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

by A. L. Knorr

  I slowed and spiraled, catching an updraft and taking it higher. The fissure ended and became thick forest over steadily rising ground. The landscape turned into a sea of bright treetops and dark shadows. I dove down and into the trees. Here, there was no gliding, here there was only quick banks and turns. Skimming through narrow openings between branches to grab the breeze, and skipping up with it like an athlete sprinting upstairs.

  A clearing bathed in sunlight up ahead revealed my prey. Aimi let loose that laugh again and I responded with a haunting scream. The race was on. She sprinted full out and I followed from above, diving and turning and trying my best not to misjudge and crash. The forest got tighter and tighter, the branches skimming my feathers. Aimi's running form appeared and disappeared below me in flashes through gaps in the canopy. We exploded into a clearing and I dive bombed for her head.

  She was too quick. Bunching her hindquarters, she took a flying leap to meet me in the air. She shimmered, taking on her full-sized shape and punting me in the breast with her nose. I bounced up into the air in a turmoil of feathers, that yipping laughter coming from everywhere. I righted and circled the clearing, screaming in pretend frustration.

  Aimi sat on her haunches and watched me, those bright eyes blinking into the sun, her tongue lolling out and her sides heaving. She'd won and we both knew it. She lowered onto her elbows as I flew low enough to raise the dust in front of her. She dropped her chin onto the dirt as I landed and bounced up to her. I ruffled my feathers and shook the ache out of my wings.

  The sound of a human voice in the distance made Aimi raise her head and cock an ear upward. Our mother. Aimi made eye contact with me and stopped panting, going as still as a statue. I bobbed my head twice and took to the air. It took mere minutes for me to retrieve our clothing, but as I grasped the robes I realized they were too heavy for my current form. I shifted into a falcon so I could bear the burden.

  I winged back to Aimi with our clothing but I deposited her dress on a branch and out of her reach. She lowered her head and watched me as I shimmered and took on my human form, pulling my dress on in front her.

  She let out a whine.

  I grinned at her. "You know what I want," I said. "You won that one, but unless you want to show up at home stark naked then you know what to do."

  She whuffed at me, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. Her fur rippled like a sharp wind had blown over her and her big powerful form melted away, leaving a fox pup.

  "Ohhhhhhhh," I squealed.

  She sat back on her little haunches and howled to the sky, the cry turning into a yipping laugh. Her eyes had gone the soft green of winter moss. Her ears had thickened and shrunk, soft little triangles poking out to the sides. Her fur was fuzzy and stuck out in every direction like black dandelion fluff. Her tail was short and narrow, unlike the thick bottle-brush tail of her full-grown form. It stuck up behind her and curled over to one side.

  "Gaaaaa! You're so cute!" I cried.

  She tottered toward me on baby fox legs and I scooped her up and held her warm body under my chin. Her fur was down-soft and hot from the sun. She licked my face and neck as I cradled her. She stuck her cold wet nose into my ear and I laughed. Kitsune rarely had reason to take the form of a kit. It was an act of love. When we were like this, I had no anxiety in the whole world and she could feel it. She stopped licking me and cocked her head, pointing her nose toward home. She gave a little whine. I hadn't heard anything with my human ears, but I knew Mother must be calling again.

  "Yes, all right," I said, putting her down and climbing the tree to retrieve her robes. When I turned back to her, Aimi was in human form again and holding out her hand for her clothing.

  She was shaking her head at me, a sly smile playing about her lips. "Your flying has gotten so much better," she said as she wrapped herself up and tied her dress closed. She scraped her disheveled hair back and twisted it up, retrieving a stick from her pocket to secure it.

  "Still didn't win," I said.

  She shrugged. "You probably will when it really counts."

  I opened my mouth to ask her about her cryptic words but she spoke first.

  "Shall we take the bridge back?" She began jogging for home, her bare feet flashing at me to keep up.

  7

  My mother had the door open and was waiting for us as we came up the walk, out of breath. Her brows drew together and the corners of her mouth pulled down. Her gaze traveled from the tops of our disheveled heads to our muddy feet. She shook her finger at us. "You're filthy again. You are lucky Kito has gone or he would change his mind. You couldn't pick another day to play your bush games?"

  We were used to her admonitions about our sport. My mind snagged the important thing like a burr to wool. "There has been an agreement?" I asked as she ushered us inside the house.

  "There has," she said. "Baths for both of you, and wash your hair. Kito returns tonight."

  I bit off a groan. Preparing a bath was my job and it took a long time to heat pot after pot of water and fill the large wooden tub we kept behind the frosted sliding glass doors.

  "I'll help you," Aimi said as my mother left us to talk with our father in the other room. We watched as she slid the door shut between the two rooms and gave us a stern eye to do as we were told. She and father would keep their voices so low that we wouldn't be able to eavesdrop, not in human form anyway.

  Aimi allowed me to have the first bath, a luxury that, as the youngest of the family, I had never had before.

  I scrubbed myself all over with wet soap first, and then sank into the steaming water with a sigh. Scratches on my legs that I hadn't noticed now stung from the hot water. I lifted my hair over the back of the tub and let my neck relax as Aimi picked the tangles out of my long black strands.

  I looked up at her as she was working. From the angle I saw her at, her face upside down, her lips looked downturned and sad. My heart gave a confused pang. I wanted Toshi, more than anything, but I hated to see Aimi unhappy. "You are the eldest," I pointed out. "It is traditional to marry off the older sister first." I could barely keep my voice from hitching.

  Her eyes flashed to mine. "How many elder sisters are Kitsune? Would you knowingly agree to marry a Kitsune off to a prominent member of your community without their knowledge?"

  "You could bring great fortune," I said.

  "I could bring great misfortune, as well. Even I don't fully know the nature of the warrior whose blood did this to me."

  "Yes we do," I said fiercely, sitting up and sloshing water over the side.

  "Shhh," she said, putting a hand on my shoulder and pushing me back down.

  "You are a Zenko; it is impossible to think otherwise," I said, my face flushing with heat. I couldn't tell if it was from the indignation I felt when Aimi talked like this, or from the steaming tub. There were two main kinds of Kitsune, and Zenko was the benevolent kind. It was unthinkable that Aimi was the malevolent kind, known as Nogitsune.

  Aimi swept my hair to the side. "Move down."

  I moved forward and tilted my head back as she scooped up water with a jug and poured it over my hair. I closed my eyes with the pleasure of her fingers scrubbing at my scalp.

  "When you talk like that, you sound like you want it to be me," Aimi said.

  "No," I answered. "You know that I love him. You don't love him." When she didn't answer I opened my eyes and straightened my head to turn and look at her. Water ran in rivulets down my face. I rubbed them away. "Do you?"

  She dumped another jug of water over my head and I had to close my eyes and cover my face.

  "Do not worry about me, little sister."

  Sitting there in that tub, my hands over my face and water sluicing over my head, my mind raced over the possible outcomes. Would our father knowingly wed a Kitsune into another family? Kitsune were as complex as the warriors they came from, never all good or all bad. Legends circulated of Zenko, benevolent Kitsune who healed the sick and provided wealth to families who were in great d
ebt, who influenced events to turn in their families’ favor. But there were just as many legends of Nogitsune, Kitsune who tricked people out of all of their wealth and disappeared without a trace, even of leading a husband they'd become tired of into a trap that would result in his ruin. Aimi had become my parents’ daughter before I was born; I couldn't picture life without her. Father was the one who had brought Aimi in, taking the risk of inviting a nogitsune into his home. Our mother had told our father that Aimi had gifted me with a tamashī—the spiritual heart of a creature of the Æther. I was also an Akuna Hanta, a hunter of demons. What that meant for my future, I didn't know, and even Aimi seemed unable to prepare me completely.

  The water stopped coming and I opened my eyes. Aimi took a bar of soap scented with yuzu oil and rubbed it into a wet cloth. She began to scrub my arm, keeping her eyes on her work, her face impassive. The truth that we both knew was that in this situation, one scenario was just as likely as another.

  I put my hand over hers and she stopped scrubbing. Her green eyes met my gold and there we locked, the sisterhood we'd shared up until this moment in time as visible to me as it was to her.

  "Promise me," I said, my voice shaking, "that no matter who has been given to Toshi, we will never let it come between us. We will always be sisters, always be together."

  Aimi held my gaze, and the soapy washcloth stilled on my shoulder. "Akiko," she said. "You are not a little girl anymore. At some point you have to stop living in a dream world. You know that I cannot promise you this, and you cannot promise it to me either."

  I gasped at the brutality of her words. She'd said them so softly, almost sweetly, but they shot straight to my heart and punctured me like a barb tipped with poison.

  "No," I said, my eyes widening.

  She dropped the washcloth in the tub, her expression melting. She took my cheeks in her hands. "I do not say this to hurt you, little sister. You will come into your Hanta powers soon. I will have to move on with whatever comes into my nature to do." Her voice took on a sound like wind. It blew around me and through me. "We are immortals. Forever stretches out in front of us. It is foolish to think that we can spend all of time together."

  "Why?" My vision blurred as tears filled my eyes. Aimi was going to leave me? I didn't know how to be anything without her.

  "Hush now," she said, releasing my face. She kissed my cheek and retrieved the washcloth from the tub. "Mother comes."

  "Aimi, are you in the tub yet?" came our mother's voice.

  "Just getting in now, Mother," she said.

  "You are dawdling." We heard the sounds of her hands clapping together, the way she did when she was trying to hurry us along.

  "Yes, Mother," Aimi and I said at the same time.

  Aimi brushed a tear away from my cheek, smiled at me, and picked up the jug to rinse me. "Cheer up. We have a fiancé to meet."

  * * *

  Kito arrived without Toshi and as I stood there behind my parents with my eyes on the floor, disappointment curdled in my stomach. I had thought there was a chance he would come.

  Aimi and I stood side by side, our hair pulled back and up in the traditional hairstyle of Furano, our village. We wore our best kimonos—Aimi striking in a moss-green that flattered her eyes, and me in my favorite shade of blue, like the sky on a cloudless day.

  There was bowing all around as my father, dwarfed by Kito's stature, welcomed him into our home. "These are my daughters, Aimi—the eldest, and Akiko. Good girls, both of them." My father's chest puffed out at these words and my mother’s face colored. She wouldn't say so in Kito's company, but my mother's advice was always to project humility.

  "Truly, you did not do your daughter's beauty justice," Kito said, in a voice that was surprisingly soft.

  My eyes flashed up to Kito and back down to the floor. My heart plummeted. His eyes had been on Aimi with these words.

  "Had I been given daughters and not sons, I would be thankful for girls such as these," Kito said. His shadow fell over me as he stood in front of me. “Don’t be afraid to look me in the eye.”

  I looked up and my eyes made contact with his. Gray, with a ring of brown around the pupil. My neck ached at the angle it needed to take to look up at him.

  I fought the urge to squirm under his scrutiny. I clutched at my forearms under the sleeves of my kimono, trying to warm my ice-cold hands.

  "You are very small," Kito said.

  I said nothing. A woman who was too small was not as desirable in the rural areas like ours. Our family was descended of the samurai class, which was my saving grace. I would never be required to take on the back-breaking labor of a farmer’s wife, but the job of childbearing fell to every woman, and the bigger, stronger women could bear more babies and would be more likely to have big boys.

  "Toshi tells me you esteem one another, is this true?" he asked, his eyes darting around my face in search of the truth.

  My lips parted to answer but my father got there first. "Akiko is the youngest, it is Aimi we agreed to this morning." His voice was gentle, wanting to correct the mistake without embarrassing Kito.

  "I know," replied Kito, his eyes never leaving mine. "What do you say, girl?"

  My heart pounding so loud in my ears it nearly drowned out my own voice, I found my courage. My father had offered Aimi, not me. This might be my only chance to fix it.

  "I do not just esteem your son," I said, my voice trembling. "I love and respect him." My voice grew stronger at the look of pleasure on Kito's face. "I would follow him anywhere, give him many children, and use any resource at my disposal to further his position."

  "Akiko," my mother said quietly, admonishing me.

  "No, I like a girl who can speak her mind when asked." Kito stepped back. "I am a descendant of an onna-bugeisha. I know the value that it is possible for a woman to bring, and the men of our age ignore this at their peril. I want a wife with a spirit like Tomoe Gozen for my son."

  "If I might," Aimi spoke, and Kito's eyes tracked to her. "I believe I am a better match for your son. I am older, stronger, wiser in the ways of our village politics, and able to counsel Toshi into a place of great respect."

  "This is most unusual," my father said, bewildered. The situation had gone in a direction that none of us had expected. Daughters were never asked for their opinions.

  Kito turned toward Aimi. "Are you saying Toshi would be undeserving of this respect without you at his side?"

  Aimi hesitated. "No, of course not. I meant no offense. Only that I can offer Toshi something more."

  My eyes were on the floor, but I didn't need to look at her to know what she was trying to convey. I could tell from the tone of her voice. She'd apologized, but her voice was loaded with secrets. Aimi was Kitsune, a creature of power, capable even of nudging fate if she felt inclined. She was a being that humans with a taste for risk tried to trap and enlist to their cause.

  But I was a creature of the Æther, too, capable of... and there my thoughts stalled. Capable of what? That was the problem, I didn't know yet. Anger filled my mouth with bitterness, but my fear was stronger. Aimi was attempting to sway Kito's preference with words. How far would she go? Would she use her power to alter this outcome into her favor? I turned my head to look at Aimi, but she kept her gaze on Kito.

  Kito made a long thoughtful grunt in the back of his throat. "But you do not love him."

  Aimi opened her mouth to respond when Kito raised a hand. "More importantly, he does not love you." He turned away from both of us. "Excuse me for this unexpected turn of events, Okaasan. I exchanged words with my son this afternoon." Kito dropped his chin on his chest, thoughtfully. "I speak of love but I am no sentimental fool. I was once in a similar position. I know the value of true affection. I would have a wife for my son who sees him the way my wife sees me. If you are not opposed—"

  My father was appeased by this show of deference. He nodded. "I am not against the match."

  The two men grasped forearms and it was finished. />
  My mother ushered us from the room as the men discussed a few details. My legs trembled and I thought for a moment I would collapse. It had not yet sunk in. Was I really to be Toshi's bride?

  When we were in the bedroom Aimi and I shared, my mother glared at both of us. "Not another word until he leaves," she said under her breath. She slid our door shut and left Aimi and I standing there alone.

  I felt out of breath. A confusion of emotions threaded their way through me. Elation at the outcome, anger with Aimi, but also a cold rationalization. I might have done the same thing had I been in her shoes. After all, our father had chosen her for Toshi, not me. In a way, I had stolen him from her.

  Aimi knelt down and crawled onto her sleeping platform. Without bothering to take off her kimono, she lay down on her side facing the wall.

  With some difficulty, I changed into my sleeping shift, put away my kimono, and went to my own bed. I lay down with my back to her.

  8

  The Ryozen Museum was an L-shaped, two-story building nestled among green shrubs and graced with elegantly curved, pagoda-inspired roofs. It did not look like a place with state-of-the-art security, which made me feel a little better, but the weight of what I was about to do still pressed heavily on me. Inside this building lay the key to my freedom. All I had to do to have my tamashī back was steal an antique short sword.

  I stood on the street looking up at the museum entrance. In my purse was a color printout of the blue wakizashi in its sheath. It wasn't great quality but it was the best I could get from a frozen video screenshot.

  My heart pounded in my ears, blocking out the sound of footsteps, conversation, honking, and traffic.

  Daichi had never asked me to steal for him before. And in my life before Daichi captured my tamashī, I had never stolen. My parents had raised me to keep my hands off things that weren't mine. Now I was going to steal from the state, from my country, from this museum, and from the Japanese people—my people.