by Claire Luana
As she pushed, she opened a rift into the demon realm, sending them through into the eternal darkness beyond, the empty void that was their home. And just as fast, she sealed the opening behind them, strengthening and fortifying the walls between the spirit world and the demon realm until no demon would ever be able to pass through, no matter what cruel magic sought to aid them.
When her task was complete, Kai stumbled, fatigue washing over her. The sky lightened in the east, the sun dawning. Time had always been strange in the spirit world.
Kai found her way to a chair by the small table at the back of the courtyard, collapsing into it.
Hamaio sat down next to her in the chair Kai herself had once sat in.
“You did it, Kai,” Hamaio said warmly. “He’s very proud of you.”
Kai laughed ruefully, blowing a lock of unruly hair off her forehead. “All I did was clean up my own mess.”
“This mess was fated, even before my time. The tengu had set out on this path many centuries ago. All he could do was hold back the tide until he found someone strong enough to finish it. To make it right again.”
Exhaustion was overtaking Kai as the creator’s intoxicating power drained from her. “Why didn’t he tell me? Explain everything in the beginning? Why put us through all of this?”
“He’s not allowed to directly interfere once the creating is done. It’s one of the immutable laws of this universe.”
“Lending me his power isn’t interfering?”
“He sent you back to the mortal world when it wasn’t your time to die. It’s not his fault if you borrowed a little power on your way back.”
“Borrowed? I didn’t do anything…” Kai began in disbelief but then relaxed as Hamaio winked.
“I wish he would have told me what he wanted of me. So I didn’t have to muddle through and make such a mess of things.”
“He gave you what aid he could and trusted that you would the find the rest of the puzzle pieces when the time was right. The fact that we are sitting here shows that his trust was not misplaced.”
Kai looked down at the handprint. It glowed faintly, strangely warm against her skin.
“It’s ready to find its way back,” Hamaio said.
“What?”
“His power.” Hamaio nodded at the handprint. “It was never yours to keep. I suspect you know that.”
Kai nodded, relief coiling through her. She missed moonlight, silvery sweet and simple and familiar. “How do I…?”
“Just release it. It will do the rest.”
Unsure what Hamaio meant, but trusting the magic to find its way home, Kai closed her eyes, imagining herself standing beside the whitewater rapids of the creator’s power. Thank you, she thought. But it’s time to go now.
The river churned and bubbled in farewell before it vanished, leaving the afterimage of its brilliant course burned in her mind’s eye.
Kai opened her eyes. Between her and Hamaio flapped a soft iridescent moth the size of her palm. It flitted for a moment around Hamaio before rising into the air and flapping into the distance, leaving a trail of light in its wake.
Looking down confirmed what she already knew. The handprint was gone. She sighed with relief. “What now?” Kai asked.
“It’s still not your time,” Hamaio said.
Kai pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, laying her cheek to rest on them. “I don’t know if I can go back,” she whispered. “Everything that happened…so many people died because of me. I led them astray.”
“This is true. But you saved them too. Being a leader doesn’t mean being perfect. There is wisdom in admitting your imperfections and learning from your mistakes.”
“I’m tired of learning,” Kai said. “I’m just tired. I don’t know if I want to do it anymore. I wasn’t even Tsuki’s true heir. What right do I have to rule Miina?”
Hamaio laughed. “Of course you’re not the heir. You’re the queen.”
“What?” Kai asked. “No, Chiya is older; she was supposed to be queen.”
Hamaio pursed her lips as if suppressing a smile. “My husband and I tied the gods’ hiding places and the clue box to our heirs, the sunburner and moonburner next in line for the throne. We knew we might be lost in the battle against the tengu, and we wanted someone who would remain. You are the current queen, the wearer of the lunar crown, so it was your heir whose blood was necessary. The sunburner king, what’s his name, Ozora? He couldn’t have opened it either—only his son, his heir, could.”
A scarlet flush colored Kai’s cheeks. She hadn’t even thought about the fact that Hiro, not his father Ozora, could open the box and Taiyo’s tomb.
“See?” Kai said weakly. “I couldn’t even interpret your riddle correctly.”
Hamaio leaned forward and took Kai’s hands in her own. “He saw something in you, Kai. When you appeared in the spirit world near death but full of light, clinging so hard to life. He saw a chance for this world. Is that woman gone? That spirit?”
Kai didn’t respond. That woman was before Leilu. And Chiya. And bodies crushed by earthquakes and wasted by famine. And mobs at the gate and being tricked by the Order. Before the misery and despair of looking up into a moonless sky and knowing the sun would never rise.
“I suppose you could stay if you truly wished it.” Hamaio frowned. “I will let you think on it. But in the meantime, the creator would like to give you a gift. As a token of his appreciation.”
“A gift?”
“I’ll send it up.” Hamaio stood and left Kai, disappearing down the steps at the far end of the courtyard.
Kai stood and walked to the edge, surveying the shining line of the sea as the sun warmed her face. It felt good to be alone. No worries. No obligations.
But she wasn’t without worry, without obligation. Her mind flashed to the people she loved, their faces conjured up before her. Had others been lost in the battle? What had happened to the seishen when she’d vanished? Did she really want to stay here? Never return? What would happen to Quitsu? What would Hiro think?
“There you are, my little fox.”
Kai whirled around at the deep voice, a tight knot forming in her throat.
“Father?” she said, her voice a whisper.
He stood before her, tall and as strong as the last day she had seen him. His short hair was burnished gold now, shimmering in the morning light. He grinned, his white teeth flashing.
She ran to him and threw herself against him, her face buried in the muscles of his chest. Tears sprang to her eyes and she sobbed, wetting the linen of his shirt.
“Shhh,” he said, rocking her in his arms.
She pulled back. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m so sorry I didn’t listen and I was exposed as a moonburner and everything is my fault.” She buried her face again, sobbing as two years of guilt bubbled forth, a shallow wound that had never healed.
He laughed his deep barrel laugh, and the sound of it was so wonderful that her tears doubled, a waterfall of emotion pouring from her. Gods, the world wasn’t right without that laugh.
When Kai’s tears finally began to subside, her father, Raiden, cupped her blotchy face in his hands and looked into her eyes. “You saved our people from destruction twice over, once from a war where we destroyed each other, and now from an enemy that would have devoured us all. This world owes you a debt of gratitude.”
“But so many have died,” she said. “Because of me.”
“No.” He shook his head vehemently. “People live because of you. This world is safe because of you. Everyone who has died fighting this evil did so because they chose to. When you take the blame for their deaths, you diminish their sacrifice. You didn’t force anyone to fight.”
She hadn’t thought of it that way.
“I was sentenced to die twenty years before the sentence was ever carried out. Those twenty years were a blessing from the gods. They were the best of my life because of your mother—and you. I have no reg
rets.”
His deep chocolate eyes soothed her. “You must put your regrets aside too. Do not let what has passed before cripple the life you have left to live. Every wrong decision was the right one in the end. The creator knew he could trust you. And I’m sure as hell glad he did, or I’d be a tengu sandwich right now. Even the spirit world was overrun.”
Kai cracked a smile, wiping her eyes.
She thought of the storms she had weathered with her friends, the scrapes they had avoided. She didn’t bear all the praise for saving their land, and perhaps she didn’t bear all the blame for its downfall either. In truth, did she not want to see Miina bloom again, to ruffle Quitsu’s soft fur, to feel her body warm under Hiro’s touch? She began to smile as the memories flashed by one by one.
But her smile faltered. “I don’t want to leave you. Won’t you be lonely?”
Her father looked over his shoulder towards the staircase, where a woman stood, silhouetted against the sky.
A sob ripped anew from Kai’s chest as she recognized Chiya, her strong arms crossed before her, her silver hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore her navy moonburner uniform and Tanu sat beside her booted feet, his striped tail swishing.
“I have your sister with me now,” Raiden continued. “We have a lot of catching up to do. We’ll be waiting for you when it’s your time. Just not yet.”
Chiya nodded from across the courtyard, a sad smile on her face.
“Okay,” Kai whispered, pulling him into another hug, trying to memorize every bit of him.
They pulled apart, and he took her hand, walking with her to the edge of the courtyard, where the creator had once pushed her off.
Kai looked back at Chiya and raised her hand in a solemn wave.
Her sister waved back.
“Ready?” Raiden asked.
“I think so,” she said.
Kai stepped up on the low ledge, not letting go of his hand.
She turned.
“I love you,” Kai said. “Tell Chiya…I love her too.”
“I love you too, my little fox,” Raiden said. “And she knows.”
Then she jumped.
The first rays of a new day’s sun were stretching over the desert horizon.
The exhausted burners had piled the tengu bodies against the far wall and had laid their own dead in a line. Hiro examined the faces, memorizing each one. Leilu. Chiya and Tanu, side by side. Sunburners he had grown up with, sparred with, commanded in battle. The broken golden body of Kuma, General Ipan’s seishen, lay at the end of the line, his throat ripped out by the falcon-headed giant tengu. Ryu, who had returned to his original size upon Kai’s disappearance, lay quietly by his brother, mourning him.
Nanase was gravely wounded—the gash to her thigh gaped angry and wide. The general sat by her side numbly as Tsuki bent over the wound, weaving moonlight to reknit the flesh and blood vessels.
Hiro put his hand on the general’s shoulder.
The general looked up, tears streaking his face. “It should have been me. Kuma had no right to go and die on me.”
“He went out how he would have wanted,” Hiro said. “A warrior’s death.”
The general smiled. “It was an epic end to his story. He took down that other big one, you know, before the bastard got him.”
“I know,” Hiro said. “We’d all be lost without him.”
“Proud of him,” Ipan said. “It was good to see him like that. It’s not often you see a thing’s soul from the inside out, but we got to. Our seishen. They’re extraordinary beasts.”
Hiro nodded. “Kuma was one of the best.”
Hiro looked around the courtyard at the moonburners tending wounded, at the light rising in the east. At the pile of tengu carcasses, Jurou’s broken body thrown on top of them. He looked everywhere but the spot where Kai had disappeared. The spot where Quitsu now sat, still as a statue, keeping silent vigil until his friend returned.
The lump in Hiro’s throat grew.
Emi and Daarco approached, studying Quitsu’s lonely form. “He won’t move?” she asked.
Daarco placed a comforting hand on Hiro’s shoulder.
“No,” Hiro said. “He insisted that Kai will return. And that he’ll be waiting for her.”
“Maybe he’s right,” Daarco said.
Hiro let out a bitter laugh. “You never were a very good liar.”
“I think…” Emi said. “Her time came when she had the fever. And the last few weeks we had with her… It was borrowed time.”
Hiro shook his head. “There must have been something I could’ve done. A fork in the road. If we hadn’t freed Tsuki and Taiyo… If we had discovered the tengu’s plan sooner, before the fever spread. Some way we could have seen her through this.”
“You could drive yourself mad thinking that way. You did exactly what you were supposed to do,” Emi said. “What the world needed you to do. What Kai needed.”
“How do you figure?” Hiro asked.
Emi took his hand and squeezed. “You let her go.”
Hiro nodded, not trusting his voice to speak. “I’m going to miss her,” he finally managed, barely more than a whisper.
They turned away together, unable to look at the solitary seishen any longer.
A loud thud sounded behind them, followed by a groan.
“You landed right on me!” Quitsu’s voice exclaimed.
Hiro whirled around. A figure lay on the ground, tangled up with Quitsu. It…it couldn’t be. But it was!
Hiro whooped with joy and dashed over to where Kai and Quitsu lay.
He swooped Kai up in his arms, spinning her around, crushing her to him. His heart soared with the sight of her, the feel of her in his arms, warm and real.
“I think…I’m gonna be sick,” she croaked, and he stopped his mad twirl, setting her down.
He pulled back only slightly, refusing to break contact, needing to feel her solid presence. He took her face in his hands and looked her over. Flowing silver hair, warm hazel eyes, playful freckles dotting her nose. She looked like herself.
“I thought I lost you,” he said.
“You almost did,” she said. “But I had some help remembering what I have to live for.”
“How—?”
His question was cut off as she kissed him, wrapping her arms around him in an embrace full of promises.
“Enough of the kissy stuff,” Emi said, trotting over to peer at the two of them from an uncomfortably close vantage. “Spare some for the rest of us!”
Hiro and Kai broke apart with a laugh and Emi wrapped Kai in a bear hug. And then the burners were whooping and laughing and hugging and congratulating Kai in swirls of silver and gold hair.
The excited chatter died away as Tsuki and Taiyo approached hand in hand, the seishen elder behind them.
The god and goddess glowed with life and health. Gone were their disheveled, blood-stained clothes. They wore fine silks—Tsuki a fitted dress of navy covered with stars, Taiyo a handsome tunic of emerald, embroidered with gold.
As they neared, Kai ran her fingers through her wild and tangled hair and tugged at her torn and dirty shirt.
“You look beautiful,” Hiro murmured in her ear, and she blushed, allowing her hands to fall still.
“Kai and Hiro, together with your loyal burners and seishen, you have saved us and this world from a dark future.”
“It was our pleasure,” Kai said, looking sideways at Hiro. He suppressed a grin. Just a walk in the park.
The elder walked between the two gods, and bowed low before Kai. Her eyes widened in surprise at the gesture.
“Kailani Shigetsu, I fear I owe you an apology,” the elder said, rising from its bow and sitting on its haunches. “When you came to me in the Misty Forest, I should have let you drink from the lake. Its pure essence would have given you the knowledge you needed to truly wield the creator’s life light. But I feared you were not worthy of such power, and so I kept it from you. I see now that I was wrong. I co
uld have made your journey, your fight, much easier. I regret that I did not.”
Pain flashed across Kai’s face as her eyes flicked to the line of bodies lying on the stones, those friends lost. But Hiro found he didn’t have the energy to be angry at the seishen. How could it have known what was to come?
Apparently, Kai reached the same conclusion. “Someone wise told me that every wrong decision was the right one in the end. What matters is that you came when we needed you, and without you, all would have been lost. You have my thanks,” Kai said.
The elder bowed again. “I see the creator showed much wisdom in his choice. I am glad to have known you. You and my dear Quitsu are well-matched.”
“The elder is right,” Tsuki said. “We owe you a great debt of gratitude. How can we repay you? Ask anything of us, and it shall be yours.”
“Heal our land,” Kai said without a second’s thought. “And our people. The tengu wreaked havoc on us…disease, famine, earthquakes. Please set it right.”
“It is a wise ruler who thinks of her subjects before herself. It will be done,” Taiyo said. “And for you?” He turned to Hiro.
Hiro’s arms remained firmly fixed around Kai’s waist, and he was unable to tear his gaze from her profile. “I already have everything I want.”
Kai’s blush deepened.
“If there is nothing you desire other than your beloved,” Tsuki said, “perhaps a wedding present is appropriate.”
She stood back from Taiyo and closed her eyes, opening her hands to the heavens. The ground beneath them rumbled and water gushed out of the empty fountain in the courtyard below them, the sound of rushing water and tinkling droplets rising like a symphony throughout the city. Plants exploded out of the dry ground to the left and right of the courtyard, vines crawling along window frames, palm trees springing up tall outside of doorways, fruit trees blossoming to shade tidy courtyards. Tsuki’s power swept over the city and life sprang up wherever it touched. The music of chirping birds and buzzing honeybees joined the city’s vibrant timbre.