If you have not played the game, do yourself a favor and not read this.  Go play the game first.  You can rent it and finish it in two days, although, if you are at all like me, you will probably want it added to your permanent collection.  Once you have completed the game, do come back and read my story as a companion piece.  On another note, if you have no idea of what Ico is about, you might want to check out the first chapter and see if the game sounds interesting to you.  The first chapter covers a prologue not shown in the game—the whole thing is pretty much my own contrivance, and even the spoilers aren't anything you won't learn from the intro sequence.

Which brings me to my next point: the story will include plenty of things you did not and will not see in the game.  Perhaps my aim is not so much to novelize the game but to verbalize it.  There is very little dialogue and even less explanation in Ico.  The game is an overwhelmingly visual experience, something to be seen before understood.  Unfortunately I only have written words at my disposal to engage your interest, and where the game lacks suitable materials for a written tale I must invent them.  (Besides, it's more fun for me that way.)  Oh, and it hardly needs to be said, but I will appreciate your reviews immensely.  I write this story for my own satisfaction, but I post it for your reviews.

The story is presented through the eyes and the mouth of the hero, Ico.  You will notice that his narrative voice is not that of a twelve-year-old boy.  As to how old Ico is now and what might have passed since his adventure to effect this change in him, I will leave to your imagination. 

ICO: VOICES

By PeterEliot ([email protected])

            I should start at the beginning.  The beginning, that is, of the longest three days of my life.  Or perhaps I should just say the beginning of my life, what I know of it, for all of my existence before then seemed to distill to the murky revelations of those threescore hours.  And all that came after had necessarily to bear their mark.  I carry that mark still.

Certainly there is not very much I know about my beginning.  I know that I have answered to the rude name of Ico as far back as memory stretches.  I never learned my true surname.  It may very well be that I didn't have one to learn of, had my parents been some obscure peasants.  But I could not verify this, because it was never imparted to me who my parents were, either.  To those who ask how anyone could be so appallingly ignorant of his own origins, I will reply that I was an orphan from the womb.  An impossible claim this must seem, I know.  But it is the truth; while some children become orphans by circumstances, I was destined as one.  My father and mother might have abandoned me in relief—or they might have had to be threatened, perhaps forced, to surrender their child, who might have been their only one, or merely the newest in a string of dependents.  Whichever the case, I was separated from them at an exceedingly early age, and entrusted to an old friar who lived at the edge of a mountainside village, the only human settlement I knew until the age of twelve.  There I grew up without the remembrance of my kin's faces or the knowledge of where and whether they lived.

All this because of the horns, you understand.  At first, I was told, they were little more than a pair of small bumps above my temples.  But they were unmistakable even then.  Before my second year was over, the damning buds were poking prominently through my locks.  Before long, their tips needed to be filed down periodically lest I should cause inadvertent injuries.  By the time I was twelve and the horsemen came, the horns had achieved a menacing span that easily doubled the breadth of my skull, and that was only because they moderated themselves by arcing upwards at midpoints, like bullhorns.

I wonder now what the townsfolk thought of them.  I wonder what they really thought whenever they saw me and could not help but be conscious of the horns, as if they had not already seen them there many, many times before.  For I tell you that was the impression they so often gave me.  In the middle of a talk or a meal or a mass or whatever occasion where I was in their company, they would momentarily stop, with no foreseeable cause, and send a wary glance in the direction of my head as though they were caught unawares by something about me that they hadn't quite noticed before.  And then I was bound to detect a change in them, a change too subtle to define but discernible regardless; a change in their intonation, or in their mannerism, or in the set of their mouths or the pattern of wrinkles between their brows.  And I would be reminded once again how this hometown of mine was a provisional home and would forever remain provisional though I had lived in it all my life—and how in all likelihood it would not have made a bit of difference for me if it had been my true home place.

I mustn't leave it to be supposed that I was shunned completely, or that I suffered deliberate persecution.  By and large the grown-ups showed me an uneasy and distant sort of civility during my residence at the village.  There were times when I thought I sensed a note of grim sympathy in their demeanor.  As to the children of my own age, they were a jolly and thoughtless lot, just as I was.  The villagers frowned on their children's associating closely with the curse-child, but the youngsters tended to be heedless of the admonitions and played with me when it pleased them.  That's not to say that the horns never occasioned childish quarrels from time to time.  They did, and I generally had to put up with some beatings.  Afterwards I would seethe and cry in the friar's hut next to the shrine we cared for, cursing the world, and all the while wondering why I had no mother to comfort me in misery like the other children's did.  And then, after a couple of days, I would find myself chasing squirrels with the same brood, oblivious as they were of the brief spite.

That was early in my childhood.  Once I was ten years or so of age, the number of willing playmates declined steadily as the horns, along with my height, grew faster than ever before.  What would I have done at that time for a peer!  A true peer, that is.  Another one like myself.  But there only existed one horned child in a generation, if any existed at all.  Or so the old friar told me.  The friar told me a great many things over the years.  But sometimes it seemed to me there were equally as much, if not more, that he didn't care to have me know.  In retrospect, he must have had mixed feelings about his long-time charge.  His devout heart could never quite forgive me for the baleful peculiarities on my head, whose power to unnerve him did not diminish over time since they kept growing larger each year.  All the same, his was a gentle and compassionate disposition, and he remained a loyal if somewhat aloof guardian to me.  He probably half suspected that I was doomed to serve the devil, who saw it fit to display his sign so patently on me.  As countermeasures he made sure, among others, that I learned the Holy Scripture, knew how to read and to write, and participated in the daily routine of the shrine, all in hope of winning me back to the godly path.  This last of the measures he accomplished by appointing me to carry out various chores in the shrine's maintenance.  For six years I cleaned the shrine, gathered firewood, and washed the dishes and the clothes.  All save for cooking.  I didn't cook.  The friar could not endure my culinary efforts, and so assumed that burden himself.

But to get back to that day, the day that began it all—the day that ended many things and started as many.  The season was early June, and the sun was beginning to take on the summer heat.  It was quite early in the morning when the horsemen arrived at the shrine.  The friar and I were already up lighting the morning candles, and as usual it was I who welcomed the visitors.  At first I thought they were all strangers.  Then I saw that the head of the village, a mild-mannered man in his fifties who also acted as the town magistrate, was with them.  His thin form seemed so slight as to look almost immaterial in the company of the other four men, who were in armors and looked very imposing.  I had to strive to keep my eyes from straying to the armored figures while exchanging greetings with the magistrate.

            "Father Micael has risen, I take it?" he said.

            This was the name of my guardian.  "He has, sir," I said.

            "Go and tell him that I am here with guests, will you, child?"

            I said I would, and ran into the shrine to find the friar already in his morning meditation.  I informed him of the visitors outside.  He appeared displeased at having the prayer interrupted.

            "It is an hour yet until morning devotion," he said, frowning.

            "I don't think they are here for that, father," I said.

            He rose to step outside, and I followed him.  The men waited in front of the hut, still on horseback.  The magistrate smiled in salutation, dismounting.

            "A pleasant morning, father.  Are you well?"

            "I am, Lord be thanked.  You pay us an unexpected visit this morning."

            "These warriors wished to be conducted to you."

            I observed the strangers while the elders talked.  I could not make out anyone's face, for it was hidden inside iron covering like the rest of his body.  This was a disconcerting fact, since I could not tell whether any of them were staring at me, which people invariably did when they saw me for the first time.  But they could be no more riveted by my sight than I was by theirs.  The knights seemed to have sprung out of the very books in Father Micael's library—books he rarely allowed me to peruse because he believed they planted ungainly fancies in my head.  Here were those fancies come to life and bestriding steeds before me.  The men betrayed no suggestion of the weight they bore, and the chain-mail that enclosed their muscular frames chinked gently when the horses moved.  That they had traveled some distance was plain from the assortment of bags and satchels that hung on the beasts' sides.

            "Pray send the child inside, father," a voice said.  I looked up, startled, at the warrior in a gray cloak who had spoken.  Unlike the others he wore a dark battle mask over his helmet.  Even while seated atop the horse, his great stature was so evident that I thought if he stepped down, his height should suffer but little.

            I turned to my guardian to see if the stranger's request pleased him.  He nodded.  "Go light the rest of the incenses, Ico," he said.

I made a bow at the assembly and went into the shrine.  Taking a candle, I hurried through each of the incense urns placed throughout the interior as fast as I could without extinguishing the candle.  Then I went back outside through the hut, which was connected to the shrine, and hid myself behind the corner closest to where the men stood on the yard.  I could just barely pick out their words.

"Perhaps you remember me."  It was the masked knight's voice.      

            "Ay, I believe I do," Father Micael said.  "You were with those that brought me the boy ten years ago."

            "Twelve years.  He's turned twelve last month, hasn't he?"

            "How, now!" the friar said.  "You seem to know him better than I.  And I was certain he has been forgotten.  Have you some business with him, today?"

            "I do.  I come for him."

            "How, now!" the friar repeated, emphatically.

            "You remember, surely, that this was promised."

            "My recollection fails me on that, I think."

            "Be not obstinate, father."

            "Obstinate, I!"  The father's voice rose a little.  "You who comes unannounced for a claim forsaken for a decade call me obstinate?"

            "It was never forsaken—nor forgotten.  This has always been the arrangement," the knight said.  "Your neighbor will confirm it." 

            "It is as he says," the town magistrate's voice followed.  "The provision was thus set, when the boy first arrived here.  He is no longer your charge.  You are released from that duty, father."

            "Never mind my duties; I know them best.  What's to become of him?"

            "To be removed, as the arrangement prescribes," the knight replied.

            "Removed?" Father Micael echoed, with great deliberation.  "Whither?"

            "That is the concern of the master of the arrangement, and I am not he.  It is only relevant for us that the boy's custody under your guardianship terminates this day, and we are to conduct him out of the village."  

            "It is settled, father," the magistrate said, before the old priest could demand to be enlightened further. 

            "It is not settled for me."

            "There is little we can do about it.  It was settled long ago.  It is merely that the time has come."

            Father Micael was quiet then.  "There was always a rumor," he said at length.

            "Father," the magistrate said.

            "I never gave the tale a thought."

            "Pray, father."

            "Even now I cannot believe it.  Assure me there is no truth in it." 

            "We're obliged to comply, father."

            "He is a good lad.  He has a good soul—I know he does."

            "I understand, father."  The magistrate's tone was apologetic.  "Understand, then, this has nothing to do with that."

            "Why won't you tell me what is to become of him?"

            "Because I do not know, father."

            "These men do," Father Micael said contemptuously.  "Yet they will not tell me.  There can be only one reason."

            "They are bound, father—just as we are bound," the magistrate said.  "There is little we can do.  It is best that we not speak more of this.  But the boy must leave today."

            "Will you stand by this obscenity, Joel!"  

            "I do not know that it is an obscenity," the magistrate replied.  "I know that it is for the good of all."

            "I demand to know who stands behind this," Father Micael said.  "I demand to know who takes a diseased interest in a child just because he's got horns sprouting on his head.  And don't think to persuade me that this isn't about the horns.  I know better."

            "This squabble is fruitless, father," the knight said, breaking his silence.  "I am in the authority here, and I must perform my duty.  If you haven't the mind to respect the arrangement, I shall order my men to enforce it regardless."

            The knight must then have gestured to the others in his company, for immediately there was the sound of the men dismounting from their horses.  My heart beat faster.  Father Micael's voice came again.

            "Wait, please.  I don't want him handled violently.  Permit us a little time—the child hasn't eaten, and he needs to get his belongings together.  No?  Permit me, at least, to break the tidings to him.  You must appreciate how this will upset him.  You want no trouble from him on the way, yes?  Then let me prepare him for departure.  He will do as I say." 

            "The father is right," followed the magistrate, addressing the knight.  "Let him do as he wishes.  It would be the expedient recourse for all."  

            "Come again at noon," Father Micael said.  "It is all I ask.  Come, the boy needs to be made to understand."

            "Very well, father," the knight said, after a while.  "We shall be back.  Get him ready by noon."

            No further words were spoken.  I heard neighs, and hooves breaking into trot, and the sound faded away.  I stepped cautiously onto the yard to find Father Micael gazing down the snaky mountain path at the horsemen's retreating figures.  Soon they were lost in the dense green of the forest.  Only then did the friar turn back to the hut.  His eyes immediately caught my form.

            "Have you heard?" he asked.  He did not seem upset, or even surprised.

            "Yes, father."

            "Come, boy.  We must not lose a second."

            The industry exhibited by the old priest in the following half-hour was something frightening—more frightening, it felt to me, than the mysterious exchange I had just listened to, for he went about the procedure with such tightlipped resoluteness.  Running into the hut, he ordered me to saddle and fetch the lone mule we had.  When I had done that, he loaded the animal with two large sacks into which he threw a hastily assembled selection of traveling articles.  They were chiefly foodstuff, and an awful lot of it, too—hefty loaves of bread, mutton chops, apples, more bread, and a water bag.  He had to have loaded a fortnight's worth of provisions for us both, and I think he would have packed more but for the fear that the burden, along with the rider, would be too much for the mule.

            "Get your hood and frock, Ico," he said, fastening a roll of blanket to the saddle.

            "Am I going with those warriors?" I asked timidly.

            "Hood and frock, Ico.  Make haste."

            In a state of rising apprehension I obeyed his command.  When I returned, Father Micael was writing furiously on a parchment, with the saddle and the animal underneath it as the writing board.  Rolling up and banding the parchment, he put the frock around me despite the warmth of the day and pulled the hood down to my eyes.  It was tailored to accommodate the unique shape of my head, and while I looked like a clown in it, it kept the horns out of direct sight.  He inspected me.

            "This will have to suffice," he said, with a sigh.  Then he took me by the shoulders and fixed me with a forceful gaze.  "Listen, boy: you are to remove the hood under no conditions.  Do you understand?  Under no conditions.  You mustn't let anyone see your horns.  Not until you are safe and away."   

            I was now beyond frightened, beyond confused, and downright desperate in my need to know.  "Where are we going, father?"

            "We go nowhere.  You must flee before the soldiers return."

            "Flee, father?" I exclaimed.  "I must?  But why?"

            The fierceness dissipated from Father Micael's expression, and he exhaled a profound sigh that was close to a moan.  When he spoke, his throat issued a deep rumble as it often did under great emotional strains, and the words that came next were utterly confounding, and nothing like what he had ever said to me before.  "Ico, child, forgive me.  Forgive me for not having realized sooner.  I ought to have been keener.  I ought to have foreseen this."

            "Please, sir," I called in sheer panic.  "Why do you say thus?  What is happening, Father Micael?"

            "I do not fathom all of it—indeed I understand but little.  But those men mean to do you harm, Ico.  I am certain of it."

            "But why, father?" I said.

            "Listen carefully, for we have little time.  Twelve years ago," he said, leaning in to address me closely, "armed men, men like those that were just here, arrived from the outside.  In whose service they belonged, I never gathered.  But they easily procured the cooperation of the town elders, and at their bidding the elders charged me with the care of a horned infant who, for a reason untold, was unable to remain in his native parish.  The warriors departed on that same day—leaving you, then only a month old, and the vague promise that my charge would not be permanent. 

"Even before then I had heard tales of children with horns.  Children, Ico—not men, not women, but always children.  And there was the horrid rumor—the absurd hearsay, and the speculations, that only got worse with your coming, the rumor that the poor younglings were never suffered to grow past their youth."  The priest groaned here, while I listened transfixed.  "The stories never ceased to be in my ears, but I could not imagine that they were true.  As the years rolled on and nothing happened, and not a word was heard about the men that had brought you, and not the least of a credible reminder was given to me that a design existed with regard to your future, I leaned towards discounting the speculations entirely.  I came in time to doubt even the men's word that they would be back for you.  May God have mercy on the old fool!"

"What will they do to me?" I asked, dazed.  My mouth was dry, and I had the urge to sit down somewhere, anywhere.

"I do not know, in truth," he said.  "I have suspicions, but there are parts of the tale that I hesitate to dwell on—or to overwhelm you with—even now.  But you must flee."

            "But, where am I to go, father?" I heard myself say.

            "Proceed west, cross the river and request sanctuary in the abbey.  You can hardly hope to outrun them on this feeble beast, but you know these forests better than they.  Take the most unusual route you can think of, even if it means doubling the distance.  Always travel where there are places to hide, and do not stop in a village on the way—don't let anyone even see you, for the soldiers will be making inquiries.  Give the abbot this parchment.  I have explained your situation in it.  Do you understand what I say, Ico?"

            I stared back at my guardian.  Dropping my gaze, I nodded bleakly without a word.  Father Micael, too, said nothing for a moment.  Then he regained his brisk air of authority and bade me to mount the mule.  I had to struggle somewhat to climb on; my limbs had gone weak all of a sudden.  Once I was ready, he grasped my hand in both of his wrinkled ones.

            "The priests at the abbey already know that you're under my care, so you ought to be able to find some sympathetic souls.  God be with you through all, Ico.  Forgive me."

            "Will they not cause you grief for this, father?"

            "I do not think there is need for much worry there.  Their interest is in you, not me.  Now go."

            "Father Micael," I said.

            "Yes, child," he said.

            "When am I to come back?"

            He smiled sadly and squeezed my hand once more.  A moist warmth rose and lingered at the back of my throat, and I swallowed it down.

            And that was our farewell.  At the time I was too numb in the soul, and he too consumed with urgency, to afford more demonstrative a parting.  For a good hundred yards I kept my eyes trained on our hut and on the diminutive figure of the priest flanked by the leaning gateposts.  The mule walked onward at a slow, almost leisurely, pace.  One would have thought I was setting off for the marketplace, for all the rush I was in.  Then Father Micael waved his arm impatiently in distance, and I hastened the mule into the forest that rose before me, taking an uphill path opposite to the direction in which the knights had left.

            It was little surprise to me that the forest appeared so different that day.  A fugitive of my own imagination in a home place of twelve years, I fancied a thousand foes in the shadows that dappled the woods.  Every breeze through the leaves above whispered an unseen peril.  I quickly developed an unfair irritation at the mule that carried me along, vexed that the clacking noise of its hooves on the rocky soil would betray my presence in the stillness of the forest.  I tried distracting myself by mapping out in my head the route I would take to reach the river, and calculating how long the journey would require.  Crossing the bridge would be unwise, I thought, so I would have to move across the shallow upstream.  I figured it would take me at least a week.

            Within minutes, it all proved to be a futile endeavor.  In retrospect, the knight who spoke with Father Micael had to have anticipated that the friar would seek my escape.  Scarcely half an hour into the forest and occupied with my calculations, I jolted upon hearing a voice call out my name.  I looked about madly, and beheld, not far off to my right, the very knight on his horse.  Gray, looming and still as the trees beside him, he seemed to be an element of the landscape, and utterly unmovable.  In helpless silence I returned his masked gaze.

"Come back, Ico," he said.  Like the first call, the command was hardly the gesture of a frantic pursuer.  It held a poise born of the assurance that the prey was already in the trap. 

I turned, and spurred the mule on to a sprint.  Behind, the knight charged as well.  The steed's neigh pierced the air.  I do not know what was going through my head when I rushed the mule headlong into the web-cluster of bushes and branches.  Perhaps I thought the mule's smaller bulk would somehow make it through.  Thorny twigs brushed by, leaving a wake of sharp stings on my face.  I protected my eyes and got low on the mule's back, and did not see the others spring out of the shadows.  But I heard the sound, and the shouts.  They caught up with me in no time.  There was a brief struggle between the mule and the considerably larger mass of another knight's horse, running side by side.  Something pushed me, or tried to grab me, from the left, and I lost the grip on the rein.  I nearly fell—then a powerful hand grasped me by the collar and hauled me off the saddle as though I were no heavier than a rabbit.  The next instant I found myself secured by an arm under both shoulders, and I was now on top of a different animal altogether.  I was pressed close against my captor, and the pungent odor of perspiration filled my nostrils through the fabric of chains that enclosed his body.  I looked up; the masked knight's eyes bore down on me.

"Must I restrain you, boy?" he said.  His voice was deceptively low, and his breath very, very close.  "Do you wish to spend the journey in fetter?"

I shook my head.

"Good," he said.  He loosened his grip and seated me in front of him, between the arms that commanded the reins.  The other warriors rode up beside us.  One of them had the mule, its saddle now vacant, in tow.  "Go return to the priest his belongings.  Rejoin us at the creek," the masked knight said to him.  The man departed with his order, and the rest of the company, I among them, moved on in the opposite direction.

Next chapter should be up in a few days or so.  If you leave your e-mail address in a review slot I will notify you of updates.  If you just want to discuss Ico with me and other loyal fans of the game, check out the game's message board on Gamefaqs.com.  Reviews are appreciated.

PeterEliot ([email protected])