“That was why, when Kato told me what you had done, I was so impressed,” she said.
A knock at the door. The serving girl came in just long enough to set a tray down on a nightstand. On it, a bottle of plum wine and two small cups. Ren sniffled, but that did not stop her reaching for the wine. She held her billowing sleeve back as she poured into the cups. Her bare wrist was pale as her namesake, small and delicate and—
Like yours. Like your small hands beating at my face, trying to get me to stop hurting you and—
“Barsalai?” Ren was speaking to me.
I’d closed my eyes to shut out the image of you. Now I opened them and found that she, too, looked wounded.
She slid over the cup of wine. “Drink,” she said. “You look like a woman who needs it.”
I was a woman who needed oil. Not alcohol. But I did not have much to counter that with. It’d been some time since I last had plum wine, at any rate. I sighed and tipped the cup to my lips. It tasted like dirt, which didn’t much surprise me. Foolish of me to hope it’d be any different.
“Barsalai,” she said, tutting softly. “Something wears on you.”
She reached for me; I drew away. No. No one could touch me. I did not deserve such sympathy, nor the wine that I continued to drink. This entire situation was preposterous.
Ren must’ve realized her doting was getting her nowhere. She finished her cup and set it down. Then she held up the mask again. “Do you know how many years my father wore this?”
I studied it. Whoever cast it did a fine job—the fox’s whiskers stood out now after at least a century—but nicks and scratches betrayed its age.
“Many,” I said.
Ren nodded. “Twenty years,” she said. “He stopped only when he lost his left eye.”
My head hurt when she said that—a sudden, sharp pain, like an arrow in my skull. I rubbed my eyes to deal with it, but it was gone within a few seconds.
“I was ten, I think, when that happened. Kato was five. All of us moved back to Imakane, where my father was born. With the money the Son of Heaven provided him, he bought a plot of land.” A fond smile crossed her face. “Would you believe I was a country girl?”
I shook my head. This village was not Fujino, but Ren made it seem bigger just by being in it.
“I was,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to go to the capital, but back then it was just an idle dream. My father thought he had two sons in those days. Perhaps he sought to marry me off to some other farmer’s daughter.”
* * *
I LET OUT a soft sound as it all fell into place. So that was why she kept so many horses! Like the healers of my people, she was a sanvaartain. With the proper medicines, she could change her body into one that suited her. Now her Qorin mentors made sense.
“I think I would have gone already, if the Yellow Scarves hadn’t attacked us. But they did. They were hungry, they claimed, and ours was the only farm that bore crop that season. So they took everything, torched the land, and killed my parents.”
She said it softly, quieter than a whisper. I fought the urge to touch her shoulder. I wanted to comfort her somehow. I know what it is like to lose family. I know what it is like to be alone.
But my hands were no longer meant for comforting. The moment I reached out, I caught sight of my talons and drew back. No.
“I’ve been here, trying to earn enough so that Kato and I can move to Fujino together,” she said.
Silence followed. Oil. Ask her for the oil. A great pyre I’d light, and she’d see it here from her balcony and know that I was free. Oil.
But Ren stood from the bed. Without her wooden sandals, she was smaller than I thought. I could see her pulse as she came closer. One, two, one two—I could see it. I bit my lip and resolved to look at her hands, and only her hands.
Except I saw her pulse there, too.
Urges. Half of me screamed to pin her against the wall and tear out her throat. The other half still wanted to pin her to the wall, still wanted to press my teeth to her neck—but that was different. Singing girl. I could make her do more than sing, if she wanted me.
But neither of those things were me, neither of those were my thoughts, so why was it that I kept thinking them? Why did I keep hearing them over and over when all I wanted to do was die?
I pressed myself flat against the wall.
“Barsalai,” she said. “Did something happen at the cave?”
Did something happen at the cave? she asked, as if I wanted to speak about this at all with someone I barely knew. Yes, something happened at the cave. I proved I’m a worthless human being.
Save that I was no longer human.
I massaged my temples. Biting my lip, I nodded.
“I thought as much,” she said. “That is why you want oil today, and not food.”
Again I nodded. Just give me the oil. Just give me the oil and let me jump into the fire; better that than live and continue hurting you.
“Was she hurt?” Ren asked. “The woman you wanted to buy food for.”
I was a waterskin, pierced by an arrow. Something within me just … just burst. And before I knew what was happening, I was on the floor of a singing girl’s home in tears.
“I did it,” I kept repeating. “I hurt her, I almost killed her and I couldn’t stop.…”
Clutching my knees, I was clutching my knees, rocking back and forth. Horrible, weepy moans left me. At times I’d tug at my hair or rake my cheeks. Ren sat in front of me, whispering words I did not quite understand in the haze of my depression. I remember her saying she was going to hold me, I remember that. I remember how she struggled to fit her arms around me because of our disparate sizes. I remember how much she looked like you: small, dark, delicate, like a porcelain doll I’d nearly shattered.
I let her hold me. I let her hold me because I knew I was never going to let you do it again. Not with what had happened.
I do not know how long I was weeping, only that by the time I was done, my voice was hoarse and my eyes ached. It was only then that I began to hear what Ren was saying.
“You must keep going, Barsalai,” she said. “For all those who cannot.”
“Why?” I snapped. “Why bother?”
At this she pursed her lips. “Because we need hope,” she said.
I hung my head. Hope. As if I could provide such a thing.
Ren stood, all at once, and reached for the shrine. “You are the only one who has ever helped us,” she said. “Really helped us. The guards sit on their haunches and complain of danger; the captains on the Wall don’t pay attention to commoners. Only you helped us. Only you have lived, where everyone else has died.”
I wished I were dead, too. I looked up at her and frowned.
“There will be other villages,” she said. “Other singing girls who need help. There will be soldiers, once afraid of the blackblood, who remember that you’ve conquered it. Barsalai, you must keep going.”
“I hurt her,” I said.
“Does she live?” asked Ren.
I nodded. Yes, I’d seen you get up. You were alive, thank the gods.
“Then you have to see her again,” she said, “if only to apologize.” Ren sat near me again. With shaking hands, she offered me her father’s mask. “Here,” she said. “Wear it and remember: You are a hero in Shiseiki.”
I stared at it, stared at her.
“Take it,” she said.
“It was your father’s,” I said.
She nodded slowly. She touched the fox’s muzzle one last time. “It was,” she said. “But he cannot wear it now. So I think it is right for you to have it.”
I stared at the mask.
Yes, it was a fine piece of craftsmanship. Every hair on the fox’s muzzle ached to be petted. Wrinkles around its eyes suggested mischievous mirth. Ren was being humble about her father. Only officers receive war masks of this quality. Such a thing could easily fetch five hundred ryo at market. More, if the buyer, like my brother, delighted i
n historical artifacts. That was more than enough to leave this village. It was enough to feed a village.
Yet here she was, offering it to a woman she’d known for all of a day.
I shook my head. “I cannot,” I said.
Ren pursed her lips. “Barsalai, please,” she said. “It is the only thing of value I can give you.”
“Why?” I asked, meeting her gaze. Why give me anything at all? I’d only asked for oil.
Yet she did not waver. There was so much about her that reminded me of you, Shizuka—a different version of you. For she, too, was small as a yearling, but coltish and stubborn. I saw in her eyes and the set of her dainty feet that she was not going to let me win.
“You know the story of Minami Shiori and the fox woman?” she asked. Of course I did. I’d only heard you tell it forty times.
One day, while walking through the woods, a distraught woman came running up to your ancestor. The woman, dressed in finery, claimed that she was part of the Son of Heaven’s caravan. Bandits had just attacked. The guard captain was among the slain. She needed someone to fight back, and Minami Shiori was the first person she saw holding a sword.
Instantly Shiori was suspicious. Fine though the woman’s robes were, they were also old—the sort of thing a grandmother might wear.
“My lady,” said Shiori, “you understand, the gods are at war—these are troubling times. Swear on the Eight that the Son of Heaven is truly in danger, and I will go.”
At this the woman faltered. She hemmed and hawed and tried to find a way out of it. Just as Shiori was about to draw her blade, the woman spoke.
“I swear to you on the Eight,” she said, “that the Son of Heaven is truly in danger, and I will truly take you to his side.”
It is well known no one can break an Eightfold Oath. So Shiori followed the woman without reservation. Sure enough, she did come upon the Son of Heaven tied to a tree. Sure enough, his entire coterie lay as corpses around him, with holes where their hearts should’ve been.
It was then that the woman rounded on Shiori. She’d kept her word, for she’d brought her back to an endangered Emperor. But that was where the oath ended. As she fixed Shiori with her heart-piercing glare, she was sure of her victory.
But Minami Shiori knew the instant she laid eyes on the Emperor what had happened. She drew her blade and sheath, then held her sheath before her face.
“Will you not put your weapons down?” cooed the fox woman. “I mean you no harm.”
“You mean to kill me,” she said, “and bewitch the Emperor besides. No, I shall not put my sword down.”
She crept closer, staring at the fox woman’s feet to judge distance. Fox paws peeked out from beneath the hem of her robes.
“But must you kill me, my darling?” said the fox woman. “For I have loved you long from afar, and I know all the secrets of your body. Come to me, lie with me, and I will make you strong enough to conquer Hokkaro.”
Shiori took another step forward, and another, and another. Eventually she did drop her sword and sheath—but she never looked directly at the creature. It wrapped its arms around her, pulled her in close—
And it was then that Shiori struck. She pulled a knife from inside her sleeve and slipped it between the fox woman’s ribs. After the creature crumpled to the ground, she cut off one of its nine tails, and dabbed the blood on the Emperor’s lips. This broke the fox woman’s spell.
That is not a very good telling of the story. I am certain that, reading this, you are shaking your head, lamenting some part I’ve forgotten. I know Shiori says something before she stabs the fox woman in your version. I do not know what it is. Something full of bravado, probably. I will let you fill in that detail now, as you are reading.
“I don’t know much about your condition,” Ren had continued, “or how it affects you. But I do know you are more of a hero than Minami-zuo was. All she had to do was resist a fox woman. Difficult, but it is something anyone might do if they put their mind to it.”
She paused and touched my face. I do not want you to think it was an amorous sort of touch; it was not. Concern, pity, sympathy—these things dominated her features. If she’d wanted to bed me, she would have made it clear, Shizuka; this was nothing more than comfort.
“What you fight is much worse. It is not a fox woman, standing in front of you. It’s in your blood,” she said. Her hand hovered over my heart, but she did not touch it. Already she was treading on broken ice. If she touched my heart, she’d fall into the frozen water. “Barsalai, I cannot know how you suffer. But you must keep fighting her, this fox woman in your veins. Your Empress is helpless until it is slain. If you give in, she, too, will wither and die.”
I find it strange, to this day, that she chose a story about Minami Shiori to make her point. Why not one about Emperor Yone, or the Gray Master? Or Yusuke the Brawler?
Why choose a story about one of your ancestors saving another?
Something about this struck me. At times, Shizuka, life is like watching pine needles falling into poems.
And you and I, well …
“Take the mask, Barsalai,” she said. “Mock your temptations. Do not let them rule you. Your Empress needs you.”
I looked down at the laughing fox.
I thought of you in the woods alone, with no idea how to hunt and less idea how to make a camp. No—that wasn’t right. You knew how to make a camp, didn’t you? My mother sent you out a day’s ride from the clan once, on your own, so that you’d learn how to set up a tent and hunt for your own food. She left you there for a whole week before she allowed me to go to you. I was terrified that you’d be lost or hungry, but there you were hale as ever. You’d coaxed a birch tree from the ground and slung a blanket over its lowest branch in lieu of a real tent. Your campfire was badly made, and by all rights should not have lasted an hour, let alone however long you’d been keeping it. Next to the fire was a pot full of berries not native to the steppes. On second glance many of the same berries grew on the birch tree, somehow, though they don’t normally bear fruit. You had a single marmot cooking on a spit above the flames. You had not bothered to skin it. Did the smell of burning fur not bother you?
“Cheater,” I said.
You laughed. “To survive is Qorin, isn’t it?” you said. “Your mother said I should use all the tools available to me.”
You and I both knew she hadn’t meant divine tools.
But you and I both knew that I wasn’t going to tell her.
Now, even as the memory hurt me, it brought me comfort. You could hunt. Not well, but you could. You had my tent. If an animal approached you, then you had your sword. When it came to survival you’d get by, as you always did.
But what about you? About us? I tried to kill you and then left without saying anything at all. That would shatter the hardest of hearts.
And so I put on the mask.
Ren’s smile was one of teary-eyed relief. She threw her arms around me and held me tight for a few beats. “Barsalai,” she said, “you may have whatever you wish from my home. If you … If you still want the oil…”
I shook my head. “Food,” I said. “I will return in the morning for it.”
Together we rose. She gave a short bow. “Good,” she said. “I shall watch for your mare. And, Barsalai?”
I turned, one hand on the sliding screen.
“I hope I will see you again.”
There is a certain pain one feels at times. Not from a wound, but from the anticipation of the wound. In that instant before blade meets flesh, already you can imagine what the cut will be like. Your mind hurts you before the metal does.
That moment, I think, was an arrow soaring toward me.
“I do, too,” I said.
I rode into the forest like a crack of thunder. Our camp didn’t take long to reach. When I arrived, I saw only our tent, only the trappings we’d left behind. I did not see you. I did not see your stout red gelding. I swallowed the worry rising in my throat and closed
my eyes.
I have known you all my life, Shizuka. I have played with you in the gardens of Fujino; I have slaved over letters written in a language I could barely read, I have shared a bed with you, I have held you at the moment of your small death. Part of a person’s soul is in their scent: I have half of yours, and you have half of mine.
On some level, I knew this. So when I took a deep breath of the forest air, I knew what I was looking for. Your scent. Your steel peony scent.
I caught a glimmer of it to the east. I urged Alsha in that direction, standing in the saddle to get a better view of things. The scent of you grew stronger and stronger. But there was another smell, too, just as floral.
At last, I spotted familiar felt. There was my tent, flung over a low hanging branch. Bright white lilies surrounded it, lilies I’d only seen in the Imperial Gardens. At the center of the flowers, just in front of the tent, you sat with your arms around your knees. Twigs and petals alike were entangled in your now-messy hair; your cheeks were puffy and your eyes were red from all the tears.
But it was you.
“Shizuka!”
When you turned and saw me, your eyes went dawn-bright, your mouth hung open. “Shefali!” you cried. You ran to me. The flowers parted for you.
I jumped off Alsha and met you halfway, and you slammed into me with as much force as your small body could muster. I staggered backwards a step or two as you squeezed me tighter than ever before.
I kissed your forehead, kissed your hair, took deep breaths of your soul. I counted all your fingers, checked you for injury. You were fine. Thank the gods, you were fine. Weeping, but fine.
The gasps that left you reminded me of a mewling kitten. Tears rained down from your eyes; snot dripped from your button nose. You beat my chest with your tiny fists.
“Idiot!” you said amid the weeping. “Running off like that, after saying what you did…”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. Gods, but you kept crying and crying—you gasped for breath. “But you need to breathe, Shizuka.”
You kept beating at me, raking your nails down my deel. “I didn’t know where you were, Shefali, you left me alone and—”
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