Late Summer, Early Spring by Patricia Correll

Author:Patricia Correll [Correll, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

“HAVE YOU confronted the demon before, Uncle?”

Iwata slackened his pace, curious to hear the answer. He glanced over his shoulder, but Hiroshi’s head was turned, his loose hair hiding the scar on his temple. “Not since the night we chased it away from your father. I’ve seen it twice. Twice in eight years.”

Bitterness weighed heavily in his voice. A frown settled over Iwata’s face. He strained to hear over the crunching of his feet in the undergrowth.

“What’s it like?”

Iwata’s frown deepened. Couldn’t Daigo hear the hard edge of pain in Hiroshi’s voice? He answered instead. “The size of a bear, white all over but for the tips of its tails. It has a broken fang, and it’s missing a toe now, thanks to the prince.”

“It’s evil,” Hiroshi said flatly. “It toys with humans. It never needed Prince Narita’s life force. It played with us like a cat does a mouse, tormenting us for its own pleasure. It killed your mother for no reason but its own amusement.”

Daigo fell silent. Iwata turned back to the path he was forging. Hiroshi was right—the thing was evil. Iwata had felt it himself. The fox had sunk its teeth into his neck and left no scars, but sometimes he still felt the pressure of its jaws in those rare minutes when he was alone and had nothing else to think about.

Sunlight flooded his vision, and Iwata paused, blinking. He’d emerged from the trees. Fool. Pay attention!

He glanced around quickly. Beyond the tree line lay a strip of land covered in yellowed grass as tall as Iwata’s chest. Past the tangle of grass lay a village, small houses of weathered wood scattered like game pieces dropped by a giant child. Farther away Iwata saw a glittering blue line: the sea, darker beneath the rich blue of the sky. The air was heavy with the smell of salt. Iwata squinted, seeking movement, but the village appeared deserted.

The others came up beside him. Daigo grinned. “We have it trapped. Foxes are land spirits, they can’t cross water.”

Iwata remembered how a priest had sprinkled sea salt around Prince Narita, hoping to confuse the creature. The seven-tailed fox had scattered the salt as if it were dust.

Hiroshi seemed to be thinking the same thing. “I wouldn’t count on that.”

They approached the village slowly. Three travel-worn men could easily be taken for bandits by nervous peasants. As they drew near the first house, a ramshackle little rectangle whose boards were weathered smooth and gray, Iwata smelled something else in the salty air: the pervasive stink of fish.

A sharp twinge of pain in Iwata’s thigh nearly buckled his knee. It was where the dagger scar marred his leg, a spot that sometimes ached but never hurt this badly. Hiroshi glanced at him. An instant later pain flooded Iwata’s neck where he’d been bitten. With his good arm, he reached out and steadied himself against the wall. The boards were almost soft beneath his hands. The burning lanced deep into his muscles;

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