The Priestess and the Dragon

by Nicolette Andrews

  "Before I tell you, I must ask you a question."

  Suzume looked to the old woman, holding her tongue on impatient words.

  "Now you must answer me truthfully, or I will know you are lying to me."

  She raised an eyebrow but said, "I promise to hold nothing back."

  The old woman smiled, the sides of her mouth creasing over. "Do you love my son?"

  The words tangled in Suzume's throat. Of course not, I love his power, his influence, and that he can get me back to the palace. How could she say that to his mother, who loved him more than anyone ever could.

  She must have seen the answer in Suzume's expression because she said, "Don't answer, I cannot bear to hear the truth. I know he is not the most handsome or the most charming, but he is a good man. He would never beat you or mistreat you. He would cherish you until you are older than me, that I can tell you. But I was a young girl like you once upon a time, and like many maidens, I was torn between love and duty." She sighed, a far-off look in her eye.

  The idea that this ancient woman could have been Suzume's age once and caught in some sort of love triangle was almost laughable. But since she was already walking the line of her future mother-in-law's patience, Suzume trained her expression to polite interest. The old woman came back to the present and finished with, "In the end, duty always wins; that is the way of the world."

  Does she know about Akito? What if they send him away?

  "How do you know the choice you're making is the right one?" Suzume asked.

  "You don't, until it's too late. But duty will never forget the service you've done unto it. Where love may fade and leave you behind."

  The pain of abandonment was a familiar one to Suzume, but lost loves was not what initially sprang to mind. She thought of her distant father, who she had interacted with only a handful of times over her lifetime, and her mother, who was beautiful but cold. She had seen her more often than her father, but she had felt no affection there. She's right, even if I do not have love, if I at least have power, I have something.

  Suzume looked up and across the courtyard. Akito watched her from a distance along the veranda. He did not look like himself, his scar was gone, and instead of a sullen expression, he grinned at her in a mischievous way. And she was transported for a time to a place she did not recognize, but it felt familiar all the same. He wore a uniform in blue, and his face was different, more handsome and charismatic. He looked familiar, as if they had known one another in a different lifetime. He walked over to her, arms swinging, and as he did, her heart swelled with unfamiliar emotion.

  My dragon, she thought.

  "If you continue to ignore me, I may call off the wedding altogether," Lady Tsubaki said.

  Suzume looked away from Akito and back to Lady Tsubaki, her mind reeling. Who was that? Why do I keep seeing things?

  "No, please tell me, Mother," Suzume said with genuine sincerity this time. Anything to distract her from these horrid visions.

  The old woman sniffed. "We've received word from the palace. Your father has given his permission for you to marry my son. The wedding can commence."

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Things moved too quickly. Suzume felt frozen as time sped past her. She felt disconnected from reality--even her own emotions. The tormented feelings of love and betrayal should have stung more, but they felt distant, as if she were observing a theatrical dance. Suzume stared at the falling maple leaves as they skated across the pond. A koi broke the surface of the water and opened its mouth, looking for bugs. The maid hurried about the room. A second maid tugged and pulled at Suzume's white robe, tying the sashes and flattening the folds.

  Today was the day she would marry Daiki. All her scheming was coming to fruition and all she felt was empty. She could not even triumph in her soon return to the palace--Daiki had promised to take her there after the wedding. None of it felt real.

  They were to be married at the local shrine. The same shrine Daiki's parents had been married at; Lady Tsubaki had insisted. Suzume smiled and pretended to be excited. The setting was picturesque. A traditional shrine, not unlike the one she had been exiled to. It was crowded by maple trees full of burnt red leaves that melded with the red archways, which led to the shrine proper.

  Everything was perfect, except for Akito. He hung around like a ghost, watching her. Her feelings for him made as little sense as her melancholy over marrying Daiki.

  I've always gotten my way. I've never been passive. Why am I not standing up for what I want? I do not love Daiki. I love Akito. He is the man I should be marrying.

  "I am almost done, mistress," the maid said as she put on the outer layer of the robe. The ceremonial hood was held by a second servant, who was standing by with eyes averted.

  "I want a moment alone," Suzume announced.

  The servants looked at her with large liquid eyes, without emotion or concern. They're just like empty dolls. They do as they are told, dancing to his whims. I hate them.

  "Mistress, it is almost time to leave for the shrine," the maid replied in a flat tone.

  "Leave me," she snarled as she threw her arms out to exaggerate her point. She had hidden her less flattering tendencies since coming to Daiki's compound, but now she did not care what they thought.

  The maid holding the hood set it down and the maid at her feet rose with simple grace. They bowed to her in unison and left. The paper-screen doors closed with a soft thud.

  Suzume sighed. She hoisted up the thick layers of her robe and went out onto the walkway that faced the inner courtyard. She stared out at the garden. It was pristine. Not a stray stem or a leaf fallen in the wrong place. I never see gardeners, yet it is always perfect. The wind blew through the courtyard and chilled her to the bone despite the numerous layers. The wind is too cold for summertime.

  Footsteps fell on the landing and Suzume turned in time to see Akito. He had put aside his military uniform and wore formal clothes that she remembered from when they had both been at the White Palace. He wore a long outer robe in a brilliant cerulean and white billowing hakama. His hair had been brushed and styled into a topknot. The scar across his handsome face gave it a menacing quality when he frowned, as he was now.

  "Suzume." When he said her name, it made her knees buckle. It was intimate and caressing and wrong. He should not be here now to see her in her wedding clothes. If Daiki found them together again... she had to send him away but could not find the words to do so.

  "Akito, what are you doing here?" She looked away, turning to go back inside. She could not face him. The guilt suffocated her.

  He grabbed her by the shoulder and she glanced back at him. "You don't have to go through with this. It's not too late for us to run away together."

  She slipped out of his grasp and kept her back to him. She shook her head. "It is too late. I am promised to Daiki, and this is the only way I can return to my place."

  "Your place is with me," he snapped.

  She hated hurting him. Akito was so calm and remote. To raise his passion like this, her rejection must have truly hurt him. She needed to apologize, to make him understand. Suzume turned back around to face him, but Akito was gone and the garden was gone. All that remained were blank stone walls, which were slanted at a strange angle. The walls were covered in a white substance tangled up in thick strands.

  Something clicked behind her. Suzume tried to move, but her whole body was bound up tight. Her extremities were numb and only her eyes rolled around in her head. Something scuttled past her. She could not see it clearly, but she realized the walls were slanted because she was lying on the ground.

  "You're stronger than I thought, Priestess, but they all succumb in the end," a high-pitched female voice crooned. The same voice she'd heard singing to her.

  She heard the click-clatter again. Suzume felt her stomach roll. Where am I? Where is Akito?

  She felt something, a tingling at the back of her neck. Whatever was behind her shifted in place. Suzume rolled her
eyes around in her head but could not see anything other than the walls with the thick sticky strings in front of her. Then something pierced her neck. Pain flooded her body. Every inch was alight with pain. It radiated like liquid fire in her veins, and when she opened her eyes, she was standing outside a shrine.

  The red arches loomed above her. Down a path, the temple shrine waited. She could smell the incense in the air. She spotted the red and white of the shrine maidens waiting for her at the end of the walkway. She looked down at her wedding robe. Her hood had been put on. She had to turn her head far left to see past the hood to Daiki, who stood beside her. He smiled at her shyly and his round cheeks were flushed with pleasure. His gut pressed against the black groom robes. His belt was cinched so tight it looked as if it might burst. I am marrying Daiki. I must be tired from the sun. I am imagining things.

  They walked through the archways, and with each step, her body felt leaden, taking an enormous effort to move. Sweat rolled down her spine and she resisted the urge to wipe her brow, which was dewed with perspiration. She didn't want to smear her makeup. This feels familiar. The shrine loomed before them, with a sweeping arched roof and curled eaves like a fall leaf.

  The doors to the shrine were open and flanked on each side by shrine maidens. She glanced at them and they seemed familiar as well. The woman on the right had white hair that was held in a loose ponytail down her back with one piece of white ribbon tying it. To her right on the other side of the door, a dour-looking woman scowled at Suzume. I know these women, but how? I only just viewed this shrine the other day with Daiki--we did not even meet the shrine maidens.

  Inside was the shrine and, in the center, the altar, which held the host of the god: a sphere. Suzume stopped, she knew this. This all had happened before. She pressed her fingers to her temple. Her brain felt foggy again like she was forgetting something important. She glanced up and a man was sitting on the edge of the altar. His legs crossed over one another. He was the same one she had seen in the courtyard.

  "So you're going through with this, huh?" he asked her.

  Suzume looked to Daiki and the shrine maidens. They did not seem to see the man sitting on the holy altar.

  She decided, in that case, it was best to ignore him. She joined Daiki as he bowed to the shrine. The man only grinned. The shrine maidens said an invocation, their melodious voices twining together. Suzume closed her eyes and tried to focus on the ceremony. She peeked at the man, who continued to grin at her.

  "Is this what you've been wanting in your heart of hearts?" he asked her.

  Suzume gave him a haughty sniff in reply.

  The white-haired shrine maiden brought Suzume and Daiki the ceremonial rice wine. Daiki took three sips and then Suzume took her three sips. It burned the back of her throat, not unlike the pain of the bite from her nightmare.

  The man on the shrine stepped down and paced around Suzume and Daiki. Daiki did not notice and smiled a goofy smile.

  "I don't know why you're so intent on ignoring the truth," the man said as he paced.

  Suzume glowered at him but did not reply.

  "You can keep on pretending, but what I am dying to know is: Who's Akito? You've never mentioned him. There's never been an inkling of you being capable of real love."

  She scowled at the apparition, because that is what she was sure it was. She was under a lot of stress lately, it had to be her imagination.

  The apparition laughed softly. "Here he is to stop the wedding."

  Akito stood to one side of the room along with the other servants. He watched her with hooded eyes. The apparition had a point. Until he had revealed himself, Suzume had forgotten about him. How could a love so passionate be forgotten like a lost trinket?

  Daiki offered his hand to Suzume and the pair of them approached the altar. He read his invocation. The ceremony was nearly finished. Soon she would be his wife. She felt that everything would be back to normal once she was Daiki's bride. Akito would return to the battlefield and she would continue on with her life.

  "Is that what you want?" the apparition asked. "To be tied to a man? Owned by him, subject to his whims? In another life, in another time, you were the greatest of the priestesses. A look from you could destroy men like this."

  Suzume glanced at the apparition. Half of his face was Akito and half was the handsome stranger.

  "Who are you, really?" she asked.

  He smiled and it sent a chill down her spine. "I am everything you've ever desired. Everything you lust for. I am all your sins and mistakes, and I am your destruction."

  Suzume took her hand out of Daiki's and stumbled backwards. She was trapped inside her nightmare again. This was a dream and she needed to wake up. The old shrine maiden approached with the ritual branch, moving automatically, not noticing the rising panic in Suzume.

  She looked into the face of the woman. "I know you. You're Chiyoko, the head priestess at the temple in the mountain."

  The woman did not respond. She handed Suzume the branch and stepped back. Her eyes were blank like that of a doll. The second shrine maiden glanced at her and she was the second in command at the temple shrine, Zakuro. She whirled around to look at Daiki and he was gone, replaced by a large looming spider with dripping fangs.

  "You weren't supposed to wake up, Priestess. You're much too powerful. If the Dragon hadn't woken you to question you, this would not have happened. He should learn not to meddle, it would have made your passing so much quieter." The spider sighed or that's the closest thing she could compare it to coming from a monster.

  "What did you do to me?" Suzume screamed.

  "It doesn't matter now, Priestess, your end has come." The giant spider hissed as she dove at Suzume with her poison fangs.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Suzume screamed, her last defense. She wriggled in her bindings, but the strong sticky fibers had her bound up tight. She closed her eyes and waited for the attack that didn't come.

  Her skin tingled all over and turned into a slow burn, which grew until she felt like she was ablaze, as if she was at the center of an inferno. The spider screeched and Suzume opened her eyes. A shield of red light surrounded her. Through an opaque red barrier she saw the spider pacing back and forth.

  The temple and everything else had disappeared and she was inside the cave once more, but she was no longer bound. Her clothes were shredded and she was covered from head to toe in stringy, sticky remnants of the webbing that had cocooned her previously. She pulled a string of webbing from her face with a grimace. Disgusting, how did I end up here?

  The spider scuttled back and forth outside the barrier, clicking her mandibles and hissing at Suzume.

  "You shouldn't have a drop of spiritual energy left," the spider hissed. "My spell should have drained all of it out of you."

  "Your spell didn't work very well," Suzume said, climbing onto shaking feet. She tried to gain her bearings. Why am I in a cave? Where are Daiki and Akito? The spiritual shield around her was weak. In certain spots it was an opaque crimson, in others a faint pink. Not good. If the spider noticed, she did not know how to reinforce the weaker spots. She didn't know how she had made the shield in the first place, it had happened instinctively.

  The spider lunged for the weak part of the shield. On reflex, Suzume threw up her arms to protect herself. But when the spider came in contact with the barrier, shafts of tentacle-like energy shot out, burning the spider's legs. The spider fell back, making a horrible screeching sound. At least she can't get through the shield.

  Suzume's head spun. Whatever the spider had done to her, it was affecting her still, though the effects were fading. She was beginning to remember things. She remembered the attack on the road and the large shadow that descended upon her after getting caught up in a web. It was the spider's spell all along. None of that was real. What a relief. Suzume looked up at the spider, whose long legs and bulbous body blocked the only exit. Now how do I get out of this mess?

  The spider taunted her,
"You're weak from my spell and you cannot hold that shield for long. I will wait for it to fail and then you will be mine. You are just delaying the inevitable."

  Suzume sneered at the spider. "You talk too much," she said, unable to stop a snide remark from slipping out.

  The spider only laughed, convinced she had Suzume beat. Suzume concentrated harder on her barrier. Back at the mountain temple, when Kaito got too close, she was able to send probes of energy toward him. Seeing as her spiritual energy burned the spider, perhaps if she could control it now, she could get past this spider. She imagined the energy reaching out from her shield and attacking the spider--as she had once done with Kaito back at the temple.

  A weak tendril, the size of a thread, slithered off of the shield. It floated over to the spider and brushed against one of the spider's legs. The spider retracted her smoking leg.

  "That tickled," the spider said and clicked her mandibles menacingly.

  Suzume hid her fear with a smirk. Maybe she'll think I have a plan if I keep smiling like this. The truth was, she didn't have a plan. The shield was starting to flicker again, her head was spinning, and her knees were bound to buckle beneath her at any moment.

  The spider crept closer, and her fangs were dripping with more of the hallucinogenic poison--Suzume was sure. I cannot believe I am going to die in a filthy cave, eaten by a giant talking spider who puts you into the middle of a melodramatic fantasy before you die. Suzume's knees locked and she fell down, scraping them on the stone floor. The barrier had faded to a dusty pink, and when the spider loomed over her, it hardly flickered in her defense.

  "You never should have left your shrine, little Priestess. You should know there are much bigger and badder things waiting to eat you."

  "Thanks for the advice," Suzume replied--despite her current situation, she still couldn't guard her tongue.