Sword Kissed Read online

Akari sighed as she adjusted her pack, which was heavier than it should have been since everything was laden with water. “Sera has been my sensei since my parents realized I was Sword Kissed when I was just a kid. She’s been like a third parent to me.”

  “And?” Takeo asked.

  “And what?” Akari asked, having already forgotten what they were talking about.

  “Sera,” he said. “How well do you know her?”

  “She’s been my sensei since my parents discovered—”

  “You just said that,” Takeo interrupted.

  “Said what” Akari asked. “Come on. We don’t have time for this.”

  “Come here,” he said, taking her hand. “Get the map. Hold it in your hand.”

  She wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but she did as he said.

  “Now,” he said, steadily gazing into her eyes. “What do you know about Sera?”

  “She’s my…sensei…” Akari started to say, but then she remembered she had already said that. “She’s…I don’t know. When I think about it, I don’t know anything about her. Where is she from? Who taught her to sword dance? Does she have a family? I feel like I’ve been wearing blinders for the last fifteen years.”

  “Like…there’s a veil between you?” Takeo asked.

  Akari took a step back. It was exactly like that. She had known this mountain was here her whole life, but she had never thought to climb it or ask if there was anything significant on it. It was as though she could see the mountain, but as soon as she looked away, she forgot about it. It never entered her mind she should climb it until she was handed the map and told to.

  It was the same with Sera. She had known Sera her whole life, but she had never thought of Sera as having a life outside of their training sessions. It was like she was a ghost who couldn’t exist outside the walls of the dojo.

  Who was Sera? How did she have this map? What did she know about the fae world? Was she even human?

  “Looks like you and Sera are going to have a long chat when we get back,” Takeo said with a chuckle as he let go of her hand and headed back up the mountain.

  Akari kept walking, but she could feel the scowl that had appeared on her face. She was mad and hurt. She felt as though she had been betrayed, lied to her whole life. Sera knew more than she was letting on, and Akari was going to find out exactly what that was.

  Was that why Sera had sent Akari on this training mission? To open her eyes to the fae veil? To see through Sera’s lies? But why hadn’t Sera simply told her the truth?

  Because nothing was ever simple with Sera.

  Oh, they would have a chat when she got back. There was no mistake in that.

  “Let’s forget about Sera for now,” Akari said as she squeezed her hands into fists. “We need to keep going and see just what’s hidden up here.”

  She gasped as a tiny stone rolled down the mountain and smacked her in the forehead.

  “What the hell?” she asked as she looked up. At first, she didn’t see anything, but then she felt Takeo’s hand on her shoulder.

  “Akari,” he said softly. He eyed the woods around them.

  Akari followed his gaze, and she finally saw them.

  They were surrounded.

  10

  They were surrounded by demons.

  Dozens of carved demonic faces on traditional tribal masks stared down at them. They were painted blue or white and adorned with horns and fangs. Their eyes and mouths were painted blood red. The creatures were standing above them, holding the higher ground.

  For a moment, all stood still. Then one of the demons let out a terrifying shriek. It was as if it were a signal for all the monsters to yell out war cries and hold spears aloft. Akari drew her sword, and Takeo nocked an arrow in his bow.

  The demons threw rocks and sticks down on Akari and Takeo, and they did their best to bat them away. They backed down the mountain a bit to try and gain a better fighting advantage. Akari couldn’t fight them from where she was. She needed to be face to face with her opponent. But Takeo loosed an arrow. The demon he was aiming at was able to dodge, the arrow just skirting by his head. He let an arrow fly at another one, but the demon used a shield to block it.

  “Damn it,” Takeo cursed. “I can’t get a good shot from down here.”

  “Come on,” Akari said, heading back down the trail. “I think I saw another way up the mountain. It’s not on the map, but…”

  The demons hooted and hollered, and then Akari felt the ground beneath her feet shake. Takeo clearly felt it, too. They looked back up the mountain and saw a huge boulder rolling toward them.

  Akari let out a gasp. She tried to step out of the way, but she knew she was too slow. She was going to be crushed! She closed her eyes and braced for impact.

  Something slammed into her side, pushing her flat against the mountain and out of the way at the last second. She opened her eyes. Takeo had her pinned safely against the mountain wall.

  “I didn’t know fae had super speed,” she said.

  “Among other things,” he replied, breathing hard, anger on his face. After making sure no other boulders were coming, he unsheathed both of his daggers. With monkey-like agility, he grabbed onto the trees lining the trail and zipped up the mountain toward the demons.

  “Ay-yi!” one of the creatures yelled as Takeo knocked it down. Takeo kicked another creature below the knee, and it fell and began to cry. A creature in a terrifying blue mask ran away screaming as Takeo advanced toward it.

  Confusion crossed Takeo’s face. These weren’t hard and fast warriors like they first thought. They were scared little critters of some sort.

  Another demon ran at him, holding a spear aloft, but Takeo simply placed his hand on the creature’s forehead to keep him from advancing.

  Akari looked around and saw that several of the creatures had gathered around her. She raised her sword, but they were not attacking. They seemed to observing her curiously. She sheathed her sword and held her hands up in surrender.

  “I have no wish to harm you,” she said. “I am a Sword Kissed. A protector. I am here to help Chiyoko.”

  The demons turned to one another and made little chirping noises.

  “What’s going on?” Takeo called.

  “I think they are trying to decide if they are going to kill us or not,” Akari replied.

  Takeo pushed the creature that was still swinging a stick at him away, causing it to fall, and he descended the mountain to stand at Akari’s side.

  “We are here to help you,” Takeo said, also holding up his hands. “We are friends of the hill folk. We want to heal the poisoned land.”

  The creatures grew very excited, beginning to chirp even more loudly. Finally, one of the creatures approached Takeo and took off his mask. What they saw looked like a cross between a small child and a bear cub.

  “They are kappa,” Takeo said with a sigh of relief.

  “What is a kappa?” Akari asked as the rest of the creatures took off their masks.

  “We are the children of the forest,” one of the creatures said. “The last of Chiyoko’s protectors.”

  “Protectors of the earth,” Takeo said with a laugh. “We are here to help you. We want to help Chiyoko as well.”

  “So we are just going to forget they tried to smash us with a giant stone?” Akari said quietly. “Okay.”

  “Well, they didn’t know why we were here,” Takeo said. “Like Ameonna. Who knows how long it has been since people last came here through the veil.”

  “No,” one of the other kappa said. “No people. Only kappa. Only hill folk.”

  Takeo nodded. “I understand. But Chiyoko is very sick, right?” The kappa all nodded their heads in agreement. “My friend and I, we were sent to help Chiyoko. To find out why she is sick and to heal her.”

  “Chiyoko sick long time,” another one of the kappa said. “Sick all time.”

  “Chiyoko has been sick the whole time?” Akari asked. “How is that possible?”


  “Chiyoko eat the sick,” another kappa said. “Chiyoko get sicker.”

  Akari shook her head and whispered to Takeo, “This isn’t making any sense. We need to find those ruins and caves.”

  Takeo nodded. “Little friends, can you tell us where we can find the ruins?”

  The kappa looked at one another with confusion.

  “Ruins,” Takeo tried again. “Old buildings.”

  The kappa chirped amongst themselves and shook their heads.

  “Falling-down place,” one of the kappa finally said. “You want to go to falling-down place?”

  “Umm, maybe,” Takeo said. “That is as good a place as any to start.”

  The kappa said something to the others, and then they all chirped and nodded happily.

  “Let’s go! Let’s go,” they all started saying as they made their way up the hill. They grabbed Takeo’s and Akari’s hands, pulling them along as though they were old friends.

  They had not traveled far when they saw what was left of a gold statue. It appeared feminine in form, but the head and arms were missing.

  “Rasha,” Akari said, reading the plaque at the statue’s base. “I’ve never heard of her. Have you?”

  Takeo shook his head.

  “Mother,” one of the kappa said, pointing to Rasha.

  “Your mother?” Akari asked, surprised she had never heard the name before if she was some sort of mother goddess. World Mythology had been one of her favorite classes back in school, and she knew the deities from China and Greece rather well.

  “All mother,” the kappa said.

  Akari shook her head. The little critter must have been mistaken, or perhaps the hill folk had developed their own mythology.

  “Well whoever she was, hopefully it means we are traveling in the right direction,” Akari said.

  “I wonder what happened to her,” Takeo replied.

  “Hopefully we won’t find out,” Akari said uneasily. She wasn’t sure they could trust these kappa creatures. They seemed sweet and innocent now, but they had certainly tried to kill them and not just scare them away only minutes before.

  “There!” one of the kappa finally called out as she pointed up ahead. “Falling-down place.”

  Akari saw the remains of an old wooden archway. It had been painted red at one time, but the paint had faded and chipped away. At that moment, Akari remembered the paintings on the wall of the cave where they had spent the night. The little creatures she saw in the cave paintings must have been the kappa. She had a feeling that whoever built the archway probably made the cave paintings as well, or they were at least from the same time. It looked as though it predated the Great Divide.

  Beyond the archway was an old temple. The grounds around the temple were completely covered with knee-high grass, as if no one had walked through it for ages. And dotted throughout the grounds were large cherry blossom trees, the blooms of which were delicately falling and being scattered by the wind.

  Sakura…sakura…

  Akari gasped. “Did you hear that?” she asked.

  “Hear what?” Takeo asked.

  Akari shook her head. She must have only thought the words to the song when she saw the sakura—cherry blossom—petals falling.

  “Careful. Careful,” the kappa said, putting their fingers to their lips in a shushing motion. “Must be careful. Must be quiet.”

  “Why don’t you kappa stay here?” Akari said to them. “We will inspect the…falling-down place.”

  The kappa nodded in agreement.

  Akari took a deep breath and drew her sword.

  “Expecting a fight?” Takeo asked as he pulled out his daggers, twirling them in his fingers.

  “It pays to be prepared,” Akari said as they started to cross the yard toward the front door of the temple.

  The stairs squeaked as they took the two steps up to the temple porch. They looked around, but they did not see anything to cause alarm. The kappa kept their distance, crowding the gate as they watched eagerly.

  Akari saw no reason to delay. She turned to the temple door, which was already hanging open a crack.

  “Are you ready?” she asked Takeo.

  Takeo nodded.

  Akari opened the door.

  11

  Akari gasped. There was a large open room, in the center of which was a huge statue. Akari took a tenuous step inside. The floor creaked, and she hesitated, but there seemed to be no traps or other dangers. She opened the door wide to let in more light, and cherry blossoms blew across the floor. Takeo stepped inside behind her.

  She walked up to the statue. It was of a woman in flowing robes at least ten feet tall. She was reclining on a flat stone and gazing at Akari with a gentle smile on her face. Her hair was piled atop her head in a very old style. Around her were carvings of little animals, such as rabbits and fawns. Behind her was a cherry blossom tree with the branches and blossoms hanging over her. In her right hand, draped casually over her knee, was a katana.

  Akari noticed that the katana was not to scale and appeared small in the woman’s large hand. She took a step closer to get a better look. The blade shimmered in the light. The katana was not carved, but had been forged from steel, a real katana.

  Sakura…

  “What did you say?” Akari asked, turning to Takeo.

  He shook his head, not taking his eyes off what he was looking at across the room. “Nothing. I was just looking at these paintings.”

  Akari followed his gaze to the wall. All four walls were decorated with ornate paintings. The pane they were looking at was terrifying. It showed the land of Chiyoko in flames. The people were running and screaming, and the earth had been ripped asunder. Demons of all sorts were pouring out of the rift and attacking the humans.

  “By the gods,” Akari whispered. “It’s depicting the Great Divide.” She wasn’t sure how she knew this. She had never seen anything like it before, but she knew. And Takeo nodded in agreement. She started to move to the next panel, but Takeo gently took her hand.

  “Let’s start at the beginning,” he said. He pulled her to the panel nearest the door.

  The first panel showed not just Chiyoko, but the whole world as one. It depicted people—humans, not fae—living their lives, farming, fishing, marrying, building homes, caring for the animals. They seemed to be happy. They were all smiling, playing music, hugging their children. It appeared the world was perfect.

  She knew they were humans because they all had pale skin and black hair. Legend said that at one time, people in Chiyoko—well, back when it had been called Japan—had people of various shades as well. Humans could be white, black, brown, red, and more. And their hair came in many varieties as well. She had always wondered what she would have looked like with yellow hair. But even then, the number of people with these different features was extremely small compared to the overall population. After Chiyoko Hollow formed and the people were cut off from the rest of the world, the people with yellow hair or brown skin seemed to fade away. Akari had never seen a human who didn’t have the same skin and hair color she herself had.

  They moved to the next panel. This one also appeared to show the world, but the continents were shaped differently and the overall color scheme was different. While the first painting seemed to be bathed in sunlight, this one was more green, as if the whole world was a luscious garden. The people were clearly fae—they were in many different shapes and colors—and they too were depicted as living normally, happily. But they were also shown using magic, with sparks coming from fingertips or children apparently talking to animals.

  She thought it was interesting there were no demons, not even what she would call “good demons,” the innocent tricksters or protectors that existed alongside the dangerous demons. There were no sprites or hill folk either. She wondered what that meant.

  Takeo was gritting his teeth and his eyes were glistening.

  “It’s home,” he finally said. “It’s the fae realm. I’ve never…never seen
a rendition of it. There are none alive who remember it.”

  “It is beautiful,” Akari said, squeezing his hand.

  He nodded and gave her a small smile.

  They moved to the next panel. This one was half fae realm and half Chiyoko. The fae and the humans appeared to be living in both realms.

  “It looks like the veil between worlds had disappeared,” Akari said. “And humans and fae lived together in both worlds.”

  “I wonder how that happened,” Takeo said. The panels had no words, only images, so they had to do their best to interpret the story based solely on the paintings.

  The next painting was rimmed in red, and the humans and fae were fighting each other. The world was dark, the earth scorched and the animals dead.

  “How terrible,” Akari said. “It looks like the fae and humans started fighting, but there is no explanation about how they came to be enemies.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t matter,” Takeo said. “There could not be a cause great enough to justify this kind of death and destruction.”

  Akari nodded. The reasons for the fighting were lost to time, and they would probably never find out the true history behind it. But it didn’t matter. They needed to find out how to fix Chiyoko now.

  The next panel was the one they had seen originally, with the earth ripped open and about to crumble. This was the first panel that showed demons, and they were pouring out of the rift. Akari surmised this was the origins of the demons in the world, which didn’t surprise her.

  The next panel, though, showed a beautiful woman. She was weeping for the earth, and she held thirteen smaller women in her arms.

  “This looks like a mother and her daughters,” Akari said. “She seems frightened.”

  Akari squinted and noticed there were kanji characters drawn on the flowing gowns of the mother and each of the daughters. It had been many years since she had studied traditional kanji, but she could make out just enough.

  “Rasha…” Akari read on the mother. “That’s the same name on the statue outside.”

  “It sounds like a fae name,” Takeo said.