The fifth year of Emperor Bidatsu’s reign, Kisaragi. Aki, Itsukushima.
The waters of the Inland Sea were calm. The scent of the tide rose halfway up the mountain, dampening the camellia blossoms. On the island’s northern side, a white beach curved in an arc; on the southern side, sheer cliffs plunged into the sea. The Garan Settlement stood atop those cliffs.
Itsukushima. There was no shrine yet. No torii, either. On the island’s high ground, still covered in primeval forest, a little over a hundred houses huddled together. Medicinal herbs hung beneath the eaves, their dry scent mingling with the wind.
The Garan Clan. A people descended from Garuda. They held small spheres of influence across the islands of the Inland Sea and made their living cultivating medicinal herbs, chiefly hemp and poppies. They understood bird-speech, revered birds, and lived alongside them.
Peacocks lived in the island’s mountains. Descendants of peacocks brought from the continent by their ancestors had taken root in the island’s forests over generations. Returned to the wild, the peacocks feared humans and rarely showed themselves.
Deep in the mountains. Kana sat atop a moss-covered rock.
She was sixteen. Her long black hair flowed down her back, and she wore a thin hemp garment over her brown skin. Tall and a head taller than the girls her age, she had narrow, elegant eyes. They were gentle, but there was a distant light in them, as though she were gazing at somewhere far away.
A peacock stood before Kana.
A male. He watched Kana warily with his tail feathers closed. Emerald and lapis-blue plumage glimmered dully in the dappled sunlight.
Kana did not move. She had been sitting there since morning.
She spoke to him in bird-speech.
It was not a voice. It was a low vibration produced in the back of her throat. Humans shaped it with their throats at the same frequency as the resonance of a bird’s breastbone. It was the Garan Clan’s art of conversing with birds.
—I want you to give me just two of your feathers.
The peacock tilted his head. He watched Kana with one eye.
—So I can carry on the Phoenix Dance. They have to be your feathers.
The peacock did not move. Kana did not move either.
Cicadas sang. The dappled sunlight shifted, and the shape of the shadows slowly changed.
How much time passed?
The peacock took one step closer.
Kana held her breath.
Another step. Another.
The peacock’s beak touched Kana’s knee.
Slowly, Kana reached out and rested her fingers against the back of his neck. The warmth beneath his feathers flowed into her fingertips. His heartbeat was fast. A bird’s heart beat far faster than a human’s.
“Thank you.”
She said it aloud—not in bird-speech, but in human words.
The peacock shuddered. Two feathers fell loose from the base of his tail. Great emerald and lapis-blue feathers. Their eye patterns wavered in the light.
The peacock withdrew from Kana’s hand, took three steps back, and disappeared into the underbrush without looking back.
Kana picked up the two feathers. When she placed them in her palm, they trembled faintly in the breeze.
Now she had everything. The arrow quiver and the feathers. Everything needed for the Phoenix Dance.
When she came down from the mountain, the settlement was in an uproar.
Something was different. The women who had been bundling herbs beneath the eaves had stopped to stare toward the plaza. Children ran about, and dogs barked.
Clutching the peacock feathers to her chest, Kana headed for the plaza.
Two unfamiliar people stood in the center. They wore woven hawk-feather garb—the dress of Tengu envoys—and their faces were covered in the dust of travel and weathered by the sea wind. They had likely come this far from island to island across the Inland Sea.
They stood beside the clan chief, speaking with him about something.
The clan chief was Kana’s grandfather. His white hair was tied back, and he was an upright old man. He was the person who understood bird-speech most deeply and had inherited all the Garan Clan’s knowledge of medicine.
When Kana approached, her grandfather turned around.
“Kana. Perfect timing.”
He held a wooden tablet in his hand.
“An official summons from Imibe. Read it.”
Kana accepted the wooden tablet.
“Bring the princesses of the Six Kowakuni Clans to Tachibana Palace of Asuka.”
She read it aloud. Her own voice sounded strangely far away.
The princesses of the Six Clans. Kana lifted her head and looked at her grandfather.
“I’m the one who’s going?”
“Who else would go?”
Her grandfather smiled. It was a gentle smile, but one that left no room for argument.
One of the Tengu envoys spoke.
“In Kaku-kari Village, the princess was capturing a dragon. In Yama Village, the princess was forging iron. Both were magnificent—”
“A dragon,”
Kana murmured.
“Iron.”
She murmured it again.
A princess who captured dragons. A princess who forged iron. Today, she had asked a peacock for its feathers.
Kana looked down at the peacock feathers. The emerald and lapis-blue eye patterns glowed quietly in the evening sunlight.
“…All I can do is dance.”
Her grandfather placed a hand on Kana’s shoulder.
“Then dance. Your dance is something only you can do.”
Kana nodded.
That night. In her room, Kana opened the arrow quiver.
It was made of two bamboo tubes joined together. When she removed the lid, the scent of white powder rose into the air. Sleeping powder refined from poppies and hemp—the sleep-inducing powder only Garan Clan apothecaries were permitted to prepare.
She inserted the peacock feathers into the arrow quiver. The shafts fit perfectly into the bamboo tubes.
She would hold one in each hand and dance upwind. Each time she waved the feathers, the powder would rise and spread on the wind. Anyone who inhaled it would see visions—beautiful visions. Birds of brilliant colors would flit through the air, flowers would bloom in profusion, and, wrapped in sweet fragrances, they would eventually sink into a deep sleep.
The Phoenix Dance. A prayer, a weapon, and an art passed down through the Garan Clan for generations.
Kana closed the arrow quiver and looked outside the window.
The waters of the Inland Sea were dyed silver by the moonlight. The islands’ shadows rose black against the night, and beyond them, the mountains of Honshu blurred into the distance.
Asuka lay beyond those mountains.
There was a princess who captured dragons. There was a princess who forged iron. And there were princesses she had yet to meet.
Kana stroked the peacock feathers. They trembled faintly beneath her fingers, still warm, as though retaining the last trace of the bird’s body heat.
“Let’s go.”
She said it aloud. She was not speaking to anyone. She was speaking to herself.
The peacock had given her its feathers. Then she would dance with them—wherever she went, before whomever she faced.
Kana hugged the arrow quiver to her chest and lay down. The sound of the Inland Sea’s tide drifted through the window like a lullaby.
Her sleep was peaceful. An apothecary’s sleep: light and long, able to distinguish the scents of medicinal herbs even in dreams.
The settlement began to stir the next morning.
The women gathered at Kana’s house. It was like preparing her for marriage—no, more than that.
“If you’re going to Asuka, you can’t wear that.”
An older woman spread out a hemp garment dyed indigo. Fine embroidery modeled after peacock feathers adorned the collar. It was the formal dress of a Garan princess, sewn and stored away over many years.
“Fix your hair, too. Would we let one of our island girls bring shame upon us?”
They combed her hair with camellia oil and tied it up with a seashell comb. The girls picked flowers and tucked them into Kana’s hair: white camellias, red camellias, and mountain lilies.
Kana said nothing, letting them do as they pleased.
“Don’t cry.”
Her mother spoke, though her own eyes were redder.
“I’m not crying.”
“You are.”
Her mother touched Kana’s cheek. Only then did Kana realize that she was crying.
When she went down to the beach, her father was preparing a ship.
A sailing ship. Small but sturdy, the kind the Garan Clan used to travel between the islands of the Inland Sea. A new sailcloth had been stretched across the mast, billowing in the sea wind.
“I’ll take you as far as Saikazaki. From there, it’s a straight shot to Asuka.”
Her father spoke with an awkward smile on his sunburned face.
The people of the settlement had come out to the beach. A hundred of them—all of the Garan Clan stood in a line on the sand, watching Kana. Children waved, the elders nodded, and dogs wagged their tails.
Her grandfather stood before Kana.
“A bird is still a bird even after it leaves its nest. You are a child of the Garan Clan, wherever you go.”
Kana bowed deeply.
She boarded the ship. Her father took the helm, and her mother hauled on the sail ropes.
The ship pulled away from the beach. The green of Itsukushima slowly receded into the distance.
The people on the beach grew smaller. The shadows waving their hands became dots, then melted into the outline of the island.
The waters of the Inland Sea were calm. The sailing ship headed east, weaving between the islands. The scent of the tide. The cries of gulls. With the sails filled by the wind, the ship skimmed across the water.
Kana sat at the stern, the arrow quiver resting on her lap. The peacock feathers peeked slightly from the bamboo tubes. Emerald and lapis-blue shimmered in the light of the sea.
Saikazaki. A cape jutting out from the coast of Kii. From there, traveling east and upstream along the Kinokawa River would take her through the basin to Asuka.
Her father brought the ship alongside the shore.
“From here on, you’re on your own.”
Her mother embraced Kana. She said nothing. Nothing needed to be said.
Kana stepped onto the cape. When she turned around, her parents’ ship had already raised its sail. They were catching the tide on their way home.
The small sail disappeared into the light of the Inland Sea.
Kana faced east. Asuka lay beyond the mountains.
She adjusted the arrow quiver in her arms and began to walk.