“Here I am,” said a voice.
The black curtain parted, sunlight gleaming on rippling silk. And there she stood, quiet and fragile and beautiful. A simple kimono of embroidered black flowed off her shoulders, hugged her waist, the handle of a black lacquered tantō at her hip. She was thin, pale as wisteria blooms. Her hair flowed about her face like black water, rolling down her back in waves. Her face was careworn, her eyes tired, but still, they blazed with light at the sight of her friend, the smile on her face as fierce as the Lady Amaterasu’s light.
At her side, two children stood, a boy and a girl perhaps ten years old, both tall and beautiful, black hair and pale skin. She held a third child in her arms, little more than a toddler—a boy with bright inquisitive eyes as sharp as knives. All three were looking at the arashitora, spellbound, the thunder tiger dipping her head as if to bow.
The crowd was awash with jubilation, cheering wildly at the sight of the woman and her children, the legend made flesh. She looked over the mob and smiled, raising one fist in the air. The gesture was returned, ten thousand fists and a single name, shouted over and over again.
“Yukiko!”
“Yukiko!”
When the frenzy abated, after what seemed an impossible age, the twins looked up at their mother, an unspoken question in their eyes.
“Go on, then,” Yukiko nodded.
The twins whooped and dashed away, jumping off the stage and running to the arashitora’s side. They stopped a handful of paces away, staring at the mighty Kaiah with wide eyes, holding out their hands together, palms outward. The thunder tiger stalked toward the pair and lowered her head, flared her wings, pushing her cheeks against one palm and then another to euphoric roars from the crowds.
Yukiko made her way down off the stage, a frailty in her tread. Kin stepped up beside her, took the babe from her arms, and Hana fairly flew into her embrace. Both women were weeping, holding each other as a drowning man clutches floating tinder.
“I knew you’d come,” Yukiko breathed.
“Even if all the oni in the Hells stood in the way.”
“I missed you, sister.”
The pair parted, Hana turned to the twins standing beside Kaiah, wondering at the luster of her fur, the softness of her feathers.
“Hello, Masaru,” the woman said. “Naomi. You don’t remember me, do you?”
The children stared mute, as children are wont to do, and Hana laughed, loud and fierce, a glint of lightning in her eye. She turned to Kin, to the little boy in his arms, reaching out to caress the child’s cheek.
“And who are you, little man?”
“His name is Arashi,” Yukiko said.
“Arashi,” Hana smiled. “‘Storm.’ Very fitting.”
Yukiko motioned to the small tract of deadlands around them. In the distance, thunder rolled, the edges of the sky darkening with the press of an oncoming storm.
“Shall we do this? Before the rain?”
“I still remember this place,” Hana sighed. “Our house was right over there. Broken windows and broken dreams…”
“Then let’s be rid of it. And all shadows of the past alongside.”
Hana nodded, took Yukiko’s hand and walked to the edge of the deadlands, Kin beside them. A thin wash of black vapor roiled on the surface, feeble and near translucent in the light of the sun. But still it lingered—the last mark of blood lotus left in Shima. Tora bushimen stood vigil around the perimeter, but there was no crush to touch the stormdancers. A strange hush descended over the crowd, a gravity that took hold and pulled them back down to earth, all jubilance and joy stilling, silence echoing in the mournful breeze, laden with the promise of distant storms.
Yukiko brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. Her lips were bloodless, and she seemed so small amidst that sea of people—somehow utterly lost. But she reached out for Kin’s hand, smiling as he placed a gentle kiss on her brow. She looked to the children at his side, the people gathered up on the stage behind her. All of them wounded, but walking still. And she drew a deep breath, and she spoke, and her voice was strong as the roar of a thunder tiger.
“People of Shima,” she said. “Hear me now.”
Yukiko raised her hand, and Sumiko saw the flesh of her palms was covered in scars; hundreds of knife wounds scored across her skin.
“Ten years. Ten years I’ve walked, the length and breadth of this place we call home. I have seen rivers black and choked with corpses. I’ve watched poisoned winds blow across deserts where forests once stood, looked into empty skies where once there were as many birds as stars across the face of night. We came so close to the abyss, you and I. I stood on its edge and looked into its eyes. I heard it speak. I learned its name.