Don’t make the holes too loose,Kiki said as my fingers danced across the starstroke, making knot after knot.
Stop worrying.The holes were as wide as my smallest finger, tiny enough for Kiki to slip through, but not one of Raikama’s snakes. I had already made sure of that.
I’m not the one with my brow furrowed. What’s the matter, Shiori? Shouldn’t you be glad you’re almost done? You’re going home soon.
Yes, it should have gladdened me that we were so close to the end of this horrible journey. But in all honesty, I would have preferred if it never ended.
I had not forgotten the price we would have to pay to break our curse. All winter, I had tried to block it out of my mind. But now that the net was nearly finished, it was never far from my thoughts.
One of my brothers would have to die.
Over and over, I tortured myself with the different possibilities. That I might never hear Andahai scold me again. Never hear Benkai’s words of assurance. Never build kites with Wandei or laugh with Yotan, or argue with Reiji. Never trust my secrets to Hasho.
With every knot I tied, my heart hurt a little more. As my net swelled in size, the tiny pearl in my chest glimmered and throbbed, sometimes aching so acutely I had to stop and catch my breath.
Did Raikama’s pearl ever hurt her? I wondered what it must have been like for her to leave her country for the palace. Alone and melancholy, burdened by secrets she could not share with anyone.
I gritted my teeth. Was I truly commiserating with my stepmother?
A little. She used to look so happy when I ran into her apartments, as if I were her only friend in the world. Why did that have to change? What had made her hate me?
Wits, Shiori,I muttered silently, picking up my net again.Raikama is evil, that’s all there is to it. There’s nothing tounderstand.
That was what I told myself night after night as I worked on the net, until I tied the ends of the very last strand of starstroke.
Until at last my net was completed.
It was splendorous, long and wide enough to reach the far corners of my room. The demonfire gave it a shimmering light, like sparks, and the blood of stars made it vibrant, as if I’d somehow captured all the colors of the universe. If I told someone I had crushed a thousand rubies to make it, they would believe me, for that was the only way to describe Emuri’en’s strands of fate. With the three magics together, the net shone with a light that could have ensnared my gaze for all eternity.
Beautiful as it was, looking at it brought me no joy. I stuffed it into my satchel, not wanting to see it again until the wretched day that I’d have to use it against Raikama. I didn’t even want to think about my stepmother until then.
But it seemed I had no choice in the matter. That night while I slept, a long-buried memory surfaced, uninvited:
“Why did you put the snake in Reiji’s bed?” my stepmother asked. “It upset him.”
“He deserved it. He broke my favorite doll.”
“Just because Reiji was unkind doesn’t mean you should be, too. Think of the snake—you might have hurt it.”
“Or it might have bitten Reiji,” I said wickedly.
“Shiori!”
“I don’t like Reiji,” I said stubbornly. “And I don’t care for snakes. They’re the natural enemy of cranes.”
Raikama laughed. “It is cranes that eat snakes, not the other way around. Snakes are my friends. They were my only friends, once.”
“Even the vipers?” I asked. “Hasho said those are poisonous.”
“Especially the vipers. They practically raisedme.”
She said it so seriously I couldn’t tell whether she was joking. “Well then, you’re the only snake I like, Stepmother.”
Raikama tousled my hair. A glow beamed off her face, gold and radiant as the moon. I started to point, but Raikama’s hand jumped away from my hair. In a heartbeat, the glow was gone, as if I’d imagined it.
Gone too was her humor, and her voice became serious. “One day, you won’t say that. One day, you’ll despise me.”
“I couldn’t hate you.”
