by Claire Luana
Two women in moonburner blues strode into the library, their silver hair glinting in the moon orb light. “Stela! Leilu!” Kai cried, leaping up to embrace them both. “What are you doing here?”
“You didn’t think we would miss all the excitement?” Stela asked, her striking eyes glittering.
“Demons to kill? Sign me up,” Leilu said.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Kai said. ”But…I don’t understand.” Stela and Leilu had been assigned to the palace in Kistana as the Miinan ambassadors to Kita. While Kai was happy to see them, she hadn’t called them back.
Stela grinned. “Nanase contacted us and asked us to return. She said you needed some help for your…secret mission.” She arched an eyebrow. ”And she can’t spare any burners from the citadel with the spotted fever in the city.”
Kai squeezed Stela’s and Leilu’s hands. “It’s so good to have you home.”
“It’s good to be home!” Leilu said. “We’ve missed so much. Demons. Lost gods. Earthquakes. And…we hear you’re engaged? Does he know that if he hurts you, he’ll have a long line of moonburners waiting to kill him?”
“Trust me, he knows,” Hiro said, striding in with Ryu at his side. He hugged Stela and Leilu, winking at Kai over their shoulders.
Emi and Daarco arrived next, Emi greeting Stela and Leilu with hugs and squeals.
“Is this a meeting or a slumber party?” Daarco remarked to Hiro.
“Who’s your surly friend?” Leilu asked, linking her arm with Emi’s.
Emi made the introductions, and the rest of their group arrived. Hanae, Nanase, Chiya, Jurou. Colum strode in last to the questioning looks of the others.
“I asked him to come,” Kai said. “He was the only one who didn’t almost die on the last mission. He’s a part of this if he’s willing.”
“As long as you’re still paying, Queenie,” he said, flipping the coin he always played with.
“I’m paying,” she said.
“Are we getting paid now?” Stela asked, laughing as Kai rolled her eyes.
They filled the chairs surrounding the huge table and talked through the details. Kai and Hiro would lead the two missions. Hiro to the north to find Taiyo, Kai to the south to Tsuki’s rescue.
On Hiro’s team was Daarco, Emi, Stela and Leilu. Chiya, Colum and Jurou would accompany Kai.
“You need at least one sunburner with you during the day in case the tengu attack in the light,” Jurou had argued. “Unless you want to take Daarco on your team.”
Kai had looked skeptically at Jurou’s thin, bookish form, and then glanced to Daarco. She didn’t like either option. Perhaps she didn’t need a sunburner since she could use her new powers in day or night.
“You wouldn’t deprive a historian of a chance to see history in the making, would you?” Jurou had finally said, and Kai relented. Colum had surprised her after all. Perhaps Jurou would prove helpful.
The teams would leave at sunup, as soon as Nanase gathered their provisions and weapons.
When Kai and Quitsu walked into the armory after dinner to retrieve their supplies, Stela and Leilu greeted them swathed in thick fur coats.
“Is it too late to switch to the tropical island expedition?” Leilu asked ruefully, her face framed by the fur trim of her hood.
Kai laughed and pulled Leilu’s huge form into a hug. “You’re a moonburner, remember? Every night can be a tropical beach for you. Keep yourself wrapped in warm air.”
“What about the days?” Leilu pouted.
“You tell Hiro and Daarco to take good care of you during the days, and you take care of them at night. Everyone comes home with all their fingers and toes, all right?”
“I have to say”—Stela lowered her voice, taking her massive coat off—“I am curious to learn more about Emi’s fellow.” She nodded her head towards Daarco, who was examining his own furs with a scowl.
“Keep an eye on him,” Kai said. “I think Emi will keep him in line…but he’s unpredictable. Just make sure he remembers that the tengu are the enemies, not us.”
When the rest of the teams arrived, Nanase went over the weapons, supplies, and food that she had gathered for their expeditions. Master Vita had come through on his research and had located precise coordinates for both groups. Hiro’s team was heading to the high northeast pass of the Akashi Mountains. Kai’s team would fly over the Tottori to the southwestern shore of Kita.
Kai approached Nanase. “Thank you for getting all of this ready so quickly. You’ve given us every chance. It’s up to us to take it from here.”
Nanase turned her intense hawk’s gaze on Kai. “Remember your training, listen to your gut, and you will be fine,” she said.
“Take care of my city while I’m gone,” Kai said. “And my people.”
“I’ll do my best,” Nanase said.
“And that will be enough,” Kai said. “I trust your judgment. Make the hard calls if you need to.”
Nanase nodded, and Kai knew she understood. The decision to use moonburners and citadel forces against Kyuden citizens was a heavy one. Kai hoped it didn’t come to that, but if it did, she knew that Nanase would use the appropriate amount of force. She felt a moment of profound appreciation for the other woman. She left her country in good hands.
As Nanase turned to distribute the rest of the supplies, Hiro slipped his hand into Kai’s, pulling her to the side of the room.”I feel like we were just here,” he joked.
“Let’s hope this mission goes better than the last,” she said.
“We got the information we needed and everyone came home alive. It could’ve been worse.”
“True,” she said, linking her arms around his waist and laying her head on his broad chest for a moment. “Be safe. Don’t take unnecessary risks.”
“Don’t be a hero?” he asked, stroking her hair.
“Exactly,” she said. He looked down at her, his vibrant green eyes roving over her face, as if he was trying to memorize what he saw. She pushed down the lump in her throat that threatened to choke her. This wouldn’t be the last time she saw Hiro. This wasn’t where their story ended.
“I love you, Kailani Shigetsu,” he said, kissing her gently. She let her world tilt for a moment in his embrace, breathing in the faint taste of mint on his lips, the spicy smell of leather and soap. And then, she broke off the kiss, pulling herself back to the task at hand.
“I love you too,” she whispered.
“We’ll see each other before we know it.”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” he said, taking her face in his hand and tracing his thumb across her cheek.
“Well, I guess…that’s it,” she said, pulling back with more than a little regret. “Time to go.”
“You’ve got to give a speech,” Hiro said.
“A speech?”
“Motivational. Rally the troops.”
She sighed. The constant expected speeches were one of her least favorite parts of being a monarch. “Honestly,” she said, “who has inspirational words ready at a moment’s notice?”
“I’m confident you’ll think of something,” he said.
She harrumphed but turned to face the rest of the room.
“Listen up,” Kai said, raising her voice. The others quieted down immediately.
“We do this to restore balance to this world. To free allies who will help rid our world of an evil that tries to destroy us. The tengu won’t go down without a fight. Expect attacks. Stay on your guard, trust each other, and we will see this done. I can think of no group of people who I would rather have at my side and trust on the other side of the world than you all.” Her voice wavered. “Come back safe, because you’re all going to have to be in the wedding!”
Stela and Leilu whooped, and a ripple of laughter passed through her friends.
“Let’s kick some tengu ass,” Emi said.
Geisa sat unmoving. The pitiful fire before her had long since died away. Outside the cave in which she sat, the
northern sun shone weakly, barely warming the frigid landscape. The cave stank from the fetid breath and musk of her creation, which sat stupefied across from her. Before she had smeared the mark on its face and called forth the dark magic of the tengu, it had been an ice bear, a majestic creature with thick snowy fur and sharp ebony eyes. The creature had fought until the end as the dark tendrils twisted into its flesh, transforming it from a free creature into this sad automaton.
Geisa used to love animals. As a child, she had swum every day with the iridescent fishes in the cove behind her house, diving in the clear water for crabs or oysters. When her seishen had arrived, a beautiful silver otter, they had frolicked in the waves, splashing through the surf and swimming out to the smaller islands to sleep the afternoons away in the shade of leafy palm trees.
She shoved the memory down, carefully replacing it in the mental box where she kept all her thoughts of her seishen. They were too painful to be remembered but too formative to be forgotten. She wasn’t sure how the memory had come free; she was normally so careful with her mental discipline. She had to be. The memory of the happy times always led to the blackest moment of her life—when her seishen had been killed, slaughtered in that hell-hole beneath the sunburner palace. That day she had lost her soul. She should have sacrificed her pride, her body, her sanity. Those unimportant trivialities she had been clinging to. Anything to save her soul.
A lump grew in her throat and a tear froze in the corner of her eye. She focused on the discomfort of it, the ice crystal tugging at her eyelash, scraping the lid. When had she last let a tear fall? Years. Not even for Airi. She was unraveling. She could sense somehow that the glue that had held the pieces of her together was melting away. So she focused on the remaining task before her.
She had already been waiting twenty-four hours, but had to stay until the fool sunburner prince and his band of misfits made their bumbling attempt to free Taiyo. It could be days more. At least once the moon rose again, she could burn for warmth.
She had been cautioned to wait, to let the burners release Taiyo of their own free will. But Geisa knew that with the right motivation, she could mold a will to her own. She was tired of waiting. Tired of careful political maneuvering, of being used, of sitting in cells, in caves. She was ready to burn this world to the ground—every face, every bit she recognized—until there was nothing but oblivion. She eyed her twisted tengu, waiting glassy-eyed for her instructions. She wasn’t a safe pet anymore. She had gone feral.
“Bear,” she called, her eyes gleaming in the pale light of the cave mouth. “Go find Prince Hiro. He will land below the pass. Bring him here to me, and we will use his blood to free his precious god.”
After two days of flying, Kai caught her first glimpse of the Adesta Islands. She sighed with relief. Her legs and back ached from the hours in the saddle, and her koumori’s movements were sluggish beneath her.
Lights clustered on the north side of the largest island, evidence of the island’s small fishing hamlet. They landed their koumori on the island’s southern beach.
With rubbery legs, Kai walked down to the shore, where the waves washed up on the beach. Quitsu trailed behind her.
“I’ve never seen the ocean,” she whispered into a cool breeze that tousled her hair and caressed her skin.
“Me either,” Quitsu said, similarly awed.
The wind brought new smells—salt from the sea, seaweed washed onto the shore and dried in the sun. The sand beneath her boots was unlike anything she had ever felt—slippery, yet firm. The waves crashed into the beach in a rhythmic pattern that soothed her spirit and reminded her of her earliest lessons in moonburning. She knelt down and let a wave lap over her hand, burying her fingers in the cold, wet sand.
Colum joined her, looking out at the ocean, gray in the faint morning light. The other islands were shadows in the distance.
Colum’s curly hair rustled in the breeze, and when he turned to Kai, there was a gleam in his eyes. There was a calm about him Kai had never seen before. As if the mask he wore had been washed away by the salt air. “I forgot how much I missed it,” he said.
“It’s incredible,” Kai said. “I never knew what I was missing.” She laughed ruefully. “Is this close to where you grew up?”
Colum pointed southwest. “A few days sailing that direction will get you there,” he said.
“You should go visit,” Kai said. “After all of this is done.”
Colum was silent for a moment before he said, “This is your goddess’s domain too.”
“The ocean?” Kai asked. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
“It is,” Colum said. “My people believe that Tsuki rules the waves, the tides. Taiyo rules the land, but Tsuki the sea. It makes sense that we’ll find her here.”
“I hope we do,” Kai said.
They stared into the crashing waves for a time before Kai reluctantly turned and trudged up the beach to join the others.
Chiya and Jurou set off at dawn to scout the neighboring islands, looking for the beach from the vision.
It took them less than an hour to find it.
“We didn’t find Tsuki,” Chiya said, springing off her koumori, “but we did find the beach where the vision begins. In the image, the viewer gets into a boat and rows towards the next island. So we figured we should start our search on that next island.”
“Sounds good,” Colum said, approaching from the water’s edge. A strange, red-shelled creature squirmed in his hand, and a bag looped around his shoulder bulged with more.
“What is that?” Kai wrinkled her nose, bending over and looking at the creature. It snapped at her with a sharp pincer.
“Crab,” Colum said, smacking his lips. “Tastes amazing roasted with butter.”
Kai eyed the creature skeptically. “I might have to take your word for it,” she said.
They packed up camp quickly and headed for the next island, landing on its northern beach.
“See that little blue boat?” Chiya pointed across the channel to the next island.
Kai shielded her eyes from the sun and squinted. “Yes, I can just make it out.”
“It’s the boat from the vision. I can’t believe it’s really here.”
“Good work, Chiya,” Kai said, pondering the right time to tell Chiya the other part of her role. Why the box had only worked when held in her hand. The part where they needed her blood to open Tsuki’s prison.
“Where should we look?” Kai mused out loud.
“Everywhere,” Jurou said, wringing his hands in excitement.
Kai stifled a smile. He reminded her so much of Master Vita. His excitement for their adventure seemed undampened by the terrible future that would face them if they failed.
“Let’s fan out,” Kai said. “Each pick a path and walk it from one side of the island to the other. It’s not a big place; we should find her before too long.”
“What’re we lookin’ for, Queenie?” Colum asked, his hat low over his eyes.
“You’ll know it when you see it. Quitsu, Tanu,” Kai called, before the seishen had a chance to scamper off. “See if there are any animals on the island you can talk to. Ask about anything out of place. Buildings, sculptures…anything manmade, really.”
“On it,” Quitsu said and was gone with a flash of white. With a nod from Chiya, Tanu followed.
Kai walked through the island’s lush foliage, unable to stop herself from gawking at the island’s vibrant flowers, tiny cerulean frogs, and giant palm fronds. Her sense of wonder buoyed her spirits for a time until she emerged from the green center of the island onto the southern beach, where the rest of the group waited.
“Anything?” Kai asked.
They shook their heads. Kai took a swig of water from her canteen, wiping sweat from her brow. The heat of the midday sun was stifling despite the breeze that ruffled her hair. The air felt heavier here, more tangible.
“I found fresh water,” Colum said. “So we won’t die of thirst.”
<
br /> “That’s something,” Kai said. “Let’s do one more pass before we rest. When the moon comes up we can scry for her.”
Their second search was as fruitless as the first. There was no sign that humans or tengu had ever been on the island, let alone buried a hidden goddess waiting to be set free.
Despite the setback, Colum’s bounty from the sea raised their spirits at dinner. He roasted lemon-yellow fish on sticks over the fire and dropped the hard-shelled crabs right into the flames to crackle and warm.
They laughed at each other as they tried to break into the shells, squirting hot juices down their fronts. The flavor of the meat was salty and rich despite the creatures’ tough exterior. Jurou examined the crustaceans with a puzzled expression before discovering the perfect way to twist the joints to be rewarded with a whole delectable piece of meat.
They fed the bonfire with dried palm fronds, and the sweet hazy smoke soothed Kai’s restless mind. She reclined on her elbows, her belly full and happy. Colum produced a small flask of sun whiskey, and they passed it from hand to hand.
The warmth of the fire mingled with the cool salt air, and for a time, Kai forgot her troubles.
When the fire had died down to embers, Kai and Chiya walked down to the ocean to scry for the goddess. Kai scooped sea water into a shallow wooden bowl and handed it to Chiya. “Why don’t you do the honors?” She wasn’t quite ready to disclose to Chiya that she couldn’t moonburn.
Chiya traced the symbols on the surface of the water, waiting for the water to reveal its prize.
Nothing appeared. It shimmered, as if trying to show something, but it stayed murky and dark.
“Crap,” Kai said.
“Maybe it’s the salt water?” Chiya ventured.
Kai hadn’t thought of that.
They dumped the seawater and Chiya poured fresh water from her canteen into the bowl. They tried again. Nothing.
They walked back to the fire and sat down on the sand, dejected.