by A. L. Knorr
"After, what?" I prompted her, as I picked up the teapot to pour her tea. The steaming liquid filled the air with the scent of toasted rice and greens.
She raised her eyes to mine. "Do you remember anything from when you were still in my womb?"
I blinked in surprise. "Is it possible for a baby to remember something from before their birth?"
"Not a normal child, no, I don't think so. I only ask because I have never felt anything like what I felt when Aimi gave you her blessing. It was so powerful that I thought you might have some memory of it."
I sat down across from her, the tea forgotten. "What did you feel, Mother?"
She got a faraway look in her eyes. "The only word I can think of to describe it was ecstasy," she said softly.
My breath caught in my chest for in that moment my mother's face looked as youthful as mine. It was as though just the memory of the moment was enough to erase the lines of worry that had etched themselves into her skin over the years. My mother had always been beautiful, even as she aged, but just then she was a window into the past. My body swept with gooseflesh and I was afraid to speak, afraid that it would break the spell.
"I was already eight moons and you were such an active baby. You would kick with excitement whenever Aimi laid her hand on my belly. But that day, she laid her hand on my belly and brought her face close to you. She whispered, 'For giving me a home and a family, I give your daughter a tamashī. May she take it and be blessed.'" My mother closed her eyes and a tear escaped and rolled down her pale cheek. "They were simple words. I did not know what a tamashī was, but in that moment I was overcome by a feeling of so much love. It was everywhere inside and outside of me, it erased every bad feeling and bad dream I had ever had, and filled me completely. It chased out all of my fear and anxieties, of which there were many, and I knew only rest and peace." She wiped the tear away. "I have been wishing for another small taste of that feeling ever since, and I wonder if it is what good people feel after they die." She focused on me. "When you were born, all the women of the village heard from the midwife about how easy the birth was. I didn't know what to expect, but you were just a normal baby, pink and perfect, and even your father was not disappointed that you were born a girl."
"That too, was a gift from Aimi," I said, and my mother nodded in agreement.
My mother laughed. "Your father and I were shocked beyond reason the first time you became a bird. Why you chose to become a tiny peacock to wander in our garden was beyond me."
I gave a half-smile. "I saw one at the traveling fair that came through Furano when I was six. Do you remember? I was so enchanted by it."
"Oh, is that why?" She laughed again. "I pulled Aimi aside and asked her what it meant and she was just as surprised as we were. She looked so pale and serious until she saw that it scared me and then told me not to worry. She said, 'She has taken the tamashī I gave her and become an Akuna Hanta. There is nothing false in her, for the Æther has chosen her to be one of the highest beings of its realm.'”
It was nice to hear this story, to finally know something of what had happened to make me what I was, but I felt the growing weight of expectations. Yes, I could have wings, but beyond that I was just a regular girl, unremarkable. I had never even seen an akuna, didn't even know what a demon looked like or how they affected people, how they operated.
"So," my mother interrupted my thoughts. "When I ask you if you are sure that marriage is what you want, it is with all of this in mind. Knowing that the Æther has chosen you for its purpose, and that you will be used for good in this world, who are we to commit you to the life of wife and mother?" She picked up her steaming cup and raised it to her lips.
"Maybe," I ventured, "maybe being a wife and a mother is necessary for me to grow into my Hanta powers. For what good is it to be a defender and a protector of humans against the demonic realms, if I have not had the human experience myself?"
My mother stared at me over her cup, thinking over my words. She took a sip and put her cup down. "I suspect some of your Hanta wisdom is beginning to show itself." She inclined her head in a show of deference that mothers rarely gave to their daughters. "As you wish."
Chapter 10
"You're late," I said to Toshi as he came through the trees and into the sunlight beating down on our rock slab.
"I am sorry," he said, breathing hard from the climb. "Father has graduated me to weighing the value of the swords we turn out of our ovens. It is not as easy as you might think. I have to practice with every weapon we make before I can make an educated recommendation for price. I feel like he knows that soon I will no longer be under his roof and is trying to extract every bit of labor from me that he can."
Toshi's words could have been taken as a complaint, but his tone was good-natured. He approached and dipped his head at me politely, then swooped in and kissed my cheek.
"But you like swinging swords around," I said. "I've never seen you happier."
"My happiness has nothing to do with swordplay, I assure you," Toshi laughed. "And what has my little bird been up to these last days?"
My heart always swelled when he called me by this nickname. Toshi did not know I was a Hanta, and yet he'd chosen 'little bird' for me. I knew it was for my fine bones and tiny stature, but I liked to think it was also because he could feel my other nature in some way.
We talked and laughed until Toshi had to go. It was his duties which kept us apart more than mine. We kissed goodbye and agreed to meet again in a few days. I watched his figure retreat into the woods and then I turned back to the ocean. I sat down cross-legged in a patch of sunlight, absorbing the heat from the clifftop. Birds sang and chirped without restraint. I spotted the backs of two whales cresting in the water. Two pelicans winged overtop, so close to one another that their wings nearly touched. Every creature needed its companion. A pang went through my heart. Aimi and I had not played for weeks. We'd hardly exchanged words.
The birds had stopped singing and nothing but the sound of the wind and waves reached my ears. A light scattering of pebbles made me turn.
A blue-black fox the size of a large cat padded across the rock toward me. Aimi came closer, her head down, her mouth closed. She sat on her haunches a few feet away.
"You found me," I said. My soft words belied the excitement I felt to see my Kitsune sister on this clifftop again.
She made a show of getting up and sniffing the moss around me. She crossed behind me and sat down on my other side.
"He just left," I said.
She blew a breath out of her nose and looked out at the ocean.
"I miss you," I whispered.
Her mouth opened and her tongue appeared as she panted under the sun's heat. Those green eyes found mine and she got up and came closer. She nosed my elbow and I lifted my arm to let her in close to my side. I let my arm come to rest on her shoulders and all was right with the world again.
"You talk about us as being creatures of the Æther. What is the Æther, anyway?" I asked Aimi as we gathered flowers in the woods to fill our home with the fragrance of summer. "Mother thinks it is the place where faith lives—is that what you think, too?"
Aimi popped a violet blossom in her mouth and chewed. "I might describe it better as spirit." We moved through a thick carpet of violets, our footfalls silenced by the soft stems and flowers. "It will be different for you than for me, I think."
That drew me up and I stopped walking. "Why would it be different?"
"You are Akuna Hanta, I'm only Kistune. I'm a creature with power, but I am as flawed as any human. My motives can be selfish, or altruistic. As a Hanta, you are capable only of good."
I thought back along the timeline of my childhood: the time I cut Aimi's hair while she was sleeping, took a spoonful of honey in the middle of the night because I was hungry, and dressed up in my mother's most expensive kimono when she wasn't home, got the hem dirty and then blamed it on Aimi. "That's not true."
"Not in your human form," Aimi said
with a laugh. "But when you become a Hanta, you are an agent of the gods, capable of destroying the most powerful and wicked demons. Even Oni."
I shuddered as the image of the red-skinned devil with horns and fangs and carrying a nasty looking spiked club rose to my mind. These ugly fearsome creatures were sometimes painted on room-dividers and robes as a warning. Legends told that they meted justice out to the wicked and loved to feed on human flesh. Bile rose in my throat. I had always thought the legends were contradictory. How could something that was supposed to mete out justice on the wicked be so wicked itself? It made no sense. "How am I supposed to destroy an Oni?"
"You ask so many questions, thinking I might have the answers," Aimi said patiently.
"Who else should I ask? You are the one who did this to me."
"But I didn't know you'd come out as a Hanta." Aimi turned around and looked back at me, holding her palms out. "I thought you'd just be a girl blessed with sharp intuition and good luck. It's your own heart that took my gift and made you what you are."
"A bird," I replied, crossing my arms. I dropped my chin and gave Aimi a look that said I wasn't impressed. I had always thought that Aimi had been given a superior ability to mine.
"No." Aimi raised her eyebrows in surprise and strode up to me. She put a hand on my forearm. "I mean, yes, you can become a bird, but because you're a creature of the air, you can get closer to the Æther than anyone or anything else. You can touch the sky. You can visit where all the good spirits live and where they are made. The Æther feeds power into both of us, but you're from a higher realm." At my expression of confusion, she sighed. "Have you ever tried to take the form of a vulture?"
"What?" I dropped my arms. "No, why would I?"
Aimi stepped back. "Try it. Right now. Just humor me, please."
I dropped my arms, pictured a vulture, and waited for the feeling of a thousand little stars dancing over my body as I took a winged shape.
Nothing happened.
Aimi cocked an eyebrow. "Well?"
I looked down and then back up at her, bewildered. "I can't. Why can't I?" I tried again, and failed again. Nothing changed.
"Vultures are carrion eating birds. Creatures that live on death. A fox is a predator, but it’s also a scavenger and a trickster. As a Hanta, the Æther gives you the form of creatures who live in the highest realm, and who do not live on death."
"But I can take on the shape of a falcon, an owl, and a hawk. They all kill to survive."
"Yes, but the difference is that they are hunters. They take something that is alive and make it dead. Vultures feed on things that are already dead and rotting. The shapes that you can take are symbolic of your purpose. Birds hunt from the skies, you hunt from the highest realms of the spirit, combing the realms below you. Those birds hunt mice and rodents from the sky. You hunt demons. Now do you see?"
My mind spun as all this sank in. Aimi turned away and kept walking.
"So how am I supposed to hunt these demons? What do I do with them?" I stumbled after her, catching up.
"I don't know the answer to that, but I have faith that you will. When you're ready."
"When will that be?"
"When you get the Hanta vision, I guess." Aimi stooped to cut a cluster of flowers and add them to her basket. "And not a second before," she chuckled. "The Æther works that way. The answers come, but always at the last minute. It's like it is always testing how strong our faith is."
My mind went back to what Aimi had said about Toshi's heart being as beautiful as a pearl. I watched her thoughtfully. Always more graceful than me, always slightly ahead of me. She had so much faith in the Æther providing us with the knowledge we needed when we needed it. I added more blossoms to my basket and we harvested side by side in silence. Me digesting all this new information, and Aimi thinking her Kitsune thoughts. Whatever they were.
"Do you remember anything from the days before you were a Kitsune?" I asked.
"You mean from when I was just a fox?" Aimi had a basket filled with daisies draped over her arm. My basket was full of lilies. Together we would make numerous bouquets and deliver a few among our neighbors. It was something Aimi and I had done every year since I was small. "Some," she replied, bending to cut more stems. "I remember coming to a battlefield and hearing the sounds of dying men. It was their cries that attracted me in the first place."
"Do you know who had been fighting?"
"I have no idea. I had no interest, either. All I wanted was to follow my nose toward the scent of blood. I remember being very fearful of the smell of men, but also that these men were wounded and would pose less of a threat." She laughed. "Makes it sound like I was able to rationalize, but it wasn't like that. My thoughts weren't really thoughts, they were just instinct."
"What happened then?" I tucked the stem of a blossom into my hair.
She shrugged. "It's hazy, but I remember skirting the bodies until the smell of one of them drew me in. He was still alive, but he was dying, and the smell of his blood was so thick and strong.”
I shuddered. "That was when you drank some?"
"Yes. But I got scared away by the sound of horses approaching. I didn't drink very much." She shrugged. "I guess the quantity doesn't matter so much."
"And you had no idea what it was going to do to you? That it was going to make you into a Kitsune?"
"Of course not," she said. "I was just a fox like any other. There was nothing special about me."
"Did you feel any different?"
"Not that I can recall," she said. "Not until I was dying."
"How much later was that?"
"Oh, years, Akiko. I lived out all of the days a fox could hope for. I was old and infirm when I died."
"The blood stayed in you all that time?"
"I don't know. I guess whatever you eat becomes a part of you in some way, and I had eaten something that gave me a tamashī. Or maybe it was the spirit of the samurai that left his body and went into mine." Aimi sat on a rock and took out our water bag. She took the kerchief from around her neck, wiped her face, and held the bag out for me.
"What is a tamashī, exactly?" I took the bag and put it to my lips for long refreshing swallows.
Aimi laughed as I sat down beside her and handed her back the bag. "You have one. Can't you feel it?"
"I don't think so." I frowned.
"Maybe because you started life as a human, so you've always had it. I started life as an animal, so when I got my tamashī, I could feel the difference." Aimi took a sip and put the bag down. "Watch."
She turned toward me, and keeping her gaze on me, she flicked her left hand out and opened her palm. A light appeared in the region of her heart, glowing under the fabric of her robe.
I gasped and leapt to my feet, staring at her chest.
The glow moved down her left arm and I followed it with my eyes as it moved along underneath her sleeve. It rolled out of her sleeve and came to rest in the palm of her hand. Its brightness almost made me squint.
"What is it?" I breathed. The small bright ball looked like a star, and it twinkled with a warm yellow light.
"It's my tamashī," she said. "My connection to the Æther and the source of my power." She closed her fist around the light, reopened it and the light was gone. "Maybe some would call it my soul."
"How did you do that? Can I do that?"
"Of course," she said. "Just try it."
I opened my left palm the same way she had. Nothing happened. I looked at Aimi.
She looked thoughtful. "Try it with your right hand."
I made the same motion with my right hand, and a light appeared in the region of my heart. I gasped and then laughed. I felt it there, warm and humming. I sent the ball of light down my right arm and into my hand. My tamashī was brighter, whiter, and larger than Aimi's. We both had to squint to look at it.
"More evidence of the difference between you and me," she murmured.
"What?" I asked, blinking at her over the light.
>
"The fact that it came to your right hand, not to your left." Something in her face looked sad at this. But before I could ask her to expand on this thought she said, "Just be very careful with this, little sister." She held a hand out to shield her eyes from the glare.
"Why?"
"Because it is the seat of your power, and it can be snatched—" Quick as a striking cobra she grabbed my tamashī and dashed away. "—like that!" she cried, laughing.
"Hey!" I took off after her, laughing too. "Come back, thief!"
She giggled as she darted through the trees, the soles of her shoes teasing me as she kept just out of reach. We pounded through the trails we both knew so well until Aimi darted off the path and onto rougher ground. She skimmed nimbly over the rubble and boulders between thick shrubs and thorny bushes. They grabbed at my clothing and I heard a tearing sound. I didn't care, and doubled my efforts in pursuit of her. It was the first time Aimi and I had played since my engagement to Toshi. My heart was flying with happiness.
Aimi's form disappeared up and over the edge of a boulder. When I heard her scream, my heart vaulted into my mouth and I sped up to crest the rocky rise where she had vanished from view. I pulled up in shock.
An elderly stranger stood in the small clearing, he turned toward us as we came over the rocks, Aimi first. He was holding a twisted walking staff in a gnarled hand. A bright yellow kerchief had been tied around his throat, and a matching hat sat on his head.
