“What have you trained me for, if not this?” Sen said.
“To protect your mother,” her father said. “Step aside, Sen.”
Sen ground her heels into the earth, her hand drifting to her sword handle, just as her father had taught her. “I am not a sentry,” she said. “I am a warrior, and I will go to war.”I won’t stay home and cook and clean while you die, she thought.If I must die, I will die beside you.
Her father leveled his gaze with hers. Then, in one swift movement, he drew his sword.
Sen squared her stance and caught the edge of his blade as he struck down. But rather than striking again with any of the elegant formations he’d taught her, he drew the hilt of his katana back into her face.
Sen reeled back, her vision flashing white, blood gushing from her nose. But her father wasn’t done. He raised his blade and sliced across her abdomen. Heat and then pain seared her stomach. She didn’t know where her sword had gone, her hands too busy clutching her stomach, trying to keep the blood in.
“You think you could ever be a warrior?” her father said. He loomed over her, blocking out the sun.
She gasped for breath, trembling with a sudden wave of cold. “I’m as strong as any man,” she managed, even though her words shuddered like dying leaves on dry branches.
Her father scoffed, sheathing his sword. “It’s not because you’re a girl,” he said. “It’s because you’reweak.”
Then he turned and walked away, leaving Sen in the dirt.
He won’tactually leaveme here to die, Sen thought, panting into the ground. She tried to rise to her feet, but the pain sent her straight back down.It’s another test, she thought.He’ll come back for me.
But the morning sun bloomed bright and hot overhead, and all the moisture left Sen’s mouth, and her hands felt cold and wouldn’t stop shaking. Kura knelt beside her, ghostly hands tracing Sen’s jaw where blood trickled from her lips.
He does this because you’re strong, Kura said.
But Sen didn’t feel strong, not with her body numb and shivering, her father’s last words to her echoing through her mind. Hands gently lifted her up and she tried to let out a relieved breath, but no air would come to her.
Chichiuehas returned for me, she thought. But she felt herself pressed against a woman’s chest, her long hair sticking to the blood on Sen’s throat. She laid Sen down in a bed of grass.Chichiueis coming back for me, she wanted to say, but couldn’t force her mouth to work.Put me back where you found me, or he’ll be disappointed when he returns.
She woke to Seijiro shouting at her, then her mother, then the world turned to night.
The next week passed in a haze of fever, but still her father didn’t return. Then they received word that the rebellion had failed, and she realized he wasn’t coming back at all.
You’re weak, she thought as she swung her sword at young trees and branches and plants in the woods.
You’re weak, she thought as their soup grew more and more watery by the day and she could hardly taste it at all.
You’re weak, she thought as the months spun by and nightafter night she lay awake listening to the cries of the cicadas and wishing she had died on the battlefield with her father, because without him she was a lost star in a dark sky.
Then, one day, her father returned.
“I came back for you,” he said to her. “I will continue your training, and when it’s safe, you and I will start another school together.”
And that was how she knew this man was not her father.
You’re weak, she thought as she hugged him anyway, leaning into his touch as he patted her hair.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Lee
On Lee’s twelfth birthday, his mom made him a cake before his dad came home from work. She hadn’t frosted it very well, so the red velvet cake showed through the cream cheese frosting, giving it an odd scarlet tinge. She’d decorated it with blue icing that spelled out HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEE, then added twelve yellow candles and pink flower petals from the garden. It was ugly, but his mom had made it for him, so he loved it.
“Should we wait until Dad gets home?” Lee asked.
But his mom was already lighting the candles. “This one’s just for the two of us,” she said.
She sang to him, and Lee liked that part because his mom was a very good singer, then she gave each of them a big slice.
