The Twelve Kingdoms: Shadow of the Moon by Fuyumi Ono Read Free Book Online

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