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Volo has traveled every inch, it feels, of Hisui, and yet he does not recognize the great house that Ginter leads him to.
It is built solidly, with sturdy wood siding and supports; it looks almost like an estate, if Hisui would permit such a thing—but the land is wild yet, and its wildness presses flush to the house’s foundations. Some attempt has been made to coax the surroundings into submission, though futilely. With the circumstances, Volo feels inclined to personalize the house some: to assign it some history or haunting, give the whole affair a touch of the romantic—he is one for the story, after all—but that would be asking too much of fate.1
Still, there’s something to it that makes his hackles raise as they walk up, something besides Volo’s watchful escorts and the pokéballs missing at his belt.
When did the Guild build this place? Has he been off searching on his own that long, in truth?
Ginter turns to look over his shoulder and eye Volo as he takes the front steps to the door. Volo doesn’t know what to make of his gaze. Ginter is practical in the extreme, and has no patience with faith2 or superstition; he had silently tolerated Volo’s wanderings, it seems, just so that he wouldn’t have to be subject to the reasoning for them. Ginter is a merchant, and—as merchants do—can afford only to focus on trade.
He and the Guild have never been Volo’s allies. The Gingko were Volo’s means to reach Hisui only, and here he is, in Hisui, in his god-clothes, beaten and abandoned by the messiah herself. Perhaps—and Volo grinds his teeth to think it—perhaps he really should have just stowed away on their ship. Then, at least, the Guild would feel no responsibility toward him. Perhaps he would have starved to death in the Highlands without their resources. But then, at least, Volo would not be in this miserable procession: being led into a house like a maw, his escorts allowing him a berth usually reserved for the insane.
They believe he is sick. They have taken his pokémon from him. What, now, can he do?
If the Gingko Guild, respected by the Clans and Galaxy Team alike, takes responsibility for a wayward one of their own, and assures the other groups that they will handle him—temporary insanity, you know; anyone would get a little touched left alone in these wilds—what can Volo do to undo it? To assert his own sanity?
Even Cogita, who claimed to be fond of him, has not spoken up. Perhaps the gossip has not yet reached her, tucked into her retreat, but she did always seem as wary of him as she was fond.
So to the great, bright house he goes, to be carefully watched, to drink herb broths, to be hidden from the sight of Mount Coronet, to sort stock for the Guild. They will put him to work that he cannot shrug off. They will forbid him from leaving, from ever wandering until he is “well” again.
Personally, he disagrees with their ideas.
Personally, Volo believes3 that the scraping, screaming thing within him will not be assuaged until he can determine what made Akari worthy, and possess it.
But, mortal, disheveled, without his pokémon and without a single person’s trust—what can he do?
Neither Ginter, Volo’s direct superior, and who most often keeps an eye on him, nor Tuli, Ginter’s most reliable worker and thus second most common minder, try much to talk to Volo. They don’t acknowledge the god he is dressed in worship of, or how they found him, collapsed and sobbing at the foot of the stairs to the Temple of Sinnoh. They do not offer him new Guild clothes. For all that Ginter promised to handle him, he does not do much handling; he does not try to talk Volo down from his faith. He only keeps the doors locked. Sanity, Volo must assume, is irrelevant so long as the mad are not free to roam.
Volo’s wandering has not made him strong enough to break locks or hinges. The windows refuse to break. Without his pokémon, he finds out one evening that he does not quite have the nerve to take the key by force—and they don’t keep the key in the house after that, anyway, and from then on Tuli rubs a hand over her throat and keeps her distance.
So for now he will let it alone. Like an ancient mural, he will instead study the house.
It is a beautiful place, he must admit. The house is not far from the road, but quite far from Jubilife or either of the Clans; from what he hears of Tuli and Ginter’s conversations, it is—was—meant to serve as a safe place for Guild members to rest during their travels. It is two stories, with a wide kitchen and dining area, and with more bedrooms than Volo and his watchers could hope to occupy. It reminds Volo of Jubilife, some, but there’s something a tad eclectic about it; he can see the different voices of the Gingko chiming in on the architecture. How many hands, from how many different regions, made this place, he wonders? Are they bitter now that this waypoint is occupied to bursting by Volo and his reverence and his minders?
Someone tried to start a garden just outside, Volo notes idly one day. Silly. As if merchants would be around often enough to tend one; as if most would cast their gaze that far down at all.
The clear recency of the building spoils some of its potential for haunting. Despite this, however, Volo never feels at ease in its walls. There is something strange to it. He can feel it. He wants to know it—but if he were to ask Ginter about its origins, the man would grow suspicious, and he’s short with his answers anyway. If Volo tried to ask Tuli, she’d likely just run from him.
He gets so angry with them sometimes. Righteously so—rightly so, but anger could never convince them of his sanity. He’s sure he used to be better at reigning himself in. It must be due to what happened—it must have been Akari, that child, who so easily overcame him, who loosed the rage in him and didn’t bother to lock it back up.
Ginter tells him occasionally to control himself. Volo stares at him in these moments and feels his hands twitch.
Yes. He used to be much better at reigning himself in.
After his battle with Akari, Volo might have been able to drag himself into some semblance of normalcy for the sake of the Guild’s eyes. If only they had not been the first ones to find him—if only Akari had sent someone else: Professor Laventon, ideally, or even that freak Kamado. If Volo had been able to reassemble himself in their presence, he could have pretended serenity to the Gingko. He could have promised them Akari was only blowing things out of proportion, as irresponsible teenagers do. That Professor Laventon, ever the anxious, was only worrying. He could have whispered that Kamado was lying: you remember how volatile he is, yes? He probably wants to pull one over on the merchants, don’t you think? The scenarios chase themselves in the corners of Volo’s mind as, day by day, he wraps parcels of berries, Tuli doing the same at the table across from him, her hands trembling.
He was not afforded luck’s mercy. The Guild found Volo screaming god’s name in plea, looked at each other and decided he had long been beyond it, and dragged him from the mountain before he could figure out how to be mortal again.
The house. Of all the bedrooms in it, Volo picks one with a window overlooking the road. It is not particularly wide—none of the rooms are, for their transience—and not particularly homely, but the Gingko had taken care, at least, to paper the walls. All of them have wallpaper in different colors, and the room Volo situates himself in is yellow. He picks it because if he stands on the window sill, he can just see the tip of Mount Coronet. He picks it because the yellow is the same as the ornaments on his clothing. He picks it because, trapped in this house, this is the closest Volo can get to holy.
Maybe this is the strangeness: that Volo keeps thinking of it as a house, and expecting it to be a house, when the building is more accurately a hostel. None of the rooms have wardrobes. All of the windows are reinforced, and do not open. The walls and floors and trim are not polished or perfect. Complete care was not taken; without a permanent resident to require that care, the building is allowed to be incompletely livable. It is transient in nature—it is a place for travelers, a place to be tolerated rather than loved, a place that can shelter but cannot house. One is meant to leave it when the morning comes. One is not supposed to stay long enough to notice that the wallpaper is peeling.
Volo stares at the corners of the walls. Whoever put up the wallpaper, whoever cared enough to try to make it even a little visually appealing, didn’t put it up correctly. At the edges, the paper peels away. Whoever cared enough to try to make the room visually appealing didn’t even do that correctly—the paper’s pattern is hideous, and Volo would choose a different room, except that all of the other patterns are equally ugly, and the color, the god-gold, is this room’s only redeeming quality.
The pattern is equally boring as it is irritating. There is no artistry to it—it does not bother to depict anything recognizable, but its curves are deliberately familiar enough to catch the eye and try at first to convince the viewer that it does, in fact, hold meaning. Volo keeps catching himself staring, trying to interpret meaning from nonsense. All illuminated in yellow, the paper begs Volo’s attention, begs his study, his deciphering; it pretends divinity to draw attention and only by staring at it can Volo return the pattern to mundanity, and let the gold wash over everything, his vision blurring with it.
Tuli and Ginter, when they stay overnight, take the rooms at the other end of the hall. Good. There they do not even pretend to be illuminated.
A month passes and Volo is still locked in the way-house.
Not for lack of trying. He sits by the window in his chosen room and simmers, wanting to break the glass, but without the tool, or the strength. A month of attempting to sweet-talk his way out, or break out, or—in that one case—force his way out, and still he is here, reduced to an embarrassment of the Gingko, working to sort and package their wares as if enough hard work will get him out on good behavior, as if this is the path to divinity. If he had his pokémon, Volo would have Lucario bullet punch the fucking door down.
Ginter, once, when Volo resorted to begging, shook his head and grimaced and said clearly you are suffering. He said it in that manner of fathers: not to Volo, but about him; Ginter tsks at Volo’s disturbance but doesn’t move to correct it. There is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him;4 Volo is insane for insanity’s sake. Ginter is not a doctor. Ginter is not Volo’s friend. His responsibility is prevention; Volo is a shinx kept penned to save pedestrian’s ankles.
Suffering. Volo has done nothing but suffer. All his life he has been choked by brightness, and he has been so close to it, but rejected, an unworthy apostle. He allowed Akari her calling. His own now is to find worthiness, and yet here he is. It weighs on him so, not to do his duty in any way.5 Is this penance? For his arrogance, has Volo been consigned to the way-house, to pack goods until he learns something, or forever? It was Giratina Volo summoned, after all: Arceus’ least-favorite, the child damned to eternity purgatorial. Is this Volo’s fitting punishment: the painfully human equivalent?
A month in this place has made Volo listless. His mind and heart churn with fire, but for some reason his limbs are heavy. To dress every morning in the image of god takes such effort. To walk downstairs and face Ginter’s work is all the worse.
He thinks of Akari. How did she stand it? Trooping along so valiantly, painstakingly recording behavior and habits and shapes and sizes, day after wretched day? She was alone in the duty. All the rest of the Galaxy were too much of cowards.
He thinks of Akari. How did she bear it? Her mission given directly by god?
His body had felt weak, standing there in the Temple of Sinnoh. How didn’t she fall directly to her knees?
He almost misses her, sometimes. Infuriating as she is, as much as Volo can’t come to terms with her, at least she was honest. In their every interaction Akari was completely bare-faced. She certainly knew he was lying, or at least hiding something, but she took Volo as he presented himself to her and did not ask for more. So few people refrain like that. The world asks and takes and asks and takes—and yet, where Volo would give everything, anything, Arceus has refused to ask, or to even look at him.
Volo turns in circles in his small room. Around him the gold beams at him, as if light, or the absence of it; beyond the gold there is the paper, whose pattern looks out at Volo as if it knows what influence it has.6 Part of the pattern’s curves, so haltingly familiar, come together—almost come together—and form what is almost a pokémon, or perhaps a person; something of a recognizable shape. Volo stares at it unendingly. He begs to be able to describe it. It resists comprehension—the paper entices him, and then shies away, and on, and on. Volo has never seen so much expression in an inanimate thing before.7
Down the hall, Tuli opens and closes a door. Volo knows her footsteps by now. Downstairs she goes, and there’s the key in the lock—leaving for a walk, or changing shifts with Ginter, maybe? It’s all the same to Volo. Behind her, the door is locked again, and this solitude, however brief, differs little from living in the way-house in the first place.
Volo turns in circles in his small room. It is evening. The wallpaper has secrets for him yet—the strange evening light seems to illuminate a subpattern to the paper, only sort-of visible, as arresting as the main pattern and more for its elusiveness. In the evening light, Volo stares, and tries to blur his vision, to allow the gold to wash over the lines, to exorcise them. Stubbornly, the wallpaper warps itself, and he sees within it some creature, moving behind the pattern, wearing it.
Occasionally Gingko merchant teams and larger caravans do meander by. When they do, if Ginter is here to watch Volo, he will stop his work and go outside to greet them. Ginter never forgets to lock the door behind him, but every time Volo prays that he will—for freedom, yes, but also so that those voices he hears might be closer to him than muffled by walls and windows. If Ginter and Tuli avoided talking to Volo early on, they have taken a vow of silence now. There comes no malice from them, only frustration; the Gingko don’t know what to make of Volo, or how to proceed, or how to help him.
Let him out! If Volo could just see the sky and the mountain clearly, he thinks he could breathe. His hands would stop itching, wanting for the shape of a pokéball, barring that a throat. If they would at least give him his hat back! Then he would stop shuddering at the sensation of his hair brushing his neck: so limp, so human.
Let him out. He begs it. His hands shake trying to pack boxes and tie cloths in this house. Ginter looks at Volo and steals the work from under him, sends him away, and the only away is his chosen room, and so Volo spends hour on wretched hour laid out on that cot of a bed, staring, staring, staring, as if this is the path to divinity. He can hardly remember the words of the promise he made himself in the Temple. The shape of the Plate he once held ghosts in his hands, and he clutches at his own skin, feeling hollow, laughing and begging god for mercy, as he is always; living is an extended plea; humanity is always asking for mercy.
The wallpaper, so familiar by now in its ugliness, is almost a comfort. Volo cannot understand the pattern just yet but he understands the process: unearth mythos, interpret, comprehend. It dwells in his mind.8 He lays there on his bed and traces the pattern through the hours. He follows it in its repetitions. He turns the shapes over in himself and assembles and reassembles them. He looks for the end and beginning. If he could just section it—if he could pull one instance of the pattern from the whole and define it—then, perhaps, Volo could know it like he knows Arceus; perhaps it and god could both be made digestible.
Volo has not yet managed to get it right. The myth exhausts him. Lying there, study becomes dream seamlessly; the gold chases him into sleep.
When it becomes apparent that Ginter and Tuli will let him, Volo stops going downstairs to contribute to the Guild work.
They are both so very passive. Ginter, though he oversees trade that goes through Jubilife, takes orders like anyone else, and when it comes to Volo there is no protocol. Ginter and Tuli, impersonal merchants, who favored work enough to move to Hisui without family tailing them, act as Volo’s quiet watchers because it is all they understand how to do. The Gingko Guild’s reputation and respect must be preserved. Volo is a threat in that respect: ensure he cannot do any more harm. Volo was found sobbing and shrieking incoherently about god: ensure no one else has to see that.
They don’t know what to do with him. They don’t even think to ask someone else how he can be helped.
Alone in his room, Volo watches the wallpaper. There are things in it nobody knows about but him. Behind the pattern they coalesce into one creeping thing: a woman perhaps; a creature-thing that wanders, that Volo follows as it prowls, and he is closer to comprehending it. Soon, perhaps he could give it a name.
At times he is almost thankful his pokémon are not here. He never thinks that way for long—but there is ritual to this, the study, that Volo would not make them endure. The wallpaper requires hours. He gives them. Certainly, Togekiss and the others would grow restless, waiting for him to complete his work. Perhaps they would even grow agitated. Volo can stand the paper so much easier than a pokémon might.9
Gingko groups pass by the wayhouse with increasing frequency as of late. Volo worries idly that perhaps Ginter will try to move him to a different place to be watched over. It would be an opportunity to break free, of course, but—not yet! Not while he is still watching, still tracing the pattern and its prisoner! By moonlight it seems to shake the paper, and Volo wants almost to reach forward and let it out.
Before he knows it he has spent days without leaving the room. The color soothes him through his frustrations: the pattern dares Volo to comprehend it and yet curls incomprehensibly; just when he thinks he might pin it down, it veers sharply away from understanding, and he is left breathless, beaten. It is like a bad dream.10 Lying prone in his bed bears almost the same sensation as on his knees in the Temple. The same holy purpose suffuses him. This is not the path to divinity, but it is a path, and entrapment must somehow be made bearable.
All his long study does bear fruit. There is one peculiarity he notices, a thing he could not have seen in those first few days: the pattern moves and changes as the light does, instant by instant. Volo cannot take his eyes from the paper; if he does he will miss something, and understanding will elude him.
In daylight the wallpaper seems to undulate. At night, his room lit by the moon when it is full enough, Volo sees what lurks within it. The subpattern he had seen rears back and lurches forward and becomes that creature: the woman-thing he had noticed before. It is clear to him now. In the day it rests, near-imperceptible, and Volo wonders if it is the yellow and the light that keeps the thing at bay—that, by moon, all grows silver and the woman can rear its head.
Volo cannot truly never leave the room—he must eat and bathe sometimes—and on those occasions, when he passes Ginter or Tuli in the hall or kitchen, they look at him so strangely. It is almost like fear. It is inexplicable to him—it was silence they wanted, wasn’t it? For him to stay put? He spooks like a starly when Ginter gruffly asks him how long it’s been since he last ate, as if Volo’s habits interest him at all. And when he returns to his room once, he finds Tuli looking inside—looking at the walls— and Volo can’t stand the thought of her seeing it, seeing what he hasn’t yet been able to piece together. Volo is determined that nobody will find it out but himself.11 He places a hand on Tuli’s shoulder and asks her what she’s doing and she starts hard enough to slam herself into the wall. She leaves quickly. Volo returns to his work.
They are going to move him. As Ginter tells it to Tuli, murmuring together in the kitchen, the Guild hub near Diamond Clan is too annoyed not to be able to use the wayhouse as intended, and complained to management overseas. Ginter’s been ordered to take him away. Volo didn’t catch where—not on a ship out, surely? He spent so much effort getting here. It’s his homeland. Hisui is his birthright. He can’t be made to leave it.
More so, he can’t be made to leave this place, not until the wallpaper can be defined. Perhaps he’ll even write it down—if her mission is holy, Volo can imitate Akari. He can catalogue the paper and the creature behind it, write it all down and present the writing to the sky. There’s a week or so, he thinks, until they move him—that will be enough. It must be.
Volo forgoes sleep. He has never needed much, and this is more pressing. It is deeply interesting, anyway, watching the changes between day and night—in the sun, it hibernates, and by the moon Volo sees what he should have always seen: how the creature takes hold of the pattern and shakes it. It creeps there, not a languid action but one frenzied, and all the time it is trying to climb through.12 But nobody could. The pattern—so irritating!—is a choking thing; all this time Volo has been strangled by it, and the woman, too.
It crawls, and as the nights blur together Volo comes to recognize it. He couldn’t before—the wallpaper is yellow for a reason; the gold drowns all else out. Volo’s gaze was blighted by divinity. The holy cannot be seen past. Only when night steals the color can Volo begin to shape what he is seeing, what thing wants out.
The woman in the paper is not a woman in truth, but a thing like one; if it were made mortal that would be the closest thing. It wants out—it begs freedom from the gold, the imitation-holy, and Volo had picked this room for its color but sees now how deeply it was pretending. Volo is the light here—Volo in his god-clothes, a thing like Arceus to the woman in the wall, and he sees its face when he presses himself to the paper, so like his, and it is him—this place is not penance, it is instruction—Arceus is teaching him!
Volo has pushed his cot in front of the closed door. Footsteps come from beyond it—then voices, and knocks. Is it time already? He is not finished yet. He has not writ the myth—he as Arceus has not yet descended; Volo is not free from her wall.
The cot bangs as Ginter attempts to force the door open. There are shouts. He as Arceus pays them no mind—he is busy; there is work. To free Volo from the night he must pull her from the wall. He will make her comprehensible. He will teach her how to be worthy, tie her hands and put her where she can learn worth, put her in some wayhouse—he can make one! The foundation will rise from the wild where before there was nothing!
But this wallpaper is stubborn. It is like Volo does not want to be taught. Hah! He as Arceus remembers that. Come here, you—come out! Be made holy!
“Volo! What are you doing in there?” There’s Ginter calling. Has he ever said so many words to him?
He scrapes his nails down the wall. He is pressed into the corner, as flush to the paper as is possible, staring at himself, burning with light. This is the path to divinity. This is how he is made worthy. Free himself and write her down—he will not be Akari but like her—the only way to know god is to become it. Here he is in his god-clothes! From unworthiness he pulls his former self! Give her two minders—give her hands that twitch!
The cot screeches across the floorboards. Ginter stands in the forced-open doorway with Tuli, and they both stare. From his corner he looks back at them, pieces of the wall in his lap, nails bloodied. They can’t see her but Volo is creeping towards holiness. He as Arceus is teaching her.
“What are you doing?” Ginter repeats himself. Shh. You were already heard!
“I’ve determined it,” he tells them brightly; he is singing with light, can’t they see it? He needs not the Temple! He needs no new world made in his name! “I’m her now, close to her! I possess it!” He is smiling. He is serene.