And at this, too, I nodded.
I nodded because I was eight, and you were asking me to promise something that I never thought would happen. Because we were eight, and battle was still a distant dream in our minds, no matter how often we’d seen its effects. Because we were eight and standing beneath a plum tree, and nothing could hurt us.
*
THE NEXT DAY you began your formal swordplay lessons. And, yes, it’s true—from the moment the wooden sword touched your hands, you were a natural. As a horse is made to run, so you were made to wield a blade. Your strokes painted bruises on your instructor like ink on paper.
But I was not so talented.
Hokkarans favor straight swords. They’re well suited to your obsession with showy duels. On horseback it is different: a straight blade gets caught in your enemy’s neck, and you can hardly stop to retrieve it. A curved blade is more practical.
Your instructor was an old man from Shiratori Province. The long years of his life bent his back and hobbled his knees, but with a sword in hand, he was spry as a youth. Complicated forms were to him as simple as rising up in the morning. Perhaps easier, given his age. He’d fought in the Qorin wars against my mother. Everyone his age had. But the color of my skin was the least of his concerns.
“Oshiro-sur!” he’d shout, the veins in his neck pulsing. “Have you no grace? I ask you to be flowing water; you are a cliff face!”
I frowned. I could be flowing water. When arrows left my bow, they were rain falling from the sky. When I was on my horse, we were the rampaging rapids of the Rokhon.
But put me on my feet, put a straight sword in my hand, and ask me to move like a dancer?
You noticed my discomfort.
As the days wore on into months and the Daughter brought spring back to the lands, you insisted we go riding after sword lessons. The forests around Fujino were dense, and from your castle we could see the morning fog like a cloud come down from the heavens. It stayed until midday, when Grandmother Sky called it back. White on emerald green, vibrant and pale; the sight itself refreshing and enticing.
It was your great-grandfather who commissioned that forest. In his day, it was only a thick circle of green around the palace. He was an avid hunter and wanted a place to keep his more dangerous game. Here, where he kept wolves and tigers and bears, you wished to hunt.
“Come,” you said. “My men always go hunting in that forest; they never take me along. Too dangerous for an Imperial Flower, they say.”
Forests intimidated me as much as castles did. No roof is a good roof, whether it be carved stone or a branch. I kept calm by remembering I’d see patches of blue, at least. Maybe I could stitch them together and make a patchwork sky.
I was too distracted by my little mental sewing experiment to keep track of where we went. Only when the scent of horses came to me did I realize you’d led us all the way to the stables. How you did it without anyone questioning us is beyond me—but then again, who would ever question you?
Once I realized our horses were nearby, a grin spread wide across my face. I could feel my gray nearby, I could feel her in my bones. How far would we ride? The forest was large. My gray didn’t have much experience navigating thorns and brambles. Would she be all right? Perhaps I should pack extra sweets … she likes them far more than any horse of her caliber should. They’re ruining her teeth. But how am I to deny her? How can anyone look into those soulful pools of brown and deny them a sweet?
“Your Imperial Highness, are you well?”
Ah. Right. In Hokkaro, you had hostlers instead of tending horses yourselves. This man was their leader if the plume on his cap was any indication. I’d forgotten his existence, and his voice startled me.
Before you opened your mouth to berate him, I touched your hand. You stopped and looked at me; I pointed to our horses.
“Ah, that’s right,” you said. Then you called to him. “Boy, ready our horses.”
“O-Shizuka-shon,” said the head hostler. “That Qorin girl touched you—”
You waved. He scrambled to his feet and prostrated himself before you. “That Qorin girl is Oshiro Shefali, my good friend, and you will treat her with the same respect you treat me.”
By then I had already begun preparing your red gelding. Hokkaran saddles are different; where we have stirrups, a horn, and a high seat, you have little more than a flap of leather. Hokkarans believe that a rider and horse should communicate without words. That is the Qorin way of thinking, too; except that we recognize the usefulness of gestures.
You banished the head hostler to his chambers. I helped you up onto your horse and swung into my own saddle. My horse nickered. I ran my fingers through her mane. Again, she nickered—but this time she stamped her hoof, too. A dark mood, then.
So I leaned forward and whispered to her. In hushed Qorin, I spoke to her of the sweets that awaited her at the end of the day, of the verdant places we were going, of home, of grass and wind.
As the words left me, my throat thrummed with more than air. No, this was a great wind. This was the voice of something larger than myself, compressed into a whisper.
It was then I realized I was no longer speaking Qorin. Imagine a language like swaying grass. Imagine vowels sounded like a seer’s horn, consonants the rattle of bones in her cup. My tongue was thick with the taste of loam.
My horse calmed.
I felt like an empty river. I opened my mouth and stared at my hands and tried to understand what had just happened. And, as I did whenever I was confused, I turned to you.
And there you were, sitting atop your horse like a throne. When you saw the expression on my face, your brows knit together. “Shefali?”
I closed my eyes and squeezed my hands together. Opening them took some effort. Were they still mine, or were they, too, the tools of something else?
You urged your horse toward me. There, just outside the royal stables, you squeezed my shoulder. Golden butterflies pinned to your hair fluttered the closer you moved.
“Shefali,” you said.
I licked my dry lips. A deep, rattling breath shook me. “I am all right,” I said.
“You aren’t,” you said. “Do not lie to me. I know you as I know my reflection. What happened?”
I met your eyes. I could not meet them long. The second we locked gazes, my chest throbbed and ached and rang with a note I did not recognize.
You, too, flinched. Your ring-covered hand flew to your heart.
“Did you…?” you asked.
I nodded. When you turned to look around us, the ornaments in your hair sounded like temple bells.