8

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Spirit, unprotected from the depredations of memory, stayed in unease. Nights came; nights went—morn was sullied by autumn's challenge; sky, a jittering maiden, turned grey, swooned when storm's wrath descended. The rains would not stop . . .

The vertiginous valleys stayed cloaked in mist whilst he followed the snake and his sure apprentice. Find the boy—kill him! the words would come, each a stab, each a song, each a breath. Had he not done that . . . a thousand times before? Yet a blur was the memory of it all; he, Leaf's thrall. What passion to draw it all out—one stroke at a time? The mark itched upon his tongue.

From Konoha's keep, the boy had run far; now, he called unto him, a seduction he felt in the air, dancing about. The serpent, teasing his tongue, taunting his eyes, temping his mien, told him of the boy he thought to be his King! You became a king when you fell away from Leaf's shade? What a strange thing to say? And at that moment, a little flutter invaded his heart, but his spirit looked away in a shame that it loved . . .

The birds flew from his scroll, their wings watery, black, solid—a trick he had learnt from someone whose face he had all but forgotten. Is that not all but what a life was, a scroll upon which shades were meant to fade . . . ? He had not known it to be any less true; so he drew, and he drew furiously, and he drew happily of a boy that was a lost, a smile that the days had condemned, a red that was jovial still . . .

By night, Leaf was etiolated; his mind, strongest; and then he would dream of the boy he had loved ever since he learnt to hold the brush in his fingers with more bravery than he had ever learnt to hold the sword. The mark itched and it itched some more till his spirit was as tender as a wound.

At last, he stood before a great snake sleeping as stone; and a diaphanous mist that stood between the boy and him; and his eyes made him feel bare . . .

"Brother!" I said, watching a succulent red paint the lips as delicately as flowers; and just a bit of it trickled down into the milk, and it turned into spring . . .

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