Chapter 1

Sneak peek of the forthcoming Novel: The Malady and The Moon-Eater

Like a slowing heartbeat, the ocean-blue light in the room softened. The tattoos that curled around Daniri’s elbows and wrists faded to black as her magic fell back asleep.

She glanced below at her cupped hands. A newborn otter was wriggling in her palms, its fur still wet and matted. Its eyes were tightly shut. Its tiny chirps were shrill and weak, searching for milk, for warmth, for its mother, for some reassurance that even though no one asks to be born, fate would be kind to it now that its life was set furiously into motion without so much of a choice. One of those was a broad assumption.

Daniri cleared her throat. Maybe it didn’t want milk.

She glanced around the traditional Ninemu living room. The woody tatami smell was masked by the sanitizing alcohol she kept by her side. The bread and red bean wafting through the papered sliding doors reminded her that her client’s cafe was just in the adjoining room. She wondered how no customers had walked in this whole time. Her clients, Atsuko and Maki and their two daughters, were currently arrayed around her. Births, Daniri thought, were always the strangest show to spectate.

“You’ve done it, Doctor! A miracle!” Maki, who was dressed in an apron, smacked her between the shoulders. It stung, but Daniri didn’t protest. The adrenaline was probably surging through his body, much like the rest of the family. They had been watching, frozen, waiting with bated breath, as she coaxed and nursed and soothed the mother otter whose pregnancy had complications so early on its gestation that the family had booked her months in advance.

All at once they seemed to surge forward. Atsuko stood up, holding her hand to her chest exclaiming that someone should have been minding the front of the cafe. The two girls jumped from their seats puttering towards the mother otter.

Swiftly, Daniri placed her hand between them and the otter, who lay anxiously in a heap, umbilical chord freshly removed.

“Let’s give her some space. She’ll need all her strength to recover. How about someone fetch another pair of clean towels and a cool pitcher of water?” Daniri’s voice lowered into a whisper conspiratorially with the girls. “The water’s for me.”

As they hurried off, Daniri turned to the mother otter. She was pawing eagerly for her child. Only minutes ago she had been curled inwards like a crescent moon, writhing in agony on the waterproof blanket Daniri had set on the family’s heavy futon.

Daniri’s knees crinkled on the blanket noisily. She held her finger against its soft forehead, as she repeated the phrase every veterinarian had learned to utter after every birth.

“May the gods who brought you here watch over you until you return into their arms,” she said. She placed the baby gently next to its mother.

The otter mother gathered her pill-sized baby to her muzzle. She, who had squealed in agony and sunk her claws into Daniri’s hands. She, who could only calm down once Daniri administered her batok magic and siphon away the pain. If Daniri hadn’t been here, if the Balikbayan had reached the harbor a day late or if the otter had given birth a day early, would she have shriveled up in the gnawing maw of childbirth? An all too familiar feeling churned in Daniri’s stomach. She shook it off.

Standing up, her feet tingled as the blood rushed back to her toes. A little red dragon the size of a cat was waiting by her side obediently. Her companion and loyal assistant stared back at her expectantly with pebbly black eyes.

“All right, Ampon. Let’s get this cleaned up.”

The dragon bounced on the futon. Crinkle. Crinkle. Crinkle. And began laying rags around the mother and child.

For a moment there was a strange peace, as Daniri began to disinfect her tools. The rest of the family had slowly returned to their duties out in the cafe. But it was short-lived when the sisters came stamping down the hall, Atsuko hot on their heels, scolding them to keep it down.

The older sister handed Daniri an icy glass of water perilously filled to the brim, while the younger one hovered over the otters. “Oh, will Momo be all right, Doctor?” The younger one asked.

Daniri took a few gulps and pressed the cool glass against her cheek before answering. “Yes, she’ll be all right. You can thank your gods her baby wasn’t breached inside. Have you heard of that term before? Sometimes a baby can sleep sideways in their mother’s tummy, which makes it harder for them to be born. Imagine trying to get through a doorway while rolling on the floor. It’s like that.”

“What would happen if the baby was sleeping side ways?”

“Then we’d have to do surgery. Don’t worry, I would have used my batok to keep Momo safe so she wouldn’t feel anything. But the recovery from that type of procedure can be difficult. Even after we stitch her up, it’ll be a long time until she feels like herself again. And I wouldn’t be around to maintain her pain.”

“Do all of your friends have that?” The older sister asked. She was pointing at the tattoos on Daniri’s arms. The black, inky tendrils that had been bright blue minutes ago rippled across her elbows like the edges of a lazy puddle.

“Please excuse them, Doctor,” Atsuko said. “Ever since the Gintuan soldiers arrived, they’ve been obsessed with the batoks. They took the city by storm really. Before, the girls would dress up like the Ninemu princes and princesses in the palace and pretend to shoot fire from their fingers. Now they pretend to sweep the entryway so they can get a glimpse of the soldiers parading down the street. I’ve had to peel the girls away if any of them happened to visit the cafe. They’d swarm the table and just harass the poor things and yap their ears off. No offense, Doctor, but I don’t really understand the novelty. War has changed us all for the worst I feel. But am I any better, really? If the princess decided to waltz in for tea then I’d polish a hole into the table next to her. If she so much as glanced at me then we’d have good luck for decades—Girls, please! Give the doctor some space.”

“Does it hurt?” The youngest was asking. “When you make it glow, does it burn your skin?”

“No, my skin doesn’t hurt.”

“What does it do? Can you control animals? Can you make plants grow very fast? Do you speak to bugs too?”

“I don’t exactly ‘control’ anything in particular.”

“Can you use your powers on the Bakunawa? Have you ever seen it in person? The soldiers told us it was taller than the entire mountain, but it’s sleeping,” The older sister said. “Do your powers wake it up?”

Before Daniri could answer the younger sister bounced on the balls of her feet and pointed excitedly at the wall. “Look! Look!”

Pinned on the wall among faded menus and haphazard art was a painting curling inwards at the corners. A thick, blue squiggle had been dashed in the middle with the deft confidence that only a child could muster. At first it looked like a snake, but the scaled fins frilled around its head like a collar gave it away. It was the most powerful deity of the Gintuan Islands—the Bakunawa. Below were jagged grey strokes—the ocean. And with the same grey a ruddy circle by the Bakunawa’s mouth—the moon. Suddenly, the mix of sanitizer on Daniri’s hands and baking bread in the room next door made her nauseous.

“Well, that’s a lovely picture.” Daniri said. She smiled at the younger sister. “The colors you picked go so well together. But, no, I’m not the Bakunawa’s doctor. Those soldiers should have told you too, that’s strictly the job of the Bakunawa’s Head Priest.”

The older sister’s eyes grew wide, as she asked somberly, “Have you met him? The Head Priest? The soldiers said he’s the batok monster.”

“The killer!” Her sister said.

“He murdered someone when he was a child, right?”

Atsuko gasped horrified. “Enough, girls!”

“But that’s what the soldiers said!”

“Enough! No more,” their mother repeated quieter but firmly. “It’s inappropriate. Now, your father’s putting together a box of namagashi. Please fetch it for us.” When the girls left once again she turned to Daniri. “I’m sorry about that, Doctor.”

Daniri assured her it was fine. “Next time I see a Gintuan soldier, I’ll tell them off for filling your children’s heads with tales. Wouldn’t want the next generation of Ninemu worshiping Gintuans like gods.”

Atsuko rolled her eyes up towards the ceiling. “You Gintuans are always so humble.”

She made sure Daniri didn’t need anything else before she followed the girls back into the cafe.

If only she knew how ‘humble’ the Gintuans are in their schools and palaces. Daniri sighed and tipped her glass towards Ampon, who had been dragging soiled rags into a pile the whole time. The dragon flew over, landing on her arm and helped himself to a couple gulps. His wrinkled, scaly throat bobbed up and down. Without interrupting his drink, Daniri set both the glass and Ampon on a side table so he could take a break, while she finished the job.

Carefully, Daniri scooped Momo and her baby into a cozy enclosure in the corner of the living room. The family had fortified it with blankets and pillows so it could sit snugly between a shelve of books and a stack of starched linens.

The cafe outside was begin to bustle with activity. She could hear the entry bells and the daughters’ greetings ring out to the customers. Daniri pictured the cafe. The tiny rattle of teacups and glasses and the tell-tale squeak of tiny hinges grinding. The walls lined with cages full of restless otters. She could hear them chirp above the chatter outside.

Atsuko and Maki ran an otter cafe. Customers paid to pet and feed the otters and then promptly return them to their cramped enclosures. Daniri knew that the owners tried to let the otters out daily, but most of downtown Ninemu was made up of cramped houses, so their already claustrophobic garden backed up into crates of cafe supplies and their neighbour’s fence. She knew the moment Momo stopped nursing, the otter would be promptly returned to the rotation with the rest of the group, and her baby would become the star-addition, bringing in a boost in business.

Daniri rifled through the paper pouches packed with antibiotics and vitamins she had prescribed to give the otters the best chance at a smooth recovery.

In an ideal world this place didn’t exist. Atsuko and Maki would have made their living without subjecting animals to slow mundane cruelty at the cafe. Maki would stick to specializing in wasagi sweets, Atsuko’s business prowess would keep sales streaming in steadily. Their daughters would be fed, clothed, and sent to school on that money. But that other world was a million miles away.

In this one it wasn’t her choice to make. What was true in every world was that there had been a chance Momo would not longer be alive if she hadn’t been here today.

Atsuko returned, as Daniri slung her hefty, weathered bag over her shoulder. The cafe owner touted a lovely box wrapped neatly with thin, pink paper stamped with miniature ginko leaves all over. She pressed it insistently into Daniri’s arms. The doctor shook her head, she would pay for it. They had already compensated her handsomely for the appointment, she was more than happy to purchase it as a gift for her next client later that day. But Atsuko wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“Maki’s packed all his seasonal specialties in here. Please, keep this for yourself. I can put together a pack of our usual. Who are your next clients today? Our plum filled mochi is a hit with our regulars, so I’m sure they’ll like it.”

Daniri shrugged as she consulted her agenda. “Oh, it’s Princess Hanabi.”

“The princess?!”

“Actually, I’d better get going. They said they’d send a ride or palace guards, I can’t really remember. But they’ll be here any moment to fetch me.”

“Royalty? Here?!”

“Okaa-san!” The oldest daughter peeped her head through a crack in the sliding door. “There are guards from the palace outside!”

Red-faced, Atsuko frantically smoothed her apron down, smacking at the powdered sugar on her pockets. Daniri took the opportunity to press a wad of cash into Atsuko’s grasp. Before she could protest, Ampon flapped between them, carrying one of Daniri’s packs in his mouth. Daniri patted Atsuko’s arm.

“It’s been wonderful to see you again, Atsuko-san. Please tell, Maki-san and the girls my regards. I’m sorry, we have to part like this. Thank you for the sweets-and please! Make sure Momo gets as much peace and quiet as she can, keep her hydrated. I’ve left her meds beside her cage, and if you can, get her a bigger one.”

Daniri side-stepped away, Ampon in her shadow, and the pair whisked out the living room and through the cafe.