Neither Good Nor Evil

Chapter III

Neither Good Nor Evil

The ocean was the same in every direction: grey-green, endless, with that slow movement that sometimes looked like breathing. The ship pressed on without hurrying, and Rebecca and Ciri had solved the problem of free time in the most predictable way possible: a board game about accumulating wealth and ruining everyone else.

Ciri was doing very badly.

"How do you do it?" the girl whined, staring at her position on the board with the look of someone who has just lost something important.

"You have absolutely no grasp of finance," said Rebecca, moving a piece with complete ease. "You'd burn through a fortune in half a day."

"That's not true."

"You just mortgaged the bakery to buy a lot that connects to nothing."

Ciri looked at the board. She didn't answer.

In the cabin, the captain was smoking his pipe with the unhurried ease of someone who is in no rush for anything. A thread of sweet smoke curled in through the half-open window. He was humming something quietly — a slow, slightly irregular melody, the kind that sounds like it has traveled from mouth to mouth across generations and lost a few notes along the way. He glanced at the horizon, narrowed his eyes, and stuck his head out the window.

"We're getting close! Get ready!" he shouted.

Rebecca looked up from the board.

"Listen to me," said Ciri, in a tone slightly different from her usual one.

"What is it?"

"Relax. Nobody is going to attack us in the third ring."

Rebecca set her piece down on the board and fixed her eyes on Ciri.

"This time tell me exactly what it is."

Ciri moved a piece with studied calm, as if the question had no urgency.

"Remember what I told you? That the third ring is different for each person."

"Yes."

"In my case, it no longer applies. Since I've crossed before, the trial recognizes me and lets me through."

Rebecca stood up sharply. The pieces jumped off the board and rolled across the floor.

"What exactly does that mean?" she demanded.

"The third ring determines whether the island accepts you. It evaluates everyone who tries to enter for the first time. If you don't pass..."

Rebecca's heart started beating faster. Sweat prickled at the back of her neck.

"What happens if I don't pass?"

Ciri let out a short laugh, almost mischievous.

"If the island doesn't accept you, you'll be unconscious until we carry you out of the zone."

Rebecca looked at her.

"That's it? I thought you were going to tell me I'd die."

"Why would you die?"

"Never mind," Rebecca replied, with a thread of irony.

Ciri stood up, took Rebecca by the shoulders with both hands, and guided her gently toward the mess hall sofa.

"What are you doing?"

"Sit down and get comfortable."

"How am I supposed to get comfortable before a trial?"

"Trust me."

✦ ✦ ✦

The ship entered the fog without warning.

It wasn't gradual: one moment the horizon was clear, and the next the vessel was wrapped in a mist so thick that the deck lights barely managed to illuminate a meter in any direction. The temperature changed all at once, as if someone had opened a door onto somewhere else. A cold, damp stillness settled into the lungs.

The fog began seeping into the ship through window frames and door gaps, soft and silent, as if it had somewhere to be.

"It got very cold all of a sudden," Rebecca murmured, and yawned. "And very sleepy."

Ciri sat down beside her and put a hand on her shoulder.

"That's normal. You're going to sleep now and be evaluated. Don't be afraid."

Rebecca's eyelids were heavy. She resisted for a moment, out of habit, and then stopped resisting. The last thing she saw before the darkness closed in was Ciri's face looking at her with an expression that, for once, held nothing sardonic in it at all.

✦ ✦ ✦

She woke up suddenly.

She was not on the ship.

She was on a street. The sun beat hard on the pavement and the air smelled of frying oil and hot dust. Birds sang somewhere in an invisible tree, and nearby children were running and laughing — that unmistakable sound that play has when there is still nothing to worry about. Rebecca looked around slowly, taking in every detail.

"Where am I? A moment ago I was on the ship..."

She started walking. It was a neighborhood of low houses, with laundry hung over balconies and a street food stall sending fragrant smoke across the sidewalk. Rebecca was heading toward it almost on instinct when a boy came running from a corner, straight at her.

He passed right through her.

Rebecca went still. The chill that ran down her spine had nothing to do with the temperature of the place.

"Am I dead?" she murmured. "When did that happen?"

Then came the sound.

First a sharp whistle, then the impact: an explosion that shook the ground and made the air vibrate in her chest. Then another. And another. Smoke began rising a block away and people ran in every direction, screaming, colliding with each other, dropping whatever they'd been carrying.

"We're under attack! Run!"

Rebecca looked up. Projectiles were arcing across the sky, falling like hail onto the houses. An entire building collapsed with a low roar and a cloud of white dust that swallowed everything for a few seconds.

When the dust settled, she saw the boy.

He was sitting on the ground in front of the rubble of what had been his home. Fire was consuming what remained of the facade. The boy wasn't running, wasn't screaming; he was crying in that silent, total way that children cry when the tears go beyond fear.

"Mama... I want my mama..."

He had blood on his forehead — a clean cut from some piece of debris. Rebecca went to him and crouched down.

"Are you all right? Does anything hurt?" she asked, reaching out her hands.

Her fingers passed through him as if he were made of air.

"Hey. Can you hear me?"

Nothing.

"Poor thing," said a voice to her left.

Rebecca stood and turned.

The figure watching her had the head of a stag: the skull clean and white, with its antlers branching intact toward the sky. It wore a long black robe that reached the floor, and its hands and feet were bare bone, without flesh. It stood still with the specific calm of something that has no need to move in order to be threatening. And yet, strangely, it gave off no hostility. It was more like encountering something very old that is simply there.

"What are you?" asked Rebecca, without fully dropping her guard.

"I'm only here to observe. Same as you."

The figure turned its dark eye sockets toward the boy.

"What do you think will become of this child?"

Rebecca looked around, checking whether it could be speaking to anyone else.

"Are you talking to me?"

"Well... I have no idea," the being admitted, in a tone Rebecca couldn't quite read.

The bombardment stopped. In its place came the tanks: first the metallic grinding of tracks on asphalt, then the columns of soldiers advancing in formation, rifles forward. They began rounding up survivors into lines, pushing them, separating families. Voices pleading and cries of grief mixed together until they became one uniform, terrible sound.

Rebecca watched, unable to do anything. The helplessness was physical — a pressure in her chest.

"Why are they doing this? What's happening?"

"Do you think that boy should take revenge on those who did this to him?" the being asked.

"How is a child that small supposed to take revenge?"

"What if he grows up to become a powerful Summoner?"

The being tilted its stag head slightly.

"If you were in his place, with that power... would you?"

Rebecca was quiet. And in that silence a memory surfaced — sharp and unannounced, the way the ones that matter always do.

It was night. A campfire. The sound of crickets in the dark and the smell of burning wood mixed with the smell of a roasted corn cob that Rebecca was holding in both hands, blowing on it to cool it down.

"What do you think of Summoners?" asked the man sitting beside her.

"They're incredible. Mastering the aura is amazing."

The man laughed — not mockingly, but with something closer to tenderness.

"You're right about the aura. But being a Summoner doesn't make you a good person."

"Why not?" asked the girl, tilting her head.

"Because the aura is neither good nor evil, Rebecca. It answers to the heart of whoever uses it, even if that heart is full of darkness. I've seen it with my own eyes. Never forget that."

The memory faded.

Rebecca looked at the being with clear eyes.

"I wouldn't become a killer for the sake of revenge. That's not something my father would do. And it's not something I would do."

"Are you certain?"

"Completely."

The being tilted its head the other way, with that slow motion that creatures without facial expressions use to communicate something anyway.

"I see. That boy, after losing his family, grew up feeding on hatred. Years later he traveled to an island and learned to master the aura. When he returned, he used that power to seize control of his nation and started a war that left tens of thousands dead. He shattered a peace treaty that had taken two peoples generations to achieve."

Rebecca looked back at the boy, who was being dragged by a soldier toward the line. So small. Still so unaware of what he would carry inside him.

"What a shame," she said quietly.

The light vanished.

Not gradually — all at once, like a candle being snuffed out. The neighborhood, the smoke, the noise, the boy: everything was gone. Rebecca and the being were suspended in a darkness so absolute that up and down lost their meaning. There was no ground beneath her feet, or if there was, she couldn't tell.

"So it was all an illusion. I should have figured."

The being moved closer. Its bones creaked with each movement — crack, crack — that dry, articulated sound of old bone. It raised one arm slowly and set its hand on top of Rebecca's head.

"Hey. None of that, bonesy."

"Wake up," the being whispered.

The darkness began dissolving at the edges, like ink spreading through water. Rebecca felt her eyes closing on their own, with no way to resist, as the voice went on resonating from somewhere that was no longer quite that place.

✦ ✦ ✦

On the ship, Ciri and Captain Silverbeard had been beside the sofa where Rebecca slept for some time. Ciri had her eyes fixed on the young woman's face with that quiet focus she put on when something genuinely mattered to her but she didn't want it to show too much.

Rebecca's eyelids moved.

"She's waking up," said Ciri.

Rebecca's eyes opened slowly, as if it cost her. The mess hall ceiling appeared blurred, then gradually came into focus. Beside it, Ciri's face.

"Ci... Ciri. Is that you?"

Ciri jumped back with a small cry of delight that made Rebecca sit up with a start.

"You did it! Now you'll be able to enter the island!"

"One of these days you're going to be the death of me, girl!"

The captain's laugh filled the mess hall.

"What is it, old man?"

"Since the moment I saw you," said Silverbeard, wiping a tear of laughter, "you've reminded me of someone who came through here a long time ago. A man they called el Demens."

Rebecca got up from the sofa and began stretching her arms and neck. Her joints cracked like unoiled hinges.

"That was my father."

"I see," said the old man, in a tone that suggested this answered several questions at once.

"How long was I asleep?"

"About twelve hours," Ciri answered.

"Twelve hours? No wonder my body feels like this. I'm going to stretch outside."

She went up to the deck. The air was different: saltier, denser, with that weight the wind takes on when land is near. Seagulls had multiplied their presence; there were dozens of them, gliding over the ship and settling on the masts with complete indifference to the humans below.

"We're almost there," said Ciri, appearing at her side. "Look."

Rebecca narrowed her eyes toward the horizon. What she saw didn't resemble the image she'd built up of an island.

"That looks like a continent."

"It's approximately five hundred thousand square kilometers."

Rebecca leaned her forearms on the railing and stared. The landmass drawing closer was green and dark, with mountains that reached the base of the clouds and a coastline that stretched in both directions until it disappeared. There was the next step. The one that had begun the day she found her father's old notebook among things she shouldn't have been going through, in a drawer that had been shut for years.

Here I come, she thought, without saying it out loud this time.

✦ ✦ ✦

The ship docked at the pier of Pascue: a small town of low houses and stone streets that smelled of dried fish, damp wood, and some stew someone was preparing nearby. Summoner families, Ciri had said. Shops, inns, everything a person arriving from far away with little money needed to get their bearings.

"Finally," said Rebecca, stepping onto solid ground and immediately noticing the difference beneath her feet. "I thought that journey would never end."

"Everyone can disembark!" the captain announced from the deck.

A little further along, at the far end of the pier where the dock became a path, a young woman was running toward the town with the energy of someone who has just arrived somewhere she doesn't want to be found. She wore a pink dress, a short white jacket, and black boots, and her blonde hair was loose, blown by the wind along with the dry leaves that drifted down from the trees in small spirals.

"It'll take them a while to find me this time," she was saying to herself, smiling, as her steps carried her into the same streets of Pascue that Rebecca had just set foot on.