This owl feather was home. The red-haired archer girl, Sorcha, gazed at the feather resting on her open palm. It stretched the span of her hand and its soft earthy brown vane was pleasant and warm on her skin, fading into a wintry white closer to its quill’s bony end. Gently, she placed her other hand on it, closed her eyes, and smiled to herself as she prayed.
“Enue must be so far from where I am now. Hope achah’s doing okay on the farm without me. Those two little brothers of mine better be lending a hand for his tired, old back or I’m gonna give them an earful if I come back. Ah, right! I’m doing perfect myself! Sure, I might be super forgetful, but as long as this feather achah gave me soars on my bow, I’ll never forget Enue no matter how far I go. May your wings guide them.”
Sorcha lowered her forehead and touched her clasped hands for half a minute.
Her words were carried off by guiding winds to the wise owl Ural-Kamuy. She also silently thanked the ever-present yet invisible kodama bashfully listening to her from trees and bushes.
She nodded to herself again in satisfaction. Then, she re-wrapped the feather back to the upper limb of her bow with its bark linen that was dangling from her green waist sash, tightening it with a whipping knot for binding bundles of hay together. The owl feather soared valiantly with the air currents.
The archer tucked her bow behind her back. Tiny greenish-white motes of light engulfed her bow as it magically dematerialized, shimmering into strands of visible wind that trailed off before vanishing.
“Mmm… but I’ve kinda completely forgotten the way back home by now. Meh, no biggie! That means there’s pretty much only one direction for me to head to: onward!”
Sorcha’s grin widened. After pulling her brown mitsugake gloves past her wrist, adjusting the knot on her sash wrapping her maple red skirt, and tugging the sleeves on her sunset yellow ruunpe shrugged over her shoulders, she then broke into a dash, not once looking back. Friendly autumnal breezes caressed her cheeks, brushing her long ponytail backward and blowing her milky yellow streaked bangs wildly as she raced, raced, raced. Dried leaves crunched under her feet, but not for long. Wind gathered around her soles, lifting her bare feet off the ground by an inch, and her dash became a skating airy glide.
Yeah, she won’t forget them. She won’t in a million moons.
Finally, finally, finally! She was finally on her way to the capital! She was finally about to live the excitement! The thrill! The opportunities! Her biggest dream was to be in the heart of these lands.
So many other boys and girls her age could only fantasize about the wonders they heard from the capital, herself included. Huge streets where you could find anything you want, entertainment from beyond the endless seas, the legendary, virtuous, heroic samurai in action, and millions of new faces from beyond Enue and the seas to meet!
And right now, the jolly girl could imagine herself gliding across the ceramic roof tiles, each house like stepping stones, all while waving at strolling citizens on the streets below.
The village’s elders, though, they could show more enthusiasm. They scoffed at their “southern outsiders”, claiming their rapid development was ruining the kamuys’ homeland. No way! If anything, those foreigners were advancing their lives by introducing changes from their quotidian lifestyle of hunting and foraging and fishing and woodworking and planting. Though she might not know now, she was confident their life-changing ideas might even be helpful to the kamuy! Maybe she’d be the one to contribute, who knows? To her, the capital was a chance for a teeny-tiny korpokkur like herself to discover the bigger world around her.
Oh, but she wasn’t literally a teeny-tiny korpokkur. She was a half-korpokkur, an identity she embraced and strongly believed so, even if she was of human height and lacked their shapechanging magic. Old achah often regaled her with stories about both her ona and unu when they were out in the fields. Sorcha didn’t remember either of her parents personally as they had been around during her childhood, though the details of her heritage stuck in her mind like nectar.
Ona, being achah’s son, was a farmer like him and later Sorcha. According to achah, ona’s spirit passed on after being chosen and enlisted in the war overseas, and her step-unu who birthed her younger brothers left the village shortly after. Her real unu was a korpokkur who, after bearing Sorcha, was forced to return to her kin deep within these lands. Ever since her tenth birthday, achah had been taking care of her along with her brothers.
Everything. Everything before her tenth birthday was like an empty, barren field that someone forgot to till seeds in the middle of a growing field of crops. And every time the thought flashed in Sorcha’s mind, she realized just how large of a part of her life was lost to her.
How were her parents like? Who was she back then?
Six years had since blown by.
While ona’s spirit was resting peacefully on the summit of Kamueku, that didn’t mean unu wasn’t not alive. She bet she could find and meet her someday now that she was exploring beyond Enue. Sorcha had an autumn harvest’s load to tell her.
Stretching her arms and yawning, she beckoned the fresh forest air around her with a twirl of her fingers. As if answering her call, cool gusts ruffled Sorcha’s sleeves and stroked her ponytail, playfully tickling at her bare tummy. Sorcha chuckled and shooed the mischievous gales away. They left behind a lingering gift of sweet and revitalizing osmanthus and vanilla from the woodland depths.
“Thanks for the wonderful scent, flower spirits! I can’t see or hear you, but I appreciate your hard work. Stay safe during the winter!”
With extra energy flowing into her spirit, Sorcha couldn’t help but dash again, scaring off a drove of wild hares feeding on a wildberry bush by accident. She turned her head to promptly apologize as she sped off. Pursuing gales surrounded her feet and lifted the wind archer from the ground.
From the high canopies, shrikes chirped their hypnotic mate-calling trills, blending harmoniously with the shwiff-shwiffing of leaves rustling wherever she skated. Sunlight rained through the tall cypress branches, creating a web of mesmerizing patterns on the golden forest carpet that looked animated at her high speed.
“This. Is. The. Best!”
Brushing her bangs blowing into her eyes aside, she let the currents guide her forward while she swung her head in a slow rhythm.
“Mmm… is it just me or has the forest been kinda humdrum even for this time of the year? Wonder if I can find something interesting happening.”
And then, a cry.
Loud enough to shake awake the sleeping trees, to startle birds into taking off from their nests, their beating wings flapping in droves over Sorcha’s shoulder.
“HEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!”
Narrowly evading a flock of frightened birds eyes, Sorcha’s eyes darted to her left flank, the direction opposite of their flight path. Without hesitating, she picked up the speed and glided toward the source of the cry, her hair streaking behind her like a red ribbon with yellowish-white strands.
“You just had to tempt the kamuy, didn’t you, Sorcha? But if someone’s in need of help, I’m not gonna just turn away. Wonder if it’s a demon attack? Ooh, more practice targets for me…”
A raised dirt path came into view as the girl approached the forest’s edge. It stretched across the corners of the eyes in both directions. Toppled in the tall grass on the forest-adjacent side of the path was a carriage. Wheel tracks tore through the dirt and the grass in a snaking trail, likely where the rider lost control and crashed when one of its wheels slipped into the depression on the edges. Broken crates spilled fresh apples, peaches, and oranges among other fruits as well as cuts of raw meat from the back.
The rider in question was a man with short graying hair and dressed in a blue-black yukata. A traveling merchant? He was atop his overturned carriage and curled into a ball, his hands shielding his head from the stones lobbed at him by the source of the trouble.
Stout, short, and hunchbacked demonic yokai with stubbles as horns on their foreheads and miasma-twisted faces that made it impossible to tell if they were cranky, bloodthirsty, or both, a legion of lesser oni surrounded the poor merchant. Their skin was as ashen as the ichor that ran in their veins.
One, two, three… What comes after three? Anyways, there were most definitely more of them than fingers on her hands!
Invasions by vile demonkin were not unknown on the continent. Like all demons, they escaped from a Gate of Makai, now rampaging the lands while spreading their evil wherever they roamed… or something like that. The Elder lectured her and the other kids about their origins many times, but the barebones were all that stuck in her head. Still, she knew demonkin posed a threat to both human civilization and kamuy, so she was as responsible as the next person to exterminate them.
Lesser oni were the small fries. Legions were always accompanied by a commanding greater oni, who varied in size, appearance, and human likeness, though was universally identifiable by their oni horns. But if all in their ranks were the same dark shade of gray, where could it be?
This legion of lesser oni had targeted this poor merchant’s carriage to pillage. Two were clawing their way into the crates for fresh produce while the rest encircled the carriage, hopping and skipping in a bizarre dance. They waved their wooden clubs in the air, squabbled celebrations in their demonic tongue, and grabbed stones around their feet to throw at the man.
“Stop! Stop! You can have my goods. Just leave me be, you vulgar demons! HELP! HEEEEEEEELP!”
The oni cackled. One looked at another while ridiculing his cowardly state. It then threw a sharp rock at his head, forcing him to duck. The rock struck his temple, and all of them erupted in laughter at his pain.
Like a whisper in the wind, nobody had a clue a presence was spying only a few yards away…
Sorcha reached over her back, motes of light forming into the shape of her longbow. Its shimmering momiji limbs unfurled like wings, embellished with kamuy markings resembling zephyrean gales, its tips curving inward like insectile antennae. At the top, the feather of Ural-Kamuy glided in vigilance. As brilliant greens and golds filled the light, two faintly glowing string-thin air funnels stretched from end to end of her bow.
Her sights were set on those demonic heads. Holding the bow’s woody grip steady with her other hand, Sorcha’s left thumb, pointy, and middle fingers pulled the airy strings all the way back. Wind concentrated into a bead before the center of the bow, where the arrowtip of a traditional bow and arrow should be.
Her right eye flitted shut. Her tongue stuck out, and she tasted the icy air. Her aiming finger followed the same oni who threw the sharp rock and was bending down to dig out another one. It leaped in savage excitement. It barked for attention from its partner as it prepared to strike again.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Gotcha!”
Fwoooom!
The ball of wind whisked in a straight line like a blade’s slash, scattering and slicing fallen leaves in its path as it barreled for the throat of its target.
The rock in the oni’s hand fell and rolled away from its feet. Then, it gagged. Its distressed, twig hands tried to seal the opening wound slitting across its throat, but its dull black ichor gushed out and sprayed the dumbstruck faces of its comrades. Not too soon did it then collapse and bleed out.
Panic.
The other oni clambered over objects and one another while bawling demonic expletives, scrambling to take cover or search for the assailant.
Sorcha released two curving wind blades that severed the bony neck of one and sliced off the stubby leg off of another. Both tumbled in a cloud of dirt, with the one-legged oni wailing as it lay immobilized.
The merchant lifted his head and pointed at Sorcha with lighted eyes.
“Savior! My savior! Fend off these oni and rescue me!”
All at once, the legion turned their bulbous heads at her.
Really, old man? Meh, no biggie! Picking them off sneakily wasn’t that fun anyway.
Sorcha waved and smiled at the merchant and the oni.
“Yoohoo! Over here, fishies!”
Altogether, they clamored at the volume of a thousand steaming kettles and raised their clubs in the air. They charged right at Sorcha, a big number against her alone.
Bait successful.
With the demonkin leaving the toppled carriage, the cowering merchant could hastily descend, sprint into the forest shroud, and hide until the threat was gone. And glancing at the carriage, she noticed he had made himself scarce.
Maybe it wasn’t his first ride on a raging wooly ox! Great!
Now to deal with the main problem.
She swept her bangs aside with the back of her hand and then beckoned the oni with a cheeky smirk. Her heart pumped with excitement.
“Line up properly, okay? Allow me to blow you all back to where you came from!”
Her taunt riled them up.
They cried in bloodlust, charging at her while flailing their weapons.
A second volley of wind blades curved mid-flight between Sorcha and the oni, slicing the throats, arms, and ankles of the four oni closest to her. Undeterred by their falling comrades, the oni stampeded over their corpses. Their irisless black eyes were zoned in on her and only her.
Sorcha skipped backward in between attacks to keep her distance. Her fingers pulled and pulled on her airy strings, her bow’s limbs hissing in anticipation with every attack.
She was aiming to either kill or maim their mobility. Easier said than done when their heads obscured their necks! Plus, despite their sticks for legs, they were quite proficient runners. She groaned. Weaker demons should be easier to exterminate!
Then, by pure instinct, Sorcha ducked to her right as a stray rock streaked past her left ear. Her arm jerked, her thumb slipped, and a blade whooshed toward two low-hanging branches at a nearby tree, leaving cut wounds through its bark.
“Hey! Cheap!”
If it weren’t for her korpokkur luck, that might’ve concussed her.
An oni at the back leered at her, cackling and pointing. It danced on one leg in celebration as if it had scored a victory.
Sorcha sighed, shaking her head in disapproval. You missed, dummy…
As she was about to retaliate, the ones at the front were a headbutt away from poking her with their horns. The oni bellowed their battle cries and raised their clubs over her head.
Her heels moved. A vortex of wind beckoned around her feet, sweeping tall grass aside. Sorcha launched herself atop the tallest canopy just as the oni’s portly clubs smashed the spot she was standing with a clamorous boom.
Dust shot into their eyes. Coughing and waving clouds of dust away, the befuddled legion scrambled to search for her.
Sorcha whistled. Altogether, every oni lifted their heads to the sky and goggled in astonishment at the archer miraculously suspended upside down in midair, the center of her bow aiming straight at the heart of the demon cluster below her with its strings taut all the way back. She had made a graceful backflip using her wind abilities—and she was at the apex of her acrobatic stunt.
“Yoohoo! Up here!”
Tempestuous greenish-white magical wind accumulated into a single point a nail’s length off of the grip. Gales ravaged, tousling her hair and billowing her skirt and causing nearby trees to tremble in sudden trepidation. Loose tree leaves were ripped from their branches and dragged along the storm brewing around the half-korpokkur archer. Her winning grin blossomed on her lips and her chrysanthemum eyes shone with delight, a stark contrast to the dumbstruck and dilating solid black gazes below. Half of them began to shout in panic or warning to flee.
Too late.
“Kamuy of the four winds, hear my call! Korpokkura Oparikep!”
Ssswoooom!
The energy ball barreled into the earth at a blinding speed amidst the scampering feet and sank beneath.
Silence.
Even the espying nature spirits held their voiceless breaths.
And then, chaos. A monstrous whirlwind sprung from the soil, the intense fury of wind spirits uniting as an engulfing tempest. Its ire towered over the lesser oni, its turbulent bellow thundered in the eardrums of all nearby, its temper snatched leaves, twigs, rocks, wooden crates, even demons who failed to resist its pull, anything loose it found in its vicinity. One by one, the oni screamed as it swept them off their feet to the treetops and propelled them into debris or one another.
Like a bakeneko, Sorcha landed perfectly on her two feet with a light thud. Patting away dirt on her hand and brushing away strands of her hair blowing over her eyes, she shielded her eyes from the whirlwind’s wrath as she watched her carnage unfold.
“Phew! Thoroughly outdid myself with that move!”
After a few more seconds of payback torment, the whirlwind spat out what it had swallowed. Morsels of fruit, splinters of wood, and bodies of oni rained onto the earth and lay scattered within a small circumference within the dispersing winds. Though fierce, Sorcha’s magic had limited her attack’s damage inside that small area. If not, it might’ve uprooted nearby trees or sent debris colliding into the merchant’s carriage, or worse, even flung it hundreds of yards away.
Grass and soil were stained in black ichor and broken bodies. Few surviving oni were left crippled, arms and legs snapped like twigs, helplessly scrabbling away for safety.
Sorcha was fairly certain she got all of them. But if any escaped, she’d pick them off in the woods without hesitation.
One oni closest to Sorcha rolled over on its back and met with her eyes. Its right femur had punctured its skin, ichor gushing out from bone.
She stepped up to the fatally injured demon and gazed down at it. Her comforting smile reflected in its fearful eyes, and it quickly realized her expression betrayed her intentions for mercy. Through its bloodied lips, it shook its head at her, begging for its life in its tongue while dragging itself backward pitifully and slowly with its arms.
The archer drew her bow at it.
“Ta-ta, and watch your step when you return to your Gate!”
It raised its hand in a final plea, but a powered wind blade bisected its palm and split its head open like a melon.
Sorcha sighed. Discomfort stirred inside her, but demons were demons. Cruel, ruthless, and remorseless beings that polluted the kamuy homeland with their evil miasma. They had to be banished back to Makai.
So she swallowed her passing thoughts and cleaned up the surviving oni. That was when the elderly merchant finally showed himself from the brink of the forest. Bruises peppered his withered face and hands, though luckily, no alarming injuries.
“Killed every last one of them? Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! You saved my life and my business! Err, most of it, anyway. I suppose I’ll have to make do with some smashed fruit, sign them off as rotten and discarded to my vendors.”
He bowed at her twice, thrice, each time leaning until his back was perfectly parallel with the ground.
Sorcha dematerialized her bow and dusted her outer robe. Putting a hand on her hip, she tried her best not to cringe at his overbearing courtesy by grinning instead.
“Tch. Cursed shogunate, never giving attention to road maintenance! Potholes everywhere! It was a nightmare traveling on this road, and now demons attacking? Never again, I say! My skin isn’t worth finding what minimal opportunities a merchant can find in the backwaters of this continent.”
“Glad I came in time, huh?”
“You, girl, what a marvelous display of wind mastery. A whirlwind taller than the trees ripping and tearing everything in its path? Ha ha ha ha! You remind me of—”
Suddenly tongue-tied, the merchant squinted awkwardly at Sorcha, making the girl point at herself in confusion.
“Umm… Something on my face?”
“Ahhh! Now hold on a second, I remember you! You’re the same young maiden who rescued me from another demon attack back at that Utari settlement. Same abilities, same face!”
Utari was the name of her tribe. And by settlement, he must have meant her home, Enue. So this merchant had passed by Enue where she had allegedly saved him from a demon raid too? She wouldn’t have been able to recall such an event by now, so she’d take his word for it.
She chuckled, scratching her chin in slight guilt for forgetting him.
“Was I? I kinda forgot. Oopsies!”
“Don’t you doubt my memory just because of my age. This makes twice you’ve saved my life now. Heaven must have sent you to be my watchful escort on these perilous roads. Young maiden, you do possess the unforgettably beauteous looks of a ten’nyo. Ha ha ha ha!”
“Okay, okay, a little too many compliments. Mind being more careful of your own safety? I might happen to be saving you a third time if not, you know.”
“Fresh produce attracts demons like flies, so it can’t be helped. Now I would gladly get back on the road to the capital and, if the gods may permit, avoid running into more trouble, but my dear horses have run off into the forest after my crash. Could you retrieve them while I survey the damage on my vehicle? There are two.”
She tilted her head at the forest. Since she was planning to head back in, why not help an elder out?
“Sure!”
“What I like to hear! You will have your reward when you return with my horses. By the way, some of the oni managed to flee into the forest before you wiped them all out.”
She nodded. If there were survivors, they had to be returning to their leader, a greater oni. Glancing at the scattered corpses, she was reminded there were no such figure in their ranks. Any one of these fleeing lesser oni could lead her right to their big boss. That was her opportunity to find and deal with it before it could wreak havoc.
One greater oni was the strength of a thousand lesser oni, so leaving a single one lumbering unattended? Bad, bad news. Just where had this legion’s commander gone? Or was this a group that attacked without one, and she was being wary for no reason?
But more important, was the merchant aware? Maybe she ought to—
“You look pale, girl. Something troubling you?”
“Ah, no, not at all. Don’t mind me, I was thinking about something. Umm… wait, what was I supposed to be doing?”
The merchant raised his eyebrow at Sorcha, which made her cheeks flush. He nudged toward the forest with his chin.
“Find my horses that ran away and return them to me. I will be waiting by my carriage.”
“Gotcha. You can count on me!”
And just like that, her earlier worries had all but poofed out of her mind, replaced by a firm resolution to deal with the merchant’s problem. And something else about oni that was important, she was pretty sure. The wind archer bade the merchant a thanks before gliding into the forest.
Back outside the forest, the seasonal gales grazed over the grisly, blackened field, a shivering waft of somber silence washing over. The elderly merchant who was examining his broken carriage tugged his yukata for warmth. The birds that flew in terror had yet to return to their nests.