I’ve been a hunter all my life. Skinning an animal and preparing it for consumption were not new to me. Yet, somehow, the paring knife felt clumsy now. Would it not be easier to use my talons, or my teeth? I’d get a better feel of the meat that way. Maybe taste it a bit and—
This was why we went to these butchers to start with.
So I struggled at first, and on occasion you caught me sinking my nails into pork or duck. But you always reached out for me. You always touched the base of my neck.
“You can do this, Shefali,” you’d say. “It is only blood and flesh.”
And so it was.
The longer we traveled, the more things you’d try to help me with. If a peddler traveled with charms supposedly from Sur-Shar, you’d buy every single one. We stopped at every holy site we could along the way. Springs, forests, even a pit supposedly inhabited by an ornery rock god. We did not see the rock god, but you did nearly fall in, looking for him. I caught your sleeve and pulled you back up again.
But that was what it was like, traveling to Xian-Lai with you. Long days and long nights. Afternoons spent in local markets, me wearing my fox mask and you with a rice farmer’s hat you insisted flattered you. It did not flatter you, of course, but it made you happy, and that was the same thing. In the evenings, we’d set up camp, and I’d try to cook whatever I’d hunted that morning with varying levels of success. I don’t know how Uncle Ganzorig makes his stews so appetizing, but I can be sure it does not run in my blood.
As we ate, I’d ask you about Xian-Lai, though you’d never been. About what the Xianese nobility are like, and how they might view someone like me.
“You are only half Hokkaran,” you said with a smirk. “So I imagine they’ll like you much more than they like me.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You do not represent two hundred years of oppression,” you said. “They were independent, before my ancestor Emperor Yoshinaga sent General Iseri to conquer them. Ages of their own traditions and customs—and we forced them to embrace ours. Yoshinaga wasted ink telling our people we were superior to the Xianese. In reality, he only wanted control of their ports. And, perhaps, oranges. My family has a regrettable love of citrus fruit.”
“Citrus?”
“You will see,” you said, smiling. “If I don’t eat them all first.”
As we came closer to my brother’s holdings, I found myself sitting up at night in bed.
Moving clears my mind; it always has, and I find still it a useful habit. But in those days, I was so focused on what my brother would think of my condition that I was paralyzed.
Staying in one place leads to a stagnant soul and mind. You see only one patch of the sky, one patch of stars, and never witness Grandmother Sky’s true glory. Demons, too, find you more easily when you stay in one place.
I think the last is somewhat unique to me. Ghosts are an exception. Ghosts will haunt you to the ends of the Earth if you’ve upset them, even if it has been actual decades since you did so, and you’ve tried to repent, but …
Continuing.
In our room not far from Xian-Lai’s capital, the Not-You found me again. It formed from the shadows in the far corner, like smoke solidifying into a human form. Our previous encounter left it with thick bruises around its neck. A festering pit gaped back at me where its left eye once was. It did not stand, did not beckon me. It merely sat in the corner and stared at me.
Seeing it tore at old wounds. I hissed, bared my teeth, my nostrils flaring.
“Leave,” I said.
Bones rattling in a cup—that was the sound it made. “You cannot be rid of me, my love,” it said. “I am not a stain on your prized deel.”
I thought of waking you, for you slept curled at my side with your thumb between your lips. Who was I, though, to ruin such perfect slumber? No. I would be all right. This thing was not real. One hand on the bare skin of your heavenly hip would be enough to ground me.
“Why are you here?”
Now it craned its awful neck at me. A thick black tongue darted out from rotted lips. “To warn you,” it said. “Your brother will lie to you, Steel-Eye.”
At this, my fury threatened to bubble over. I squeezed your skin; you groaned in your sleep. Sad as it sounds, I clung to that noise. I forced myself to remember the consequences of losing control.
“You’re the liar,” I said.
Its head lolled to the side, ear to shoulder. The matted clumps of black that served as its hair swayed just enough for me to catch sight of its right ear.
Your uncle is in possession of a dog, a monstrous red thing half his size at the shoulder. I want to say it is more fur than dog, but I’ve been tackled by it once before and can attest to the creature’s strength. Regardless, there is so much fluff, it is difficult to make out the thing’s features. All except for its ears. To prevent infection, its ears are cropped to resemble a horse’s.
So it was with the Not-You’s ear, or what was left of it. A twisted nub of flesh poked out from the side of its head; about the top third of a normal ear. Seeing it sent a chill straight to my gut. I covered my mouth.
Why, I wondered, did this disfigurement upset me more than the rest?
That is the trouble with telling you the story this way. You know why it upset me. Yet I must continue to tell the tale, for I have gone too far now to abandon it.
The Not-You fixed me with a piercing look. “Am I?” it said. “Steel-Eye, I alone have never lied to you, and I never will. How could I lie to my own precious blood?”
“You sicken me,” I said. I kept one hand on your hip; the other moved to my stomach. This lurching … I wanted to throw up, but I hadn’t eaten anything in a week.
“An upset stomach is a small price to pay for the power I’ve given you,” it said. “And you will continue to grow stronger. How beautiful you will be, when you finally meet Him.”
Not worth getting angered over. Not worth striking it. Not worth giving in to that rage. But gods, how I wanted to hurt it.
“I will leave you, Steel-Eye,” it said, “for you will not hear reason. But when the conquering one comes, when you most need him, remember what I said. He will lie.”
As it spoke, it began to lose substance. Again it was smoke, though this time it dissipated in the wind. The word “lie” hung in the air like a ringing gong.
I slipped beneath the sheets and let my fingers climb the ladder of your spine. When I reached the top, I kissed the nape of your neck.
Only then did you turn toward me. Your eyes fluttered open, weary with sleep; but your hands cupped my face. “My love?” you said. “Is everything all right?”
Tomorrow we’d see my brother. Tomorrow I would know what his wife was like, what his new holdings were like. Tomorrow I’d have to tell him what happened in Shiseiki. The Not-You spoke of lies and dark futures.
But in that moment, it was just you and I in an inn room, away from the prying eyes we’d soon have to avoid. You and I, alone and naked, huddled together beneath the sheets. When our skin meets, when our hearts beat so close together, when we are so tangled up in each other that we cannot tell ourselves apart: this is the most sacred time.
Yes, Shizuka, as I stroked your face and wiped drool from the corner of your mouth, it was a holy thing.