Year of the Demon

BOOK FOUR

MUROMACHI ERA, THE YEAR 198

(1484 CE)

20

Kaida left the surface and returned to the world where she felt most at home.

The water was chilly today, but Kaida didn’t mind. She was happy to feel the two cold streams of it worming their way deep into her ears. Underwater, no taunts could reach her. Underwater, everyone was a mute.

Her sandbag pulled at her ankles, dragging her swiftly down to the coral bed. To her right she saw the other three ama fluttering down too: Miyoko, as slender and streamlined as a shark; Kiyoko, rounder, more like a puffer fish; Shioko, short and powerful, fanning her arms overhead to accelerate her descent. Shioko was always catching up, always trying to overtake the other two; Miyoko was always the leader; Kiyoko only followed along, always just another dolphin in the pod. At this distance they were no more than naked white blurs against the blue, but for Kaida it was so easy to tell which one was which.

Kaida was happy to see they’d chosen to dive on the Squid’s Head, an oblong mound of rock and coral three or four boat-lengths from her. Miyoko’s taunts had been especially sharp on the ride over to this part of the reef—hence Kaida’s relief to return to the silence of the aquatic world—and when Miyoko was sharp-tongued like this, evil words had a way of becoming evil deeds. The other two weren’t vicious like her; if anything, they were scared of Miyoko, maybe even as scared as Kaida was. Not that it mattered. Whether they followed out of loyalty or simply to avoid becoming targets themselves, they still followed.

The fact that Sen was their oarsman today made matters worse. He was a simpleton, born with no more wit than the gods granted a sea turtle. He had just enough sense to row a boat where he was told, and not nearly enough to tell the difference between a wicked smile and a friendly one. When Miyoko’s barbs made the other two laugh, Sen understood only that he was to laugh along with them. If Miyoko decided to do more than talk, Kaida could not hope for Sen to intervene, even though he was a grown man and the four girls were all in their teens.

Sand billowed up around Kaida’s feet as she reached the long fingers of brain coral that everyone in the village called the Tentacles. Schools of coral fish scattered from her like leaves on a stiff breeze, their whites, blacks, and yellows fluttering like a thousand pennants. A wave of cold rippled over her. She was two or three body-lengths deeper than the Squid’s Head, and looking up, she saw the others swimming with long, graceful strokes. They danced like three white dolphins behind the screen of coral fish stripes.

Kaida’s own movements felt clumsy in comparison. She hooked the stump of her left arm through the tether on her sandbag, and with her right hand she withdrew her kaigane and wedged its metal tip between the coral and the shell of the nearest abalone.

It was a stubborn one, and since she couldn’t abide the thought of chipping the beautiful green whorls of coral, it took her some time to coax it free. The other ama were already bound for the surface. They’d have more than one lousy abalone in their catch bags. Kaida’s lungs burned, but she refused to head back up.

She found a second oyster entrenched even deeper than the first. Passing it by, she found a third one, tiny by comparison. The fourth was worth keeping, so she went to work on it with her kaigane.

She couldn’t say what it was that made her look up. When she did, the three white dolphins were no longer diving on the Squid’s Head. Kaida looked up at the belly of the boat, hoping to see the other ama up there. It was only when she saw Shioko frog-kicking down at her that she knew she was under attack.

Two hands locked fast around her right wrist. They were Kiyoko’s, and Kiyoko was the strongest of them all; Kaida knew she couldn’t free her hand.

Slender forearms slipped around her midsection from behind like a pair of eels. That would be Miyoko. She always wanted to inflict the worst blows herself. Kaida slammed her head backward, hoping to catch her in time, but Miyoko was ready for it. She must have tucked her head, because Kaida’s skull cracked against something hard, not something soft and crunchy like a nose.

Miyoko’s squeeze came as fast as a hammer blow. Kaida vomited what little air she had left. Black spots swam like little fish in her vision.

Kaida struggled to free her right arm. She’d show Miyoko how deep a kaigane could cut. But Kiyoko’s stout hands held fast. By then Shioko was on her, and together the three of them pulled Kaida halfway up to the surface before they let her go.

But only halfway. Kaida couldn’t launch herself from the bottom, yet she wasn’t close enough to the surface to be certain she’d make it. Black spots were already encroaching on her vision. She had only a split second to decide: dive back down—never the easy choice—or try to reach the surface without the benefit of a push-off.

She swam straight up, kicking like mad. Her lungs heaved mightily, so hard she almost threw up. When she broke the surface her inhalation was a loud, gasping, birdlike cry. It was another five or six breaths before she could hear Miyoko leading the chorus of laughter.

Kaida puked into the boat, inspiring another fit of giggling. Sen, the oarsman, chuckled too; Kaida could feel the vibrations from his deep, dopey voice through the wooden hull. She spat a mouthful of vomit on his foot, regretting it instantly. He didn’t deserve it; he was only the closest target. He was too stupid to know any better. And now Kaida had no more vomit to spit at Miyoko or the other two.

She dived back under, as much to silence their laughing as to flush out her mouth. She stayed under for a while, filling her mouth with salt water and spitting it out, over and over until the taste of bile was gone. Then she surfaced, took her deepest breath, and swam down again to recover her kaigane and her abalone.

The other three did not follow her this time. Once was enough. No doubt they would content themselves to watch from the surface and comment on how saccadic her movements were. Even the silence of the water was not enough to shut them up in Kaida’s imagination. A seal without a flipper. A turtle without a fin. They’d called her as much and worse before. No doubt they hadn’t bored of it yet.

Kaida wondered what she could have done wrong to deserve sisters like these.

This time she had plenty of air when she kicked off the bottom, though the whole way up she thought about how far it was and how narrowly she had escaped drowning. Again. The trick of pulling her away from the seabed was Miyoko’s newest invention. She really was a virtuoso of cruelty. One of these days Kaida wouldn’t make it to the surface, and she wondered whether Miyoko would still be laughing then.

She was certain her other two stepsisters would not. Kiyoko only picked on Kaida to fit in. Like a remora, she attached herself to the shark in order to stay out of harm’s way. Shioko wasn’t evil so much as competitive. She was the youngest, always catching up, always plagued by the need to prove herself. When she showed genuine malice, Kaida saw it as a sort of emotional karate, practiced out of some vague sense that it might protect her fragile sense of self. Miyoko’s cruelty was purer, more hateful. She indulged her malicious urges for the sheer enjoyment of it. Kaida knew about the little animals she trapped sometimes, and what she did to them. Now that Miyoko had an ugly, crippled stepsister, she’d broadened her tastes.

Kaida broke through the crest of a big wave to see the other three already warming themselves around the