Reparations Page 2

  The captain approaches. Kito clutches my hand and steps protectively in front of me. “You there. Girl—let me see your face.”

  Tohru pushes Kito aside and takes my chin in a firm hand. His eyes narrow as he studies my face. I glare back, hoping my hardened expression is one he could never imagine on the soft, delicate features of highborn Amaya Rokuro. I am no longer that girl, all silk and flowers and sweet-smelling soaps. I am stone and mud and hard-won survival.

  “You’re Magistrate Rokuro’s daughter,” says Tohru.

  My insides freeze. “I—no—you’re mistaken.” The stammering is not an act, but I hope it will make me sound more convincing.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of. You can be honest.”

  I glance at Kito, who can do nothing but watch to see how this plays out. His posture is rigid, every muscle tensed. His eyes scream, “No.”

  “My name is Hana,” I say. “My father was a merchant. That’s the truth.” Kito helped me concoct this lie a few weeks ago. My speech is too formal to pass as a peasant, but it’s conceivable that I could be the daughter of a wealthy merchant.

  Some of the other soldiers gather around us, conferring with one another in whispers. One of them approaches Tohru, speaks into his ear. He considers, nods, turns his attention back to me. “We’re taking you to the Imperial City. Rokuro will tell us who you really are.”

  The soldiers surround me in the space of a heartbeat. They bind my wrists in front of me before I can even think of a spell that might help me escape. A flame starts to form in Kito’s hand, but soldiers restrain him, too. He thrashes against them to no avail. “You can’t take her!”

  “Relax,” says Tohru. “If what she says is true, she has nothing to worry about. We’ll return her to you safe and sound.” The smirk on his face says he knows I’m a liar and looks forward to the moment when he can prove it.

  He grabs one of my wrists and leads me to a horse. Seeing no option that won’t make my predicament worse, I cooperate and follow him willingly. I catch snatches of whispers as we pass through the crowd.

  “…serves her right.”

  “…Rokuro’s daughter?”

  “…the one who gave the order…”

  I bow my head. My father’s legacy will haunt me until the day I die.

  The captain mounts the horse, and some other soldiers help me up behind him. With my hands tied, there is nothing for me to cling to. He kicks the horse into a trot and I struggle to keep my balance. I can still hear Kito shouting as we ride away from the village.

  Once again, I am a prisoner.

  For a moment, I consider that it might not be such a bad idea to cooperate. Perhaps I can help make up for my father’s crimes in some small way. But I remember what Kito said about desperation, and his fear that the Tainted Army might harm me just to get my father to comply with their demands. No matter how I look at the situation, it’s a cage, and I have had enough of cages for one lifetime. I will not be used and manipulated for anyone’s cause, no matter how noble it seems.

  I consider throwing myself from the horse and running back towards the village, but Tohru could easily catch me again. I will wait until nightfall. Perhaps when we make camp and he falls asleep, I can escape somehow.

  To my disappointment, we stop for the night at a guard station along the road. I will likely be watched, then, which means there will be no chance to escape. If I could use magic, I might be able to get away. But magic is channeled through movement and expelled through the hands. With mine tied, palms wrapped together tight, I’m powerless.

  I see an opportunity when Tohru takes me inside the officer’s tent to eat with him. We are the only ones there, the others having already finished eating. Tohru dishes out leftover food for the two of us. He puts a bowl of rice and fish in front of me but does not unbind my hands. I make a show of trying to hold my chopsticks with my fingertips, letting them fall on the floor every once in a while so that Tohru has to stop eating and retrieve them for me. He is patient at first, responding with kind smiles when I apologize for my clumsiness. After repeating the process a dozen times or so, an exasperated sigh escapes his lips.

  I take another bite and drop a chopstick again. Tohru does not immediately bend to pick it up. I wait a few moments before clearing my throat. “Excuse me, captain. Would you be so kind as to pick that up for me?”

  He does, slowly and deliberately. The lines around his mouth have deepened as he scowls, and I can tell he is trying not to raise his voice when he speaks. “If you do that again, you won’t get it back.”

  I put on my most pathetic pout—the one I used to use on my father when I wanted something from him. “If you’d just untie my hands, I could hold onto them better.”

  The anger dissipates from Tohru’s face almost instantly. He laughs. “That’s very clever, Amaya, but I’m not untying your hands.” His smile is one of genuine amusement, neither cruel nor condescending, which somehow only makes it worse.

  “My name is Hana,” I mutter.

  “Of course it is.”

  He waits for me to finish eating, then takes me to another tent, where two female soldiers stand guard. Tohru explains to them that I am a valuable asset to the Tainted Army should be closely monitored. They salute him and he lifts the flap of the tent. Inside, I can see the prone, blanketed figures of some thirty women and young girls. “You can sleep here tonight. I know it’s not much, but by tomorrow, we’ll be in the Imperial City with all the comforts there. Pleasant dreams.”

  Tohru leaves and I find an empty space on the ground in one corner of the tent. I have no blanket, but the night is warm. As I lay down to sleep, I consider that Tohru is not the villain I want him to be. He has been kind to me today, but my suspicions remain. Perhaps he’s only pretending, believing that I’ll be more willing to tell him the truth if he gains my trust.

  I plan to disappoint him.

  We leave the guard station early the next morning and reach the Imperial City that afternoon. Tohru asks me one more time to tell him who I really am. “My name is Hana,” I say. “My father was a merchant.”

  He sighs and shakes his head. “I suppose we’ll just have to ask Rokuro.”

  We dismount at the palace gate. He hands the horse off to another soldier and we walk up the stairs that lead to the main entrance. Tohru speaks to a series of guards and officers of increasing authority until finally, we’re allowed to enter. Another guard takes us to the area where the Tainted Army houses their hostages. We enter a small room at the end of the hall, and for the first time in almost a year, I see my father.

  He looks much older than I remember. His black hair is streaked with gray, and he seems small and bent in his simple brown robes. He sits on the floor with his hands in his lap and looks up only when Tohru says, “We’ve brought your daughter, Rokuro.” The captain’s eyes are narrowed as he watches my father for some sign.

  I look back at the man across the room. Our eyes lock, but my father’s face remains dispassionate. His hands lay still on the fabric of his robes. For a moment, I think that maybe he doesn’t recognize me; I have changed too much.

  Then something touches his eyes—a flicker of recognition, joy, grief, and guilt all mixed into one. It disappears an instant later. “This is not my daughter,” he says. His voice is as steady and commanding as I remember.

  Tohru clenches a fist at his side. “Look closer. The past year has been hard on her, thanks to your barbaric prisons. She may not look the same.”

  My father shakes his head. “She’s the right age. I’ll admit she even has some of the same features. I can see how you misidentified her, but she’s not my daughter.”

  “She has to be,” Tohru says. “I saw her almost every day for years. I know her face.”

  My father straightens and raises his voice. “Do you honestly think I wouldn’t recognize my own flesh and blood? What kind of cruel joke is this? You tell me my daughter is alive, and then you bring this imposter before me. This girl is no
t Amaya.”

  They regard each other like two wolves tensed for a fight. Tohru waits for some indication that Magistrate Rokuro is lying. My father does not even glance at me; his face is as hard and still as marble.

  Tohru sighs. “Fine, then.” He takes my hand, and leads me outside. I steal a glance back at my father before the door closes and for a moment, I think I can see the faintest trace of a smile on his lips.

  Tohru cuts the rope that binds my hands and walks back the same way we came in. I scurry to keep up with him. We say nothing to each other until we get outside. “You know the way to the gate, I trust,” he says.

  I nod. “I’m sorry,” I say, without really knowing why. He’s the one who should be apologizing to me.

  He shrugs. “Take care of yourself out there. If I were you, I’d keep the name.”

  I nod and we shake hands. “Goodbye,” I say.

  He gives me a wry smile. “Goodbye, Hana.”

  I make my way to the walls surrounding the palace grounds. There, I hear a familiar voice. Kito argues with some soldiers on the path ahead, demanding to be allowed inside. He stops when he sees me, his eyes wide. I’m not sure how he managed to get here so quickly, but it doesn’t matter; I’m glad he came. I smile and run into his arms, and we leave the soldiers muttering about what a pair of crazy fools we are.

  “What happened?” Kito asks, taking my hand. “Did you see your father?”

  I nod. “He said he didn’t know me.”

  Kito scowls. “After everything that’s happened, he still denies his only child.”

  I shake my head. My father wasn’t denying me as his daughter. He was protecting me. I recognized the fleeting look in his eyes. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around me and welcome me home. But he hadn’t, because he knew it wasn’t in my best interests to be affiliated with him in any way. Maybe he feared the same things Kito had—that the new authorities would use me to manipulate him. Or perhaps he simply knew I’d been a prisoner for far too long already. Either way, I knew it hadn’t been easy for him. I’m not sure I can forgive him. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But I am grateful to him for that one small gesture of atonement.

  “No,” I say to Kito. “He gave me my freedom.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The idea for “Reparations” started with a single line from a writing prompt I saw somewhere about a year ago, at which point Amaya entered my head with the full force of a Category 5 hurricane. I don’t write first-person stories often; I have a hard time getting the character’s voice just right and tend to dislike sticking in any one character’s head for the duration of an entire story. I didn’t have either of those problems with Amaya. She just wrote herself, and I enjoyed every second of it.

  I sent this story to a grand total of five publishers before I decided I didn’t want to go that route after all. Two of them sent back very positive rejection letters, but they both suggested changes that I realized I just wasn’t willing to make. Maybe I would have been better off listening to them. Maybe (probably) the story isn’t as good as it could be. That’s okay. “Reparations” is a deeply personal story for me—more personal than I ever anticipated it being. It’s the story I’d been trying to write for five or six years, though I didn’t realize it until long after it was finished. It was a sort of catharsis, and because of that, I couldn’t bear the thought of making any major structural changes. For all those reasons and more, I decided to publish the story myself and make it available to readers for free. I can only hope that someone will find it and enjoy reading it in spite of its imperfections.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  T. A. Hernandez grew up with her nose habitually stuck in a book and her mind constantly wandering to make-believe worlds full of magic and adventure. She began writing stories after reading J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings for the first time at age 10. Thankfully, her writing has improved significantly since then, though she will happily admit that she has much more to learn and is looking forward to a long and exciting journey in her Quest to Tell Better Stories.

  She is the proud mother of two girls and a college student working towards her degree in social work. She also enjoys drawing, reading, watching movies, riding her motorcycle, and making happy memories with her family and friends.

  Her debut novel, Secrets of PEACE, was published in July, 2016. More information can be found on her website listed below.

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  Contact T. A. Hernandez through any of the following to stay up to date on her stories, view concept art, and more:

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  Your questions and comments about the story and characters are always welcome and appreciated.