Spirit's Princess (46 page)

I wanted to answer, but when I tried to speak, all I could do was cough, a tempest of a cough that shook my bones and set my chest on fire. I struggled to sit up, and managed to prop myself on one arm for a few hard-won breaths, but then was swept away in a renewed fit of coughing. My head spun, my sight darkened. Kaya grabbed me before I could fall back onto my bedroll. I heard her calling frantically for her mother, though I couldn’t make out anything she said except for Lady Ikumi’s name. I wanted to tell her that I was fine and not to make a fuss. Didn’t she realize that her mother shouldn’t be bothered at a time of mourning? As soon as I woke up, I’d make a soothing potion that would relieve the hot pressure on my chest. I could take care of myself.

I opened my mouth to speak to my friend, but she melted from my sight. Her words trickled through the cracks in the world, and I went falling after them into oblivion.

Himiko?

The voice that called my name did not belong to Kaya. I heard it clearly, high and sweet on the cold wind that whipped through my hair and wound my dress tightly around my legs. The soles of my bare feet were chilled by the slick gray rock beneath them, but as I glanced down, I saw them suddenly buried in ghostly mounds of pale blue springtime flowers.

Himiko, are you there?

I tucked my hands under my arms and shivered, curling into a crouch to keep out the cold. Tears clung to my eyelashes, turning everything I saw into starbursts of captured light, but they weren’t tears of sorrow. They were the children of the wind, which sent his clever, merciless, icy fingers probing into every unguarded gap in my clothes, seeking every exposed portion of my body to torment with frost.

And yet, at my feet, those flowers …

The flowers stirred and parted. I was gazing into a shallow pool of tawny water encircled by the nodding petals. A round black stone rested in the very center of the pool, glowing with its own enchanting light. I reached out one hand to touch it, but when my fingertips brushed the surface, the flowery banks snapped together sharply. I jumped, startled, lost my balance, and sat down hard among the flowers—flowers that now spread their petals into wings and flew away, a cloud of singing birds.

What are you doing, Himiko?
The voice in the wind now bubbled up out of the pool, and the pool grew smaller as it floated up from the ground, turning slowly in the sunlight.
What are you doing, little fawn, so far from home?
The smooth black rock at the heart of the golden brown water was the center of a single eye, which rippled gently until it became two.
How long it’s been since we have seen one another
, said the stag who stood before me.

You know how these people are, Cousin!
The fox thrust his muzzle out from between the great deer’s forefeet and looked up at him boldly.
Always so busy, always so sure they know how to master life that they forget how to live it
. His jaws parted in a rascally grin.
At least
this
one kept us in her heart. Welcome, Himiko! We’ve missed you. Can you play with us?

Impertinent thing
, the stag murmured, with an indulgent look toward the fox.
Not everyone wants to play
.

Ha! Maybe you don’t, but I’ll bet
she
does! And if she doesn’t, she should. A fine time she’ll have here if all she does is mope and freeze and wander without knowing which path to take. Let her play! Let her dance! Better if she lets her feet do the thinking, not her head! That old thing’s too weary and muddled up inside to help her anymore. Better to go dancing down the path that pulls them than to stand fretting until she turns to stone. Dance with me, Himiko!
He sprang from his haven between the stag’s hooves and capered wildly on his hind legs, his bright eyes daring me to join him.

This isn’t the time for me to dance with you, little one
, I said quietly.
I’ve just come from a house of mourning. My brother’s wife is dead
.

So am I, but does that stop me?
The fox uttered a merry yelp and did a backflip, landing with his hindquarters raised and twitching.
Wind and fire, water and stone, none of these live the way you humans count living, but see how they all dance!

He swished his tail, and it became a rush of countless colors that swept across my eyes and lifted me through the heavens. Silver lights glinted all around me, and I realized I was flying through the stars toward the crimson and gold line of the horizon. I raced headlong toward the dawning light. It shimmered and took the form of my amulet, the dragon stone’s golden rainbow glow transformed into the
glory of the sun, the woman’s image reborn as the radiance of a goddess.

Welcome, Himiko! Welcome, O princess, healer, shaman!
Her smile was as dazzling as her words of greeting. She reached out to me, and the sphere of light she held cradled in her arms became a cloak of undying brilliance that wrapped itself around us both until it overpowered my sight.

When I could see again, I was on solid ground once more. I looked down on rolls of white clouds that stretched away forever, then moved aside with the slow grace of grazing deer to reveal the immense shadow of the mountain where I stood. Beyond the shadow, I saw forests, fields, rivers, and farther off, mountain ranges dusted with threads of snow, veiled with drifting sheets of rain, wreathed with the rising breath of dragons.

I could sense the presence of the sun goddess all around me, hear her voice resound from earth and sky, and see her image overlaying everything my eyes beheld. Even so, at the same time, I felt she was at my side, her light around me, her hand on my shoulder, her words a tender whisper in my ear and in my heart.

Such things should never have been possible. They
weren’t
possible in the waking world, but here—? The realm of the spirits set its own boundaries on possibility, and they are no boundaries at all.

Snow blanketed the summit, lapped itself around my feet, but the sun goddess’s nearness shielded me from the cold. I turned slowly, sipping air that was sweet with the essence of evergreen forests, icy waterfalls, moss-furred stones,
and from somewhere far within the great mountain’s core, the darkly beautiful breath of ancient, smoldering fires.

This is Yama’s mountain
. I don’t know how that thought came to me, only that I had no doubt about the truth it contained.
This is the peak I’ve seen so often in the distance from home. My feet are on sacred ground
. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, drawing the spirit of the mountain’s strength and serenity into me. Then, with words I wove from dreams and love, I raised my voice in song and lifted my feet in dance.

I danced with arms wide, to hold the world, and with head flung back to let the sun bathe my face. I stamped on the snow, and my bare foot opened a zigzag crack from which streamed beasts and birds, silk-winged butterflies and jewel-eyed serpents, silvery fish and countless other creatures too wonderful to name. I heard the fox spirit call out to me, and I danced to meet him. We leaped into the sky and twined our steps through the eternal forests. We slipped beneath the earth as easily as we dove into the water, laughing when we startled drowsy moles and grouchy badgers in their burrows. We moved through water as easily as we danced through air. I was never so happy. I was never so free.

Himiko! Himiko! Where are you going?
the fox spirit cried.

Where?
I echoed, dancing through a tangle of winterbare branches, a splash of springtime blossoms, a wealth of summer-shadowed grasses, and a glow of autumn-kindled leaves.
Everywhere! Oh, everywhere I can!
I closed my eyes in bliss.

But you’re going too far. You’re losing sight of the path to take
you back again. You’re caught in the winds of the spirit world and flying away from the land of the living!

What did you say?
The fox spirit’s words were a splash of cold water in my face. My eyes snapped open, seeking him. Nothing was there. Nothing. I was alone in a place that was no place, a void the color of smoke.
Where are you?
I called, but what I should have cried was
Where am I?

All at once I was falling. I hit the ground with a jarring impact and sprawled on my belly over what felt like a serpent made of stone. When I caught my breath and pushed myself upright, I saw that what I’d thought was stone was actually the gnarled root of a gigantic tree. Looking around, half dazed, I saw that I was deep in a forest of looming evergreens. Their trunks were an otherworldly silver, and it would have taken five of me, with arms stretched to the limit, to encircle the smallest one. The air was damp and carried the wails, shrieks, and crazed tittering of vengeful ghosts.

Welcome, Himiko
. Their voices swirled around me, mocking the goddess’s greeting.
Welcome, O princess, healer, shaman. Welcome to your eternal home
.

This is not my home
, I told the unseen phantoms, using all my strength to keep my body and my words from trembling.
I don’t belong here
.

Don’t you? Don’t you?
Their words piped and screeched like the song of cicadas.
Then why have you come?
The needles of the massive cypress and pine trees shook with ghostly giggles.

I don’t know
. I tried to lick the dryness from my lips, but
my whole mouth felt parched.
But I’m
going,
and you can’t stop me
.

Why would we have to do that when it’s you who’ll make the choice?
The invisible ones hissed with the sound of a plunging waterfall.
How can you go back to the waking world now that you’ve tasted the marvels of this one? Here, nothing holds you down, nothing grieves you, nobody forces you to choose between who you are and who they want you to be. Don’t you
want
to stay, Himiko? Don’t you want to be free?

I felt the brush of deathly cold fingers over my face, the dreadful imitation of a loving touch. My heart fluttered wildly. I took a deep breath to calm it and placed one hand on my sash. The comforting presence of my wand was there, and so was the weight of Lady Ikumi’s mirror. It radiated an eerie warmth under my palm. I glanced down and saw the polished bronze glowing steadily through the cloth of my sash.

“I
am
free!” I shouted, drawing wand and mirror. My voice—my
living
voice—rang out across the spirit world. The ghosts shrieked, and I saw them as a momentary flare of tattered white shapes among the trees before they fled into the shadows. The silence rushed back to fill the forest after they were gone.

Holding the glowing mirror against my chest, I began to walk through the trees, tripping over the huge, upthrust snarl of their roots. The forest sucked away any sound I made, and aside from the evergreens, I saw no other life, not even a speck of moss or the flicker of an insect’s wing.

I had no sense of time or of direction. No matter how far I walked, nothing looked different. Aside from undulations
of the roots, there was no change in the flatness of the ground. I cried out into the hush surrounding me, calling to the fox spirit, to the deer spirit, to all the spirits I had known and seen and sensed in this place, and above all, to my lost lady of the dragon stone, my goddess. But no call answered mine, no sound reached my ear, my mind, or my heart.

At last, I sat down with my back against a pine tree. Had the fox been right? Had I wandered so far that I could never find my way back to the living world? And now that I was trapped within the world of the spirits, was I also doomed to wander here alone forever? I sighed and glanced at the mirror resting in my lap. At least my own reflection would be better than no company at all.

But when I gazed into the mirror, my image was not alone.

So you’ve come to me at last
. In the gleaming bronze surface, a young man’s face appeared just behind my left shoulder. I gasped and threw myself to one side, twisting sharply to face him.

Who are you? Where did you come from? What do you want from me?
I demanded as I scrabbled to gather up my fallen wand and mirror. My mind reeled with shock and disbelief. There had been no room between my back and the pine tree’s trunk for a lizard to fit, let alone a human being.

He knelt beside the monumental trunk of the pine tree, his long black hair cloaking a sky-blue tunic tied with gold, his dark eyes smiling.
Can it be that you fear me, Himiko? Just now I saw you defy and scatter a multitude of ghosts. That’s not the action of a timid girl
.

He rose slowly and held out his hand, offering to help
me to my feet. I hesitated only a moment, then took it and stood.
I’m not afraid of you
, I said. I wanted to say more, but my speech deserted me. I was looking into eyes that spoke to mine, gazing at a face I’d never seen before but that I’d known forever. I was safely on my feet, yet I did not let go of his hand, and he did not pull it away from mine.

I didn’t think you were
, he said.
The abruptness of my appearance must have startled you, but now you remember how things are in this world. You danced above the clouds and into the dark warmth of the earth; I moved through the green heart of this forest. Can you accept that we both walk a path that’s laced with magic?

Who are you?
I asked again.

Someone much like you
, he replied.
Someone who feels the threads that bind life to life and who crosses the boundaries that keep world from world. Prince and healer and shaman
.

But your name—?

Do I need one?

You know mine
.

Yes, Himiko, I do
. He brushed a strand of hair away from my face. A delicious thrill ran over my skin.
Let me be Reikon, then, since you won’t be happy otherwise
.