by Claire Luana
The only physical weapon she had was her jade-pommeled knife, but it was nighttime and the half moonlight streaming from the cave entrance was all the weapon she needed. She burned moonlight, letting it fill her with its energy. She felt alive, as if her soul was on fire.
“Come on then!” she yelled, getting to her feet. She cast a moonlit orb into the heights of the cave, disturbing a flock of bearbats clinging to the ceiling above. She ducked as they dropped from the ceiling, making for the cave entrance. And then she truly saw her opponent.
“Crap.”
It had to be at least ten feet tall at the withers and thirty feet long. A dragon. A real, live dragon. It spread its wings and reared on its haunches, letting out the unearthly scream they had heard before entering the cave. Its violet scales glimmered in the light of her orb, and its bright white teeth flashed dangerously.
“It couldn’t have been just a journey of self discovery, could it?” Quitsu said, reappearing at her side, his hackles raised in a mohawk down his back.
“Nothing is ever easy,” Kai said. As adrenaline coursed through her veins, she found herself strangely calm. This was a fight she understood.
The dragon had apparently allowed her enough time for self reflection. It blasted another shot of fire at them.
Kai remembered her training, drawing the heat from the fire and channeling it into the rock walls of the cave. The dragon’s fire felt strangely familiar as she handled it. Like moonlight.
Her opponent didn’t give her much time to ponder this oddity as it surged forward, jaws bared. She threw up a shield of intense heat in front of them, causing the dragon to shy back.
Kai took advantage of the dragon’s temporary withdrawal and threw lightning bolts at it—one, two, three, in rapid succession. The bolts seemed to go right through it, making it stronger. It lashed out with its huge serpentine neck, and she and Quitsu dove to the ground again. Its jaws just missed them.
She threw a fireball at the dragon’s head and landed a direct hit, but the beast hardly even flinched.
“It’s like the moonlight is feeding it,” Quitsu cried, echoing her very thought.
What was going on?
She pulled her knife from its sheath and tossed another lightning bolt at the dragon. She was tiring now. She wasn’t used to burning this much moonlight at one time.
“Quitsu, distract him,” Kai said. “I have an idea.”
“I don’t want to be the bait,” he said, but jumped on a tall crystal.
Kai crawled to the side of the spring and clothed herself in shadows, crouching.
“Hey, dragon, over here!” Quitsu yelled at the dragon. “Fox appetizer! Want a piece?”
The dragon reared back and struck in the same manner it had before. But this time, Kai was ready.
Quitsu dove from the crystal, Kai leaped from her crouch and stabbed her knife straight into its violet eye.
But it was gone.
As soon as her knife touched where the dragon should have been, it vanished. Kai stood up, gripping her dagger with white-knuckled fingers.
“What the hell?”
The sound of slow clap sounded from the cave entrance. “Impressive,” a female voice said.
Kai walked towards the entrance and into the moonlit night. The voice belonged to a moonburner, one whom Kai had seen around the citadel, but had never spoken to.
“I don’t understand,” Kai said.
“You don’t think we can afford a real dragon for every moonburner exam, do you?”
“It . . . wasn’t real? Then what?”
“An illusion powered by moonburning and a very old relic.” The moonburner opened her hand to reveal a delicate violet crystal, carved into the shape of an intricate dragon. “It’s been in the citadel’s possession for years. Quite an impressive piece of magic. I think it used to guard something important.”
Kai said nothing. Perhaps she should be fascinated by how the relic worked, but she just felt tired. Tired of games. Tired of falsehood. Tired of the citadel staging life-threatening encounters to test her.
“You passed,” the woman continued. “Return to base camp and find Nanase. Congratulations, master moonburner.”
Making their way back down the ravine was even harder than coming up it. Kai’s arms and legs were fatigued from the journey up, and the boulders were slick with dew and frost from the cold night air. At least they had found the spring quickly. Surely they had been faster than the other samanera. It had taken them hardly two days.
Kai and Quitsu reached the clearing with the strange rock as the sun was beginning to rise. They decided to rest for the day and make their way back to Nanase’s camp in the evening. Despite the hard ground beneath her, her fatigue from the day pulled Kai into a deep sleep.
She awoke with a start. It was nighttime. Had they slept so long? Quitsu was still sleeping beside her peacefully. She peered into the trees around them, listening and looking for what might have disturbed her. Her eyes scanned past a break in the trees and then flew back. There was a figure standing there.
Kai stood, suddenly alert. She eased the knife out its sheath strapped to her arm. Hopefully it was just one of the other samanera.
“Who goes there,” she asked loudly, watching the figure.
“I don’t . . .” a female voice said. “I don’t know where I am.”
“Are you lost?” Kai said, taking a few steps towards the figure. “Come into the clearing; maybe I can help you.”
The woman walked forward slowly, head swiveling back and forth to take in the immense mountains behind her. The peaks looked especially majestic, their snowy caps illuminated in the silvery light of the full moon.
Wait. Full moon?
Kai looked up, gazing in disbelief at the huge round moon above them. Last night was a half moon; she was sure of it. What was going on?
The figure drew closer to her. The woman was wearing a light white shift cut above her knees. She was barefoot. Not one of the other samanera. What was she doing out here dressed like that?
The woman stopped, an arm’s length beyond her. “Kai?”
The woman’s face came into the light and Kai’s heart dropped from her chest.
“Mother?” Kai asked, shocked. “Are you . . . a ghost?” She couldn’t believe it. It was her mother. She looked thinner and had dark shadows under her eyes, but it was undeniably her mother standing before her.
“No, I’m not a ghost,” Hanae said. “But I don’t know how I got here.”
“But you’re dead,” Kai said, her voice twisting. “You have to be a ghost. Or . . . a hallucination.”
“I most certainly am not dead,” Hanae stepped forward, taking Kai’s hand. She felt solid and real. “Why would you think that?”
“Because Queen Airi told me that . . . she sent moonburners to look for you . . . and you had died.”
“She lied,” her mother said. “You can’t trust her.”
“But why would she lie?” Kai asked weakly. After what she had seen in the facility, she should have suspected that the queen would lie about something like this. Did Kai dare hope that she wasn’t arguing with a figment of her imagination?
“She only cares about herself,” Hanae continued. “She wouldn’t want you distracted by thoughts of home. It was probably just cleaner for you to think I was dead.”
Kai closed her eyes and gripped her mother’s firm hands, palpable relief filling her. She wasn’t alone in this world. Her mother wasn’t dead! But then, just as quickly, her relief mingled with an anger she hadn’t realized she had been suppressing.
“You lied to me too,” Kai said. “I could have gone to the citadel when I was younger! None of this would have happened. And you put a block on me so I couldn’t moonburn. The first time I burned, it put me in the hospital.”
“You have a right to be angry with me,” Hanae said, raising her hands. “But you have to understand. What I did, I did to protect you. If you burned while we still lived in Kita, it woul
d have meant death for all of us.”
“You could have at least warned me. Told me what you had done. I would have understood.”
“You were a lonely girl in the middle of nowhere living a lie. How could I tell you that I was taking from you the only magical thing in your world? You would have been miserable.”
“So instead, I thought I was broken? You didn’t have the right to make that choice for me. Not when I had to live with the consequences,” Kai said, blowing her hair from her forehead in frustration. “But that’s what you do, don’t you, Azura.” Kai enunciated the syllables of the name, drawing each out like a piece of taffy. “You made your choice to leave, and Miina had to suffer the consequences.”
Her mother grew very still. Her voice was quiet. “You speak of things you cannot know.”
“I’ve figured it out,” Kai said. “But what I can’t understand is why. Why you abandoned your country. If you think Airi is such a terrible ruler, why did you leave Miina in her hands?”
“It’s complicated,” Hanae said.
“Enlighten me.”
“It would take more time than we have here tonight,” Hanae said. As if her words were a prophecy, Hanae flickered briefly.
“What . . . what was that?” Kai said, looking around wildly.
“I think I know where we are,” her mother said, drawing Kai into the middle of the clearing. She opened her mouth to say something, but the jade-pommeled dagger sheathed on the inside of Kai’s forearm caught her attention.
“Where did you get that?”
“Nanase gave it to me. Why?”
Hanae smiled. “She was always too clever for her own good.”
“What are you talking about?” Kai said.
“I gave her that knife. She was like a sister to me, growing up. If she has given it to you . . . she must at least suspect your true identity.”
Nanase knew who she was before Kai did? That was disconcerting. Her mother flickered again, bringing Kai back to the moment. “You said you know where we are?” Kai asked.
“We are in the spirit world. Occasionally moonburners travel here by mistake or in dreams, but usually it is reserved for creatures of the spirit, like seishen.”
“The spring,” Kai said, realization dawning on her. “I drank from the purple water of the spring. It is said to grant a wish, or your deepest desire. I guess . . . mine was to see you again.”
Kai’s anger broke and tears welled in her eyes. She bit her lip, looking away from her mother’s concerned face.
“I don’t know how much more time we have. Are you all right?” Hanae asked. “Are they mistreating you?”
“No,” she said. “But everything is spinning out of control and I don’t know what to do. The war is escalating. Geisa is planning a major offensive, but the Oracle says it will be the end of us all. And the queen is keeping moonburners in cages and breeding them with captive sunburners.”
All her fears and worries poured out, faster and faster. “One of my friends is in a hospital bed, and the other was beaten and stripped of her title as a master. And Master Vita is dying.”
“Master Vita is dying?” Hanae asked.
“Yes. He has consumption. He could already be dead. And you . . .” Kai said, a desperate plan beginning to form in her mind. “You could stop it all. I will come for you. I will rescue you and bring you back to Miina and you can help me fix this mess.”
“I will never go back, Kai. I cannot.”
“You can. I can’t do this alone.” The hot tears trickled down her cheeks in rivulets.
“You have always been the strongest person I know,” Hanae said. “Strongest willed, too. But strong. You will find a way.”
“But you’re Azura. Heir to the throne. Everyone loved you. I’m no one.”
“You are my daughter,” she said, taking Kai’s face in her hands, tears in her own eyes. “Everything good in me is in you. But you are twice as smart, twice as strong, and twice as brave, because you are the best of your father as well.”
“Father?” Kai asked, her voice coming out very small.
Hanae shook her head. “Youkai executed him shortly after you were exiled. He died well.”
Kai drew a shuddering breath and tried to push aside the grief crashing over her.
Hanae flickered again.
“Wait,” Kai said. Hanae was growing fainter. “You are still in Ushai? With Youkai?”
Her mother nodded. Kai threw her arms around her mother and was met by the odd sensation of someone who was both there and not there. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Kai awoke as evening dawned. The true evening, not the evening in the spirit world. She stared at the spot where her mother had stood. The moon was back in its half-moon form, rising cheerfully in the sky.
“What’s wrong?” Quitsu asked.
“Let’s get moving. I’ll tell you on the way.”
She recounted everything to Quitsu as they made their way back down the mountainside. Quitsu took it in stride, as he did with everything.
“Your mother said that seishen come from the spirit world?” Quitsu said. “That would make sense. We aren’t born really. We just . . . come into being, out of the mist. The seishen elder never really explained it to us.”
“You don’t remember it?” Kai asked. “The spirit world?”
“No. The first thing I remember is being in the Misty Forest, with the other seishen. But it was fuzzy. We come out of the mist when our burner is born. We are fully formed . . . but mentally, we mirror our burner. The seishen elder cares for us. But as the burner grows, we too grow in intellect and understanding. I was there a long time. Years longer than most. But I knew you were out there, somewhere. It was faint.”
“Probably because of the blockage. I couldn’t burn,” she said.
“That’s what I assumed,” he said. “Most of the seishen—and there were only a few of us at a time—would leave after perhaps a dozen years in the forest.”
“When your burner starts to burn, you are called,” she mused. “I think so.”
“How did you find me in the desert?”
“The seishen elder told me to go and where to find you. He knew something was wrong. I don’t know how.”
“However he did it, I’m glad he did. Maybe we can go ask him someday.”
Quitsu looked down the mountain, to where the Misty Forest lay, nestled in darkness. “Maybe.”
They reached the lake where she had scryed before, seeking the purple spring.
“Let’s stop.” She drank from the cool water at the lake’s edge. She was about to rise from her knees, but paused. She began performing the scrying ritual, tracing the symbols on the water.
“What are you doing?” Quitsu asked.
She drew faster, pulling the moonlight into her, warm and urgent. When she finished, an image appeared on the water, as before. But this time, it was of Ushai, of Youkai’s sitting room. The room was partially rebuilt from the state it had been in after the moonburner attack and fires, with signs of painting and carpentry in progress. The room had been filled with new opulent furniture, a thick rug and a silver tea set. There was a woman in a white robe and obi pouring tea. Her mother.
“It was real,” she said. “I can’t believe it.”
“Is that her?” Quitsu asked.
“Yes. And she’s still a slave. I have to rescue her.”
“How?”
She ran her hand along the surface of the water, banishing the image. “That’s a good question. Any ideas?”
“No,” Quitsu admitted.
“Me either,” Kai said, standing and brushing the dirt from the torn knees of her leggings. “We’ll think of something.”
CHAPTER 28
Kai and Quitsu were the first to arrive back at Nanase’s camp.
“Congratulations,” Nanase said, taking Kai’s vial and holding it up to the firelight. “I never had a doubt.”
“Thank you,” Kai said quietly.
Nanase cocked her head, studying her. In that moment, she looked like her seishen.
“You drank from the spring.”
“How did you know?” Kai asked.
“That’s the funny thing about getting what you want most in the world. It’s never what you thought it would be. Now, kneel,” Nanase said, rolling up her sleeves.
“Why?” Kai asked nervously.
“It’s time to give you the moonburner sigil,” Nanase said. “To truly make you one of us.”
“What?” Kai asked.
“We each wear it.” Nanase said, turning around and folding down the high collar of her uniform. She bore a mark below the base of her neck, a circle with two crescent moons inside it, back to back. “It marks us as master moonburners. Wear it with pride.”
Kai nodded, pushing down the feeling of unease growing within her, as she recalled helping her father hold down squealing calves to brand them with their ranch’s symbol. She knelt.
Nanase folded down the neck of Kai’s light blue uniform. She placed one hand firmly on Kai’s left shoulder and the thumb of her other hand at the base of Kai’s neck.
Kai felt a warm sensation that grew hotter. She hissed through her teeth as the pain flared, but then it was gone.
“Well done,” Nanase held out her hand and they locked wrists in a shake. “You are a master moonburner now.”
As the dawn approached, Kai found herself and Quitsu sitting across the fire from Nanase in uncomfortable silence. Nanase had flatly refused Kai’s request to return to the citadel before the other moonburners returned from the test. It was “too dangerous” for Kai to travel alone.
Kai fingered the jade-pommeled knife, her mind running in circles. “When you gave me this knife,” Kai said, “you said it was a gift from someone who was like a sister to you. Will you tell me about her?” Kai wasn’t sure if Nanase knew that her mother lived. She needed to tread carefully.
“We grew up together in the citadel,” Nanase said. “We played together when we were young. She came . . . from an important family. I didn’t. My mother was a kitchen maid. My friend insisted that I come to all her lessons with her; she was so adamant that her mother relented. I owe my education, my position . . . everything to her.”