Author's Note: Okay, this is it. The last chapter of the novelisation. One of the big reasons I like ICO so much is because of its ending - the last five minutes, especially. I would say this is probably my favorite ending to any video game ever (and that's saying a lot). Oh, and I think the title for this chapter is pretty self-explanatory, once you've read it.
Chapter Fifteen – Sunrise
The castle began to tremble in the aftershock of the queen's death, and the tremors did not cease. Indeed, they only grew in power. Chunks of the ceiling came crashing down, dust falling like rain. They avoided the boy lying on the floor, as if afraid of the one who had slain the mistress of the castle. The boy lay with his head in a pool of his own blood, red as the shirt he wore. His horns were nothing but stumps now; one horn lay somewhere towards the middle of the room, and the other was next to his limp body where it had broken off when he hit the wall. The horned child was horned no more.
Outside the royal hall, in the crypt, the only sound was the rumbling of the walls. The rigid form of the princess remained in the same position as before, still and unmoving. Yet after a minute or so had passed, the glowing symbols on the coffins flashed out brighter than before. White magic shot from each of the coffins towards Yorda's statue-like form. The glow of the magic swamped her, hiding her from sight with a rushing sound like a thousand doves taking flight. The magic lit up the disc set into the floor, where the queen had been planning to transfer her soul into Yorda's body. But the queen was not there, so the magic rushed over and into Yorda's greyish body. When the glow finally faded away, a girl sat there in the same position as the statue-like one had. But this girl was not stone-grey, nor blinding white. She was pitch black, with a few crackling offshoots splintering about her limbs. No face could be seen, but the outline was unmistakably Yorda's.
Yorda sat there for a moment, turning her head about to take in her surroundings. She was no longer kneeling at the edge of the retracting bridge, watching Ico fall down the infinite distance to the sea. Now she was in the shaking crypt, looking about at the fifty-four coffins that lined the walls. She looked down at her dark body, so black it almost looked blue, and moved her fingers experimentally. Then she turned to look at the doors to the throne room behind her, open wide like a mouth threatening to swallow the entire world. Slowly, Yorda got to her feet and faced the door, listening closely for any sound. None came, so she slowly made her way up the stairs.
In the throne room, Yorda took in the destruction: the pieces of the ceiling cluttering the floor, the sword embedded in the throne at the back of the room, and the chipped pieces of magical stones heaped about the feet of the throne. Yorda understood almost instantly what had happened, and searched the corners of the room for confirmation. Sure enough, a familiar form lay on his face off to one side, unmoving. Yorda stepped up to him and knelt down at his side. She tentatively reached out with her dark fingers and gingerly touched the stump of one of his horns, which was bathed in red. She looked at him closely, and saw that his chest still rose and fell, though he made no other movement.
Yorda gently turned Ico over so he lay on his back, slung his arm around her neck, and picked him up easily in her arms as though she did this every day. Standing up, she paused for one last look at the throne room and the sword stuck in the throne, then made her way out of the room. Yorda walked slowly, unhurriedly, down the stairs into the crypt, past the coffins, which no longer glowed, and into the little room beyond. Shifting Ico's weight slightly, she pulled the lever and the floor descended to the bottom of the tower. She made her way out to the little dock and saw that the water level had risen. Either that...or the island was sinking.
The spare boat that was always dragged up high on the shore was now floating in shallow water. Yorda gently set Ico into the bottom of the boat, taking care with his wounded head. She looked down at his face one last time, remembering all the expressions she had seen on that face in their one day together. She had seen him angry, afraid, anguished... He had expressed relief, sorrow, and concern so vividly that Yorda had almost not needed to know his language. She remembered his hand, so warm and comforting, closing about her own, and trailed her fingers wistfully along his palm.
Yorda so wished she could join him in freedom! She wanted to walk hand-in-hand with him on the forested cliffs and never have to worry about bars or walls that would pen her in. She longed to cast aside the fear that she had always known in this castle, and she ached to remain by the side of her one and only friend. But she didn't belong with him. She could see that now. She was a monster, just like the queen of this castle, and she didn't deserve to experience freedom. But Ico... He had tried so hard to free her. He had risked his own life, time and time again, to ensure her safety. She wanted to thank him somehow, and the only way she could think to do that was to give him the deepest desire of his heart: freedom.
But Yorda knew she must not tarry long. The water level had already risen alarmingly, and she knew he had to get out from under the island before the opening sank beneath the surface. So she grabbed the side of the boat and pulled it along with her as she waded out, stopping when the water was waist-deep. She gave the boat a little push and watched it float slowly out into the bay beyond. When it passed out of the little opening in the side of the island, Yorda whispered, "Arak quias."
The castle was collapsing in on itself, the walls falling inward, the islands sinking down into the water. The bridge in the room with the chandeliers slipped down into the dark opening below; the windmill toppled over the side of the cliff and into the sea; the coffins tipped over, breaking open and spilling the bones of long-dead children out onto the floor. Flocks of doves fluttered up into the sky as the courtyards where they roosted crumbled into the sea. The sun was just rising, dawning on a new day, proclaiming the end of one era...and the beginning of another.
Ico blinked as the newly-risen sun glared down on his closed eyelids. He shaded his eyes with one hand and looked at the wooden surface directly in front of his nose. The sound of the surf beating against a shore was all he could hear, besides the lone call of a seagull far away. His mind was sleepily blank, devoid of thought, as when one wakes from a midday nap in the sun. Ico could tell, however, from the freshness of the salty air that it was morning. But he couldn't remember where he was, or why he was there. He wasn't sure he wanted to remember; it was so comfortable to just lie in the sun like this, listening to the waves rolling up onto the shore...
He closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but he was already awake, and becoming more alert by the minute. Finally, Ico sat up and saw that he was in a little boat, washed up onto a beach of sparkling golden sand stretching in both directions. Ico got up and vaulted over the side of the boat, feeling refreshed, but as he did his head began to swim, and he toppled to the sand. Pain throbbed on both sides of his head, and once the world stopped spinning around, Ico reached up and experimentally touched the spots where his horns had once been, wincing in pain when his fingers met the fresh wounds. His horns were nothing but stumps of bone now; when he looked at his shadow, he thought that perhaps if he let his hair grow a bit more, it would cover even those remains up.
Getting shakily to his feet, Ico's memories began to come back. He remembered how his horns had broken off in the fight against the queen, but after that everything was blank until he had woken up in this boat. How had he come here? Who had sent him to this beach? Once again, he found himself alive when by all rights he ought to have died. He hadn't expected to survive after the battle with the queen, but it seemed his destiny continued on even after that ordeal. Still...unless the hand of God had literally swooped down and placed him here, he couldn't understand how he had come to be on this beach.
Ico turned around to look out at the bay, but what he saw made him draw in his breath with a gasp. The bay was the same shape; it looked the exactly as it had before, except now it was empty, the view unobstructed all the way to the horizon. The mighty, impossible structure; the tall, narrow islands; the castle and everything in it...all of that was gone, as if it had never been there in the first place. Ico was astonished at how clean everything looked, now that the castle was gone. He felt as though someone had been breathing down his neck for the past twenty-four hours, and had only now gone away.
All the same... Ico realized that Yorda must have sunk with the castle. True, she wouldn't have been able to speak or hold his hand in the petrified state he had last seen her in, but he would have liked to rescue her anyway. It felt melodramatic to be standing on this beach, free and hornless, with no one to share his freedom with. After all that trouble, he was to be left just as he had started: alone.
Ico slowly began trudging along the shore, just to have something to do. His heart felt so heavy, even in the beautiful morning. It was cool enough still that the sand was not too hot on his bare feet, so he took off his sandals and carried them, letting his toes sink down into the sand as he walked. Even as he felt forlorn and lonesome, one of the village priest's favorite sayings came back to him: "There is always something to be thankful for."
Ico sighed and looked around him. True, there were many things to be thankful for. He was alive, after all. Alive and free. He murmured a prayer of thanks, but his heart was still heavy. He walked along the edge of the water, feeling the sand slipping away from him when the water pulled it away, and enjoying the coolness of the water. Finally, he looked up from his feet and saw something lying on the sand in the distance. He couldn't quite make it out; the sun was rising higher and glaring off the bright sand. The thing looked white, whiter even than the sand.
The closer Ico got to the object, the more certain he became that his eyes were playing tricks on him. Perhaps his loneliness was begging his eyes to tell him that it was a person lying on the sand. Yet as he drew ever nearer, he became almost certain that it was a person. Or at least a body. Suddenly his breath caught in his chest and his feet came to a stop. He knew only one person with skin so white, so white it almost seemed to glow in the sunlight.
Dropping his sandals, Ico ran the last several hundred feet, only stopping when his shadow lay over the body. It was Yorda, all right. There was no mistaking it – the bright white skin, the matching dress, the brownish hair lying limply on her neck. Perhaps it was simply the glaring sand behind her, but Ico thought her skin didn't look quite so unearthly pale as it had before; it was tinted ever so slightly pink. Yorda lay with one arm tucked under her head, her other hand lying on the sand. Her eyes were closed, and she was very still – as though in a deep sleep, or...
Ico stared, his heart in his throat, at the girl on the sand. He hardly dared to breathe and forced himself not to think. The moment stretched on and on, and Ico might have stood there for all eternity, but then Yorda's eyelashes twitched and her fingers curled around the rough grains of sand. Slowly, her violet eyes opened and she turned her gaze upward.
"Ico..."
The End