Barefoot on the Wind

by Zoe Marriott

  Never, never had I forgotten that.

  I felt, though I could not hear, the low rumble of the groan that vibrated in Itsuki’s chest. “You mean that her servants were humans once? Alive once?”

  I nodded. “There are … dozens?”

  “There may be even more than that.” He looked around helplessly.

  Dozens of ice and bone servants, with human faces. This was what had become of them all, the lost ones, our loved ones – and it was worse than we had ever known. They had not even been granted the respect of true death. Being eaten would have been better than this obscenity, twisted and ruined and forced to serve the one who had stolen them from their families and homes.

  And if Hyouta was here … so must be my grandmother, who was taken barely six months later.

  So must be Kyo.

  Then, in a blinding flash that seared away, for an instant, all sickness and grief, I knew something else: Itsuki had not eaten anyone.

  There had never actually been any evidence that he had, after all. Only the assumption that if a monster lived in the forest, as the trees said, and took humans, it must be to consume them. But Itsuki did not call the humans from the village. The Yuki-Onna did. The Yuki-Onna had stolen our people and changed them, stolen their bones and faces and condemned them to this unspeakable living death in her service, and it was vile, vile, vile, but—

  But she had not made the beast eat them. At least she had not engineered that. The beast had nearly killed my father and me – but we had both survived – and the Yuki-Onna had the rest of our people, and so Itsuki was not a murderer. He was not a maneater. The relief was almost enough to do what the sight of poor Hyouta’s face had not been, and make me sick then and there.

  With a dry rattling, the thing that had once been my mother’s friend shifted from one foot to the other, and made a swooping gesture towards the Moon gate with its long bent arms. Itsuki was still gazing up at her – it – in spellbound horror, but I recognized the movement as impatience, and remembered what Itsuki had said about the dangers of keeping the snow maiden waiting.

  “Come on,” I said, climbing up Itsuki’s broad shoulders until I could stand on my own feet again. I looped my arm through his as he rose too, rather shakily. “We must do what we came here for.”

  “But that woman…”

  “She is dead. If the Yuki-Onna has done this to them, then everyone who was taken is dead. There is nothing to be done.” I avoided the dull gaze of the Yuki-Onna’s servant as it bowed jerkily. It turned away and walked into the maze, clearly intending us to follow. “But I pray my father is still alive. It is not too late to hope for him yet.”

  The words were pure bravado. This new evidence of the Yuki-Onna’s power and evil made me fear for my chances of success more than ever. No matter what had happened to Oyuki, no matter how much she had been wronged, nothing could justify this. What hope had I of reaching someone who could do such a thing to poor Hyouta?

  My argument seemed to reach Itsuki, though. He moved forwards determinedly. And perhaps we leaned into each other more than was strictly necessary as we went – but if so, no one but us two knew it.

  Seventeen

  I saw the truth of Itsuki’s words as soon as we stepped through the Moon gate: two more vaguely human shapes, cocooned in cobweb layers of frost and bone, were fused into the fabric of the maze on either side of the entrance. A permanent guard.

  Try as I might to stop myself, it was impossible to resist. Fearfully, I gazed into each face, searching for the long-remembered features of a loved one. The one on the left was familiar, I thought, but neither were well known to me. I was ashamed of my gladness. Each of them had been a person, with thoughts and hopes and fears and dreams. Each of them had loved someone, or been beloved by someone. Each of them was precious. And now, each of them was dead and imprisoned in this Moon-forsaken place, and there was nothing I could do to help.

  What would I have done if one of them was Kyo? Or Grandmother? Dear Moon, what was I to do if I saw a face I loved staring dully out at me from one of these “servants”?

  You will think of your still living father, and not fall apart, I told myself grimly. And in the meantime, follow your friend’s excellent advice and keep your eyes on your feet.

  Side by side with Itsuki, I walked the twisting corridors of the Moon maze, following the remnant of the woman who had once been dear to my family. The sustained horror and fear were having a strange effect on me. Or perhaps all this dark magic was too much for my merely human brain to withstand. I felt numb, remote, as if my true, vulnerable self had curled up small, somewhere deep inside, where no one could reach or hurt it. I watched what my body did from far away, through a sort of blurry veil, and could almost pretend that none of it was real at all.

  It was a relief of sorts, to finally leave those haunted pathways behind and emerge into the centre of the Yuki-Onna’s web – but the kind of release that brings new pain, as when a knife is drawn from a wound and the blood gushes forth.

  The heart of the maze, its hub, was surprisingly small. Not much larger than our village meeting hall. It was almost empty. A mere bleak field of snow, edged by some stunted, leafless black trees and, here and there, clustered groups of the snow maiden’s “servants”, standing to attention. This time I successfully wrestled the temptation to check their faces, and kept my eyes firmly averted.

  At the far end of the barren clearing was a throne – it could only be called that – hacked roughly from what seemed to be another, smaller, frozen waterfall. The seat of the chair was backed by cruel spikes and spears of ice. On top of the waterfall, where once perhaps the rocks had been home to shrubs and plants, a single dead white tree remained. The trunk curved forwards over the cascade of frozen water, its bony branches heavy not with leaves or blossoms but with razor-sharp frost crystals. The trunk bowed so low that these strange frost flowers very nearly brushed the head of the thing that sat on the throne.

  She had been a woman once. It was clear that she was no longer anything of the kind. She was nothing like any mortal human being.

  If Itsuki’s beauty was repellent, the Yuki-Onna’s was monstrous. Her flawless face was lovelier even than I had imagined, and I could see that she had been no older than me when she died. Her skin was the same absolute white as her ice, and it glittered fiercely, iridescent, so that other colours were seen within it: green and blue and purple. Her eyes were as dark as a Moonless night, burning cold. Her hair was a sweep of onyx that reached her waist, clad in a glimmering veil of frost, and her gown was white peacock feathers, trailing around her tiny feet in luxuriant layers, with the black eye pattern standing out stiffly behind her neck, like a ruff.

  One glance was enough to etch her image into my mind forever, and I wrenched my gaze away from her face, blinking fiercely. I was surprised that my eyeballs didn’t smoke even from that brief contact.

  “My dear, how kind of you to bring me a visitor,” she whispered – and though her voice was low, and gentle, and sweet, it wailed around the walls of the Moon maze like the shrill, hopeless pleas of the dying. “Is she a new pet of yours?”

  I felt the great shuddering breath that Itsuki drew in and the momentary tremble of his arm where I clutched at it. But when he spoke, he managed to sound his steady, calm self.

  “No. This is Hana-san. She is not of the maze. She came here by accident and seeks only to return to her village and her people.”

  What? No! Swiftly I released his arm and straightened up. “I seek more than that. I have come to beg for my father’s life.” In my fear, my own voice emerged with a kind of stiff defiance, and I felt Itsuki’s warning look on my face.

  A deep, rolling chuckle – sick children screaming for their mothers, condemned men crying for mercy – and Yuki-Onna seemed to shift forwards, eager. “Interesting. She has fire. Not to your usual taste. Perhaps that is why you seek to be rid of her?”

  Something, some brittle note, some falsity in her delivery of the lin
e struck me as … wrong. It seemed like a line, a piece of dialogue written down and memorized, then delivered by some puppeteer in a play – and not a particularly good one.

  Involuntarily my gaze flickered up to hers, and for less than an eye blink, I could have sworn I saw something else – something that was still human – looking back at me from within or maybe around the edges of that immense and malevolent power. Then it was gone. Gone so completely that I was no longer truly sure I had seen anything at all, and had to look away once more.

  Itsuki did not rise to her taunt, but merely inclined his head towards me, encouraging me to speak up for myself since I had forcibly disrupted his plan to play intermediary. I swallowed, and my throat clicked dryly. But I lifted my chin and fixed my eyes on the flowers of frost behind the snow maiden’s head.

  “My lady, at the last dark of the Moon, you … you called a man here into the wood. But he escaped. I found him the next morning at the edge of the trees. Though he was – wounded – the wound was not fatal, and he should have recovered. Only he was – is – still held in the same magic that had called him to the wood. He rests in a sleep that no one can wake him from, and if he sleeps for much longer he will die. That man is my father.”

  Her head tilted slightly sideways, as if in confusion. The birdlike gesture somehow made her seem a little more human, and, encouraged, I went on. “In fairness, my family begs that you break your spell upon him, and let him go free.”

  “Fairness?” she repeated sibilantly, and at the hissing sound all her dead servants stirred with a dry, uneasy rattle.

  “Yes.” I pressed my lips together tightly. But the Yuki-Onna did not continue. She seemed to be waiting. I forced myself to speak again. “You – you had your chance to capture him, my lady, and you failed. He returned to us. It is not fair to make us slowly watch him waste away out of … of spite.”

  Itsuki made a jerky, aborted movement beside me, and the Yuki-Onna seemed to go still.

  “Your people were not fair to me,” she said, and the softness of her voice now was like the rattle of death in an old man’s chest. “They had the power to save me once, and they refused to help. Why should I care for fairness now? Now that I have the power, and they do not?”

  “What you say is true,” I admitted. “But the people you speak of, who did not save you – they are all long dead, and you have punished many, many others since then who were and are innocent of any crime.” Strangely, it was Hyouta’s face that flashed before my eyes, and urged me to speak my thoughts aloud. “How much more suffering must you inflict before you are satisfied? Is your vengeance not complete yet?”

  There was a beat of quiet. Itsuki shifted slightly in place but stayed where he was, as if to move would incite the snow maiden, the way a mouse fleeing for freedom captures the attention of a cat.

  Then the Yuki-Onna rose to her feet in a jerky, furious movement. “None of you are innocent!”

  She made a furious sweeping motion with one hand. Faster than I would have believed their clumsy bodies could move, two of the dead servants lunged forwards. Their spindly twisted limbs came up like spears, bone shards and icicles bristling, to pierce me or rend me in two.

  Roaring like thunder, Itsuki threw himself into their path.

  He sent the closest one flying with a swipe of his arm that reminded me irresistibly of the great white cat that lurked within him. The servant tumbled head over heel, crashed against the wall of the maze, and was still. The other one was still reaching for me. Itsuki turned on it. He ripped its arms from its body in a single brutal movement. It toppled to the ground, legs thrashing.

  Spinning in place, Itsuki threw the disintegrating bundles of sticks that had been the thing’s limbs at the foot of the Yuki-Onna’s throne, and roared again.

  “You shall not harm her!” The gentle rumble of his voice was almost unrecognizable, transformed into a growl of pure ferocity – and I realized with a shock that I had never heard him angry before, not ever. “Torment me as you will, I have earned it, but Hana-san has done nothing wrong. You will have to kill me before I let you touch her, do you understand me?”

  The Yuki-Onna and the beast stared one another down, each of them breathing hard, two raging creatures of dark magic – with me, the soft, unprepared human caught between them. Then the snow maiden put back her head and laughed.

  It was a wicked, gloating laugh of mean delight, and the sound made me shudder.

  “Oh, yes! Yes! This is perfect. I have waited for this day, and now at last it has come. Take him!”

  As one, the army of servants rushed forwards from every corner of the maze, converging on Itsuki where he stood before the Yuki-Onna’s throne. They brushed by me as if I was not there, sending me stumbling back with no more effort than I would use to wave away a fly.

  The things spun and bent and twisted, surrounding Itsuki with a forest of white branches and bones, spiked with shards of ice. In less than a moment they were no longer free-standing individuals but a single structure. A woven cage, pockmarked everywhere with dead human faces. The cage enclosed Itsuki completely, and then contracted, forcing him down onto his hands and knees.

  I cried out – but at my first step in his direction, the Yuki-Onna closed her fist, and Itsuki collapsed, curling up in an all-too-familiar spasm of pain.

  She wagged a finger at me gently, smiling a terrible smile. “You asked me, child, if my vengeance was yet complete. The answer is no. Never has this brute loved anyone or anything as much as himself – and so himself was all that I could take from him, little as it was. But you, you have made something wonderful possible. In such a short time, you did what I could not achieve in one hundred years. You have placed him in the position to watch helplessly as what he cherishes is wrenched away from him.”

  Itsuki uncoiled and slammed against the inside of his cage, sending chunks of bone and ice and one of the human heads flying as he snarled at the snow maiden through the bars.

  “Hush now. Don’t worry, my darling,” the Yuki-Onna crooned. “I shall not hurt a single hair upon her fair head, never fear. I don’t need to.” She fixed her burning black gaze on me, the smile dying from her face. “You can go. My maze is not for such as you – you should never have come here.”

  Frozen in place, yearning desperately to run to Itsuki’s side yet fearing to make his agony worse, I stared at her in dismay.

  She clicked her tongue. “Are you paying attention, child? I grant your request. Your father will live. You may walk free of this place, unmolested, and the moment you are gone from here, your father will open his eyes again and be just as good as new. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “I – I – yes – but – I…” My gaze returned to the cage. Itsuki’s claw-like fingers had curled out of his prison, nails digging deep into carved horn and bone. His hood had fallen down, and his poison-green eyes stared out at me from between the bars.

  “There is just one more thing,” the Yuki-Onna said. “A price that must be paid for my fairness. The moment that you leave this place, the maze will close to you, and the Dark Wood will hide it. You will never, ever return here. You will never see this beast again. Your father’s life and your own, in return for the beast’s happiness. Doesn’t that seem fair?”

  She was offering me everything I wanted, everything for which I had been willing to risk or even sacrifice my life. Yet I met Itsuki’s eyes, and I could not move. I could not turn, I could not take a step, no more than I could have grown wings and flown. I couldn’t.

  Itsuki spoke, his voice the same soft rumble I had grown to trust, though it was hoarse now with deep, panting breaths. “Hana-san. You must go.”

  “No.” I shook my head furiously. “No, I won’t leave you like this. I can’t!”

  “Your father.” Itsuki’s great pale head came up to the bars, pressing against them as if he could not help but try to get closer. “It’s his life. It is your life.”

  “He’s right,” the Yuki-Onna said, and my stomac
h turned. “If you don’t go now, I may change my mind. With a snap of my fingers, your father could die, and it would be all your fault for being so ungrateful.”

  “Itsuki—”

  “Go. I’ll be all right. I promise. Go.”

  Heartsick and torn, I stared into his eyes. He nodded, and despite everything, despite the cage around him and the Yuki-Onna towering over him on her throne, there was a kind of … happiness on his face, a kind of peace. He wanted me to go. He truly wanted to help save my father, and for me to be free. Slowly, hating myself, hating the Yuki-Onna most of all, I turned away.

  The walls of the Moon maze peeled back silently before me, clearing the path straight down to the shore of the island where the white boat waited in the black water. The snow maiden’s triumphant laughter rang in my ears, following my every step.

  From Itsuki there was no sound at all.

  Eighteen

  By the time I reached the shore of the island and allowed myself to look back, the maze had reformed itself behind me, and the snow maiden, and the dead remains of the villagers, and Itsuki, were all hidden from view behind its shining walls. I struggled with myself for another moment, my hands aching for the grip of my bow, hearing Itsuki’s last words to me in my head – urging me to go, reminding me that this was about my father’s life. And then, with my heart like a lump of rock inside my chest, I climbed gracelessly back into the boat and sat down.

  With nearly indecent speed – as if the Yuki-Onna or whatever force served her was desperate to have me gone – the boat slithered smoothly from the narrow sandy shore. The hull sank into the water. The boat moved forwards.