The Sword of Kaigen

by M.L. Wang

She had enjoyed the vague fantasy of raising powerful, forward-thinking young women with the courage to amount to more than their mother, but it was just that: a fantasy.

Misaki had long since let go of the idea that she could raise her children the way she wanted—or that they were even her children at all. Her sons were Matsudas first and foremost. Their sole purpose was to grow to be powerful warriors, like their father before them, and his father before him. They belonged to the Matsuda house, as she did.

“You’re not a disappointment.” “What?” “I said, you’re not a disappointment. You couldn’t be if you tried.”

My family tried my cooking exactly once and then decided they’d rather live.”

“And look at that!” She poked a finger into Misaki’s cheek. “What?” Misaki put her hand to her face, thinking maybe there was a piece of rice stuck to it. “You’ve got dimples!”

What Setsuko didn’t understand was that this unfamiliar creature—this fearless, ridiculous woman who ran fast and played with swords—was an echo from a time when Misaki’s whole life had been happy.

Misaki had spent years trying to belong with these people. They weren’t like her friends from her school days. They weren’t scrappy visionaries like Elleen, or geniuses like Koli, or unstoppable forces of energy like Robin. They would never change the world, nor understand why someone would want to, but they loved her. She could laugh with them, and that was enough. There were days Misaki could convince herself that it was enough.

“Tajakalu may be able to use their physical strength to throw a projectile,” Yukino Sensei said, turning back to his class, “fonyakalu may be able to use their nyama to push against one. Our nyama is the projectile. When a weapon is made of ice, we can control it down to the molecule. As jijakalu, we are the only race of theonite who can fight with a solid weapon that is truly an extension of the self.”

‘there are a million ways to tell the same story. Our job as jaseliwu is to find the one the listener needs to hear. Not necessarily the one that makes them the happiest or the one that gives them the most information, but the one they need to hear to do what they need to do.’

“Because I like you!”

“If I think your life is in danger, I will kill for you.”

“Most strong things are rigid. If you are water, you can shift to fit any mold and freeze yourself strong. You can be strong in any shape. You can be anything.”

“It will all be worth it when you hold your child in your arms,” her father had said. “It will be worth it when you watch them grow.” And Misaki had believed them. Not because it made any sense. Because she had to. Because if she didn’t believe it was worth it, then what had she done?

Though their skin was touching, they might as well have been a galaxy away from one another.

Eventually, she resigned herself to the idea that she was nothing more to him than a vessel, a womb to carry his sons—but that was alright. It would all be worth it when she held her child.

So, she forced down the tears, smiled her sweetest smile, and held the infant closer, even as the feel of him made her want to shudder and retch. She forced herself to love him.

She didn’t realize that the only thing more painful than bearing another Matsuda son would be failing to do so.

Something in Misaki was dead after that day. She no longer saw her husband or Mamoru as they passed through the house around her. Every night, Takeru clinically opened her kimono, pushed her down, and lay with her. He put another baby in her, and she lost that one too.

“My marriage wasn’t like yours, Setsuko. I’m not here because my husband loves me. I’m here to give him sons.” “What are you? A baby dispenser?” Setsuko laughed, scrunching up her nose.

“Why don’t you try taking responsibility for the things you can control instead of the things you can’t?”

“I like how I can feel the sun simmering on the horizon even before it comes into view. I like the moment it lights up the fog and then burns through it. That brightness reminds me that there’s a world beyond this mountain, beyond Kaigen. No matter how cold the nights get here, the sun is rising somewhere. Somewhere, it’s making someone warm.”

You learn over time that the world isn’t broken. It’s just… got more pieces to it than you thought. They all fit together, just maybe not the way you pictured when you were young.”

“You know, Mamoru… you’ll be a man sometime soon. But just for today, let me be your mother, and tell you in all my motherly certainty that everything is alright. The world is whole. You are on the right path. Everything is going to be alright.”

“If it came to it, I would have killed without a second thought. If it was to save Robin, I would have killed as many people as I needed to.”

“He’s…” Warmth. Hope. The sun burning through the fog. “A

You just lectured Mamoru about not being strong enough to fight through his doubt. You’ll beat your son into the ground, but you can’t be bothered to fight for yourself?

There were letters that should have come that conspicuously never made it into her hands. She already knew what most of them would say. Elleen would stiffly express less sadness than she really felt before saying that she respected Misaki’s judgment. Master Wangara would tell her to look out for herself. Koli would go on a tirade that started out making sense before devolving into ramblings on the nature of human ambition and free will. And Robin… well, she tried not to imagine what he might have written. It hurt too much. She could have objected—and if she’d really wanted to, found a way to get to the letters before Takeru did—but in a way, it was a kindness. It made it easier to forget the life she had left behind… or at the very least, push it to the back of her mind.

In a breath, the rage of fifteen years filled her chest, lifting her chin and pulling her shoulders back. “I’m taking the boys.”

And with those three syllables, she was certain for the first time that her husband could feel an emotion. He could hate.

“No!” Setsuko screamed as the roaring column descended on her family’s village. “Wait! Wait!”

His eyes were squeezed shut like he could feel every drop of her pain, like he could take it all into his own chest if he only willed it hard enough.

“Face the enemy?” Chul-hee said incredulously. “I don’t know if you noticed, Headmaster, but the enemy is a tornado. What are you going to do?”

Rank and file Ranganese troops wear yellow. Their elite fighters wear black. If you see yellow, you stand a chance. If you see black, I want you to run.

Sorry, Kaa-chan. Mamoru stepped into the striking zone.

She could still feel Mamoru’s shoulders sliding from her fingers, the moment she let him go. Because he was a warrior. And a part of her understood that there was nothing crueler than denying a warrior the fight he was born for.

Misaki was just the opposite: a weak, deceitful ambush predator who rarely gave her victims the dignity of a clean fight. Because in a clean fight, she would lose.

The dragon killer ripped the blade free and Mamoru watched his own insides spill from his body. Reality overcame him like river waters breaking through the last of winter’s ice. I’m dead, he realized with chilling clarity. I’m dead.

Why would you do that? she wanted to scream, to shake him. Why would you do that? But Hiroshi was only five. He had only done what he had been taught by his teachers, his distant father, and his monster of a mother. They had created a little boy who was ready to give his life to kill his enemies. A true Matsuda. Misaki’s head dropped onto Hiroshi’s tiny shoulder. The monster crumbled and she was just a woman, just a mother who had failed her son.

A decade later, a fifteen-year-old Hiroshi would become known as the youngest swordsman ever to master the Whispering Blade. What the world would never know, was that he was the second youngest.

Alone on the mountainside, a Whispering Blade caught the last rays of a dying sun. It gleamed once, pointed skyward, as its first and only victim hit the snow. Then, its work done, the sword fell to mist. The sun sank to the sea.

Wistfully, she thought of all the things she could have done to him before he died, how many times she could have stabbed him, how many pieces she could have cut off... but no amount of violence would heal Hyori.

“A life of dangerous adventures might seem worth it now, when you are young and seemingly invincible, but one day, you will have children, and you will not want that life for them.”

Robin was walking away? Robin was walking away. Misaki opened her mouth to call after him—Come back! Come back! Please, Robin! Take me with you! But no sound came out. The breath had frozen in her chest.

Why did he walk away? an agonized voice screamed through Misaki. He’s Robin. Robin saves everyone. Robin never leaves a friend behind. Why did he walk away?

Why had she expected him to read her and react like a man? The answer lurked, unwelcome: because you’re too afraid to do it yourself. You are a coward, Misaki. If she wasn’t woman enough to fight her own battles, then what right did she have to Robin’s help? How could she expect him to save her when she wasn’t willing to lift a finger to save herself? What had she thought Robin was going to do anyway? Fight the Whispering Blades and the rest of the mountain and then whisk her away? That wasn’t within his ability. He had never had any power to change this situation... only she had. And she had been too weak to make it happen.

If some part of her second son had ever truly been a child, it was gone now.

She wished she could feel something... anything other than the inevitability of each step down, down toward the end of her world.

In her mind, Misaki had compared the bomb shelter to Hell. But this—this clarity of stillness—was worse. The bizarre thing about Misaki was that she could be at home in Hell.

The first time Misaki had held Mamoru, as a tiny baby, she had hated the feel of his jiya simply because it reminded her of his father’s. It had made her want to retch and recoil. Now she reached for it, her fingers grasping and senses straining for the smallest trace—but of course, there was nothing. The life force that had made him Mamoru had departed, on its way to a different realm of existence.

she wished, from the depth of her aching chest, that her claws could pull a life back to the Duna as easily as they could tear one out of it.