Deadly Wish: A Ninja’s Journey

by Sarah L. Thomson

  A deep, hollow drumbeat sounded through the night. Captain Mori jerked in surprise. The drum sounded again, a single, heavy stroke, and now we could hear oars splashing and heaving through the water.

  “Wake the men,” the captain said grimly. “Get lanterns lit. We need some light.” He was turning restlessly, peering over each rail, trying in vain to see something in the darkness except the thick fog that hung in sheets just off the bow, that clung in wisps to the rails and ropes.

  The sailor darted down the hatch, calling loudly for the others to wake and arm themselves, and I seized the moment to dash behind the captain’s back as he stared out to sea. My current hiding place depended on darkness; if the men lit lanterns, I’d be as visible as a black mushroom in a bowl of rice.

  My first choice for concealment would normally be a rooftop, but that would not do here. Sailors look up constantly, to the stars, the clouds, the set of the sails. Crouching low, my hands helping me along, I slipped to the stern and huddled behind the huge winch that raised and lowered the anchor. At my feet lay the anchor itself, a smooth stone as long as I was tall.

  All the while, the drum thudded. In time with its beat, oars pulled through the water. Each beat was louder. Each stroke with the oars brought the unknown boat closer.

  Pirates must be accustomed to sudden alarms, I thought. Men were pouring out of the hatchway. Some had strapped on swords; a few had mismatched pieces of armor, perhaps a shoulder guard or a chest protector, which they tied into place with cords. Some swung ropes with grappling hooks or brandished long, spiked poles. Others lugged horoku to pile along the deck or hung lanterns wherever they could. A pale glow illuminated the wooden deck, the black sea, smooth as oil, and the men poised at the railing or perched on the cabin’s roof. All were barefoot, half of them stripped to the waist. Every muscle was tense, every eye alert.

  A prow cut through the fog, and a ripple of movement passed through the waiting men. His short kimono tightly belted, his two swords swinging, his hair in a samurai’s top-knot, Captain Mori strode to the railing to see more clearly what was coming toward his ship.

  All eyes were on the intruder now, so I wormed forward for a better view through the railing. These pirates might be adept at fighting off other ships or at ravaging towns and villages, but I doubted that they would be prepared for what they were about to face.

  The ship that came out of the fog was much smaller than ours, lower in the water, with no masts for sails. Huddled forms bent over the oars as the drummer in the stern kept up his unwavering beat.

  In the prow, a tall, hooded figure stood upright, wrapped in a gray cloak that came down to the ship’s deck. Something about his stance said without words that he was the one in command, and it was to him that Captain Mori spoke as the smaller ship drew alongside.

  “What do you want?” the captain asked, a hand on the hilt of his longer sword.

  The commander of the smaller ship raised his head, his hood falling from a face that was no face at all. Ivory bones, yellowed with age, gleamed in the lantern’s light; teeth were bared in a meaningless grin; empty eye sockets held all the shadows of the sea. Around its forehead the thing wore a peaked white headdress, as if it were a corpse prepared by a priest for burial and the journey to the underworld.

  But this corpse, it seemed, did not want to make that journey. It opened its fleshless jaw to answer the captain’s question.

  “You,” it said.

  Every sailor in every wineshop told stories of creatures like these. A funa-yurei, ghost of a sailor long dead, it was bound to its phantom ship and crew unless it could find a soul to take its place.

  This one seemed to think that Captain Mori’s would do.

  As the captain’s sword flashed out and down, a skeletal hand rose to meet it. Mori’s blow would have severed any mortal limb, but when the bright blade bit deep into the yurei’s bone, it simply closed its bony fingers tight around the steel.

  Mori did not have the sense to let go of his blade, and the yurei yanked, pulling him off balance so that he half-fell over the railing. The sailor next to him threw away his grappling iron to fling both arms around his captain’s waist. Mori did drop his sword then, but it was too late; the yurei had a solid grip on his right wrist and was steadily pulling him over the side.

  One more sailor flung himself on Mori, trying to drag his captain back to safety. Others clustered near the rail, stabbing at the boat with their polearms, trying to force it back. The ghosts at the oars shook back their hoods and reached out with bony hands to snap the poles as easily as I might have snapped a chopstick.

  Perhaps half the sailors stood their ground, defending their ship. Others dropped their weapons and fled—but where could they go?

  A few climbed the masts, desperate to put as much distance between themselves and the ghosts as they could. One jumped overboard, then another. Were they mad with terror? Or had they decided that an honest death by drowning was better than being dragged aboard a ghost ship?

  No, I realized—they were trying to swim to that small island I’d glimpsed through the fog earlier. But they could not reach it. As men swinging horoku lined up at the rail, ready to fling their smoldering bombs onto the yurei’s ship, a wave climbed impossibly out of the perfectly calm and flat sea, sweeping toward our ship, tossing swimmers aside as lightly as leaves on the wind. It was the height of our deck when it hit.

  NINETEEN

  Mori and the men struggling to hold him disappeared under a wall of black water. The funa-yurei’s ship rode the wave as easily as a child’s toy boat rides a ripple in a stream, but ours lurched to one side. I was swept across the deck in the grip of cold salt water, slammed into a railing, and slid back when the boat tipped the other way. Then I braced myself on hands and knees on the slippery boards, shaking clammy hair out of my eyes, as the water drained away.

  Sailors were scrambling to relight the lanterns that the wave had drenched. To my astonishment, Mori was still on board, gripping the rail with his free hand, five of his men now clinging to him. But both his feet were off the deck, and the yurei did not even seem to notice the polearms jabbing at it. It brushed aside a grappling iron swung at its skull and yanked so hard I thought Mori must either go over in the next moment or lose his arm.

  More men were bobbing in the water now, and one was dangerously close to the ghost ship. A yurei dropped its oar to lean over and seize the man’s hair. He screamed.

  I staggered to my feet and reached inside my jacket to close my hand around the pearl.

  Mori would be over the side in a moment. Another wave like that would sink the ship. I’d drown—we’d all drown. Or I’d be dragged aboard that ghost ship to serve for year upon year upon year, until I could snag some poor soul to replace mine.

  With one wish, I could stop all of this from happening. But if I wished, I’d have no soul at all.

  Laughter bubbled up inside my head, and another wave, not as large, rocked the ship. A sailor, wide-eyed and terrified, slammed into me as he raced by, knocking me off my feet. He dove over the rail, and then—

  Silence. I sat up, my ears ringing with the echoes of frantic screams and terrified curses. The fog swept in, thicker than before, prickling my skin with cold, winding clammy fingers down the back of my neck.

  Something hit the deck with a thump.

  Then the fog swirled away as a fresh breeze filled the sails, and I saw Captain Mori sitting on his deck, blinking in astonishment at the stretch of empty sea before him.

  The ghost ship had vanished.

  A few men were still bobbing in the water, and those on the ship were throwing ropes or reaching down to them with poles. I got to my feet, drenched and dripping, to scan the dark water in all directions, as far as the light of our lanterns reached.

  Nothing but empty ocean.

  A heavy hand fell on my shoulder, and a burly sailor twice my weight spun me around to face him. “And who,” the man growled, “are you?”

  There was
not much point in putting up a fight. Even if I could get free, where would I run? Where would I hide? So I let the man haul me across the deck to where Captain Mori was getting to his feet, wringing water from his robes and shaking it from his hair.

  “A stowaway?” He looked me over from head to toe, frowning. I could see that he did not recognize me.

  “Foul luck, that’s what she is,” said the man with his fist knotted in my collar. “Or cursed.”

  Mori studied me, taking in everything from my braid, dripping water over my shoulder, to my bare feet. “She’s no ghost herself, at least,” he said. “Do we have all of the men back on board?”

  “All but Matsuburo. They—those things—they took him.” The man holding me shivered. “He didn’t deserve a fate like that, Captain.”

  “No one does.” Mori rubbed his wrist, marked where the yurei had gripped him with a livid red ring that would later be a dark bruise. “Speak up, girl. What are you doing on my ship?”

  I should have had a lie ready. But my eyes were busy scanning the empty horizon for threats. Where had those ghosts gone? Why had they vanished?

  “Lock her in a cargo hold below deck,” Mori said impatiently when I did not bother to answer him.

  “Captain? But what if she brought this evil on us?”

  “She’s nothing but a girl, Jiro. What do you suggest, that we fling her overboard?”

  The man holding me tightened his grip as if he longed to do just that. And didn’t he have a point? I had brought this evil on them. I’d put their entire ship in peril. If it hadn’t been for me, that poor sailor, Matsuburo, would never have been dragged screaming aboard a ghost ship.

  In a way, Jiro was quite right. I was cursed. I was a danger, not just to my friends, but to any stranger unfortunate enough to come in my way.

  The deck rocked slightly under our feet as the sails bellied out, full of the freshening breeze. “Get her out of my sight. I’ll deal with her later,” Mori said, and Jiro growled under his breath but swung me around toward the hatch that led belowdecks.

  “No. You can’t!” I blurted out.

  “Oh, now she has a tongue. Can’t, did you say?” Mori snorted. “This is my ship, girl. I can do anything I want with you.”

  I twisted in Jiro’s grasp and craned my neck to catch the captain’s eyes. “Look out to sea,” I told him urgently.

  In the light of our lanterns, the water seemed to be boiling. Smooth black bubbles with an oily sheen were rising.

  Mori shouted quick orders and crewmen leaped into action, hauling ropes so that the sails snapped tight with the force of the wind. But the ship didn’t move. The masts creaked and groaned; the sails strained as if they longed to leap free and fly. Even so, the ship stayed where it was, as if mired in mud.

  One sailor somewhere cried out, “Umi-bozu!”

  This, I realized with a chill inside me that had little to do with my soaked clothes and the rising wind, was why the funa-yurei had disappeared. They’d abandoned their prey just as a fox will leave its meal to a marauding bear.

  The bubbles grew larger by the second. Sailors leaned over the rails to slash at them with boathooks and swing grappling irons at them, but I could see now that the spheres were full of water, rather than air. The weapons passed harmlessly through.

  Mori lunged forward to seize my arm. Jiro let go as the captain shook me furiously. “What do you know about this?” he roared. “What kind of a curse have you brought on my ship?”

  I didn’t know if he could read the guilt on my face, or if he’d simply decided that three strange events—a girl stowaway, a ghost ship, and demons rising from the water—must be connected. It hardly mattered. The umi-bozu were seething and swelling, nearly level with the deck now. In a moment, they would engulf the ship, sailors and all.

  “How do we drive them off?” Mori shouted in my face.

  “Throw me overboard!” I yelled back at him.

  While the captain gaped at me, I seized my own wrist and yanked, pulling against his thumb, the weakest point of the grip, to free my arm from his grasp. Then I ducked low and came up with my shoulder in Jiro’s stomach, just below the ribs, knocking him to the deck.

  I leaped over his body, sprang to the rail, and dove.

  I must have passed straight through the body of at least one umi-bozu, but it felt like nothing but water, heavy and cold, enough of a shock to clench the muscles around my lungs and drive my breath away. I swam hard, striking up for the surface. Somewhere in the distance, in the darkness, there was that small island, the one I’d seen earlier. There was perhaps half a chance—a quarter—a sliver of a hope that I could reach it.

  It was more hope than I would have had if I’d stayed on that ship. And perhaps Mori and his poor sailors would survive without me on board. Even pirates didn’t deserve to be snatched by ghost sailors or swallowed by umi-bozu.

  I seemed to be swimming through endless darkness. Where was the black bulk of the ship’s hull, the glimmer of moonlight or lantern light on the water? Would I swim forever and never reach the air?

  All around me, huge, round golden eyes blinked open in the murk.

  I twisted in the water, tried a different way, but more eyes opened, great gold spheres, like paper lanterns hung in trees at night. They stared hungrily at me, and I remembered that no one knew how umi-bozu killed their prey. They seemed to have no mouths, no teeth, no hands, no claws—just round bodies made of cold seawater and those staring eyes.

  How could I defeat these eerie creatures? No weapon could hurt them. No fist or foot could make an impact. I’d been trained for combat; I knew how to fight any opponent. At Madame’s school, I’d left instructors twice my size lying in the dirt of the practice yard. But here I was floating, far from solid ground, facing bakemono that could not be injured, let alone killed.

  I could do nothing. For the first time since I was younger than Ozu, I was helpless.

  Would I be drowned? Devoured?

  Then the eyes blinked out, as if the flames inside the lanterns had been snuffed. It seemed that the creatures were gone, melted into the ocean like ink. But I was not relieved.

  Something else was tearing through the water toward me. If it could frighten away umi-bozu, what would it do to me?

  Moonlight glinted off silver eyes, smaller than those of the umi-bozu. Fangs gleamed; nostrils flared; delicate barbels streamed alongside the creature’s head as it swam. A serpentine body, indigo and milky white, longer than Mori’s ship, thrashed through the water as a dragon bore down on me.

  I felt as if its claws were already sinking into my chest, tightening around my throat as the last of my air bubbled out of my nose. The thing would not have to bite me in two or tear the limbs from my body to kill me. It would just have to keep me underwater half a minute more.

  The mouth was opening. If I’d wanted to, I could have dodged between those ivory fangs and swum right down its throat.

  A strange slowness seemed to take hold of everything around me, as if I were floating, not just in water, but in time. The dragon’s maw gaped, but came no closer. My chest ached, but the pain did not sharpen. And a voice spoke clearly.

  You can wish. You can send that writhing snake back to the depths. You can save yourself.

  But if I wished, the last tendril of gold around the pearl would melt, and the demon would be free. I’d promised to hold the pearl, to keep it safe. I’d failed a mission only once in my life. I would not do so here. I would not wish.

  But if you die, you will also fail, the voice whispered. It bloomed inside my own thoughts. There was no way I could block it out.

  Once you drown, the pearl will be cast adrift, the voice insisted. Anyone could pick it up. Anyone could wish. And someday, surely, someone will.

  There was no hope, then? If I wished, I’d fail. If I died, I’d fail. I could save myself, but not my mission. Not the pearl. No matter what I did, the demon inside the pearl would find its freedom.

  This was a battle I
could not win. That meant I must not fight it.

  I’d said it to Ozu, pulling her off Otani. My instructors at Madame’s school had said it to me, over and over again.

  Do not waste one moment on a hopeless battle. Don’t fight unless you can win.

  A samurai might stride boldly into a single combat or lead a doomed charge, sure that although he’d lose his head, he’d win enough glory to compensate. But I was no samurai. I was a ninja. And if I couldn’t win one battle, the only choice was to fight a different one.

  If I made a wish, the demon would be free. I’d set a hungry, vengeful bakemono loose upon the world. Mori and his sailors would be the creature’s first targets, no doubt … and who would be next? There was no way to know.

  But what if my wish could prevent that? What if my last wish banished the demon back to the underworld?

  It would take my soul with it. But my mission would be fulfilled.

  I could feel the demon’s alarm ring like a bell inside my head. Don’t you dare. Don’t—

  Time swept back in around me, and the water dragon lunged.

  Claws clamped on my arm. Teeth sank into my shoulder, near the junction with my neck. The snakelike body swirled around me, a whirlpool of blue and white. I had no time to wish or even to think, tumbled and rolled as if in the clutches of a tidal wave, pulled deeper and deeper, away from the air.

  Dimly, I was aware of the demon howling as my lungs tightened and tightened, my throat clenched, my mouth opened, and cold salt water rushed in.

  TWENTY

  I woke in the care of demons.

  I didn’t realize it at first. For a time I was only conscious of a gentle rocking, a solid surface under my back, and air easing in and out through my aching throat.

  This seemed a pleasant enough state to be in, and I was in no hurry to change anything by doing something rash, such as opening my eyes. Sounds drifted over me, strange murmurs and mutterings, and then hands lifted me and tugged at my jacket, trying to ease it off.