by Claire Luana
Colum listened with rapt attention. “This Hamaio sounds quite compelling. Maybe next time you can take me with you. I love me a strong woman.” His grin was roguish.
Kai rolled her eyes. “Have you ever met a woman you didn’t want to sleep with?”
Colum rubbed his chin, pondering. “Sure. The very elderly. Relatives—”
She tossed an apple from her pack at him, but he ducked, causing it to hit Hiro’s sleeping back.
“Ow,” Hiro said, rolling over on the apple as Kai and Colum snickered.
“What’s life for if not appreciating the beauty of creation?” Colum said, waving his hand at the mist around them. “And let me tell you, women are my favorite part of creation.”
“I’m confident the feeling is not mutual.”
“It’s too early for Colum’s warped philosophy,” Hiro grumbled from his bedroll, trying to pull the blanket farther over his head.
“It’s about time to be gettin’ up, actually,” Colum said, standing and stretching. “Good luck wakin’ that one up without a bucket of cold water.” He motioned to Daarco. “He sleeps like he drained a tavern dry.”
“That’s because he probably did,” she muttered.
Colum clapped his hands. “Up and at ’em,” he said. “Time to get a move on.”
The group grumpily peeled themselves out of their bedrolls, brushing leaves off their clothes, running fingers through hair. There wasn’t much to do to break camp; they hadn’t brought tents.
As soon as they scarfed down a bit of food, they were back on the march. The night was eerily quiet, and Kai’s sense of unease grew as they walked deeper into the mist. The forest seemed to be watching them. As they passed through the trees, Kai pulled a sprig of ash from a nearby tree, beginning to make the charm Hamaio had spoken of. She hoped it would work. She wasn’t anxious to find herself in the spirit world again anytime soon.
She approached Colum, curious to find out more about this strange man who had appeared so suddenly in their lives. She hoped Master Vita was right in his assessment that they could trust him.
“You’re not from Miina, are you?” she asked.
“Could ya tell?” he joked. “No. I’m from the south, past where the land meets the ocean. There’s a chain of islands. King Ozora claims the islands as part of Kita, but we haven’t seen a tax collector in a hundred years. We reckon we’re free.”
“I guess he’s been too busy fighting moonburners to worry about the far corners,” Kai said. “What are the islands called?”
“Shima,” he said.
“Do they have burners there?” she asked.
“Aye. Mostly healers, village elders and such.”
“They don’t go to the citadel or Kistana for training?” Kai asked.
“No,” he said. “Nothing but fighting and death waiting for ’em. The elders train the youngsters when their hair starts to change.”
“Wow,” Kai said. “I can hardly imagine a place where burners are just…people. Not soldiers or warriors.”
“Best place in the world,” Colum said, a faraway look in his eye.
“Why did you leave? Why become an entrepreneur? Or adventurer? Or whatever you consider yourself.”
“Why does anyone do anything?” he asked. “For love.”
“You? Love?” Kai asked.
“Aye! A tender heart beats beneath this ruggedly handsome exterior!”
“If you say so,” Kai said.
“I was young then. I fell in love with a girl from my village. Mesilla and I grew up together, were like brother and sister. Until we got older…and then we weren’t. Her hair started turning silver, and her seishen arrived, and we knew that she was a moonburner. For a time, life was good. We played at being adults. Vowed to love each other forever, to marry. She was so beautiful,” he said, his eyes wistful. “I used to lay on the toasted sand of the beach and watch her and her seishen swim in the waves. There was never a more perfect sight. Their silver hair, flashing in the turquoise water.”
He fell silent, and Kai gave him a moment. But she was curious now. “What happened?”
“She was smart and ambitious. Wanted to see the world. She wasn’t content to be trained by the burners on the island. She wanted to learn at the citadel in Kyuden. So I vowed to escort her. I wanted to travel too, to have adventures like in the stories. But most of all, I wanted to be near her. One day, in Kita, we were attacked on the road. Men took her and her seishen and left me for dead.”
“That’s awful!” Kai said.
“I was young and stupid, thinking I could protect her.”
“You didn’t know…” Kai trailed off. She had felt that same naiveté herself. It was easy to think you could conquer anything when your world stayed small.
“I traveled to every corner of every land looking for her. I went to the citadel, hoping she’d escaped and made her way there. She hadn’t. I stayed for a few years, working for the queen, hoping she’d come ridin’ through the gates one day. I eventually had to face the reality. She never would. And by then, after all those years, I was more at home on the road. Staying in one place…being too close to people…grated on my soul. I’m not made for that anymore.”
“I’m sorry you never found her,” Kai said quietly. What would she do if someone took Hiro from her? She shuddered at the thought.
“Now don’t you go feelin’ sorry for me,” he said. “I’ve lived a full life, seen things some people have never dreamed of.”
“Have you been back home?” Kai asked.
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t home without her.”
They continued in silence, Kai contemplating the surprising nature of Colum’s tale. Her mind raced with worry, flitting from thoughts of Hamaio and the spirit world to the tengu to Chiya and what Kai would face when she returned to Kyuden.
After a stretch of hours, Colum called for a break.
Kai groaned, dropping her pack to the ground and rolling her tight shoulders.
Quitsu looked at her with mock disapproval, clicking his tongue. “We’ve only been moving for a few hours.”
Kai groaned. “Last thing I need is a lecture from a supernatural spirit who doesn’t get tired.”
“I’m going to take a piss,” Daarco said, marching into the underbrush.
“Charming,” Emi called to his retreating form.
He hadn’t uttered anything but grunts over the course of the night, though he was keeping up an impressive drinking regimen.
“Is that an enchanted flask or something?” Kai muttered.
Emi snorted. “If it is, I gotta get me one.”
Hiro approached Kai, rubbing her shoulders. “How you holding up?”
She closed her eyes, groaning in pleasure at his ministrations. “When did I get so soft?”
“It’s palace life,” he chuckled. “You have to fight it.”
“Daily runs when I get back,” she said. “No matter what excuse I give.”
“Ha!” Hiro said. “You must think me far more persuasive than I am. I’d just as likely get Ryu to walk a tightrope as get you to go on daily runs if you don’t want to.”
“Leave me out of this,” Ryu grumbled. “Perhaps the fox will perform like a trained circus animal.”
“You wanna piece of me, fluffy?” Quitsu said, puffing his chest up and swaggering towards Ryu’s kneecap.
“Enough.” Kai laughed. “No one’s doing anything they don’t want to do.” She turned her attention back to Hiro, turning and lacing her arms around his waist. “You just haven’t learned the art of subtle motivation.”
“Oh?” He arched a golden eyebrow, tracing his hands up and down her arms, drawing a shiver from her. “Perhaps another form of exercise would be more palatable?
She opened her mouth to respond, but her comment was cut off by a resounding scream of terror from the forest just beyond the fog line.
They looked at each other with alarm.
“Daarco!”
Kai and Hiro drew their swords and
dashed into the forest, Ryu and Quitsu on their heels.
“Daarco,” Hiro cried. “Where are you?”
Colum and Emi were beside them in a flash, Emi with her two knife blades drawn, Colum with his tall wooden staff.
“Over here,” a hoarse voice called, desperate and muffled. Followed by another strangled scream.
“This way,” Ryu said, dashing ahead, the thick underbrush catching in his dense golden mane.
They burst through the treeline into a clearing barely visible in the thick mist.
“Where is he?” Hiro said, his chest heaving.
Ryu and Quitsu sniffed around the forest floor, their noses quivering.
Kai scanned the clearing, peering through the whiteness of the fog, looking for movement. And then she saw something unbelievable. A flash of gold buried under the roots of an ancient oak tree. But the roots…were moving. Retracting. The forest was…taking him.
“Oh my gods,” she said, and launched into action, dashing across the clearing. She took her sword and reached for moonlight to burn down the blade. But the moonlight…she couldn’t grasp it. It was a slippery fish, undulating out of her mental grip. She couldn’t moonburn.
Kai shoved down the panic that was rising in her throat and threatening to choke her. Daarco had only seconds. She hacked at one of the thick roots with her sword, praying she didn’t split Daarco’s skull in the process.
The roots shied back at her blow, revealing more of Daarco’s head.
He lifted it from the debris of the forest floor, gasping in a rattling breath. “Help…me…” he croaked.
Movement exploded around her. The forest came alive, branches whipping and grabbing at her clothes, her arms, her hair.
Emi reached Kai’s side and burned, sending bolts of fire into the oak tree.
Kai continued to hack with her blade. The tree hissed and screamed as its bark burned, an unearthly sound that reverberated painfully in Kai’s ears. Daarco’s arm came free as the tree recoiled from her strikes.
All the trees in the clearing had come alive now, furiously pounding at them with limbs and sharp needles. She could hear the trees’ buzzing, angry voices calling in a language she didn’t understand.
“Try to hold them off and give us some room,” Kai called breathlessly. “We’re getting him free.” Even while her body moved, her mind was scrambling and fumbling for moonlight. It had to be there. If she just reached far enough…
Hiro and Colum tightened the defensive circle around them, hacking at the branches, trying to keep them from interfering with Emi and Kai’s desperate rescue attempt.
Quitsu and Ryu snarled and snapped at the branches, but with no weapons but their fangs and claws, they weren’t much help.
Emi had locked arms with Daarco now and was pulling him free of the tree’s clutches inch by inch, all the while sending gouts of flames into its roots. The fire was spreading quickly, lapping with an insatiable thirst up the roots that held Daarco.
The heat of the fire poured over Kai and pops of pitch exploded, splattering her with hot sap.
“Hurry,” Kai gasped, redoubling her efforts. They didn’t have much time.
“Don’t let me go,” Daarco gasped to Emi, clinging to her and the ground, fighting the crushing grip of the tree.
“I won’t,” she groaned.
Kai chopped with her sword again and at last made a final cut through the root.
The tree wailed a keening, angry sound and smashed Kai flat across the chest with a huge limb. She flew across the clearing, smacking into another tree and crumpling to the ground.
Time seemed to slow as she looked up from the forest floor, gasping for the breath that had abandoned her. The scene was grim. Emi and Daarco lay on the ground, tree branches pummeling them while Emi projected a roiling dome of fire above them as a shield. Colum whacked the limbs that came at him with his whirling staff, but sweat poured from him, and his movements were slowing. And Hiro—a tall tree had Hiro by his ankle and was swinging him, smashing him to the ground in violent thwacks. Ryu snarled at a tangle of vines that had wrapped around his hindquarters, bearing him to the ground.
Kai’s breath came back in a rush of pain. She coughed and moaned in shivering breaths, sure her ribs were crushed beyond all hope. The roiling voices of the trees washed through her mind, filling her head with indecipherable cries that blended into the swirling mass of her terror. She couldn’t moonburn.
Her friends still fought furiously, but she could see that the forest was winning.
No, she thought. Not like this. There had to be something she could do.
She closed her eyes and reached farther with her spirit, deeper, into spaces she had never dreamed to go. There was something there. Not the cool quicksilver of moonlight, but something else. She reached for it. As she did, the voices of the trees intensified, pulsing through her head with such force that the pain left her temporarily breathless. The words were foreign, but the tone was clear. The trees were telling them to leave. That the forest was sacred. They were unwelcome intruders.
Seizing on her momentary distraction, a tendril of ivy snaked out and pulled her feet from under her, wrapping up her legs in a split second. She slammed against the ground. No!
As her agonized thought burst free, the trees paused for a moment.
Kai felt their power thrumming through her, their voices and anger like her own heartbeat. The life of the forest, as if it were her own. Pulsing, primal energy, just out of her reach. But she could feel it. No! she thought. This has to stop!
The trees shuddered again, hesitating briefly, but it wasn’t enough.
Abandoning all reason, Kai rallied her will and plunged it into the unknown power. The handprint on her chest flared to life, emanating a bright white light. She was through, she had done it, and now her qi grappled with a raging torrent of elemental power. An underground aquifer of life-giving energy that powered the rise of the sun, the wane of the moon, the sudden burst of a spring rain, the first heartbeat of a new calf. This—this was the stuff of creation. She struggled with the wildness of it; pulling it into her qi was like trying to fill a cup from a waterfall. But drop by drop, she collected it, and it filled her with a power that she had never known.
“Stop!” she cried to the forest, and pure white light burst from the scar, ripped from her like her heart torn from her chest.
The white hot fire swept past her friends, striking the trees, sending them to a shuddering stop. Their leafy foes recoiled branches and vines, unwinding from her battered companions, until in a flutter of leaves, they stilled.
Kai felt the power slip away and the bright light dimmed and died, leaving only the white of the fog and the washed out image of the forest.
Kai let herself slump back to the ground, drained and hollow. They were safe. For now.
Emi had her arms wrapped tightly around Daarco, who was partially collapsed on top of her. They seemed content to stay that way for a minute.
“You just had to…take a piss in this clearing,” Emi managed, dropping her head to the ground.
Hiro started to laugh, a wheezing hacking sound that betrayed the pain he was in.
Laughter filled the clearing as their relief and exhaustion mingled into macabre humor.
Kai laid back, clutching her aching ribs as tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t feel the moonlight. What had she become?
Hiro couldn’t identify a part of his body that didn’t ache. His head pounded like a taiko drum and his neck felt like it was being stabbed with a hot poker. He had been thrown around by that damn tree like a rag doll. He prodded a tooth with his tongue and grimaced when it wiggled precariously. At least it was still attached. For now.
The rest of their group didn’t look much better.
Kai clutched her ribs and moved gingerly as they limped back to camp. The strange handprint on her chest glistened dully on her skin, only scar tissue once again. Daarco had his arm around Emi and was leaning on her f
or support as his legs had been badly bruised by the vice-like tree roots. Emi herself had blood dribbling from a dozen cuts and was covered in dirt and soot. Colum and the seishen were the only ones that seemed to have come through relatively unscathed.
As soon as they reached the cluster of trees where they had left their packs, they collapsed into the dirt.
“Is it safe to stay here?” Kai asked, her voice breathy with pain.
“Aye. I think you took care of those trees with your light explosion,” Colum said.
“Do you think they have…friends?” Emi asked.
Hiro let out a wheezing laugh despite himself. The thought of trees forming ranks like a gang of street thugs seemed ridiculous. Though the idea of trees attacking in the first place would have seemed ridiculous just ten minutes prior. So perhaps he shouldn’t have discounted the possibility.
“I think we’re safe for now,” Colum said. “Let’s rest and…regroup”—he motioned to their various wounds—“but we set a watch tonight.”
“We can watch,” Quitsu said. “Ryu and I. We don’t really sleep.”
“Good,” Emi said. “I don’t think I’d be good for much right now.” Her skin was sallow and she had deep blue smudges under her eyes. She had burned a lot of moonlight defending against the trees.
“You should eat, Emi,” Hiro told her, tossing her a package of dried meat from his pack before collapsing on his bedroll. “Replenish your strength.”
Kai fished in her pack for the small medical kit she had brought, herbs and wraps and a needle and gut. She was quiet and her eyes were wide and glassy, as if she was staring beyond whatever was before her. But her healer’s training took over, and she tended to the group’s wounds efficiently. She saw to Emi first, giving her friend leaves to chew to dull the pain, and then stitching the worst of Emi’s gashes with quick, neat stitches.
Hiro watched Kai as she worked, his chest tight with worry. Questions swirled in his mind. Whose handprint was that? And what in the gods’ names was that white light? Why was Kai moving like a sleepwalker, drifting through the motions? What had she seen?
Kai smeared some salve on Emi’s cut and then turned to Daarco.