Across the heavens was the sky. Beneath the sky, there was a sea. Above the sea, there was a rock. Upon the rock, there was a girl.
The girl was tall and athletic, and held herself with a warrior's poise. A curved sword hung at her waist, and a feathered clasp held her long hair to the side. She sat atop the rock and watched the sea and looked at the sky.
She didn't look at the sky often. It was high and bright and oppressively blue, and it stretched wider and deeper than a sky should, as if it was bending the horizon away from it. Before its empty vastness, everything beneath it felt insignificant. The girl did not like feeling insignificant.
Instead, she watched the sea. Beneath its glimmering surface, it was dark and cold, stirred by swift currents. The shallows nearby were choppy with waves that seemed to race to dash themselves against the rocks, making their deaths as loud as possible before being replaced by another. Sometimes she found herself cheering them on. She liked the sea better than the sky. The sea looked like something dangerous that could be fought; neither sea nor sky would notice your efforts, but there was no coming to grips with the sky.
The rock was less entertaining, but she liked it best. It was as tall as five men and about as wide at the top, with boulders spilling down one sloping side to make a long trail into the water. Parts of it piled up haphazardly from beneath the waves, as if someone very strong had thrown it together in a great hurry. A tree sprouted from its crown, a gnarled afterthought like the topknot of an aged warrior. The rock was rough and uncomfortable, but the discomfort was the sort that reminded her of her own existence, and she was glad for that without knowing exactly why.
Fish leapt and seabirds passed by, but neither stayed. She always expected there to be a shoreline in sight, but whenever she looked she saw only the shallows around her rock, the deep sea and the deep sky, and in the distance, a panorama of snow-capped peaks that rose from the horizon like a wall. That was all.
She had been there for some time when she heard the call.
At first she thought she had only imagined hearing it. She raised her head and listened, staring out across the water. She was still alone. There were no boats upon this sea, and no one else upon her rock.
Someone had called out to her, hadn't they?
Yes, she was sure of it. She stood and turned to look for the source and found a sheer cliff stretching from the waves behind her, impossible to miss, as if she had simply never turned to see it. It rose up from the sea without preamble a hundred meters across the water, an expanse of craggy dark rock that defied perspective; it might have been as tall as a castle or as tall as ten mountains. Waves boomed like war drums against the cliff's base.
Her hands ached with remembered pain as her eyes traced their way up the stony face. Perhaps she'd climbed it before, or one like it. She hated heights. No matter how good your balance or how firm your grip, no matter how solid the footing seemed, there was always a fall at the end.
But someone had called for her. Someone had called her to fight for them.
Besides, did she really want to stay here any longer?
She filled her lungs to the brim, feeling as if it had been years since she'd last breathed. Facing the cliff, she let the air out in a slow, controlled breath, and dropped into a stance somewhere between a sprinter's start and a coiled watchspring. Her muscles ached as they flexed, waking up after long disuse.
Lower and tighter she coiled, holding her body at the edge of motion, gathering herself. When she felt she might burst, she fought to hold it for one more moment, relishing the strain. Then she set herself loose.
Her feet carried her forward so fast her geta broke shards out of the bare stone. Four furious strides covered the length of the rock, and the fifth and last kicked off the crumbling edge and flung her out over the water like an arrow. The air whistled in her ears and dragged at her hair, but it couldn't stop her. She wouldn't let it. She felt air on her teeth and realized she was grinning.
How had she forgotten how good it was to move?
She hit the water with hands outstretched fifty meters out, halfway to the cliff already. The sea was a cold shock that started at her fingertips and ended an instant later at her toes. She turned the shock into sudden motion, kicking more like a dolphin than a human as she sped towards the wall.
The cliff loomed overhead just as the cold started to seep into her bones. She raised her head to look over the waves and a sudden swell shoved her forward, towards the rocks. Knifing like a salmon, she fought the surge until it brought her close enough, then scrambled for a hold on the rock as the water pulled back for another swing. There was no time to choose handholds, only enough to heave herself up hand over hand on any projection she could find, feet scrabbling at the rock to keep her moving. She made it up twice her height before the next wave hit. When it boomed against the rock below her, the best it could do was slap her foot, carrying off one of her geta.
Clinging to the wall with her fingertips, she glared down at her one bare foot and huffed in irritation. Then she kicked her remaining shoe into the sea, turned her eyes upwards, and started to climb.
She did not like this cliff. It was barren and crumbling and drab, each stretch similar enough to be monotonous but just unpredictable enough to be troublesome to climb anyway. The worst of all possible cliffs.
She could still hear someone calling.
It was impossible to say how high she'd come, but the salt was long dried on her clothes and her arms and legs were a mass of aches. A longer way than she cared to fall, certainly. She'd made a point of not looking down, and the view upward seemed much the same as when she'd started.
There was no warning when the chunk of rock snapped and tumbled from beneath her hand. The lurch made her feet slip, sending her swinging to the side in what felt like slow motion. Her other hand's grip slipped as she twisted, but her fingertips caught on the very edge.
She swayed back and forth, teeth clenched and eyes fixed on those fingers, because otherwise she'd look down and see how far she was about to drop. She felt a moment's bizarre gratitude for the wave that had made her lose her footgear, because another couple of ounces would have cost her that purchase.
Carefully, feeling all her weight hanging from those fingers, she eased herself to the side. Her searching foot found a toehold, and she swung to wedge her free hand into a crack, made a fist, and jammed it tight to hold her. Prying her cramped fingers from their hold was more painful than hanging from them, but she forced herself to flex and curl them until her hand was useful again.
The girl gave herself five seconds to rest her head on the rock face, then looked up at the distance still to climb and stared it down as she reached for the next hold. Nothing had ever stopped her from accomplishing what she set out to do, and this cliff would not be the first.
She could see the top.
By now, however long it had been, every stretch and reach was agonizing, and because she disdained her own discomfort she pushed herself to keep moving as fast as before. Her hands were raw, the sword calluses on her fingers nearly scraped away, and she was sure her bare feet were bloody. As if she needed another reason not to look down.
When her hand stretched up and over the lip of the cliff and caught the edge, the sense of triumph was so sharp she cheered aloud, a tired, raucous shout that echoed faintly from the rock face. Forcing her arms to work a little longer, she swung up to grab the lip with both hands, gathered herself, and with an exhausted grimace, heaved herself upwards.
Her armor clattered as she rolled up and over the rail of the boat, already reaching for her sword. Around her, she could hear the shouts of men at war, a song she knew intimately. No one was in sight, though, and she gave herself a few moments to catch her breath, every sense alight for the enemy.
The boat rocked beneath her feet, back and forth. The shouts went on, but apart from the motion of the waves, the deck was still beneath her feet. No one appeared around the sides of the shelter that rose up amidships.
Had the Taira abandoned the boat already? She knew the young Emperor Antoku would throw himself into the sea soon - or be thrown, one could hardly expect even an Emperor to manage that by himself at six years of age - but she hadn't expected to find empty vessels yet. She supposed she'd simply try one boat after another until she found enemies, then. There had never been any shortage of those.
Settling her armor on her shoulders, she stood up, but a creeping doubt made her hesitate. Was she here to crush the Taira once more? No, that couldn't be. No one had ever needed to be defeated by her more than once. So who was she here to fight against?
She heard someone calling for her again, and turned to look.
Suddenly the boat was jostling with a dozen other craft, all identical and all identically empty, every square inch riddled with so many arrows that they should have sunk from the weight alone.
No, that was the wrong question, wasn't it?
Who was she here to fight for?
She blinked, and the boat was crowded with shouting, armed men, the sashimono above their backs proclaiming for the Taira and their allies.
Another blink, and the boat was ablaze, the rails curtains of roaring flame. The deck was smoldering beneath her feet, and sheets of smoke obscured the sea and sky.
Past the flames, someone was calling her. Yes. That was what she was here for.
Stopping had been a mistake. Really, when had it ever not been?
Facing the fire, she closed her eyes and ran forward in smoke-scented darkness. The roar of the fire fell away, then the heat and the choking fumes. Blindly, she ran on, geta clacking like claws against the boards, ignoring that she'd run far past where the boat should have given way to water, refusing to acknowledge obstacles in her path. Whatever was in her way would simply need to move aside.
The girl didn't know how long it had been since she'd started running, but she knew she wasn't on the water any longer. The clack-clack-clack other footsteps on rough boards of the ship had given way to the click-click-click of footsteps on stone. Now there was a distant ringing of weapons and shouting of warriors, but muffled, as if through walls. Something warned her against looking, but she slowed to listen, eyes still shut.
One bellow drowned out all the others. It was a voice she knew well. She couldn't make out the words, but its meaning was clear. It was the roar of someone who intended to let his killers know that many of them would be departing with him.
She did not open her eyes. There was nothing here she wanted to see. A soft, ugly weight seemed to settle on her shoulders, though she waved her hand through it and felt nothing. It felt like being watched by malicious eyes, like whispers behind her back that she couldn't ignore and couldn't confront.
Was someone still calling?
Her next step hit a wooden riser, and she had to stop to catch her balance. When she raised her hands to feel around her, they were sticky, and the copper-salt smell of blood filled her nose. The sense of something gathering around her redoubled, pressing close.
This would be a bad place to stop.
Eyes squeezed tightly shut, she felt for the step with a foot she refused to acknowledge was trembling. When she found it, she bolted up the unseen stairs in a headlong rush, taking them four steps at a time, keeping her feet with preternatural balance. Eyes closed, she reached a turnaround before she realized it and hit the far wall bruisingly hard. Without missing a beat, she adapted, caroming off of it and pounding up the next flight. She knew how tall the flights were now, and without having to look, she made the turn at the next landing and kept going, up the next flight, and the next.
Somewhere on the stairs, a sudden agony twisted in her stomach, making her stagger. She clutched her stomach, tasting blood on her teeth. That untouchable weight gathered around her, bearing down. Every breath came harder, like it was seeping in with the air, pooling in her lungs and stealing the breath she needed to move.
Wasn't there somewhere she had to reach, though?
She tried to suck in a breath and coughed until she was doubled over, each one agonizing. One sticky hand made an unseen handprint on the floor. She swallowed back blood.
She was not going to stop.
With a grimace, she forced herself back to her feet. She swayed, but refused to fall. One step at a time, groaning with the effort, she started to run through the pain, no longer aware of what she was running on or running from, only that there was somewhere she intended to reach, and that she would get there. She ran, and let the running become her world, her only focus a journey from here to elsewhere.
Gradually, the agony in her stomach faded to a twinge and then to nothing. The copper-salt smell of blood was replaced by the sharper tang of sea air. It seemed to scour her lungs clean, and she slowed to a walk, drawing in deep, cleansing breaths.
When she heard the beat of familiar wings, she stopped walking and opened her eyes again.
Once more, she was on a boat, facing the prow. No wind blew, and the sea spread out around her to the horizon, mirror-calm, under a sky that seemed paused. Before her, directly ahead of the boat, shone a brilliant sun of no color at all. Everything vanished in its glare, losing line and color and substance. It was impossible to see the horizon behind it, and the bow of the boat lost definition going forward until the prow seemed only to be a faint line drawing. It should have been frightening, but it was not.
The call was coming from there.
She started forward, only to stop when she heard beating wings again, and a loud, uncouth birdcall. A jungle crow perched on the railing to the side, huge and glossy. A gull or a crane would have looked more appropriate against the sea, but it did not appear to care about appropriateness. It watched her with one bright eye.
The girl stared back. "What?" she said flatly.
The crow flapped its wings, lazily.
"Do you have something to say?" she asked.
The crow let out a long kaaar.
"Well, what else am I going to do?"
The crow pumped its head and neck, and gave a long croak.
She grinned. "Most likely it will be the same as before. Should I let that stop me?"
The crow tilted its head left, then right, and let out another kaar.
With an impatient look, she said, "If you aren't going to help, then go away. I don't need you to see me off, and I definitely don't need a minder."
She strode past toward the boat's prow. Behind her, the crow let out something that might have been a series of caws, or might have been a laugh, before taking wing. It flapped close past her head, brushing her hair with a wingtip. The girl snorted with amused irritation, but didn't bother watching it leave. Instead, she kept her eyes on that strange light ahead, walking straight up to the bow of the ship over planks that looked less present with every step.
She'd thought the light was like a sun on the horizon, but as she approached, perspective shifted, and instead of huge and distant, now it seemed small enough and close enough to grasp, hovering conveniently over the boat's bow. Bracing one foot on the almost-unseeable bow rail, she reached up toward the light. She cupped it in her hand and drew it down before her so it stole the definition from her hands and wiped the chill from the air, erased the sight of the boat and the sound of waves and wind. It was like holding radiant nothingness. Amid utter silence, feeling herself losing definition, she tilted her head to peer at it, held it close to her eyes so it filled her vision with bright nothing, dove in.
The world vanished in a gentle revelation.
It was not like going blind. It was as if she was blind and had dreamed of sight, except instead of seeing, she'd imagined living. Now, she was waking from the illusion of being alive, the fragments of it blurring into hazy memories of seas and swiftness and laughing crows, of the anticipation of violence and the expectation of loss. She did not see, or hear, or breathe, or move; she was a formless, timeless existence, poised between all possible heres and nows.
But the voice was still calling her.
It was much clearer now that she wasn't pretending to hear it with her ears. Instead, it seemed to resonate in the core of her. Hear me, the voice was saying. It was steady and bright, and what it lacked in authority it made up for in earnestness. Please come, it said. Help us. You are needed.
Something inside of her woke with longing. She had always wanted so very badly to be needed.
The call was like a hand pressed against a pane of glass, with hers opposite it. She could feel the tiny tremors of pressure from the other side, the warmth of it. She wanted that warmth, that life, wanted to take hold of it and dream better dreams this time.
I accept your pact, she said, with no voice save that of her soul.
Instead of pulling the warmth to her, she pulled herself toward it, embracing the call.
Your will shall create my body, she swore,
And my sword shall carve your destiny.
I heed the Grail's call.
I shall abide by your will and purpose.
Such is my answer to you.
She could hear the call louder now. It rang against the barrier between them, bearing a promise weighty enough to shake the barrier. It was an impossible promise to keep, she could tell, but she understood. Sometimes the way you accomplished the impossible was to set an impossible standard for yourself and then hold yourself to it.
I witness your oath, she said.
I will help you uphold all the good of the world.
I will stand with you against all the world's evil.
Now the call was a beacon she struggled towards, pushing the weight of her soul against the barrier between them. It began to give beneath the pressure, and she redoubled her efforts.
As one of seven heavens, she proclaimed,
Clad in the three Words of Power,
From the circle which guards the World,
A guardian of the balance attends you now!
With a final heave, the barrier between her and the world shattered.
The girl blinked against the sudden light with eyes created by the sight of it. Brilliant golden motes gusted from the passage opening in front of her, swirling around and through her. Where the lights touched, they painted her essence in matter. Golden whorls drew bones and flesh and skin and hair, sketched clothes upon her body and geta upon her feet. Radiance swirled toward her hand, curved and coalesced into the sword she'd made part of her legend.
Breath filled her new lungs. Her heart beat for the first time, again. Knowledge of places and times not her own etched itself into her mind, making her ready for her duty. The light opened into a circle, a shining passage back to the world of the living. Someone was out there, waiting for her to make their cause her own.
Perhaps this time she would be worthy. She would do her best. She'd never known how to do otherwise.
Ushiwakamaru squared shoulders that hadn't existed a moment ago and stepped out through the ring of golden light.
"Ushiwakamaru, arriving as requested! As a samurai, I shall serve you with my whole heart."
Author's Note:
The theme for this chapter is 'Iron', by Woodkid.
A soldier on my own, I don't know the way
I'm riding up the heights of shame
I'm waiting for the call, the hand on the chest
I'm ready for the fight, and fate
