Chapter 20

Shota bid the sailor farewell at the dock in Sado Island's main natural harbor. He enjoyed the trip hugely. The sailor taught him so much in such a brief time! Coupled with what he had learned before, he felt he could conquer the world, one ocean at a time! The boat was his and he could sail her! Shota couldn't stop grinning.

The sailor helped Shota arrange for moorage and showed him to a merchant bank where he could lodge his gold safely. Once that was fixed, the man wished Shota well and ambled off to visit his relatives on the island before arranging passage back. Shota kept back enough money to buy a pack, staff and a warmer coat, plus lodging and food if he needed them, before he set off to find Azuki.

***

Azuki stood in the shallows of an estuary not too far off the main road that circled the island. She willed herself to watch for fish and to ignore the three young male toki that circled her, trying to tempt her with their dubious charms. She was not at all ready for a boyfriend! Didn't they know she was really only eleven?

"Azuki" she heard on the wind. It sounded like Shota. She shook herself. Wishful thinking. She extended her great wings, stretched, and folded them precisely along her back. Feathers flew. She longed to gather them and make them into something wonderful, but she couldn't.

"Azuki-chan!" The voice was closer, and it was was it? real.

She turned to the sound and saw, at no small distance, Shota, scanning the tide flats to see if any of the beautiful toki responded to his voice.

"Shota!" Azuki cried and launched herself into the air, landing beside the bird-boy, so excited she nearly knocked him down.

"Shota-chan! I can't believe it! What are you doing here?"

"Be a girl, will you? I can't change. I have too much stuff. I've been looking for you forever."

Azuki changed, to the clear consternation of the toki she'd been with. They had no idea the newest member of their flock could do that.

"Mother sent me," Shota said.

"But shedidn't survive," Azuki said, tear springing to her eyes as she remembered the small, still figure crumpled on the ground. "And it was all my fault!"

"It wasn't," Shota answered hotly. "Stop thinking like that. You know better. It was the Sheriff's greed, nothing you were or did. Mother sent me to find you and bring you home. She said she'd set things right for us. It was her last wish."

"Home." Azuki sounded first hopeful, then sad. "Home," she repeated. "How can we go home? Genmai is still Sheriff. He will have taken everything. We'll have nothing and we won't be safe. He'll still want to capture us and keep us as slaves." Suddenly Azuki burst into tears. "Oh, Shota, I don't like being just a toki. I want to live where I can be a Toki-girl, where I can use my feathers to make beautiful things, new things. Where I can be who I really am, but that doesn't seem to be anywhere. Where can either of us really be ourselves?"

"It might be worse than you think," Shota said grimly. "If we don't get back by the quarter-day at the equinox, the Sheriff can declare us dead and strike our names from the record books. We won't be able to live as humans anymore, in human society, only as outcasts. Once we're erased from the records, we can never be citizens again."

"How can Mother help us deal with the Sheriff?" Azuki asked. "How can she set things right?"

"Father helped me," Shota said, and told her about his dream, about the straw, the fly, the oranges, the ship captain and his lady, about Blackie and about his boat. "Father helped me," he concluded. "So Mother can help both of us. They're helping us right now, I think, even though we can't see them. You trust Mother, don't you?"

"Of course I trust Mother!" How could he think she might not? Yet, she thought Shota's reasoning too simple.

"Then trust her," Shota said. "She promised she'd make it right for us. She sent me to get you and bring you home by quarter-day. Father helped me or I wouldn't be here. Come home with me and we'll see how things are. We can decide what to do next when we get there."

Slowly, Azuki nodded. Maybe he was right. She hadn't done very well on her own. Why not go home? She did trust her parents. And, she thought bitterly, where else was she going to go? Being a toki hadn't worked out. At least with Shota, she'd have her brother back. Maybe her home, too if they could go back. But if they didn't hurry, that option would be lost to them forever.

"How will we get there?" she asked. "I can fly to Niigata if I start early and watch the weather, but you can't, and I can't carry you and your things."

"We don't have to. We don't need to. I have a boat, remember, and I know how to sail her.