Black Pearl Dreaming

by K. Bird Lincoln

  Another skip in the dream, a different group of men with guns in invader blue lined the banks. Yet even now, Abka Hehe heeded my prayers. She sent the hairy, slow-moving Nari and the sleek, spotted Kesike to nibble at the ranks of invaders as they slept in their cots last night. There were fewer campfires along the south. Anger curdled my insides. I would pray for hail and punishing rain, and chase them all away, including the Kitsune who did not fear me as the humans did. And did not respect me like the shamans.

  But today, I was careless. I swam close, too close, to a whirlpool eddy. An invader stabbed down with a bayonetted rifle. There was a sharp pain. I reared out of the river and crushed the invader in my jaws, more blood coating my fangs and polluting the swift run of the Heilong Jiang’s current. But he was only a distraction. There was another invader, reeking of Kind but not Kitsune or shaman, and he reached out with a hand and caught the tip of my tail. Sharper pain arced through me, like a bayonet through the spine to my brain.

  A pasty, human face contorted in a rictus appeared, and then I was heavy, sinking down into the water, draining of vitality and drowsy. The human-shaped Kind eating away the mighty, river-heart of myself, eating away the very name Muduri Nitchuyhe until I was but a small consciousness, a Black Pearl—

  Dad.

  Awareness struggled to the surface, a small flame flickering barely, some consciousness other than of the great river-dragon, something that recognized the face not as an enemy. It was human, familiar, bringing a surge of anguished longing.

  I was human.

  Another stutter in the memory, a skip, and now I was in a great, metal box. It was cold, so cold. I was so tired. It was so hard to fight the invader the others called Baku in my dreams. They took me so far away from my river, even Abka Hehe would not hear me across this ocean. Sleep. I could sleep, and the Baku would siphon my dreams, a slow death, a peaceful death, but better this than becoming a tool of the blue-uniformed invaders, becoming their weapon—

  “Koi.”

  Sleep tugged at me, whispered from the four corners of my brain, weighed my eyelids, vibrated along my curved spine, even as I knew sleep meant an eternal rest, no exit—

  “Wake up!” A stinging on my cold-numbed cheek.

  Cheek?

  Human, not dragon. The small flame of awareness burst into life again, and I knew what Koi meant. It meant me, but I couldn’t take it in, couldn’t force the meaning into the oddly-shaped container of flesh and bones. Longing for the sun-kissed whorls and eddies of my home raged like a flood along my veins, and I could not consume the enormity of her, the dragon.

  The voice spoke again, urgent words that were meaningless syllables even as the timbre and vibration of the voice awoke the fierce ache of deep regret. It was too hard to fight, though, too hard. The dream was a spigot open to a torrential stream of the Black Pearl’s memories, and I was weary. It was easier to sink back in the depths on the cooling, rocky bed of mud—

  A warm pressure this time, followed by a kinako scented whisper. “Take my dream, Koi. Let it bring you back to me.”

  The soothing water blurred from muddy browns to bright, mossy green. The sharp scent of pine needles and last season’s leaf cover decomposing to dust under my feet.

  Feet?

  With a jolt, every muscle in my body spasmed in exquisite, stretching torment and a blossom of pain burst into life at the base of my neck. The world spun, a sharp 360 degrees blurring into a kaleidoscope of colors, slowly, slowly resettling into the shapes of trees. Cedars reached towering branches to a bright, star-lit sky, and I was running, running—

  Ken? This was Ken’s dream, the very deepest fragment of him dreaming himself. But, how?

  No energy to waste on how. The Black Pearl’s river still flowed around the bubble Ken’s fragment had woven around me. I was Koi Pierce. I was Baku, and I had to eat this dream or drown, my own self-flame extinguished forever.

  I pictured the flame inside me bursting into life like a roman candle on the Fourth of July. There was a strangled yelp not my own—Ken!—as I drew in, inhaling like a cigarette; the forest, the running, the pine needles. I consumed it in a burning flame, feeling the draw on Ken’s very spirit as his strength drained into me. The bubble held as the Black Pearl’s river flowed through us. The pain blossom at the back of my head unfurled great petals of hot agony. I shivered, but held on, burning, burning.

  Another rapid series of stinging slaps on both cheeks this time, hard enough to wrench my whole head. I jerked away in indignant surprise and found myself back in the cave, Pon-suma grasping me by the shoulders in a bruising grip. Ken lay crumpled and shivering on the floor as the Black Pearl’s tail lashed overhead.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Ramusak Ceh!” yelled Pon-suma directly in my ear.

  I ripped my hand from the Black Pearl’s skin with a wrench that rocketed from palm to heart and down to my gut, like ripping my tongue from a frozen lamp post. “God damn it!” I pushed at the middle of Pon-suma’s chest, and he went flying, skidding away across the slime-covered floor. The giant tail came down on Ken with a sickening crunch, too loud in the dark space. My heart clenched. Static, along with pressure rising inside my skull, clouded my eyesight.

  I hesitated.

  Ken’s scream of pain penetrated the fog. Tugging my sleeves down to cover my hands, I pushed with all my might at the nearest dragon-coil. It shifted with a muffled thunder. I dropped to my knees, half-blind, searching with fingers for Ken’s face.

  The scream stopped. “Don’t.” Ken’s words came out strangled through gritted teeth. “Don’t touch me.”

  I pulled back hands sticky with blood, pressing fists into my sides instead, trying to contain the ballooning pressure. So cold. Why is it so god damn cold?

  “Move the dragon,” said Pon-suma. It had shifted, now blocking our exit. On hands and knees, I scuttled between the dark blob that was Ken and the coils of green light where the Black Pearl had settled again.

  “Shikari shite,” I said. Hold on. Panicking, I shoveled my hands between the nearest coil and the floor. With another full-body muscle spasm the Black Pearl’s dream crashed over me in a flood of sun-kissed water, ratcheting up the pressure ballooning my already full insides. The kernel of Koi-flame flared bright with Ken’s strength, his forest dream bubble holding against the Black Pearl’s torrent. I jerked the coil back with all my might, going ass-over-teakettle. I clocked the back of my head on the cave floor.

  A pair of hands lifted my shoulders gently. Pon-suma’s voice said softly, “We have to carry him out together.”

  I stood with his help, head reeling, static scrawling across my vision. “Too dangerous. He’s hurt.”

  “He’ll die of hypothermia.”

  “No,” said Ken, teeth chattering so hard he could barely speak. “Koi can’t—”

  Whatever he was going to say was cut off with another muffled groan of agony as Pon-suma grabbed his shoulder and beckoned me over. We gripped forearms and slid Ken onto our makeshift sling, careful not to brush bare skin. He groaned again, a sound that ripped my already tender insides to shreds, but the solid weight of him straining my arms was an anchoring release for the pent-up energy of the dreaming twisting my guts like ropes.

  Pon-suma managed to hold Ken one-armed while he wrestled the door open. As the door closed, the slithering, moist sound of the Black Pearl’s restless coiling chased after us, but the dragon didn’t try to follow. Halfway up the stairs, Ken bumping and limp between us like a broken rag doll, Pon-suma leaned against the rock wall. “Murase-san! Ben!”

  There was no answer from the darkness above. The door was closed, the rectangle of light gone, but at least it was warm on the stairway. Ken lost consciousness. I bent my head to his face, relieved to feel his breath warm on my cheek, but I couldn’t keep hold of one thought for very long. My brain was filled with a whirling chaos of fear; the Black Pearl’s river, a stabbing bayonet, the bone-deep terror of seeing the Black Pearl’s tail come down over Ken�
�s body. What just happened?

  Pon-suma moaned and muttered something in that strange language he’d yelled earlier under his breath. Ainu? Stupid. Ken is dying and you’re wondering what language that is? Pull yourself together!

  “Why is it so cold?”

  “Yukiko-san. This cave freezes energy,” said Pon-suma.

  No time to unpack that information; we had to get Ken further up the stairs. Pon-suma’s foot slipped on something fluffy covering the top stair, and he came down hard, spilling all of Ken’s weight into my arms. Luckily the wall was there to keep us from falling any further. I barely managed to hold us both up, even with borrowed unnatural strength flowing through me from dream eating. Soft things floated in the air, stirred up by the draft of our movements.

  Pon-suma reached out and plucked one from its lazy trajectory, comical in his dismay. It was a feather. A blue jay feather.

  “Kwaskwi, open the god damn door or I will rip your head off,” I yelled.

  The door slid open with a jolt, and a familiar wide grin in an oversized face blocked the sunlight. “You wound me, Koi. No thanks for the rescue? Imagine how tedious it was to travel hours with an angry Kitsune. And only J-pop on the radio!” Kwaskwi gave an exaggerated shiver.

  Good to see you, too, Asshole.

  “Help!” Pon-suma lifted Ken up, and Kwaskwi stepped back, allowing us to bundle ourselves back out into the fresh air. The pain blossom in my head began to wither, but I was still angry at Kwaskwi, myself, the stupid cave floor and the dent it put in my head, not to mention Pon-suma and the rest of his gang.

  “We need to get Ken to the hospital,” I said, as we laid him gently on the grass. In the sunlight he was pale, bright spots of red high on his feverish cheeks, eyes working madly under shut lids and pant-legs frozen solid with blood or dragon slime.

  “No hospital,” said Pon-suma. “Midori.” He glared at Kwaskwi. “What did you do to them?”

  Kwaskwi gave an innocent shrug and pointed back down the path. Ben and Murase sat, tied to the historical marker signpost, blue feathers scattered all around them and poking out from their mouths like a gag.

  Ben’s left eye sported a darkening bruise. Parallel, angry-red scratches marked both forearms, but Murase looked untouched.

  “Ken, not me,” said Kwaskwi. He had on his creased leather jacket, chains, and royal blue flannel shirt, so couldn’t quite pull off innocent. “He might have been a little mad.”

  “Let them go,” said Pon-suma.

  “Anything for you, princess.”

  Pon-suma ignored the accompanying smarmy grin and went over to Ben and Murase to begin untying them. With a retching gag, the two vomited up black bile and feathers, coughing as Pon-suma pounded them on their backs.

  Kwaskwi put a careful hand on my shoulder. “Ken will be okay.”

  All I wanted was to melt into that touch, give up fighting the pain and the pressure of the dreams I’d eaten, and let Kwaskwi take over, but I didn’t quite trust him. I wasn’t sure who anyone really was here in Japan.

  Despite the fact that Ken had come for me, run into the Black Pearl’s den and now lay wounded on the grass, bleeding and unconscious, I wasn’t sure of him, either.

  I wanted more than anything to believe Ken had done that out of caring for me. But he’d given my name to the Council. There was a betrayal here, and I didn’t know how deep it ran. I was shaking and starving and bone-tired and didn’t know how long I could stave off the tell-tale tremble of my lower lip.

  Kwaskwi pulled me into a tight, one-armed hug, burying my nose in the warm leather of his jacket which smelled of Old Spice and sunshine. He let me go just as Pon-suma approached, Ben and Murase in tow.

  Ben ran to her brother and knelt, checking Ken’s pulse at wrist and neck. “Steady, but weak.”

  With a groan, Ken’s eyes fluttered open. “Don’t, don’t make Koi touch the Black Pearl! Ben, she’s not ready.”

  “Too late,” said Kwaskwi. Ken tried to sit up, and groaned, clenching his fists around Ben’s wrists at the pain.

  “What happened?” Ben demanded.

  “The Baku couldn’t handle the Black Pearl. The ancient one broke the Bringer’s legs,” said Pon-suma. “We need to get him to Midori.”

  “I’ll bring the car,” said Murase, and took off at a fast jog back toward the field.

  “Koi?” Ken’s eyes were open, but he still seemed confused. I knelt on the other side of him. “I’m here. It’s okay.” I ached to touch him, to feel his solid reality, to reassure myself he was here, breathing.

  “I found you.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. My sister is stupid.”

  “Yes.”

  “Savage,” said Kwaskwi. He stuck one arm out and bent his head into the crook of the other one. Dabbing? Seriously?

  “Hey!” Ben protested.

  I gave her my best Marlin Pierce stare-of-disapproval. “You kidnapped us.”

  “Still!”

  The car bumped over the grass and maneuvered past the sign to stop close to the white picket fence. Pon-suma and Murase came over with a blanket to improvise a sling. Ken reached out, grasping my sleeve. “She stays with me.”

  “We’re all going the same place,” said Murase. We rolled Ken onto the blanket and into the back seat of the car, me squishing in awkwardly with Ken’s head on my lap. Pon-suma and Murase got into the front seat.

  “What about me?” said Ben.

  “You can go to hell,” said Ken in a voice like he’d swallowed gravel.

  Murase rolled down his window. “Rendezvous at the museum.”

  Ben looked at Kwaskwi. Kwaskwi gave his trademark grin and made little flapping wings at his sides. “I’m covered.”

  “Let’s go!” I said. We pulled away, leaving Kwaskwi and Ben staring after us. I wanted to ask Ken if he’d found my rest stop message, what he’d had to do to reach me, and why he hadn’t told me of the Black Pearl, but he was in pain and that wasn’t a conversation anybody else needed to hear. Pon-suma and Murase most definitely spoke some English, so there was no private language for us. My whole life I’d had Japanese to talk about secret things with Marlin and Dad. This felt like a gag, words building up in the back of my throat.

  “You’re okay?” Ken’s face looked oddly alien upside down on my lap.

  “It was like Thunderbird,” I said. “I couldn’t break free. But your forest, it grounded me, helped me funnel the Black Pearl’s dreams around the core of myself…” I trailed off, aware of Pon-suma’s eyes watching us in the rearview mirror.

  Ken blinked very slowly, and strength drained from his features, as if he was finally letting go of urgency. He was slack, exposed. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I knew you were strong,” he whispered. “Your ability to take power from a waking dreamer, it caught me off guard. So deep, so quickly. But you’re fine. You came back.”

  He let a finger hover over my wrist tentatively. Asking permission for touch. His ability to touch me without forcing weird fragments on me was part of our growing intimacy. I got flashes of his forest, but I’d dreamed them so many times, they were almost my own. I gave him a nod letting him know the touch was okay. Nothing would transfer anyway, most likely. I was burned out.

  I’d hurt him by drawing on his forest dream to break free of the Black Pearl. Is that why he didn’t want me to touch him in the cave? I pushed damp hair from his brow, and he turned into the caress, lips brushing my palm. Not afraid now.

  “You have explaining to do,” I said sternly, but couldn’t stop the answering ache rising from inside me. Out of the Black Pearl’s cave, Ken’s inner nuclear reactor was back in business radiating that delicious body heat. Even hurt and helpless in my arms, his eyes, irises wide and pupils spilling over into the whites, made twin slashes of primal dark that speared right through me.

  “Don’t let Murase-san or the Council bully you into anything more tonight.”

  “I’m more afraid of what you can ma
ke me do,” I whispered.

  Ken’s brows furrowed deeply. “Yes, there is that.”

  That broke the spell of his eyes. I gave him a light smack. We were pulling into the museum’s circular drive. The bumpy ride over uneven concrete made Ken close his eyes and gasp in pain.

  Midori held the front door open. Pon-suma and Murase lifted Ken from the car, leaving behind an empty, cold feeling on the front of my body. I followed after them back into the tatami kitchen room. Midori had them lay Ken out on a low table where she’d already arranged a bewildering array of first aid bandages, iodine, splints, sprays, tubes, and syringes.

  “Your text said broken legs?” said Midori.

  “The Black Pearl,” said Pon-suma.

  Murase looked grim. “He shouldn’t be this hurt.”

  “Yukiko-sama’s freezing of the Black Pearl’s cave drains energy as well,” said Midori in a lecturing tone. Then in a softer, more worried voice, “you’ve lost a lot of blood, young man.”

  Ken closed his eyes again, skin pale and clammy. Midori turned on Murase. “Where is Ben?”

  “She’s coming with the Siwash Tyee.”

  I have to ask Kwaskwi what Siwash Tyee means. Later.

  Pon-suma picked up one of Ken’s hands and held it out to Midori. “Blue-tinged fingertips.”

  “He’s at risk for hypovolemic shock.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” My question came out a bit hysterically high-pitched; I couldn’t seem to get a handle on the inner pressure of the dreams I’d eaten. I needed to go punch something or someone.

  “Midori-san and Pon-suma-san are trained nurses. Ken will be okay.”

  “You’re not O positive, are you?” Midori asked me.

  I shook my head mutely. Ken needed the hospital if he was so messed up! Why were they all just standing around staring down at him? He was going to die! And they were all a bunch of heartless, manipulating creatures who couldn’t be trusted. They didn’t care Ken was literally fading in front of them!

  “Koi,” said a voice suddenly behind me. Startled, I swung around, all my worry and fear and the restless energy I’d taken from the Black Pearl’s dream surging through me in a black roar of emotion that ended with my fist flying out in a punch. It connected to the middle of Ben’s face.