“Aw hell to the no.” I jammed the door open and dropped out of the truck. He did not get to pull out the L-word. Not kosher. It was time to get this freak show on the road and deal with Ken and the angsty turmoil later.
Yukiko stood motionless by the mound with the biggest cross, while a dozen jays perched on the crossbeam above her. She nodded as I scrambled over the white picket fence, and then she glided over and put a hand on my chest bringing me to a sudden halt.
“What?”
Those glacier eyes caught my gaze, enfolding them in icy attention that momentarily soothed my aching head. Then chill breath slithered down my neck and arms. It felt like I was being probed body and soul. Unwilling to risk accidental skin-to-skin contact, I waited. She arched an eyebrow and tilted her head to one side like a quizzical bird.
“It’s okay. Yes, I do this willingly,” I said. “Even if the pretense that brought me here was a lie.”
She nodded again, lowering her hand to my stomach. She tapped it twice, the corner of her mouth raised ever so slightly.
Ken had somehow maneuvered himself over the fence. “She’s telling you to eat something before you go down there.”
Still caught in Yukiko’s gaze, I answered sharply, “Great idea. Who’s got a breakfast buffet hidden in their pockets?” The jays lifted, jostling each other and ruffling wings in silent laughter.
“Actually…” Ken stepped up. “I was saving this for an emergency,” he said, pulling a thin rectangle from his magic pocket. “And I guess hoping for forgiveness points.”
“Shut up and give me chocolate,” I said.
“Right.”
I am really angry and betrayed and food will not make me forgive you.
But Ken had brought Dagoba Xocolatl, not only artisanal but Oregon chocolate. The bar loaded with my heaviest emotional baggage about food, Dad, and the break-up of my family.
Marlin and I inherited our need for theobroma cacao straight from Mom, who scorned the typical Hawaiian milk chocolate macadamia stuff as tourist fodder and taught us to eat bean-to-bar chocolate from a small company on Kauai. Dad, on the other hand, would grumble in surly, male Japanese the equivalent of real men don’t eat sweets at dessert time.
Except for Xocolatl.
For some reason both Mom and Dad loved the chili bite. Even when Mom was nauseous from the Adriamycin, she could keep that down. And Dad would literally snatch the last square from Marlin’s palm if she was inattentive.
The wilds of Aomori didn’t contain a store that sold this, so Ken must have brought it all the way from PDX. Chocolate doesn’t give him the right to use the L-word. This doesn’t make up for manipulation. But I was horrified to discover tears welling up in a hot veil over my eyes.
Chewing the dark spiciness, the exact shade of Ken’s eyes, I hid my stupid reaction by tugging at the grass panel at the top of the mound I knew hid the secret entrance. The jays suddenly lifted away from the crossbeam, flying in a swarm clockwise around the cross and then shifting counter-clockwise: a swirling, blue-feathered funnel. They released a piercing cry and then pinwheeled out in all directions, revealing Kwaskwi leaning casually against the cross, arms resting on his chest. Such a drama queen.
“Having trouble with the secret lever?” He reached down and pushed at something at the base of the cross. The panel slid open, revealing the narrow opening. Yukiko floated into the opening with boneless grace and disappeared down the stairs. I coughed, the delicious chocolate bitterness turning to a chalky bile.
“Are you coming?” I said to Kwaskwi, jerking a thumb at Ken. “He’s injured.”
“I’m sensitive to cold. It gives me a sinus headache.”
“You don’t need the trickster,” Ken scoffed.
“You were planning to send her down into the icy cave of an ancient one with only Yukiko?”
“She’s Baku, she is strong.”
“And you’re several kinds of idiot, Bringer.”
Ken bristled. “I do what I have to do. Don’t doubt Koi. She’s more than capable of eating a few dreams to make the Black Pearl groggy enough not to lash out but still awake enough to move. I’ll come down as soon as Yukiko releases the cold.”
“Without even giving her a jacket?”
Ken sheepishly shrugged off the windbreaker and held it out to me. I gave him an incredulous look. “Keep it.”
“You’re mixing politics with your love life, and we all know that usually turns out rosy,” Kwaskwi muttered.
I shoved a hand in the direction of both boys. “Enough. Kwaskwi are you in or out?”
“Is this a favor you’re asking? If so, I’ll need a token.”
I glared at him. I am so not in the mood for this. “You’re doing this out of the goodness of your soul. Also so I won’t grab your smirking face and eat the dreaming heart right out of you.”
“Ah,” he said, smiling even more broadly. With a courtly bow and overly grandiose sweep of his arm toward the entrance he added, “If that’s the case, after you, madam. The Black Pearl awaits.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Damn my pride. I should have taken the windbreaker. Yukiko’s presence made the underground passage not just cold, but arctic. Polar. Beyond freezing. My teeth started clattering before we even made it down the stairs. The metal door at the bottom stuck to my nervous fingers when I turned the handle.
Good thing I don’t have to lick it.
Infuriatingly, Kwaskwi had on a thick, flannel shirt, leather jacket, and fur-lined black leather boots. He whipped out a slouchy beanie of startling blue and shoved it on his head. “I am always prepared,” he said as I gently disengaged my fingers from the door, leaving a top layer of skin cells behind. “I would not send my girlfriend down a frozen tunnel to capture an ancient dragon. Especially without a coat or hat.”
I don’t see you sharing your hat now. “You want some kind of award? Pon-suma isn’t even here!”
“Never know who may be listening,” he said, nodding at Yukiko, waiting impassively. Kwaskwi gave an exaggerated sigh and reached around me to push the door open.
Ah, eau-de-Black Pearl, how I’ve missed you. I’d forgotten what a delight this cave was. The only illumination came from faint light leaking down the stairs behind us and a vague, hazy shimmer hovering around Yukiko like a ghostly double.
“I’m gonna just stand here and look pretty while you girls do your stuff to calm the Black Pearl down enough for transport.” Kwaskwi shoved his hands into his pockets, stomping his boots for warmth.
“Where is she?” I asked Yukiko.
She held up a hand, opened her mouth wide, and hoovered in air like her lungs were balloons. The cave temperature rose noticeably, enough to stop my teeth-clatter.
A stripe of green lit up the darkness, slowly advancing in long curves, tracing the Black Pearl’s large coils—eerie bioluminescence.
“Baby’s waking up,” said Kwaskwi, pulling out his hands. “Better get Baku-ing.” A harsh, scraping sound echoed through the cave, making me startle. Yukiko, mouth firmly pressed shut, lowered her arm and indicated the closest green stripe with her chin.
Okay, I got this. I am Baku. I released an ancient dragon before. The first time I’d touched the Black Pearl I’d been taken by surprise. Now I knew what she felt like. All I needed was a little bit of her dream, just enough to weaken her a little. Plus, I had Ken’s forest fragment handy to help me focus.
I rubbed my cold-numbed palms together and blew on them for luck. Stumbling forward with outstretched hands, I reached for the green light.
Fingers connected with rough leather, a feeling like rock pressing in all sides compressed my lungs, and then I was in her dream.
Warm silty water caressed the long, sinuous stretch of spine from head to tail as I swam into an eddy shaded by the leafy boughs of an ash. Tiny bang huahua yu darted back and forth to catch insect larvae stirred up by my passing, their small collisions against my scales the slightest tickle. I was tense and listening for the blue unif
orms encamped in this area. Anger flared at what I had seen on the riverbanks this morning—the limp and breathless bodies of the spotted feline servants Abke Hehe had sent to help me against the invaders. Even the spotted feline kesike fell to the blue uniforms and their guns. Abke Hehe could not help any further.
A flame, not anger, flickered to life inside. Koi. I am Koi. The river, the fish, the layered glassy light overhead rippled for an instant, a prolonged moment between one breath and the next when I was fully aware of my double existence: I was Koi in a cave now, I was the Black Pearl in the Heilong Jiang long ago. This knowledge spawned Baku hunger. A gaping maw opened, waiting to be filled. I ached to take in this dream, the kernel-self of the Black Pearl, the dream she returned to day after day, struggling to hold herself together deep inside the chilled ground of her prison. The flame brightened, and grew bigger.
Burn, little flame, burn.
The flame consumed the dream, heat flowing into all my limbs in a delicious pulse. Now it was me swelling, bloating with the Black Pearl’s life-energy, a pressure building at the base of my throat and underneath my ribs. A glorious fullness of ecstatic warmth and power.
I should stop. But the dream was very seductive, and there was room for more within me. My hunger was cavernous, my body ample, and the ancient one had so much to give. Just a little more, just a little longer.
The Koi part of me remembered the ice hag Dzunukwa lying haggard and wilted on the Pioneer Square brick and the awful guilt of how close I’d come to killing her. I will not do to the Black Pearl what I did to Dzunukwa.
I willed the flame to shrink. Koi. I am Koi, in a cave. It worked. The Baku hunger subsided back into my own human limbs. A disjointed, loose-boned feeling lingered, the aftereffect of trying to move my human neck like the Black Pearl’s flexible spine. Moving through a sea of molasses, I slowly dragged my arms back, aching in every muscle. Pain spiked at the base of my skull. My heart tried to batter its way out of my chest.
“You holding it together?” Kwaskwi’s voice.
Why is it so dark? Ah, my eyes were screwed shut. I cracked them open, the faint light of Yukiko’s glow too harsh to look at directly.
“I’m here.”
“Nice job not sucking the dragon to death. She’s gone quiet. Let’s get her up the stairs.”
Yukiko glided over to the door. Kwaskwi moved to my side while I tried to keep my bulging insides in check by pressing hands along my ribs. “You sure you ate enough that this bad girl won’t object to manhandling?”
“Of course not!” My voice exploded in anger. “I’m not sure of anything!”
“We will try anyway,” said Ken. I peered at him, outlined in dawn’s glimmer at the bottom of the stairs. Yukiko must have warmed the cave enough for Ken to handle. “I’ll take the front end in case she wakes up.”
“Always the butt end, never the bride,” Kwaskwi grumbled. I elbowed him in the ribs. “Aw come on, mortal danger is way more fun with a little levity.”
Ken fiddled with something by the door and red emergency lights flickered to life along the perimeter of the cave floor. It was my first real look at the dragon. She was beautiful. Black scales rippled with a rainbow iridescence that grew lighter at her tail and her head sat upon an arched neck like a seahorse with a rounded, elegantly long snout and huge eyes swirling in intense shades of blue, turquoise, and indigo. She had small webbed forelegs near her head and tiny vestigial legs near her tail that looked more like clawed wings.
As I stared into her eyes, she blinked, slowly, and the delicately scalloped protrusions forming her eyebrow ridges twitched. She was half-awake, but weakened. I flushed from head to toe, sweat breaking out at my temples despite the lingering cold.
I had done this. Me. I am not the bad guy. This is not an attack. But a part of me reveled in the tight fullness of my belly and the jittery trembling of my arm muscles from stolen power coursing through them.
Yukiko and Ken stepped to either side of the Black Pearl’s head and embraced her around the neck; their hands barely reached around to grip each other. A grunt of pain ripped from Ken as they lifted her head.
“You can’t!” I blurted, stomping over to elbow Ken aside. “Just give me the damn windbreaker.”
Ken was stupid and injured. Better I use this borrowed strength to actually do something helpful this time, otherwise I would have to slap someone again. A muscle ticked along his jaw as he handed over the jacket. Ken’s long limbs meant the jacket sleeves hung well past my fingertips—perfect for keeping away from bare contact. I gripped Yukiko’s hands through the windbreaker, and bent my head so a curtain of hair covered my cheek. The Black Pearl’s scales were strangely soft through the protection of my hair, like a rough chamois, and her moldy sock smell overwhelming. The smell stung tears from my eyes as we heaved the Black Pearl’s head and neck toward the stairs.
The Black Pearl’s forelegs scrambled on the stairs as if eager to escape the cave. But two layers of eyelids fluttered down over the mesmerizing tapestry of her eyes, one translucent, another cloudy milk. She wasn’t truly awake.
Halfway up the stairs, the coils pulling straight behind us, Ken and Kwaskwi began lugging the tail end as well. A strange, melodic moan filled the stairwell, like whales singing. It vibrated up from the depths of the Black Pearl’s body directly into my bones. An overwhelming wave of loneliness rode the song, so intense it stilled the breath in my lungs, froze the tears in my eyes, and tightened a burning belt around my heart.
I shut my eyes against welling tears. I crouched naked and alone, shivering in a dark place not my home, feeling the raw festering places all over my soul where river, friends, Abka Hehe’s love had been ripped away and would not heal.
“Yukiko-sama,” said Ken, gasping.
I wailed, a long low cry like a solitary wolf in a vast forest. Then my breath frosted over, cold encasing me and the Black Pearl’s head in a muffling, protective shield.
Yukiko to the rescue.
The whalesong stopped just as we reached the top of the stairs. I rested the Black Pearl’s head on the grassy mound with Yukiko, leaning over, elbows on my knees, crying. “Oh god, she’s so sad.”
“We’re getting her home,” called Ken from halfway down the stairs. “Just a little more to the truck. We’re almost there.”
The truck was a million miles away. I sniffled. Yukiko reached down and wrapped her arms around the Black Pearl’s neck, clearly unmoved by the whalesong or my breakdown. I gripped her hands again and heaved, borrowed power still giving me the muscle strength of a bodybuilder.
Luckily, the strength lasted until we reached the truck where Kwaskwi’s jays circled relentlessly overhead. If Tojo and Kawano were on the lookout for us, the jays were a dead giveaway, but no one else seemed to care.
“Now what?”
Ken climbed onto the back of the truck and unfastened the tarp. “She goes in here.” I bent to lift her head, but couldn’t even straighten my legs. My arm muscles had turned to limp noodles.
“I’m tapped out.” I stepped back so Kwaskwi and Ken could move in. The three of them managed to push the Black Pearl’s head to the front of the cargo space. Then working together while Ken leaned on his stick, every line in his face stark with the strain, we tugged the long coils up and packed them in the tight space.
Yukiko gracefully smoothed the bottom of her robe to one side and then nestled herself in seiza amongst the dragon folds. She nodded to Ken.
He beckoned the rest of us out of the truck and then refastened the tarp. “You coming with us to the river?” he said to Kwaskwi.
“I guess so.”
“You going to ride in the truck cab?”
“No, you lovebirds have all kinds of fun issues to hash out. Lies. Suspicions. Betrayal.” He peered into my face. “And she desperately needs a tissue. I’ll follow.”
The circling jays began chattering excitedly. They exploded in all directions, one zooming down like a missile headed straight for Kwaskwi’s h
ead. With a grunt, he lifted an arm parallel to the ground. The jay pulled up at the last moment and settled on his wrist, cawing. Kwaskwi’s upper lip lifted into a sneer. “Tojo is at the museum.” He pulled off his beanie and crumpled it into a pocket.
Ken limped over to the driver’s side without a word, starting the truck before I had even gotten halfway through the door. He put the truck into reverse and skidded out of the parking lot. Kwaskwi disappeared from the rearview mirror as we bumped and jostled our way onto the main road. Three black cars were parked at the museum’s front door with their headlights turned on. As we passed, someone slammed a car door.
Driving through town, we were both quietly tense, expecting any moment to find Tojo or Kawano glaring back from the rear view mirrors.
Ken slowed down for a toll gate machine and handed me a ticket without comment. We entered a highway bounded on both sides by metal, corrugated walls.
“What does the dragon dream of?” said Ken quietly.
“Home.”
“And the war?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to talk to me in more than single syllables?”
“No.”
“You can’t avoid me forever.”
“I have hella good avoidance skillz. Queen of denial.”
Ken gave me a hopeful glance, probably latching on to my deceptively light tone. It was taking everything I had to keep myself together. He arched an eyebrow in that sly fox way that usually made me melt. Not now, jerkface. “When we reach Aisaka River you’ll have to release the Black Pearl.”
“Oh my god, what did we just do? Didn’t we just release her from the cave?”
“Yes,” said Ken gravely. “But she’s been in a deep, deep dreaming state for decades and frozen by Yukiko for decades more. She isn’t completely free yet, that’s going to take more work.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“There’s an unspoken and there.”
Black Pearl Dreaming Page 15
