by Cindy Lin
“Look at that,” said Goru, relieved. “Maybe I’ll be giving my chores away.”
The rest of them had a turn before they moved on to the other targets around the shrine. Though nearly everyone managed to hit the target enough to gain a stray point here and there for their teams, the match was clearly between Tora and Inu. When it came time for her to shoot again, she insisted that Inu go first. “I’d like to have a chance to score bonus points too,” she said—and proceeded to jog as far away from the bale as she possibly could, nearly doubling the distance. She then hit not just Inu’s but other arrows that had reached the target. Even on the moving targets, Tora held her own, matching Inu shot for shot, and quickly racked up points.
The two teams were tied, 183 to 183, when Rana stepped up for another go at a target. She was still very much a beginner and had to wear a special training glove on her right hand. The leather sleeve had just one finger covering her thumb, to help her with pulling on the bowstring. Raising the bow in her left hand, Rana drew the string back. Her left arm wobbled as she strained to keep the bow in place against the string’s tug. “It’s really tight!” she exclaimed.
“She looks tired,” Nezu muttered to Tora.
Ignoring the fact that Rana was on the other team, Inu went into teacher mode, offering advice and encouragement. “Drop your shoulders, Snake Girl—your neck’s disappeared. Focus on your form, and don’t worry about the target. Correct shooting is correct hitting.”
Rana nodded, then loosed her arrow with a snap of her string. She cried out in pain and dropped her bow.
“Oh no, string slap!” Usagi grimaced. She knew the feeling. It happened whenever she gripped her bow too tightly or got tired and let her posture go. She hurried over to take a look. Sure enough, an ugly red welt bloomed on Rana’s left forearm. “Shall I go get the Apothecary?”
“Let me see.” Saru gently pushed Usagi aside. She examined Rana’s wound, then put an arm around her shoulders. “I’ll take care of this. Let’s go make a poultice.” The Monkey Heir looked around and shook her head. “Fun’s over, everyone. Inu and I are leaving the day after tomorrow, so we all should get back to work.”
As she led Rana away, Usagi felt a strange pang in her chest. Saru and Rana seemed to be growing quite close and shutting her out. Worse, since returning to the shrine, Usagi had been feeling a strained distance from the others. Everyone was so disheartened over the failed mission. They must be blaming her for the loss of two Treasures. But what could she do now? Reaching for her rabbit pendant, Usagi worried it with her fingers.
“Boils and blisters.” Goru looked let down. He headed for the target bales and began to remove arrows.
“We were so close to deciding the winning team,” Nezu agreed.
But Inu shrugged and tossed back his shaggy hair. He turned to Tora and bowed. “Excellent showing, Tiger Girl,” he said. “Call it a draw?”
“I guess.” Pursing her lips in disappointment, Tora bowed in return.
“We can still trade chores if you like,” he said with a smile.
Laughing, Tora demurred. “That’s all right—I’ll stick with the goats. I’ll have plenty of chances to clean the outhouses when you and Saru leave.”
Soon the time came for Mission Flute to leave for the Dancing Dunes, down on the southern tip of Midaga. Tucked in their clothing and in their backbundles, Inu and Saru carried what had become essentials on these missions: a firestarter; a cloth that could be used as kerchief, scarf, towel, or sling; a slate pencil rolled in a strip of paper for taking notes or writing messages; and select medicines from the Apothecary in case they got into trouble. They also had their hidden weapons in their walking sticks, Inu’s unstrung bow stored in his pack along with a bundle of arrows, and a set of throwing blades that Rana had enhanced with venom. It was a newly developed animal talent of hers, producing a venom that could paralyze, and Saru was eager to see whether it would work better than the sleeping potion they usually used. She’d sewn the shimmering Fire Cloak beneath a plain dun-colored wrap. Dressed as traveling peddlers, they had a selection of trinkets that everyone had had a hand in creating.
“Think anyone will buy them?” Rana asked, polishing the tiny grooves in the shell of a cherry-sized tortoise she’d fashioned out of clay.
Saru took it and held it up by its bright silk thread. “Get your long-life charms here! A long life and good fortune, yours for two coppers!” she called. She stopped and raised an eyebrow. “What do you think?”
“I think you should take my money!” drawled Goru. “Nice work with your earth gift, Snake Girl. That tortoise looks like it’d walk off if it weren’t on that cord.”
Coming out of the kitchen, Nezu brought Inu and Saru a string of rice balls tied up in bamboo leaves and filled with bits of mushroom, sausage, and salted egg. “A little something for your first evening meal tonight.”
The Monkey Heir’s pale face lit up. “I’m drooling already!” As she put them in her backbundle, she reminded everyone that Nezu would be in charge, and Usagi second- in-command. “Everyone keep studying—and practice the stealth arts that the Tigress taught us,” Saru urged. “We’re going to need them more than ever if we hope to get all the Treasures back.”
“There may not be enough of us to take things by force,” Nezu agreed, “but we still have ways to outsmart the Dragonlord.” He flashed a grin.
The two senior Heirs looked around at the five who would remain: the Rat Heir, the Rabbit Heir, and the three Heirlings who’d escaped the Dragon Academy. “In the name of the Twelve, we leave the shrine in your care,” Saru said.
“May the spirits of the Twelve be with you and guide you until we are together again,” Usagi replied.
Inu gave a solemn nod, then his dark eyes crinkled. “Try to stay out of trouble, the lot of you.”
Life around the shrine settled into a new routine. As the Heirs in charge, Usagi and Nezu would lead the others in mind-the-mind sessions each morning to prepare for the day. They would sit quietly with their eyes closed, breathing slowly and evenly, letting their thoughts settle. There were chores both before and after their morning meal, then intensive study in the shrine library. It was urgent that they go over the Treasures that were still missing and memorize what they looked like and how they worked, especially since the Heirlings had done so badly trying to see the Flute of Dancing Dreams in the Mirror of Elsewhere. Nezu began quizzing them on a manual known as the Warrior’s Guide, which included stories and cautionary tales recorded about each artifact.
“Why must we always carry waxed cotton wool around the Flute of Dancing Dreams?” he demanded of Rana.
Rana didn’t hesitate. “To plug the ears of anyone who should not fall under its spell. Unlike what happened to the 31st Snake Warrior, who accidentally made a whole village sleep for an entire year.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Goru scoffed. “Who doesn’t like a good nap?”
“Except their crops went untended and all their animals ran off,” Usagi said. “The Warriors had a lot to make up for with that village.”
Nezu nodded. “With any tool, mistakes can be made and its power abused. Each Treasure is only as good as the person using it—so it’s important you learn all this. Can’t have Inu and Saru bringing back the flute only to have one of you accidentally force us to dance till our feet bleed.”
In the afternoons, they worked on drills. After stretching and warming up their muscles, they focused on stealth techniques, like misdirecting attention to enter forbidden territory or make a quick escape. “If you’re on a rooftop trying to run away, throw a pebble down one side—then head down the other side. Whoever’s in the building won’t know which way you’ve gone,” advised Usagi.
They studied spy tactics that would help them on their missions. Usagi was especially good at them, since her rabbit hearing allowed her to eavesdrop easily on conversations, and Tora’s tiger vision meant that she had a good view on things, but spying, as Nezu was fond of repea
ting, meant gathering information, and there was more than one way to do that.
“Talk to people! It’s amazing what people will tell someone who asks, if they think they’re interested and are harmless. Everyone likes to tell stories about themselves.”
They worked on disguises to help them hide in plain sight, mixing face paints and applying them so that Usagi looked like she had a scruffy beard, Goru appeared to have only one eye, and Tora’s tiger teeth were blacked out so she had wide gaps in her smile.
“I don’t know if that makes you look harmless,” Usagi laughed. “But it definitely makes you look hilarious!”
Tora waggled her eyebrows. “I could say the same about your beard!”
Along with their disguises, they practiced acting, to help them blend in wherever they went. Nezu would point to one of the three Heirlings and suggest a possible character, and then Usagi would pretend to be a stranger, challenging them to pass as a “rich merchant’s son,” a “traveling entertainer” or an “old blind beggar.”
“Use what the other person says to build on your story,” Nezu advised. “If someone mistakes you for somebody else, or thinks you’re a peddler when you really meant to be a fisherman, go along with it instead of saying, ‘No, you’re wrong.’ It’s easier than having to come up with an elaborate cover story—just say yes to whatever they say to you.”
Goru scratched his shaved head. “I don’t know—what if they catch you in the middle of a lie?”
“I’m not saying that you shouldn’t prepare a story for your disguise,” Nezu said. “It’s always better to be prepared. But sometimes things will happen that catch you off guard, and it doesn’t have to throw everything else you’ve planned into doubt. You can still make it work.”
Usagi had never considered that before.
Things didn’t need to go perfectly to work out. The thought gave her hope.
One morning, a few weeks after Inu and Saru had set off from the shrine, Usagi and Tora were elbow-deep in chores. As they wiped down the expanse of wooden floor in the Great Hall, Tora suddenly stopped scrubbing. She looked around, then spoke in a lowered voice. “I saw something in the Mirror of Elsewhere the other day.”
“What do you mean?”
“When Saru had us look for the flute. I—I didn’t focus on the flute. I actually tried looking for something else.”
“What? What did you look for?”
“My father,” confessed Tora. “I thought I started to see something, but it went cloudy very quickly. I want to take another look.”
Usagi sat back on her heels. “You really think you saw him?” She chewed her lip, doubtful. “It’s not good to look at that Treasure too often. There are consequences for using the mirror without care. It’s quite powerful.”
“Yes, yes, ‘You’ll get stuck looking Elsewhere all the time and stop paying attention to what’s right in front of you’—all you Heirs keep saying that. But I remember you telling me that you used it all the time to check on me and Uma when Strikers took us to the Dragon Academy.”
“Not all the time,” Usagi protested. “I mean, I did sneak peeks at it, but I made sure not to look for too long whenever I did. Besides, I saw you both captured, and the mirror showed you clearly. I knew I had a chance of finding you. I worry that you’ll wind up staring into that thing for hours, trying to look for your father when he’s dead . . .”
Tora’s amber eyes flared. “You don’t know that he’s dead. You don’t know for sure.” She went to the weapons wall. The simple sword that Tora had been given as a cadet from the Dragon Academy hung there, along with some of the more legendary blades that had been wielded by Warriors of old. She brought the steel blade to Usagi. It had an unadorned hilt and simple scabbard, but the edge of the sword was finely wrought, with wavy lines visible in the metal. “These lines show how many times the metal has been folded and beaten—just look how many there are! And this mark—it’s supposed to be Wayani, but I swear it looks like the stamp my father used to brand his pieces.” Her jaw set. “I’d know his work anywhere.”
“So you—you think your father has been taken to Waya and is making swords for the Dragonlord and his army?” Usagi’s voice trailed off. Tora had spoken of this before, but it always seemed dangerous to Usagi to hope, even as she secretly wished for it to be true. If it were, perhaps her parents were being held prisoner somewhere too. Anything would be better than what they’d always believed, which was that their parents had been callously murdered and buried in a mass grave so vast it formed a hill outside their hometown of Goldentusk. “I just wonder if maybe you’re seeing something that’s not there—something you want really badly.”
Tora snorted. “You’re saying it’s all in my imagination? Here, I’ll test it by thinking of something else—something that I know won’t show up.” She fetched the mirror from the chest of Treasures, then plopped down before Usagi. She gazed into it, then grew pale. “That can’t be.”
“What do you mean? What are you seeing?” Usagi leaned over to look, but Tora pulled away, staring intently.
“The Tigress! She’s in the mirror.”
Usagi whispered, “Tigress? She’s . . . alive?”
Chapter 7
The Second Tiger
THE HAIRS ROSE ON THE back of Usagi’s neck. Though it was nearly summer and the weather had finally warmed, the Great Hall suddenly felt ice cold. “How? How can you be seeing the Tigress in the Mirror of Elsewhere?”
It was impossible. With her own eyes, Usagi had witnessed the Blue Dragon striking down the Tigress. Whenever Usagi thought about their mission to the Palace of the Clouds, she could still picture the moment when the Dragonlord had brought down his sword on his old teacher, and the explosion that had sent them all sprawling when he’d struck the former Tiger Warrior. “She’s dead. You were there.”
“I know!” Tora was still staring, eyes wide, into the mirror. “That’s why I was asking the mirror to show her to me—I thought nothing would come up. But here she is.”
It was too much for Usagi to grasp. “Give me that,” she demanded.
Tora handed over the gilded metal disk, her tawny cheeks ashen. “I swear on the Twelve, I’m not making it up.”
A beam of sunlight from the open doors of the Great Hall struck the mirror and bounced into Usagi’s eyes in a dazzling flash of light. It reminded her of the blinding flare that had gone up when the Blue Dragon killed Horangi. Blinking, she waited till she no longer saw spots, then held up the mirror. Usagi thought about the Tigress’s gnarled hands, how healing they were when she’d attended to a cut on Usagi’s arm, how gentle they were when she stroked her cloud leopard’s great furry head. She remembered the priestess’s penetrating green gaze whenever she was teaching them, and how she shuffled around the shrine with the help of her long wooden staff, twice the height of the diminutive old warrior. And yet how gracefully she’d moved when she was battling the Blue Dragon, with nothing but the wood staff to protect her.
The image of the banners fluttering above them in the Great Hall grew cloudy in the mirror, then changed. A shrunken figure appeared, crumpled and motionless. Long hair, snow white with a streak of black, hung in a ragged curtain, obscuring the figure’s face. But Usagi would recognize that hair anywhere, even out of its usual braid. “Teacher?” she breathed. She examined the figure, still as stone. Was the Tigress truly alive? Usagi wished she could reach through the mirror and touch the gnarled hands. They appeared bound, attached to a chain of some sort.
Her heart leaped at the sight of movement, the chain shifting. The gnarled hands came up and parted the curtain of hair. A single eye peered out, a slashing scar just below it. It was the Tigress, all right, and she was alive.
“Stars and spirits,” Usagi gasped.
Tora grasped Usagi’s wrist. “You see her?”
“Yes.” Usagi blinked hard several times, half expecting the image of Horangi to disappear from the mirror. But it remained steady and clear. The Tigress was alive
, and she was a prisoner.
“Where are you?” Usagi whispered.
As if in answer, the mirror clouded over, then cleared to show an image of a squat central tower with long buildings radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel. The buildings’ windows were slits too narrow for even a bowl of rice to pass through. It was a prison of some sort, but where? Was it in the capital? Out in the countryside? The image in the mirror shifted again, and Usagi was startled to see a complex of grand buildings with elaborately decorated tile roofs, surrounded by a great white wall on a misty hill.
Tora nudged her. “What are you seeing?”
Dazed, Usagi let the mirror drop in her lap. “I think she’s at the Palace of the Clouds.” In her mind’s eye, she could still see the Blue Dragon roaring and shaking his fists in triumph. It had seemed clear the old warrior was dead. But it didn’t line up with what Usagi was seeing now.
“Bulging blisters,” said Tora. “We’ve got to tell the others about this!” She got to her feet and looked at Usagi expectantly. “Come on!”
They rushed out of the Great Hall to find Nezu and the Heirlings. Usagi felt both hot and cold, and she was dizzy, as if the blood had rushed from her head. Her limbs tingled, and she stumbled a little as they ran through the shrine compound, looking for the others.
Down by Crescent Lake, they found Nezu, Goru, and Rana by the Tigress’s Nest, a prayer pavilion on the edge of the water where the old warrior had often spent time when she was alive. Usagi corrected herself. The old warrior was still alive.
Within sight of the ornate open-air pavilion, Rana was busily moving mounds of dirt and rocks with her elemental gift. As she frowned in concentration, a winding trench formed in the earth, the dirt flying into piles on either side, stray small stones lining up to form an orderly border. Goru, wearing heavy clogs made of iron, stomped on the piles of earth and packed them down tight. He looked up and waved. “All done with cleaning the Great Hall? We’re building a new obstacle course. Nezu had the idea to install some water features for training after what you encountered in the last mission.”