That is not a very good telling of the story. I am certain that, reading this, you are shaking your head, lamenting some part I’ve forgotten. I know Shiori says something before she stabs the fox woman in your version. I do not know what it is. Something full of bravado, probably. I will let you fill in that detail now, as you are reading.
“I don’t know much about your condition,” Ren had continued, “or how it affects you. But I do know you are more of a hero than Minami-zuo was. All she had to do was resist a fox woman. Difficult, but it is something anyone might do if they put their mind to it.”
She paused and touched my face. I do not want you to think it was an amorous sort of touch; it was not. Concern, pity, sympathy—these things dominated her features. If she’d wanted to bed me, she would have made it clear, Shizuka; this was nothing more than comfort.
“What you fight is much worse. It is not a fox woman, standing in front of you. It’s in your blood,” she said. Her hand hovered over my heart, but she did not touch it. Already she was treading on broken ice. If she touched my heart, she’d fall into the frozen water. “Barsalai, I cannot know how you suffer. But you must keep fighting her, this fox woman in your veins. Your Empress is helpless until it is slain. If you give in, she, too, will wither and die.”
I find it strange, to this day, that she chose a story about Minami Shiori to make her point. Why not one about Emperor Yone, or the Gray Master? Or Yusuke the Brawler?
Why choose a story about one of your ancestors saving another?
Something about this struck me. At times, Shizuka, life is like watching pine needles falling into poems.
And you and I, well …
“Take the mask, Barsalai,” she said. “Mock your temptations. Do not let them rule you. Your Empress needs you.”
I looked down at the laughing fox.
I thought of you in the woods alone, with no idea how to hunt and less idea how to make a camp. No—that wasn’t right. You knew how to make a camp, didn’t you? My mother sent you out a day’s ride from the clan once, on your own, so that you’d learn how to set up a tent and hunt for your own food. She left you there for a whole week before she allowed me to go to you. I was terrified that you’d be lost or hungry, but there you were hale as ever. You’d coaxed a birch tree from the ground and slung a blanket over its lowest branch in lieu of a real tent. Your campfire was badly made, and by all rights should not have lasted an hour, let alone however long you’d been keeping it. Next to the fire was a pot full of berries not native to the steppes. On second glance many of the same berries grew on the birch tree, somehow, though they don’t normally bear fruit. You had a single marmot cooking on a spit above the flames. You had not bothered to skin it. Did the smell of burning fur not bother you?
“Cheater,” I said.
You laughed. “To survive is Qorin, isn’t it?” you said. “Your mother said I should use all the tools available to me.”
You and I both knew she hadn’t meant divine tools.
But you and I both knew that I wasn’t going to tell her.
Now, even as the memory hurt me, it brought me comfort. You could hunt. Not well, but you could. You had my tent. If an animal approached you, then you had your sword. When it came to survival you’d get by, as you always did.
But what about you? About us? I tried to kill you and then left without saying anything at all. That would shatter the hardest of hearts.
And so I put on the mask.
Ren’s smile was one of teary-eyed relief. She threw her arms around me and held me tight for a few beats. “Barsalai,” she said, “you may have whatever you wish from my home. If you … If you still want the oil…”
I shook my head. “Food,” I said. “I will return in the morning for it.”
Together we rose. She gave a short bow. “Good,” she said. “I shall watch for your mare. And, Barsalai?”
I turned, one hand on the sliding screen.
“I hope I will see you again.”
There is a certain pain one feels at times. Not from a wound, but from the anticipation of the wound. In that instant before blade meets flesh, already you can imagine what the cut will be like. Your mind hurts you before the metal does.
That moment, I think, was an arrow soaring toward me.
“I do, too,” I said.
I rode into the forest like a crack of thunder. Our camp didn’t take long to reach. When I arrived, I saw only our tent, only the trappings we’d left behind. I did not see you. I did not see your stout red gelding. I swallowed the worry rising in my throat and closed my eyes.
I have known you all my life, Shizuka. I have played with you in the gardens of Fujino; I have slaved over letters written in a language I could barely read, I have shared a bed with you, I have held you at the moment of your small death. Part of a person’s soul is in their scent: I have half of yours, and you have half of mine.
On some level, I knew this. So when I took a deep breath of the forest air, I knew what I was looking for. Your scent. Your steel peony scent.
I caught a glimmer of it to the east. I urged Alsha in that direction, standing in the saddle to get a better view of things. The scent of you grew stronger and stronger. But there was another smell, too, just as floral.
At last, I spotted familiar felt. There was my tent, flung over a low hanging branch. Bright white lilies surrounded it, lilies I’d only seen in the Imperial Gardens. At the center of the flowers, just in front of the tent, you sat with your arms around your knees. Twigs and petals alike were entangled in your now-messy hair; your cheeks were puffy and your eyes were red from all the tears.
But it was you.
“Shizuka!”
When you turned and saw me, your eyes went dawn-bright, your mouth hung open. “Shefali!” you cried. You ran to me. The flowers parted for you.
I jumped off Alsha and met you halfway, and you slammed into me with as much force as your small body could muster. I staggered backwards a step or two as you squeezed me tighter than ever before.
I kissed your forehead, kissed your hair, took deep breaths of your soul. I counted all your fingers, checked you for injury. You were fine. Thank the gods, you were fine. Weeping, but fine.
The gasps that left you reminded me of a mewling kitten. Tears rained down from your eyes; snot dripped from your button nose. You beat my chest with your tiny fists.
“Idiot!” you said amid the weeping. “Running off like that, after saying what you did…”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. Gods, but you kept crying and crying—you gasped for breath. “But you need to breathe, Shizuka.”
You kept beating at me, raking your nails down my deel. “I didn’t know where you were, Shefali, you left me alone and—”
You gulped in a deep breath. When you next opened your mouth, only syllables came out, not real words. Still you beat at me. Breathe, I said, and I remembered to do it so you’d have something to emulate. In, out, in, out.
Suddenly you grabbed fistfuls of my deel and buried your head in its roomy chest pocket. You slipped one hand inside, laid your palm flat against my heart.
“Shefali,” you whimpered. “Shefali, I didn’t know how … how hard it was for you.”
Was I worth all those tears, was I truly worth them?