Touko's hands wouldn't stop
shaking.
The dragon collapsed atop the cart
and rotted away, never to move again. Leaving Touko and Kaho behind,
Shouzou went to look inside the cart. The first cart was damaged far
more severely than the second and was on its side. Shouzou's main
concern at the moment was survivors; he searched for them among the
rubble.
A short time later, Shouzou emerged
from the cart, ashen-faced and haggard as a ghost. He shook his
head.
There was a danger that the carts
might explode, or that an errant spark might spread to them and
cause them to combust. Shouzou paused to get his work clothes and
his tools, then led them away from the carts and into the Black
Forest. Kanata remained alert to their surroundings. Touko gripped
her sickle in both hands. She'd wrapped it in paper again after the
attack.
No one spoke for a long while.
The attack had been loud—deafeningly loud—but
now the forest was silent.
The dragon killed them,
Touko thought.
Before they left, Shouzou closed
Benio's eyes, frozen open and glassy in death. Kaho and Touko
watched him, mute and in shock. Her body was pinned under the
dragon's, so they couldn't move her. They left her behind, and all
of the other dead crew members, too.
Kanata took the lead, scenting the
air with his ears pricked. His strides were confident, as if he knew
where they were going. Touko had no idea where they were or how far
they'd gone from the carts. So far, Kanata hadn't sensed any danger
from Fire Fiends, but how long would that last? People weren't meant
to walk in this forest.
Touko had cut down the dragon with
the sickle—a weapon that
wasn't hers to use. She remembered slicing through flesh and exposing the writhing
innards. She'd never thought the inside of something living could
move around so much. But slicing through it stopped that movement.
Stopped it forever.
Touko's hands were shaking again.
Kaho whispered, "Touko." Shouzou
and Touko stopped walking. "Where is Kanata taking us?"
"I don't know..."
They were walking blindly into
danger; that was Touko's first thought. But Kanata seemed confident.
Maybe this reminded him of when he'd wandered these woods with his
original owner, the Fire Hunter. Even in the cart, he'd been more
comfortable than Touko with their surroundings.
Kanata was their best guide to get
out of the forest safely. He moved with purpose, sniffing the air
from time to time. Touko wished he could tell them where they were
going.
"I'm sorry," Kaho said softly.
"This is all my fault. I should never have gotten on the cart. And I
should never have tried to leave. That's why everyone died—even the guardian god. What do we do now?" She pressed her cut-open
face against Shouzou's shoulder.
"Don't cry," Shouzou said. "We'll
cry together when we have the time for it."
Touko had thought that Shouzou was
uninjured, but now she noticed the blue-black bruise blooming from
his temple. The side of his face was smeared with drying blood. When
he'd fallen, he'd suffered these scrapes.
Touko's knees were scabbing over
and exhaustion made her legs heavy. Still, she knew she'd got off
light—it was nothing
less than a miracle that she'd survived that without breaking a
single bone. Kanata's fur had gotten singed a little, but he showed
no sign of discomfort.
"You can't blame yourself," Shouzou
said. "Maybe you should apologize for breaking the fan blade when
you went through the ventilation shaft... but you never wanted to be
married, and you didn't call the dragon here, did you? You didn't
cause any of this. If you wanna make up for something, let me have a
nap later." He snorted. "I think you have a fever, too. Damn it.
Don't die now. No one else is allowed to die."
Touko wondered what would happen
now. Benio and the rest of the crew being dead seemed so unreal.
Will we die, too? Will we be attacked by Fire Fiends in the
forest?
she thought. Her hands shook, and she was warm all over.
I could die. I could die at any moment, in the middle of the
Black Forest.
Those thoughts made Touko tremble,
but there was something steadying in her, too, like an affirming
flame.
Benio said she wouldn't die, but she still did. The crew wasn't
supposed to die. But it doesn't matter what we say or do.
Benio had been crushed to death so easily, like an afterthought. The
crew hadn't stood a chance against the dragon's power.
So what matters now?
That thought was what kept Touko on her feet. She had no name for
the emotion she was feeling, but her quest for meaning necessitated
that she stay alive. She stood up straighter and focused more on her
surroundings. Kanata walked ahead, strong and sure-footed.
Eventually, Kanata stopped, and
Touko and the others all knew why: there was strange smell up ahead,
wafting toward them in the forest's stale air. Both Kaho and Touko
choked a little on the smell. They were traveling over muddy, sticky
ground now. Shouzou had shoes with leather soles and tread, but Kaho
and Touko wore only straw sandals that squelched on the unsteady
path. Touko's socks were soaked through and her legs felt numb from
cold.
As they walked closer to the source
of the smell, Touko recognized it. Anyone who lived in the villages
around the capital would have recognized it. It was a sweet smell,
but not exactly pleasant; there were under-odors of rot and decay.
Kanata let out a short bark. In
response, a whistle echoed from deeper in the forest.
Three figures appeared in the trees
overhead, jumping smoothly from branch to branch like monkeys. The
smell became even stronger.
"What... what is that?" Shouzou
asked, alarmed. He took an involuntary step back.
One of the figures carried a long
thin staff in one hand. One was broad and stocky. The last looked
like a child. All three had sand-colored hair, shadowed black at the
temples. Their skin was an ashen gray color.
These were the Tree People—people who lived in the Black Forest, despite the danger.
The Tree People jumped from the
trees and landed on the muddy ground.
"We heard a lot of noise... what
just happened?" the strong-looking Tree Person asked.
The Tree People looked over Touko,
Kaho, Shouzou and Kanata with their unsettling jade-green eyes. The
tall figure with the staff was a woman, and the child was a little
boy.
"Uh, um, who are you?" Shouzou
asked, taking another step back.
"You shouldn't go back that way," the woman with the staff said. "There's a Fire Fiend coming."
"Mr. Shouzou, these are Tree
People. They brought medicine to my village sometimes." Tree People
had brought medicine for her grandmother and ointment for the
chapped hands of the workers that made paper. Touko was trying to
calm Shouzou, since she didn't understand why he was afraid.
"Tr-tree People?" Shouzou asked.
"You live near the capital, then?"
The boy reached out and pet
Kanata's back. "Do you know Kakurichiku? They live in the capital, I
heard. Do you know if they're still alive?"
"Or their associates?" the woman
asked. "The Fire Hunter's dog called us. Are you Fire Hunters?" Her
green eyes fixed on Touko, who shook her head. The woman appeared
unconvinced. "You are not Fire Hunters, yet you bear a scythe that
only Fire Hunters can use," she said. "Curious."
How do you know that?
Touko wanted to ask, but the words stuck in her throat.
The woman looked away from Touko. She and the two others had tattoos of an unfamiliar plant on their cheeks.
"There is no Fire Hunter here, but
this dog is a Fire Hunter's dog," Shouzou said. "Our cart was
supposed to carry the dog to the capital. The Fire Hunter is
dead."
The Tree People talked among
themselves in low voices, looking at Kanata all the while. Kanata
looked back, his tail wagging.
Now that Touko understood that the
Tree People were safe—at
least for the moment—she
gained the presence of mind to ask for help. "Please, please, you
have to help us," she said. "A dragon attacked our carts and killed
everyone but us. We ran away because we were worried the carts would
catch fire."
"A dragon?" the burly Tree Person
raised an eyebrow.
Kaho shuddered against Shouzou's
spine.
The Tree People exchanged
uncomfortable glances. Then they nodded to one another.
"You may come with us," the burly
Tree Person said. "We'll need to attend to your injuries. And if
you're with us, the Fire Fiends won't attack."
The woman nodded agreement. She and
the man beckoned for Touko and the others to follow them. The boy
climbed back up into the trees and kept pace by swinging from branch
to branch.
"What is that smell?" Shouzou
asked, frowning. The Black Forest always had a bit of a dead and
rotten scent to it, but the smell that lingered in the air now was
like boiling acid, astringent and bitter.
Touko knew that the smell came from
a chemical that the Tree People used to repel Fire Fiends. She liked
the smell about as much as Shouzou did and felt suffocated by the
pressing closeness of the trees. She calmed herself by remembering
that these people were sheltering them from the forest's dangers.
"What happened to my village?" Kaho
asked. Do you know? You always came to give us medicine... I come
from Mizushina <Crystal Village>. Our guardian god attacked
the carts... why?" Her voice was quiet and her thoughts came out of
order; she really did have a fever.
The strong Tree Person turned back
slightly. "I don't know. I'll have to ask my friends who live closer
to the villages. But if your village has lost its guardian god, the
barrier around it is useless. I hope your friends move away before
the Fire Fiends attack it."
Kaho went pale.
Touko walked just behind the Tree
People in the lead and pet Kanata's back. Kanata stood up
straighter, as if he were trying to project confidence. He'd led
them to safe people. Maybe it wasn't too much to hope that they
would wind up in a safe place. Trembling finely, Touko focused on
putting one foot in front of the other.
"Don't speak until we reach the
village," the boy said from behind them. "Fire Fiends are watching
us." Despite the warning, he sounded cheerful.
Touko and Shouzou exchanged worried
looks.
"Wh-where are you taking us?"
Shouzou asked.
"To our home," the burly Tree
Person said. He didn't even turn around to answer.
Touko tugged on Shouzou's work
clothes to signal to him to follow in silence. Shouzou looked down,
his face covered in oil and sweat, eyes bloodshot. He took a deep
breath, then adjusted Kaho's weight on his back. He cursed under his
breath and kept walking.
***
Tree People lived in the heart of
the Black Forest, where Fire Fiends and Fallen Beasts roamed freely.
They took medicines and herbs to the villages that were near their
own homes. They were like Fire Hunters in that they knew how to
fight off Fire Fiends.
Touko had seen many Tree People
come to her village to deliver medicine, but this was the first time
she had walked this close to them. She'd imagined what their lives
would be like in the Black Forest, but reality didn't match her
imagination at all.
"Come along," the woman said. "Fire
Fiends don't come here." She pointed her staff forward, toward a
building formed out of living trees. It had the same gray-black
sticky bark as other trees in the forest, but the trunk appeared
deformed: hollowed-out like a basket and shaped to grow wide and
deep to accommodate the depression. The tree's branches were evenly
spaced to support the hollow; they surrounded it like walls. The
leaf canopy overhead served as a roof. It was about the same size as
two small huts in Touko's village.
Three other Tree People were already inside, with another dozen or so standing outside. The Tree People looked at Touko and the others with open curiosity. All of them were gray-skinned, with light-colored hair, green eyes, and stylized plant tattoos on each cheek. Their ages were varied; Touko wasn't sure if she was seeing an entire village or if this was just a small percentage of the Tree People that lived in this area. They looked similar enough to one another to be part of a single family.
Touko's nose was adjusting to the
Fire Fiend repellent. If Kanata was disturbed by any unfamiliar
smells, he didn't show it. The dog was calm as he padded along a
little ahead of Touko and the others. Since his owner was a Fire
Hunter; he'd probably smelled Fire Fiend repellent many times.
The Tree People didn't appear
hostile or alarmed, merely curious. One old woman looked at them
with a wide smile.
"C'mon, kid," Shouzou said. "Let's
get this over with." He entered the house ahead of Touko lay Kaho
down. She was losing strength in her arms and legs and needed to
rest. She'd only just awakened after her injuries on the cart, and
those injuries hadn't fully healed yet. Another attack by a Fire
Fiend now would mean her death.
Kanata followed Shouzou inside, and
Touko followed Kanata. She felt an odd tingling sensation in her gut
as she went in. She was a stranger here, and this was a strange
place. Nothing about how the Tree People lived was familiar.
The first room Touko entered was a
living area. The floor was lined with sturdy mats that felt like
thin wood. A square chunk of the floor was missing to accommodate a
tree trunk growing upwards, which allowed for leaf cover overhead.
Touko had thought that the roof was part of the same tree from the
outside, but that wasn't the case. The tree in the center of the
floor had greenish bark, not black bark, and its leaves were bright
green.
People avoided Shouzou as he
walked; maybe his disheveled appearance frightened them. The
children were more curious than the adults and started inching
closer.
"It's a dog! A Fire Hunter's
dog!"
"He looks so strong and brave!"
The Tree People children gathered
around Kanata to pet him, and he let them. Touko helped lower Kaho
to the floor. Kaho breathed shallowly, eyes half-closed. Her skin
was warm to the touch.
"Kaho, we're okay," Touko said. "We
got to a Tree People house. You're going to be okay." Touko removed
her straw sandals, then knelt down next to Kaho. Shouzou collapsed
to the bare earth floor. He rubbed his forehead, taking deep
breaths.
"What happened to you?" a Tree
Person asked. He was a man in his prime with a lean build. His
tattoos covered his entire face, not just his cheeks like the other
Tree People. A necklace of amber stones strung together in a complex
pattern hung from his neck. He appeared to be the leader of this
group of Tree People.
When Touko and Shouzou made no
reply, the woman bearing the staff spoke for them. "They were riding
in one of the carts from the capital. The guardian god of a nearby
village went berserk and attacked them. They said they ran
away."
"A guardian god... was it
Mizushina's <Crystal Village's> dragon?"
Kanata edged closer to the smallest
children for more pets. The boy who'd helped guide them here also
pet Kanata, who submitted to the attention by sitting patiently. One
of the tattooed scouts wandered over and scratched Kanata's head
with his sharp nails.
"The guardian god of Crystal
Village is a piece of the guardian goddess that protects the
capital." There were stories that the guardian gods that protected
the villages were all pieces of that goddess, split into different
shapes for different tasks. "For it to go wild like that and attack
people, someone must have influenced it. Maybe one of the
Spiders."
Shouzou's shoulders drooped; he
closed his eyes. "Spiders?" he asked.
The strong Tree Person nodded
decisively, appearing unconcerned. "Strange things are happening
everywhere of late. Have you heard any news as you traveled?"
Of course they had: the carts
needed to stop to resupply and to drop off brides in different
villages. There had been a bad harvest this year because the soil
was stressed.
The Tree Person leader, the man
wearing the amber necklace, appeared troubled. "The forest is
descending into a state of death and decay. The world protected by
guardian gods is changing its essential nature. We've never seen
such a cataclysm before, but it does seem like the Spiders might be
to blame."
"Wait a second," Shouzou said. "You
can't just blithely say stuff like that. Why would a Spider take
control of a guardian god? How can they even do that? The guardian
gods protect the villages; they don't attack people. They're all
part of the guardian goddess!"
The Tree People gave Shouzou looks
of confusion—and
compassion.
"So you do not know," the leader
said. "Spiders belong to the same race as the guardian gods. They
are part of the same family, but a different branch. Long ago, the
family quarreled, and the Spiders concealed themselves in the
forest. All guardian gods possess power over the natural world. The
Spiders specialize in manipulating insects, especially venomous
ones. A Spider could make a guardian god go mad with pain from
poisoned bug bites."
Shouzou appeared shocked by this
revelation.
While Shouzou spoke to the Tree
People, other Tree People came into the house to help treat Kaho's
injuries. These were a woman who reminded Touko vaguely of her
mother and two girls that were roughly Touko's own age. They placed
a sackcloth blanket over Kaho and lifted her head to help her drink
medicine. One of the girls placed a wet, cool cloth on Kaho's
forehead to help soothe her fever.
"Thank you very much for your
help," Touko said.
The girls smiled, then went over to
the center of the room where the green tree grew. Touko noticed that
all the Tree People wore their hair loose; it wasn't customary here
for women and girls to tie back their hair. The men's hair was cut
short.
Shouzou sat in a corner with his
back against a wall and his head in his hands. His boots were still
on. "So we were attacked by a Spider..."
Touko hugged herself, tugging at
her sleeves and bending down. "Shouzou, what are Spiders?"
Shouzou dug his fingers into his
head and didn't answer. Not at first. Then: "No more questions. Not
right now. The Tree People already told you what they are. They're
like the guardian gods, only with power over insects. The guardian
gods protect the capital, but if they can't even protect the
villages..."
Touko understood this fear. The
capital might be in danger. All of the villages might be in danger.
She remembered the goddess Warashi that frequented her village's
shrine: a small child clothed in pure white, with pale green eyes.
Warashi was responsible for keeping up the barrier that prevented
Fire Fiends from attacking the village. The dragon had served the
same purpose for Kaho's village... though Touko had never heard of a
shrine god being a dragon before. Until she'd decided to go to the
capital, she'd assumed that all the guardian gods of village shrines
looked like people.
In any event, the guardian goddess
that protected the capital was the same as the one that protected
the villages, only in a different form. All of the guardian gods
lived in the capital, with the exception of the pieces of the
goddess that defended the shrines. She understood all that... but
then, what were Spiders?
They were a threat to the villages,
the forest, and the capital. Any being that was capable of turning a
shrine god from its purpose of protection was dangerous. And they
could live in the Black Forest, too, just like the Tree People. Had
the Spiders adapted and changed to live in the forest? Did they help
the Tree People with their barriers? (Did Tree People
have barriers?) Touko
thought that someone from the same family as the guardian gods she
knew of would be capable of such things.
The burly Tree Person who'd guided
Touko and the others this far approached Kaho's makeshift sickbed.
"We are chosen from among the people in the capital to support the
guardian gods within the forest and rescue those who wander in from
the villages. Spiders are as powerful as guardian gods, and it's not
impossible for one to have taken control of an offshoot—not even a full guardian god—to attack you." He folded his arms.
Touko had stopped trembling during
the man's speech. She knelt down near Kaho with the Fire Hunter's
sickle in easy reach, wrapped in the blessed paper from her
village.
"You must be thirsty," the leader
of the Tree People said. "We'll bring you something to drink, and
treat this girl's injuries. But you can't stay here for long. The
Fire Fiends will pick up on your scent and attack this place.
Tomorrow, when you are well enough to travel, we'll take you to the
nearest village."
The two girls who'd helped give
Kaho medicine came back to Touko and the others with water that
they'd gathered from the roots of the green tree. The water was
collected in jars, just like rainwater. Touko and Shouzou each
accepted a jar of water.
Kanata received his own jar of
water happily. He bowed his head to the girls in a human-like
gesture of respect, then lapped at the water.
"Where is the nearest village?"
Shouzou asked. "How can we get there from here?"
"We can't take you all the way
there," the leader said. "I'm sorry. Tree People can't survive long
when they're away from the green trees at the centers of our homes.
The trees are the source of our vitality in this blighted place." He
pointed one gray finger at the tree in the center of the room.
The green trees were like a hearth
fire, a lantern in the darkness—a light that none of the Tree People could live without. Touko
remembered the egg-shaped lanterns in her village. It
would be hard for people
to live without light.
Touko and Shouzou exchanged
glances. The water in the jars was clear, not cloudy, but the jars
were made of the black bark of the normal forest trees. The faint
smell of rotten wood wafting from the jars wasn't reassuring.
Still, Touko was too thirsty to be
picky. And Kanata was drinking. She took a single sip of water.
"It's good," she murmured as the
water slid down her throat. All of her pain and exhaustion caught up
with her at once. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, and she was
trembling again. She felt like her hands would never stop shaking—at least not for very long.
There was blood on Kaho's hands:
the blood of the doctor who'd died trying to save her. Everyone had
died so fast, crushed by the attack or rattled by impact. Touko
couldn't accept that it had happened. None of it made sense.
A worried Kanata pressed his nose
against Touko's cheek. Shouzou gulped down water, using his free
hand to pat Touko on top of the head as if she were a small
child.
***
Touko couldn't sleep. When she
closed her eyes, all she could see was the cart in ruins; all she
could feel was the shock of the cart jolting to a halt. There were
dead bodies everywhere in her mind's eye: everyone was dead. She
felt cold through as she remembered all of their faces.
The Tree People slept on the
opposite side of the room, on the other side of the green tree. It
was like they were avoiding Touko and their other guests. The three
Tree People who'd brought them in were taking turns standing watch
over the others.
Kanata lay next to Touko, resting
his chin on his front legs. Touko curled in on herself, looking from
Shouzou to Kaho. The forest outside the house was dark and
forbidding. The figures of people she knew blended into it, as if
the darkness were trying to swallow them whole.
Shouzou was asleep with his back
against the wall, head drooping toward his lap and his mechanic's
tools set within easy reach of his hands. Kaho's breathing had
calmed after her injuries had been treated.
Shouzou lifted his head and called
out to the Tree Person on guard duty. His voice was so weak that Touko could barely make out what he was
saying. Touko saw the woman come closer to him, stepping over the
wooden floor. She wasn't carrying a staff now.
"How far is the nearest village
from here?" Shouzou asked.
"If you walk and take frequent
rests, it should take you about three days," the woman said,
sounding confident of her guess.
Shouzou sighed heavily and ran his
hands through his hair, digging fingers into his scalp. "Is it
really true? Did a Spider attack our carts?"
"I wasn't there, but it seems
plausible," the woman said. Her jade-colored eyes reminded Touko of
Warashi, her village's guardian goddess. They glowed faintly in the
dark. "It would be a show of rebellion to the guardian gods in the
capital." Her voice was soft; she spoke quietly in an effort not to
wake anyone.
Touko listened to Shouzou and the
woman with her back pressed to Kanata's side.
"You make it sound normal or
inevitable. It's not." Frustration marked his tone.
One of the Tree People came over to
check on Kaho's condition.
"I can tell you what I've heard,"
the woman said. "The Spiders are trying to harness natural fire
again, so that people can use it safely. Instead of letting Fire
Hunters go into danger to harvest fuel and trapping ordinary people
behind barriers, the Spiders want a return to the kind of world
where people can use fire freely, like in the past."
"That's a lie!" Kaho said. Kaho was
also awake; she sat up when a Tree Person approached her, staring
into the darkness with an expression of anguish on her face. "It's
good that people can't
use natural fire anymore! When they could, they used it to kill one
another! They waged war with it, and they can't do that anymore."
Her voice was hoarse and thick with emotion.
Touko, alarmed by Kaho's outburst,
got up and touched Kaho's shoulder. "Are you okay?" she asked. She
rubbed Kaho's back to get her to calm down.
Kaho was shaking—from anger, not from fear or fever. Touko felt the roil of Kaho's
emotions as if they were her own and reached out to hold Kaho's
hand.
Touko had never thought that the
loss of natural fire was a good thing. Her grandmother had often
wished that she could go back to the ancient days, when people
didn't have to flee from fire and hide in the dark. She'd wanted to
see the faces of the children she'd birthed. After Touko's mother
burned to death, she stopped talking about the ancient days. It was
like she'd lost hope and the ability to express grief all at
once.
The Tree Person turned her head
toward Kaho and spoke in a calm voice. "Well... we have no idea what
the Spiders are thinking. But it's hard to imagine that the guardian
god of your village would go crazy for no reason."
"But her village was blighted,"
Shouzou said. "That's why she was sent from it to be married—the soil went strange this year. The village needed to be cleansed
of evil influences. Was the soil becoming weird the trigger for this
attack?"
Kaho shook her head weakly. "I
don't know. The dragon always stays underground. I've never heard of
it showing itself to people before. There were no outsiders to my
village who visited, aside from you all in the carts. I don't know
what happened to my village... only that the same thing happened to
Benio's and Hotaru's." Her voice went strained when she mentioned
Benio and Hotaru.
"The soil's strangeness made it
softer than normal," Kaho continued. "It's been that way for years.
It all started when a mine shaft collapsed, so we could no longer
extract stone or precious gems. Many people died in the collapse."
Tears fell on Kaho and Touko's joined hands; she was crying. Even in
the darkness, Touko could tell.
"Why would the Spiders do such an
awful thing?" Touko asked in a whisper.
Shouzou shifted to face Kaho. Touko
set one palm against the base of Kaho's spine to support her while
she sat up straight.
Kaho raised her head and looked at
the Tree Person. "The Spiders are... these people aren't bad people.
They treated my injuries, and they didn't have to."
Touko's eyes widened in
surprise.
Kaho stopped trembling, gaining
strength in her voice as she spoke. Her curly hair moved under
Touko's supporting hand.
"The mine shaft was underground,"
Kaho said. "The dragon coiled itself in the soil, creating a barrier
there. The children were the first to enter the narrow, half-dug
tunnel. They weren't suited for any other work. I did the same work
when I lived in my village. Somehow, the workers dug the wrong way,
and the shaft wound up outside the dragon's protective barrier. Then
the earth collapsed on top of us. I couldn't breathe, and I thought
I was going to die. But..."
Kaho faltered.
Shouzou pressed her to continue.
"You said that the Spiders... weren't bad people? Have you met one
before?"
Touko felt Kaho's nod in the
darkness. Touko reached out and hugged her. Kaho hugged back, still
holding hands.
"The Spider looked just like a
human," Kaho said. "At first I thought it was a ghost, because it
lived in the forest and wore the fur of a Fire Fiend. They helped
dig me out, took care of my broken leg, and gave me food until the
leg healed. They told me that they found me because the bugs were
burrowing toward us. He said my parents were worried about me,
though I don't think they ever came looking for me.
"After I could walk again, the
Spider said, 'I must return to the forest. You can go back to the
village or follow me.'"
Touko's chest felt tight from too
much emotion. Kaho had been through so much. And in the end, she'd
chosen to return to the village that had abandoned her.
"How old were you when this
happened?" Shouzou asked.
"Four," Kaho said. Her head
drooped.
"Really?" Shouzou asked. "Well, the
Spider you met doesn't seem like a bad person. But is doing what
they did to your village's guardian god justified, even to bring
back natural fire?"
Kaho and Shouzou, Touko and the
Tree People sat in darkness and silence for a time. Kaho choked back
sobs, trying not to make any noise.
Is it even possible to bring back
natural fire?
Touko asked herself. Her parents had burned up in a fire, consumed
by it. Fire didn't seem safe to her.
Touko's doubts and Kaho's wracking
sobs were lost in the darkness of the surrounding forest.
Outside of the house, Touko saw a
glimmer of red light.
That glow was the eyes of a Fire
Fiend.
Touko's heart beat faster. She
struggled to calm herself and remain still. She tightened the hug
she shared with Kaho. Kanata sniffed the ground and came closer to
Touko and Kaho, his spine going rigid.
Kanata was close enough to touch
now. Touko reached out and pet him on top of the head between his
ears, seeking reassurance. Kanata licked Kaho's bloodlessly pale
hands as if he wanted to heal her.
"It's warm," Kaho said in surprise.
She hadn't expected the dog's tongue to be warm. "And it tickles."
She laughed. Not very loud or for very long, but it was still a
laugh.
"Like the others said, we can't
hide you for too long," the Tree Person said. "You smell different
than we do. We'll have to leave tomorrow. I promise we'll escort you
as far as we can." She withdrew, returning to guard duty.
Time passed; how much was difficult
to determine. Kaho fell asleep with Kanata's back supporting her
head.
The forest pressed in close, even
when Touko closed her eyes. Touko slept and did not dream at
all.
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