A softness to her edges, satin weight on her eyelids. Her tongue too big for her mouth. The world swaying to a tune she couldn’t quite hear. The room spinning as she opened her eyes.
“You wake,” Daichi said.
Wind kami called down timeworn mountainsides, the spirits playing in the branches of the treetop village outside, bringing the brittle-crisp promise of winter to come. Yukiko sat up slowly, groaning and squeezing her eyes shut once more. The pulse of the entire world beat beneath her skin, the thoughts of every beast, man, woman and child around her, layered upon one another in a shapeless cacophony. She pawed blindly beside her bed, seized the half-empty sake jug, upending it into her mouth. Daichi murmured concern, tried to take the bottle from her hands but she pushed him away, molten fire pouring down her throat, rushing to fill the void inside her.
“Yukiko—”
“Stop, please,” she begged, curling into a ball with her fists to her temples. “Give me a minute. Just one minute.”
The old man sat in silence, legs crossed, palms upturned on his knees. He seemed a statue of some bygone warrior, katana slung across his back—a glacial stillness in contrast to the seething shift inside her head.
To even glance into the Kenning was to look at the sun. To make cinders of her eyes. But she could feel Buruu in there, rumbling beneath it all like thunder on a distant horizon. She reached for him, synapses ablaze— just a touch to let him know she was awake. The sake did its work; black velvet thrown over her head and smothering the noise and heat of the world. She felt it flow her to her edges, a beautiful gravity filling her to her fingernails, dragging the Kenning to some quiet corner in her mind and choking until it could barely breathe.
She didn’t know how long she lay there, curled like a babe in lightless, amniotic warmth. But finally she opened her eyes a sliver, saw the old man still seated at the edge of her bed, concern plain in those steel-gray eyes. He coughed once, twice, as if he’d been struggling to remain silent, wiping his knuckles across his lips. And finally he met her gaze.
“What is happening to you, Yukiko?”
His voice was graveled. Rusted. The muddy rasp of a pipe-fiend, so akin to her father’s for a moment she thought she was dreaming.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head, tongue numb. “I can hear everything. Animals. People. Everyone. Inside my head.”
The old man frowned. “Their thoughts?”
“Hai. But it’s like everyone shouting … all at once. It’s deafening.”
He stroked his moustache, slow and thoughtful. “The cause?”
“I don’t know. My father never told me about this. No one told me anything.”
“I do not mean to cause you alarm…” the old man paused, licked his lips, “but I think you caused an earthquake today.”
She stared at him, jaw slightly agape, blinking slow.
“Do you not remember the ground shaking?” Daichi asked. “Trees shivering like frightened children as you fell to your knees?”
“No.” A hollow whisper. “Gods…”
“Can you not hold it at bay? Control it?”
Yukiko fixed the old man in a bleary stare. The sake was heat in her veins and in her cheeks, pulling her eyelids closed. Legs trembling. Mouth dry. “My father … I think perhaps he smoked lotus to keep it quiet. Liquor seems to dull it, too.”
“That seems a dangerous road to walk. One that does not end in answers.”
“I know it,” she sighed, her tongue clumsy on her teeth. “Truly, I do. I don’t want to hide in the bottom of a bottle.”
“Kaori told me of the birds. The ones who killed themselves against your bedroom walls.”
“Buruu said it was because I was screaming. Inside their heads.”
“And now you say you can hear not just the thoughts of beasts, but of people too?”
Yukiko remained silent, awful certainty of Daichi’s destination building in her gut.
“Leave aside the earthquake for a moment,” he said. “The fact you may shake the very island beneath our feet when you get upset. Think for a moment what else might happen if you lose control again.”
“Are you saying—”
“I say nothing. I simply wonder if next time, it is not birds trying to silence your screams, but people.” The old man gestured around him. “Us.”
“Gods…”
“Indeed.”
Yukiko blinked, cold dread in her belly. She hadn’t even considered the thought …
“I don’t know what to do, Daichi,” she breathed, dragging her fingers through her hair. “I have nobody to ask how to control this thing. No teacher. No father. Nothing.”
Daichi steepled his hands beneath his chin, brows drawn together in thought. A long silence passed, his frown growing darker as moments turned to minutes.
“I did not wish to tell you this,” he finally said. “I should have spoken of it after the incident with the birds, but I hoped the matter not as grave as now I know it to be. And in truth, we cannot afford to lose you, Yukiko.”
“I don’t understand…”
“I know where you can find your answers. If answers exist to be found anywhere at all.” The old man coughed, wiped his mouth on his sleeve with a grimace. “A monastery on the isle of Shabishii, far north of here, near the Imperium’s edge. It was said the monks there kept the mysteries of the world inked on their flesh.”
“To keep them secret?”
“To keep them safe. Their order began with the rise of the Tenma Emperors, when the Imperial Censors first started burning ‘indecent’ literature. The monks tattooed themselves with ancient arts and the deepest secrets, that they would not be lost to the Imperium’s hubris. Much harder to kill a living man than incinerate a
