I awakened as in times past, with a vivid recollection of what had happened up until a point, and then nothing. But that wasn’t quite true. One or two additional details had pressed into my memory.


    I remembered heavy tears streaming from my eyes while he had kissed me with his open mouth; his voice at my ear whispering, Child of Orihime, your tears taste like salted wine. Then blackness, and the intermittent hacking of breathlessness and fear. He had died as the others had. Was he also poisoned? Then at last, I understood the source of my mysterious poison. It had come from my tears!


    I sat up and held my head. Perhaps more of my memory would return, but I recoiled with the thought of reliving the event.


    Instead, I closed my mind and glanced around the tiny room where I had slept. A tatami floor. A sulfuric odor. The roar of rushing water. Could I really still be at the mountain inn?


    I should be in prison. I should be exposed for my violence. They would torture me to death. Surely, I would be executed.


    The shoji door scraped along its track. I glanced up. A small servant girl carried tea in on a tray, set it on a kotatsu, then disappeared.


    I tasted the tea. It was tart with fermented cherry. When I lifted it again to my lips, I raised my eyes and caught a glimpse of a spider, crouching within the seam of the ceiling and the wall. I gave an involuntary start. Spiders rarely startled me, but something was different about this one. I spoke to it, as if in apology, “You are welcome to any insects here.”


    It spun a hasty thread and traveled to its end, hovering close to my face. I stared at its mask of eyes for several seconds and never flinched until it spoke—not in words—but in language that seemed to translate directly into thoughts within my mind.


    “Accept the truth of your nature.”


    My jaw slackened.


    “What do you mean?” I asked, though, at once I knew: I had a kinship with this creature. And as I stared, stunned, the spider disappeared.


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    In her place stood a beautiful woman. Her willowy figure stood before me, a long coil of thick black hair covering her. I stared in awe, and even more strangely, recognition.


    She was the woman Ansei had sketched in his book and the same who had haunted my dreams!


    Finally, she spoke. “Furi, you have a shadow of the Earth Kumo in your history. You carry our venom in your tears; our artistry in your fingers; our industry in your ethic. Be glad, for yours is a high purpose and a great calling. Keep your path. You have much to learn and to prepare for.”


    I exhaled sharply but I kept my nerve, even while my chest pounded and my lungs heaved. I had so much to ask her and would have begged her to explain, but in another instant, the woman disappeared, leaving nothing but her wisp of spider thread.


    The puzzle of my past expanded in my mind and folded tightly closed with this single revelatory piece. At last! In my mind’s eye, I saw Master Nobu’s dead brother, mother Ishiyama…the grotesque forms of the two thieves at Madame Ozawa’s mill. The source of my poison, and a sensation of strange relief flooded my whole being. I began to shake, and then to cry.


    I didn’t know how long I cried, but my pillow was soaked through with my toxic tears before I came again to full self-possession.


    The aroma of food called me to awareness of life outside of my own suffering. I was hungry.


    Soon, a different servant woman brought a tray and wordlessly set it on the table, and I arose from my futon, hardly believing I—an assassin—could be treated so well.


    The tray bore a breakfast of salt fish and miso soup. I ate it all without ceremony, licking my fingers of the salty traces.


    Once again, the door slid again on its tracks, and the woman who brought my breakfast appeared.


    “I’ve come to change your bed clothes.”


    I lunged for the pillow.


    “Please not this,” I said. “Don’t even touch it!”


    “If that is your preference, My Lady.”


    My Lady? Why had she addressed me so politely? Could it be the Okugawa heir had survived? And supposing he had survived the venom in my tears, how long could his life persist, wed to an Earth Kumo?


    More time passed, and I grew anxious of information. Who was seeing to my care? Why did they stay hidden from me? Dared I go out to discover them?


    I wore nothing but the thin cotton bathing robe I had taken to the bath the morning prior. For all I knew, the Princess had packed my kimono off with my other belongings, and not knowing, didn’t want to go out to confront my guards in only a thin robe.


    The moon had risen high in the sky before I heard the shoji door withdraw once more.


    I blinked, and then snapped upright, rigid.


    Ansei stood at the threshold.