In the entry hall, Jae-ha passed Shin-ah his boots and cloak, and he hastily wrapped his own cloak around himself, intending to make a getaway before anyone could remind him what an unparalleled honor his presence was. Surprisingly, Shin-ah left his mask where it was, but he never opened his eyes, and when they stepped outside, Jae-ha had to fight the impression that he was leading a blind man.
The moon was nearing full, and an opalescent aura hung around it in the black sky. The breeze was slight but bracingly cold, its scent frosty and pure; after the cloying air at the ceremony, breathing this stung blissfully. Feathery flakes of snow, larger than earlier, meandered downward making less than no sound, dimming the crunch of fallen snow under their boots. Shin-ah's breath was still a bit fast, but it was puffs of mist that revealed it now, not sound.
"Are you all right?" Jae-ha asked him.
He nodded. His voice, always soft, was tiny but clear in the falling snow. "There was… someone I wanted to see," he said. "I didn't see anyone. I didn't see… anything… but what I saw was too much…"
"Yes, the atmosphere in there was quite something," Jae-ha agreed sourly.
"Is that, ah…" Shin-ah hesitated. "Why did you try to cut yourself?"
"I didn't." Jae-ha knew his knives well and was certain he wouldn't have actually drawn blood. Although with hours still left in that seance, he supposed he might have been that desperate by the end.
Shin-ah didn't seem fully satisfied by that answer, but he didn't press.
They walked along in silence for a while before he spoke again, hesitantly. "I don't know why he didn't come. Maybe he didn't want to."
"Or maybe there's nothing to it," Jae-ha supposed.
But Shin-ah shook his head emphatically, raising his hands to his eyes again.
If it was all real, then Jae-ha thought he'd had even more of a lucky escape. The brisk night air was already clearing his senses enough to know that he shouldn't leave Shin-ah alone with whatever was rattling around in his head. "So, who was this?" he made himself ask.
"The old blue dragon. I don't remember him very well, but… He taught me never to use my eyes. He taught me to use a sword to protect the village. I remember he would get angry when I cried, and sometimes he would grab me and pull me. He told me not to go outside, because there wasn't anyone who would be my friend…"
"And you want to see this person again?"
"Mm." Shin-ah nodded. Why was it so much easier to remember the harsh things? "He would let me hold his hand, too, or stay warm with him at night… He said if I had bells like that, he could find me…"
"If it were me, I'd toss them off a cliff and say 'good riddance,'" Jae-ha told him. "A few little crumbs aren't worth putting up with someone like that."
After he'd spoken, the sound of crunching snow dropped off, and he realized that he was only hearing his own footsteps. He turned to look — Shin-ah stood still, eyes squeezed tight shut, mouth twisting over a crumpled chin; he pulled a ragged breath.
Augh! Jae-ha managed not to let the internal cry of shock escape his mouth, and he hurried back to take Shin-ah by the shoulders. "Now, now, don't listen to me. What do I know about it?"
Shin-ah sniffled and rubbed his eyes.
"Just picking out a few things — that could make anyone look bad. I opened my mouth like an idiot, all right? He could have been a perfect father for all I know."
"You think so?" Shin-ah asked.
"Well, I know there can be more to these things than it seems." Even as he desperately retreated, Jae-ha wasn't willing to cede the ground completely; hearing about someone being rough with Shin-ah as a child and telling him no one would be his friend struck a spark of anger that Jae-ha would pledge loyalty to, but he also knew where he'd gone wrong.
He coaxed Shin-ah back into motion and started aimlessly down the path again. "Learn from your big brother," he said; "this is the sort of mess you make when you assume that other people are like you."
The spark of protectiveness had been there, but he'd also let himself react as if Shin-ah were talking about Garou — which was not only foolish but hypocritical. He did know that there could be more to words and actions than it seemed. After all, in his own youth, 'I trust you' had sometimes looked like a knife thrown at him. Once, after he'd needed a rescue from the other pirates, the most touching 'I love you' he'd ever gotten had sounded like 'You stupid brat I should throw you over the side and let you swim back home'…
Jae-ha didn't trust himself to open his mouth again, but he kept watching Shin-ah, and was relieved to see him relax into a more calm, thoughtful look, eyes still closed, brow still lowered but more gently.
"More than it seems…" Shin-ah reflected. That was all he said.
For some time, they walked along in silence, shoulder to shoulder. When Jae-ha finally thought to look around, he found himself lost. Focusing on Shin-ah, he hadn't paid any attention to where they were going and had ended up in a part of the village that might have been barely familiar in daylight but was now altered by darkness and snow.
"Oh, this isn't where we're staying," he said. He could get his bearings quickly enough with a jump, just enough to see from above…
But before he could suggest it, Shin-ah spoke. "I saw something earlier, and I was curious. No one's there now."
"Ah, capitalizing on the distraction. I like the way you think." Far from leading a blind man, it turned out Jae-ha was the one being led.
The reversal became even more extreme as they came to one of the larger buildings and went inside, where there was no fire and no lamplight — pitch darkness. Now Jae-ha really was blind, and he let Shin-ah lead him along. Well, after that, he can run me into a wall if he likes.
But he didn't. Shin-ah brought him through rooms and eased him through doorways and finally guided him to kneel down and put his hand on something soft.
"Cushion," Shin-ah told him.
Jae-ha sat down on it by feel, and then there was nothing for him to do in the dark but wait. A moment later, a strike and flash of flint made him recoil — so Shin-ah did have a little revenge, or else just didn't know that sudden light would hurt a normal person's eyes. Jae-ha squeezed his eyes shut until the red flashes stabilized into lamplight, then he blinked and peered through the lingering colored spots.
The room they were in was a study. He was sitting in front of a writing desk, aimed away from it at a blindly-chosen angle, and he was facing a wall completely lined with diamond-shaped wooden niches holding scrolls. Shin-ah had finally opened his eyes and was scanning over the collection.
"Ah, this is what you were curious about. I didn't know you were such a scholar," Jae-ha remarked. And maybe he wanted to embarrass himself just a bit more in payment for embarrassing himself earlier: "Myself, I couldn't read until I was thirteen."
Shin-ah blinked at him. "Why not?"
"No one bothered to teach me."
It got him a strangely quizzical look. "Before they taught you, you couldn't see it?"
"Well, I could see that there was paper with ink on it…" He trailed off as he caught the shape of the disconnect. "Are you saying you didn't have to learn? You can see what writing means just by looking at it?"
Shin-ah nodded, then turned back to the niches. "This one," he muttered, and plucked the thin scroll he wanted, based on no outward label that Jae-ha could see.
"You really can see just by looking, can't you?" Jae-ha went over to the scrolls himself and touched one at random. "What's this one about?"
Shin-ah looked at it. "It tells about the life of the thirty-ninth white dragon." He paused for a moment. "Nothing much happened."
Jae-ha touched another scroll, slid it out a few inches. "What about this one?"
"The twenty-eighth white dragon. Bandits came, and he fought and killed them all, but he was wounded in the battle and then he couldn't have children…"
Jae-ha sucked in his breath and slid the scroll back into place.
"…And then the next white dragon was born, and they said that it was his child, that the mother was a virgin and it was a miracle, but it wasn't really, and the scroll says what really happened but that it's supposed to be a secret…"
"All right, then! Turns out the white dragon ancestors are more colorful than I thought." And this talent of Shin-ah's was an interesting and unexpected twist as well, one that suggested some possibilities.
Shin-ah was unrolling the scroll he'd picked when Jae-ha put an arm around his shoulder. "Listen, let's have a little conspiracy, you and I."
Shin-ah leaned away from him a little, with an understandable twist of his eyebrows.
"Nothing questionable, just hear me out. Next year, let's winter over somewhere else. Are you with me so far?"
Shin-ah tilted his head. "I thought you were having fun."
"Ah, hah," Jae-ha half-laughed, struck by the unexpected counter. "Well, I've been trying to make the most of it. It's actually been quite annoying at times — saying 'jealousy is so ugly,' or 'good things come to those who wait'… Not that I would paint them all with that brush, but…" He sighed. "This is a rather troublesome place. It's not as terrible as I expected, and sometimes I even find myself thinking, 'yes, I see how Kija came from these people' — but then I'll come up against something that's just intolerable…
"Of course, it's so different from Awa, you know," he added, with sudden intentional brightness. "There, quite a few of the ladies already know what an unreliable scoundrel I am —"
"No, you're not," Shin-ah argued, sudden and calm.
Jae-ha stopped short, again taken by surprise, but this time he smiled. "So, you're saying I might be someone worth conspiring with after all?"
Shin-ah balked a little, but he'd played right into Jae-ha's hand.
"If this question comes up next year, I'm going to suggest Awa, and I want you on my side," Jae-ha continued, pressing the advantage. "Winters are milder by the sea for one thing, and I'd say the food is better —"
"But, so many people," Shin-ah pointed out.
"Now, now, a city can be a very good place to hide — especially if you have someone with you who knows the town like I do, and especially when so many people there owe you favors.
"Another advantage is that with a few months in town, we could make some money. There are various things I could do, and finding a job for Yoon should be easy enough. Kija might be hopeless, and Hak and Yona dear should probably stay out of sight — maybe if she dyed her hair, although that would be a shame… But at any rate, I think I could find something for you."
Shin-ah pointed to himself incredulously.
"Why not? If none of my other ideas work out, you're sure to be the world's best beachcomber."
"Beach… comb…?"
"Finding valuable things that wash up from the sea. Shells, goods from shipwrecks… Walk along the beach and look for pretty things, essentially."
Shin-ah considered it, with a finger to his chin — another expression that looked half-strange without his mask. Jae-ha judged that he'd put enough wind behind the idea to strike the sails and let it coast in on its own. "Well, you have most of a year to think about it."
After a little more thought, Shin-ah turned back to the scroll he'd taken down.
"What's this one about?" Jae-ha asked. He squinted at it himself, but between the archaic script and the weak light, it was opaque to him.
"I was curious about the one who died," Shin-ah said.
"The one time, eh?"
Shin-ah began to read from the scroll. "'The fifty-second white dragon gave birth to a son who had the divine power in his right hand, and so the fifty-third white dragon succeeded his mother. He grew healthy and strong until his fifth year. Then in the winter of that year, the divine power passed fully into him, and his mother fell ill and died.
"'Not four weeks had passed since her death when the Ancestors' Festival came on the longest night, the eve of the days between the years. The feast was laid, the incense was burned, and the founder's necklace was placed upon the lord white dragon. When the moon rose high, his mother's spirit moved and spoke through him, telling of her final wishes and her love for her husbands and all her children. But as dawn approached, the son still in the bitterness of his grief would not re-take his place in preference to his mother, though all present could hear her pleading with him. Neither would the mother usurp her son's place from him, so that when the dawn came, neither spirit assumed the seat of the body, and when the rays of the sun fell upon the young lord, both spirits remained in the world of the dead. Thus the fifty-third white dragon breathed his last.'"
"That's depressing," Jae-ha said, stating the obvious.
Shin-ah kept reading. "'Then the village elder said, "This tragedy should stand as a warning to us all that we must not place our personal attachments above our sacred duty. And yet who can fault the young lord for such filial devotion? It is for us as keepers of the tradition to guard against such a calamity in the future." And so a new rule was made, that on the longest night of the year the founder's necklace should be worn by the oldest living person who had held the title of lord white dragon, and that in a year when such a person had died, or when no such person was living who had reached their ninth year, the necklace should be worn by no one but should be placed upon a cushion in a seat of honor and propitiated with incense and offerings and prayers for the departed.'
"That's all," Shin-ah said at last.
"Well, at least the response was sensible," Jae-ha observed.
Silence fell as Shin-ah rewound the scroll and returned it to its place.
Jae-ha settled himself on the cushion again, carefully arranging his cloak to both present a smooth line and offer some warmth in the unheated room. He glanced at the papers on the desk where he was sitting; they at least were in a modern script that he could read…
"Maybe that's why," Shin-ah said.
"Hm?"
"Maybe that's why he didn't come. That time, if the mother had thought that something might happen, she wouldn't have… I don't think it's like that, but maybe, a little… Maybe he wanted me to…"
"Wanted you to live your own life without his meddling?" Jae-ha surmised.
Shin-ah nodded.
"That could be it." Privately, Jae-ha found it infuriatingly tragic, watching his little brother try to wring a sense of love out of literally nothing, but he'd learned his lesson. Whatever Shin-ah was finding in that nothing, even if it was tragic, it would be stupidly cruel to try to take it away from him.
Jae-ha turned again to the papers on the desk and began to read one. It concerned preparations for the Ancestors' Festival with all of the four dragon warriors and the princess — it was a record of that very day. What was on the desk were preparatory notes for when the scribes would file a scroll about Kija. The books stacked there must be whole volumes about him, and there atop the stack, an easy, wide-open target, was a collection labeled Marriage.
I shouldn't, Jae-ha told himself — but even as it was spoken silently, it was still done for show, a sop to a non-existent audience. He already knew that he couldn't help himself. The book was already in his hands.
As Kija sat in quiet acceptance, he gradually noticed the space around him seeming to widen. He had felt that at the ritual in years before — the other villagers and even the feast table seeming to drift far, far away. But this time, he felt it as an unfurling, revealing new dimensions. It was as though the world were written on paper, and part of it had been twisted off from the rest — not severed but separated. Kija felt as though he were sitting just at the twist, and now the twist was loosened, expanded, the separation eased.
He gradually noticed a presence reaching toward him from the other side, along some channel that the loosening had opened. His heart quickened. He was seized with the impulse to reach back toward that presence, but he remembered — Just let it happen. It's enough to have them so near. If they are to find their way across, I must be their anchor.
So he remained still, accepting, even as the presence grew nearer and nearer. It touched him. More and more clearly, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He drew breath as he recognized the touch of a dragon claw like his own. One of his predecessors had come. The warmth of another body drew close behind him. He felt it all as though another person were there in the flesh, but it was not his flesh that felt it. The anticipation and the paradox dizzied him…
Yona heard a flump that snapped her out of her pleasant reverie, and she opened her eyes. Kija had fallen backward and lay flat on his cushion.
"Kija!" She started up. Hak was also halfway to his feet.
"Please don't worry," Granny assured them. "In this ritual such things are quite common."
Yona settled back into her seat, still uneasy.
"Did he fall asleep?" Hak wondered.
Yoon lifted his head from the table and blinked blearily.
Zeno wiped his face with his sleeve and peered at Kija. "No," he said. "Something's happening."
The feeling resolved, and Kija opened his eyes. The room, the feast, the others, even the weight of the beads on his neck seemed far away, not along an ordinary length of space, but along that twisting channel. It took special attention and effort to see and feel the physical world.
But he couldn't help feeling the dragon claw leaning weight on his shoulder, a hand taking his other arm. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man with a shock of white hair leaning forward and squinting at him. He heard their voice…
"Hyun-soo?"
"No," he replied, inclining his head. "My name is Kija."
"Oh, sorry. I thought you were one of my kids."
It was so surprisingly ordinary that it almost made him chuckle, but as the spirit released him, Kija feared that he might have squandered the moment of contact. "In a manner of speaking, I am one of your children," he said, turned on his knees and bowed. "Honored ancestor, White Dragon Village welcomes you."
As he raised his head, the spirit's dragon claw seized his and snatched it up from the ground.
For a moment, the spirit stared at it in silence, and for the first time, Kija had a good look at who it was that had reached him. It was a big man, more muscular than even Hak and surely taller when standing. His white hair was not close-cropped but somewhat short and wild, and he wore a fur tunic that angled down from one shoulder — with such unfamiliar clothes, his time must have been long, long ago. He regarded Kija's claw with lowered brows and a rugged face, but still Kija thought he had kind eyes.
"Why do you have the white dragon's claw?" the man asked.
"I am blessed to be among your successors," Kija told him.
"Successor…?"
The man's brows drew up over those kind eyes, not in anger but in confusion.
Kija puzzled at this for a moment, then gasped — here was a person from long, long ago, and if the idea of a successor confused him, perhaps it was that he hadn't been a successor. According to the story that had been passed down, the founder had never seen his successor, either — there had been no scribes in the beginning, but the first scribes had written what was said of him, that his power never waned until the moment of his death, that the village mourned and prayed for days before the second white dragon was born. What other white dragon wouldn't know…?
"Could it be," Kija asked, "that you are the one who received the sacred blood from the dragon god?"
"…Yes? Who did you think—?"
"Aaah!" Kija couldn't contain himself and let out such a cry of delight that he gave the founder's spirit a start. He didn't know where to begin but let the words tumble out. "It's such an honor to meet you! I never imagined — but no, no, I mustn't! The whole village is waiting for a word from you — everyone is waiting —"
Their two dragon claws were still together, his hand in the founder's, but now Kija tightened his grip and rose. "Please, this way." He turned toward that other side of the world, the physical world, ushering the founder ahead. "Our master is waiting."
"What!? The king?"
"Yes, a new incarnation of the Red Dragon has finally come."
Suddenly there was no need to coax the founder's spirit forward. "That's right," he realized. "I felt… But Blue and Green, where did they go?"
"Don't worry, we will send for them. I'm sure they'll be delighted to meet you — they won't have gone far…"
As Jae-ha sat reading, occasionally putting the book down to breathe some warmth back into his fingers, he could feel Shin-ah moving around in the darkness behind him. The blue dragon's blood came closer again, and he turned over his shoulder —
To find a cloth-draped spectre looming over him in the lamplight. Softly, it asked him "Are you cold?"
"Ah — a little," he admitted. The book dropped from his hand with a papery crash.
Thankfully his mind connected the voice and presence before the apparition descended and enveloped him. Shin-ah curled up against his back and tucked the fringes of the borrowed blanket or tapestry around him to catch as much shared warmth as possible.
"Tell people when you're doing these things!"
"Didn't I?" Shin-ah asked.
Jae-ha let it go with a sigh.
He picked the book up again but only straightened it and put it back down. The story of Kija's first ill-fated engagement had been amusing; the seventh was frustrating and tiresome. So if his granny leaned on him enough about his 'duty,' she could wring a 'yes' out of him, but when things got too serious, he would bolt, only making a bigger mess. Then Granny would start pushing again, but the more she pushed Kija the more nervous he became about it all, so the cycle continued — and apparently, no matter how many times the pattern repeated itself, no one involved learned anything from it. No wonder the village had greeted the latest episode of the drama with a collective shrug.
Still, there was no distraction on offer here except the books — since Jae-ha still had no desire to go back to the ceremony and now was further pinned down by his role as Shin-ah's warm cushion. His eye fell on a row of volumes lined up between carved bookends at the back of the desk, and he idly selected the first of the series — may as well start at the beginning.
He riffled through the pages and had nearly reached the front cover when some of the words caught his eye and he paused to read.
April 8th
A full day. Seeming safety, but continuing care. Judgment.
The bleeding has stopped. The wounds still seep clear plasma, but not red blood. By the grace of the gods, the young lord has suffered no debility from severed muscles, and he has taken no infection. He has lost weight, but the dragons' matron assures me that some loss is normal in the first days of life and it is not yet cause for alarm.
At this point there seems to be no great danger to the young lord's life, but he still cries constantly and struggles about with the pain of his wounds. His hand must be kept thickly swathed to prevent injury to his mother and nurses; he has only a fraction of the dragon's strength as yet, but his claws are already very sharp. His distress also disturbs his feeding. The matron carefully gave him an herbal syrup to ease his pain and let him suckle and rest more comfortably.
She secretly added the same medicine to Lady Kiha's tea. Even afterward, the lady would scarcely let the young lord be taken from her arms and never from her sight. Her body is recovering well from the birth, but she remains understandably agitated — although she was somewhat calmed by the judgment about the former lord.
The dragons' matron met with the elder and the council, and they accepted her advice and instructed the scribes that the incident should be recorded thus: that the former lord white dragon had not sufficiently prepared himself for the birth of his successor, that when the divine power in him began to diminish, he left himself unguarded, and an evil spirit came over him and caused him to attack the young lord. Indeed this seems to me to be true, in one manner of speaking or another, and in this way the former lord need not be found guilty of intentionally wounding the white dragon. He declared himself willing even to face the penalty for that, but as the matron insisted and the council agreed, the young lord has suffered enough injury without being left fatherless. It was judged, however, that the former lord should never touch the young lord or enter his presence without guards; this would be in keeping with concern about an evil spirit, and the former lord's behavior cannot simply be tolerated without consequence.
(The elder asked that I make particular note of the matron's role and wise advice. I believe she intends the matron to succeed her soon, hopefully after the young lord no longer needs such constant care.)
April 9th, morning
As this was the third dawn of the young lord's life, he was named, according to tradition.
Due to the judgment, the former lord was not permitted to speak at the ceremony, but Lady Kiha chose a name which she said she and her husband had agreed upon before the birth, should the child be a boy.
The one hundred eighth white dragon's personal name is Kija.
Jae-ha paused there. He noticed that his fingers were aching with cold again, and he put the book down and tugged free a bit of Shin-ah's tapestry — he thought it was probably a tapestry — to wrap it around his hands and face.
It was one thing to have seen Kija's scars; it was another to have a window into the time when they were still fresh.
This was also his first glimpse of Kija's mother. He could admit that reading about her jealous protectiveness turned up a leftover scrap of resentment at the white dragon's seemingly-charmed life. But then, no one had introduced them to 'Lady Kiha' this winter, so Kija must have lost her somewhere along the way. Jae-ha had no idea what might have happened to the woman Garou had pointed out to him once, who had looked at him with pain in her eyes and then hurried away leaving only an image of long braided hair, but that didn't matter; the woman who had actually been a mother to him was still very much alive.
And as for fathers, Jae-ha keenly remembered that day at the hot springs, when Kija had said who gave him his scars. It was a shock to think that his father could have been killed for the crime — a shock but not a surprise; what else would this village do with someone who assaulted their holy dragon? But Kija had spoken of his injury without the slightest bitterness or shame, even with respect — 'Is there any reason I should be gloomy about it?' If it had come out when they first met, Jae-ha would never have believed it, but by then he'd been able to understand; Kija really did see the world that way, that he could accept such a thing as a gift of passion and not a curse. From there, it was easy to forget that he might ever have seen it differently.
But of course, as a baby, he had taken it the way a baby would, screaming and fussing over his own pain without a thought for motives or traditions. It stung to think of it, but somehow, more deeply, the image felt reassuring.
Kija was human after all.
And even White Dragon Village knew when to bend the rules.
The cloth suddenly jerked back against Jae-ha's face as Shin-ah straightened up.
"What is it now?"
"Back there. Something's happening." Shin-ah shuffled free, staring intently at a fixed point in space. His mouth widened silently for a moment, then — "It's not Kija."
There was no need to say 'we're going.' Jae-ha quickly blew out the lamp. Shin-ah had already taken hold of his hand.
Kija's right arm rose and folded, planted the dragon claw on the floor, and pushed his body up from the cushion — but it wasn't Kija. With just that one gesture, it was obvious to everyone; Kija wouldn't move like that. He wouldn't scrub his eyes with his left hand as this person did, wouldn't look around squinting, his mouth pulled off-center in a pensive quirk that showed one pointed tooth…
The villagers drew in their breath, staring in wonder and audibly silencing themselves to await the words of the visiting spirit.
He only looked back at them in confusion. As his gaze came around, Hak tensed to see such lack of recognition reflected at him from Kija's face.
But then he turned toward Yona.
His eyes went wide; his jaw went slack. He sprang to his feet and rushed over to fall on his knees in front of her table. "Your Majesty!" He looked her up and down. "This is—! How—?"
Zeno peered at him. He wiped his eyes again but it didn't wipe away what he thought he was seeing. He leaned closer. "White Dragon…?"
The visitor's eyes flicked toward him for only a second, still under Yona's spell — then suddenly he whipped around. "Zeno!?"
Before Zeno could say anything, he'd been seized with the dragon's claw. Teacups rang and spilled as he was pulled across the table into a powerful hug.
"Zeno, it's you! Where have you been!?"
Yona perked up. "This is your friend?"
"Yes, this is the first White Dragon."
A collective gasp rose from the crowd of villagers. Granny firmly gestured them to stay silent in deference to this most honored ancestor.
"Your Majesty, don't you recognize me?" he asked Yona.
"I'm sorry. People tell me I'm the Red Dragon King, but I don't remember any of it. I can feel it, though," she said smiling. She offered him her hand. "I'm glad to meet you. What's your name?"
He at last let go of Zeno to take her hand lightly in his claw and kiss her knuckles. "Guen, Your Majesty."
"What characters is it spelled with?" a voice burst out; the village scribe on duty couldn't contain herself.
"Huh?"
"Don't worry about it, don't worry about it;" Zeno waved it off. Guen's name, like his own, hadn't been written with ideographic characters — much to Abi's frustration when he tried to use them for a fate reading.
"I don't know what's going on," Guen admitted to Yona, shaking his head. "I don't know how you got like this, but as long as it's you…
"This guy, though!" He turned to Zeno again and took him by the cheeks. "You haven't changed a bit! It's like you're still a kid!"
"Oh, turns out that's part of my power."
"Mm, I'm even more jealous now," Guen said. "Your eyes are all red, are you okay?"
Zeno smiled, although he was almost ready to cry again. First the words from Kaya, now this. "It's… Zeno's just so happy."
"Why are you talking like that? If you're happy to see me, you could have come earlier. I told you and then you took so long — I thought I was going to die!"
Zeno froze.
Hak took a breath and covered his face with his hand.
"What's wrong?" Yoon whispered.
"Do you want to be the one to tell him?"
Yoon only blinked, confused by the whole scene. Even after the blue dragon's tomb and Green Dragon village, this was surreal, to see Kija acting quite normal and amiable but like an entirely different person.
"Guen—" Zeno began.
Before he could finish, the doors of the hall were flung open with a bang.
Guen turned. "Blue! Green!"
And then he stopped and puzzled at the sight of Shin-ah and Jae-ha entering the hall and threading their way forward between the tables.
"This is my friend Guen," Zeno announced, hoping to soothe their obvious alarm — but on the other side, nothing was going to soothe the truth; there was nothing to do but face it. "This is, ah… This is Shin-ah, and this is Jae-ha," he told Guen, pointing them out.
"But, I can feel it—"
"That's what I started to tell you. It's been a long time, White Dragon. Over a thousand years. Everyone has successors now. Well, everyone but me."
"Then, Abi and Shuten are…"
Zeno nodded solemnly.
Guen slumped, taking it in in silence. Yona came around the table and sat beside him with a hand on his shoulder; "I'm sorry…"
Shin-ah quietly edged around the central ring to Hak and Yoon. "Kija, he's…?"
"He's got to be in there somewhere," Hak whispered.
Shin-ah nodded; even keeping his eyes closed again, he could see that much.
"I knew that," Guen said at last. "I think I knew it. I could feel it, right when…" He shook his head as if to throw something off. "What am I doing? The dragons are all back together! Even if things have changed, this is… We have all this food here," he realized, "why isn't anyone eating?"
Granny at last broke the silence and bowed. "Honored founder," she said, bowing. "This is the Ancestors' Festival. No one would presume."
"It's… really?" He looked around. "This is a weird Ancestors' Festival."
"It's a lot different now," Zeno agreed.
The villagers looked at each other, quizzical and somewhat chagrined.
"But I'll take that as the honored ancestor's permission," Jae-ha announced, picking a bottle of wine from the feast table and pouring himself a cup.
Hak accepted the permission as well, took a bowl of oranges and slid them in front of Yoon. Yoon didn't even look, still staring at the scene in confusion and distress, but he started blindly peeling the fruit and seemed slightly less lost having something to do with his hands.
Guen approached Shin-ah and held out his hand. "What was your name again?"
Shin-ah shrank back and regarded the offered hand carefully, as if Guen were trying to coax a wary animal.
"Shin-ah, it's okay," Yona encouraged him.
Jae-ha nudged some dishes aside and sat on the feast table, crossing his legs. "True, I suppose there's no reason not to be friendly — so long as you give Kija back before dawn."
Guen blinked at him. "Give… who?"
Jae-ha and Hak turned on him with hard, cold stares. Zeno and Yona each had a softer jolt, but it was shock enough.
"White Dragon…" Zeno started.
Granny bowed. "Lord Founder, they speak of your current successor as white dragon. It is through him that you are able to be with us tonight."
"My what?" Only slowly did understanding dawn on his face. "That's right, before I woke up, I saw someone… 'Honored to be among your…'"
Suddenly he clapped his hand to his head and nearly collapsed, only catching himself on his claw. "'Everyone has successors now,'" he echoed dully. He stared at his left hand as if seeing Kija's smooth skin and delicately-sculpted muscles for the first time. "The Ancestors' Festival… And I'm 'the honored ancestor'…"
"I'm sorry;" Yona lay a hand on his shoulder. "I didn't realize you didn't know."
"Lord Founder, if there is anything that we can do to ease your regrets, you have only to say the word," Granny told him. "To meet you even for one night, surely this is a gift from the gods. White Dragon Village is at your service. Please."
"'White Dragon Village'…" Guen looked around at the sea of white-haired heads, white robes, and unfamiliar faces. "So that's is how it is. Everyone's gone — I'm gone." He pulled an uneven smile that looked painfully out of place on Kija's face; it quivered, then faded completely and went slack. "I'm here for just one night, and then it's…" He turned his head as if turning toward someone, but his eyes grew dull and distant.
Zeno caught his breath. "No, wait—!"
Guen slumped onto a table and tumbled toward the floor.
Yona caught him. "Guen?" She patted his cheek. "Kija?" Still no response. "What happened?"
"I think Guen went to talk to White Dragon, maybe," Zeno said. What he didn't say was what an ominous feeling he had about it. With his memories of Guen flooding back, he knew them both well enough to imagine…
He hoped he was just worrying too much.
Kija watched the spirit wander back toward him from the physical world. "Lord Founder?"
"I have a name, you know," the great man said, rubbing his brow.
Kija understood that very well, and he bowed his head. "Of course, Lord Guen."
"You don't need the 'Lord.' I mean, I guess I won't complain if it makes you feel better." Guen dropped himself to a seat next to Kija. Even sitting flat on the seeming of ground while Kija sat on his knees, the older man was still taller. "So I'm an ancestor, huh? Even my kids are long gone, and you're some kind of grandkid's grandkid's grandkid, or however many it is…"
"According to our village's history, I am the one hundred eighth white dragon," Kija offered.
Guen puffed a breath out under his teeth, shaking his head. "Have they all been like you?"
"Not exactly." Kija wasn't quite sure what to make of the question. "But we have all devoted our lives to serving our king."
"That's good."
"Waiting so long, the other dragon villages lost their way, but—"
"Is that so?" Guen asked. "Well, looking at those other two, I can see that…"
Kija had let the remark slip through in a moment of pride, but hearing Guen agree struck an unexpected spark of grievance.
When its heat and glow faded, only awkward silence was left. Like when he had learned the truth about Zeno, this was a meeting he could only have dreamed of, and now that it came, he didn't know what to say. But unlike with Zeno, he couldn't take comfort in thinking, We'll be together from now on; if there's anything that must be said, there will be time.
It was Guen who broke the silence. "I knew," he said. "Well, I guess I knew."
Kija straightened, listening for whatever knowledge was about to be imparted.
"The last time we were all together, I told the others, 'this blood makes us brothers; this will tie us together forever, even when we die.' That was what I thought. But toward the end I could feel it trying to slip away, like losing the blood of your family, and I tried to hold onto it…" He gave a sad, lopsided smile. "I think I held on until the rope broke. I remember I woke up in the night and felt my hand crumble and float away, and then there was just nothing… We were waiting for my first grandkid, and I didn't even get to…"
He trailed off. His smile fell, and his eyes widened. "Maybe I did. I remember seeing a hand, just a human hand, and I thought, 'Whose is this? Why is it stuck to me? Why does it move?' And then I saw my claw again but it was tiny, and it was in the wrong place, and it was… cute. But I didn't know what was happening. It didn't make any sense. Nothing was making any sense…"
So the founder had seen his successor after all, Kija realized. Another of the village's stories turned out to be less than truthful — but who would have wanted to teach their children that the founder was lost without his power and ended his life in a haze of confusion?
"All of my predecessors have faced such a bitter crossing," he reflected. "Unless it happens that I give my life in my master's service, my turn will come."
"'Crossing' isn't the word for it," Guen said. "Everything just… stopped. I could feel people calling — I couldn't see or hear it, just feel it somehow, and I thought 'that must be my kids, and I'm still here, that means it's not over…' Was that really a thousand years of Ancestors' Festivals, you all trying to call me back?" He shook his head. "When I felt everyone — the other dragons — I thought it was true, we were all together again, but then I felt them slipping away, like they were leaving me…
"Well, not Zeno. — But ugh, that guy! What did he think I was going to do? He could have told me." Another lopsided smile. "Although now I'm really jealous."
"I admit, I've envied his power on occasion." It was a thought Kija wasn't proud of, but…
"Right? To be there for everybody forever, no matter what — what would be bad about that?"
"It must have been hard to lose so many people," Kija said, still not proud to be thinking about it.
"It is hard," Guen agreed. "I lost my king, and a wife, and three kids. But it's worth staying. And to think, 'we'll meet again someday; when you come back, I'll be right here to meet you'…"
At that, Kija smiled, for once knowing what to say. "Lord Guen, you are here."
Guen blinked at him, with a kind of innocent frankness that he had glimpsed in mirrors on occasion — and somehow those eyes looked just as fitting in the founder's rugged face. Finally he laughed. "That's right isn't it? This just isn't what I thought it would be like." He leaned back on his hands and looked into the distance.
Kija followed his gaze and looked with him at the physical world. Yona and Yoon were nudging and prodding at his unresponsive body as Hak and Jae-ha looked on. Granny was trying to reassure everyone, but Shin-ah still watched in some distress — Kija hadn't thought of leaving his little brother with the sight of a body vacated by the soul — and Zeno wore an uncharacteristic frown.
Guen drew a deep breath, let it out slowly… "I could still do it, you know."
Kija turned.
The founder grinned and met his eyes. "It's not like I thought it would be, but I can still feel it. I wouldn't let anything happen to them — well, everyone's human, but I'd give it all I've got." He flexed his claw. "I hate to brag, but back in the day not even Green could beat me."
Excitement surged in Kija's chest. It seemed to spin off balance, but he knew he couldn't back down. This encounter was an impossible gift — how could he turn away anything that it offered? To turn away would be wrong; it would be selfish. After all, "I can't abandon my duty, but… For the dragon's claw to protect our king with the greatest possible strength is what matters most."
Guen's brows lifted in surprise. His smile brightened. "That's right — you get it. But… Are you sure? You want to decide it between us?"
"That would be the right thing to do," Kija answered. The energy inside him flowed stronger, its whirl more dizzying, but surely the path was clear. He couldn't refuse a chance to test himself against the founder. All his life he'd known that he lived to give his all for his king — and that was the question being asked of him now: 'Are you willing to go this far?' In that light, he had to remind himself to accept Guen's hesitation as a courtesy and not an insult; to him, it wasn't a question at all.
Kija rose and bowed — to a worthy opponent. "Please, Lord Guen. Grant me this honor of this challenge."
Guen rose, and for the first time Kija fully faced him standing. The muscles of his shoulder were as large as Kija's head. "All right," he said, offering his right hand. "I give you my word: if I win, I'll fight for this princess and protect her with all my power."
"And I give you the same pledge," Kija said, accepting his grip.
Even in the thrill of the moment, he marveled at how their scales slid and caught against each other. He'd never been allowed to hold his father's hand, and he was lucky even to see Jae-ha's leg. It made him that much more certain: this night was a gift, this was the way it should be.
They released each other and stepped back. Guen took a guard stance; surprisingly, he faced Kija with the armor pauldron of his left shoulder and held his claw back. Surely he was giving it room to move the way he liked, but it left an opening behind his back where it would take him an instant longer to reach. Surely he knew it; surely he was ready to compensate, but it would be a place to begin, before the flow of battle took over — and, Kija realized, even the founder had never faced another white dragon's claw in battle before. That might be all he needed to press the advantage, if he didn't hold back. He was fighting a noble, immortal spirit, not a body that could be destroyed — there was no reason to hold back, and every reason to give it everything he had.
Kija charged forward, striking toward the back of Guen's shoulder with all his strength and will. His claw shot forward, huge and filled with power.
Surprisingly early, Guen spun away from him. When he came around, it didn't seem that they should be in reach of each other, but suddenly Kija's knuckles were sliding over a mass of scales that folded around him in a flicker of claws, entrapping his wrist before he could react.
In the next moment, his feet were torn from the ground. His right shoulder strained and crackled with pain as he was flung through the air — flung but not released, and his shoulder bore the full force of the whirl and tumble. If it had been his left arm — if it had been his body — that arm would surely have been ripped away at the joint.
But even through the pain, his dragon strength held firm. Through the pain and dizziness he still felt his heels rake the ground and moved to get purchase and control.
Before he could catch his balance, his feet were kicked out from under him. In the same moment, the grip on his wrist released, sending his head and shoulders crashing to the ground. Instantly he rolled away —
— And was brought up short by scaled fingers against his face. The founder's claw was lightly clasping his head.
Kija froze, panting, his mind a blank. The moment stretched on so long that the founder settled his wrist, and Kija's neck irresistibly tilted along with it.
Then he knew. If this were his body, he could be dead in the blink of an eye, much too quickly to counter. In only a fraction of a second, the founder could easily crush his skull or snap his neck, or slash his throat with a flick of one finger…
Instead, the claw opened and lifted away. Guen's voice came down from behind Kija's head. "Do you want to try again?"
Kija found that he couldn't answer.
"Come on, let's just call that one bad luck. If you'd rolled the other way and gotten your claw down, you could have been gone before I caught you."
It took a moment for Kija to even understand; Guen was saying he could have pushed himself away, used his arm to move like Jae-ha used his leg. It only drove the point further home. Kija would never have thought to do such a thing, and would only have thrown himself further off balance if he'd tried.
The size of the claw, which he could only unleash with sheer passion — Guen had used it against him in perfect calm. The grip on his wrist too quick to parry, the clasp on his head seeming to appear from nowhere — when Kija tried to remember times he had grappled or thrown opponents, they all seemed clumsy and childish by comparison.
The question — which of them could use their power to be of greatest service — had been asked and answered.
The chance for further sparring was still a gift, but Kija couldn't pretend that his heart would be in it, not when he suddenly knew… The princess's smile, Jae-ha's reliability and tenderness glimmering from behind his teasing, Shin-ah's shy yet open face, Zeno's bright sunshine and mysterious shadow, even Yoon's scolding and Hak's insults… He'd seen it all for the last time. This quickly, it was over. Even his right hand felt weak.
Kija turned on his knees and bowed to Guen, with his head to the ground. "No," he said. "This is your victory. I will honor the promise we made."
"I've got to give it to you. You didn't underestimate me for a second, but you jumped right in and didn't flinch." Guen lay his claw on Kija's shoulder and gave a brisk but gentle rub. "I wasn't sure what to make of you at first, but you're really brave."
Strangely, the words didn't sink in. If someone had told Kija at sundown, 'the first white dragon will praise your courage,' he would have thought it an impossible dream, but now that it happened it only bounced off his heart. Had he really been so brave? He hadn't accepted the risk so much as brushed it away, irrelevant.
And it was irrelevant. He straightened himself, eyes still downcast but mustering a smile. "I've always known that I would be happy to give my life for my master. I imagined that it would be on a battlefield. Surely this is far better, to be leaving everyone in good hands.
"But if I might ask a favor of you…"
"Of course. Anything."
"When you go back, if you could tell everyone —"
"Now hold up right there," Guen stopped him. "We still have until dawn. Anything you want to tell them, you can tell them yourself."
His heart leaped; it was true, he still had this one night…
This one night out of the year. "Next year and the years after, will you bring them back here for the Ancestors' Festival? Even if it's only one night a year, I would like to see them again."
Guen clasped his shoulder. "I'll drag them if I have to."
"Thank you."
A long moment passed in silence.
"Go on, everyone's waiting," Guen said. "You don't need to waste any more of tonight talking to me."
"No," Kija scrupulously protested. "It's been an honor."
The founder's gentle smile twisted strangely; perhaps he also knew that feeling of praise glancing off its target. "Just go."
This time Kija did rise and turn back toward the other side of the world, where everyone was waiting.
He could see Yona and the others still wearing looks of concern — but now they were all looking at Granny, who'd been brought closer on her litter and seemed to be offering reassuring explanations with a smile of pride. Indeed, Kija looked further and could see the villagers all around the room; even before he was close enough to hear them, he could see people flush with awe, exulting quietly to each other.
Yes, he thought. You all taught me well. This chance had never come before and would never come again, of course it had been right to embrace it with all he had. To give everything for the king without hesitation — that was what he lived for; that was the desire his predecessors had left to him. He would have been ashamed to do anything less in their presence tonight.
I should be proud, he thought.
I should be…
Chapter 3 - END