by Emiko Jean
“Akira.” Her talons withdrew against his throat. Her black eyes faded to brown. With a disgruntled noise, she scooted off him. “You know I hate it when you call me that.”
The Son of Nightmares grinned wider. He could count on one hand the number of people who knew his real name, and it sounded particularly lovely passing through Mari’s lips. He sat up and placed both hands on her cheeks. She leaned into his touch just as the last scale on her hands receded. He was used to seeing her charcoal scales, her talons, her black eyes. Gently, he thumbed away tracks of dried tears and a scrape of mud. “You’re a mess.”
Her eyes fluttered and met his. Squish. That was the sound his heart made every time she looked at him, her brown eyes alive with recognition and light.
Akira remembered the first time he saw her, ten years ago. He was a gangly boy at the edge of the forest, and Mari a scrawny kid in a too-fancy kimono. Each was surprised and frozen silent, fascinated by the other. At first sight, he thought she was a vengeful ghost like his mother. But soon he realized who she was. He’d heard rumors of her clan: Animal Wives, a village of women who preyed on men. Whether or not those rumors were true, she was something different. Something more.
“I don’t like it when you look at me that way.”
“What way?” he asked, a rueful smile touching his scarred lips.
“Like you’re thinking how best to handle me.”
“That’s not what I was doing at all.” Although he kind of was. Years of friendship, and Mari remained an enigma—eyes that flashed from anger to fear, mouth that frowned more often than not, hands capable of killing but gentle when holding his.
Mari stood. Akira’s fingers fell from her cheeks. He missed the warmth of her skin. “Then what were you doing?” she asked, turning her head away from him, a stubborn set to her jaw. Akira wished Mari could see herself as he did—beautiful, wanted, beloved.
“Why were you crying? You never cry.” His smile faded. “Hissa had her baby. A boy?”
Mari crossed her arms over her chest. She still wouldn’t look at him. “My mother put the baby in the river. I couldn’t watch,” she said, her voice thin, watery.
Akira rose, dusting loose dirt from his sleeves. “He will live,” he assured her. “Besides, I’ve told you, there are no blemishes on the souls of Animal Wives.” Every being, yōkai, human, animal, every living thing carried a distinct, colored aura that the Son of Nightmares alone could see. Mari’s was pure blue, the color of a glacier. And when a soul killed another, a piece of it went missing, a hole appeared.
Mari snorted. “But how long will he survive, and how well?”
All his talents, and Akira had no idea. “All I know is that the river doesn’t kill them. Perhaps the monks will find him,” he said, trying to offer some comfort. The Taiji monks fostered children. They lived in a monastery with doors hung so low, you had to crawl through them. The monks would never turn a baby away. But the monastery was north, and the current of the river ran south.
“Maybe,” Mari said stiffly.
“Sad girl,” Akira crooned. “I have something that will make you happy.”
Her body loosened, and she settled her gaze back on him. His heart made that squishing noise again. She sniffled. “I can’t be gone long.”
Akira nodded, understanding. A hidden friendship. Stolen moments. This was how it had always been between them. How it would always be.
“Come.” He caught her fingers, interlaced them with his. Her palm was warm and soft. A perfect fit.
They walked deep into the forest. The light of the moon played hide-and-seek beneath the canopy. Giant-winged moths and spotted beetles fluttered and buzzed past.
Akira closed his eyes and breathed, absorbing the dense sweetness of the land. He knew every inch of this forest, every blade of grass, the bark of each tree. He spent most days in the canopy, swinging from the branches as easily as a monkey. Although his mother was yōkai, a ghost, he hadn’t inherited her ability to float through walls. He had inherited other things. The power to move as the wind, to leave no trace on the ground, to behave like a shadow. And his scars. The deep, silvery trenches on half his body were reminders of the painful story of his mother’s death.
Before his mother was yōkai, a ghost, she was human and named Mizuki, the most beautiful girl in her city. She married Takumi, a local sake brewer. Takumi was as jealous as Mizuki was vain. One night, Takumi accused Mizuki of being too free with her smiles. He killed her, but not before carving the marks on her face. Mizuki awoke transformed, a yōkai vengeful ghost. She haunted docks, alleyways, abandoned apartment buildings, prowling for men who followed women too closely or held them too tightly. Upon these men, she heaped brutal punishment.
Akira slowed. A creek blocked their path. Water tinkled over rocks. He hopped across and went to lift Mari, but she shook her head and jumped over herself. So like her. “You surprised me back there. I didn’t think you would return before morning,” Mari said, walking beside Akira.
Their shoulders brushed, and Akira relished the touch. He chewed his cheek. He’d hoped she wouldn’t bring it up. “He didn’t want my help.”
Mari paused. She inhaled and exhaled with a deep breath. Worry scrunched her brow. “But he’s headed down the mountain?”
“Yes. I made sure he knew never to venture back here.”
Mari gave a curt nod. “Good.”
Akira scratched the back of his head. “Did you have to break his nose?”
“He laughed at me.” Mari’s expression grew pained. She kicked a rock. Too often, Mari bloodied a man and then sobbed in Akira’s arms. Quick to anger and quick to regret it.
Akira would do anything for her. Mari had come to him, years ago, on a night like this. Her eyes bright, fearful, and full of liquid. Akira, help me. Unable to refuse, Akira followed her to a shed where a boy rocked, holding his busted knee. Akira put the boy on his back and carried him all night to the main road leading down the mountain.
From then on, Akira became the keeper of Mari’s greatest secret. Mari maimed but never killed. If her mother ever found out that Mari let her captives escape, and how Akira aided her . . . He fought a shudder. Nothing good would come of it.
Mari stopped short at a wall of trees blocking their path. They had arrived at their destination. “The ginkgo tree?” she asked with a note of disappointment. The Animal Wives had been here a dozen times before, meeting under the thousand-year-old tree to celebrate the twelve festivals of the gods, goddesses, and seasons. The last time they’d met, winter was nearing its end. They’d smeared mud onto one another’s faces and whispered spring blessings of luck and health.
A smile twitched at the corner of his lips. “Wait and see,” Akira said, stepping through the trees.
Mari grumbled but followed. Her face lit with a smile. She was the most beautiful thing in Akira’s world. “It’s shedding!” she exclaimed.
Akira felt proud, like he’d given her a rare and precious gift. The tree’s crown spanned a hundred feet. Bright yellow leaves drifted from the branches to the ground, soft and silent as snow.
Mari caressed the rough bark, reverence in her touch. To the Animal Wives, the ginkgo tree was sacred, a symbol of their duality, endurance, and longevity. Akira had asked Mari to tell him the story over and over, mainly just to hear her voice.
The first Animal Wife came to the peak of the mountain during a harsh winter. Nearly frozen, she stumbled upon the ginkgo and found shelter beneath its branches. She thought it must be magical, a tree with leaves in winter. The trunk kept the vicious wind from slicing her apart. When a lightning storm swept through, branches split from the tree, and the Animal Wife scooped up the timber. With it, she built the first home in Tsuma.
The Animal Wives believed that as long as the ginkgo tree stood in the Tsuko funo Mountains, they would survive. Some of the older Animal Wives were even superstitious about the tree’s annual shedding, regarding it as a dangerous time for their clan. A naked tree is vu
lnerable, and thus so were the Animal Wives.
“I knew you’d like it,” he said with a grin.
Mari didn’t speak. She took a deep breath. Strife brewed in the murky depths of her eyes. Nestled in the branches were kodama, the ginkgo tree’s soul manifested in small white figures, just the size of Akira’s forearm. They were round-bellied, dark-eyed, and silent, but their mouths were open as if lost in a deep, childlike sigh. Full of innocence. Akira wondered how his soul might appear. Dark? Scarred? Weak? It was the only one he couldn’t see.
“What are you thinking?” Akira asked, reading Mari’s forlorn expression.
“Hissa says that we are monsters, that Animal Wives are cursed never to be loved for who we truly are.”
Akira’s heart lodged in his throat. He thought of his scars, his vengeful ghost mother, and his human father. Half yōkai and half human, he was the real monster. He would never be accepted among either group. He existed in a state of in-between, never human enough, never yōkai enough. Worse, his father wasn’t just a human but a foreigner, a trader from the Ollis Isles with fair skin and hair. He came to Honoku as a merchant and fell in love with a ghost. “I don’t see you that way,” Akira told Mari.
A giant gust of wind swept through the tree, and its leaves fell like rain, catching in Mari’s hair. “How do you see me?” Mari asked with a distant smile.
Perhaps she was fishing for a compliment. Akira didn’t mind. He would always take the bait if it were offered from her fingertips. “I can’t say.” His smile teased. He drew even closer. “If I told you how I saw you, your ego would become unmanageable.” Mari laughed, and Akira’s soul lightened. You cannot fathom all the ways I adore you, he wanted to whisper. Confessions hovered on his tongue, words of love and devotion, but then Mari circled the tree and sighed. He knew that sound. It was time for Mari to go.
With a sad goodbye and a delicate wave, Mari slipped through the line of trees and disappeared. She was always the first to leave. Akira slumped to a sitting position under the ginkgo tree. He rolled his head up and gazed at the kodama. Farther above, the stars shone like sprinkled sugar on a black mat.
Every time he saw Mari, Akira had a crushing feeling it might be the last. A feeling that wasn’t unwarranted. When he was thirteen, he ran away from home. Not to escape, but to follow. Curious by nature, the mystery of the Animal Wives had obsessed him. So when Akira spied one departing Tsuma, he pursued her.
Only he didn’t think to cover his face. The first villager he came across spat at him. Akira remembered wiping the phlegm from his cheek and touching his scars. After that, he remained in the shadows.
Two weeks passed. He never told Mari about what he saw. At first, he thought nothing of it. The Animal Wife checked into a boarding house and caught the attentions of a local jeweler. Within days, they were married. A few nights after their wedding, Akira watched through a latticed window as the Animal Wife robbed the jeweler. She stuffed her pockets with vials of powdered gold, coral gems, and chains of silver, then snuck away before dawn.
The Animal Wife’s deception wasn’t what bothered Akira. His own family survived by relieving mountain travelers of their coin. It was what happened afterward that deeply unsettled him. When the Animal Wife returned to Tsuma, she was changed. Her smiles became forced. At night she wept, and nine months later, she placed her baby boy in the river. Her soul became discolored, turning from radiant lemon to pale yellow. No blemishes marred the surface. She had not killed. The color change, Akira came to understand, was from sadness.
Mari’s fate would be far worse. Her future was death or marriage to the imperial prince. When he thought about their inevitable separation, it was as if a torch had been pressed under his ribs, burning him slowly from the inside out. He knew that one day he’d have only the memory of Mari to cherish—and the knowledge of how grand it could have been.
The First Empress
From the sky, Sugita watched his favorite human. His son, the first emperor, whom he had crafted in his image, was sad. On his golden throne, the human wept. Sugita called for the lightning and descended Kita’s staircase.
He approached the weeping human. “What ails you, son?” he asked, for he was at a loss. From the heavens, Sugita saw all the gifts he’d bestowed on the human: fertile fields that yielded enough rice for eternity, mines with iron and gold and precious gems, humans who worshiped at his feet, who praised him as a god. “I have given you so much,” Sugita remarked, unsettled by this human condition of wanting more.
His son’s lips trembled. “I have everything, and no one to share it with.”
Sugita’s mouth parted in surprise. He had not considered love as a human need. To love was divine. He thought only gods and goddesses capable of it. “You wish for a partner, a woman to share your life?” Sugita asked.
“Yes.” The human’s eyes lit up. “I want a woman,” he told Sugita. “But she must be worthy of me.”
Sugita nodded. So Sugita scooped up human women from every clan and placed them in the farthest corner of Honoku. He left them in a cave carved by water and wind in the middle of a desolate cliff. Among the women were two sisters, Makoto and Tsukiko, daughters of an umbrella merchant.
Armed with silk umbrellas, Makoto and Tsukiko fought the other women for pieces of rope discarded in the cave. Using the rope, they climbed from the cliff.
At the bottom of the cliff, Tsukiko moaned. “I want to go home.”
Makoto grasped Tsukiko’s hand, holding it to her cheek. “Little Bean, as your older sister, I vow I will see you home or die trying.”
The girls followed the Drum constellation, hoping it would lead to their small village. With the first heated wind of summer, they came to a mountain. “No way to go but up,” Makoto said. They climbed. At the summit, Honoku spread out before them. The sisters realized that they were no closer to home than the stars to Earth.
They journeyed onward. Fall kissed summer goodbye. Just as the first leaf fell, they came to an abandoned village. They didn’t question their good fortune. They raided the homes, stuffing their mouths with strips of wild boar meat, pickled beets, and mushrooms soaked in miso. But the village hadn’t been abandoned. And while the sisters slept, the inhabitants returned. Oni. Eight-foot-tall demons with four eyes and six black horns curling from the crowns of their heads. The strongest of the yōkai. Again, Makoto and Tsukiko used their umbrellas as weapons and fought their way out of the oni encampment.
But for every victory, a price must be paid.
Tsukiko was badly wounded. Makoto refused to leave her sister. As clever as she was fierce, Makoto built a sled from branches. Then she lifted Tsukiko onto the makeshift stretcher.
“Little Bean, I will see you home or die trying.” Makoto dragged the stretcher. Winter stripped fall. It began to snow. To keep Tsukiko distracted, Makoto sang to her. Tsukiko hummed along, and Makoto could just hear her over the howling wind. Soon, Makoto realized that Tsukiko’s voice had faded.
Makoto stopped.
The stretcher was no longer behind her. The wind had bled the warmth from Makoto’s hands. She’d thought she’d been holding the stretcher, but she’d really been grasping air. Makoto wailed and backtracked. She found Tsukiko nearly buried in the snow. Her lips were blue and her eyes closed. Ice crystals had formed on her lashes. Tsukiko was gone.
Weeping, Makoto curled up next to her sister’s body. “Little Bean, I will see you home or die trying.” They were not home. Makoto resolved to perish next to her sister. She slept through the raging storms. Snow covered their bodies. But the winter would not take her. Nature protected her. When the snow melted, it pooled on her lips, forced her to drink. When the spring wind shook the trees, fir branches fell and covered her like the warmest quilt. And when the first apple dropped from a nearby tree, it rolled into her open hand. She would not die. Nature would not let her. By this time, Tsukiko’s body had sunk into the earth, only her delicate fingers still aboveground.
A man approached. Diso
riented, Makoto grabbed her umbrella and pressed the tip against the man’s throat. Blood trickled down his neck.
The man knelt. “My bride, my equal!” he exclaimed.
At once she recognized the man. The emperor. “I want to go home,” she said, dropping the battered umbrella.
“You are home,” the emperor replied. His arm swept behind him where the palace rose, golden and glimmering in the spring light.
She cried. “I have failed my sister.”
The emperor smiled gently. “Success and failure are merely illusions. They are not yours to hold.” Then he whispered all she was and all she was meant to be. “A ruler,” he said. “Mine,” he said.
Beloved by nature.
Revered by her husband.
An Empress of All Seasons.
Chapter 7
Taro
Water poured from the sky, splattered on the tiled roof of the palace, flowed into the gutters, and out the mouths of golden shachihoko—tiger-carp hybrids that summoned rain and protected against fire.
Inside, Taro turned his cheek to the emperor’s hacking cough. Over the last twenty-four hours, the cough had grown raw and violent. They sat at the low table for an evening meal of fish-paste cakes and vegetables simmered in sesame oil. The emperor could barely hold down his food. A servant rushed forward, a silver pitcher of water sloshing over in his hands, but the emperor shooed him away.
“Has one of the theorists looked at you?” Taro asked dutifully.
The emperor took a sip of sake, his cheeks blushed red, and his eyes watered. He shook his head. “I’d rather choke to death than let one of them near me.”
Taro arched a brow but said nothing. Theorists had been called to tend to Taro’s mother when she was in labor with him. They had failed to deliver Taro, and his mother had grown sicker and sicker with the delivery. Desperate, the emperor was forced to summon another kind of help. Known for their midwifery, a futakuchi-onna, a yōkai, was the emperor’s only hope. The two-mouthed woman had ushered Taro safely into the land of the living, but she had also aided in the empress’s exit. Or so the emperor concluded. This was the root of the emperor’s intense hatred of yōkai. Funny how love can drive you to hate.