Barefoot on the Wind

by Zoe Marriott

  But it was not to last.

  As Itsuki bustled around, cleaning up, I noticed that though the mother cat had cleaned the two youngest kittens, and each of them had latched onto one of her milk-filled teats, the oldest and smallest was still damp with birth fluids, and lay a little apart. Its legs worked feebly, and its head moved as if it was trying to sniff out the milk it needed. But when it worked its way closer to the mother, she nudged it away from her.

  Biting my lip, I crouched down and, with hands that I had not yet had the chance to wash, and which I hoped would smell strongly enough of the mother cat not to make things worse, lifted the smallest kitten until it nestled back against its siblings.

  The wildcat didn’t protest, though she watched me narrowly with her fierce yellow eyes as the runt found a teat and began to suckle. I let myself breathe a small sigh of satisfaction. But as I returned from thoroughly scrubbing my hands and arms, and tying my obi into place around my kimono, I heard Itsuki make a low, sorrowful noise. He was standing over the wildcat now – and once more, the runt had been pushed away to the edge of the bedding. It cheeped plaintively, struggling to return to its mother’s warmth. She paid it no attention.

  “She rejected it,” Itsuki said quietly when I came to stand beside him. “Either three babies is too many to care for, or it’s too small compared to the other two. Or both.”

  “There might be something wrong with it,” I said as kindly as I could. “Something we can’t see. My grandmother said that cats can smell if one of their kittens is damaged, and they let it die rather than waste milk on it.”

  “Damaged?” he repeated. There was an unaccustomed note of bitterness in his voice.

  “You know what I mean. Itsuki-san, she’s not a person. She’s a beast. They don’t feel the same way humans do.”

  He winced away from me, his shoulders hunching painfully. The kitten made another pathetic cheep by his foot. It was unbearable.

  “We could try hand-feeding,” I offered rather desperately. “I’ve seen it done, with calves. If we keep the kitten warm enough, and feed it the milk from the goats, it might survive. We can take turns looking after it at night.”

  I didn’t tell him that usually no one bothered to hand-feed calves unless it was clear that the calf in question was sturdy, and there were younger children in the family or among the neighbours, to take on the responsibility of feeding it every few hours through the night. And that even then such rejected calves often died – and if they didn’t, they eventually ended up slaughtered for meat anyway.

  It might work, I told myself. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t.

  The way Itsuki’s stiff, unhappy posture melted was enough reward. As if I had somehow given him permission, he scooped up the abandoned kitten in one hand and cradled it protectively to his chest.

  “I’ll go and find something we can use for a bottle,” he said.

  For the next three days, Itsuki and I acted like new parents with a sickly child, carrying the kitten with us everywhere we went in a sling that Itsuki had converted from my old one and padded with a scrap of fur taken from the mother cat’s bed. We fussed over it, listening with quivering readiness for its tiniest protesting cry. Though its eyes had not yet opened, and wouldn’t for at least another week, I was sure the kitten knew the sound of my voice and Itsuki’s, and responded to them. And despite my anxiety, the kitten seemed to thrive. I began to hope, and then to truly believe, that our little runt had a fighting chance.

  What was more, in those three days, Itsuki did not have a single one of his painful attacks.

  On the first night, I laid on my side of the hearth and Itsuki on his, the kitten curled up in the crook of my good arm, since I had volunteered to night-feed it. Further away, behind a carefully heaped-up pile of blankets, wooden pails and other debris that we had arranged to block her off from the rest of the room – she was getting increasingly territorial – the mother cat growled softly. The fading orange light of the fire painted flickering patterns on the vine-festooned ceiling and I watched them with heavy eyes.

  “We should call him—” I began sleepily. Itsuki laughed, and I broke off, then demanded, “What?”

  “Haven’t you taken the time to check? Our little one is a girl.”

  “Oh!” It hadn’t occurred to me. “No wonder she’s such a stubborn creature, then.”

  “What did you want to call her? Will it still work for a girl?”

  “I was going to say Jun – but obviously Kimi would work better for a female.”

  “Aren’t those dogs’ names?” He sounded baffled.

  “Yes, but… Well, they’re names for companions. You know that hand-rearing it – her – this way means she’ll think of you as her family. She might go off and hunt for herself or find a mate when she’s older, but she will probably stay with you for a long time.”

  Long after I’m gone.

  “I like the sound of Kimi.” Fabric rustled as he turned onto his side. “I’ll think about it.”

  On the third night, a groan of distress woke me, and I blinked my eyes open with the confused thought that Itsuki must be having another attack.

  But then I felt it. The small, warm shape of Kimi was gone from her place on my breast. My stomach churned with dismay, and when I bolted up into a sitting position, I saw what I had feared.

  Itsuki sat next to me, a dim shadow, outlined only in moonlight, with a fluffy body cupped in the frame of his twisted pale fingers. She was still, just as still as she had been when I pulled her from her mother. The tiny wheezing sounds of her breathing that I had become so accustomed to were gone.

  “Oh, Itsuki,” I whispered.

  “You were right,” he said. The words were rough, almost a growl. “You were right in the first place. She was too weak – too damaged – her mother knew it. She – she was probably suffering all this time. It was cruel to drag it out—”

  “Don’t say that!” I interrupted. “Don’t you say that! We gave her warmth and comfort. We did everything we could for her. She knew that she was loved. There’s nothing cruel in that.”

  He bowed his head. “We – we need to – bury her.”

  “We should bury her here. In amongst the roots of the tree.” I sniffed, hiccupped, rubbed my forearm carelessly over my eyes, and got up. “I’ll get a spade.”

  Silently, in the light of the waning moon and a galaxy of glittering stars, we chose a spot – a place where the sun often rested in the daytime – and I dug the hole for Kimi’s grave. A small hole. Terribly small. But deep. She deserved to rest undisturbed.

  Itsuki wrapped the soft little body in the piece of fur and the cloth sling that we had used to carry her, and then tenderly, so tenderly, placed her in the earth. He used his hands to push the dirt back in on top, and to smooth the soil flat over her.

  As he knelt there with me standing at his shoulder, his back gave a single, convulsive shudder, and he curled forwards, leaning his forehead against the tree trunk. “She was dead when I woke up. There was nothing— She was already dead.”

  “I know,” I said, turning the spade over and over between my hands.

  “I didn’t get to say goodbye. I know she was just a little kitten, just an animal, but … I never got to say goodbye. Just like before. My mother, my father, my little sisters. All gone. Gone. And I can’t—” His voice broke, and he slammed his hand into the tree next to his face. Once. Twice. Then again. Even the vast, mighty tree seemed to tremble under the force of those blows.

  I couldn’t stand it. I dropped the spade and crumpled down to the grass behind him, wrapping my arms around his wide, crooked shoulders, and my hands around his forearms to hold his hands still. I pressed my face into his back, and for once he did not flinch away from me. Silent tears shook him.

  “Do you remember their names?” I demanded, fiercely. “Do you remember?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Say them now. Say goodbye now, and Kimi will carry your farewells with her into t
he Moon’s embrace. She’ll be your messenger. Go on.”

  Soft and slow, he choked the names out. “Kaori. Osamu. Natsumi. Miyuki.” A pause. “Goodbye. Goodbye, Kimi. Rest well.” He drew in a ragged breath. “Now you, Hana.”

  I was not like Itsuki. I … did not deserve to have my messages carried into the beyond. Kyo was gone because of me. If it weren’t for me, I knew, I knew – even if I did not know how – that he would still be on this earth. It should have been me instead.

  “Hana. Your lost deserve to hear it. Go on.”

  I shuddered. Then, almost soundlessly, I murmured: “Grandmother. K-Kyo. Goodbye. Goodbye.”

  After a moment, I began to sing, my voice cracked and wavering:

  “Sakura, sakura,

  Covering the sky,

  A fragrance blown like mist and clouds,

  Now, now, let us go now to see them…”

  It took a while longer for Itsuki’s voice – rich and deep, yet still a little wobbly – to join mine in the song for the first time. But it did. He did.

  We stayed there like that, together, until the sun rose above the dark crown of the trees.

  When dawn came, Itsuki insisted that I return to my makeshift bed and try to catch up on the hours of sleep I had lost.

  “You are still recovering. Rest is the most important part of that,” he said, weary but kind, himself again.

  “And what about you?” I asked. “You were awake longer than I was. Don’t you deserve rest too?”

  There was a rueful smile in his voice when he replied. “I don’t need much sleep – and I want to visit the goats again, and look at that billy goat’s front hoof. I’ll feel better for occupying myself today. You know what I mean.”

  I did. Who could blame him for wishing to be away from the sad reminder of the mother cat and her two healthy kittens for a while? The friendly goats would most likely be a comfort to him. I knew that he wasn’t trying to coddle me unnecessarily – I honestly was in need of sleep, worn thin by both Itsuki’s grief and my own, and dangerously likely to burst into tears again at any moment.

  “Don’t work too hard,” I told him.

  “There is no such thing, for me,” he said, and left me with a quick, gentle squeeze to my hand before I could ask what he meant.

  I sighed, and tucked myself into my blankets, and tried to doze off.

  “My mother, my father, my little sisters. I never got to say goodbye.”

  I didn’t get to say goodbye…

  My grandmother.

  My brother.

  I … didn’t get to say goodbye…

  My father.

  “We might be able to keep him alive until the Moon is next dark…”

  Don’t go out at the dark of the Moon.

  “When a person doesn’t move, can’t eat or drink much, their body starts to fail very quickly…”

  No one ever comes back from the Dark Wood.

  “He is already dead, Hana-san.”

  “It was cruel to drag it out…”

  Cats play with their prey.

  There is a monster in the forest.

  A monster.

  A monster.

  MONSTER!

  The monster’s immense jaws unhinged. A colossal, raging snarl clapped at the air like thunder, shook the ground. Behind ivory teeth longer than my fingers, its mouth glowed, dark red, as if some impossible fire raged within its belly. A white-hot cloud of breath rolled out between its fangs like steam, and I watched the arrow that had sunk deep into the cat’s flesh quiver and then – somehow – eject itself from the beast’s chest. The beast stepped upon the fallen arrow and crushed it to dust with one massive paw and then roared again, its eyes seeking out mine with a gleam of terrifying, feral intelligence.

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

  It leapt forwards.

  I ran.

  My eyes snapped open.

  “Never go out at the dark of the moon,” I whispered. “No one comes back from the Dark Wood. There is a monster in the forest.”

  Thirteen

  I remembered. I remembered everything. What happened to Kyo. And my grandmother. Father. The impossible thing I had come to the Dark Wood to do.

  Dear Moon, how much time had passed since then? Weeks! Last night the Moon had been a thin, sharp crescent among the stars. It would be dark again in a matter of one or two days. That was all the time I had left to save my father’s life. And that was if Kaede had managed to keep him breathing this long. If he wasn’t already… If he was still there in the healer’s house on the other side of the Dark Wood. If it wasn’t too late for him, as I had believed, lying alone and bleeding in the earth, that it was too late for me.

  It wasn’t too late. I would not give up hope of saving my father.

  As I floundered out of bed, I felt the heaviness of responsibility settle into place on my back, and the familiar empty ache of Kyo’s loss, of my own personal despair and grief, unfolded within and around me as it had not fully done for … for days now, here with Itsuki. Not even last night, after Kimi. It was endlessly cold, like a deep, black shadow, and for just one weak moment, I faltered in its shade, sagging beneath the weight of unhappiness I had carried for so long.

  How could I forget so much of what made me who I was? I ought to have been a completely different person – and yet somehow I had still been Hana. Still been me. Just…

  Happy.

  But that was all over now. I forced my shoulders to straighten, forced my chin up.

  I had to go home.

  First, though, I must find Itsuki. I must find him, and explain to him why I was here, what I had come to do and what was at stake. He would help me. I knew he would help me however he could.

  After pulling my clothes back on and swiftly re-braiding my hair, I left the garden of knots to seek my friend out. I knew where he would be, in the garden of rocks. He and I had walked that way together a dozen times. Before I would have hesitated to travel the thorn corridors alone, but there was no time to worry about myself any more.

  No time, no time, hurry hurry hurry, urged the voice in the back of my mind, triumphant that I was heeding it at last.

  When I heard the wavering, plaintive notes of the wood flute drifting through the thorn hedges to meet me, I felt a rush of relief – not only that I had managed to find the right garden in the right part of the maze but also at the knowledge that I would be with Itsuki again soon and could tell him everything and … and…

  I stepped into the garden of rocks, my mouth already opening to call out to Itsuki – and felt myself go as still as one of the glittering chunks of stone.

  He sat cross-legged in a gently waving bed of reddish ferns, with his small wood flute still at his lips, though the music had fallen silent the moment he had caught sight of me. The morning light fell full on his face.

  Of course he had taken off his hood and the bindings around his face in order to play. He hadn’t expected me to rush in here like this. Not when he had left me resting, not when he knew I was afraid to walk the maze by myself. And even if he had been given some warning, why would he hurry unduly to conceal himself from me? This was the second time I had seen him unhooded. I had not run screaming before.

  But I had not remembered before.

  I had not admitted to myself, before, that my terrifying, confused nightmares were real, that I had truly walked into the Dark Wood at the dark of the Moon and been savaged by a glowing white beast with green eyes. And neither, before, had Itsuki’s white skin been marked with black stripes that zigzagged over the fine bones of his face, outlining his eyes and radiating out to his hairline and jaw in a distinctive and unmistakable pattern.

  My gaze travelled agonizingly slowly over his massive frame as he rose to his feet. Over the twisted, deformed legs that, I now saw, had finally come to bend backwards at the knee like a beast’s. Over the curving l
ine of his back, and the shoulders which had gradually inched upwards over the past days, shortening his neck and creating a hulking, cat-like silhouette. Over the long, slender hands that had thickened and curved in upon themselves until they resembled great white paws, with great white talons. No wonder he limped when he walked upright. He was meant to be on all fours.

  I had been looking at him for weeks, but until now, I had never realized what I was looking at.

  There is a monster in the forest.

  “You…” I breathed. “You.”

  “Hana—”

  “My family must be particularly delicious,” I croaked. “You just can’t get your fill, can you?”

  Confusion, sadness, and hurt crossed his black-and-white striped face, so quickly I barely made them out, like ripples of heat rising from a fire. And then … guilt. That was the final, most awful blow of all. I had not even realized that I still held out some hope he would have an explanation that would save me from this heartbreak, until that hope was gone.

  It was true.

  The flute fell from his fingers, and he took a single step towards me. I fled from the garden of rocks like a hare with a fox at its tail.

  There is a monster in the forest. There is a monster in the maze. Savage beasts that roam the thorns… He said it himself. He meant himself.

  Itsuki is the monster. Itsuki is a beast.

  I ran into the maze of thorns and kept on running.

  I never looked back. Not even when I heard his anguished cries of my name, or his pleas to return.

  A fine play-actor indeed, I thought bitterly, dashing the tears from my cheeks. But he had already proved that, had he not?

  “I don’t know,” he had said, when I asked him what happened to me.

  “I promise that no harm will come to you at my hands,” he had sworn.

  He had even told me he did not hunt – did not eat the flesh of animals.

  No. Only human flesh will do.

  Monster. Beast.

  Betrayer.

  Stronger than fear, stronger than anger, stronger than any pain I had ever felt – even my physical agony after the beast had raked me with its claws – the sense of betrayal was overwhelming. All my memories of Itsuki – everything I thought I knew of him – kindness, and trust, and friendship… How could it all be lies? I had held him as he cried over the tiny grave of a dead kitten. I had sung to him as he writhed in pain. I had leaned into his side and taken comfort from his strength, believing utterly that it would never, could never be turned upon me.