Free The Book of Heroes by Miyuki Miyabe

enough.
    I guess so.
    That reminded Yuriko that her grandfather had said once that they should consider his late adoptive brother to be family. It was the least they could do, seeing as how there was no one else left to remember him. Her grandmother had been worried about the grave. Who would wash it and make visits? she asked.
    —He was a very solitary man.
    My great-uncle, you mean?
    —Yes. I was only in the cottage for three years myself, but it was immediately clear he lived alone. But, the book added, he didn’t seem lonely.
    Even though he lived alone?
    While she was waiting for his reply, Yuriko remembered something important.
    Wait, didn’t you say the Hero was there at the cottage with you? Does that mean the Hero is a book too?
    The book answered, his voice so faint Yuriko felt she had to press her hand harder against the cover just to hear it.
    —That’s right.
    So it was one of the books my great-uncle bought?
    —Yes. I don’t know where he got it, if that’s what you want to know. Though one of my friends probably does.
    Then how did my great-uncle manage to escape it? How come the Hero didn’t take him?
    They had left the expressway and were now on a city street, under the light of streetlamps and shop signs. Though they were indistinguishable from the night sky now, Yuriko knew they were surrounded by little hills, and in the distance, mountains. The little building indicators on the car’s GPS screen had grown few and far between.
    —It’s difficult to explain.
    This was hardly a surprise for Yuriko by now.
    —See, what we call the Hero isn’t even in this Circle. It ’s in another place, imprisoned.
    A police car pulled out of a side street, turned toward them, and passed by. Yuriko saw the officer in the passenger seat craning his neck to look inside their car. Her father drove smoothly, and her mother didn’t even seem to notice the police. Her eyes were fixed on the road ahead, like she could already see the cottage in the mountains before them, her son huddled in a dark room, only a flashlight or a candle for light, an old blanket or jacket draped over his shoulders.
    —The Hero has a power other books lack. And the copies of the Hero that exist here, in your Circle, act as a conduit for that power. They’re not the Hero itself, but they’re a part of the Hero, in a manner of speaking.
    So the book that Hiroki had found in Ichiro Minochi’s cottage had been a copy. Yuriko had never heard of anything so strange, or so intriguing.
    So what’s the point in throwing the Hero in prison if there are copies all over the place? Yuriko asked with all the indignant fury a fifth grader could muster.
    The red book didn’t flinch. If the Hero were free to roam, it would roam throughout the Circle, its copies multiplying freely. That we have as few copies to deal with as we do now is thanks to the fact that the Hero is imprisoned in the nameless land.
    The “nameless land”? Yuriko was pretty sure she hadn’t heard of any place like that yet. She was about to ask the book about it when the car bounced suddenly and her backpack slid off her lap. Her hand lost contact with the book.
    They had just run out of paved road. Her father tensed in the driver’s seat, and her mother pushed with renewed intensity on the dashboard.
    “Almost there now. Up this road, right?”
    “I’m pretty sure there’s only one way to go.”
    Yuriko caught herself so she wouldn’t hit her head on the back of the seat, and managed to reach down and pick her backpack up off the floor.
    Outside the car, beyond the beams of the headlights, the night was pitch black. The wavering lights made it look like the trees that came looming out of the darkness were swaying their branches and dancing along the sides of the road. Who goes there, bringing light into our mountains at such an hour? Who is it who needs light to enter our woods? The leaves rustled. The branches swayed. Without realizing it, Yuriko shrank away from the