I whirled, scrambling deeper into my bedroom. On my desk were the paper cranes I’d folded. Hundreds of them. I hurled them into the air. “Come alive, and help my brothers.”
At my command, their pointed beaks lifted and their paper wings flapped. Within seconds, they rocketed behind Kiki.
They surrounded Raikama at the doorway, but they might as well have been gnats. She raised an arm, and a brilliant light flashed from her heart—then all at once my birds dropped, as lifeless as a pile of stones.
Only Kiki still flew. She hid behind my hair, her wings trembling so violently I could practically hear the little bird’s fear.
“So you do have some magic in you,” my stepmother said, cornering me. “This would have been easier if you didn’t.”
Hate gave me strength. I threw the walnut bowl from Seryu at her head, hurling it harder than I had anything before in my life.
But Raikama caught it in one hand. She held it on her palm, and a glow pooled within it, shadowy snakes crawling over the brim and wrapping themselves around my neck.
Muscle by muscle, I stiffened, immobilized by the snakes squeezing me tighter and tighter, until not even a wheeze could escape my lips.
“Stop,” I gasped. “Let…them…go….”
“You wish to speak?” My stepmother’s yellow eyes glowed. “Then be wary of what you say. For so long as this bowl rests on your head, with every sound that passes your lips, one of your brothers shall die.”
Raikama raised my chin so our eyes met. I expected her to laugh at how helpless I looked, but her expression wasunreadable.
“As of now, your past is no more. You will neither speak nor write of it. No one shall know you.”
She set the bowl upon my head. As the wooden sides fell over my eyes and nose, I opened my mouth to scream, but her curse arrived faster than my voice, and a world of blackness folded upon me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I woke facing the empty sky, my back against crisp green earth. Tall bunches of grass brushed against my cheeks and ankles, and the wind carried a bitter chill that was twining its way into my bones.
I pulled myself up, breathing hard.
This wasn’t home. I was on the top of a hill, no palace in sight, and in place of Gindara was the sea. I could see it from every direction, the gray water lapping the shore.
Raikama had stranded me on an island. One, from the looks of it, in the Far North. The moon was as large as my fist and still shone in the morning sky.
Anger swelled in my chest, but I balled my fists, pushing it away. I’d be angry later. Right now, I needed to get out of here…I needed to find my brothers and return home. I scanned the landscape below, noticing specks of rusted red and brown along the shore: fishing boats—a faint promise of civilization.
I hiked up my tattered skirts and scrambled down the hill. Before long, I heard horse hooves stuttering against a dirt road.
What luck!I thought, racing in their direction. I flailed my arms, and started to open my mouth to shout out to them. I’d simply tell them I was Princess Shiori, the emperor’s daughter. They would be more than pleased to bring me home.
But the coarse laughter of men—and the flashes of steel blades carelessly wielded in their hands—stopped me midstep.
“Hey, you!” one yelled, spotting me from afar. “Girl with the hat—halt!”
Fear swooped in my gut. I’d heard plenty of stories about the perils of Kiata’s roads, bandits being the most dangerous of all.
I disappeared into the bushes. A hundred steps in, I shed my outer robe so I could move faster. My teeth chattering from the cold, I ran, following the pallid rising sun above me, so small and white it looked nothing like the sun I was used to seeing at home.
When the hill was far behind, and but a mound against the gray-blue sea, I slowed to catch my breath. The bandits hadn’t followed, thank the Eternal Courts, and I’d come across a flooded rice field. A village couldn’t be far off.
Searching for a path, I raised my hand to shield my eyes from the sun. But when my fingers brushed against wood instead of skin, the bandit’s words came thundering back tome.
Girl with the hat,he had yelled.
My heart gave a lurch. Therewassomething on my head. Not a hat. A bowl, wooden and unyielding. Try as I might, I could not take it off. Was this Raikama’s magic?
I knelt by my reflection in a shallow pool, staring at myself. The bowl was deep, covering my eyes and my nose—yet I could see perfectly, as if the wood were no more substantial than a shadow. That wasn’t the case for my reflection: no matter what angle I tilted my face, the bowl covered my eyes and obscured everything above my lips.
