Black Pearl Dreaming

by K. Bird Lincoln

  “It was me.” The words burst out. “Dad told me about the Black Pearl and I was so curious. I didn’t mean to upset anyone.”

  Tojo folded his arms. “More lies.”

  Kawano held up his hand in a quelling motion. “You tried to eat its dream?”

  “I’m not sure what happened. The Black Pearl’s dreams were very powerful. I became a bit…stuck. Then Ken came and unstuck me.”

  “And bagged two broken legs in thanks,” Kwaskwi added.

  “The Bringer is injured?” Tojo sounded more miffed about the possible inconvenience than concerned. I don’t think I like this guy.

  “Midori is taking care of him. He’s in the back room, too.”

  One of the guards stiffened. Another one shot a worried look at Ben and Murase, who had at some point moved to flank Kwaskwi and me. Five against four in this room, and the guards were worried about an injured Ken appearing?

  Kawano considered each of us in turn, disapproving of Ben and Murase, but blank for me. He settled on Kwaskwi. “Your stake in this is unclear, Siwash Tyee. Will you interfere with the Council’s right to retrieve Herai Akihito?”

  Should I be irked or relieved that I am not valuable enough for his notice?

  Kwaskwi flicked away his piece of pampas grass. Somehow it landed on Tojo’s shiny, leather shoe. “Why would I jeopardize our mutually beneficial relationship?” The lazy, sarcastic tone made a muscle in Tojo’s cheek twitch. “But maybe one of you should ask her that question,” he said, jerking a thumb in my direction.

  “I, I don’t know if Dad’s tour was over,” I stuttered. I really, really didn’t want to go anywhere with the black suit guards or Tojo. We weren’t fooling anybody with this cover story, but for diplomatic reasons of their own Tojo and Kawano were playing along.

  “The American Herai are welcome here as long they wish to visit,” said Murase, folding his arms behind his back. “Our agreement still stands. The Eight Span Mirror will keep watch over the Black Pearl without directly challenging the Council’s decision to keep her in Herai-mura.”

  What does he call all that “release the Black Pearl” crap he threw at me?

  Tojo was obviously fully aware of Murase’s sketchiness—for a short guy, he could certainly suck in all the air and attention in a room, standing there red-faced with arms crossed. “How long will you allow this?” he said in a low voice pitched to be heard by the entire room.

  Kawano ignored him. “Our agreement is unchanged, but it does not include the Baku or the Bringer. We will take them back to Tokyo now.”

  Murase shook his head slowly. “It would be rude to drag Herai-san and his daughter away.”

  “This is not a negotiation. The Bringer is ours, and we require the Baku as a gesture of good faith.”

  “Strange how the quality that makes the Bringer valuable to the Council is one you ignore in the rest of us,” said Ben. She had readjusted her clothing, but restlessness spilled off her like heat from a motor engine.

  Kwaskwi’s smile broadened and he leaned back in his chair, clearly amused by the verbal tussling. Of course, he had all the background context for this political dingleberry. I did not.

  The black suits were shifting around and Tojo’s frown grew fierce.

  I am the Bringer. I bring Death. Ken’s anguish when he talked of what he was capable of back in Portland, that he could take Kind life though it was anathema to all Kind, had been real. But Ben implied all Hafu could kill. That gave a different sheen of power to The Eight Span Mirror.

  “And Koi’s got it, too,” said Kwaskwi, making a show of plopping down into the chair opposite of Kawano and resting backwards, hands clasped at the back of his neck. “Bet nobody put that together yet.”

  No wonder Kwaskwi was tickled. Tojo’s pure Kitsune illusion was just a party trick. A painful party trick, true, but making someone think they were burning to death if that person could stab you in the chest for realsies was still just a trick. Hafu were dangerous.

  “I want to stay here,” I said. “I don’t think Dad will go with you, either.”

  “He must!” said Tojo.

  “We will formally request his presence,” said Kawano. He jerked his chin at the front door, and the three young black suits hurried out, looking relieved. “A gesture of good faith.”

  Murase bowed in acknowledgement.

  He stood up, clearly expecting us to lead him to Dad.

  Kwaskwi couldn’t contain his glee. “Oh, please, let’s all go see Herai-san.” He stood up and strode down the hallway whistling.

  The back room felt stifling and over-stuffed with ego, self-importance, and cranky men by the time we all filed in, crowding around the low tea table where Dad still sat with his tea. It steamed, untouched, in front of him. Yukiko sat motionless beside him, eyelids at half-mast, her hand on Dad’s shoulder. Ken, Pon-suma, and Midori made a startled tableau on the other side of the room.

  Ken tried to sit up, supported on one side by Pon-suma. Kwaskwi’s sudden look of concern was comical, and he made his way swiftly over. Propping up Ken’s other side apparently involved a lot of touching Pon-suma’s arm and hand. The white wolf of the North gave an exasperated huff of breath and then began an implacable, relentless stare on Tojo. He really didn’t seem to like Tojo at all.

  He’s not the only one.

  I knelt at Dad’s side. “Dad?” His neck, stiff as clockwork, swiveled my direction.

  “It’s okay, Koi-chan. Yukiko-sama’s cold makes the dreams sluggish and dim.”

  Murase, Ben, Kawano, and Midori joined us at the table in a flurry of rearranged zabuton. Tojo remained standing behind Kawano, arms still folded, an angry guardian deity.

  “Herai-san,” said Kawano. “You have seen the Black Pearl?”

  Asshole. I told him it was me. Apparently I was not to be trusted.

  “No,” said Dad, yawning. “I wish to stay far away. That is why I left Japan.”

  “Then it is time to return to Tokyo. I know how proximity to the Black Pearl pains you.”

  “Not yet.” Dad drooped forward over the table, catching his head in his hands. “Listen to Murase-san. It’s time to consider releasing the Black Pearl.”

  Tojo made a disgusted sound. “Nothing has changed. Our numbers shrink each year. Only those living close to the Black Pearl here in the Kanto region have pure-blood children.”

  “The Eight Span Mirror have children in every prefecture,” said Midori.

  Tojo kissed his teeth in displeasure. “Hafu breeding like rabbits will not save the Kind.”

  “I was in Nagasaki,” said Kawano in a tone that held actual weight and heft. All eyes went to him, including Pon-suma and Ken from across the room. Even Kwaskwi turned uncharacteristically serious. We were all glued to his words. “No one believed what the Americans had done at Hiroshima, details traveled too slowly. The stories that it was gone, just smoke and wreckage, were insane.” He looked at Murase. “I survived because I was on the Uragami riverbank when the air raid siren went off. We’d been bombed so many times before, it was instinct to submerge in the river.”

  No one moved. I felt a squirming awkwardness. Dad tied me to Japan, but I was American. It always birthed a weird mess of conflicting butterflies hearing about World War II atrocities no matter whose side was the villain, but Kawano wasn’t done. “I came up near a bridge. There were dead people with blackened skin. As we walked out of the city, some came to us asking for a drink of water. They were bleeding from their faces and mouths, and they had glass sticking in their bodies.”

  “No Hafu or Kind are born in or around Hiroshima or Nagasaki,” said Murase quietly. He drew in a shuddering breath, the weight of the world on his shoulders. “And Fukushima is starting to experience the same thing since the tsunami damaged the nuclear power plant.”

  “The Black Pearl is waking up,” said Dad in a sleepy voice. His eyelids were at half-mast again, but not fogged with dementia. Ever since we’d arrived in Herai-mura he’d been lucid.
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  “We have been without a Baku for too long,” said Tojo. “We have no way to keep the Black Pearl here without a Baku to soothe its restless dreams.”

  “North Korea has nuclear weapons, but doesn’t want to anger China. China won’t risk North Korea destroying the Black Pearl. Without her here as insurance,” Kawano spread his hands and shrugged, an oddly American-looking gesture, “the Council doesn’t have the power to control the Pacific Basin, let alone our own country.”

  “Would that really be so awful?” said Ben.

  “Shush.” Midori made a chopping movement in the air.

  “We need you, Herai-san,” said Kawano. “We need you back where you belong, here, with your own Kind. With you in control of the Black Pearl, we could heal Fukushima before even more babies go unborn.”

  “My own Kind?” Dad had turned pale, a sheen of clammy sweat across his brow. Yukiko withdrew her hand, resting it gracefully on her folded knees. She was regal and untouched by Kawano’s emotional stew, a storybook noblewoman from one of Dad’s historical dramas.

  Dad’s hand shook, the contents of his tea cup dangerously close to spilling over. “Tojo Hideki, Yamada Otozo, Ishii Shiro-sensei with his experiments in the war. You sent all the Baku and Tengu to Manchukuo and the Philippines and used us all up. Grabbing land and power. For Japan’s peace and co-prosperity. And now all you have left of our hubris is the Black Pearl. Can’t keep her much longer with just Yukiko-sama’s power. What will you do, Kawano-sama? Yukiko-sama, you and myself: we are the only ones left in Japan with power that is more than illusion.”

  “Hmmm, that’s not actually true,” said Ken in a groggy voice. Startled, we all looked over to where he drooped between Kwaskwi and coldly furious Pon-suma. “Now we have Koi-chan, too.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Kawano, Tojo, and the black-suit boys left to find a minshuku hotel to stay overnight, after ridiculously overly-formal Kind speak promising no one would mysteriously disappear or mess with the Black Pearl. At one point Tojo seemed about to pull out a knife and demand a blood-promise. Not that he needed one in order to keep me away from the Black Pearl.

  Yukiko and Dad would not be persuaded away from their endless cups of green tea at the table. Dad was half-comatose anyway, but Midori and Murase, and more importantly to me, Pon-suma, obviously trusted her enough that after the others left they didn’t hold back an explosion of heated arguing right in front of her.

  Uncomfortable with any role The Eight Span Mirror was trying to force me into, I scooted away from the table toward where Pon-suma and Kwaskwi had abandoned Ken on a pile of zabuton. He lay there quietly. I thought him asleep, his chest rising in a slow even rhythm, his legs bulky from the splints underneath a knitted afghan. I slipped my hand down in my cardigan sleeve and put it to his forehead, relieved to find no evidence of fever. Ken’s eyes popped open.

  “No, don’t,” he said when I pulled my hand away. “You smell so good.” Okay, now I know he is delirious. I was pretty sure I smelled like sweaty gym socks. I was starving, and so far beyond exhausted that gray static hovered at the corners of my vision. But Ken captured my hand and placed it over his heart, sighing peacefully, and closing his eyes again.

  “Why did you bring me here?” I asked, softly.

  Eyes still closed, Ken’s mouth, the generous lower lip looking even puffier than usual after his battering, pursed in thought. “To fix things. For your father. For you to learn about being Baku.”

  Midori’s drugs were making him drop his guard. Was it taking advantage if I dug deeper to get to the truth? I thought of how he’d given my name to the Council, how he’d seemed so reserved since we came to Japan.

  Fuck it. I was on shaky ground, and so far Kwaskwi was the only one who was still solidly Team America. I needed every advantage I could get. “No, Ken, that’s not the truth,” I said gently, brushing stray strands of the thick, slightly wavy hair through my knuckles he usually had moussed up into trendy spikes at the top of his head—not something I could ever do if he were all the way awake. Not only because I wasn’t touchy-feely, but because reaching out for Ken felt too much like an open admission of how much I enjoyed touching him. “Because the Council told you to?”

  “The Council doesn’t know about you.” Okay, so maybe Ken’s brain is actually still caramelized. The Council definitely knew about me now.

  “Why not just bring Dad, why me, too?”

  Ken turned his head away from me, the pressure on my hand lighter. He was going to sleep. “Because,” he said in barely audible English, “I can’t let you go. You can make everything better.” He went limp, and something fluttered from his other hand. A small scrap of paper. A white mountain with a crudely drawn fish and the word Herai. Ken had found my stupid rest-stop clue after all and carried it all the way here.

  God damn it. I swallowed back a torrent of confused words stewing in the back of my dry throat. This boy! His chest was warm against my palm, and though the pressure of those octave-spanning, strong fingers no longer bound it there, the force of that confession was a steel band.

  Starry-eyed ingénue, I was not. Maladjusted, sometimes morbidly paranoid, yes, but also painfully self-aware. A side effect of growing up with no defenses against other people’s psyches invading your own through dreams. I distanced myself from anyone but Marlin and Mom, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t aware of what normal looked like. Now that comfy isolation was a fatal flaw—anyone who managed to get past my defenses loomed larger than life.

  He’s using you, said Survivalist Koi.

  But he doesn’t want to leave you, whispered the girl whose heart pumped fervent blood, growing too tender, too large for its flesh and bone cage.

  Wanting to trust Ken, no aching to trust Ken, and being able to trust Ken were different things. Kissing him felt like a refuge, a safe, breathing place for me to touch and feel without guarding against invasive fragments. His forest fragment was so innocent, so familiar that it had refuge flags planted all around it in my head. But had Mangasar Hayk’s murder-dreams scared me into blindly trusting the first guy who came around with peaceful forest dreams, dreamy, moka-roast eyes, and an unbearably sly arched eyebrow?

  Survivalist Koi spun Ken’s protection not as caring, but self-interest. Ken was keeping his assets close. We Herai Baku were obviously valuable to both The Eight and the Council—and I didn’t like how that made me a pawn.

  Only Marlin gets to manipulate me. She’d earned the right by putting up with me all these years. I was definitely not going to melt into googly-eyed mush just because half-baked Ken said he couldn’t let me go. If he was super old like Dad, then maybe he’d used that line a hundred times.

  I disengaged my hand from Ken’s chest and stretched out my aching legs. Sitting seiza was definitely painful on the knees, even with the zabuton cushion bunched up under my butt like Kwaskwi did.

  A cold draft wafted down my spine and I looked up to find Yukiko sitting next to me, waiting patiently for me to meet her gaze. I flinched. Her eyes were the transparent blue of compressed glacial ice. “Oh, hello,” I said, blushing.

  Outside distant thunder rumbled, and the hushed murmur of a spring rain shower gathered across the museum’s ceramic tiled roof.

  Yukiko nodded slightly, raising both elegantly plucked albino eyebrows. Asking me what I am doing? She hadn’t ever spoken a word in my presence. Non-verbal communication wasn’t my strong suit.

  “Ken seems fine. He’s a little foggy from the drugs, but resting peacefully,” I told her.

  Yukiko shook her head, lips slightly pursed in disappointment. “Thank you for…for taking care of Dad. He seems peaceful, too.” The glacial eyes unwaveringly pinned me in place, making me uncomfortably aware I was missing something important.

  “…we gave our word,” Murase was saying loudly at the table. “It can’t be Hafu that break the peace.”

  “Why not?” Ben jumped up with fists clenched at her sides. “We’ve tried following the Council’s rule
s, and it’s only gotten us meaningless meetings. All the while the Black Pearl suffers. It’s not right.”

  “It’s kept us alive.” Midori reached out, but Ben shook her off. With a determined glance my direction, she stalked off, muttering.

  “Kids these days, what are ya gonna do?” said Kwaskwi in English.

  I sighed. Yukiko’s motionless silence was more than I could bear. Her waiting tugged and pulled at me, like the nagging frustration of trying to recall a fabulous dream after being startled awake. I was desperately close to babbling nonsense out loud just to fill the void.

  She stretched out her hand, palm up.

  “I d-don’t think that’s a good idea, actually,” I stuttered. No way in hell. Frozen fragments are not on the menu today. Shivers whispered down my spine.

  Yukiko looked down the line of her aquiline nose, daring me to touch her. I wasn’t going to fall for that. I had nothing to prove. I’d survived Hayk and Ullikemi and the Black Pearl. I just wasn’t in the mood for mental frostbite.

  Thunder cracked directly overhead, startling me into a flinch. Kwaskwi spared me a sideways smirk, but Murase, Midori, and Pon-suma didn’t pause their intense argument.

  “Excuse me, but I think I’m going to go interrupt the huddle over there. I’m literally starving and—”

  Yukiko, quick as lightning, darted forward on her knees, capturing my head between two ice-cold hands and pressing her forehead to mine. She breathed out a chill mist that obscured the air, enshrouding us in a blanket of hushed cold.

  My heart seized painfully like I’d jumped in the water at Cannon Beach in February. Then, with enormous effort, it began beating again, but slowly, ever so slowly. Sounds came through distorted, Murase’s voice impossibly deep like James Earl Jones, and the Sanrio Kerropi frog character clock on the wall ticking out the seconds at a sonorous, geriatric pace.

  The transition to Yukiko’s dream was unlike any I’d experienced before. No, spinning, no jerk. Just a slow fade to white. The thunder, heartbeats and clock sounded further and further away as if I were moving through a long tunnel. Kind dreams were vivid, and the white was unbearably so, but there was no way to squint or close my eyes. Slowly, the quality of the white resolved into a million specks of frost, widening, spreading into the most beautiful, intricate laced patterns. Lace-frost spread into my peripheral vision, and I found I was able to turn my head. My exhalations left my body and became crystalline beauty, adding to the pattern.