“Then they would starve,” I said.
You sighed and shook your head. “Earlier,” you said, “when you spoke to your horse—did you not feel strange? Did you not feel like someone else’s inkbrush?”
I stared at the backs of my hands. Warm, brown skin, pockmarked here and there with unhealing white. If I made a fist, I could see my pulse throbbing. I counted the beats, waited for you to continue. If someone was using me as their brush, what were they writing?
You swallowed. Near to us was a shrub full of blossoms I could not name. They were all bright violet—so bright, I did not like to look at them. You reached out toward one of them. It struck me that your hand shook, that there was this fear in your eyes you cut down like an enemy on the field.
When your fingertips met the petals, they turned from violet to gold.
A soft sound escaped me, and I covered my mouth in surprise.
“Shefali,” you said, and you took my hand in yours. I could not help but stare at you—your pleading mouth, your wide eyes. “As candles are not stars, we are not like the others. You must promise me, no matter what, that we will always find our way back to each other.”
Your words hammered against the bell of my soul.
“I promise,” I said. “Together.”
“Swear it,” you said. The fire of youthful conviction filled you. “Swear it to me.”
Without hesitation, I stood up and walked to the great white tree on which the songbird sat.
When you walked to me, it was without fear, without a trace of nervousness.
I drew an arrow from the quiver hanging at my hip. I held out my hand, the flat of the arrowhead resting on my palm. Then, together, we cut our palms against it.
Sharp pain jolted through us.
And yet neither of us flinched.
When I drew my hand back, the arrowhead was dark with blood. It stuck to my palm, and it was only with some effort that I removed it. Then I nocked the arrow. Sweat and grime from my grip pressed into the weeping wound we’d just made.
When I drew back the bowstring, when the pressure against my palm set my whole arm alight, when the pain screamed inside me—when all these things happened, I pointed my bow at the sun.
“I swear by sky and blood,” I said. “I swear by my mother’s ger, and my grandmother’s spirit. I swear by the blood of Grandmother Sky, who birthed the Qorin and taught us to saddle lightning. Together. I swear this.”
Only then did I loose.
Like the songbird, the arrow soared overhead, straight on toward the sun. I turned before it reached the peak of its arch. Once Grandmother Sky tastes your blood, you may not hide from your oath. Where can you go to hide from her bright gold eye, or the dull silver one? All things return to the sky in time.
As we walked back to the blanket we called our camp, I wondered if we would return to the sky.
Only the stars and the clouds deserved to be in your company. Only the sky could be home to you. Only the sky was a splendid enough throne for you.
*
WE STAYED IN that clearing that night. I urged you to let us ride back, or at least to ride toward somewhere a little better populated. But you insisted in your bullheaded way that we could stay wherever we pleased. After all, hadn’t you just told me that we were not normal?
I did not like that. It was the sort of thing said by a girl who has never had to keep watch for wolves in the dark of the night.
And so, as you crept into my tent to sleep, I set about bundling together our belongings and hanging them from a tree. Once this was done, I sat before the fire and resigned myself to a sleepless night.
It rained not long after you went to bed. My fire, reduced to smoldering cinders, did not give me much light. I slipped my arms inside my lined coat and huddled closer to the embers.
Yes, I remember the orange of the cinders, the low rumbles of the night creatures. I remember rain on leaves and their fresh green smell. I remember closing my eyes and listening to the hundred thousand sounds of life. I tilted my head back and let the rain fall into my mouth.
When it rained in the steppes, we’d put out every bowl we could to catch it. A hundred li away, my mother and cousins were running out into the darkness. They’d turn and dance and sing praises to the sky. In Xian-Lai—so far away, I could not imagine its distance—my father and brother slept in their warm beds. Kenshiro might be awake. Knowing him, he’d be sitting up in bed, looking out the window. In his hand I pictured a brush; on his mind, poetry. He kept writing to me of Lord Lai’s youngest daughter. Kenshiro said she was more beautiful than the wind through a silver horse’s mane, which might be the wrongest thing I’ve ever heard. How could he look on you and say such a thing about any other woman?
But love makes fools, as they say—and in my brother’s case, it drove him to write terrible courtship poetry.
Thick drops of rain fall like beats. One, two, three, four, five …
And then there was you, asleep in my tent, not even a length away from me, yet given over to the world of dreams. I wondered what you dreamed of. I wondered if you were safe.
*
BY THE TIME dawn came upon me, my eyes were heavy with sand. I rose and moved toward the tent.
It was then that I saw the tiger.
You must understand I did not hear it, did not see it before this moment. A creature three, four times my size moved with the silence of death itself.
Your ancestor Minami Shiori hunted tigers for sport. Looking at the beast now, I did not know how she did it. Every sinew in its body, every muscle, tensed for attack. Great green eyes froze me in place. So astounded was I that I did not notice the beast was hurt.
Yes, yes, as it turned toward me, I saw dried blood on its paws like rust. On its side, a yawning mouth of a wound; on its side, claw marks. Red was its muzzle, red its teeth.
I did not know if tigers traveled in packs. I’d only heard of them in stories. There was only ever one tiger in the stories. Perhaps they were not like lone wolves, or lone Qorin.
But this one?
This one was. I knew that look in its eyes.
I licked my lips. The tiger crouched down. I’d seen cats do the same sort of thing, when they were about to pounce on mice.
I did what any Qorin would do: I mounted my horse and drew my bow, in a smooth ripple of movement. My palm still ached from the wound, but I did not have time to dwell on it.
“Shizuka!” I shouted. Hopefully, the sound of me raising my voice was enough to rouse you. If not, perhaps hooves pounding against the undergrowth would.
The tiger leaped forward, landing not far from me and my horse. In the moment before I kicked into a gallop, I found myself in awe.