“Being alive!” he shouted over the rolling thunder. “Alive and breathing!”
“You’re a madman!”
“And yet, you stand here with me!”
“What about the rain? It will burn you!”
She staggered as the deck rolled, a white-knuckle grip on the rails. One slip and she would sail off into the darkness, scream unheard over the thunder’s roar.
“Come here!” he called. “Stand up here with me!”
“Not for all the iron in Shima!”
He beckoned with one hand, the other gripping the rope lashing the barrels together. It was as if the ship was an untamed stallion and he sat astride it, fingers wrapped in its mane. She pushed her fear away, grabbed his hand and hooked her legs among the barrels.
“Can you taste it?” he cried.
“Taste what?”
“The rain!” He opened his mouth to the sky. “No lotus!”
Yukiko realized that he was right; the water streaming down her face was clean and pure, translucent as glass. She remembered the mountain streams of her youth, she and Satoru lying beside them with Buruu in the long summer grass, drinking deeply from the liquid crystal. She licked her lips, eyes gleaming with joy, then opened her mouth and let the rain wash down her throat.
“Now close your eyes!” he yelled, rain whipping his face. “Close your eyes and breathe!”
He threw out his hands again, face upturned to the storm. She watched him for a moment, his expression like a child’s, unburdened by any sense of fear or loss. He was so strange. So unlike anyone she had ever met before.
But then she tasted the rain on her lips, felt the wind in her hair, heard the roar of the storm around them. And so she closed her eyes, threw her head back and inhaled. She could see the lightning flashing against the bloodwarm blackness behind her eyelids, feel the wind buffeting the ship beneath them. The rain was a balm, washing away the fear. She breathed, cool air filling her lungs, warm blood pumping below her skin. Kin screamed beside her, a whooping holler as the deck rolled like a storm-tossed ocean beneath them.
“We are alive, Yukiko-chan! We are free!”
She laughed, calling out shapeless words into the storm. It was as if she were a little girl again, running with her brother through the rippling bamboo, strong and bright, wet earth beneath her feet. She could feel the lives she swam among, the hundred tiny sparks rising like cinders from a bonfire, catching her up and filling her with warmth. No fear. No pain. No loss. Before any and all of it had come in from the dark, when the simple act of being was enough.
She stretched out her senses into the tempest, mind uncoiling between the raindrops, engulfed by the beauty and ferocity around her.
A flicker of warmth.
Wait . . .
A heartbeat.
. . . What is that?
“Arashitora!” came the cry, followed by the sharp whine of a siren. “Arashitora!”
Yukiko opened her eyes, blinking in the blackness. She saw the helmsman leaning over the starboard side, pointing, yelling at the top of his lungs. The navigator was cranking a siren handle up on the pilot’s deck, its shrill, grinding cry piercing the din. She looked to where the helmsman was pointing but could see nothing, a vast expanse of seething blackness beyond the Child’s deck lamps. Lightning flashed, a flare of white-hot magnesium across the clouds, the sun rising for a split second to cast off the blanket of night.
And then she saw it. A momentary flash, the green flare left behind on your eyelid after you stare too long at the sun. The impression of vast, white wings, feathers as long as her arm, broad as her thigh. Black stripes, rippling muscle, a proud, sleek head tipped with a razor-sharp beak. Eyes like midnight, black and bottomless.
“Izanagi’s breath,” she whispered, squinting into the black. “There it is.”
Lightning flashed again, illuminating the beast before her wondering eyes.
The impossible.
The unthinkable.
A thunder tiger.
11 Arashitora
The smoke held him down with warm, soft hands, head underwater, the noise of the storm and siren and running feet all a distant murmur beneath the screams of dying beasts. Eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks, bloodshot eyes rolled back in his skull, trying to keep waking at bay. But finally the din became too much, too loud to ignore, a grating sliver of steel caught beneath an eyelid and dragging him up through the greasy chemical dream into waking.
“Aiya,” Masaru frowned, rubbing at his head. “What the hells is—” His cabin door smashed open. Kasumi stood in the doorway, the spring-loaded serpent of a net-thrower clutched in her hands. Her hair was loose, floating in the breeze around her face like black silk, a faint blush of excitement in her cheeks.
Beautiful .
“Masaru,” she breathed. “Arashitora.”
She dashed away without another word. Adrenalin kicked Masaru in the