Free The Book of Heroes by Miyuki Miyabe Page A

window, her whole body tensed.
    Abruptly, the silhouette of the cottage appeared in the headlights. It was like it hadn’t existed until that very moment. Like it had been an animal, sleeping until the sound of the car’s engine woke it and sent it lumbering into the light.
    Where the night sky and the mountains and the forest had seemed dark, the cottage was darker still as if it had trapped inside it all the darkness from all the nights it had been left abandoned. Though the darkness in the air around it was free to leave at dawn, the darkness within the cottage was permanent. In the days and weeks it had sat there, the darkness had piled up, condensing. It looked like the weight of all that darkness had pushed Minochi’s cottage even closer to collapsing than it had been the last time they visited.
    The car stopped. Her father turned off the engine.
    “Time to get out, Yuriko.”
    Yuriko was clutching her backpack to her chest as if it were a bulletproof vest. The last bit of overgrown road up to the house was short, but very steep, keeping them from just driving up. Her father had to use the clippers just for them to get to the cottage door. The grass and weeds and brambles had all grown tall. There was no sign that anyone had cut a path.
    Yuriko had tripped walking up it the last time they were here and found a chunk of old pavement stone in the grass. There had been several of the smooth flat stones lying here and there. Her brother had noticed them when he came to help her to her feet. He hadn’t said anything at the time, but later when he was telling their parents about it, he suggested that Mr. Minochi might have once been rich, but had since fallen on hard times.
    Her mother and father had looked at one of the smooth cobblestones, then at each other.
    “Must’ve been hard for him to keep this place in shape,” her father had said.
    “If he needed money, why didn’t he sell his books?” her mother had wondered.
    How had he gone all the way to Paris in search of old books, but not been able to pay for the upkeep on his own cottage?

    “Hiroki! Hiroki!” Yuriko’s mother called as she waved her flashlight about and tried to push past her husband.
    “Hey, watch it. I don’t want to catch your hand with this thing,” her father warned, swinging the cutter, but it seemed like her mother couldn’t even hear him.
    No matter how many times her mother called, nothing stirred. She searched, looking for some light that wasn’t there. It seemed to Yuriko that her mother’s eyes burned with an intensity so bright, she half expected them to reflect in the windows. But the windows were dark.
    The front door was locked, and with more than just an ordinary lock. Someone had attached a light green-colored metallic plate to the door and the frame just above the knob, from which hung a large padlock. Both looked brand-new, like someone had slapped them on by magic just moments before.
    “Who did this? The lawyer? Your brother?” Mother asked in a panic.
    “How should I know?” her father snapped. “Get a handle on yourself, Yoshiko,” he said, grabbing her by the shoulder and shaking her. Her eyes seemed to lose their focus. The burning intensity in them went dull. The hand gripping the flashlight lowered to her side.
    In the end, they decided to break in through one of the windows on the first floor. Her father cut his wrist a little when he reached in through the broken pane to undo the crescent-shaped lock on the window frame. Yuriko, with her small size and light weight, had the easiest time getting through the window once it was open. Inside, the place smelled like dust. The darkness pressed in on her. Yuriko sneezed and had to press her face into her backpack to stop.
    “Hiroki! Hiroki?”
    Her father and her mother moved through the cottage, shining flashlights into every corner.
    Yuriko heard the red book whisper to her where it touched the tip of her nose through the thin fabric of her