The Priestess and the Dragon

by Nicolette Andrews

  "Suzume," she ground out and took the opportunity to try to adjust the sandal on her foot. She missed her platforms and her palanquin. Small blisters had formed beneath her dusty socks.

  "Soo-zoo-me." He rolled her name around on his tongue and she regretted telling him immediately. He repeated her name several more times--only to further infuriate her, she suspected.

  She knew she should stay on his good side. He had threatened to kill her and her entire family, after all. I would fry him now and walk the rest of the way if it meant I could return home, she thought. If I knew how, she amended.

  The Dragon laughed suddenly. He startled her and she threw her arms out, throwing her shoe. She almost fell over and saved herself by rocking forward on the balls of her feet.

  "What is so funny?" she asked with hands crossed over her chest once she had regained her balance.

  He was bent over taking large belly laughs and did not respond right away. When he did, it was halting. "Your... name... means... sparrow!" As he said this, he laughed harder and clutched at his side.

  Suzume frowned and considered throwing her other straw sandal at him, the head priestess' warnings be damned.

  "Why would a sparrow be so funny?" she asked again. She took a deep breath and tried to keep her own temper in check.

  "It's not the sparrow that's funny. It's you! A loudmouthed arrogant woman! You're nothing like a sparrow." He pointed at her as he said this and Suzume colored and turned away to hide her embarrassment.

  She sat down on a nearby fallen tree, removed her other sandal and pelted it at the Dragon. He dodged it and continued to laugh uproariously. I don't care what he thinks. He's just a lying fool.

  "Then what is your name, oh Great God of the Mountain?" she said.

  He stopped laughing and stared straight at her, and storm clouds seemed to gather behind his eyes. Suzume shrank back. What's gotten into him? The slightest thing upsets him.

  "A Yokai's true name is a secret no mortal shall know, but I was once called Kaito." His voice echoed through the valley, rippling along the river. She stared him in the eyes and refused to be cowed. He measured her, staring her up and down before turning to walk away without another word. Probably something to do with that woman again, she thought and fought the urge to roll her eyes.

  She was perplexed by his reaction, but pleased; her short temper and violence towards the false god had not summoned his wrath, not yet at least. Nothing worse than a man scorned! Suzume thought. They probably had a spat and she rightfully locked him up. She sighed. And now I am cleaning up the mess.

  She scanned the area for her sandals and found them floating along the river's edge, tangled in the reeds along the shore. She cursed aloud this time and went to find something with which to fish them out.

  Down the road Kaito called out, "You shouldn't wear socks with those, you'll get blisters!"

  "Thanks a lot," she muttered as she hoisted a sopping-wet straw sandal out of the water with a twig.

  As she pulled the other sandal out, something else came out of the water with it. A green webbed hand held onto the sandal as well.

  Suzume screamed and dropped the stick and fumbled backwards, falling onto her rear. The sandal landed in the water with a splash. The hand grasping the sandal was followed by an indented head, almost as if the creature had a dish in its skull. It emerged from the water's surface and blinked large black eyes at her. Suzume screamed again and the creature opened its beak and squawked at her.

  Suzume, over her initial fear, grabbed the stick and struck the thing with it.

  "Get out of here! You strange creature!" She shooed it.

  The Yokai flailed and splashed about, trampling the reeds.

  "What's all this commotion?" Kaito asked, coming over to Suzume, who was actively hitting the creature now.

  "This toad thing attacked me!" she said, pointing an accusatory finger at the creature, who had sunk down in the water. Only his black eyes and indented head were above the water's surface.

  "This?" Kaito pointed to the creature. He knelt along the shore. The creature sank beneath the surface, leaving a ripple in its place. Kaito reached in after it and pulled out the squirming creature, which continued to wail a high-pitched shriek. It was a pale green all over with a turtle shell and webbed hands and feet. "Stop your noise, insect. I am your lord returned after many centuries' sleep."

  The creature flailed and beat at Kaito's arm with its webbed hands. He sighed. "Use your words. I know you speak the common tongue."

  The creature looked at him, blinking its large black eyes. "You no eat me?" it asked with a trembling squeaky voice.

  "No, I will not eat you," Kaito said with a smirk. "If you behave and answer my questions."

  The creature nodded its head furiously and it was a wonder the water in the indent on its head did not spill out onto the ground.

  "What is it?" Suzume asked as she wrinkled her nose.

  "This?" Kaito said as he dangled the creature in front of Suzume. "This is a Kappa. A little insect that lives in bodies of water and has a bad habit of drowning unsuspecting idiots, don't you?" He shook the Kappa, who nodded its head in eager agreement as if blindly agreeing to Kaito's insults.

  "Are you saying I'm an idiot?" Suzume asked with an arched brow.

  "No, you just did." He smirked and then turned his attention back to the Kappa. "Now tell me, who has been ruling this region in my absence?"

  "Many come. Many go. Humans multiply. Big ones disappear but for one." The Kappa looked back and forth, not meeting Kaito's gaze.

  "Answer me straight, you little water beetle! Who is it, the monkey clan? The ogres? No, wait, they're both too stupid to even put on pants, it wouldn't have been either of them. "

  "This region is ruled by Governor Kitayama," Suzume interjected but was quickly cut off.

  "Not your paltry human 'rulers', one of the one hundred thousand, the earth's first children, an immortal. We owned this land before Seikatsu accidentally unleashed you pests upon the earth. And now look how you've spread across this land like a disease." He shook the Kappa again. "Who is the remaining 'big one', then?" he growled.

  The Kappa shrank into itself, making a compact little ball. "He has many names. Many faces. No one knows for sure."

  Kaito sighed. "I'll let you live this time, but if you try to drown something of mine again, I'll use your shell as my soup bowl!"

  He dropped the Kappa. It landed on its turtle shell and rolled over before scurrying into the water. The last they heard was a splash. All that marked his escape was a small ripple on the surface of the water. Suzume stared at the place where the Kappa had been. Why have I never seen things like this until now? She looked back to the Dragon. Everything changed when he woke up.

  "What does he mean, 'big one'?" she asked.

  He crossed his arms over his chest as he scanned the horizon. His eyes narrowed, looking in the distance. Suzume shaded her gaze beneath her hand to try to spot what he was looking at but saw nothing.

  "What are you looking at?" she asked impatiently.

  After a few minutes of silence he answered her. "There are different types of Yokai. They range anywhere from beings like me down to insects like that thing. My kind rule over the smaller ones and keep them from devouring each other. If there were another being like me in this area, I would feel his spiritual pressure or at least a trace if he were disguising himself."

  "Well, do you sense anything?" she asked with a hand on her hip.

  "No," he replied.

  "Well, isn't that a good thing?"

  "It is as if there is no Yokai here at all, expect for these dumb creatures. Which cannot be possible, there should be someone here. It's possible whoever this 'big one' is, he's powerful enough that he does not even leave a trace of his spiritual energy. That would make him as powerful as me." He frowned.

  She did not like the sound of two of Kaito. Suzume snatched her sandal off the ground and shoved her foot into it. It squished unpleas
antly as she walked, but there was no time to complain or she would be left behind.

  "Where are you going?" she demanded.

  "An old friend of mine is nearby. I think it's time we paid him a little visit and found out about this 'big one'." He smiled at her over his shoulder.

  Suzume sighed. Somehow she did not think this encounter would bode well for her. Maybe if she was lucky, Kaito would meet this big one and they would somehow kill one another and take care of her problem for her. She could only hope.

  Chapter Seven

  Suzume's eyes refused to stay open. Her head bobbed as she followed Kaito. Her body ached, and her bottom and back were bruised from sleeping on a lumpy mat. She had tossed and turned throughout the night. Every call of a wild animal and even the sound of the wind through the trees had her bolting upright.

  The Dragon had been awake most of the night as well. After the sixth time being awoken by an animal screeching, she had seen him sitting by the campfire, staring into the flames, lost in thought. The light had danced in his eyes and gave him a haunted, dangerous look. It was no wonder he did not sleep, she wouldn't want to sleep either if she had slept for five hundred years. He had not acknowledged her and she had not said anything about the sullen looks he gave her.

  In the morning he was his same chipper self, urging her to hurry along like the happy sadist he was.

  Kaito turned away off the road and down an embankment. She was in a daze and nearly walked past him until he grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her down with him. She lost her footing and slipped down the side, staining her clothes with mud and losing her hat in the process. It flipped end over end before plopping in a particularly large mud puddle with green algae clinging to the edges.

  "What did you do that for!" she snapped. The sleepless night wore her temper thin.

  "You were wandering off."

  She looked forlornly at her ruined hat. The sun would fry her pale skin for sure. "Well, you could have said something instead of grabbing me."

  "And miss an opportunity to see you fall in the mud?"

  She clenched her hands into fists and tried to find a reasonable response, but that was impossible with Kaito. "Where are we going?"

  He did not answer her and instead leapt along a few rocks across to the other side of the river. From her vantage point, she could see large trees, their roots exposed by the water rushing beneath them. Is he really leading me into a swamp? He has to be joking. She waited for him to turn back around and tell her it was a joke. When he didn't, she knew she had to follow.

  Though Suzume had never had the displeasure of stepping foot in a swamp before, she imagined this was the worst of them all. There were no pathways, so they were forced to jump from slippery, slime-covered rocks across bubbling brown mud that somehow constituted water.

  Suzume slipped at least ten different times and her pants were soaked up to the knee. Hundreds of thousands of tiny buzzing insects had made a feast of her, and her skin was already marred by angry red welts where they had dined upon her. Now would be a good time to learn how to zap things with my powers, she thought as she swatted at another insect that had landed on her neck.

  As Suzume questioned her sanity in following the Dragon into this swamp, her foot slipped on another slick rock and she went into the boggy mud. She landed with a plunk up to her waist. Mud flew into the air and landed on Suzume's face and neck. The thick brown water squirted and squished as she clawed at the fragile ground, which slid through her fingers, coating them in a slimy residue as she tried to climb back out. The mud that had landed on her face rolled down her cheek, leaving a filthy trail on her skin.

  Kaito stood a few feet ahead of her at the edge of a rare patch of earth.

  "We don't have time to stop and play in the mud," he called out to her.

  She scowled at him, but it lost some of its power when she was covered head to toe in muck. "I am not playing in the mud. I slipped. Why does your friend have to live in such a disgusting place anyway?"

  "Looks like you're playing in it to me." He smirked.

  She had no rebuttal and decided to revert to more childish antics. She stuck her tongue out at him.

  Kaito laughed and then said, "I don't mind this place so much. It's tranquil." He held up his hand and a dragonfly with shimmering blue wings landed on the tip of his finger.

  Suzume huffed and dragged herself out of the mud, which made a sucking sound with each labored inch as she pulled herself out. Her pants clung to her thighs and her long sleeves were weighed down with saturation. She trudged over to him on the island in the center of the mud.

  "Your idea of tranquil and my idea of tranquil vary greatly." She shook her hands and mud went flying in all directions. Kaito dodged a particularly large glob that she had aimed at his head. "How much farther is this place?"

  "We're here," he replied with a wave of his hand to indicate the dirt patch on which they stood.

  Suzume looked around. They were on an island perhaps the length of her arm span before it widened to maybe twice that at the far end, where a grass-covered mound sat.

  "You brought me into the middle of the swamp for... this?" She swept her arm across the landscape. The trees were different here than anything she had seen before. Their roots were above the waterline and they looked like hundreds of coiling snakes curling and jutting out of the brown muddy water. Land was a rare sight and it was predominantly water and trees. The island they stood upon spearheaded into the river that ran through the swamp, and unlike the areas they had trudged through, the water was relatively clear here.

  "That I did. Maybe we can make this our summer home."

  She narrowed her eyes at him, but before she could snap back a retort, something else spoke instead. "I know this voice, though long has it been since I heard it."

  Suzume glanced about, looking for the speaker, but there was no one there but Kaito and her.

  "Did I hear someone talking just now?" Suzume asked.

  "You did. It was I," the voice said.

  Suzume spun around in circles, flinging mud every which way as she did so. "This isn't funny, Kaito."

  Kaito laughed so hard that tears streamed down his cheeks. He clutched his knees and waved his hand towards the grassy mound at the far end of the island. It had moved closer. The front of the mound was diamond shaped and the back almost serpentine, but wider. Suddenly the front lifted up, revealing a crevice beneath. Suzume screeched and fell backwards onto her rump. Kaito was still laughing as she realized it was not a hill but a creature, which opened a wide mouth. It bellowed something akin to a laugh. The creature's breath stank like fish and the mucky water.

  Suzume climbed onto her knees and frowned at the two of them. Kaito stopped laughing and went to kneel in front of the creature, which had raised itself off the ground by a few inches and sported short stubby legs that were draped in slimy moss. Two tiny black eyes stared at her from the flat head, and smooth skin covered its body. The creature's feet were webbed and greenish brown and sank into the soft earth. His body was covered in the same glistening skin, and a large bulbous tail was sunk into the water at the edge of the island. It's a giant salamander. Yuck.

  "I have not had quite this much fun in a long time. The way she spun and mud went everywhere." It rumbled and croaked. "My old friend, I thought you were gone for good," the thing said in a deep booming voice.

  "You should know better than to doubt me." Kaito grinned.

  The creature nodded its massive head. "You're right. Perhaps it is a sign of the times. Once long ago I was sought after for my wisdom and knowledge; now I waste away here in my swamp, sometimes dreaming and sometimes listening."

  "Please tell me we didn't come here to hear the swamp monster's life story," Suzume said.

  Kaito ignored her and addressed the creature. "Well, I hope your ears are as sharp as they once were. Tell me what has happened in my absence? Everyone is gone, even the small ones are scarce."

  The giant salamander sho
ok his head back and forth, and clumps of grass and mud slid off his brow and revealed brown mottled skin beneath. Suzume wrinkled her nose as the creature sighed and a gust of foul-smelling wind hit her.

  "They've fled south to warmer climates, east and west to the sea, and north to the island. They were trying to get as far as they could from here."

  Kaito frowned. "What are they running from?"

  "A new Yokai appeared when you went to slumber. The small ones claim it devoured the less powerful to absorb their energy, but that sounds like small ones' nonsense to me," the giant salamander scoffed.

  "What is it, then?" Suzume asked. She had no patience for this chitchat in the swamp. The sun was rising high and so was the humidity. The insects buzzed about and she waved her hands in front of her face to bat away the swarm of gnats that were circling her.

  "I can only speculate, as I have never seen it myself, but I would wager it is a shape-shifter. Those that came through my swamp described it in different ways: Tall as a mountain, small as a gnat, as powerful as a dragon, or as meek as a small one. I would have left my swamp to search myself, but I could not leave it unprotected. The small ones I have managed to catch say this land is cursed."

  "What could you possibly protect in this swamp?" Suzume said with her arms crossed over her chest. "It sounds like you're just afraid of this powerful Yokai."

  The giant salamander stared at her for a moment and she did not like the way its slimy eyes felt on her skin.

  "Did you learn what you wanted?" Suzume asked Kaito to end the silent appraisal of the swamp monster.

  "Not quite. When the shifter rose, where did it come from?"

  The creature lowered its head and hummed a rumbling sound that rippled the muddy water around it. "Now that is a good question. It happened so long ago I think my memories are foggy."

  "He doesn't remember--let's go. I am being eaten alive here!" Suzume snarled as she slapped another bug on her arm.