by Anna Frost
Ari did not subside until Kin removed his boots and wiggled his toes at her. The matter resolved, he went to rub the dragon’s belly. “I’m sorry, Drac. We got in trouble and things happened.”
He laid out the situation as best he could.
Drac nudged him here and there with his scaly nose. “I see it. Two auras, made one. The strands are intertwined tightly, but they’re yet distinct. If we wait, separation will be impossible. It must be done now.”
For the first time in a long while, Akakiba addressed Drac directly. Do you know how?
“They must be pulled apart.”
“Wouldn’t that hurt?” Ari inquired curiously.
“We won’t know until we try,” Kin said. “How do we go about this experiment?”
“I will pull on Yuki,” Drac said. “The fox can pull on the other.”
Akakiba nudged Kin with his muzzle. How? I can’t see what’s her and what’s him. Unless… Ari, bring the sword over there to the stable. Don’t touch it with your bare hands.
Once the Soul Eater sword was no longer in the room, Akakiba curled up on the floor. For long moments, nothing happened. Then a gold fox sprang from his red-furred physical body.
I can see it now. Akakiba paced around his now-empty fox body as if guarding it. Are we ready?
“Yes, yes,” Kin said. “Go ahead. If it hurts, I’ll scream.”
Drac sat on one side; Akakiba on the other. They pulled, and Kin tried not to fight it. It wasn’t exactly pain he felt, but it was uncomfortable. He began to split. His senses went haywire, giving feedback twice. Double vision, double hearing, double feeling. Double headache.
They pulled and pulled and— Where there had been a single sense of self, there were now two.
“Whoa, whoa, Drac, you’re pulling me out of my body!” Yuki protested.
Let go, Brother, Sanae said. She gathered herself and shuddered. That was the weirdest thing!
Chiyako walked in the room from an adjacent one. Sanae suspected nothing they did could surprise her anymore because she merely said, “Oh, welcome back, Yuki. Is everyone well?”
Ari explained, “Yuki and Sanae got their souls stuck together so the others had to pull on their souls until they weren’t stuck together anymore. I think Akakiba got turned into a fox, too.”
“That’s nice,” Chiyako said, patting Ari on the head. “You keep an eye on them while I go work on the roof.” She exited again.
Sanae watched Akakiba return to his physical, fox body. Something was wrong. Nobody in the clan was so careless about humans seeing them in fox-form, yet he hadn’t shown any sign of caring Ari had not only seen him, but heard and recognized his mental voice as well.
Brother, she whispered. You haven’t even tried to shift human since you woke. Are you fox-trapped? It was what the clan called it when somebody lost the ability to shift out of fox-form. Her father had been trapped for years now.
Akakiba looked away. I don’t know.
It wouldn’t have been so bad—being a fox was perfectly pleasant—if there hadn’t been a human involved. Sanae turned around to look at Yuki, wondering how he would take it.
In the corner, Yuki sat staring at Drac. “The link’s completely gone,” he whispered. “It’s not coming back, is it?”
Oh, she’d forgotten about that.
Making herself physical, Sanae went to curl up on Yuki’s lap. Because they had been one, however briefly, she knew how this loss hurt. I’m sorry.
Drac watched Yuki with large, solemn eyes. “I once meant to ask you to settle down with me near a nice lake or river. But you made your choice clear when you went after him. Separating this way is…less painful. Let it die.”
Yuki leaned forward. “Wait. Are you saying we could reforge the bond if we wanted?”
“Is that the choice you wish to make, between me and him?”
Yuki gaped. “I don’t— You can’t ask me to—”
“I see,” Drac said. There was the weight of finality in his tone.
Prodded by a scaly nose, Ari obligingly opened a door to an unheated part of the house.
“I will sleep the rest of the winter away,” Drac said. “In the spring, I will begin my maturation. Farewell, Yuki.”
“Wait, wait. You can’t just—” Yuki got to his feet as if to chase after Drac.
I think my brother can’t shift anymore, Sanae said, quietly. Under the circumstances, perhaps he should know that before making any decision.
Yuki turned back to her, “What?” He glanced over at Akakiba sitting by the fire in fox-form. “What is she saying? You can’t shift?”
I can shift. It just…hurts, Akakiba said stiffly. It was difficult to shift into fox.
“Can you shift back to human?”
I believe so.
But it might be his last shift, Sanae said. If her brother couldn’t bother explaining, she would. The question is: would he rather be a fox or a human for the rest of his life?
Don’t be so dramatic, Akakiba said. I might recover. I’m still tired.
Sanae couldn’t tell if that was denial or a lie to calm down Yuki. It never got better, only worse. Maybe he would be able to shift a couple more times, but if it hurt to shift… It was a bad, bad sign. And yet Akakiba was lucky, because he might be able to make it back to human if that was what he wanted. Most people got trapped so suddenly they never had the chance to choose. He probably wouldn’t appreciate it if she pointed it out.
Yuki ran a hand through his short hair. He looked lost. “Food and sleep, then? When you wake up you’ll be well. You’ll try to shift, then, won’t you?”
It took a beat, a very noticeable beat, before Akakiba said, Yes.
Without saying a word, Ari bought out rice balls.
Afterwards, Yuki drew Akakiba in his lap and ran his hands in his red fur over and over again while staring at the door through which Drac had disappeared. “Sleep,” he ordered.
Sanae bit her metaphorical lip and said nothing. Eventually, her brother’s breath evened out in unnatural slumber.
As the girls prepared for bed, Ari whispered to Chiyako, “Everybody is sad now.” Her idea of a whisper was loud enough to be heard by everybody in the room.
Yuki stayed awake throughout the night and Sanae sat with him. As the hours passed, Yuki’s hands stopped moving so nervously and he glanced toward the door less and less. It was mourning, of a sort.
In the morning, Akakiba shifted. Instead of taking a breath’s time, as it should have, it took longer than it took the tea water to boil and rice to cook over the fire. He’d gone to another room to shift, but they could hear him grunt in pain the entire time.
Yuki looked relieved when a human Akakiba stepped back in the room for breakfast. Nobody mentioned the problem. What was one more trapped fox? It wasn’t new. But most members of the clan would have chosen the other way. She’d have chosen fox, as well.
“We should get on the road,” Akakiba said. “We won’t be safe until that thing is locked up with the other.”
“Agreed,” Yuki said.
Nobody mentioned Drac, either.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jien
Traveling with Marin the ex-shinobi (she insisted on the ex- part) was like holding a lethal snake and hoping it wouldn’t bite you.
At times she was like a traditional wife—pouring tea, cooking meals, seeing to Domi’s well-being, and keeping quiet when she had nothing to add to the conversation. At other times she was the anti-thesis of traditional womanly behavior—taking charge, playing with dangerous toys, and assaulting Domi with public affection.
“I don’t understand that woman,” Jien said to the fire one evening. He was alone with his fellow sohei, Domi and Marin having wandered off together. He didn’t want to know
what they were doing.
“She enjoys being outlandish and getting a rise out of people,” Aito said. Then, giving him a meaningful look, “You should recognize the type.”
“Ouch.” He’d have protested he wasn’t that bad, but then Aito might argue he was. Silence was wiser.
Prodding at the fire with a stick, Jien watched the flames leap and dance as if in challenge at the snowflakes drifting down from the heavens. The snow was so thin on the ground it might all melt away should the sun be in an aggressive mood the following day. After the mountain’s cold, this mild weather was wonderful. For that, Jien was grateful. For the rest…
Nara was yet two days away on foot and he was trapped traveling with boring people. He would have expected Domi—a normal human who inexplicably had the ability to manipulate spiritual energy—to be interesting, but he wasn’t given to social chitchat. One could hardly fault a hermit for being too hermit-like, but it was frustrating.
Sanae’s next visit couldn’t occur soon enough. She was chatty, and sunny, and never told him to shut up. To be fair, Aito never told him to shut it either, but that was because he just stopped listening.
While he sat there bored out of his mind and forcing tasteless rice down his throat, Akakiba and Yuki were likely having fun confronting and beating the shinobi who guarded the sword they were after. Sanae had indicated there was a plan in progress but she hadn’t given details. It was cruel.
“Hey, Aito,” Jien said. “Can’t you send one of your little friends to watch what Aki is doing?”
“The distance is too great. I do wish I could. They must not fail. As long as the enemy holds a single of these swords, they can make additional copies.”
“Oh, don’t worry. They’ll get it and gloat about it forever. Since Sanae hasn’t felt any other in the area, it must be the last.”
Aki wasn’t usually inclined to gloating, but he’d do it just to annoy him. Aki had never figured out how to behave with friends, which must be why he didn’t have more than one. Yuki didn’t count; puppies could love cruel masters as much as kind ones.
He poked the fire some more. “Ahh, I wish something exciting would happen.”
Aito woke him with a vicious jab of the butt of his spear, hissing, “She’s taken the sword.”
“Huh? Who?”
“Who do you think? Marin!”
Jien sat up and glanced about; Domi was sleeping on the other side of the dying fire. The hermit usually took the first watch and Marin the second.
“But Domi’s here. Are you sure she’s not just scouting?”
“She’d have no reason to take the sword to scout. She took one of the horses, too.”
Since there were two horses and four people, they’d been traveling on foot and using the beasts as packhorses. Winter wasn’t as fierce away from the mountains and they hadn’t met significant hardship despite this slower pace.
“We should ask Domi what might have gotten into her,” Jien said.
Once awakened and given the news, the hermit groaned. “I told her not to entertain the notion.”
“So she’s stolen it, then?”
“Oh, yes. She has this idea she could sell it for an outrageous amount of money. She thinks I need medicines and serving girls for my condition. She won’t believe me when I say I left civilization because I was tired of being treated by turns like priceless porcelain that must be protected and like a monster that must be controlled.”
Aito expressed no reaction to this revelation, which hinted certain familiar spirits must have spied on those private couple conversations. Aito must have believed Domi could keep Marin in line. It was an error Jien wouldn’t have made; when a woman like that wanted something, men standing in the way had better brace for impact.
Aito hit him with the butt of his spear. “Jien! You’re not paying attention. This is serious.”
“I’m thinking! Stop panicking! I thought you didn’t have any mood other than ‘cool and collected.’” He tried to put together the conversation to which he hadn’t been paying attention. “Domi said Marin is likely hurrying to get in town and sell the sword before we can catch her, right? That’s why she took a horse. One of us should take the other horse and go after her to keep tabs on the situation. It doesn’t matter if she sells the sword; we’ll get it back from the idiot who thinks he has any right to property stolen from the Great Temples.”
“Unless she sells it to someone of importance. In which case trying to recover it might lead to bigger trouble.”
Jien waved a dismissive hand. “It wouldn’t be the first time. You know what nobility thinks of us. If we have to break a few heads to make them understand our property is always our property, even if bought from a thief, then we’ll do it.”
“Aito should go,” Domi said. “You wouldn’t let me go, I’m sure. Jien and I shall follow as fast as possible. Do avoid engaging her, Aito. Your weapon is short-ranged; hers are long-ranged. It would pain me to bury you.”
So it was spoken and so it was done; Aito galloped away to catch their sexy thief.
“You don’t seem worried for Marin,” Jien remarked hours later as he and Domi stopped for a meal.
“Why should I be? She’s deadly. I worry for those who may stand in her way.”
“Good point. You know, I had no idea Aito could get angry. Maybe it’s the stress from traveling in a group. I think he’s a loner by nature.”
Maybe Aito felt he was to blame for allowing the theft to happen. He might be used to controlling any situation because of his familiars. Speaking of which, was there one spying on them right now? Jien studied their surroundings, but saw no patch of mist or bright light or other suspicious thing.
Domi smiled into his tea. “Looking for your friend’s spies?”
Jien froze. “Ah, you know?”
“How could I fail to notice? I feel spiritual energy and spirits are made of it. When those four started following us, I deduced they were attached to one of you. Which one wasn’t difficult to guess, your respective personalities being as they are.”
“You’re calling me a loud mouth, aren’t you?”
“I wouldn’t be so rude.” Domi took his time drinking tea, draining a second cup and a third.
Jien shifted restlessly. “Shouldn’t we hurry? I think it would be for the best if we caught Marin quickly.” Aito should be too sensible to try to use force against her but…
Domi’s eyes seemed to sparkle with mischief. “Oh, we will. Soon, I shall share a secret with you.”
“Oh?” Jien poured himself a cup of tea, sat back, and waited for what was bound to be an exciting revelation. “I look forward to it.”
They repacked, visited the bushes to evacuate surplus liquid, shouldered their packs, and started down the path. They walked until they had passed through a village’s dormant rice fields and returned to the forest, where the brown of bark and the white of snow dominated a tranquil landscape. Recent snowfall had laid a fresh layer on the road and it showed tracks from both foot travelers and mounted ones. The horse tracks were surely those of Marin and Aito.
Devoured by curiosity, Jien was about to start prodding for answers when Domi stopped and said, “This will do.”
“For what?”
“Do you know it’s easy to travel long distance through the spiritual realm? The rules of the real world do not apply there. Distance is not a fixed thing and neither is speed. This I have learned while experimenting.”
Understanding took Jien’s breath away. “You mean you can bring us to Nara through the spiritual realm? How?” A belated thought formed in his mind. “Why did Marin run away? Didn’t she realize we’d get there before her?”
“She, ah, doesn’t know about this ability. I haven’t had a good reason to use it since I’ve met her. Wherever would I have gone
? I didn’t plan to leave my mountain ever again. Things turned out otherwise, but that’s how life is. One never knows what is ahead.”
Initial excitement began to give way to self-preservation considerations. “Ah, is it safe, this trick?”
“It hasn’t killed me yet,” Domi said. “I’ve tried it with animals before, but not with a person. Forgive the familiarity, but I must hold onto you to keep you safe.”
That information didn’t make Jien feel any better but how could he not try it? Traveling through the spirit realm! He allowed the hermit to wrap his arms about him and waited for the show.
And waited. “Well? Is it working?”
“Stay calm. We go… Now.”
The world was ripped away from his senses. Jien gasped and went rigid with instinctive terror, for it felt like falling off an endless cliff. The sensation dissipated as they arrived on the other side.
With the real world gone from his awareness, he discovered the other side.
If he’d had to name the color of the spiritual realm, he would have called it gray, but it was a soft and pleasant shade of it. Fog-like grayness swirled endlessly around ghostly, unmoving shapes he tentatively identified as trees and vegetations. He couldn’t identify any living thing, but the sparks of lights rushing every which way must have been spirits. Other bright sparks were unmoving, sometimes pulsing. Slumbering spirits, perhaps? Dying ones?
The spiritual realm was, to the human eye, a great deal like the night sky. Thousands upon thousands of pinpricks of light going on forever, every way he looked. It was awe-worthy until he realized a number of those lights would be demons, spirits hostile to humans. Then it was less awe-worthy and more worry-worthy. Could they be attacked here?