Black Pearl Dreaming

by K. Bird Lincoln

  The monk and Rockabilly focused on Ken. Bright spots of red appeared on his cheeks. The tic in his jaw worked overtime.

  “Take a fragment from the Bringer.”

  From Ken? The monk totally didn’t get it. “I apologize. I am very tired, full Kind fragments are too intense for me to handle right now.”

  Rockabilly muffled a guffaw. Kwaskwi looked inordinately pleased. “Still haven’t told her, have you, Kitsune?”

  The monk gave a slow smile. “You do not know Fujiwara Kennosuke is Hafu?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Hafu. Ken was half-human like me.

  He’d kept that a secret. Even when he explained how he was the Bringer, how other Kind could not kill, but he could, he stayed silent about this. What was he afraid of? Knowing he was Hafu should make me feel closer to him, but it felt like a wedge driving us apart and making me even more uneasy with the trust I’d so blindly given him back in Portland.

  All of a sudden, an urge to touch him, to dream his fragment bubbled up from my stomach into the back of my throat. If I touched him, ate his primeval, pure forest dream, I’d know for sure, right? And it would mollify the monk.

  Ken’s head was still slightly bowed, gaze determinedly on the floor in front of the monk. I reached out and grasped the back of his neck under the slight curl of his longish hair. He gasped as if my hand were red-hot.

  I relaxed, letting the weight of my hand settle fully on his neck. For a long moment where dust sifted through a sunbeam across Ken’s shoulders, nothing happened. Then, all of a sudden, the bottom dropped out of the world. Dust motes ballooned up and shrunk in a weird rhythm, and when it settled again, I was no longer in dim sunlight, but under the guttering light of a torch. There were cobbles cold and hard under my knees and tears choking my mouth and nose.

  A woman with long dark hair sat nearby, head bowed in grief. Slender and beautiful, in a quilted puffy happi coat and split hakama, there was an ageless quality to her.

  Mother.

  She cradled a man’s head in her lap. His eyes were closed, and his chest did not rise. Pain like the ancient weight of mountains on the tender flesh of my heart, sharper pains up and down my forearms where long scratches still bled…

  “Koi AweoAweo Pierce.”

  Blinking furiously in the brighter light of the Teahouse, I dragged myself away from the fragment. Mother. Ken had given me a fragment of his mother, not the forest and the moon and the running through underbrush he’d given me every single time I’d touched him before. What did this mean?

  “And so?” said the monk.

  My heart was pounding, a light buzzing ran up and down my spine, restless energy from the fragment. The vise across my temples tightened. My body wanted to consume this energy. Ken’s pain and grief, a memory-dream, was a tantalizing morsel for the voracious kernel-flame of my Baku self.

  “So?” I ground out through clenched teeth.

  “Did you eat the dream?”

  I stared at the thin, bloodless set of the monk’s mouth, unable to make sense of his words. This wasn’t just a regular fragment. Something about being here, being the Bringer in front of the Council had brought out this deep emotion, redolent with life force.

  “It’s okay,” said Ken softly.

  “That’s not a fragment you can share without losing a part of your life force,” I gulped down a wave of grief. “I mean, that wasn’t what you wanted me to see.”

  “No,” agreed Ken. “But still it’s okay.”

  “Either you can handle fragments or not. Which is it?” The monk looked indignant.

  Rockabilly sucked air through closed teeth. “Don’t bother, Kawano-san. This one is no use. Herai Akihito will have to do.”

  Kwaskwi muttered again. “Well now, that really gets us fired up to cooperate, doesn’t it?”

  How did he get away with snark all the time? Maybe it was part of trickster magic.

  “Don’t be so quick to dismiss—” Ken said.

  “We are done here, then,” the monk interrupted.

  Dismissed, just like that. Fresh off the plane, my full name offered like tribute to the Council, and I had been judged, found lacking, and discarded.

  God damn it. I was going to get myself to the nearest Starbucks equivalent and treat myself to a giant hazelnut, dark chocolate mocha. And then take a bath.

  “Where’s Dad?” I said, standing up.

  “Koi, wait,” said Ken, following me out the door after a quick series of backing-away-bows to Rockabilly and the monk. He made a series of swipes on his phone.

  Outside, deepening twilight gave a washed-out patina to the courtyard like an old-fashioned photograph. I thought of pictures of Japanese Kamikaze pilots I’d seen in history books—young, fresh-faced, ready to die. How many had memorial tablets here at the shrine? I kicked at some errant gravel.

  Ken and Kwaskwi reached my side. Ken put out a hand to grasp my elbow. I jerked away.

  “This is the not the Baku they are looking for,” Kwaskwi said.

  I rounded on him. “You. Go find my dad and bring him back here.” I whirled back to Ken, poking him in the chest. “And you Mr. Bringer—” Stabby stab went my finger on his chest. “—will take us to a coffee shop and then our hotel, and you will say nothing.” Wincing, I dug thumbs into my temples. “Stupid headache.”

  Kwaskwi clicked his heels together with a mocking salute and sauntered away on the tree-lined path leading to the main compound. Ken tried to grab one of my hands, the movement aborted mid-air as he reconsidered. That’s right, jerk. As if I’d let you after that show in front of the Council.

  Ken’s face began to soften, shifting, the planes of cheekbone rounding and eyes enlarging at the corners. His lower lip got fuller. Despite everything, I couldn’t keep my eyes off that pouty lip, wanted to touch it, flick it like strumming a ukulele. “Your salesman face doesn’t work on me, Kitsune.”

  Ken sighed, sticking his hands safely in his jacket pockets. “The Council would never allow a Baku loose in Tokyo that they had no measure of control over.”

  The words made sense but were no kind of balm for the hurts he’d dealt my heart. Giving up my name, keeping secrets from me, failing to defend me. But this lame attempt at damage control wasn’t over. “They will help Akihito,” he said in English. “They won’t stop us from contacting other Kind who can help you figure out what you can be, even with your human half.”

  All I could focus on was that I’d let that pouty, lower lip kiss me. Apparently it didn’t mean the same thing to Ken that it meant to me. Why didn’t he tell me he was Hafu? And why share a fragment more intimate than his forest fantasy? I’d thought that dream fragment meant he was uncomplicated. Ha. “Because they did such a bang-up job with you? Already figured out what you can be with your human half, Bringer?”

  A rueful glance, a blush, I wanted some kind of acknowledgement. Instead, anger tightened his jaw, the tic beating madly, his eyes going from milk chocolate to burnt espresso in an instant. Little fluttery things winged up and down my belly. The feeling like an electrical storm gathered, settling over me like an itchy blanket. “I have always known what I am,” he said slowly.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket along with the startling loud caws of a murder of crows. Ken glowered as I pulled it out.

  “What? I put in the sim card Marlin bought me in the limo.”

  “Tell me that isn’t Kwaskwi’s ringtone.”

  “There were no blue jay sounds.”

  I answered the phone. Kwaskwi’s voice was calm, bemused. “Akihito says he should stay here with the lady. He wants us to go to the hotel without him.”

  Ken was shaking his head. “You have Kwaskwi’s number? I don’t even have Kwaskwi’s number.”

  I brushed him off. “You’re the one who brought him into this in the first place.” Ken had contacted Kwaskwi because we needed a safe place to stash Dad when Hayk and Ullikemi were out to use any member of my family they could get their hands on.

  �
��Don’t be jelly, Ken, you know I love you, too,” said Kwaskwi’s amused voice, tinny from the phone.

  “Put Dad on.”

  “She’s all yours,” I heard Kwaskwi say in the background, and then Dad’s voice. “There is a measure of peace for me in the presence of Yukiko-san.”

  Somehow Kwaskwi’s snort was perfectly audible. He quipped sotto voce, “If you call ‘peace’ standing frozen like a Popsicle.”

  “We stick together, Dad, or we go home.”

  He’d argued strongly that Japan was the only place I’d be able to learn to control the Baku. It wasn’t fair to blackmail him this way, but I no longer felt like fair was an option. Dad sighed. “I see. Well, then, I will meet you at the back gate in a moment.”

  He hung up. I stared at my phone; the screensaver was an old picture of Marlin, me, and Dad. My sister must have put it there. We were lined up behind the blue and red sushi counter at the restaurant, us girls looking gangly and awkward but Dad as close to happy as I ever saw him.

  “He’s meeting us at the back gate.”

  Ken nodded, falling back so I could lead the way into the trees, retracing our steps. His presence loomed at my back like a dark cloud.

  Kwaskwi lounged against a post where we had left our limo. Dad stood stiffly next to him. There was no limo.

  I stopped, putting my hands on my hips. “How are we getting to Starbucks?” I walked over to Dad putting a hand on his lower back. Even through his shirt, he felt oddly cold. Ken gave me a tentative half-smile. “There’s a Doutor Coffee Shop at the main intersection. I’ve called a taxi.”

  “And here it comes,” said Kwaskwi, jerking his chin at a black van, oddly narrower and shorter than its U.S. equivalent, pulling too fast into the driveway. Spraying gravel, it stopped dangerously close, cutting off the guys from me and Dad. The back door slid open, and a pair of gloved hands reached out and lifted Dad into the vehicle. Ken’s panicked warning came too late, and then I, too, was jerked into the van face-first. The door closed with a slam, and the van took off, rocking me forcefully into the metal side.

  A strange girl and a familiar, pale face with long, orange-brown hair no longer tied back in a pony-tail, but loose and flowing down his back, regarded me with cautious eyes. The shrine boy. What had the monk called him? “Pon-suma.”

  He blinked. “Your Japanese inflections sound like an old man.”

  It was my turn to blink.

  “My fault, I’m afraid,” said Dad, trying to settle upright despite the jerky motion of the van on the crazy backstreets. He shrugged. “I’m an old man and Koi hears my Japanese the most. You should tell us now why you are resorting to this dramatic method of getting our attention.” Polite, but with a firmness that reminded us all Dad was a Baku, and not to be dismissed despite how he hunched and shivered.

  “We are dissenters,” said the strange girl. She appeared as young as Pon-suma, but with short, dark hair moussed up into spikes. “We will not sit by and let a dried-up old Kappa and Tojo decide the fate of our Kind.”

  “I am well aware of The Eight’s existence. Spare us the propaganda. Just tell us what you want.”

  “The Eight?” I asked.

  Pon-suma refocused on me. “The Eight Span Mirror,” he said, pointing at the girl. “She’s Ben. We’re Hafu like you.”

  I waved in a rolling motion trying to indicate he should continue the explanation, instead, he took it as an invitation to sidle closer to Dad.

  “The Eight had no idea you were even still functional, let alone that you had a daughter, until I heard from Ken about who he was bringing home,” said Ben.

  Wait. Ken was part of this?

  Dad didn’t seem afraid, exactly. More irritated. And pale. And definitely shivering. It wasn’t that cold in here. What had the Snow Lady done to him? I let loose the breath I’d been holding far too long. “You don’t happen to stash lattes in the back of this van, do you?”

  Ben looked at me like I was crazy, but Dad gave a little chuckle. Nope, not scared. So he knew these people? Did he and Ken plan this somehow?

  I patted my cardigan pocket, reassured by the solid rectangle of my phone. They hadn’t tried to take it away.

  “Where are you taking us?” Dad asked. So not his plan, then.

  “North, far from the Council. Where you will be safe.”

  Dad tensed up, his hands curling into claws, the whites of his eyes showing. “No!” he yelled, lunging at Ben. “Don’t take me there. You can’t take Koi there!”

  Pon-suma whipped out a country doctor’s little black bag and withdrew a syringe filled with a green, slightly glowing liquid. Like Ken’s on the plane.

  This was going sideways fast. Fear thickened my lungs.

  “Herai-san, we won’t hurt you or your daughter. If you get away from Tokyo, you’ll see—” Dad broke through Ben’s upflung arms, his hands going around her neck to choke away the words.

  “Dad!”

  I wrestled his thin shoulders, but somehow he held onto Ben with a wiry strength I didn’t know existed in his thin frame. Ben began to shake, growing paler as sweat formed at her temples. Dad was forcing a living fragment from her, eating a dream to drain life force from her. I couldn’t believe it, even as I felt the echo of a rushing heat where my bare fingers brushed Dad’s neck.

  “I dreamed the world wyrm’s dreams, and it was only pain,” Dad mumbled.

  Pon-suma plunged the syringe into Dad’s thigh. With a groan, Dad flung himself away from Ben, leaving angry red marks on her porcelain throat. He leaned against me, the muscles in his arms and legs slowly loosening, betraying him under that damn drug’s influence. His eyelids lowered. “The Black Pearl. They’re taking us to the Black Pearl.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “What the hell!”

  Pon-suma positioned a zabuton cushion under Dad’s head and laid him out at the back of the still madly careening van.

  “Sorry,” said Ben. “It seemed best. Herai Akihito is unstable. And dangerous.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Ben shook her head. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

  “Where the hell are you taking me?” I pulled up one hand, curling it into a claw like Dad’s. “Do you have another one of those syringes? Either answer questions or shoot me up. I may be Hafu, but that doesn’t mean I can’t rip dreams from your living bodies and suck your soul dry!”

  Damn, I’d have to remember that line the next time Kwaskwi was driving me crazy. If I ever saw Ken or Kwaskwi again. Ben and Pon-suma didn’t seem eager to hurt us, but I’d learned dealing with Kind meant I couldn’t completely trust my instincts.

  “Herai-mura!” said Ben. She held up both hands, empty. “No more drugs. We’re taking you to Herai-mura.” And then, unnecessarily, “Your father’s birthplace.”

  “Isn’t that like five hundred miles north in Aomori Prefecture?”

  Pon-suma nodded.

  “Aw hell, no. I am not riding in this van all the way to Aomori! Let us out.”

  “Sorry,” said Ben. “My brother will find us if we stop too close to Tokyo.”

  “Brother.”

  “Kennosuke is my eldest brother.” Somehow this felt like another betrayal on Ken’s part, even though it didn’t seem like he was part of this particular kidnapping and he’d told me back in Portland about his four sisters.

  “That’s just fabulous.” Ken and Ben. If I wasn’t so tired I would have snorted. Dad wasn’t scared of them, but he was scared of where they were taking us—his hometown. It was a lot to process but the Council gave me the creeps and at least Ben and Pon-suma were treating me like a real person instead of a tool. Anyway, it wasn’t like I could overpower them in the back of this van and carry Dad back to Tokyo.

  “You won’t regret coming with us. I promise. The Council doesn’t have all the answers. Give us a chance.” Ben tilted her head, giving me a quizzical look.

  “God, I need coffee.”

  “Well that,” said Ben, “I can do.”


  But it was a false promise. The blue, insulated bag emblazoned with the Sanrio rabbit-puppy mascot Cinnamoroll she pulled out from a corner had only cans inside. She offered me one. Deepresso espresso drink. Oddly summative of how I was feeling at the moment. Does she have a confused-croissant in there, too?

  The can did nothing to assuage my aching head, but did add a bonus layer of queasiness to my stomach. When the van finally got on to a highway Ben leaned against the front panel, folding her hands in her lap, and closed her eyes. I kept a wary eye on her and Pon-suma, who sat straight-backed next to Dad. After a long silence, Pon-suma opened a packet of crackers, methodically chewing each one. He handed me a packet, too. I stared down at it, my eyes blurring, vowing to stay alert. But my will was weak and the gentler driving and jet lag were catching up with me. My eyes closed between one bump and the next.

  When I awoke, it was dark. Immediately I fumbled for my phone, but couldn’t find it anywhere which meant I didn’t know the time, and I couldn’t contact Ken about my oddly lax kidnappers who were currently dozing away on the other side of the van cargo area. Marlin was going to freak when I didn’t return any of her texts.

  Though I wished I could shut out the world through sleep, I was utterly awake, and still exhausted. To make things worse, the van smelled like the bottom of a dude’s gym locker, and I was starving. The tiny packet of crackers shaped like crabs and shrimp Pon-suma had given me with the Deepresso felt like a drop of water in the vast desert of my stomach.

  I patted my cardigan pockets again, hoping against hope. Ah yes, at least something was going my way. The rectangular shape of my Tcho Mokaccino bar was still there. I ripped open the wrapper and shoved it into my mouth, relaxing into the deep, roasted bean creaminess melting on my tongue. Then I reached over to Dad’s clothed wrist. He was still out, but I could make out a slight whistling snore and he wasn’t restless or sweaty. That strange coldness was gone.