Divine Comedy (28)
Alec
I did not sit idly by while my sister enjoyed her break with Seth. Only hours after she had left Iya Valley to meet him in Tokyo, Goro gestured to my backpack. "Break out the civilian clothes. We're going as well."
"Going where?"
"Back to China, but on the other side of it." He flashed a grin that twisted the scars notched into his cheeks. "We're going to hunt for jinrō."
I tensed. "You really think I'm ready?"
"We'd be staying put on this hill if I thought you weren't."
Goro left me alone to let me change out of my keikogi, and also left me to my thoughts. A few weeks ago, Jane and I had accompanied him across the sea and visited a Buddhist monastery in eastern China. It was not the famous Shaolin temple that attracted tourists in droves, but a tiny place tucked away in the heights of Mount Tai. The monks there were well acquainted with Goro, so they hadn't batted an eye at our presence and instead greeted us with courteous bows.
"These good monks will demonstrate the next part of your training," Goro had told us.
We'd been led through hallways that wound around and linked courtyards like beads on a string. We had passed by monks training in the courtyards, some looking younger than me and Jane, and others were men around Carlisle and Esme's physical ages. I'd been pleased to recognize the kata they were performing. We hadn't stop to observe further. What Jane and I had to learn had been up ahead.
Goro had come to a stop before we entered the next courtyard. Many of the monks had carried spears. Goro had asked in Mandarin if we had come for the demonstrations too late, and a monk had replied with a small grin that we had come just in time.
The three of us had remained in the shadow of the hallway, propping our arms on the red wooden rail.
"Watch closely," Goro had told us.
One monk had centered himself in the courtyard while the rest surrounded with spears aimed at him. He had worn only saffron pants, long socks, and leg wraps, so his midriff had been bare. As the steel points had closed in on the monk in the middle, I had noticed the knotting of muscle and a tightening of his face. He had spread his arms wide, almost in an inviting gesture. Then, to my alarm, his bare torso had been speared from every direction. The monks had formed a flower of steel and saffron, but amazingly, no blood. The points had dug deep through skin, but I had smelled no blood spilling from those wounds. A second later, the speared one had let out a great shout, but not out of pain. The other monks had pulled back the spears, revealing no wounds in the first place.
Beside me, Jane had mirrored my astonishment. "How—?"
"Keep watching," Goro had said.
She had shut her mouth and we had watched the monks arrange themselves in a T formation, their spears pointed to the sky this time. The same man who had let himself get speared had also formed a T-shape—arms spread, legs close together—and had been hoisted up by bare-handed monks to rest on the points. Spears had dug into his outstretched throat, each of his limbs, and just over his groin, the last of which had made me cringe.
The monk borne aloft by the spears had kept his pose, and again, no blood burst out to run down the spears. I had used my sharp sight to look for signs of trickery, but found none. The monk had been lowered from his dangerous perch and let out another great shout.
As if the daring monk hadn't astounded me and Jane enough, he had leaned his entire weight on the pointed end of a spear, with that pointed end digging into his neck. The sight had made me swallow hard.
His fellow disciples had put away the spears and took turns with the next set of demonstrations: snapping poles of wood and even bars of iron over their skulls, legs, and stomachs. No trickery there, either. None of the monks had red or gold in their eyes. There'd been only the steely light of total focus and discipline.
With the end of demonstrations, Jane had let loose the flood of astonishment she'd been keeping dammed behind a wall of silence. "They're all human," she had breathed. "How is that possible? How can they just walk away without broken bones? Without bleeding to death?"
"The answer is called iron shirt training," Goro had said, "or iron body training." He had turned to us and made a circular motion over his belly. "Remember that energy flows in us all." Then he had closed his hand into a fist and held it over the middle of his stomach. "With enough training, you can redirect your energy, tighten it, center it, hold it there like the tip of a spear, and with that focus, you can be impenetrable. If humans can train their bodies to deflect the tips of spears, solid wood and iron, imagine what our bodies can do." He had cracked a grin that, had I faced him in battle, would have turned my legs into jelly. "With an iron shirt, an iron body, not even the fangs and claws of jinrō can break through you."
Jane and I had gaped at him. "We can learn to do that?" I had asked softly.
"Children of the Moon can bite and slash their way through anything." Doubt had been thick in my sister's voice. "I've never heard of anyone being able to withstand their blows."
Goro's grin had only widened. "Well, now you do."
When we had turned away to leave the Buddhist temple, and head back to Japan, I had sensed the slightest shudder coming from Jane. She had lifted a hand—to rest over the reminder of the worst pain imaginable, no doubt—and I had clasped it before she could complete the upward motion. At my comforting squeeze, she had given me a faint smile.
Iron shirt training hadn't been easy—of course it hadn't, when you had to push your body past a limit you thought impossible to cross. Somehow my sister and I had endured it in one piece, and now I was going with Goro to take on my first jinrō. The first one I would face without the luxury of my gift, anyway.
Goro and I descended Iya Valley and took a ferry to cross the South China Sea. "The last time we were in China, we were on the eastern side," I said. "So we're heading west?"
Goro nodded. "Surviving jinrō like to hide in places where our kind shy away from—hot, sunny places, like jungles and deserts. In a small nation like Japan, it hadn't been hard for me to track down and take care of jinrō." He cast his gaze to the Chinese shoreline ahead of us, a dark line dividing the sea from sky. "China still has its fair share of them, though. They like to lurk in sparsely populated deserts to the west. Last time I went on a hunt, jinrō were terrorizing nomads in Taklamakan Desert. I suspect they're still some around stirring up trouble."
I wasn't surprised to hear that. Much like us, Children of the Moon targeted the fringes of society to keep a low profile. Human nomads made ideal prey. Once we landed at the port of southern China, we took to the cover of wilderness and struck northwest on foot towards Taklamakan Desert. A human would have balked at our journey across China, but with our speed, infrequent feeding, and no need for rest, we could cross without delay or difficulty.
When the lush forests dwindled and thinned out to sand dunes, we didn't slow down. The searing heat and shifting sands didn't deter us. As for being sighted, we didn't have to worry. Our blurred figures could easily be dismissed for desert mirages.
Half a day later we reached the Tarim Basin, where most of the Uyghur people lived. Goro had no interest in heading into the cities. We kept to the dry stretches of sand where hardy nomads made their home.
As with the rigors of training back at Iya Valley, the exertion of speeding across an entire country and a desert accelerated my thirst. At a remote waterhole, Goro and I came across a few wild bactrian camels, which we could feed on without being spotted.
At our scent, the camels reared back from the water's edge and brayed, though we soon held down one for each of us. With a firm grip on the camel's drooping, shaggy neck, I leaned into its ear. "I'm sorry, and thank you," I murmured, before I killed it with a quick wrench of its neck.
Goro had instilled that little ritual into me and Jane. He had taught us to always be thankful for the animals whose blood nourished our bodies. In his first life, Goro had been pescatarian, so consuming the blood of mammals had been a struggle at first. Still, he preferred that to feeding on humans.
It was sunset when we stumbled upon our first traveling band of nomads. As with us, cloth covered nearly every inch of their bodies, though unlike us, they bent under the weight of their packs or perched between the humps of tamed bactrian camels.
Goro hailed them and tried to strike up a civil conversation in their native tongue. Since I only knew Mandarin, and no other dialect in China, all I could do was stand by while they talked. I didn't need to know Uyghur, however, to notice fear flickering in the nomads' eyes. Not fear of Goro, but of something else.
Goro turned back to me when he parted ways with the nomads, switching back to English. "That family said they're fleeing to the city. They wanted to leave before the next full moon. Blood moon, they call it. They're relieved to know that I take their urgency seriously." He narrowed his eyes. "It's just as I feared. Jinrō are in the area again. Let's keep going. There should be more nomads where that family'd been coming from."
By nightfall, our sharp noses picked up the acrid smell of smoke wafting from a fire. We headed in that direction, and within minutes that would've taken hours at a human pace, we came across a trio of round tents that'd been pitched up for the night. Smoke rose from the centers of the felt tents. There must be people huddling close to their only source of warmth. Even in the summer, the desert at night could plunge to freezing temperatures.
Dogs of mixed, indiscernible breeds had leashes tethered outside the tents. We couldn't get closer, for the dogs caught wind of our scent and split the air with their barks. The tentflaps were thrown back as a woman and several men burst out. They carried revolvers and rifles aimed at us.
Goro raised placating hands and said something in Uyghur. It took several moments for the men to relax and lower their guns. It took several more to hold what seemed like a terse, tense dialogue. The young woman with the rifle made a curt nod and disappeared into the tent.
Goro briefly rested a hand on my back and strode forward. "They're inviting us inside. Come."
I followed him into the tent directly across from us. Inside was more spacious than I had expected, with enough room for a man, two women, three children, their beds and a stove. One woman was young, around the man's age, while the other was quite old, so wrinkled that they almost shut her eyes. I assumed the young woman to be the man's wife and the mother of those three children.
The young woman stowed away the rifle, then offered me and Goro meat and milk. Goro declined it with a raised hand and perhaps a polite "no, thank you." As with the first family of nomads, Goro spoke to them in Uyghur. And like before, all I could do was remain at his side politely and quietly.
"You could try Mandarin with them, if you dare," Goro had told me, "but more often than not you'd likely just ruffle their feathers. A marginalized ethnic minority like the Uyghurs don't want to speak the language of the majority unless they have to."
Not a problem. Standing by without a word was my default position since my days with the Volturi. Goro would pause in his interactions with the nomads to translate for me.
"This is quite a large family, enough to span three tents. The other two belong to aunts and uncles of two generations. I told them that I know of the blood moon. They told me of their misfortune with the last one. A jinrō prowls in this stretch of the desert." He gestured to the young woman stoking the fire. "Nur lost two of her brothers to it. The family lost many more dogs and camels. They want to take refuge at the nearest city, but they have sick elders to care for. The journey across these dunes would kill them."
I frowned. "They have no choice but to stay and open themselves up to another attack."
Goro made a grim nod. "Nur is bent on avenging her brothers, even with her wounds still healing from the last full moon."
I could smell the bandages hidden under her clothes, bandages that would need to be changed soon. My frown deepened. "Doesn't she know that she would die, that the rifle would do her no good?"
"Oh, she knows. Still, she said that she would go out kicking and screaming before any harm comes to her children."
The glow of the fire brought out the flint in her eyes. Despite what I had said, more of me admired the woman for her courage than disapproved of her foolishness. She reminded me of my mother, of her unwavering love for me and Jane, when she had been our fiercest defender from a village that had hated and feared us.
"Her courage will not be in vain tomorrow night," I said. "We'll make sure that no more loss comes to this family."
Goro grinned. "That's the spirit. That's exactly what we came here to do." He said something to Nur, and at that, she smiled at me. She rested a hand over her chest and made a reply that had Goro raising his eyebrows. "Risky, but it might just work."
"What did she say?" I asked.
"She will offer herself as bait to lure out the jinrō."
When she said that, her husband looked distressed and put up a vocal protest, but Nur held her ground and shot back with an insistent tone. The man looked between us and Nur, and with a dark furrowed brow, he said something to Goro. The reply from Goro had the man put up no more protest.
Then he said to me, "He says that if by some miracle we survive the blood moon, he wouldn't know how to repay us. I said that it won't be his family repaying us, but the jinrō."
I knew what he meant. If I could last through the night intact, then I could earn the fangs or claws that would form my own sword. I looked around the tent, at the two boys and one girl clinging to their mother's legs, all three below the age of ten, at the grandmother curled up in her bed, at the family who had welcomed us into their home. This was the ultimate test, and this time, it wasn't just my merit as a warrior on the line. Lives were at stake, and they counted on me to succeed.
Goro's presence was reassuring; if I couldn't defend the family, then he would, but it'd be a failure and a great shame to let him handle the jinrō alone. I had to pull my weight and do my part.
We spent the next morning having Nur show us where the jinrō had been. The camp was situated in the midst of steep rocky ledges, in the middle of scuffed, upturned sand that still bore pawprints of the jinrō. The largest dog owned by the family had paws only a third of a jinrō's, and the pawprints of a jinrō ended in long, human-like fingers. The tracks ended past the shelter of the rocks, where the wind shifted the sand into perpetual smoothness.
The wind, however, couldn't wipe away the thick, tongue-curling stench of jinrō. Goro and I could track down the scent, and catch the jinrō in a more vulnerable human form, but that would defeat the purpose of coming here.
Goro forged his blades from the fangs and claws of a jinrō at full moon. Blunted human teeth and fingernails wouldn't do. In a way, Goro needed the unexplained, mysterious magic of the full moon to make his blades as well.
So we waited for the sun to set, and as it climbed down the sky to take the desert heat with it, Nur limped out with us to the outskirts of camp. I let her lean against me for support, in case the sands shifting underfoot made her slip. She breathed hard, and despite the lump of new bandages I felt through my hand on her back, she pressed on with a clenched jaw and eyes trained ahead.
Nur said that her family had spotted the wolf springing into camp from behind a pointed rock. We stopped there. It was hard to miss. It looked more to me like a termite tower, if that tower was blown to larger-than-life proportions.
Nur pulled away from me, but not before giving me a pat on the shoulder.
"'Thank you, I can stand on my own from here," Goro translated for me. "The wolf will come. It has tasted the flesh and blood of my kin. It's greedy for more.'"
"We won't let it have its fill tonight," I said.
Goro conveyed my promise in Uyghur, and she made a tight-lipped smile.
"'Avenge my brothers in my place,'" he said on her behalf.
She placed great faith in me for something she would have wanted to do herself. For this woman, I would not betray her trust. And for Goro, my teacher, I had to prove that he had trained me well, that I had been a good student.
Goro and I took our places on both sides of Nur, pressing into near hiding against the rocks. The sun sank beneath the sandy horizon, and in its place, a full moon glowed over us. The desert cold did not penetrate me and make me shiver, but something else did. The pure cold tingle of sensing a jinrō nearby.
The light of a full moon cast an uneven, rounded silhouette on the hulking, hunched shadow as it emerged from the pointed rock. Only the peaks of pointed ears broke the roundness of the silhouette. Grey hair, not quite long enough to be called fur, covered the shadow from head to toe. Hands twice as large as mine, each finger steeped with a sharp claw, hung from long arms and massive shoulders. Moonlight glinted on rows of fangs between a long snout. Baleful yellow eyes peered back, like little twisted versions of full moons, sending a shiver up my spine.
It walked on two legs, but it was no human. That human had disappeared with the sun. In their place, under the curse of the full moon, was a slavering, mindless beast that could only think of blood and meat. Such as it was with Children of the Moon, with jinrō.
Goro and I had neither blood nor meat, but Nur did. The jinrō went down on all fours and lunged for her. She didn't break into a run. She didn't even stumble back. Instead she stared back in silent defiance. Goro and I sprang forward to intercept the jinrō. The two of us threw ourselves at the jinrō's torso, its waist, avoiding the clawed hands that could have torn Nur apart had we not tackled back the jinrō in time. We fell into the sand together.
The jinrō was massive. Even hunched over, it was taller than Goro. Its back formed a shallow crater through the sand on impact. Its clawed hands swung at us. We deflected the downward scythe-like arcs with palms striking its wrists, before it could take our heads off.
Not even Goro's strength, the great ropes of his muscles stretched to their limit, was enough to keep a jinrō of this size pinned down. We skipped back on light feet as the jinrō scrambled back up. Sand had turned its fur into golden dusty tufts, and some of it trickled down the same path as the saliva from its jaws.
The jinrō lunged past us, again charging at Nur. There came the window of opportunity, the burden that came with being a beast. Goro and I grabbed the jinrō by its tail, pulling the other way to send it thudding belly-first into sand this time. The jinrō whirled around to blast us with a foul-smelling snarl.
With my grip closest to the base of the tail, I was first in the path of its arm swing. I knew that path, where it began and where it would end. Or so I thought. Drawing from the well of iron shirt training, I redirected the energy in my body from my hands to my chest, where I thought the jinrō's claws would strike, would break.
But I misjudged, and so did the jinrō. I was smaller than its average opponent.
In its savage swipe at me, the claws of its index and middle finger slid harmlessly across my sternum, but the rest raked over my neck and face. Goro released the jinrō's tail and caught me before I could sprawl onto the sand.
"Alec—!"
"I'm fine," I said through gritted teeth. "I can still fight."
Blood welled from two long gouges that ran from the right side of my neck to my cheek. It ran down my lips, my chin. I tasted blood from the bactrian camel I had fed on. The cuts stung, but I bit down on the pain and slipped into a stance beside Goro.
"Remember your training," he said. "That's what will get you through the night. That's what will get you your sword."
I swallowed down disappointment from my failed attempt. I could easily deflect the jinrō's blows with leopard fists, but that wasn't the point of coming here. The only way to get those fangs and claws was to meet them head-on. It'd be a dangerous gamble to see what would break first: the jinrō's body or mine. Nur and Goro bet on me, against the jinrō, and I didn't want to fail them.
The jinrō kept its back to Nur, facing me and Goro with a tail thrashing against the sand and a yellow glare piercing through the dark. We had its full attention now. It knew in its hungry mind that it would not get its meal with us in the way. It would have to go through me and Goro first.
I challenged the jinrō with a silent, steady glare of my own. "By dawn, it won't be my head in the sand, but your fangs and claws," my eyes said.
Sand burst behind the jinrō as it sprang from its crouch with jaws wide open. Summoning that memory of the monk on Mount Tai, the one pinned by petals of spears, I stood my ground, spread my arms wide, and met those jaws without putting up resistance. Or so it'd look to the untrained eye. I met those jaws with all the resistance of skin harder than diamonds. Like a trap snapping shut, the jinrō sunk its fangs into my exposed torso.
There came the snaps and cracks of teeth. Blood streamed out, but not mine. The jinrō reeled back howling, showing rows of red, toothless gums.
"Yes," Goro cried from behind. "Well done, Alec."
The skin of my torso felt unscathed, unbroken. That sent a surge of confidence up through my chest, and I had to make that one-sided grin my sister was so fond of making.
The jinrō hunched on all fours over the sand, coughing and spitting up blood. Its lips curled up in a toothless snarl as it met my eyes.
I strived to keep my voice measured and calm. "Come on," I said to the jinrō, "we have all night."
The full moon still shone brightly overhead. Its cursed light compelled the jinrō to keep fighting, even if it wanted to run. Even without that moonlight goading it on, the jinrō looked like it wanted more than ever to hack me into pieces for the teeth it had lost.
It leapt on to attempt just that with bared claws. Unlike bites, slashes came in many different angles. I took evasive action, ducking and weaving through wild swings, to study the method behind the madness. Jinrō may be mindless, but they could be predictable, if you cared to study their behavior. I had paid the price for lacking foresight earlier. The deep cuts on my right cheek served as a reminder.
Then, instead of twisting away, I centered my energy like closing gates on the battering ram I knew was coming. The jinrō raised one hand high above its hand, its elbow pointing to the night sky, and I met the downward arc of its swing with the deft start of a backflip.
Claws broke off along my hardened chest and torso. The jinrō's pained howl filled my ears as I finished the flip to put more distance between it and myself. Its fingers now ended in red, dripping stubs.
The jinrō, once bent on tearing me apart, lost face. It turned tail and ran on two legs for Nur. It stretched out its clawed hand for her, as I knew it would, but I wouldn't let it. I threw myself between it and her, to let the jinrō's claws become a sort of spear point driving into the middle of my belly. Against my hardened skin, the remaining claws broke on impact.
I broke my fall with outstretched hands and caught my balance with quick, practiced turns of my feet.
"I'll take over from here," Goro boomed. He stepped in to manhandle the jinrō to submission with frightening ease. With a sweeping kick he brought it to the ground and held it there with a wrenching lock over its limbs.
The jinrō kicked and struggled, but without its most deadly weapons, it was much less of a threat now. Over the growls, whines, and snarls, Goro said something to Nur.
She unwrapped one of the cloths over her head and gave it to me.
"Use that to collect all the fangs and claws," Goro said to me next. "I don't want you to get burned."
The cloth was clearly homespun yet well-made. With it, I retrieved my prizes of the night, letting the glint of moonlight guide me to the fallen pieces. I wrapped them into a bundle.
"Now what?" I asked Goro. "What happens to the jinrō?"
"We wait till dawn," he replied.
My eyes widened. "You're not going to kill it?"
His explanation was simple. "I am a doctor."
That only amplified my disbelief. A doctor for our kind, and for jinrō? Unheard of.
Goro, still keeping a vicelike grip on the jinrō, spoke to Nur again. He must have told her to head back into camp, because she drew away, but not without looking over her shoulder at us.
The battle had seemed to stretch out to me, but in reality, it had ended in only a few minutes. Keeping a safe distance even from a felled jinrō, I waited with Goro for sunrise.
At the first rosy fingers of dawn, the jinrō thrashed even harder against Goro. This I knew to be its instinct to run with its tail between its legs and hide. The transformation back to human form was an elusive one, not meant to be seen. This time Goro and I witnessed this one shrinking back, though to my expectations, not by much. A jinrō that massive must have been a very large man, and I suspected correctly.
This man could be Goro's twin, but only in bulk and height. Unlike Goro, his skin was rugged and sun-tanned, and wiry dark hair coated his arms and chest. Yellow eyes darkened, and a beard grew back on the man's face. He looked Uyghur, like the families we had met earlier. The fight in him left with the moon. Now he curled up on the sand, sweating and trembling like a wet leaf.
Goro slowly and gently released him. He shrugged off his top to drape it over the man's groin. Then he knelt down and murmured into the man's ear. The murmuring went on for a while, and though I could hear well enough, I couldn't understand whatever Goro was saying.
Goro rummaged into a tiny pack in his belt and pulled out what looked like purple petals pinched in his fingers. To my perplexed surprise, he fed them to the man, who grimaced as he chewed on the flowers. The man was given more of the flowers, though to cup in his hands, not to eat.
Goro helped the man up to his feet. The man in his daze hadn't noticed me all the while, even though I was responsible for his lack of teeth and nails. Goro and I watched him walk away on unsteady feet, his shoulders no longer rounded and imposing but sagging from exhaustion.
I peered at Goro with a frown. "You're going to just let him go?"
"He didn't go empty-handed. I gave him medicine."
I blinked at him like an owl. "There's medicine for jinrō?"
"Took me half a millennium to figure it out." He sounded more resigned than boastful as he rubbed a hand behind his neck. "Wolfsbane, picked under the light of the full moon, and left on ice the next day to freeze its power in place."
"That's the cure?"
"Not a cure. Preventive medicine. The cure for lycanthropy is still a mystery, but at least I had found a way to suppress the wolf before the full moon. I told that man how much and how often he should eat the wolfsbane. I told him to never come back to attack this family again. When he told me that he's a believer, I told him to find the nearest mosque so he could repent, and swear to Allah from there to do no more harm and take no more lives."
I remembered that Goro had given up slaughtering jinrō, and stared after the man's retreating back. "Are you this merciful to them all?"
"Not all. Only to the first-time offenders. Repeat offenders won't be treated so nicely. The key is to make sure that they never succumb to the wolf within them again."
That jinrō was lucky to walk away losing only his fangs and claws, rather than his life. Like sharks, Children of the Moon could constantly replace teeth and claws like growing back hair.
We headed back to reunite with the Uyghur family we'd been protecting, and they streamed out of their three tents to greet us with cheers. Many of them reached out to shake Goro's hand, and only refrained from doing the same with me because I still held the bundle of fangs and claws.
Nur's husband looked concerned as he pointed to my face and traced a finger down his right cheek.
"It doesn't hurt anymore," I assured him. "There will be a scar, but I'll live."
Goro conveyed my words into ones the man would understand.
Nur then said something to me in a warm voice, and Goro translated: "'Keep the cloth as a token of my gratitude.'"
I smiled and nodded my thanks.
Goro declined offers of money, jewelry, and camels. "We got what we had come for," he seemed to say to the family. "We will take nothing else from here."
With the threat of the jinrō lifted, the nomads could remain in the area and tend to their sick without fearing for their lives.
After we wished each other well and parted ways with them, I said, "Forging the sword must come next. Where will we go to do that?"
"It's a place you know," Goro replied.
We sped across China, this time eastbound, to the very same monastery where Jane and I were introduced to iron body training. It turned out that the monks kept a forge there as well, to create their swords, spears, and other weapons used in shaolin.
As a friend of the monks, Goro could borrow the forge and use it as he pleased. "The monks initially acquainted with me are long dead," he told me, "but honor-bound agreement and friendship can last for more than one lifetime."
Goro spent all day and night toiling by the flames, hammer, and bellows. I stood by at a safe distance. Undaunted by the searing heat, he melted down the fangs and claws to mix it in with metal. By the third night, he finished the sword. When he presented it to me, its steel halfway into the sheath, I accepted it with reverent hands and a deep bow.
The sword was a thing of deadly beauty, a thing to admire until one faced the receiving end. The blade glinted under the moonlight, stretched out in my hands like a long, cold, curved tooth that could bite deep.
"Before I let the jinrō go, I had asked him for his name," Goro said. "I hope that I won't have to cross paths with him again, because if I do, I would have to strike him down. But his name matters, because that's what you will call your sword."
Naming swords after jinrō who had given their fangs and claws for the blade...it made sense for Goro to have that tradition.
"What is his name? The sword's name?"
"Timur. It means 'iron.'" Goro cracked a grin. "Quite fitting for a sword, no?"
Indeed it was. Perhaps it was fate that we had crossed paths with that jinrō in western China. I couldn't fight back a grin of my own.
Goro's golden gaze upon me was warm like the sun. "Alec, you've trained hard and fought even harder. You earned the right to wield this blade. Wield it well."
"Thank you. I will." With that solemn promise, I slid the sword—slid Timur—into its sheath.
How far I had come from the boy I used to be. Here I stood, straight-backed and proud, gripping a sword I could call mine, which I earned from defending those who couldn't defend themselves...did this make me a sort of knight? Had my wildest dream just come true?
I've come to really like using jinrō as a substitute word for Children of the Moon. This chapter makes the most mention of it by far, so just imagine how cumbersome and awkward it'd be for me to write "Child of the Moon" every time in the fight scene.
The preventive medicine is something I made up (again, not much canon info on Children of the Moon, so plenty of room for creative interpretation). That's made up, but the Uyghurs are not. They are a real group of people, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group based in northwestern China.
I was going to have Alec's POV in the last chapter, but I decided to break the usual Jane-Seth-and-occasionally-Alec pattern by having a chapter dedicated to just Alec. I thought it appropriate that the trial to earn his sword got a whole chapter to itself. Jane's trial will get the same treatment.