The knowledgeable one knows the destination,
but not the direction.
The foolish one knows the direction
but not the destination.

The knowledgeable one hires a guide or takes a map
until the guide is lost or the roads change
and they freeze in fear
for the destination cannot be found

The foolish one follows their impulses
until realizing they are lost
they flee in their panic
further into the empty spaces

The Tao is never changing
and never the same.
Though winding through dark roads
its destination is always certain

The one who follows the Tao is never lost
nor do they fear to enter the unknown
for they are guided by the Tao wherever they go
even into the empty spaces.

~ from The Book of the Lost Tao

The pale warmth of the winter sun had long since faded by the time 14-year-old Hikari Miyabe left her cram school in Tachikawa Japan. Hunched against the biting wind, hands shoved deep in her pockets, she carefully watched her steps on the icy sidewalks. Her fellow cram-school students—she couldn't really call them friends—tried to fill the silence with customary school-girl chatter, their breaths frosting the night air as they muttered through half-frozen lips. They apologized as she left them, exchanging wishes of good nights and promises of working hard again tomorrow before she walked into the train station and waited on the platform alone. At least it was easy to find a seat. All of the office workers had long since gone out drinking with their co-workers or slumped off home.

She shuffled off of the train at her stop. Her neighborhood street lay dead silent beneath a heavy blanket of unfamiliar shadows. Her steps quickened as her house grew closer, but a dark human shape appeared in her peripheral vision. She jumped, nearly losing her footing and hurried toward her house while peering over her shoulder. No one should be standing in the darkness before Mrs. Kuromizu's house. Hikari hurried to her door and fumbled for the key only to find it unlocked. The shadow didn't move. It's just my imagination after all, she thought, hopping into the familiar warmth of her home. She still turned and locked the door behind her pausing in the genkan just long enough to kick off her shoes. "I'm back."

Her mom was in the kitchen, cleaning. "Welcome back, Hikari. I left some food for you on the table."

Suddenly starving, Hikari dropped her book bag and pounced onto her chair. "Itadakimasu!"

Her dad sat in the other room watching a sports recap on TV. He called back over his shoulder. "How was cram school?"

The Miso soup was still warm. Hikari paused her slurping long enough to reply. "Pretty good. I aced the practice test."

"Keep up the good work."

Her mom brought her a drink. "We left the bath warm. If you hurry, you should have enough time before bed."

Hikari scooped up some rice. "I'll bathe tomorrow. I want to study a little more."

"More? I thought you were doing well."

"I am. But I have to be even better if I'm going to become a world-class doctor and cure everyone." It was a promise she had made to herself, then repeated as each of her mother's parents had died from cancer.

"You need to sleep sometime." Her mother placed a gentle hand on top of her head. "You can't take care of others if you don't take care of yourself."

"Don't worry." Hikari smiled up at her mother. "I can take care of myself and others."

A heavy thud fell against the door, then repeated itself twice more. Hikari's mother looked up. "I wonder who that could be."

Hikari's younger brother, Daichi, stood at the end of the hallway in his pajamas rubbing his eyes. "Is that Sis?"

"Go back to bed." Their mom gave him a gentle push on the shoulder, turning him around as she passed him on the way to the front door.

Something about the air felt odd. Hikari put down her rice bowl and chopsticks. Daichi's eyes followed their mom as she stepped into a pair of crocks waiting in the genkan. She opened the door.

Mrs. Kuromizu stood outside, shoulders slumped forward, her head hanging low her matted hair covered her face. Her floral print kimono was splattered with large globs of something thick black and oily.

"Oh! Obaa-san!" Her mother cried out. "Did you fall in the mud? What happened to you?"

For as long as Hikari could remember, Mrs. Kuromizu had lived next door. Her husband had died before Hikari was born and as far as she could tell Mrs. Kuromizu—or Obaa-san as she usually called her—had always been old. Since Hikari's only surviving grandparents—her father's parents—lived far away in Hiroshima, Obaa-san really was like a grandmother to her and her little brother. They had often stayed at Obaa-san's house after school when their parents worked late. Hikari's mother never failed to invite her inside for tea and cake whenever she came by.

"Come inside." Hikari's mother gently touched Mrs. Kuromizu's elbow as she guided the old woman through the door. She didn't say anything when Obaa-san stepped up into the house, still wearing her outdoor shoes, leaving a trail of black ooze behind her. The same substance covered Mrs. Kuromizu's arms up to her elbows as if she had fallen and landed on her hands in thick black tar. "Are you hurt? How can I help?"

Obaa-san's head rose, her oily hair leaving a dark smear across her face as it slowly parted. Her eyes were shiny black ovals.

Hikari rose from the table, staring at Obaa-san's dripping hands. Obaa-san's fingers seemed longer and more misshapened than arthritis could explain. They looked almost like sharp curved hooks. "Uh, mom?"

Her mother looked back at her. "Hikari, go call--"

Mrs. Kuromizu's head seemed to split open at the mouth. It lunged forward clamping even white rows of shark-like teeth on the base of her mother's neck.

"Ah!" Her mother gasped, spun around and fell backward, a hand pressed to her neck as it sprayed blood.

Obaa-san shuffled toward her, chewing. Bright red blood trickled from her smile down into the black ooze.

Her mother screamed. It was a terrified shriek that Hikari could never have imagined her mother capable of making.

Obaa-san bent over her mom who crawled backward across the floor.

"Don't hurt my mom!" Daichi rushed forward and grabbed Mrs. Kuromizu's arm, pulling at it.

The thing that had been Mrs. Kuromizu slowly turned a bloody grin toward Daichi. It seemed to shrug him off and Daichi flew into the room, bounced off a wall and fell to the floor in a limp spin.

"Hikari!" Her dad rushed past her. "Take your brother and run." He picked up a chair, a light-weight thing built on curved aluminum tubes, and stood before Obaa-san brandishing it.

Hikari leaped to Daichi's side and wrapped an arm around him. She pulled him back, her hand stinging at his touch. Run away? Where? There was no other way out of the room. Even if she could have somehow scampered passed her father and Mrs. Kuromizu to the door, she couldn't take Daichi with her and she refused to leave him behind.

She looked back at the kotatsu in the middle of the room. She and Daichi had sometimes hidden under the futon covered table while playing. It had always been a warm safe place.

Her father roared and struck the thing that had been Mrs. Kuromizu with the chair. It barely flinched, returning a deep-throated gurgling snarl before lunging at him.

Hikari didn't look back. Unable to think of anything else, she dragged Daichi's limp body under the futon. Gasping and panting, she looked at her hand; the stinging black liquid splashed across Daichi's body was smeared across her palm. The pain grew, an icy burn that traveled under her skin and up her wrist leaving a frozen numbness behind. She clutched her fist and tried not to whimper.

Her father made a strange short cry and fell with a grunt. A moist rending and tearing and a hungry lip-smacking sound followed.

What could she do? Where could she go?

Hikari wanted to charge out and hit the monster. She wanted to drive it away from her parents. But she knew that, even if she had the use of both hands, that wouldn't be enough. Perhaps, if she sacrificed herself, the thing might forget about Daichi...

A terrifying silence sliced through the sound.

Hikari held her breath. Had it left? Only her frantically pounding heart remained unfrozen by fear.

A shoe scraped the floor. A snuffling sound moved back and forth as if searching. Hikari cringed under the table as it neared. It stopped with a gurgling laugh. "Why don't you come out, Hikari-chan?" The voice was Mrs. Kuromizu's. It had a choking phlegmy sound that made Hikari want to clear her throat.

"Your brother has begun to quicken. Do you want to stay there until he eats you?

Hikari gazed down at her brother lying across her lap, eyes closed. She couldn't tell for certain, but he didn't seem to be breathing. She swallowed hard, trying to catch the hopeless wail rising in her throat. A tear collected on her eyelashes and dropped onto her cheek. She rubbed at it with the wrong hand leaving a bitter frosty bite where it had been. At least she and her family would soon be together again...

A light flared somewhere nearby as if a car had pulled up to the house and was shining its headlights through the open front door.

The rasping breath of the thing that had been Mrs. Kuromizu receded as if it were moving into position to attack whoever had arrived. A flash as from a hundred strobe lights drove away every shadow--even under the kotatsu. A muffled whump and a wave of warm air followed, washing through the room as if someone had opened the door on a bright sunny day on the edge of summer.

Wooden geta tapped into the room and paused. After a forlorn sigh, a soft woman's voice spoke. "If only I had come sooner. Why hadn't I sensed it earlier?"

Hikari had determined to wait until the stranger left, but curiosity overcame her. She slowly inched up the edge of the futon just enough to peer out with one eye.

A middle-aged woman wearing a black kimono with a green lotus blossom pattern leaned over the bodies, knees bent together to the side in a graceful crouch. Balanced, somehow on the edge of her wooden shoes, she gazed sadly at the bodies of Hikari's parents. Her long, black and gray-streaked hair was drawn up on her head and held in place with two unadorned hair sticks that shone like shiny metal spikes. A long naginata, the traditional weapon of the Onna-bugeisha—the wives of the samurai—trailed out behind her from her right hand. But this was a modern take on the weapon. Its shaft was a two-piece aluminum pole and the long curved blade of razor-sharp high carbon steel had strategic cutouts to reduce its weight without compromising its strength.

"I'm sorry," she said a little more loudly, her voice heavy with regret. "I would have saved them if I could." She turned an apologetic smile toward Hikari. "But it's not too late for you."

Hikari let the futon fall and scrambled back into the kotatsu.

"The Corruption must be quite painful. I'm sure you can feel it spreading through your body."

Hikari tried to flex the fingers of her black, withered hand. They moved with a slight delay, but she couldn't feel it. Her hand seemed like an alien thing belonging to someone else.

The geta slowly tapped closer. Hikari sucked in a frightened breath. The tapping stopped at the edge of the futon. The kimono whispered as the woman knelt. "Please come out." Her voice was almost plaintive. "I may not be a doctor, but I promise I can cure you."

Hikari's heart squeezed painfully with the memory of her promise. She was supposed to become a doctor so that she could cure people—people like her grandparents...or Obaa-san...

The edge of the futon lifted just enough for the woman to peer inside with a hesitant smile. "I know you may not trust me, but could you give me a chance?"

She held out a hand. Her translucent skin glowed with a yellow light as if the sun were shining through from the other side of her flesh. The bones of her fingers were rich amber shafts, wrapped in veins and vessels of shining gold.

Though fascinated by the sight, Hikari held back. Not every beautiful thing was good. If this woman could so easily destroy the thing that killed her parents, she had to be dangerous.

"My name is Ren Inaike. What is yours?"

"Hikari Miyabe."

"You're safe now. Come, let me help you."

Safe? Could it be true? Hikari's eyes watered at the sound of that word. She stretched out her hand which dripped with oily black liquid. Her fingernails had already seemed to have grown. The woman didn't hesitate, gently clasping her fingers. A warmth washed over Hikari as if she had just stepped into a bath. Then it began to burn.

Once during a school outing, Hikari's class had visited a glass blower. She had managed to slip through the press of children to get closer to the furnace than was safe. When they opened it to draw out some molten glass, a wave of desiccating air struck like a blanket of needles. The heat was enough to sear the lungs. Someone had snatched her back from the flames but the heat seemed to claw after her.

"I know it hurts a little..." The woman said softly.

Hikari felt as if she had been plunged into flames or as if her skin were being peeled off with knives of acid. She tried to pull her hand back, but the pain held every muscle rigid. It locked her lungs so that she could not draw air, trapping an unvoiced scream inside her. Just as the pain reached a level so great that it became some sort of independent thing, the world went white and disappeared. For a brief moment, she felt the presence of an invisible cloud of people surrounding her and whispering, each voice the soft flutter of a tongue of flame.

Passing through a silvery nothingness, she sank down into the cool shadows of the kotatsu. Cool... Kotatsu... Gasping, on her hands and knees, Hikari chuckled at the thought of a table designed to keep people warm feeling so cool.

"Feeling better?" Ren asked.

Hikari's looked at her cursed hand. It was healthy and pink. Faint pinpricks of fire flickered briefly under her trim fingernails. Her skin tingled as if she had just stepped from the warm waters of an onsen into the cool air of a wintery night. She could feel the strength of the fire coursing through her. It made her want to run and jump and push heavy things with a power she had never before had.

Her head jerked up. The shadows melted from her vision and subtle new colors painted in the gaps that had only been gray before. She heard the neighbors rustling in their houses up and down the street which had seemed so unnaturally silent earlier. She even heard the faint trembling pulse of a fading heartbeat...

"My brother! You must cure him as well!"

Ren's neatly groomed eyebrows rose. "Who?"

Hikari reached under the kotatsu behind her and, with unexpected strength, dragged Daichi out by his pajama shirt. The black liquid splattering his shirt sublimated into faint streamers of smoke at her touch leaving clear unstained spots beneath her fingers.

"You'll never have to worry about The Corruption again."

Hikari gave her an imploring look. "Please! Cure him."

"I fear we are too late." Ren leaned over him, probing the back of his head with a gentle caress of her hands. "His neck is broken. He should be dead. Only The Corruption has kept him alive as it adapts him to its purpose."

"But you...the fire can cure him, right?"

Ren hesitated as if struggling with herself. "The Sacred Fire can cure as well as kill. In this case, since The Corruption has nearly finished taking him...the attempt would not be easy—it always costs something--and in this case, it would almost certainly fail..." She smiled wistfully at Hikari. "But we can only try."

Ren rose gracefully, gestured for Hikari to step back and laid her pole weapon aside. She held her hands out over Daichi's small body, one hand atop the other, fingers splayed. They began to glow and that glow brightened until it became difficult to look at.

Hikari squinted into the light looking for any change in Daichi. The light increased and spread up Ren's arms. Her hair floated upward and her kimono fluttered from an intangible wind. A nimbus of light surrounded her as if the morning sun rose behind her. Her eyes were blazing white ovals as if her face—even her whole body—were nothing more than a tissue paper mask covering a light so powerful, so impossibly bright, that it could not be fully exposed in this world.

Daichi's body began to glow from within, his skin cracking and sloughing off, revealing a body of almost pure light beneath. It could have been a trick of the heat or the tears in her eyes, but Hikari thought she saw his eyes open and a smile play at the corners of his mouth. She gasped in hope.

Ren made a small cry and the light blazing behind her snuffed out. She collapsed to the floor, falling on one hip, hanging limply from her shoulders as she struggled to keep herself propped up on her hands. "That's all...I can manage...now. The draw is too much."

Supernatural flames flickered over Daichi's body a moment, then died away. His body collapsed in a puff of fine, powdery ash.

"The Corruption had taken too much," Ren panted. "Purifying him left too little remaining. At least he is in a better place now. The fate of the corrupted is too terrible to contemplate."

The reality of the nightmare her life had become wrapped itself around her, binding her. Her parents were now torn lumps of meat and bone lying on the floor behind her. Her brother was nothing more than ash on the wind. Only moments ago her family had been together and happy...

It had all changed in an instant. How could that have happened? Had life always been so precariously balanced over such horror? And now it was all gone, her family, her life. Hikari looked at her hands. Faint traces of light flickered beneath her skin. Was she even Hikari anymore?

Ren fumbled for her naginata with a shaky hand and pulled it toward her. She propped it up, clinging to it as she pulled herself to her feet. Leaning against it, she swayed slightly, panting.

Hikari stood in the middle of the room in what had once been her home, spilling tears onto the floor. It was now little more than a tomb for her old life.

Ren watched her a moment without speaking. "You're not alone."

Hikari sniffed and looked up. "Eh?"

"You have a new family waiting to welcome you." Ren shuffled forward and removed a pin from her kimono. It was a flower blossom carved into jade. "The Jade Lotus." She showed it to Hikari, then pinned it on her school uniform blouse. "Almost every one of us has lost someone. Some of us lost everyone. So we've come together to form a new family, one that fights the corruption and tries to cure those who have been corrupted by it."

"And they will take me in?"

"Yes. You have become one of the Awakened. The Sacred Fire burns within you. You now perceive the secret war and have become a part of it. We need your strength as much as you need the Jade Lotus' help."

Hikari lowered herself in a slow collapse and sat on her haunches covering her face with her hands. "I don't know what to do..."

Ren took a deep breath and looked around thoughtfully. "If you are to come with us, we'll need to tell the authorities a story they can understand regarding what happened here and why you survived..."

Her words flowed past Hikari without meaning. Ren's voice faded as if she were growing more distant or as if Hikari were falling into a bottomless pit.

Ren's firm hand on her shoulder brought her back. "Do you have anything in this house you wish to take with you? Anything small but special enough you would race into a burning house to save it?"

Hikari's short life flashed before her eyes in a jumble of random images...her father giving her a pen and pencil set on her entry into junior high school, her first award for winning a science competition, a hat with Mickey Mouse ears and her name embroidered on it from a rare family vacation. The memories scattered like the falling shards of a mirror reflecting a life that no longer belonged to her.

What one thing would she save? Was there any way to pick such a thing? She shook her head and started to cry. Then she remembered Daichi's gift. She raced down the hall to her room.

"What?" Ren asked.

Hikari flipped open a box on her dresser. It contained a number of small items that had special meaning for her: a ribbon her best friend had given her in fourth grade, a lucky eraser she had used during an important test where she got the top marks in the class, a colorful shiny pebble she had picked up at the beach during a school outing, a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks from a restaurant she had eaten at alone with her dad when her mother and baby Daichi were visiting her parents.

Hikari pulled out a delicate chain with a beautiful silver butterfly. Her birthday had been six months ago. The necklace had been a gift from Daichi. The last gift he had given her. The last he would ever give her.

Ren called from the genkan at the front door. "Hikari-chan, we must go now."

Hikari slipped the chain on. It caught on the jade lotus pin. She tugged at it hastily but it remained entangled. Clutching the butterfly, she ran out of her room.

Ren had unscrewed the naginata's shaft and put both parts in a long slim bag hanging from her shoulder. She held a hand out to Hikari. "You must go back to the train station and wait there until you hear the fire trucks' sirens. When they ask where you were and why you weren't home, tell them that you forgot your textbook at the cram school and had gone back to get it only to find the school closed and locked up. Do you understand?"

Dazed and unable to find the words to reply, Hikari nodded.

"Don't worry. I'll be here waiting for you." Ren gave her a kind smile. "You're safe now. You're not alone."

Hikari staggered dizzily up the street toward the station. She felt strangely detached from both her body and the world itself. A faint breath of wintry air brushed her forehead. It felt refreshing. She inhaled deeply and looked up into the night sky where only a handful of stars struggled through the light pollution of the city.

A flicker of amber light reflected off nearby houses. Hikari glanced over her shoulder. Her house's windows blazed. Mrs. Kuromizu's house was only a dark silhouette against it. A fountain of glowing embers shot up into the empty spaces of the sky.

What had she gotten herself into?