Yuki put her shoulder against mine. I could feel her listening, just as I was doing.
“Does it matter? We’re trapped.” I heard the whisper of oiled metal on leather as one of Otani’s swords slid from its sheath.
“A living wall. And we’re not trapped.” That was Ichiro’s voice.
“Put that away. You’ll skewer one of us,” Jinnai told Otani.
“I think I know how to handle a sword, little thief who led us into a blind alley.”
“Just let me—” Ichiro’s voice cut off as he walked into something. The wall? Jinnai?
“Watch yourself, monk!”
Clearly, what Ichiro had walked into was Otani.
“I know what to—”
“Quiet, all of you!” My voice rang out in frustration, startling the three of them, cutting their bickering short.
But not everything was silent.
That sound teasing at my ears had gotten louder. A soft scuttling, a scratching. A sound of claws gripping, of furry bellies and naked tails brushing against dry straw.
“Look up,” Ichiro said sharply.
On the closest roof, outlined against a dim gray glow of moonlight and starlight, something was sitting. The little upright shape was about the size of a lapdog, but the head was too small, and the ears were as well. It looked like a rat, though larger than any such creature should be. I caught a glimpse of viciously curved teeth that did not gleam white or ivory in the moonlight. They shone as bright as a polished sword.
Then the rats were upon us.
FIFTEEN
The rats were on my feet, climbing toward my knees, claws pricking. None of their teeth had bit, not yet, but the creatures squealed and chattered, sounding hungry.
Jinnai yelped. Otani cursed. I heard the ronin’s sword clang against the ground, but even if he managed to slice one rat in two, there were a hundred more.
The large, steel-toothed rat on the rooftop hissed eagerly.
“Don’t fall!” Ichiro shouted. “Whatever you do, don’t fall over! And let me get closer to that wall!”
He must have pushed Jinnai aside, for the thief thumped into me. I stumbled backward, away from Yuki, and stepped on something warm and wriggling. Staggering, I lost my balance. To my relief, my shoulder blades hit a wooden wall behind me. It kept me upright, but it couldn’t protect me from the furry waterfall that poured over my head from the roof above.
Trapped. Trapped between walls that should not have been here, trapped by tiny creatures that should be no threat at all. Claws ripped at my hair. A soft weight pressed on my eyes. Bare tails lashed at my neck. I grabbed handfuls of fur and snatched rats from my face and head, flinging them away.
But there were more, there were always more. They’d pile into this small space, and we’d be helpless. Someone would fall, soon. Someone would trip, or the weight of a hundred, a thousand, little bodies would pull one of us down.
The thought of being crushed, buried, smothered in warm fur, clawed and nibbled to death, was worse than any idea of dying in an honest fight. I leaped up, grabbing the rooftop above me, seizing handfuls of prickly thatch. Keeping my eyes and mouth tightly closed, ignoring the rats that poured over my head and shoulders, I thrashed and kicked. Someone beneath me grabbed one of my feet and shoved, giving me the height I needed.
Then I was crouched on the roof, face-to-face with the steel-toothed rat.
The smaller rats scuttled away, as if to give their master space. It bared its shining teeth at me in a feral grin, and I bared mine back.
I could see the muscles in its back legs bunching as it tensed, its tail writhing like a worm in the straw. So I tensed my legs as well, and when the rat leaped, I rolled away and came up running.
The huge rat squealed as its leap took it over the edge of the roof. I didn’t know how it would fare in the alley among my friends. I didn’t know how my friends would fare, facing that creature. But I was running at last, leaving them all behind.
Smaller rats fled as I vaulted over the roof’s peak, let the downward slope increase my speed, and hurdled the gap between this building and the next.
Shouts and squeals faded behind me. I ran from rooftop to rooftop, the moon lighting my way. My friends would have to fight off the steel-toothed rat and its furry army, but that would be the last fight they’d have to face for my sake.
From now on, I’d rely on no one but myself. Risk no one but myself.
With only the demon in my pocket for company, I headed toward the sea. My feet were so light over tile and thatch, I felt as if, any moment, I would leap and fail to come down. I’d fly.
It was one of the city’s temples, eventually, that brought me to earth. I managed to get from a wineshop to a tree to the wall that surrounded the sacred grounds; from there it was just a leap to the kitchen and storehouse, then to the hall where the monks ate their meals, and then to the bell tower. There, at last, I was stranded.
Below me stretched a garden, pale paths winding among boulders and around smooth pools. Beyond the garden was a stand of cedars and pines with a towering camphor tree in the center, all the branches melding together to make a clot of pure black on the nighttime landscape. Past them I could glimpse, once more, the temple wall.
I could backtrack and make my way along that wall, but it would probably be faster to go straight ahead. That would avoid the risk of Jinnai or any of the others catching up with me.
Slipping off the tower’s tiled roof, I landed as lightly as I could on a thick bed of moss. I left footprints behind, but at least I made little noise.
Ignoring the paths, which curved and wound gracefully to encourage strolling monks in their meditation, I headed straight for the trees, feeling a tremor of relief when their shadow fell across my shoulders. Darkness had always been my ally. I’d be safe within it from restless monks who could not sleep, from friends who might try to follow me.
There was a trail under my bare feet; I could feel its smoothness. I headed quickly along it, one arm up in front of my face to guard against spiky branches.
I breathed in the tang of cedar and pine, the cool, damp air that never, even in full daylight, was free of shadow. The trail took me ahead, deeper into the trees, deeper into darkness.
It couldn’t be large, this strand of trees. Any moment I’d duck under the last branch. I’d see the wall before me, stones glimmering in the moonlight. I’d climb it and be back on the streets, heading down toward the sea.
It would be easy. I didn’t need Jinnai to guide me through this city. I didn’t need anybody.
The path seemed to be narrowing. I could feel branches brushing my shoulders, the sweep of pine needles, the prickle of cedar. I shuffled forward, feet close together, so I wouldn’t step off the path and lose it. I might never find it again in this darkness.
This darkness.
Somehow, the shadows around me didn’t feel cool and friendly anymore. My own breath felt hot and sticky against my face. And the night itself seemed to be closing in. It took all my strength to push through it.
Where was that wall? Where was the moonlight, the free air, the streets where I could run? How could this wood be so large, here in the heart of the Takedas’ largest city?
I inched forward. Was the path curving? What if it turned and took me back to the garden?
I was moving so slowly. Too slowly. But if I tried to run, or even walk more quickly, I’d lose the path.
A root snagged my foot, and I stumbled, biting back a hiss of pain and stepping into a drift of dried pine needles, soft and slithering beneath my feet. Quickly I righted myself, my toes groping for bare, smooth earth.
I couldn’t find it.
I backed up a cautious half-step and swept the ground with my feet to either side. Nothing but more needles, shifting under my weight.
I dropped to my knees, reaching out with my hands. Dry needles. Roots like frozen snakes. Fallen branches sticky with sap.
The path was gone.
I wasted
minutes hunting frantically for it, and at last gave up. I raised both arms to shield my face and began walking blindly forward, thrusting my shoulders against branches and needles, tripping over roots and deadwood, struggling against the darkness. It didn’t even matter now what direction I went. If I kept going straight, I’d force a way through.
My breath began to quicken, hot in my mouth, tasting of pine sap and something more sour. Of disappointment. Frustration.
Failure.
I should have been free of this wood by now. I should have been up on the temple wall, high enough to see any threat coming at me. I should be running through the sleeping city.
I shouldn’t be stumbling through this endless wood, smothering in greenery. When would I get out?
Maybe I never would.
Maybe I didn’t deserve to.
I wouldn’t be able to get down to the harbor. Not in time. I’d fail. I should have expected it. I’d failed so many times.
If I’d simply done what I was supposed to do, what I’d been trained to do, on my very first mission, I wouldn’t be here now. I’d thought I was so good—the best—and look where I’d ended up.
Lost in a forest. Defeated by trees.
I shoved my way forward, my breath catching with frustration. Masako had cried like this, I remembered. When I’d cracked her wrist in the practice yard, rehearsing a maneuver we’d been taught earlier that day. She’d always been slow to catch on to a new move; I’d always been quick. That time, she hadn’t had her balance right, hadn’t been able to resist me, and I’d twisted too hard and left her sobbing in the dirt.
She got an extra blow with the bamboo rod for letting her pain show.
How old had we been? Ten? Twelve?
We should have been friends. I think we were, for a while. We laid our mats out side by side, our sore and aching muscles eased by each other’s warmth.
But I was defter than she was with every weapon. Faster in every race. I could hold my breath longer underwater, climb a rope more easily, go longer without food.
Friendship is a weakness. You have enemies and you have rivals. Nothing more.
One night I moved my mat away from Masako’s. From then on I slept alone.
She sobbed that night, too.
Friendship is a weakness.
They taught us all that, but I was the only one who believed it.
Most of the other girls found some way to keep a secret kernel of tenderness in their hearts. Masako mothered the younger girls. Yuki tended her plants. Aki and Okiko clung to each other.
Okiko had turned on me, though. And she’d been right to do it. I should never have asked my old friends to help me safeguard the pearl.
Look what had happened to them. Aki struck down by her own sister. Masako in tears as she fled with Ozu. Yuki and Ichiro, Otani and Jinnai, probably dead by now, trapped helplessly, devoured by filthy vermin.
Jinnai …
Jinnai had stolen the pearl back from Saiko for me, and how had I rewarded him? By asking him to risk his soul.
I should never have become the pearl’s guardian. I was doomed to fail, and to drag anyone who tried to help down with me.
It would be best if I simply stopped trying.
I’d already given up pushing against the entangling branches. I leaned my weight against them and drew in a slow breath.
How odd. My knife was in my hand, and I couldn’t remember drawing it.
I stroked the flat of the blade gently across my palm. It wasn’t my own—a shadow warrior’s weapon. If it had been, the blade would have been black with grease and soot, so it would not catch the light. This was just a poor man’s knife, with a worn wooden handle. The edge was not even that sharp.
Sharp enough. It broke through the skin of my palm, and I barely felt the pain.
Just one flick of the tip in the right spot, and it would all be over. I could sit down here, alone in the center of this suffocating forest, and let my life slowly ebb like the tide leaving the shore.
I could stop struggling. Stop fighting.
I could fail. It was astonishing how restful that thought was.
Yet something held me back. Some faint memory of an obligation.
Oh, yes. What about the pearl?
I had no will left to care about my burden. It wasn’t mine by rights, anyway. Ichiro had only given it to me because he’d been in fear for his own life.
And I’d been no good as a guardian. I had wished, again and again. Now the demon inside was just a hairsbreadth away from freedom.
It would be for the best if I let the pearl lie here with my body. Someone else would pick it up one day.
Someone like Saiko, probably.
The thought seemed to freeze my hand on the handle of my knife. The blade hesitated against my skin.
Had I truly thought of letting the pearl lie here for Saiko to find?
That wasn’t right.
I might be tired. I might be a failure. But I wasn’t going to hand the pearl over to Saiko.
If that thought had arisen inside my head, then something was wrong with my thoughts.
I gripped the hilt of the knife hard and thrust the blade into the trunk of the nearest tree. I thought the wood quivered under the blow.
I forced myself to my feet.
There was an enemy here. I knew it now. My instincts, awake at last, were screaming at me to fight.
Fight what?
There was no demon to face. Unless …
Could this forest itself be the demon? How could I fight a forest?
I turned, reaching out with my hands, but thick branches hung with dense curtains of needles shut me in on every side. How had I gotten here, if I couldn’t even take a step? Had the trees moved to entrap me, imprisoning my body, poisoning my mind?
Light. Light was flashing through the dark needles.
Someone was calling. “Kata!” The trees were pressing on me. I felt as if my ribs would cave in; my lungs were empty of air.
Hands thrust through the greenery and seized mine, and suddenly I could take a step, and then another. Jinnai yanked me forward, and the trees seemed somehow to fall back. I stood face-to-face with the thief in a little clearing. Otani was behind him, with a torch in his hand. Yuki tugged Jinnai aside to get a look at me, and Ichiro, peering over her shoulder, heaved a sigh of relief.
“The forest,” I gasped out, my voice uneven as my breath shuddered back into my lungs. “The forest is a demon.”
Otani peered at me. “It’s hardly a forest, Flower. Just a few cedars.”
“We have to get out,” I insisted.
“Fine, we’ll get out,” Jinnai said impatiently. “Then I’ll put a leash on you, I swear, Kata, to keep you from running away again. Wait—you’re hurt.” He let go of my right hand to cup my left in both of his.
“She’s right,” Ichiro said grimly. “Look there.”
He pointed. Every eye followed his gaze.
My knife was buried up to its hilt in the knobby trunk of an old pine. The sticky liquid oozing from the gash and dripping down the rough bark was not sap.
The tree was bleeding.
“The forest is a demon,” Ichiro said. “And I think Kata made it angry. We have to go.”
Jinnai pulled me away from the wounded tree. “Yes. Certainly. We’re leaving now!” he called out, raising his voice. “Sorry to intrude, humblest apologies, won’t happen again—”
“The path,” Otani interrupted. “Where’s the path?”
SIXTEEN
All four of my companions turned to look at the unbroken wall of branches and dark green needles that blocked our way on every side.
“It wants to keep us here,” I said, my voice still quavering with shameful weakness. “And it tries to—”
Ichiro gave me a sharp look.
How could I admit it? How could I say that this forest had very nearly made me defeat myself?
“It will try to get into your thoughts,” Ichiro said. “The longer we stay
, the worse it will be. This way.”
“How can you tell the way?” Otani demanded.
Ichiro held up a coarse bit of string, unraveled from the hem of his robe. The other end disappeared between two close-set trees.
“I thought we might need a way out,” he said. “Follow me.”
I wrenched my knife from the tree’s trunk, slid it into the sheath at my wrist, and did as he said.
Ichiro’s fragile thread led us stumbling between trees, forcing ourselves through underbrush, crawling over roots, ducking under branches. Yuki stayed close behind the novice monk; Jinnai brought up the rear with me, his grip firm on my bloody hand. Otani walked in the middle. The light of his torch seemed to keep the menacing trees at bay.
“We’re lost,” he muttered.
“We’re not lost,” Ichiro called back.
“We were only in this wood a few minutes before we found Kata. We’ve already been walking for longer than that.”
“We’re following the thread,” Ichiro insisted.
“We’re going in circles. We’re lost.” Otani’s steps were slowing. He lowered his torch. “We’re lost,” he repeated.
Jinnai pushed at his shoulder. “Move. Don’t stand there.”
Otani did not obey. He stood, looking from side to side as if he’d seen something that had caught his attention and confused him, all at once. “I lost them,” he said vaguely.
“Who?” Jinnai shoved at him again, but it was like a mouse shoving a mountain.
“All of them,” the ronin answered, turning his head from side to side.
Were the trees drawing in? Darker, denser? Was Otani’s torch dimming?
Jinnai let go of my hand.
“They trusted me. They followed me,” Otani murmured. “Everyone said it would be glory, but it was only death. Masatoshi, Nakatada, even Aritake … all gone now. Can’t you hear them?”
The torch slipped from his hand, landing on a bed of damp moss. I snatched it up before it could go out.
“Ichiro!” I shouted, but the muffling closeness of pine and cedar needles seemed to choke all the strength from my voice. “Which way?”
Ichiro turned to me, his face the gray-white of wet ashes. A broken piece of thread dangled from his fingers.
Deadly Wish: A Ninja’s Journey Page 13
