Curses and Will Chapter 28: Chapter 1: The Village Under a Shadow

Read chapter 28 of Curses and Will by Simply No One on NovelPedia.

We left Kibō no Mura three days after the waterfall, Kagenken's farewell shorter than I expected from a man who'd spent the better part of two weeks patching me back together in every sense that mattered. "You'll be back," he said simply, standing at the dojo gate with his cigar already lit. "Not because you need more training. Because you'll want to know I'm still standing." A pause, something almost amused crossing his face. "Try not to lose a limb proving it." Suga had cried at the gate, openly and without embarrassment, which had somehow made the goodbye easier rather than harder. Annya promised we'd write. Kagenken just nodded once and turned back toward the dojo before any of us could see whatever was actually on his face. The road back toward Henbō Toshi cut through unfamiliar country, hills rolling steeper than what we'd crossed on the way out, the forest thinning into open farmland the further we traveled. Annya walked beside me most of the way, quieter than usual, the kind of quiet that wasn't unhappy so much as thoughtful. We reached the outskirts of a small farming village on the second day, smoke rising from a few scattered chimneys, fields stretching out on either side of the road in neat, tended rows. Ordinary, by every visible measure. Except nothing about it felt ordinary the moment we crossed into it. The first thing I noticed was the silence. Not the comfortable kind, not even the watchful, judgmental silence I'd grown used to in towns that recognized Annya. This was something closer to held breath, the entire village pulled tight like a string about to snap. Doors stood closed despite the warm afternoon. Windows shuttered even where the light should have been welcome. A handful of villagers crossed our path at a distance, heads down, moving with the particular hurried stillness of people trying very hard not to be noticed by something. "Something's wrong here," Annya murmured, her hand drifting toward the small dagger she kept at her hip out of habit more than necessity. I didn't answer right away. A weight had settled over my chest the moment we'd crossed the village boundary, similar to what I'd felt entering Henbō Toshi weeks earlier, but different in texture. Less hunger, more control. Less like something hunting and more like something already in charge of everything it surveyed. We found an old woman sweeping the step outside a small shop, the only person who didn't immediately look away from us. "Travelers," she said, voice low. "You'd do well to keep walking. Nothing for you here." "We're not looking for trouble," I said carefully. "Just passing through. What's happened to this place?" Her broom stopped moving. She glanced once toward the center of the village, toward what looked like a modest manor house rising above the surrounding roofs, before looking back at us. "Nothing's happened," she said, too quickly. "Nothing at all. The Headman keeps us safe. Keeps us fed. We're grateful for it." The words came out rehearsed, flat in a way that didn't match the fear sitting behind her eyes. "You don't sound grateful," Annya said gently. "You sound frightened." The old woman's hands trembled around the broom handle. For a moment something honest flickered across her face, something close to wanting to say more. Then it shuttered closed again, fast, like a door slammed against a draft. "Keep walking," she said, turning back to her sweeping. "Please. For your own sake." We didn't keep walking. That evening, we found a small inn willing to take us in, the innkeeper a nervous man who kept glancing toward the window every few minutes like he expected something to be standing there. Over a thin, quiet dinner, I caught fragments of conversation from a table of farmers nearby, voices kept deliberately low. "...third family this month..." "...don't ask where they went, you just don't..." "...he sees everything, you know he does, even what you're thinking..." That last line caught hold of something cold in my chest