Born of Aether: An Elemental Origins Novel (Elemental Origins Series Book 4)

by A. L. Knorr

  Daichi's face sank into an expression akin to regret. "Once. I could have. But now...it has taken too long just to find it." His expression cleared. "Enough questions. When you have the wakizashi, you call me."

  "I will have to fly back on a plane with it," I mused. "There is no way it will stay intact through the Æther, and I definitely couldn't carry it all the way home as a bird. I’d drown in the ocean a few miles off the coast, no matter what species I became."

  "Don't worry about that," said Daichi gruffly. "Focus on getting it out of the museum without getting caught. Let me worry about the rest."

  My stomach did a flip of terror at the word 'caught' and I swallowed hard. The realization of what I was going to do began to sink in. Somehow, I was supposed to break this artifact out of a museum without setting off any alarms, without alerting any staff, and without any patrons seeing me do it. Would the ability to phase into a bird even be of any use to me in this scenario? I closed my eyes. It's for your freedom, Akiko. I had to find a way.

  As though he could sense my rising tension, Daichi stood up. "It's time," he said.

  "I'm ready." I sounded more confident than I felt. I didn’t want to give Daichi any reason to doubt me and retract the opportunity. There was too much at stake for me to fail.

  Daichi and I made eye contact and held it for a moment. "Luck, destiny, and the Æther are both on our side," he said. He put a gnarled hand on my upper arm. "Now, go."

  "Goodbye, Grandfather," I said. I went to my bedroom and shucked my clothing. I tied the silk robe around my neck and phased into a common crane. Within my slender wings was the ability to soar higher than almost any other species. I hopped down the hall and back into the kitchen.

  Daichi stood at the back door, one gnarled hand on the door handle. He opened the door and cool fresh air swirled into the kitchen, beckoning me. I strutted past Daichi's legs and through the now towering exit. The bright afternoon sky stretched out above me, endless space and freedom.

  I hopped off the porch as a gust of wind blew through the yard, then I caught the updraft and pointed my beak to the sky. I didn't look back as the house and Daichi spiraled away beneath me, shrinking to the size of monopoly pieces. Thirty-thousand feet up. Into the ozone. That was where I would find it—the Æther. The wind picked up and blew me around, helping me surge ever upward. The air grew cold and wet as I disappeared into thick clouds and could see nothing but bright fog. Up and up and up I continued, my wings tireless and powerful. The silk at my neck became damp with condensation.

  The air grew thin and still I flew. Breaking through the clouds, I didn't look down at the tops of the fluffy cotton below me. Up and up I spiraled, resting my wings and soaring on updrafts where I could. The atmosphere above me stretched out like an endless becalmed sea—a desert of silence and space.

  The snapping of distant thunder and the flash of a bright light took my breath away. My vision went first. Or was I just so high up that there was nothing to see? Silence closed in around me. Surely, I had to be close. So close. I lost all sense of up or down, left or right. My senses shut down. I felt no wind any longer, no cold. The aching of my wings and the feel of air brushing against my feathers faded away. The sensation of the damp silk robe at my neck disappeared. I felt nothing. Nothing but a small, cold, empty place deep inside me. Like I'd swallowed an ice cube and there it sat, melting in my gullet.

  I surrendered to the Æther, to the trust I had that it would carry me where I needed to go. All I had up here was that cold empty space inside me, and my memories.

  4

  There came a point when I realized that my parents treated my sister Aimi and I differently than other parents treated their children. Maybe it was observing the way children were told to keep silent whenever we ventured out in the village. We had chores and responsibilities, but we were allowed to speak and were asked for our opinions. We were permitted to take our creature shapes as we wished as long as we were far from town and we knew for certain we were not being observed.

  Aimi would take her Kitsune shape, always a fox, and I would take to my Akuna Hanta wings. I could take the shape of any bird I wanted, though how that meant I could hunt demons I couldn’t have explained. We would play in our forest for hours, passing our youth as happy as any child could ever wish to be. As we grew older, our parents would inform us of the goings on in the village, and of changes in Father’s business, good or bad. I began to see a pattern in what happened after they did this. If something wasn’t working out in our favor, our parents would lay the situation out to Aimi and I over dinner. Aimi would listen intently, and say very little. But a short time afterward, the winds of fortune would shift in our direction and everything would turn out okay.

  No one else in our village knew what we were and so never gave us any special treatment. Least of all the neighbor’s son, Toshi, who played tricks on me relentlessly. He would snatch the sticks from my hair on a windy day, making the long black strands whip around and become hopelessly tangled. He'd drop a toad in my lap and run away laughing as I gagged with revulsion. He'd wait behind our outhouse until I needed to use it and then throw caterpillars in through the moon shaped window. The path I took into the woods to gather plants and mushrooms for my mother wound by his house and he waited in the bushes to jump out at me and set my heart to pounding.

  I came to abhor my daily trek by his house so I took great pains to make a new and secret path to avoid falling into his traps. A game of cat and mouse ensued, where Toshi would wait until he knew I was leaving the house and follow me, trying to discover my secret path. I would lead him through the woods, meander through the swamp, up over the rock slabs, and through the brambles until his father would call for him and he'd have to abandon the chase.

  I had begun to feel that I had won when he stalked me less and less. Soon weeks would pass without him hounding me and I began to relax. Then I began to miss his attentions. I learned rapidly as I became a teenager that Toshi was unlike other boys of our village. He did not look down on girls and shun their company. Boys and girls were strictly segregated in different schools and social activities, but that had never prevented Toshi from paying attention to me. He always had a good-natured smile for me, even as he teased me mercilessly, there was no malice in it.

  Eventually thoughts of Toshi faded away. Life went on and my duties changed from those of a little girl to those of a young woman. I became wrapped up in the secret world inside our own house. I played only with Aimi, as the other girls in our village were as boring as worms by comparison. She whispered secrets of the Æther to me in the dark of our shared room, and we talked of venturing further abroad in our creature shapes, and even of eavesdropping on the closed-door meetings the men of the village attended, to see who was going to be wedded to whom next. It would have been strictly for the thrill of being there when no one knew it, because our father would come home and tell us anyway.

  Several summers had gone by before I gathered my herb basket and decided impulsively to take the old path, the one that wandered by Toshi's house.

  The rhythmic sharp sound of chopping wood echoed off the trees and rock slabs. Expecting to find his father, I rounded the bend and their yard came into view. My body became still as my eyes fell on the man wielding the axe, but my mind was a tempest. Broad square hands gripped the wooden handle, and his thick black hair was tied half-back to keep out of his eyes. The high forehead and widow’s peak reminded me of drawings I had seen of ancient samurai.

  I could not have stopped myself from staring even if I had been in a crowd. Sweat-slick skin pulled taut over the figure of a grown man. He moved with the grace of someone at home inside himself, not the gangly clumsiness of the boy I remembered. How could this creature be Toshi? Could he have changed this much? What had happened to the boy who used to torture me?

  A twig snapped under my foot and he looked up. His eyes fell on me and we gazed at one another. There he was. Toshi. He squinted toward me, the sun in his eyes. It t
ook a moment, but recognition melted the line between his brows and an enormous grin split across his face. He lifted a sweat-drenched arm, seemingly unembarrassed to be caught naked to the waist.

  "Akiko!" he called, a little out of breath.

  I gasped as he dropped his axe and crossed the back yard with an easy stride, his footsteps silent in his fabric boots. He made his way through the trees and into the shade, stopping not far from me.

  "I can see you more easily now," he said. "I almost didn't recognize you. When did you become a woman?"

  "When did you become a man?" I countered, unable to stop the spread of my own grin. I knew that no other girls in our village would dare address a boy in this way. The respect my father gave to Aimi and me in the privacy of our home gave me confidence unheard of in other girls.

  Toshi inhaled at my daring, and was perhaps emboldened by it. His teak-colored eyes took me in, the only part of this man who reminded me of the boy I once knew. "But you're beautiful!"

  I laughed with delight. It seemed Toshi also did not like the formality normally imposed upon young people of our age. Men did not speak to women like this. I was already surprised he'd approached me, as it was custom for young men and women to have a chaperone in order to be together. Apparently, Toshi didn't care.

  "And you are bold," was all I could think to say, as heat flushed my cheeks.

  He laughed and it too, reminded me of the boy. "We are old friends."

  "Friends? You tortured me to no end when we were young. That was friendship?" I raised my eyebrows and crossed my arms, my basket dangling over my forearm. "I hope we never become enemies."

  He dropped his gaze and chuckled, a black strand of hair falling over his face. "Don't you know," he said as his eyes flicked back up to mine, "that's what boys do when they like a girl?"

  I gasped. My whole body flushed with an unexpected heat. Where had little Toshi gotten his confidence from? My heart swelled, and just like that, he had me. His good-natured, lop-sided grin swept my feet out from under me and I knew what I wanted then. More than any Hanta life, I wanted Toshi.

  "And men?" I asked, breathless. "What do men do when they like a woman?"

  His eyes widened in surprise. "I see I am not the only one who has found courage."

  He took a step forward and I took a step back, both of us smiling. My heart pounded like a hammer and everything in me had come alive in a way that it never had before. I never knew these feelings were possible.

  "Men go after what they want," he said, taking a lunge toward me.

  I squealed and ran, lifting my skirts as I bolted away from him. My basket discarded and forgotten, I tore through the woods, fueling my legs with Hanta fire. Laughing, we pelted through the trees, Toshi hot on my heels. His fingertips would graze my shoulder, my waist, but always I would dodge away. His surprise at my speed delighted me even further. What amazed me even more, I realized—as the trees whizzed by and I scrambled up over the rock slabs and boulders—was that I trusted him completely. The only other man in whose company I felt safe and respected up to that point was my father. Why that was, I could not explain, it was only something I could feel and settle into.

  My heart in my throat and Toshi's footfalls behind me, I ascended the boulders leading to the rock slab overlooking the coast and Tai Island. It was my favorite place in the world. It might have been more popular, except it was so difficult to get to. By the time I crested the last boulder, my legs were shaking, my body was as hot as a coal, and my chest was heaving. Toshi finally caught me and swung me around in the sunlight as it beamed down on the huge clifftop. Moss cushioned our footfalls and tiny stones scattered as we kicked them rolling with our slippered feet. The wind picked up tendrils of our hair and cooled my face and neck.

  His face was so close to mine and his grin was all for me. I thought I would burst with the pleasure of the moment. Toshi's chest and shoulders heaved under my hands as he caught his breath, his slick skin sliding under my palms. I had never touched any man this way before, yet somehow, it felt so natural. His hands closed around my waist and he looked down at me.

  "Why did you stay away for so long?" he asked.

  "Well," I brushed strands of hair back from my face, "you were a thorn in my side." I swallowed and panted, my heart still pounding in the cage of my ribs.

  "Akiko," he said and put his forehead to mine. The sun reflected in one of his eyes and lit it from within, as golden as honey. His hands squeezed my waist. "Tell me you knew."

  "Knew?" I pulled back and gazed at him, palms on his arms.

  "Tell me you knew that I loved you. From the moment I first stood near you and was intoxicated by your scent, by your being. I loved you. I love you still."

  My nerves made me laugh, in spite of the seriousness that had taken over his face. "My scent?"

  His leaned down and put his face next to mine with a soft inhale. Shivers coursed up my spine as he breathed me in. "Like the air after a thunderstorm. No one else smells this way."

  I closed my eyes, letting him hover there. If my mother had seen me she would have been horrified, maybe even ashamed of how wanton Toshi had made me. But I didn't care. I felt alive, and no one would ever see us here. This was my clifftop, mine and Aimi's, and now it belonged to Toshi, too.

  "I had no other way to get close to you, other than to harass you," he said quietly, his breath grazing my neck. "It was the only way I could have your smell, your smile."

  I laughed and stepped back. "I don't remember smiling at you—cursing you was more like it."

  "You did smile," he said, taking my hand as we walked to the edge of the rock slab to overlook the ocean. "You always had a smile for me, even when I was horrible. Tell me I can have that smile for the rest of my life?"

  I gasped. "Our parents—"

  "Yes, I know. We have to get their approval. It won't be difficult, Akiko. We are a perfect match. And my father has always said there was something special about the Susumu girls. You will see." He pulled me around to face him again. He put his fingers under my chin and lifted my face. "Say yes. I will pledge my life to make you happy, keep you safe, and make sure you want for nothing."

  I thought my heart would leap from my chest and into his hands. He was completely irresistible. I could not remember loving him when I was a little girl, but my heart was brimming over with it for him in that moment. It was impossible to say no. So I didn't. And there, on the rock slab, under the hot summer sun and overlooking the ocean, Toshi held my face and kissed me.

  5

  Consciousness first came back to me as a bright white light and the feeling of spiraling downward in wide lazy circles. The next feeling was of an empty stomach. My vision returned and every anxiety and question came flooding back to me. A bird's brain is a small thing, so how was it that mine could be so packed full of crashing thoughts and wonderment? The angular shadows, artificial lights, and squared off parks of a city took shape beneath me. I could only hope that it was Kyoto. It wasn't like I could put GPS coordinates into the Æther.

  If this city was not Kyoto, then I was in for a challenge. I had no money and no phone until I made it to the lockbox Daichi had prepared. If I was in Tokyo or Hiroshima, I would have to figure out which direction to fly in and wing there without using the Æther.

  What came into view beneath me was nothing like the Japan of my childhood. Clusters of high rises and the sounds of traffic and voices formed a dense audio-fog in a layer that hung over the city.

  I had also lost all sense of time while I was riding the Æther. I had to trust that I had arrived within the time frame that the wakizashi was on display.

  Once I'd dropped below the roof of the tallest building, I changed into the form of a gray pigeon, small and unremarkable. I felt the weight of my silk collar more at this size, and it brushed the fronts of my wings as I flew, making my flight awkward. I dropped and flew lower, my tiny lungs protesting at the change in air quality. I needed to find somewhere I could change without bei
ng noticed.

  Spying an open-air mall, I perched on the rafters of a half-roof. Lots of other birds sang and flew among the rafters, helping to camouflage me and my strange silk scarf. I hopped along the beam, my little head cocking this way and that. A large discount clothing merchant had long tables loaded with piles of mismatched merchandise. Four curtained off changing rooms marked each corner of the store. Bingo.

  I flitted high over the tops of the single person changing rooms, three of which were in use. Quick as lightning, before anyone noticed a pigeon with a black silk collar around its neck, I dropped into the empty one. The feeling of a thousand stars shimmered over my body as I phased and landed on human feet. I yanked the curtain shut and untied my silk kimono. Putting it on, I wrapped it tightly around me. The robe didn't offer any more thickness than a nightie, but at least it covered me from neck to just above my knees. In its own way, it was oddly flattering, and could even be quite pretty if paired with heels. But it was definitely not the kind of outfit that people wore out and about on a regular day. I fished in the pocket at my hip for the silk slippers. They offered no actual protection for my feet, but at least they'd draw a little less attention than bare feet would.

  I took a breath and opened the curtain, praying that no one would notice that I didn't have any clothing with me to try on. I wandered along the tables slowly, pretending to shop but scanning any signage I could find. Nothing gave me a clue as to where I was.

  I left the discount tables and walked casually through the mall, trying to look like I belonged there. I got a few strange looks, a few stares, and some looks of concern, mostly from older women—mothering types wondering what this young girl was doing wandering around the mall in a thin black kimono. The cold of the marble floors made my feet feel cool, which cooled my whole body. Suddenly painfully conscious that I had no underclothes on, I crossed my arms over my chest. I had to get to my lockbox, and fast. This was much more uncomfortable than I'd anticipated.