She had vowed to kill Rogsam, and she had begged Jiguro to teach her to fight. He shook his head. “Fighting is for men,” he said. “No matter how hard you try, you’re still a girl. You’ll never have the muscle to amount to anything. And right now you’re just a kid, so training could stunt your growth.”
But she refused to give up. When Jiguro rose at dawn to practice, she rose with him and watched him intently, mimicking every move in his daily regimen of exercises. When he began working as a bodyguard for a rich merchant, she rushed to the scene of every scuffle and studied how he fought.
Then one day something terrible happened: One of Rogsam’s hunters found them. While Balsa had watched Jiguro fight many times, she had never seen a battle as harrowing as that one. The two men appeared to be dancing — thrust, strike, parry, their spears whirling too fast for her eyes to follow. As his opponent’s spear sliced across his shoulder, Jiguro’s spear plunged through the other man’s chest.
The smell of blood and the agony of death turned Balsa’s legs to jelly. She could not move, even when she saw Jiguro crumple over his opponent as though he too were dying. But he was not dying. He sprawled across the dead man and wept soundlessly, his body heaving with sobs. It was the first time she had ever seen him cry.
It was not until much later that she learned why he grieved. The man Rogsam had sent to kill them was one of Jiguro’s best friends. The king was not only powerful; he was also vicious. After this incident, Jiguro finally agreed to teach her to fight, for she would need combat skills if their pursuers ever killed him.
Balsa had thrown herself into practice with all she possessed, the thick, hot lump of hate erupting with every thrust of her spear and every jab of her fists. Although she was only eight, she fought like a mad thing, heedless of injury. “You’re a born warrior,” Jiguro muttered one day. “Perhaps you were fated to do this.” His next words remained seared on her memory. “Conflict seems to follow those who learn to fight. If I could, I would spare you a life of bloodshed. But I have no choice.”
Nor did he have any choice himself, for no matter how far they ran, Rogsam’s assassins always found them. But Jiguro was strong — stronger than all of them. By the time Rogsam died, he had killed eight friends to save his own and Balsa’s life.
Balsa was jolted back to the present by a change in the flow of air. She ran her hand along the rock wall, stretching out her arm until it ended abruptly and left her fingers swimming in space. She took a few careful steps forward, groping in the dark until her hand met stone on the other side. She had come to the first branch.
She checked the mark on her spear handle. She had copied it on impulse from Jiguro’s spear when he died, not sure if she’d ever come back. Even if I make a mistake, I can still find my way back as long as I remember how many turns I took and in which direction, she reassured herself. She was beginning to regret her decision to come through the caves. Perhaps it was just foolish pride, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. The longer she spent trapped in this thick, impenetrable darkness, the more she felt the air being squeezed out of her chest. She struggled to keep herself from bursting into a run. Besides the obvious foolishness of running blindly, her footsteps would echo deep into the caves, and if the hyohlu heard, she would never get out alive.
Moving carefully back until her hand touched the right wall, she turned the corner. The next turn would be on that side. Right at the next branch, then left, and after that, left once again and I should be outside. The rushing stream, which had roared continuously in her ears, gradually receded into the distance, and though her straw sandals muffled her footsteps, her breathing now seemed very loud in the silence.
She had just reached the next passage and was turning the corner when the acrid smell of smoke stung her nose. An image flashed into her mind: a midwinter’s night, her father returning home through a blizzard, and in his hand, a torch that smelled just like this one, drenched in tallow to burn through the wind and snow.
A scream jerked her back to reality. The wordless wail bounced off the walls, echoing through the caves — a child’s voice, high and shrill.
Dropping her bag on the ground, Balsa took her spear and sped cautiously through the dark. The crisscrossing caves distorted sound, making it hard to locate the scream’s origin. At the next branch, however, she saw a light and raced toward it, taking care to remember the route back.
To eyes accustomed to the dark, the light of the torch seemed as bright as day, reflecting off the white hakuma stone with a brilliance that lit up the entire cavern. Then a streak of light whistled through the air and struck the torch, quenching its flame. Darkness returned, but not before the scene had imprinted itself on Balsa’s mind: a boy gripping a torch, his back pressed against the wall, and a girl cowering on the ground beyond him.
The smoke from the extinguished torch tickled her nose as she felt her way to where she had seen the boy. His ragged breathing told her that he was still alive and, as she did not smell blood, she was fairly certain he was unharmed. Reaching his side, she grabbed his shoulder. He jumped. “Don’t scream!” she whispered fiercely. “Tell me what happened.”
“My sis — my sister … the hyohlu …”
Balsa turned in the direction of the little girl. Something lurked in the darkness just past her — something uncanny. Swinging her spear toward it, Balsa exhaled slowly. The stillness that always came before battle settled over her, and adrenaline surged through her veins, shrinking the world down to nothing but herself and the enemy before her. Drilled to fight even in the dark, she could just make out a phosphorescent pale blue glow. Keeping her eyes wide open, she shifted her gaze slightly to the side until she discerned a shape within the bluish haze. So that’s a hyohlu, Balsa thought. She felt chilled to the core.
When she stepped forward, so did he. When she leveled her spear at him, he moved his toward her. It was like watching her reflection in a mirror. A deep, crackling tension bound them together and the heat of it flashed through her body. Energy rolled toward her, slamming into her chest like a wave crashing against the shore. She leapt toward him, but just before she drove her spear home, a shiver raced across her core. She jerked away quickly and a black wind grazed her side. Faster than thought, she knocked the hyohlu’s spear aside with her own. Sparks flew at the impact, but already his rebounding spear was arcing down upon her head. Their weapons clashed with dizzying speed, thrusting, parrying, and whirling through the air like windmills. Balsa no longer relied on her eyes or even her conscious mind; her body moved automatically, waiting to the last possible second before knocking away her opponent’s thrust and striking back.
A strange sensation crept over her. It was like she was dancing in a dream with her opponent as her partner, each move leading naturally to the next in the comfortable rhythm that controlled her body. Although their spears whined with ferocious speed, time seemed to move slowly, liquidly.
I’ve done this before, she thought in wonder, a long time ago. Indeed, there was something familiar about the hyohlu; he reminded her of someone she should have known. Their spears began to slow and the storm that had raged between them lessened, until finally they both came to perfect stillness.
Balsa exhaled a gust of air and realized with surprise that she had forgotten to breathe. Their duel, which had seemed so long, had lasted but a single breath! She thought she saw the hyohlu bow slightly, and she inclined her head in return. The dimly glowing figure receded into the darkness, and Balsa stared blankly after it.
What was that? she wondered. The encounter had been more like a wordless conversation than a desperate fight for her life. Once, long ago, when she had been practicing with Jiguro, their moves had matched so perfectly that they had fused into a single flow. “The Spear Dance!” Jiguro had murmured in disbelief. “So you’ve actually reached that level.”
Balsa broke into a cold sweat. Was the apparition she had just faced not a hyohlu after all? Could it have been Jiguro? Don’t be ridiculous! she chided herself. He died six years ago. You buried him with your own hands.
Just then she heard a faint moan behind her — the little girl. Balsa collected herself abruptly and turned around. Moving cautiously toward the sound, she reached out to touch the child. “It’s all right now,” she said. “The hyohlu has gone. Are you hurt?”
“My foot …” the girl answered between sobs.
Balsa felt the boy approach uncertainly. His hand, waving about in the dark, touched her head, and she took it to guide him toward the girl.
“Gina, are you all right?” he whispered.
“Kassa!” the girl cried.
“It’s all right now,” Balsa repeated quietly. “But let’s get out of here. I’ll carry your sister. Grab the end of my spear and follow me quietly.”
The boy helped the girl climb up on Balsa’s back. Recalling the route she had taken to find them, she traced her way back to the passage where she had left her bag. By the time they finally left the cave, the moon was already sinking in the west.