Year of the Demon

suspected if the troughs were so deep as to expose the Claw.

But her mother would protect her. Even in the face of this hell-spawned storm, she sang the song of the little Kaida-fish.

Thunder clapped again. A wave moving in the wrong direction smacked the stern and spun the boat like a little child throwing a stick. Kaida’s father lost his grip on one of the oars. Her mother’s hand darted out faster than Kaida thought possible. She snatched the oar’s grip in midair and thrust it back toward her husband, who damned the wind and the waves and his spent, wet hands.

Kaida felt her mother’s arms wrap around her once more. She would be all right. All of them would be. Storms are stronger than men, her mother always said, but they have no patience. We only need to outlast them. That’s what she always said, and already Kaida could tell the thunderheads had blown out most of their anger. She could hear her mother’s lullaby a little better now.

Her father never saw the other boat coming.

It caught them broadside, flung by a rogue wave. Wood screeched louder than thunder. Then it burst apart, shooting splinters everywhere. Kaida caught a volley full in the chest. Only afterward did she realize her mother took as many in the arm, protecting Kaida’s face.

Kaida watched her family’s boat crumple like washi paper. The other family’s boat plunged on, shearing itself in half like a giant barracuda opening its mouth wide, bearing down to bite Kaida’s boat in two. The sidewalls split down the middle, the bottom half submerging with the keel, the top half exploding into a hail of splinters as big as the bones in Kaida’s forearm. The bottom half of the boat dragged its occupants down with it. Still the two boats plunged on, ripping each other apart. Huddling against her mother, Kaida watched the other family go under. She could feel it through the soles of her bare feet when one by one the keel crushed their heads to pulp. It was merciful; at least they would not drown.

Drowning was every ama’s worst fear, and Kaida knew she and her parents were likely to face it soon. Their boat wasn’t taking on water; the water was taking it. The starboard side was no more than a jumble of ragged timbers. Kaida felt her guts heave up into her throat. The boat crested high above the sea, carried by the biggest wave Kaida had ever seen. For a terrifying moment she could see Ryujin’s Maw. Its black teeth dripped with white foam.

Then the sea dashed her family right into the Maw.

The world was nothing but darkness and noise. Kaida thought drowning would be quiet. She did not expect it to thunder so loud that it drowned out her other senses.

She tried to clap her palms over her ears, but she could only move her right arm.

Just for an instant, the noise abated. Just for an instant, there was light. Kaida saw her mother huddled over her, hugging her close. She saw her father too, his back against sheer black rock, holding on to the inside of their rowboat as if some crazed mob were trying to pull it away from the other side. Then she understood. Somehow they’d landed between two of Ryujin’s fangs, and the weight of the water wrapped their little boat around them, trapping them as snugly as a turtle in his shell. But a turtle had flesh and bones to keep its shell attached. Kaida had only her father, fighting the sea with a tenacity found only in wild animals and madmen.

Kaida tried to help. It was stupid—she was a little girl, without a tenth of her father’s strength—but she tried to grab the boat anyway. She couldn’t reach with her right hand; her mother was in the way, so she tried with her left. Once again her left arm would not move. She looked down to see why.

Her hand looked like a stomped-on crab.

It was almost next to her nose when she turned to look at it, so she could see all the details clearly. Part of the boat pinned it to the black, bloody rock. Some of her fingers were still intact. The hand itself was nothing but jagged bones. They stuck out in crazed directions, all a-jumble.

The world went black again, the water pressing their turtle shell back down with deafening fury. When the noise relented the light came back, and Kaida got a good look at her dead mother.

•   •   •

Kaida sat bolt upright under her covers. She didn’t scream—not with her stepsisters around; she knew better than that—but she remembered screaming back then. She remembered the echoes of her cries within the wreckage of the boat, the intermittent fits of blackness and noise, the hope in every black moment that perhaps when the light came again she’d see she was mistaken about her mother. But the dark had been worse than the light. In the light she could see what was. Once the dark closed in around her, she could only imagine, and imagining made it worse.

She pressed her stump to her chest, trying in vain to slow her panicked heart. The house seemed smaller when she was afraid; the ceiling felt too close, as if it might collapse at any moment. She couldn’t stay inside. She couldn’t stay inside.

As silently as she could, she slipped out of bed. She tried to think of Masa, how quiet he could be, how he had melded into the sand the night she met him. Then she thought of how his dead body slumped when his friends dropped him in the shorebreak.

A moment’s inattention was enough. She didn’t crouch low enough when she passed by the window. She’d exposed her silhouette, and she should have guessed her father’s injuries would make it hard for him to sleep.

“Kaida? What are you doing awake?”

“I’m sorry, Father. I just have to go outside.”

She tried to make it sound like she just had to pee, but her heart was still racing; she couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice.

“Kaida-chan, what’s the matter?” said Cho, her voice raspy and sleepy. Even now, after all these nights, Kaida still forgot Cho slept with him. Hearing Cho’s voice coming from her father’s bedroll startled Kaida every time.

“It’s all right,” her father said. “She just gets frightened sometimes.”

“Father, no—”

He didn’t hear her, but Kaida couldn’t risk raising her voice, couldn’t risk waking her stepsisters. They couldn’t hear what was going to come next. They just couldn’t. It would be the end of her.

“Father—”

“She was right next to her mother when she died,” he said, oblivious. “Dark, close spaces have troubled her ever since.”

Kaida froze. She held her breath, the better to hear whether anyone else was awake. If even one of the other girls overheard him, Kaida’s life would descend into a kind of misery that made everything she’d suffered so far feel like a mild sunburn.

But no one stirred. No one’s breath changed its pace. Kaida lingered for a moment just outside the door, listening, but she was safe. Her stepsisters were all asleep.

All the same, she stayed outside until she could make herself pee, close enough to the hut that Cho would hear her. Better for Cho to be confused in the morning. She was still groggy from sleep; maybe she’d remember the peeing and not the rest.

Kaida crouched outside and hugged her knees. It was cold, but she forced herself to count to a hundred before she went back inside. If the disturbance has jostled any of her stepsisters even halfway out of sleep, Kaida would allow them plenty of time to sink back into their dreams.

At last she crept back inside. Wiping the sand from her feet first, she padded over to her little bedroll. Just as she reached it, skinny, cold fingers tightened around her ankle.

“To think,” Miyoko whispered, “all the things we’ve contrived to torture you, and all we really needed was to put a sack on your head.”

Kaida’s guts went cold. She wanted to cry. She wanted to stomp on Miyoko’s hand, maybe break some bones. But that would only make things worse. Her father and Cho would hear. Then Kaida would be the villain, not Miyoko.

“Or maybe flip over a boat, neh, Kaida-chan? Sit on it with you under there. Maybe even bury it. What would you think about that?”

Kaida could almost hear Miyoko’s triumphant smile.