Across the Nightingale Floor
Tales of the Otroi, Vol. 1
Chapter One
My mother used to threaten to tear me into eight pieces if I knocked over the water bucket, or pretended not to hear
her calling me to come home as the dusk thickened and the cicadas' shrilling increased. I would hear her voice, rough
and fierce, echoing through the lonely valley. "Where's that wretched boy? I'll tear him apart when he gets back."
But when I did get back, muddy from sliding down the hillside, bruised from fighting, once bleeding great spouts of
blood from a stone wound to the head (I still have the scar, like a silvered thumbnail), there would be the fire, and
the smell of soup, and my mother's arms not tearing me apart but trying to hold me, clean my face, or straighten my
hair, while I twisted like a lizard to get away from her. She was strong f ... read full excerpt from Across the Nightingale: Book One of the Epic Tales of Otori ebook
