Rabbit Rabbit :)
Happy Feb of 2020, everyone! We've finally reached the grandmommy-chapter of the tale - namely the long-awaited culmination of Saya and Diva's ghost-bond, and also a meeting with ancestral Chiropteran Queens themselves! Expect lots of angst and mysticism, in addition to general wtf-ery!
Hope you guys enjoy! Review, pretty please!
The late-afternoon is humid beneath the forest. Shafts of sunlight, glittering with dustmotes, stir in dappled patterns as the wind sighs through the trees. Straight ahead, a hillside, cobbled with rough stones, slopes up toward a minka—a traditional thatched-roof hut.
Saya shades her eyes in the dizzying brightness.
This is the place.
It took her an hour to find it. Not far from the Miyagusuku tombs—but far enough off the beaten track that she nearly lost her way. But the directions from the friendly yanchu at the tombs are good. This is where that mysterious old woman resides.
Yu Shimbaku.
Saya's pulse pounds behind her eyes. Not fear of the impending meeting—but of getting caught. She hasn't told Haji where she is.
Or what she plans to do.
Sneaking out wasn't easy. The entire family has been on tenterhooks these few days. August has sent a squadron of Red Shield agents over. They are stationed everywhere: at Omoro, at the twins' apartment, at the villa, even at the hospital where Ezra's surgery is scheduled for later today. Shaking them off was difficult. But evading Haji's omniscience was by far the greatest challenge.
In the end, she'd asked him to check on Sayuri and Sayumi. It is a win-win. Yuri's due date is imminent. She knows that Haji is concerned, however much he downplays it. She also knows the twins are more unnerved by the toxin than they're letting on. Hopefully Haji's presence will act as both an analgesic and an armament.
Keep them safe.
Meanwhile, Saya clutches with dreamy avarice her memories of the past days. The purest pleasure on the night of Haji's bite, and the base gratitude emanating from him. Afterward, they'd stayed twined together in bed. The curtained window had washed the colors out of everything, blurring her thoughts into white-noise. Haji's eyes had been fixed on hers, half-lidded as she drifted off.
Giving bliss its own spectrum: the brightest blue in the room
Tears burn Saya's eyes.
I'm sorry, Haji.
I have to do this.
The sunlight darkens. Her sandals crunch over cobbled stones and dead leaves. She wears a kimono—the blood-and-ivory one that Nathan had given her. Beneath it is the necklace with Diva's stone, half-talisman, half-memento. In her pocket, the ampoule with the wolfsbane ticks away like a timebomb.
Soon.
Very soon.
The hillside steepens and then narrows into a natural bridge. The minka sits stolidly at the end. Below, stumps of bony white trees jut like skeletons. Saya is struck by the profound silence. It is as if there is a spell around the space.
Nothing alive may enter.
Saya wonders, walking with grim steadiness across the bridge, if she counts.
Up close, the minka is less picturesque, more rustic. Its boarded walls are stiffened with clay and rushes. The inverted-V framework, interwoven with bamboo rope, is pierced by a central chimney, poking up like a wick. Gray coils of incense drift out. They waft into Saya's nostrils, letting loose a smoke-tickled sneeze.
"Kusuke!"
Saya jerks.
The phrase is the Okinawan equivalent of Bless You—with a twist. It translates into Eat Crap. The belief is that evil spirits may steal one's soul mid-sneeze. The curse is intended to scare them off.
"Nearly got away from you," Auntie Yu chuckles.
"Got away from me?"
"Your mabui, silly girl."
The yuta stands at the hut's doorway. No white kimono or headwrap; she is clad in a plain blue yukata, her unbound gray hair wisping around her face like tufts of candyfloss. A wild rabbit is nestled in her arms. The yuta caresses it idly. In the sunlight, the wrinkles radiating from her eyes and bracketing her mouth remind Saya of the bark of a gajumaru tree. There is a sense of deep internal pressure ingrained into her body, a proud map of her life history.
It makes Saya awkwardly aware of her own body—pale, poreless, perfect. A cipher.
The yuta gives Saya the once-over. "Hm. Lopped off your pretty hair. Lice?"
"What—? No."
"Just askin.'" She knuckles a sleep-crumb from her eye. "By the by, you're lookin' a sight better than before. Well-fiddled an' well-fed." She winks. "You cook your man into afakee stew?"
Says shakes her head.
"Lettin' him sup on your afakee nightly, then?" Her laughter whorls out like smoke rings. "Well, there's a type who's happiest on his knees. Keeps 'em where you can see 'em, saa?"
Saya grits her teeth. "I need to talk to you."
"Ain't we talking?"
"Not in riddles."
"Not even in greeting?" She titters and dips her head. Her fingers comb through the rabbit's plush fur. "Hassa. See how brazen she's become? Ragin' everywhere like an angry red fire. Her family won't be able to keep up. They're only human, saa?"
There again. The double-edged insight that pierces through Saya's chest. The yuta leans against the doorway and yawns, affable and easygoing and utterly unaware that she's said anything of import.
Saya no longer buys the act.
"Who are you?" she asks. "What do you really do?"
The yuta shrugs a shoulder. "Anything. Everything. Liftin' a curse. Makin' a poultice. Savin' a soul, or damnin' it to jiguku." Her lips quirk, but Saya isn't sure it's a joke. "You here to be saved or damned, little star?"
"I need answers." Saya edges closer. "When we last met, you knew who I was. You knew what would happen to me."
Auntie Yu's lips peel back from her teeth. Each one is delineated with brown from lifelong tobacco use. Even in the bright sunshine, her eyes are so dark that the pupil and iris are indistinguishable.
"Oh?" she says softly. "What's happened to you, little star?"
Saya's breath comes in a ragged rush. Inside her, something unravels: the last iota of resistance to the truth of herself. Against her hard-won habit of secrecy, she tells the yuta everything. About Tórir. About her miscarriage. About her visions. About the snake in Akamine's belly, and the description of the blue-eyed girl. It doesn't feel like disburdening herself. It is like passing a skein of poison from mouth to mouth.
When she is finished, Auntie Yu's expression isn't disbelieving. It is dismayed.
"Natteoru mon!" she exclaims. "You're in a heap of trouble!"
She lets the rabbit drop. It meets Saya's eyes, little nose quivering, then scampers inside the hut. Auntie Yu swivels after it.
"C'mon! Nama-namaa-sun! We ain't got time."
Saya frowns. "Time for what?"
The yuta has already disappeared indoors.
Saya hesitates, then toes off her sandals, crossing the threshold.
The minka's interior is spare and simple, no screens for separate rooms. No furniture to speak of, either. Only a folded-up futon, and, in the center of the room, a square irori—a raised cooking hearth—where a potbelly kettle of burnished black iron hangs suspended by a hook. The walls are bare, save for an alcove holding the butsudan. The place is scarcely big enough for two people; its sloping roof, with beams knotted together, creates a closeness that is almost claustrophobic.
And yet, the moment Saya steps inside, she is struck by the mystique of the place. Something vibrates through her, sonic figments of memory overlapping like the tines of a windchime.
A woman, fierce-eyed and dark-haired, stepping past the doorway. Kneeling in prayer, on the eve of battle. A vial is clasped in her palms, its seal bearing the crest of a moon ringed by a serpent biting its tail. She speaks to someone whose face remains unseen.
"If he lives," she says. "You must forewarn my kin. You must forearm them."
The unseen figure nods. The sunlight shifts through the windows, dazzling streaks moving across the floor. They catch the sheaves of an ivory-and-blood kimono hung from a rod on the wall. A kimono with a familiar pattern: red foxgloves splashed across the sleeves, and snakes darting in spideweb-fine paleness across the obi.
The same kimono Saya is wearing now.
The memory gusts away like a winter chill, leaving Saya in goosebumps. She stares at the minka's interior with new eyes. The space seems to acquire a muted glow, incandescent with intimacy. A message that she is meant to be here.
"Ayena!" Auntie Yu chides. "Don't stand there all slack-jawed! Come here!"
She kneels by the irori. Saya does the same. As she performs the action, her body feels strange. Déjà vu encases her like a second skin.
"I—" she starts.
Auntie Yu cocks her head.
"I've been here before," Saya whispers. "I don't know how that's possible."
Auntie Yu chuckles. "If it ain't possible, then how can it to be?"
Saya shakes her head. "It couldn't be me. Was it—?"
Sunako?
Auntie Yu doesn't answer. Lifting the kettle from its hook, she pours tea into two earthen cups. She nudges one towards Saya. Herb-scented steam curls from the amber liquid.
Almost formally, she says, "What was once, will be again. For the people of Okinawa, this is shinjichi. A fact of life. As the moon halves itself, so it grows round again. As the spirit dwells in one earthly vessel, so it passes to the next. There are those for whom the passage goes smooth. And others… for whom there is no passage at all."
A sickle of light falls through the window. It slices a band of brightness across Auntie Yu's eyes. "When I saw you last, you was askin' about your sister. Stringy little thing, you were. Afraid of your life. Afraid of yourself. New here you are, marchin' up to seek answers, all boilin' with iji. Bold as bold."
Saya frowns. "You still haven't given me answers."
Auntie Yu's laugh holds a wavering edge of wistfulness.
"Answers," she says. "They ain't no simple thing, little star. Kutuba noo ushikumaran. What is spoken cannot be undone. What if you dislike what I tell you?"
"That's for me to decide," Saya says.
The old woman hums in agreement.
Cradling her teacup in both palms, she takes a sip. Her eyes slip shut, and she murmurs, "You must understand, girl. Mabui is more'n spirit. It's the essence of the self. After death, some mabui cling to their livin' kin. Especially those dyin' in times of bloodshed. Other mabui flee the body if'n there's trauma. They leave the person a breathin' shell. It happened to many, after the war. You've heard o' that at least?"
"Operation Iceberg," Saya murmurs.
"Tetsu no bōfū," says Auntie Yu. "Typhoon of steel. Many lost their mabui to the slaughter. Some were misplaced forever. Wandering night an' day without rest." She reaches out, her burn-scarred fingertips tracing the red stone of Saya's necklace. "Often, the dead's belongings capture a drop of their mabui. Like a kaba-kaja. An old fragrance."
"My sister," Saya whispers.
"Ii. The sister who's been cleavin' you in two. Blurrin' your world at the edges." Resolve reshapes the yuta's face. "There's a ritual to separate one mabui from another. Like oil from water. Takes time, but it can be done." She touches the sleeve of Saya's kimono. "Except it ain't the sister you should be worryin' about, little star. It's the others. I told you about 'em, saa? Eyes like hers. Eyes like yours. One wove this kimono from the softest-spun silk. The other wore it to battle, dyeing it with her blood."
Saya eyes widen. "Then—this kimono belonged to—?"
My mother?
My aunt?
"They who swore to undo what was done." Auntie Yu sounds for a moment sorrowful. Then she smiles. "You're wearin' their clothes easy. But it ain't so easy to be wearin' their vengeance."
Saya's heart judders hotly in her chest. It's back again, stronger than before: a sense of the supernatural. Looking into Auntie Yu's wizened face, she wonders if the old woman is just that: an old woman. Or is she something closer to Saya? A creature outside of time, wrapped in deceptive layers of ordinariness?
"Who are you?" Saya whispers.
Auntie Yu gives her a small smile. But her eyes glitter too darkly.
"Little fushi," she says. "Last we met, I was telling you to be ready. For when it happens. For when he comes. You heeded my words. Fattened up and sharpened up. Got yourself kweeta with daughters. Let 'em be your shields, so you'd live to fight him another day."
"Him," Saya whispers, then understands.
"You're knowin' his name," Auntie Yu says. "You're knowin' his nature. Akamaata, we call his ilk. Named after a demon in Motobu. A snake with the power to transform himself into a handsome man. Seducing the village girls, then leaving 'em all twisted in agony from carryin' his children. That's not what you're wantin', saa?"
Unless you prefer that viper's spawn in your belly.
Saya flinches.
"That's why I came here," she says. "I want my daughters to live. If he touches me, he can kill them. I must keep them safe."
Something seeps across the surface of the yuta's face. Sadness. Solemnity. She gazes down into her teacup, as if divining something in its depths.
"I remember," she murmurs, "long ago, I was called across the seas. To see a beautiful woman who was wastin' in her childbed. She was a monoshiri like myself. An oracle. But at the mercy of men with souls as black as akaamata. She begged me to kill her." Auntie Yu sighs. "What could I do? Sage, mage, midwife—I was all o' them things. I tried to tell her. Warabi mo iru noni, iya ga shikkarisan ne, cha su ga. You got to be strong! You got two children to care for! She'd hear none of it. She already foresaw the destruction of her kind. She wanted her daughters to live in her place. Carry on the family line. Keep them safe. It was her dying wish."
The words whipsaw through Saya. She gasps, caught in the grip of a gut-deep epiphany. The yuta's eyes are pitch-black—the irises gone, a thin band of otherworldly color at the edges. The energy fizzing around her is the same, mesmerizingly potent and yet familiar as lightning, as stormy seawaves, as a thicket of bone-white trees.
Something aligned with the natural order of life itself.
"Then it was you!" Saya cries. "The one who gave the wolfsbane gift to Sunako! Who conjured up that talking snake!"
The yuta offers the faintest of nods.
"But how? You—you're not a Chiropteran! How are you still alive?!"
Auntie Yu clucks her tongue. "Thinkin' you're the only one who walks outside of time? Who suffers an' awakens to suffer again?" Her eyes glow in the dimness, the brightest spots in the hut. "My fushii. You've a lot to learn before the day is done."
"I—"
"Sssh. Listen to Auntie Yu. Listen, and do not fear. Everything you are, you will be when you leave my home. Everything you weren't, it will die with the last daylight." Her hands clasp Saya's, and something flows between them, a crackling wave of power. "You're wantin' to save your daughters, saa? They're barely nothin' yet. Just two specks in your belly. But with one touch, he can kill 'em. End your kwamuchi before it begins."
Mutely, Saya nods.
"Girl o' mine. I've doleful news. Nothing in the world can save 'em. But shield 'em? From his bites an' his kisses alike? I can give you plenty for that."
"What do I do?" Saya whispers.
Auntie Yu dips her chin toward the tea.
"Drink."
"Wh-what?"
"Black haw. Cramp bark. Oat Flowers. And a pinch o' ichijama."
Saya frowns. "A pinch of feelings?"
Auntie Yu heaves a mighty sigh. "Not jimu, girl. Jama. Sorcery. What in your mother's tongue, they called Seiðr. The gift—or curse—of the gods. The kami have passed it down to womenfolk for generations. Here, an' elsewhere." She sobers. "This tea is what I gave your mother. To keep her daughters safe in her womb. It was taken by the light of the blood moon, same as it'll rise tonight. It will keep your daughters in one piece too… but only for so long."
"If it worked for my mother, why not here?"
"Because of the mabui. The spirit. You an' your sister were ready to be born." Her palm brushes across Saya's midriff. "Your daughters are seed. Less than seed. A tin. A blood-speck. Their mabui is not yet rooted."
"But—"
"Drink." Gathering up the folds of her yukata, Auntie Yu rises. "After, I'll make you an ointment to mask their scent from him. Then we've got to prepare."
"Prepare for what?"
"The mabui-gumi. To keep the spirit safe."
Saya stares at her. "Whose spirit?"
"Yours." The old woman's tone is vexingly absent, her mind on the task ahead. Around her feet, the rabbit scampers, lured out from its hiding place. "It's time you spoke to your ancestors. Learned their secrets for what lies ahead. You understand, saa?"
Saya can only nod. In her bones, she does understand. But there seems no way to translate the understanding to speech.
"Good," says Auntie Yu. "I'll make the offerings. I'll say the prayers. I'll keep watch as your mabui leaves your body. But I'll be needin' an ikari."
"Ikari?"
"An anchor. Anythin' special to you. A name. A place. A word. Somethin' to keep you rooted to yourself."
An anchor?
Saya hesitates. Inside is a tiny pinch of fear, leftover from nightmares, that none of this real. Worse, that it's a trap, a farce, a madwoman clutching at straws—or spiraling deeper into derangement.
Yet, at her core, she knows it is not.
She exhales, and words slink through her mind like koi-fish through a pond, colorful dapplings of memory. Diva. Haji. Kai. Riku. Yumi and Yuri. Each name carries a pocket of warmth, a reaffirmation of her purpose. Yet the word that her mind curves around like a fish-hook isn't a name. It isn't even a place. It is a moment in time, nearer than far, that took her breath away. A moment where she was suspended on the brink of terror, only for it to melt into sweetness.
The moment Haji had met her eyes, and stunned her with a quiet revelation. Of his steadiness, his loyalty, his acceptance of every fatality that had swept into their lives. But also demonstrated to her the truth: that haunted did not mean halved. That no matter what she was struggling against, she wasn't alone.
"Bavalengro," Saya whispers. "The word is bavalengro."
A vista of snow-dusted cliffs.
There are stone buildings here and there, pretty as sugar-cakes, with whitewashed roofs. Yet Saya's fascination is for the land itself: flat stretches of greenery extending to every vanishing point. Each blade of grass is perfect, studded with frost. It rolls outward, a mystical emerald vastness, unspooling as if from a giant spindle.
Yet nothing stirs or makes a sound.
The air—or is it the space enclosing the air?—seems trapped in a bubble. Frozen. Here and there, snowflakes hang at eye-level, revolving slowly in place.
Saya stares at a single flake, inches from her face.
She touches it with a fingertip. It melts into a red splotch, and hits the snow.
Then comes a voice.
"All goes in the way of blood."
The snowflakes are fixed, but Saya isn't. She spins.
The figures who appear before her are no taller than she is. Two females. Girls—Saya can't help but think. Both are clad in simple white dresses. Yet something about them is as timeless as the cliffs. They are an extraordinary pair: one looks like a photographic negative of the other. The first is fine-boned and shockingly pale, her beauty like a chandelier: impossibly intricate and fragile. Her blue eyes radiate a multifaceted glow. The second is dark as wild honey, her body a smooth twist of sinew. Her mouth reminds Saya of a peeled fruit, redly glistening. Her hair is knotted in dozens of braids; when she tosses them back, her eyes burn into Saya's like red-hot sparks.
Red like hers.
Saya's voice dries up in her throat. "You—you are—"
"Sunako," says the first.
"Saya," says the second.
"We each like the other's name better than our own."
"So we introduce our other self, before our own."
Their words pour in a singsong, lapping and overlapping. The syllables are foreign, yet they sink like snowflakes inside Saya, melting into familiarity. Their bodies, aligned together beneath the vast skies, are like tethers of a triangle, bright lines of energy weaving between them. The same energy Saya feels when she is with Sayumi and Sayuri, but stronger. Not like a seal of secrets but a portal opening, preternatural power spilling out.
Saya's vision wavers. Unexpected tears fill her eyes.
"I wanted to see you," she says. "For so long."
"Is seeing believing?" Sunako asks.
"Is believing knowing?" asks her mother. Then she smiles. "But it has been long."
"Too long," Sunako agrees.
In unison, they hold out their arms. Saya stumbles into them.
The embrace is like nothing she's ever experienced. Nothing—not the bluest slice of sea, not the sweetest of Haji's kisses, not the savoriest of Dad's homecooked soba—comes close. She floats in newfound contentment, she brims with newborn bliss. For years, she's tied herself to the mast of solitude: a quest, a vendetta, a suicide. She's never given a thought to her peace of mind. Now it overflows through her, filling every empty space that she'd not even realized was there.
It goes beyond love. It is a rightness of place.
"Kære," says her aunt.
"Allerkæreste," says her mother.
"All the love we saved for you."
"All the lessons."
"You learnt them on your own."
"No better teacher than tenacity," her mother sighs.
"Or adversity," Sunako grins.
Saya squeezes her eyes shut. For a moment the sense of being enveloped by these women, strangers and yet not, suffuses her with giddy little-girl goosebumps. She takes a breath to get a hold of herself.
"He's told me about you," she says. "Your Chevalier."
The two Queens' heads tilt toward each other.
"Whose?" says Sunako. "Her Fox?"
"Or her Viper?"
"Um…" Saya scrubs the tears from her eyes. "He goes by Nathan lately."
This provokes something unexpected from the Queens. Laughter. Such familiar laughter. Her mother's is an airy, breathless giggle—the same ribbon of sound that she'd passed on to Diva. Sunako's is husky-edged as an oboe d'amore, identical in pitch to Sayumi's.
Staring at them, Saya can trace the miracle of heredity: an earlobe like hers, a forehead like Yuri's, a chin like Yumi's. She'd never thought it relevant before. Her ancestors could have been warriors or witches; it mattered little in the grand scheme of things.
They were ciphers, like her past itself.
Now she understands what she missed out on. Never knowing her roots, and subsequently a part of herself. Knowing what she is capable of, but not the boundaries she breaks or fits into simply by being who she is. The web of blood, and where it tangles into a knot, and where it smooths into belonging.
"Nathan," Sunako smiles. "Nátan."
"He kept the name I bestowed," her mother says. "Besotted boy."
"Brave boy."
"He had his moments." The blue eyes dip away. "Unlike like the other."
"Tórir." Sunako's red lips curl back, her teeth sharp as needles. "A mistake I would cleave the cosmos to undo."
"He's after my family," Saya says. "I need to stop him."
The two Queens nod as one.
"We will show you the way," says Sunako. "He must die and you must live."
"You, and your sister's daughters," says her mother. "The scales have too long been tipped. Balance must be restored."
"Balance?" Saya asks.
The Queens exchange a glance. There is kinship in their gazes, but also challenge.
"Shall I tell her?" Sunako asks. "Or shall you?"
"She is flesh of my flesh," her mother says. "As are you."
"Together then?"
"As we marked our place in history."
"As we turned its tides." Sunako takes Saya by the chin, red eyes locking on red. Her skin is tough as sun-warmed leather. "Kære. Were you never told why we exist?"
Bemused, Saya shakes her head.
"A pity." Her mother sighs, and strokes Saya's face. Her fingertips are cool as polished marble. "Allerkæreste. You must mark our words."
"Abide by them."
"Live by them."
"Die by them."
The sun breaks through the gray-bellied clouds to speckle the vista with brightness. The scenery shifts. It is disorienting, like a kaleidoscope pattern. First a green cliffside, then a waterfall. Its boom carries over the roar of the seawaves, a powerful white froth pouring into the deep blue bowl of a basin. The sun angles through the clouds, its rays hitting the spume; it reminds Saya of the milky shimmer on glass during the rainy season.
She and the two Queens sit at the edge of a low-lying precipice. Their feet dangle off the edge. The flyaway foam dampens their bodies. Saya thinks fleetingly, I know this place. Nathan spoke of it. A waterfall spooling into the sea.
"Bøsdalafossur," says her mother. "Our old haunt."
"As old as we," says Sunako. "Giving back what it has taken from the sea."
"Keeping balance," says her mother. "As we once did."
"Balance?" Saya whispers.
They smile as one. Their hair is strung with crystallized beads of moisture, skins exuding warmth and scent, an aroma like a thunderstorm massing at the horizon: lightning-fire and petrichor.
"All living creatures exist for a purpose," says Sunako. "Some live for beauty."
"Others for barbarity."
"Some live to create."
"Others to destroy."
"So it is for us," Sunako says. "The blodfødt have existed as long as mankind itself."
"So many names," says her mother. "So many faces."
"As many as the moon itself."
"Hela."
"Brigid."
"Ishtar."
"Isis."
"So many arrows of words," her mother says. "Each one leading home."
Saya shakes her head. "I don't understand."
The Queens exchange another glance, but this time their solemnity is a cover for mischief.
"She takes after you," Sunako says. "Full of questions."
"Better than silence," says her mother. Then her attention is on Saya, undivided, "As with the cosmos itself, all life must seek balance. A birth for a death. A beginning for an end."
"Chaos for order," Sunako says. "Hate for love."
Saya frowns in belated understanding. "The serpent biting its tail."
"Very good, allerkæreste." Her mother smiles pristinely, "The serpent circling the blood moon. The sigil of our dynasty."
"All are caught in her coils," says Sunako. "She is ever-encompassing. Ever-flowing."
"Yet as fixed as the waterfall."
"Changing."
"Choosing."
"Balancing."
"Becoming."
Saya's eyes widen. "Wyrd."
Her mother touches her lips to Saya's forehead. The softest kiss.
"Yes," she says. "Such was our purpose. To flow alongside mankind."
"To build bridges."
"To break boundaries."
"To discover truths."
"Or unmake them." Sunako stares broodingly at the waterfall. "Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel."
"Fate goes ever as she must," Saya whispers.
Her mother regards her with pride. "As shall our little allerkæreste."
Saya wants to smile back. But something troubles her. "You mentioned balance. Does that include… right and wrong?"
The two Queens laugh again. It is a dark heavy music like the waterfall. Saya has an intense sense that she isn't in the presence of ordinary women, but two beings carved out of time itself: beyond the quotidian limits of morality. Their ethical centers are more aligned to the complex machinery of nature, at once pure and pitiless.
"What was once right is wrong," Sunako says, "What was wrong once paraded itself as right."
"And on it will go," says her mother. "Just as we do."
"Yet it cannot touch us," Sunako says. "Our purview is balance."
"Through knowledge."
"Through mystery."
"Through peace."
"Through war."
"War?" Saya echoes, a wingbeat of dread fluttering in her chest.
"Of course," says her mother. "War devastates, but it also purifies. Replaces complacence with conviction. Stagnation with strength."
Saya shakes her head. In her mind, a red flower of memory opens, sensory motes of Vietnam erupting. Blood and flames. Bodies. The screams of the living and the dead.
"It's not always like that," she says. "What about the suffering? All the lives lost and families destroyed?"
Sunako sighs. "She is very human."
"Softhearted," her mother agrees. "But not simple."
She lifts a hand, caressing Saya's hair. "Allerkæreste," she says. "We are not purveyors of senseless carnage. We battled alongside humans to expand the world we shared together. We took to balance what we gave. Art. Science. Song."
"Like despots, we despoiled," Sunako says. "Like conquerors, we spilled blood. Soaked ourselves in depravity. Inveigled our ways through tragedy."
"And like sovereigns, we were bastions of order," says her mother. "In the old state of nature, humans were free, but their lives were bleak, brute, brief. Under our realm, they traded their aimlessness for aspiration. A cloistered life for a communal. A demesne for a dirge."
"And if our realm was less-than-perfect—feh." Sunako shrugs a shoulder. "Is the illusion of sanctity not everything?"
"Or the illusion of humanity," her mother murmurs, with a faraway smile.
The bluntness of their words disturbs Saya. In one breath they own their barbarousness, and in the next they bask in its beauties. Maybe it is their nature, one rooted not in morality but duality. Or maybe it is the nature of their realm itself, structured not as a city on a hill but a bloodthirsty behemoth, its veins pulsing with violence from start to finish, yet with an inner-sanctum of splendor that spawned thousands of empires in its wake.
"Wars as equalizers, we sowed in abundance," says Sunako. "Erasing the old, engendering the new. But wars as profiteering? That is a mockery of our ways. A gift from Tórir, who sold mankind its spoils and its glitters."
"Violence for its own sake," says her mother. "Cruelty to breed more cruelty."
She raises a hand, and the piercing blueness of her eyes ignites. The scenery darkens, snow swirling. The water below is dotted with bright red blooms like the mushrooming imprints of jellyfish. Inside, images flicker, a jerky loop in nightmarish stop-motion:
Cities fallen like matchsticks. Fires blaze, bodies sprawl, blood splattered in spiky blots on walls and gleaming in huge pools across the ground. Armies cut swathes of terror through the land, leaving despoiled women and limbless children in their wake. Brothers fight with teeth and nails for scraps of spoiled meat. Fathers barter their dull-eyed children for handfuls of coppers. Humans cower, starved and sobbing. Queens huddle in caves, faces streaked with grime. A line of soldiers drag captives along in chains, boots trampling over misshapen skulls. Fog washes out the sky, ash raining from explosions. In a cradle, two infant girls mewl, tiny ankles in shackles. On a bed, a girl screams, her bound body taken by a familiar one, the brutality of the act obscene, her sobs stripping the air as Tórir arches over her, his red hair a starburst of bright blood in the lamplight and his two-toned eyes alight with triumph…
—And with a short-circuiting suddenness, the images fade. Saya is left trembling all over, blood streaking her face.
Her blood?
The two Queens—Blue and Red—watch her impassively.
"He cares nothing for the law of Blodfødt," says Sunako. "The balancing act of give-and-take. He knows only his hungers, and his hatreds. His law is not the primal law, but the lure of arrogance. You must correct it. You must settle the score."
"An eye for an eye," says her mother. "A life for a life."
"Revenge," Saya whispers.
"A human word," Sunako says. "With human connotations."
"We seek only to tip the scales," her mother says. "His life—for the countless that will be lost. His defeat—for insurmountable defeats of humanity. We ask that you struggle, not to resurrect our empire, but to preserve what little is left. Yourself. Your kin."
"There is blood on all our hands," says Sunako. "Nothing will wash it away. But there is one forcer that binds us together. In death as in life. Tórir has slithered from her grasp for too long."
"Wyrd," says her mother. "All—even we—are subordinate to her supremacy. We can shape her, but never shatter her. Nor should we try. Wyrd shows us the truth of ourselves, by our choices. She gives us our power, or takes us furthest from it."
The tremble in Saya's bones threatens to become a breakage. She hugs her arms tightly across her chest. Hot blood drips down her face, though she feels no wounds anywhere.
"What if this is wyrd, too?" she rasps. "What if Tórir is meant to kill us all?"
"Perhaps he is," Sunako shrugs a shoulder. "But—"
"But what?"
"If such was wyrd, would you journey all this way to see us?"
The truth of this sinks into Saya like a knife. It aches, but doesn't she flinch from it. Wyrd or vengeance, she needs to protect her family. She needs to keep anyone else from getting hurt. She doesn't fully understand the origins of Tórir's vendetta. She only understands its hatred. An undiluted hatred, endless and rapacious, the shadow twin of his bright smile and cavalier manner. A Chevalier who sought to subdue his fate, and the Queens themselves. Through cruelty, through cunning, through conquest.
Wyrd—the realm of Queens—isn't devoid of those qualities. It is as brutal as it is unyielding. It calls for winners and losers, and leaves no room for weakness. But it isn't chaos for its own sake.
Tórir's dream is.
If I let it happen.
Saya's heart quivers in her chest. Her words come without forethought.
"All right," she whispers. "I'll do it."
The Queens smile. Two co-conspirators relishing a secret.
"We knew you would," says her mother.
"We bled for it," says Sunako.
"Dreamt for it."
"Died for it."
"To keep you safe." Tears brim the cups of her mother's eyelids. "You and your sister."
"An imperfect vow," Sunako says mordantly. "It kept you safe from him—but not from each other."
Saya's breath hitches, and she lowers her gaze, motionless except for the spill of tears. Deep as her joy at this reunion goes, her grief for Diva will always go deeper.
"I'm sorry," she whispers. "About Diva. I—"
"Sssh, allerkæreste." Her mother encircles an arm around her. "Your sister will be with us."
"Soon," says Sunako. "Her time with you is nearly done."
"Would that you both lived," sighs her mother. "Would that I could rewrite your fates."
"She cannot," says Sunako. "I cannot."
"What's past is past."
"But the present remains."
"Your present," her mother says. "Your choices."
Her eyes are on Saya's, blue as the sea. Charting out the intricate tides of her life.
"Beware," she whispers. "that you choose wisely."
Saya feels cool air on her teeth; her mouth is open to speak. Below her dangling legs, the waterfall churns up a milky spume. Then a shape surfaces from its depths. A girl—dark-haired and milk-skinned. Lips slightly open, light glinting on the points of her fangs. She hums low in her throat, and opens her blue eyes.
Staring into them, Saya's pulse shivers in recognition.
"Diva," she gasps. "Diva, what are you—?"
The scenery ripples around her. Colors bleed into blackness. The two Queens on either side of Saya, and the shape of her sister below—everything disappears. Saya's own body is caught in a current and ripped away. She struggles, helpless against its force. Against the inexorable power of Wyrd itself.
Behind her, Diva's voice calls out. It could be something sisterly: "Be careful." Or something sad: "Farwell." Or something sweet: "I love you."
Whatever she says, Saya doesn't hear. A dark liquid silence fills her skull, and sweeps the words away.
"Bavalengro."
Saya wakes up blind.
She is sprawled on a futon, dented with the impression of its owner's body. Blood crusts her eyes and smears her face; she smells its stale copper tang on her skin. Her hands rise in reflex to scrub it off, but someone holds them gently down.
"Easy, little star." It is Auntie Yu. "Slow an' steady."
Something cool and damp across her face. Wiping the blood. Her skin sizzles as if in a fever. Like white-hot rivets scattered across her brainpan, after-images of the Queens' faces burn into her. Red eyes. Blue eyes. Counsel and kisses. Warnings before the war. And at the last, Diva. Her body a live starfish floating in the water.
"What happened?" Saya tries to say. But her throat is gluey with blood.
A smooth rim touches her dry lips. A cup of water. Its icy sweetness hits her molars: pure heaven. She swallows too quickly, and coughs.
"Slow," Auntie Yu titters. "Chu no iu koto o kikan kara ya saa. This is what happens when you don't go listenin'."
Saya takes a breath, then sips slower. Her boiling-hot body cools by degrees. Her eyes flutter open.
Twilight has deepened the gloom of the hut. A bronze tōrō—a traditional hanging votive—dangles from the ceiling. A single candle burns inside, wind licking the flame. Two moths swoop around it, their furry bodies battering against each other, shadows arcing crazily across the walls. Outside the hut, she hears the bristling of insects: grasshoppers, cicadas, spider crabs.
"What—" she rasps, "What happened?"
Auntie Yu kneels by the futon. She looks careworn, but pleased. "Ayena, girl! What d'ya think? I got back your mabui!"
"My mabui?"
"Nearly got away from me. Like miji, it was. Slippin' through my fingers." She makes a fist. "Had to keep a tight hold. Else you'd lose yourself. Run dry."
Saya sits up. Her body feels bruised and tender. Like raw meat. But inside is something stranger. An absence. It is like having a tumor excised, a scarred ache where there was once unbearable pressure.
Then she spots it. Her necklace, with Diva's stone winking in the lantern-glow. It rests in the middle of three rocks. The rabbit lies beside them. Belly torn open, ribs glistening through cleaved fur. Its misshapen organs are heaped inside a bowl.
The yuta dips her fingers into the bowl. Blood paints their tips.
"Done an' done," she murmurs. "My offering of rice an' awamori weren't enough. She was wantin' blood."
"She?" Saya echoes.
Auntie Yu nods. "Deeji kaakin. Real thirsty, your sister. Was she born that way?"
Sister.
Saya shivers. The seepage of shock is like icewater.
"You spoke to Diva?" she whispers.
"Ii."
"But how?"
"Sssh. Lie still." The old woman rearranges Saya's blankets. "It's as I was tellin' you. Some mabui cling to their kin. Get so entangled it becomes a machibui-kaabui-sun. A hopeless knot. As your sister's mabui became with yours." Her face is gravely pale in contrast to the flickering red sun of the lamp. "Luckily, there's a ritual to separate one mabui from another. Like oil from water. Mabui-wakashi, we call it. We say cleansin' prayers and make offerings. We separate the two spirits, an' make sure the deceased is at peace."
"Deceased?" Saya rasps. "Then—Diva was never—?"
The old woman's gaze slips sideways. "Never livin'? You know she wasn't, little star. Dead for years now. So dead she's starving for life." Gently, "When your mabui left your body, hers stayed behind. I spoke to her. Nu ya ga, ittai, I asked. What's the matter? Why aren't ya moving on? Pas avant que ma soeur soit préparée, she kept sayin'."
Saya's heart lurches. " 'Not until my sister is ready'."
Auntie Yu sighs. "I fed her blood. I held her hand. I kept tellin' her. Hurry up and go home! Wasn't right, I told her, to cling to her sister so tight. She wept an' whined an' wailed. Took hours before she was ready."
"Ready?"
"To go where she belongs. With the gwansu. The ancestors."
Saya's breath hisses like her throat has been slit. "So she is—?"
"Free. You of her. She of you." Auntie Yu leans closer, her blood-flecked hand touching Saya's. "Your mabui is your own again, little star."
Stunned, Saya stares at the old woman. Outside, the evening washes into nightfall. The two moths carry on thumping their bodies against the tōrō. The rabbit's blood glistens like oil on the yuta's fingertips.
Nothing has changed. Yet the space inside Saya is irreversibly altered.
She shakes her head, but she isn't sure at what. Her hands tremble under Auntie Yu's. She breaks their grip, and reaches for the necklace in the center of the stones. Diva's red crystal feels warm in her palm. The surface shimmers, shards of luminescent light caught in each facet.
But the solace Saya once felt from touching it is gone.
Saya's head dips down, her bangs obscuring her face. Her shoulders spasm. A ragged sob works its way from her chest, then another and another. Inside, the dam of self-control finally collapses. The outpouring of relief is indistinguishable from agony. She hadn't understood, until this moment, how ferociously she'd clung to the hope that Diva was still with her. The loss of it burns through her system. She doesn't feel finished with her sister. She will never be finished. Her death will remain for as long as Saya is alive.
A bittersweet reminder that she is alive.
Burying her face in her arms, Saya sobs—for Diva, for their mother, for Sunako, and at long last, for herself. The rock shines like fresh blood in her palm; she cradles it like something nearly as precious.
The final fragment of her old life.
"Sssh, little star," Auntie Yu murmurs. "Warabi mo iru noni, iya ga shikkarisan ne, cha su ga."
You have to be strong.
You have two children to care for.
The same words once spoken to her mother. They pass through Saya with supercharged meaning.
Thousands of years old. Potent with newfound purpose.
Translations of the Okinawan:
afakee - clam
jiguku - hell
Nattoeru mon - This is awful
Nama-namaa-sun - Hurry up
iji - fire, zest
kweeta - big
kwamuchi - pregnancy
miji - water
Hang on to your hats, as the next few chapters are awash with disaster, and their fair share of tragedy! Hope you guys enjoyed, and let me know your thoughts on the ancient Queens!
Review, pretty please! :)