Prologue
The okara children who had been sent away from the plague in the Ankoku found themselves in a dark wilderness. One of the older boys used his magicks to float over the trees. They were relieved to learn that the forest sat just outside a town in Bayan.
When they entered the town as a group, they received a lot of strange looks. Their clothing was about a century out of fashion, and a good half of them were clearly ill. The humans regarded them with an air of deep suspicion, covering their noses and mouths to ward off disease. Then one of the older boys heard whispers of “yokai,” and he suggested that the group should split up. Their magicks were stronger than a normal human’s magicks, but a mob of people in hysteria could overpower even the strongest yokai. Separating would be safer and avoid arousing human suspicions.
So the group disbanded. Ayato and Kazuma went off by themselves. Then, they got sick.
Extremely sick.
Sicker than anyone had ever been before. Probably.
Ayato didn’t have anything to compare it to, having never been ill before, but it certainly seemed like he was dying. This had to be a whole new level of sickness.
He and Kazuma had gone back into the forest when they separated from the group, intending to travel through it to another town or village, but now they were somewhere in the middle. They had collapsed on a bed of soft grass beneath the trees, too shaky, weak, and dizzy to keep walking. Whenever they tried to eat something, they did that “throwing up” thing, too. Ryoma was right, it was awful! Ayato wouldn’t wish this on anyone.
“Why did you do this to me?” Ayato had tried drinking water and vomited it back up. He held his stomach and tried to catch his breath. His whole front side was sore.
“It’s better we’re sick now,” Kazuma reasoned.
“We might not have been sick ever!” Ayato couldn’t make it to his feet and half crawled, half dragged himself back to the soft grass and blankets. “We got out. We would have been safe.”
Kazuma rolled to her side when Ayato flopped back down beside her. “I had a vision.”
Ayato pulled the blanket up to his chin. “What kind of vision?”
“This plague is a kind of yokai, and it’s going to make us unimaginably powerful, Ayato.” She curled closer to her brother for warmth. “When we transition, it’s going to transition with us. We’re going to be like a whole new kind of kaji.” Her expression dazzled with anticipation, despite the cold sweat from her fever. “Isn’t that great?”
“No.” Ayato would have punched her in the arm if he had the strength. “What the Makai, Kazuma? You did this to us on purpose? Are you crazy?”
“I’m not crazy.” The joy fell from her face. “You didn’t see the vision I saw. This is going to be amazing. There will be nothing else like us on Nakaba. We’ll be like the Kishin gods, Ayato.”
“You did this to me for power?” He still felt like punching his sister but chose instead to not cover his mouth when he was overcome by an unstoppable sneeze.
“It’s not my fault that we’re twins.” Kazuma used the blanket to wipe the snot from her face. “If I only did it to myself, then the balance between us would be thrown off, and it would kill us both.”
Ayato rolled his eyes, “You actually believe in that old tale?”
“I don’t believe anything,” Kazuma shot back. “I know it’s true. Twins are one tama, separated into two bodies, but connected by a spirit thread. If you die, I die, and if I die, you die, because we’re just two halves of the same coin.”
Ayato scowled. “I kind of hate you right now, but I’m also sleepy. I chose sleep. We’ll talk about this later.”
Kazuma was referring to an old Bayanese myth that twins were once one body and one tama. Sometime before birth, they divided in half, becoming two bodies, each with one half of a single tama. It was said that the twins were still connected to each other even after birth, through an invisible spirit thread, tama to tama. This made the balance between the twins very important. It was also said to be powerful enough of a connection to instantly kill the surviving twin if one of them died, because they were, after all, one tama living two lives.
Papa used to tell them the tale all the time when they were little. It had been their favorite bedtime story at one point, but Ayato had hardly thought about it since their father died. And it was only a bedtime story. Kazuma had done this to him because of a bedtime story.
“You can’t see the spirit thread, can you?”
Ayato cracked an eye open.
Kazuma pinched the air with one hand as if holding a single strand of hair, but there was nothing between her fingers.
His eye drifted shut again, “See what?”
Kazuma probably replied.
Ayato didn’t hear. He had returned to his fevered dreams, which featured a dancing okuma bear yokai called Sasha, attempting to force Ayato to dance in her traveling show for one salmon a day as compensation.
A clap of thunder shook the air and woke him with a start. The rain had begun lightly but was getting heavier now. Kazuma had slept through the thunder, somehow. Her back was to Ayato.
Ayato quickly compacted the air around them, condensing it into a dome to create a shield that would keep the rain from drenching them when the downpour started. It had gotten considerably darker in the forest, but a flash of lightening fixed that for a split second. The thunder came moments later and the rainfall increased in intensity. Ayato had woken up just in time. They would have been soaked to the bone if he’d slept any longer.
Did he have time to go pee before it got really bad? Probably not, but he would have to risk it.
Ayato moved as fast as he was able, relying on tree trunks for support as he made his way downhill from their resting spot. When he felt that he had gone far enough, he stopped to do the deed against an inviting tree. Just as he thought it would, the rain turned into a downpour, and Ayato’s stream joined a growing stream of rainwater in a satisfying manner.
When he finished, Ayato started to make the climb back up. His clothes were so wet now, they clung to his skin. He’d have to take them all off when he got back to the safety bubble. He slipped a few times in the mud. It was getting hard to walk uphill. Good thing the soft patch of grass was on level ground.
His foot slipped and he landed face first in the mud. Ayato rolled onto his back to spit out the mouthful of dirt and water. The stream of water was swiftly becoming a river.
Ayato climbed to his feet in time to see the geyser coming.
He sucked in a deep breath and threw his arms up over his face, and when the water struck him, he was thrown back into a tree.
The water pulled Ayato along with it down the hillside in a dance crazier than what Sasha the dancing bear yokai had expected for a salmon a day wage. He was head-over-heels-over-head until his head struck a rock. After that, he was nothing.
And he remained nothing until he was something again.
When Ayato came back to himself, he was instantly aware of the fact that he was simultaneously warm and dry. The crash of the thunder and the roar of the water in his ears had been replaced with silence and the soft crackle of a good fire.
He stretched out his limbs and immediately noticed the absence of the awful sickness and the feeling that he was dying.
“Kazuma?” Ayato sat up in an unfamiliar setting.
His heart leaped out of his chest and he jumped to his feet. He was in a cabin on a straw mat near the fire pit. Garlands of root vegetables hung from the rafters. Other straw mats were organized in a circle around the fire. A large, black pot hung over the fire, steaming away.
The blanket fell away. Ayato was dressed in a dark navy vailo. The corded belt had even been tied snug around his waist. The vailo was the traditional dress in Bayan, but it wasn’t every-day wear these days. It was worn mostly on special occasions like festivals and holidays. Had he ended up in some backwoods village where they still dressed traditionally?
Ayato threw the blanket aside. He had to get out of here and back to Kazuma. How long had they been apart? He was supposed to be protecting her. Ayato was the older brother by a whole minute.
He hurried to the door and pulled back the cloth curtain to the last thing in the world that he was expecting to see.
Tengu everywhere.
They were a race of bird yokai. There were tengu, little “t,” that looked no different from regular birds except that the insides of their beaks were completely dark purple like they’d eaten nothing but mulberries all their lives. Then there were the Tengu, big “T,” that looked like humans with massive bird wings sprouting from their backs and feet like talons. Like their little “t” cousins, the Tengu had dark purple coloring in their hair. These were Tengu big “T;” a whole village of them. Thank Aoto he had landed in a yokai village.
Ayato relaxed a degree.
Humans made him nervous. They always seemed to be looking for excuses to kill his kind.
“He’s awake!” A boy several years younger than Ayato shot passed the balcony on his wings. He buzzed about the streets, spreading the news.
All the houses were on stilts or in trees. Ayato was a good two stories above the ground, but there was no ladder or rope with which to climb up, since the Tengu, young and old, used their wings to come and go. Ayato didn’t have wings, but his yosoki magicks allowed him to manipulate the wind. He walked to the edge and wrapped the air around himself, shooting straight up into the sky.
“What the?” Ayato adjusted his control. Had Kazuma been right? Had the akuma plague made him stronger?
The village laid out before him was a series of ever-widening circles, situated around the village center, which consisted of a small shrine dedicated to whatever Kishin the Tengu revered. Outside the village sat forests and mountains, and more forests. He turned in all directions, but it stretched for miles upon miles, as far as his eyes could see. It was hard to believe that this was the same forest he and Kazuma had wandered into to escape the human town. If there were any human towns near here, they must have been well hidden by the green canopy.
Ayato aimed himself towards the sacred space at the center of the village. He had never used his magicks to fly before. He hadn’t been strong enough. Now, he couldn’t tell if it was exhilarating or terrifying; the difference between them was indecipherable. He landed softly on his feet near the first circle of houses around the village center. The Tengu were quickly gathering; men, women, children, and elders. They were all dressed as he was in traditional vailo. The women wore their hair tied up in buns, while the men had theirs loose and long.
Grandfather Mao approached Ayato first. The ancient old buzzard made his way across the grounds with the aid of a walking stick. His dappled wings were healthy and strong, but his legs were gnarled and weak. They stuck out from his vailo like chicken legs.
“Okara,” Grandfather Mao addressed Ayato, “do you know where you are?”
“No,” Ayato answered truthfully. There was no use in lying to Tengu, or maybe tengu. He couldn’t remember which, but one of them had eyes that could see the truth. They knew when you were lying.
“Do you know how you came to be here?”
“No.”
Grandfather Mao nodded grimly, “Do you know where you came from at least?”
“The Ankoku, Sir,” he replied automatically, but then he thought better of it. “But more recently from nowhere.”
“Nowhere?”
“There was a plague.” Ayato pushed the dirt around with his toes. He tried to block from his mind the way people looked when they were overcome with plague and the fact that his mother would soon join their ranks if she hadn’t already. “I was in the forest with my sister, but there was a storm and a landslide and somehow I ended up here.”
“Somehow indeed.” He peered over his long, hooked nose with lemony eyes, “We pulled your lifeless body from the river. If it weren’t for your yokai side, you would have died, okara.”
“From the river?” Ayato echoed. He hadn’t recalled seeing a river, but it could have been obstructed by the trees, he reasoned. So, this place was connected to the part of the forest he had been in. If he used his magicks, he could probably fly back upstream and find Kazuma in a day or two.
“We’re all curious about you,” the Tengu continued. “This village is special. Protected. Usually, there is no one who can go in or out.”
Or out? Ayato lifted his eyes to the crowd of vailo wearing Tengu. That may be why they seemed to be at least three centuries behind in fashion.
“But you came in.” Grandfather Mao spread his wings as he straightened himself up. “We want to know why.”
Why? Ayato felt himself starting to shrug his shoulders. How was he supposed to know that?
“But more importantly, we want to see if you can leave.” Grandfather Mao beat his wings and pushed off from the earth, “Come along Okara.”
Ayato wrapped the wind around himself again and lifted up, “My name is Ayato, Sir.”
They flew for nearly twenty minutes. Ayato was certain they would have reached the edge of the forest by then, but it continued on, far beyond the river bank where Grandfather Mao stopped for a rest.
“This is where we found you,” Grandfather Mao explained, taking a seat on a large boulder.
Ayato came to a wall; an invisible field of hardened air just to the old Tengu’s left. He ran his hands around it. The invisible wall rose up high overhead and probably formed an enormous dome if the Tengu had not found a way to fly over it. It even went into the river. The water flowed through the wall, but fish and other animals could not pass. A bird flew into it just over his head, fell to the ground stunned, then shook it off and flew away. Ayato found a stick and tested the wall. The stick passed through until his fingers reached it. Then the enchanted air hardened and stopped his hand from advancing any further. Ayato dropped the stick and it fell to the ground.
“It thought I was dead,” Ayato realized. “That’s why the magicks let me through.”
“We thought you were dead, too,” Grandfather Mao admitted. “We were moments from lighting your funeral pyre when you suddenly coughed up the water in your lungs and started breathing again.” He peered at Ayato over his hooked nose. “That was a full day after we found you, Ayato.”
Ayato leaned against the invisible wall that certainly recognized his presence now. “I’m not dead.”
“Not anymore.” The Tengu’s yellow eyes swept over him from head to toe.
“I have to get out. I have to get back to my sister.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible.” Grandfather Mao rapped on the wall. “My clan has lived in this valley for centuries. No one has ever left. There is no way out. Of course, no one has ever entered before either.” He gave a flicker of a mischievous smile. “Perhaps you’ll be the first on both counts.”
