Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
I stopped in front of the painting and parted my lips.
Hiro looked at me. “What’s wrong?”
I was so fucking speechless I just walked on to the next painting and stared at it for several seconds.
In it, a man kneeled in prayer with the shadow of a monkey rising above him.
I got a closer look.
The man’s human body stayed small and humbled with his forehead touching the floorboards.
Meanwhile, the monkey-shadow towered over in darkness. Gold tinged its outline. The monkey’s limbs stretched long. Its spine arched.
And there was this wild intelligence in the monkey shadow’s face.
The brushwork was so detailed I could see individual strands of fur, each stroke devoted and deliberate, like the artist had loved and feared this shadow at the same time.
My skin prickled.
Hiro watched me. “Nyomi?”
I walked on and stopped at the next painting with a woman kneeling beside a stone well—her actual form serene, peaceful, but the crane-shadow behind her was enormous, wings curved like a crescent moon and a beak tilted toward the sky.
I looked at Hiro. “Why. . .did they paint shadows like this?”
He shifted his gaze to the painting. “These are old paintings. Kenji jokes that they came with the island.”
I shivered. “What does that mean?”
“When his mother’s people gave him the island, they also gave him these. He keeps them here because he says that the images make him feel odd.” Hiro shrugged. “Anyway, we should go.”
“But. . .” I held up my hand. “Do you know why they painted these animal shadows behind the people?”
“Not really, but I have a few guesses.”
I snapped my view to him. “Could you tell me?”
“When we were children, Kenji’s mother used to tell us a story. I think it was a legend from her clan.”
“A legend?”
He nodded. “She said that every person walks with two shadows. The one the world sees. . .and the one only your true love can see. The person’s soul mate.”
A chill rolled down my spine.
Slow.
Electric.
Heavy.
I swallowed. “So what are the shadows in these paintings?”
“My guess is that they are the second shadows. The ones revealed only to the person meant to see your soul without armor.”
My chest tightened.
I stared at the painting again—at the ink, the wings, the impossible enormity. At the way, the shadow curled protectively around the woman’s body.
“Did you believe Kenji’s mother?”
He let out a muted laugh. “I was a child. I believed everything she said. Kenji too. We used to talk about how our wives would see the shadows. We were kids. What did we know? But later. . .”
“What?”
“When we were older. . .she told us not to put faith in it anymore.”
“Why not?”
He glanced toward another painting—a man in ceremonial armor bowing toward a shrine. Behind him, a massive hornet-shadow rose like a crown made of storm clouds.
“Because,” Hiro said softly, “she told us that the Fox never saw her shadow so. . .”
Something in me cracked open.
Hiro continued, “She laughed when she said it, but not in a happy way. She said the legend was probably just an old village superstition.”
My heart thudded once.
Or the Fox wasn’t her true love, and it made her sad to realize that after having kids with him.
Hiro’s expression turned firm. “We should go.”
“You’re right.” I went back to walking down the long hallway. Still, my gaze drifted back to the paintings.
A warrior with a wolf-shadow, jaws open in silent howl.
A tiny girl kneeling in the snow with the shadow of a massive elephant rippling behind her like wind.
An elder with a bear.
A painting with a breathtaking mother holding a baby while a tiny dragon unfurls behind the newborn.
I looked at him. “The people in the paintings were Kenji’s mother’s family?”
“Yes. Her bloodline. Her clan. They gifted my brother with this island and people.”
“People?”
“Yeah. I jokingly call them The Silent Ones. They blend in. Staff, gardeners, vendors. Some stay in the hidden wings. Some choose the shadows. They serve him without ever being invited. They answer to no one except his mother’s last wishes to protect him.”
My eyes drifted to one last painting—a fisherman pulling a net from the sea, the shadow behind him was a crouched leopard.
So. . .I haven’t been hallucinating all this time? I really do see Kenji’s dragon-shadow.
The realization hit with a force I wasn’t prepared for.
This wasn’t just a metaphor or a poetic moment between lovers. This was something older—something that sat outside anything my rational mind could classify.
A pressure built behind my ribs as I tried to take it in. I wasn’t losing touch with reality. I wasn’t imagining things out of fear or desire. I was seeing something other people had painted, documented, passed down.
Something his mother’s bloodline accepted as fact.
The dragon-shadow is absolutely real.
My brain scrambled to make sense of it, but this was beyond the edges of my mental bandwidth.