The lightning had ceased, leaving jagged scars among the starry patchwork of night.
I searched the heavens for stars I recognized. There weren’t many: the Rabbit—friend to Imurinya, the moon lady. The Hunter’s bow and arrow, which belonged to Imurinya’s husband. And the Crane, the sacred messenger of fate.
The Crane was a constellation of seven stars northeast of the moon. I traced it with my finger, the way I did when I was a child. Father had named those seven stars after us seven children.
Andahai, Benkai, Reiji, Yotan, Wandei, Hasho—and Shiori.
“No matter where life takes you,” he would say, “you will be like those stars—connected by the light you shine together.”
Though it was cold on the beach, and we were drenched with rain and seawater, somehow I felt warmer than I had in a long, long time.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
If there was anything good to come of being cursed, it was that in one short week, my brothers and I grew close again, as close as we’d been when we were children.
Though winter loomed over our little cave, the skies dismal and gray, our spirits were anything but. Yotan and Benkai told ghost stories by the fire, Wandei chased after Kiki and tried chiseling birds of his own out of firewood, and I supervised while Andahai and Hasho cooked.
Sometimes during our meals, we shared our earliest memories of Raikama. I contributed little—I was the youngest, after all, so my recollections were the least clear. But it was also shame that kept me silent; I’d been the fondest of Raikama when she first came to Kiata, a fact I wished I could erase forever.
Or maybe I already had. It was odd, but I hardly remembered why I’d ever loved my stepmother. It was as if someone had turned those memories into sand and blown them away from my past. Truth be told, it was probably better that way. I didn’t miss them.
“She isn’t from Kiata, that much we know,” said Wandei logically. “If Father met her abroad, he must have brought ships with him. An entire crew of men. There will be records of her arrival, or at least of her birthplace.”
“A woman with her beauty cannot simply have appeared out of nowhere,” Yotan agreed.
You forget that she’s a sorceress,I reminded them, poking my words into the dirt.She might not always have been beautiful.
“But she most certainly had a name. A family. A home.” Hasho paused. “It’s a start.”
Itwasa start, but I was more preoccupied with the ending. A day or two after we returned from Mount Rayuna, when the pain in my hands had subsided, I sought out Benkai to show me how to use my dagger.
There had been a reason I’d taken the dagger from the sentinel, and it wasn’t merely to break chestnut shells or hack starstroke. Benkai was a high sentinel, and my other five brothers were skilled warriors—one day soon, we would have to return home to the palace, where Raikama’s magic reigned strong.
Teach me,I begged silently.
Andahai stepped between us. “A dagger isn’t going to do much against Raikama. Even Benkai missed when we tried to fight her.”
“Let your hands heal so you can begin work on the starstroke,” Yotan agreed. “The net is our best chance of defeating her.”
“Take a rest, Shiori.”
“You’re all coddling her as if she were a silkworm,” said Reiji. “She just stole starstroke from the Dragon King. She can handle a knife!” He rose, dusting his torn trousers. “I’ll teach her.”
The others and I looked at him, startled. Of all my brothers, I hadn’t expectedhimto take my side.
Without another word, he led me to the back of the cave, and our training began. Eventually Benkai joined, and by the end of the night we were sparring.
“You’ve grown stronger, Shiori,” Benkai said, surprised when I held my own against him.
Two months of toiling for Mrs. Dainan, cleaving cabbages and melons with her dull knives and hauling firewood in the cold, had helped.
If only all that could have prepared me to deal with the pain of the starstroke.
The next day, when my brothers left to gather supplies for winter, I tackled the nettles at last, spreading them over thecave to determine my course of action.
No blade could pierce the nettles, let alone cut them. In their raw form, I couldn’t weave the stems together to make a net, and I certainly couldn’t sew them together—not with their fiery thorns and razor-sharp leaves.
A trio of magics,I repeated to myself after hours of agonizing with Kiki. If three magics had really created these cursed nettles, all I could see was the demonfire—the blinding light that encased every stalk. Where were the strands of fate and the blood of stars?
