“Try removing the leaves and the nettles,” Kiki suggested. “You can hardly touch the starstroke otherwise.”
It wasn’t as easy as pruning roses, that was for certain. The thorns and leaves were like teeth and claws. Removing the leaves was the easier task, for they snapped off with a few scrapes of my blade. As long as I was careful not to touch their jagged edges, my fingers usually managed to escape unscathed. The thorns, on the other hand, were stubborn magic. They could not be removed unless I pounded at them with rocks that I collected along the mountainside. Pounding them off was slow, arduous work.
But I was indeed to be rewarded. Demonfire armored every vine of starstroke, but once the last leaf was cut and the last thorn chipped off, the nettles transformed. The demonfire sank into the fibrous stalk, muting the nettles’ dazzling light. Within minutes, the starstroke became a skein of coarse, loose threads, glimmering violet and blue and silver like stardust against the twilight sky.
The blood of stars.
I cradled the threads in my battered hands, half in awe, half in disbelief. This one reedy string had taken all day to achieve. I would need hundreds more before I had enough to weave a net. At my current pace, it would be well into winter by the time I was done.
Still, I’d learned to rejoice in even the smallest victories. That evening when my brothers returned, I showed it to them. We celebrated by roasting chestnuts and feasting on purple yams, and counting the stars until we fell asleep.
If only such good times were meant to last.
As the days passed, I could feel myself slipping back into old habits. More than once, I almost snapped at Andahai aloud, almost laughed at one of Yotan’s jokes, almost cooed at the nestlings Hasho brought into the cave.
My voice, which I had trained myself to forget when I was at Sparrow Inn, was dangerously loosening from my throat. That could not happen.
I started pretending to be asleep when my brothers returned in the evening, started to feign indifference when they offered to fly me into the clouds. I withdrew from dinner early, didn’t laugh at Yotan’s jokes, and told Benkai and Reiji I was too tired to spar.
Being alone was easier. Working with the starstroke alone was easier.
Each night my hands healed just enough for me to attack the day’s work again. I handled the nettles with care to avoid the worst of their wrath. When I was feeling brave, I practiced touching the thorns and the leaves, teaching myself to hold in my gasps and cries.
Pain doesn’t get easier,I reminded myself when I flinched.You just have to get stronger.
Slowly, the practice made my tender skin grow thick and resilient, and by the end of the month, I could grab an entire stalk of starstroke without so much as a wince. But I knew it wasn’t enough for just my skin or my voice to be strong. All of me had to be, if I wanted to break our curse. My heart, especially.
That evening, I stood outside the cave to observe the moon. It had grown plump over the month. Soon it’d be full, and I would see Seryu again. I hoped he had gleaned something useful from his grandfather.
“You want to consort with a dragon?” Andahai exclaimed when I wrote my brothers about the impending meeting. “Have you forgotten it was a dragon that nearly killed us?”
That was Seryu’s grandfather,I mouthed, but my eldest brother didn’t understand. He didn’t want to.
I tried again, starting to scratch in the mud:He can help—
Andahai snatched my writing stick from me. “You are not to meet with him,” he said. “I don’t care what your reasons are. A dragon’s only allegiance is to himself. We cannot trust anyone.”
I searched among my brothers for an ally, but found none, not even in Hasho.
“My decision is made, Shiori,” Andahai said. “You are not to leave.”
“Andahai’s right,” Benkai said gently. “Our priority must be discovering Raikama’s name. But perhaps when we are back, we can come with you.”
My head jerked up. They sounded like they’d be away for longer than a day.
“We’ll be gone a week,” Benkai confirmed. “Maybe longer, if our journey takes us outside Kiata.”
“There is plenty of food for you,” said Yotan, trying to make me feel better. “And you’ll have the nettles to keep you busy.”
Where are you going?
“We will begin in the South,” Andahai said. “Snakes are cold-blooded creatures. It is unlikely that Raikama came from the North.”
A fair assumption. Yet it stung that they hadn’t consulted with me first. I reached for my writing stick to ask more about their route, but Andahai immediately presumed I was trying to ask to go with them.
“You’ll only slow us down. Wandei doesn’t have time to make another basket for you. Stay in the cave and keep hidden.”
Keep hidden? I crossed my arms, both exasperated and insulted at once. I thumped my fists on my chest.I can fend for myself.
