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On the coast, it doesn’t matter who claims to be emperor. Inland matters are meaningless here, where the lash of the waves upon the sand roars louder than the inland wars between lordlings. Power is only given to those who can afford it, after all.
On the coast, the plentiful fish in the sea are a lie, because a fisherman must be careful when he climbs into his boat to appease the gods for safe voyage, and even with a fat offering, the demons still come calling.
How many generations had her village lived under this constant terror? How long had they left cows and fish and even the youngest children of the poorest villagers on the demon bat’s doorstep? Did those pleas even matter at all? Because for all the assurances of the village elders that the attacks were lessened, that the bats did protect them from the feudal lords (who are worse), Shizu did not believe them.
Her father had plucked from his boat, still within view of the shore by a cackling demon, who dragged him into the sky, then dropped him back into his boat, which rented in two from the impact.
Shizu lost her dad and her family’s livelihood in a single instant, on the wings of a single bored demon. It was only through the generosity of the headman (and nights her mother sent her away from their hut when he visited) that they managed to survive. Shizu learned to dig for clams in the moonlight during those nights, using the fish knife her father left her to open them, seeking both the sweet and soft flesh and the occasional pearl.
It was not much, but it was enough to live.
Shizu never forgot the day her father never came back, or the cackling demon who took him from their family.
Then one day her mother disappeared.
Shizu would never know what happened, only that her mother had been sick every morning that week, and when she rushed off to the headman’s house, she never came home.
The demon bats, the headman claimed, had whisked her mother away too, to be with her father.
On the coast, lives are fleeting as seafoam.
So Shizu did what she could. Each and every day, she waded into the most dangerous tide pools, the ones just at the border of the forbidden cove, and she collected and she shucked: cockles and clams and shrimp and fish, everything she could find. She gutted the fish and collected the pearls, and trudged up to the market to sell them.
When the headman offered to watch over her, she demurred. She didn’t like the way he watched her, the way Shizu was sure she remembered as the way that he watched her mother too.
When a demon bat swooped too close to her head, whistling at her, Shizu looked it right in its beady eyes, and she did not look away until she was certain it had finished its sport. She would not show fear of them, like her father did. And she would not let them take her quietly, like her mother did.
Shizu cherished her life, and she would live each and every day that the kami gave her. She enjoyed the solitude of the tidal pools, and the roar of the ocean, and the children who had not yet lived the tragedies that befell those on the coast, shrieking and laughing as they frolicked on the beach.
Someday, Shizu hoped, the world would live up to their laughter. Someday, life on the coast would not be so fragile.
And when the children danced and sang the Sōran Bushi, Shizu giggled and quietly joined in, foisting the nets and hoping for fish and fighting the sea in her dance.
Maybe the sea will hear this song and destroy the demon bats, Shizu thought. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Soon Shizu was singing the Sōran Bushi every morning on her way to the tidal pools, her own personal offering to the kami. Her own personal ritual to keep safe, in hopes that the demon bats would stay away that day.
Little did Shizu know, but the songs and dances had had the opposite effect. At least, for one.
“Thank you, but I am fine.” It was the fifth day in a row Shizu found her path blocked by the thin beard and thinner smile of the headman.
“Now now Shizu-chan, the path to the pools is dangerous. What would we ever do if the bat demons came for you?” He asked, his black eyes as dull as his words were sharp.
It had not escaped Shizu’s notice that his overtures had become more aggressive, seemingly in lockstep with the rounding of her hips and breasts. He made personal trips to the hut her parents left her, claiming to want to look around in case anything needed repair. Or if she wanted the extra rice he picked up from the market. Or had pearls to sell.
“For your wife?” Shizu had asked, keenly aware that whatever good humor the man had forced into his smile drained away at her question.
It was enough that Shizu began to sleep with her fish knife under her pillow.
But at least for the moment, the headman seemed content to harass her when the sun had crested the horizon. As if the night carried with it the threat of the same fate as her father, to be spirited away by the demon bats as a good meal and good sport.
“I trust in the kami,” Shizu lied. “They have seen me safely down this path each and every other day, and I do not believe today will be different.”
“Oh but… today is certainly different,” the headman replied. Something sinister had appeared in the inky blackness of his eyes, something that made Shizu reflexively finger the handle of her knife. “Today the demon bats are on the prowl, looking for beautiful and unspoiled women.”
Shizu had to bite her cheek to keep from trembling. She had to think. The Sōran Bushi would not aid her, and she had long ago been convinced that the kami had abandoned this place, no matter what she said.
Was this the same line the headman had used on her mother?
The guilt and rage of it gripped Shizu’s throat. Her mother, looking into those inky eyes and thinking of her daughter hunched over in the tidal pools, tongue sticking out of her mouth as she worked open clam after clam. Her mother, deciding that it was best to save her daughter by dirtying herself, waiting for the day that the demon bats—
“Is that what you did to my mother?” Shizu snarled, before she could stop the words. “Did you feed her to the demon bats?”
The headman’s face twisted for only an instant before that sickly smile returned to his face. He started walking forward, balling his hands into fists and licking his lips.
It seemed the time for negotiation was over.
Shizu wrapped her fingers around her fishing knife. She would not be able to hold him off, but perhaps if she timed her swipe just so, her slash could leave a mark upon his face, a warning to all those who would come after her that the demons were not always the ones flying on leathery wings.
“Only the wickedest would eat the mother of a child.” The slash from the sky came so quickly that Shizu fell to the ground from its force. Long silver hair streamed from his ponytail, which billowed in the wind with his cape. He wore ornate armor—that of a warrior—in deep tones of red and black. Shizu had not seen his face. Was this the god come to save her? Was this— “And I would know if this one’s mother had been slaughtered by my people.”
Oh.
When he turned around, his violent violet eyes stilled for a moment. He extended one hand toward her, slowly and deliberately, as if each motion was whispering I am not a threat. “Are you alright?”
No! Shizu was not alright! The headman was here and had threatened to despoil her. And her mother had died to the man’s wicked hands. And now? A demon bat was all that was standing between her and the same fate. A demon bat, whose people had killed her father for sport!
Shizu slapped the demon’s hand away and scrabbled up on her own. The headman was already disappearing into the distance, scurrying away from the demon bat as a rat scurries away from a cat.
“I can take care of that trash if you would like me to,” the demon said, disgust at the fleeing headman painting his face.
Shizu wanted to take her fish knife and slash the man’s cheek, to howl at him of her pain—pain that his brethren caused. But she would die the moment of her stroke, and she did not dare think of the retribution that would come to her village.
The only weapon Shizu could wield was her tongue.
“To be carried up into the sky screaming like my father?” She asked. “While your brethren cackle at the sport?” The blood rushed into her ears, fury replacing fear. If Shizu was to die today, the least she could do was speak her mind. “To raid our village and demand children as sacrifices, so that we may hope to see one more day of peace?”
“That’s not—”
“Maybe you could raze our huts and kill our women too, paint the ocean with our blood to remind us that the kami will never save us?”
“I would never—”
“There is a reason we think you monsters.” Shizu’s voice wavered, but she urged herself on. “Because what you have done to us is monstrous.”
The man did not try to interrupt again. He studied Shizu, waiting, in case she had not yet exhausted her rage.
But Shizu could speak no more. The weight of it all finally crashed into her. She would not survive this encounter, even if this bat demon set her free.
Life was fleeting on the coast, after all.
So she mustered up the last of her words, the last of her courage, and spoke one last bit. “At least if you are going to take my life, make it quick?”
“No.”
Shizu could not tell if his answer made her want to laugh or cry. She had hoped at least for a painless death but even that was not to—
But the man was getting down onto one knee, and bowing low in deference.
“On my honor as a guardian of the barrier, prince of the bat demon clan,” he said, before Shizu could make sense of this turn. “We will not take the lives of humans, as long as I draw breath.” When his eyes returned to Shizu’s, she could not look away. Not when something so hard and monstrous had suddenly become so gentle. “I am sorry.”
The man pushed himself back up from the ground, then dusted the sand from his knees. “Though should that man ever threaten you again, I cannot promise that I will not maim him.”
“Why?” Shizu blurted. Gentleness and beauty and protection, from the prince of the demon bats? Who vowed to stop taking the villagers’ lives as if he had the authority to do so? It was all too much.
“Because I enjoy the way you sing,” the man replied. “And one who would sing and smile and dance on her way to a hard day’s work… surely that is someone worth protecting.”
“The children sing and smile and dance too,” Shizu retorted. “Sure they are people worth protecting as well.”
And for the first time, the demon bat smiled, then nodded. “Yes. They most assuredly are.”
Shizu turned away from the man, then continued her journey to the tidal pools. There was still almost an hour before the water returned and covered her hunting ground, and the confrontation of the morning had left her exhausted.
“May I join you?” The man asked, though he did not move to close the distance between them. “At least until you have made it to the pools.”
Shizu thought to ask why, but the spectre of the headman’s black eyes crossed her memory and twisted her stomach.
“Yes.” Was all that she could say.
It did not escape her notice that his violet eyes sparkled at her acceptance. That he bowed before trotting to her side. How he remained close but made a point to avoid looming over her.
“I will never be able to make up for the sins of my brethren,” he said. “But I hope that today is a step away from that old life, toward something new.”
“Then I hope that you can truly keep your promise,” Shizu replied, then she foisted up her yukata and stepped into the pool. It was time to get to work.
“So do I.” Shizu belatedly realized that she enjoyed his gentle smile. He bowed and turned to head back up the path, back toward the village, but then he paused. “Would you be agreeable if I escorted you to and from this pool this evening as well?”
There was only one possible answer.
“Yes.”
But she found, this time, she did not mind so much.
Artwork commission by heavenin--hell