The Dragon and the Firefly

by Keanan Brand

  The Dragon

  and

  the Firefly

  by

  Keanan Brand

  The Dragon and the Firefly

  © 2017 by Keanan Brand

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by

  any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or

  information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the author.

  Penworthy Press

  1

  The ragged boy stared at the iridescent fruit. “Will it bite?”

  Ryu drew a knife from his belt, passed the blade through the flames embracing a rice pot, then cut the apple into quarters, laying bare the pale flesh. “No serpents here.”

  The boy's somber gaze fixed on Ryu's ruined face, and he crossed his arms.

  Ah. Of course. Ryu must prove the worth of his wares. It was the way of the market.

  He peeled the rough skin and tossed the scaled pieces into the fire, where they writhed in sinuous curls before disintegrating into ashes. Then he bit a sliver of the crisp sweet flesh and chewed slowly.

  The boy's grubby hand snaked toward the peeled fruit. Hesitated.

  Ryu nodded. Go on. Eat.

  He did, eyes widening.

  Hai, serpent fruit was unexpected, as if eating honey and green plums at once.

  The boy stared at the remaining half of the apple. Ryu lowered his hand. The boy grabbed the slices, bobbed his head, and ran away, sweet treasure clutched to his scrawny chest.

  Smiling, Ryu wiped the blade on his sleeve and returned it to his belt. Once an urchin himself, he'd been grateful for small gifts. As Master Daiki's servant, however, he'd been thankful to draw one comfortable breath. The old man needed a sparring partner, and claimed his stiff joints wouldn't allow him to challenge his students any longer. Best train a young dolt with slow reflexes who would trade bruised ribs for plenteous food. Somewhere among the rice bowls and the drubbings, Ryu had learned to fight.

  Inhaling air still damp after morning rain and fragrant with smoke from cooking fires, he pulled another apple from his pack and sauntered through the market, tossing the gleaming fruit from hand to hand, whistling through his teeth a haunting little tune. Stray dogs whined, skulking out of his path. A blind beggar, meager coins rattling in a broken bowl, turned his head as if his milky gaze followed the wanderer's progress. An elderly weaver looked up with a toothless smile, and the young woman beside her spoke a greeting. Ryu inclined his head. The greeting ended. The smile disappeared. The women stared.

  Washed, trimmed, clad in new garments, he could not rid himself of the scar pulling half his face into a sneer.

  Ryu strode toward the food stalls. He whistled louder, chasing anger past the sharpener's bench and the locksmith's.

  “Not since the war have I heard the assassin's lullaby.”

  Ryu halted, cutting off the whistled tune mid-note. His fist clamped around the apple, and the scaled skin dug into his palm. Heat crawled along his spine.

  A hooded archer stepped into the light. Beyond the archer, a man in leather armor pretended to examine a glazed pot. Across the broad market street, another warrior stared at an ornate hairpin. Ryu studied his surroundings without turning his head. A narrow street to the left. A low-hanging eave to the right.

  The archer pushed back his cowl, revealing Arashi's lean face. “You are meant to be dead.”

  Cutting the skin deep with his thumbnail, Ryu threw the apple. Mid-arc, its skin split and peeled away, unraveling into the bodies of two gleaming serpents. Hissing and snapping, they wrapped the necks of Arashi's men.

  Grabbing an eave, Ryu swung up onto a roof then ran below the ridge on the opposite side. A neighboring roof leaned close, and he leaped across. Thatch was slick, and clay tile not much better. Fletching scraped his cheek. An arrow gouged the ridge beam. He slid down the roof, his pack dislodging tiles, and he landed in a crouch, reaching for another apple.

  A dark-clad assassin loosed a sling. Ryu twisted aside. The stone hit the wall beside him and shattered into glittering shards. His breath stopped for an instant, then pain stabbed his side. One shard impaled his side.

  With the last of his strength, he threw the apple. The assassin cried a strangled sound and fell into the street, face swollen, eyes staring. Gleaming blue and green ropes loosened, unwound from the dead man's neck, then twined together into a ball and became only an apple once more.

  Ryu slumped against the wall, blood soaking his fine new clothes. The apple rolled to rest near his upturned palm. Cold weighted his limbs.

  A boot nudged the fruit aside. “My arrow made you a corpse once.” Arashi crouched to look Ryu in the eye. “Must I kill you again?”

  He pulled open the front of Ryu's tunic, and removed a flat jade disc the size of his palm. It was engraved with a man's name and title on one side, his city and province on the other, and was fitted with a green tassel. “I expect the owner of this, but meet a ghost instead.” He tucked the identification into his tunic. “Sensei has no more need of it. Or did you borrow his name?” Arashi stood. “What takes you now is poison. You will feel nothing—until you feel everything. Folk will think you at peace, asleep and smiling, but you will scream in agony, and no one will hear.”

  He rammed his heel into the apple. The fruit writhed but did not flatten. Arashi grunted as if surprised, and kicked the apple over the opposite wall. Then, humming the tune Ryu had whistled, he sauntered down the street, past his dead cohort, and out of sight.

  Stand, Ryu commanded his legs. He could not feel them, but he would use them. Use them until they no longer obeyed.

  He pressed his shoulder against the wall, forcing himself upright a bit at a time. His lungs were bellows, gusting loud breaths from his raw throat. If he could reach the apple—

  Shrill whistles pierced the air, followed by the rapid cadence of boots through the streets. The watch.

  Ryu lurched toward the wooden gate in the opposite wall. He fumbled bloody fingers on the latch then fell forward, and the gate crashed with him.

  Someone gasped. Shadows stood over him.

  “H-help,” he shouted, but only a whisper came.

  “Lift his feet. You take his arms. Put him there. Careful. He bleeds.”

  “The-the watch!” a youthful male voice protested.

  “Do as I say,” said the first voice, female, strong, yet with the husky crack of age.

  Ryu was laid on a wooden floor under an overhanging roof. Urns and baskets were shoved into a line on the outside edge, shielding him from sight.

  “R-ringo.”

  “Shh.”

  “Ringo.”

  “He's asking for an apple.”

  “Hurry, hurry! Cover the blood with dirt— Apple? This?”

  A hand held the iridescent fruit above him. He strove to reach for it, but his arms lay at his sides.

  Boots tramped to a halt out on the street.

  The hand opened, dropping the apple. It hit his chest, tumbled off, and rolled along the floor. The hand withdrew.

  “Chiyoko-sama,” said a commanding voice, “did a criminal flee this way?”

  “He fell here, yes, but my boys chased him off.”

  “Did you see—”

  “That way.”

  The watch marched onward.

  Pain ripped Ryu's side. He screamed, but only air pushed past his teeth. Cut open the apple!

  No one heard.

  *

  Her daughter, Hotaru, poured water down the wounded man's throat, but Chiyoko held little hope. The man's skin was cold, his breathing shallow, his heartbeat leaping. Scars ruined his face and marked his arms and torso, and one pulled up one sid
e of his mouth. A shame. The unmarred side of his countenance bore the look of—

  An old woman's wishful thinking. He wasn't the first young man whose face she'd studied hoping he would be the lost boy.

  Years past, in another war, the emperor had secretly sent his family to the countryside with a handful of servants and an armed contingent, yet the caravan had been attacked. Chiyoko fled with the infant grandson, and stopped to rest in the shade of a thorn-wrapped tree. When she woke, the boy was gone.

  She'd had another name then, and time had given her another face. Now she lived among the lower classes, raising their castoff children, rescuing the boy every time she took in an abandoned child.

  And now this man. How had he obtained the apple? Serpent-fruit trees were revered, and the apples were rare. The first and greatest of the trees, the One Tree, was said to stand hidden in the imperial gardens. Though the fruit could heal, it could also kill. Only fools and gastronomes dared eat it. Yet folk believed the trees protected children, and many an orphan and abandoned infant were found there. Indeed, in their lives ever after, the children told of hearing a faint song in the distance—a call, a comfort, a guide.

  Hotaru had been such an orphan. Were she not a foundling, she might have been a wife and mother long ago, with a home of her own, rather than helping raise others. Even now, a handful of children gathered at the door, watching the ministrations.

  Chiyoko grabbed the apple, and cut deep. She expected blood—did not serpents dwell beneath the skin?—but what fell into the bowl was clear liquid, and the pale flesh was pristine. She touched a fingertip to the juice and tasted it. Sweet and sour at once. She cut a sliver of fruit, peeled back the glittering rind, and mashed the flesh in the bowl, producing a soupy paste she then poured into the man's mouth. He swallowed. Chiyoko repeated the steps until half the apple was gone.

  Color returned, and warmth. His eyes opened, and his mouth moved as if to speak.

  She touched his shoulder. “You are safe.”

  His eyelids drooped, and he blinked. Slowly, his body relaxed, and he slept once more.

  Hotaru cleared away a basin of bloody water, and the children gathered the rolls of bandages, his ruined tunic, and the apple rinds. The seeds were scooped into a small cloth and set aside for the stranger to keep, should he wish. It was proper courtesy.

  In the kitchen, Chiyoko stoked the cooking fire and set water boiling. She wrapped the remaining half of the apple in clean cloth, placed it inside a small empty urn, and set the lid over the mouth. Standing on tiptoe, she slid the urn onto a high shelf.

  Whatever else it might be, serpent fruit was medicine, and she would not waste it.

  *

  Hotaru took paper, ink, and brushes from a cabinet, and knelt at a low table. The man lying on the other side of the room was a speck in the corner of her eye, an irritant she could not remove. Mother collected strays as some women collected baskets, but this fugitive had brought the watch to their door.

  Shadows danced—tree limb kabuki—and Hotaru opened the window to allow more light. Then she smoothed a wide sheet of rice paper, anchoring each corner with stones gleaned from a riverbed. Hotaru dipped her brush and traced the delicate swooping line of a wing.

  A bird's shadow skimmed the window.

  She drew a wind-bent blossom.

  A breeze danced through the room.

  She let the tip of her brush rise, lightening dark strokes to pale as she painted sunlit grass.

  A beam of light warmed the golden wood of the well-worn floor.

  “Where am I?” a voice rasped like grinding stones.

  Hotaru stilled her brush.

  Heat filled the room, as if a fire had been lit in a brazier. Then the blanket rustled on the mat, and the man struggled upright. He put a hand to his side. “How long have I been here?”

  “Long enough for the watch to pass twice.” She flicked the brush over the page, leaving thin lines to later guide pigments.

  The man rose and took a few tottering steps. His narrow hakama were dirt-streaked and blood-stained. A thick bandage belted his middle, pressing Mother's poultices against his skin. Scars covered his back and arms, and over his heart slashed a narrow ridge. His skin flushed as if he burned within, and he swayed, crashing against a tall cabinet.

  Hotaru set aside her brush and stood. She aimed her gaze at the wall beside him. “There was poison in the wound. Mother cured you.”

  “The apple.”

  “Hai, the apple.”

  He gripped the upper edge of the cabinet. “Arigatoo.”

  “No need to thank me. I would have left you to the watch.”

  2

  Arashi waited at the mouth of the bridge arching a pond teeming with koi. He leaned on the railing and gazed down the bamboo path leading to the center of the garden. He had been sent to the marketplace to confront a man carrying a message between conspirators who refused to accept the shōgun. Who he met was a ghost.

  Near the end of the war, he had lain in wait in this very garden, felt the thrum of the string as the arrow released, watched the emperor's personal guard fall and lie still, a poisoned arrow in his chest. In that moment, a flea's breath of guilt and grief stung Arashi, and lasted as long. One day later, he lit the funeral pyre and stood with grave face while the imperial family, servants, and soldiers mourned. Flames consumed the armor-clad corpse, its scarred face shrouded. No matter the legends about serpent-fruit trees and their apples' healing power, not even the One Tree could draw ashes together and make a man live again.

  And yet—bearing Tatsuyoshi's distinctive whistle, his voice, his ruined face—somewhere on a quiet street a ghost lay dying.

  Arashi straightened as Minoru strode down the path. The shōgun dressed like a samurai, wore two swords, and—when seen alone—walked tall like a warrior. Accompanied by his men, however, he seemed hunched, a crippled bear among tigers. Before the war, Minoru had been a powerful daimyo. Now the emperor was dead and Minoru occupied the palace as shōgun.

  Arashi crossed the bridge and bowed in greeting.

  “Who works against me?”

  Arashi pulled the jade disk from his tunic.

  Minoru paused on the bridge and examined the ring. “Daiki-sensei?”

  “Long dead. Our spies must have been mistaken.”

  “The bearer?”

  “Also dead.”

  The shōgun uttered a low command, and his men retreated to the foot of the bridge. Minoru looked at Arashi.

  The assassin did not pretend to misunderstand. “The bearer was Tatsuyoshi.”

  Minoru's head jerked as if struck. Nostrils flaring, he stared down the bamboo path. After a long silence, “Bring me a beggar.”

  *

  The milky-eyed blind man eagerly drank the poisoned sake. By the time he ate two bites of rice, his dirty face paled. Before he could take another drink, he fell backward in the grass.

  Arashi knelt, pried open the dead man's mouth, and poured down his throat a pale juice, the blood of serpent fruit.

  Minoru nudged the corpse with the toe of his boot. “How long?”

  Arashi shook his head. “I only know the legend. I have never seen the dead rise.”

  Legend also said the tree sang. Minoru grunted. Wives' tales. He studied a thorn—long, glossy, wicked sharp. “Why did you abandon your brothers and fight against them?”

  Arashi hesitated. “Daiki-sensei found Tatsuyoshi wandering a village and took him in. I had more skill than the other students. Tatsuyoshi was clumsy. Slow. Yet even the emperor preferred him.” He spoke as if the words bit his tongue. “I will be second to no one.”

  “Yet you serve me.”

  Arashi turned his head and gave no reply.

  Minoru stood over the blind man, whose eyes stared at nothing. The late emperor had refused Minoru's requests to eat of the One Tree, saying any serpent-fruit tree could cure him. Yet every tree Minoru found seemed barren. If the old man hadn't been so miserly, he might still be alive, hale
and strong, not cut down by Minoru's blade.

  Perhaps the emperor refused because he knew he guarded false treasure. Even though Minoru now partook of the fruit at every meal, he could not slay the demon eating him from within.

  “Kino mi-wa moto-he otsuru.” The fruit of a tree falls to its root. He stared up at the thorn-wrapped trunk and leaf-covered limbs. “Arashi-san.”

  “Hai.”

  “The war was for naught.”

  Arashi's brows twitched into a frown.

  “Cut it down.”

  The assassin looked at him as if at a madman. “The people revere this tree. Would you risk their wrath by destroying it? Consider, my lord. Quietude rests on a sword's edge. Even in their battle-weariness, the people will rise.”

  Minoru's hand rested on his hilt. “This is not the One Tree.”

  “Tatsuyoshi's apples released serpents and slew my men. Perhaps he knows where to find it.” Arashi bowed. “Let me question market-folk and travelers, and learn what I can of him.”

  “Mm.” Minoru nodded.

  Arashi straightened. “You asked who is working against you. Perhaps the rumors about Tatsuyoshi are true. Perhaps he is the emperor’s gran—”

  Minoru drew deep, rapid breaths. Pain twisted his gut, and he dropped to his knees. “Haste! The demon feeds.”

  3

  The boy had many names: thief, filth, trouble. He lived in a hovel on the edge of the city, outside the walls. He scavenged, bathed in the rain, scratched a small garden grown from castoffs, and learned by hiding under the school, the master's voice rumbling through the floorboards.

  The war? Nonsense among powerful men. If more were like the scarred man, the boy might pay attention to their squabbles.

  A fist grabbed his ragged shirt, jerking him up and tumbling the precious hoard of apple slices into the dirt. “Who gave you the apple?” demanded a man with bow and quiver on his back. “How do you know him?”

  The boy said nothing.