Chapter Seven

“I did it again,” I said in between panting breaths.

There was no feeling in the words. I spoke as if I had spilled a bit of stew on the dinner table.

I couldn’t allow myself to care, not yet. Raw survival instinct owned me.

First, I had to get the knife out of my leg. I was losing blood.

Best to get it over with. I wrapped my right hand around the base of the knife and yanked up hard. It was just as painful as when I had copied two knives off of it, but I noticed the pain more, now that the fighting was over. My teeth clenched and my eyes squeezed shut as the blooded blade came out of my leg.

I wanted to lie back on the ground and rest after that exertion, but there was no time. I had to wrap the injury right away. Using the knife, I cut a strip of fabric from all around the hem of my dress, then pulled up my skirt so I could wrap my bare leg. My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely do any of this.

Eventually, I had the tourniquet cinched tight around my thigh. I hoped it would keep me going until I could get better treatment.

That done, I realized that I didn’t feel as cold as I should have, wearing only my dress. The warmth spell I had cast yesterday was still active. I had left my coat and cloak in Chen’s little house, along with the shoulder-bag that held my remaining spellcards and other supplies.

The spellcard folder was most important. I couldn’t go on without it, but that meant heading back into the Mayohiga clearing, past all the traps –

one of which had speared Marisa, and her dead body was hanging from it right now; shut up, shut up, don’t think about it, don’t even look at them

– and Chen was gone. My only way in was to shift past the traps, but I had never tried that while injured.

One task at a time. Before anything else, I needed to stand up.

I expected it to hurt, and it did. My left leg protested against carrying me. Any time the damaged muscle worked, hot lances of pain shot down to my ankle and up into my stomach.

Now standing, resting most of my weight on my right leg, I took one step forward. It was mostly a hop on just my right foot.

Covering any ground was going to be slow and agonizing, but at least I could move. I wished I had a crutch of some kind, so I could let my left leg dangle.

On to the next task. I took in a breath, closed my eyes, and shifted.

---

Going back in through Mayohiga’s entrance tunnel was a waking nightmare. The wound alone made it harder to shift at all, but I also had to work twice as hard to move at half my normal speed.

The headache grew far faster than normal. Over the last few hobbling steps, pounding waves thumped through my skull and seared the backs of my eyes. My vision swam and jumped with colorful splotches. I could hear nothing but my own pounding heart.

I made it through, emerged into the fenced clearing of Mayohiga, then stumbled and collapsed on the ground. I didn’t feel myself falling over.

Only after lying there for a few seconds did I realize that I had fallen. The headache slowly cleared, but that just gave all the other pains a fresh chance to shine through. My face was wet and hot. I must have been crying.

No time for any of that. Bracing myself against the fence, I got back to my feet. It was a shorter distance to cross the clearing straight to Chen’s hut, but limping was easier when I could lean on the bamboo weave.

Around the perimeter, I made it to the fancy cat house, then threw myself onto the wooden platform. I tried to crawl in, but putting any weight on my left knee engaged the injured muscle. Turning around and sitting, I scooted backward, used my shoulders and the back of my head to open the thatched door, then laid my upper body inside. This put my gear within reach.

After a lot of exertion and struggle, I got my coat and cloak back on, and had my travel bag over my shoulder. I pulled myself from the hut and sat upright on the edge of the platform.

Looking back across the clearing to the entrance tunnel, sick dread clawed at my guts. Now I had to go all the way back, including shifting out past the traps... and passing the girls’ bodies again.

---

I did make it out of Mayohiga. It’s a small miracle that I didn’t faint within range of the exterior traps. The violent screeching in my skull dropped me to my hands and knees. The shift fatigue hit my stomach worse this time. With all four of my limbs shaking, I fought the urge to retch. If I had eaten anything this morning, I would have sprayed it all over the snow.

I sat on the ground for a short while, trying to catch my breath, swallowing repeatedly to calm my stomach. My back was turned to Reimu’s and Marisa’s remains, letting me stare off into the woods.

My body was screaming at me to rest, but I couldn’t stay. The smell of blood could attract any number of beasts brave enough to scavenge in the cold, and I would lose strength with every hour spent out here. If not for the warmth spell over me, I might have already passed out and be well on my way to freezing to death.

I didn’t have my bearings, but I had to get moving. My only chance would be to bushwhack in a straight line and hope to come across a trail. That trail might lead to some hermit magician’s house. If I were lucky, I might run into someone heading out for morning errands.

---

I’m not sure how long it took to find the trail, nor how much distance I covered. I can only say that it felt like I had visited Hell itself. Every hobbling step forward step hurt. Taking a break by leaning against a tree trunk, that also hurt. I was dehydrated, exhausted, light-headed.

What’s worse, I couldn’t keep to a straight line. A rock in the ground, a thicket of bushes, a slope that was too steep – I kept having to take little detours around terrain. I tried to return to my course every time, but I couldn’t know if I was going the right way.

There was no denying it. I was lost. This would be a fitting punishment for my crimes: not to be murdered or slain in battle, but a slow death in the great outdoors, giving me plenty of time to savor the torture of exposure.

With my head full of dark clouds, I emerged from the trees and set foot on the packed-hard dirt of a trail. It was well-timed, because even my good leg couldn’t carry me another step. I plopped myself down and sat with my back to a tree trunk, wrapping my cloak around me.

For all I knew, even taking a break might not help. Maybe I would never have the strength to stand again... but that didn’t matter. I would rest here for a few minutes. If that wasn’t enough to get me back up, then so be it.

That’s when I heard a high-pitched voice humming a melancholy tune, somewhere up the trail to my left. At first, I wasn’t sure the sound was real – then I saw a faint light filtering through the trees. It looked like the glow of fairy wings.

The humming grew louder, and the light came closer. I held my breath, hoping it would go somewhere else and ignore me. Meeting a fairy was the last thing I needed. She would alert the rest of her dance, and soon I’d be swarmed with lesser youkai nibbling on my flesh.

On a good day, I could easily defend myself or escape. Today was not a good day.

Around a bend in the trail, a single fairy floated into view, her wings buzzing in glowing blur that kept her airborne. I stared at her, confused, because she was cleaner and better-clothed than any wild fairy I had seen. Her hair was long and blonde, topped with a pink ribbon. She wore a full winter dress, plus a little scarf and mittens.

The fairy bobbed forward another few feet before noticing me. There she stopped, hanging in air, and her breath caught in a gasp.

“Oh dear!” she said, putting one hand over her mouth. “Has another resident fallen upon hard times? Would it be either presumptuous, precocious or perpendicular of me to approach and inquire as to their wellbeing or lack thereof?”

I sat silent, hood obscuring most of my face.

“Excuse my deciduous intrusion into your impoverished morning, my fellow traveler!” said the fairy, waving one arm and floating toward me slowly. “Are you in need of directions, emotional support or political suffrage? This humble doll can only possibly offer one half of those three things, but the enthusiasm with which I offer it might compensate in the satiation of whatever need currently vexes.”

“Don’t talk to me,” I said. “Either bring your dance to feed, or go away.”

She tilted her head. “I... beg your highly crosshatched pardon, ma’am? I do not dance, for both of my feet are so left that actual left feet appear to be far, far right by comparison. Instead, this morning’s activity is an errand, whereby my mistress required this gratefully-obsequious familiar to visit the home of our much-missed neighbor and confidant, and learn if she has yet returned from her sojourn to the mountain shrine.”

That rang a bell. This wasn’t a wild fairy, and her mistress knew Marisa. Maybe this was my chance to get to shelter. It would require lying through my teeth, but that was far from the worst thing I had done today.

I looked up and pulled off my hood, letting the her see my face.

“Then I’m sorry,” I said, “but your trip is wasted. I was just at the Kirisame home, and she hasn’t returned yet.”

The fairy’s shoulders drooped. Her wings slowed then stopped, so that she lowered to the ground and stood there.

“Goodness,” she said. “My mistress may indeed be all three disappointed, defenestrated and dynastic to hear this unwelcome news. The winter chill shows no sign of abatement, despite its welcome having expired many corrugated weeks ago, and my mistress yearns to know firstly that her neighbor has returned safely, and secondly that a solution to this prolonged season is discovered and forthcoming.”

None of the fairies back home rambled this much. It grated on my frayed nerves. Still, I had to be polite.

“I share those concerns. That’s why I’m visiting. My name is Sakuya Izayoi, and I’m from the Scarlet Mansion on the lake. My mistress sent me to the Forest to recruit skilled magicians for a conference, where we’ll discuss what to do about the long winter.”

“Oh!” The fairy clasped both hands to her blouse. Her eyes lit up with a sharp blue glow. “Perhaps then it was fortunate, fortuitous and flagrant that this stroll has brought me to you. There is no magician more skilled than my own mistress, whose home is not far enough from this spot to be considered within the realms of yonder.” She curtsied. “My own name is Shanghai, living doll, devoted familiar and uproarious fan of my mistress, automancer extraordinaire Alice Margatroid. Though you are not the company my mistress would expect to bring back in tow, your presence is likely to be well-received.”

“Then lead the way,” I said, “but don’t go too fast. My leg is hurt it’s and slowing me down.”

Her wings buzzed to life, lifting her into the air.

“As the mightiest of your wishes carries me, ma’am, so shall mine lead you. Please follow me rhythmically.”

---

Sitting for those few minutes had helped a bit. Everything hurt and the whole world was awful, but I was able to stand and keep hobbling along. Simple thirst joined the chorus of agonies, made worse by the dry winter air. My lips were chapped and my insides felt like cracked ground during a drought.

Shanghai led me up the forest path, hovering a few feet above the ground. She went at a modest pace I could keep up with, and she talked the whole time.

“This will be good news,” she said, “very good news. The mistress is in need of such news that’s either good, better, or best. She has been out of sorts lately. The music plays every night. Last night, the night before last night, the night before the night before, the night after the night before the night before, and so on.

“It is very lovely music, do not doubt, question or misconstrue, but even the loveliest of the lovelier of the lovely things will grow wearisome precipitously. My poor mistress has been deprived of a proper night’s slumber for time intractable. She needs her beauty rest, and it is just so, for so the mistress says, and who is better an authority on the mistress’s condition than she herself?

“If she were to tell me she is beautiful, then so she must be, for so she says. If she were to tell me she is brilliant, then so she precariously is, for so she says, and she speaks what is. What a generous means to educated ends! Extrapolating truth and offering it for either my gain, benefit, or best interest. What hardship she has spared me, gratuitously and perfunctorily, teaching me herself, so that I needn’t enroll in a school for the witless. And do look! We’ve arrived.”

We came to a big area that had been cleared and flattened. Here stood a well-kept cottage that belonged in some affluent town on a lakeside, not the middle of the woods. Shanghai flew ahead for the doorstep.

The front door flew open. An angry-looking woman stormed out.

“Good grief, Shanghai! Why are you bringing lanky vagrants home?”

She might have passed for human anywhere other than Gensokyo. Short blonde hair and blue eyes. Taller than some, but shorter than me. She wore a light blue, ankle-length dress. She looked fatigued and frustrated, but she was a hundred miles less of dirt road than I was.

She stood there, glaring at me, fists planted on her hips. Shanghai hovered near her shoulder, wings buzzing.

“Who are you? I don’t accommodate beggars.”

“I’m no beggar, but I do need help.” I tried to bow, then froze against the stabbing pain in my leg. “I can offer the friendship of my mistress, Lady Scarlet, if you’ll aid me.”

“Lady who?”

I winced. Was my mistress’s name less well-known than I needed it to be?

“Did you say Lady Scarlet? As in Remilia Scarlet?”

“Yes!” My heart picked up. “I’m her personal attendant, Sakuya Izayoi.”

“Oh, that’s just too perfect!” She stepped up to me, jabbing a finger in my chest. “Is this some sick joke at my expense? What else did Marisa tell you? Who’s that librarian she steals books from?”

“Patchouli Knowledge,” I said. “And you must be Alice Margatroid.”

She hmphed. “Of course you know my name. Marisa did a good job of getting your story straight.”

I didn’t have the energy to debate, so I tried a different approach. I held up one of my throwing knives, a clean one, for Alice to see. Her eyes stuck to my initials etched into the curved throwing grip, and her face changed with disbelief.

She looked down, eyes darting back and forth as she connected points in her mind.

“That can’t be,” she said, then looked up to meet my eyes again. “Are you the one who stabbed Reimu?”

“Yes. It seemed necessary at the time, but I regret it now. Those two did leave our home on good terms.”

Alice was shaking her head. “I can’t believe it. I thought she made it all up. Why would you come here of all places?”

“Lady Scarlet sent me to find the help of skilled magicians in dealing with the long winter, but I also have a more pressing need.”

I opened my cloak, showing her my blood-soaked, tattered and filthy dress. The sight startled her. She took in a sharp breath and stepped back.

“You’re hurt!” she said. “This... this couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

“I’m sorry to impose, but I can promise that Lady Scarlet will compensate for any aid given.”

“Oh, she will. Let’s get you inside. I can’t have a human bleeding to death on my doorstep.”