We sat down by the hearth as I lit another fire. Himiko sat by me, comfortably wrapped into the bed furs. We were both silent, our minds exhausted for how close we had come to disaster. Had I not found thread that needle through the wolf’s maw, had Himiko not exploited that opening, I would be dead, and she would be on a ship back to her captors. I placed a cauldron of melted snow over the fire to turn into boiling water.

“How is she?” I asked, pointing at Himiko’s round stomach.

“Or he,” she said monotonously. “It’s alright, I think. It’s only been three months, I believe, it is light enough not to be a burden yet.”

She pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her head against them.

“And he tried not to hit it…” she whispered.

“Come,” I said as I stepped closer and knelt next to her. “I’ll tend to your wounds.”

“It’s nothing,” she said.

“Still,” I pleaded. “Show me.”

After a moment of hesitation, she opened the drape of furs and sat back.

She had cuts over her arms and legs, and a few bite marks over her shoulder and chest. More importantly, she was covered in blood.

The snow in the pot had melted now. When it boiled, I immersed some clean rags into the cauldron and slowly cleaned off her body. I tried my best to contain the fire rising to my cheeks as my hand passed around her breasts and thighs, averting my gaze. When I looked up at her, she seemed to be smiling gently at me.

“Unguent,” I mumbled, as I pulled the small wooden box out from my satchel. “Just some herbs, they’ll keep the wounds from getting infected and help them heal.”

“Thank you, Akira-kun.”

I started with the cuts on her legs, applying the thick green paste as softly as I could and wrapping dry bandages over them as I went. How soft her skin was. Though I could hide my face away, my hands were still feeble as I worked up her thighs.

“Akira-kun,” she said suddenly. “You were a soldier of house Kuma, were you not?”

“I… I don’t know,” I said, under my breath.

“I noticed the emblem on your knife the first time we met, and I did not think much of it. But that lieutenant, he recognized you.”

“I suppose so…”

Gently, with two fingers under my chin, she raised my face to meet her eyes.

“What will you do,” she asked. “When you reclaim your memories, and your loyalties come clashing, what will you do?”

“I swear, Himiko,” I said in a whisper. “Whatever this knife means, however it came into my possession, I no longer stand by it.”

She smiled, with resigned sadness.

“You don’t know that, Akira-kun,” she said, shaking her head.

“Even if I remember, I won’t forget what we went through since we met, will I? And even then, I...”

She truly was regal, as I looked up to her. Her fingers so softly arched under my chin, her eyes reflecting the wild dances of the hearth. I felt an urge, grumbling in my stomach, to move closer, to feel her delicate neck against my cheek.

Because I love you.

“I just know,” I blurted out. “I’m sure you can kill me with a word if it turns out I’m wrong.”

She chuckled, and her hand moved up to gently hold my face.

“How earnest you are,” she said. “Allow me to explain why that thistle flower unnerved me so. That crest, engraved into your knife, is a perverted copy of the Chrysanthemum seal, the symbol of the God-Empress, my ancestor. She is the only one standing between Kuma and the domination of the realm.”

“How so?” I asked, confused.

“The God-Empress has ruled over Yamatai since times immemorial, as is her right as the very creator of its islands. Two hundred years ago, the many lords under her command erupted into civil war, and she chose to remain impartial. In that struggle, one house rose above the others, house Kuma. In their bloody momentum, they conquered the northern, inhospitable island of Hokkaido. That, Akira-kun, was the home of the Ainu, your people.”

I felt a weight sink into my chest. I tried to focus on applying the unguent, though a dreadful possibility dawned upon me.

“Do they… Did they…?” I asked through gritted teeth and hurried breath, dreading Himiko’s answer.

She noded gently.

“They live, your people, though diminished and under the firm thumb of Yoshimichi Kuma, the current lord. Now, he and the God-Empress stand in a silent stalemate, they in the North and she in the South, each waiting for a reason to march upon the other. When I first saw you were Ainu, I was suspicious. When I saw the thistle flower, I doubted you. I am sorry, Akira-kun.”

I had moved on to her chest now, where a wide bite mark around her shoulder left deep indents all around, over her right breast and her back. My face was so close to hers I could feel the warmth of her breath.

“Do you still doubt?” I asked.

“I hate doubting,” she said. “You, least of all.”

I smiled, as I stepped behind her to bandage her shoulder.

“If I’m wrong, anyway, and I turn on you, you have no cause to fear me. You should’ve seen yourself, out there, you were nothing like that tiny little fox in the shed. Your jaws on my neck back then seemed so… harmless.”

“Oh, do you remember it so fondly?” she asked with a sly grin, peeking at me playfully over her shoulder.

I felt heat rise to my head. I mouthed something silently, though my mind went as blank as a sheet of ice.

She burst out laughing.

“Oh dear, do not look so flustered,” she said through a teary chuckle. “You are a mighty huntress, who just fell a great beast! A shapeshifting lieutenant of the mightiest lord under the God-Empress!”

She pulled a chortle out of me too.

“I’m unsure which is more fearsome, princess,” I said, as I felt a strange courage take over me. “A wolf the size of my cabin or a smile of yours.”

She smiled gently and turned her gaze back to the fire.

“It had been a long time,” she said pensively. “Since I let myself smile from the heart.”

Her bright red hair covered part of the wounds on her back, and I had to move them to finish bandaging them. How soft they are, I thought again, as I felt the curly locks flowing through my hand. I moved them over her shoulder gently, and through the orange curtain her hand reached out and found mine, resting together on her neck.

“Thank you, Akira-kun,” she whispered. “Thank you for being kind.”

She let my fingers slip away. When I finished her last bandage, she pulled the cover back around herself and moved closer to the fire, and I sat back next to her. She huddled close next to me.

“How I wish there was none of this war out there,” she said. “Only Umeshima and its plum orchards. How peaceful life would be.”

The thought made me smile.

“Masuda, he said something about this, did he not?” I asked, after a moment of thought. “He said there was something deeply wrong with Umeshima, it seemed to scare him. He was terrified.”

“He’s right,” Himiko said, almost immediately. “Ever since I have landed here, I felt uneasy, even more so in my fox form. Instincts grow stronger, then, especially that eerie feeling you may have when someone, somewhere is watching you.”

She sat upright to face me, her bright orange eyes shining with intensity.

“It is no simple spell that plagues your island, Akira-kun, but we will find its source, and cut it down like we did the wolf.”

I suddenly remembered my promise to Aoto-kun.

“Damn it,” I said. “The damn wolf. With it turned back into a man and burned to ashes, I cannot bring it to Aoto-kun.”

Himiko looked at me in interrogation.

“A boy who works for Gin-san, he caught a glimpse of Masuda late at night, which frightened him deeply. I promised I would bring him back its pelt to reassure him.”

Himiko smiled.

“Akira-kun, still you forget that I can change that with a word.”

And so she spoke in that old language again. I felt a shiver crawl down my spine as it resonated inside the cabin. She spoke for a few seconds, a sentence perhaps.

“There,” she said.

I looked in her hands, expecting to see a wolf pelt, but saw nothing. She noticed the confusion in my eyes and smiled.

“None can create out of nothing,” she said. “Even with kotodama.”

She pulled on the blanket of fur around us, and I finally saw that it had turned white. The seams had even been fused together, giving the illusion of one large pelt.

“Show it to him tomorrow, but keep it, won’t you? I’ve grown rather fond of it, even though it has changed.”

Looking at the fire, something else came to my mind.

“That blast of fire that came from your lips, was that kotodama? You did not say a word before it happened.”

She smiled, as if satisfied by my question.

“Clever you, to have noticed that,” she said.

I could not help but feel proud.

“You are right, it was not,” she explained, sitting up straight. “Within each living thing there is energy. Every language has a word for it, but in Yamatai we call it ki.”

“Air?” I asked.

“Exactly, because like air, without ki there is no life,” she continued. “Humans, gods, animals, grass, ki is what makes us alive, it’s our energy. When you shoot an arrow, for instance, you use some of your own ki unconsciously to pull back the string. But you can make it conscious; you can direct it to certain parts of yourself, you can expand it to make yourself bigger and stronger, and you can expel it outside the confines of your body.”

“So it is fire, within us?”

“Not exactly,” she explained. “Fire is a form of energy, which is why our ki can take this form. How you are able to use this ki depends only on your abilities.”

“I would like to spit fire,” I said, which drew another smile out of her. I liked that.

“Well, you’re in luck; it is the first step one must master in the study of ki.”

“Will you teach me?”

“Of course, Akira-kun.”

She placed her hands like she did earlier, palms apart but fingertips touching, and breathed a wave of fire over the hearth, which roared like an open blaze.

“I promised, remember? One day, you’ll understand all of this.”

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

I placed the cauldron back into the fire, with some rice, strips of dried meat, miso and plum liquor. Soon enough, we had a stew.

We ate our fill, and we felt content. Our spirits had grown in confidence, but also closer together. Throughout the night, she laughed, and she smiled as we stayed huddled together, almost instinctively seeking each other’s warmth. When we grew tired, we fell asleep together too, with Himiko rolled into a ball as I held her close by the hearth.

In the morning, she cleaned away the burnt shed and Masuda’s remains with a word, folding the earth over itself to bury it deeply underground. She erected another shed, but none of my tools or my reserve of dried meat had survived the blaze. We set out north towards the mountains for a hunt, the fake white pelt strapped to my back. There was a place there, a small clearing at the foot of a cliff, where the boars liked to forage.

I felt happy, while we walked side by side down the hill and into the forest. Just looking at her, prancing around the path, over rocks and into bushes, made me feel relaxed. I felt light, as if that intoxicating feeling carried me off my feet. I felt the fresh breeze on my face, blowing in my hair, and even found myself laughing when Himiko jumped face first into a stream to catch a small fish.

It was only a short distance away, and we found the clearing after just over an hour’s walk at a brisk pace. The clearing was empty, so Himiko and I climbed into a nearby tree. That strategy had been effective on the deer, but even more so on boars: their thick necks barely allowed them to look up. We waited there for a few more hours, and Himiko fell asleep next to me, lazily lying on the branch.

When the sun was at its highest, the boars came, joyously digging up the ground for acorns and roots. Himiko’s ears awoke before she did, turning in their direction. They numbered just over two dozen, all females. The males were much fewer in number, but they roamed alone around the island. To make sure that boars on Umeshima saw another generation, all I had to do was target the oldest adult females, and let the younger ones and the piglets go. They would avoid this clearing for a while, but within a few years they would return.

Gin-san had said that this new bow could pierce a boar through and through. It was time to test that theory.

I saw two matriarchs, foraging on opposite sides of the sounder. They had much less meat on them than the younger adults, so I had to get them both to make it worthwhile. It was a stroke of luck that they were both far apart from each other and within range of my bow. Once I had shot the first, I would have a split second to turn my attention to the second one before they panicked. The one on my left raised its head, looking into the distance as it chewed. Satisfied, it returned to its foraging.

That was my opening.

I pulled two arrows out of my quiver, and nocked one. I adjusted my aim for a second, breathing in slowly. I aimed for its chest. If this bow was as strong as Gin-san promised, it would break any ribs it encountered and pierce the lungs, if not the heart itself.

I let loose, and did not wait to see my arrow land. I immediately nocked the other, turned my whole body towards the other, and shot one more time.

I heard a shriek, and in a heartbeat the whole forest resonated with squeals as the whole sounder erupted into a panic, dispersing into the forest below us. We jumped down from our perch when the cacophony died down.

The first boar had died on the spot, but the second had only collapsed on the ground a few steps further. It was heaving slowly, the arrow stuck firmly into its lung. I reached for my knife, only now realizing that I had left it with Gin-san to be sharpened.

“Shit,” I mumbled, as I used another arrow to stab the boar in the heart.

I looked at Himiko, who stared back at me with her bright fox eyes.

“Well, I can’t carve them here as I intended to,” I said to her, getting nothing but a quivering whisker as an answer. “I’ll just carry them back.”

I always carried a roll of linen string in my satchel, which I used to secure pelts and carved meats into a neat roll. I put one of the beasts on each shoulder, using the string to tie them together. Standing back up after pulling each of these 300 pound beasts on my back felt easier than it should have been. Only days ago, I had struggled with a single dear, but the two of those hogs together felt no heavier.

Still, I stumbled when I first got up, breathing heavily as I found my balance. I crossed Himiko’s gaze. That fox’s face did not show expressions, but somehow she seemed amused.

“Can’t you turn big again? Lend me some help?”

She tilted her head to the side for a second, before turning tail and trotting ahead.

“That means no in fox, I take it.”

It was a difficult trek back, especially since I heard my stomach growl all the way. In my hurry to find a solution to my lack of a carving knife, I had forgotten to eat. Even so, I rarely felt hungry so quickly after a meal as copious as the one we had the previous night.

It was still early in the afternoon when we passed through the marketplace, I realized that the now familiar sight of the thoughtless merchants barely troubled me anymore. Tsumugi was standing there, with the same empty gaze, her son standing by her like a pair of statues. I dropped one of the boars on the ground, and they all gathered around it like they did for the deer. Immediately, Himiko jumped on my shoulder to take its place.

Almost subconsciously, I found myself raising my hand to feel Himiko’s comforting, soft fur in my palm. I felt embarrassed when I realized what I was doing, but she did not seem to mind it much; she was busier yawning with her jaws wide open.

When we arrived at the workshop, Gin-san was sitting on the front bench again. In fact, he was also still holding my knife, mesmerized by the crest on its pommel. He did not seem to have moved at all since yesterday. I let down the remaining boar and approached the old man, collapsing on the bench next to him to rest my tired back. He did not seem to notice.

“Gin-san,” I said hesitantly, trying to get his attention away from the blade. “Have you stayed here all night?”

I knelt down in front of him, trying to find his gaze, which was firmly fixated on the pommel.

“Gin-san?”

“I tried getting him to his bed,” Daisuke said. He appeared behind the counter, with black pockets under his eyes. “He would not move, I think he did not even hear me.”

He seemed exhausted. He had evidently stayed up late to try to help his father.

“I sharpened your knife though,” he said. “I managed to slip it away from his grip, he didn’t even notice.”

“Thank you Daisuke, but…”

“I don’t know!” he said, throwing his hands up in the air. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him… I…”

His voice quivered. His hands were holding the edge of the counter so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Himiko jumped down from her perch and approached the old man on his bench, her nose fluttering around the knife. She looked at me and shook her head. She was as mystified as us.

“I know he’s old, but surely he’s not that old?” Daisuke said, weakly. “Akira-san, do you… Do you think…?”

“I’m not sure, Daisuke-kun,” I whispered.

Gin-san did look completely frozen, like a statue. He was not asleep, as his hands were still firmly up, holding the dagger.

“Let me take a look at him,” I said to Daisuke in a voice that I tried to make reassuring. “Why don’t you fetch Aoto-kun? I have something for him.”

The poor boy nodded frantically and hurried into the corridors of the workshop, scratching his head nervously.

I knelt down to see Gin-san’s eyes. I passed my hand between his face and the knife, snapped my fingers left and right near his ears, and gave him a gentle slap.

Nothing, not even a blink. In fact, his bloodshot eyes had not closed since we arrived.

I looked at Himiko, who kept on sniffing the old man.

“What do you think?” I asked. “Is it the spell?”

She replied with a snort. That, too, meant “I don’t know.”

Daisuke-kun returned, Aoto-kun in tow.

“Hey,” I said, with the widest smile I could muster. “How are you dear?”

“Good,” he answered, weakly, trying to avoid looking at Gin-san. “Is that…?”

“You have a keen eye,” I said, as I untied the white pelt on my back. “We got the wolf, my friend and I.”

Only now did the boy seem to notice the fox, his eyes widening with surprise and awe.

“How big was it?” he asked, still mesmerized by Himiko.

“Oh he wasn’t that scary during the day,” I said, trying to reassure him. “His eyes weren’t that red either, I’m sure that was just your lantern’s reflection. It was quite easy; we found some traps, my friend caught a scent, we tracked him down, one arrow and there it is, a beautiful wolf pelt.”

“Wow,” the boy said. “You sure are a great hunter!”

He rushed forward to jump in my arms.

“Thank you for protecting us,” he said in my ear.

I felt a tingle in my heart, and a tear came to my eye.

“Can I pet your fox?” he asked, immediately distracted.

“Of course,” I said. “She doesn’t bite.”

Himiko, who was still busy sniffing around Gin-san’s hands, turned to smell the boy’s hesitant finger instead. To me and Aoto-kun’s surprise, she jumped on his shoulder and started poking her nose around his head while the boy giggled. The sight made me smile.

After the boy returned to the workshop, I stood up and looked at Daisuke-kun. During my whole exchange with Aoto-kun, he had stared at an empty corner of the room.

“Daisuke-kun,” I said, and his eyes snapped back to me. “I’ll try to figure out what’s happening with your father. In the meantime, we’ll find a way to carry him back to his bed, and you’ll take good care of him…”

“Care…” Gin-san whispered in a coarse voice.

Daisuke-kun and I both stood there astonished while Himiko jumped back in surprise.

The old man looked up at me, and suddenly the glee that had accompanied me this day vanished. His mouth and hands were shaking, his neck twitching like an animal in its death throes. But his eyes, his eyes pierced through me. They were not the usual brown stones of the old bear I knew, so full of gentle kindness and confidence. They were black, filled with fear, pure terror the likes of which I had never seen before. He stood up, and Daisuke-kun rushed to help him.

Gin-san stepped forward, and his heavy hands fell on my shoulders. We stumbled together until my back was against the wall.

“I remember now, I remember,” he kept on repeating. “That man, that man you talked about, in the black robes and the wicker basket.”

His voice had become so high and trembling I could barely recognize it.

“Wh– What about him,” I said, struggling to breathe as he pressed me against the workshop’s wall.

“I remember,” he said again, slowly turning his gaze towards the knife in his hand. “You were holding this. He– he was there.”

Tears were flowing from his eyes. He was stuttering, holding back sobs like a scared child. Himiko barked, and pulled on the man’s pants, to no avail. He was unnaturally strong, even for her.

“He was there,” he repeated, holding the knife’s pommel in front of my face. “He brought you to us, you understand? He said, we… We were a g– garden. He.. he…”

The old man closed his eyes, rolling his head around as if in pain. He stepped back, letting the knife clatter to the ground, and stumbled back, breaking the bench in his fall. He was breathing rapidly, wrapping his arms around himself. Daisuke-kun ran to him and looked at me, terrified.

“He c– c– c– called himself,” he stuttered. “The… the…”

I leaned in closely.

“He called himself the… the Caretaker.”

He struggled to let that last word past his lips, the “Caretaker”, after which he immediately fell silent. He was shaking his head, his eyes still filled with dread. I looked at Daisuke, who had begun shaking as well. I felt it too, fear, creeping up from my stomach, but I did not let it take hold. I felt it too – when that wolf towered over me – but I had prevailed, and I would again.

“Daisuke!” I shouted, to force him out of his panic. “Come, take his arm, I’ll take the other.”

The poor boy nodded frantically and obeyed. Together, we struggled to help the giant to his feet, each sliding under his shoulder to carry him forward. The corridor was too narrow, so we went in sideways, slowly bringing Gin-san to his bedroom above the shop. He rolled over on his bed, where he stayed sobbing, and turned against the wall.

Once we had returned downstairs, I took Daisuke-kun by the shoulder.

“I need you to stay strong, you understand?” I said, talking slowly with a grave look, like Gin-san would.

The boy was nervously wringing his hands and avoiding my gaze. I gave him a gentle slap on the cheek, and he finally looked at me. There was that same terror in his eyes.

“Stay strong, Daisuke-kun,” I said. “Whatever this is, I’ll find a way to help him, you have to trust me.”

He nodded, tears flowing down his cheeks.

“Good man,” I said, with a final pat on the shoulder. “Take good care of your father for me in the meantime.”

I picked up my carving knife from the floor and used it to detach one of the boar’s legs clean at the joint.

“Here,” I said, handing it to the shaking young smith. “He needs to eat.”

Before we left, I cut off another leg and threw it to Himiko, who caught it in mid air. After we left the workshop, I felt my fear return. I had kept it down long enough, but now my fingers were trembling too. What was it, that power that had possessed this man?

I suddenly felt my chest tighten. Now that I was out of sight, I stopped. I felt light-headed, I was struggling to breathe. Himiko turned to see why I was no longer walking, as I fell against the side of a wood cabin, slowly sliding down to the ground.

It was overwhelming, a pure terror I saw no root for. I had felt that fear before, cornered, alone in the woods by a wounded bear – but there was no bear. No, instead there was a threat so utterly incomprehensible, so beyond my imagination; a madness that could break the mind of the strongest man I knew at the sight of thistle flower.

I reached for my collar, but it was pointless. I could barely breathe anymore. The snow was bright, so white it was hurting my eyes. My heart was beating too fast, I felt it would burst out of my ribcage. I clutched my arms around my chest to try to stop the world spinning around me.

Himiko jumped on my lap, and tried to smell something out of me. Eventually, she just laid her head against my arm.

He was my anchor, this old Gin-san. Memories before encountering Himiko were blurry, but even then I was sure of one thing: he had cared for me. If I felt scared, unsure, confused, it was always him I went to. And now, something had set a terror in him. It was not the spell; it was not pain he felt when he tried to remember. It was abject terror.

I looked at Himiko, her bright amber eyes staring back at me calmly. I tried to slow my breath, following her lead. I opened my arms, and she slid in under my coat, her fur brushing against my skin. She felt warm, she felt comforting. I held her firmly for what felt like an eternity. The sounds of the village, the workshop, the fear and the danger, everything else had faded away. It was just the two of us.

Finally, I felt the grips of panic loosen and air reached my lungs again.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, as she climbed up to lick my tears away. “He’s a good friend.”

I managed to stand back up, slowly, and we set off again, as if nothing happened.

We passed at Hanagami’s shrine before leaving the village, where I left the two remaining legs on my boar. It was no time to be tight-fisted in offerings. Himiko seemed intrigued by the Verdant Stone, as she stayed behind to smell it thoroughly.

Once we returned to my home, she turned back into human form and I begun carving the boar outside. I was trying to take my mind away from Gin-san, but that feeling of dread would not leave me. Himiko slipped back into her white kimono and joined me.

“That… Caretaker,” I said. “It was a tall man in a black robe, and a wicker basket on his head. He appeared, out of nowhere, shortly after I first saw you by the river. He looked into my mouth, like you did, said something about me being unprepared, and being chosen, and then vanished. Does that mean anything to you?”

She shook her head. Her arms were crossed, while she stared at the setting sun and the plum orchards pensively.

“You’re describing the outfit of a komuso monk. They’re buddhists, I know they wear that basket for some spiritual reason, but that Caretaker does not sound like a monk to me,” she said. “But what he said about Umeshima being a garden…”

“What of it?”

She took a moment to piece her thoughts together, before turning to me with a grave look in her eyes.

“You have an astonishing amount of ki, Akira-kun. In fact, you have more than me and that lieutenant of Kuma combined. Given your age, and your situation, that should be impossible. On the other hand, the villagers have little. I never approached them before today, but I saw this morning that they had almost none, as if they were on the brink of death. Gin-san had some, Daisuke-kun and that boy too, but…”

She shook her head again.

“And then there is that stone. It had ki too, so much that it cast a shadow over the whole island.”

“But it’s…”

“Not alive?” she asked, with a slight smile. “Exactly, it does not make sense.”

She came close to me, and took me by the wrist to stop me in my work. Her eyes looked dreadfully serious.

“I don’t think Umeshima is just any island, Akira-kun, and I don’t think it’s just a garden either ” she said. “I think it’s the Caretaker’s farm.”

I set the knife down on the ground. It took me a moment to understand what she was saying.

The village was the feed. The Stone, and I, it seemed, were the cattle.