Quiet. And still. Between one heartbeat and the next, everything stopped. No fear, no worry, just…silence. And beauty.
And then the frost cracked, ugly jagged breaks that felt like the edge of a knife trailed down my skin. The cracks widened, and yellow sun shone through, melting it further. My breath came in huffs, too fast, my hands uselessly clutching at melting patterns in the air.
A long, low moan rent the whiteness, catching it in a grip of pain, squeezing the air from my body, and smashing me down to the earth. I raised my head to find myself on my knees next to a mound of grass-covered dirt. No cross, no white picket fence, but this is the Black Pearl’s prison.
The moan came again, not heard, but a dark vibration felt through my knees and palms pressed to the earth. I lifted my head, long white hair swinging over my face, and stood. There was a door, I knew this, and a staircase, and at the bottom a creature in terrible agony—a wrongness that made my teeth ache—unraveling the pure beauty and stillness of the frost patterns in my boundless white.
I found the first door, opened it, glided down the stairs, and opened the door at the bottom. A horrible, awful stench assaulted me, but I surged forward. A clean-cut Baku in military uniform stood, arms in a wrestler’s grip around the neck of an old one, a dragon, born of earth and water far from the islands. Foreign. The dragon thrashed, but the Baku drained it, consuming its ambient magic, and it hurt.
This is Yukiko’s dream-memory. It was Dad, eating the Black Pearl’s waking dream—consuming the kernel-self power of the dragon. I didn’t want to experience this. Enough! I get it!
I was done being forced. Reaching for the Koi part of myself that still burned steadily deep within my belly, I coaxed the flame into a short-lived spurting flare. Burn. The flame eagerly consumed Yukiko’s dream. As soon as I felt the icy agony being drawn into me, the world spun on its axis, the white disappeared, and I was lying on tatami next to Ken, staring up into Midori’s worried face.
“Are you okay?”
No. Not okay. Very far from okay, thank you very much. I tried to sit up, and instantly wished I’d kept one of the airplane sick bags.
“What were you trying to do?” Midori demanded of Yukiko. She sat regally, hands on her folded knees, expression serene. Whether she meant to hurt or control me with that dream I didn’t know, but I suspected it wasn’t something she worried herself over. I’d gotten her message, though.
Yukiko was from the Council, but she pretty clearly felt the same way as The Eight about the Black Pearl. Her vision of Dad eating the Black Pearl’s dream was suffused with a dark, treacly wrongness, which left a burnt espresso grittiness on my tongue. And it had hurt, as if that wrongness was the force disrupting the chill, peaceful beauty Yukiko carried within her.
Oh Dad. What did you do?
It hadn’t really hit home yet that the Dad I knew from Portland when I was growing up was actually a reinvented man. I didn’t want him to be the man from Yukiko’s memory. It felt like betrayal. But how could I be angry at him for stuff he did before I was born? I had enough anger on my plate from him keeping me ignorant all these years, even if it was out of love.
“I think she’s on your side,” I said in a husky voice. Midori held out a glass of chilled mugi-cha, barley tea. I grimaced. Dirty dish water appealed to me more.
“She talked to you? You communicated with Yukiko-sama?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Murase came over and folded himself into a mirror of Yukiko’s formal seiza. “You feel it, don’t you? The Black Pearl has turned dark. Despairing.”
Yukiko turned the glacial ice on Murase, and gave a long, slow nod.
“But what of Tojo and Kawano-san?”
Yukiko lazily blinked, and though I swore not a muscle moved in her face, when her eyes opened, her expression was of disdain.
“I don’t think she’s afraid of the Council,” said Kwaskwi from the table, propping up his head on one fist.
“How can you be sure?” Murase asked of me. “Maybe you misunderstood.”
“It tasted true,” I said. “I think it was a memory-dream. I’ve never encountered a false memory-dream before.”
“If you’re willing to help us, that changes quite a lot,” Murase said. Midori tried to urge the mugi-cha on me again, and I gave a little wave under my nose to signal no thanks.
“Isn’t it almost dinner time?” said Kwaskwi. His fingers tapped a thoughtful tattoo on his skull.
Dinner time? No wonder my tummy feels sloshy and empty. I guess we skipped lunch. I sat up, relieved when the room stayed firmly still and the bit of energy from Yukiko’s dream fizzed and popped along my limbs instead of creating a migraine.
Kwaskwi gave a slow grin. “Pon-suma should drive me into town to get some food for everyone. Then you’ll have time to scheme.”
Pon-suma did not look pleased by the idea, but Midori and Murase quickly gave instructions for a local supermarket that did dinner bento and handed him a sheaf of pink and blue yen notes from which dour bald men glowered.
After they left, Midori went to find Ben, leaving me with Murase, Yukiko, and my two comatose guys on the floor.
“Herai-san has to go back to Tokyo with the Council,” said Murase. “Kawano-san and Tojo-san will not agree to anything less. And I admit I didn’t realize the extent of Herai-san’s deterioration. There are facilities in Tokyo that can better care for him.”
Yukiko gave a slight dip of her chin.
“But if you could get them to leave Koi-chan here…” Murase trailed off.
Yukiko pointed her chin at Ken.
“The Bringer is a complication. Maybe we could keep him here as the Council’s eyes and ears?”
This time she responded with an arched eyebrow.
“No, he’s too weak, isn’t he? Tojo won’t allow it.”
This is the weirdest war council. One-sided conversation didn’t seem to faze Yukiko and Murase, but I was antsy. And tired. And hungry. “Look, I’m Hafu, but don’t automatically assume I’ll blindly follow your agenda. You kind of wrecked my goodwill by the kidnapping and tricking me into touching the Black Pearl.”
Murase stiffened. “Surely you see now why that was necessary? We are at odds with the Council—forced to keep an ancient one imprisoned solely for their own moribund, blind goals. They care solely that Japan has the Black Pearl’s power.”
“And I care solely for Dad!” Well, and Marlin. Maybe Ken. But Murase and Yukiko didn’t need to be all up in my romantic business. “You just said the Council can take better care of him!”
“You are one of us no matter what you feel, a mix of human and Kind. Growing up with that experience gives you the same empathy, the wider understanding of the beautiful diversity of the world and how it is changing, as Hafu born here.”
Wrong. I am not the same.
Coming to Japan, embracing the Baku part of myself like Ken urged; this was somehow magically supposed to make me belong, integrate into a group, a family, I’d always been missing. The Kind. But I was realizing that I’d been naïve on several levels. The more the Kind’s political cracks were revealed, the more I didn’t quite fit with either The Eight Span Mirror or the Council. I’d grown up believing myself entirely human. Whatever wider understanding Murase referred to, I’m sure it wasn’t this “I’m just a human girl with a side of psychotic break” thing I had going on.
“I’m not saying I won’t try to help, just that I’m unclear about everything. You can’t just pack Dad off to Tokyo with the Council. I will not be separated from him again.”
“You have to stay here.” Murase was getting quite agitated. Yukiko’s icy regard swiveled his direction. Pursing her lips, she gave him an obvious chillax, dude look.
Before I could try to explain my inner ball of tangled feelings again, Kwaskwi swept into the room with two plastic shopping bags bulging with square containers and a pouty expression I’d never seen before. “Come on, Koi, let’s ditch this Popsicle stand.”
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CHAPTER TWELVE
“What’s gotten your feathers in a twist?” I asked.
Pon-suma padded into the room, implacable as always, but decidedly not looking at Kwaskwi. Kwaskwi dumped his bags onto the table. A heavenly aroma comprised of equal parts something fried and something pickled wafted my direction.
“I’ve had enough of what passes for hospitality here,” he snapped. “White Fang over there gave me the keys to the guest shack. Let’s go eat somewhere not drenched in duty and honor and politics.”
Was that a blush pinking Pon-suma’s cheek? No way. Had Kwaskwi made some kind of stupid move and been rebuffed? I couldn’t think of any other cause for the tetchiness. But I wasn’t about to look a gift blue jay in the mouth. “I’m not leaving Dad and Ken here to their tender mercies.”
Kwaskwi made an exasperated sound and threw his hands up in the air like Mom when she faced Dad’s stubborn silence during an argument. He sauntered around the table, giving Yukiko a wide berth, and then bent over and slipped his arms under Ken’s back and legs, lifting Ken as gently as if his tall frame weighed no more than a Teddy Bear.
“Be careful!”
“He’s out cold, feeling no pain. Don’t fret.”
“I can’t carry Dad by myself.”
Yukiko lifted a hand. Murase startled, but she rested it on my clothed shoulder. Even with the cotton barrier, a numbing sense of chill spread down my shoulder into my chest, slowing my heartbeat for a long, stretched-out moment. Murase cleared his throat, breaking the spell. “Yukiko will see that Herai-san rests until you and the Council return tomorrow morning.”
I leaned over the table and Yukiko’s hand fell away. I’d tasted her dream. She would protect Dad because he could help the Black Pearl. It was Murase I needed to be sure of. “Nothing disturbs Dad. If you want me on your side.”
Murase nodded gravely. I knelt next to Dad fussing with the cotton towel covering him, making sure his pillow was plumped.
Kwaskwi made an impatient clucking noise and headed toward the door. Scared he was going to bash Ken’s splinted legs on the door frame, I jumped up and wedged myself in between the frame and the boys.
“What about dinner?” I said in English, the consonants feeling oddly harsh in my mouth after so much time spent in Japanese.
“It’s already at the guest shack.”
“Should I be scared you keep calling it a shack?”
Kwaskwi gave his trademark wide grin, showing more front teeth than usual. I followed him out the main doors and onto a little path curling around the back of the museum leading into a thicket of towering cryptomeria, needles bristling ominously in the gathering twilight. Japanese beeches shivered and rustled beyond.
The Eight Span Mirror’s guest shack was a hunched over, traditional cedar-beam and earthen-walled box, thatched with a steep roof mossy with neglect and likely housing a horde of mice and spiders.
“Seriously?”
“Oh, it gets better,” said Kwaskwi maintaining that over-sized grin.
I skipped ahead to open the sliding outer door and help Kwaskwi wrangle the unconscious Kitsune inside. We found ourselves on a packed-earth genkan entrance with a built-in shoe cubby and a huge step up to the raised tatami mat floor of one big room. Kwaskwi started to lay Ken down.
“Whoa, not there.” Toeing off my shoes, I hopped up onto the tatami and made a beeline for the sliding doors on the far side I guessed were hiding a closet. Bingo. Japanese style folded futons in a dyed-indigo pattern and fluffy, white comforters covered in clean-smelling cotton were neatly stacked inside the closet shelf. I lugged out a futon and spread it near the floor-inset charcoal brazier at the center of the room.
“Please tell me this isn’t the kitchen,” I said.
Kwaskwi carried Ken over. Only a slight gasp marked Ken’s transition from arms to futon, but he did not lie peacefully. His breath came unevenly and his hands made jerky clenching movements. Midori’s drugs were wearing off.
“Okay, I won’t tell you the only way to heat water is the brazier. Or about the Japanese-style squatter toilet in the outhouse.”
“Sure know how to butter up a girl,” I said, settling down cross-legged at a low kotatsu table laden with more convenience store plastic bags. The heater slung underneath was sadly not turned on. I started rifling through the bags: convenience store pasta carbonara in a plastic tray, tonkatsu pork cutlet sandwiches with crusts removed, and konbu and pickled ume plum rice balls. No way was I going to fire up that charcoal for the pasta, so I snagged the sandwiches. The salty-sweet Bulldog sauce created a harmony of pork goodness in my mouth and the cutlet was soft as butter. The first bite woke up my stomach. I was ravenous.
Kwaskwi watched me gobble down the sandwiches. When I reached for a pickled plum rice ball, he covered the pasta container with crossed arms. “Mine,” he said. “But this,” he held out his hand palm down, concealing something with his sleeve, “might make up for lack of a real toilet. Thank me later.” He flipped his hand over.
My cell phone! “How did you…?”
“Pon-suma slipped it to me.” With deft chopstick action, he began slurping cold pasta carbonara directly from the tray.
Yikes. There were thirty texts from Marlin, ten from my Portland Perlmongers contact, Ed, offering gigs, and two from Ken. Feeling disloyal to Marlin, I opened Ken’s first.
I’m sorry.
Koi, hold on, I’m coming. Trust me.
A tear welled up hotly and dripped down my right cheek, a salty condiment for my rice ball. I snuffled.
“Not the thanks I was looking for,” said Kwaskwi. I wiped my nose with a sleeve and then reached out to squeeze his clothed arm.
“This is…you don’t even…I could kiss you.”
“Whoa there, little lady,” said Kwaskwi with a sudden John Wayne accent. “Not that the thought didn’t cross my mind before, but now I have colder, less damp fish to fry.” Kwaskwi gave my arm a little pat, and then pushed my hand off his arm. Beside us on the floor, Ken gave a deep groan.
Oh you silly, silly boy. What are you doing? Why did he change so much when we got to Japan? It was a constant ache inside my chest that he seemed more a tool of the Council than the generous, strong man who helped me handle a murderer and a dragon in Portland without trying to control my Baku decisions or man-splain the Kind world. I waded through Marlin’s angry texts, and wrote a long message back telling her Dad and I were fine. But my thoughts kept returning to Ken.
He had come for me. And now he lay there, broken. This wasn’t the first time he’d walked into danger for me, either. When I was under Hayk’s control back in Portland and I’d barely known Ken seventy two hours he’d rescued me too. More tears trickled down my nose. The rice ball was gone, and there was no more Oolong tea left in the bottle Kwaskwi had handed me after the sandwiches disappeared.
Food couldn’t be my distraction anymore. I had to decide who I was going to trust. The Eight Span Mirror? Ken? The Council? Weird that the man sitting across from me, still slurping spaghetti carbonara like his life depended on it, was already in the trust category.
I’d never touched Kwaskwi’s bare skin or experienced his fragment but I felt in my bones that broad grin and restless energy were backed by a fiercely loyal heart. Naïve? Probably. I’d even googled his name, and found nothing but Google Books versions of Abenaki and Algonquin dictionaries. Apparently “kwaskwi” meant either push forward or run through. I’d also googled blue jay tricksters and suspected the Salish tribe stories like Blue Jay Finds a Wife were closer to Kwaskwi’s origin than the plains tribe verb definitions. Really, I knew very little about him.
I understood he wouldn’t always choose my side or even jump in to protect me if it meant ripping his leather jacket, or went against the interests of the Pacific Northwest Kind, but Kwaskwi had always been straightforward. He didn’t hide the fact that he saw me as a little Baku feather in his Siwash Tyee cap—an asset for the U.S. Kind.
He hadn’t outright
defied the Council yet, but there was definitely antagonism there. Maybe Kwaskwi and his people were tired of living under rules made by a bunch of cranky, old Japanese men. I’d lived in America all my life, and despite having Japanese heritage, the fact that Kwaskwi was from my side of the Pacific meant something. “Why do you defer to the Japanese Council?”
Kwaskwi looked up, noodle suspended mid-slurp. He coughed and had to take a swig of his Cherry Coke before he could speak. “Why do you?”
Because I don’t know anything, and I was trusting Ken to do the right thing. “I didn’t think I was.”
“You trailed after the Council’s lackey like a Belieber with a backstage pass, and now The Eight Span Mirror has you feeling up the Black Pearl without foreplay or even dinner first.” Kwaskwi rested elbows on the table, steepling his hands together and fluttering his fingers like a movie villain. “Question your own issues with daddy figures lately?”
“Oh, totally.” I sighed. “I just can’t decide on which daddy figure to latch onto. Murase? Kawano? How can I decide when I don’t know the history? Isn’t there a textbook or a Kind Wiki I could read?”
Kwaskwi pointed a chopstick at my nose. “You are funny. It’s why I keep you around.”
“I thought it was because I’m Baku and owe you a debt.”
Kwaskwi cocked his head at an angle, almost like a blue jay eyeing a delicious worm. Exhaling slowly, he laid palms flat on the table. In a series of infinitesimally small changes—angular, muscled shoulders sloping down, lips closed in a smile, a widening of dark irises, and jarringly uncharacteristic stillness—he took on an aura of seriousness. “Hafu like Midori or your sister Marlin who don’t manifest Kind attributes sometimes are raised ignorant of their true parentage, but you are unique. You are powerful Kind. Like the ancient ones: Ullikemi, the Shishin, and the Black Pearl. It’s easy to forget how much Akihito kept from you.”
Black Pearl Dreaming Page 12
