Book : Blood Will Out Author: Jo Treggiari Rating: 3.5 Stars Review: [Spoiler Free] A broken child forged in hell fire. The birth of a psychopath. An aloof protagonist. A suitable victim. This novel piqued my curiosity, and held it for most of the book. The element of who-done-it ever present. There were some areas of improvement that I will go in detail below for the author but overall the book…
The world as he saw it was a concealment mechanism; he didn't carry inside him the constant watchman called conscience or society or God. He lived in two modes, the apparent and the veiled, and in two realms, the opera and the sewer, and he shuttled between them like a genie.
The second chapter of an original story entitled Blood Will Out penned by frostbell and myself is up! frosty has created art to accompany it, including full color pictures, all of which can be found on her blog as well as my own. Look under the “BloodWillOut” tag in my blog and the button over on the right hand side of my blog for everything pertaining to the story, including upcoming chapters and more art!
In this chapter, we meet Kiyoshi, a warrior who is as loyal as he is impassive. His lord has been behaving strangely of late, and we follow his investigation of his ailing mentor to no good end. There's also Kirei, who is everything a kitsune should not be, and a shadowy figure whose existence fluctuates between spectral and horribly real.
Suddenly, the wolf retched. From its mouth, there issued a pale blue mist that shimmered with more than just moonlight. It twisted and fluttered gently in the air for a moment, like gauze teased by wind. The smaller, white wolf appeared rooted to the spot. The mist drifted towards it, and it watched, awestruck, the shimmer magnified in its wide red eyes.
Kiyoshi pulled his cloak tighter against his slight frame, the frame of a boy not yet a man, about eighteen years of age, one would have to guess. Seated in meditation on the frozen river’s bank, he considered the barren landscape, his eyes almost white as the snow that covered it, but with the faintest hint of icy blue. Lord Sato was a kindly man, he thought. He had taken him in as an orphan, raised him to be one of his samurai, and ensured he lacked for nothing. But every day his face grew more sallow and he had begun to give off a strange, metallic odor. He was never himself. By day, he moped in his private chambers, and could not be bothered with matters of state, much less the general administration of his personal estate. Kiyoshi had gladly taken on all of this, but it was not these matters that concerned him. It was the state of his mental stability that was growing increasingly dire.
Kiyoshi was used to Lord Sato’s dalliances at night, during which he took no guard, not even a single trusted samurai like himself. Lord Sato was as strong and capable as any samurai, and insisted that they allow him his nights to himself; he would sleep late into the morning, and that would be that. No one was to ask where he was going or for what purpose. That is how it had been since Kiyoshi was a boy. But recently, the lord had begun to have trouble speaking, as if something beyond his control stayed his tongue. He often looked as if he wanted to speak with Kiyoshi, but could not summon the strength to do so.
Kiyoshi had never disobeyed his lord before. But unlike many samurai, he had no unblinking sense of honor or blind loyalty. Such veneration could get in the way of true justice, he had always thought, should the master lose his sense of honor or loyalty to his subjects. So he had resolved to follow him that night.
He looked up from the river he knew so well, his meditations done for the day. Rarely, if ever, did he truly meditate. He often ended up thinking about all the things that needed doing, even more so, now that his Lord was basically a recluse and Kiyoshi was left to deal with his worldly affairs.
It was dawn on a cold winter’s morning. When Kiyoshi was still young, Lord Sato had opted to live in the northernmost tip of his estate, though Kiyoshi could not fathom why. It had seemed, at least at first, that there were few people here, and even fewer pleasures. Nevertheless, Kiyoshi had come to love the north and the Okuma who had dwelled there for a hundred odd years now, driven from their original homeland in the south. They did not resent Lord Sato, as they often resented visiting nobility. Instead of treating them as political baggage, unruly subjects he had to deal with because no one else would, he treated them like lords of their own land, even if he technically owned it. They let this show of respect be enough of an apology for the pain they had endured at the hands of the invaders from the mainland those many years ago. Kiyoshi himself did not stand on ceremony, and words never came easily to him. The taciturn nobility of the Okuma, who did not need an apology in so many words, was what he deeply admired about them.
As he stretched in the pale light of the rising sun, he heard the rattling of low-level pine branches. He laughed.
“Don’t think you’re going to fool me with that bear cub mirage again.” A tiny white fox emerged from beneath the ground-scraping limbs of a nearby pine tree, its branches heavily laden with snow. Kiyoshi approached it, smirking faintly. “You nearly had me convinced last time that a mother bear would be after my blood, what with her cub following me everywhere. But it was just you. What a laugh.” The fox glowered up at him, but he smiled down at it.. “No love lost, I assure you. Come, I’ve saved some food for you. I’ll take you indoors and get you something warm to wear, so you can eat with me in your human form.” The fox’s hackles raised and it pivoted on the spot and sprinted back for the woods.
“I didn’t mean to offend!” he called after it. “We’ve been doing this for years now. I just thought we ought to properly meet.” The fox hesitatingly trudged back, and for the first time, followed him to the gates of Lord Sato’s compound. “Now, I’ll have to hide you in my cloak.” Again, the fox glowered. “Come, now, do you think everyone here is as friendly toward kitsune as I am? They think you spoil all their milk and cause all the bear attacks.” The fox shot off through the snow. “Don’t be so sensitive, I jest!”
~*~
They finally made their way into the compound and Kiyoshi took the kitsune into his room, a Spartan garret of wood and stone, where he had laid out bear meat and milk for her to eat.
“There’s a screen in the back of the room and some clothes there for you to change into.” The fox trotted behind the screen, and after some rummaging around, emerged in the many layered yukata he had laid out for her. .
Kiyoshi had never seen a kitsune in human form before. He hadn’t even really believed in them until recently. This one was quite young, as he had expected, given that it only had one tail - an enormous, luxuriantly fluffy white thing that mingled with her long, wild hair, a pure, unsullied orange with little variation in it, utterly unlike what one would expect to see in human hair. Her eyes were a bright, golden yellow that glowed steadily in the still faint dawn light. She looked at him, chin stuck out defiantly, and he almost had to laugh. She radiated all the foxfire he knew she possessed, but she was the least intimidating sight he had ever seen, in spite of her fierceness. She was hardly half his height, and exceedingly thin.
“You already know my name. Just call me Kiyoshi, no titles are necessary. What’s yours?”
“Kirei,” she said hesitantly. She appeared almost taken aback that he would speak with her, though he couldn’t imagine why. She forged onward, however. “And don’t think I’ll hide my ears, or hide my tail, or change the color of my eyes around you! I don’t care how weird you think all that is! It’s me, alright? And I like me, so you can just deal with it.”
Kiyoshi laughed, and Kirei scowled. “Very well. It doesn’t bother me.” She stood there, glowering at him. He gestured toward one of the cushions on the floor. “Go ahead and sit. Eat. There’s enough for both of us.” She did, and tucked in heartily.
When she had eaten most of her food, she looked up at Kiyoshi, a bit of grease dribbling over her bottom lip. “Thank you,” she said solemnly. “It’s hard for me to get food this time of year.”
“You’re welcome. Do you not know how to hunt?”
“I do!” she snarled, but her eyes were downcast, and she fidgeted on her cushion, picking at the bones she had assiduously stripped of their meat. “I just...I don’t like being alone. To hunt would mean leaving town often...and I don’t want to do that.”
“I see.” He was silent for a moment, and stared at her thoughtfully. She squirmed beneath the gaze of his strange blue eyes, which she could not meet . “I know you don’t like to hide who you are. But you could stay here, if you did.”
Kirei finally met his gaze, eyes wide. “You’d let me stay here with you?”
“Yes. I’ll talk to my lord. He’s a good man; I’m sure he would let you.”
“That would be...” She cast her eyes about the room, almost as if she felt trapped. “But you can’t ever stop me from acting like a kitsune, if I want!”
“No, I won’t. No one else will, either. I’ll talk to Lord Sato.”
~*~
Sato left, as he did every night, and Kiyoshi did not follow. He had enough skills in tracking that he could afford to wait and put some distance between the two of them. So after a few hours, he set out.
After treading deeper and deeper into the forest through a heavy snowfall, he came to a strange trampling of several long-lived snowbanks that appeared to be far deeper than anything Lord Sato could have done. Had he been overtaken by bandits? But bandits hardly traveled here, it was a harsh land with little to plunder. He followed the tracks, taking care to muffle the swish of his cloak against the snow-covered forest floor. The snowfall, as it always did, muffled much of the noise he made, but he never liked tracking in a snowfall. It cloaked his presence, but it also made him blind to the movements of everything else, filling a white space with white noise that could hide all that stirred in the forest of the night.
He approached the clearing up ahead with caution, for he could discern very little through the falling snow. He reached a good vantage point from which to survey the clearing, obscured beneath the drooping limbs of a rather ancient-looking pine. Two large, amorphous shapes were stirring on the other side of the clearing, blurred by the snow, the smaller one as white as the snow, the larger one pitch black.
“Why won’t you come live with me?” begged the smaller one in a strangely canine whine. “You do not have white fur, like the northern Okami, but I will hunt for you. You will not go hungry. And we will be together.”
“I have other needs, woman,” said the larger one in a sonorous growl that echoed through the whole clearing. “Needs that you cannot fulfill.” There was a long silence.
“Damn it,” said the gruff one, “the child has followed me here.”
Kiyoshi, who had been sitting quiet and still beneath the pine tree, could feel his heart pounding in his throat. He sensed that running away would be futile. He unsheathed his katana, and emerged from beneath the tree.
“Where is my Lord Sato?” he asked the large black shape, still too far away for him to make out.
“He’s not long for this world, child.” The creature’s voice was ragged and cracked, its breathing labored.
“Tell me where he is,” Kiyoshi said levelly, “and I will leave you to die a peaceful death.”
The creature laughed, a contemptuous, tired sound that nevertheless echoed through the whole clearing. “He will die with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s none of your concern.” The creature staggered into the clearing, and Kiyoshi saw that it was an enormous, pitch black Okami, the largest he had ever seen. It was at least as tall as himself, twice over. The wolf collapsed a few feet in front of him, but he did not move. He had fought an Okami once before, and won. There was no reason to believe he didn’t have it in him now.
“I will attack you if you do not tell me where he is.”
“It’s no use. The deed is done. Your Lord Sato has been mostly dead for a long time.” Suddenly, the wolf retched. From its mouth, there issued a pale blue mist that shimmered with more than just moonlight. It twisted and fluttered gently in the air for a moment, like gauze teased by wind. The smaller, white wolf appeared rooted to the spot. The mist drifted towards it, and it watched, awestruck, the shimmer magnified in its wide red eyes.
Then it was convulsing, writhing about such that it kicked up several layers of freshly fallen snow. At the same time, the large black wolf had shrunk, and thinned, and paled until there could be no doubt that it was Lord Sato. Kiyoshi rushed to his side, but the moment he touched the frail corpse of his lord, it had dissipated, dissolved into the same kind of mist that had issued from the wolf’s mouth, rippled in an unseen wind, and disappeared.
Lord Sato was dead. Kiyoshi turned to flee the clearing, but immediately in front of him was an exceedingly tall, lean man in a gaudy kimono, the myriad loud colors of which glinted with a fine golden thread in the moonlight.
“Please, child. Don’t leave yet.”
Kiyoshi froze, his emotional instability rebelling against his warrior’s instinct to flee from a pointless battle that would result in nothing but his own death. The Okami, now in human form, had eyes just the same as his own: a translucent blue-white, iridescent with the reflective retina common to creatures of the night. Never in his life had Kiyoshi imagined he would ever meet someone with such eyes.
But it never did to dwell, and he was stayed by this revelation for but a moment. He ran as swiftly as he could through the forest he knew so well, and the man was soon far behind him.
~*~
Once he reached Lord Sato’s compound, he slipped as quietly as he could into his room and gently nudged Kirei’s shoulder until she woke up.
“Kirei,” he whispered. “We have to go.”
“Why?” she mumbled groggily.
“I’m not really sure, but I feel we must. Please, hide your ears and tail and change the color of your eyes. I don’t want anyone to hurt you just because you’re a kitsune.” She opened her mouth to protest, but she had no energy.
“Oh, alright.” After he had gathered all he could for their departure, he whisked her out the door, swiftly and silently.
“You’re going too fast, Kiyoshi! I’m way shorter than you; there’s no way I’ll be able to keep up.” Kiyoshi had reached the compound entrance, but try as she might, Kirei could not keep up with him. She was so far as to have to yell, but she whispered loudly instead, hoping it would carry through the silence of the night.
He was soon at her side, and without a word, hefted her up and around his torso. “Now hold on with your legs and arms.” Kirei blushed furiously.
“I didn’t mean you had to carry me!”
“Please speak more softly. We need to get out of here as fast as possible.”
“If you say so...”
As Kirei and Kiyoshi set off, a silver-haired Okami watched them go from where he stood beside a pine, one arm draped languidly over a low-hanging branch, the other raised to eye level, so he could examine his bloodied claws in the moonlight. He had already slaughtered most of the men in the compound. He’d go back later, so those who were left would have time to find the bodies, squeal like the swine they were, and frighten themselves half to death, saving his claws half the trouble. That half was the best half, much like the first bite into a fawn not yet weaned from its mother - it was that half that separated predator from prey.
“It does not do,” he said in clear, lilting tones that cut through the still air like the birdsong so foreign to this cold country, “to blaspheme your better nature, my son. Blood will out.”
The first chapter of an original story entitled Blood Will Out penned by frostbell and myself is up! frosty has created art to accompany it, including full color pictures, all of which can be found on her blog as well as my own. Look under the “BloodWillOut” tag in my blog and the button over on the right hand side of my blog for everything pertaining to the story, including upcoming chapters and more art!
Our story begins, like many others, with a young girl lost in a forest. But she is anything but helpless, a bow, two knives, and a sword at her side. On this night, she can either take a life or save it, and her choice will determine the future of realms both spiritual and human.
A piteous howl echoed through the night, and Kaya froze where she stood, afraid to move, but desperate to hide. But then the howl changed from an uncanny, bestial moan to a very human keening somewhere to her right, full of a pain and sadness she had never known. She followed it.
The sickle moon cast its spell in a shallow pool of tired white light beneath her feet. This was the first time Kaya’s foster father and brother had allowed her along on one of their hunting expeditions, and she was lost.
That morning, she had been captivated by the play of the morning sun on the snow. So, while her family slept, she had gone down into the valley, a sea of snow that already undulated and shimmered in the feeble light of dawn. She had stopped to admire every icicle that graced the forest canopy, filtering that light, twisting it into a stream of patterns thrown against the lesser white of the snow, shifting and changing with moods and a mind of its own. She sometimes let herself believe that if she could take hold of either side of those seams of light, cutting into the snow still dull in the predawn hours, she could cast it off to expose the surface of the sun, the source of fire, grandmother earth. Her whole body thrilled with the thought; she longed to see such a thing, to lie down on the surface of that which had given her life and feel what it means to know where one comes from.
But the forest of the night was not the forest she loved, at least not when she was small, and weak, and very much alone. She had wandered so far in her admiration of the day forest that she could not find her way back, and now she crept through the night forest, silent and full of light just like its day sister, but as ominous as the day was full of promise.
A piteous howl echoed through the night, and Kaya froze where she stood, afraid to move, but desperate to hide. But then the howl changed from an uncanny, bestial moan to a very human keening somewhere to her right, full of a pain and sadness she had never known. She followed it.
In a clearing fully exposed to that night’s full moon, the snow was stained with a great pool of blood and a small, naked girl clutching at her leg lay prostrate on its edge. Kaya observed her from the opposite end of the clearing, peeking out from behind a tree. Her hair was the blue-black of the night sky, but the thin, pointed ears that lay flat against her head and the tail between her legs were purest white. An Okami.
“Girl, I can smell you.” Kaya pressed herself against the tree in fear, though the voice she heard was not a threatening one and there was no menace in it. It could have been the voice of any girl from her village, high and warbly like that of a songbird. “Please girl, let me go.” The girl’s leg was caught in one of the bear traps of her tribe, the Okuma. “Please girl...it hurts...” Her voice was growing fainter.
Her mother had been killed by an Okami. The Okami often attacked her people. She had been warned never to approach one, much less aid a wounded one. But this was a girl, just her age. Surely, she could not be so bad as all the rest. Surely, letting her go would be a good thing. She was going to die. She approached.
“You are very brave.” She was close enough now to see her face, pale from loss of blood and wracked with pain, red eyes glazed and dull. Her long, wild hair clung to her skin, slick with sweat. “I never met a human so brave.” Kaya unsheathed her jian and held it to the throat of the Okami.
“One wrong move and it won’t just be your leg you lose, Okami,” she said in a voice far more resolute than she felt. “You must promise me never to come near me or my ken ever again, or I will kill you.” The Okami nodded.
With her other hand, Kaya prized open the bear trap with a hunting knife. “There, now go.”
The Okami extricated itself from the trap and promptly and swiftly transformed, its cherubic child’s face hollowing out and stretching grotesquely into a snout, its arms and legs thinning, lengthening, and bending backwards with a sickening crunch, and the pure white fur covering its entire body.
Kaya faced the wolf, jian at the ready, and stared it down. She tried to seem brave, but her knees were quaking.
“I-If you attack me, then you have absolutely no honor. Now keep your word. Leave, or I will strike.” The wolf leered at her, as if daring her to try. But it turned and slowly limped away.
Kaya set off in search of her family again. She had been walking for hours when she finally found her family’s encampment once again. But where were her brother and father? She called their names as she approached, but there was no reply. The fire had gone cold and the tent had come undone and flapped in the wind, held down by a single stake.
And then she saw them, supine in the snow, drenched in their own blood, and mutilated beyond recognition. She thought of how much the snow-draped earth resembled the surface of the moon. For all she knew, it could be the moon. Or maybe they were on the surface of some celestial ocean, a reflection of the pale sentinel that shone, unflagging, upon the face of grandmother earth. Floating on a sea of chaos, into which she had dragged her family, and in which they had drowned.
