People huddled together in a cramped room, whispering to one another. The air was too warm because of all the bodies packed into the tight space. Touko returned to consciousness slowly and looked for someone, anyone she recognized.
Where did everyone go? Touko thought. Kanata and Kun should be nearby, at least. She touched her face, feeling her unseeing eyes move under her eyelids. Her hair straggled over her shoulders.
Touko couldn’t see, but she could hear. The voices around her were all unfamiliar and growing more agitated.
“…evacuation? Why? Why can’t we go home?” a child asked.
“Fire Fiends broke through the barrier,” an older voice said. “They’re coming through the tunnel. It isn’t safe to stay here.”
“Did you see them?” a different child asked. There seemed to be many children around Touko. “Did you actually see the Fire Fiends? I don’t believe any of them could have gotten through the barrier.”
“I didn’t see the Fire Fiends myself, but many people did. A star fell to earth and caused a fire, too.”
The children started whispering: Touko sensed their anxiety and fear. Some began to cry. Older children scolded younger ones for making too much noise. One person was coughing almost constantly; it sounded painful.
Where am I? Touko thought. The air was stale and dusty. The floor was sticky; dust had settled over oil spills there. There was also a faint scent of earth and vegetables.
Touko thought she saw something move: a shadow, so brief she lost it.
Maybe she wouldn’t be blind forever. Kiri had given her medicine. Hopefully, it would work. She tried to focus on the place where she’d seen movement and found a black-and-red blotchy spot. That spot wasn’t one of the children or anyone else in the room. It was vaguely threatening, like a Fire Fiend’s shadow.
Miss Akira must have gone to the shrine, Touko thought. That meant Temari would be with her. It was unlikely that Koushi would have gone with her, so he must be somewhere else. Were Kun and Kanata with Koushi now? And where would Koushi go? To a factory, to use one of his weapons? Maybe, but which factory would he go to?
Touko was alone—surrounded by strangers. She strained her ears to try to figure out what was going on, but no more information was forthcoming. These people were lost, much like she was. This was terrifying. The sounds and smells around her faded as she concentrated on the dim shadows she saw.
Kun was still injured. She hoped he’d gotten medical treatment. She also hoped that Kun was all right with Akira being gone, since he usually followed her everywhere. Kun would stay by Akira’s side if he could—and if he did, it wouldn’t be safe. Akira might not come back from the Guardian Gods’ shrine.
There was a wall against Touko’s back. She placed her palms on it to help steady herself. She had a terrible headache and was parched with thirst. The iron tang of blood in her mouth made her throat itch. Was this her blood, the Fire Fiend’s that she’d killed, or both? A Fire Fiend had bitten her on the leg; moving at all made the injury hurt. She worried that she wouldn’t be able to move when she needed to with one leg weakened and her eyesight limited. She didn’t even have her borrowed Fire Hunter’s sickle anymore. She guessed that Hinako must have taken it. Akira might have, since she’d told Touko not to use it anymore, but Touko doubted that.
Hinako was certainly stronger than her, and the sickle had belonged to her father. It made sense that she would try to protect herself, her brother and everyone else with the weapon.
There were footsteps: someone was coming closer. Touko curled herself tightly into a ball, making herself small.
“Is it true?” a child asked. “Are there really Fire Fiends inside the city? But no alarms went off…”
“If it wasn’t true, we wouldn’t need to evacuate,” an older child said. “The adults fled first. I don’t like that they left us for last, but there it is.”
“But why can’t I go home?” the first child whined.
“You can when it’s safe,” the older child said. “They’ll probably send us back to our factory once they give the all-clear. Then the adults will come back and check the city to make sure there are no more Fire Fiends. Everything will go back to normal eventually. You’ll see.”
A clump of children, all about ten years old, whispered to one another for a few moments. Then one pointed to Touko and asked, “Hey, who’s she? She’s not from the factory!”
“No,” another child said. “Who are you, huh? Are you okay?”
A hand touched Touko’s shoulder. She flinched.
“Is that blood? Are you hurt?”
Touko didn’t answer. Her heart beat loud and fast in her ears.
“Which factory are you from? What’s your name?”
Touko knew she was being questioned, but she couldn’t focus well enough to answer. She struggled to sit up, supporting herself against the wall. Hands reached out to support her back and shoulders as she shifted. She wanted to see faces—to understand who was helping her right now. But her vision remained shadowy and indistinct.
“Maybe she’s from the slums,” one of the children said. The voice was muffled, as if the child were covering their nose and mouth. That was no surprise. Touko smelled revoltingly like sweat, sewage and Fire Fiend blood.
“But she was with all the rest of us when we evacuated.”
“Maybe she sneaked in?”
Touko frowned, back to the wall, and the children remembered that she could hear them. “Sorry,” she muttered.
“Oh, we’re sorry, too,” one of the children said. A hush fell over the others. They were afraid of something—afraid of her? She hoped not.
“I, uh, need to go back to the factory, but I can’t see well. Can someone guide me?” She squinted, straining her eyes, and she managed to get a better look at the children. They were pale-faced, and their clothing had been made in the capital. One was a boy, and two others were girls. Their faces and hands were stained with ink and brushed with dust. They appeared wary of Touko.
Touko gulped. She couldn’t rely on these children to help her. She was a stranger to them, and vice versa. She tried to stand up by leaning up against the wall, but her right shin protested. The boy helped her support herself again by putting hands on her shoulders and pulling up.
Touko didn’t thank him. He appeared afraid of her, even though he was helping her. She stumbled away and lost a small bundle when she missed a step. Akira had pressed this into her hands after she’d collapsed: it was a supply pack full of food. She also lost a few pieces of blessed paper. The paper was such a pure stark white that it made her healing eyes hurt.
As the blessed paper fluttered to the floor, Touko noticed that one of the pieces of paper had writing on it. She grabbed it and read it. “To Touko” was written in Akira’s handwriting. The paper was folded in half. When had Akira had time to write her a letter? After she’d found Shuyu’s corpse and passed out? Akira must have slipped the letter in with the bundle of food.
Touko tensed as she lifted the letter off the ground.
“Do you want to go outside?” one of the girls from before asked quietly. She seemed surprised at her own temerity. She helped gather up the spilled paper and the bundle and gave them back to Touko. She was careful not to touch Touko with her own hands.
Lifting the bundle and paper made Touko feel weak at the knees and sick to her stomach.
“You can’t walk.” The girl who’d helped her with her dropped things was at her shoulder. “Hang on. We’ll help.”
The girl held Touko up by the shoulders. Touko managed to take another step forward. Her surroundings came into sudden, sharp focus. She saw four walls, all grimy and dimly lit. The room was packed with children—some very young and some around Koushi’s age but most were between those ages. A few adults sat at a low table under the room’s solitary lamp. A wizened old woman was among them. There was a hearth along one wall—unlit—and a water pump that no one was using at the moment. There was also counter space for preparing meals.
Everyone was talking or whispering. Touko listened in, picking out pieces of conversations.
“The Fire Hunters came to exterminate the Fire Fiends, so we’ll be safe.”
“A star fell from the sky!”
“The barrier around the city broke, and they’re saying that the Spiders got in, but I don’t think that’s true…”
Touko felt like she was intruding—like she shouldn’t be here. She leaned heavily on her helper and shifted her steps toward the only door she could see. She wanted to get out of this place.
The blessed paper of the letter in her hands felt soothing and cool. Touko found herself looking down at the letter as she staggered out of the crowded room. Akira’s handwriting was really awful. Letters were written with no rhyme or reason and all different sizes.
She read the letter—fortunately, she had some practice reading Akira’s letters, and this one was short.
Touko, you’re injured and you’ll only be a burden if you follow me. Your role in these events is over. Don’t come after me.
“Spiders?!”
A scream echoed from the room Touko had just left. The door was open, so Touko could see inside. One of the girls who’d talked to her took a sharp breath from fear and started coughing. She couldn’t stop coughing once she started. The boy next to her pounded her back, his expression tense with worry.
“Will the Guardian Gods fight the Spiders?” a child asked. “Or maybe the Fire Hunters will?”
“We should do something,” an older child said. “We shouldn’t just be stuck here doing nothing.”
The older children were becoming agitated. The outnumbered adults tried to keep the peace, but they were rapidly losing the battle against their distressed charges. The old woman slapped a few children upside the head when they failed to settle down.
“Shut up, you brats,” the old woman snarled. “A child who can’t do as they’re told is a useless child.”
No one heeded the old woman or any of the other adults.
“We work in the factories,” one of the older boys said. “No matter what, we’re going to die. What does it matter if a Fire Fiend or pollution kills us first? We should fight!”
“Shut up!” a man shrieked. “I’m your employer! If you say another word, I’ll terminate your contract! I’ll send you to the junkyard or the construction crews! You won’t have the strength to complain when your back is bent by hard labor.” He banged his fist on the table.
The man’s speech riled up the older boys even more. They shouted over him in protest. The yelling made the youngest children wail.
The girl supporting Touko snorted imperiously through her nose. “The older kids are always like this,” she muttered conspiratorially to Touko. “They’ve never seen a Fire Fiend, never mind a Spider. Complaining won’t accomplish anything. It’s not like we’re rich kids at the Academy or anything like that. All we can do is grin and bear it and get on with the job.”
The room was too warm; the press of bodies together wafted heat Touko’s way. The hallway beyond the door was dark, but much quieter. A few other children followed Touko and her helper out of the room and down the hall.
“Don’t leave,” an older boy called out. “We have orders to stay here until it’s safe.” He was chewing tobacco and was a head taller than Touko. He glared at Touko. He smelled vaguely sweet, like honey or flowers.
The coughing girl’s fit suddenly ceased, and she swallowed heavily. “I think she can go,” she said in a hoarse voice. “She’s not a factory worker. She came from a slum or something. Maybe she wants to go home.”
The girl supporting Touko shoved her away in a panic. Everyone knew that there was an epidemic in the city’s slums right now.
The coughing girl coughed again, though she didn’t have another fit. “My mom has it worse than the people with plague,” she said. “She can’t even talk anymore. The pollution made her sick and wrecked her throat. Her hands and feet are gnarled. She can’t even go to the bathroom on her own. One day, we’ll all end up like that.” She made a face.
The girl’s profile was lit by the lamp, revealing two long ponytails that spilled over her shoulders. Touko thought she looked a little like Rin. She missed her cousin acutely. The feeling added to the pain of her wounds.
A short boy passed Touko by, shoving the room’s door open. He walked briskly down the hall to a doorway that led outside. He had a severe hunchback; his chin nearly touched his chest.
“Wait,” Touko choked out. “Where are we? A factory?”
“A communal kitchen at the edge of the city,” the boy said. “There’s nothing to eat right now, though.”
Touko’s stomach growled.
The girl helping Touko asked, “Can you walk?”
“Uh… yes.”
The girl snorted contemptuously.
I can’t stay here, Touko thought. But where could she go? The children she’d left behind in the room all wanted to go home, or to go fight the Spiders.
The short boy kept walking, followed by a handful of other children. He held the door open so that others could go outside before him. Storm clouds obscured the sky, though the rain had finally stopped. The street was deserted and quiet, and also dark; there were no streetlamps here. There was no sign at all that the city had been attacked. The violence Touko had seen at the mouth of the tunnel hadn’t touched this place. A chill wind echoed down the empty street.
Touko’s vision was dim and washed-out and the bite on her leg throbbed. A canal in the middle distance was swollen with water because of the sudden rainfall. She stumbled and gasped in pain—or maybe it was one of the other children who’d gasped.
The short boy had told the truth. Touko and the children had been hiding in a communal kitchen close to the edge of the capital. There were no large buildings here and no factories. The ground leveled off and then plunged to accommodate a wide canal with a bridge over it. The canal was flooding at the edges. Fresh water and sewage all mixed together in a sludge. The tough grass and weeds that grew along the canal’s side struggled to absorb the extra water.
The rain had stopped here, but it was still raining in other parts of the city. Some of the clouds looked like dark pillars of marble that stretched from the sky all the way down to the ground. The clouds obscured buildings and smokestacks and the capital’s uneven skyline. Lanterns and searchlights illuminated some areas, but most of the city was in darkness. The light that reflected against slick surfaces was practically blinding.
Touko thought she was walking in a different world as she took in her surroundings. There were no lamps or clouds or rain here. All those things belonged to the part of the city that was fighting. She was in a safer, partitioned bubble of an area. Rain falling in some places and not others confused her, but then she remembered that the rain wasn’t natural. Some Guardian Gods could manipulate the weather. That had to be the explanation.
The city’s main industrial area was being pelted with rain, but the rest of the city was dry. It was as if someone had drawn a circle around the area where they wanted rain, and made it so. The industrial area had effectively been walled off from outside interference. The Guardian Gods had to be there.
A shiver went up Touko’s spine. Akira and Koushi were probably with Kanata and Kun. Why wasn’t she with them anymore?
“What’s that?” a girl pointed to a storm cloud inside the industrial area. The other children were noticing that it was only raining in specific parts of the city.
“The Guardian Gods must be making it rain over there,” a boy said.
Water splashed up from the canal, whipped by wind. Some of the sewage-contaminated water hit Touko’s nose.
“Does that mean that the Spiders are really attacking?” the girl asked.
“I think so,” the boy said. He straightened up, smiling. He almost looked… happy. “They finally came. Took them long enough.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” the girl chastened him. “If the police found out, they’d take you away and you’d never come back.”
“I don’t care,” the boy said. “My parents told me that a lot of kids are sick like me because of the factory pollution. Most of us won’t live to be adults. The Guardian Gods are deliberately ignoring that problem. I’d rather die quickly fighting against the Spiders than linger in illness and pain for the next few years.”
Touko’s vision dimmed. Her head ached horribly. She felt as if Kun’s insects were crawling around inside it and leaned heavily against the wall behind her. She had to find Kun and the others. Where had they gone? She didn’t know if it was right or wrong for her to stay here, but she couldn’t bring herself to sit still. She ran her hands over a piece of blank blessed paper to help herself focus. Then she pushed off the wall and started walking. She had no idea where she was going.
Walking proved too difficult. Touko was reduced to crawling before too long. She was close enough to hear the boy when he said, “Spiders can control insects. Apparently, the insects carry them to some kind of paradise when they die. I hope I can make it there. It’s too late for my dad—he hanged himself—but mom, gran and grandpa and my younger brothers and I might all make it. Then they won’t have to work in the factory or starve anymore.”
“Nonsense.” The girl snorted. “Thinking about what happens after you die is stupid. If you and your family are hungry, then work harder so that you can afford a decent meal.”
Touko struggled to keep moving forward. She used to think that the capital was a perfect place and that everyone was wealthy and happy. How wrong she’d been. She wanted to go back to her village and tell everyone what she’d seen and heard here. She didn’t think the villagers would believe her.
Life in the capital was no fairy tale. People suffered here just as they suffered elsewhere. She wanted to talk to her grandmother. What she was feeling was something like disillusionment—disenchantment—but worse. She would have given almost anything to be back in her own village now, standing under the gentle glow of an egg-shaped lantern.
The children had fallen silent. Some went back inside and some drifted away from Touko. When a door opened nearby, the sound echoed eerily on the deserted street.
Touko was relieved to be left alone, but she also lacked the strength to be on her own. Her arms and legs were numb. She curled up on the ground, taking deep breaths and gathering strength. She was breathing hard and found that strange. She hadn’t really exerted herself too much. Maybe any amount of exertion was too much right now, because she was hurt. Her muscles screamed at her whenever she moved the tiniest bit. She’d done herself more damage than she’d realized while fighting the Fire Fiends. The Tree People’s medicine could have negative side effects, too. Touko’s aunt had told her that it was poisonous to humans. But Touko lacked the presence of mind to remember that about the Tree People’s medicine at the moment.
“You there! Are you ill? Where is your home?” a young woman asked from behind Touko.
Touko turned around, each movement excruciating. Dark mist obscured the edges of her vision. She saw the woman, but the perspective was odd. To her, it looked like the woman was standing at the edge of the Black Forest—and beckoning her to enter.
“Hey! Come back here!” The girl who’d helped support Touko earlier also called out to her.
Touko shook her head in a panic. The woman remained where she was, but the girl quickly caught up to Touko and tried to help her up.
“I’m okay,” Touko said harshly. “Thank you for helping me, but you can go now.”
The girl shook her head firmly in denial. “You can’t stay out here alone. It isn’t safe.”
“She’s right,” a different young woman said briskly. “We should all get inside where it’s safe and dry, don’t you think?” she asked in a tone of obsequious politeness.
The polite woman wasn’t alone: she had three people with her, all tall and wearing nice clothing. The woman carried a lantern aloft, and the women with her were carrying covered baskets. She made sure Touko and the girl were following her.
It was a short distance back to the communal kitchen. The woman carrying the lantern rapped her knuckles smartly on the closed door. “Hello? This is where everyone from the factory was gathering, right? I’ve brought some food, fire fuel and blankets. They’re donations from the Okibi family. No one knows when the factories will be up and running again, so you all should get some rest while you can.”
The man who had called himself a factory supervisor opened the door, all trace of bluster gone. “Why would the Okibi family donate to us? They operate the synthetic meat factories. We’re agricultural workers.”
The four women were nicely dressed, yes—and now Touko noticed that they were identically dressed. This was house livery. These women were the personal servants of an important household.
The women cast their eyes down. The one holding the lantern said, “My husband has instructed me to provide aid to all, not just to workers in Okibi factories. It would be shameful for anyone to go hungry when we can provide for so many.”
“Oh,” the man said. “That is certainly admirable, but…” The man trailed off, looking extremely uncomfortable.
A shock wave shook the ground and distorted the air before the man could say more. Bright light flashed—so bright, it was like a rip in the air that lingered for long seconds after the light faded. The accompanying roar made Touko and the others cover their ears. The women carrying supplies stumbled, but managed to keep upright.
Another flash followed right behind the first, but the shock wave wasn’t as great, perhaps because it was farther away.
Touko gaped. Lightning fuel was causing these flashes, these quakes in the ground. Did that mean that Koushi had managed to get to the weapons he’d made?
“Koushi…”
The rain over the industrial area was the work of the Guardian Gods, but the lightning fuel detonating like that had to be Koushi’s work.
“What did you say, child?” An older woman in gray clothes walked over to Touko. “Do you know the boy staying at Okibi Estate?” Her hair was gathered up behind her head, leaving her face fully visible, but Touko could only perceive her as a blurry shadow.
“Well… not really, but Kanata…”
Before Touko could finish her sentence, the older woman exchanged glances with the women carrying supplies. They spoke to one another in low voices.
“Where does this child work?” the older woman asked the man who worked as a factory supervisor.
“I don’t know,” the man said. “She came with us when we were evacuating. It was important to get all the children to safety while we could.” He scratched the back of his neck and looked down, clearly flustered.
“That’s not a factory worker!” the old crone from before shrieked from beyond the doorway. “That child lives in the slums!”
Another flash of light, another rumble through the earth—this time much closer. Children scattered and screamed, running for cover.
“Silence!” the crone ordered as she ushered children inside the communal kitchen. “This is why we told you not to go outside, you brats.”
“Can you stand?” the older woman was close to Touko again.
Touko nodded dully.
“Then come with me. We’re going to Okibi Estate.”
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