Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Milagroso

Originally published by Tor.com

It’s late afternoon on the eve of the Pahiyas Festival when Marty finally drives into Lucban. The streets are filled with people congregating outside their houses, stringing up fruits and vegetables shaped into chandeliers. Entire roofs are covered in kiping, leaf-shaped rice wafers, their colors flared to dazzling by the slowly setting sun. Someone has tacked poster paper all over the preschool wall, and children with paint smeared on their cheeks are making trees full of hand-shaped leaves. Vendors have already set up shop, prepping for the onslaught of tourists.

Most side streets are blocked, so Marty has to drive through the town center, which is the usual explosion of propaganda—posters of the mayor and councilors alternate with banners for washing detergents, Coca-Cola, Granny Goose Chips, and the latest summer-special, MangoMazings—exactly like the real thing! Marty ignores these as he navigates the still-familiar streets. They didn’t leave Manila for this.

They left Manila to see a miracle.

Inez is stirring awake, though she keeps her eyes shut. She groans, shifts, and slaps her thigh, impatiently. In the rearview mirror, Marty can see Mariah’s head snapping back and forth to match the car’s rhythm, her mouth hanging open. JR is also asleep; the seat belt is tight across his hunched chest, making him look smaller than he is. Sunlight beams through the car, shading half his face yellow.

“Is this Lucban, hon?” Inez has finally stopped forcing sleep. She yawns and stretches her arms.

“Yep.” Marty tries to sound more awake and cheerful than he feels.

Inez looks out the window. “How colorful,” she says, as they drive past a house with a giant Ronald McDonald stationed by the doorway, waving his hands. Her tone makes everything seem gray.

Marty stands by the door, wiping his palms on his shorts. Looking up, he sees five strings of kiping dangling from the second floor balcony. Even their ratty papier-mâché carabao is out, gazing forlornly at the street with its one remaining eye.

Inez is looking for a spot with better reception; he can hear her muttering in the distance. The kids are unloading their luggage.

“Tao po,” Marty calls. When no one replies, he enters, heading for the living room. “Manong? Mang Kikoy? You there?”

He hears a door creak open, then the slap of slippers as Mang Kikoy shuffles into view. His skin is wrinkled and brown as tree bark. The mole on his cheek has grown even more colossal, but otherwise he is the same old Mang Kikoy who has maintained this house, Marty’s ancestral home, since forever.

“Boy? Is that you?”

“Yes, manong.”

“Just in time, just in time. Where is your family?”

“Outside,” Marty says, feeling a twinge of guilt. It’s been a little too long, perhaps, a little too late—but once he married Inez, and they had Mariah, he’d felt compelled to remain in Manila. He liked his job at San Miguel Corp., and he always believed that Lucban was near enough that they could visit anytime. As a result, they never did. To ignore these thoughts, he asks, “I noticed the décor. Are we part of the procession this year?”

“No, but I thought it might be good to decorate the house anyway. You never know.”

Mariah materializes at Marty’s elbow, dragging her duffel bag. “Dad, it’s so hot,” she says, fanning herself.

Mang Kikoy beams at her and moves forward to take her bag.

“Please don’t—it’s heavy.” Marty turns to his daughter. “Mariah, this is your Manong Kikoy. Show him you can carry your own bag, please.”

“Hello po,” she says, straining for politeness as she lugs her bag towards the stairs.

“Hello, hija.” Mang Kikoy grins wider as she slouches past. His teeth are a gray, sickly color. “Well, Boy, I must go back outside; the kiping is cooking. Let’s talk again later.”

“Sure,” he says. Mang Kikoy has already turned to go when JR rushes past, arms held stiffly away from his body, making fighter-jet noises.

“Wee-oop! Wee-oop!” He yells. “I’m attacking you! Propeller BLAST!”

He makes swiping motions at Mang Kikoy, who laughs. “So this is your little kulilit. Has he ever tasted a miracle before?”

Marty’s throat dries. He swallows. He doesn’t ask, Is it true, manong? Is it real? He doesn’t say, It’s not right, who knows what eating those things can do. Instead he puts a hand on JR’s head, to stop him from airplane-ing, and says, “No, never.”

Dinner is at Aling Merrigold’s. Inez fusses over their clothes and hair, and asks Marty twice whether they shouldn’t have brought some pasalubong from Manila. The children are sleepy, already bored. Marty promises that tomorrow will be more fun.

On the way to dinner they walk past increasingly extravagant houses. One has a robo-rooster attached to its roof, where it cacaws ear-splittingly every five minutes. Another has The Last Supper rendered on its walls, made with colored straw and palm leaves. Still another bears the mayor’s face, fashioned out of kiping, all across the roof. Two giant animatronic carabaos are lowing by the main door, while a life-sized San Isidro stands on a rotating platform. He holds a spade in one hand and a sheaf of corn in the other.

“Farmer Jesus!” JR exclaims.

“That’s not Jesus, you idiot.” Mariah snaps a picture with her phone. “Who’s this, Dad? I want to tag it properly.”

“San Isidro Labrador. Patron saint of farmers and peasants.”

“That’s Mang Delfin’s house,” Mang Kikoy adds. “This year, the procession goes through this road, and he’s determined to win. He’s got a pretty good chance, don’t you think?”

Marty nods, although the house speaks for itself. The Pahiyas Festival has always been a chance to show off one’s home, but now the stakes are even higher. These homeowners want to be chosen for the miracle. They want to boast of a natural harvest, and have jealous neighbors beg them for a taste.

Aling Merrigold’s house at the far end of the main street is simpler, though she has deployed her trademark rose pattern that no one has been able to copy. Vivid fuchsias and yellows adorn the typically drab white walls. She welcomes each of them in by smelling their cheeks.

“Martino!” She coos. “I haven’t seen you since you were a young man! But how old you look now!” In a softer tone that everyone still hears, she adds, “You’ve grown quite the belly!”

“Thank you for having us,” Marty says. “You look healthy as always.”

She laughs with delight then swats him on the shoulder, the flab of her arms jiggling.

“This is Inez, my wife,” Marty says.

“Well, but you look so very young for Martino!”

“Oh, not at all,” Inez demurs.

“And what do you do, Inez?”

“I’m a merchandiser for Rustan’s.” She tips her chin up, just a fraction.

“Wonderful,” Aling Merrigold says.

“And these are my children.” Mariah and JR give her halfhearted hellos, and she smacks her lips at them.

“And Mang Kikoy, of course, how good to see you,” Aling Merrigold says. Mang Kikoy smiles, then shuffles off to eat with the rest of her household staff. She leads Marty and his family to the dining room, babbling the whole time: “I can’t believe it’s been four years since your father died. I spent lots of time with him after your mama died, you know. And he did talk about you such a lot—how he was so proud of you, and how he missed you so much! But then I can’t blame you, my dear; it’s so hard to get time off with the economy like this, no? And then you have these two children. So healthy!” She beams at the kids. “So healthy! You feed them well! Do you get plenty of free food from San Miguel? You still work there, di’ba?”

“Yes. He was recently promoted to Procurement Manager,” Inez says. “Extra vacation time is one of the perks, so we were finally able to take this trip.”

“Is that so?” Aling Merrigold draws a dramatic breath. “Well, I’m not really surprised. When San Miguel created that breakthrough formula for the Perfect Pork—wow. I said to myself, This is it, this is the future! And you know, I was right. I mean, the lechon we’re having tomorrow…and you will eat here tomorrow. I insist. After all the events, of course. My balcony has a great view of the fireworks!…What was I saying? Oh yes, tomorrow’s lechon is Perfect Pork, which truly is perfect.”

“I’m very glad to hear that,” Marty says.

They walk past a sliding door into the air-conditioned dining room. Aling Merrigold gestures for them to sit. “This dinner is mostly from San Miguel, as well—the roasted chicken is, for sure. This is your Spam, and I think the bangus relleno is yours, too. Pero the cake is from Gardenia. And the chicken cordon bleu is by Universal Robina, because I’m sorry, their cheese is better than yours, you know? Anyway, let’s eat.”

She says grace, and they dig in.

Marty takes a bite of the roasted chicken. It’s delicious. He feels a swell of pride. He helped make these things. Not directly—that was the research team’s job—but he handled most of the exports and imports that provided the raw materials for their meats. After the lockout with China he had shifted grudgingly to more expensive vendors in Vietnam, only to realize that their bio-plasticine millet (BPM) adhered to flavorants more easily, and could be molded into more convincing shapes. Chicken and tuna, in particular, could be replicated using Vietnamese BPM for a cheaper unit cost, and San Miguel was quickly able to launch a new line of canned goods, labeled: More nutritious. Extra-delicious!

People still say it doesn’t beat the real thing, but Marty thinks it comes pretty damn close. They’ve finally reached an era when neither Mariah nor JR will incur a health risk from their diet; when people don’t need to fret about foodborne illnesses; when it’s conceivable, if the government gets its shit together, for people below the poverty line to have three meals a day.

“Has the Department of Health decided on a budget for its feeding program yet?” Aling Merrigold asks.

“No,” Marty says. “I hear they’re working on it.”

Aling Merrigold rolls her eyes. “They’re always working on it.” She takes a sip of Coke. “Still, I can’t pretend I’m thinking about anything except tomorrow. You haven’t seen it live, but the moment when San Isidro makes his choice and the produce becomes—you know, natural—it’s wow. Talagang wow.”

The news reporters said the same thing, when the first miracle happened during Pahiyas three years ago. No one believed the sensational coverage on TV Patrol at first, but then the owners of the winning house started selling chunks of food as proof: a bite of real corn, a handful of real green beans, a cluster of real juicy grapes. The reporters showed the old church’s statue of San Isidro in the town square, surrounded by people bursting into tears as they bit into their first unsafe food in years. It was ridiculous. Marty remembers thinking, Why is everyone so hung up on this? Why is everyone freaking out?

He remembers thinking, It can’t be a miracle, because we’ve already INVENTED the miracle.

What are you doing here, then? Something inside him asks. He recalls the twist in his gut, the saliva filling his mouth, as he watched an old woman nibble on a real banana, weeping wretchedly.

This is home, another voice that sounds more like him insists. I just wanted to see the fiesta.I wanted the kids to see.

He pauses over his next forkful. “You don’t think it’s—you know, a hoax, or something?”

“Ay naku, no, never! You’ll understand when you see it,” Aling Merrigold says. “You don’t even need to taste it. It’s the smell, the color, the everything. I mean, the mayor tried to keep it from spreading, played it up as airbrush and fake imports, but there’s no denying it. Really, how long naman can you lie without shame? Last year, I shelled out for a few pieces of camote—that’s my favorite, you know?—and when I ate it, Diyos ko, it was so good.”

“I see.” Marty licks his lips. “Well, it’ll be fun to watch.”

Aling Merrigold nods and swallows a spoonful of milkfish relleno. Marty watches her, satisfied. It doesn’t matter that the milkfish is made of the same thing as the chicken, the rice, the vegetables. They look different, taste different, and have the same high nutritional content. They’re better for everyone.

Mass the following morning is at 6:00 a.m., which causes much groaning. They manage to make it through the church doors in time for the second reading. The priest is particularly zealous, exhorting everyone to give thanks for their gathering together as one community, and for the bountiful harvest that San Isidro—“and our sponsors San Miguel Corp., Universal Robina, Golden Arches, and Monde Nissin”—have provided. The people of Lucban are restless, beaming at each other as they exchange signs of peace. Only the image of San Isidro remains calm, already primed in a float for the beauty pageant winner to carry him in later.

After mass there are a few hours left before the procession, so they decide to explore the town. Stalls selling woven buri hats, fans, handbags, and little straw birds are interspersed with old ladies on fold-out stools, hawking rice cakes and empanadas. Inez haggles over a bundle of hats. Mariah picks out keychains for her friends. JR drops the buko juice he’s slurping and it bursts on the concrete, leaving a slushy puddle that nobody minds. Inez tsks, and Mariah wonders loudly when the procession will start. They each have a serving of pancit habhab on banana leaves.

Marty remembers not caring much about the actual Pahiyas Festival as a child. He was more interested in the preparations leading up to it. He would squat next to Mang Kikoy as the old man ground soaked rice, until it was pale and liquid as milk. Mang Kikoy would stir the wet rice, divide it into shallow buckets, then mix in the coloring: blue and yellow to make apple green, red and blue to make dark pink. Then he would dip a large kabal leaf in the mixture, as a mold for the kiping, and hang it so that the excess coloring dripped. To finish he would cook them over a charcoal grill, while Marty ate the rejected attempts and recited random facts he had learned at school.

Marty didn’t watch the kiping preparation yesterday. Something about the BPM Mang Kikoy was using instead of rice made Marty feel weird. It might have been misplaced nostalgia, and he knew that was a useless feeling.

JR, however, had watched and reported to Marty after: about how he had eaten some of the leftovers and they tasted kind of funny, kind of like nothing, but Mang Kikoy said it was made of rice so that was probably normal, right, Dad?

“Kiping has no taste,” Marty said, laughing. “I mean, rice itself has barely any flavor.”

“But Mang Kikoy said the real foods in the fiesta taste awesome, and if I can eat a fruit or veggie from the winning house tomorrow, I’ll understand what he means!”

“Oh, did he say that? Those things are really expensive. And they’ll probably make your tummy ache. Or make your teeth gray, like Mang Kikoy’s!” Marty rumpled JR’s hair, so that JR squirmed. “Don’t know if you’ll get to taste any of that, anak.”

“I will,” JR said. “I’m gonna grab some with my stretchy arms—SHEEE-OW!” He whipped his arm wildly. “And then I can tell all the kids in my class, and they’ll be jealous, because they’ve never eaten yummy real food and they never will!” He chuckled, evil and gleeful, and robotically walked away to heckle his sister.

Marty remembers the great glass houses they passed on their way to Lucban, lining the fields stretched beneath Mt. Banahaw. Piles of corn and rice, endless rows of pineapple and root crop, stewing in their meticulously engineered domes, more delicious than nature could ever make them. Simply more than God could ever make them.

The procession begins at 1:00 p.m. with the local policemen leading the marching band through the streets. The crowd surges from the town center. Those who live along the procession route peer out from windows and balconies, waving at onlookers. An ABS-CBN TV crew starts their segment. People in bright red shirts bearing the Universal Robina logo hover near the cameras, holding up signs that say Don’t Eat the Miracle Food—It’s Poison! You Could Die!

Marty frowns at their lack of respect for the festivities, even as he recalls his last meeting, where the Procurement Division Head had raised her eyebrows at his vacation request. (“For Lucban?”—and when Marty nodded, how she cleared her throat and averted her eyes.) Ignoring this, he gestures for his family to follow, and heads for the middle of the parade. JR complains that he can’t see, so Marty hoists him onto his shoulders. They walk on, keeping to the edges of the crowd. The higantes come after the band: giant, cartoony replicas of the president, the kagawad, a schoolgirl, a farmer. A carabao—live this time—follows it, pulling a cart full of waving children. Unlike the animatronic version, this carabao plods silently on, martyr-like. It is trailed by girls with feathered headpieces and dresses in garish colors, shimmying to a syncopated drumbeat.

The priest from morning mass scoops water out of a bucket and sprinkles everyone with it. Behind him walk the beauty pageant entrants, led by the newly-crowned Miss Lucban and her escort, standing on a float, carrying San Isidro between them. Marty is transfixed by the face of the saint—how it looks tired and drawn in the middle of the crowd, rocked to and fro by the music. The parade is pushing, pulsing from all sides; Marty presses onward, checking that Inez and Mariah are still following. The band has gone through its traditional repertoire and is now playing the Top 40. Everyone sings along—some droning, some with effort. Marty moves faster so that he can keep pace with San Isidro, but it’s difficult. He feels crazed, dehydrated, but he’s determined to witness the so-called miracle, determined not to care.

“Dad,” JR says, “Dad, hurry up, we’re going to miss the selection!”

Marty tries to walk more quickly, but the crowd keeps him at bay, measuring his pace. The people proceed down the street in a blare of noise and sound and color, getting more raucous as they approach the fancier homes. At some point the fiesta-goers begin to stop in front of each house, and lift San Isidro above the crowd, holding him there for a few moments. Each time this happens the procession holds its breath, then bursts into cheering when nothing changes. Marty is starting to get exhausted. He brings JR down and clutches his hand. JR beams up at him, infected by the delight of the crowd. Marty smiles back, as best as he can through the heat and confusion and the sudden shower of confetti and kiping raining from the house they are passing.

They’re drawing closer to Mang Delfin’s house, with the animatronic carabaos and giant replica of the mayor’s face. The frenzy and expectation heightens each time San Isidro is raised, but there is also a sense of inevitability, because only one house can win, and everyone seems to know which house it is. Someone starts chanting: “Mang Delfin! Mang Delfin!” The marching band launches into the current chart-topper. People are headbanging and wiggling and not-quite-accidentally grinding each other.

Marty realizes they’re not going to see anything if they stay where they are. Ducking into a side street, he skirts past former neighbors’ houses. He counts the walls before turning back onto the main road, right at the cross street between Mang Delfin and Aling Sheila’s house. They have a perfect view of the proceedings: the crowd is amassing in the home right before this one, breathing a collective “Ooooh!” as San Isidro is raised, then bursting into laughter when nothing happens, and he is lowered once more.

JR jumps up and down. “It’s going to be this one! It’s going to be this one!”

Marty’s heart races. He squeezes JR’s hand, and gazes at the façade of Mang Delfin’s house: up close, he can see potato-faced people pieced from squash and taro, with string-bean-and-okra hair; intricate butterflies made of rambutan and longgan; long, sweeping bunches of banana mingled with kiping. The mooing of the fake carabaos is incredibly loud. If there’s any house that can feed the whole town, it’s this one.

But what’s wrong with this food? He thinks. Isn’t this worth giving thanks for? What more do people want?

“Mang Delfin! Mang Delfin! Yaaaay!” The crowd whoops as it reaches its destination. Everyone quiets down enough so that the band can start a drumroll. Miss Lucban and her escort slowly, tenderly lift San Isidro up to face the house. Marty is magnetized, again, by the saint’s face: its severely rosy cheeks and sleepy eyebrows, the stiff golden halo behind his head. He can’t tell if San Isidro wears a look of benevolence, or of agony.

“Real food! Real food! Real veggies, real fruit!” JR hasn’t stopped jumping or chanting. Marty fights the urge to tell him to shut up.

“Oh my god,” Inez says. “This is actually so exciting!”

Mariah, who has whipped out her phone to record everything, says, “The signal here sucks!”

The hush continues. As the crowd watches, the statue of San Isidro—now facing its life-sized twin, in front of Mang Delfin’s house—lifts its wooden arm, the one holding the sheaf of corn, in a rigid salute. His face remains frozen, but for one instant, his eyes seem alive—and even though they aren’t directed at Marty, his belly churns and his eyes water. A child in the crowd bursts into tears.

Then: an explosion of smell and color. The house is suddenly unable to bear its own weight, and several ornaments come loose from the ceiling and balcony, falling on the crowd below. Potatoes and bananas roll off the shingles, detach from the windows; tufts of kiping billow out and descend on everyone’s heads. Marty sees this in slow-motion. Each fruit and vegetable is more alive, the smell so intoxicating Marty nearly vomits. He lets go of JR’s hand to cover his mouth, and JR immediately lunges for the food. Inez shrieks and darts forward as a squash-face starts to come loose from the wall. She tries to catch it in one of her new hats, shouting, “What are you doing, Marts? Grab some! Hurry!”

Everyone is frantically scooping. Mariah has her mouth full of something. “Oh my god,” she says. “Oh my god, it tastes totally different!”

Marty looks back at where the procession had been neatly standing, and it’s all gone—San Isidro has disappeared, swallowed by a swarm of flailing limbs. Someone—Mang Delfin?—roars over the noise, “This is my house! Those are mine! Stop! Stop!”

“There’s enough for everyone, you greedy ass!” someone shouts back. The cheer that follows quickly dissolves into grunting as people climb over each other.

Marty comes into focus. “JR!” He calls frantically. “JR? JR!”

His little boy could be trampled. His little boy could get LBM, salmonella, stomach cancer. That food should never touch his lips.

Inez is still filling her hats; Mariah is helping her. Marty tries to enter the writhing mass of fiesta-goers. An elbow bashes him on the cheek, a knee catches his ribs. Someone to his left retches. The stench of body odor and puke overpowers the sweet fragrance of the fruits.

“JR!” He keeps shouting.

“Dad!”

JR squeezes his way towards him, reaching over two women grappling with a knot of bitter gourd. Marty manages to grab JR under the armpits, lifting then hauling him toward a side street. He takes deep breaths, trying to clear his head, and through a haze of nausea he sees JR’s giant grin. JR is clutching a swollen banana in his fist: a banana full of bruises, green at the base, just like the ones Marty used to eat as a child, nothing like the ones they now grow. “Dad! I got one! Can I eat it?”

Marty feels sick, overwhelmed, like too many eyes are on him. He reaches out, grabs the banana, and peels it without thinking. JR watches him, wide-eyed. Marty has no idea what he’s going to do—hold it out to his child and let him eat it? Eat it himself, because it looks so goddamn delicious? Thank God, San Isidro, for a miracle? Cry for his manmade miracles, so much nothing when held to the light of day, to a pair of tired eyes in a wooden face?

“Yes,” he says. “Go ahead,” he says, his mouth already tasting the sweetness, craving it—the truth of a miracle, too bitter to swallow—“But don’t, no, you shouldn’t, it isn’t safe, it isn’t right,” he says, and he is suddenly crying, and JR looks at him with an expression that edges bewilderment and terror. In his closed fist the banana has been mashed to a pulp.

The Oiran’s Song

Originally published by Uncanny Magazine

Winter will always remind you of three things: the smoke rising from the fire that burned your home; the cold floor you slept on as a pageboy in the teahouse; and the peculiar shade of your brother’s skin, the way his bruises grayed like melted snow. This color does not make sense in your mouth: spoken, tasted. But you see it every time you close your eyes. His body being folded like a paper fan, broken apart like ceramic. The few nights you could lean next to him, he smelled like wine and another person’s sweat.

When you were twelve, at the onset of war, the teahouse sold you to some passing soldiers. You bundled up your clothes and stopped by Kaoru’s room. He held you briefly, and you exhaled into his chest, where delicate bruises were patterned: stains of the floating world. You didn’t know it then, but the pleasure quarters were starting to crumble. “Goodbye, niisan,” you said.

Your brother did not tell you to be happy, which would have been cruel. Instead he said, “Live well, Akira.” His eyes, when they rested on your face, were loving, sad, and afraid.

The memory of Kaoru’s last words is eclipsed by Taichou’s order to fetch wood. “Yes, sir,” you answer.

As you hoist a gun over your shoulder Kazushige winks and adds, “Get some dinner for us too.” You are not the best shot; Kazushige knows this. He laughs and slaps you on the back, and decides to come along. He hunts four rabbits to your two. You gather wood, and wonder how time has passed so quickly.

When you start the fire, you remember the last village you saw—and the wet smell of terror, the smoky taste of ash. (Someone’s blood on your hands.) Like the floating world, the battlefield is all about survival. It’s simply a different set of rituals, a different locked gate. You will not admit your disgust at yourself, at all of them. You will not admit your hatred or your fear.

After dinner, as you’re gathering everyone’s mess, Taichou says: “An oiran will be arriving soon. This one has supposedly trained in Edo’s Yoshiwara.” Through the hoots and clapping you remember the last oiran: Tamakoto, her pale neck barely visible beneath the collar of her stiff dancing robes. When she snapped her elbows back and lifted her sleeve to gesture at the sun, you felt—strange, beyond yourself. The grace radiating from her curved wrists, her small measured steps, was thick and distracting.

Tamakoto ran away from your camp during an overnight stay at a village. The men raged for days, calling her a peasant bitch, a cunt. (You will not think of what happens next. How they turn to you in a fury, grab your wrists and force you against the floor. How you think, instantly, of Kaoru and how you are not him.) “If I ever see her again,” Saburo said, “I’ll stab those budding breasts.” He hadn’t managed to take her, before she fled. Although some of the soldiers come from samurai families, you would not know it from the way they leer. But they have the means to pay, and that’s all a brothel owner needs to know.

There are few alternatives left for the women of the pleasure districts. Servicing soldiers in the war—side of the shogun, side of the emperor—is a fate left for those who have no better options. Still: some are determined to live, and it is one way to survive.

Taichou informs you that the oiran will be sharing your tent. When Tamakoto fled, the men ruined the spare she was using—pissing on it, setting it aflame, her silk futon still inside it. You never shared that futon, of course—never dared slip in, never asked for a turn—but when you helped her unload it the pattern was burned into your mind. White cranes dancing on a sea of red. (Her eyes flitted to yours then darted away.)

In your tent that evening you trace shadows on canvas and wonder when the war will end. In the hazy dark, you think you see the outline of a creature flitting too close—a crouched figure, with tiny pinprick ears. You scramble out, but there is nothing; just snow blowing everywhere. Probably a fox. Shivering, you slip back into your sheets.

There are youkai in these mountains, or so the stories go. Snow crones, fox spirits—strange smiling devils, drawn by the scent of war. The more superstitious soldiers and villagers say these youkai move among the living, wreaking havoc, taking souls. What pleasure is there in tormenting the already-suffering? These must be lies—invented by some foreign fearmongers, or printers without news to sell. The true demons, people laugh.

If youkai were real, would the snow make them cold? Or would they not feel it, burning as they are?

You cannot hear her, so it takes you too long to see her. It could also be because she is wearing white. Her robes and pale skin blend with the snow. Her hair, bound at the top of her head, is the only thing separating her from the landscape. As she approaches, snow muting the footfalls of her geta, you straighten up. Almost like you mean to salute her, which is stupid, but you never promised to be the ideal soldier. Only then do you notice the bent old woman next to her. You hasten to take the bag from the obasan’s back.

“She is one of our best,” the brothel auntie says to you. “She can play and sing better than any of those silly geisha in Edo. Ah, she is of great skill, our Someyama! I will admit that her dancing could be improved, but she has certainly mastered refinement in other pleasures. We are very grateful for your patronage.” Although the oiran has already been sold, the obasan seems determined to extol her virtues. She bows, although it makes almost no difference to her curved back. The oiran stands silently, assessing the pale green tents, the muted noise of men.

“We are grateful,” you say, suddenly too aware of her fate. The obasan motions to the oiran, who stoops toward her. They exchange quick, hurried words, and the oiran nods. The obasan walks away, back to the caravan that brought them here. Somehow you missed that, too. As you are puzzling over this, the oiran clears her throat.

“W-welcome,” you mumble. She has a pack on one shoulder and a wrapped instrument over the other. An uncanny reflection of the snow dances in the black pools of her eyes. Her robe, you notice, is very thin. And beneath it, her skin—so white. You swallow. “Aren’t you cold?”

She looks you up and down, then shakes her head. “What is your name?” she asks. Her voice is surprising. There’s a rough quality to it, a lack of pitch and affectation. And the way she stands with her narrow shoulders slumped is almost inelegant. She is nothing like Tamakoto, nothing like the others, lacking their grace and maturity. Perhaps, despite the obasan’s words, the brothel sent their worst to sing for your group out of spite, as all the oiran sent before have died or fled beyond return.

“Akira,” you answer. She half-smiles, sharp and dangerous. Suddenly, you feel sick: bile rising in your throat, tremors beneath your skin. Her smile slices through to your bone and reminds you that you are cruel, that you are part of the war; that all this fighting is designed to break you apart, burn the world with innocents in its midst. And she knows this. She knows all of it. It’s lined in her dry lips and unblinking eyes: all the poison in this nation of death. You stagger under the force of that violence.

Then just as suddenly that sensation is gone. “Are you all right?” she asks, but there’s another question in her eyes: do you know me? She frowns slightly, but when you nod in reply, her face relaxes. Her look of cunning may simply have been a trick of her pale face, the snow drifting before it. White against white.

You are tired, and it is cold.

“Kindly follow me,” you say. You lead her to your tent, and hold the flap open. She sets down her belongings, and you hand her the pack the obasan carried. She narrows her eyes at you, then draws the flap closed. “I’ll see you at dinner,” you almost say, but do not.

She makes quite the entrance in robes of deep navy gauze, stencil-dyed and embroidered with a pattern of waves. Her obi, tied at the front, is golden-yellow, and matches the pins she has carefully threaded through her hair. She holds her shamisen lovingly in her hands, the instrument’s circular body white as her powdered throat. Her simplicity from that afternoon is gone. Here, she is radiant and imperial, certain in herself.

The soldiers burst out cheering as she walks into their midst. She scans the table, and focuses on Taichou. Her demure grin disappears from view as she bows deeply, before gesturing with all the tentativeness of a skilled seductress at the empty space next to him.

“Of course,” he says. She takes her seat, and carefully positions her shamisen.

Her fingers skim the strings, and she plays as you walk around the tables, pouring sake for tonight’s celebration. This music is oddly familiar. It makes you think of Kaoru gasping as someone beats him, and how his pain must turn to laughter, how he must pretend to want it. It makes you think of feet getting pulled out of slippers as you run, everything turning to ash behind you: your mother’s smile, the paper doors that were your world. When you serve Gengoro your hands tremble. You spill a little sake, and he slaps you across the face.

The oiran lifts her head at the sound of his strike. She’s the only one who notices—everyone else is used to it. She catches your eye as you shuffle to a different table. Taichou’s hand is already drifting over her knee. She plays more furiously. She doesn’t smile, but the notes do. You are suddenly more afraid than you have been in a long, long time.

Taichou has her that first night, as you all expect him to, then it’s fair game. She’s a prostitute from Yoshiwara, like the other girls before her; but she’s also an oiran. A courtesan of her standing can choose who she lies with. That’s the air she puts on, even now, and the rest of the camp seems happy enough to comply. When she is not servicing someone, she shares your tent, because you’re the youngest and the least dangerous, or perhaps…because you know what it’s like to have your body damaged, the way hers is.

“Make him a man, why don’t you?” Tennosuke laughs, arm encircling her waist. She smiles at him, at you. They don’t think you’d ever lay a hand on her.

They know her name, but everyone simply calls her the oiran, which she says is fine. You think it isn’t right—that it debases her, somehow—but when you tried addressing her as Someyama she said, “Don’t call me that. It isn’t my real name.”

“What should I call you, then?”

She lifted her palm to the corner of her mouth, smirking. “I wouldn’t give that away so easily, would I?”

The fourth night is the first she spends in your tent. She changes into a sleeping robe and removes the paint from her face, undoing her hair so that it flows over her shoulders. She combs it out with her fingers, and you try to look at anything but her. Sweat slicks your hands. You spend a long time gazing at the tent wall, but when you finally glance back she is watching you. What feels like eternities pass, as her fingers slip through her hair.

“Are you waiting for something, Akira-kun?” She finally asks. You haven’t spoken much since your initial meeting. The way she says your name makes you burn. You are surprised she remembers it. “Do you want me to start?”

“Start what,” you say, nervous laughter catching in your throat as she leans close, letting her hair fall against your knee. Her own knee pokes out from her robe, and is suddenly pressed against your groin. She takes your face tenderly in her hands. Her lips part. Her breath, wine-sweetened, is warm in the chill air, as she draws closer to your face. You brace your hands on your thighs. She’s beautiful, and breathing—so close to you—and you could just take her—but you don’t want to. You don’t.

You lift her hands from your face and push back, gently, until she is kneeling in seiza. You try not to notice how her robe gapes.

“I’m sorry,” you say. The apology is useless, but you want to give it anyway. “You don’t need to do this with me.”

She tilts her head. “I know how to work with anyone,” she says, still in that sweet coaxing voice. It’s different from the first voice you heard her use. She wasn’t in character yet then. “It will be fun, I promise.”

“No—I mean it. It’s really all right.” You sit back, trying to ease the discomfort between your legs.

She gathers the folds of her robe in one fist. “You really won’t touch me?”

“I won’t.”

She bursts out laughing. Its like icicles falling away, sharp and crushing—but you like this face better: her eyes crinkled, mouth gaping. It’s more human, less like a doll. She stretches luxuriously, still grinning. “I knew you were one of those…your face is quite pretty.”

“I—no, it’s not like that. You—you’re from Yoshiwara, right?”

She nods, and resumes combing her hair. Her posture is no longer designed to seduce you; she sits comfortably, her legs folded to one side as she listens.

“I was—from the floating world, too. Shimabara. My brother and I were part of a teahouse. Um—I wasn’t one of the kagemajaya. Just a pageboy.” You shrug. “Kind of like what I am here.”

“Aren’t you a soldier, too?”

“Well, yes,” you mumble. You were allowed the title by Taichou last summer—but you know it means nothing really, to these soldiers. You’re still their little servant, the best approximate to a woman when a real one is not around. You are not from a samurai family. They do not know your father’s name, nor would they care if they did. These are not the well-bred nobles of the warrior class; these are men who know how to fight. “They’ve taught me how to shoot, and wield a blade. But it isn’t really my choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“To be part of this war.”

She makes a disapproving sound. “When does one ever get to choose?”

You press your tongue to the roof of your mouth and say nothing more. Your hope is stupidly naïve. She casts her gaze down. “Don’t be too idealistic, Akira-kun. There’s no place for that in our world.” She sighs and lies on her futon, facing away from you.

You fall asleep that night listening to her breathe, wondering how to live.

The first few days, she does not run out of questions. She never helps you with your tasks, but often comes along. When you ask her why, she replies, “I’m bored.” But no sex before dinner, or so the unspoken rule goes. She keeps up with her practice, and plays splendidly every night, so they let her do as she pleases. In many ways this matches the idleness of Yoshiwara before evening. But there are no warm baths and no parades here, no other girls for her to pinch or tease. She sits and watches you, tossing and catching her bachi or plucking her shamisen, while you walk through the forest gathering wood, or beat the soldiers’ bedsheets out in the snow, or polish their guns and swords.

The soldiers scout for the enemy, await orders from the military, loudly argue about whether to trust the French. You know that the purpose of your unit is to be light and quick and trained with foreign weapons. Eight in a unit, stealth and speed as shields. You have seen the men do their work. You have tried to do the same.

But you are clumsy with the sword, and although you are now a decent shot, holding a gun still makes you anxious. You might fire more accurately if they did not snicker every time you tried. A year ago, Kazushige was appointed your trainer by Taichou—they don’t expect you to become one of them, but an extra set of hands and eyes is always welcome. Kazushige is one of the few who has never touched you. He still laughs at your mistakes and tentativeness, still hits if you do something wrong, but when he lifts your arms to position the rifle, you do not feel like he is about to grip you too hard. Sometimes you even think you like him.

The idea of liking anything is strange. Unreal. You remember Tamakoto; you remember Kaoru. As memories held apart to be revered, wondered at, they make sense; anything closer and your mind shuts off. The oiran’s shamisen makes an awful twang, and you return to the task at hand: checking that the traps set to capture wolves are still in place.

“No wolves are going to come, anyway,” the oiran says.

“How do you know?”

“Because of the oni,” she answers.

It is well known that the women of the floating world delight in storytelling. It is one of the skills they spend years honing.

“Like in the rumors? Those are lies.”

“No, they’re not,” she says. “I’ve seen one.” You glance at her, but she doesn’t meet your eyes. She strikes her shamisen, then grins so that you know she is teasing you. “It frightened the hell out of me.”

You keep your mouth closed, though really you are thinking: you frighten me, and I don’t know why. Then you realize: it’s because I want to protect you, and I don’t think I can.

The trap is empty, as it has been the last several days.

“The wolves aren’t coming,” she repeats.

Someone shouts for you to start getting dinner ready. As the two of you trudge back through the snow, you think: the wolves aren’t coming; they’re already here.

You grow used to her shadowing you. Her music still makes your blood race. She performs each night, even dancing sometimes (a beautiful silvery fan in hand, arms undulating like waves in the air); she does her duty. But those few evenings she spends in your tent, you talk freely, easily. She doesn’t bother with elegant language around you. From her tales, you imagine being a young girl in a smoky brothel, delivering love letters for the oiran you are apprenticed to, learning to play the favorite song of that fat old merchant who comes every night to see you. Learning not to flinch when he rests his fingers on your ankle.

She asks about your childhood and you think of the fire, and being brought to the teahouse; but instead you tell her about the times before then. Like that summer festival you attended as a young boy. How you took so long eating spun sugar that it melted and covered your fat fist; how Kaoru caught a firefly in his cupped hands, and together you watched its feeble glow. How your mother scolded you for buying the mask of an oni, and how she never let you wear it after that night.

“The mask of an oni?” The oiran’s smile is amused. You feel a little silly, but your thoughts turn to water when she palms the side of your face. “Would you wear it if you had a chance, now?”

“Maybe,” you say. But you’re tired of wearing masks, or maybe just tired. Her hands slowly cover your ears. “What are you doing?” You ask, though you feel you shouldn’t.

“One of these days, I’ll tell you a secret.” It’s as if she is saying something entirely different. “One of these days, I might sing you a song.”

Something about the way she doesn’t promise either of those things makes you hurt.

You don’t know if you prefer the encampments—set up throughout Northern Tohoku, often by larger units—or the villages. You’re aware that you bring a cloud of terror wherever you go, that the stricken faces of merchants and innkeep are never far behind when you advance. But sometimes, selfishly, you think it’s nice to see other people. To visit the market for real food, instead of eating rations, gathering plants, shooting rabbits. To wash in a bath rather than a stream, and to let someone else clean up for a change. It’s nice until you remember how terrible and narrow-sighted you’re being, and how you’re never going to stay, because once your men have had their fill of one village, they’re on the move again. Tokugawa’s secret army, ready to spring at a single word. The light cavalry; one of the few still standing.

Whenever you stop by a teahouse your chest tightens, and you wonder if by some chance you’ll see Kaoru—but of course it’s never the one you left, and you’re not even sure if he’s still alive. Even then, you can’t buy his freedom. Both of you have years of service left, to pay your relatives’ debts.

Why don’t you run away, you asked Kaoru once. Why don’t we run away?

Do you see that gate? He pointed. In the afternoon sun his skin looked almost translucent, as if he might suddenly fade. It is shut throughout the day, and only opens in the evening to let the customers through. And if we left, they would send a search party. There is no leaving this place.

Sometimes, when you look at the oiran, that same question echoes in your mind. You could leave in the middle of the night. The snow would keep your secret until dawn.

But you are not that brave, not that hopeful.

Fighting, the next day, from an enemy group that has surged ahead. Fighting doesn’t happen in your own base very often, but when it does, the camp moves like clockwork. Guns come out like extended limbs and fire, fire, fire. Taichou shouts orders, and everyone follows. These soldiers have been marked by invincibility every year you’ve traveled with them; they don’t know fear.

You hold your rifle level and shoot. Your target falls backwards. The little spray of blood catches in the sunlight before landing in the snow. You suck in a breath; this is not the first man you have killed, nor will he be the last. That you are now a decent shot fills you with both terror and relief. Kentaro makes a strangled sound and rolls over, leaving a bloody smear in his wake. Gengoro, your resident medic—in the loosest sense of the word—curses, seizes Kentaro by the wrists, and drags him off. You shouldn’t be watching, you shouldn’t be distracted. You duck behind a carton of rations, and a second later it splinters at the corner.

Presently the gunfire dies down. You are exhausted, but you already know that the night will be spent planning for the move to the next checkpoint. Pressing on. You have come so far from Edo. You must never back down. You must be ready for battle and follow your orders; this is why you exist.

Everyone forgets the oiran. You remember her only when you have lain your rifle down and Taichou counts all the soldiers, still breathing. Fear builds inside you like rising steam. After being dismissed, you run back to your tent without pause. You burst inside to find her sitting in bed, tying her hair. She looks as if she is preparing for dinner, as always—but her breathing is shallow. A stripe of sweat shines on her neck. Her hands, holding her comb, are shaking.

You take the ornament from her fingers and tuck it into her knot. There is a strange gleam in her eyes when she looks up at you. You think it must be fear, and say nothing. The urge to grasp her shoulder swells then fades—you have no idea why it even comes to mind. To ground her, perhaps—hold you both there.

“Don’t be afraid,” you say. “It’s over now.”

“I’m not afraid, Akira-kun.”

You decide she is lying, and are somewhat relieved. She is finally acting more like you expect: simply a girl, perhaps more understanding of life’s unfairness than most, but not as calm as she pretends, not as fearless.

Kazushige finds the body while scouting ahead. He runs back, more alarmed than you ever remember seeing him, and shouts for someone to follow. It’s terrible, he says. A dead man—by his uniform, someone from a different unit on the same side—all his guts strung out, face disfigured beyond recognition.

The oiran grabs your sleeve as you head out. She doesn’t want to be left alone, not after yesterday’s battle. You clasp her hand. “It’s all right. We’ll be back.”

“You don’t need to be the one who goes.”

Taichou’s orders—you do. “Stay here,” you tell her.

By the time you reach the point Kazushige marked, the body is no longer there.

“I’m sure it was here,” he says. “Look, there’s still blood.”

It’s dried: faint bronze layered on ice. “Did it look like the work of a sword?” you ask.

Kazushige is still looking around, as if the corpse might have crawled away. “Damn. Help me check the surrounding area.”

But there’s nothing, even half a mile out. You imagine what he might have seen; you wonder what beast, human or otherwise, did it.

When you report back to Taichou, Kazushige pretends that the wounds were likely from some violent skirmish, and that together you buried the corpse. You hold your tongue. When you leave the captain’s tent Kazushige holds your wrist in a vicelike grip, pressing hard in warning. You make a small sound of pain, and he lets go.

“Thanks,” he says.

In your dream, the demon is singing: yuki no asa, ni no ji ni no ji no, geta no ato.

I remember this, you tell the demon. Morning snow; the impression of geta. Twice the strokes for two.

Yes, the demon says. How clever you are. Did your mother once sing it for you?

My mother, and my brother.

The demon is a lady, you find, or perhaps it is only for now. Her touch against your cheek is like water. Her breath on your nose is like ice. Don’t shudder, the demon says. It makes me feel so far away from you.

But you’re not far at all. You’re right here, you say.

For now, the demon says. She kisses your cheek. Thank you for playing along.

“I think she might last through winter,” Kazushige says, squatting next to you while you fill some cartridges with gunpowder. Since he found the corpse and it disappeared, you haven’t spoken. You glance at him, not sure if you should be wary or lighthearted. The oiran likes the look of Kazushige, or at least that’s what she told you once. Specifically, she said, mmm, he’s so huge and manly. You told her he wasn’t all that bad, and she just grinned.

You think Kazushige must be terribly in love with her, because he hasn’t had his turn yet. He’s so patient. Sometimes the others call him Hotoke-sama, but he just laughs.

Tentatively, you ask: “Are you hoping for spring already, Kazushige-san?”

“Aren’t we always?” He smiles and nudges you, and you try not to tip over. You think of how many people his giant hands have killed: firing expertly, or gripping a sword and slashing in broad strokes. Kazushige was trained in one of the most prestigious sword schools, but he has embraced foreign weapons entirely. Everyone in the camp views him with a mix of awe and jealousy.

Kazushige trained you, but in truth, you don’t know him at all. But do you need to? What would be the point of knowing him? He treats the oiran with respect. He has never laid hands on you.

“I suppose.” You never forget to be polite; to be grateful, at the right moment.

“What does she taste like?” He asks, suddenly. There is a powerful hunger in his voice. Your skin prickles.

“Hm?”

He breathes out loudly. “It’s nothing.” He pauses. “Sometimes I envy you.”

For the fact of your uncaring, or for the beautiful oiran that sleeps across you, that you have now, at times, started to consider your friend? What a stupid, tenuous word that is, friend. And yet she is the closest to it. As is Kazushige, perhaps.

“You have no reason to.” You turn your face down, because now it is time for you to draw on modesty, the last feeble weapon in your arsenal.

She decides to play her shamisen next to Kazushige at dinner. He can’t stop staring at her in the dim light, his mouth slightly open. She pours him another cup of sake. You watch Taichou eyeing them at the end of the table, but he’s played along thus far, he’s not going to stop tonight. The other men, too, seem particularly preoccupied with how she leans close to Kazushige and calls him master.

Something is wrong, you think—something is strange about her song. It sounds like the habit of breaking one’s heart. Some melody you’ve heard before, the lyrics about two tracks from two pairs of feet, disappearing in the snow. (Mother’s paperthin smile, Kaoru in the afternoon light, a hand of death stroking your cheek so that it freezes.) When dinner finally ends, the oiran takes Kazushige’s hand and leads him back—to your tent. You don’t even protest. Maybe you can’t. You stand outside in the snow and it’s wet, slushy beneath your sandals. You wonder if you should try to find somewhere else to stay, or just wait. Wait.

Then you hear a harsh grunt, a gasp—I’m still—please, wait—and you can’t listen any longer.

You wander away, just far enough so that you can’t hear their noises. You crouch down and close your eyes. Sex always makes you think of Kaoru. (The same words, through the paper screens: wait—Master, please—oh, no no—of course I like it, of course, that feels—ah—wonderful.) Anything from sliding doors to the mention of Kabuki can make your insides burn. Sometimes you see your brother’s face and the smile suspended on it, meaning nothing. His lips parting, the choke beneath his involuntary sigh. (Some days his neck was lilac as the pattern on the robe of the brothel owner’s wife; how expensive that garment must have been, paid for in sweat and flesh.) You shake your head, knowing that won’t clear the images, and straighten up to take a piss.

You are standing in the snow, feeling your heart thaw, watching the sky for wolfhowl and moonbeams, when you hear a cut-off cry. A gasp. You’re back at your tent before you know it. The side is splattered with something like ink, and from beneath the flap red seeps onto the snow. Your hesitation lasts only a second.

In the dim light you can hardly see the blood, but you can smell it. The two bodies on the bed are still—or appear to be. Then one of them slowly twists around.

The oiran. Her expression when she sees you is—angry. Full of hate. No, terror.

She screams.

His body is collapsed in blood, the wound on his neck a strange slash. The oiran sits in her soaked red sheets, now sobbing after her cries turned hoarse. Taichou appears first. He grabs your shoulder and stares at you, searching. You stare back. You have no answers to give, and he sees this, backhands you anyway. He wrenches the oiran from her sheets—drags her out into the snow—and she stands before everyone, pale body stained.

“What was it,” Taichou asks, and when she merely shudders, he grabs her chin and forces her to look at him. You want to tell him not to do that—it’s dangerous—no, it might be hurting her—no. It’s not your place. “What was it?”

Talk, you useless slut is not spoken, but you all hear it anyway.

She mumbles something. You see Taichou’s hand quiver on her chin and this time you take a step forward. Her eyes slowly slide to yours, hold you in place. She’s not scared of him, you realize. She’s not afraid of any of this.

“What was that?”

“Oni,” she repeats. “Oni came, Taichou. Quick as lightning, with blades for fingers. It all happened so—so quickly. It’s these mountains—please, believe me—” her breath catches. “We’re not safe.”

They search her belongings, scour your tent, but there is no tool that could possibly inflict such a wound. She was naked; there was nothing on her person to conceal. Someone came and departed, then. She acted so well, appearing dead; or her beauty stirred the killer to pity, and she was spared. You have no way of tracing whether the murderer is independent, or one of the enemies’ assassins. Nobody knows much of Kazushige’s past—any number of grievances on his name or his family may have finally caught up with him.

That is not so unusual. The she remains breathing, however, is.

Taichou, ever the noble, has Kentaro strike her instead. On her knees in the snow, covered in a crust of blood, she is a pitiful figure—but she doesn’t let her head drop. She coughs and spits red, keeps her cries to a minimum. When Kentaro is finished, she merely wipes her lip and lowers her eyes.

Taichou has no such qualms about beating you. The bruises feel like weights beneath your skin. If you were not useful to them, you might be dead. “If anything else happens,” Taichou says, “Be assured that I will not let either of you off so easily.”

They do not trust you, have never truly seen you; but they have never feared you, either. They will not start now.

She cannot explain anything beyond her belief that it was oni. They decide she is crazy. Women from Yoshiwara sometimes are, driven to drink and delusions from the misery of their existence. Maybe it was a long time coming; or maybe she was so rattled by whatever it was she did see. Some start calling her yuki jyoro—snow whore. Still, her words have an effect: the decision is made to head for a different checkpoint. Murmurs throughout the camp are uneasy and angry. Before leaving the next day, they dispose of Kazushige’s body—the camp’s first the whole past year.

You wash your sheets in the river, waiting desperately for them to run clear, your hands icy in the water. A small, additional punishment.

When you look up, the oiran is seated a short distance from you. The bruise on her left cheek is painful to look at, and her eyes raw from crying. But there is serenity in the way she waits for your accusations, your questions.

“I’m not,” she says.

“Not?”

“Not lying.” I’ve seen one, she once told you. Oni. Winter not thawing quick enough. Snow piling on the mountains, soft and downy as bird feathers. A man with his entrails spread, his face missing.

She watches you, lips trembling as if she wants to say more. Everything about this moment is a terrible idea. Above all, you have the strongest urge to lay your lips on hers, just to keep her quiet.

You have never thought this before. She has changed things.

“Akira-kun,” she says, pulling her legs up so that her knees are against her face. “Can you keep a secret?”

Don’t undo this, something tells you, not for her, you don’t know what she is—

But you recall that first smile she gave you, and how it cut. How her songs wear down your soul. How she turned, so slowly, last night. You cannot change the fact of things; you can only open your eyes wider.

“Yes,” you say, and wait, and breathe.

She explains it the way one would tell a fairytale. You never hear about the gods who bled all over the snowcapped mountains, who cursed the earth and all things in it. It may be pretty to imagine, but the oni of these peaks are anything but pretty. They are terrible. Terrifying. They do all the things you hear in stories, and some things you don’t. They like the taste of human hearts and eyeballs. Their manners of killing are varied, but always violent.

Oni are banished to the earth from the next life over, for sins so terrible not even hell wants them. The most powerful have plenty of dark magic, and can take on the shape of a man or woman; they go into villages under their human guise, slaughter the men, rape the women, resume their true forms and eat the children.

They don’t feel, she continues. Not the way humans do. The concept of a feeling means nothing to them. It’s a void. A set of characters limning the air. Smoke curling from a burning villge, the gasping between a child’s cries, the blood running from a woman’s thighs as she leaves Yoshiwara with no worse hell to descend to. All forms of emptiness, drawn in different lights.

The oni don’t feel. This is the one thing that keeps them alive, the one thing that keeps them from living. They understand sensations, thrills, pleasures—but not their consequences.

Once upon a time, she says, oni entered a village. One encountered a farmer’s daughter. She was not the most beautiful woman in the village, but she might have been the most unlucky. The oni buried himself inside her. The woman lived with shame and terror for months. Her death in childbirth was a blessed one.

Children of oni are not born once. They are born as many times as they are killed. With the blood of terrible gods in their veins, they are unable to truly die; the closest they can get to that satisfaction is bringing death to others. There are countless ways of doing so, but the best is using human methods. Humans are inventive like that. They love to dispose of each other. So there are oni that learn trades, speak human tongues, use human weapons with the speed and strength they have gained through the years. Humans need only supply the reasons. Killers and assassins are always wanted; a war just makes it easier.

“Do you know the tale of Ikkaku Sennin?” She stands.

“No.” You stand with her.

“He fell in love with Sendaramo, and lost his magical powers. But my bastard father didn’t do that.” She clenches her fists. “Someday, I’ll find him. I’ll make him suffer what I’ve suffered; I’ll make sure he understands.” The hate in her voice ebbs away. “My mother was human,” she says, as if this needs saying. But if not for that mother, she could not possess such a look of misery; she wouldn’t feel at all.

This time it’s you reaching for her, not cupping her ears or her chin, just holding your hands out, waiting to see what reaction this will elicit. She stares for a moment, then moves toward you. You pull her in, and her arms curl around your back, her chin rests on your shoulder. Her chest against yours rises and falls, steadily, and you can feel her heart like a hummingbird. The demon blood thrumming inside it.

“Aren’t you afraid of me?” she whispers.

You shake your head. You can’t say why this is true—perhaps because she has a beating heart, just like yours, and she has suffered through so much more. You are no longer afraid of her, of what will happen. But there are many things you wish to ask her. Is the demon you’ve seen the one leaning against me now, lovely in the lake’s reflection? Who has bought you, who has sent you to our camp to kill us? How long have you been circling these white plains? How many men and women have you murdered this way, in Yoshiwara, in Edo, in the war? Before the war?

What do you think of when you see snow falling? What do you think of when you smell winter?

“What is your name?” Your mouth is against her ear, closer than you’ve ever been to another person since Kaoru lay beside you, trying not to let you hear his weeping; no—since they pushed your face into a pillow and forced themselves inside you, groaning—

Her laughter emerges as white breath against your shoulder.

“In truth I have no name, but the humans who first raised me called me Ayame.”

“Ayame,” you repeat.

“A name is a useless thing to have.” She pulls back and studies you. You see blood cascading in her eyes. You see fire. You see Kazushige’s wound. When she kisses you, you close your eyes, but it doesn’t stop the images. Snow keeps falling, right through the darkness that remains long after you’ve opened your eyes again.

“Why Kazushige?” you ask, later that day. You are polishing guns that will obviously be used soon.

“Do you know how to fold paper cranes?”

“Yes. Why Kazushige?”

“Promise me you’ll teach me how to fold a paper crane, first.”

You’ll have to think about where to find the paper, but that can be arranged. Taichou keeps some for his official letters. They’re not square. You’ll just have to slice them square, or maybe she can do that, with whatever she uses to slice men’s throats. “I promise.”

“I’m teasing. I already know how. You think I don’t know how?” she smirks and you shrug, the gesture unpracticed.

“Why Kazushige?”

Irritation crosses her face. Her eyes narrow, as if she is asking: Why? Do you care? Why should you care? “He detested you.”

“He was kind to me.”

“Kind? Just because he didn’t hurt you the way the others did? You think that is kindness? You disgusted him with your weakness. That’s why he never touched you.” You don’t know if you can trust her; you don’t know if that will make things hurt less. She glares. “How you can hold on to that fluttering goodness inside you? Don’t you get angry? I’m angry all the time.”

You hold her gaze, try not to tremble as she continues: “You misunderstand me, Akira-kun. The desire to see some blood spilled—you don’t know the hunger, how much it hurts here,” she draws a circle over her heart, waits to see how you’ll react when she says, “How much I burn to see you all dead, how your breathing makes me want to spit. How humans make me sick.”

That doesn’t surprise you, doesn’t chill you even if it should. You put down the rifle you were cradling. “Let’s fold some cranes,” you say, taking her hand. She looks shocked for a moment. Then rueful.

It turns out she has paper—one of the parting gifts from the obasan. She balances a perfectly folded crane on your head; it flops down onto your shoulder. She sighs and picks it up. “That body Kazushige saw? That was the work of an oni not covering its tracks. He had seen too much. So I decided I was going to finish the job. I was prepared to slay him, slay everyone. I was told not to let anyone live. But then you came back—you came in—and I couldn’t kill you.” She grins, but there is nothing happy about it. “It’s all your fault.”

So the camp marches, marches onwards, through the drowsy mountains and your own protesting feet, shivering. It’s glorious in its way, the battle hymn of war singing in your bones, in the strings she still plays. There is a village some miles before the next checkpoint. You will scour it for supplies, for signs of the enemy.

Ayame still performs, sings, dances. But these days, they don’t even wait for dinner. They take her when they want to, wherever they please. You can taste the climbing anxiety and anticipation—the bloodlust with it, musk and iron, the taint one can’t be rid of. You fear for the women in the approaching village. Ayame’s wrists are often bruised. If you could see her hips, you are certain they would be too, but she just smiles and shakes her head. Doesn’t hurt me. You think your stupid human brutality can hurt me?

“Are you incapable of being hurt?”

“I wouldn’t give that away so easily, would I?” she says, amusement like a curling green leaf beneath her words.

One night, she has finished just her first two songs when Kenjirou asks her to stop. There is a pause while people wait for Taichou’s reaction, but he says nothing: arms crossed, mouth set. Kenjirou grabs the shamisen out of her hands. Her eyes widen, but she remains silent. He plays for a few seconds; someone else beats a rhythm with the bottom of his cup. After being spoiled by her music, the noise he makes is discordant—ugly.

“You know this game, don’t you?” Kenjirou slurs.

The tang of alcohol is suddenly alive in your mouth—but the pain in your chest is not due to poison. So this isn’t the method she uses. (Not enough blood, you think. Not enough pain.) Ayame slowly stands, and nods.

He plays, and she begins to sway—the movement can hardly be called a dance. Back and forth, her hands folding out, drawing in—then he stops, abruptly. She is caught in mid-step, and judders to a halt. Kenjirou laughs, and everyone laughs with him. Expressionless, she unties the sash from her obi, and drops it to the ground. The music begins again. This time she freezes perfectly when it stops; but when Kenjirou says “Hey!” she obligingly sheds her kimono.

Soon everyone is pounding out the beat with their hands or cups. Kenjirou yodels a tune as he strums her instrument. There is no paint on her body to match her face, but there is something unnatural about the paleness of her breasts, her limbs. You are only sure it is her bare skin because of the way she shivers, and how painful it looks where the blues and blacks are stippled red.

“Akira! More sake,” Taichou says. The game continues, and with it, the jeering and panting, growing more animal-like.

“You should join her,” Gengoro mutters. He has come up behind you; one hand seizes your hip so that you freeze. “This game isn’t supposed to have only one player. Or would that ruin it?” For the first time in years you feel the sharp edge of danger again—the bottomless shame, your powerlessness, the desire to damn survival and recover some of your pride. I’m angry all the time, she said—but there are no traces of it on her face now, eyes patiently distant while someone throws a cup at her and misses.

You turn to face Gengoro and let him crush his lips against yours, drag you against his body. This doesn’t hurt me, you think—but you aren’t like her. Even as the catcalls behind you grow louder, as Taichou bellows out a terrible laugh, as the sound of cloth tearing makes you grit your teeth—you are aware of the trembling in your hands, how you have no blades or claws. How you long for this story to close at the end of winter. How the first touches of spring are still not showing through; how they may never show for you.

The following night, she tugs on your robe and puts her hands against your chest, saying, “It’s cold, cold, cold, it’s so cold.” It’s the most desperate you’ve ever seen her, eyes huge and wide as a child’s. And she’s only a child, really—though how many times has she been a child, you don’t know. You’re only a child. You’re like two rabbits sitting terrified in the midst of everything. But she’s no rabbit, she’s a wolf, she’s biting off your long ears and you let her because she looks so much like you, and it’s freezing. You wrap your arms around her and tell her to go to sleep. She makes this sound, a nothing-whisper, and huddles against you like she might understand your heart. You’ve done this before. You were here before: someone’s arms around you, and you couldn’t protect him, and he was waiting inexorably for death to claim you both, because the fire didn’t that first time.

“What was his name,” she whispers.

“Kaoru,” you whisper back. “He was never really the strong type. We couldn’t save each other.”

Only when he held you. Only when they’d brought the cane across your hands too many times, and you thought maybe this is what all older brothers do: stand by, do nothing, just kneel by you when it’s all over, hold your head and weep.

Ayame shifts to face you. “Would you save someone now, if you could?”

There is an alien note of pleading in her voice. You can’t bear it. “Of course.”

“Then destroy me,” she says. “That’s all I ask. I’ve been searching many years for someone who can. It hurts just as much for me, only there is no end in sight.”

Sorrow pierces like a knife through your chest. Slowly, you close your hands around her neck. Your heart beats slow and steady. You push your thumbs down, feeling her pulse, the movement of her throat as she swallows.

“I can’t,” you say, ice inside you, everywhere. “I’m sorry. I’m not strong enough.”

Her hands rest over yours, carefully. “It’s all right,” she says, disappointment mingling with resignation. “Death wouldn’t keep me long, anyway.” She rests her head on your chest. Next to her warm body, you feel frozen. “You’re kind, Akira-kun. I won’t ask it of you again.”

The village is already burning when you enter. When will you stop being broken by the sight, the sound, the sorrow of war? You are twelve again, being embraced by Kaoru and he doesn’t tell you to be happy, he doesn’t even tell you goodbye. He just tells you to live. It is the sweetest parting message in the world. Or this, perhaps: crackling fire, orange against the snow.

Taichou tells everyone to grab what they can, no need for niceties here. Spot the enemy, find those bastards. Again, Ayame is forgotten. It’s strange how she leaves their minds when they aren’t hurting her, but not strange enough. Not wrong enough. You’re tried of trying to reconcile the halves of your heart; you can no longer lie to yourself. So you don’t stop her, you don’t do anything, when she emerges from where she was asked to stay put, brings out her instrument, and starts to play.

The next few scenes do not make sense. They do not happen in order. They perhaps do not happen and your eyes, witnessing, are traitors.

A little girl stumbles out of her house, blood streaming down her face, crying, and sees the oiran.

Someone, unseen, opens fire. Gengoro next to you falls on his knees, blood erupting from his chest.

You hear yourself shout—the same time Taichou does—for everyone to get down, hit the ground.

The little girl runs for Ayame—anything that is female, human, mother, mother, you almost hear her think—and Ayame lets herself be hugged, hugs the girl back, bending forward, her sleeves billowing out.

You leap over Gengoro’s body, duck behind the façade of a house, sight along your rifle. You don’t see any attackers. You realize it might not be bullets, flying through the air.

In the oiran’s arms, the little girl flops backwards. Her eyes are glassy, her mouth slack.

This is it, you think, this is when I know for sure—

Ayame pulls out her koto and Taichou points his rifle at her, shouts at her to fall back, what the hell is she doing, and she yanks off the strings. You remember the strange gash on Kazushige’s throat and everything slowly, beautifully, clicks into place. That can’t be the only thing. As if to prove your point she reaches into her sleeve and, with the practiced grace of swans, draws out her fan. (You never wondered whether it might be steel.) The sharp edge she launches goes straight for Taichou’s throat, and instinctively you make a move to run for him, knock him out of the way.

You don’t make it. You weren’t expecting to. His eyes, in that final moment, are luminous with hate, betrayal.

“Cursed,” he manages to spit. His gaze lingers on you as he dies.

Your body doesn’t know which direction to move toward. Are oni pouring out of the mountains, or is it just her, the little girl now fallen from her grasp, all the other men turning with bewilderment and terror to witness Taichou bleeding out on the snow?

“Akira-kun,” she calls. She doesn’t need to shout. Her voice carries over the snow—her voice, your home. “Akira-kun, run away!”

(Kaoru said: There is no leaving this place.)

(Ayame said: I was told not to let anyone live.)

You could run. You could leave her. You can’t save her, after all.

You can’t save anyone.

Kenjirou appears from the other direction, takes in the scene, aims as she turns. Her chest explodes: crimson blooms on her navy robes, spatters the ground, spills out of her mouth. She falls on her knees, gasping.

The gunshot echoes endlessly in your ears; shatters something inside you.

Kaoru’s distorted breathing. Tamakoto’s eyes flicking away. Your hands against Ayame’s throat. It hurts, she said. How she must suffer, alone and filled with hate, swallowed by blood and oaths and the fact of an existence that doesn’t end. You’re the only one who understands, who knows—and you can’t leave her now.

You will lend her your blades, your hands, your hate—however weak and blunted.

A cry of fury escapes her lips, blending with their cries of terror, as she stands. You raise your rifle and shoot Kenjirou in the head.

“Do you remember mother’s favorite song?” you ask Kaoru. You are lying on his lap, looking up at his face. It is a summer afternoon like the one so many years ago, when you bought a demon’s mask. A dragonfly darts in and out of the window. Across the street, the faint banter of oiran and their kamuro can be heard.

“Of course,” Kaoru says. “How could I forget?” and he opens his mouth—

This dance is one you’re familiar with, but it’s still far too much like a dream. How a body falls, stiff and awkward. How the world sounds when you are moving too quickly through it, pulling the trigger again and again. You like the way she kills better. There are spinning stars in her sleeves that can gouge out a man’s eyes. She has pulled off her oiran robes and is now clothed like a kunoichi, and moves as one too. She doesn’t let herself get shot again; your bullets are too slow for that.

She was born in a village, but much longer ago her father was born on these mountains. The oni don’t need to reveal themselves to be seen; they are drifting out now, as a bullet punctures your stomach, and another smashes into your shoulder. Out of the corner of your eye, Tennosuke’s blade flashes. You dimly register the pain in your side as you thrust your own sword through him.

It’s almost like the snow has covered the world just for this purpose: to be stained red, red against orange fire, against the somber blue of a uniform that marches for no one.

You were going to establish the new era. You were going to kill in the name of unity. You were going to walk on and buy the freedom of your brother, hold the demon in your arms, because that’s all you want, and together you will listen to her song, and talk about what it’s like to live and die in a floating city. Tea the taste of salt. The smell of sex permeating everything, layered over with incense. Lips pressed tight: a collective of broken promises.

Ayame shouts your name as you slip onto one knee. The sudden silence is strange and sweet. In its melody your own heartbeat sounds too loud.

She comes before you and lays her hands on your head, like a blessing. The ghosts of all things, flowing back. She doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even smile. (You don’t know why you thought she’d enjoy it.) Her hands cover your eyes, cover your mouth, and you kiss her palm. When would this be all right? If the world stopped being so white, for just a moment. If the snow didn’t fall. Then would you still be here, distended? Would you still be kneeling, alone with a demon you can’t bear to leave, a demon who wanted you to live?

“I can’t bear it,” you say, into her hand. “Is this what it’s like?”

She sighs, and when you look in her eyes, they are cracked like glass. This is the human in her. The woman screaming as she gave birth. The snow-covered mountains. A song about wooden clog marks.

“Why didn’t you run?” she asks.

“You will live forever and I won’t.”

She doesn’t move. The grief on her face is a living thing. The steel in your body is heavy, but you feel weightless. You watch her face, waiting. Waiting.

Your eyes close when she leans forward. Her lips are snow; red snow. They taste like singing. Like blood. They are soft like the folds of Kaoru’s robes, where you nestled your head, wondering when the world would stop spinning. Burning. Everything white.

Winter will always remind you of that longing, recursive, in your chest. The last of your strength gives; she catches you as you slump, and pulls your head onto her knees. You lift a ragged hand and gently cup her face. You don’t ask if she’s satisfied. That’s a stupid question.

“Tell Kaoru, if you ever find him—I’m sorry. Tell him—this story closed at the end of winter.”

She nods. There are icicle-tears in the corners of her eyes that don’t fall. Your hand slips. She catches it and grips, hard, whispering: “I wish I could be reborn into a world with you in it.”

Do you love me, you think, but you can already hear her reply: I wouldn’t give that away so easily.

Instead you ask, “What was that song?”

Her fingers brush your hair. Something wet lands on your cheek—demon tears, or melted snow. The dark encroaches as she starts to sing: “Yuki no asa, ni no ji…”

Good Girls

Originally published by Shimmer Magazine

This story contains scenes dealing with suicide and violence relating to infants, which some readers may find upsetting.

You’ve denied the hunger for so long that when you transform tonight, it hurts more than usual. You twist all the way round, feel your insides slosh and snap as you detach. Your wings pierce your skin as you leave your lower half completely. A sharp pain rips through your guts, compounding the hunger. Drifting toward the open window, you carefully unfurl your wings. It’s an effort not to make a sound.

You’re a small girl, but it’s a small room, and though your boyfriend is snoring you can’t risk being caught. You look back at him, remembering how he’d breathed your name a few hours ago, pouring sweat as you arched beneath him—Kaye, baby, please. You wonder if he’ll say it that way when you eventually leave.

The half you’ve left behind is tucked in shadow: gray, muted pink where your intestines show through. The oversized shirt you’re wearing hides the worst of the guts that hang from your torso as you glide into the sticky night air. You suck in a deep breath as the living bodies of your housing complex flood your senses. A girl sobs in her bedroom while her father hammers at the door. A pair of elderly foreigners lie in each other’s arms. A stray dog licks its balls outside the iron gates while a security guard dozes in his cramped sitting room.

Manila is a city that sleeps only fitfully, and you love it and hate it for that reason.

The first thing taught at the Bakersfield Good Girl Reformation Retreat is the pledge: “I’m a good girl. A good girl for a good world. And while I know it is not always easy to be good, I promise to at least try.” The girls are made to repeat this three times at orientation, and one girl seems moved enough to shout “Amen!” at the end. Or she could be mocking it; Sara can’t tell. The girls on either side of her are listless, mouthing the pledge without care or conviction. One scratches her knee then digs underneath her fingernails, puckering and unpuckering her mouth like a goldfish. Sara suspects she’s wearing a similar expression. She frowns and squints at the clear blue California sky, the same one from the home she was just forced to leave.

Afterward they’re herded onto the field for physical exercises and split into groups. Sara’s group starts running. She quits on the second lap out of five, short of breath and thinking nope, not worth it. She jogs off the field and is trying to disappear someplace when Captain Suzy, who is in charge of PE, catches sight of her. Captain Suzy frowns and starts heading for her, except the flag football team erupts in a hair-snatching free-for-all. Captain Suzy surges into the brawl and flings girls away from each other, so that by the end mud and grass is strewn everywhere and more than one girl has fainted from the heat.

Later, Sara learns the fight was because of a butterfly knife that someone had snuck in and stupidly showed off. Lots of girls wanted it.

They’re given Exploration time after lunch, with the stern reminder that they have to be prepared for Group Sharing (4:30 PM), followed by Journals (6 PM) in their respective rooms before Dinner (7 PM). After leaving the dining hall, Sara surveys the abandoned schoolhouse where all Good Girls are forced to stay. It’s mostly dusty classrooms with chalkboards. Tiny white bugs swirl in every sunbeam. Most chairs and tables are child-sized, and colored mats cover the floor. A mesh-wire fence circles the entire yard, and past it, a tall rusted gate. Beyond them lie endless fields, roasting under the sun. The fence is too tall to climb, and Sara is neither agile nor motivated. She heads back to her room and decides to Explore her bed.

There are meals all over the Metro, so many routes to explore. You’ve mapped them out over years and months of nightly travels: countless delicacies, different treats for different moods. The only difference is your start point, your end point. You never last more than a few months in the same place. You always need to find someone new to take you in—to believe you’re human, just like them.

Tonight your hunger is confusing. You don’t know what you want, what will satiate you. You decide to start upscale and work your way down, so you veer toward the part of the city with its lights still on.

Music pulses loudly from a club. Three high school girls totter out on four-inch heels, standing awkwardly on the carpet to avoid the potholed road. One of them is holding a phone to her ear. A car comes up; a maid hops out of the front seat and opens the door for the girls, and they climb in, unsteady from lack of practice or too many vodka Sprites. You think about dancing, about what it’s like to occupy the skin of a beautiful party girl, something you can do with ease—slipping into a bar with confidence, slipping out with someone’s fingers twined in yours, ready to point at the stars and laugh then lean in close for a kiss.

They can never smell the blood and sputum underneath the liquor in your breath. Humans make up wonderfully intricate rituals, pretend to have such control—but they easily devolve into animal longing, just heartbeats flaring in their cage of skin and bones.

Something is knocking at Sara’s door. A monster of some kind, an overgrown baby bleeding from the chest. Its clawed fist is tapping in a way that’s supposed to be quiet, almost polite—then Sara realizes she’s asleep and scrambles out of bed.

She opens the door. It swings into the hallway and bumps into the girl standing there. “Sorry,” Sara says. Her shirt is soaked in sweat.

“No worries. I’m Kaye! Nice to meet you.” The girl’s hand is cold and dry in Sara’s gross sticky one.

“Sara,” Sara says. “So I guess we’re roommates?”

“Yep,” Kaye says. She is petite and gorgeous, with shiny black hair and flawless honey-colored skin. Asian, but Sara can’t guess which. She wears an easy, friendly grin as she wheels in her luggage. She stops to note which bed Sara has occupied, then throws her backpack onto the empty one.

Sara shuts the door and sits on her bed. She picks up her regulation Pen + Diary in a halfhearted effort to prep for Group Sharing, but ends up watching Kaye unpack instead. Kaye unzips her overstuffed luggage, displaying piles of neatly folded clothes and small colorful snacks: Sweet Corn, Salt and Vinegar Chips, Boy Bawang. Notebooks and papers are wedged between socks and shoes in plastic bags. Kaye fishes out a pair of slippers and slaps them on the floor triumphantly.

“So what’s your deal?” Sara asks, as Kaye peels off her shoes and socks and sticks her feet into the slippers.

“I eat fetuses,” Kaye replies. “If I feel like it, I eat organs too.”

Sara frowns and shuts her notebook. Kaye doesn’t elaborate, and starts sorting clothes on her bed. Sara leans forward so that she can better inspect Kaye’s luggage. There are stickers all over it. One says Fragile, another says Delta Airlines; three are written in Chinese Characters; two read Wow! Philippines. They’re faded, the edges picked off as if someone with long fingernails was extremely bored.

“You came from abroad?”

“A few months ago.” She opens a pack of chips and holds it out to Sara. Sara peers in; they look like shriveled corn kernels. She shakes her head.

“So you were flown all the way out here to stop eating babies,” Sara repeats. Her gut churns, and a voice in her brain goes no, no, no.

“Unborn babies,” Kaye clarifies. “But it’s not like I can help it.” She starts laying out her clothes on the bed, methodically. “I would tell you what they call me, but you wouldn’t be able to pronounce it anyway.”

“Try me,” Sara says.

Kaye smirks and rips out a page from her regulation Diary, then scribbles something on it. She holds it up for Sara to read.

“Manananggal?” Sara tries.

Kaye collapses onto her bed laughing.

The sky is outlined by skyscrapers, some still in construction. A half-finished high-rise condo is fenced off with boards bearing the image of the newest starlet. She’s wearing a red dress, hair fetchingly arranged over one shoulder, glass of champagne in hand. The flowery script next to her head reads: Where luxury and comfort reside.

The giant open-air shopping complex next to it is almost empty. A few cafes remain lit, although the chairs inside are turned up. A barkada of young professionals staggers back to the parking lot, high on caffeine and the adrenaline of overwork. They are laughing louder than the silence calls for. One man swears he will kill their boss the following morning.

You like these declarations. They can only be made at this hour—witching hour, your hour. You like them because they’re not true.

The Group Sharing discussion leader is named Apple. Sara ends up on her right, legs curled on the pink-and-orange mat. Apple greets everyone with a giant smile, then takes attendance. There are five girls in the sharing group, including Kaye. Apple begins by saying how happy she is that everyone has come to the Good Girl Reformation Retreat, where all girls are expected to be supportive and encouraging in their journey toward goodness.

“In order to get to know one another better, I would like each of you to tell the group which particular circumstances brought you here. There is no need to be shy or secretive about it. While we know it is not always easy to be good, we are now at Retreat, and we are going to try.”

Tamika, seated on Apple’s left, starts: She knifed her last boyfriend in the ribs. Trang has a habit of setting small fires because they are very pretty. Lena stalked her favorite lab teacher and sent threatening messages to his wife. Dana doesn’t say anything, but she pulls up her shirt and shows everyone a scar that cuts across her extremely toned belly. Sara notices Kaye looking at the pinkish flesh marring Dana’s brown skin with a sad smile.

“You have to tell us, Dana,” Apple insists. Dana says, “It hurt,” and that’s all she can be persuaded to say.

“Maybe next time then,” Apple says, with too much hope. “And you, Kaye?”

“I was brought to the US to marry someone,” Kaye says, the perfect mix of defiant and ashamed. Someone gasps. Sara’s mouth drops open, but Kaye doesn’t notice, and adds: “I’m not as young as I look.” She gives a tiny, tired grin, before proceeding to tell them about the drug bust at her husband’s place, her illegal papers, how no one will pay for her flight back to Manila. How the US government took matters into its own hands, and sent her here. How she’s homesick and rattled and maybe it’s for the best that her husband of two months OD’ed, but really mostly she’s glad to just be here, it seems safe. Everyone nods solemnly, and Dana reaches out and holds Kaye’s shoulder, briefly.

Liar, Sara thinks, but no, this is the truth. Of course this is the truth, and Kaye was just messing with her. Kaye was just having a little fun.

Then suddenly Apple says, “Sara? What about you, Sara?”

“I—” Sara says, and wonders how she can explain.

Manila’s gated communities, home to the rich and famous, swanky as fuck. You flap past some consulates, flags drooping from their balconies, but you’re not interested in foreign food today. You sweep closer, lower, appreciating the distinct features of each house: angels cut into columns, black iron gates with gold accents, circular driveways sweeping up to meticulously lit front doors. Gardens overflowing with gumamela blossoms and palm trees. All the houses are humming with electricity, air-conditioners running at full blast. The humans moving inside them are less electric: house-helpers clearing leftover party dishes, children stuck on their game consoles, everyone else asleep. It’s all boring boring boring until you smell tears—so much sorrow in the saline—from the odd modest house, a little decrepit for the neighborhood. The sound of sniffling is amplified. You stop and circle the air with interest.

Sara explains it like this:

“It started after I dropped my sister’s baby. Nobody knew if the baby would be okay. Then the baby was okay, after they’d checked it out at the doctors ‘cause everyone was convinced that the bruise was some kind of tumor. I was just playing with it. I just wanted to hold it for a little while. So anyway after that, I was forbidden to touch the baby. That was okay. I could deal with that.

“The problem was, I started always thinking about babies. Because a baby is this terrible, fragile thing, you know? And so many things can happen to it. I just kept theorizing: if you keep pushing your thumb into its head, won’t your thumb actually sink into its brain? Or if you hold it upside down for too long—like those dads on TV you know, always swinging their babies around?—like, maybe all the blood fills up its little brain and it gets a mini-baby-stroke. It got so bad that whenever I saw a baby, any baby, I got the sense that, like—me being alive—like it could cause that baby to die. Them or me, you know, and why the hell should it be me?

“So I started thinking I should fix that. I started looking out of windows and thinking I’m better off—you know—out there. Like when I’m in a moving car. Or when I’m on the fourth floor corridor of my school building. I get this sense that I can jump out and all the babies in the world will be saved. I kept trying, but something would always stop me, and when they asked me what my problem was—you see how hard it is to explain? So I would just tell them—I want to fly. That’s all I could say. I want to fly.”

She is pregnant, the private-school princess in her immaculate bedroom. The tiny thing growing inside her is incredibly fresh—six or seven weeks old—and she’s just found out, or just admitted it to herself. She doesn’t know what to do. She’s composing an email to her boyfriend, or maybe her best friend. She types in quick bursts, interspersed with falling on her bed and beating her pillow with impassioned fists. You imagine the taste of her child in your mouth; you consider sucking it up and sparing her the agony of waking tomorrow. Wouldn’t that be a mercy to this child? Not having to live with the shame of bearing her own, so young, and her parents so disappointed, and her schoolmates so ready to talk shit about her?

You settle on the roof, testing the tiles, positioning yourself above her bedroom.

Then she starts playing a Taylor Swift song. It’s blaring from her iTunes and she is wailing on the bed, and suddenly it’s so hilarious that you can’t bear to end it. Besides, you don’t want to wait for her to fall asleep. She might not fall asleep at all.

You sigh, take off again, and decide that it’s time for a change of scenery.

“So that’s your story,” Sara says that night, eyes gazing into the pitch darkness (Lights out at 9, 9 is so early, do they think anyone can actually sleep at 9?). “Mail order bride. Drugs. Gross old man. That sounds really terrible, but that…makes more sense.”

“That’s why I’m here, but only you know the truth about me,” Kaye says, an undercurrent of laughter in her voice. She sits up in bed, looks across at Sara, and Sara’s just imagining the weird light reflecting in her irises. “Hey Sara, I’m glad the baby was okay, by the way. It wasn’t your fault you were careless. Well I mean, it kind of is, but can anyone really blame you? Babies are such fragile things. I don’t know why you girls keep having them.”

“Says the baby eater,” Sara says, with what she hopes is humor, but she’s exhausted and suddenly imagining a baby tumbling down the stairs.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Kaye laces her arms across her knees. “That’s okay. I only told you because I thought maybe you wouldn’t—haha. If you did believe me you probably wouldn’t like me, and I’d have to say it’s in my nature, and then we’d fight, and god I’d have to leave again, when I’m not even hungry yet. When I’ve got nowhere to go.”

“You’re weird,” Sara says, because clearly Kaye is more messed up than she lets on.

Kaye laughs. There’s so much laughter in her, it surprises Sara. Kaye crosses the room and sits on the opposite end of Sara’s bed—so quickly, suddenly she’s there and Sara sits up and draws her knees back reflexively. She should be freaked out, but after weeks of being treated like broken glass back home, in school—this proximity is not entirely unwelcome. Everyone sidestepping the baby issue, Dad and Mom hissing about suicide treatment in the kitchen after dinner, her meager friends suddenly evaporating.

A person who treats her like she’s real? It’s an odd relief. Kaye leans closer. She smells nice, and her eyes crinkle.

“Tell me about your home,” Kaye says.

You head for a shantytown: homes made of hollow blocks, roofs of corrugated metal. It’s hardly a mile from the fancy neighborhood. The nearby river is peaceful, although the banks are still torn up from the last typhoon. From a distance you can already smell people, piss, dogs with festering sores, wet grass, shit, washing detergent. The earth is always damp here, soaking up rain, and the proximity of the houses makes everything feel warmer, more alive.

They do this nightly talking thing a lot, exchanging stories, doodling on each other’s Diaries then laughing and ripping out the pages. Then shushing each other. There’s no TV and no nail polish and no ovens to bake brownies in—only these, their words, their memories.

Sara finds herself in Kaye’s beloved Manila: garish colors everywhere, clogged highways, grimy naked children running next to spotless cars, in which the bourgeoisie sit with a driver, a maid, sometimes a bodyguard. Sara doesn’t have much to say about her own suburban neighborhood in Pleasanton, but Kaye seems fascinated by America anyway, so Sara tries. She explains the difference between Democrats and Republicans, and the nuances of California slang: Hella bomb, they repeat. Hella sick.

Kaye describes the parts of the body she likes best—she eats the fetus pretty much whole because it’s the tastiest (“I take it down my throat, and, uh…it’s a little hard to explain,”), then the heart, liver, stomach. Kidneys are surprising flavorful. It must be the bile.

When she talks about her monster self Sara just holds the thought apart from her brain. It’s too weird. It’s almost funny, how earnest Kaye is about it.

Sara recounts her sister’s wedding in Vegas, which they couldn’t really afford, but it was cool to act touristy and kitschy, posing next to the unsexy French maids in the Paris Hotel casino. It was stupid, and that’s what made it fun.

You count the number of warm bodies in each house you pass, considering the possible damage. Family of four, six, another six, three (absent father), four (absent mother), five (including grandmother). That one won’t manage if you eat the mother, because Lola is sickly and Tatay beats the children. Interesting drama, but you seem to be craving something else. Entrails won’t do tonight—you want a baby.

You’re enchanted by the amount of closeness you find in many homes: sweaty couples pressed together, children crowded on either side, useless electric fans whirring. It’s love and hunger bound up in acceptance, minute joys punctuated by a mostly typical dissatisfaction, the longing for something better, some way out of this.

They’re not exactly unhappy, despite everything. You think you understand that.

Very lightly, you settle on a gray roof with a gaping hole in the corner. You look down at the man and woman tangled and snoring on a bed, their two-year-old squashed between them. The scent of fresh mangoes is just enough to entice you. There’s only so much time left to properly enjoy your meal, so after a brief consideration you open your mouth and let your tongue slip through the ceiling.

The Retreat is all routines. After the first day, it’s only variations on a theme, and it gets harder to remember when they started, although that’s what the Diaries are for. Sara isn’t too worried. It must be expensive to run the retreat. Girls come in batches, sponsored by donations, desperate family or community members, and government money; they can’t stay forever. Three weeks, she figures. Four. In the meantime: free food, thirty other girls that are just as fucked up as she is, and even the daily exercise is starting to become manageable.

She figures things out. The cooks are on rotation, and the one every third day actually makes edible food. If you wake up at 5 there’s still hot water left in the showers. It’s okay to walk quickly instead of running during laps, as long as you finish all five. Apple expects you to write at least a paragraph in your diary every day, or else you’ll have to do a long-ass recap at the end of the week. If only there was more to say.

Most girls stay in their rooms during off hours. If the retreat is for repentance, Sara’s not sure how effective it is. At night she can usually hear sobbing down the hall, or hard objects (bodies? heads?) smacking against the walls (sex? Fights? A mix?). Girls who act out are given warnings and punishments. There are no field trips, but they do painting and basket weaving, and learn an alarming number of songs in different languages. If not for the fact that someone always showed up for music class with a burst lip and a black eye, it would almost be like summer camp. Even the Captains turn nicer, only harsh when someone gripes about exercise or doesn’t finish her tossed greens.

Still, despite the moderated peace, restlessness is starting to build beneath the monotony. Someone claims that on their last day the teachers will clear out, and they’re going to gas the place, kill all the girls. It’s a stupid claim, but it has its effects.

“What the fuck are we doing here?” becomes a common question, a chant: in between tooth brushing, or eating soft-but-actually-hard rolls, or making honest-to-god charm bracelets.

Sara asks it, herself, sprawled out on her bed. It’s Going to be Okay! is the motivational statement Apple has assigned them this week. It’s pretty weak, as far as encouragement goes. “What the fuck are we doing here?”

She doesn’t really expect an answer, but Kaye says, “Learning to be good girls. Right?”

“Well when do we get to say okay already, I get it, I’m good?”

Kaye shrugs. “What are you going to do when you get out of here, anyway?”

Sara doesn’t answer, but she pictures it: going back, holding up her nephew triumphantly, the mediocre joy of normalcy after so much exposure to other people’s shit. So she’s thought about killing herself and has a weird thing about babies. She’s never actually hurt anyone. I’m not like these girls, she thinks, and it makes her feel both proud and disgusted. Then she sees herself climbing onto a balcony, feeling the salt edge of the wind, wondering if there’s still a part of her that wants to leave everything.

“Hey Sara. Were you serious about wanting to fly?”

Sara feels jolted. Kaye’s eyes are opaque on hers.

“What do you mean?” Her heartbeat quickens. Kaye smiles and looks out their window.

“You get to decide. Are you going to be good when you leave here? Are you going to turn out all right? You could, you know. You could. There’s no need to stop trying.” She stands and stretches, then clasps her hands over her stomach meaningfully. “But not me. I don’t get to pick. I never get to say I’m good. I can try, but I’m powerless against my hunger. I mean, we all need to eat sometimes, right?”

Sara swallows. Her saliva sticks in her throat. She isn’t afraid of Kaye. Kaye is her friend. Her gorgeous, crazy, baby-eating, compulsively lying friend.

Kaye crosses the room, lightning quick, until she is standing before Sara. The setting sun turns her face a weird shade of orange. She crouches down so that she’s level with Sara, stretched on her bed.

“You know,” she says, face contorting, like she’s holding back tears. “I’m getting hungry. I’m going to need to feed soon. Promise me something. We’re friends, right, Sara?”

Sara pauses, maybe too long, before nodding. Then, to increase her conviction: “Yeah. Of course.”

“When I feed—promise me that you won’t care. You can just—sleep. It doesn’t really change anything. I’ve always been this way, you know? And all you girls—” she shakes her head, stops herself. “You do that for me, I’ll let you fly for one night. It’s nicer here than in Manila. It’s cooler.” She pats the top of Sara’s head. Which is funny, because she’s shorter than Sara.

“What do you think?” she asks. “I can fly, you know. I’m pretty fucking great at it.”

Sara thinks of falling, of landing on the pavement and hearing her shoulder shatter, seeing her own blood streak out past her vision. Her mother sobbing by her bed at the hospital, saying I can’t do this anymore, honey. It has to stop. And after being released, how she’d had no idea, how the van had come one day, and in a haze of anti-depressants she’d stepped onboard. She’d come here.

If Kaye could fly—hold her, dance her through the air—she’d be able to see. If it’s safe to go back. If she’s tired of being this way, at least for now.

But more than that, Kaye just wants her to pretend everything’s fine. She can do that. She’s had a lot of practice.

She reaches up and puts her hand on top of Kaye’s, not feeling scared or threatened or awed. Just tired. Bonesucked tired. She squeezes Kaye’s hand and says, “Okay.”

Your tongue settles on her stomach, and you start feeding, sucking greedily. You’re starving, and it tastes so fucking delicious. The woman squirms, and the child next to her utters a short, soft moan. You don’t want this. You do.

Sara wakes up sweating. It’s sometime past midnight? It’s too early. She needs to go back to sleep. She shuts her eyes. The sound of her breathing is too loud. She decides to get a glass of water and stumbles out of bed, bumping into something in the middle of the floor. She falls backwards, landing on her ass.

The window is open, the metal fastenings they installed after some girl attempted escape somehow undone. A cloudy moonbeam streams through it, illuminating the lower half of Kaye’s torso and her legs, her feet still in their slippers. It is standing erect, perfectly immobile, like someone sliced a girl in half and left it there for fun. The insides are shimmering, grisly, unreal.

Sara crawls back under her sheets and goes to sleep. Sometime later something slides in next to her, nudging for space on her pillow. Something wraps its arms around Sara and puts its forehead against the small of Sara’s back. Sara smells blood mixed with the faint tinge of—mango?—and after a moment’s hesitation, she holds those arms against her. The back of her shirt grows damp with what might be tears.

When you’re finished, when you’ve shriveled up everything inside her stomach so that your own is full, you spool your tongue back into your mouth and breathe deeply. The horizon tells you that you have about an hour before the sun rises. That’s just enough time to head home, rejoin your lower half, shuffle back into bed. Good girls don’t get caught with babies in their bellies; good girls don’t lie; good girls don’t sneak out wearing only their boyfriends’ shirts.

You know what you are; you know what you aren’t.

In their twentieth session, Apple says they’ve all been exceedingly Good Girls, and they’re going to be moving on the following week. The girls have demonstrated that they’ve absorbed the values of the retreat and are ready to rejoin the good world. Once Admin gets their paperwork done, the Captains do their sign-offs, and the discussion leaders file their reports—the girls will be free.

“You get to go back home,” Kaye says, while they’re packing.

“So do you,” Sara says, but she’s suddenly not sure.

Kaye flashes her teeth, feral. “I told you, girl, I don’t have one. I go where the wind takes me!” She flings out her arms, dramatically, and flops backwards on her bed. “This was nice,” she says. “Even when it sucked it was okay. I should hang out with girls more. They don’t want as much from you as guys do. I can stay full for longer! Girls are like fiber.”

Sara doesn’t like the wistful tone in Kaye’s voice. Sara doesn’t like how her own heart squeezes, or how lonely she feels. How afraid she is of going home to find—but no, it’ll be okay. She’s different now. She’s going to do better.

You get to decide, Kaye said. It’s not that easy. But she can try. Some girls will break their promises, lose their homes, keep on rattling against the gates, biting and sobbing and breathing. Sara, if she wants to, can change.

Kaye rolls over on her bed, arm covering her eyes. She lifts it to peer at Sara. “I still owe you. How about tonight?”

You’ve never detached with someone watching. You’re so fascinated by her gaze on you that you hardly notice the pain. Sara’s big blue eyes are an excellent mirror—how there are stringy bits when you twist off, how the way your spine tears from sinew is fluid, almost graceful. Your shirt is short this time so she sees your entrails hanging out, nearly glowing with all the slick against them.

To her credit, Sara doesn’t vomit. You move slowly over to the window, keeping your wings folded, and undo the latches with your knifelike fingers. You drift out and motion for her to stand on the desk. She climbs up, shakily, and says, “Can you really carry me?”

You like to think your smile, at least, is familiar—even if the pointed tongue between your teeth isn’t.

“Yeah,” you say. “Trust me.” This is you: this is your life, the strength that fills you as you fly, feed, move on. Spanning provinces, cities, countries, continents. Finding new homes to leave, new bodies to keep you warm when you’re not hungry, new strangers to suck dry when you are. And you’ll keep on doing this, as long as you can make it back in time. Before the sun rises, or someone finds the parts you’ve left behind—something must always be left behind.

This is how you survive.

Sara will get to go home. You’ll just have to find a new one.

“You ready?” The trees are crowding out most of the wind, but you can still taste the breeze, drifting over the dormitories where so many girls are sleeping like wolves, retreating from the world. Just waiting to bare their fangs.

Sara nods. You can’t read her expression—like she’s about to scream or laugh or cry. You squeeze her hand as hard as you can without hurting her, and spread your wings.