Of Dreams & Lost Things (G; Hikaru no Go)
Apr. 21st, 2009 05:07 pm![[info - personal]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radiosilence
Of Dreams and Lost Things
“There runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existance.”
I.
The first thing Akira realises as he wakes up is that he has found another, one who can see the lines and lay the stones as he can, one who can see the invisible cities superimposed on the barren landscape as he can, demarcations, scars.
The next thing he realises is that he is alone.
II.
The next time Akira sees the boy is deep in the heart of the City of Undesired Outcomes. “I've laid a stone here already,” he says. The boy shrugs. “May I see your maps?” Akira asks. “I'm caught in a bad shape at the moment.”
The boy looks at him oddly. “I don't have any maps,” he says, eyeing the nineteen-by-nineteen grids of Akira's proffered charts uneasily. “Why would I have maps?”
Akira is unnerved, and tired. Finding this city had been harder than he had expected. “How do you know where to move next if you don't have any maps?” he asks. “How do you know the routes if you can't see the pattern? Haven't you ever gotten stuck, or ended up somewhere you'd already been?”
“No,” the boy says. “Don't you just know?”
“No,” Akira replies, closing his eyes and leaning back on a bloodstained door. From inside he can hear the sound of a woman weeping. “No, I don't.”
When he opens his eyes again the boy is gone.
III.
He is standing both in the City of Irretrievable Moments and in front of his father's massive study desk, though it may seem larger in memory. He is both seventeen and five and his father is holding out sheet after sheet of gridded map paper and quizzing him with that particular downslant in his eyebrows that means he's keeping from smiling. Akira is standing very still and trying to look serious. He doesn't think it's working particularly.
“And,” his father is saying, “why is this a bad shape?”
“You'll have to take away a stone on your next move,” young-Akira chirps, hands behind his back, looking earnest.
“Good,” his father says, “and this one?”
“The shape sends you back to cities you have already marked,” young-Akira says, and his father almost-smiles. “And this?”
Akira looks at the map, at the great white expanse of nothing, and says “I don't know.”
IV.
The City of Forgotten Ambitions is where he finds him next, standing in the centre of the street, standing next to the star-point of light that is the mark of a white stone.
“A well-laid stone,” Akira says, and the boy smiles. “You have a talent for it.”
“So do you, unless the old men in the City of Turning Leaves have all turned liar. Touya Akira.”
“Ah.” Akira flushes slightly. “Then you have me at something of a disadvantage.”
“Do I?” the boy smiles. “Lucky!” he remarks over his shoulder to no one in particular as he walks away.
Akira lets him go.
V.
“Never move outside of the pattern,” his father is telling him, in his memory. “It is dangerous and foolhardy to start randomly laying stones in territory you know nothing about.”
Akira considers it. Dangerous, yes, foolhardy, yes. He stuffs his maps back into his bag and stalks out into the night desert, forgetting connections and junctures and stones and waiting, waiting, waiting for the boundaries of an invisible city to pull him in, to bloom outwards upon him like a hidden flower.
“The City of Necessary Meetings,” the boy says, from where he is sitting at a tilting cafe table under the edges of a striped awning. “Fancy that, eh, Touya? Well, don't stand there looking like a dying carp, sit down!” he snaps, impatiently, and Akira blindly complies. “The name's Shindou Hikaru, by the way. It seems we have things to talk about.”
“It does indeed,” Akira says, pulling out a chair and sitting down. “Doesn't it.”
Hikaru grins.
VI.
In the history books they tell it like this:
At the beginning of the world, there were many cities, connected by trade and commerce and roads and lines of meaning on maps that were green and blue and gold and not just white-black grids with circles like stars laid across them.
In the beginning there were many cities, and they were both similar and different in myriads of ways.
Then, one day barely within the reach of memory, some forgotten god had taken offence at the lines and roads and canals, had spoken out over the earth, “What do you see?” and the answer had been, nothing.
And now there are many cities, but they are silent, unseen, contained; waiting. And there are men and women with grids and stones, who move among them like ghosts, tracing back the roads that were lost so long ago, finding the connections that had been lost.
That is what they say in the textbooks, and Akira has never had a reason to doubt the story's veracity; never had a reason, of course, until the advent of one Shindou Hikaru, who does not believe in maps, whose stones shine brighter than anything he has ever seen, whose smile is lightening quick and tempered with an endless sorrow.
“There was a ghost,” Hikaru says, still smiling. “His name was Sai. He was there, long ago, when the cities were vanished, got caught in something unfortunate—the City of Deep Water, he told me—and he drowned. He taught me to see the invisible connections, the words to lay the stones, how to make the patterns.”
“But it shouldn't work! The way you make your connections—the cities—it shouldn't work!” Akira protests, and Hikaru looks both taken aback and amused.
“Why shouldn't it work?” he demands, while Akira sputters.
“The thing is,” he says, at last. “The thing is there are rules.”
“The thing is,” Hikaru replies, eyes lit with some kind of strange joy, “the thing is it doesn't matter.”
VII.
In memory he sees his father's face, overlaid with exhaustion and Ogata's scowl and words curled tight around the edges of his father's sentences. “The problem is,” he is saying, “sensei, the problem is we keep finding cities that should not be there.”
And his father's voice, confidant-solid-real, “if they are there then they should be there, wouldn't you say? Perhaps there are some questions we ought not to ask.”
“But if we keep following the prescribed patterns—” Ogata had protested.
And then—and then there was something he had wondered about ever since, an exhausted sigh, a shake of the head, a whisper: “I wonder if the prescribed patterns are doing us any good, after all.”
VIII.
“What do you mean, 'it doesn't matter'? Of course it matters!”
Hikaru laughs, leans forward. “Akira,” he whispers. “there is only one city.”
IX.
“Sai saw it,” Hikaru confides, off-handed, drawing huge black splotches over Akira's maps. “But he said he'd never find it. Something about the act of laying the stone, or the movement of hands, or...” he shakes his head, as if to dislodge a stray thought. “In any case, what you will find, after laying down all possible patterns, is that there is really only one city. One city, in many parts.”
“What kind of myth is this?” Akira asks, but there is truth in Hikaru's eyes and his voice when he speaks has no trace of doubt.
“Help me find it,” he says, “Akira.”
X.
(A revised history:
In the beginning there were many cities, connected roads and caravans and lines of light.
But cities, like people, grow and change; what was many became less, as cities merged and joined and lines of connection and meaning were lost in unity.
In the beginning there were many cities, and they were different and the same. But over time they grew not apart but together, and became one: one city, alone.
And then some god (whose name has been lost, forgotten) came to earth and saw the one city, and They said, “What good is this? For there is nothing to hold you together now; and without connections you will be pulled apart.”
And the people stood and cried, “So test us!”
The god saw this, and the one city, alone, and They said, “So find each other.”
The people looked one to the other and said, “We see nothing!”, but by that time the god had already departed.
Some wailed and gnashed their teeth, and went back to their homes to mourn things lost.
Some shrugged their shoulders and shook their heads and carried on as they always had.
And some remembered the god's words, and said, “we will search.”)
“Yes,” says Akira. “I will.”
“If I tell you that the city toward which my journey tends is discontinuous in space and time, now scattered, now more condensed, you must not believe the search for it can stop. ...You can search for it, but only in the way I have said.”
FIN
“There runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existance.”
I.
The first thing Akira realises as he wakes up is that he has found another, one who can see the lines and lay the stones as he can, one who can see the invisible cities superimposed on the barren landscape as he can, demarcations, scars.
The next thing he realises is that he is alone.
II.
The next time Akira sees the boy is deep in the heart of the City of Undesired Outcomes. “I've laid a stone here already,” he says. The boy shrugs. “May I see your maps?” Akira asks. “I'm caught in a bad shape at the moment.”
The boy looks at him oddly. “I don't have any maps,” he says, eyeing the nineteen-by-nineteen grids of Akira's proffered charts uneasily. “Why would I have maps?”
Akira is unnerved, and tired. Finding this city had been harder than he had expected. “How do you know where to move next if you don't have any maps?” he asks. “How do you know the routes if you can't see the pattern? Haven't you ever gotten stuck, or ended up somewhere you'd already been?”
“No,” the boy says. “Don't you just know?”
“No,” Akira replies, closing his eyes and leaning back on a bloodstained door. From inside he can hear the sound of a woman weeping. “No, I don't.”
When he opens his eyes again the boy is gone.
III.
He is standing both in the City of Irretrievable Moments and in front of his father's massive study desk, though it may seem larger in memory. He is both seventeen and five and his father is holding out sheet after sheet of gridded map paper and quizzing him with that particular downslant in his eyebrows that means he's keeping from smiling. Akira is standing very still and trying to look serious. He doesn't think it's working particularly.
“And,” his father is saying, “why is this a bad shape?”
“You'll have to take away a stone on your next move,” young-Akira chirps, hands behind his back, looking earnest.
“Good,” his father says, “and this one?”
“The shape sends you back to cities you have already marked,” young-Akira says, and his father almost-smiles. “And this?”
Akira looks at the map, at the great white expanse of nothing, and says “I don't know.”
IV.
The City of Forgotten Ambitions is where he finds him next, standing in the centre of the street, standing next to the star-point of light that is the mark of a white stone.
“A well-laid stone,” Akira says, and the boy smiles. “You have a talent for it.”
“So do you, unless the old men in the City of Turning Leaves have all turned liar. Touya Akira.”
“Ah.” Akira flushes slightly. “Then you have me at something of a disadvantage.”
“Do I?” the boy smiles. “Lucky!” he remarks over his shoulder to no one in particular as he walks away.
Akira lets him go.
V.
“Never move outside of the pattern,” his father is telling him, in his memory. “It is dangerous and foolhardy to start randomly laying stones in territory you know nothing about.”
Akira considers it. Dangerous, yes, foolhardy, yes. He stuffs his maps back into his bag and stalks out into the night desert, forgetting connections and junctures and stones and waiting, waiting, waiting for the boundaries of an invisible city to pull him in, to bloom outwards upon him like a hidden flower.
“The City of Necessary Meetings,” the boy says, from where he is sitting at a tilting cafe table under the edges of a striped awning. “Fancy that, eh, Touya? Well, don't stand there looking like a dying carp, sit down!” he snaps, impatiently, and Akira blindly complies. “The name's Shindou Hikaru, by the way. It seems we have things to talk about.”
“It does indeed,” Akira says, pulling out a chair and sitting down. “Doesn't it.”
Hikaru grins.
VI.
In the history books they tell it like this:
At the beginning of the world, there were many cities, connected by trade and commerce and roads and lines of meaning on maps that were green and blue and gold and not just white-black grids with circles like stars laid across them.
In the beginning there were many cities, and they were both similar and different in myriads of ways.
Then, one day barely within the reach of memory, some forgotten god had taken offence at the lines and roads and canals, had spoken out over the earth, “What do you see?” and the answer had been, nothing.
And now there are many cities, but they are silent, unseen, contained; waiting. And there are men and women with grids and stones, who move among them like ghosts, tracing back the roads that were lost so long ago, finding the connections that had been lost.
That is what they say in the textbooks, and Akira has never had a reason to doubt the story's veracity; never had a reason, of course, until the advent of one Shindou Hikaru, who does not believe in maps, whose stones shine brighter than anything he has ever seen, whose smile is lightening quick and tempered with an endless sorrow.
“There was a ghost,” Hikaru says, still smiling. “His name was Sai. He was there, long ago, when the cities were vanished, got caught in something unfortunate—the City of Deep Water, he told me—and he drowned. He taught me to see the invisible connections, the words to lay the stones, how to make the patterns.”
“But it shouldn't work! The way you make your connections—the cities—it shouldn't work!” Akira protests, and Hikaru looks both taken aback and amused.
“Why shouldn't it work?” he demands, while Akira sputters.
“The thing is,” he says, at last. “The thing is there are rules.”
“The thing is,” Hikaru replies, eyes lit with some kind of strange joy, “the thing is it doesn't matter.”
VII.
In memory he sees his father's face, overlaid with exhaustion and Ogata's scowl and words curled tight around the edges of his father's sentences. “The problem is,” he is saying, “sensei, the problem is we keep finding cities that should not be there.”
And his father's voice, confidant-solid-real, “if they are there then they should be there, wouldn't you say? Perhaps there are some questions we ought not to ask.”
“But if we keep following the prescribed patterns—” Ogata had protested.
And then—and then there was something he had wondered about ever since, an exhausted sigh, a shake of the head, a whisper: “I wonder if the prescribed patterns are doing us any good, after all.”
VIII.
“What do you mean, 'it doesn't matter'? Of course it matters!”
Hikaru laughs, leans forward. “Akira,” he whispers. “there is only one city.”
IX.
“Sai saw it,” Hikaru confides, off-handed, drawing huge black splotches over Akira's maps. “But he said he'd never find it. Something about the act of laying the stone, or the movement of hands, or...” he shakes his head, as if to dislodge a stray thought. “In any case, what you will find, after laying down all possible patterns, is that there is really only one city. One city, in many parts.”
“What kind of myth is this?” Akira asks, but there is truth in Hikaru's eyes and his voice when he speaks has no trace of doubt.
“Help me find it,” he says, “Akira.”
X.
(A revised history:
In the beginning there were many cities, connected roads and caravans and lines of light.
But cities, like people, grow and change; what was many became less, as cities merged and joined and lines of connection and meaning were lost in unity.
In the beginning there were many cities, and they were different and the same. But over time they grew not apart but together, and became one: one city, alone.
And then some god (whose name has been lost, forgotten) came to earth and saw the one city, and They said, “What good is this? For there is nothing to hold you together now; and without connections you will be pulled apart.”
And the people stood and cried, “So test us!”
The god saw this, and the one city, alone, and They said, “So find each other.”
The people looked one to the other and said, “We see nothing!”, but by that time the god had already departed.
Some wailed and gnashed their teeth, and went back to their homes to mourn things lost.
Some shrugged their shoulders and shook their heads and carried on as they always had.
And some remembered the god's words, and said, “we will search.”)
“Yes,” says Akira. “I will.”
“If I tell you that the city toward which my journey tends is discontinuous in space and time, now scattered, now more condensed, you must not believe the search for it can stop. ...You can search for it, but only in the way I have said.”
FIN
