Barefoot on the Wind

by Zoe Marriott

  Monster!

  I hesitated. The ground climbed sharply ahead of me, rising up to a dark crest many feet above my head. There was no way I could make it up that slope without both hands. But I very much did not want to move any deeper into this enchanted place without my bow at the ready.

  Monster!

  The trees were almost writhing now, their branches bending, trunks creaking, as if they sought to rip their own roots from the ground.

  MONSTER!

  I flinched – but all at once, as if that last tearing wail had exhausted their strength, the trees fell silent. The wind died and the leaves stilled. Silence rang like the chime of a bell.

  High on the crest above me … something stirred.

  It shone in the blackness, so radiant with its own light that my night-blinded eyes could hardly bear to rest upon it. A sinuous shape, glowing like new-fallen snow under a full moon.

  The creature emerged almost lazily, its steps deceptively swift, and boneless and alien in their grace. In a liquid, effortless motion, it coiled and sprang. The leap carried it halfway down the slope in just one bound – and it was that which helped me believe what I saw, for only one animal could move that way, on four legs, with a spine so flexible it could almost bend in two.

  This shining thing was a cat. A great, white cat, bigger than an ox. Bigger than any animal I had ever seen.

  Sleek muscles rippled beneath a silver-white pelt marked with jagged dark streaks – stripes. It stood still where it had landed, a long, black-tipped tail flicking indolently in the air behind it. A luxuriant silver mane grew around its great triangular face. As it tilted its head, I saw its eyes for the first time. Each one was bigger than the width of a man’s palm. And green. An impossible green, glassy and glowing. Those eyes were too vivid, too bright to belong to any earthly creature.

  It stared at me. I stared back. A bare twenty feet apart, the beast and I regarded one another, motionless. Around us the forest seemed to hold its breath. My arrow was at the ready, my bowstring taut with tension, arms trembling with readiness. But I could not move. I couldn’t even breathe. I was mesmerized with terror and awe. It was beautiful. This shining silver monster was the most beautiful thing I had seen in my entire life.

  I hesitated too long. My fingers had grown numb. My hand twitched, and my grasp on the bowstring slipped. With a low twang, the arrow loosed, piercing the air in a perfect arch. For an instant it seemed to hang there – as if I could catch it, snatch it back. I cried out involuntarily: “No!”

  My arrow sank deep into the great cat’s chest.

  The beast’s immense jaws unhinged. It roared. The sound clapped at the air like thunder, shaking the ground beneath my feet. Behind ivory teeth longer than my fingers, the great cat’s mouth glowed crimson, as if some impossible fire raged within its belly. A white-hot cloud of steam rolled out between its fangs.

  As I watched, immobile with disbelief, the arrow that had been embedded in the cat’s flesh quivered and then – somehow – ejected itself from the animal’s chest. The beast stepped upon the arrow, crushing it to dust with one massive paw, and then blasted the night with another roar. Its eyes bored into mine with a terrifying, feral intelligence.

  No droplet of dark blood marred the monster’s white hide. It was unmarked. Unwounded. My weapons could not touch it. And now the beast knew that.

  I thought I had felt fear before, but it had been nothing, nothing, compared to the all-consuming blaze of my terror now. Any hope I’d cherished of fighting the beast was gone.

  I was going to die.

  The monster leapt forwards.

  I turned and ran, throwing myself at the soft, crumbling earth of the slope. My hands scrabbled and my feet dug in desperately, and my precious bow caught on a spiny branch. It flew out of my grasp. I could not even spare a glance to watch it fall. There was a flash of white in my peripheral vision – instinctively I dropped. A heartbeat later a paw twice the size of my head carved a yawning scar in the earth where I had been.

  Arrows scattered out of my quiver around me with a sound like dry bones as I rolled and launched myself away. Some remote instinct scolded me for not stabbing the creature in the gut with an arrow while I passed, and I nearly laughed at the absurdity of it. I could not kill what did not bleed. No one could.

  I should have listened to Shouta.

  I never should have come here.

  Kyo’s voice, low and sneering and contemptuous as it never had been when he was alive, echoed in my mind: Oh, but you were always coming here, weren’t you?

  The blast of the beast’s breath rolled around me as I zigzagged and jumped, ducking and dodging the lash of its giant paws over the uneven ground. The space of the hollow was narrow and the monster was so massive that it could barely turn around without crashing into the trees and bushes that edged the clearing, offering me feeble cover. But it was fast. Impossibly fast.

  I can’t keep this up.

  I was already so tired. I had to get out. Up. Away. Yet the monster was somehow always there, batting me down again before I could even think of trying to escape. I took a glancing blow in the stomach from one of its paws and went flying. I slapped my hands against my throbbing abdomen as I landed, expecting to feel my entrails sliding out between them.

  There was no blood.

  It had swiped me with its claws sheathed…?

  That look of alien intelligence in its eyes – I had a flash of memory – barn cats toying with a mouse before they ate it—

  I am the prey.

  Up. Up. Get up – get away.

  No. Not yet.

  The ground trembled. I lay still, waiting, waiting. Playing dead. The beast was nearly upon me. I could feel those unnatural eyes burning into me.

  Now!

  Its jaws snapped inches above my shoulder as I darted away, sweeping under its lashing tail. The head whipped around as I passed – too close, too close – and I surged to my feet and jumped, flinging myself recklessly upwards towards the low-hanging branch I had seen as I fell. If I didn’t make it, I would drop right down into its jaws—

  My hands snagged the bough, and I swung my legs up with everything I had, muscles burning, choking on my gasp of relief as I thudded into the trunk. Spitting out a leaf, I began to climb.

  Go, go, high as you can, away—

  The cat circled the tree as I scrabbled through the branches. Its low, savage snarls rose up through the leaves and scraped down my spine. The tree was young, its branches slender and flexible. Barely enough to support my weight. The beast could not climb it.

  Please don’t climb it…

  I hissed as something banged against my bruised hip. The hatchet. I had forgotten about it. My shaking fingers reached down to touch the handle. It was all I had left.

  The air exploded with the unbearable thunder of the beast’s roar. Below me the glowing white shape lunged forwards, and the tree shook. Branches tossed around me, scoring thin lines on my skin. I grabbed at the trunk with one hand. The other clenched fast over the quartz hatchet.

  The beast roared again, and flung itself once more against the base of the tree. With an agonized shriek of tearing timber, the roots ripped free of the earth and the tree began to fall. I screamed as the clearing rose up to meet me.

  My head rebounded from something hard – a rock, a knoll of wood. Vision fanned out into a blur of wavering images as I struggled to move, dragging myself out from under torn tree limbs. But I couldn’t stand. My legs wouldn’t obey.

  The monster seemed almost to flow into existence before me, its edges scintillating, stretching and reforming against the darkness.

  Red mouth opened.

  Green eyes sparked.

  I flung the hatchet with a yell of defiance. The quartz blade bounced uselessly away from the cat’s breast. The monster roared in my face. Then its claws struck home, raking down the side of my body and through my right arm in a single furious swipe.

  The power of the blow flung me away. Bon
eless as a rag doll, I tumbled, slid sideways, and then slipped … down. Down. Down.

  Deep, moist darkness embraced me as I slithered into the earth itself, like being born in reverse. Distantly I realized that the monster had knocked me into the crevice left by the tree roots when it had wrenched them out of the ground. My own deadweight had dragged my body to the very bottom of the hole.

  Giant white paws scrabbled at the edges of the crack in the earth, sending cascades of dirt and pebbles flying. A green eye stared in. Infuriated, the monster bellowed and snarled, and the ground trembled again. It stalked past, and then returned, then thundered away once more. It couldn’t reach me.

  Too late. Too late now.

  Agony washed over me in sickening waves. The stench of my own blood, thick and coppery, made me want to retch. I could feel the liquid gushing out in warm rivulets down my side. I thought I must have lost my arm – there was no feeling there but the pain. I didn’t dare look, and I couldn’t find the strength to move, even if I had wanted to.

  Wretched whimpers spilled from my lips. I didn’t try to hold them back. It didn’t matter any more. Nothing mattered because … because this was it. This soft earth … would be my grave. I was going to die here, in the Dark Wood … like my great-grandfather … like Grandmother.

  Like Kyo.

  Amidst the dirt and blood and pain, the thought brought a strange sense of peace. Yes. It was right… I had tried my hardest, tried so hard for so long … but it had never been enough. I had never been enough for Father… Now I had failed him again. For the final time.

  I had always been coming here, hadn’t I?

  Coming here, to the Dark Wood.

  To be with them.

  Soon I would see them again… My grandmother and my brother… Soon it would all be finished.

  I would finally be free…

  The pain was … not so bad any more. I was starting to feel sleepy.

  The narrow sliver of light that fell into my grave was changing. Gradually warming with the golden flush of dawn. That was … nice. I was glad to feel the sun on my face…

  My grasp on consciousness slowly slipped away, but my eyes clung to the light until I could hold them open no more.

  Seven

  Consciousness came back in a starburst of agony.

  Fire seemed to flow through my flesh, eating away at me in long glowing runnels, like rivers of molten metal burning my shoulder, my hip, and deep, deep into my side. I tried to cry out. All that emerged was a high, thin wheeze that whistled between my teeth. The effort made the hurt surge up over the rest of my body like a red tide, and if I had possessed the breath in that moment to do it, I would have begged the Moon for death.

  What happened where am I what’s wrong no no I can’t make it stop please make it go away—

  “Be still, be still, you’re safe. You’re safe now. Don’t move.”

  I heard the voice only distantly: my own pained, panicked breaths drowning everything out. A large, shadowy shape moved across the orange screen of my closed eyelids – I couldn’t seem to open them – before a strong hand cupped the back of my head and tilted my neck up. Something touched my lip. The rim of a cup, rough and unglazed.

  “Hurts,” I whimpered.

  “I know,” the voice rumbled softly, soothingly. “Drink this. It will help.”

  The cup tipped. I tried to swallow, but the bitter liquid made me choke and cough. The pain flared, and I let out a weak, stuttering sob. I felt fingers knead the tight muscles of my neck, like an apology. “Keep trying.”

  The liquid was lukewarm, and it tasted awful. I choked again – just a little – but I did keep trying, and finally the cup was taken away.

  “Who – why…?”

  “Just rest. Sleep and get better.”

  He laid me carefully back down, my head nestling into some soft, spongy pillow – but the movement jarred my shoulder, which made me flinch, which made my side and hip scream. I bit my lip but couldn’t hold in another sob.

  “Breathe out,” the voice – whose voice? – rumbled. A damp, cool cloth passed over my forehead and cheeks, wiping away sweat and tears. “Breathe in. Slowly now. Breathe out. It will pass. Pain always passes. Breathe in. What we know will pass, we can endure.”

  I followed the rhythm he set, breathing slowly and quietly until both the clawing fire in my side and the panic had eased enough to be bearable. I sensed more than heard him shift away and stiffened.

  “Don’t leave me. Don’t go.” I didn’t recognize his voice yet, but I … I didn’t want to be alone.

  “I’m not going anywhere. Be still now.” He began to sing. “Copper fish, dance, dance… Leaves falling on silver pool… Autumn rain, fall, fall…”

  My mind slowly clouded over as the stuff he had made me drink took effect. I fell asleep to the gentle, rumbling growl of the sweet lullaby that no one had sung to me since I was ten years old…

  I woke again with a start and let out a wordless cry. Instinctively I twisted, trying to get away from the pain, but it burned brighter in response, until I thought my whole right side must be consumed down to the blackened bones.

  Hands – big enough to cover almost the whole length of each of my forearms – held me still with a steady, careful weight. I blinked my eyes open, trying to make out who was there, but my vision swam with tears. It was too bright. Everything was too bright. I only saw a shadow against the shifting firelight. I didn’t recognize anything.

  “You must be still. Be still, be still, please, please…” the deep voice murmured, a soft repetitive litany that calmed me almost against my will.

  “Who are you?” I begged. It hurts it hurts why does it hurt so much? “You’re not my – where is my mother – who are you? What is your name?”

  “Listen to me,” he said urgently. “Your wounds have only just stopped bleeding. If you thrash about, you will open them again. Please be still. You’ve already lost a lot of blood, and I don’t want you to die.”

  I croaked, “What happened to me?”

  But before he could answer, an agonizing twinge scalded me anew, and I fell away from him, back into darkness.

  “Who … who are you?” I asked again when I woke the next time. “Where is this?”

  “I am nobody,” he answered, already lifting me – one-handed, I realized, and with seemingly no effort at all – for the cup. “And where you are is safe. That’s all you must know.”

  I stared up at him with wide, blurry eyes. I thought I could make out … something, some kind of hood or fabric that shadowed his face. For the first time I realized – or fully accepted – that I did not know this person. He was not of the village. I had never met anyone not of the village. I had never met a stranger. How was this possible? How could it be real?

  “I don’t know you,” I fretted. “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s all right. You don’t have to understand anything now,” he said, pressing the clay rim of the cup a little more insistently to my mouth. “You only need to rest and heal.”

  So I drank, and slept again.

  A beast – glowing, lightning and shadows – eyes like green fire – its roar shakes the earth and its gaping maw burns red, red breath, white heat like the centre of a forge—

  No!

  The scream resounded in my chest, but I trapped the sound behind my teeth before it could escape. It was a dream. Only a dream, some nonsensical nightmare, not real. I didn’t want to wake my parents. I didn’t want to wake Kyo.

  No, that’s not right. That’s not… Kyo is gone.

  He’s gone and it was my fault… Where did he go? Why didn’t I stop him?

  Why can’t I remember?

  Eyes squeezed tightly shut, I tried to make sense of what I knew – but instead of flowing together smoothly from the past into the present and away towards the future, my memories were … shattered. Opaque fragments on the surface of a dark, cold river. I struggled to capture the fragments as they bobbed by in my mind, and
to make sense of them, but they … they made no sense. Kyo standing on the edge of the river, laughing. Mother crying. Long spirals of choking, dusty blue smoke – no, incense. Trees looming against the night sky, leaves tossing, and a burning white thing that ate up the shadows: a fallen star consuming all it touched with fire…

  Terrible green eyes. Glowing. Glowing in the dark.

  Terror arced through my body, locking me into stillness like a small wild creature facing a predator that it cannot hide from or outrun. Only a nightmare, the voice of common sense insisted. No such thing exists. It was only a dream. An awful dream, and no more.

  Bone-deep discomfort, clawing through my right side, slowly drew me back to reality. I was hurt. My body’s warning throb made it clear that I should be very careful about trying to move my arm or shoulder. Pain radiated through my abdomen, through my hip and the top of my thigh. I struggled to coax my gluey eyelids to lift, wincing them shut again as the light blinded me and flooded my vision with tears.

  Forcing my left arm – heavy and limp – to lift and reach across my torso took an alarming amount of effort. I persevered, panting. My slowly questing fingers encountered thick wrappings on the injured shoulder. Not the soft, slightly frayed bandages I had been expecting, though. Something … waxy, with dry, curling edges, but faintly damp. Oily damp.

  My shoulder was wrapped in leaves. Layers and layers of leaves, soaked in a salve or ointment.

  What in the Moon’s name had I done to myself that Sensei had needed to cover me with leaves?

  I let my fingers follow the strange dressings downwards as far as I could, and discovered that they covered most of my torso. A heavy robe, made of thick, stiff fabric, had been wrapped around my other side and over my left arm. A thin blanket pulled up over that covered me from armpits to toes. I let my arm relax back to my side and, groping beneath me, found that I was resting on what felt like some kind of strange, thick, springy mattress covered in a soft fur.