Black Pearl Dreaming

by K. Bird Lincoln

  More rustling and a sigh. “As you wish.”

  Pushing Ken’s angst aside, I settled back on my heels on the grass and closed my eyelids.

  Okay, time to strut your stuff.

  I forced my brain to picture an ink-dipped calligraphy brush stroking strong and sure down creamy rice paper in the beginning Kanji characters I learned in Portland Japanese School kindergarten on Saturdays: the open box of day, the triple straight lines of mountain, the squiggly parallels of river. I’d used this mental exercise to stop other people’s fragments from entering my consciousness, now I used it to push away Ken’s cryptomeria cedars, the Heilong Jiang, and drowning darkness.

  Here, little fragment, come to momma. And there it was—the slight tickle of Enoshima’s fragment, burrowing down at the bottom of my mind away from the roar of Kind power. More kanji strokes painted with all the concentration I could muster, literally using ink to carve out the boxy kanji character eye in the whirling storm of Yukiko, Dad, and the Black Pearl’s dreaming.

  Here goes nothing.

  The coffee man’s dream surfaced, rising to unfurl tentative wings into the small bit of calm. The dark of my blindness softened and warmed, a cotton blanket instead of crushing fear. A strange anticipation shivered over all my skin, almost like expecting a blow, the exquisite sensitivity to air, scent, and living presence acquired by someone sightless from birth.

  I was blind, but quietly confident in my own space, content with the boundaries of my own flesh. Roasted beans—coffea arabica from Brazil—released burnt brown sugar and resin to permeate the space like the benevolent blessing of an angel. Reacting like Pavlov’s dog, the beloved smell filled my mouth with saliva, relaxed shoulder blades down my back. The raging force of the Black Pearl’s dreaming softened to a dull roar.

  My lungs expanded with breath as my hands curled around the warmed ceramic of an oversized mug. Simple. Uncomplicated. Blissful. It felt like home.

  Yes, this is the center of who I am. Human.

  The smell of burnt bark pleases you? The voice was strangely reedy and thin.

  Who?

  You have eaten my dreams now several times, Baku. You have my name.

  Muduri Nitchuyhe. The Black Pearl.

  One such as you, the child of a betrayer, is not worthy of the gift of my name. But Abke Hehe does not always choose the straightest valley or the clearest water for us to swim in. You are not only Baku. You are…more.

  Marlin would have been proud how I kept from mentally rolling my eyes at this. But the Black Pearl deserved more from me, more from all of us.

  I will release you from your prison.

  The Council sets me free?

  No, not them. It is The Eight Span Mirror, the Hafu who fight for you.

  There was a long, whistling sigh. I squeezed the mug between my hands and found that it was no longer ceramic, but the damp end of a snout—the Black Pearl’s nose. The Black Pearl’s dream, a Kind dream, seeping into Enoshima’s dream like lazy whorls of ink expanding into spilled water. Would this work if I didn’t keep Enoshima’s dream pure?

  Cruel to torment me with false hope.

  I’m not trying to fool you.

  And Kawano-sama? The Eight Span Mirror has never been able to stand against him. He stopped you before.

  My first attempt to release the Black Pearl seemed like weeks ago, but perhaps only an hour or two had passed in real time. I remembered the strange shadow in the river and Kawano’s seriously froggy hands. Kappa. River monster.

  Our mistake was trying to set the Black Pearl free in Kawano’s territory. No river here in Enoshima’s dream. I shivered, willing the smell of coffee to cover the silt-mold river scent threatening to take over.

  He won’t stop us this time.

  It may be too late to release me. I am very tired. I am failing.

  Let me try again. Don’t you want to go home? Sing with the kesike and Abka Hehe?

  A long, whistled sigh caressed my face with the scent of moldy socks. Enoshima’s dream was dissolving. Hastily I focused on roasted beans and warm darkness.

  You will release my spirit, Baku? To soar free of this cruel island?

  I want to try. I have to try.

  So then.

  A sound of running water, a splash, and once again I felt the Black Pearl’s mouth close around my head. But this time I held onto the smell of coffee beans and my strong, steady Koi-flame. I took in a breath and released it, along with fear and the ratcheting pain in my head. Enoshima’s confidence in his own skin, the sureness with which he navigated the dark kept me standing. This was it. Kawano wouldn’t give us another chance.

  Burn, then. Burn it all.

  With a scream, I pushed out the last remnants of Yukiko’s icy power twisting around the thick columns of the Black Pearl’s like lightning.

  Every cell in my body lit on fire, every muscle spasmed and shook in a frenetic dance of power and life and longing.

  I poured all of it into the warm absence-of-light. The river scent faded away, conquered by burning and burning and burning. The Black Pearl screamed, resonating at a painful frequency that tingled in my jaw and pinged my joints as if my skeleton were strung together with sensitive funny bones.

  Back to my center, to my purest self.

  I wasn’t sure if that was my inner voice or that which sang as Muduri Nitchuyhe. It didn’t matter—everything was burning away in the flame, the moldy sock smell, the river, the last vestiges of Yukiko’s ice, Dad’s memory of Shie-chan, and finally, finally the swish of river water and creeping damp.

  Agony warred with release, the burning wiping everything clean, turning everything to ash, thinning the weighty darkness. How long could I bear this? How long had I borne it? An eternity? A nanosecond?

  The Black Pearl’s whalesong crested, reached a diamond-hard frequency; yearning, striving to break free. Unease soured my belly. I burned and burned and the Black Pearl was still here, still trapped.

  It’s not enough. Anguish crashed over me, quenching the supernova. Suddenly flaccid muscles sagged. Something heavy heaved itself in the darkness nearby and then another, smaller presence moved.

  A life’s beginning or a life’s end. That is what it will take to release the Black Pearl.

  Dad? Ken was supposed to keep you away!

  You can’t do this alone, Koi-chan.

  Not you.

  Dad must have convinced Ken, the jerkface, to let him touch me in reality, although all I could feel was the burning energy, the whalesong, and a fizzing, prickling feeling of horror tracing up and down my limbs. Lightning laced through the air, flashing brilliant ice-white, stinging my dark-adjusted eyes with Yukiko’s stolen energy. It revealed a stop-motion image of Dad, squeezed inside the Black Pearl’s cavernous mouth with me, reaching out with both hands to grasp a curved fang.

  No.

  I caught both his hands in mine, and wrenched them down against my chest. Give it back. Yukiko gave it to me.

  Kawano-san pulled Ken into the pond. There’s no more time to argue.

  I almost got it. Just one more burst.

  My daughter, this is not your battle.

  It’s mine now. I will set the Black Pearl free.

  Koi AweoAweo Pierce, go kurosama deshita.

  It was the phrase Dad thanked his workers with at the end of each day at the restaurant, the phrase he’d said when I walked off the stage at Southridge High School graduation, and it was what he’d whispered as they lowered mom’s coffin into the ground. He was using my full name, and he was saying goodbye.

  Lightning flared and did not fade. Dad squeezed my hands, forcing them, still wrapped around his wrists, outward to touch the fleshy walls of the Black Pearl’s mouth.

  Roasted coffee flooded the air.

  This is a human fragment. Good. Remembering you are Kayla Pierce’s daughter as well as mine will help. The words came with a mental strength, a solidness I’d never felt before. And then Dad flared to life. Where I was a supernova, Dad
was the molten heart of a volcano, thick with a sludgy heat powerful enough to melt the backbone of the Earth. Yukiko’s power was subsumed into his like a tectonic plate crushed to lava.

  And we burned.

  Where I thought nothing was left, Dad’s molten power scoured away even the ashes and char until there was only my little flame and his glowing heart in a darkness still touched with Enoshima’s roasted beans. The whalesong crested again, an overwhelming cry of agony, and then Dad’s heart began to feed from my flame as well.

  Dad!

  Just a little more. The lava engulfed my flame. I was on the banks of the Heilong Jiang, I was behind the sushi counter at Marinopolis, I was tugging on my mother’s kimono sleeve, I was touching my head to tatami mat in front of Kawano’s stern frown.

  Dad’s dreams. Not mine. I am Koi. Koi AweoAweo Pierce and I am also human.

  Dad was using up every bit of himself, and taking me along with him. A life’s end. But the cowardly part of me cringed away from death. I wasn’t ready to die.

  With everything that remained of me, I conjured up the warm darkness and the fragrant aroma of caramel roasting Arabica and wrenched myself out of Dad’s glowing, hungry power.

  Hands, I have hands. With this realization came the sensation of one hand plunged into water and the ability to pull it back.

  The world spun 360 degrees, and when it righted itself I clenched my eyes shut against the bright, blurred sun of reality and vomited up bile. Tears streamed from my eyes, and my questing hand found the kneeling form of Dad beside me, one hand outstretched. He moaned. Someone behind me grabbed me by the armpits and pulled me up roughly.

  “Get her away from them.” Tojo.

  “Too late,” I said, my voice hoarse and cracking.

  Tojo spun away, yelling in harsh male Japanese to someone. Kawano. Trying to stop us again.

  Not this time, you slimy eel.

  I reached for Dad. He was spasming, muscles clenching up and down his back. Suddenly the whalesong tore itself free of Baku dreaming-space and subliminal vibration, morphing into an audible, keening wail. Tojo rushed back, leaning in so close his cigarette and whiskey stench fouled my air. He put rough hands around my neck. “Make that stop.”

  Something rank and dripping joined him. Kawano. Where was Ken?

  “I know you can hear me, Herai Akihito. Stop now, or Tojo will strangle the life from your daughter.”

  “Threatening the life of young Kind now?” Murase was here, somewhere off to the left.

  “Tojo’s always been a death Bringer,” said Kwaskwi. “Now he can officially step into the vacant position.”

  “Kawano,” I croaked. “Take a flying leap.” I pushed a fist in the direction of his voice, willing there to be some Baku-fueled strength remaining, but my hand met his chest with a meaty, ineffectual thwack. I had completely burned out trying to free the Black Pearl.

  “You will stop your father from making this terrible mistake.”

  I gave a sobbing laugh. Cracking open an eyelid won me only the blurry brightness of blowback blindness. I still couldn’t see. All the new layers of Baku powers, the Japanese connection to my father, the romantic self I’d been finding with Ken, all fell away.

  It was just me, pared down to Koi again with nothing but my wits. “Bite me.”

  “You will obey the Council!”

  I was so mad I could only yell in English. “Don’t you get it? No, I won’t!”

  Dad cried out. I let my knees sag, suddenly dropping all my weight, but the trick that worked in all the movies failed—whoever held me tightened arms like steel bands around my middle. “Dad!”

  The whalesong suddenly stopped like a speaker with the electricity cut. The participants in our little rumble paused between one breath and the next—the turgid, pregnant hush before a hurricane. Around my middle the steel band became rubber. I leaned forward until my hand grazed the stubbly side of Dad’s lax face. “Dad?” But there was nothing. No molten volcano of Baku hunger, no gray room of empty dreamscape.

  I reached for my own Koi-flame and recoiled from the aching void I found instead.

  Something burst. A wind smelling of konbu and socks buffeted my face, whipped through my tangled hair. A sense of joy and release so intense it curled my toes.

  And then the wind and the joy rose above my head and blew away.

  It was done. He’d done it. We’d done it. Not with a bang, but a sigh.

  Farewell.

  We had done it. Dad, me, and the sacrifice of Yukiko’s life energy. The Black Pearl was gone. I could feel it. Maybe her body still lay in the grass, but the whalesong lived, flying away on the wind. The overwhelming absence of her ached like a tender spot in the gums after a pulled tooth.

  Men were arguing in harsh voices and hands pulled me away from Dad again. I turned my sightless eyes in their direction. It was over, and all they could do was jabber on like angry monkeys.

  “She’s gone, dumbasses. There’s nothing you can do now.”

  A hard, open-palm slap rocked me backward. Stinging heat blossomed on my cheek. Kwaskwi and Murase protested over each other in jumbled shouts. I probed my cheek with hesitant fingertips and tried not to laugh. It was such a small pain, nothing compared to the agony of trying to set the Black Pearl free.

  “Desist,” Kawano snapped.

  “She will learn to obey the Council,” said Tojo.

  “The Black Pearl is gone,” said Murase flatly. “We all have some learning to do.”

  “Herai-san, you have doomed us to slow extinction,” said Kawano. “Our learning will be all about loss, now.”

  Tojo growled. “Imprison them in the Black Pearl’s cave. Let the Baku take her place. That will show everyone the Council remains strong.”

  “That’s not gonna happen,” said Kwaskwi.

  “Pardon me,” said Murase. “First you will let Midori tend to Herai-san. Then you will let us all go.”

  “You dare!” Tojo again in all his huffy glory.

  Kawano spoke a sharp rebuke. There was an awkward silence. I could make out the angry breathing of Tojo and Kawano next to me. “Tojo-san may not realize yet what this new dynamic may require.” Kawano’s voice was so god-damned reasonable. It made my teeth hurt.

  Suddenly a soft hand touched my elbow. “Here, this is Herai-san,” said Midori. She guided my hand downward onto a soggy shirt-covered chest. “Can you feel anything?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing but his heartbeat. Is he okay?”

  “His eyes are closed and he looks pale. But he’s breathing.”

  Tojo, Kawano and Murase argued behind us. I tuned it out, trying to gather the courage for my next question. “Where is Ken? Ben?”

  Midori hissed. “Kawano-san put them in the pond.”

  My heart stopped. My stomach felt like boiled lead. I bit my lower lip hard, a small pain to hold back unimaginable loss. No, no, no, no.

  I felt a cool cloth on my feverish cheek. “Oh, I am so sorry. They’re alive, Koi-chan. It’s a Kappa thing. They are underwater but breathing.”

  With painful, slow thuds my heart started beating again. Anger rose on the tide of pain. I stood up. “Enough. Enough!”

  Silence.

  “The Black Pearl is gone. Yukiko is gone. I don’t know when Dad will wake up.” I reached my hands out blindly into the air where I thought Kawano was standing, curling my fingers like claws. “But I am here. And I am a Baku. It looks to me like the power balance has tipped my way. The Eight Span Mirror’s way.” I took a gamble. “Right, Tomoe?”

  A chorus of soft hai’s told me Tomoe and Murase were riding the wave of my bravado.

  Kwaskwi cleared his throat. “I have the Shishin on speed dial. What do you think will happen to you, weakened by the loss of the Black Pearl and Yukiko-sama, if the Siwash Tyee of Portland and the most powerful Kind alive in the U.S. see you attacking Herai-san this way? Attacking his precious daughter?”

  Who the hell knew what a Shishin was. It sounded like a C
hinese name. It didn’t matter. Tojo and Kawano’s in-fighting only made it clear how thin a thread the Council hung on now that the Black Pearl was free. If they didn’t want other Pacific Kind rattling their cages, neither of them could afford to lose any more face.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  At the end of my first encounter with a dragon back at Ankeny Square in Portland, I’d missed the after-party by passing out. No such luck this time.

  The aftermath of giant dragon confrontations sucked. It was tedious, chaotic, everything felt pointless and nobody brought me lattes or chocolate.

  Midori had Dad carried to a limo with the help of Kwaskwi and a black suit, where she tucked me in alongside, reassuring me he was resting in good enough shape. Then she described Kawano releasing Ben and Ken, shivering and pale, from their watery prison as Tojo gathered up the remains of his men.

  “Ben and Ken are squeezing into Murase’s K-car with Pon-suma,” said Midori.

  I straightened up. She was narrating. “You know I’m blind.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “I thought I was hiding it.”

  “Not so much. Is it permanent? Or will your sight return?”

  “It came back last time.” I rubbed my fist into my eye sockets and held up my bandaged arm. “How long will this take to heal?”

  “Saaaaa…..” Stupid, infuriating Japanese stalling syllable. She put two tablets into my palm and held a bottle to my lips. I obediently sipped. Water cooled my scratchy throat. I considered my pride and the crazy shit that just went down.

  “Did Ken even check to see if I was okay?”

  The smell of Axe Body Spray told me Kwaskwi was close. He placed a finger on my chest, over my heart.

  “What are you doing?” said Midori.

  “I swear I will keep faith with you, little carp,” said Kwaskwi, uncharacteristically solemn. “But I must leave.”

  “Wait? Why are you leaving?” Panicking, I reached in his general direction with my good arm. He was my last, real connection to Portland, to home.

  He took a deep breath through his nose. “Someone has been attacking the Kind in Portland. They have grown bold since I arrived in Tokyo. Elise just texted me; Dzunukwa was attacked.”