She felt him pull himself back, whispering across the link binding them together.
SMALL STEPS FIRST, AGREED?
She wiped the blood from her nose, a slick of crimson on her knuckles. She sniffed hard and spat, salty, bright red.
All right, agreed. Small steps first.
GOOD.
The thunder tiger nodded.
EVEN STORMDANCERS MUST WALK BEFORE THEY FLY.
They ascended, clouds rolling back across a bloody gray sky. The sun was a harsh glint on the edges of her goggles, sharp enough to cut her eyes from her head. The forest pulse receded as they rose above it all, the island shrinking beneath them as the air grew thin and brittle, blood-red ocean stretching all the way to the horizon.
Looking far behind them, miles upon miles to the south, she could see the Iishi Mountains melting into low foothills. And beyond them? Blood lotus. Everywhere. The blooms had been plucked as summer died, red fields stripped to undergarments of miserable green. The weed with a hundred uses, or so the Guild claimed. Proof the gods existed. But squinting across endless fields rippling in the toxic wind, Yukiko only saw proof of her people’s greed.
Deadlands. Great, smoking tracts of earth, stripped of life by the poison in the lotus roots—an infection spreading across Shima’s flesh. From this altitude, they could see how bad it had become, how far the soil-death had spread. Countless miles of ashen earth, rent with fissures as if the island was bursting; some sepsis forcing its way up through a broken crust. Dark mist drifted snot-thick over the deadlands, never straying far from the desolation’s edge.
Yukiko found herself wondering if Kin was right. If there was anything they could do to save the land. Some way to undo all the damage they’d wrought …
Buruu lurked behind her eyes, a gentle, cotton-pawed prowl. Feline grace, even in his thoughts, trying his best not to awaken the pain he could feel coiled and ready. She nodded to the southern fields, blurred by smog and distance.
That’s Kitsune country. My homeland. The valley I grew up in was filled with bamboo once. Bamboo and butterflies. And now it’s nothing but that accursed weed.
WHERE WILL YOUR PEOPLE GO, WHEN ALL THEIR SOIL IS ASHES?
Over the oceans. To steal others’ lands with the power chi gives them.
AND WHEN THOSE LANDS ARE ASH? WHEN EVERYTHING BENEATH THE RED SUN IS GONE TO DUST?
Unless we put an end to it? They’ll go to the hells, Buruu. And all of us with them. That’s why we must be swift. Hiro cannot marry Aisha. The dynasty cannot be reforged.
MY KIND WERE RIGHT TO LEAVE THIS PLACE. TO GO WHERE YOUR KIND CANNOT FOLLOW.
North?
He nodded.
EVERSTORM.
Everstorm?
THAT IS WHAT WE CALL IT.
What’s it like?
BEAUTIFUL. I WISH YOU COULD SEE IT.
Will you take me there one day? When all this is done?
She felt sadness in him then, a hint of something usually buried in the darkest corners of his mind. A glimpse was all she saw with the Kenning’s new strength, the shadow of something vast, some leviathan moving beneath black waters. And just as quickly, it was gone.
NO.
He sighed.
NO, I WILL NOT.
*
North across the Iishi wilderness, the sawtoothed peak and drop of the mountain range, turning to slow gold in autumn’s grip. They cleared the coast of Seidai Island, and she could see Shabishii in the distance; sheer granite cliffs rising like broken teeth from the bloody sea. The storm grew in ferocity, thunder rocking her bones. They slept as night fell, Yukiko’s arms bound around Buruu’s neck, the thunder tiger falling into a trancelike state; the not-quite unconsciousness of migratory birds who spend months with nothing but the sea for company.
By morning they were floating high above the water, the isle of Shabishii looming out of the mist. The ocean wandered away below them, getting lost before it reached the horizon and melting into the sky. She had never seen the sea before, save the black scum of Kigen Bay. It was nothing like the old paintings; not the color of deep forest or Kitsune jade or even the eyes of a samurai boy whose smile had filled her stomach with butterflies. It was red as blood, a seething swell reflecting the crimson sky above. And before it filled her heart with aching and she turned from the thought, she realized how childish it had been; to love a boy she didn’t even know. To name the shade of his eyes after a color she’d never seen. And how long ago it all seemed.
She thought of Kin. Eyes closed. Sighing. Running her fingers across her lips, the memory of his kiss lingering like the— YOU ARE DOING IT AGAIN.
What?
I AM GOING TO START COMPOSING BAD POETRY SOON.
Gods, I’m sorry …