Heroes in Training, page 20
“It’s not my doing,” I said, “but perhaps I can ease your empty belly.” I offered her a corner of rice cake.
The fox eyed the morsel. “I’m sure that’s tasty, but don’t you have anything stronger, something to chase away the cold? I can barely feel my nose.”
It was unwise to displease a fox, so I splashed some sake into my wooden bowl and set it down.
“That’s more like it!” She lapped the wine, licking her whiskers to catch the last drops. “For your generosity, here’s some friendly advice: turn back. There’s trouble ahead.”
I bowed. “I hope you don’t think me ungrateful, but I regret I’m honor bound to press on.”
“Oh? Well anyway, that’s hardly an even trade, advice being free and not worth a drop of sake. I’ll give you another bit of counsel: stay on the path. Don’t vary your course.”
I frowned. “Both turn back and go forward?”
The fox grinned, her tongue lolling from her muzzle. “If your yang is nourished and your yin starved, does that make you happy or miserable? Besides, what sort of advice do you expect a mouthful of sake to get you?” She barked, the fox equivalent of laughter, and bounded away.
I shook my head. Foxes. I would rather face a tengu demon than a friendly fox. With their riddles and pranks, they might ruin you even as they tried to help. At least with a tengu, I always knew what its teeth meant.
A puddle of ice-crusted mud caught my eye. It was a thick crimson. Over it, a copper tang hung like a shroud in the air. Several steps away, tiny red berries ornamented a young lilac tree—wet fruit that thawed into droplets of blood. A bloody icicle hung suspended from a twig like a red needle.
Perhaps because of my agitation from encountering the fox, I did not notice the man lying beneath it until he groaned.
In my defense, his kimono was dark—a chestnut brown with bands of deep ginger that blended into the crisscross shadows beneath the arching canopy. His hair also camouflaged him, a torrent of black that rooted him among the moldering verdure on the forest’s floor. Still, his skin was whiter than milk, white as mourning. I should have seen him.
He watched me through half-lidded eyes. The source of the metallic bouquet suffusing the air was the seeping gash in his side. Even felled and half-conscious, I was struck by his beauty—the aristocratic lines of his face and the grace of his limbs. I’d never before seen such a nobly formed man.
When I stepped closer, he raised his arm, and I saw the weapon gripped in his fist, a katana of folded steel, a samurai’s sword.
“Come to finish me off, witch?” His voice was silver silk, frayed with pain. “Or merely to watch me die?” The katana wavered. How long had he lain there, bleeding in the dirt?
“I mean you no harm,” I said.
He squinted. “What game are you playing now, Yuki-onna? How like you to turn my final moments into some farce.” His words grew indistinct. “It’s not a very good disguise in any case.” His head drooped, and his arm slipped to his side, although he continued to cling to the katana.
I crept nearer and kneeled, counting upon his weakness to keep him from chopping me to bits. The icy mire of blood and soil soaked into my yukata.
I set the shakujou aside so I could open his kimono, noting as I did its sleek softness—not wool or even felt—luxurious as fur but thin as silk. His skin burned fever hot save for the bubbling hole—from a dart or arrow, perhaps—that poured frozen mist into the air. Whatever the cause of his injury, it was feeding upon his body’s warmth, his vital ki. It wouldn’t be enough to staunch the bleeding; I had to neutralize that poisonous cold or it would kill him.
I drew one of the pins from Grandfather’s shakujou. I disliked these slim implements, so finely honed it seemed every time I handled one, I must pay for the privilege with blood. Grandfather had often despaired at my clumsiness, sighing as he wrapped my gold-scored fingers in linen. But they were thrice blessed and inscribed with prayers—taijiya tools to negate demon magic.
Moving fast as thought, the man snatched my wrist. I flinched, and the edge of his katana hovered at my throat.
“You’re not her,” he growled. “Did she send you to torment me?”
I spoke softly, as though to a frightened animal. “The dart that wounded you carried a curse, and I believe the point is still embedded.” I tilted the sliver of gold so a wisp of sunlight could highlight the prayers etched along its length. “This is a gofu, a blessed amulet to counteract demon energy.”
He studied me, his eyes creased with pain. “Not that,” he rasped. “Use my shoto to dig it out.”
“But—”
“Else plunge that thorn into my heart and have done with it.” He closed his eyes and released me.
There was only one reason a creature would refuse the touch of a holy charm. I leaned close, searching. They had been concealed by the darkness of his hair and the lattice of shadows, the elegant pair of black horns that twisted from his temples.
I was a fool. Worse than a fool. This wasn’t a hapless man but an oni, a malicious demon of brutal hungers. The drape of his kimono derided me, the tiger-stripe pattern evident now, clear indication of his true nature. I hovered in indecision, poised to drive the gofu into his heart, as he’d suggested.
But he was so defenseless. And so beautiful. Compassion, what grandfather had called the foundation of a taijiya’s art, and also something else, something I did not wish to admit to, wouldn’t let me finish him.
Instead, I tucked the gofu into my obi and pulled the wooden chopsticks from my sleeve. I found the demon’s shoto sheathed at his hip, a long knife of gleaming steel, sharp and deadly as spite. It sheered into his flesh as easily as slicing water.
His cooled blood spilled over my hand. The sinews in his throat tightened, bowing his head back, but he didn’t cry out. I cut again, widening the entry in order to insert the tips of my chopsticks within. His silent anguish continued, and I suffered with him.
His breath juddered through clenched jaws as I probed, searching with both blunt wood and also with that other awareness, the thrumming along my nerves that alerted me to youki, demon energy.
I touched the knot of cold with a chopstick at the same moment as I felt it, a contamination like a drop of tar in white tallow. I gripped it with the chopsticks and tugged. It resisted, slick and lodged tight, requiring me to dig it free with wood and steel.
The oni suffered my ministrations in silence.
At last I saw a pale bead peeping from the edge of his wound. Frozen blood encased it in a growing block of red. It wedged there, fouling my attempts to pry it loose. Despite his fortitude, I could not subject the oni (or myself) to another incision, so I used my fingertips to pluck it out.
As soon as I touched it, the bead slid into my palm.
The oni went limp, a ragged sigh slipping from his lips.
A bolt of winter hammered my hand, a numbness that sliced through muscle and bone. I dropped the shoto and drew the gofu from my sash. I stabbed the cursed pellet, and it shattered beneath the golden tip like brittle ice.
I thought the oni had finally slipped the yoke of consciousness, but when I pulled a length of linen from my satchel, I saw the glimmer of his eyes beneath his lashes, watching me.
In a rush, I remembered tales of oni who lusted after human women, violating helpless maidens before devouring their flesh. Fear sped my pulse, and also an intriguing thrill that brought guilt rushing after. I gripped the gofu tighter. It nicked my thumb, drawing a thread of blood from tip to meaty pad.
I swore and dropped the razor-edged metal. I immediately scrabbled after it, sifting the dirt with my fingers for the splinter of gold. Only after I’d found it and shoved it back into the shakujou did I recall the oni.
The demon had not moved during my antics, although his lips now wore a curve of mirth. I busied myself with herbs and bandages.
“That’s not necessary,” he murmured.
I glared at him, a swathe of linen hanging from one hand. “After all that, you don’t expect me to let you bleed to death, do you?”
His smile mocked me as I inspected his side. I dabbed away the now-warm blood and discovered only a pinprick seam.
In a fluid motion, lithe as a dancer, he stood, towering over me. I scrambled to my feet, clutching the shakujou to my chest.
“As I said. Unnecessary.” He pulled his kimono closed and knotted it with an obi striped orange and black like a tiger’s tail. With skillful ease, he slid his katana into its scabbard.
He bent to collect his shoto from where I’d dropped it. I watched, bemused, as he twirled it in one hand. Would he now slash my throat, tear at my flesh and drink my blood?
It seemed not.
He wiped it clean with a tiger-pelt sleeve and sheathed it. His kimono possessed an unusual quality. Where it had been discolored by blood, it now gleamed, dry and unsoiled. The filth from his shoto rained from it in a gray dust.
In comparison, I felt grubby and unkempt with my yukata stained and damp, and my hair a tangled nest about my face.
“Do all oni heal as quickly as you?” I asked.
His eyes flitted to Grandfather’s shakujou. “Not always,” he said. “Some faster than others. That stick you’re sporting has hewn down its share of oni by the look of it. The taijiya you stole it from is going to be eager to have it back.”
“I didn’t steal it,” I said. “It’s mine.”
The oni arched an eyebrow. “Is it? Pardon my ignorance. I have not heard of a maiden taijiya so confident that she heals mortally wounded demons in order to defeat them in honorable battle.”
I paled. “Are we to battle, then?”
He laughed, displaying straight, white teeth with only a suggestion of flesh-tearing serration. “Only if you demand it.” He bowed, every line of his body distorting the salutation into a jest. “As you have saved me, I’m yours to command.” His eyes—feral, tawny orbs like a tiger’s—glinted a challenge. “What would you have of me?”
“I don’t recall oni being so honorable,” I said.
“May a demon not have honor? Would it suit you better if I fell upon you, slavering and rapacious?”
“Tell me your name,” I demanded, doing my best to achieve Grandfather’s authoritative boom. I straightened my shoulders.
“I’m called Ronin by those who care to address me.” His amusement was obvious even without his muted laughter. As I feared, I sounded more like a puffed-up mouse squeaking at a wolf than a taijiya.
“What is your business here, and where is the demon who caused your hurt? I’ve a score to settle with him.”
“Her. It was a woman’s hand that threw the dart.” Ronin’s manner switched to bleak bitterness in the space of those words. “My mistress brooks no defiance and no failure, she of the frozen heart, cruel Yuki-onna.” Ronin lifted his eyes to the white-rimmed mountains behind us.
His wistfulness filled me with misery, a heartsick desolation.
“It wasn’t so great a thing she demanded. I’ve won legendary prizes, magnificent and precious, for her, razed whole villages at her whimsy, but at this, I balked. All she required was a certain female infant, with the only obstacle an old monk, her grandfather.”
I started. “A girl and her grandfather?”
Ronin scowled, returned from whatever reverie he’d fallen into. “I killed the old man. He was stronger than I expected, but in the end, even his ki succumbed to Yuki-onna’s frozen death, delivered by the edge of my katana.” His laughter was harsh, dripping with self-loathing. “But I could not bring myself to fetch her some brat and told her so.”
“W-what was the girl’s name?”
Ronin shrugged. “Ayame or Ayemi, perhaps.”
I felt as though I’d swallowed a lead ball. “It was you,” I gasped. “You’re the demon that killed Grandfather!”
His eyes widened. Faster than any man could move, he sprang at me.
Rather than drawing a gofu or swinging the shakujou to ward him off, I screamed, cringing like a useless fool. I expected to feel his teeth at my throat, but he scooped me into his arms.
The earth fell away as he swept us aloft.
I struggled, but his arms were a cage of marble and steel.
“A baby.” His words were strangely fierce. “An infant girl.”
Waves of heat throbbed through the dual layers of our garments, smoldering hotter than an open forge. The youki energy of an oni is akin to the ki of fire. It made me lightheaded and weak; I would have fainted but for the shakujou between us, radiating a soothing counterpoint. As dizzy as I was, I still noted that Ronin didn’t care to touch it, buffering his skin with his tiger pelt where it pressed against him.
“Put me d-down!” I forced the words through chattering teeth.
“I regret I cannot. My mistress requires your presence.” He flew, eyes fixed upon the summit of the tallest mountain. In the space of three breaths, the air grew chilly and thin, and whirling snowflakes powdered the sky. I writhed, half frozen by the piercing cold, half baking against Ronin.
“S-so much for a demon’s honor.”
He glanced at me. “You think honor is a game exclusive to mortals?”
“You s-seemed to tire of it quickly enough.”
“Don’t assume you know all the rules of this game, little taijiya.” The resignation and sorrow in his voice were ancient as the mountain above us.
With a stomach-lurching maneuver, he deflected a gust of frigid wind with his back, sheltering me from the worst of it.
“By all the eight million kami, don’t do that,” I gasped. “Unless you intend to deliver me dead from fright.”
“The cold will kill you faster than any distress I could provide.”
“I wouldn’t depend on that,” I chattered.
“I could fly better if you carried your shakujou. It’s awkward, wedged between us.”
Ronin wanted me to keep the best weapon I had against demonkind? Why? He gazed over my head, intent on our journey.
“Very well, release my arms.”
He adjusted his hold, cradling me beneath my knees and shoulders, and allowed me to slide the shakujou free. I wrapped one arm around it, and with the other, I plucked out a gofu. Gripping it as tightly as I dared in my numb fingers, I leveled the point over his heart.
Ronin tilted his head to regard first me and then the gold skewer pressing into his kimono. “If you don’t put that away, you’re liable to cut yourself again,” he said
“I have sworn to kill you, demon.”
“We’re quite high,” he remarked. “If you stick me, I may not be able to keep from dropping you.” He swooped at the distant crags below to illustrate.
I wrenched my eyes from the speeding ground. “Death doubtless awaits me at your destination anyway.”
“Then perhaps I should do this before you send us tumbling from the sky.” I felt long fingers tangle in my hair as he bent his neck, bringing his lips to mine. At the touch of his mouth, an ember flared between us, electrifying and sharp. I inhaled in astonishment, taking the firestorm of his breath into my lungs. Ronin tasted of smoke and hot steel, warm rain and summer winds. His kiss chased away the chill of the frozen air and left me breathless. Through the tiger pelt kimono, I felt him trembling.
He buried his face in my hair, his lips brushing my ear. “Kami of fire and light.” I could barely hear him over the screaming wind. He crushed me to him, so I could not think.
“Ayame, I will be yours,” he said, “to kill as you wish. If you will not allow me seppuku, I swear I will kneel to a blow from your shakujou or open myself to the point of your gofu. Only free me first, little taijiya. Please, free me first.”
I had no more than a moment to splutter in astonishment.
He loosed his hold, and I cried out, expecting to plummet through a mountain’s span of empty air. But my descent was brief; I sank not through the ether, but into snow, up to my ankles. My shout petered out, ending as a confused yip.
We had alighted during his kiss, and I had been too preoccupied to notice.
He kneeled.
I gaped, baffled, until I realized his obeisance was not to me. I turned, slow as a dream.
Behind me, not five strides away, stood the most exquisite maiden I had ever seen. Her skin was an ice blue so luminous she glowed against the backdrop of winter white. A curtain of raven-black hair cascaded to the ground, stray locks billowing in glossy streamers about her head. She wore a silk kimono—moonlight embroidered with clouds—and her eyes were dark as forever. There was a familiarity to her loveliness, like a forgotten memory, or a dream.
She didn’t walk, but rather drifted to us, bare feet passing over the snow.
“You dare to return?” At odds with her visage, her voice was a knife of ice. “Do you love me so much, my samurai, that death means nothing to you?”
“Death has never meant anything to me, Yuki-onna.” Ronin’s words released me from my paralysis. I blinked, my eyes dry and chilled from staring.
She glanced at me. “And who’s this?”
“She is Ayame. You charged me to fetch her.”
“What nonsense are you babbling? You think I’ll forgive your transgressions with a trick? I told you to bring me a girl child, an infant, not a maiden full grown.”
“Girl children become maidens, my lady.”
Her brow furrowed. “Could it be?” The edge of her voice softened. “Sixteen thaws and sixteen freezes. I’d forgotten how time affects those who bow to its passage.” She caught my chin in her slender fingers and forced me to meet her gaze. “Do you remember me, child?”
Her touch sent tendrils of ice through me. “M-my apologies, l-lady, no,” I stammered.
“You’re shivering. Come closer. Let me wrap you in my kimono.” She undid the knot of her obi and opened it, sweeping me into her embrace.
“No!” Ronin’s shout floated to me, as though from a great distance.
Pressed against her skin, a glacial storm buffeted me—body and ki—tearing at my confusion, my unhappiness, and my lingering grief, even as it chilled me through. The shakujou slipped from my benumbed fingers.
