by Carly Chase
“I hope I don’t speak out of turn here, Mamoru. I know nothing of this world, or the yokai. I just think that, well, in any conflict, doesn’t everyone believe that they are the ones in the right? Maybe if you consider more what motivates the yokai who attack people, a resolution could be found where it doesn’t just become an endless cycle of violence against each other?”
“There are plenty of people in this world who tried thinking that way. For all of them, it ended in loss and pain. It may be distasteful to view the yokai as indisputably bad, and yes, sometimes the actions we take to protect ourselves may ignite further hatred from them, but it has to be this way. If you need further persuasion, then, well, I can take you to see someone who once tried to trust a yokai, and you’ll see for yourself...”
Anya put aside her other questions, pertinent though they were, about exactly what Mamoru had tried to summon this Hime-sama woman to do. He’d piqued her interest. For some reason she felt like it might not be such a good idea to get her entire sense of what was going on in this place from the priest, and so the opportunity to talk to someone else seemed like one she should take. Plus, this way she’d get to go outside of this house, and she was beyond curious to see what this world actually looked like.
Sadly, she was to be disappointed in both respects.
Without another word, Mamoru stood and beckoned her to follow him, but instead of leading her out of the house, he took her through a plain hallway and up some wooden stairs. From here, she at least got a sense of the size of the priest’s house, and realized it was practically a mansion. She could also see light from outside now – though it was dim. It was either sunrise or sunset, though since she didn’t know what season it was either, it was hard to say what time that made it. It wasn’t cold or particularly hot in the house, but whether that was due to the ambient temperature or some kind of heating, she couldn’t say. The oil lamps suggested there wasn’t electricity here, but then, there was summoning magic and yokai, so who could say what other solutions people here might use to stay comfortable.
Mamoru moved almost silently along the corridor at the top of the stairs, past closed rooms that Anya longed to see into, squinting her eyes to see if she could make out shapes through the paper screens. But at the end of the corridor, the priest stopped and slid aside the door in front of him. He turned to gesture to Anya to go inside. Suddenly she was apprehensive. She was here to meet someone, so surely Mamoru should go in first and introduce her? What was she supposed to say?
Her anxiety about how to announce herself to a stranger as someone recently summoned from another world was quickly dispelled, however, when she saw the person in the room.
The girl was lying, motionless and peaceful, on a futon on the ground. Other than her, the room was bare, and blinds covered the windows so none of that hazy light Anya had noticed was spilling in, though oil lamps lit up the space, giving it a warm, cozy feel. The girl looked to be a teenager, perhaps a little younger than the boy who was the priest's assistant, and like everyone else Anya had seen so far in this world, she looked Asian. Specifically, she looked Japanese, though Anya wasn’t sure if Japan existed in this alternate world, despite how much of the aesthetic detail around her suggested that Japan – in some other point in time – was the closest cousin to this place in her own world. Her hair was long and black, and worn loose, though it seemed to have been lovingly fanned out around her head, making her look like some kind of sleeping princess from a story. Somehow, without even asking Mamoru, Anya knew that this girl wasn't in a normal sleep, however.
Her skin looked as radiant as would be expected in a healthy young woman, and she didn't seem to be in any discomfort - there were no signs of fever sweats, and she was breathing softly and rhythmically. Her expression was serene and untroubled, and so it didn't even seem like she was having a bad dream. But Anya knew from the context of being brought here after the conversation she and the priest were having, that there was something very wrong with the sleeping figure.
"What happened to her?" Anya asked, her voice kept to a low whisper more out of respect than out of fear of disturbing the girl.
"This is my sister, Shiro," Mamoru said, his voice soft too, but not at a whisper. He was used to having conversations in this room.
Mamoru knelt down on the ground next to Shiro's futon and carefully moved a strand of hair from her forehead.
"Is she... in a coma?"
"Something like that. Shiro is the person I wanted you to see so that you could understand the dangers of even entertaining the idea that yokai can be trustworthy. I could show you many others, but hopefully this will be enough to make you see how things are. My little sister, she had so much to look forward to. She and Reo - my assistant, you met him before - were inseparable. I was expecting that someday soon they would marry. But now, well, I don't even know if she'll be able to open her eyes again, or if she will just spend out her days in this room, with time passing by around her."
Anya felt sympathy for Shiro, but was beginning to lose her patience with Mamoru's roundabout way of explaining things.
What does Shiro's condition have to do with trusting yokai?
She didn't feel right pushing him though, not here, when he was clearly distressed about his beloved sister. She looked down sadly at the unconscious girl, and let the priest continue his account in his own time.
"Shiro loved animals. Loved all life, in fact. She was of course, raised to know the dangers of the yokai - being the sister of a priest - but there was something in her nature that just wasn't capable of appreciating that anything could be beyond redemption. I don't know exactly when she found the kitsune. It may have been approaching her since she was a small child. But she believed it was her friend. Her pet, even. I suppose it looked cute and playful, and she didn't really have anybody around her her own age except for Reo, and I often kept him busy with his work and studies. Whatever it was that made her long for that kitsune to be something better than its true nature, I can't say. But this is where it got her."
"I'm so sorry, Mamoru… But, well, you used another of those words I don't know. I mean, I'm guessing a kitsune is a yokai of some kind?"
"It is one of the most feared kinds of yokai. Its nature is that of a trickster, and it can be very powerful. But, often, they look like foxes, and, well, Shiro wouldn't have been the first child to be drawn in by their playful ways and harmless, appealing appearance. Even among kitsune, not every creature is the same, you see. Some are very similar to their animal counterparts, others more like spirits of fire and flame. Some of the most powerful take the forms of humans at times, and only reveal their fox forms in combat, or when they need to do something foxlike to execute their trickery. Just as they look different, they can have different levels of intelligence, and so it is easy for even someone who knows about them to think, well, this one just looks like a sweet little fox cub, and it acts like a playful puppy. This one can't mean any harm. But then, once someone has been charmed by the yokai and lends it their trust, well, that's the end of it. Shiro is just lucky she wasn't killed."
“But, if she thought it was her pet, or her friend or something, for years, why did it suddenly choose to attack her?”
“Who can say. Perhaps the kitsune had derived all of the pleasure it could from having fooled a human, and decided the game was over. All I know is, after forbidding her for so long to spend time with the creature, I one day found her in the woodland behind the town, where she was supposed to be gathering firewood, with the thing looming over her. It had revealed its true form, then, you see – no longer a cute little cub, it was a white fox the size of a horse, with flaming eyes and eight tails, its teeth bared. Shiro was cowering in fear against a tree, and so of course, I immediately threw out a prayer to purify the yokai and destroy it. Somehow, it had fooled her so much that she even pleaded with me, in that instant, to let it live, and the cowardly monstrosity ran behind her, as if to use her as a shield.”
The priest looke
d down at his sister’s face the whole time he spoke, and Anya couldn’t see his eyes, but she knew there were tears there from the trembling in his soft voice.
“My spell didn’t affect Shiro, of course, with her not being a yokai, and so the kitsune’s attempts to shield itself were futile. As my prayer finished, the yokai was purified, but it used its dying moment to curse my poor sister.”
And she’s been like this ever since.
“Is there nothing you can do for her? I mean, you’re a priest, can’t you remove the curse?”
“As yet, we have not found a way, but we are trying everything. We have sent for books of knowledge from other towns, and most of our study was dedicated to trying to save Shiro...”
Most of their study… He can’t mean, summoning me?
“Wait, I – you didn’t bring me here, or, at least, try and summon Hime-sama, because you thought it might help Shiro, did you? I wouldn’t have any idea how to cure a curse!”
“No, no. Hime-sama was a guardian. A warrior against the yokai. She was not a healer. Even she wouldn’t have been able to solve this problem.”
Anya exhaled slowly with relief. Whatever she was going to have to disappoint them by being unable to do, she was glad it wasn’t saving this girl’s life.
“Shiro’s condition is for me and Reo to work on. But we were struggling to do that with the recent rise in yokai activity here. People needed us to exorcize yokai far more than usual, and with no sign of the attacks lessening, we feared that something big and disturbing may be afoot. Dealing with that, we could barely look after Shiro in her current state, let alone make any progress on getting her back to normal.”
“So you thought if you could summon Hime-sama, she could protect people and fight the yokai...”
“Exactly. She was a legendary priestess from three generations ago, who sealed some of the most powerful yokai of that time. Things have been almost peaceful since her time, perhaps thanks to this region’s reputation as being a tough one for yokai to thrive in, because of her work. But, with Hime-sama long departed, there was just me here and, well, I have never had anywhere close to the experience she had, or needed a fraction of her mastery until now. I focused my efforts on learning to create defenses for the villages and people, and on banishing smaller, troublesome yokai. It seems now we are in a time when greater power than mine will be needed.”
Anya looked down at the sleeping girl again, and then at the priest, who was now holding Shiro’s hand. It felt horrible to be this desperate man’s hope, while knowing that she was actually powerless.
If only I really was Hime-sama. Or if I had studied something else so I could at least use some kind of technology or knowledge from my world to help. Maybe build some kind of assault rifle to shoot the invading yokai with, or perform some kind of medical procedure that’d wake Shiro up… I’ve never regretted my career choice before, but now, well, what true use is anything I can do to people with these problems?
She knew she had to tell him, but it made her feel terrible saying it out loud. It wasn’t her fault that it was true, but she still felt guilty about destroying any hope the priest had left that the summoning had worked, and that everything would be OK now.
She knelt down across from him and gently took his other hand, across Shiro’s still body.
“Mamoru… You know I’m not really Hime-sama, don’t you? I don’t know what went wrong with your summoning, I mean, perhaps you could try it again and it’ll work, but me, well, I really don’t think I can help with any of this stuff. I wish I could. I really wish I could. But I can’t. You’re going to have to send me back.”
The priest shook his head, and a tear slipped down his nose and onto the pale pink sheet over Shiro’s body.
“Anya… I, I don’t know how to tell you this, but… Whether you are Hime-sama’s new incarnation or not, you can’t go back.”
Anya’s eyes narrowed. Was this man still being stubborn? There was really no sense in keeping her here, why couldn’t he see that?
“The summoning, well, it only works if somebody’s destiny is tied to this place. That would be why it would call out to Hime-sama’s soul, wherever she is now. It’s a magic that simply helps people be where they need to be. I don’t have the power to randomly move people about between worlds like they’re chess pieces – nobody should. Your soul responded to the spell either because you are she who was once our Hime-sama, or because there is another important reason why you belong here.”
Chapter 3
"What kind of leader do you expect to be if you can't even protect us from your own brother's impetuous bullshit?" the young man, dressed in furs and leather spat, his eyes issuing a challenge from the other side of the open fire in the meeting cave.
"I am just not sure we need to intervene in this. Ikari is young. He's angry. It'll all blow over," Kiba said.
It wasn't that he was afraid to take care of the situation Ikari was creating with the humans, he just wasn't sure it was worth the clan getting so worked up about. So what, a few humans might get frightened and decide to raise their defenses against the yokai - what did that really matter? They would never be able to do any harm to his clan's way of life here in the mountains, and if some low level yokai got repelled or destroyed by the humans for trying to use this as an opportunity to attack, well, it served them right. It was of no concern to him, and shouldn't be of concern to the others.
"But surely any threat of the humans taking notice of us is worth avoiding? Especially if all it costs is reining in your little brother. Would you really put us all at risk just to let him play out his adolescent tantrum?"
"It is more than that, and you know it,” Kiba said sharply, “Ikari may be young and that may be driving how he is reacting to the situation, but his best friend was taken by those people. If he wants to know what truly happened, or even if he wants to take revenge, who are we to deny him that? They are just humans, and their priest is weak, too. I know we historically fear that town, but that wretched priestess has been gone for longer than any of us have been alive, and the man who defends the town now is no match at all for us. It is also extremely unlikely that any human would brave coming out here and causing us problems. Isn't that one of the reasons we live so far from their settlements? The environment alone is treacherous enough for them, even without us defending it."
"As much as that all makes sense, I will not accept the risk! Certainly, there is no one person in the town that we should fear, and indeed, we are in a well protected location, but this clan has always valued living free, without interference from humans, above all else. If even the existence of this clan is discovered - and it will be if Ikari keeps on with what he's doing - then everything is compromised. And worse still, we know it will be on his mind to simply tear the whole town down. If he does that, there'll be a sizable mob of humans from the whole region looking to get rid of us as a threat.”
The man spoke in a low voice with only a hint of the savagery his appearance suggested, but in the silence of the meeting cave, with only the fire crackling, all of the men heard his every word.
“They won't care that that town brought it upon themselves, or that Ikari has no quarrel with any of the others. They'll band together to try and exterminate us. Ikari will become a legendary yokai in their mind, a powerful monster that has to be taken out at any and all costs. We could win that war, sure, but not without losses, and still, the more human lives we take, the more renowned and hated we become, and the more the forces of those who hate us will grow. Is any of that worth it just because you think your brother deserves some kind of petty closure?"
Kiba looked around at the three other men sitting around the fire. Only one, Ryokan, had spoken, but it was clear that they were all in agreement about this.
Kiba had only become leader of the clan a year before, and this wasn't the first time his actions had been questioned. He'd tried to be a leader who listened to the representatives of his clan, but was always aware that at
the first sign of weakness, his position as the alpha male could be threatened. It was a strange situation, but then the clan itself was strange.
Tiger yokai, some of the most powerful yokai in the world in both strength and intellect, forming a community and alliance just to preserve their freedom. They all knew this wasn't their nature. Just like true tigers, they were not pack creatures who needed a structure, a boss, and roles to function, and so rebellion against the one they named alpha was something they often felt driven towards. Nobody in the clan, at their core, wanted there to be an alpha. Nobody wanted there to be other people to consider in their decisions, other than their own mate and their own children, and even then, only for as long as they were too young to defend themselves. That was the way of their spirits. But this was how the clan and its members had survived for 100 years or more. Strength in numbers. And that meant things like democracy and hierarchy - distasteful things for their wild tiger souls.
The matter of Ikari was an uncomfortable one for Kiba. He did feel some responsibility for the way Ikari was acting - after all, the clan had always warned him against allowing his brother to spend so much time with the kitsune group who lived in the forest at the foot of their mountain. But Ikari had always been a bit different, and if he had found the stoic ways of the clan too oppressive, and favored choosing his friends from a people known to be a little less serious and a lot more fun, Kiba had never seen the harm in that. If anything, he had thought that Ikari was doing a good job of keeping relations between the tiger yokai and the fox yokai amicable. He'd never interfered in Ikari's choices, even though he was 8 years older and had been ordered by their father to take care of him. It seemed to Kiba like there was a big difference between protecting his little brother and stopping him from being himself. What did it mean to be a powerful yokai if you couldn't do what you wanted? What did the whole philosophy of the clan about protecting their freedom mean if he was supposed to police how Ikari spent his time, and who he was friends with?