by Carly Chase
Kiba put his arm around her shoulder, where they were sitting on the grass outside the house, and squeezed.
“What is it?”
“Well, my magic is very similar to priest magic in some ways, even if its intent is not the same and I use images instead of words. And I keep remembering something the priest said the first night I was summoned here – that Hime-sama used images in some of her wards against the yokai.”
“Who is Hime-sama? That’s just a human word for a woman of high social status, a princess.”
I guess my mind didn’t translate it because I thought it was a name.
“Really? I thought it was the name of the priestess Mamoru was trying to summon when he pulled me through from my world. See, I’d been so sure I wasn’t her, but what if I am? What if I am the reincarnation of Hime-sama after all, and I used to wage war against the yokai...”
“That’s what they call that wretched priestess? Her name was not Hime-sama, though that may have been her title – there is something in our records that suggests she might have been the daughter of some important human family, who left nobility due to her exceptional skills at killing yokai, and became a priestess. No, her real name – and it is still a name yokai tell horror stories to their children about, even though she’s been gone for decades – was Hisa. And there is no way you are her, reborn.”
“But, I can do this strange magic, and it’s already so powerful when I’ve just started to study it, and I was connected to this world, and there’s you, and…”
“Your magic is the opposite of Hisa’s – it can only benefit yokai. Your views too, oppose hers. You were willing to trust yokai, whereas she could only hate us. And I don’t think fate would be so cruel to me as to give me that bitch for a lover!” he said, the last part clearly a joke, but Anya realized that perhaps there was a point where a yokai would refuse the partner destiny had provided for them.
“You really don’t think I’m her?”
“Impossible. But, maybe you are connected to her. Maybe there was someone at that time who stood up against her, for the yokai, and their memory just hasn’t survived history. Or maybe there wasn’t somebody like that, but there should have been, and now there is. Your destiny is still a mystery, Anya, but that woman was a monster, and you are not.”
Feeling somewhat reassured that she probably wasn’t the reincarnation of someone who committed atrocities against yokai and was hated, generations later, by the man she now loved, Anya moved the topic on to what Kiba and Ikari had been discussing.
“We have to resolve things with my clan, basically. I was sent to stop Ikari causing trouble with the humans, because the clan was worried that this would lead to complications. As you can tell, I sided with my brother instead of the will of my people, and now we’ve taken the priest’s sister. Ikari is also of a mind that the priest needs to be punished for what he did, though Yuki-Shiro is at present keeping him from taking that sort of action. She thinks her brother needs to be reasoned with, though it never did her any good before…”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t want you and Ikari to hurt him either. From what I saw, he’s not an evil person, he’s just been brought up with views based on fear of people different than him. Views he’s not ready to let go of. There are people like that in my world, and violence against them, well, it always just leads to more hatred and violence. We need to be above that to make any difference. I agree with Yuki-Shiro that trying to change his mind is the best approach, even if it might be futile. He’s not dangerous to the kitsune or to your clan anyway, is he?”
“Not at the moment, no, my clan just didn’t want the humans knowing of our existence at all. And they definitely do now, because Ikari and I had a run in with him as we were leaving the town with you and Yuki-Shiro.”
“But what can he do? Yuki-Shiro says he isn’t powerful enough to harm higher yokai, and there won’t be any more invasions now that Ikari has rescued her. Surely he’d be too afraid to do anything to your people?”
“I agree. They had all these ideas that humans from all around the region may band together to try and fight us, or something ridiculous like that, but that is just the paranoia of a clan who prefers to be hidden away in ignorance. I didn’t want to lead them further down that path, and now, it won’t be an option anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ikari intends to leave the clan and live here once he and Yuki-Shiro are married. She wouldn’t be happy living in the mountains with only serious tiger-people for company, and Ikari likes it better here too. As for me, I’ll be leaving the clan as well.”
“Really? But you’re the leader!”
“Yes, but I am also destined to be with you, and you could barely survive the conditions we live in. Clearly you have bigger, more important things to be doing in this world than hiding away in a mountain cave, and so my destiny was never to stay. It never felt right anyway. I was only the alpha because my father was before me, and I am the strongest, physically speaking. That’s generally how it is decided when the clan votes. None of them particularly like my way of thinking, but for tigers it is natural to dislike being told what to do anyway, and so they are used to feeling that way about any leader.”
“What will they think about you leaving?”
“Hopefully they will be pleased. Ryokan can take over and they can stay hidden away worrying about everything forever, and Ikari and I can live the lives we want, just like our parents – they left to go out into the world alone as soon as I was old enough to take over. I guess our bloodline isn’t one fond of being tied to that kind of responsibility – though I don’t think any tiger’s is.”
“Sounds like you’ve made up your mind,” Anya said, with pride in his decisiveness.
“Now comes the annoying part, though – I have to go and talk to them. It’s been too long since I went out in search of Ikari, and it’s better if I go to them before they decide to come here. It won’t take a genius – which is just as well because Ryokan is not one – to figure out we came here, given the Yuki incident was what started all of this.”
“How far away is your home?”
“It’s very close actually. We are at the foot of the mountain here, you just can’t see it through all the trees. We live up there, in a network of caves inside the mountain itself. In my tiger form, I can get up there in a few hours. I won’t be gone for long.”
“Can I come with you to the edge of the forest? I want to see your mountain, and say goodbye.”
“I was hoping you would want to,” he said, squeezing her shoulder again.
“Before we go then, there’s something I want to try.”
“If the fox makes Yuki-Shiro as powerful as a normal kitsune, then I think the tiger could make you twice as powerful as you usually are, or, you know, some increase, anyway,” Anya said, back inside the house, painting a stripy tiger onto Kiba’s bare bicep.
“But tiger yokai don’t use magic, except to transform. That’s really all we can do. It’s just that our tiger forms have the greatest strength of all the yokai… Except maybe dragons, but I’ve never seen one of those,” he admitted.
“Well, then maybe it’ll boost your strength or speed or something – it’s all guesswork really, but the tiger I drew on paper did glow blue like it would do something. I just didn’t want to ask you to try it before because you didn’t seem too eager to show me your tiger form.”
“I just didn’t want you to be afraid. I wanted you to love me, and… Well, it just didn’t seem like turning into a terrifying animal was a great way to win your trust.”
“Even though I asked you to do it?”
“I can’t say that every choice I made in trying to win you over was the best one – I don’t know of any yokai who ever had to deal with the complexities of human love before, so it’s not a topic we know anything about. I just did what seemed best. But, you’ll see it today.”
“Hopefully, if this magic works, I’ll see a tiger nobody ha
s ever seen before,” she said, kissing him softly on the lips before inking in the tip of the tiger’s tail, and watching the now familiar blue glow get consumed into his body.
They walked through the forest, largely in silence, Anya holding on to Kiba’s arm. She knew he was only going to be gone a day at most, but it would be the first time she’d been without him since arriving in the village, and that felt somehow weird now. He looked to be deep in thought, and she didn’t want to delve too deeply into the situation with his clan. It seemed like he had had his position thrust upon him, and being free of it was what he really wanted, though she imagined that the conversation he’d be having back in his homeland would be an uncomfortable one.
The trees began to thin out after a while – the village was buried quite deep in the forest itself, and so there had been close to an hour of walking where it had just been a pine forest with wildflowers. Anya decided to pick some on the way back and see if any of them would make for magic drawings.
“We’re almost at the forest’s edge now – you’ll see the mountain soon. Can you find your way back OK? The village is at the center of the forest so you can’t really go wrong if you just turn back and go in a straight line.”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” she said, though it suddenly dawned on her she hadn’t been paying much attention to landmarks or anything, she was that used to using her phone’s GPS to help her find places.
I really should try and get back those pre-digital skills!
And then, there it was. The biggest mountain Anya had ever seen – though that wasn’t saying much, as she’d never actually visited one in real life. It was easily as tall as a Manhattan skyscraper though. At the bottom, the harsh rock made her feet hurt in her kitsune sandals just looking at it, and further up, ice and snow.
I’m kind of relieved he had no expectation that I might want to go and live up there… It’s pretty, but I’d rather admire it from down here.
“I can see why it’s easier to get up there if you’ve got four legs...”
“Yes, there is that. It’s one of the reasons my clan decided to live up there when they formed about 100 years ago. The caves were already there, and it is so hard for humans to reach the entrances to them that they figured they could go ignored up there.”
“But you don’t want to go ignored?”
“It’s not just that, I just don’t think it’s good for a whole body of people to value protecting their isolation so much. We’ve been among the kitsune for some time now – me, a tiger, you, a human – and they have welcomed us. They are not so proud of their separation from the world as my clan, which is why the young ones like Yuki tend to go out and explore. I think, whatever me and Ikari are supposed to do, it’s out in the world, otherwise we wouldn’t have been brought together with you and Yuki-Shiro.”
She hugged him tightly. She was going to miss his serious ways while he was gone, the kitsune were certainly far less intense about things, and she’d come to find it rather endearing.
“So, now, the moment of truth. You know I have to take my clothes off for this part, right?”
“I can live with it,” Anya said, with a suggestive smirk.
Admiring his naked body in the midday sun, complete with the tiger ‘temporary tattoo’ she’d given him, Anya smiled reassuringly. She wasn’t afraid at all. He could turn into a shoggarth with a thousand eyes and tentacles and she’d still know she was safe, and she’d still love him.
The transformation itself was something that Anya’s eyes couldn’t really register. It wasn’t the slow morph of a werewolf movie, more like her vision just went really strange for a moment, and then, where Kiba had stood, was an impossibly large, but incredibly beautiful tiger. Its head was level with Anya’s own, and at her 5ft 8” that made for a very big cat. Its fur was gleaming in the sunlight, however, and its eyes – his eyes – were the same gold as the flecks she had noticed in Kiba’s human eyes. He lowered his great head, and Anya put her palm on it, her hand buried instantly in the plushness of his surprisingly soft fur.
“So, this is you, too, huh?”
Tiger-Kiba let out a little growl that almost sounded like a chuckle.
“You can’t talk like this I guess?”
He grunted again.
“OK, so, just nod or shake your head. Are you the same as usual, with the tiger spell?”
His head moved from side to side, her hand thrown off of it for a moment.
“Bigger?”
He nodded.
“And you feel good? No weird side effects?”
He nodded again.
“Well then it looks like you just powered up!”
She wrapped her arms around the beast’s powerful neck and nuzzled her face into the fur there. Who hadn’t always dreamed of cuddling a tame big cat? She had to take advantage of the opportunity – though of course, she knew it wouldn’t be the last one.
She gave him a kiss on the top of the head, which felt at once both normal, like kissing Kiba, and very, very bizarre, and wished him well on his journey.
“I’ll be back at the village, OK, come as soon as you can, because I don’t know how long I can hear about Yuki-Shiro’s wedding dress without you there to rescue me.”
He growl-chuckled again, and with that, turned around, and as Anya watched in wide-eyed amazement, raced off like a speeding train to scale the mountain.
Chapter 16
As he drew closer to the part of the mountain where entrances to the internal cave network would start to appear, Kiba somewhat reluctantly transformed back into his human form. It had been exhilarating, trying out the powered-up version of his tiger form – especially since his beloved Anya had gifted it to him with her magic. He’d almost felt like he was carrying a piece of her with him. He’d gotten here in record time, and was not fatigued at all.
But he didn’t want the others to see it. Undoubtedly, they would be even more reluctant to let him leave if they thought he had found a source of power like that, and he didn’t want to show his hand either, in case he would at some point need to fight what would soon be his former clan.
He dressed, and, with no great enthusiasm, carried on towards the main cave entrance, passing through what had previously been his own hunting grounds, where mountain goats and birds made easy prey for tigers. He felt no love for this place. He never had. There had always been easier, happier ways to live, and his people had always rejected them. The life of a tiger in his own clan, the clan he was supposed to have been leading and protecting, was a hard one, and offered little by way of joy or satisfaction.
At first he’d been of a mind to change things, but the stubbornness of those at the next tier below him like Ryokan and his friends was impossible to break. He’d long envied Ikari for having the freedom to simply run away whenever he wanted and seek out his own entertainment – a luxury Kiba himself had never been able to enjoy.
But now, now destiny had spoken, and he and his brother were done with this austere, stoic life forever.
Before he even reached the main cave entrance, as if they’d somehow known he was on his way, Ryokan, Katsuo, and Akira – the same men who had been at his last meeting here before he’d set off to find Ikari – strode out of the darkness and stood, barring his way inside with defensive poses – shoulders broad and arms folded across strong chests.
“So, which spy did you send, Ryokan?” Kiba asked, with resignation.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does. Sending a spy to watch over the leader of the clan is a betrayal, and not one I’d like to think you made one of the younger ones commit.”
Ryokan shrugged.
“We didn’t trust you to handle the situation with your brother to our satisfaction, and so we had you followed. Clearly you are not surprised by this, so let’s not pretend it’s some horrible treachery that you’re actually going to do anything about.”
“So, can I assume that you are dissatisfied with what occurred in the human tow
n? I am not. Ikari saved Yuki, and now, he has no reason to continue using lower yokai to attack the town. Everything was resolved very much to our liking.”
Ryokan’s eyes narrowed and he balled his fists in suppressed rage.
“Of course we are dissatisfied, Kiba, stop fucking about. You were seen by their priest, you took his sister.”
“Yes, and I’m sure he is very angry about it, too, but there is little he can do, and he is only aware that Ikari and I exist, not that there is a whole tiger clan out here on this blisteringly cold, shitty mountain where nobody with any love for their own life would ever choose to be.”
“What is the meaning of your new tiger form?” Katsuo suddenly asked, bringing himself into the conversation.
So, they saw me coming, but they don’t seem to have had anyone watching us inside the kitsune village, or they would have guessed that it was a result of Anya’s magic. How much do they know about Anya? If they know we took Yuki-Shiro, they must have seen us leave the priest's town, and they may well have seen her say goodbye to me before I came here…
“A new form of magic has entered the world. It can be used to provide certain benefits to yokai. It is performed by a human, and she happens to be in alliance with Ikari and I, as well as the kitsune.”
“The dark skinned woman.”
“Yes.”
So they’ve seen her, but they don’t seem to know of our true relationship.
“So now, our leader is taking blessings from humans,” Katsuo taunted.
“The power that this woman has is yet to be fully explored, though when it is, and we are clear on how it can be best used to help people, she will almost certainly be willing to trade items with this clan that will allow you to take these benefits too. Healing, protection, it has all sorts of applications, and we have no intention of keeping it from any peaceful yokai groups who may be able to make good use of it. We are not hoarding secrets, here, so there is no need for any hatred towards the human woman.”