Darkening Skies

by eden Hudson

  “The chosen one! This old madam is not worthy to look at the chosen one!”

  It took several seconds for Raijin to realize why the woman was kowtowing to him. In the school, nearly every student had been a potential chosen one and every master a former potential, and no one fell on their knees before any of them.

  He bent down and pulled her up. “Please, aunt, stop. You are worthy. I am no better than you. Please.”

  When she finished crying out that she wasn’t worthy, the little woman pulled a square of intricate lace from her robe and dabbed her eyes, careful not to smudge the already streaky paint lining them.

  “You don’t understand,” she said, sniffling. “I was there, chosen one. I was at your birth. I held your mother’s hand. I caught you as you came into this world. I heard your first cries. Me, a worthless sensha, and I have been blessed by fortune ever since. I used to be the lowest girl in this teahouse, and now I own it.”

  A combination of disappointment and relief filled Raijin as he realized what the little woman was saying. This was not his mother.

  She patted him on the back as fondly as if he were her son and beamed up at him with that painted smile. “Daitai will take you to Mama Lanfen. We’ll go right now. It’s time I saw her, anyway. Just let me put on my walking shoes.”

  She slipped back through the peeling flower door. A minute later, she reemerged wearing the wooden platforms Raijin had seen on other locals, hers gilded gold. He glanced down at his own bare feet, realizing for the first time how out of place he was here in the seaside village.

  Daitai didn’t leave him time to dwell on this, however. Her plump little hand slipped into his long fingers, and she pulled him across the muddy street.

  “Come, come. Mama is this way, chosen one.”

  They stepped from the street onto the boardwalk opposite the teahouse, Raijin’s bare feet and Daitai’s platforms tracking mud on the planks. Though his legs were much longer than the little Daitai’s, Raijin had to hustle to keep up. The madam was giddy with excitement. She pointed out businesses and gossiped about their owners and clientele, maintaining a constant flow of words as they walked. They took a right, then a left, then followed a street to the farthest south edge of the village. The businesses thinned out and the houses grew smaller and rougher, until finally they were in a neighborhood of shacks made of scavenged boards, castoff boat pieces, driftwood, and broken roof tiles. The boardwalk likewise died out, and the mud turned to sand beneath their feet.

  Outside one shack, a pair of filthy toddlers screamed at each other while a girl no older than Raijin sat nearby staring down into the sand and chewing on her bloody thumbnail.

  Farther in, a dirt-crusted elderly man missing his right arm and leg leaned against a rock, his remaining hand outstretched.

  “Anything the honored young man can spare? Perhaps esteemed business lady can spare a coin?” he begged.

  Raijin’s chest felt tight. He couldn’t look away from the beggar, but he didn’t want to look at him, either. It wasn’t right for an elderly man to speak up to a child. He should be the one shown honor and respect. Where was his family to provide for him in his old age?

  “Esteemed young warrior, a coin for a worthless beggar?”

  “I-I—” Raijin stuttered, bowing sloppily in his haste. “Apologies, revered grandfather, but your grandson has nothing.”

  Daitai hissed at the old man and pulled Raijin away. “You have to ignore them, Raijin. They’ll never stop asking for more.”

  But they were everywhere he looked, begging, filthy, defeated, suffering. Running sores, hollow eyes, and starving potbellies were the norm among these people. Legions of sand fleas leapt whenever one of them moved, gnats swarmed in the hot air, and tiny crabs wandered in and out of the doorless holes in the sides of the thrown-together little shacks. The farther they walked, the less Raijin felt he could breathe.

  Where was Daitai taking him?

  As if she had heard his thought, the little painted woman stopped at a lean-to built against the back of another building’s latrine. It wasn’t even a shack; it didn’t have the necessary number of walls, just the slanting ceiling of foraged and salt-faded tiles that didn’t look as if it would keep anything dry in a rainstorm. Through the nearest opening, Raijin could see a threadbare blanket lying on the sand bundled around a small pile of sticks. Nothing else.

  “Lanfen!” Daitai called cheerfully, rapping on the roof. “Your beloved sister is here bringing your medicine and a surprise!” The little woman ducked inside, then leaned back out to beckon for Raijin to follow. “So tall. You’ll have to crawl in. Come now, chosen one.”

  Something in the lean-to croaked.

  “Yes, yes,” Daitai said, slipping back into the lean-to. “After I show you who is visiting.”

  Not sure what else to do, Raijin knelt down and walked into the makeshift home on his knees. It smelled awful. Unwashed flesh and human excrement mingled with a stale chemical odor.

  Daitai was sitting next to the threadbare blanket, holding one of the bundled sticks with one hand while she patted it with the other. Raijin could see her painted mouth moving, but the words had ceased to make sense.

  At the top of the blanket, he realized, was a skull covered in withered gray skin and dusted with wisps of greasy, colorless hair. Dull green eyes burned in the hollows of the skull’s sockets, alight with madness or fever or both. They blinked, and Raijin flinched. The skull was alive. It was connected to the stick Daitai kept patting, and the stick wasn’t a stick at all but a skeletal hand.

  “I need my medicine,” the skull croaked at the painted woman. “Please, Daitai, good sister, always so good, give me my medicine, please I’m crawling with it, I need out of this pain, please, Daitai, fix your sister’s pain, help me, give me the qajong, take care of your sister, please give it to me.”

  “Yes, Lanfen, but listen first. Do you recognize this boy?” Daitai said, gesturing to him. “Why, he is practically a man. Isn’t he so handsome all grown up?”

  The feverish green eyes focused on Raijin. Cracked white lips opened.

  “I’m hallucinating,” the skull croaked. “He’s not here. You did this to me, Daitai, by not giving me my medicine in time. You’re torturing me because you love to see me in pain! You hate me! You are a bad sister!”

  “Oh, you hush,” Daitai scolded as if there was nothing sickening about the skull screaming at her for drugs. “You’re not hallucinating anything. He’s really here.”

  The feverish green eyes lit up for a moment, going a rich, brilliant jade with happiness. Tears spilled down the skull’s emaciated cheekbones. Except it wasn’t a skull, it was a woman. A woman no older than Daitai. He could see that now, as her wasted face stretched into a smile.

  “Raijin?” she whispered. “My baby?”

  His heart stopped. The world pitched violently beneath his knees, and he felt himself drop onto his backside in the stinking sand.

  The woman—his mother—reached skeletal arms toward him like a child asking to be picked up.

  Trembling harder than he had when he offered his hand to the guai-ray, Raijin crawled over to the stinking, filthy bundle of blanket and bones. The stench gagged him. He leaned down into her arms, and they closed around him. It was like being hugged by a foul-smelling cedar sapling. His skin buzzed like furious bees, both repulsed and confused.

  “My baby,” she whispered, squeezing him with all of the meager strength in her frail body. “I love you, Raijin, my baby boy.”

  Then warmth like the first hot wind of the springtime exploded from his heartcenter. His throat ached with unshed tears. This was his mother, and she didn’t want him to leave.

  “My boy,” she cooed, petting his thick black hair. She kissed his ear, then whispered, “Mama is in so much pain, Raijin. She needs her medicine. Will you be a good son and go to the apothecary and buy a ball of qajong for Mama? It will help her stop hurting. You can go do that for Mama, go ahead.”

  Lik
e that, the warm wind was gone, replaced by icy winter.

  Raijin felt a paper packet stuffed into his fist. When he glanced over his shoulder, Daitai gestured toward his mother. The skeletal woman was still coaxing and cooing at him, begging him to go buy her something to take her pain away.

  He held the packet out to the skeleton.

  She kissed his cheek and squeezed him again. “Mama knew her Raijin was such a good boy! You are a good son, such a good son, taking care of Mama.”

  Her sticklike arms released him, reaching instead for the pipe tucked away under the lowest corner of the lean-to. Raijin watched, frozen, while she shoved the little brown ball down into the bowl with shaking fingers and lit it.

  Raijin lurched backward onto his hands in the sand and scrambled out of the stinking little hovel like a crab. He turned over onto his hands and knees just in time. Vomit spewed out of his mouth as if it were coming up from the depths of his soul.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  PRESENT

  Late that night after the second wedding feast concluded, Hush came to Koida’s chambers as promised to model the proper position for meditation. Unable to speak, the woman brought with her a scroll from Raijin explaining her purpose—mainly, Koida thought, to set Batsai’s mind at ease at having a stranger closeted overnight with his ward.

  The mute woman led the second princess to the foot of her bed platform, then pulled her down onto the nightcaller floor and took a seat facing her, their knees nearly touching. When the scream of wood on metal stopped, Hush folded her legs, straightened her back, and pressed her fists together in front of her heartcenter.

  Koida mimicked the pose. At least, she thought she had until Hush shook her head and took hold of her wrists. The mute woman pulled Koida’s fists apart half an inch.

  “But your fists are touching.”

  Hush shook her head. She brought her own fists together, then held them up for Koida’s inspection. The thinnest rift remained between the woman’s sharp-looking knuckles.

  Koida tried to get hers as close but found she couldn’t keep them from bumping into one another.

  Hush shook her head again, the black horsetail of hair sliding over her shoulders, and pulled Koida’s fists back to the half-inch distance.

  “Will they get closer with time?” Koida guessed.

  The woman nodded, her dark almond eyes crinkling with the smile hidden beneath the cloth mask covering her nose and mouth. Then she pressed her fingertips to her chest. She sucked in a long breath, the cloth sucking tight to her nose, then breathed it back out, pushing the cloth away from her mouth.

  Koida tried it. Hush nodded in approval. They practiced breathing together for some time before the woman got Koida’s attention once more and pointed to her eyes, closing them gently.

  They spent the next hour practicing. Now and again, Hush reached out and pulled Koida’s bumping fists apart or pressed burning fingertips to the hollow of Koida’s chest to slow her breathing.

  When Koida felt that she had gone long enough without bumping her fists together, she opened her eyes.

  “Ji Yu Raijin mentioned an exercise,” she said. “Pouring Ro into Itself. May I try it?”

  Hush nodded.

  Koida turned her concentration inward, finding the roiling cloud of amethyst energy at her heartcenter. Rings of pure, dense lilac surrounded the Ro cloud like planetary rings. She couldn’t begin to imagine how she would turn that mess into a single cycling waterfall while holding the Resting Meditation position, not when she had never yet been able to send her Ro down the pathways it was supposed to follow instinctively from birth.

  Inhaling through her nose, Koida focused on the dense rings and roiling cloud, trying to ball them together forcefully. It was as if she were trying to lift the Sun Palace one-handed. She strained until sweat ran down her face, but nothing happened.

  Hush’s burning fingertips tapped Koida’s chest. She had stopped breathing altogether in her struggle. She refocused her attention on inhaling and exhaling, then returned to the Ro at her heartcenter.

  Maybe she couldn’t ball the disobedient cloud and rings together. Their densities seemed so different, the rings so compressed, the clouds sizzling and arcing all over the place like electrified mist.

  What if she poured the Ro cloud into the center of the rings and cycled it around them instead? She would have half a dozen rings, but that would still count as Pouring Ro into Itself, wouldn’t it?

  Koida straightened her back and—after an adjustment of her bumping fists from Hush—concentrated on sending the purple energy at the center of the rings swirling around it. At first the Ro tried to scatter in all directions away from her heartcenter, but she reined it in like she would her headstrong half-demon warhorse, chasing it down and fighting it until her Ro reluctantly started to do as she ordered.

  A trickle of airy purple energy slid over the edge of one dense lilac ring. So little that it was almost nothing at all, and yet it was everything.

  Koida seized upon the tiny victory, dragging the airy, sizzling Ro around the ring and forcing it over the edge again. It felt like mist from a waterfall. The rest of her rebellious Ro was sizzling along her limbs, not escaping or manifesting, but traveling up and down just out of her reach. She ignored it. She would deal with it if she could just get Pouring Ro into Itself to work.

  From the center of the ring, she pulled the slender finger of sizzling Ro mist around and repeated the process. And again. And again.

  Her muscles shook from the physical strain, and her nightdress was soaked with sweat, but she watched the scene in her heartcenter with satisfaction and fascination. She was doing it. She was exercising her Ro.

  Koida giggled with exhilaration and immediately lost her grip on the sizzling misty Ro. It scattered as if grateful to escape. All at once, the rest of the amethyst energy rushed back into the center of the dense lilac rings, returning to the messy, roiling cloud.

  She sighed and opened her eyes.

  Hush, still seated before her, raised her thin black brows.

  “I had it,” Koida said. “I was doing it.”

  Eyes crinkling with a hidden smile, Hush pressed her palms together and tipped them to Koida in a gesture of praise.

  “Gratitude,” Koida said, though the word had come instinctively and without conviction. Her mind was elsewhere. “Perhaps if I...”

  She closed her eyes and returned her fists to their position over her heartcenter, but Hush pulled them apart and rested each fist on one of Koida’s thighs.

  Koida frowned at the silent woman in confusion. “What’s wrong?”

  Hush pointed at the bright morning light glaring through the cracks around the balcony door, then at Koida’s bed. She pantomimed sleeping by laying her head on one palm and shutting her eyes.

  How long had she been wrestling with that single strand of Ro? Hours, at least.

  Exhaustion hit Koida all at once. Her body was stiff and achy from sitting in one position for so long. The muscles in her arms and legs and back burned as if she’d torn each and every fiber apart. A blinding lance of pain flashed through her temple, and in its wake, she felt the dull ache that had built up in her skull while she fought with her Ro.

  Suddenly, she thought she might topple over backward in a dead faint.

  Either her face betrayed her or Hush had expected this when she urged Koida to rest. The mute woman grabbed Koida’s hands, then hooked Koida’s arm over a shoulder knotted with muscle and lifted her onto the bed platform.

  Koida had time to think that she should change out of her sweat-soaked nightdress and wash her face. Then she fell over the edge into the black hole of sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  PRESENT

  Koida woke late in the afternoon. She hoped Batsai had sent a page to tell Master Lao she would not be training that morning—he often did so when she slept late—until she remembered that Lao was gone, exposed for his deceit and replaced by her future husband only a day b
efore. Raijin was her new master, and she was on the Path of the Thunderbird now, her stiff, screaming muscles the proof.

  Remembering the small victory of the night before, Koida focused on the roiling amethyst Ro surrounded by the dense lilac rings at her heartcenter. It didn’t look any different. She raised one protesting arm. Her hand shook as she forced the Ro down her shoulder and into her hand—as usual, it ignored the correct pathway, scraping along the inside of her arm the whole way—and manifested an amethyst bo-shan stick.

  The stick looked like it always did. Not quite all there. Weak. Just a stick.

  Koida let her arm drop back to the bed. Raijin had said it could take years before she saw progress, but it was still disappointing. Last night, she’d felt so exhausted that she was sure she’d made leaps and bounds forward.

  “What’s all that sighing?” Batsai’s gruff voice demanded. He cracked her door open and leaned inside. “Are you complaining yourself awake, little dragon?”

  She sat up and stretched, groaning at the million throbbing aches and pains shouting at her from her strained muscles.

  “I wish I wasn’t,” she told him.

  “Well, get up anyway so I can be free of your ladies,” Batsai said. “They’ve been flirting with Hyung-Po since dawn, waiting for you to wake so they could dress you for the wedding feast. Though I don’t see how we’ll have a feast without the groom.”

  For a moment, the comment confused the second princess. Then she remembered Raijin saying he had important matters to attend to and would be gone today.

  “Surely he will be back by tonight,” she said.

  He wasn’t.

  Koida sat on the dais and ate by herself, pretending nothing was amiss while her father, sister, and the nobles and court officials looked on. After the meal, several of the courtiers came to tell her how beautiful she looked and made poorly veiled attempts to wheedle out information about the missing groom. She turned aside their curiosity and vindictive glee until her father finally declared that he’d had enough of the feasting and would retire. Infinitely thankful to end the torture, Koida withdrew to her residence.