by Nick Lake
Carefully Taro swam farther into the wreck, between the ribs of the ship. He could see other things now, sticking out from the seabed. A rusting anchor, a teacup, what looked like a bone. He tried to put himself in his mother’s position. Where would she have hidden the ball? She could have buried it anywhere, in the sand, and it would take him days to find it. He stared hopelessly at the sea bottom.
Suddenly an enormous octopus detached itself from the reef before him and moved quickly over the sand, its colour – which had blended with the greens and greys of the reef – changing to an angry, pulsing red. Taro backed away, alarmed. He had been willing to dismiss dragonflies and crabs, but this was a giant octopus, and it was coming towards him. He grabbed another rib, pulling himself behind it. The octopus curled its legs around the same piece of wood and began to climb upward.
Taro knew that the amas feared octopuses more than sharks. It was said that no shark had ever attacked an ama, knowing that they were protected by the Princess. But octopuses were different – they were low creatures, and didn’t answer to the kami, or to any bodhisattva. Once an octopus had caught an ama as she dived, and made her his wife. Some of the women said that they had seen her, a skeleton clothed in tattered flesh, floating out of a cave in the reef, tiny fish floating in and out of her eye sockets, crabs scuttling in her hair.
Taro felt panic taking him over. Forcing himself to be calm, he let go of the rib and kicked out, knowing that there was one direction he could move in quicker than the octopus – straight up. Moments later he broke the surface, gasping for breath. The wind was howling now, and his boat had drifted farther out to sea. He cursed. There had been nowhere to tether it, and he had not thought of what to do if he lost it. Now it was being carried farther away by the moment.
To the south, a large ship plied the coast, no doubt taking cargo from Osaka or Kyoto to the territory of one of the northern daimyo. It would pass him, but not close enough for him to wave for help. He’d just have to hope he could swim back to shore when he was finished.
Already, though, clouds were massing overhead. He didn’t have much time. He trod water for a while, then dived once again, heading closer to the reef this time, hoping that the octopus would have stayed where the ribs of the ship met the sand. A small voice at the back of his mind said that he was wasting his time, but he ignored it. Swimming strongly, he glided through the water towards the reef. Here the ribs no longer rose in mocking echo of their original shape, making a ghost ship that sailed on sand. There was only broken wood and debris, scattered all over the rocks.
Taro swam right down to the reef and then moved slowly along it, picking his way over splintered pieces of plank, so old that they were more barnacle and coral than wood. Fish moved serenely around him, unworried by his presence. Some of the bolder ones even nipped his fingers, as he pulled himself along the reef. In a crevice, he spotted an eel, seeming to glare at him. The coral was all the colours of bone and rust and wood, so that it was hard to see what was detritus from the wreck, and what had grown in this place. He wondered how he would ever find the ball in this underwater realm. There were countless cracks in the reef, and between them and the sand, it could be hidden anywhere.
But that was when he saw it.
Just ahead of him, cradled in the soft purple fronds of an anemone, was a golden orb, shining in the moonlit water.
Relief surging through him, Taro swam towards the ball. His lungs were burning and his limbs aching, but he didn’t want to go back up, for fear he wouldn’t find this spot again. As he came closer, he could see the etchings on the surface of the ball, which he was sure had been cast from a single lump of gold. What he thought were Sanskrit characters covered its surface, gleaming dully in the dim light. This is it, he thought. I’ve actually found it.
He reached out to touch it, and something gripped his wrist. He saw a head like a snake’s, teeth sunk into his flesh. Fear struck him like a rearing horse, knocking his body backwards in a convulsing effort to get free. Blood pounded in his ears and his eyes opened wide, and he saw before him an enormous turtle, its furry legs paddling the water as it worried at his arm, biting him.
A Kappa. It’s a Kappa.
Taro struck out with his other hand, trying to free his wrist. The ball shimmered before him, seeming at once close by and far out of reach. This is why my mother shook her head, he thought. She wasn’t pointing at me, she was pointing at this place. . . She didn’t want me to come here. Oh, gods, I’m going to drown.
Desperately he clawed at the head that had seized on his wrist, but it had clamped on with the force of a barnacle. He looked around him, trying to find something – anything – that might help him. A length of wood, perhaps.
And that was when he saw them.
Swimming towards him over the reef, like grotesque shelled dogs, was a school of grinning Kappa demons.
CHAPTER 40
TARO NEARLY BREATHED in water as he twisted his arm, trying desperately to free himself. Salt burned his throat. Already he’d been under too long, and dark stars burst in front of his eyes. His forearm burned with pain, from the tight grip of the Kappa and his own attempts to tear his limb free.
All the while, the other Kappas swam towards him.
Taro knew that Kappas were notorious for drowning the unwary, latching onto them and dragging them down into the depths, to feast on their flesh and pick their bones clean. His heart was pounding, his legs and arms thrashing, while a detached and horrible part of his mind contemplated the idea that he might be about to die.
At least I’ll see them all again, he thought. Shusaku. Mother. . .
A Kappa swam into him, bashing his head with its shell, and stars exploded in front of his eyes again. He scrabbled for purchase on the reef, and thought he’d seized a piece of coral, but it turned out to be a Kappa’s head. The thing twisted, making a sort of watery snarl, and tore at his hand with its teeth.
Then, just as he thought his fear could not reach a higher pitch, the water went dark. A cloud must have covered the moon, cutting off its light, and in the gloom he could barely make out the demons intent on drowning him. The Kappas were so many that their shells brushed against one another, and the scraping and clicking of the ivory came at him now from all sides, out of an unknowable world of blackness.
And then something hard and sharp seized his leg.
Taro opened his mouth to scream and water rushed into his mouth. His lungs flared with agony, doubling him over, as his leg and arm were pulled closer to the sharp coral. He thought, This is it—
—and then there was an ama coming towards him out of the murk, trailing a wake of phosphorescence. The woman was lithe, dark-haired, and beautiful, and she glowed as if a private moon were shining on her alone. She was dressed in the traditional ama loincloth, her body smooth and strong. Taro had never seen her before, but he knew who she was – the woman from the prophetess’s story; the one who had first dived for the ball and who had cursed the line of the emperors.
She was also, he realized suddenly, the Princess of the Hidden Waters. She and that long-ago ama were one and the same. . .
The glowing ama drifted to him and then stopped, gracefully hovering over the reef. She smiled, and Taro had never seen anything so pure or so perfect.
She has come to take me to Enma’s realm, he thought. So this is what death is like. . .
But the woman didn’t come closer. Instead her face twisted into a fierce mask of anger, and she swooped, powerful as a dolphin, at the Kappa that clutched Taro’s arm. She rushed through the demon, as if it wasn’t there, and indeed when Taro looked down the mouth was no longer gripping his arm, and the terrifying vision of the dog-limbed turtle was gone.
Moonlight reappeared, and the scene was bathed again in deep blue. Taro saw flashing white, all around him, a figure racing through the water in a protective circle. It dived on a Kappa, and the grotesque turtle became only water and bubbles. She’s saving me, he thought with wonder.
&nbs
p; His lungs fit to burst, Taro lunged forward to seize the ball, then pushed off the reef – he felt it tear the bottom of his foot, but that didn’t matter now – and began to rise towards the surface. He knew he should not go up too quickly, but he could feel the pressure on him to let air into his lungs, and also knew that if he didn’t get to the air above, he would gulp despite himself, and it wouldn’t be air, it would be water flowing into his body. The golden ball was heavy in his hands, but he clung to it, holding it tight to his chest.
I have the ball I have the ball I have the ball, he thought, over and over like a mantra. He would command vast armies, and drive them against the samurai of Lord Oda, crushing them like dragonflies between his hands. He would summon his mother to speak to him, and raise Hana from her deathlike sleep.
But first he had to live, and right now the water was pressing against him, searching with cold fingers at his eyes and his mouth and his nose, trying to force its way into him and make him one with the sea.
Panicked, but glad to be free of the demons, he saw the lightness of the surface as a rapidly nearing wall of white, and he prayed that he would reach it in time.
One heartbeat. . .
Two heartbeats. . .
Three heartbeats. . .
And then he broke the surface and air rushed into him like an invading spirit, angrily tearing his windpipe, as if to punish him for having absconded from the kingdom of air. His eyes stung, and he saw the night sky, twinkling with stars, through vision blurred by sea or tears or both, it was impossible to tell.
He was alive.
He was safe.
CHAPTER 41
SHUSAKU STEADIED HIMSELF by gripping the ship’s rail. He could feel the sting of salt spray against his face, yet he could smell pine trees, and knew that they were close to land.
‘Is this the right place?’ said Lord Tokugawa.
‘You’ve been here before,’ said Shusaku. ‘It’s where your son comes from.’
‘Yes,’ said Lord Tokugawa. ‘But I only ever saw it from the shore. You escaped by boat, you said. So tell me, are we there?’
Shusaku sighed. ‘I can’t see. How would I know?’
‘Come now,’ said Lord Tokugawa. ‘You sneaked into the fortress of Hongan-ji, and you couldn’t see then, either.’
Shusaku shrugged. It was true. He’d completed the daimyo’s insane mission and had delivered one of the new guns to the warlike monks on the mountain. It had been complicated by the fact that Lord Oda’s troops were readying themselves, and the monks believed an attack was imminent. Yet with the help of Jun, he had scaled the walls – considered impossible to climb – and gained access to the inner sanctum of the Pure Land sect, the Ikko-ikki. But nothing was over yet.
Back on the pirate boat, after the mission with the gun, the daimyo had greeted Shusaku warmly.
‘You succeeded?’ he’d asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And the boy? He died?’
‘No. I left him at the monastery, with the Ikko-ikki. As you instructed.’
‘Good,’ said Lord Tokugawa. ‘He will prove useful there, I’m sure.’ There had been a lot of commotion on the ship, and Shusaku had asked why.
‘Mount Hiei is burning,’ said Lord Tokugawa. ‘The pirates take it for an evil omen.’
‘The sacred mountain?’ Shusaku had asked. ‘I heard gunfire from there. What is happening?’
‘I believe Lord Oda is making his move,’ said the daimyo. ‘Foolish of him, of course. One should never begin play before knowing where all the pieces are.’ With that, he had left Shusaku and retired belowdecks.
Then, with the rest of the guns distributed to the pirates, Lord Tokugawa had rendezvoused with his own ship, and now they were sailing up the eastern coast of Japan, heading for the place where Shusaku believed the Buddha ball to be, assuming he was correct in thinking that the amas must have kept it hidden in Shirahama bay, where the Princess first threw it. Lord Tokugawa was determined to recover it, and with it the assurance that he would be shogun.
‘Describe the place to me,’ Shusaku said.
‘We’re towards the north of a wide, shallow bay,’ said Lord Tokugawa. ‘There are lights on the coast, clinging to a steep mountainside. It looks familiar to me, but these coastal villages are so similar.’
‘Is there a torii gate ahead, on the promontory?’
A pause. ‘Yes.’
‘Then we’re here. I’m not sure where the ball would be, if indeed it is here.’ He hoped that Taro was far from here – still safe on the ninja mountain, preferably, if he was not dead. Shusaku wouldn’t put it past the boy to try to recover the ball himself.
‘No matter,’ said Lord Tokugawa. ‘We’ll lower anchor here. In the morning we’ll have one of the local divers tell us where it is, and recover the ball for us.’ None of the samurai could swim, or the sailors, either.
Shusaku could swim, of course – Lord Tokugawa knew that. All ninjas could swim. It was often the only way to get across a moat, and to the assassination within. But Shusaku was blind, and there was no one to guide. There had to be some things he couldn’t do.
‘They might not know where it is,’ he said to the daimyo. ‘And they might not go after it anyway. They’re very superstitious. They believe certain parts of the bay to be cursed, or haunted, or both. They think it is fatal to dive there.’
Lord Tokugawa chuckled. ‘I’m sure they do. But they’ll learn that it’s fatal to refuse me too.’
Shusaku nodded, keeping his opinion to himself. Lord Tokugawa had become harder than he remembered him, more like the other daimyo than ever before. Shusaku remembered when he had been compassionate and quick to defend the weak. Shusaku himself had benefited from those traits, for he had once been a high-ranking samurai in Lord Tokugawa’s army, and a minor lord himself. After he was made a vampire by a ninja who had fallen in love with him, Lord Tokugawa was appalled but did not cast him out as he might have, merely kept him in his employ, and Shusaku had been loyal to him ever since.
And yet Lord Tokugawa had been clever then, too, and his superior skills in strategy often depended on surprise, treachery, and deceit. The man was utterly ruthless in his pursuit of power. Shusaku had seen him put innocent men to death without a backward glance, simply because they knew too much, or had associated with the wrong people. He was also unflinching in his imposition of what the samurai called honour, and had made people commit seppuku for the mildest offence.
Deep down, in fact, Shusaku had always sensed that the daimyo had kept him close not out of compassion – but out of strategy.
That was why Shusaku had kept Taro’s survival from him. It was one thing for one of your samurai to be made a vampire, especially if that gave you a valuable connection to the ninjas. But the son of a daimyo? It was unthinkable. Taro would have been killed immediately.
Lord Tokugawa clapped Shusaku on the back. ‘Soon I’ll have the ball,’ he said. ‘And then nothing can stop me being shogun.’
‘You have to get hold of it first,’ said Shusaku. ‘I’m not even sure that it’s here. And even if it is, and you can convince the villagers to help you. . . Well, these are dangerous waters. You know what they say: Kappa mo oboré-shini.’ The expression meant ‘Even Kappas drown.’ Kappas were the water spirits that abounded in these parts, a sort of supernatural turtle that sometimes caught swimmers unaware and drowned them for fun. But even Kappas could drown, just as monkeys could fall from trees, and amas could get their foot caught in the coral and die. Shusaku didn’t want Lord Tokugawa to blame him if he was thwarted – Shusaku had seen the daimyo kill too many of his followers who had failed him. And anyway, what if the villagers didn’t help? Even the threat of death might not induce them to dive the wreck. . .
‘Oh no,’ said Lord Tokugawa. ‘I have every faith in you, and the good people of Shirahama. I believe I will have the ball in moments.’
‘Moments?’ said Shusaku, confused.
‘Yes indeed,’ said Lord Tokugawa
, and Shusaku could hear mirth and triumph in his voice. ‘You see, a boy has just come to the surface by the ship, spluttering like a baby in a bath, and he’s holding a golden ball in his hand.’
CHAPTER 42
THERE WAS A loud creak from behind him and Taro turned in the water, just as rough hands seized him under the arms and hauled him upward. The ball was snatched away from him. He thought for a moment that the Kappa had followed him to the surface, but then he landed hard on a wooden surface and looked up into the smiling faces of a group of samurai. At least, they looked like samurai – but none of them wore a mon to identify their family allegiance.
Almost as if they don’t want to be recognized, thought Taro.
The armed men were clustered around a big man with startlingly sharp eyes – obviously the leader.
‘Thank you,’ said this man. He weighed the Buddha ball in his hand. ‘You have saved me a lot of trouble.’
Taro wiped the salt water from his eyes, looking around him. He was on a small ship, with a covered sleeping area at the back. He spotted a couple of suntanned men who had to be sailors, but otherwise everyone on board was a samurai.
Behind the samurai stood a figure dressed in a dark robe that covered his face entirely. He was the only man on the ship not dressed in samurai garb, and he carried himself differently. Almost like a ninja. But that was absurd – why would these samurai be consorting openly with a ninja? Such men served private purposes, carrying out assassinations under cover of night. They didn’t travel with warriors.
The big samurai bore down on Taro, and he pulled himself backward, wanting to get away from this colossal man with his hard eyes.
The big samurai chuckled. ‘It’s as if he’s seen a ghost,’ he said. Some of the other men laughed.
