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You are born into a blessed family at a shrine of great renown, delivered into the arms of the head priest and his wife. Your first memories are of crimson torii and the dull breeze-jingle of the old brass bell. You are a child who is born alongside the realm of spirits, taking your first steps on sacred ground. You raise pudgy, soft-boned hands up towards the empty sunlight, and your parents don’t understand when you reach out to grab at the whisps that float through the air and tease at your fingertips. The great trees outside your nursery room window sing lullabies to you through their leaves, and the babbling brook near the courtyard laughs with you, brisk and shrill. Your mother coos as she combs your thin hair back, saying that you have the brightest little eyes she ever did see on a babe. They are brighter than she knows, shining like gilded steel.
It is halfway through your eleventh month, not long before your first birthday, when your jade bangle slithers off your wrist and writhes on the floor, hissing and spitting all the way. You cry when the jade-snake nearly bites you, and when your mother crushes it underfoot, there are only crumbled remains of envy-green stone. Several days later, you are whisked to the mountains, and you have not seen your parents since.
--
You have not spoken to another human being in weeks. Not that there are many opportunities to do so. Your caretakers feed you, clothe you, and bathe you, but there is little opportunity for conversation, and no travelers ever find this castle nestled in nape of rolling mountains. You have little desire to leave your room, let alone this valley. Despite your caretakers’ best vitamin supplements, your legs are bird-boned and weak-kneed from lack of exercise. It is a serpentine cycle of not wanting to go out and not being able to go out. Your health is as splotchy as your malnourished skin. You haven’t heard your own voice in weeks. But that is not to say that you do not talk.
Sitting prone in a bed hollow enough to fit a family, it is only when you are left by yourself that you turn alive. The gilded hand mirror laments your laziness and the paling of your complexion as it sits on your bedside table. Despite reflecting your looks, the both of you often seem at odds with one another, and never quite see eye to eye. While the mirror is your harshest critic, its presence does help liven up the sparsely furnished space of your room. Meanwhile, your jeweled beads make fretful noises and fuss over you. There isn’t enough light in here, it’s not healthy for you. A child should not be cloistered away in solitude, a single, high-placed window being their only unreachable link to the outside world. But you are no child, and you are not alone. While your lips do not move, there is a universe of sound and life within you that blossoms at the tips of your fingers.
It isn’t often that new additions are made to your small collection of belongings, but one day, you wake up to find a gleaming lacquer-sheathed sword at base of your bed.
The metal of its blade is cold in your hands, and you cut yourself by accident. A caretaker bandages your palm and warns you to be careful. The sword apologizes to you afterwards, when you’re alone. It’s the first time you hear it- no, him- speak. And when he finally does open up to you, you learn that he has far more to say and more stories to share than anything else you’ve ever talked to before. His name is Kashuu Kiyomitsu, and he becomes your first friend.
--
Your caretakers tell you to bring him to life. They ask you many times with cloying requests and blatant bribery. You feign deafness and dumbness; you may be cage-born and sheltered, but your spirit is made of the same steel as Kiyomitsu’s blade. You hold as much affection for them as they hold power over you, and they learn that sugared plums and shining baubles will not sway your resolve. Having lived such a meagre childhood, greed is not one of your vices. Spite and pride however, are.
Your limbs may be frail but your senses work just fine, and you hear the reedy whispers amongst your caretakers. They may not talk to you, but they talk amongst themselves, and you enlist the walls as ears, bid the wind to carry their voices to you. They wonder if you lack the power, question if you had it in the first place. This delicate child who performed a one-time miracle, but since then has fizzled and burnt out into ashes and husk, sitting stony and silent in bed all day. They do not believe that you speak with everything around you, that the world lights up for you more than it ever will for them. So you resolve to prove them wrong. What neither you nor they understand is that you cannot create life, only shape it.
Kiyomitsu warps at the touch of your hands, hairline fractures spreading like cobwebs on the smooth surface of his blade. You hear his voice, something between a gasp and a sob, but you shut your mind to him and press on, focusing every ounce of strength from your trembling frame into his. Holy blue fire sparks and spits from his cracks, and the sword thrums, singing from your power. Behind your eyelids, just as you saw jade stone twist into green scales so many moons ago, you picture cold steel melting into raven black hair and milk-ivory skin.
It comes to a head when the blade shatters into fragments, and a jagged screeching noises cuts through the veil of your mind. Kiyomitsu is screaming. Your eyes snap open, and you see an ugly mass of melted iron and spiked fury. He was beautiful before, but that beautiful image, of hair as soft as down, the little mole below his lip that flashed into your mind for the briefest spark of moments, is now gone. Just like the snake, he turns on you in rage, and attacks you.
The caretakers dispose of your failed attempt and give you a new sword. That night, your pillow is wet with tears, and you vow that you will never succeed for them, not for their sake, and not for your own. It is a self-loathing sort of penance.
--
Many swords pass through your hands, warriors’ hearts with silken souls, and they are all doomed to ruin at the touch of your bony fingertips. Sayo, Yasusada, Hasebe, Tsurumaru. You learn their names and their stories, see their faces when you close your eyes, but never hope to touch. Scores and scores of them are transformed into monsters, just like Kiyomitsu was, and are dragged away with cold chains and screeches of betrayal.
The waters taste bitterer with every sword destroyed. The winds whisper words of unrest through the tree leaves, seasons are changing and the flow of time is spiraling. Your skin prickles even in the hottest of summers. Something is wrong, but between heart-break and blade-shatter, you’ve hardly the time to realize what.
--
Your footfalls sound like thunder, wooden sandals clapping against courtyard stone. Despite the buckle of your knees with every step, the wind pushes you forwards and the ground rises to meet you. You walk with purpose flaming from your eyes, thin fingers curled into tight fists. They will be shocked to see you walking, let alone with such strength. They never knew you possessed such power.
When you reach the main hall, the grand double doors slam open at a stroke of your hand. “Where are my swords?” You ask, with the countenance of a god reclaiming her own. They say nothing, and look at you with horror in their eyes because they see that you know. The walls are your ears, leaves on the breeze your spies. This castle, these mountains, nature itself answers to your calls. You have heard glimpses and seen fragments of time travel, corrupted weapons, and forced battle. A private army you have created, and it is not theirs to wield. But now that you know your own power, you have nothing to fear, and everything to lose. Your lips twist like a dagger to the chest, and you raise your hands before you as if in supplication.
“Get out.”
The ceiling trembles above them, threatening collapse, and you bid the very thrones they sit upon to give out beneath their gluttonous weight. The trees bang against their walls, and your fury is like a storm. The smart ones flee for their lives without looking back, the earth snapping at their heels as they run. The others, you remove by force, flinging them into their own machines casting them adrift in time.
Your legs tremble as you sit upon the throne, alone in this secluded castle hidden in a deep valley, you breathe deeply before you close your eyes. There are no other humans, but the palace comes alive.
--
Beaded jewels often lack the kind of experience and soul that swords have, but numerous as they are, they make capable servants. You have them heat the forge, smelt the ore, pound the anvil. You cannot recreate the masterpieces of history that you have destroyed, but nonetheless, you must try to mend what you have wrought. The cold sun and the sharp moon gaze upon your endless efforts, but despite many failures, you vow that you will succeed this time, for their sake and for yours.
You reforge them out of fire, coal, and your own iron will. And when you wipe the sweat of your brow, stare into the blood red, golden fire, you see life taking form.
“I am Kashuu Kiyomitsu, the child beneath the river.”