A Quiet Walk, chapter 4
Feb. 19th, 2008 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainsometimesPosting the penultimate chapter of this fic here while pondering if I should go ahead and post the final and fifth chapter to ff.net now, or look it over for a possible final rewrite first.
Anyway, here's chapter 4.
Continues from Chapter 3
Chapter 4: The Twilight Street
-In which we pass through narrow streets of cobble and stone: a door opens, and an ascent is contemplated
When the door appeared he almost walked right past it. It was only at the last moment that something clicked in his head and he turned around to look more closely across the street. There was nothing dramatic about either the whitewashed brick wall or the rounded wooden door in the middle of it, painted green. But it looked very much like it hid something secret, leading somewhere worth going.
Or it might not be. Only one way to find out.
He looked up and down the road before crossing it slowly, feeling absurdly that he ought not to make any sudden movements, as if the green door would sprout wings and fly away otherwise.
...Damn, but his thinking was growing more and more muddled around here. He almost wanted Sanji to be there just to kick some sense into his head. Except that the love-cook would almost certainly go crazy before he did, he corrected himself immediately.
The lock seemed to be made out of the same basic white material as the key he had picked up earlier, though yellowed by the sun and not sparkling in the least. The key fit perfectly. And the hinges hardly even squeaked as he pushed the door open.
He blinked.
*
“Let’s start by that big clock-tower over there! L-bird, this way!”
“Ah?! Okay!”
“Whoa, that’s some way up, all right…”
“Can’t be helped! All the better view from it! Let’s go, guys!”
*
Beyond the green door lay an ordinary-looking street that began – or ended – with the white-washed brick wall and stretched out a fair bit into the distance. Most of the houses were fairly low, rarely more than three or four stories high, though it seemed the ones at the far end of the street were taller. The street was narrow and dusty like everywhere else, but not very dirty or littered. A kite lay abandoned in the dust not far from the wall, but that was all he could see.
And the sky…
Zoro blinked again, then fairly stared.
He turned back, looking up at the sky above the first street from where the green door opened up, where he was still standing. Yep, there the sun was, burning hotly right down on his back, the sky a cloudless azure blue, while the shadows down below were small and tiny and maybe even actually smaller than they should be at around a quarter past one or whatever the time might be. Certainly still early afternoon, though, and still very dry and hot.
But on the other side of the green door, the narrow long street and its houses were shrouded in – well, not quite darkness, it didn’t look like night-time, but most definitely a dark dusk. Actually, the gray-blue sky didn’t quite look like a normal nightfall sky either. Zoro had never witnessed a solar eclipse, but he could imagine it might make the sky dark in this very way. Except that while the sun could not be seen at all on this side of the door, the houses very oddly still had shadows – huge, sunset-tall shadows that criss-crossed the narrow road.
At the very far end of the street, as it veered off to one side, he could just about make out a small white square, probably the sunlit side of a distant building. So it looked like the strange semi-darkness only lasted across this one street and its adjoining alleys. This one passage through the dusk.
Zoro grinned slowly, widely. Well, this was more like it.
*
There was no drop in temperature as he stepped onto the darkened street. Despite the absence of visible sunlight, the air was just as hot and dry on this side of the door.
He shrugged. Just one more weird thing among many.
As he stood there with one hand on the door handle, he had the distinct impression that if he let the green door stand ajar, he could go back here later if he wanted to; but if he shut it close, he would be unable to return this way. Even if he didn’t lock the door – even while keeping the sparkling key in his pocket. It also felt like no-one else could follow him through the green door into this part of the town, if he were to shut it completely.
But that was exactly the way it should be. No turning back. He closed the door behind him without the slightest hesitation.
It was preternaturally silent on this side of the door. He’d thought the rest of the town was quiet, but in here he couldn’t catch even the slightest breath of air and no rustling of leaves. The houses didn’t creak; there were no scuttling lizards, falling acorns or buzzing insects, and no other little mysterious noise either. The silence reigned absolute but for the sound his steps and his breathing made – and even they seemed strangely muffled.
He fingered the hilts of his swords slowly and thought it was probably a good sign, this deafening, expectant silence. Something seemed likely to happen soon enough.
Then he thought he caught a movement in the corner of one eye, something small rolling on the ground at high speed. He spun around but there was nothing there.
He passed the crumpled kite lying in the middle of the road and spied a cat in the next alley over, crouching low and watching him indolently while biting into something small it was holding between its paws. Zoro gave it a wary look, but it didn’t start talking or turn into something else as he’d half expected. It made no noises as it ate. (He craned his neck without meaning to but couldn’t make out what kind of animal the cat’s meal had been.)
What are you doing here? Why are you here? the empty houses and the dark gaping eyes of their windows seemed to ask, but it was only echoes in his mind from the birds’ words earlier.
No, I am not hiding, he thought. What would I be hiding from? Nothing has scared me recently. There’s nothing like that going on.
But…I’m not having an adventure on my own either. Don’t get me wrong, adventures are fine and all, but really…they belong with Luffy. That’s not what’s going on either.
So am I here to fight someone, then? Maybe. Maybe not. Just – There’s just something I’ve got to do, something I’ve got to find here. Could be a sword, or an enemy, or something else... But there’s got to be a reason this town exists for me here. It’s something that I’ve got to accomplish. On my own.
Is that really too much to ask?
*
About halfway down the street and without the slightest warning, he felt the smell of dewy grass on a summer night. His nostrils widened and he stopped, looking around. Nothing had changed on the street. Still hot and dry and dusky, not a straw of grass in sight.
Yet…
it smelled just like the grass had smelled on that one night outside the dojo so many years ago now. When three katanas had been gleaming, as one sword met two in the moonlight…
The smell disappeared within seconds, the air was dry and sandy once more, and he started to walk again. Really, there’d been no point in stopping in the first place. No use in trying to understand it.
Of course he wasn’t hiding. There was nothing to hide from.
And there was absolutely no reason for something inside his chest to hurt, even for just a moment.
So he looked down on the ground and decided it hadn’t.
*
“Huh? What’s that?... Hey, you guys, there’s something big moving over there!”
“What? Where? Oh, I see it!! It’s someone walking, isn’t it?”
“Great! Maybe it’s the one we’re looking for!”
“…What’s that it’s dragging behind it? Looks weird from up here.”
“I want a closer look! I’m going down!”
“Yeah!! Me, too!!”
“H-Hey! Don’t fly too close now – we don’t know what kinda person it is!”
“Yeah, but how else will we find out?!”
*
Zoro was only four short blocks from the end of the street when he caught a glimpse of something gleaming in the dark side street he was just passing, something that looked metallic.
He turned around and shouted: “Who’s there?”, one hand ready to draw if need be. But there was no answer. He felt a bit foolish, yet tempted to go in pursuit just this once, for hadn’t that been the flash of steel?
He took one hesitant step towards the alley…
And stopped as he heard squawks of happy surprise in the air above him.
“Hey! There he is!”
“Great! You’re not invisible anymore!”
“Invisible?” said Zoro, frowning. He stared up at the black birds with about equal measures of relief, apprehension, guilt and irritation, with a sprinkling of bewilderment on top. For some reason he wouldn’t have thought even birds would be able to come here, once the green door was shut close.
“Where the hell did you go?” he shouted.
They blinked at him, looking first confused, then indignant.
“Whaddya mean?” yelled the Luffyesque bird. “You’re the one who didn’t wanna talk to us anymore, you dummy! You sent us away!”
“No, I didn’t! You just disappeared on your own! Jerks!” Zoro added for good measure.
“You’re the jerk!”
“Hey!” yelled U-bird, looking from one to the other with annoyance. “Could you two do this some other time? L-bird, we’ve got something to tell him, remember?”
“Oh! That’s right!” The small black bird brightened again. “Hey, Swords-guy, we’ve found your opponent!”
“What– ?!”
“Well, we’ve found someone, at any rate,” said U-bird. “A really suspicious type, too.”
“Yep! Over there somewhere!” said L-bird, one claw waving vaguely to what Zoro thought of as the left.
“Over there,” corrected U-bird. “And N-bird’s keeping an eye on her right now so she can’t get away!”
“Her?” Zoro felt the blood draining from his face, his grip tightening to the point of pain on Wadou’s hilt. Oh, fuck...
“Yep, some old granny carrying a big knitting around!” burbled L-bird, and Zoro slumped in relief. “She says she’s eaten the Dream Dream Fruit and that she MADE all this!” the bird went on, sweeping one wing widely, apparently to indicate their entire surroundings. “But N-bird thinks she’s just making it up!”
U-bird nodded. “Yeah, she said, and I quote, ‘you’re just someone Mr. Swordsman has been dreaming up!’ Man, N-bird’s really stuck on that one theory of hers.”
“Huh,” said Zoro. “Doesn’t sound like a fighter.” Not that he didn’t know full well about deceptive appearances. Some appearances were extremely honest, though. “But I guess I could go take a look at her.”
U-bird swooped higher and pointed with one wing. “Great! Look, I think it’s best if you just keep going this street to the end. Right to the left there’s a square that opens up, and it was around there we left her. N-bird said she’s going to leave tracks for us to follow.”
Zoro nodded in acknowledgement. “Okay. Sounds good.” He started to pick up his step.
“Hey, I told you not to turn around!” protested U-bird. “Straight ahead!”
“What, like this?”
“No!! Now you’ve gotta turn!”
L-bird laughed. “That looks so funny!”
Zoro scowled at him. “Like you’re one to talk,” he and U-bird said in chorus.
“Yeah, whatever,” said L-bird, flapping his wings energetically. “Just don’t turn invisible again, okay? That was boring!”
“L-bird, I keep telling you, he never was invisible in the first place…”
“How d’you know? If someone is invisible you can’t know, can you? Anyway, who cares!? Let’s go after that weird old granny already! Yay!”
Zoro sighed imperceptibly and followed the birds. Aah, what the hell. It was kinda good to see them back, anyway.
*
It was a really small square, he noted as he left the twilight street and entered sunlight again. The opening was flanked with narrow brick buildings whose windows were mostly boarded up. There was a lot of dust flying around, and more flies than he’d seen anywhere else in this town. A chestnut tree looked rather forlorn where it stood at its closest end, dropping chestnuts on his head as they passed. The most notable thing about the square was a wide and very high staircase of stone that mounted from one end of the square up high into the side of a hillside – Zoro couldn’t see where it led, but it wasn’t as if he had time to stand and gawk. The birds circled about looking for clues with a rather confused air, and it was Zoro who happened to notice the thin red thing on the ground first.
“Hey, what’s that?” he asked, pointing with Wadou.
“Huh?” L-bird and then U-bird hurried over to there. “Hey, it’s a red thread!” The thread began right there in the approximate centre, then ran over about half the square towards the foot of the great stone steps.
Zoro sheathed the sword and crossed his arms. “Could that be from the knitting you were talking about? The one the old lady had.”
“Oh!!” exclaimed L-bird, jumping up and down. “That’s it, it must be! There was a lot of red in it! Right, U-bird?”
“Yeah, that’s gotta be it! That’s pretty smart of N-bird. Now all we have to do is to follow that thread and we’re bound to catch up with them!”
“It seems to lead up the steps,” noted Zoro. “So, N-bird’s alone with that old woman, then?”
U-bird nodded. “Yeah, she said she was the best choice because she’d be able to keep track of her the best, and find her again if she had to break off and fly away to us.”
L-bird clouded. “I wanted to follow the weird granny, but N-bird said I’d only cause trouble,” he grumbled.
“Amazing,” said Zoro evenly. He was now almost at the foot of the steps.
“But it’s no good!” L-bird suddenly exclaimed, looking bothered. “I wanna see what they’re up to! That old granny could be doing something cool – or she might be mean to N-bird! Okay!!” He took a dramatic extra leap in the air. “I’m going up to take a look! Don’t go away now, Swords-guy! I’ll be back soon!”
Zoro raised an eyebrow as he looked up at the small shape of the ascending little bird.
“You know,” he said calmly after a pause, “if Orangey really were in trouble up there, then how would he be able to help her? Being a small bird, I mean.”
“Good question,” said U-bird. He’d landed on the stone handrails close by, and was sitting there silently for a few moments. Then he took an indecisive hop to the left and then flew up a short bit, sat down again and then jumped right back, twisting his head and looking pretty damn worried.
“You know,” he suddenly said, “you know, I – I think I’d better go check on them. Just – just to make sure they’re not getting into trouble…um…don’t lose the thread or N-bird will mangle me, okay?! Be right back!” And then he was off as well, flying up at a high speed but in an anxiously teetering fashion, sort of like a shot from a drunk but experienced archer.
The unseen clock struck half past one.
Wait a minute... he’d never heard it strike a quarter past. That was odd. Maybe it was out of order.
Alone again, Zoro squinted in the sunlight, looking up the stone steps. The air was trembling with heat.
Why was he hesitant all of a sudden, why did he feel reluctant to follow the red thread of yarn up these steps? He glanced behind him: the exit from the dark twilight street was still not very far from here, across the small square. He couldn’t say why he felt an urge to go back there, as if he’d forgotten something important and precious he needed to bring with him.
It didn’t make any sense to think that. There had been nothing there on the twilight street, nothing except a teasing glint of steel that hadn’t led anywhere. Up there he might find a confrontation, a way to take action, a worthy purpose – maybe even a chance of gaining the new sword he was looking for – and also the possibility of a way out of this place. And more and more, he was beginning to feel like he was running out of time.
And yet…
He wasn’t wounded, felt no fatigue, wasn’t even sleepy in the least (though he wouldn’t have minded a drop of booze). He felt perfectly fine and healthy. Yet as he looked up on the towering stone steps above him, his limbs felt heavy and reluctant, his mind getting more sluggish. Maybe there might be another way – But no. No.
Luffy was counting on him. They were all counting on him.
He had a promise to keep.
He’d already climbed about five steps before it occurred to him to wonder: since when did the promise become the second thing in his mind, instead of the first?
*
He climbed the many stone steps with a mounting sense of urgency, picking up speed as he went. The ascent was less tiring than it had seemed at the foot, but the steep climb, the absence of landings and the hot midday sun still made for heavier going than he felt they ought to have done.
About halfway up, he failed to see a small grey ball of yarn until he had already stepped on it. Very quickly he’d gotten tangled into the yarn, lost his balance but luckily toppled forward instead of backward, slid down ten meters but managed to stop the fall after that. The grey thread of the troublesome ball and the guiding red thread were a tangled mess, and it took him some time to untangle himself without cutting the red thread. Further up, the grey thread ran up the steps side by side with the red one.
A few minutes after that, a huge purple ball of yarn, bigger than Chopper in Guard Point, tumbled down from the top right at Zoro. He had to draw both swords and hack through the yarn in order to get it out of the way. Even when sliced through, the strands of yarn still moved on their own, trying to form a net around him, so he was forced to whack them away with the flat of his swords and then jump up several meters above the tangle to move forward.
So…a knitting enemy that attacked with threads and balls of yarn, he thought. Rather silly, but he’d seen sillier. Ah, well.
Then L-bird and U-bird reappeared for the last thirty meters or so, flying down from the top to keep him company for the last bit. L-bird looked bright-eyed and dishevelled, as if he’d been in a satisfying scrap. U-bird looked distinctly annoyed. Zoro gave them a look and decided not to say anything.
When he finally reached the top he didn’t bother with turning around to look at the view, although he was sure you could see a lot of the sleeping dusty town from here. Again he felt pressed for time, and focused wholly on the wide expanse in front of him instead.
*
Well, how about that. This actually looked pretty much like the big central piazza he’d been picturing all along. On the opposite side of the vast open square rose a narrow building with a tall, imposing tower – probably the town’s clock-tower, as there was a big clock-face on top of it, and had great slits in its walls high up where the bells must be. The left side of the piazza was guarded by a big square building furnished with lots of Marine flags and insignia, probably the local HQ. But there were no soldiers around. The right side was taken up by two more luxurious structures – palaces of some kind, he supposed. At the approximate centre of the square was a fountain, and this one was whole and functioning, its water sparkling in the sunlight. Not far from it stood a statue of bronze and a largeish block of stone. The red and grey threads that had leapt up the stone steps both led to the fountain and joined there with many other threads in one huge multicoloured knitting at least three meters long. And sitting on the edge of the fountain still knitting it was the old woman the bird had told him about.
She was big and gnarled, with a round stomach and wide shoulders and a huge head of curly grey hair all tangled up like a bird’s nest. Her body was wrapped in a tattered black cloak, and the arms and legs that stuck out from it were long and skinny but not without muscle. She looked pretty ugly to Zoro, with pockmarks and warts on her wrinkled old face and two short hairs on her chin, but her small eyes were bright and alert when she looked up at him as he came closer.
“Ah, there you are, dearie,” she said kindly, nodding at him without pausing in her knitting. “You look like you’ve been walking for some time to get here. You must be feeling rather hot and tired. Why don’t you sit down here by the fountain for a while?”
“Hey,” said Zoro, pointing at the clock-tower, “is that thing not working properly, or what? I heard it strike one o’clock and then half past one, but never a quarter past one.”
The old woman smiled. “Ah. Then you must have passed through the twilight passage on your way here. I thought you might – you seem to be the type. No, you wouldn’t have heard the bells strike while in there.” She reached for yet another thread of yarn and twined it into the knitting. “Sounds from the rest of the town tend not to reach that place. By the way, did you find anyone to fight in that place?”
“No.”
“Hm. Perhaps you didn’t look for it well enough.”
“What?” said L-bird, looking perplexed. “Was there some fighter around there?” He swerved to Zoro accusingly: “You never said! You said you wanted to find some big open place like this, so that’s what we looked for! Otherwise we could have looked for a dark alley instead!”
Zoro waved dismissively. “Nah, it’s nothing. Forget it, it doesn’t matter.” He shifted position, leaning Wadou in its scabbard against his shoulder. “These guys say you’ve got devil fruit powers, old lady.” He thumbed towards the birds, who had sat down further away on the fountain, L-bird much closer to the old woman than U-bird.
The old woman nodded with a smile. “Why, so I have,” she said lightly. “I’ve eaten the Dream Dream Fruit, and that gives me the power to move into other people’s dreams and manipulate them to my liking. My real body may not be very strong, but I can always slip away from stronger people into the nearest open dream. And I cross from one dreamer’s mind to another’s as easily as you cross the street. Not perhaps the most useful ability from a fighter’s point of view, but it can come in pretty handy at many times.”
“Don’t listen to her, Mr. Swordsman!” N-bird suddenly appeared from behind the statue, flying over towards them. She looked a bit dishevelled as well, Zoro noted. “I don’t think there really is any Dream Dream Fruit,” continued the orange bird. “Look at her, she’s all flat and weird – I don’t think she’s a real person at all! And she talks like a cliché of a devious old witch! I bet she came right from your head, just like we did!”
“You’re both nuts,” said Zoro. “I told you, this doesn’t feel like a dream.” It was true that the old woman did look a bit flat-ish, kind of like many of the houses in this town. But so what? And the birds didn’t look like that. “Hey, old lady,” he continued lazily, tilting his head back, “I don’t have time to stop for a chat. I’m looking for a new sword and a way out of here. If you don’t know anything about either of those things, just don’t stand in my way. Okay?”
He heard U-bird mutter softly to N-bird as she landed beside him, “Why is it that I totally hear ‘Hey, you wanna fight, or what?’ behind those words?”
N-bird mumbled in reply, “If he were talking to someone else, I’d wonder why he has to look so evil when he says it. But that old biddy absolutely deserves it.”
“Why you would have to go provoke a devil fruit user is beyond me,” said U-bird, but now Zoro was zoning them out, focusing on the old woman.
She was looking up at Zoro, squinting in the sunlight. “Well, dearie, if you put it like that, I think I will be in your way.” She grinned a wide, gap-toothed smile; then she pointed one of her knitting needles at him, and suddenly it grew longer and wider until it reached the length and width of a lance, prodding his stomach with a razor-sharp point.
“En garde, young pirate!”
(To Be Concluded)
Anyway, here's chapter 4.
Continues from Chapter 3
Chapter 4: The Twilight Street
-In which we pass through narrow streets of cobble and stone: a door opens, and an ascent is contemplated
When the door appeared he almost walked right past it. It was only at the last moment that something clicked in his head and he turned around to look more closely across the street. There was nothing dramatic about either the whitewashed brick wall or the rounded wooden door in the middle of it, painted green. But it looked very much like it hid something secret, leading somewhere worth going.
Or it might not be. Only one way to find out.
He looked up and down the road before crossing it slowly, feeling absurdly that he ought not to make any sudden movements, as if the green door would sprout wings and fly away otherwise.
...Damn, but his thinking was growing more and more muddled around here. He almost wanted Sanji to be there just to kick some sense into his head. Except that the love-cook would almost certainly go crazy before he did, he corrected himself immediately.
The lock seemed to be made out of the same basic white material as the key he had picked up earlier, though yellowed by the sun and not sparkling in the least. The key fit perfectly. And the hinges hardly even squeaked as he pushed the door open.
He blinked.
*
“Let’s start by that big clock-tower over there! L-bird, this way!”
“Ah?! Okay!”
“Whoa, that’s some way up, all right…”
“Can’t be helped! All the better view from it! Let’s go, guys!”
*
Beyond the green door lay an ordinary-looking street that began – or ended – with the white-washed brick wall and stretched out a fair bit into the distance. Most of the houses were fairly low, rarely more than three or four stories high, though it seemed the ones at the far end of the street were taller. The street was narrow and dusty like everywhere else, but not very dirty or littered. A kite lay abandoned in the dust not far from the wall, but that was all he could see.
And the sky…
Zoro blinked again, then fairly stared.
He turned back, looking up at the sky above the first street from where the green door opened up, where he was still standing. Yep, there the sun was, burning hotly right down on his back, the sky a cloudless azure blue, while the shadows down below were small and tiny and maybe even actually smaller than they should be at around a quarter past one or whatever the time might be. Certainly still early afternoon, though, and still very dry and hot.
But on the other side of the green door, the narrow long street and its houses were shrouded in – well, not quite darkness, it didn’t look like night-time, but most definitely a dark dusk. Actually, the gray-blue sky didn’t quite look like a normal nightfall sky either. Zoro had never witnessed a solar eclipse, but he could imagine it might make the sky dark in this very way. Except that while the sun could not be seen at all on this side of the door, the houses very oddly still had shadows – huge, sunset-tall shadows that criss-crossed the narrow road.
At the very far end of the street, as it veered off to one side, he could just about make out a small white square, probably the sunlit side of a distant building. So it looked like the strange semi-darkness only lasted across this one street and its adjoining alleys. This one passage through the dusk.
Zoro grinned slowly, widely. Well, this was more like it.
*
There was no drop in temperature as he stepped onto the darkened street. Despite the absence of visible sunlight, the air was just as hot and dry on this side of the door.
He shrugged. Just one more weird thing among many.
As he stood there with one hand on the door handle, he had the distinct impression that if he let the green door stand ajar, he could go back here later if he wanted to; but if he shut it close, he would be unable to return this way. Even if he didn’t lock the door – even while keeping the sparkling key in his pocket. It also felt like no-one else could follow him through the green door into this part of the town, if he were to shut it completely.
But that was exactly the way it should be. No turning back. He closed the door behind him without the slightest hesitation.
It was preternaturally silent on this side of the door. He’d thought the rest of the town was quiet, but in here he couldn’t catch even the slightest breath of air and no rustling of leaves. The houses didn’t creak; there were no scuttling lizards, falling acorns or buzzing insects, and no other little mysterious noise either. The silence reigned absolute but for the sound his steps and his breathing made – and even they seemed strangely muffled.
He fingered the hilts of his swords slowly and thought it was probably a good sign, this deafening, expectant silence. Something seemed likely to happen soon enough.
Then he thought he caught a movement in the corner of one eye, something small rolling on the ground at high speed. He spun around but there was nothing there.
He passed the crumpled kite lying in the middle of the road and spied a cat in the next alley over, crouching low and watching him indolently while biting into something small it was holding between its paws. Zoro gave it a wary look, but it didn’t start talking or turn into something else as he’d half expected. It made no noises as it ate. (He craned his neck without meaning to but couldn’t make out what kind of animal the cat’s meal had been.)
What are you doing here? Why are you here? the empty houses and the dark gaping eyes of their windows seemed to ask, but it was only echoes in his mind from the birds’ words earlier.
No, I am not hiding, he thought. What would I be hiding from? Nothing has scared me recently. There’s nothing like that going on.
But…I’m not having an adventure on my own either. Don’t get me wrong, adventures are fine and all, but really…they belong with Luffy. That’s not what’s going on either.
So am I here to fight someone, then? Maybe. Maybe not. Just – There’s just something I’ve got to do, something I’ve got to find here. Could be a sword, or an enemy, or something else... But there’s got to be a reason this town exists for me here. It’s something that I’ve got to accomplish. On my own.
Is that really too much to ask?
*
About halfway down the street and without the slightest warning, he felt the smell of dewy grass on a summer night. His nostrils widened and he stopped, looking around. Nothing had changed on the street. Still hot and dry and dusky, not a straw of grass in sight.
Yet…
it smelled just like the grass had smelled on that one night outside the dojo so many years ago now. When three katanas had been gleaming, as one sword met two in the moonlight…
The smell disappeared within seconds, the air was dry and sandy once more, and he started to walk again. Really, there’d been no point in stopping in the first place. No use in trying to understand it.
Of course he wasn’t hiding. There was nothing to hide from.
And there was absolutely no reason for something inside his chest to hurt, even for just a moment.
So he looked down on the ground and decided it hadn’t.
*
“Huh? What’s that?... Hey, you guys, there’s something big moving over there!”
“What? Where? Oh, I see it!! It’s someone walking, isn’t it?”
“Great! Maybe it’s the one we’re looking for!”
“…What’s that it’s dragging behind it? Looks weird from up here.”
“I want a closer look! I’m going down!”
“Yeah!! Me, too!!”
“H-Hey! Don’t fly too close now – we don’t know what kinda person it is!”
“Yeah, but how else will we find out?!”
*
Zoro was only four short blocks from the end of the street when he caught a glimpse of something gleaming in the dark side street he was just passing, something that looked metallic.
He turned around and shouted: “Who’s there?”, one hand ready to draw if need be. But there was no answer. He felt a bit foolish, yet tempted to go in pursuit just this once, for hadn’t that been the flash of steel?
He took one hesitant step towards the alley…
And stopped as he heard squawks of happy surprise in the air above him.
“Hey! There he is!”
“Great! You’re not invisible anymore!”
“Invisible?” said Zoro, frowning. He stared up at the black birds with about equal measures of relief, apprehension, guilt and irritation, with a sprinkling of bewilderment on top. For some reason he wouldn’t have thought even birds would be able to come here, once the green door was shut close.
“Where the hell did you go?” he shouted.
They blinked at him, looking first confused, then indignant.
“Whaddya mean?” yelled the Luffyesque bird. “You’re the one who didn’t wanna talk to us anymore, you dummy! You sent us away!”
“No, I didn’t! You just disappeared on your own! Jerks!” Zoro added for good measure.
“You’re the jerk!”
“Hey!” yelled U-bird, looking from one to the other with annoyance. “Could you two do this some other time? L-bird, we’ve got something to tell him, remember?”
“Oh! That’s right!” The small black bird brightened again. “Hey, Swords-guy, we’ve found your opponent!”
“What– ?!”
“Well, we’ve found someone, at any rate,” said U-bird. “A really suspicious type, too.”
“Yep! Over there somewhere!” said L-bird, one claw waving vaguely to what Zoro thought of as the left.
“Over there,” corrected U-bird. “And N-bird’s keeping an eye on her right now so she can’t get away!”
“Her?” Zoro felt the blood draining from his face, his grip tightening to the point of pain on Wadou’s hilt. Oh, fuck...
“Yep, some old granny carrying a big knitting around!” burbled L-bird, and Zoro slumped in relief. “She says she’s eaten the Dream Dream Fruit and that she MADE all this!” the bird went on, sweeping one wing widely, apparently to indicate their entire surroundings. “But N-bird thinks she’s just making it up!”
U-bird nodded. “Yeah, she said, and I quote, ‘you’re just someone Mr. Swordsman has been dreaming up!’ Man, N-bird’s really stuck on that one theory of hers.”
“Huh,” said Zoro. “Doesn’t sound like a fighter.” Not that he didn’t know full well about deceptive appearances. Some appearances were extremely honest, though. “But I guess I could go take a look at her.”
U-bird swooped higher and pointed with one wing. “Great! Look, I think it’s best if you just keep going this street to the end. Right to the left there’s a square that opens up, and it was around there we left her. N-bird said she’s going to leave tracks for us to follow.”
Zoro nodded in acknowledgement. “Okay. Sounds good.” He started to pick up his step.
“Hey, I told you not to turn around!” protested U-bird. “Straight ahead!”
“What, like this?”
“No!! Now you’ve gotta turn!”
L-bird laughed. “That looks so funny!”
Zoro scowled at him. “Like you’re one to talk,” he and U-bird said in chorus.
“Yeah, whatever,” said L-bird, flapping his wings energetically. “Just don’t turn invisible again, okay? That was boring!”
“L-bird, I keep telling you, he never was invisible in the first place…”
“How d’you know? If someone is invisible you can’t know, can you? Anyway, who cares!? Let’s go after that weird old granny already! Yay!”
Zoro sighed imperceptibly and followed the birds. Aah, what the hell. It was kinda good to see them back, anyway.
*
It was a really small square, he noted as he left the twilight street and entered sunlight again. The opening was flanked with narrow brick buildings whose windows were mostly boarded up. There was a lot of dust flying around, and more flies than he’d seen anywhere else in this town. A chestnut tree looked rather forlorn where it stood at its closest end, dropping chestnuts on his head as they passed. The most notable thing about the square was a wide and very high staircase of stone that mounted from one end of the square up high into the side of a hillside – Zoro couldn’t see where it led, but it wasn’t as if he had time to stand and gawk. The birds circled about looking for clues with a rather confused air, and it was Zoro who happened to notice the thin red thing on the ground first.
“Hey, what’s that?” he asked, pointing with Wadou.
“Huh?” L-bird and then U-bird hurried over to there. “Hey, it’s a red thread!” The thread began right there in the approximate centre, then ran over about half the square towards the foot of the great stone steps.
Zoro sheathed the sword and crossed his arms. “Could that be from the knitting you were talking about? The one the old lady had.”
“Oh!!” exclaimed L-bird, jumping up and down. “That’s it, it must be! There was a lot of red in it! Right, U-bird?”
“Yeah, that’s gotta be it! That’s pretty smart of N-bird. Now all we have to do is to follow that thread and we’re bound to catch up with them!”
“It seems to lead up the steps,” noted Zoro. “So, N-bird’s alone with that old woman, then?”
U-bird nodded. “Yeah, she said she was the best choice because she’d be able to keep track of her the best, and find her again if she had to break off and fly away to us.”
L-bird clouded. “I wanted to follow the weird granny, but N-bird said I’d only cause trouble,” he grumbled.
“Amazing,” said Zoro evenly. He was now almost at the foot of the steps.
“But it’s no good!” L-bird suddenly exclaimed, looking bothered. “I wanna see what they’re up to! That old granny could be doing something cool – or she might be mean to N-bird! Okay!!” He took a dramatic extra leap in the air. “I’m going up to take a look! Don’t go away now, Swords-guy! I’ll be back soon!”
Zoro raised an eyebrow as he looked up at the small shape of the ascending little bird.
“You know,” he said calmly after a pause, “if Orangey really were in trouble up there, then how would he be able to help her? Being a small bird, I mean.”
“Good question,” said U-bird. He’d landed on the stone handrails close by, and was sitting there silently for a few moments. Then he took an indecisive hop to the left and then flew up a short bit, sat down again and then jumped right back, twisting his head and looking pretty damn worried.
“You know,” he suddenly said, “you know, I – I think I’d better go check on them. Just – just to make sure they’re not getting into trouble…um…don’t lose the thread or N-bird will mangle me, okay?! Be right back!” And then he was off as well, flying up at a high speed but in an anxiously teetering fashion, sort of like a shot from a drunk but experienced archer.
The unseen clock struck half past one.
Wait a minute... he’d never heard it strike a quarter past. That was odd. Maybe it was out of order.
Alone again, Zoro squinted in the sunlight, looking up the stone steps. The air was trembling with heat.
Why was he hesitant all of a sudden, why did he feel reluctant to follow the red thread of yarn up these steps? He glanced behind him: the exit from the dark twilight street was still not very far from here, across the small square. He couldn’t say why he felt an urge to go back there, as if he’d forgotten something important and precious he needed to bring with him.
It didn’t make any sense to think that. There had been nothing there on the twilight street, nothing except a teasing glint of steel that hadn’t led anywhere. Up there he might find a confrontation, a way to take action, a worthy purpose – maybe even a chance of gaining the new sword he was looking for – and also the possibility of a way out of this place. And more and more, he was beginning to feel like he was running out of time.
And yet…
He wasn’t wounded, felt no fatigue, wasn’t even sleepy in the least (though he wouldn’t have minded a drop of booze). He felt perfectly fine and healthy. Yet as he looked up on the towering stone steps above him, his limbs felt heavy and reluctant, his mind getting more sluggish. Maybe there might be another way – But no. No.
Luffy was counting on him. They were all counting on him.
He had a promise to keep.
He’d already climbed about five steps before it occurred to him to wonder: since when did the promise become the second thing in his mind, instead of the first?
*
He climbed the many stone steps with a mounting sense of urgency, picking up speed as he went. The ascent was less tiring than it had seemed at the foot, but the steep climb, the absence of landings and the hot midday sun still made for heavier going than he felt they ought to have done.
About halfway up, he failed to see a small grey ball of yarn until he had already stepped on it. Very quickly he’d gotten tangled into the yarn, lost his balance but luckily toppled forward instead of backward, slid down ten meters but managed to stop the fall after that. The grey thread of the troublesome ball and the guiding red thread were a tangled mess, and it took him some time to untangle himself without cutting the red thread. Further up, the grey thread ran up the steps side by side with the red one.
A few minutes after that, a huge purple ball of yarn, bigger than Chopper in Guard Point, tumbled down from the top right at Zoro. He had to draw both swords and hack through the yarn in order to get it out of the way. Even when sliced through, the strands of yarn still moved on their own, trying to form a net around him, so he was forced to whack them away with the flat of his swords and then jump up several meters above the tangle to move forward.
So…a knitting enemy that attacked with threads and balls of yarn, he thought. Rather silly, but he’d seen sillier. Ah, well.
Then L-bird and U-bird reappeared for the last thirty meters or so, flying down from the top to keep him company for the last bit. L-bird looked bright-eyed and dishevelled, as if he’d been in a satisfying scrap. U-bird looked distinctly annoyed. Zoro gave them a look and decided not to say anything.
When he finally reached the top he didn’t bother with turning around to look at the view, although he was sure you could see a lot of the sleeping dusty town from here. Again he felt pressed for time, and focused wholly on the wide expanse in front of him instead.
*
Well, how about that. This actually looked pretty much like the big central piazza he’d been picturing all along. On the opposite side of the vast open square rose a narrow building with a tall, imposing tower – probably the town’s clock-tower, as there was a big clock-face on top of it, and had great slits in its walls high up where the bells must be. The left side of the piazza was guarded by a big square building furnished with lots of Marine flags and insignia, probably the local HQ. But there were no soldiers around. The right side was taken up by two more luxurious structures – palaces of some kind, he supposed. At the approximate centre of the square was a fountain, and this one was whole and functioning, its water sparkling in the sunlight. Not far from it stood a statue of bronze and a largeish block of stone. The red and grey threads that had leapt up the stone steps both led to the fountain and joined there with many other threads in one huge multicoloured knitting at least three meters long. And sitting on the edge of the fountain still knitting it was the old woman the bird had told him about.
She was big and gnarled, with a round stomach and wide shoulders and a huge head of curly grey hair all tangled up like a bird’s nest. Her body was wrapped in a tattered black cloak, and the arms and legs that stuck out from it were long and skinny but not without muscle. She looked pretty ugly to Zoro, with pockmarks and warts on her wrinkled old face and two short hairs on her chin, but her small eyes were bright and alert when she looked up at him as he came closer.
“Ah, there you are, dearie,” she said kindly, nodding at him without pausing in her knitting. “You look like you’ve been walking for some time to get here. You must be feeling rather hot and tired. Why don’t you sit down here by the fountain for a while?”
“Hey,” said Zoro, pointing at the clock-tower, “is that thing not working properly, or what? I heard it strike one o’clock and then half past one, but never a quarter past one.”
The old woman smiled. “Ah. Then you must have passed through the twilight passage on your way here. I thought you might – you seem to be the type. No, you wouldn’t have heard the bells strike while in there.” She reached for yet another thread of yarn and twined it into the knitting. “Sounds from the rest of the town tend not to reach that place. By the way, did you find anyone to fight in that place?”
“No.”
“Hm. Perhaps you didn’t look for it well enough.”
“What?” said L-bird, looking perplexed. “Was there some fighter around there?” He swerved to Zoro accusingly: “You never said! You said you wanted to find some big open place like this, so that’s what we looked for! Otherwise we could have looked for a dark alley instead!”
Zoro waved dismissively. “Nah, it’s nothing. Forget it, it doesn’t matter.” He shifted position, leaning Wadou in its scabbard against his shoulder. “These guys say you’ve got devil fruit powers, old lady.” He thumbed towards the birds, who had sat down further away on the fountain, L-bird much closer to the old woman than U-bird.
The old woman nodded with a smile. “Why, so I have,” she said lightly. “I’ve eaten the Dream Dream Fruit, and that gives me the power to move into other people’s dreams and manipulate them to my liking. My real body may not be very strong, but I can always slip away from stronger people into the nearest open dream. And I cross from one dreamer’s mind to another’s as easily as you cross the street. Not perhaps the most useful ability from a fighter’s point of view, but it can come in pretty handy at many times.”
“Don’t listen to her, Mr. Swordsman!” N-bird suddenly appeared from behind the statue, flying over towards them. She looked a bit dishevelled as well, Zoro noted. “I don’t think there really is any Dream Dream Fruit,” continued the orange bird. “Look at her, she’s all flat and weird – I don’t think she’s a real person at all! And she talks like a cliché of a devious old witch! I bet she came right from your head, just like we did!”
“You’re both nuts,” said Zoro. “I told you, this doesn’t feel like a dream.” It was true that the old woman did look a bit flat-ish, kind of like many of the houses in this town. But so what? And the birds didn’t look like that. “Hey, old lady,” he continued lazily, tilting his head back, “I don’t have time to stop for a chat. I’m looking for a new sword and a way out of here. If you don’t know anything about either of those things, just don’t stand in my way. Okay?”
He heard U-bird mutter softly to N-bird as she landed beside him, “Why is it that I totally hear ‘Hey, you wanna fight, or what?’ behind those words?”
N-bird mumbled in reply, “If he were talking to someone else, I’d wonder why he has to look so evil when he says it. But that old biddy absolutely deserves it.”
“Why you would have to go provoke a devil fruit user is beyond me,” said U-bird, but now Zoro was zoning them out, focusing on the old woman.
She was looking up at Zoro, squinting in the sunlight. “Well, dearie, if you put it like that, I think I will be in your way.” She grinned a wide, gap-toothed smile; then she pointed one of her knitting needles at him, and suddenly it grew longer and wider until it reached the length and width of a lance, prodding his stomach with a razor-sharp point.
“En garde, young pirate!”
(To Be Concluded)