Shadows on the Moon by Zoe Marriott Read Free Book Online

women of noble birth are notoriously delicate. The important thing is that you rest.”
    “What about the scars? How shall I hide them?”
    “Let me ask you something. When Tsuki no Ouji-sama’s men came to your father’s house, they pursued you through the orchard. How did you manage to escape so many armed men?”
    “I do not know,” I said miserably.
    “You do,” he said, and his definite tone made me look at him in surprise. “Try to remember.”
    “I don’t know,” I insisted.
    He gave me an impatient look.
    I closed my eyes, forcing my mind back to that time of terror. So much fear . . . so much pain . . . running, seeing Aimi fall and then . . . the light. I had reached out into the light, bent it around me like a shield, like a mantle. I had imagined myself invisible.
    And I had run past the soldiers and they had not seen me.
    “It was not real,” I whispered. “It couldn’t be.”
    “If you remember it, why should it not be real?”
    That made me blink.
    “And in the fireplace,” he continued, “it was not really the ashes that covered you. I made a blanket of darkness to hide you from the soldiers, just as earlier you had made a mantle of light. You are Kage Oribito. A shadow weaver. One who can weave illusions from the threads of the world. When faced with death, you instinctively used your talent to save yourself.”
    “But I — I am not . . . Such things do not exist,” I stammered, shaking my head. “You are speaking of — of magic.”
    “The skill is real. The men who taught me believed that Kage Oribito are favorites of the Moon, allowed to share in Her special gift of concealment; for does She not cloak Her face in the shadows of the sky? You may have been using this power in tiny ways, unbeknownst even to yourself, all your life. Or it may never have manifested itself were it not for those terrible events. I do not know. I do know that what you did was an extraordinary thing. To walk before those men in daylight, unseen, is a feat I could never have achieved, and you might never work such a weaving again. It was the Moon’s protection — Her gift — that saved you.”
    A sense of wonder filled me. “How do you know so much about this, Youta?”
    “I was not always as you see me now,” he said, his eyes turning far away for a moment. “Once I had a different life. I, too, was born with the Moon’s gift, though it does not work so strongly in me. As a young man, I was sought out by a group of men and women who had this skill and who made it their mission to find others like them and train them. It was done in secret, and I was told always to keep it so, except with others of my kind. We are drawn together. No one knows why. Instinctively we find one another. Instinctively we help one another. Perhaps that is another gift from the Moon. I do not know. ”
    “Then you did come here to find me?”
    “Yes. I had to. One day you, too, will feel that
knowing,
and will be compelled to aid other shadow weavers in need.”
    “So when you said you would help me . . . ?”
    “I can teach you to use your skill again. A small illusion to cover your arms should be within your power.”
    “I have no idea what I did,” I said warily. “You call it a skill but, for me, it just happened, as easily as reaching for a blanket in the cold.”
    Youta carefully drew my right arm out straight. “Watch what I do. Follow me not just with your eyes but with all your senses, and that extra part of you should be able to follow, too.”
    I squinted, tensing as if my muscles could help me to see. At first I saw, felt, nothing. Then there was a strange sensation, not in my arm but in the air around it. A brightening of the light and an intensity of the colors: a sort of stillness in the air. I had an intuitive flash of understanding — I knew what was going to happen — and as the grayish lumps of bandage smoothed out into pale skin, I knew that Youta was right. I
could
do this. I did it all the