But I could taste it again. Fear, sweet and potent. I felt as if I’d drunk an entire skin of kumaq in one sitting.
“Pick her up,” I repeated. “I won’t hurt you. I swear.”
I met her eyes. She was a mother, I think—I could smell childbirth on her. That sounds strange. If I said I smelled the sweets she made for her children; if I said I smelled long nights awake stressing over a cradle—would that be less strange? Or more, perhaps? These images land on the back of my tongue and play on the back of my eyelids.
She scrambled to her feet and scooped you up.
“Follow,” I said.
So it was that I left the Imakane bathhouse, blood caked so thick on my skin, I may as well have emerged from a mud pit. My teeth came to a point now; the veins on the back of my hand were visibly dark; and, though I could not see it, delicate black veins colored my eyes, too.
When Temurin and Qadangan saw me, they screamed. I suppose they thought I was a demon.
“Barsalai,” I said, pointing to myself. “Barsatoq needs help.”
For in that moment, I did not care what I had done. As long as I brought you out of the bathhouse safe and alive, nothing else mattered.
It would not be until later, when you were bandaged and healing, when I had to explain to my mother what had happened, that I broke down weeping at this thing I’d become.
The more I try to remember this, the deeper a nail’s driven into my skull. I returned to the ger. We returned, I think. Otgar covered her mouth when she saw us, spat on the ground. To my disgust, she moved in front of my mother.
“Disgust” is not the word. As if Burqila Alshara needed protection.
The dark bubbling within me simmered over. Their voices were the hiss of steam in my ear—hurt her, make her suffer, look what she has done to you!
“Whatever you are,” Otgar said, “leave here now—”
I bared my teeth. Fangs, now. Each of them came to a point, so that when I smiled, I looked like a wild animal or worse. My nails grew so thick and dark, they reminded me of a hawk’s claws.
I was keenly aware of many things in that moment: One, Otgar’s heartbeat. Two, the vein on her temple pulsing to unseen drums. Three, the shaking of her sword. Four, the power coursing through me. Drunk. I was drunk on it, Shizuka, on the knowledge that no one could stand before me and live—
But Temurin’s strained voice returned me to my own mind. “Dorbentei,” she called, this woman who had fought with my mother in the Qorin wars, this woman who now sounded terrified. “Dorbentei, that is Barsalai. Something happened, she is not herself—”
“Barsalai?” Otgar called. And my mother shoved her out of the way so hard, she fell to the ground.
Burqila Alshara slew her brothers without a trace of regret. Burqila Alshara rode with one hundred men and women to Sur-Shar, and rode back with five hundred, despite not speaking a word of Surian. Burqila Alshara blew a hole in the Wall of Stone with Dragon’s Fire. Burqila Alshara conquered half the Hokkaran Empire with five hundred men and two thousand horses.
Yet when she saw me—when she realized it was her own daughter standing there, painted black with arterial ink—she covered her mouth. Slack-jawed and pale she was, the agony of recognition writ large on her brow. With trembling hands, she made the only sign I recognized. The one she’d made with a beckoning wrist, with a sharp flick; the one she’d made look soft; the one she’d made to call me to dinner.
My name. No, not even that—the name she alone called me. Shefa. My name was among the few hand signs I knew; when we were alone, my mother would always leave off the last syllable. You did not know this name, and this now may well be the first you’ve ever seen it.
And I heard Temurin’s soft weeping; I heard your labored breathing. I looked down at myself. At the claws I once called fingers. At my skin, thin as rice paper, trying to hide thick black eels. I looked to you, to my wound, weeping darkness.
“Mother,” I said. “Mother, I’m sorry.”
Was that my voice? I didn’t sound like myself anymore; I was echoing in an open field. My knees knocked together as the weight of my actions came upon me, as I saw everything that had just happened with my own eyes and retched.
I’d torn a man’s throat out with my teeth. I’d drowned people. I’d enjoyed it, all of it, the thrill and the power and the rush.
“Mother,” I repeated as I sank to the ground.
“Mother,” I repeated as she held me.
And then I wept like a child who’d wandered onto a battlefield.
Otgar took hold of you. While my mother rocked back and forth with me, she tended to your wound. All the while, she kept looking up toward my mother and me. With her free hand, my mother spoke.
“When?” came Otgar’s voice.
“Two months ago,” I muttered. “We were fighting a demon.”
Rocking, rocking, rocking. What was I going to do? What was she going to do with this abomination she’d birthed? Was she going to kill me? She should kill me. If this was the way I was going to behave now, I needed to die. Better to put down a wild dog than let it loose. I’d almost attacked Otgar, of all people, and even as my mother held me, I had to fight the thoughts flooding my mind.
“Your blood,” said Otgar. She could not say it without cracking.
I nodded, eyes shut tight.
“Shefali,” Otgar said. “Shefali, what happened?”
In bits and pieces, I told them. We wanted to help. That was all. We went into that bathhouse thanks to your amber-colored idea of heroism. We went in to make sure the villagers were all right and then you were hurt and …
My mother held me for some time.
I spent the night alone, in my own tent. I refused to be near my family. I refused to be near anyone at all, lest that creature I’d become overpower me again. No one quite knew what to do. We untied the villagers, of course—Qadangan and Temurin did that before we left. They were safe.
But they were going to talk. You’d shouted your name when you entered. They knew who you were. And how many other Qorin did you travel with, Shizuka? Soon tales would spread. O-Shizuka travels with a demon, with a woman who tears out throats with her teeth.
What were we going to do about me?
That night, the Not-You came into my bedroll. That night, she wrapped her arms around me, and I did not have the will to fight her off. She stroked my face with decrepit hands. She breathed, and I smelled fungus, smelled death.
“Ah, Steel-Eye,” she said. “Look at you. You are so much more beautiful now.”
I buried my head in the pillows, but her nails dragged across the nape of my neck.
“With your teeth, perfect for biting,” it said. “Your eyes that see so much. Yes, you are more beautiful now, and you will be more beautiful yet.”
“I do not want to be,” I said.
“Ahhh,” it said, planting a rancid kiss on my shoulder. “Finally you have spoken to me, my love.”
“Leave me,” I said, pulling the pillows over my head.