The village doctors were among those who had stayed, and together with Yoon, who had suddenly found his feet, they started to work on the spot. They pulled back Kija's blood-soaked robe and pressed fresh cloth to the wounds until the bleeding began to come under control and the cloths stopped soaking through, then added herbs and more cloth. The doctors had Kija lifted carefully onto a litter, covered with layers of borrowed cloaks for warmth, and finally ordered him carried away to his own house.

The villagers threw the hall doors open to the morning sun. Nearly everyone crowded after the procession as they left, with Yona first in line behind the litter.

But not quite everyone left. Zeno stayed behind. Shin-ah held back from the press of people, dodging into the lea of the front wall where a last scrap of stillness and shadow still held, shielded from both the flow of the crowd and the inrush of light.

Other than the two of them, the room quickly emptied and stood in an abandoned silence that was ghostly in its own way. The lamps still burned uselessly, eclipsed by sun that turned their brightest glow into mere shadow. The last of the incense still smoldered, its smoke trails shining white in fleeting wisps. By some miracle, the feast table had survived, but it lay long-forgotten, its splendor washed pale in the morning light, for a distracted audience of one. Zeno was looking around, but not at the food.

"Um?" Shin-ah called, raising his voice a bit.

"Oh, Zeno is okay. Blue Dragon can go on with everybody else," he replied, but without smiling. He noticed the lamps and started blowing them out.

Shin-ah knew that if he did go, Zeno would be left here all alone — and he was the one who had lost an old friend, who had spent these last few awful hours knowing that he would lose a friend at dawn no matter what. Shin-ah knew better than anyone how badly Kija had been hurt, but Kija already had a crowd of people around him, and Shin-ah trusted them all to take good care of him.

"No," he said. "I'll stay. Just…" In the harsh light after a night so intense, he wanted his mask, the familiar and comfortable way it muffled his senses.

As he stepped into the doorway, into the shaft of light, he heard something hit the floor behind him with a jingle. He turned, and there, just at the edge of the shadow, lay the little silver bells he had asked for.

There was no answering rattle as he felt in his robe; sure enough, they had fallen out. He stooped to pick them up — then paused. He was certain he'd tucked them away securely. When he felt in his robe, the bells were gone, but little Ao's acorns were still there. For only the bells to fall, and to fall just there, just short of the light that would break the spell…

He really did come. It wasn't that he stayed away — it really was like that…

Shin-ah touched his fingers to the little silver orbs. To touch something that that person had just touched was almost like touching them again, after so long. It filled him with such a feeling of warmth that it overflowed into his eyes.

But he didn't pick the bells up again. If that was where old Ao wanted them…

"I'll give them to you," he whispered. "Thank you."

When Shin-ah returned wearing his mask, Zeno had poured some of the cold soups together and wiped out a bowl to begin collecting the scattered beads.

"I'll help," Shin-ah told him.

"Thanks, Blue Dragon." Shin-ah's eyes would be too great a help to refuse — but, "Listen, though; if you see a bead that looks, um, special? Let Zeno be the one to touch it, okay?"

Shin-ah nodded, and they both turned to searching in silence.

Maybe, Zeno thought, he was just looking for a way to distract himself, or maybe it was wishful thinking, but maybe…

Guen hadn't made himself known the way Kaya had, with a fleeting, fragile reach across from another world. He had never moved on to that place, had still been here as a complete presence — but in that case, how could he have appeared so suddenly? Where had he been, that Zeno hadn't seen him or felt his presence sooner? How could two thousand years have passed him by, that he would appear that night hardly knowing what had happened, as though he'd been alive just the day before?

And why, when Kija fought his way back, had he been so desperate to tear off the necklace?

Zeno remembered Guen trying to comfort him after his first mortal wound had healed, when he had begun to realize how monstrous his power really was…

I'm actually jealous, you know. You don't have to worry about falling in battle and not being able to help the king and the rest of us anymore. Isn't that a good thing?

Do you really worry about that? Zeno had asked, an easier path than sharing his own thoughts.

Well, when I'm in the thick of things somehow I always forget to worry about it, but when everything's quiet, sometimes I think, what if I ended up having to leave everybody…

At the time it had felt that much more cruel — Guen didn't understand how it felt; the gods had given that power to Zeno instead of to someone who would have been happy about it and been more useful to everyone. But now…

Guen was the one who had said the dragons' blood would unite them forever. That was what he had wanted, to the point that a deathless body had seemed to him to be a blessing. In the end, if he had felt it all slipping away, would he have reached for something permanent and deathless to cling to, even if it was something with no eyes or ears?

Was that why the spirits of the dead — especially Guen's own descendants — were attracted to the necklace? Because they could feel him sleeping there?

If it was true, Zeno thought surely he would be looking for one of the white, curved stones, but he found all five of them, and no matter how he looked at them, he saw nothing but cold, smooth, milky crystal.

Was I wrong? he wondered. Or worse yet, Is he there, but I can't see him? Is there no way to know? No way to get through to him again? Having Guen back again after so long — was it going to end like this, with this much pain and then no chance for reconciliation, just a separation as unyielding as stone?

Zeno felt the blue dragon's presence come close, felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned to find Shin-ah offering him a cup of tea. "Oh, thank you." Refreshment had been the furthest thing from his mind, but it would feel good…

As he brought the cup to his lips, Shin-ah clapped a hand over the rim, shook his head and pointed. Zeno heard a faint, sliding rattle.

A bead had landed in the teacup.

Zeno picked it out with his fingers. The tea was long since cold, but it wouldn't have mattered. What he found was a little nugget of red jade with a white stripe running through it.

And there, cutting raggedly across the white stripe, was a crack.

When Zeno touched the little hairline fissure, he knew. He clasped the bead tight to his chest.

Shin-ah touched his shoulder.

"Hey, Blue Dragon," Zeno managed after a moment. "You can keep looking for beads, you know. I'm sure they'll want to put it back together."

Shin-ah shook his head and didn't move.

"Listen, Zeno needs to, ah, go over there for a while," he said, pointing vaguely. "I can't look anymore so I need you to do it for me, okay?"

Shin-ah hesitated but finally nodded. Zeno left him to the search, wandered off to a corner of the room, and curled up there, still clasping the bead.

This night was still a tragedy — to see his old friend end up like this, to see two of his friends hurt each other so badly. But at least that wasn't the end. At least the tragedy had a crack in it.

As he held onto the proof of that, he found his hand pressing against his medallion where he'd hung it around his neck. He raised the two treasures in his hands, looked at them side-by-side, and came to a decision.

He made certain that Shin-ah wasn't looking, then bit down on his fingers, hard enough to bring out the scales and claws. Then he pried loose one of the dangling wires from his medallion, the center one of the three. He slid the beads off of it and threaded the streaked, cracked jewel on in their place, then hooked it onto the top of the medallion and twisted the wire securely.

It was a risk. The medallion had a way of reverting to its original state no matter what happened to it, but this felt right. If it was a way of offering that bead to Heaven, that would be all right; surely that would be for the best. But Zeno couldn't help hoping…

He held the medallion, pressing the bead between his hands, and he whispered to it: "Listen, this thing gets treated pretty roughly sometimes, so I need you to hang on tight, okay?"

Kija was brought to his own room, to one of the beds laid out for the dragon warriors — even in the crisis the villagers left the most honored and luxurious bed for their king.

Where Kija had torn off the founder's necklace in panic, the gouges left by his claws were deep and would scar — a burst of curving red streaks like a sketch of a firework — but they were not so deep as to touch anything vital. The injuries to his body could not explain how weak he was or how long he remained unconscious.

"Our Lord White Dragon has fought a terrible battle in the spirit world and been wounded in his spirit," Granny explained, sobbing. "But don't fear! We have experience with injuries of that kind, and we know what to do!"

"What have you people been up to for two thousand years?" Yoon wondered.

There were indeed records in the village's archives about the care of spirit injuries. Luckily, they said, spirits were more resilient than bodies and could never be destroyed beyond hope of recovery, although if their wounds went unhealed it could cause grave suffering and incapacity and in extreme cases could even lead to the death of the body through wasting or suicide. Kija was in no such danger, however, and not only because of the blessing of the dragon god or his obvious strength of spirit. That he'd spoken at first, reasonably and recognizably, that he'd understood what was said to him and particularly that he had cried were all very hopeful signs that he should recover well if they observed the recorded regimen:

There should always be a light near him, but never a naked flame. Both harsh noise and profound silence should be avoided. Food should be as strongly seasoned as he would comfortably tolerate — apparently hot peppers were good for the soul. Above all, he should feel 'the touch of kind hands' and hear 'familiar voices beckoning him or speaking to him.'

The records noted the implication, saying that indeed the fewer friends a patient had, the more dangerous a spirit injury would be to them, but again, that meant that Kija's case was especially hopeful. Day or night, he always had someone beside him.

Granny herself took up the duty first. She had herself placed at the head of his bed, lay her small old hands on him and called softly to him. She remembered the lesson of the moment he'd returned, and so as she called him she said "Lord Kija" again and again, gently and patiently.

For Kija, his sleep as he began to heal was a deep, dreamless oblivion. Warmth, pain from his wounds, gentle light, touch, voices — they passed through his consciousness in floating snatches. Nothing else seemed to exist. He couldn't judge the time, but it was the third day of New Years when he finally opened his eyes. He could hear Yona's voice, but couldn't make out the words. He saw her sitting beside the bed. She leaned over him, looking into his eyes; she was saying something, but all he recognized was his own name. It was as much as he could do; his eyes fell shut and he sank back into the sleep of lost time.

When he woke again, it was past midnight. No sun entered the room. The glow of the fireplace, diffused by a paper screen, cast pale yellow light and blurred black shadows. This time it was Jae-ha's voice he heard, and he thought that he could understand with just a little more time, but the flow of words stopped before he could get hold of it.

A moment of silence, then clearly: "You're awake?"

He didn't know how to respond, but apparently the unformed effort was enough to give him away. Jae-ha turned and leaned over him as Yona had done; this time he wouldn't be defeated so easily, he would meet Jae-ha's eyes and listen to what he said…

But instead of stopping, meeting his eyes and saying something, Jae-ha just kept leaning, down and down until their faces touched forehead-to-forehead, and he pressed Kija back into his pillow. He ran his fingers into Kija's hair and gripped it just above the left ear until it pulled painfully at the roots.

"Do not ever do anything that stupid again," he growled.

Kija remembered the ceremony — recalling vague snatches was all he could manage, but it was enough. He remembered standing in that other place behind the founder, seeing the others crying, Jae-ha caught between rage and collapse…

His voice wouldn't catch; words came out as only a whisper, but he did manage words. "I put you through so much. And then it was all for…"

What had seemed to be the next words stopped him, but Jae-ha had already heard them.

"'All for nothing'?" he demanded. A dangerous smile could be heard in his voice, and he tugged the fistful of Kija's hair harder. "So you should have gone through with it, is that what you're thinking?"

"No… that's not…" It wasn't right. He knew that much. No more words would come, but maybe those were enough.

It was strange, like when he'd been punched at the ceremony. Somehow the pain as Jae-ha pulled his hair felt deeply soothing.

It was even a disappointment when Jae-ha leaned back from him a little and released his grip, but then Kija heard the fine rustling of his own hair conducted loudly through his own skin, and he felt the gentler pressure of fingertips running back and forth over the very spot that had been pulled at.

Still hearing and feeling it, he fell asleep again.

Jae-ha finally leaned back and relaxed, stretching out to lounge beside Kija and laying the prescribed hand on his shoulder. At least his younger brother seemed to have learned a little something from that moment of righteous, rule-breaking rage.

'Bloodsucking insect,' eh? Jae-ha recalled the words that had tumbled from Kija's mouth, and he smiled to himself. From anyone else in that much of a passion, the insult would have seemed quaintly chaste, but he could just imagine Kija reaching into the depths for the most scalding invective he could throw.

He was human after all.

And now Jae-ha had something special tucked away if he ever wanted to embarrass him.

Kija's brief snatches of wakefulness were enough to reassure everyone. The vigil continued but was more relaxed, with more easy coming and going. Jae-ha started catching up on lost sleep. Yoon took turns at tending Kija's wounds, and was left to do it without anxious supervision from the elder or the village doctors.

As he refreshed the herbs and changed the bandages, Hak looked on and Yona softly told Kija everything Yoon was doing.

When he was finished and tucked Kija's robe and blankets back into place, Yoon sat back, looking thoughtful.

"Something wrong?" Hak asked.

Yona looked up.

"No," Yoon said, "it's just I've been curious. At the ceremony, before all of that happened… Did you actually see anything?"

"I managed not to," Jae-ha offered thickly from the next bed, then turned over and settled himself again.

"I didn't see anything," Hak agreed. He supposed he must have had the opposite problem and tried for it too hard; he had spent half the night inwardly calling after his king but had never heard any reply but his own echo.

"Did you?" Yona asked Yoon.

"I don't know," he admitted, vexed. "Before what happened I… I actually fell asleep, and I had this dream. I was in one of the villages back home, but it was a festival or a market day or something, and the streets were just lined with piles of food. There were these people — I don't know who they were, but they kept pulling me along like 'here, eat this; here, eat this.' And maybe it was just a dream, but somehow it felt… I don't know."

"Maybe it was some of the people you've helped, and they wanted to pay you back," Yona supposed.

"Or maybe, I even thought… Maybe someone who wished they could have done that, when they were…"

Yoon let it trail off, but neither Yona nor Hak needed any more hints to understand, and if he didn't want to mention his parents, best to leave it at that.

"Yona, what about you?" he asked.

"I didn't really," she said. "I didn't mean to, but I just ended up letting my mind wander and thinking about my parents. I remembered when I would lie in bed next to my mother — how warm she was, how she always smelled nice, how it felt when she held my hand…" She nudged Hak and laughed. "You remember that awful soup my father made for me that time? It was like I could just taste it —"

Suddenly she froze. Her eyes went wide, and her hand rose to her mouth. "That was it," she realized. "That was them. They were right there and I didn't know. Why didn't they…? I didn't… I didn't tell them anything…" Tears rose in her eyes.

Jae-ha sat up and looked over Yoon's shoulder.

"Princess…" Hak lay a hand on her arm, watching her wipe her cheeks. In his mind he called after King Il again; Are you really okay with this? Would you really come that close and leave her like that?

"I… I think," Yona choked, "I think I understand it, though." She wiped her cheeks again and tried to steady her breath. "If I'd known it was them, I would have chased after them, like… 'Are you angry? Are you sad? Are you proud?' I've done the thing my father never wanted me to do. I'm not turning into an elegant lady like my mother. So I would have… But if it was like that, if it was just little things like a dream, maybe they couldn't have answered me. This way, it's like…" Fresh tears fell over a quivering smile as she remembered those fleeting sensations, each one a token of love. "It's like, 'You don't even have to ask.'"

Hak settled with a sigh half relief, half resignation.

Yoon cast about awkwardly for somewhere to look and turned to Jae-ha, who noticed him staring and blinked back at him.

"I don't usually get to see you with bed-hair, is all," Yoon said.

Jae-ha's brows lifted even as his eyes drooped shut. "Concern for a lady is always a good look," he opined, and lay back down.

Yona laughed a little, leaning on Hak's shoulder. "It is sad, though, that Hak didn't see anything," she said at length. "Maybe you could have met your parents."

— The parents from before he could remember, from wherever it was that old Mundok had found him. He smiled with a gentle sniff. "I don't need anything like that. My family is still alive." He leaned over to glare at Kija. "—Somehow."

Yona smiled. Yes, somehow their family had all gotten through again — but then, she remembered there was someone for whom that wasn't true, and whom she had hardly seen since the ceremony.

She gave herself a while longer to calm down, then she leaned over to Kija and stroked his hair. "Listen, Kija, I'm going to leave you with Hak for a while." She bent closer to whisper, "He's always salty, but I know he really likes you. But you know that, too, right?"

Kija shifted his head with a soft moan.

Yona smoothed his hair again and stood. "I'm going to check on Zeno and Shin-ah."

On the morning after the solstice, when the crisis had first passed, Zeno and Shin-ah had still been there huddled in a corner of the great hall when some of the villagers came back to pick up the pieces.

The two of them had already found most of the beads from the founder's necklace, and the villagers went looking for the rest. It turned out that the scribes actually did have a document with drawings and descriptions meticulously cataloging the necklace bead-by-bead so that it could be perfectly reconstructed should it befall some calamity like this — and so they noticed that a bead was missing, one from the back near the clasp, where it would have rested on the nape of Kija's neck.

One of the scribes eventually came over to ask Lord Yellow Dragon and Lord Blue Dragon if they might have seen a red jewel with a white stripe.

Zeno shook his head. He'd re-tied his headband by then; the medallion swung with an unfamiliar clicking of the new bead, and he raised his hand to it, unthinkingly pointing out the theft.

The scribe stared for a moment, then bowed. "Understood, Milord." It was the last thing anyone said to Zeno about it.

The necklace was re-strung as completely as it could be and placed on a cushion at the head of the room where the villagers built an altar. The floor was hastily repaired, the tables cleared away, the seat cushions rearranged into straight rows; new lamps and incense were lit, and the hall was given over to a vigil for the founder's affronted spirit. Granny had told Kija, 'we will all bear this sin with you,' and the entire village seemed intent on honoring her words. People came one by one to bow before Guen's necklace and give offerings and prayers to assure him of their gratitude and esteem and beg for his forgiveness.

When Yona came, Zeno had never left the vigil, and Shin-ah had hardly left his side; the scribes and Shin-ah's friends from the watch had been bringing them word of Kija's condition. Yona saw them sitting together on some of the cushions, far enough from the front to give them some space. As she crossed the room, some of the villagers bowed to her, and she noticed the scent of the incense — not the grassy spice from the night of the Ancestors' Festival, but something more heavy and subtly sweet; it reminded her of the incense she and her father had burned on New Year's Eve for her mother and her uncle.

Shin-ah looked up as she approached, and she knelt down beside him. "Shin-ah, do you want to go and see Kija?"

He nodded.

"I'm going to stay here for a while, so you can go, okay?"

He touched Zeno's shoulder; the yellow dragon nodded to him and managed a tired smile.

Shin-ah left, and Yona took over the still-warm cushion beside Zeno.

"I'm sorry," she said. "We were all worried about Kija, but I shouldn't have left you here alone."

Zeno shook his head. "White Dragon was in danger, but the miss knows Zeno will be all right no matter what, so—"

"No," she cut him off. "It must have been really hard on you. I try to remember how I felt, before what happened. I was so happy I got to meet Guen. I felt like he was a good person, like even through it all he really was trying to help and do the right thing."

Zeno still tried to smile, but it came out more crooked. "He was always like that. If he thought he knew the right thing to do, you couldn't argue with him."

Yona nodded. "I did feel like he and Kija were a lot alike."

Too much alike, Zeno thought. He'd seen it coming — if only he'd seen it just a moment sooner…

"Say," Yona spoke up, "if you ever get to see him again, tell him I'm sorry, okay?"

"Eh?"

"I don't remember it, but I know that to him, I was his king. He really loved me and wanted to help me, and then I yelled out that he wasn't the one I wanted; it must really have hurt for him. In a way I'm not sorry, because I still think it's better this way, that getting Kija back was the right thing, but I wish it hadn't been like that."

She put her arm on Zeno's shoulder. "I should say it to you, too. I'm sorry I was so cruel to your friend."

Zeno tried to laugh it off, but it didn't come out as a laugh. "Zeno thinks that, too, that… that the right thing was getting this White Dragon back…"

"But that's hard, too, isn't it?" Yona persisted. "Guen was someone who you would have wanted to be on his side no matter what, right?"

She wasn't letting him take any of the easy ways out. He nodded, wiping at his eyes.

Yona drew him into a hug, cheek-to-cheek. "I'm sure I would have wanted that, too. I hope we can all see him again, sometime when it's not like that."

"Yes," Zeno agreed, and he let himself sniffle against Yona's shoulder.

When he shifted his head a little, he felt something small and smooth shift, heard a small click — she had hugged him on the side where he wore his medallion, and he'd felt the red bead being nudged over the edge of it and falling into place, held in the embrace between his cheek and Yona's.

"Miss… Can you stay here for a while? Just like this?"

"Yes. I can."

The weeks of the New Year's holiday passed. Kija gradually regained a bit of strength, and everyone gradually relaxed as the raw shock of New Year's Eve mellowed into history.

On the morning before the new moon, the village came together for a last outpouring of prayers to conclude the vigil for their founder, and then the necklace — minus the single stolen bead — was at last carefully placed in its chest and carried away.

When that was done, Granny turned to the assembled villagers. "What happened this year must be a warning to all of us that even our sacred duties must not blind us to the attachments of our human hearts. But who can fault our young Lord White Dragon for his devotion? No, as keepers of the tradition, we are the ones who must make certain such a thing never happens again."

And so a new rule was made, that the founder's necklace should never be worn again, but at every Ancestors' Festival should be placed on a cushion before the feast and honored with offerings and prayers.

By then, Kija had recovered enough to speak more clearly, sit up for a few hours at a time, or stand and move around his room a little. When the evening came, Granny and the villagers in charge of ceremonies came and dressed their white dragon in a heavily ornamented robe and headdress and made ready to bring him to the main hall.

"Are you sure you're up to this?" Yoon asked him.

"Of course. If I couldn't even do a thing like this…" but Kija let the answer trail off.

Granny was more sanguine — and had lapsed back into calling him by his title when she wasn't actively tending his injuries. "All he has to do is sit and accept praises," she insisted. "Our Lord White Dragon can do that in his sleep!"

At the ceremony, this judgment looked doubtful for a while, as Kija struggled with waves of tears through the villagers' prayers, but in the end it turned out that Granny was exactly right. Kija's head drooped with jingles of the gold ornaments until Shin-ah and Jae-ha had to hold him up, but the villagers only smiled his snores.

Zeno smiled, too, finally reunited with the group and finally seeing the white dragon spirits accompanying Kija again. They clustered around him affectionately and rubbed soothingly at his wounds. A few spirits did approach Zeno from time to time and nudge at the cracked bead, but they were firmly aligned with the younger generation and even seemed a little more satisfied than before. If Yona had put her thumb on the scale from the start, Zeno realized, it would only have frustrated them more, but when Kija stood up to fight, to hear their king's voice take his side — the side of 'you are more than your usefulness to me' — perhaps it had been just what they needed.

In the morning, when the new year dawned, Kija was left to sleep through the celebratory dancing and singing — and the weddings. Even his Granny could admit that he was in no state to get married.

Hak and Yona did go to the party, and when Zeno announced that he was going too, he'd begun to recover his usual sunshine and bounce. Yoon was staying to care for Kija, and Shin-ah was never much for parties, but Yona looked back at Jae-ha.

"Aren't you coming?" she asked. Surely if anyone among them loved a festival, it was him.

"No, no, I'll stay and help Mother look after the children," he said — then added, "If any ladies ask about me, please give them my regrets."

In fact they encountered a crowd of inquiring village women as soon as they left the house. Hak burst out laughing, although Yona wasn't quite sure why.

As more weeks passed, it turned out that Kija's tears at the new moon ceremony had been a warning of things to come. As his mind and body grew stronger, he came back into the world more fully and clearly, but he came back with every emotion raw. Granny insisted that this was a normal phase of recovery and would pass in due time, but until then, Kija would fall to weeping or frustration over the slightest thing.

When a winter storm struck the village, howling against the house and rattling the shutters, he spent the entire day, night, and day that it lasted sleepless, wide-eyed, and tense, but he irritably batted away any suggestion that he was frightened. He even snapped at Shin-ah for trying to soothe him, only to immediately burst into tears of remorse that spiraled beyond the guilt of the moment and lasted for hours. Only when the wind finally quieted was he able to sleep again.

The next morning, when they could open the shutters and look out at the storm's result, all the doors of the house had been buried in snow, sealing them inside. The housekeepers were prepared with provisions and wouldn't hear of their heavenly sovereign and her companions doing such menial work as shoveling snow. Zeno nonetheless found an excuse to dispose of some of it when he enlisted Hak and Shin-ah to help him bring basins of it upstairs and started an indoor snowball fight. It was left to Yoon to disarm everyone and melt down their weapons until he could declare peace over a basin of hot water steeped with herbs.

Kija had joined in the battle with relish, laughing immoderately for as long as his endurance lasted — and thankfully having the presence of mind to throw only with his left hand. As he sat soaking his feet in the herbal bath, his eyes brimmed with tears again, and his chin quivered, although he clung stubbornly to a clumsy, crooked smile.

"Are you okay?" Yona asked.

He nodded, pulled a deep breath. "I'm just — so glad to be here with everyone —!" he choked out, then began sobbing in earnest.

Yona wrapped her arms around him.

"We're all glad to have this White Dragon, too," Zeno said, joining in the embrace.

Yona could feel the others' touch or feel Kija moving a little as they all took his hands or lay their hands on him. They held on like that for a long moment, then Yona felt someone jerk and heard a small jingle, and she looked up.

It was Zeno. He'd backed away a little with a look of surprise. His medallion was swinging by his cheek; Yona realized that it — and the new bead he'd added to it — must have been pressed between his face and Kija's, the way it had been between his and hers when she hugged him at the vigil.

Kija looked up, blinking.

Zeno broke into his own clumsy smile. "It's okay. It's going to be okay," and he hugged Kija cheek-to-cheek again.

Yona went to bed that night tired and happy. She thought, Maybe this is what it would be like, if we all settled down together somewhere. The idea made her smile, although she knew that it wouldn't happen for a long time.

—If ever. One of Kija's lines from the New Year's Eve ceremony rose again in her mind: 'My walk in the light is brief…' It left her staring into the darkened canopy of the bed, pondering what could lie behind those words. Well, she concluded, that's true of everybody. It was natural enough, on an occasion for remembering the dead, to remember death itself — and this year it had brought them such a painful reminder of how fragile their time together really was…

All the more reason to enjoy it now, she decided. She pulled the soft quilts over her chin and listened through the bed curtains to the sounds of her friends' breath as she drifted off to sleep.

Around the beginning of the third month, the snow piled in the village began to sink in on itself, the mountain streams thawed out and ran freely, and Yoon finally announced that they could leave whenever they chose.

It came up as they were walking together through the mountainside forest. Kija's recovery had reached a stage where the treatment regimen called for long nature walks, and the whole party had gone out with him.

"This feels so familiar," Yona noticed with a smile, "like when we're all traveling together. "I guess we'll be doing that again soon. It was good to spend some time here, but I'll admit I'm looking forward to it."

"We're just waiting for word from Mother," Hak said.

And that was when Yoon offered his opinion. "Weather-wise, we can leave whenever we want."

The crunching of footsteps on fallen snow and pine needles went silent as everyone stopped and turned to look at him.

"Really?" Jae-ha asked.

"We're past the season for really bad storms, especially once we get out of the mountains, and what we do have to deal with, the villagers can outfit us for," Yoon explained; he wasn't about to let Kija humbly turn down supplies and provisions this time. "It's just when we're all in shape to go."

Without naming a name, the implication was clear, and Kija's eyes widened. "That's — I wouldn't want to hold everyone back —"

"It's okay," Yona assured him. "You don't have to push yourself after something like that."

"And it's not like we're going to leave without you," Hak added, in case he was stupid enough to suggest it.

"Yes, I see…" Kija started walking again, but slowly, and after a few more minutes of threading their way among the trees, he spoke. "I would like to go."

"Hey," Yoon argued, "you're a lot better but you're not back to normal yet. If you push yourself too far just because you feel like you're supposed to —"

Kija stopped so suddenly that everyone knew Yoon had touched a nerve, and it took very little pondering to catch the echo of the Ancestors' Festival, when he'd gone much too far for the sake of what he felt he was supposed to do.

"I know that," he said slowly, "but…"

"You're bored, right?" Hak offered a way around the tension.

But Kija didn't take it. "Of course I'm not bored," he said, a little testily. "But… The way I feel now… It's as if something inside me aches to be stretched." He smiled a little, looking at his claw. "My power always used to feel that way, before I met all of you." He curled his scaled fingers, and his smile fell.

Shin-ah touched his shoulder.

"You're right to suspect me," he admitted. "Even now I'm asking myself, 'have I ever used this power as I should have?' That night… when I met the founder…"

Yona took a step closer to listen. It was the first time Kija had spoken directly about what happened at the Ancestors' Festival.

"It's true," Kija said. "He was much stronger than me. He had mastered ways of using the dragon's claw that I had never given thought to. It's true that a moment might come, when I might fail to protect you, where he would have succeeded — and now I'm asking you to take me with you when even my own strength isn't at its fullest."

"Aw, White Dragon, that's not—" Zeno started.

But Kija shook his head and pressed on. "That I'm the one here with you now — I don't believe that it's wrong, but I can't say that it isn't selfish. Now that I've come that far… Before, I could think, 'I was chosen by the gods,' but now I've presumed to choose myself. I can't continue to be prideful and complacent. So I do want to push myself further, to become worthy of it. But for now, I've put you all through something so terrible, and you've all gone so far out of consideration for me…" He had recovered enough to hold his emotions in check through the confession, but barely. He turned to the others and made a deep bow from the waist. "I can only ask you to continue to bear with me."

Everyone moved to offer their own form of reassurance. Shin-ah patted Kija's shoulder, and Zeno hugged him.

"What sort of big brother would I be if I couldn't do that?" Jae-ha wondered.

And Yoon: "Fine, but next time you die, I won't forgive you."

Kija was still bowing when Yona stepped in front of Hak. She looked at Kija's lowered head, reached down and ruffled his hair.

"Ah!" He gave a jolt and blushed.

"Sorry! I liked getting to do that while you were sick; I just couldn't help it one last time," she said.

"Er, no, it's — it's quite all right," he stammered.

"But Kija…" Yona leaned closer. "I don't like you talking like that, like you're not good enough. I know when I met you, I said 'lend me your power,' but now… I don't want you because of your power, or because you're the strongest. Even if you lost your power, or if you were hurt or sick and couldn't fight — even if I had to carry you on my own back, I'd still want you with me," she said, "just because it's you."

"Princess…!" He straightened enough to look her in the eyes before bursting into tears again, and she hugged him with her arms around his neck as he sobbed on her shoulder.

Hak watched for a few moments. "What am I supposed to say after that?" he wondered. "'Yeah, I don't mind protecting the white snake'…"

"Shut up! I don't need — augh!" Kija's protest ran aground in frustration, but it did snap him out of his crying fit.

Yona took his left arm in hers and started off on their walk again. "Listen, Kija, I really meant all of that, but if you want to get stronger so you can help everyone, I think that's great. I know how that feels." She laughed. "I'm a little selfish, too, you know? I think, 'if Kija feels that way, too, maybe we're not so different,' like maybe I'm not so far behind everybody."

"No, that's… Princess, you're very strong," he insisted.

"But there's so much more to learn!" she enthused. "Oh, I know! Tetra fights with bare hands, too, and that would be a good thing for me to know, if I was ever in a pinch. Next time we see Lili, we can ask her to teach us some." She gave Kija a playful nudge. "We could even be sparring partners!"

"Wha!? Ah — no — that's — I couldn't presume —!" The idea collided in Kija's mind with his own thoughts of what he had to learn, with the memory of Guen's quick, precise grabs. To try that on Yona — and then he noticed, as he somehow hadn't noticed before, that they were already walking arm-in-arm…

Kija's face burned crimson, and he tottered on his feet.

Jae-ha found Zeno and Shin-ah walking along together, and he took them by the shoulders in an aside. "I think our other brother has had enough excitement, don't you?"

They both nodded.

"Shin-ah, start looking for the shortest way back?" Jae-ha suggested.

Shin-ah pointed without having to look; he knew this part of the mountain from his time with the village patrols.

"Well, then, lead the way."

They stayed a few more days while Yoon and Hak arranged the supplies they would take with them.

Yona insisted on abandoning the posh bed, wanting to train herself back toward sleeping in camp. Kija still wouldn't take it back in preference to her, and after enough back-and-forth between the two of them, Jae-ha announced that he wasn't about to let it go to waste. Zeno flopped down in it too and called Shin-ah over to show him how soft it was, then noted that it hardly seemed right to have one of the four dragons missing — "Don't you think so, White Dragon?" — and so for their last few nights in the village they managed to coax Kija into his own bed, crowded though it was.

Kija did insist on forgoing a farewell feast, but on the morning they left, the whole village gathered at the gates to see them off. Yona thanked the villagers for their hospitality, she and Hak said goodbye to the people they'd met at the training hall, and Yona got parting encouragement from her archery teacher. Bows and good wishes were exchanged between Yoon and the doctors and between Zeno and the scribes. A few of Jae-ha's admirers even got farewell kisses on the cheek or the forehead.

Granny didn't load Kija with things to take with him this time. Supplies had already been arranged for, and she somehow held back from trying to send a suitor. She did call him close to her for a goodbye, both of them with tears in their eyes.

"I've been glad to be here with you again, but I can't hold my master here any longer," Kija said. "It pains me to think that this might be the last time you're able to see me."

"Don't say it like I'm going to die!" Granny snapped.

"I only meant —"

She cut him off with a scoff. "As if I need my eyes to watch over you. Even when you're far from here, I can still do that much."

"So I've noticed." He bowed to her. "Then, with your blessing, I will go forth and do all I can to be worthy of his honor and to express the devotion of our village."

"Everyone knows that, even if you don't say anything," Granny told him. "No matter what happens, you're our village's pride."

Kija blushed to accept it, knowing that Granny had been there at the Ancestors' Festival — she'd been the one to tell him 'we will all bear this sin with you.' She'd raised three other white dragons before him, and had been there when his father scarred his back. When she said 'no matter what happens,' she knew what she was saying better than anyone, and still…

This time it felt so natural that he didn't even realize the echo until he was already bowing and speaking. "I am so very grateful."

Granny's bearers didn't make a sound or let their smiles fall, but with a tilt of a head here and a sinking of a shoulder there, they let the sweetness of the moment show.

"Save your bowing for your king," Granny scolded. Finally, she turned to Yona and the others and bowed down on her litter. "Thank you for all the care you show our Lord Kija."

Yona bowed in return. "Thank you for taking care of him until now."

It was a reversal from the first time they'd left, when the village was sending Kija off to protect her, but Yona liked this way better. Kija started to protest but let it go and accepted it with an awkward smile.

As the party left the village, Shin-ah's friends from the watch escorted them some way down the mountain to give him a quieter farewell, and then Yona and her friends struck out on their own again, planning to make another stop at Ik-su's house before heading for a market town where they could gather information.

"Ahh, that was nice!" Yona declared, stretching her arms. "It's good to be traveling again, but I'll miss everyone."

"And it worked out well," Yoon said. "I'm really glad we weren't out in some of those storms, and they sent us off with plenty of supplies and money. Being up in the mountains makes for a longer winter, but we'll know all of that when this comes up next year."

"We could go back and see everyone," Yona suggested.

"Well, that's — that's not — you don't have to do that," Kija said hurriedly. "It would be too selfish to ask you all to indulge me twice in a row…"

"It's all right, you don't have to be shy," she told him.

"Are you sure you could bear to miss the Ancestors' Festival?" Jae-ha asked, with an odd mix of archness and sincerity.

"My duty to all of you must take precedence," Kija answered firmly. "After this year I'm sure — I'm sure that the spirits will understand."

"So then, that leaves the question of where to go," Hak pointed out. "White Snake was in such a hurry, we never did hear everything Yoon had thought of."

Yoon opened his mouth, raising his hand to count off the options on his fingers —

— But Shin-ah spoke first. "Awa."

"Yeah, that was high on my list," Yoon confirmed. "Winters are milder by the sea, for one thing."

"Good place to hide in a crowd," Hak agreed, "especially since a lot of people there owe us favors. And a lot of information would pass through, even in winter."

"The food there is really good!" Zeno added.

"And some of us could find work and start the spring with money," Yoon said. "Well, some of you exotic beasts are probably hopeless, but I assume Jae-ha knows what he's doing there, and I could find something."

"I'd love to see Captain Gi-gan again," Yona enthused.

"Yeah, Droopy Eyes probably misses his mom," Hak said.

"I'm human, aren't I?" Jae-ha conceded, fighting back laughter. He hadn't had to say a thing.

Yona stepped forward and took Kija by the arm again, catching his attention; she'd noticed that he was the only one staying silent about the idea. "What do you think?" she asked. "Does that sound good to you?"

He looked up into the sky as he walked along, considering it. "There are fireworks there, on New Year's Eve?" he recalled.

"Oh, yes," Jae-ha replied, "and a parade, with the streets full of light and color and music… If you're going to honor the dead, why not do it beautifully?"

Yona watched Kija's face and saw his answer: a quiet but hopeful smile.

"I would like to see that," he said.

Chapter 5 - END