Childhood's End
Morning light filtered on through the windows of the house, falling on the girl who lay on the sleeping mat, tangled in blankets. The girl stirred and slowly came awake, opening eyes that were topaz-gold in the muted light.
Reiko lay in bed, savoring the moment just after waking when she more always most comfortable, the long transition from dream to life one of her favorite times of the day. Finally, she could delay it no longer, coming all the way awake, stretching luxuriously, and rising to her feet.
As she dressed, she wondered briefly if she were ill; there was an odd heaviness in her breasts and belly that felt very strange. Experimentally, she prodded her small breasts, and yelped when she found that they were tender, almost sore. She sighed. She'd only started her monthly courses six months ago, just after her nineteenth birthday, and already they seemed like an onerous burden. It seemed that she was always temperamental and snappish for days before, sometimes up to a week, and then she had to go through the ridiculous ritual of purification afterwards.
She unbraided her hair and combed it out, letting it fall loose over her shoulders and down to her waist. She dressed in a kazami--three layers of clothing, inner, middle, and outer, each in contrasting colors, and secured everything with an obi, tied in the front. She fussed with the robes, trying to get them to fall correctly, and then shrugged. She wouldn't be seeing anyone but her father and brother today, and she was feeling irritable enough that she didn't feel like working to make sure her appearance was perfect. She would have to settle for "not disheveled", instead.
She opened the screen that separated her small room from the hallway, and slipped down to the large room that served as a living area for the small family. As usual, she was the first awake, and she blew on the embers in the brazier and put on water for tea. There were sweet rice balls in the cool storage beneath the house for breakfast, and Reiko brought out the bundle they were wrapped in. She and her younger brother together did most of the cooking; she often teased Setto about his unmanly skills, but the truth of the matter was that her father did not care to have many servants around, so they did without, as they could.
Reiko heard a step behind her and turned, finding her father behind her. She gave him a brilliant smile and he held his arms out. She hurled herself at him, a small dark comet, and was lifted up in his arms, her father spinning both of them around.
He set her down and said, as he did every morning, "So where is the other half of my daughter? I seem to have mislaid her! Surely, this cannot be my whole Rei!"
And as every morning, she laughed and replied, "This is all there is of me, Father. You can stretch me out, but then I'd just be very thin!"
Laughing, her father helped himself to some tea. It was true that even for a girl, Reiko was small, a bit less than four and a half feet tall and small-boned. She had been late to mature, as well, but puberty when it had arrived had been kind to her, giving her small body a certain nearly-ripe lushness that was merely hinted at by her robes.
The pair were joined by her younger brother Setto. In contrast to Reiko, the fifteen-year-old was tall and gangly. He looked very much like a young version of their father, and nothing at all like Rei Idiko, his mother, a woman of the Dragon clan who had died of a cough about three years after Setto had been born. Takumi Yamashita, their father, was very minor nobility due to his marriage to his late wife; not enough to have any of the wealth of the clan fall their way, but enough to open many doors that would have otherwise been closed. The family wobbled on the very edge of respectability, their position better than many but by no means secure.
Of Reiko's mother, nobody ever spoke. Her father refused to even tell her what her name was, only that she had given Reiko up to him when she had been an infant, and gone away. She wondered sometimes what her mother had been like, but she felt no urge to find her. She loved her family, her father and brother, with a single-minded passion, and could not imagine living without either of them. Reiko had been of marriageable age for six years but her father seemed to be in no hurry to find her a husband, at first using the excuse that she had not yet flowered, and after it became obvious that she had simply said that he was waiting for the right match to come along for her. He also said that he wanted to wait for her to finish her wu jen training; she was only a year away from becoming a full-fledged mage.
Reiko didn't want to leave her family, and was glad that her father was dallying about finding her a husband. Setto, when he was younger, had insisted that he was going to marry her and nobody else, but both of them knew better now.
Today, her father had business with a man in a neighboring village. "I'll be back by sundown. I expect both of you to have completed your lessons before you go running off into the forest together, all right?" Both of them agreed. Reiko had poetry to study, and both of them studied history; Setto was currently studying the work of a Chinese tactician that her father had somehow gotten his hands on. Reiko also had her magical studies to work on, as well.
It was taken for granted that in another year or two, Setto would take a position in the Dragon clan or one of their allies as a samurai-in-training, and eventually become a full samurai. Reiko intended to follow him when he went, though she hadn't told him this yet. After all, she would need to keep him out of trouble, and a fully trained wu jen was welcome almost anywhere she would want to go.
The day grew warm, after their father left, but they had been caught in disobedience once this week already and didn't want to chance getting caught again. They knew that if they didn't allow the memory of their latest escapade (which had involved neglected lessons, a pair of kitchen knives misappropriated for weapons practice, and a completely ruined screen) to fade, the punishment would be much worse.
Reiko couldn't stop fidgeting. Not good at sitting still at the best of times, she was hot and her body felt strange, and she chafed against the layers of clothing she wore. In addition, she hated poetry, not really appreciating the point of it all. There seemed to be something subtle in it that her mind simply refused to grasp.
Finally, she set her scroll down with a papery thump. Setto looked up and asked, "What's wrong?"
She pulled her hair back with one hand, as her latest fidget had brought it around to try to get into her mouth. "I don't know. I feel strange. I'm hot. And I hate poetry."
Setto was ever the rational one of the two of them. He placed the back of his hand against her forehead and said, "You're warmer than you should be. Are you ill?"
She grimaced. "I think it's about time for my courses. But poetry is stupid, no matter what day of the month it is."
He grinned, and said, "Switch to history, sister. As for the heat, why don't you take your outer robe off? It's only me here, and you can put it on before Father gets home."
It was an entirely sensible (if not terribly modest) suggestion, and Reiko gratefully discarded a layer and immediately felt much better. History was more interesting than poetry, and she and Setto took turns reading aloud to each other.
There was something strange happening in Reiko's mind, though. Her sense of smell seemed to be much sharper than it usually was--she could smell damp earth from underneath the house, the scent of horse manure from the pasture they shared with the neighbors, the tangy salt smell of Setto's sweat. In the back of her mind, strange, distracting things were moving, things with teeth and claws and wantings. She found herself dwelling on some noises she'd heard the night before, of two of the neighbor's servants meeting in their garden after everyone else was sleeping. She thought of the day that Setto and she, in one of their wild ramblings through the woods that surrounded their village, had come across a couple having sex in a clearing, under the open sky. They had crouched and watched, fascinated, and afterwards they had explored a little themselves, enough to satisfy a bit of curiosity about the differences between boys and girls. That had only happened the once, though, and they had never spoken of it again.
"Rei? Rei! Have you even heard a word I've said in the last ten minutes?"
She coughed. "No, I'm sorry. I think I might be ill, actually. I'm still hot, and a little dizzy." And I am thinking of long-forgotten things that are definitely not the history of battles, she added to herself. What on earth is wrong with me?
"You could try taking off your middle robe. You're wearing your shift underneath, right?"
"Setto, that's not exactly modest!"
He rolled his eyes. "Who's going to see? We bathed together as kids, I know what you look like underneath your robes. As far as I'm concerned, you're still the same skinny twerp whose arm I broke the first time we ever trained with swords together."
Reiko couldn't argue, and she did long for some relief of the heat. She shucked her middle robe with a sigh of relief. Her inner robe was more of a shift, sheer and sleeveless, and only came down to just past her knees. Setto repeated the passage he'd just read, and then Reiko took her own turn, reading about a battle between mounted samurai and infantry.
She suddenly fell silent, setting the scroll down and raising her hand to her head. Concerned, Setto asked, "Are you all right? Still dizzy?"
She nodded. She didn't exactly feel ill, but she certainly felt very strange. She was smelling things now that she had no names for, scents crowding out her ability to think. "I had better--ow!" She doubled over, a cramp rippling through her abdomen. "I think I'd better lie down."
She felt Setto's arm around her shoulders, and he helped her up. "Makes me glad I'm not female. You get the short end of the stick--you have to give birth, and you have courses when you're not having babies. Seems like a raw deal to me."
She tried to glare at him but couldn't summon up the gumption. Except for the tight knot of cramping in her belly, her body felt like it was made of some warm liquid, heavy and sweet as honey. Setto guided her to her room, and sat her down on her mat. "Is there anything you need, Rei?"
Despite how warm she was, she shivered. Suddenly, the idea of being left alone was a terrible, empty thought, and she asked, "Stay with me a while? Please?"
"Of course." He sat next to her on the mat, and after a while she crawled into his lap, curling up and letting him hold her while the cramps in her belly faded and then intensified once more. Reiko might have dozed for a few minutes, and when she came back to herself, she immediately noticed two things. First was that the pain had faded to a tolerable level, which was a relief.
And the second thing was that her brother was evidently enjoying having a nearly naked girl sitting on his lap, sister or no. Just a natural reaction, she told herself. He's fifteen. Everything arouses fifteen-year-old boys. I'll shoo him off, take a nap, hope whatever this is passes.
"Um, Setto?"
"What?"
"I, uh, think you should probably go now." The images that had been dancing through her mind before were playing again, and she was starting to realize what some of the strange feelings were--and they were dangerous feelings for her to be having around Setto. They were not feelings she should be having for her younger brother!
"All right." He paused, waiting, and then said, "Rei, you're going to have to get up first. You're sort of pinning me down."
She flushed. "Oh! Sorry." She straightened and rolled out of his embrace, ending up on her knees on the mat beside them. She intended to rise, go find her outer robes, drink some of the tea that was supposed to be good for one's moon cycles--
--but instead, she stayed on her knees, frozen.
Wordlessly, sister and brother stared at each other, their faces almost close enough to touch. And the nameless thing that had been coiling inside of Reiko awoke.
One moment, she was looking into her brother's eyes. The next moment, she was kissing him, and he was kissing her back, and it was a decidedly unsibilinglike kiss. When they broke the kiss, Reiko sprang away from him, a hand raised to her mouth, saying, "Oh dear gods. I'm sorry, Setto. Please, go."
He remained seated, watching her stand trembling. "I should go. Let you rest." And yet he did not move, did not do anything but look at Reiko. His gaze held many things--hunger, fear, fascination, desire. A long moment of silence passed, and he said, carefully, "Do you really want me to go? Because I think I don't really want to."
"I--Setto, I'm your sister. Get out!"
He repeated the question. "Do you really want me to go?"
She just looked at him, helplessly. The thing that had awoken in her was burning, hungry. She whispered, "No. But you should. You really should go. Please. I don't want to do this--" But her actions belied her words as with one step and then another, she drew closer. She thought frantically, I'm supposed to protect him, guide him, what am I doing?
She came in range and he caught her hand, drawing her down on the sleeping mat beside him. "Rei, I love you. I always have. This is just...one of those things that happens sometimes, I think. You've heard the stories our father's told us, the old myths. And all the emperors who married their sisters." He touched her cheek, and it wasn't a brother's touch but a lover's. Both of them were trembling like spring leaves. He set his forehead against her fevered one, and said softly, "I think if it doesn't happen now, it'll happen soon anyway. Would it be so terrible? If both of us are willing..."
She wailed quietly, "But I'm your sister."
"Half-sister." And they were kissing again, impossible to say who initiated it, and this time what was awake within her would not let Reiko out of its grip.
She whispered, "I love you," as she slid her hand inside his kimono, one of his hands tangled in her hair and the other one caressing her breast.
The first time, there was pain as he slid inside of her, but it was brief and the scent of spilled blood only heated her more. Setto saw her wince and felt her shiver, and saw the brief shine in her eyes as tears came and went, and something inside of him went still. He had known she was untouched, but hadn't considered it important before now.
The second time, there was no pain, only joy as they explored each others' bodies, both of them experimenting with movement and touch. She sank her teeth into his neck and murmured, "You are mine, Setto. You will always be mine."
The third time, Reiko fed.
They were moving together in a languorous fever, as if they could be here in this place forever. She could feel that Setto had something she wanted, and without thinking she reached for it, pulling at it, rewarded by a dizzying burst of sweetness through her body as she drew on him, drinking deep. Whatever it was, it was filling a place within her that she hadn't known was empty, satisfying a hunger she didn't know she possessed.
Setto gasped, feeling the feeding as pleasure, wanting to give her more--
And then, a pair of hands that were not Setto's grasped her shoulders, pulling her away, she screaming as the conduit was broken--
--pain, as she flew through the air and with a cracking thud hit the wall and landed crumpled on the floor--
--her father, his eyes flat and hard as she had never seen them, saying as if the word were bitter as green apples, "Kitsune."
He picked her brother up off the mat, Setto's gangly form limp and unconscious in his arms, and without another word left the room, sliding the door shut behind him.
Reiko lay sobbing on the floor, until, mercifully, the world went away for a while.
When she woke, things were wrong.
She tried to get up and couldn't. She opened her eyes and the world was flat, seemingly drained of color, but everything was so sharp! It was bright as noon, but a glance out the window told her that the night was lit only by a crescent moon. And the room--why was the room so big?
She moaned. The sound came out as a whine.
Reiko couldn't get to her feet. Every time she tried, she'd fall over again. Finally, she managed to make it onto all fours, hanging her head, smelling dust in the floorboards and the rodents that ran underneath. Her shoulder hurt badly, and she couldn't put any weight on that arm. She craned her head, to see if she could find out what was wrong.
Her arm was a furry leg, and instead of a hand she had a paw.
The rest of her was covered in fur. Behind her hung a fox tail, a luxurious brush of black fur tipped with grey. But before she could make sense of this, the world tilted and she fell over, onto her injured shoulder, and the pain spiraled through her body and she passed out.
When she woke, she was in her own body again, and her father's hands were on her. He was muttering something, tracing designs on her skin that burned her. Her shoulder felt like it was on fire, and as she reflexively tried to move to make it feel better, something grated within it.
Her father pushed her down with one hand. "Be still, kitsune."
She whimpered. She was lying on a hard surface--a table? There was something around her wrists that burned, holding her hands still. "Why do you keep calling me that? Father, what's happening? What are you doing to me?"
The look in her father's eyes held nothing of love. "I call you fox because fox you are, Reiko. Your mother was a kitsune. I was married to her for nine years before I discovered what she hid underneath that beautiful skin of hers, and how she had been betraying me all that time with other men. I took you in because I thought that I could keep you from becoming what she is. I thought I had succeeded. And then I come home and I find you in the process of killing my son."
She tried to sit up and again her father pushed her down. She felt weak as a kitten, shaking. "Setto! Is he all right? What--what did I do to him?"
"Kitsune live on the lives of others, and they feed through sex. You fed on him, and you almost killed him. He's sleeping, and he will sleep for another few days. But he will live, no thanks to you, Reiko." He untied the cord that had been keeping her hands bound.
There were tears gathering in her eyes, leaking from the corners. "Father, please, forgive me! I didn't know...please, Father, please, I am so sorry." The tears were coming faster now, turning into sobs.
The crack of his palm impacting on her face echoed even in the small room. She yelped and rolled away, falling from the low table onto bruised knees, her hands tangling in her own hair. Her father stood, and she crouched by the table, hands covering breasts that were still sore, trying to make herself so small as to be invisible. Her father's voice was quiet, and his words fell into her ear like poison. "I have no daughter, Reiko. My daughter died yesterday. You are a demon, a killer of men, a liar just like your mother. You took advantage of my love, and your brother's love, and the home I provided for you. No, Reiko. I do not forgive monsters."
She stared at him, her entire world crumbling around her. She was white with shock, shaking, even her tears stopped cold by what he had just told her. She whispered, "I'm sorry..."
He just shook his head. "I should kill you, kitsune, and rid the world of one more demon. But I cannot. Despite myself, I cannot. I am going to the village for an hour or two. I expect you to be gone when I get back."
For a time after he left the room, Reiko couldn't move. She did not cry; somehow, this tearing pain was too large for tears. Yesterday, she had been human, with a family who loved her. Today she was a demon, crouched naked on the floor of a house in which she was no longer welcome.
Finally, she rose to her feet. She didn't take very much; some writing materials and some things she needed for her studies as a wu jen, an extra kimono, what little money she possessed. She fashioned a sling out of a sqare of silk that she usually used to tie over her hair, and having some support made her injured shoulder feel better. She glanced over her shelves, seeing nothing that she was willing to carry with her, and her eye fell on a few trinkets that were sitting on the shelves.
One of these was a fox, cunningly carved out of jade, that her brother had given her for her last birthday. It was beautiful, and though she hesitated she finally picked it up and put it in the bundle she would tie up soon.
Next to where the fox had sat was something else, a small lacquered box, inlaid with iridescent shell in a crane pattern. It had been a gift from her father, who had bought it on one of his trips into Dragon territory because he knew she loved both boxes and things that shone.
She reached out and then stopped. The memory of her father's voice rang in her mind. "I have no daughter." She stared at it, her eyes distant, thinking.
Softly, she said, "You might not have a daughter. But I still have a father. If I'm lucky...some day you might remember that."
She picked up the box and put it in her bundle, tying it shut.
Reiko padded through the silent house, to the room where her brother slept. He looked pale and drained, and he didn't move as she entered and knelt beside him.
She smoothed the hair away from his forehead with her good hand, looking at him, heart filled with emotions that threatened to tear her apart. She said, quietly, "I'm sorry, Setto. I should have been stronger, I should have fought more. I love you, brother. Take care of our father for me. And if you can hear me...don't come after me. I'm going to be running as far away as I can get from both of you. Stay here. Live your life. Become the samurai that I know you can be. I'm not part of your story any more."
She was crying again, shivering. She touched her beloved brother's face once last time, trying to memorize his features. Then she rose, going to his shelves, finding his copy of The Tale of Genji, his favorite book.
She opened it and inside placed a circle of black hair, cut from her head and tied with a red ribbon, her favorite hair tie. He would eventually find it, and with luck he would be able to interpret the message.
And she went to the front room, placed her wide-brimmed hat on her head, and tucked the small bundle of her things under her good arm. For the last time, she slid the front door closed.
Her shoulder hurt but she did not cry as she walked slowly down the road that led away from her childhood.
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