Black Warrior

by Tiffiny Hall

  ‘Mum!’ I scream. She braces herself against the bars and stays still until he finishes roaring. When I look down at her, we have company.

  ‘Art! Cinnamon! Elecktra! Sabo! Sergeant Major!’ I yell down to all of them. It seems the whole town is gathered around the Ferris wheel, hundreds of people. I shudder. I. Need. My. Powers. I’ve fought one thousand warriors at the Cemetery of Warriors, I’ve defeated a gladiator, a murderous monk, that deranged Apache warrior. They were hard work, but nothing compared to this. How do you fight those you love?

  ‘You are nothing without your powers,’ Old Roxy sneers into my ear. I ignore her. I may not have powers, but I have my training.

  As I stare into the eyes of the Black Warrior, I think about the legend of the White Warrior. You have to respect your gifts. My powers have left, so I must respect that and learn the lesson. The Black Warrior took revenge when his powers were taken and look what happened to him. I have to prove to the legend that I’m a fighter, strong on the inside.

  The townsfolk look up at me, lean their heads slowly to one side as if listening to the air flatten and crack beneath the Tigon’s wings, then open their mouths into black holes. They draw in a collective breath and the wind sucks out from all around me. My hair blows across my face. Suddenly a wall of fire explodes up towards us. The Tigon beats his wings as their mouths hiss flames. Fire catches on the bottom of the Ferris wheel and begins to burn towards Mum and me.

  ‘Fire breathers!’ I yell at her.

  ‘Don’t look down!’ she screams up to me, continuing to swing her way towards my carriage.

  The Tigon roars, nearly blowing my cheeks off my face. Then his roar turns to a growl that channels fire onto the carriage next to mine. The carriage explodes into the night’s sky. I duck as it plummets to the ground, its flaming pink canvas roof sailing down behind it. I look around desperately. There’s nowhere safe to climb.

  The Tigon weaves in and out of the Ferris wheel, knocking it with his burning tail, toying with us. The whole structure rattles, forcing Mum to stop her advance and hold on. He flies to Mum and stares her in the eye, then arches his head back so his whiskers catch the silver of the moon and roars. Fire blasts onto the carriage Mum is standing on just as she leaps up and grabs a bar above her with one arm, flames licking at her toes.

  The Ferris wheel shakes and two more carriages plummet to the ground. I look down and the fire-breathing army stares up at me, waiting, mouths open.

  Thump. I spin around. Jackson flashes visible. He has always been the best climber.

  A fireball flies through the air at the Tigon, but he swats it away with his sparking tail. Hero rides a wind tunnel up to the carriage next to us.

  ‘What on earth?’ I hear Mum beneath me.

  An explosion, three more carriages burst into flames. Hero keeps shooting fireballs at the Tigon. Jackson looks to the sky, which is jagged with pregnant clouds. He summons the clouds to move their bowls over us, then he waves his arms to the sky. Heavy, eye-stabbing rain falls onto our faces, extinguishing the fire around us. Then a clap of primeval thunder. I grip the slippery side of the carriage as it rocks ferociously.

  ‘Mum!’ I yell.

  Mum is hanging a few carriages below me. She is stuck. ‘Roxy, climb down to me!’ she shouts.

  I realise that without my powers I’m terrified of heights. ‘I can’t!’ I turn to Jackson and disappear into his chest. He pushes me away gently and grips my shoulders.

  ‘You must,’ he whispers. ‘Climb down, we’ll cover you from up here, then once you hit the ground transport to the Cemetery of Warriors. You’ll be safer there.’

  I look at him.

  ‘Forgot. The no powers thing,’ he says.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Hero yells.

  ‘You’re forgiven,’ I call back, realising he isn’t apologising for anything bad he did in the past, but calling us to action.

  Jackson kisses me urgently. His kiss passes across my lips, a shooting star across the black night of my fear.

  ‘Once you get down, run. Go to Samurai Falls. It’s wet and hidden,’ he says.

  Hero is fighting the Tigon fire with fire, riding wind tunnels and throwing fireballs. ‘I’ve got your back,’ he calls over to me.

  I slide down onto the floor of the carriage. The Ferris wheel is on fire, but luckily the rain is helping to contain the flames. The carriage swings violently as the Tigon continues to weave in and out of the bars, thrashing the structure with his tail. My fear reaches to the rafters. I slip one toe over the edge and my stomach lurches. I slide my other toes over the edge, followed by my legs, until I am hanging only by my fingertips. I look up into Jackson’s wide apple eyes as I feel beneath me for a bar. Nothing. I swing my legs frantically. Then a bit of slippery metal, one toe connects, then two. I flick off my shoes so I have more grip. My toes curl around the bar. The Tigon flies towards me and beats his wings. I scream, the carriage shudders and my feet lose their grip. Our carriage dismantles on one side. I am now barely holding on to a carriage that is scarcely holding on to the Ferris wheel. This is not awesome.

  ‘Jackson!’ I yell. He is grasping my fingers. My feet find new footing. I don’t waste time and reach one hand out to the nearest bar. If I can grab hold, I can slide down to Mum like a fireman. The Tigon flies towards me again. He bares his razor teeth, his snarl twisting. I stare deep into his eyes — Kimo is nowhere to be seen.

  Hero flies towards us, a fireball cupped in his hand, but he can’t throw it at the Tigon without hitting me. The Tigon hovers eye to eye with me. I close my eyes. I feel his enormous nostrils sniff me. I wait for the deathly heat. Nothing. I open my eyes and he has disappeared. I hear the beating of wings below and see his black mass about to envelop my mother. I slide down the pole urgently towards her, my palms burning from the steel. Mum is hanging on to the bar with one arm. I pull out my nunchucks and sling them over the bar. Mum grabs hold of them with one hand as I lean down and clutch her other hand. She looks up at me, trusting. She grips my hand tight. I struggle to hold my mother’s weight and I can see the nunchucks waning too. I wrap my legs around the scaffolding and backbend down to her, so I’m upside down. My fear of heights is squashed by my fear of losing my mother. I hold Mum’s hand with my heart in my throat. Her eyes bulge and a dark shadow falls across her face.

  ‘Roxy!’ she yells.

  I look up and see the Tigon perched in the carriage above us like a vulture. His breath is rancid. He pants and growls, waiting to pounce. He has us, dangling, helpless, powerless. I lock my ankles tighter and try to grip my toes. Every bit of strength is focused on hanging on to Mum.

  ‘Hold on!’ I scream. I look down at my mother; I have her life in my hands. I look up at my father; if I don’t kill him, we will die and everyone will remain cursed forever. A scythe slices my heart in two. How can I decide — save Mum or kill Dad?

  My thoughts spin, working their way down my body like hula hoops. Save Mum, kill Dad. Lose Mum, liberate Dad. The decision is a hot coal smouldering in my chest. I haven’t even had a chance to decide if I love Kimo, let alone if I want to kill him. He could have taken revenge on Elecktra for not being his own child, but I had his powers. Only a true monster would use his child to avenge himself on his wife. A monster. I stare up at the growling Tigon. His fur, black and sharp, glistens in the moonlight. Rain pounds my face. My grip on Mum is slipping. He is waiting to kill us. I tighten my grip around Mum’s fingers and make my choice.

  A voice suddenly transports me back to my dream. ‘Roxy, let me go!’ Mum yells up at me and begins to fight to be free. ‘Let me go! He wants me! Go with Hero — get away!’

  I resist her struggle. Hero is creeping up behind the Tigon. Jackson is invisible and I can tell he is climbing towards the monster because carriages swerve as he lands his weight in them. I look at my feet and grip tighter. Pink canopies from the Ferris wheel carriages float past me like tossed handkerchiefs.

  The coal is now a ball of fire, rising in my thro
at. I digest the anger and feel it transform into a familiar feeling at the tip of my fingers, calling for one thing. Then something Kimo said lights up my mind.

  ‘Roxy, let me go!’ Mum yells again and the words hijack me back to my dream. I’ve experienced this before, the feeling of steel under my feet and my mother’s hand gripping me for life. My fingers twitch. It was Mum in the dream. And now I know what I must do. The dream and Kimo’s words coalesce like cotton candy on a stick. It’s a risk, but looking down at my mother dangling by the chain of my nunchucks and hearing the Tigon growl above me, I have no choice and reach for my back pocket.

  Suddenly the nunchucks snap. Mum screams, but I catch her. Both her hands grip my fingers. Her legs swing frantically beneath. She looks down. The fire army blows a wall of fire towards us, an ocean of deep red.

  The Tigon roars and leaps towards us, like my old Tigon birthmark. He stretches himself out, his claws reaching for my neck, his powerful hind legs propelling him forwards. Holding Mum with one arm, I reach into my back pocket and feel the nib of my ninja star. I whip it out as the Tigon soars above us. He lands on our rafter, the impact loosening my grip. The Tigon slashes at us with his claws, trying to amputate my arm from Mum. I need him closer. He paws at Mum.

  ‘Just take me!’ she screams. ‘Kimo, I’m sorry! I never meant to hurt you! I loved you!’ Her eyes shine with tears. Her face melts. She doesn’t look strong as she usually does, but vulnerable, as if Kimo’s love has made her weak. Maybe he is the reason she kept so many secrets. Perhaps the threat of his revenge always made her cautious and on guard.

  The Tigon tears her uniform. His teeth, crocodile sharp, drip blood. I scream. He leaps towards me. I see my target, his heel. As he flies over me, I flick my ninja star towards the sole of his foot. I grip Mum tight as we watch the flash of silver slice through the air and pierce the Tigon’s heel. His wings paralyse immediately, he growls a cry into the air, coughs fire, then plummets to the earth. The townsfolk disperse as he smashes onto the ground between them.

  Jackson and Hero help to pull Mum up onto the rafter to safety. She flops next to me, holding her slashed side. We peer over at the Tigon, but he has disappeared. A man lies where the Tigon once was. I look at my foot. The birthmark of the Tigon once again flies from my toes to my heel. My powers are restored. I summon water and turn the rain off. The sky clears, casting everyone in white moonlight. Jackson and Hero touch knuckles.

  ‘What are you doing up there?’ Cinnamon calls. Her eyes are back to normal, their blue depths shimmering.

  Hero’s face lights up. ‘I’m coming,’ he calls down.

  The townsfolk look their regular selves, though a little disorientated. I don’t think they can remember how they came to be there in the first place.

  The Ferris wheel is a mess — the carriages still kindle and the structure is collapsing, half-melted from the fire-breathing army and its leader. I summon water to extinguish the remaining fires as we climb down to safety. Wind tunnels support us all as we swing towards the ground.

  As soon as Hero touches down, he runs over and hugs Cinnamon. She looks shocked. She peers over his shoulder at me with her large azure eyes, then winks. Did Cinnamon know he liked her all along?

  ‘I’m glad your hair is back to normal. It’s really pretty,’ Hero tells her and she turns the same colour as her curly locks.

  Art rushes towards Mum and me, enveloping us in his rubber arms, still wearing his wetsuit.

  ‘Yes!’ Mum cries.

  ‘Yes what?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, I will marry you!’

  Elecktra squeals with delight as she joins in the group hug.

  I pull away and Jackson takes my hand. He brushes a ribbon of hair off my face and leans down and kisses me. It’s our longest kiss and I don’t care who sees it. Then we walk over to Kimo.

  ‘Is he dead?’ I whisper, kneeling down beside my father. No longer the monster; now only the broken man.

  His eyes flutter open. ‘Roxy?’ he whispers. ‘You’re the White Warrior.’

  I nod.

  ‘You lifted the c-curse,’ he stutters.

  Jackson helps him to sit up. Kimo looks over to Mum and Art still hugging. Elecktra is doing her victory dance around them.

  I’m speechless; it’s like meeting my dad for the very first time. Kimo glances at the Tigon birthmark on my bare foot, then words slowly come to me like feathers falling from the sky. I catch one at a time. ‘Our feet tell stories,’ I say.

  Kimo nods, his long chocolate hair falling across his face. He brushes it behind his ears and ties it in a ponytail. The moonlight sinks into the fanning wrinkles around his eyes. I can’t read his expression, which is changing constantly like a puddle of water.

  ‘You know what?’ I say to him. He looks at me, a strand of his dark hair fighting free and whipping him in the eyes, as mine always does. ‘The greatest power isn’t wind or fire.’

  He takes a deep breath as if breathing in the night, his first night in many years as a man, not a beast. ‘No?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s love.’

  Kimo smiles and shakes his head. The movement knocks something wet out of his eye that reflects in a flash of moon. He reaches out and squeezes my arm. His touch feels like a warm hug. ‘Thank you,’ he says. And his thank you feels like he’s saying he loves me.

  Jackson pulls me into him and we watch Kimo introduce himself to Art. I realise that as long as I have family, I could lose everything and I would be okay. I know Dad tried to kill me, but that’s sort of how my family works. We almost kill each other sometimes, but as long as we love each other to death, that’s the important part.

  EPILOGUE

  Hero, Cinnamon, Jackson, Elecktra and I stand before the gates at Hindley Hall on Monday morning. Kids file through them as usual, the A-list kids entering via Gate One, the unpopular kids by way of Gate Two. We’ll be late if we don’t go in now.

  I wrench my gaze away from Jackson and hit my eyes to the pavement to walk towards Gate Two. So much has changed. I now know my father, the good and the bad; my sister is a samurai; my mother makes mistakes; and yet … I stop and turn to look at Cinnamon walking beside me. She is trim in her school uniform, her orange afro as wild as ever, her face almost unrecognisable. Yet I remain unchanged, still thinking of myself as Gate Two despite being ninja then the White Warrior, ninja again and back to the White Warrior. The thought catches my skin on fire. I hand-brake Cinnamon’s arm.

  ‘Aren’t you sick of this?’ I ask.

  She knows exactly what I’m talking about and leans her eyes back towards Hero, who waits with Elecktra and Jackson outside Gate One, watching her fondly.

  The taste of grass invades my mouth. I wait until there is a gap in human traffic, then summon the earth to move the concrete bases of both gate structures. The ground rumbles, making the gates rattle and waver. I summon wind to knock them to the ground. The gates crash into each other, the sound reverberating through the school.

  I wave Jackson over to the centre of the fence. He holds open his blazer to cloak my hands as I run two hot lasers of fire down the middle of the fence with the tips of my fingers to make a wide opening. Jackson flaps his blazer closed and hooks an arm around me. Elecktra, Hero and Cinnamon join us. Elecktra takes my hand and together we walk through the new entrance to the school. All the other Gate Ones and Gate Twos follow us. There are no bullies or victims, no samurai versus ninja, no cool and uncool — just kids. For the first time in my life I feel like I fit in, not with the others, but finally, with myself.

  GLOSSARY

  Black Warrior — a White Warrior who uses their powers for evil and is cursed as the Black Warrior.

  Dojang — traditional place of Taekwondo practice.

  Dojo — sacred place of ninja and samurai training.

  Fire breather — someone who is cursed by the Tigon and can breathe fire like a dragon.

  Hook kick — a kick that strikes from the side using the heel of the foot. Executed
similarly to a side kick, but aimed slightly off target and propelling backwards.

  Katana — a type of samurai sword.

  Ninja — known for wearing the best uniform in the business, ninjas were members of a feudal Japanese society of mercenary agents, highly trained in martial arts and stealth, for covert purposes ranging from espionage to sabotage and assassination. Also refers to anyone super cool.

  Nunchucks — hand weapons used for frontal assault, consisting of two sticks joined by a chain.

  Red Samurai — a super-powerful samurai who is possessed by the Serpent Sword. They are completely red, from hair to toenail.

  Samurai — the ninja’s enemy. They are warriors who fight with swords. Super deadly. Love to wear red.

  Serpent Sword — a sword filled with ancient warrior blood that has the power to possess the samurai who captures it and turn them evil.

  Shuriken — a throwing blade or ninja stars.

  Side kick — a sideways kick using the blade of your foot. You can show off by performing a double or triple side kick.

  Taekwondo — a Korean martial art and the national sport of South Korea. In Korean, tae means ‘to strike with foot’; kwon ‘to strike with fist’; and do ‘path’. Taekwondo is ‘the way of the hand and the foot’. It combines combat techniques, self-defence, sport, exercise, board breaking, step-sparring, yelling, patterns, meditation and philosophy.

  Tigon — a monster with the body of a tiger and the wings, tail and fire breath of a dragon.

  White Warrior — a ninja who can control the elements, flash invisible and fly.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  If I could use capitals to thank these people (in a way that would not offend my editor), I would. Their thank yous deserve a holler, a megaphone, a shout-out; not a tiny paragraph at the end of this book. Writing the Roxy Ran trilogy has been as much an adventure for me as it was for my characters. I am indebted to my inspiring publisher, Lisa Berryman, who believed in my story and believed in me and did much to shape us both. So proud to be represented by my passionate literary agent, Clare Forster, who has been with me every heart-stopping moment along the way. Kate Burnitt, you are brilliant and make editing fully fun!