READING THE letter yet again, he found he could no longer process the words. He felt the senseless stupefaction of a lost shepherd, wandering a moor that had grown strange to him. For indeed, he was a shepherd who possessed no master to guide his soul. To Maze, the world had become a sequence of questionable events, entirely devoid of logic.
Why would his master forbid him from returning to the manor? What life awaited him now? He knew not what was required to restore his reality, nor how to return to the peace he had known before he pursued his savior and unsealed that fateful letter.
He held but one desire: to stand once more before the man who had been as a father to him. He longed to look upon his master's face and finally feel the presence of the man who had rescued him from the pit. In his darkest years, that man had been the light that led him from the shadows toward a home and a purpose. It was a bitter grief to feel, forsaken by the truth and plundered of his emotion.
If fear was the sole remnant of his humanity, then he feared his damnation was already creeping within him. When he forced himself to rise, his legs shook under his weight, weak and unsteady like a stranger to his own body. Even his flesh seemed to betray his will.
Maze looked up and beheld flickering dust in the darkening sky. The sight hauled his mind backward to a time of equal despair, as if the past had reached out to claim him. A body crawling in the dirt. A cry of pain. A bruised hand reaching for a blurred figure.
He wanted them to flee from his mind.
It only brought pain and misery.
But he clearly knew that hand . . . was his master who had saved him before. The shepherd tried to close his eyes to still the vision, but a sharp ache stirred within his chest. He wondered, with a heart full of bitterness, if he were even permitted to feel such grief.
He remained wary of what the letter advised: to open the small, fist-sized chest. It was with a desperate hope that he sought to claim the so-called sevenfold reward before the occurrence of the eclipse. He feared he was running out of time, yet he could not fathom what it was his master truly desired for him to achieve.
Perhaps he still possessed a moment of grace. Indeed, even if time failed him, he might have to flee and return to the mountains where he was once saved, there to despair with what remained of his life. To live in regret for refusing what was meant for him would be a secondary death.
Yet, whether his master was truly safe remained a question he could not yet conclude. It might merely be a bluff.
A cruel act.
Biting his lower lip, Maze walked back to the tilted carriage. It leaned on the axle where a wheel should have been, and the harnesses hung loose where the horses had escaped. The road remained unnervingly clear. There was not a spray of blood to stain the dirt, and no splinters were evident of an ambush or a struggle. As he traced the frame of the carriage, he found neither scratches nor broken wood to prove an accident had somehow occurred. It sat there clean and emptied, resembling the silence of the closed border a hundred meters ahead.
Then there was the fog, thickening and strange.
Maze leaned into the carriage's dark interior, yet no sign of travel met his gaze. Not a trunk, nor a discarded cloak, nor any trace of the man he sought remained. He pressed his palms to his temples, straining to catch the faintest sound — a hoofbeat, the rustle of a leaf, a breath — but the world stood abandoned and indubitably still.
When he returned to the bench and scrutinized the fist-sized chest, he dared not lay a finger upon it. He had never coveted such a reward, as wealth held no charm for a soul satisfied by bread and milk alone. For him, the quiet life of a shepherd was the only bounty he deemed himself worthy to possess.
For him, shepherding was one of the real rewards he could ever reap.
Not this blessing, whatever it was. Not the letter. If he could change one thing, he would choose not to see his master at all, if it meant he would not be stripped of the life he had been given.
It was as if he were being flayed.
With these rushing thoughts in his head, his chest had tightened and wrestled, with his heart being cut into a thousand pieces. However would he determine such pain, like it was a form of betrayal, and whatever this feeling was, it screamed at him to depart and escape. To not accept this simple life waiting, or the strange incident playing before his eyes.
He could not accept the reality of the morrow.
However —
"He said he would like to give you rewards for taking care of his sheep."
"Are they bread and milk?"
"Have you had enough of those, Maze?"
Maze recalled how he was stupefied, and how Mr. Ivory became grumpy at first, but then softened.
"It is different this time, something that not even wealth could offer . . . but I do wish your life will take you somewhere else with that, not concerning your shepherding, but a life of your own."
Then, what was different this time, that Maze could not envision himself? They talked about something that he should have decided on his own, and hoped for a life that Maze had not hoped for. There was Mr. Ivory, and even the master's letter. Whatever wealth could offer, or a reality that was not shepherding, the very idea was simply impossible.
When he glanced at the letter once more, he tried to make it make sense for him.
「. . . Fret not, young man, for your life has just begun. Simply do not look for me . . . 」
「. . . So shall there be a sevenfold reap for you alone as a token of my gratitude. I bestow upon you my blessing . . . 」
「I wish for your well-being.」
「May a path be open before you, Maze.」
Looking at that, it was clear his master was sincere. Maze could only sigh and shake off his troubles, folding the letter and keeping it in his pocket.
He slowly reached for the chest. When he grasped it, he looked at how small it was, and at how mysterious and odd it appeared. The mark on the lid, the expensive embossment of gold and silver, the silver lining, and the heaviness all seemed to ridicule a mere dust like him.
At any moment, the eclipse would occur. Must I open it then, before it is too late? After all, it would be such a waste not to. The master who took care of him would be disappointed. With that thought, he still had not come to terms with the growing sadness, but there was no choice but to accept whatever promise they claimed awaited him.
He must claim it for himself.
Doing nothing until it was too late was a predicament he might regret later. Especially since, if it meant returning the favor to his master, he should probably do it, even if he did not like the idea of starting anew. Maze hoped that one day, he could see his face for once, that he might hear his voice as they would have a conversation together.
Shoving away his reluctance, Maze cracked the lid. Golden spores hissed into the air, sparking like collective fireworks against the gloom. The chest began to rattle and shake as if something inside were desperate to escape. One, a single gold fabric lashed out. Two, another leaped from the box.
Maze attempted to step back even before the rest could follow, but the egress of the ribbons was much quicker than his feet.
Then, as many as a swarm, the fabrics multiplied and jumped out one by one. They coiled around his wrists like living tentacles and slithered upward, the strands moving as if they were snakes seeking his throat. Maze dropped the heavy, vibrating box and scrambled backward again, his heels skidding in the dirt as he tried to outrun the gold. He gasped for air, his chest heaving and his eyes stretching wide with dread. Suddenly, the poor shepherd's legs tangled, and he tumbled to the ground.
To hell must be this happenstance.
He could not even think of something while the gold ribbons mummified his limbs. They galloped across the cold, hard ground to bind him tight, wrapping his body in layer after layer. Maze clawed at each of the fabrics covering his skin, but his fingers found no purchase. He was failing and failing, while his consciousness was weakening.
No, no . . . This cannot be . . . His thoughts were being devoured. With his vision blurring, even the fog had swallowed the surrounding, and a heavy darkness consumed what was left of the light. Maze tried to look up, and to his surprise, the moon had been blotted out by a blackened star.
The eclipse had already begun.
It might have indicated his late decisiveness.
Perhaps, he was too late.
He sat paralyzed on the cold ground while the gold fabrics tightened their feast upon his skin. His heart hammered against his ribs and his head throbbed with every beat. Motionless and trapped, he could only draw what felt like his final, restless breath.
But a sudden shift startled him.
The pressure of the bindings slowly vanished second after second, with the fabrics easing their grip. There was a phantom crawling sensation moving upward over his skin, again and again, but it had not the nature of a snake. It was as if there were cold water being sucked by his skin. When he looked down at his trembling arms and legs, the fabrics were gone.
He could still see —
So where did they go?
As he stood up and picked up the chest ahead, nothing could be seen anymore inside. Something lingered inside Maze. A kind of bad omen.
Then there was an echoing screech in the sky.
A flap of wings.
It appeared that there was a creature flying.
It was utterly preposterous that such a thing was now landing toward him!