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Lose Me Like an Arrow

Reiko sat near her mother, biting her lip, nervous. Edi-lo had availed herself of what few bathing facilities there were on Shrike, and combed out her ankle-length hair, which she was letting dry in the cooling evening hair.

Looking at her mother was disconcerting, like looking in a mirror--but at the same time, not. Did she really sit that perfectly still? Were her own eyes really that startling shade of gold? Even closed and quiet, her mother had an indefinable presence, wild and compelling at once, and unthinkingly Reiko obeyed it, moving to sit next to the kitsune.

Those gold eyes turned on her, and she licked lips gone dry. "Ah. We--have not been introduced. I am--"

"Han Reiko Mei. Or Iyotushi Reiko. Or Han Mei. Or Bayushi Mei. Or Takumi Reiko. My daughter. I know."

Reiko flushed and looked away. "Mother. I have wanted to meet you for so long, and now...I find myself at a loss for words. So many questions, and none of them come to mind."

Her eyes were amused, softening. "Not even one, Reiko? Surely, you must have at least one."

The younger kitsune fidgeted with the hem of her kimono sleeve. "Well, it might be too personal, but...what happened? Between you and my father, I mean. I have the story, but I no longer trust the source of that story. From what I know, he found out what you were, and then abandoned you."

"That is almost correct. I loved him and didn't want to kill him, but I needed more energy to keep me alive. He found my extra-curricular activities and my nature. He left me." The kitsune was utterly still as she said this, the picture of grace and restraint while saying an ugly truth.

Reiko smelled a story, and kept probing. "And then--what? I don't remember you raising me, but my memory is...unreliable, due to something my granddaughter did to me."

Edi-lo shook her head slightly. "The life we lead isn't the best when you are a poor single mother. A great many men want the illusion of being with a woman and that she is giving her virginity to them. It can't be done with a child. I gave you up to your father. You were raised with Setto, his son by his second wife, who later became your first husband."

Reiko blinked, taken aback. "My father. We're talking about the man who later became the Demonbane, right?"

A small smile hovered on her lips. "One and the same. He adored you from the moment he saw you. He gave you everything you ever wanted, and he loved it when you displayed affection for Setto, and encouraged you two to play with one another."

The shaman bit her lip. Flickers and shards of memories were beginning softly gather in her mind--a prayer gate, polished wood floors, being lifted high into the air by strong arms, feeling as if nothing bad could ever touch her.

Edi-lo continued. "He found you and Setto...together, one day. But you were doing more than just having sex with him. You were draining him, and Setto was dying. In that instant, you were no longer his daughter. You were kitsune. And a kitsune had done him wrong--years ago, at that point, but the wounds still bled. He vowed to destroy the kitsune in return for destroying his life."

Reiko closed her eyes, confused images and feelings welling up as she was reminded of them. Her brother, her fiercely adored younger brother, playing at being samurai together, he shedding tears as her own broken arm was bound. He father laughing, "Cut one of them, they both bleed." Memories of being older but still running together like wild things, traveling through rough country with him, laughing together as they planned a fanciful future. He was going to be Emperor and she was going to be his regent.

She had not known what she was. Nobody ever told her.

Then the day that new feelings had snaked through her body, the searing hunger of her first season coming upon her, though she had no idea what has happening. Her beloved younger brother caught up in her hunger (and truly, did they fight it so very hard?), and Reiko knowing only the hunger, and what fed her hunger.

And then, pain. Her heart shattering as her father bodily threw her across the room, her body crashing into the wall and lying crumpled on the floor. The one world, snarled, "Kitsune."

She'd understood that they had done something wrong but not why she had been the one left sobbing on the floor while her brother was carried away. She did not understand until later, when the house was silent, when her father had wrapped a rope around her wrists that burned as if it were on fire, when he told her that she had almost killed Setto. He had told her then what she was. Fox. Demon. Kitsune. He said, "I have no daughter."

In the present, Reiko could feel her heart thudding in her chest. She shook her head, wordless.

Edi-lo's voice broke over her, sweet and golden as honey. "It only got worse when Yamashita and Setto had a huge blowout about him marrying you. I don't think those two ever spoke again, after your wedding."

"And so he vowed to kill us all." Reiko's voice shook. "Me last, so I could live to see the end of what I'd wrought."

Her mother shook her head. "No, not what you'd wrought. What I had. Why do you think we both still live? You were just the target. It was my heart he was bent on hurting."

"I knew why I lived--at least, he's told me that he's tied his life to my immortality. but I did wonder about you. So much pain, from one broken heart."

Still perfectly motionless, Edi-lo was a study in light and shadow in the darkening evening. "I hurt his honor by being with other men."

Reiko ran her fingers along the inside of her arm, feeling the scars that roughened the skin. "He'll never give it up, will he?"

"There is a small part of him that is good yet. He still to this day keeps the drawings that you made as a child." Edi-lo looked off into the distance, out over the ocean. "He was a good man, Reiko."

The shaman felt another presence, and looked up. Setto stood near her, the look on his face unreadable.

Reiko asked, "Setto, I thought we only met after we were adults."

He shook his head. "You believe what you want to sometimes, love. I always knew I was going to marry you when I grew up."

"And you didn't tell me."

"No." The spirit shrugged. "I saw no reason to. You knew that I loved you, and you loved me, and that was all you needed to know."

"I--" Words failed the kitsune, and she stared up into Setto's eyes. She shuddered. "Somehow, the knowledge of my father's hatred is worse for the fact that he once loved me--and I him." Returning with the fragmented memories was the certainty that she had, yes, loved her father once. She had known. Somewhere, she had always known, had always desperately wanted his approval, was convinced that she would never receive it.

She rose and bowed, a little awkwardly, to her mother. "I, ah, have evening meditations I have been neglecting. I am sure we will speak again. I...may have a favor to ask of you." Her mother inclined her head, and Reiko turned and walked away, towards the stairway that led into the hold, Setto drifting in her wake.

Her stride lengthened, her head down, and a voice that was growing familiar these days called, "Reiko, are you all right?"

Shreds of memory assaulted her. Her little brother's inability to say her full name, both him and their father calling her Rei. The first realization, watching Setto draw a bow, that he was growing into a handsome young man, the first twinge of jealousy when she realized that he would some day leave home with a wife of his own. Everything was out of order, confusing, a deep well of emotion and image suddenly tapped.

She stopped, still looking at the floor of the corridor. She felt Jeron's arm around her, and she jerked straight, pulled away, and then relaxed as she realized that the touch was in the now. She leaned into him, shivering.

"What's wrong, Reiko?" His sky-blue eyes were worried, looking down at her.

She looked up, blue meeting gold. "I remember. My father. He raised me. He raised me, he loved me, and now he hates me. I remember. But it's too much, it's all out of order, I can't make any sense of it." Another shred of the past wrapped itself around her, and she moaned, "The village--no--"

Her father stood over her, looking at her prone, naked form, scowling down. The new bindings burned in her skin, and he turned to the crowed and said, "You can do anything you want with her. Anything at all."

Then, pain. That part was still the same.

Afterwards, the fire of the village warm on her back, a figure spoke out of the darkness. "Rei?"

She whirled, one hand on the ties of her borrowed--stolen--kimono. The figure stepped forward, and a wild hope sprang to life within her. "Setto?"

The light fell on his familiar but still changed features; it had been five years since she had seen him, and he had grown into a man. "It's me. I slipped Father's leash and came looking for you."

"It was you and the Demonbane who were the visitors, wasn't it? Who I was to be displayed to."

He nodded. "He told me a few hours ago that you were the kitsune we were checking up on. He wanted me to see you defeated and starving, to show me what you had become. He had hoped that seeing you like that would kill my love for you, and I'd consent to marry the woman he's picked out for me."

He was close now, and as he reached out to touch her hair she backed away. "Don't touch me! I kill men, Setto. I am a murderer. I've probably killed at least fifty people tonight, starting with an innocent girl. Go, brother. Marry. Forget me."

"I tried, Rei. I tried to forget you, after you almost killed me. But I couldn't, and I can't. And," his mouth twisted, "I did some research on kitsune. If you had known what you were, you wouldn't have drunk so deeply." He drew closer again, and this time she let him. Reiko's heart twisted viciously as she felt his presence, so familiar even after their years of separation. She had run so far after her father had thrown her out, trying to outrun her memories, but her past had chased her down and was standing before her, with hand outstretched.

She whispered, her voice nearly drowned by the hiss and pop of the burning village behind her, "I never forgot you either. I never stopped loving you." Tentatively, she reached out her hand.

He took her hand. "Come with me, Rei. What you are is what you are. I loved you before I knew, and knowing what you are doesn't change that. We can make arrangements to feed you."

And, slowly, he drew her to him, pulling her into his embrace. She shivered, her feet bare on the cooling ground. "I am a demon. A monster. I drink the lives of men, Setto. I almost killed you five years ago, and if I stay with you I'll probably kill you for real one day. I love you, but no. Let me go, brother. Let me run, let me keep running. I'll go west, find a ship over the sea, keep going. You'll never see me again. You'll marry and have children, you'll build a life for yourself, and you'll forget me."

"I can't, Rei. Whatever the future holds, it's not that. I am leaving tonight, with or without you. Our father is completely mad, and being around him is making me doubt my own sanity. At least come with me for a little while, travel with me. Please?"

She had never been able to deny him something he wanted, and this time was no exception. She said, softly, "All right. For a little while. On the condition that we travel as brother and sister. I don't want to chance hurting you."

He nodded and said, "We need to go. Father will come looking for me soon, an we need to be gone by the time he does."

"He's going to kill us, you realize that?"

"No. He won't. He'll be angry, but he'll get over it. He loves us too much." He paused, holding her just a bit more tightly. "Both of us, Rei."

She somehow doubted that, but allowed him to lead her to the saddled horses, and then followed him away over the hills.

She shook herself out of her reverie, shuddering. To Jeron, she said, "I didn't remember. Not because the memories were taken. Because I didn't want to remember. I closed my eyes to what I am, what I've done, because living with it was too hard. Lin only helped the process along."

"It's one of the problems of being immortal. When we do terrible things...they stay with us forever."

She looked up at him. "You, too?"

He nodded. "You cannot imagine, Reiko. Fourteen millennia is a very long time."

"I just want to make it all go away. But I tried that, and it came back." She drew a breath inward. "Time to face the music, I think."

Jeron tightened his arm around her. "You're not alone. You have friends to hold your hands as you walk the path through hell. And you have me, you know."

She glanced up at him, a small smile on her lips. "Do I, then?"

He chuckled, wryly. "You do, kitsune. Kami help me, but you do."

A small glow of pleasure lit her at his words. Maybe I'll get through this after all.

The kitsune could only hope, as shreds of her past continued to stir in her mind, that her hope was well-founded.

*****

"Wait. Are you telling me that I can give up my immortality?" Reiko was looking at Jeron, consternation in her eyes.

He shrugged at her. "I know it is possible. I think your mother may be able to accomplish it. And if you became mortal, the Demonbane would die. It was a thought, is all."

It was a brief exchange, as they lay curled together in the heat of the early September afternoon, but it stayed with Reiko, nagging at her. And it brought her once again to Edi-lo, asking her about what the Thrykreen had said.

Edi-lo's eyes grew thoughtful, and she nodded. "It is possible. Breaking a permanency is no mean feat. It would be costly, but I could do it."

Reiko tilted her head. "Costly? How?"

Her mother raised her hand, tipping it back and forth in an eloquent gesture of uncertainty. "It would take quite a bit out of me to do that. But it's no more difficult than other things I have done in my time. The real cost would be to you, daughter."

The shaman quirked her mouth. "It always is, isn't it?"

"I do not know what god you attracted the attention of when you were born, Reiko, but whichever one it was, it has an evil sense of humor. But there is this. If I break the permanency that leaves you immortal--you will survive. Your father will age and die in seconds. He is living on time he has borrowed from you, after all. So he dies, and you live, though you will grow old and die in due time. Perhaps your lifespan would be a bit longer than the average human's."

"So what is the cost?"

"Threefold. First, your sister--Yukiko, correct?--will probably be angry with you. I do not know her, but Akechi once mentioned that she loves her father dearly. Second, with that unbinding, the rest of the bonds on you will loosen and fade. It will unravel the bindings on your spirits. Your mind will be silent."

Reiko shuddered. "And they will all go into the final death." She looked up to see her spirits, all of them, gathered above her head. They were muttering amongst themselves. "And the third price?"

"Your father's spirit is bound to yours, Reiko. It's why he can feel it when you kill. There is a good chance that when he dies, his spirit will remain attached to you."

"I'd have his spirit, but no others?"

"Correct."

Reiko pulled her kitsune ball from her sleeve, rolling it across her knuckles, fidgeting with it. Finally, she said, "I love them. They are my family. I barely remember a time when they weren't with me. They keep me company, light my way, help me fight my fears. And I would be killing them. And it is their strength I use when I cast my spells. Without them, I'd be no shaman at all. I would be magicless except for what is intrinsic to me as a kitsune. I could not draw on the spirit of a man who hates me, I'm afraid."

Edi-lo simply sat, looking at her. "But with the loosening of the bindings that he and your granddaughter put on you, you may gain your memories and your powers back. You were, what, a four-tail, once?"

"Yes. Before my granddaughter died, I was. It's a steep price to pay. Perhaps less costly than death...but this way, I have to live with the consequences, rather than simply moving on."

"You could have your life back, Reiko. What there would be left of it."

The muttering of the spirits over her head grew louder, as they began to all try to speak over one another, shouting to be heard. Reiko fought the urge to clutch her head, and simply said, "All of you, could you be quiet, please? I promise I won't make a decision now." She sighed, irritated. "So. I can do nothing, let my people die one by one until I'm the last left, and I die under a Thrykreen blade. I can kill myself by bringing Setto back to life, and then both the Demonbane and I are dead, but he lives. I sacrifice my immortality and I live and he dies, but I sacrifice five people I love as well. In the end I grow old and die anyway, but at least I’ll have given my people a chance for survival. All roads lead down to death, it seems. To ending." Under her breath, she added, "And just when I might have found something to live for."

Edi-lo shrugged gracefully. "There are no good answers. There are just answers." Seemingly out of the blue, she asked, "You care for the Thrykreen, don't you?"

The shaman was taken aback by the question. "Yes. I do. Possibly more than he knows I do, but yes. Why?"

"I've seen how you look at each other. You're well matched, you two. But ask him to tell you a secret, Reiko."

"And what secret might that be?"

"Whether there are any of the Thrykreen orbs left. And where they are, if they exist."

Reiko frowned, confused. "Thrykreen orbs? What are those?"

"Hope, Reiko. If they still exist, they are hope." And her mother would say no more on the subject, simply shaking her head when Reiko pressed her.

*****

After she asked the question, Jeron was silent for a time, thinking. He asked, "Who told you about the orbs?"

"Edi-lo. She would not tell me anything else."

"It doesn't make any difference. The orbs are lost to me." He looked away from her, lips pressed together in a tight line.

"But what are they? Or were they?" She persisted, her curiosity in full cry. She smelled a secret, one that would come to her if only she dug for it.

"Your mother has a history of putting her nose where it doesn't belong, Reiko."

"Oh, please." She scrambled up on the bench beside him and bit his shoulder teasingly. "You know my dark secrets, Jeron. I should know at least one of yours."

"You aren't going to let me have any peace until I tell you, are you?"

She tilted her head, giving him a canny look that reminded the Thrykreen of her fox form. "Of course not. So you might as well give in."

He laughed, and shook his head. "It's a very long story. Back when I made my deal with the Demonbane, that my people would serve him in return for being saved from annihilation, there were about two hundred of us left in the world. He needed to use the bodies of my people to create the modified race that is the three-year Thrykreen, but I refused to let my people be killed in order to save them. Your father and I compromised; the essence of the Thrykreen would be placed into orbs, like the ones the Scorpion used to remove the souls of the kitsune. Place one of those orbs on the skin of a recently dead human, and the body will change to become a Thrykreen, and the soul will wake in a body that's identical to the one he left. I was to be the only one left as I was, to watch over him and make sure that his guardianship didn't become enslavement.

"I thought he would deal fairly with us. And so he did, for a time. But after a while, he felt as if he didn't have nearly enough control over me, and so he decided to protect himself from me. He placed the orbs under a magical guard, one keyed to his life force. If he dies, they are destroyed.

"I made the mistake of letting on that I cared about what happened to those orbs. Those were the insurance policy, just in case things with the Demonbane went truly sour. He decided to use them as leverage to keep me in line. Every time I refused to do something he wanted me to do, he would destroy one or more of the orbs in front of me, until I acquiesced. And after a time, they became punishment as well as goad; if he thought my obedience was less than perfect, or if I questioned him, he would destroy four or five of my people."

Reiko's voice was soft. "How many are left?"

"As far as I know, about fifteen. Perhaps fewer. I pushed him hard, the day before he sent me away. He may have destroyed the rest, I don't know. But I have grown used to thinking of them as lost. If he dies, even if there are any left, they're gone."

"You weren't going to tell me, were you? You were going to let me destroy the last of your people, to let me save what remains of my own. Why?"

He looked away from her, a wry smile on his face. "We are at an end, Reiko. Even if there are any of the orbs left, there are too few of us to continue. If what remains of the kitsune can be saved, at least some small fragment of that beauty will live on."

The kitsune reached out and began, tentatively, to stroke the Thrykreen's long blond hair. "I never asked you. What were you questioning the Demonbane about, that made him send you away?"

"I was trying yet again to convince him to give up his crusade against the kitsune." The Thrykreen shrugged. "He finally told me that he was assigning me to his daughter's retinue. I think he meant it as punishment. It turned out...much differently than either of us expected."

Her hand stilled, and Reiko rested her forehead gently against Jeron's shoulder. "I have a problem, Jeron. As do you. I want my people to live. I want your people to live. I think you're right, and the Thrykreen and the kitsune are the male and female of the same species. And I don't really want to kill my father. But if he lives, as he is, he will extinguish the last of both our races. There isn't any good way out of this."

"And you wondered why I didn't tell you." Jeron kissed the top of her head.

A thought lit Reiko's eyes, and she sat up. "I can tell you one thing for certain. He hasn't destroyed the last of the orbs! He can't."

"And why do you think that?" There was a strange hope in his voice as he turned to look at her.

She smiled, her expression cunning. "Because the moment you know for certain that the orbs are destroyed is the moment that you're able to kill the Demonbane, Jeron. Without the orbs, all you have is the faint hope that your people will, in successive generations, return to what they were before the Demonbane altered them."

"A hope I have been harboring for about four hundred years, and that we've made some progress towards, but it's by no means a sure thing."

"See? They have to still exist, because if they don't then he's dead. So. The problem becomes...how do we get them away from him? Steal them, trade for them....hm."

He laughed and pulled her close. "Ah, Reiko. Don't underestimate the Demonbane. But you may be on to something."

"I refuse to believe that the choices given to me are all there are, is all."

As the hour grew later, they talked in low voices, coming up with no solutions, all of their hopes feeling as fragile as rice paper before the typhoon.