Then, she started to remember.
She turned, shielding herself from the light, the dawn that had come. She wanted to go away. From this place, from the pain, from the world itself. From the weight of being here, still, somehow still alive, when so many others were not. The light cut in; it made her bleary. Somehow the shards of sun made her want nothing more than to dive back down to bed and return to the nothingness of sleep.
But she wasn’t nothing. She was here. She was hurt. She was alive.
How is this possible?
On her chest, above her heart, she found a long scar, the length of her palm. Exactly where she’d stabbed the demon, and killed them both.
Where the god Hososhi had stood in the way.
What if I die first?she’d asked.
I won’t let you, the Hososhi had said.You still have a role to play.
She pulled on the wool coat and traveling pants that the old farmer and her husband had given her, folding the pleats as best she could, tying thesash. Dressed, she stood before the window, took a breath, and looked to the sun, closing her eyes, seeing if she could feel its warmth.
The god in her heart was silent now.
She could barely remember what happened after she struck the demon. She wasn’t sure what was real, and what was the remnant of a dream: she remembered the pain, she remembered the voice, the immense and other-worldly sound of the Hososhi that came from the earth itself, but she couldn’t remember what they said.
She remembered the spear, lancing through her enemy’s heart.
Remembered how it cut through hers.
Remembered the choice now, laughing, and how she felt something bigger than herself, bigger than the world, pull the spear from her hands and away.
Then nothing. The world went black. The Hososhi smiled.
She’d come to in a hollow at the edge of the riverbank, half-hidden by the camphor trees along the steep, silty shores. Snow fluttered down. It kissed her cheek, mingling with the saltwater of her tears.
Why am I still here?
Cold lay in a dense layer over the riverside. She shivered.
Keep walking, her teacher said.
So she did. She found the village just south of the temple gates, little docks where they tied up boats for trade. She walked back to the temple, as if in a daze, found her way to the little garden, the open yard where she fell.
It was empty now. In the place where her teacher had lain, the ground seemed dark, ashen. She found the old prayer rings that had once adorned his staff. Two iron feathers remained, half-buried now. She pulled them from the mangled rings; they were painfully cold. The two feathers, representative of the twin souls of the crow monk, fit in her hand. She tucked them into her tunic and moved on. She cried.
The clearing was scorched black where the demon had died. There was no trace of the bodies. Only the spear remained. The blade, long as her arm, still bright and shining, its wooden shaft now broken near the tang.
Once, she had lived in a little village not much different to this. Once, she’d had a home. A barn, a stable, an inn. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Now what did she have?
The snow coming down, and the heat of the fires in the temple by the river, orange, red, and white. It was too much. She stumbled to her knees again.
That was how they found her. Keishi soldiers.
Someone shouted. They’d seen her, they were coming.
She didn’t want to fight anymore.
She never wanted to fight again.
She had no time. She rose, clutching the spear.
She threw herself off the high stone wall and into the river, and was washed away.
