'Flame of the Ocean' - Chapter X
Kasumi was never sure when it happened.
She knew she came free from Father’s coils as soon as he raised the globe. They had slackened then; he had let her go. She’d pulled away from him, from all of them, as far as she could while keeping a view of the globe. With Denko tight in her hands, Kasumi watched Satoshi cross the ice, taking pleasure in Father’s roar when he made it. She was surprised, too, when Sayuri and Hikari joined her in a sigh of relief once Satoshi reached the mountain. But when the blood came off onto the mountains, Denko cried, Namika gasped, and Mother and Father laughed. Maybe that was the fury, that laugh.
The passion may have come from seeing Satoshi claim the last pearl, or find a quick way down the mountain, or his refusal to fall off his feet even as Father kept strengthening the wind in the room. But when the ice broke – that, Kasumi was sure, was the need. She didn’t remember leaving the throne room, just that she found herself racing through the water to reach the room in time. She was still herself when she put Denko in a bubble, still herself when she hit the lake with a chill in her chest.
Then she saw Satoshi, floating in the black, and she was a dragon.
It was nothing like shedding her tail to come onto land. That was no matter at all, as simple as cutting her hair. The dragon change was an eruption, of fire within and knives without, the greatest pain paired with a glorious shot of hot power from her heart out into each limb. In the dragon’s form was the greatest sense of freedom and kinship with the sea she had ever known, and all the heat she could ever want and need present in her very breath. The sense of size, too – to be so huge, and still twist and write and slink and roll as gracefully as any sea eagle flying in the air – to be able to scoop up a friend as if he were a feather – it was swimming as she had never known it. And when she cast the dragon aside, and became herself again to look over Satoshi in the hall, it was a great collapsing. Fire and power rushed away from her, but they left behind a wonderful, tingling peace that lingered under her skin. If it were only easier to do, thought Kasumi, I would go back and forth from these forms every day.
The seal she had meant to guide Satoshi through the room of ever winter was with them. Kasumi set Satoshi on its back, put a hand on the seal’s neck, and led them both down the hall. Satoshi’s hands were caked in old blood, and all the color was gone from his skin. Denko popped his bubble and returned to his master’s hair. He swam and crawled all through it as if that would restore him. Satoshi said nothing, but he smiled foolishly at Kasumi and held the pearl out like a prize. She shook her head and pushed the pearl back against his chest. Through the windows, clear flat shafts of pale yellow cut through the aquamarine water.
“It’s daytime back home,” said Satoshi, his voice a whispered rasp.
“It broke just before we turned you over,” said Kasumi. “You found it and made it out in time. That’s all you needed to do.” And the dragon king can’t say a word to that. Not now.
When they came to the throne room, all was bedlam. The squid were scattered everywhere, their light shining every which way. In one beam of blue, Kasumi saw Namika, huddled close but screaming at one another for the first time in their lives. In another beam, Mother vented her wrath on the salmon, the yellowfin, the school of seahorses, and the narwhale. And in thousands of blue beams there were glimpses of Father, the great and terrible dragon king of the East Sea, twisting and writhing all through his throne room, all of this throne room, his roars overpowering everyone else.
None of them saw Kasumi and Satoshi’s return. When Satoshi cleared his throat and held up the pearl, he went quite unnoticed, even when Father’s great head sped past them. Kasumi patted her seal’s head, and it was its ringing bark that brought quiet to the throne room and eyes to them.
The squid took their posts back along the walls. Mother trembled, but she said no words, as if all her shouts and cries had been spent with the heralds. Father’s rage also seemed beyond words. Namika was no more – it had shattered, for good and all, and in its place were three women of three minds, though two were clearly of accord on something the other loathed.
Under all their eyes, Satoshi still smiled, and still held the pearl high. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a harsh rasp, so soft even Kasumi couldn’t make it out. Kasumi counted that in their favor.
“You commanded,” she said, addressing Father for Satoshi. “You commanded that Satoshi set foot in that room alone, find the pearl alone, and leave alone. Tell us, Father, in what way he broke your terms.”
The dragon king’s whiskers jerked violently, and his tail cut through the water. “Daybreak has come to the world above,” he growled.
“Just now,” said Kasumi. “Not when he left the room. Tell us how he broke your terms.”
“How did he call you?” the dragon king demanded. “By what art – by what right – did he command one of the dragonspawn in our own palace, our own ocean, against our will? We will have it out before we have your Satoshi served us as our supper, before we hand you over to the merchant as we so ordered. This is no pearl fairly found. Your deceit has doomed you both, obstinate child, but the doom will be worse for you if you do not tell us his command.”
It was all in her again, the fury and passion and need. The heat and the knives and the eruption all filled her again, and Father’s snarling face high above her was now level with her own, and her coils and talons fought with him for the room.
“Command?” Kasumi roared. “You saw all in that room, Father – what command was given that I would hear and obey? I’ve obeyed no commands tonight. I’ve defied a few, of my own will, but obeyed none.”
“You admit to deceit in this game, then?” Mother swam to Father’s side, her long hair a mess of black kelp sprawled out across the water.
“I’ll admit nothing to those who bent the game against my friend at every turn.”
“Deceiving your folk, sullying our honor, defying our contracts – do you forget who you are, child?”
“An ill-made, ungrateful creature unworthy of the dragon’s blood,” Father sneered.
“You have asked me this once,” said Kasumi, “and I tell you the same as then – I remember who I am. I am Kasumi, flame of the ocean, daughter of the dragon king, and a true dragon now in my own right, who was never forbidden to help and save my suitor.”
“Suitor?” Satoshi was still on the seal’s back, almost passed out across it. He hadn’t reacted to Kasumi’s change, to anything in the chamber; he just seemed too tired. But he stirred at this, his face scrunched in puzzlement. But there was no time to explain. Kasumi snaked her tail around his shoulders and the seal’s rump, and held them tight as she coiled around them. Father recoiled to his throne, taking Mother on his back as she drew her sword. The two dragons slunk low, each awaiting the other’s strike.
Father’s claws clicked along the arms of his throne. Kasumi’s hackles rose. They both lunged, but before they could come together, a flurry of black and blue and sea foam blew up between them. Hikari tread the water, facing Father and Mother.
“Father, Mother,” she began. She spoke gently, and as melodically as ever, but there was a power there now Kasumi had never heard before. “Whatever schemes my sister made, they have been borne out. You can’t bend her to your will now, if ever you could. Let her have her choice of a suitor. You could grant that to one of your children, at least.”
“What do you all mean, suitor?” Satoshi whispered, but Kasumi shushed him. Father and Mother’s masks of rage had both fallen. Kasumi doubted Hikari had ever challenged them like that before. “We except of her what we had from you,” Father growled softly. “And that merchant –”
“Is beholden to the shogun.” Sayuri came alongside Hikari. “The shogun is my good father. Whatever you would have of this marriage you planned, I am sure I can get it for you, and spare our sister.”
Father and Mother pulled away from Sayuri and Hikari. They suddenly looked very young, and foolish, and doubtful. They never saw the break in Namika, Kasumi realized. This whole night, the change of the married years – they missed it all.
Father and Mother, and Sayuri and Hikari, all looked to Ayako now. She tread water alone with her tail, her arms closed tight around her body. She looked back and forth from her parents to the sisters who had been one with her, and then she looked to Kasumi. There was a tremble in her lip. Slowly, as if there were a pull against her, she swam over to Father and Mother. Sayuri and Hikari swam to Kasumi’s side.
In the water, ordinary tears cannot be seen. Each of Kasumi’s sisters had a hand to their eyes, and Mother gave great heaving sobs, but there was no trace of tears. But from Kasumi’s eyes – from Father’s eyes – the quicksilver tears of a dragon poured out and dissipated in the sea. We are all lost to one another, Kasumi realized. It was somehow all the more painful for there being so little left to lose.
Mother whispered something in Father’s ear. Father closed his eyes and sighed. “The four pearls are fairly found,” he whispered. “Your Satoshi has won his challenge – and so have you, we wager. But you are free to wed this peasant, and to find your own realm in the seas as a dragon. But these waters – this palace – we would never see you in again. Now go.”
He brought his head into his coils. Mother, still on his back, followed him in. Ayako spared Kasumi one last look before she turned her back. Sayuri and Hikari patted Kasumi on either side of her dragon’s head, and Satoshi gently caressed the tip of her tail.
When Kasumi turned away from her family, she never looked back. She kept the dragon form as she urged Satoshi onto her back, left the throne room, and sped out into the courtyard and up and away from the palace, for the last time.