Page 39 of Yoshi (Land of Jade & Fire #1)

Chapter 39

Kaneko

I never thought I would long for the dangers of the jungle, but by the fourth day trapped inside Irie’s shop, I was beginning to lose my mind.

The first day had been bearable—I’d needed the rest. My body was still recovering from the jungle, from the wreck, from the sheer exhaustion of running for my life. I had slept more in those first twenty-four hours than I had in the last two weeks combined. Part of me wondered if Irie hadn’t given me something to make me sleep, but I was sure those thoughts were little more than my suspicious mind at work.

On the second day, I let my curiosity distract me. I studied Irie’s strange jars, sniffed at her dried herbs, tried to piece together what half the things in her shop were used for. She ignored me, going about her business, mixing and grinding and boiling and, well, whatever else an herb woman did with a bunch of dried leaves.

Mostly, she hummed and worked, worked and hummed.

By the third day, I started pacing. The walls were too close, too tight. I felt trapped. Like a caged bird, wings clipped, left to rot in someone else’s world. I needed air. I needed to see the sky. I needed to know if I could still run, because if I stopped wanting to run, then what was left of me?

Kazashita arrived on the morning of the fourth day, stepping through the door like he hadn’t left me there to stew in my own thoughts for nearly a week. He exchanged a few low words with Irie while I sat on my mat, pretending I wasn’t straining to hear what they were saying.

“He’s restless,” Kazashita muttered.

Irie sighed. “Of course he is. Young men are like wild dogs—you either put them to work or they chew through the walls.”

Kazashita smirked. “Then take him outside.”

I bolted upright.

Irie scoffed. “Are you daft? It’s been four days.”

“Exactly. The longer he hides, the more obvious he’ll be when he finally walks out.”

Irie crossed her arms, glancing at me like I was some sort of sickly houseplant. “Well?” she said. “Think you can handle stepping into the sunlight without bursting into flames?”

I didn’t even hesitate. “Yes, gods, yes!”

She grumbled but tossed me a bundle of clothes. “Then put on something less ridiculous. You still look like Susanoo’s bowel movement.”

I didn’t argue or bother reminding her that I had washed up from a wreck, which was basically the god of seas throwing me up—though I was sure she would say he pooped me out instead.

Stepping out of Irie’s shop felt like entering another world.

The air was thicker, heavier than I remembered. The scent of salt and spice mixed in the breeze was familiar yet foreign. The sky stretched too wide, too bright, making me feel exposed, like the sun marked me as an outsider.

And the people—

They saw me.

I braced for hostility. Suspicion. The kind of glares that would tell me I was unwelcome. Instead, their gazes held only warmth and curiosity. A few people glanced at me directly, some nodding politely, while others snuck sideways peeks and murmured something to Irie as we passed.

No one scowled. No one spat at my feet.

I barely knew what to think or how to react. If they had hated me, it would have made things easier. If they had seen me as a prisoner, a stranger, an enemy, even a slave—then I could have held on to my anger, my defiance.

But this? This quiet acceptance?

I didn’t know what to do with that.

Irie led me through the market, pointing out stalls, dragging me along like a grandmother introducing her favorite grandson to every neighbor she had ever known.

“That’s Nari—she’ll cheat you blind, but her dumplings were handed down by the kami .”

“Nobu only sells ugly fish—says the pretty ones are too proud to be eaten.”

“And there’s Old Haki—he’s been selling the same goat for five years. I think it’s a pet. People make offers, but he never takes them. I wonder if he’s secretly in love with the thing. Do men do that? Mate with goats?”

I stared at the very alive, very irritated goat tied beside the stall, and tried not to laugh at Irie’s constant prattle.

“Why hasn’t anyone bought it?”

Irie smirked. “Because it’s a terrible goat, and he asks far too much.”

I finally did laugh—and that caught me off guard. The sound felt foreign, sounded distant, like it had been locked away for too long, like it actually belonged to someone else and I’d stolen it only long enough to set it free.

And that was when it hit me.

This wasn’t a pirate stronghold. This wasn’t some lawless den of thieves. It really was a village. A home. A place where people lived, where children played in the streets, where vendors haggled over prices, where the scent of fresh food lingered in the air.

It was normal in every sense of the word that mattered.

And that terrified me.

I wanted to hate this place. I wanted to see it for what it was—a prison—a place where I didn’t belong; but how could I, when its people didn’t treat me like a prisoner or an outcast? I wasn’t shackled. I wasn’t being paraded through the streets like a captured prize. The villagers didn’t sneer, didn’t whisper behind their hands.

Some even smiled.

And that was dangerous, wasn’t it? Because if I stopped seeing this place as a cage, then what was left for me? I wasn’t ready to accept that Tooi was gone, that Yoshi was gone, that my old life had been wiped clean by the sea.

I wasn’t ready to surrender. I wouldn’t surrender.

Because if I did . . .

Irie led me beyond the market, up a winding path that climbed a ridge overlooking the sea. Below us, the island stretched out, endless and wild. Lush jungle spread across rolling hills. Sheer cliffs dropped into crashing waves below. Amaterasu’s gaze touched everything in sight, spreading her warmth far beyond the land, across the sea, to every corner of the world. It was a scene beyond any imagination, an image only whispered in tales, spoken of in taverns to entranced children. It couldn’t possibly exist, yet there it was.

A half hour later, we left the ridge, returning to town, and Irie pointed out more landmarks—places I might want to know if I was to remain. The fields where food was grown. The blacksmith’s forge, where blades were sharpened and weapons repaired. The docks, where boats came and went, where men set sail and never returned.

“This place was built by people who had nowhere else to go,” Irie said, arms folded as she looked out over the island. “Most of them weren’t born here. Most of them didn’t plan to stay.”

I swallowed. “And yet, they did.”

She smiled. “And yet, we did.”

On the walk back to her shop, Irie finally asked the question I had been dreading.

“What will you do here, boy?”

I stopped walking, and she turned to face me, raising a brow.

I looked away. “I don’t know.”

“You’re thinking about leaving.”

I clenched my fists. “I—”

“It’s all right, you know.”

I frowned.

“I understand more than you know.” She sighed, crossing her arms. “It takes time to let go of something that’s already been lost.”

“Really?” I asked, biting back the sharp retort that teased my tongue. No one could understand what I’d been through, what I was still going through. Who did she think she was? I wanted to argue. I wanted to say she couldn’t understand. I wanted to scream and shout and pound my fists until they bled.

She spoke before I could say anything. “I was taken a slave.”

Her words, spoken so plainly, in a soft voice that barely rose above the wind, stilled all my thoughts and protests.

“I was born to a pair of scholars on the mainland. My father was a physiker, my mother an herb woman who tended children of the wealthy in Bara.” Her eyes glazed over as her mind drifted into the distant past.

“Irie . . .” I could barely think. My heart ached for what I saw in her eyes.

She shrugged, as if none of it mattered; though I saw in her gaze how she still felt the pain of those days. And then she said three words that chilled my blood.

“The wakō happened.”

She released my arm and turned to resume our walk. After a few strides, she continued.

“They arrived like a storm with fangs and claws, sails black against the moon, their war cries shattering the night’s peace. By the time I woke to the screaming, the city was already burning. I remember the heat, the smell of blood mixing with smoke. I remember the way the pirates moved through the streets like fire, cutting down anyone who resisted, dragging women and children from their homes like they were nothing more than coin to be counted.”

She reached up and wiped something from her cheek.

“I remember my father standing at our door, a blade in his hands, though he was no warrior. I remember watching him die. It was quick, a single cut. The blood was so dark against his robes, pooling on the ground, soaking into the wood beneath him.”

“Irie, I’m so sorry—”

“My mother screamed as they tore us from our home. Gods, her screams—some nights, I still hear them, you know.”

What was I supposed to say? What could be said? This poor woman. And yet, her amiable demeanor and peaceful existence among the monsters who’d stolen everything clashed with every word she’d just spoken. How could she live among the people who’d inflicted so much pain on her—on a young girl?

They’d stolen so much more than her home. They’d stolen her whole life.

And yet, there was no bitterness in her voice, no taste for vengeance or lingering hatred. My head swam at all the contradictions walking beside me. I was so angry, so bitter, so ready to hate the world and everyone in it. How could she be so . . . so . . . peaceful?

“My mother never truly became one of them.”

Her voice startled me out of my thoughts.

“Even after years on the island, she was always somewhere else,” she continued. “Half in the past, in the life she had lost. Half in her own mind, dreaming of things she would never have again. She grew weak, and when the storm came—a storm that tore apart half the village, that flattened houses and sent men scrambling to rebuild—she was too weak to survive it. She died the way she had lived in those last years: silent, with her hands folded in her lap, eyes looking somewhere I could not follow.”

Tears trickled across her sun-kissed skin as weathered fingers tried to wipe away a tortured past. I wanted to wrap Irie in my arms and let her sob. Hells, I wanted to cry with her.

Instead, I held my tongue and waited.

“That was when I made my own choice. I could live as my mother had, half here, half lost in a dream of the past, or I could accept the path before me.”

There. She’d said it. She’d put it out into the world, and I couldn’t un-hear her words. Gods, I wanted to, to erase them, to send them into the void where no one would ever face them again, but they’d been etched upon my mind.

And she wasn’t finished. “I could learn the names of the people around me. I could make my place among them, on my terms. I chose to stay. I chose to live. I was no pirate, no slaver, but I found ways to be needed.”

“You were a slave,” slipped out before I could think.

Irie’s smile was as warm as it was distant. She ignored my vitriol and finished her tale.

“And so the years passed, and I became something more than a captive, more than a survivor. I became the woman everyone turns to in the dead of night when their wounds fester, when their children burn with fever, when they whisper of aches and pains they would never admit to another. I became the one they fear just enough to respect.”

“Fear you? But why?” I asked.

She thought only for the length of a heartbeat. “Because I was not a woman they could control. I was a woman who knew exactly how to end them. And that? That was enough.”

Was I being as foolish as Irie’s mother, resisting my path—a path the gods had laid before me despite it being so different from the one my heart sought? Or was I meant to fight, to resist, to spend the last of my strength seeking a return to my true home, to my family, to Yoshi?

Was there even anything left for me to run back to? Were my thoughts of a grand escape and a flight across the seas as ridiculous as they sounded in my head in that moment?

For the first time, I wondered if one day, I would stop wanting to escape.

And that scared me more than anything on that blasted island had.