“I have a job,” her father said, an edge of anger to his words, like a blade glinting in the sun. Sen could hear it, but she bet her mother couldn’t. She didn’t understand him the way Sen did.
“The samurai are gone,” her mother said quietly.
It was the worst thing she could have said.
He would have cut Sen down for saying such a thing aloud, but her mother was not raised as she was, and her father had more patience for her mother, only because he loved her less. His shadow seemed to swell against the paper doors, his spine curved into a crooked arc, his fingers like talons.
But of course, only Sen could see it.
“I will always be a samurai,” he said, after a long silence. “If you don’t accept that, leave. But leave my children, because they will always be samurai too.”
“You can’t keep telling that to Sen,” her mother said. “She’s never going to get married at this rate. She’ll scare any good man off.”
“One of the Shimazu sons will take her, once we’re reinstated,” her father said. “They’ll reward us for our loyalty.”
Sen’s mother made a sound of disappointment but said nothing more. Sen turned back to her room, worried one of herparents would come into the corridor and catch her eavesdropping.
But she no longer felt tired. Her body felt strangely light, as if it knew her days here were limited. She grabbed her sword and strode out into the rain.
Sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep, the only thing that would calm her was doing rounds of the house, scanning the forest for danger, letting anyone who might be watching know that a samurai lived here, and if they took one step into her yard, they would not leave alive. It used to be her father’s habit, but Sen had taken it upon herself in the months after he left.
The earth squished beneath her sandals as she strode toward the edge of the yard. It was harder to focus on other sounds over the roar of rain, but it forced her to be more perceptive, to not only listen to the forest but feel it as a part of her, sense the way it breathed, and bit, and squirmed.
Sen did not want to marry one of the Shimazu sons.
She did not want a great many things, but as the daughter of the last samurai, very few of her desires mattered. Samurai were not honored because of the decisions they made, or the poetic depth of their thoughts. They were weapons that did not fail, and Sen was her father’s sword arm. He was growing old, his scars stiff and painful when he walked. One day, he would fall, and Sen would be there to pick up his sword and finish the job for him.
“My lady?”
Sen turned, and there was Youna, standing on the porch with a lantern. “The rain will make you ill,” she said from the covered porch, holding out a blanket. “Come back to bed.”
Sen shook her head. “Don’t stay up for me, Youna,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“I can make you tea if you can’t sleep,” Youna said.
Sen smiled softly, shaking her head. The kind of demons that lived in her mind could not be driven away by tea.
“Thank you, but I’m fine,” Sen said. “Please go back to sleep.”
Youna hesitated, then bowed and placed the blanket on the porch for Sen. She headed back into the house, leaving the door just slightly parted.
Sen did one more circuit of the house, for the rain had already washed away her footprints. Far away, the sea had crawled back to the mountains, the shore a barren wash of white sand and sun-bleached shells, an ocean graveyard.
As Sen returned to the southern side of the house, she drew to a stop.
There, in the window of her room, was a man’s face.
Chapter Four
Lee
Lee slept through the moment his mother disappeared, but he saw it in his dreams.
First, she lay down on the hotel bed and grew thinner, flatter, until she was barely there at all. A faceless man came in and folded her up like a piece of laundry. The man put her in a suitcase, zipped it up, and dragged her away.
Lee wondered, sometimes, if his mother disappeared because she fell into one of his dreams and couldn’t find her way out.
He was twelve, on a trip to Cambodia with his parents during summer break. They were staying in a bungalow in the middle of a tropical garden, a place that was supposed to be perfect. Lee remembered bright fuchsia flowers, giant taro leaves, and guava that he could reach from the second-floor balcony. He remembered the haze of jet lag that made his body feel stuffed full of cotton instead of blood, how he’d been halfway between the real world and a dream when his mother opened the sliding door.
