Kate didn’t recognize anything from their first walk up through the forest, but that meant nothing—there must be many ways down off the mountain. As they reached the bottom, the ground became less steep, and at times they lost track of the hoofprints and worried they were going the wrong way, until they picked up the trail again. The first sign of civilization was a small shrine containing a statue with a bag around its neck. Cormac reached inside the bag and held up a handful of pebbles.
As they walked on, the mountainside changed from forest to terraced fields, all growing the same green crop. Kate didn’t remember seeing these fields from the helicopter when they’d first arrived. Perhaps we’re on the other side of the mountain?
“Paddies,” she said.
“You talking to me?” said Cormac in a funny accent.
Ghost glanced at Kate, eyebrows raised.
She shook her head. “Paddy fields,” she explained, pointing at the terraces. “Rice.”
At the bottom of the paddies, a narrow and dusty road snaked into the distance, but there was no sign of Kiko. The trail of hoofprints had disappeared too. As they looked around for it, Kate spotted three figures working in one of the fields. “Let’s ask them if they’ve seen a horse.”
“Aren’t you forgetting we’re dressed as ninjas,” said Cormac, “in the heart of the Samurai Empire?”
Kate shrugged. “I forgot.”
“We have nothing to lose,” said Ghost. “We waste more time—Kiko goes farther away.”
He strode off toward the farmers, and Kate and Cormac had no option but to follow, edging along a little mud wall that divided the flooded paddies. As they got closer they could make out a man, woman, and boy working in the field, pulling weeds and throwing them to one side. The man and boy wore nothing but rags around their waists. Their bodies were thin but muscular, and very tanned. The woman wore ragged clothes and a straw hat.
It was the woman who noticed the trio approaching. She let out a startled gasp, alerting the man, who looked equally frightened. The boy looked more curious than scared.
The man said something, and suddenly the three of them ran away, splashing through the water like frightened animals. When they reached the mud wall at the far side of the paddy, they raced along it as fast as they could. Once, the boy stopped and looked back, but he was soon called by the man. In minutes, they had disappeared into a clump of trees.
“The shōzoku must have frightened them,” said Cormac.
Kate thought about it. “It might have been the suits, but I don’t think they’d have recognized us as ninjas. I’m sure the Black Lotus don’t parade about in public in their shōzoku.”
Ghost shrugged, turned around, and retraced his steps. Cormac and Kate followed him along the narrow mud wall. As they reached the end, Ghost dashed forward.
“Horse footprints,” he said, kneeling beside some U-shaped indentations in the mud.
They followed the trail down the hill only to lose it again at the road.
“Blast!” yelled Ghost.
The road’s hard, dusty surface showed no sign of hoofprints to indicate which way Kiko had gone.
Cormac crawled around the road, searching for clues, but Kate called for him to be quiet.
“What?” he asked, looking up.
Kate put her fingers to her lips and pointed to two birds warbling on a nearby branch. She cocked her head to hear what they were saying. They were arguing about the number of legs on the creature that had gone down the road.
“Four, there were definitely four, I counted four, yes, four … ” sang one.
But the other chirped, “Two more on top, two more on top, makes six, it does, six … ”
Kate tuned out their chatter to think. Four legs with two more on top? A horse and rider!
“Which way did they go?” called Kate.
The birds fell silent and looked at Kate. The beak of one opened, but no sound came out.
“This way, this way, this way,” cheeped the other, flying off down the road.
Kate glanced at the boys. “Follow the birds,” she said, running down the road in the direction the farm workers had gone.
But after half an hour’s walking there was still no sign of people—no houses, no cars, nothing—though, judging by the reaction of the rice farmers, the locals weren’t going to be of any help.
Kate started to get a bad feeling when she noticed movement in the bamboo groves that ran alongside the road. “Don’t look,” she whispered, “but a small boy is following us.”
“Where?” said Cormac, looking around.
It was enough to frighten the boy off, and he disappeared up the hillside, leaving a path of flattened grass behind him.
“I told you not to look!” Kate scowled. “I think it was that boy from the paddy field. He might have been useful.”
“Too late now,” said Ghost, looking up the hillside at the fleeing boy.
Cormac took off through the bamboo and up the grassy slope. In seconds, he stood holding the boy and waved back down to the road.
“Jeez, he’s fast,” said Kate.
Ghost nodded. “Like a runaway brain.”
Kate smiled. “I think you mean ‘train.’ ”
The boy looked petrified when Cormac grabbed him. He cowered and babbled in Japanese, and when Cormac released him he fell back into the long grass and scuttled a safe distance away.
“It’s OK,” said Cormac, in a soothing voice. “Tomodachi— ‘friend.’ ”
But the boy continued to talk and gesture excitedly. Cormac could only understand the odd word here and there.
“Tengu,” said the boy, pointing at Cormac.
Gasping for breath, Kate and Ghost arrived. The boy flinched when they flopped down beside him.
“He doesn’t speak any English,” said Cormac, joining them. “And he seemed terrified of me when I caught him. He keeps calling me Tengu, whatever that is.”
“Well, I don’t blame him,” said Kate. “Seeing the speed you traveled up the hill to catch him, I’d be frightened too.” She turned to the boy. “Tengu?”
Cormac was surprised she didn’t know the word. She had been one of the best in their Japanese language classes.
“Jikininki?” replied the boy.
Kate shook her head. The boy put his fingers up to his forehead like horns and growled.
Kate laughed and introduced herself, Cormac, and Ghost. “Onamae wa?”
“Yoshiro,” he answered, pointing to himself.
Kate bowed her head. “Konnichiwa.”
Yoshiro smiled, so she asked another question. Cormac picked up the word “ikiru”—“to live.”
Yoshiro pointed up the hill behind him.
“Ask him if he saw a lady ride down the mountain on a horse,” Ghost suggested.
When Kate asked the question Yoshiro nodded. He pointed over the mountain and said something, and though Cormac didn’t understand it, he did catch one word.
“Did he just say ‘Goda’?” asked Cormac.
Kate nodded. “He said the woman is heading toward Yosa, where the shōgun, Lord Goda lives.”
“Doesn’t he mean President Goda?”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Maybe ‘shōgun’ is the same as ‘president’ in Japan?” suggested Ghost.
“I don’t know,” said Kate, anxiety etched on her forehead. “We did this in history class. There hasn’t been a shōgun in Japan for a long time. Who did Makoto say Lady Kiko was?”
“Lord Goda’s wife,” said Ghost.
Cormac shook his head. “But that was five hundred years ago.”
“Exactly,” said Kate.
She was silent for a moment, her face drawn.
“I’ll ask him why there are no cars on the road,” she said. But when she did ask, the boy didn’t seem to understand. She made car noises and mimed steering, which made Cormac and Ghost smile, but Yoshiro just stared back at her.
Kate threw her hands up in frustration.
“It’s like he doesn’t know what a car is.”
Cormac stopped smiling. “Ask him about a phone. Even if he doesn’t have one, he’ll know what it is.”
Kate turned back to Yoshiro. “Denwa?”
“Denwa?” he repeated, frowning.
“You know,” said Kate, holding her thumb and little finger to the side of her head. “Brrrring! Brrrring!”
Yoshiro looked even more confused now. He shook his head.
The three friends stared at one another.
“He doesn’t know about cars or telephones?” said Cormac.
Kate spoke in hurried sentences to Yoshiro, her face growing more concerned with each of his replies. Cormac tried to keep up with what they were saying, but they spoke so quickly, he was soon lost. A bad feeling twisted in his stomach.
After a lengthy conversation, Kate turned to him and Ghost, her face pale.
Cormac’s forehead felt clammy. He knew what she was going to say. Only Ghost seemed oblivious of their predicament.
“What?” he asked defensively, as Kate and Cormac stared at him.
Kate swallowed. “I have some bad news.”
“Bad news?” said Ghost.
“When we stepped through that hole of light, not only did we step into a new day, but also into a new century. Or rather, an old century.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve gone back in time. We are now in sixteenth-century Japan.”
Cormac watched the emotions on Ghost’s face morph from puzzlement to disbelief.
“You are pulling my foot,” said Ghost.
“Leg,” corrected Cormac.
“What?”
Cormac started to explain, but Kate shook her head. “We’ve gone back in time, Ghost. No cars. No phones. And a shōgun rules Japan.”
Ghost seemed to think about this for a while before nodding at Yoshiro. “Maybe he’s lying.”
“I don’t think so,” said Kate. “That hole Kiko cut in the air was some sort of door to another time. It explains the sudden change from night to day.”
“It also explains some of the things we saw in the map room at Renkondo,” said Cormac.
Kate thought for a moment before speaking. “So the swords are time-traveling devices?”
Ghost stood up. “It doesn’t matter. We must get the sword back.”
“Shouldn’t we be more concerned about getting back home?” said Cormac, standing.
Ghost grabbed Cormac by the shoulders and looked him in the face. “That sword is the only way to get back home!”
“He’s right,” said Kate. “We don’t know how the sword’s magic works, but without it we have no hope of returning to our own time. We should go.”
She bowed to Yoshiro. “Arigatō.”
The boy asked her a question.
“Yosa,” replied Kate, pointing toward the road.
Yoshiro shook his head and spoke.
“What did he say?” asked Cormac.
“He says there’s a samurai checkpoint two ri down the road.”
“And?”
“God, Cormac! Did you listen to anything they told us in class? Samurai are ruthless warriors. They don’t like your bow, you’re dead. You look at them funny, you’re dead. ‘Seppuku’ ring a bell? If a samurai screws up, he cuts his own guts open with a sword. And these samurai are Lord Goda’s. Yoshiro says they have no honor.”
“They’re like Kats?”
“I guess. What do you think they’d do to three Black Lotus shinobi?”
Yoshiro spoke again, and Kate translated. “He says we can cross the mountains to Yosa, though it will take longer.”
Ghost thanked him with a bow.
Cormac wasn’t as enthusiastic. “How do we know this isn’t a trap? We’ve only just met this guy.”
“What other choice do we have?” asked Kate.
Cormac knew she was right. He nodded and bowed to Yoshiro. “Arigatō.”
Yoshiro led the way through the long grass. At the top of the hill, the ground leveled and a little way off they saw a small village of thatched houses.
“Kini kakuretete,” ordered Yoshiro, pointing to a clump of trees before running toward the houses.
“He said to wait here,” translated Kate.
“Where’s he going?” asked Cormac.
Kate shrugged.
“He could be raising the alarm.”
Kate shook her head. “I don’t think so. From the way he spoke it seems he hates Lord Goda. The shōgun’s men attacked his village recently, killing Yoshiro’s grandfather.”
Cormac took out his binoculars and trained them on Yoshiro as he entered the village. Much to his relief, the boy didn’t seem to be giving them away. Instead he skulked about as if trying to avoid attention. When he disappeared into a house, Cormac scanned the rest of the village. The houses were all wooden and raised off the ground on thick posts. Smoke rose through the thatched roofs, chickens and ducks wandered between the houses, and children chased after one another over low rickety fences made from branches.
He zoomed in on a small knot of people in the center of the village. They were gathered around a man and woman who looked very much like the ones they had seen with Yoshiro in the paddy field. The man spoke excitedly to his neighbors. Cormac licked his lips nervously. Was he talking about them or Kiko? He focused back on the house Yoshiro had entered and watched as the boy came out and rushed toward them with a bundle of cloth in his arms.
When he reached their hiding place, he stared at the binocs.
“Binoculars,” said Cormac, handing them to him to try.
When Yoshiro first put the lenses up to his eyes, he jumped back with fright, dropping them. Cormac showed him what to do, and he gasped in wonder as he focused in on his village.
Shaking his head, he smiled and handed them three straw hats and a bundle of clothes. Kate took hers behind some trees while Cormac and Ghost changed into cotton trousers and coarse smocks made from something like hemp.
Even when Kate returned to the group dressed as a peasant, she still looked beautiful. She spun around, whipping her blond hair over her shoulder. “I heard hemp was hot this year.”
Cormac laughed. She smiled back and piled her hair on top of her head, hiding it beneath the straw hat.
Yoshiro gave them each a bag to carry their shōzoku and boots. He spoke to Kate, pointing to a path through the trees. Kate nodded as she listened to his directions before bowing in thanks.
“Yes,” said Cormac, bowing. “Arigatō gozaimasu.”
Yoshiro smiled and bowed back. “Sayōnara,” he said before turning toward his village.
Kate pulled her binoculars out of her bag and raced after him. She pushed them into his hand. He smiled and bowed again before continuing on his way.
Barefoot, Cormac, Ghost, and Kate set off through the trees, leaving the village behind.
* * *
THEY TREKKED ACROSS GRASSY SLOPES and shady woodland, following faint tracks through the vegetation. Rolling hills of rich green and yellow stretched toward hazy mountain peaks, in what was some of the most amazing scenery Cormac had ever seen. In the distance, they caught sight of other small villages like Yoshiro’s, and once, they had to leave the path and hide in the grass to avoid an approaching monk clad in white robes.
They walked for hours, mainly in silence, with Kate leading the way. The time helped Cormac sort out the mess in his head. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes, but Kiko’s sword had definitely cut a hole in the night air. The blinding light that had beamed through it was daylight from another time. Another century, for God’s sake. Ghost’s desperate mission now became his too as he finally acknowledged the truth of what Ghost had said—that the only way they would return to Renkondo was by retrieving the sword.
They came across another shrine, and this time Cormac recognized the statue. It was Buddha, sitting in the lotus position with his eyes closed and right palm raised. Ghost took one o
f the tangerines left there by visiting pilgrims. It reminded Cormac how hungry he was.
He grabbed one of the tangerines and tossed another to Kate. “Buddha wouldn’t want us to starve.”
Kate took Savage out of her bag and began to peel her fruit.
Ghost looked glum as he chewed his food.
“What’s up?” asked Cormac.
“This.” He gestured at the scenery. “This is all my fault.”
“Hey,” said Cormac. “We’re only stuck in the sixteenth century. It’s no big deal!”
They laughed.
Ghost smiled. “Thank you.”
Cormac punched him playfully on the shoulder. “That’s what friends are for. It’s good to have you back.”
Kate stood up and looked across the hills at the sun sinking low in the sky. “We’d better keep going.”
Cormac dragged his feet along the track. Technically it was over five hundred years since he’d slept. But that wasn’t right either, because the last time he’d slept was in the future, which was in five hundred years’ time. His brain ached as he tried to make sense of it. He gave up and ran after Ghost and Kate, down the hillside.
As the sun dipped behind the mountains, it spilled its fire into the sky, staining it a grapefruit pink. Kate pointed out the road below them and, farther along it, a town unlike anything Cormac had ever seen before. Where Ballyhook was an industrial town full of smoking factories and smog-smothered houses, Yosa had trees and winding streets, curved roofs and pointed spires. And in the center of it all towered an imposing building, dark and hunched over like a giant cat.
“Yosa Castle,” said Kate.
“Well, the next bit should be easy,” said Cormac, looking down at the castle.
“You think?” said Kate.
“Um … no.”
As dusk fell, tiny lights appeared in the town. Ghost crouched with his friends behind some trees and watched the road below, where farmers pulled carts loaded with yams, greens, and bamboo into Yosa. Small thatched houses lined the road, and outside them people sat at charcoal braziers, relaxing after a day’s work. The place couldn’t have looked more different from his favela in Rio. It sounded different too—silent, apart from the occasional muted laugh of a child or rumble of a cart. No shouting, singing, music, gunshots, screams, squealing tires.
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