Born of Æther

CHAPTER ONE

 Is there a limit to how many lies one person can tell? My life was so saturated with them that I was afraid to open my mouth for fear of ensnaring myself in one of Grandfather’s falsehoods. They say that if you tell a lie for long enough, you’ll eventually come to believe it. But that would never happen to me. It couldn’t. I would never forget who I was, where I came from, and what had happened to me. It didn’t matter how many lies Grandfather commanded me to tell, or what ridiculous story he had dripping from my lips to protect himself. I would always know the truth, and he couldn’t change that.

The truth.

The truth was not that I was his granddaughter. I was his captive.

The truth was not that my family died in a plague that swept our village. I had been taken from my home against my will.

The truth was not that my mother was Japanese and my father was Canadian. Both of my parents were Japanese. Grandfather made up the lie to fabricate some connection to this land, to explain our presence in this country.

The truth was not that I was a sixteen-year-old girl. I was nearly a century old.

The truth was not that I was human. I just looked like it.

I disliked walking home alone after school because these were the thoughts that most often clutched my mind. Normally, I walked home with Saxony every day, since we lived in the same neighbor‐ hood. But today she had a phone interview with the au pair agency she had applied with, so after saying goodbye to Targa and Geor‐ jayna, I had left Saltford High on my own.

Though it was April, the weather was bitterly cold and gray. Snow and ice crusted the streets and bare branches reached up to condemn the cloudy sky.

The suburb we lived in was quiet today. Very few cars passed me, and no one walked the sidewalks. It was too miserable outside for playing, and  the playground I passed was abandoned.

Our bungalow was the second to last house on our street. Even from a distance it looked unwelcome. The windows were dark and the curtains drawn. I walked up our front yard, stepped up onto our small deck, and entered our coatroom.

“I’m home,” I called out in Japanese as I kicked off my boots. I pulled on my slippers and hung my parka on its hook.

“Akiko,” came Grandfather’s voice from the small front room.

I poked my head around the corner. “I’m here,” I repeated. “Need anything?”

“Sit,” Grandfather said, gesturing to the couch across from his chair. His laptop was open and it sent a blue glow onto his lined face.

I frowned. When Grandfather asked me to sit, it usually meant he had something more complicated for me to do. He hadn’t asked me to sit in years. Most of my commands these days were mere errands— groceries, translating something for him, mailing something at the post office, making dinner, doing laundry, cleaning the house, shov‐ eling the front walk. I was the world’s most exotic house keeper.

I sat and waited.

He steepled his withered hands and gazed at me from across the coffee table. “My name is Daichi Hotaka,” he said.

My mouth dropped open. I could do nothing but stare. My heart began to pound. Something was going to change, something had happened. My mind raced. What had happened? Why, after all this time, was he finally telling me his name? My hands instantly felt ice-cold. I didn’t know what to say, so all I did was wait, skin prickling with anticipation. With effort, I closed my mouth.

“I have been searching for something that was stolen from me many years ago.” Nothing about his countenance changed, but I could sense a vibration of excitement about him that I had never felt before. “I have finally found it.”

He reached a hand out and spun the laptop to face me.

My eyes dropped to the screen. It showed a video on YouTube entitled ‘Ryozen Museum to Display Artifacts from the Bakamatsu Period. Early summer.’ My eyes scanned the text below the video: The Ryozen Museum of History in Kyoto, Japan, specializes in the history of the Bakumatsu period and the Meiji Restoration. The museum is dedicated to the often violent events that brought an end to the Tokugawa regime at the climax of the Edo Period.

Daichi had frozen the screen on a closeup of a wooden rack carrying four samurai short swords. Three of them were in black sheaths, and one of them was in a blue sheath with some kind of pattern on it. He pointed a twisted finger at the short sword with the blue sheath. It looked like the design on the sheath might be of trees, but the screen was blurry so it was difficult to make out.

“Bring me this wakizashi,” he said.

My eyes widened and flew to his face. Had I heard him correctly? I swallowed hard, my mind a torrent of questions. This was more than just an errand. This was a mission, and probably an illegal one. “It is in Kyoto, Grandfather,” I said. “You want me to go back to Japan?” A torrent of emotions crashed through me like a tsunami. After all this time, he was going to let me visit our homeland? Alone? We hadn’t been back in Japan since we left over a lifetime ago – me caged and in the form of a bird. Grandfather had never expressed a desire to go back, but then again, he rarely expressed desires more complex than hunger. I had long ago given up hope of setting foot in Japan again.

He nodded. “It will be on display soon, and not for very long.” He placed his hands flat on his thighs and leaned forward. “The time for this is now. I have spent years looking for this sword. We may never have another chance.”

“I am to—” I paused, processing his command and what it meant. “Steal it?”

His eyes gleamed and he stared at me unblinking. He took a long slow breath and each moment that passed raised gooseflesh on my skin. “You bring me this wakizashi, and I will give you your freedom.”

***

MY HEAD WAS STILL SPINNING a few days later. I sat through my classes in a daze, and avoided spending too much time with Saxony since even she was bound to notice my distraction. Every night I lay awake praying that Daichi wasn’t playing some kind of sick joke on me, that he wouldn’t retract his offer. I had chosen to walk home alone every day so I could think. If I kept this up, Saxony was going to chase me down.

I scuffed my feet along the sidewalk, kicking chips of ice skit‐ tering down the pavement. This had to be my last solitary stroll home, and thankfully the shock had worn off enough that I thought I could hang out with my friends without alerting them that something big was happening.

Daichi barked at me from the kitchen as soon as I stepped into the house. “Akiko?”

“Here,” I called, taking off my jacket and boots. My heart leapt into my throat and I fought to wrestle my irrational dread back into its place. Just because he had something to say didn’t mean he was going to withdraw the offer. I took a breath, put my hat and mitts into the wooden bin under the coatrack, and pulled on my slippers. I padded down the hall to the kitchen and immediately began to warm up. Daichi kept the heat cranked up no matter the season.

He sat at the kitchen table staring out into our snow-covered back yard. A small cardboard box sat on the table in front of him. He looked at me as I entered.

“Sit.”

I sat, heart pounding in my ears, and pleading inside that he wasn’t about to rescind his offer.

He pushed the cardboard box across the table toward me. “You will need this.” I stifled an audible sigh of relief. He was furnishing me with some kind of necessity, not calling the whole thing off. I slid the box closer and opened it. Unfolding the tissue paper revealed black fabric. Bemused, I pulled out the fabric and held it out. It was so soft and thin that it slipped through my fingers like air. Dangling it by the top, I could finally see what it was. It had short sleeves and the body of it was so short I doubted that it would even come to my knees.

“A bathrobe, Grandfather?” On Georjayna, it wouldn’t even cover her butt. “Uh… thank you.”

I spotted a small bulge in the pocket on the front of the robe. I fished out a pair of thin slippers in the same material. As footwear, they would fall apart within days. I couldn’t help my look of confusion.

“They are one hundred percent silk,” Daichi said matter-of-factly. “Oh?”

He took the robe from me and got to his feet stiffly. He brushed the cardboard box to the side and lay the robe out flat on the table. He spread the arms out in a perfect ‘T’, tucked the slippers into the front pocket and began to roll the robe from the bottom up. Folding it over and over into a stripe of fabric no thicker than an inch, he picked the length of it up and looped it around my neck twice, snug enough that if he’d pulled it any tighter I might have coughed. He tied the ends in a knot and stepped back.

I looked up at him, fingering the odd scarf. Was the old man finally losing his mind? I swallowed and felt the silk tighten. “Grandfather,” I began. “I’m confused.”

“Become a bird,” he said.

When he gave me an order, I could no more hold back the tide than I could prevent myself from executing it. I phased into a small gray chicken, my clothing falling past my small feathered body to the floor. I landed on the edge of my chair and almost slipped off the smooth wooden seat. I squawked and flapped, my claws scrabbling for purchase. The silk loosened from around my neck but it stayed draped around my chicken shoulders.

“Become a bird that can fly,” Daichi barked with exasperation.

I phased into a crow and hopped up on the table, tilting my head at Daichi. The silk robe hung from my neck like an absurd scarf, but I could barely feel its weight.

Daichi opened our back door and a burst of cold air swept the kitchen. “Fly to the ocean and return,” he commanded. “Do not lose the silk!”

I hopped to the edge of the table, hooked my claws over the rim, and took off through the open door. I dropped low toward the ground, picked up a gust of wind and swooped upward. Up and up I spiraled, the silk hanging from my neck in front of my wings. I didn’t feel the cold nearly as much when I was a bird, and the wind increased as I approached the ocean. I swept out over the beach, cawing my plea‐ sure hoarsely at this brief freedom. I circled over the waves and headed back to the house. Well-kept yards covered in snow swept by beneath me as I passed over our suburb.

The back door to our kitchen opened and I slowed down and flew inside.

“Go to your room and become human,” came the next order.

I whooshed past Daichi, landed in the hall, and hopped into my bedroom. I beaked the door closed and phased back into my human form. I stood there naked in front of the full-length mirror, my chest rising and falling as I caught my breath. The silk robe was once again tight around my throat.

Daichi had put my clothes on my bed. I pulled them on and went back to the kitchen where he was once again seated at the table, waiting.

His eyes, deep in their wrinkled folds, dropped to the black silk around my neck. “It stayed,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Still confused?” he asked, folding his gnarled fingers on the table and leaning forward.

“A little.” I sat down across from him. “I understand you want me to have clothing for when I arrive in Japan, but—”

“It will not disappear,” he said, cutting me off. “It will not disappear in the Æther.”

I frowned. I wanted to ask him how he could know that for sure, but I knew what the answer would be. The same it always was, the non-answer.

Daichi leaned forward and patted the back of my hand in a rare moment of contact. He gave me the non-answer anyway. “I was old before I met you,” he said. He got up and walked in his slow plodding way toward the living room where he would wait until our evening meal was ready.

“What do you want for dinner, Grandfather?” I asked. “Besides rice.”

He paused and looked back. Amusement was just a ghost at his lips, but the upward twitch of his mouth was unmistakable. “Chicken.” He disappeared around the corner.

I smiled and untied the knot of silk at my throat. Funny how after so many years together, even under unhappy circumstances, there could still be some kind of humor between us.

***Bonus***

When I was young, the neighbour’s son Toshi used to play tricks on me. He would snatch the sticks from my hair on a windy day, making the long black strands whip around and become hopelessly tangled. He’d drop a toad in my lap and run away laughing as I gagged with revulsion. He’d wait behind our outhouse until I needed to use it and then throw caterpillars in through the moon shaped window. The path I took into the woods to gather plants and mushrooms for my mother wound by his house and he waited in the bushes to jump out at me and set my heart to pounding.

I came to abhor my daily trek which passed by his house so I took great pains to make a new and secret path to avoid falling into his traps. A game of cat and mouse ensued, where Toshi would wait until he knew I was leaving the house and follow me, trying to discover my secret path. I would lead him through the woods, meandering through the swamp, up over the rock slabs, and through the brambles until his father would call for him and he’d have to abandon the chase.

I had begun to feel that I had won when he began to stalk me less and less. Soon weeks would pass without him hounding me and I began to relax. Then I began to miss his attentions, and eventually, thoughts of him faded away completely. Life went on and my duties changed from those of a little girl to those of a young woman. As I began to have just an inkling of the understanding that there was something different about myself and my sister Aimi, I became wrapped up in the secret world inside our own house.

I gathered my herb basket and decided impulsively to take the old path, the one that wandered by Toshi’s house.

The rhythmic sharp sound of chopping wood echoed off the trees and rock slabs. Expecting to find his father, I rounded the bend and their yard came into view. My body became still as my eyes fell on the man wielding the axe, but my mind was a tempest. Broad square hands gripped the wooden handle, thick black hair tied half-back to keep out of his eyes. The high forehead and widows peak reminded me of drawings I had seen of ancient samurai. I could not have stopped myself from staring even if I had been in a crowd. Sweat-slick skin pulled taut over the figure of a grown man. He moved with the grace of someone at home inside himself, not the gangly clumsiness of the boy I remembered. How could this creature be Toshi? Could he have changed this much? What had happened to the boy who used to torture me?

A twig snapped under my foot and he looked up. His eyes fell on me and we gazed at one another. There he was. Toshi. He squinted toward me, the sun in his eyes. It took a moment, but recognition melted the line between his brows and an enormous surprised grin split across his face. He lifted a sweat-drenched arm, seemingly unembarrassed to be caught naked to the waist. “Akiko!” he called, a little out of breath.

I gasped as he dropped his axe and crossed the back yard with an easy stride, his footsteps silent in his fabric boots. He made his way through the trees and into the shade, stopping not far from me.

“I can see you more easily now,” he said. “I almost didn’t recognize you. When did you become a woman?”

“When did you become a man?” I countered, unable to stop the spread of my own grin.

His teak-coloured eyes took me in, the only part of this man who reminded me of the boy I once knew. “But you’re beautiful!” he said.

I could only laugh with delight. Men did not speak to women like this. I was already surprised he’d approached me, as it was custom for young men and women to have a chaperone in order to be together. Apparently, Toshi didn’t care. “And you are bold,” was all I could think to say, as heat flushed my cheeks.

He laughed and it too reminded me of the boy. “We are old friends.”

“Friends? You tortured me to no end when we were young. That was friendship?” I raised my eyebrows and crossed my arms, my basket dangling over my forearm. “I hope we never become enemies.”

He dropped his gaze and chuckled, a black strand of hair falling over his face. “Don’t you know,” his eyes flicked back up to mine, “that’s what boys do when they have a crush?”

I gasped. His boldness took my breath away, flushed my whole body with an unexpected heat. Where had little Toshi gotten his confidence from? My heart swelled, and just like that, he had me. His good-natured lop-sided grin swept my feet out from under me and I knew what I wanted then, more than any Hanta life, I wanted Toshi. “And men?” I asked, breathless. “What do men do when they have a crush?”

His eyes widened in surprise. “I see I am not the only one who has found courage.” He took a step forward and I took a step back, both of us smiling.

My heart pounded like a hammer and everything in me had come alive in a way that it never had before. I never knew these feelings were possible.

“Men go after what they want,” he said, taking a lunge toward me.

I squealed and ran, lifting my skirts as I bolted away from him. My basket discarded and forgotten, I tore through the woods, fueling my legs with Hanta fire. Laughing, we pelted, Toshi hot on my heels. His fingertips would graze my shoulder, my waist, but always I would dodge away. His surprise at my speed delighted me even further. What amazed me even more, I realized, as the trees whizzed by and I scrambled up over the rock slabs and boulders – was that I trusted him completely. The only other man in whose company I felt safe up to that point was my father. Why that was, I could not explain, but it was something I could settle into. I was safe with him.

My heart in my throat and Toshi’s footfalls behind me, I ascended the boulders leading to the rock slab overlooking the coast and Tai Island. It was my favourite place in the world. It might have been more popular only it was so difficult to get to. By the time I crested the last boulder my legs were shaking, my body was as hot as a coal, and my chest was heaving. Toshi finally caught me and swung me around in the sunlight as it beamed down on the huge rock slab. Moss cushioned our footfalls and tiny stones scattered as we kicked them rolling with our slippered feet. The wind picked up tendrils of our hair and cooled my face and neck.

His face was so close to mine and his grin was all for me. I thought I would burst with the pleasure of the moment. Toshi’s chest and shoulders heaved under my hands as he caught his breath, his slick skin sliding under my palms. I had never touched any man this way before, and somehow, it felt so natural. His hot hands closed around my waist and he looked down at me.

“Why did you stay away for so long?” he asked.

“Well,” I brushed strands of hair back from my face, “you were a thorn in my side.” I swallowed and panted, my heart still pounding in the cage of my ribs.

“Akiko,” he said and put his forehead to mine. The sun reflected in one of his eyes and lit it from within, as golden as honey. His hands squeezed my waist. “Tell me you knew.”

“Knew?” I pulled back and gazed at him, palms on his arms.

“Tell me you knew that I loved you. From the moment I first stood near you and was intoxicated by your scent, by your being. I loved you. I love you still.”

My nerves made me laugh, in spite of the seriousness that had take over his face. “My scent?”

His leaned down and put his face next to mine with a soft inhale. Shivers coursed up my spine as he breathed me in. “Like the air after a thunderstorm. No one else smells this way.”

I closed my eyes, letting him hover there. If my mother had seen me she would have been horrified, maybe even ashamed of how wanton Toshi had made me. But I didn’t care. I felt alive, and no one would ever see us here. This was my clifftop, mine and Aimi’s. Now it was Toshi’s, too.

“I had no other way to get close to you, other than to harass you,” he said quietly, his breath grazing my neck. “It was the only way I could have your smell, your smile.”

I laughed and stepped back. “I don’t remember smiling at you, cursing you was more like it.”

“You did smile,” he said, taking my hand as we walked to the edge of the rock slab to overlook the ocean. “You always had a smile for me, even when I was horrible. Tell me I can have that smile for the rest of my life?”

I thought my heart would leap from my chest and into his hands. He was completely irresistible. I could not remember loving him when I was a little girl, but my heart was brimming over with it for him now. It would have been easier to hold back the tide than to say no. So I didn’t. And there, on the rock slab, under the hot summer sun and overlooking the ocean, Toshi held my face and kissed me.