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“It’s back,” I whispered to Takkan. “It’s in the air, the earth, everywhere. It’s wonderful.”

As the rain eased, I blinked at the sky. It was a beautiful, blue-as-a-pea-flower day.

“Let’s wait here, just for a minute,” I said.

With a nod, Takkan stopped. Muscles corded his arms as he painstakingly lay me down, every movement with the greatest care, on a flat rock before the Tears of Emuri’en.

The smoke was gone, and in its place was a soft fog curling up from the trees as rain tickled the earth. The fog skimmed over Takkan’s face, almost hiding the mist in his eyes.

He knew he couldn’t save me. My life literally hung on a thread—on one last piece of my soul that I had kept to myself. All we had left was goodbye.

Rain splashed against my face, but I couldn’t feel the droplets anymore. I was already drifting, like a kite cut loose, the end of my string only grasping at the earth. Soon it too would float away.

I saw a figure in the far distance, advancing slowly. It was not someone I had met before, yet his very presence cast forth a heavy, inescapable pall, like the weight of the ocean pressing down on my body.

My heart sank in my chest. I had a feeling I knew who it was.

I turned to Takkan, seizing what moments I had left. “Tell me a story.”

His dark hair obscured his eyes, and I couldn’t tell whether it was rain or tears that tracked down the hard slope of his cheeks. His hands cradled mine. “There once was a girl…who’d forgotten how to smile,” he said softly. “She was clever and beautiful, so much so that word of her loveliness had spread from village to village and she had many admirers. But when her mother fell ill, all the happiness fled from her eyes, and she became a ghost of her former self.

“Before her mother died, she made the girl promise to wear a wooden bowl over her head and never take it off. It would cover half her face and shield her from unwanted attention. Soon word spread that she was hiding demon eyes beneath the bowl, but she ignored the cruel words that followed her. It made her see who her true friends were, just as her mother had wished. After many months, she met a boy who noticed not the bowl but her sadness. He made it his mission to earn a smile from her. Every day he would walk with her in the garden and tell her stories. Slowly, ever so slowly, the girl warmed to his gentle heart, and the two fell in love.”

“He sounds like you,” I said, tilting my head back. “A simple, humble lord of the third rank. One who likes to run when it’s snowing, and paint storybooks for his sister.”

“The boy wished to marry her,” Takkan continued, “but the villagers would not permit it. Thinking her a demon, they tried to kill her—only her bowl shattered into a thousand pieces, revealing at last her eyes, which twinkled not with malevolent power but the light of the stars. The boy saw not her beauty but the woman he loved. He married her as soon as she would have him, and their strands were knotted from one life to the next and the next.”

I smiled ruefully, almost forgetting the pain. Almost forgetting the strange presence that had been hovering in my periphery, waiting for Takkan to finish his tale.

“I like the ending to your story,” I whispered. “I wish it were how ours ended.”

Takkan lowered his eyes. They were wet as he pressed his hand into mine, and his voice was husky with emotion. “We are bound, remember? If you have no heart, I will give you half of mine. If you have no spirit, I will bind yours to mine.”

“Find the light that makes your lantern shine,” I said softly, quoting Raikama. “Hold on to it, even when the dark surrounds you. Not even the strongest wind will blow out the flame.” I tilted my head to look up at him. “You will be the light, Takkan. No matter where I go.”

My vision blurred, and my ears rang, robbing me of Takkan’s reply. But at last I could see the figure that encroached upon my final moments. He came not cloaked in velvety darkness, as I’d expected, but swathed in a stinging bright light.

Lord Sharima’en himself, the god of death.

“Come, Shiori’anma,” he said, his voice cool and detached. “It is time.”

I sensed my spirit obeying the god of death and beginning to leave my body. Sleep dusted my eyelids, yet I fought to stay awake. I fought to stay. No, not yet.

“You have done well,” said the god, his words edged with warning. “Go with dignity.”

I don’t care. Let me stay. Please. It was useless to plead with Sharima’en the Undertaker. Every Kiatan knew that. But I didn’t care how childish I sounded.

“My father, my brothers—they need me….” I swallowed. “And Takkan.”

“They’ll join you when their time comes,” said Lord Sharima’en. “Now it is yours.”

“Is it?” chimed a new voice.

The god of death turned, frowning at the shimmering form that had appeared behind him.

Weakly, I lifted my head. Bathed in a crown of moonlight was the lady of the moon. Rabbits with silver-rimmed eyes frolicked at her feet, and she glided to us on a pale cloud.

Imurinya, I thought.