I tugged on Yotan’s wing. Wandei’s too. In spite of their differences, the twins were closer with one another than any of our siblings. Even now, their wings beat in harmony.
I gestured to the Dragon King.Take me to him.
Kiki began to translate, then her beak lifted in horror.What in the gods, Shiori? No!
I wasn’t listening. I was already hooking one arm over Yotan’s neck and the other over Wandei’s.
It was reckless. I could hear Andahai’s shouts as Wandei and Yotan carried me out of the basket, my legs hanging over the raging sea. Kiki’s were a little harder to ignore.
Shiori, this is madness. Think of me. I’ll die if you die! Haven’t we talked about caution as the creed of the wise? Shiori!
Pinching my bird’s wings, I thrust her into my sleeve for safekeeping. Then, with a nod to my brothers, I jumped onto the Dragon King’s head.
I landed on one of his horns and slid down to his eyebrows. Pain sliced into my hands as I clung to his bristly gold hair, thick as I imagined a bear’s fur to be. Before I lost my grip, I opened my satchel.
Light spilled out, dazzling the dragon’s pale eyes.
I have need of a starstroke net to break a terrible curse,Ishouted with my thoughts, not sure if he could hear them.One enacted by my stepmother, the Nameless Queen. Please, she has a dragon pearl in her heart, and I need it to save my brothers—these six cranes. Grant us safe passage across the Taijin Sea. I will return the starstroke when I have broken the curse.
I lowered my collar, revealing the glimmering fragment of Seryu’s pearl inside my heart.
King Nazayun’s eyebrows slanted with recognition, and the waters trembled. For a moment, I thought my gamble had worked.
But I was mistaken.
With a roar, he dove back into the sea, taking me withhim.
Nothing could have prepared me for the Dragon King’s might. I tumbled off his brow, my terror reflected in his gleaming sapphire scales before I went into free fall. Waves crested over the dragon like mountains. The wind flung me across the sea.
I braced myself for the crash, but it never came.
Wooden branches cracked under my back as strong, feathered wings batted us away from immediate peril.
Your brother Andahai says that was very stupid,Kiki chided me as I rolled onto my stomach in the basket.
She didn’t have time to relay any further reprimands. Benkai directed us into the headwinds, and we rushed across the Taijin Sea, trying to outrun the Dragon King before he realized I was still alive.
But a new danger presented itself as the clouds shifted, unveiling the sun.
It was sinking, minutes away from dusk. If my brothers couldn’t reach land in time, they’d transform in midair over the roiling sea.
We had to act quickly. The most important thing was my satchel of starstroke. Benkai was the most athletic of my brothers, the fastest and strongest flyer in his crane form. I shoved the leather strap into his beak, waving for him to take it to the shore.
He didn’t hesitate. His neck dipped slightly under the weight of the satchel as he sped toward the shore. He’d make it. I knew he would.
I just wasn’t so sure about the rest of us.
Lightning chased us, long and crooked like dragon claws, sent by Nazayun himself. The bolts thrashed the sky, some striking so close that I could smell the smoke they left curling behind them, like ribbons of bone.
The shore appeared, and I could see the hem of the Taijin Sea foaming against the pebbled sands.Just a few more seconds of light,I prayed.
The sun did not hear me. She stretched her amber arms, burnished with a sleepy glow of the rising stars, across the sea one last time, making the tides gleam. Then the last rays of daylight sank beyond the horizon, and as night fell, so didwe.
Terror clotted my throat. The wind threw me out of my basket, and I heard myself scream inside my head. In every direction, my brothers spun away from me, the moonlight hitting the fluid contours of their faces as their shrieks turned into human cries.
Hasho struggled to hold me. I grasped at his feathers, but he trembled uncontrollably as my stepmother’s dark spell seized his body.
His eyes hollowed, legs bent into a crouch, and face contorted with pain. His long black beak shrank into pale lips and a slightly hooked nose, frail bird bones reconstructing themselves into human ones, muscles thickening into arms. Lungs gasping as if he couldn’t breathe.
