropped her stance and twisted her hips. Left to right. She swung the sword with a slight coiling of torque behind it.

The blade split the grain of the air without snagging and bit into the column of wood with a clean, ringing precision.

The sword the master had made after breaking his long silence passed through the trunk without a moment's resistance.

The massive tree fell like a reed. Somewhere above, mountain birds startled out of branches and spilled into the sky.

The sensation tore up from her fingertips and flooded her spine, her whole body—physical, total, almost indecent in its completeness.

Still shaking slightly, sword in hand, Aer turned back and stared at Djite with an expression that had nowhere left to go.

Djite stood watching with his arms folded. A satisfied smile had found its way onto his face.

"Well?"

"That's—that's impossible. That's completely impossible!"

Aer was too delirious to notice her robe had slipped off her shoulder. She didn't feel the pain in her unhealed right arm at all. She bounced on her heels, once, twice, three times, unable to stop.

Not her right hand either—she'd swung with her left. And that thick trunk had parted like thread.

Her violet eyes—bright and lamp-clear—turned to the sword in her hand with something close to love.

Even when Djite had first held it out to her, she'd known something was different.

The blade was ash-grey, perfectly balanced, and the edge caught the light in a way that was almost uncomfortable to look at.

No flourishes. No ornamentation. The sword simply existed with a ferocious, undeniable presence.

The moment she gripped it, she was certain. She'd held more weapons than she could count, and none of them—not one—came close. This was something from a different order entirely.

That certainty had now been proven without a flaw.

Aer slid the sword into its sheath.

"Grandfather!"

She ran at him like a lamb that had lost its mind and flung her arms around Djite and bounced.

"Oh—you little—your arm—"

"It doesn't hurt! Grandfather, you're the best!"

Djite staggered but turned his face away sharply. The flush that had started at the back of his neck had reached his earlobes.

She'd normally be laughing at him. But Aer's eyes were so full of joy she couldn't see anything at all.

"You reckless thing. You'll be the death of this old man."

Djite cleared his throat and grumbled. Aer finally let go of him.

She was still buzzing with excitement.

"I've never seen a sword like this in my life. Is it really mine?"

Sitting on a rock, Djite let out a short, dry laugh.

"How many times do I have to say it. That sword is yours."

The corners of Aer's mouth climbed until her face muscles, stretched past their limit, gave a small involuntary twitch in protest.

"You're that pleased?"

"Yes!"

The answer came without a moment's thought.

She reached out one finger and deliberately tapped the pommel. A tingling current moved up her arm and hummed at the back of her neck.

"It's the best thing I've ever held. How did you make it?"

Djite unfolded his arms.

"Made it from sky-iron."

"......What?"

"Sky-iron."

'What is this old man even saying right now.'

Aer stared at him, blank. Djite's face remained perfectly, infuriatingly calm.

"Really?"

He nodded. Aer drew a breath and began pulling at her own hair with both hands.

Her stunned mind couldn't get words out in the right order.

“No—wait—sky—no, no, that—that—ugh—that metal, that precious metal, you used that?”

"What of it."

Djite picked at his ear as if she'd raised a point of very mild interest. Aer broke into a cold sweat and looked down at the sword at her hip.

Sky-iron. Harder and sharper than anything that exists on earth. No one had ever established where it came from or how it formed. People simply assumed a god above had sent it down, and so they called it what they did.

Mix in a duck's-egg worth and you had a masterwork blade that any kingdom's ruler would scheme to possess. A fist-sized amount and you had a national treasure the whole continent would go to war over.

"But—hold on—no—Grandfather, how did you even have sky-iron—they say it's nearly impossible to work with—"

"Found it. The working was fine."

Sky-iron wasn’t some neighbor’s dog. Aer’s jaw had stopped taking instructions.

"I came across it while I was running away. About a fist's worth. I mixed in other iron to give it length—but it'll serve."

Aer stared at him with cold sweat running down her back and shouted:

"A fist's worth—no—how could you just give me something like that!"

"Take it. It's a sword for you."

'And for me as well.'

The unspoken second half settled back down. Djite rose slowly to his feet. Aer wrestled with herself for a long moment and finally managed to open her mouth. Djite was the kind of man who wouldn't accept something returned to him. She'd be lucky to escape without a scolding.

"Thank you. I'll pay you back somehow, I promise."

"Don't bother. If you come across good iron in your travels, come back. I'll make you something to rival the armor of the Knight-King."

Aer laughed.

"Is there anything more precious than sky-iron?"

Djite's eyebrow went up.

"You never know. Who's to say you won't stumble onto a whole heap of it someday."

"Fair enough."

The silence that followed Aer's answer came gently, with no warning. Somewhere unseen, the wind moved between them and passed on.

"You're going now."

"I said my goodbyes to everyone in the village."

"......There's something I've wanted to ask. One last thing."

Aer nodded.

Djite let a beat pass, throat moving. Then he spoke in a deep voice, lower and warmer than usual.

"Why did you go that far. For a useless old man."

Aer looked at him for a long moment. Then she turned away and tugged her robe straight.

"Someone I know once told me. That’s what it means to find yourself in someone’s life—the way people do.”

"......"

"I'll be going. Stay well."

Djite stood where he was and watched her back grow smaller.

Everyone grows old. But living as an old man means learning to bear a great many griefs you didn't ask for.

Joints that had long since rusted ached in the cold each night. The fierce drive he’d once carried had weathered away until nothing was left.

In the mirror at idle moments, there was only a wrinkled, wretched old man who had stopped knowing how to dream.

But young people—they shine.

It might be only the longing for everything he'd had to send away. Even so, young people shine.

The untouched purity of them, the will that won't bend. Even their clumsiness, their bravado, their wandering, their impulses—all of it blazes like the sun, bright past looking at directly.

His son had been the same.

Djite had lived again because of his son's light. In his son's growing he'd glimpsed the radiance of his own younger self, and from his son's dreams he'd found the courage to keep going through another tomorrow.

His son was Djite's sun. And the moon that loses its sun does not shine again.

The world lost the beautiful, shifting colors it had held. Djite drifted through an ink-dark world—colorless, sunken, grim.

Life had grown unbearable. Even breathing was a weight.

The broken old man simply wanted to see his son. To go to where his son was.

And yet, here you came.

A bond he'd thought would pass by like any season.

Perhaps that was why—drunk before dawn, he'd spilled out everything he'd let fester inside for so long.

A man nearly seventy years old, complaining to a child who hadn't yet turned twenty.

That undignified, shameful thing had—absurdly—cooled just a little of the heat that had been boiling in his chest.

The dear child had stayed beside this worn-out old man without being asked. She had picked up the ruins of his body and soaked the dust off his cup.

'I said so, didn't I? That I'd pour you a drink.'

The playful parting line of a child who'd been barely holding herself together.

In a child who hadn't yet lived half a life—what had he seen?

The same radiance he'd seen in his son. And at the same time......

Djite watched the girl's retreating back without looking away.

The lines at the corners of his eyes, carved deep by decades, flushed red.

This is the second time. Watching the back of someone young as they go forward into the world.

Young people leave and old people remain. That is a truth that hasn't changed through thousands of seasons.

Djite is an old man. An old man who has lost the brightness of youth, whose beard has gone white with years.

He is too old and worn to walk beside someone with a road still ahead of them.

Djite's eyes wavered with a grief that had no sharp edges anymore.

Beneath the white beard his lips moved, urgent, aching.

There is something he hadn't been able to say. A single word he'd swallowed back down—afraid that saying it aloud would plant a seed of misfortune, or become a burden she'd have to carry. He'd kept it inside himself.

He knew it was an old man's selfish want. Even so, this time, he needed to say it.

So Djite did what his heart told him to and shouted.

"Aer!"

The sound rang off the mountain and came back to him. Aer, just reaching the edge of the slope, went still.

"You come back alive!"

It was a cry full of everything he'd held.

"You come back—without fail!”

It was a farewell sent to his son. And a comfort offered to himself.

Aer didn't turn around. But she raised her hand, high and deliberate, and closed it into a fist.

An answer without words. A promise—long overdue, and desperately wanted.

Djite swayed and sank down where he stood. In eyes that had not wept for a very long time, hot tears finally broke through.

The honest old man, who had never been any good at it, raised his hand—rough and knotted as old bark—and covered his face.

His back, which had endured so much for so long, shook like a child's.

A mournful keening broke apart among the trees and was gone. The green leaves around him swayed, indifferent, and covered it over.

The world is alive.

Djite wiped his eyes and raised his head.

His reddened, tear-filled gaze searched the direction where she had gone.

So what if the blood doesn't mix? So what if it's only a passing bond?

An unburdened smile settled onto Djite's face.

"Isn't that right? My son."

The sun he hasn't felt in a long time is, truly, radiant and warm.

Djite will live.