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She doesn’t hold the child, but she feels him pressed to her breast all the same. “This is your duty,” the midwife reminds her, holding the child firmly in place.
Numbly, Euna nods. This is supposed to be a precious moment between mother and child, but all she can feel is the monster sucking the life out of her. Without meaning to, she glances down. Golden demon eyes meet her gaze and she flinches away. She can barely feel the gentle touch of the midwife guiding the baby to her breast again.
Sitting beside Euna, her husband Su-ran is in tears. No tears have reached Euna yet. Part of her still thinks this isn’t real, thinks it’s some fever dream of childbirth, thinks that if she closes her eyes, the nightmare will be over. She’ll have a real son and not—not—
Seiryuu.
But no matter how many times she looks away, those golden eyes are there, waiting.
Eventually they close. The midwife swaddles the monster, sets him sleeping in the cradle they had prepared for their child.
“Ah!” That sight, that violation, starts Euna from her stillness.
“Would you rather hold him?” the midwife asks pointedly, and Euna sinks back into her bed, defeated. “Rest,” the midwife commands. “I must inform the elder that a new Seiryuu has been born, but I’ll come back.”
Su-ran rests a hand on her shoulder. “We can have other children,” he says. “Real children.”
What can Euna say to that? To go through all of this a second time? Su-ran doesn’t understand, can’t understand—but his face says he understands, at least, that this was the wrong thing to say. He holds her tighter, his embrace reaching where his words cannot.
Euna wakes to the sound of the monster crying, and tries to ignore it. The sound of a crying child—it’s supposed to make her feel something, isn’t it? But all she feels is resignation. She knows the nightmare is real, knows that if she gets up, golden eyes will await her. Knows that what should be a helpless child crying out for warmth is a monster, taunting her.
“Euna.” The midwife must have returned while she was asleep. “You have to feed him. If he dies, you’ve cursed some other family to suffer the same fate. Do you want to do that?”
She can’t answer. Eventually, Su-ran goes to the cradle, brings the baby to her. “This won’t be forever,” he says. “The previous Seiryuu will take him, soon enough.”
One hundred days. That’s how long the monster is to stay with its birth-mother, to ensure it will survive, to keep the gods from playing even crueler tricks. One hundred days, and it hasn’t even been one.
Each day may seem to last forever, but still Euna loses count. Her friends, her sister, even her mother—they all promised to help her care for her child, and they all abandoned her when they learned she had birthed the next Seiryuu. Su-ran does everything for the child but feed him, and Euna barely leaves her bed.
“When did you last eat?” Su-ran asks, pressing a bowl of broth into her hands. She stares at him blankly. Does it matter?
They say that Seiryuu’s eyes can turn you stone. Euna thinks it’s working.
“It’s strange,” Su-ran comments one day. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember that he’s not—you know—our son.” That night, Euna hears the faint echoes of a lullaby. She climbs out of bed. Follows the sound of her husband’s voice, rips the child from his arms. Seiryuu took her son from her, she won’t let him take Su-ran, too.
“Euna,” Su-ran is saying. “Euna, give the baby to me.”
You don’t want to curse some other family to suffer the same fate.
Then Euna looks down at the child in her hands and gasps. His eyes are shut, the red daggers on his cheeks almost invisible in the dim light. He’s not a monster, he’s just a baby. He’s her son, and he has been all along. She pulls him close to her chest. Shakily, she picks up the notes of the lullaby Su-ran was singing. He joins back in again and it’s then, when she hears their voices singing together, that Euna’s tears finally, finally come.
Then Seiryuu opens his eyes, looks up at her with that cursed gaze, and the spell is broken. Only Su-ran keeps her from dropping the child in revulsion.
The monster almost had her.
Su-ran brings the village elder to their house. “I know it’s too soon,” he says. “But you have to take him to the previous Lord Seiryuu now. Can’t you see he’s killing her?”
“Nonsense,” the elder retorts. “His powers have not yet fully appeared.” That won’t happen until the hundredth day, tradition says, the day when he is given his mask.
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” But the elder doesn’t listen to Su-ran’s request.
When he leaves, Euna looks to Su-ran, confused. “I’m not dying,” she says. It might be easier if she were. Her life isn’t her own—Seiryuu has taken everything from her, violated her, and when these hundred days are over, what will Euna have left? Maybe it really would be better to end it.
“Euna,” says Su-ran. “Euna, if you could only see yourself—”
The next night—or maybe one night after, Euna has already lost track—Su-ran takes her by the hand as soon as Seiryuu falls asleep. “Euna, it’s time to go,” he says. She looks at him blankly. “This whole village is cursed. I have to get you out of here. I won’t let you fade away, Euna, not like this.”
“Go…where?” she asks.
“Anywhere.”
They could be killed for trying to leave the village. But when Euna thinks about that, it doesn’t feel like an argument for staying.
“I’ve packed already,” says Su-ran. “Let’s go.”
As they step out the door, Seiryuu begins to cry, and Su-ran stops in his tracks. “Lord Seiryuu will take him in,” he says. “That was always going to happen. It’s just—a little sooner—” He chokes back a sob, takes a deep breath, and grips Euna’s hand tight. “Let’s go,” he repeats.
The moon is high in the sky when they hear shouts behind them. “Euna. Hide.” But there are barely any trees for shelter, none they can make it to unseen.
“Come back now and you won’t be harmed,” a voice calls out. The village elder.
“Won’t be harmed? Like Euna hasn’t been harmed?”
“All we asked was that she do her duty.”
“Let’s go back, Euna whispers, tugging at Su-ran’s hand. “I’ll be alright. I can be stronger.”
Su-ran shakes his head. “If we go back, I’m afraid you’ll die, Euna, I’m afraid you’ll—” He drops their pack. “Run,” he says. “We’re near an Earth Tribe outpost. We’ll be safe if we make it there.”
“Well?” the elder demands from across the distance.
They run.
But Euna is weak from weeks in bed, and she knows she won’t be able to run for long. Su-ran pulls her along, like he always has, and she can see the lights of the outpost ahead. They’re going to make it. Then—Su-ran falls forward. Euna falls too, still holding tight to his hand, and it’s a moment before she can right herself, before she can see—
There’s an arrow sticking out of Su-ran’s back.
“Su-ran!” She rolls him too his side. Stares into the fading light in his eyes, uncomprehending. “Su-ran!” She looks back in the direction of the approaching villagers, their torches casting a glow more cruel than Seiryuu’s eyes ever were. “You didn’t have to—” But they did. They’d have reached the outpost, she and Su-ran, and outsiders cannot know of Seiryuu’s power. “Su-ran,” she repeats, still hoping.
His hand brushes against her cheek. Does his touch feel cold already, or is that just her imagination? “Euna,” he chokes out. “Live. Live for me and—and for—our son.” His hand falls away. Again, the tears that should come aren’t there. She just feels empty.
More arrows don’t come, either. They want her alive, she realizes. They still want her milk. And they know she can’t go any further on her own.
Live, Su-ran said. If they take her back…she’ll be alive, but will she ever really live again? I’m sorry, Su-ran. She stares at the ground and waits for the villagers to reach her.
Footsteps. Just one set. A boot nudges Su-ran—Su-ran’s body—testing for life. A frustrated growl. “Go home,” says a gruff, unfamiliar voice. “I’ll handle this.”
“Y-yes, Lord Seiryuu.”
Hesitantly, Euna looks up. In all the time since Seiryuu was born, she hasn’t seen the previous dragon, but she’d caught glimpses of him before. Those times, she recoiled in fear at the sight of him. Now, there’s nothing left to be afraid of.
“You’re the mother,” he sais. She answers with a shaky nod. “I watched you,” he says. “You have nothing to give him. Do you?”
“Are you going to kill me?” Su-ran will be disappointed to see her in the afterlife so soon—but how can she do what he asked of her? How can she live? “He’s always been your child,” she says, when Seiryuu doesn’t answer. “Not mine.”
“You think I know the first thing about raising a kid?” His hand is on his sword. Euna hopes it will be quick.
“He—he likes the song about the fish in the sky!” she blurts out, a memory of Su-ran’s voice springing to her mind.
Seiryuu relaxes his grip. “Don’t know that one,” he says. She keeps watching him. It’s impossible to tell what’s happening beneath that mask. Finally, he speaks again. “You should go.”
“Go…?” Euna repeats. She’s confused. Seiryuu is…letting her go?
“They think he needs you,” says Seiryuu. “They’re wrong.” Maybe he speaks from experience. “Go,” he repeats, but Euna doesn’t move. Seiryuu sighs and turns away, but after taking a step, turns back. “Does he have a name?”
“…no.”
“So be it.”
Euna doesn’t remember stumbling into the Earth Tribe outpost, or the faces of the soldiers who helped her there. She remembers they don’t ask questions.
They take her to a village, a warm bright village with no secrets, and they take her to the healing-woman there. She does ask questions, many of them, and when she’s finished, she tells Euna to stay with her.
It’s a long time before Euna feels like she’s living again.
Over the years, she learns from the healing-woman. She sees women who fall apart after giving birth, whose children are healthy, are human, and the healing-woman calls it no one’s fault, but simply a sickness. And she hears stories, too, stories that were never told in Seiryuu Village, of the founding of their country and the four dragon warriors.
Euna wonders…
Seiryuu would be a boy now. The previous Seiryuu said he didn’t need her, but is that really true? It can’t be. Because—because—
He’s her son. He’s her son, and she left him behind.
If Euna returns to Seiryuu Village, she knows she won’t be able to leave again. So she says goodbye to her new home and sets out alone. Near the Earth Tribe outpost, she pauses. Can she really do it? Go back to live with the people who killed Su-ran? Yes, she decides. Euna will never forgive them, but for her son, she can live with them.
The outpost is strangely deserted. Euna wonders if some war has called the soldiers away. Remembering how they helped her that night, she offers a short prayer for their safety, and continues on.
The sun is setting as she reaches the village. No guards meet her. Strange, she thinks. And strange, how no lights shine in any windows.
The fields outside the village were untended and overgrown, too.
Euna sinks to her knees as she realizes the truth. Seiryuu Village is empty, abandoned, and she will never know what happened to her son.