Journey Across the Hidden Islands

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “Where’s Kirro?” Seika asked.

  “I haven’t seen him,” Ji-Lin said. “But you look like a true heir.”

  Seika’s smile lit up her face. “I think that was the idea.” Then her smile vanished. “Are you ready for this?”

  “Of course. You?”

  “Aside from a little panic. What if I say the wrong thing? What if the dragon hates me? What if she says no? But yes, I think so.”

  Ji-Lin wanted to say something encouraging, but before she had a chance to, Uncle Balez and Master Shai returned to the hall. Warmth and pride filling his voice, Uncle Balez said, “Please follow us, my dear nieces, and know that you carry the hopes of Himitsu with you.”

  Their uncle and the lioness led them out of the hall and across a stone bridge to an old road carved into the dark gray rock of the mountainside. Small stunted trees clung to the crevasses in the walls on either side, and the rocks were choked with the now-familiar irina flowers, so many that they looked like patches of snow. It was all exactly as solemn and grand and severely beautiful as Seika had hoped it would be. She loved it.

  Seika glanced back and saw that others had silently joined the procession: men, women, and children from a village below the fortress. She didn’t know how word had spread, but clearly it had. More came, and still more, until they led a silent procession winding up the side of the mountain.

  Overhead, birds circled, and Seika watched them until she was certain they weren’t more koji. Soon she’d be able to look at the sky and not worry about koji hiding behind the clouds. And soon they’d return home, and Ji-Lin wouldn’t be required to stay at the temple. She could come to the palace whenever she wanted, even live there again, depending on her assignment. If Father and the masters approved, she’d be Seika’s personal guard, and they wouldn’t ever be apart.

  Seika snuck a look at her sister, who was walking beside Alejan. The winged lion would be welcome at the palace. He’d be able to visit the other lions at the temple when he wanted to, but he’d be given rooms and invited to all court events. She pictured him in costume for a masquerade and suppressed a giggle.

  “What?” Ji-Lin asked.

  “I was picturing Alejan dressed as a swan.”

  Alejan swung his massive head to look at her with his amber eyes. “May I ask why?”

  “Every season we have masquerades at the palace, special rituals for each season. If you came to one, you could dress up as whatever you want,” Seika said. It sounded less funny when she said it out loud.

  “And you think I would choose a swan?” Alejan asked.

  “Well, you could. You wouldn’t have to.”

  “I would not choose a swan.” Looking every inch the dignified winged lion, he lifted his tail and held his head high. “I would choose a rabbit.”

  Seika and Ji-Lin both smothered laughs. The lioness shot a look back at them, and Seika quickly smoothed her expression into her polite princess face.

  The sky was gray to match the rocks. Behind them, a woman began to sing in a low voice. Another woman joined her, adding a higher harmony, and then a man added his voice. The song swelled, rising like the tide to sweep over them. As they reached the end, the people fanned out around them, filling the stone road. There was a simple archway of painted red wood. Orange trees grew on either side of the arch. Their blossoms were bright white against the hard gray stone. The lord and lioness halted beneath the arch and faced their people.

  “Approach, Heir Seika,” their uncle commanded.

  Stepping forward, Seika bowed. She told herself she wasn’t going to feel nervous anymore, not after all she’d seen and done, but of course her stomach didn’t listen and began its familiar flopping. She ignored it. Her voice rang clear and true. “I am Princess Seika d’Orina Amatimara Himit-Re, heir to Emperor Yu-Senbi of the Hundred Islands of Himitsu.”

  A murmur spread through the crowd.

  “Why have you come to the Shrine of the Dragon, Heir Seika?” the lioness asked.

  “I have come to complete the Emperor’s Journey.” Was that enough? Was she supposed to say more? She tried to push down the fluttering inside. She’d crossed the islands; she could do this.

  “As Guardian of the Shrine, I bid you welcome,” Uncle Balez said.

  The lioness echoed him. “As Guardian of the Shrine, I bid you welcome.” They parted and stood on either side of the archway.

  Seika hesitated. This was it. She wasn’t sure why she suddenly wanted to bolt in the other direction, but she made her feet walk forward. Ji-Lin and Alejan followed her.

  “Walk until you reach the heart of the volcano,” Uncle Balez advised. “Look for the light—​that’s how you will know you are there. Sunlight touches the heart, as the poets say. The dragon has shaped the inside to suit her. Don’t be afraid. You won’t see any lava.”

  “You will see bones when you reach the heart,” Master Shai said.

  Seika swallowed hard. “Bones?”

  “The dragon is fond of sheep,” Master Shai said. “We leave the bones to deter those who do not belong in the dragon’s home.” She paused. “Sadly, not all heed the warning.”

  Uncle Balez smiled reassuringly and laid his hand on her shoulder. “The dragon will hear your approach and come. Do not venture beyond the bones.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “Do not be afraid,” Master Shai said. “But do not linger either. It is not wise to linger near either a volcano or a dragon. Return as soon as you can.”

  Feeling less confident than she had a few minutes before, Seika walked through the archway with Ji-Lin and Alejan, and she breathed in the scent of the orange blossoms. It overlaid the faint stench of sulfur that clung to the back of her throat and became stronger as they walked toward a wide crack in the rocks.

  As they moved forward, the smell of sulfur intensified until she felt as if she’d been slathered with rotten eggs. Seika looked back at the archway. The lord and lioness stood in front of their people, and they lifted their voices in song as Seika, Ji-Lin, and Alejan walked inside the volcano.

  Torches lit the interior. Ji-Lin lifted one of them out of its sconce. Seika took another torch. It was heavy and smelled of burning pine, which was better than the horrible sulfur.

  “Walk between us,” Ji-Lin said to Seika.

  Seika didn’t argue. They were her guards, after all, and this was what they’d come here to do. Ji-Lin walked first, and Alejan followed last. As they descended, the sounds of the outside world faded behind them, as if smothered. Silence and darkness pressed around them.

  The tunnel was as round as a tube, and the walls were rough and full of holes, like a solidified sponge. She wondered if it was natural or dragon-made—​dragon-made, she guessed, based on what Uncle Balez had said. She felt the roughness through the soles of her slippers. The ground felt warm as well, and Seika was sweating in her dress. The silk stuck to the skin on her back and legs. She hoped they’d find the dragon’s chamber soon. This wasn’t anyplace she wanted to stay for a long time. She felt as if she were tasting rotten eggs every time she breathed. It made her throat and nose prickle and her head ache. “You know the worst part about all of this?” Seika asked.

  “The koji?” Alejan suggested.

  “Falling into the ocean?” Ji-Lin offered.

  “The smell of this volcano?” Alejan said.

  “We still don’t know why the barrier is failing,” Seika said. “Father sent us on the Journey early, which means he must have known the barrier is weak. But does he know why? Does anyone? All we know about the dragon and the barrier is from stories. And we don’t even know if the stories are true. Look at Kirro’s tale. It’s very different from ours.” Appallingly different, she thought.

  “Two hundred years is a long time,” Alejan said thoughtfully. “Stories can be forgotten. And they can change, even true ones.”

  “Even the tales of Master Shai?” Ji-Lin teased.

  Alejan fluffed his mane. The torchlight sent shadows shivering acr
oss the tunnel walls. “Of course those are true!”

  “There are a lot of them,” Seika said. “They might not all be true. She’s only one lion.”

  He huffed. “One very impressive lion. Still . . . it does not take long for a story to change or be forgotten. I know the story of your birth has been recounted multiple ways, and it was a mere twelve years ago.”

  Seika was startled. She didn’t know anyone talked about their birth. Certainly no one ever did around them. “It has?”

  “Indeed. In one version, lightning hit the palace at the moment of Seika’s birth and hit the Temple of the Sun at Ji-Lin’s birth and then a third strike hit your mother. In another story, your mother was not pregnant with two children when she gave birth to Seika, but when she realized she had birthed the future heir, she decided then and there that she needed a second child to guard her and so birthed Ji-Lin, giving up her own life force to create a new life. In yet another version, you were both born dead, but all the winged lions roared at once and woke you but sent your mother to death.”

  “I haven’t heard any of those.” Seika had only heard one version, from her father: that their mother had loved them very much but her body had been too weak to stay with them. She had held out until they were both born, kissed them both, and then closed her eyes. It wasn’t their fault, their father said. She’d been sick. Still, he said, he missed her when he looked at them. Seika sometimes wondered what it would have been like to grow up with a mother. Luckily, she had Ji-Lin, so she was never alone, at least until they both turned eleven and Father sent Ji-Lin to the temple. “I don’t think any of those stories are true.”

  “Or perhaps they all are,” Alejan said. “A story can be true without being real.”

  Ji-Lin mock-punched him in the shoulder. “When did you get so wise?”

  He answered seriously. “When Ji-Lin fell into the sea. I’d thought . . . I’d always thought we were meant to live lives like in a tale, that we’d be the heroes of stories that would be retold by generations, but I am thinking now that all the old stories . . . they are, at the same time, truth and lies.” He paused. “I have not been having comfortable thoughts. Does that mean I’m becoming wise?”

  “I think it might,” Ji-Lin said.

  Seika thought about the Bridge of Promises in the palace and all the conflicting stories that surrounded it. “What if there isn’t a dragon at all? What if that’s a lie?”

  “Don’t doubt it now,” Ji-Lin said. “We’ve come too far. Besides, why would there be a shrine and a tunnel if there weren’t a dragon on the other end?”

  “What if she’s dead?” Seika asked.

  “Then I guess the barrier will finish falling, and the monsters will come.” Ji-Lin sounded irritated.

  Not a comforting answer, Seika thought. “And if they come? What do our people do?”

  “Our people are strong now,” Alejan said. “It’s not the same as it was when Emperor Himitsu first came to the islands—​a small, tired group. We can defend ourselves.”

  “But we aren’t ready,” Seika objected.

  “Maybe we ask Kirro’s father for some of those cannons,” Ji-Lin said. “And people can restock the koji shelters. The lions and riders will fight.”

  “It would change things for everyone,” Seika said.

  Ji-Lin sighed. “I know.”

  Reaching out, Seika took Ji-Lin’s hand and squeezed it. Ji-Lin squeezed back. “I don’t want anything to change,” Seika said.

  “Things already have,” Ji-Lin said.

  Hand in hand, they walked into the dragon’s chamber.

  Dull light spilled from above—​the chamber was beneath the mouth of the volcano, with a shaft that led up to the sky—​but it wasn’t enough to brighten the shadows. Lifting their torches, they looked around—​We made it, Seika thought. At last! A vast chamber with coarse walls that looked like clumps of dried orange mud, it was wide enough for a dragon. But there was nothing here but rocks. And bones.

  The torchlight flickered over an array of bones scattered throughout the chamber. Seika looked away. Sheep bones, she reminded herself—​or at least, she hoped so. The Guardians of the Shrine were tasked with keeping people out of the dragon’s home. Except us, Seika thought. We’re supposed to be here, right?

  It didn’t feel like a place any human was meant to be.

  The chamber felt even hotter than the tunnel, though she saw no hint of lava—​all the rock looked as if it had cooled centuries ago. It was stained with deep colors, reds and oranges and browns. She pushed up the sleeves of her gown. Alejan was panting, his lion tongue sticking out. His wings drooped, the feather tips dragging on the rock floor. Seika licked her dry lips. She felt as if every bit of water had been sucked from her mouth and her tongue dried with sand-paper. Just breathing made her throat hurt. “Hello? Dragon of Himitsu? I am Seika d’Orina Amatimara Himit-Re, princess of Himitsu and heir to the imperial throne! I’ve come to talk with you!”

  The tunnel seemed to swallow her words.

  Seika tried again, louder. “Dragon of the Islands! It is Himit’s Day, and I am Himitsu’s heir. I’ve come to complete the Emperor’s Journey! Long ago, you bargained with my ancestor. I’m here to ask you to uphold that bargain. The barrier must stay strong!” The words scraped her dry throat.

  “Anyone hear anything?” Ji-Lin asked.

  Twisting, Seika looked up the shaft, toward the mouth of the volcano. It extended to the sky, ending in a smear of light gray at the top of the volcano—​the opening to the crater, far above them. She judged it was large enough for a dragon to fly through, if it wanted to. The dragon had created this chamber and the tunnels to be her home . . . but if this was her home, then why wasn’t she here? “Dragon! We need you! Please, show yourself!” Her voice echoed.

  The dragon didn’t come.

  There was no other place for the dragon to be—​at least, none that Seika could see. This was where the path led. This was where she should be, the chamber that Uncle Balez had told them about. The light was here. The bones, also here. So where was the dragon? Wiping the sweat from her face, Seika called out again. “Dragon!”

  “Maybe tell her a story, like the waterhorse?” Ji-Lin suggested.

  “What story?” Seika asked. It was hard to think in such heat. She felt the sweat drip down her forehead and pool beneath her hair at the back of her neck. Her dress was drenched. Her eyes continued to water from the bitter air, and her lungs ached.

  “Tell her ours,” Ji-Lin said.

  “Once upon a time, there were two princesses,” Seika began. “Sisters. Born on the same day. They shared a bedroom when they were little. Shared toys in the toy room. Shared adventures in the palace. One time, Seika, the older sister, discovered a hidden passageway behind their dresser. They explored it whenever the governess was napping, which was nearly every afternoon. When the latest gover­ness threw away the younger sister’s, Ji-Lin’s, favorite toy, a stuffed lion—​”

  “I remember that lion! Father had given it to me. Directly to me, not just through one of the courtiers. I slept with it every night. Carried it around everywhere, until the ears fell off and the tail was shredded. One of the court ladies tried to get rid of it.”

  “We used the passageways to sneak down to where the servants hauled the trash.”

  “It smelled worse than this place,” Ji-Lin said. She was slumped against the rock wall. Sweat poured down her face too. Alejan looked like a wet rag. His fur was clumped, and his wings drooped.

  “It did,” Seika agreed. “It smelled like a hundred bathrooms mixed with cooked cabbage, plus rotten eggs. This just smells like rotten eggs. No offense meant, Dragon!”

  In the flickering light, Seika could see Ji-Lin smiling. “We spent hours there, looking through the trash until we found it,” Ji-Lin said. “You found it. I remember that.”

  Seika remembered that too. “We were so tired when we crawled back out that we fell asleep on our beds without changing our clo
thes or washing or anything.”

  Ji-Lin laughed. The sound echoed through the cavern. “We woke to about six maids plus our governess screaming so loudly that the guards came.”

  “You jumped out of bed, holding the lion like a shield, and put yourself right in front of me. Ready to defend me. Even then. You would have swung a sword at them if you’d had one,” Seika said. “When they told Father about what happened, they left out that part. I always wished I’d spoken up and told Father that.”

  “We were, what, six years old? Five? Father was intimidating.”

  “Still is,” Seika said.

  “I don’t want to tell him we failed,” Ji-Lin said. Her voice cracked.

  “Me either.”

  “He’ll forgive you,” Ji-Lin said. “He’s always been proud of you. I’m the troublemaker.”

  “Father loves you,” Seika said. “And I know he’s proud of you. He talks about you, you know, about how you’re becoming a warrior.”

  “He does?”

  “Sometimes I thought . . .” Seika swallowed, though there was no moisture left in her mouth. “Sometimes I used to wish I’d been the one sent to the temple, so he could be proud of me.”

  “I sometimes wished I’d been the one to stay,” Ji-Lin said.

  “At least we’re together now,” Seika said.

  Ji-Lin took her hand again. “Yes, we are.”

  Alejan cleared his throat with a rumble. “The torches.”

  They looked at the torches. The flame was nearly extinguished on both of them. “We aren’t going to have enough light to make it back to the entrance to the shrine,” Ji-Lin said. “We’ll be walking in the dark.”

  “We can’t go back yet!” Seika cried. “All of Himitsu is depending on us. You saw those people out there.” If they turned around because of a little darkness, she wouldn’t be able to face that crowd. Or her father. Or any of the people they’d met on the way. “We’ve been in dark tunnels before. We can feel our way out if we have to. We can’t fail Himitsu.”