ICO: Castle in the Mist by Miyuki Miyabe, Alexander O. Smith

with her right ear against the ground. Her shoulders were hunched and her legs were bent at the knees, as though she had been cowering in a chair. Even in stone, the supple lines of her shape, like the branches of a willow tree, were beautiful.
    Her eyes were open wide in a stony stare. She almost seemed to be smiling at Toto. Perhaps she was someone’s mother or sister. He wondered what her last words had been—what she had been thinking when she died.
    “I’m sorry,” Toto whispered, covering his face with his hands. He began to cry. I never should have come here. I shouldn’t have set foot in this place. What a fool I am.
    He sobbed out loud now, unable to restrain himself any longer, and his shoulders heaved. The motion must have disturbed the wall behind him, for he heard a loud noise and the sound of something crumbling. Toto jumped to his feet and looked to see that a pole holding the window shutters open from the outside had fallen and collapsed into dust.
    On his knees now, Toto shuffled away from the window. He saw the face flying through the sky, drawn by the noise. Toto’s stomach did a somersault.
    She’ll find me!
    There was no escape outside. He considered moving into another room. He could see a doorway, but a large cupboard had fallen over in front of it, and he didn’t think he’d be able to climb over in time. He looked around for any other exits.
    Toto spotted an opening in another wall. He moved, quick as a woodland hare, dashing through the opening and then falling headfirst. As he began to tumble, he realized he was on a staircase leading into a cellar.
    At the bottom, his head hit a wall, sending stars through his vision, and he heard an incredible crashing noise from above. A moment later, the light coming in through the doorway at the top of the stairs dimmed.
    Toto sat up and looked around in the meager light. Where he had rolled through the cellar, things lay broken, just like the fruit upstairs.
    I’m trapped...
    Toto looked up at the thin ray of light shining through a hole in the rubble above. It looked like pieces of the house had fallen over the top third of the stairway. He wondered if he might be able to clear it out by hand.
    But if I go up there, that monster will be waiting for me.
    Toto turned back to the darkness of the cellar. The chilly air and dusty smell were the same as they had been above. It seemed large for an underground room. Maybe that meant another exit.
    Toto began to crawl along the floor, searching. His hands met only the cold stone beneath him. He groped toward the right and found another wall. He pried at it with his fingers for a moment, then stopped.
    Wait, that’s not a wall. It’s a piece of furniture. It’s divided into sections—and there’s something inside.
    In the darkness, Toto’s face took on a serious, grown-up expression—the kind he’d never shown to anyone before, not even Ico. He began probing the cavity intently with his fingers, feeling the shapes of the objects, tapping them lightly with his fingers. He wrapped the tips of his fingers around one.
    It moved and fell into Toto’s hand. He picked it up carefully and brought it into the light at the bottom of the stairs.
    It was a book. He had found a bookshelf.
    Of course the book was stone. He couldn’t open it, and his fingers left small indentations in the cover. In the dim light it was hard to make out the words, but he could see enough to tell that they were written in unfamiliar letters.
    Toto was reminded of the bookshelves in the elder’s house. He and Ico had been scolded once when they snuck in to take a look. In that house, every part of the wall, save the door itself, was covered in books. The book of stone he held in his hands now looked a lot like those in the elder’s study.
    Maybe this place was a study too? He wondered if the master of this house had been an important person like the elder. A scholar of ancient wisdom. Toto tried to be careful, yet even steadying