by Claire Luana
“I don’t know if he made it,” Hiro said. “He sacrificed himself so we could make it here.”
“My guests,” the giant white creature said. The elder, Kai realized. “You must be hungry from your journey. We have prepared a meal for you, and then we can discuss why you have come.”
They sat on the cushions around the table, except the elder, who rested on its haunches at the head of the table like the patriarch at a family feast.
Two golden seishen, a giant rabbit and a well-muscled boar, rolled in a cart with food. The rabbit managed to totter in on two legs, while the boar simply pushed the cart along with his snout.
“We have not had visitors in several centuries, and as we do not derive sustenance as you do, we gathered what we could for you.”
Emi sprang up and went to unload the plates from the cart onto the table.
The first plates were laden with bananas, apples, and some strange oblong fruit with a spiky skin. Another plate bore nuts and a third was filled with fresh greens. Emi finished by unloading cups of a sweet milky liquid.
“This is very generous,” Kai said as she grabbed food from the plates with her hands. Propriety be damned. “We had a difficult journey.”
“I don’t make this place easy to find,” the elder said. “None have been here since Colum last darkened our doorstep—almost twenty years ago now.”
“About that,” Colum said around a mouthful of banana. “I am still very, very sorry,”
“You were told never to return here upon punishment of death,” the elder said. “Yet here you are.”
“I’m here because the fate of the world depends upon this girl finding out everything you know about the tengu masquerading as Tsuki and Taiyo,” Colum said. “I didn’t think your vendetta against me was more important than the fate of the world…but maybe I misjudged you.”
“Please,” Kai said, glaring sidelong at Colum. “I begged him to come. He knew he wasn’t welcome, yet he risked his life to get us here. We need your help to free the real Tsuki and Taiyo so they can help us defeat the tengu. They are trying to destroy us.”
“And what makes you think Tsuki and Taiyo would save you?” the seishen elder asked. “Are you so certain you are worth saving?”
Kai paled. But Quitsu had said that the elder would challenge her. That she would have to convince him of the rightness of her cause.
“I don’t know whether I am or not,” she admitted. “But I doubt the gods designed a world of beauty only to see it returned to the fires and overrun by demons. The burners aren’t perfect, but we have managed for the first time in hundreds of years to overcome our differences and find peace. Despite the false Taiyo and Tsuki doing everything in their power to keep us at war. We are moving towards a future of enlightenment, prosperity, and mutual respect. That clearly terrifies the demons. And I would think anything that terrifies the tengu is something Tsuki and Taiyo would fight for. Unless they gave up and abandoned us by choice.”
The elder looked at her with its unsettling eyes, tapping one taloned finger on the stone floor.
“You talk of the peace you have achieved, yet even now, thoughts of war ring loudly in your minds.” He nodded towards Hiro.
Kai turned to Hiro, watching a look of guilt play across his handsome face. “Not me,” he said heavily. “But yes, my father. If the natural disasters continue, he will restart the war.”
Kai felt the sting of betrayal and her mind reeled. How could Hiro have known and not told her?
The elder did not seem surprised. “I suppose you deserve some leniency. There is so much you do not know. The tengu have done everything in their power to destroy the true history of what happened and to plant falsehoods to sow seeds of discontent between you.”
“Please,” Kai said. “Anything you can tell us… There is so much we don’t understand.”
“Come,” it said, rising on its huge haunches and walking to the painting Kai had been examining. The rest of their group rose and followed it.
“These panels tell the story of the formation of the world, but also the fall of it. When the creator made the world, he banished the dark to the edges with light from the sun and the moon. Taiyo and Tsuki were the personification of that light. But this angered the creatures of darkness, who resided in the vast darkness of the universe.”
“The tengu,” Kai said. This tale was sounding familiar to the scroll they had found in the library.
“Yes. The tengu are an abomination to this world. They are the opposite of its incarnation. And this world—and its inhabitants—is an abomination to them. When the creator banished the darkness and set up this world for its inhabitants, he divided the universe into three realms. The mortal realm, where we now stand. The demon realm, a realm of darkness and death, and between them the spirit realm, a plane that is a mirror of this one, where creatures of spirit and magic live. Gods like Tsuki and Taiyo. And me and my seishen. The spirit realm is also where your human spirits go when you first die—a place of transition. Sometimes spirits linger there longer.”
It was strange hearing the elder speak as truth what she had only heard in children’s stories. He went on.
“But you’re in this world now,” Emi said. “Why?”
The elder puffed its wings slightly, and Emi fell silent. They walked to the next panels as the elder told its tale. “The creator created the seishen as the guardians of the spirit and mortal realms. Originally, our home was in the spirit realm.”
At the word “guardians,” something stirred in Kai’s memory. Where had she heard that before? But the thought eluded her, and she turned her attention back to the seishen’s story.
“The creator set up strong walls and seals between these worlds to keep them apart. But over the millennia, the tengu were set on one goal: to break out of their dark prison and destroy the new world the creator had made. To return the world to a place where they had free reign over darkness and death. Eventually, the unthinkable happened, and the seals between the demon and spirit realm failed. Powerful tengu began to cross over, free now to travel back and forth. They were intent on killing Tsuki and Taiyo and plunging the world back into darkness. They were breaking down the walls to the mortal world as well and beginning to cross over. “
“We saw a similar story in a scroll we found in our library,” Kai said. “The tengu trapped Tsuki and Taiyo in prisons so they could have free reign over the mortal realm.”
“This part of the story is hidden from me,” said the elder. “I was in the spirit realm at the time with my seishen, and we were under a full siege from the tengu. It was clear to me that they were intent upon destroying every last one of us. As a final desperate move, I fled through the seal to the mortal realm with my charges and established this sanctuary, building strong walls to keep the tengu out. We cannot return to the spirit world. It is overrun with tengu.”
Kai thought back to her conversation with Hamaio, looking over her shoulder and pushing her forcefully out of the realm before something attacked. She shuddered.
The elder went on. “By the time the dust settled, Tsuki and Taiyo had disappeared into the mortal realm. I know there was a great battle, and the burners and the gods were able to push the tengu back into the spirit realm and at least partially seal the barrier between the worlds. But perhaps in the process, Tsuki and Taiyo were trapped as well.”
“We need their help now,” Kai said. “The tengu are obviously breaking their way into this world again. Tsuki and Taiyo must know how to reseal the borders between the realms. Do you know where they are trapped? How to find them?”
“No,” it said.
Kai couldn’t keep the look of disappointment off her face.
“But I have something that might help.”
It was a wooden box. Its dark surface bore crude carvings, as if it had been hastily made.
The elder had sent one of his seishen to retrieve the thing, and now he held it in his taloned hand.
“What is it?” Col
um asked, leaning forward to get a closer look. Clearly, the prospect of some valuable antiquity was enough to stir him from his silent musings at the back of the room.
“I don’t know exactly what it is, except that it came with a message,” the elder said. “When my seishen and I fled from the spirit world to the Misty Forest, the tengu were engaged in a two-pronged assault. On the seishen in the spirit world, and on the burners and gods in the mortal world. A messenger from the burners arrived on our shore after the battle was over. He was near death and only lived long enough to tell me that the tengu had been driven back for a time, but at great cost. The burner king and queen were killed and the gods were gone. He said that this box was key to finding Tsuki and Taiyo.”
“May I see it?” Kai asked.
The elder handed it to her, and she turned it over in her hand. It was weighty and warm to the touch.
She looked up and found the elder’s keen eagle eyes watching her. “What?” she asked, suddenly self-conscious.
“The messenger told me one more thing,” it said. “That the box will only open to the heirs. I must admit, I was curious if it would open at your touch.”
“Which heirs?” Hiro asked, holding out his hand for the box.
“The true heirs to the throne of Miina and Kita. The moon and sunburners.”
The moment Kai handed the box to Hiro, light exploded from within.
It was like standing in a dream. Images emanated from the box, projecting on the stucco ceiling.
They all stared in slack-jawed awe as they tried to comprehend what they were seeing.
“What kind of magic is this?” Emi asked, her voice reverential.
“It’s like scrying for a person…but…they managed to capture it somehow,” Kai said.
Hiro peered at the image, narrowing his eyes. He turned the box slowly, and the image rotated. It came into focus.
“I see it!” Kai said. The light portrayed a narrow mountain pass covered with ice and snow. The image showed a treacherous path between two craggy peaks. Above the jagged peaks stretched a starry sky, but it was unlike any sky she had ever seen. Across the blackness stretched a band of vertical green lines dancing and undulating. Like someone had taken a paintbrush and dashed it across the heavens.
“It’s beautiful,” said Emi.
“What is this place?” Hiro asked.
“I do not know,” the elder said. “The box has never opened for me. But I believe it may be where you can find Taiyo. You are his true heir.”
The elder took the box from Hiro and the image abruptly winked out. They all stood blinking and shaking their heads, a little unsure if it had been real.
The seishen elder handed the box to Kai again. She took it, examining it, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“You are not Tsuki’s true heir,” the elder said, not unkindly.
“That’s preposterous,” Emi said, stepping up next to Kai. “Kai is the daughter of Azura. She is the true queen of Miina.”
Kai put her hand on Emi’s shoulder to quiet her friend. A sad smile stretched across her lips.
“No, I’m not.” Kai said.
“Not what?” Emi and Hiro said together.
“I’m the daughter of Azura, but I’m not the true queen of Miina. Or Tsuki’s heir.”
The truth didn’t set her free. Not this time. Seeing the shocked and hurt looks on her friends’ faces made Kai want to crawl inside herself and never come out.
“Let us sit down as we hear this tale,” the seishen elder said. Was there a touch of…sympathy in its voice? Maybe it felt bad that it had outed her secret.
“I only found out a few days ago,” she began, sinking gratefully to a cushion. “The day of the earthquake. You may not know this, but I was not my parents’ first child. They had another daughter, Saeko. She failed the Gleaming and was left in the desert to die.”
A thunderous look passed over Hiro’s face. He hated hearing about the pain his father had caused to so many families through the Gleaming, the cruel test his father had used to expose moonburners just days after birth.
Kai continued. “They thought she had died, and that was the end of it. But after the earthquake, my mother was treating a moonburner and discovered she bore a birthmark identical to one my sister had had. My mother told me her suspicions. We hadn’t yet confirmed it.” She looked to the chief seishen. “Until now.”
“Who is it?” Emi asked quietly.
“Chiya.”
“Chiya!” Emi exploded. “That would be a disaster! I know what you must be thinking, but you cannot hand over control of Miina to Chiya.”
“But she’s the rightful heir,” Kai said.
“Emi’s right,” Hiro said. “Chiya’s come a long way, but she would use the smallest affront as an excuse to resume hostilities with the sunburners. And besides. You’re the queen. You’ve been crowned.”
“Only because no one knew about her,” Kai said. She struggled to hold back tears. She had never wanted to be queen, never wanted the responsibility. But now, the idea of handing it all over to someone else, to trust them with Miina’s fate… It twisted her inside.
“There’s no telling if anyone would support her now,” Hiro said. “If you tried to hand over the throne, it could start a civil war. A monarch needs more than just a birthright to rule. She would need allies in the burners and the noble classes, support of the people.”
“That’s kind of you to say,” Kai said, “but I’ve read the reports. The people hate me right now. They think the natural disasters are my fault! The drought…the earthquake… They’d relish the chance for a new leader.”
Colum cleared his throat. “Not that anyone asked me, but as I see it, you’ve got bigger fish to fry. You’re gonna need all the burners you’ve got to have any shot at defeating the tengu. You hand Miina’s reins over to this Chiya woman, and you may as well hand humanity over to the tengu.”
They all looked at Colum in surprise.
“What? I have thoughts.”
“As much as I hate to admit it,” Hiro said, looking sideways at Colum, “I agree with Colum. If you want to tell Chiya about this, even though I think it’s a bad idea, fine. But do it after we free Tsuki and Taiyo. We have enough problems as it is without Miina and Kita going to war. We don’t know that Chiya would honor the alliance. Or, frankly, my father. He trusts you, but I don’t know if he would feel bound to the alliance if Chiya is on the throne.”
Kai looked at the seishen elder, expecting him to object and insist upon the truth. He said nothing.
“But…we need Chiya. The box should open for her and show us where Tsuki is.”
“So we give her a half-truth,” Emi said. “Tell her we need her because of who her parents are but don’t tell her exactly who. Say we’re still trying to figure it out. Prophecy and magic and all that. Tell her it’s all very confusing.”
“I don’t like it.” Kai shook her head. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“Kai,” Emi said, taking her hands. “Doing what you know is right isn’t always the easy path. When you had to defeat Airi, that was technically treason. But you knew it had to be done.”
“Yes, but that was to defeat a tyrant who refused to relinquish power. This feels like…I’m becoming one.”
“You’re nothing like Airi,” Hiro said. “Don’t you see? The fact that we’re even having this conversation proves it. What the people need is you. Not Chiya.”
Kai hesitated. She felt ripped in two. Could she really live with herself if she lied to Chiya? If she kept from her that she had a mother who loved her, a sister who was a short walk away? But could she truly abandon Miina to Chiya? Kai felt in her gut that Chiya wasn’t the queen Miina needed. At least not now.
“What do you think?” she asked the elder.
“The ebbs and flows of the burner monarchy are of little concern to me,” it said. “But I can tell you with certainty that you will never defeat the tengu unless you are uni
ted. You are greater than the sum of your parts.”
Kai nodded, praying her mother would agree to keep the secret a while longer. “I will finish this with the tengu. But as soon as it’s over…” Kai pointed at all of them, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “I will tell her. And let her decide whether she wants to rule or abdicate to me. If she wants to rule, I will throw my support behind her.”
The others breathed a sigh of relief.
Quitsu looked at her with a proud nod. She had made the right decision. For now.
“So it’s settled,” Kai said. “We’ll take the box, Chiya will open the other side, and we’ll find Tsuki and Taiyo and free them.”
The others nodded.
“I do not know if I should let you take it,” the elder said. “The box cannot fall into the wrong hands. The burner who delivered it here gave his life to keep it from the tengu and their followers. They must not have it. It is safer here than anywhere in this realm. This island is protected from the tengu by the most powerful magic in the mortal realm.”
“We need it,” Kai argued. “We need to know where Tsuki is. To free her.”
“I doubt the wisdom of freeing Tsuki and Taiyo. They fled the spirit world into the mortal world when the tengu attacked, and though they are trapped, at least they are safe. If you free them, who knows what the consequences will be.”
Kai blew out a frustrated breath, fluttering her hair before her. “That may be true, but if we don’t free them, we know what will happen. The tengu will win. I’ll take an uncertain chance of success over a sure chance of failure any day.”
“And that is your choice. But I do not know if the box should leave this place. Bring this Chiya here if you must.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Hiro said. “Things are getting worse. The earthquakes, the fever… We barely made it here as it is. If we wait, who knows if there will be any people left to save.”
“Please,” Quitsu said, bowing his furry silver body low before the elder. “We will protect it with our lives. But we must take it. Or all may be lost.”