Dragons lived wherever they desired. My own clan of royalty dwelled in gilded halls deep within the mightiest mountains of the West. Magic and ancient stonework kept the weight of the mountain from crushing us, but I recalled worrying over such things as a child.
My sister inflicted such fears upon me.
“…and all weak dragons were squished,” she made a squelching sound with her mouth, “as rocks larger than the moon tumbled down on them and broke their bones and hide.” Her own chartreuse hide glinted under the magical lamps of my room. Jinshi’s smile broadened at the sight of fear in my own visage. “And only the weak, magic-less dragons died. The end.”
“Go away.”
She tilted her head and peered at me through slitted eyelids. “Did you say something to me?”
I hadn’t meant to speak. Speaking only provoked her further. I shook my head, ruffling the silken pillows of my bed. But Jinshi had certainly heard me.
Her sharp, silver inlaid claws darted out and wrapped themselves around my upper arm. Talons sharper than needles and harder than my own pathetic scales pierced my arm and thin streams of blood rolled out from where Jinshi stabbed me.
“Weak little magic-less drakes do not talk back to their older sisters.” Her voice hissed and she brought her head down close to mind. “Or would you like to lose your eyes permanently?” I shook my head and clenched my jaw to keep from mewling from the pain of Jinshi’s torment. “Good, now go to bed…”
The tread of a large creature swept before my doorway and the handle creaked before the door swung open. Jinshi moved as swift as a viper, pulling her claws back and jamming them into her own mouth to lap away the evidence of her assault. Her other claw darted out to my forehead and the cruel mask she’d worn while hurting me shifted to a false vision of concern.
“Darling Isha, are you here?” Mother’s voice rang strong, full of concern for my well-being. “I smell blood…”
I opened my mouth and Jinshi’s face twisted into a nightmare of impending malice. Only once had I tried to tell Mother what Jinshi did to me at night, the way my older sister mistreated me. Mother had not believed me and for weeks Jinshi had intensified her torture.
“I am fine, mother,” the lie stung my tongue, “I bit my my cheek.”
“Jinshi, I thought you would be taking lessons with the Magi?” Mother’s concern for my welfare dissipated at the presence of Jinshi, of her perfect little eldest daughter.
“Oh mother, I completed those lessons hours ago and wanted to check on my dear sister to comfort her in her weakness.” No matter how hard she tried to convey the spirit of the dutiful, Jinshi could not let me forget my failings.
Mother grinned at her for a moment as if letting the pride she felt for her heir shine through. But then she folded her claws before her and assumed a stern aspect. For a moment, I hoped a rebuke would be forthcoming. Surely mother would recognize the little pinprick holes on my arm. But she pointed at Jinshi and said, “you’ve mastered today’s lesson already? Show me.”
Jinshi slithered from her place next to my bed and stretched to her full height, undulating as she raised her head near the apex of the ceiling. “Of course, mother.”
Her whole body writhed and shifted as Jinshi stoked the lines of power beneath her skin into full magical effect. At the very height of the Winter solstice, I felt only a trickle of that power in my veins. But Jinshi glowed with it as she invoked her magic. A ball of lighting formed before her and Mother’s eyes widened in pride.
Before I suspected anything, Jinshi turned the ball of coruscating lightning toward the shelf on my wall. Father had carved a dozen figures for me, each a dragon wielding a different weapon. They were one of the few possessions which brought me joy. And Jinshi knew that. I could not even cry out before the ball of lightning struck the wall and reduced the shelf and its contents to little more than fragments of broken stones. She blasted even the thin layer of lacquer from my figurines.
Before I screamed out in fear and sorrow over my sister’s cruel act of destruction, I awakened from my recurring nightmares. Fingers splayed against my chest and my hand darted out with the same snake-like speed my sister had displayed in my memories. I caught a human throat in my palm and applied instant pressure.
“Hurk, wait…” the voice croaked out before I crushed the owner’s windpipe. “Please…”
Blackness continued to hold my world in its teeth.
Ah yes, my sight was still sealed by the Oni’s magic.
“Who are you?” I gave the throat just enough slack to explain its owner’s presence before I killed them.
“Hanari,” Though her voice was raw from my grip, she sounded almost delicate despite the attack, “and please don’t kill me, I’m trying to help you.”
Blinded, with my armor retracted into my amulet, I felt impossibly exposed and vulnerable. The fresh nightmare stole away the few remaining shreds of my tranquility. It would have been easy to snap the neck of the woman next to me. And an old part of me left for dead beneath tons of mountain rocks demanded her death for the mere crime of touching me while I slept. But the voice which demanded the stranger’s death belonged to Jinshi or the spirit who’d cajoled me into skinning her hide and shaping it into my armor.
I’d given my oath to Odgen I would be better than my sister, better than the dragon who’d slain her in a moment of hatred. I’d sworn I would use my strength and the skills he’d taught me to help those who needed it. In honor of my master, I released the woman’s throat and slid onto my back. Even if this woman were a forest spirit intent on murdering me in the darkness, it would be better to die with the sliver of my honor intact than to live with the final strands snapped.
Hanari coughed when I released her and pulled her hand away from me. Casting my mind to the Moon, I could sense where she sat, how she rubbed at her throat with her fingers. She knelt with her feet and calves under her flanks and wore nothing. How my senses collected the information into a single image was too complex to form into words. Learning to cast my mind into the Moon had required letting go of the need to explain the leaps of my awareness.
“I apologize for hurting you.” The words were formal and awkward on my lips. Dragons, even cursed dragons doomed to walk the earth in mortal guise, did not apologize to lesser beings. But as with many things in my life, Odgen had taught me humility and forced me to acclimate myself to apologies. It did not make the process easier, merely possible.
“It’s okay. I guess I spooked you, huh?” Hanari’s voice had already recovered and I marveled at the dulcet tones which dripped from her lips. Put to rhythm, her voice would have called the birds from their branches and the mice from their meadows.
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“Why are you helping me?” I’d almost asked her why she hadn’t killed me and taken my possessions. Though I was much stronger and sturdier than a human my size, asleep I was as vulnerable as a babe in swaddling clothes.
“Huh?” Hanari’s voice cracked as if surprised by my question. “You saved me from a life of bondage to an Oni. Inari Herself would have cursed me and cast me into Jigoku if I’d betrayed you after such a service.”
Inari and Jigoku… Odgen had struggled to instill a fear of the gods in my heart. But his tales had fallen on ears unwilling to entertain his flights of whimsy. The gods and their afterlives would do little to help me regain my kingdom or defend myself, so I’d paid little attention to those lessons. Still, those names tickled at the back of my memory as if Odgen had said them many times.
“So anyway…” Hanari shifted from where she knelt next to me, “can I finish helping you?” I hadn’t spoken as I tried to plumb the depths of my memory for the antecedents to the words Hanari had used. “Are you going to try to throttle me again?”
It brought a snort from between my lips. She’d leaned toward me as if to get a better view of my face. Mind of the moon didn’t give me details of her build or her face, but it provided a pretty clear mental image of her posture. “No.”
“Whew!” Hanari wiped her hand across her forehead. “I wasn’t sure if I should run or not there.” She lowered her other hand to my chest and I squirmed away from her. As if I’d stabbed her, she jerked back and yelped.
Both of us behaved as if the other were some venomous animal. I couldn’t help from laughing at the mental image there, a pair of dangerous serpents flailing away from each other in utter terror. Hanari joined my laughter and the tension in my back final eased. Something she’d said sparked my interest. “You said you were enslaved by the Oni?”
Hanari nodded, the creak of her neck and the sway of her hair in the breeze my only hint as to her moment. “Oh yes. For years I’m afraid.”
She didn’t sound like I’d imagined an Oni’s victim to behave. But then again, I’d never encountered one of the barbaric ogres before so how could I know the way they were supposed to behave. “And you said you can help me?” Her eyelids clicked shut, I could hear them over the rustling of the trees. As I listened, paradoxically, my nose picked up a fresh scent from the woman: bean curd and sweet sauce. How?
Before I could ask after the strange scents on the woman’s skin, she rested her hand back on my chest. The fabric of Odgen’s robe itched everywhere but the spot Hanari’s palm lay. Warmth built where she touched and I opened my mouth to warn her against using magic as the warmth built to a roaring flame and she yelped again, bringing her fingertips to her mouth. “What in the four kingdoms was that?”
“Magic doesn’t work on me.” I sat up and winced from the pain of broken ribs. Bruises covered my back and torso like a second suit of armor and I still could not see a thing. “What did you try to do?”
“Heal you…” Wonderful, she’s a Magus. I opened my mouth to send her away, but before I got the chance she continued, “…kitsune magic should work on anyone, anywhere.”
“Kitsune? You’re one of the Kitsune?” Odgen had taught me about the mischievous fox-shifters. Most were pranksters and minor irritants, but said to be compassionate and cheerful with their mild torments. Such legends made me wonder if Hanari had just tried to heat my skin or something odd when she’d offered me “healing.”
“Oh yes, but I’m nothing special. I only have two tails…” she sighed and I could hear her head shake, “…now.”
“I’m not sure what that means.” I’d already spoken more to this strange woman than I’d spoken to anyone in decades, since Odgen died. And here I was curious to know more about her. I already hoped… something. I couldn’t say what I wanted from the kitsune woman in the moment.
“Oh, the Oni you killed was named Waru!” Hanari danced next to me, her feet kicked up fallen leaves so she could stick to my side. “And in fairness, he’d killed me once already, so I guess he deserved it.”
“He was trying pretty hard to murder me too.”
“Right! You were his target!” Hanari’s arm slid next to mine and she said, “I am gonna make a fire and maybe find us some food. Do you want to lay down by a fire while you rest?”
For a moment my situational awareness wavered. The kitsune’s rapid change in conversation exhausted me and made me want to return to my usual silence. A need to recover my bearings and a desire for warmth gave Hanari an invitation to pull me gently away from the road. I didn’t respond to her as I tried to collect my presence of mind. So she narrated our surroundings.
“This looks like a fire pit travelers used in the past.” She walked me in a circle and the echo from a set of stone walls made me turn my head away from the center of our course. Hanari reached out and patted the wall. “I think this used to be a grotto, but ceiling collapsed. Now it’s just a little miniature cliff with a blackened fire pit on the other side.”
Wear upon the stones around the pit had smoothed them out and merged them into a single mass. Nothing shifted as we walked and my feet could almost sense the vibrations of decades worth of travelers through this area. It was my first time along this road, so I’d never passed this particular campsite in my life. Had Odgen ever passed through here?
“You’re very quiet.” Hanari paused as if to consider her words and I could feel her shaking as if to brush away what she’d said, “not that quiet is bad. It’s just that I’ve been a pelt on a stinky murderous Oni for years and it’s nice to be able to speak, but now the first person I can talk to doesn’t seem to like to talk.”
Like water spilling from a spring, her words piled into each other as they flooded from her mouth. I snickered, amused by the way Hanari spoke and the way she dismissed years upon years of what must had been a bleak existence. “You don’t sound… bitter to me?”
“Oh, you do talk!” Swallowing, Hanari stumbled over her words and had to restart several times. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad over not talking, so I hope you didn’t take it that way. It’s just, well, I don’t know when to shut up maybe. Hi.”
I opened my mouth and another soft chuckle escaped. The last time I’d laughed in amusement rather than at the expense of someone attacking me had been… Odgen. He’d been intent on teaching me how to fish and failing at it for hours. The old monk rarely did anything without earning himself quick success so watching him struggle to catch a single fish had been humbling. And when I’d strode into the water and snatched a trout from the stream on my first try, the glower he’d flashed me had sent me into belly-churning peels of laughter. The best part was he joined me and we both laughed at his antics together.
“Did I say something wrong or bad?” Hanari turned to me with her back to the wall and I could almost imagine a puppy’s upturned eyes looking out from under her brows. And I had no idea what she was talking about.
“I laughed.”
Hanari tugged on my arm. “But you stopped.”
Again, this strange girl brought a smile to my face and a soft chuckle from between my lips. How badly had Waru the Oni injured me? Was I going crazy? Or was this woman just amusing while I was in need of a solid distraction?
“Let’s sit down and you can get a fire started while I keep watch.” Blackness filled my vision, the seals Waru had lain on my eyes persisted.
I felt Hanari start at my words and turn toward me. “But your… oh, haha.” I smiled at her and she darted away into the forest beyond this little former grotto. When the wind kicked up dust from the fire pit, I could smell the ash and used coals. It wasn’t too long ago someone had set a fire here and used the natural wall to protect their backs.
Form my seat I cast my awareness out over the last. Maple trees, like the one who’d aided me against the Oni, rasped like small slips of paper in the wind. Pine trees rattled like small sacks of bones, and the leaves shed by both gusted over the land with a sound like the ocean. My mind traced the frames of the world, filling in where my eyesight prevented me from observing details directly.
Hanari’s path lit up in my imaginary sight like a spirit in a darkened room. She cut a halting, furtive path through the forest. Every few steps she’d pause, and I could imagine her raising her nose to sniff the air before she sprang away. A small pile of sticks grew in her hands as she cut her path over the forests. Inspired by the strange woman, I raised my own nose to the air. Over the ash and coal, I smelled distant rain and the fragrance of peaches cast unto the heavens. It almost smelled as if someone fermented the fruit in barrels from where I sat. Had I my eyesight and no one to burden me, I might have followed the faint scent off to the north to find its source.
Though devout in his monkish pursuits, Odgen had never turned down a cup of wine in the whole time I knew him. And he was as prone to amble into a village after a rare vintage as he was to bring down a villain.
I missed him.
By the time Hanari returned and set the campfire to light, I’d fallen asleep and drifted back to into my nightmares. There were reasons I avoided sleep as much as possible.
