by Julie Kagawa
“You will take it back,” she said again. “Take back your curse and return to me all the years I have lost because of it. A thousand years ago, I tried to summon you again and failed because of Hirotaka’s treachery. But that wish should have been mine.”
The Dragon’s eyes narrowed, as Hanshou raised both arms once more, her voice becoming desperate and shrill. “I will not spend another thousand years in this living hell!” she cried. “Grant me the Wish I should have had, or free me from this curse once and for all!”
The Dragon roared. The bellow made the rain dance and sent the wind into a mad swirl, tossing the carriage like a leaf. From above, below and all around us, lightning flashed, streaked from the clouds and converged on the figure hovering before the Dragon. Lady Hanshou threw back her head and screamed, convulsing like a bug in the center of the lightning web. I bit my lip, unable to look away or cover my eyes, and could only watch as the energy strands tore into the Kage daimyo again and again, making her body jerk erratically in the flashes.
Finally, the lightning storm ceased. For a moment, I saw Lady Hanshou floating there, her withered form now a charred, blackened husk, wings torn away, eyes blank and unseeing, before she dropped from the sky like a bundle of old twigs and rags, vanished into the swirling clouds below, and was gone.
I swallowed the sickness in my throat, and Tatsumi leaped from the carriage. Kamigoroshi blazing in his hand, he fell toward the Dragon, hair and clothes flapping in the wind, the deadly sword raised over his head. Eyes narrowed, he landed between the Kami’s sweeping, antlered horns and plunged Kamigoroshi point down into the Dragon’s skull.
The Dragon screamed. Its great body convulsed, thrashing and writhing in the air like it had been stuck with one of its own lightning bolts. The agonized wail tore through me like a hundred arrows, and in the echo of the storm, I could hear millions of voices raised in answering cries, the kami of the island, of perhaps the whole empire, reacting to the death of the great Dragon, the Lord of Tides and the Harbinger of Change.
A sob rose to my throat. But as the voices continued to scream, a shadow fell over me from behind, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I spun and saw silver hair, golden eyes and multiple tails as Seigetsu stared down at me, his gaze terrible and cold in the flickering light of the storm.
My heart stood still. “Seigetsu! How—?”
With lightning speed, the ninetail grabbed my wrist and lifted me off my feet. I gasped at the sudden pain, dangling in his grip, as Seigetsu regarded me with a smile.
“You have something of mine.”
I snarled at him, foxfire springing to my fingers, but he raised his other hand, and my stomach gave a violent lurch as if trying to expel an awful sickness. I gagged, mouth gaping open, as something forced its way up my throat, leaving a trail of cold fire behind it. A small globe the color of the moon slid between my jaws and into Seigetsu’s open palm. The ninetail gave a grim nod, and the ball vanished into his robes. I suddenly felt hollow and cold, like the flames that had been smoldering in the pit of my stomach had been snuffed out. Seigetsu gave me a sympathetic look, as if he knew what I was feeling.
“Thank you, daughter,” he told me. “Truly, I could not have done any of this without you. You have played your role admirably, but I’m afraid your part in this game is done. Say hello to Kiyomi when you reach the other side.”
And he hurled me out of the carriage.
A shriek lodged in my throat, terror flooding my body, as I flew into open air and started to plummet. I twisted, grasping desperately at nothing as tears streamed from my eyes and the wind tore at my hair and clothes, but only the roiling sky rose to embrace me.
Then there was a ripple of darkness, the glint of blue-black scales, and I struck something solid and unyielding that crushed my arm and drove the breath from me. Before I could comprehend what had happened, the thing I had landed on—the Dragon!—twisted sharply, sending me rolling. I gave a yelp and lashed out wildly, but my fingers slipped on the Harbinger’s smooth, hard scales and I slid steadily toward the edge of what could only be the Dragon’s skull.
As my feet slid over the Kami’s head into open air, my fingers closed on a handful of the Dragon’s long rippling mane, finally stopping my plunge into oblivion. Gasping, paralyzed with fear, I clung to the lifeline with both hands, seeing nothing beyond my sandals but swirling clouds.
“Yumeko!”
At Tatsumi’s frantic voice, I finally wrenched my wide-eyed stare from the drop past my feet and looked at the top of the Dragon’s head. Painfully, I pulled myself up the mane and saw a figure in the center of the Kami’s skull, still clutching the hilt of a sword as the Dragon’s body twisted and writhed beneath him in agony. Tatsumi met my gaze over the pitching of the Harbinger, his expression tortured, as if he was torn between slaying the Dragon and going to me.
As I took a breath to call to him, a pale shadow fell from the sky overhead. The demonslayer glanced up, and Seigetsu dropped onto the Dragon’s head and slashed his sword across Tatsumi’s chest. Blood arced from the demonslayer in a vivid stream, misting into the air, and Tatsumi fell backward, losing his hold on Kamigoroshi. I screamed his name in horror.
Seigetsu’s gaze flickered to me for the briefest of moments, before he turned away. Grasping the hilt of Kamigoroshi, still plunged halfway into the Dragon’s head, he paused, eyes narrowed and contemplative, and I wondered if he was going to pull it free.
The ninetail gave a terrible smile...and shoved the Godslayer the rest of the way into the Dragon’s head, sinking it past the hilt.
The Dragon jerked, jaws gaping, though no sound escaped it this time. But I saw its eye roll back, saw the moment the light faded from the Kami’s gaze and felt a sickness I’d never known spread from my heart to the rest of my soul.
Numb, I looked at Seigetsu, who straightened, hair and tails whipping around him, to stare at the Dragon’s head. Slowly, his hand rose, palm down and fingers spread, still gazing down at the Kami he had slain. Something flared in the Dragon’s forehead, glimmering like a fallen star. It floated steadily into the air, a tiny pearl, iridescent and beautiful, shining brighter than the moon itself. Seigetsu tilted his palm, and the jewel drifted into it, illuminating the kitsune’s face and the terrible, terrible triumph in his golden eyes.
“At last,” he whispered, his voice actually trembling as his fingers closed around the pearl. Tangling my fingers in the Dragon’s mane, I choked out an apology and pulled, yanking a few long, silky strands free, as Seigetsu’s voice continued overhead.
“One thousand years,” he murmured. “A millennia of planning, scheming, nudging the waters of fate, changing the destiny of countless lives, moving the pieces on the board without a single mistake. The game is finally over. The Fushi no Tama is mine.” He brought his fist to his face, the light from the jewel shining through his fingers. “I will be a god.”
“Seigetsu!” I pulled myself up the Dragon’s mane, using the last of my strength as I crawled onto the Harbinger’s skull. The ninetail lowered his arm and gazed at me as I opened my palms, calling my foxfire to life. One elegant eyebrow rose, and the kitsune smiled.
“What are you doing, daughter?” he asked, shaking his head as if I were an impertinent child. Below us, the Dragon’s body seemed to defy nature as it hovered motionless in the air, as if it were a feather floating on the surface of a pond. Seigetsu’s hair streamed around him as he tucked his hands into his sleeves, and the jewel vanished from sight. “It is over. The game is done, and the winner takes the prize.”
“That’s what you were after this whole time?” I panted. “A jewel? Why...?”
The words caught in my throat. A memory came to me then, from a lifetime ago. Sitting in a tiny room with Master Isao, listening to a story of an arrogant mortal and the jewel in the Dragon’s head.
“The Fushi no Tama grants immortality to anyone who posses
ses it.” Seigetsu’s voice echoed over the wind, and the eyes of the ninetail glowed yellow in the darkness. “The Harbinger’s wishes have brought nothing but ruin to this world. It is time for a new god to rise, one who is unconcerned with the desires of mortal men. I will shape this world anew and purge the greed of humans from the land once and for all. The Dragon is gone. A new Harbinger of Change has come!”
A shudder went through the Dragon. I felt the shiver ripple through the huge body, as whatever force was holding the mighty creature aloft departed. For a heartbeat, the Kami hung in the clouds, and in the second before it started to fall, Tatsumi lunged forward, yanked Kamigoroshi from the Dragon’s head and slashed it at the ninetail.
Seigetsu whirled, moving his head just enough so that the sword missed his face by a hairbreadth. A few strands of silver hair tumbled free and danced away on the wind. Tatsumi, the front of his haori drenched with blood, blinked as Seigetsu smiled.
“Not this time, Hakaimono. Now you face a god.”
He flicked a tail, and blue-white flames erupted from Tatsumi’s body, engulfing him completely. The demonslayer screamed as he was consumed by foxfire, dropping his weapon and falling to his knees.
Just as the real Tatsumi lunged through the blazing illusion and slashed Kamigoroshi into the ninetail.
Blood and smoke erupted as the illusionary Tatsumi vanished in a cloud of smoke, a single strand of Dragon whisker fluttering away on the wind. Seigetsu stumbled backward, the front of his white haori exploding in a spray of crimson, a look of shock and rage on his face. His gaze flickered to me, a chilling understanding in his eyes, and I felt a shiver of fear as I saw the promise of retribution in the stare of the ninetail. He dropped from the Dragon’s head, hair and tails streaming behind him, and fell into the roiling clouds.
“Tatsumi!” I crawled toward the demonslayer on my knees, clutching at whiskers and mane and whatever I could, for the Dragon was falling now, its serpentine form spiraling almost lazily through the air. Tendrils of blue and green light rose from its body as it plummeted, fragments of spirit swirling into the clouds and vanishing in the dark. My hair and sleeves had turned into sails, the wind yanking at them savagely, trying to hurl me into open sky.
Fingers closed around my wrist, and Tatsumi pulled me to him, wrapping an arm tightly around my waist as we knelt on the spiraling head of the Dragon. Even in death, the Great Kami seemed to defy the laws of nature as its massive body fell like a paper streamer toward the earth. I clung to his haori, my stomach twisting at the gaping wound across his chest, the blood warm beneath my fingers. The ribbons of light from the Dragon’s body swirled around us, soaring like schools of fish toward the sky, beautiful and terrible at the same time. For a moment, I closed my eyes and leaned into Tatsumi, numb from the tragedy of the night, the failures upon failures, all the death, pain and destruction we hadn’t been able to prevent.
“I’m sorry,” Tatsumi whispered in my ear, his own voice coming out choked. “I tried to stop it.”
I swallowed hard, wanting to tell him it wasn’t his fault, that we couldn’t have known what Seigetsu was going to do. That the ninetail had been the cause of everything. Not Genno or Hanshou or even the Lord of Jigoku himself. Everyone had been a pawn in the kitsune’s game, which had finally come to its conclusion. And we had lost.
The Dragon’s body broke through the clouds, and the island was suddenly spread out below us, growing larger with every passing second. The gaping wound leading to the center of Jigoku still glowed against the dark, sullen and ominous, and we seemed to be falling directly toward it.
I shivered, weary and soul-sick, and pressed closer to Tatsumi. “I guess it doesn’t matter now,” I whispered, feeling cold inside and out. “If the fall doesn’t kill us, the demons will. No flying carriage will carry us away at the last second.”
“No,” Tatsumi agreed, and one hand slipped into his obi. “But we do have this.”
He held up his arm, a tiny green leaf pinned between two fingers. As I blinked in shock, he gave a faint, weary smile. “After meeting you, I always have a few on me now. Just in case.”
I stared at the leaf, hopeful, grateful, but also terrified. “Tatsumi, I...I don’t know if I can do anything now,” I told him. I could feel the gaping hollowness in my stomach where the hoshi no tama, the star ball, had once resided. “Seigetsu took his magic back. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do anything but simple illusions.”
“You are,” Tatsumi said. “You don’t need his magic. You’re his blood, Yumeko. You’re the daughter of Tsuki Kiyomi, and the protector of the Dragon scroll. You have all the strength you need.”
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I reached for the leaf, curling my fingers around his own. My hand shook, and Tatsumi bent his head to mine. “You can do this,” he murmured, as I took the leaf from him and closed my eyes. “You’re stronger than you know.”
I nodded, took a deep breath and searched within for my magic, hoping this idea would work.
For a moment, nothing happened. I could feel the hollowness inside me, like a hunger that would never go away. But then, something flickered to life, an ember caught in a sudden breeze. It pulsed, then expanded outward, searing and familiar: my own fox magic, the magic that had been suppressed by the power of the ninetail. It flared, bright and joyful, suffusing my whole body, eager to be used again. I held the image of what I wanted in my mind, then sent the magic into the leaf at my fingertips.
The tiny leaf shivered, and then began to grow. It swelled to twice its size, then five times, then ten. I set it down as it continued to grow, until the once tiny leaf was the size of a tatami mat, just big enough for two people to sit on.
Below us, the Dragon shuddered, continuing to tumble lazily from the sky. The ground and the gash to Jigoku were frighteningly close. I glanced at Tatsumi and gave a sickly, hopeful smile. “Let’s hope this works.”
We knelt on the now giant leaf, Tatsumi wrapping his arms tightly around my waist, as I raised my hands and foxfire flared to life in my palms. It spread to the leaf below us, outlining the whole platform with flickering blue fire. Swallowing my nerves, I lifted my arms as I had while controlling Seigetsu’s floating carriage, willing the same to happen here.
Instantly, the leaf floated upward, leaving the Harbinger’s skull. I bit my lip, feeling Tatsumi’s hold on me tighten as I maneuvered the leaf away from the dead Dragon into open air. My heart pounded, my hands shook and beads of sweat trickled down my neck as I pointed us toward a mountain peak. The leaf began to sway slightly, as if it were a real leaf caught in the wind, drifting closer and closer to the edge of a rocky shelf. I thought I heard Tatsumi whispering words of encouragement, but the magic roared in my ears, and I couldn’t discern what he was saying.
This is real. I didn’t know fox magic could do this. But...this is real. I think? I shook myself. No, don’t think, Yumeko. Just keep going. Think later.
I held on to the magic until we were at least a couple dozen yards above the ledge. Then I lost control, and the illusion popped in a cloud of white smoke. We plummeted to the rocky peak, but Tatsumi managed to sweep me into his arms and land on his feet with a soft but pained grunt that made my stomach clench. Gently, he set me down and waited as I got my feet under me, adjusting to solid ground again and not the pitching, rolling platform of a dead Kami.
I looked up, over Tatsumi’s shoulder, and everything inside me went cold.
The Dragon tumbled from the sky in a slow, almost lazy fashion, like it weighed no more than cloth. Tendrils of colored light still streamed from the huge Kami, spiraling back into the clouds, giving the impression that the Dragon was on fire. I lost sight of it as it dropped below the ledge, and then the whole world trembled as the Harbinger struck the earth.
Numb, I staggered to the edge of the peak and looked down, my stomach nearly crawling up my throat in despair. The Great Dragon, the Lord of
Tides and the Harbinger of Change, lay dead in the center of the valley, his huge body coiled around the gaping scar to Jigoku. The hellish light reflected off the Dragon’s scales, and hordes of demons and spirits—those his great body hadn’t crushed—clustered around him, dancing and cavorting in apparent glee.
My legs shook, and I stumbled back from the edge, too dazed even for tears. “We...we have to get down there,” I whispered, turning from the devastation below. “Maybe there’s something we can do, some way to...bring the Dragon back. We have to try, don’t we?”
“Yumeko.” Tatsumi’s voice was bleak. I heard the impossibility in it and sank to my knees on the rock, trapped in a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. How had we failed so spectacularly? The Dragon was dead, the gate to Jigoku lay open and all my closest friends were gone. We had stopped Genno from using the Wish, but even that seemed trivial to the passing of a Great Kami and the loss of what Seigetsu had wanted all along. Not the Wish, but the jewel that would grant him the power and immortality of a god.
Tatsumi knelt and drew me to him, bowing his head as he pulled me close. “I’m sorry,” he murmured again, his voice sounding broken. One hand rose and cupped the back of my head, his fingers burrowing in my hair. “I wanted to give you a home to go back to.”
I took a shaky breath, feeling my eyes burn and hot tears start down my face. “What do we do now, Tatsumi?” I whispered. “The gate to Jigoku is open. The demons and spirits will keep coming out until they overrun everything. How do we close it?”
“I...don’t know.” Tatsumi himself seemed on the verge of breaking down. He trembled against me, then took a breath to compose himself. “Blood magic, perhaps. But a spell that powerful would need a lot of sacrifice, and that’s something neither of us are willing to do even if we could.”
“What will happen if it’s not closed?” I asked in a small voice. Knowing, dreading, that I already knew the answer. Tatsumi was quiet a moment before answering.
