"What am I supposed to do? Isn't somebody going to help me?"
One full night had already passed. Her mother must be worried sick about her. Her father would be furious.
"I want to go home."
Tears tumbled down her cheeks. She choked back a sob. "I want to go home," she said again. She couldn't hold it back. She hugged her knees, buried her face in her arms and wept.
Youko finally lifted her head. She'd cried so hard and so long that she felt slightly feverish. Crying her eyes out had made her feel better, but only a little. She slowly opened her eyes. The ocean stretched out before her like the universe.
"How very strange--"
She felt as if she was gazing down on a sky shot through with stars, a starry night arraigned against the serene blackness, the galaxies turning slowly in the water.
"So strange and yet so beautiful--"
In time Youko calmed down and managed to collect her wits about her. Absentmindedly she gazed down at the stars in the water.
2-2
She sat there staring out at the sea until the sun had risen high in the sky. What kind of world was this? Where was she?
They had passed through the halo of the moon to get here. That alone was hard enough to believe. In any case, to capture a moonbeam like that, it seemed equally unlikely that you could do the same thing with the light of the setting sun.
Then there was Keiki and all those strange creatures. None of them were from any species on Earth. They must come from this world. That's the only thing that made sense to her.
What was he thinking, bringing her here? He said it was dangerous, he said he would protect her. Yet here she was. What were they up to? Why did those monsters attack her? It was like out of a nightmare, the same dream she'd been having for the past month.
From the beginning, from the moment she met him, none of it had made sense. She knew this much: she was lost. He had shown up out of nowhere, had dragged her off to this strange world without a second thought about the circumstances of her life. It wasn't because he hated her, she was sure. But if they had never met she wouldn't be stuck here, she wouldn't have had to kill all those creatures.
So it wasn't that she missed him. There simply wasn't anybody else she could trust and he hadn't returned to retrieve her. Perhaps something had happened during the battle with the monsters that kept him from coming back for her. Whatever the reason, it only made things worse for her now.
Why must I keep dwelling on it?
Because it wasn't her fault. It was Keiki's fault. It was his fault the monsters came after her. The enemy is at the gates, the voice in the vice-principal's office had said. But that didn't mean they were her enemies. She had no reason to make them her enemies.
And that business about calling her his lord. She'd been thinking about that as well. Because she was his lord, his enemies had gone after her, not him. She'd had to use the sword to defend herself, and she'd ended up here.
Nobody had made her lord of anything.
He'd made the whole thing up. Or he'd made a mistake, a really dumb mistake. He said he'd been searching for her. You'd think when somebody was searching for their king or whatnot, they wouldn't screw up this bad.
"So who are you protecting now?" She grumbled to herself. "This is your mistake, not mine."
The shadows lengthened. Youko got up. Sitting here complaining about Keiki wasn't solving anything. Glancing to her right and left she couldn't find the gap in the trees she'd come through before. Whatever, she told herself, and marched off into the forest. She didn't have her coat but it wasn't that cold here. It must be a warmer climate than where she lived.
The forest looked like it'd been hit by a typhoon, broken branches strewn all about. The forest was not deep, and when she emerged she found herself at the edge of a wide marsh.
It was not a marsh but a rice paddy. Directly in front of her a causeway jutted above the water. She could see the tops of some kind of short green vegetation blown flat against the muddy lake. Beyond the rice paddies a handful of houses formed a small village. And beyond that, the steep slopes of a mountain.
There were no telephone poles or power lines. No television antennas. The roofs of the houses were made of black tile, the walls of yellow adobe. The village had once been ringed by a line of trees. Most of the trees were toppled over.
Youko pressed her hand to her chest. With a great sense of relief she took in her surroundings. It wasn't the sight of the buildings, or the strange landscape she had more or less been prepared for. This could be any plot of rundown farmland scattered around the back country of Japan.
Some distance away she spotted the forms of a number of people working in the rice paddies. She couldn't make out any details, but they didn't look like monsters.
"Oh, thank God!"
The exclamation rose unconsciously to her lips. She was still recovering from the confusion of seeing that black sea of stars. But, finally, here was something comfortingly familiar. If she ignored the complete lack of telephone poles she could pretend it was an ordinary Japanese village.
She took a deep breath. She decided to call out to them and see what happened. She hated the thought of talking to people she had never seen before. She didn't even know if they spoke the same language. But if she wanted any help she didn't have much choice. Partly to encourage herself and partly to calm her nerves, she said aloud, "I'll explain my situation and ask if anybody's seen Keiki around."
It was the best she could be expected to do.
Youko returned to the causeway she had seen earlier and made her way toward the people in the fields. As she drew closer to them it became apparent they were not at all Japanese. There were brown-haired women, red-haired men. Many reminded her somewhat of Keiki. Their features and stature weren't Caucasian, either. Their oddness seemed mostly due to the color of their hair. Take that away and they'd be quite normal.
Their clothing wasn't that dissimilar from traditional Japanese garb. All the men had their hair grown out and tied back. They were breaking down the causeway with their shovels.
One of the men looked up. Seeing Youko he pointed her out to his companions. He shouted something at her, but she couldn't make it out. The eight or so men and women there turned and looked at her. Youko acknowledged them with a slight bow. She couldn't think of what else to do.
A black-haired man in his thirties scrambled up the bank to the causeway. "Where you from?" he asked.
Youko registered the question with a deep sense of relief. They spoke the same language. She almost felt like laughing. She wasn't as bad off as she thought.
"I was over there, by the cliff," she said.
"The cliff? I mean, what's your hometown?"
Tokyo, she started to say, and changed her mind. She'd decided simply to explain her circumstances, but she doubted now that they would find anything she said believable. As she stood there trying to think of what to say, the man pressed again, "You're not from around here, are you? You come from across the ocean, huh?"
It was close enough to the truth. Youko nodded. The man's eyes widened. "Yeah, figures. A real pisser, you know, your kind showing up out of the blue like this."
The man grinned at her, as if comprehending something that she did not. He stared, his look approaching a leer, until his gaze fell on the sword she held down at her side. "Hey, what have you got there? Looks important."
"Someone … gave it to me."
"Who?"
"His name is Keiki."
The man closed the distance between them. Youko took a step back.
"Looks heavy. Don't worry. I'll take care of it for you."