Song peered out the window. He heard no sound and felt no chill. Kintu was not barking at anything overhead, but staring intently into the woods.
There was silence except for Kintu’s low growl. Then Song caught a flash of gray and a black-ringed tail. A mountain cat.
Kintu saw it too. He bounded into the woods, crashing after the silent shadow.
“No, Kintu! Come back you old fool!”
“Song!”
He whirled. Karina was just entering the clearing, waving a happy greeting.
“Karina! Come on!”
Song sprang away after the dog, not waiting to see if the girl followed. The cat was not large, but if Kintu managed to corner it, it would fight like a devil.
“Kintu!” he called again.
The dog led him up the side of the mountain through thick underbrush. Only when the way grew steep enough to require the use of his hands did Song recall the box they still clutched.
At last, the embankment leveled out into a long, narrow meadow. Breathing heavily, he sat on a rock to rest. He could no longer hear the dog.
The valley was unfamiliar, and Song drank in its beauty. Golden light poured down into a carpet of green grass blazing with wild mustard blossoms. Thick briars secluded it on all sides except the steep bank where he had climbed up. All around him a tumbling of gray boulders thrust up through the green like the protruding bones of the mountain.
A shallow stream gurgled nearby, narrow enough to straddle. After catching his breath, Song set his box aside and drank deeply of the sweet water.
Moments later, a rustle sounded behind him and Karina emerged over the embankment. “Song!” she cried, rushing toward him. “What happened?”
He had forgotten her.
He waved away her concerns. “It is only a mountain cat. You appeared just as Kintu decided to give chase.”
She paused to catch her breath, then swatted at him reproachfully. “You frightened me!”
“I did not mean to.” He took in her wildly disheveled hair, the pulse pounding against her throat, and the hot, red color staining her scar. “I’m sorry.”
“As you should be!”
She attempted to finger her hair into submission, but it refused to cooperate. The unruly tangles were so out of character that Song could not contain a snicker. When she glared at him, he burst into full laughter.
“Let me help you,” he grinned and smoothed back the long, black strands. They felt as soft as flowing water and smelled of dried lavender. How had he never noticed the scent before? He breathed deeply and found that his fingers remained twined in her hair.
“I am sorry,” he repeated, looking down into her flushed face. “When Kintu gave chase, I did not stop to consider how it might look.”
“Then you are forgiven—” she allowed him a begrudging smile “—this once.”
Kintu bounded out of the underbrush, his thick coat ragged with twigs and burrs, and Song dropped his hand. “Kintu, you fool,” he called again, relieved to find the old dog well.
As Kintu lapped at the brook, Song sprawled on his back in the thick, cool grass. The sun dotted his face with perspiration. All around him the meadow held perfectly still, a haven for a thousand droning insects.
Karina still looked weary. He patted the ground beside him. “Rest a few moments,” he suggested, “then we’ll return.”
Karina sank beside him readily, lying with her arms behind her head. She sighed contentedly. “If I were ever to leave, this is what I would miss most about the mountain. The solitude and beauty. ”
Song propped himself up on one arm, his brow furrowed. “Is your life really so terrible that you think always of leaving?”
“Of course not,” she answered. “I am happy enough. But a girl can harbor dreams, can’t she?”
Kintu came to lie protectively beside Song. His soft panting merged with the meadow’s buzz.
“What would you miss the most, Song?”
Still looking down at her, he did not hesitate. “You.”
She giggled softly. “Look!” she exclaimed. “That cloud looks exactly like Li-Min’s beard.”
He laid back, and together they soaked in the season’s waning sunlight and pointed out shapes in the passing clouds. The afternoon was so fine, the company so comfortable, and the magic of the meadow so hypnotic that both children soon dozed.
The rumbling in Song’s stomach awakened him. He sat up. The shadows were beginning to lengthen. “Karina,” he whispered, nudging her gently. “Wake up.”
The girl stretched, blinking dazedly. “What time is it?”
“Nearing supper hour.”
Karina rose, stretched again, and caught sight of Grandfather’s box. “What is that?”
Song reached for it, feeling again its smooth finish. “I do not know. I found it in Grandfather’s chest.”
“His locked chest? Oh, Song, why did you take it?”
“He left it unlocked. I was looking at it when Kintu charged into the forest, and I forgot to put it down.”
Grandfather would be angry. How could Song replace the box without his knowledge?
“You shouldn’t have taken it out of the chest. You know how secretive he is.”
Song’s face darkened. “But why is he so secretive?”
She shrugged. “I cannot make such a guess.”
Song jumped up and paced the meadow. “Why would he hide this from me? Why keep it locked up for so many years?”
“He must have his reasons.”
“Of course he does. And trying to figure them out is making me suspicious and angry!”
He stopped his pacing and pulled the box open, showing her the parchment. “Look, the box has my name in it. For some reason, my name was placed in this box a long time ago.”
His eyes blazed. “There were many things in the chest: wonderful things, mysterious things, things I must be connected to in some way.” He fingered the parchment and scowled. “But my past is as unknown to me as the origins of the Chin-Yazi.”
Karina laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Song, you must trust Li-Min. He holds a great amount of wisdom. He will tell you all you need to know when the time ripens.”
But Song broke away and stood at the edge of the embankment watching the sun ease itself past the heads of the distant Kindoli. Karina knew her parents and her history. She could never understand how he felt. Even he wasn’t sure where this hot emotion had come from. It sprang up suddenly where only curiosity had stood before.
He could not explain the compulsion he felt to find out what the box meant, as if his past and future were somehow tied up in it. He knew only that the time had come for him to find his own identity apart from the habits and fables of an old man.
He stared far off the mountain, hoping to find answers written on the horizon.
“Song, come here.”
Karina’s voice came from the east side of the valley. While Song mused, she had wandered across the meadow. He turned to find her peering into an open space between two boulders.
“I think I found the mountain cat’s den,” she called.
He scoffed and turned back to his pondering. “No cat would sleep where sun, wind, and rain are such easy houseguests.”
Karina didn’t move. “I think you’d better come look.”
He walked the few dozen paces to where she stood. To his surprise, the space between the rocks was indeed lined with gray fur and the remains of a season’s worth of meals. The floor was bare, hard-packed earth.
“It looks like an underground den,” he admitted, “but it sits in the sun.”
“I think it used to be underground,” she said, her voice tight. “Look.”
She pointed beyond the den to a round crater eight feet across and several feet deep. When Song wrestled rocks out of the garden plot in the clearing, they left holes just like this. Small holes.
This hole was huge!
“Karina,” he realized, “there used to be a boulder sitting there.”
“That’s what I thought,” she answered. “And there. And there.”
The ground was littered with fresh craters. At one time, the cat must have dug its den deep beneath a mountain of rock.
Karina’s face blanched. “Where did they go, Song?”
They scanned the valley frantically, as if it was suddenly haunted by ghosts.
“There!” Song yelled. He ran toward a rock slab so huge it must have been planted by Mutan himself at the birth of the mountain, yet it sat in a fresh gouge of earth. The rock had come to rest recently, tossed there like a child’s toy. And the top, not the bottom, was stained with earth, just like the stones in Grandfather’s garden. Rain had not yet washed the dirt away.
Looking with new eyes, they found other signs of violence. More displaced boulders, uprooted trees, rocks newly split into sharp splinters, a grove of plum trees shattered, their foliage hardly wilted.
“Song, what did this?” Karina whispered.
He shook his head. “I’m too afraid to guess. Let’s get out of here!"
Already the valley was draping itself in shadows. Kintu had led them far up the mountain, and they must start for home before the evening grew any later. Nothing could bring Song to stay in the valley after nightfall.
But the climb down took more time than the reckless chase. Song set a course for the river, glancing nervously at the purpling sky. Hadn’t Grandfather told him not to leave the hut? Surely the old man would be home by now, worrying.
Despite their haste, dusk overtook them before they reached the village, making the unfamiliar route hard to follow. Stars twinkled overhead then disappeared as the children ducked into a copse of heavy timber. Fear of an unseen menace pressed heavy against Song and mixed with terrors conjured up by his own imagination. He had to force his feet to maintain a careful, steady pace.
The silhouette of an elm tree loomed in the darkness, and Song’s breath loosened at the familiar sight. The village lay just ahead. After Karina was delivered safely home, his own dear hut would be only a short walk away. He heaved a heavy sigh of relief.
Then the slap of canvas cracked against the black dome above.
Song threw himself, cowering, against the trunk of the tall tree, clutching the box to his chest with one arm. The other he threw around the neck of the growling dog. His eyes, huge as full moons, stared up through the canopy, searching for a glimpse of the enemy. He could feel its presence, sense its evil, and taste the fear it cast like a shadow around itself.
But this time he could not feel its seeping chill.
The demon passed. Song remained pressed against the bark of the trunk, his breath coming in short gasps.
Karina grasped his arm. “S-Song!” she shuttered. “Wh-what was that?”
Before he could answer, the night’s stillness was shattered by the shrill scream of a woman.
The village!
Another scream.
Pounding footsteps.
A flurry of shouts battering the air like stones flung from a slingshot.
Suddenly, all sound was swallowed up by a single roar. Loud as thunder. Powerful as heaving earth. Terrible as death.
And then, only mangled silence.
A soft crackle whispered at the edge of the stillness, rising in volume till Song could see an orange glow illuminating the trees where the Chin-Yazi flowed over the toes of Kamiratan.
The village was burning!