Barefoot on the Wind

by Zoe Marriott

  She hugged me again. When I allowed the tip of my nose to press into her hair, it smelled of frost and flowers and distant lightning, and the heady scent muddled my thinking, so that all I could say was, “Thank you for giving me the chance to know him. And you. It is – probably very selfish, but – I’m glad.”

  She squeezed me tightly, and then stepped back. “Time for me to go. Ren is waiting. I can almost hear his voice…” She drew in an awed breath, turning her face away, into the light of the sun. Her eyes went distant, and tears gleamed on her cheeks once more. “I can hear him, Hana. It’s been so long… I can hear him!”

  And she laughed in joy and relief.

  Before I could open my lips to say farewell, the pink light winked out. The field of flowers disappeared. Oyuki was gone.

  I knelt on springy grass, on an island at the centre of a dark lake. The water, glinting black and silver under the soft starlight, lapped softly at the shores of the little scrap of land. Around me, the Moon maze and its tortured dead servants were no longer. Not fallen or destroyed, but simply disappeared – the way that Oyuki had disappeared – as if none of it had ever been.

  And before me, in the near darkness, knelt a young man.

  My eyes travelled over him slowly, thoroughly sketching out his shape as I adjusted to the faint light. He was slim, almost slender, with a build more suited to speed than power: square shoulders and long whipcord limbs. I could not make out all the details of his face no matter how much I squinted or widened my eyes, but I thought that it was long-ish, and square too, with a determined chin.

  His hair, which was neatly pulled back, was dark. His skin was dark too, though not as darkly tanned as mine, and so were his eyes. I could see the straight, stubborn line of his brows but not his expression.

  Then it occurred to me that all the while I had been staring at him, studying him silently, he had been staring back. What did he see? Now that the curse had been broken and my beast had become a man again, what did he see when he looked at me?

  “I…” My voice was a hoarse whisper. “Itsuki?” Then I flinched. “No, that isn’t your real name, is it? Forgive me.”

  There was a pause, and then a heartbreakingly familiar soft huff of laughter, and that beloved deep rumbling voice. “There is nothing to forgive.”

  Oh, please, please… I drew in a trembling breath. “Do you … remember? Me?”

  “I remember a barely human beast with no name, and a girl who gave him one, out of kindness and friendship. I remember the first time you said it, and how it made me feel as if maybe there was still a person worth knowing within the monster. I remember that to hear the name you gave me, from your lips, brought me more happiness than any of the fine empty titles I had in my old life.” He stopped, and there was a dry noise, as if he had swallowed, before he went on. “My real name is Itsuki. I was honoured to be your Itsuki, Hana – and I always will be. If … if you will have me?”

  The sob that burst from my mouth should have embarrassed me, but I had no time to be embarrassed. The space between us was gone in the next instant, and we were in each other’s arms – truly in each other’s arms – for the very first time.

  “You saved me,” he whispered.

  “You saved me first,” I said, half laughing, half crying.

  “Will you take me back to your village?” he asked, endearingly eager. “Shall I meet your family, and learn how to … to plough fields and tend pigs and mend roofs, like a proper villager?”

  “You already know how to do all those things, you liar,” I told him firmly. “No. You will be Kaede-sensei’s apprentice, and she will teach you how to use ordinary non-magical medicines, and you will teach her all that you know in return. The village will be more healthy than it’s ever been, and everyone will love you.”

  “And your family?”

  “Of course you’ll meet them. You’ll probably have to live with them, at least at first. If my father doesn’t frighten you away. But I don’t think he will.”

  “Well, I have faced down a Yuki-Onna and lived to speak of it,” he said dryly.

  “That’s why I’m confident you won’t run away from Father. Mostly.”

  He huffed again, pressing his face against my hair. We were both still laughing weakly, giddy and clinging as much for support as for the sheer delight of touching one another this way. For some time – I didn’t know how long – we stayed like that, our need to be close, and still, and safe together all the greater for being unspoken. We had won. We had saved each other.

  We were free.

  Eventually I managed to convince my hands that if they let loose their bruising grip on those neat shoulders Itsuki would not evaporate, and to draw back enough to look up at the sky. The stars had faded to distant glimmerings amongst ragged steel-grey clouds.

  “Dawn is almost here. I think I can find the way home now.”

  “Then we should go,” he agreed, and hugged me all the more fiercely.

  “Itsuki—”

  “A moment.” His voice was a faint rumble, more felt than heard. “Just one moment more.”

  I could not resist the appeal in his words. I wrapped my arms around him and felt the warm press of his lips against my forehead.

  And he will kiss me again, I thought, almost dizzy at the wonder of it. He will kiss me a thousand times more, and in a thousand ways.

  At last we climbed unsteadily to our feet. I found the wood axe, its quartz blade marred with a long crack and deep nick in its cutting edge, lying in the grass. My bow and arrows were there too, unharmed. Itsuki took the axe, and my fur, and I carried the rest.

  Everything else might have faded away like nightmares in candlelight, but the boat that had carried me to the Yuki-Onna’s island was still there. It even still had my pack in it. The little craft was no longer majestic and white with frost and sculpted ice – just a plain little bleached wooden boat – but it was good enough to carry us over the lake to dry land, when we had unearthed the dusty oars from the bottom of the hull. The trees whispered and rustled as we arrived at the shore, the clatter of the leaves – dry, golden autumn leaves – almost like applause.

  Hana Hana Hana…

  Itsuki Itsuki Itsuki…

  They said nothing else. There was nothing else for them to say – no monster in the forest, no warnings to give. The forest was free, too. The curse was done.

  “Thank you,” I said, laying my hand on the first trunk that I came to. “Thank you for your help. I could not have done any of it without you.”

  Hana Hana Hana…

  “Do you always talk to the trees?” Itsuki asked.

  “Always,” I said, a little warily. “Why, does it give you a disgust of me?”

  “I think I can learn to live with it,” he said, amused, and gave the tree next to him a gentle pat. “They have been my friends these many long years, you know.”

  Itsuki Itsuki Itsuki…

  “They like you too,” I told him, smiling.

  We walked on. At first the trees had to guide us here and there, but the light was growing, gentle gold settling in the highest leaves like a fiery crown. It was much more lovely than the fire I had created in the maze with my arrows. After a short while, I began to recognize landmarks, and simply to enjoy the peaceful walk, with Itsuki’s hand clasped firmly in mine and his footsteps, not quite as silent as my own, keeping me company.

  Every time I glanced at him now, I could see more of him. He was only an inch, perhaps two, taller than me. And I had been right: his eyes were dark, a dark ashy brown with little flecks of paler grey-brown within them. His face was long and his cheekbones broad, and his brows heavy and straight. His lips, though well-shaped, were a little thin to be perfectly in proportion. I would have bet a good brace of pheasants that when he grew angry those stubborn brows bunched up and that chin jutted out as if it was just begging to be hit with someone’s fist.

  He was not beautiful at all, and yet he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. E
very time I looked at him, I found him looking back at me, as if he too could hardly stand to tear his gaze away, and those eyes – those imperfect, ordinary, human eyes – told me that what he saw in my face was just as lovely to him. For he was Itsuki. And he was mine. I let myself smile, and smile, and smile.

  A little noise of surprise escaped me as I looked ahead and realized that the woods before us seemed lighter than they should, as if the trees were thinning, and we were reaching the end of them. But we had only just passed the great white standing stone with the curling green ferns at its base, and the ridge was not so close as that.

  “What is it?” Itsuki asked.

  I smiled again just at the sound of his voice. Nothing could be wrong this morning. So I tugged at his hand. “Something is different and I wish to see what it is. Come on.”

  I pulled him into a trot, and he laughed a little but let me. Together we burst out of the trees – I had been right, the treeline was different – and both of us made noises of shock and pleasure as we stumbled to a halt.

  It was just like my dream, like the little stolen moment of space and time where I had met Oyuki. Ahead, the pink-streaked sky, and the mountains, and not so very far away the familiar ridge above the valley that held my home. But here, where once there had been trees, was a broad, open meadow filled with tall green grass, and blowsy, cup-shaped white flowers with golden centres that swayed gently on long stems.

  “Beautiful,” Itsuki breathed.

  “I … I know this place… How did she do this?” I said, half to myself. “Is this how it looked before the woods were cursed?”

  There was a sound behind me: the snap of a twig under an incautious foot. I turned quickly, still holding Itsuki’s hand. A man walked out of the bronze shadow of the trees into the warm pink dawn light, a little unsteady on his feet, yawning as if he had just woken from a long slumber.

  No, not a man. A boy, really – no older than fourteen – tall and lanky and still growing into his limbs, with wild, too-long, shaggy hair. He squinted, rubbing at the back of his neck as he looked around in confusion, and then his eyes caught upon me.

  We stared at each other, both so still that I knew the boy was holding his breath, just as I held mine. Behind me, I heard Itsuki make a tiny noise of shock, his grip on my hand squeezing tight. And in the back of my mind there was a faint whisper of a voice – perhaps only a memory – that said: I have a little of my magic left … just enough to right one last wrong.

  And then the boy rushed forward. “Hana – it is you! Where have you been? I’ve been searching for you for ages.”

  Zoë Marriott is the author of many critically acclaimed and beloved books, including The Swan Kingdom, which was longlisted for the Branford Boase award. Shadows on the Moon, the companion title to Barefoot on the Wind, won the prestigious Sasakawa Prize and was an American Junior Library Guild Selection. Zoë lives in Grimsby, Lincolnshire. Visit Zoë’s blog at thezoe-trope.blogspot.co.uk or her website at ZoeMarriott.com. Follow her on Twitter (@ZMarriott).

  A magical retelling of “Cinderella” set in a fairy tale Japan. A companion title to Zoë Marriott’s Barefoot on the Wind.

  Suzume is a shadow weaver. Her illusions allow her to be anyone she wants – a fabulous gift for a girl desperate to escape her past. But who is she really? A heartbroken girl of noble birth? A drudge scraping a living in a great house’s kitchens? Or Yue, the most beautiful courtesan in the Moonlit Lands? Whatever her true identity, she is determined to capture the heart of a prince – and use his power to destroy those who murdered her family. Nothing will stop her. Not even love.

  “Zoë Marriott has a high level of literary intelligence and is terrific at rebooting fairy tales with wonderful descriptions of the natural world… [She is] a rising star of fantasy fiction.” The Times

  Zoë Marriott says of Barefoot on the Wind: “We all know what the message of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is supposed to be: love others for who they are inside. But as I got older, it began to seem more and more strange to me that in the traditional fairy tale, it is innocent Beauty who is forced to learn to love the Beast, while the Beast is rewarded for threatening Beauty’s father and taking her prisoner. And so I set out to explore the story from a feminist perspective, asking, ‘What if Beauty went after the Beast of her own free will? And how could the Beast redeem himself in order to truly deserve her forgiveness … and her love?’”

  Books by the same author

  Daughter of the Flames

  FrostFire

  Shadows on the Moon

  The Swan Kingdom

  The Name of the Blade series

  The Night Itself

  Darkness Hidden

  Frail Human Heart

  Author’s note

  While Barefoot on the Wind’s setting was inspired by Japan – in much the same way that Tolkien’s Middle-earth was inspired by Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Europe – the story takes place in a fantasy realm called Tsuki no Hikari no Kuni, or the “Moonlit Lands”. This country is not intended to represent a historically accurate version of any Asian country during any period in history.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.

  First published 2016 by Walker Books Ltd

  87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

  Text © 2016 Zoë Marriott

  Cover illustration © 2016 THERE IS Studio /

  illustration and creative lettering by Sean Freeman

  The right of Zoë Marriott to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-4063-6729-4 (ePub)

  www.walker.co.uk