CHAPTER FIVE
Thalia had not been aware that the Vice-Commander and Yamamoto had departed her hotel moments before she arrived, Harada having terrified the staff and threatened the manager with bodily violence for sending the Shinsengumi a note demanding a bribe in exchange for continuing silence to the news media about Thalia’s location.
This demand had been brought by messenger boy to Chief Kato just as the Vice-Chief was exiting the interrogation room for the fourth time that day, still having gotten nothing very useful out of the hijackers. Kato took one look at Harada’s face when he heard the demand and sent him off to handle it.
“That conniving bastard only thought of a bribe because he saw me on the news this morning, telling those damn reporters to back the hell off and respect Lady Cairde’s privacy,” Harada fumed on their way over. “But how he could dare to try a bribe on the Shinsengumi is truly a mystery to me. He must be new to Edo.”
“Perhaps he’s more accustomed to dealing with police like the Mimawarigumi,” Yamamoto said. The Mimawarigumi, despite their ‘elite’ status, were notorious for being corrupt bribe-takers.
“Whatever the case may be, he clearly needs to learn who he’s dealing with,” Harada said, his eyes gleaming.
“Maybe Lady Cairde wouldn’t mind talking to reporters, Vice-Chief,” it occurred to Yamamoto as they were pulling up in front of the hotel.
“For one thing, that’s not the point. The investigation isn’t over until we know exactly what happened, and we still don’t. For another thing, she hates being a public spectacle,” Harada said, thinking of how small and lost she’d looked when besieged by the grateful relatives of the hijacking victims.
“I think you’re right,” Yamamoto agreed, remembering how tired she had seemed that morning, and how she longed to be alone in the wild. “She said she wanted to go to the woods. I don’t think she feels right in the city for too long.”
Harada accepted this without comment; it fit what he knew – and what he felt – about her. “Let’s go. I’m ready to sand-blast this asshole’s rotting soul,” he said.
***
Less than an hour later, Harada and Yamamoto were both astonished to see Thalia cautiously entering the hotel when they emerged from the little dango shop across the street. It wasn’t her caution, but the fact that they had been unprepared for Alecto that startled them.
“Is that a dog?” Yamamoto asked.
“No, I’d say not,” Harada replied. Something visceral in him responded to seeing them both; he had a sudden urge to hunt by moonlight, to run with the wind over fields scented with night-blooming wildflowers. He shook his head, a little disoriented and disturbed by the vividness of the sensation.
He did not realize yet that because they were linked, he had picked up on Thalia’s intention for the evening; nor did he remember when they had first soared together over rugged cliffs and raced each other down waterfalls thousands of years ago – but his soul remembered, and yearned.
“Won’t they throw her out?” Yamamoto asked.
Harada snorted. “Who’s going to go up to that woman and tell her she can’t have a wolf in her room? That pasty-faced manager? Still, we’ll go back and make sure.”
This was without question the worst afternoon of the unfortunate hotel manager’s life. Having been terrorized by the Demon Vice-Commander of the Shinsengumi over that foreign woman, then driven to near panic by the woman herself when she brazenly marched a wolf – yes, a WOLF – through the lobby and upstairs to her room, he was terrorized yet again by the Demon Vice-Chief, who returned to tell him that she had special permission to keep the animal with her.
“Well, I don’t think she can stay here after tonight with that thing,” the manager said, his knees shaking, but his resentment lending him momentary courage. “It’s dangerous.”
“Of course, if you prefer not to enjoy the patronage of a new national hero, that’s your funeral,” Harada snapped.
“It does me no good if no one can know she’s patronizing me anyway!” the manager protested.
Harada stared daggers at the man until he relented, promising not to disturb her until morning. At that point, everything would have to be reevaluated. “At the very least, I should be charging her more,” the manager complained.
“Whatever. Just see that you don’t bother her tonight,” Harada said, disgusted with the whole thing. Really, why could the woman not have some sense? Did they allow pet wolves in her dimension? In urban hotels, no less? What a pain.
The Vice-Commander had arranged it that he and Yamamoto had this area for patrol tonight, though neither of them participated in regular daily patrol. They checked the outside of the hotel more often than was required; so it was that when at last Thalia could wait no longer, they were present to witness her departure.
Her window opened, and she emerged onto her tiny balcony in a long green robe. She looked around, seeming furtive; by instinct Harada and Yamamoto ducked out of her line of sight. Apart from them, the street was quiet for the moment. Having found it empty, Thalia looked up at the sky and opened her arms. Harada pushed Yamamoto’s head down just before her robe dropped off her shoulders, but in the moments that followed he forgot his subordinate’s presence altogether. Yamamoto looked up again in time to see what happened, and could not take it in.
She was pale except for a series of dark markings along the right side of her body in a sort of pattern they could not discern from the ground. Her nakedness was luminescent in the starlight for just a moment, and then her body began to change. First the dark markings on her right side began to glow slightly green; then her trunk shortened, her arms lengthened, her fingers grew flight feathers, her feet became talons. The whole transformation was so smooth and swift that it was difficult to believe a woman had ever stood there; instead, a huge owl perched on the railing, wings half-folded as she waited for her familiar to effect her own shift.
The wolf became a bat in much the same way the woman had become an owl; then, just before taking off, the owl turned her head and blinked, seeming to look straight at them. A moment later she was gone, a silent shadow soaring over the city toward the woodlands near the base of Autumn Mountain.
Thalia knew at the moment of transformation that she was watched, and by whom. Any anxiety she might have felt, however, was swallowed by her priorities and instincts as an owl. She was too restless, too in need of the wild night sky, to be much concerned with the world of humans any longer.
After giving them a penetrating look, therefore, she turned and waited for Alecto, folding her wings and ruffling her feathers, collecting the breezes and sounds of the city as if they were specimens. They were new, yet familiar. The old world had more in common with the new than she had expected, and it was a relief to her in all her forms.
The sounds of human communities were overloud to her, as always; the volume of human voices, steps, and movements was intrusive. All these sounds lingered in her sensitive ears to the point that she would need to be ten miles away to be free of them. The lights of the city were too bright, but colorful. They did not altogether displease her, but they were not what she hungered for. She looked to the stars and the moon; they were familiar and welcome, though the constellations were different. Cloud formations slid across the sky like wraiths.
At last Alecto was ready, and they soared upward together, away from the bright, noisy city toward the embracing heavens. Thalia reveled in the sensation of cleaving the air with her wings, silently gliding toward the forest, toward prey and the clean, delicious sounds of trees and water.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Alecto snatched insects out of the air beside and below her, her flight erratic yet swift. Thalia left her behind, trusting her to catch up, rejoicing in her freedom and in the pleasure of flight beneath this new world's magnificent starry heaven on her way to the woodlands. Once there, she perched in a tall pine and surveyed the land around her. A meadow lay to the southwest, full of mice and moles and other delights. She ruffled her feathers again, hooted softly, and took off to swoop down amid the fields of wildflowers in pursuit of her prey.
The night was delicious, and it was hers.
***
Harada had, of course, already known about her shape-shifting; he had scrutinized the details in her file, staring long at each photo depicting her other forms. The owl was magnificent, a fact he could now confirm; in the water she was a seal; and on land she could become a sleek chestnut mare with an unusual dark red coat.
Still, hearing it described in her low, foreign voice and reading about it in her file – even with photos – was a far cry from seeing it happen. He was stunned, and just beneath the numbness of shock was a riot of tumultuous reaction.
What surprised him most was that he did not feel alienated from her, did not feel revolted at the gulf between what she was and what a human was, as he usually felt with the alien invaders in all their varied forms. When it was Thalia, form seemed irrelevant; he knew her soul, somehow he recognized her essence, and he was beginning to think the part of him that knew her was the only part that knew much of anything.
He felt a strange longing to remember. Throughout life he’d had moments like this, of recognition; moments that told him he was far older than his physical years, that everything he did was founded in some earlier time, some previous life. The moments had been substantial, but they passed, and he might go years between them without having any.
Yet ever since Thalia’s arrival, he had been deluged with a sense of having forgotten far more than he could ever learn in this lifetime; knowledge hovered somewhere out of sight but very near, like an avalanche awaiting the slightest echo.
The tension was beginning to madden him; he was tempted to shout, to stomp, to set it off and let whatever momentous revelation he sensed hovering crash over him in a great engulfing tide.
He returned his mind to the problems at hand, some of which had been resolved just in his own feelings over the past few minutes. He now knew what he would say to the Chief when he returned; he had not been certain before. He turned to Yamamoto, his energy renewed, and discovered his subordinate slumped unconscious against the wall.
Yamamoto’s eyes were wild when Harada brought him out of it.
“Vice-Chief! She – did she – is it – oh, god!” he stammered, near hysteria.
“Calm down, Yamamoto,” said Harada. “You’re barely twenty years old. At your age, you can’t even remember a time when we didn’t live side-by-side with alien races. Lady Cairde may not be fully human, but she’s as native to her version of Earth as we are here.”
“But – but how? How did she – am I crazy?”
“That’s a matter for debate. The point is, Lady Cairde is half human, half Faerie. Her Faerie side has certain attributes with which we are unfamiliar. It’s nothing to panic over; on the contrary, she is unique. A national treasure in more than one way. It’s our duty to protect her and give her a place with us.” He stood gazing up at the sky into which she had disappeared.
“You knew she could do – that?” Yamamoto gasped.
“Honestly, I forgot you didn’t know it. She told us in Kato-san’s office this morning, but that must have been after you stepped out.”
Yamamoto was irritated, then felt how surreal it was that he had just seen a woman transform into an owl, only to be annoyed soon afterward by his superior’s disregard. He shook his head.
“I admit the wolf startled me,” Harada went on. “But that at least takes care of the problem with the hotel manager, as long as she has the sense to make the damn wolf stay in the woods where it belongs.”
“So she’s part owl? Is that why she can’t stand to be in the city for too long?” Yamamoto wondered.
“No, it’s not exactly that. She is herself as we see her; the woman’s shape is her ‘real’ or natural one. She can shift into three other shapes at will, as I understand it, and they too are her forms; but her human side would not be able to live as a wild creature for long. I think you have something, though; I don’t think her Faerie side can live as a tame creature for long either.” He stood in silence, considering this duality.
“Should we await her return?” Yamamoto wondered, still trying to understand what was happening.
“No, we’ll continue like it’s any other night. But in the morning, the Shinsengumi changes its policy.”
“What? Which policy?”
“We’ll offer a woman a position for the first time. Kato-san and I have already discussed it.”
Yamamoto stopped and stared at his superior’s back.
“She’s not just a woman, Vice-Commander, she’s also a foreigner,” he said. “We might gain a lot of enemies; they’ll see her as just another invader.”
Harada smiled grimly. “Since when has gaining enemies stopped us from doing anything?” he retorted. “We work for the ones who let the invaders in. They’re not in a position to tell us we can’t hire a foreigner; and besides, it was someone in government who wanted us to interview her with preference in the first place. As for anyone else who has a problem with us, their opinions are irrelevant.”
Yamamoto had long ago realized that once the Vice-Commander made a decision, it was final. The Chief was the true leader; he often rebuked the Vice-Chief for losing his temper, and Harada took all rebukes he received from Kato to heart. However, the Commander trusted Harada’s judgment so implicitly that it was little more than a formality for Kato to approve his strategies or ideas.
They completed their night’s work, and at dawn Harada went straight to the chief’s office, knowing he would already be up training.
***
Thalia woke very late, and when she did, there was a message awaiting her from the Shinsengumi. The Chief had requested that she come in again that afternoon at one o’clock. She consulted her watch, which she wore that day on a pendant around her neck, and saw that she just had time to eat and make it over there on time.
When she arrived, a young officer she had not met before ushered her into the Chief’s office again. Thalia was a little nervous, wondering if perhaps the hotel manager had complained – she had a good idea that bringing Alecto in yesterday had been illegal, but hoped it would come to naught since Alecto had stayed in the woods, where she would be fine on her own until Thalia could get back there a few times a week.
At the top of today’s priority list for her was to find another place to stay right after this meeting; preferably a more permanent one, but if nothing else she would settle for a different hotel. She was persona non-grata where she was, although no one had said so outright; the tension was thick enough to wade through whenever she entered a public room.
The Vice-Chief and Captain Okada were present again, and they each greeted her as cordially as before. The Chief invited her to sit, and they went through the polite ritual of tea. Once it had been poured, the conversation began in earnest.
“Lady Cairde, I will come straight to the point. We are all impressed with your credentials as listed in your portfolio, and your quick acting in the hostage situation you found upon your arrival saved many lives. We believe you would be a real asset to the Shinsengumi in many ways, so we would like to offer you a position as Lieutenant to start. You would also be our chief medical officer.”
Thalia was overcome; she had not expected this much trust and prestige right off the bat. She believed it was a double-edged offer in some ways; the offer was real, but underneath they also wanted her close by to keep an eye on her until they knew her well enough to trust her. She understood and respected that.
“I – wow,” she said. She covered her confusion by drinking more tea.
She thought this over, though she knew already that she would accept. After a few moments, she spoke. “I am deeply grateful for your invitation,” she said, inclining her head, “I realize how much honor you do me with this offer, in light of the fact that I am the first woman as well as the first outlander you’ve accepted within your ranks, and as such am something of an experiment. I look forward to working with you.”
“Splendid!” Kato exclaimed.
“However,” she added in a warning tone that made all the men look at her in apprehension, “as your chief medical officer, I’ll want to address some domestic concerns.”
“What?” Harada said, astonished. “You’ve hardly seen the place yet, how can you have domestic concerns?” he demanded.
“You think I didn’t notice the water stains and mildew in the hall, lining the outside shoji panels? We need to get rid of that, and I don’t care how appalled you are,” – this directed at Okada, who was giving her the kind of look that said he would deny knowing her in front of people – “it’s important for the health of all the men here. I’m betting you have at least a couple of guys sick every week, don’t you?” she said.
They all agreed that was true.
“People are allergic to the stuff you’ve got growing in here, and I haven’t even seen the most notorious rooms for growth of spores and other toxins.”
There was something so incongruous about being lectured on hygiene today by the same woman he had watched transform into an owl the night before that Harada began to wonder if he was dreaming.
“My point is, when you don’t need me for other things, I’d like to address some of this,” she said, still speaking firmly. “I’m not about to be your maid, but I can at least oversee so the place doesn’t get into this disgraceful state. Also, my first priority will be taking inventory of your medical supply closet and talking to the other trained medical officers.”
“Are you kidding?” Kato said, almost in tears. “We’ve been desperate for a woman around the place! It’s enough to make me religious.”
Thalia laughed at him.