Read The Twelve Kingdoms: Shadow of the Moon for Free Online Page A

deep breath after another. Little by little the pain subsided, some kind of motion returned to her limbs.
    She sat up, spilling off herself a blanket of pine needles.
    Pine. It certainly looked like pine. She glanced about her and saw a forest of pine trees. The tops of the trees were snapped off, revealing the white wood underneath. A bough must have fallen from those trees.
    Her right hand still tightly gripped the hilt of the sword. So she hadn't dropped it after all. She examined the rest of her body and found no serious injuries, nothing except for many minor scratches and bruises. Nothing out of the ordinary. Similarly searching her back, her hands ran across the scabbard tucked into the belt of her uniform.
    A light haze drifted across the early morning sky. She heard the distant sound of waves. She wondering aloud, "What kind of dream was that?"
    It came back to her, the fierce struggle with the beasts, their blood drenching her.
    And the sound of the waves.
    She groaned to herself.
    She surveyed her surroundings. It was before daybreak. A pine forest crowded the shore. She was alive, she had suffered no life-threatening injuries. That was the sum of it.
    It did not seem to her that any enemy was close by. Nothing foreboding lurked in the forest. And no allies either. When they had slipped into the halo of the moon, the moon had hung high in the night sky. It was almost dawn. For that long she had been a castaway. Keiki and the others must have strayed far from their intended course.
    When you get lost, she reminded herself in a small voice, you're supposed to stay right where you are.
    Surely they were looking for her. Keiki had promised to protect her. If she started out on her own they'd never find her. She leaned against the stump of a tree and grasped the jewel bound to the scabbard. Little by little, the aches and pains began to dissipate.
    How strange. But it really did work. She peered closely at the jewel. It seemed like an ordinary stone, though with the luster of polished, blue-green glass. Maybe it was jade.
    Still tightly gripping the stone she sat down and closed her eyes.

    She had intended only to take a quick nap but awoke to a bright morning sky. "It's getting late," she noted.
    But where was everybody? Keiki, Kaiko, Hyouki? Why hadn't they come to get her? Finally she said, "Jouyuu-san?"
    If he was still inside her he wasn't telling. She could not feel his presence at all. In other words, he wasn't going to show up unless she started waving that sword around.
    "Hey, you there?" she asked herself again. "Where's Keiki?"
    No answer. Nothing. A big lot of help he had turned out to be. She raised her head nervously. What if Keiki came looking for her and missed her? She recalled the yelp of pain the instant before she fell. She had left Hyouki behind, surrounded by the monsters. Had he survived?
    The unease pressed down on her head and shoulders. She jumped up, quelling the scream of panic rising from deep inside her.
    Looking around she spied to her right a break in the woods. Nothing between here and there struck her as dangerous. She could at least venture that far. Beyond the forest was a fallow field. The field was strewn with a thicket of shrubs plastered against the discolored earth. Beyond the field a cliff leaned out over a black sea.
    Youko approached the edge of the cliff. Closer, and it was like standing at the top of a tall building and looking over the edge. What she saw amazed her.
    It was not the sheer height of the cliff . It was the water, black as the night sky, almost blue in its blackness. Even in the light of dawn the sea looked like night. But then, as she followed the face of the cliff down into the water, she realized that the water itself was not black. It was perfectly clear. How deep she could not begin to imagine. The sea must be so vast, so deep, that no light could penetrate its depths.
    Then, from deep within the deep, she saw a glittering point of light. At first she