by Zoe Marriott
Then he shook his head, and just like that, the moment passed. “The rest is confused. I must tell you everything, because I do not know which parts are truly important and which seem important only to me.
“Just after I turned seventeen, a newcomer settled in the village. He was wealthy and well-mannered, although he was considered a little strange with his solitary habits. But within a few weeks of his arrival, people began to go missing from the village. They simply vanished – from their fields, their beds, their baths. None of us had any idea of where they had gone, and they were none of them the kind of people who would run away and leave their families.
“One night one of the missing, a young girl, came back. At first she seemed exactly as normal, and her family were so happy to see her that they welcomed her into their arms with few questions, and did not doubt her when she said that she could not remember anything from the time she had been gone. For two days the village rejoiced. On the third day, her family were found slaughtered in their beds. Each of them, from her baby brother to her ancient grandmother, had been sucked dry of blood. There was no sign of the girl. But bloody tracks led from the house of death to the house of the newcomer.”
Jack gulped audibly. I sat frozen against the booth, the coffee glugging uneasily in my stomach.
“Many people wanted to drag the newcomer out and kill him, believing him to be a demon. Hearing the commotion outside his house, the newcomer threw open his doors and told us that he knew what monster haunted our village and how to destroy it. He claimed the beast, sensing he knew this, had stalked his house in the night, but had been unable to enter it because of the protections he had put in place. And when we looked, we saw bloody hand prints and claw marks, signs that something had tried to get in but failed.
“The newcomer brought out ancient scrolls and papers and showed us pictures and descriptions of just such events as had overtaken us. The nature of the beast was that of a nine-tailed cat which supped on human blood. Having fed from a man or woman, it could take their form and all their memories so that it might slip unnoticed into their life and prey on their loved ones. It was a Nekomata. It could be killed, but only by one with great strength, speed, and skill. One who was willing to risk his life for his village.”
“You,” I whispered. “Your village picked you.”
His shoulders tensed, and he let out a long, slow sigh. “I volunteered.”
“God,” Jack breathed. “I can’t even… That was so brave.”
Shinobu shook his head again. His eyes were shut now, and his back hunched. “It was not bravery. It was fear. It was very clear by then that no one was safe, and I had already lost my family once. I could not endure the thought of losing anyone else. I could not bear to watch and wait for it to happen. I needed to do something, to fight, even if that was selfish. She – they begged me not to go.” His hands clenched on the table top. “Begged me. I ignored their pleas. For myself, for my own sanity, I volunteered. I thought – I thought the worst that could happen to me was death.”
The worst that could happen?
I wanted to climb over the table to him. To put my arms around him. To tell him that it was all right now, it would all be all right. Anything to make him sit up out of that defensive ball of agony and open his eyes again. But it wouldn’t be all right. It would never be all right.
He had lost everything, and he didn’t even know why.
Nothing I can possibly say or do will make it better.
“I saw the fight in my dream,” I prompted softly, trying to drag him back from the memories.
“Huh? Hang on, are these the dreams you were babbling about before?” Jack asked.
“Yes. I didn’t remember them until last night when I… Well, you know after the accident, when I was out cold. I’ve been dreaming about him for years. I saw him…” I saw him die. And he had seemed to see me, recognize me, as he lay dying. It made no sense. It had happened hundreds of years before I was born. “He beat the Nekomata, but it got him before it turned to stone.”
“I was careless,” Shinobu admitted, opening his eyes at last. “Over-confident. I thought the monster was done-for after I wounded it.”
I hadn’t thought he looked all that confident. I thought he’d looked as if he’d gone into that fight prepared for, even expecting, death. I wondered if the ones he cared for so much had ever really appreciated the depths of his love for them, a love so great that it had been easier for him to embrace the probability of dying than live with the risk that they might be hurt.
What would it feel like, to be loved like that?
“So what happened then?” Jack asked. “I mean … did you die? How did you get to be here, alive, in London, five hundred years later?”
Shinobu spread his hands. “I do not know. That is the truth.” He explained to Jack – more plainly and bluntly than he had to me – how he had found himself trapped in a timeless, inescapable prison. “If it was death, then I could never escape it. There seemed no hope. Until…” He looked at me, and the tense, unhappy expression on his face lightened a little. “Until I began to see Mio-dono, in the darkness. She was a child that first time, tiny and delicate, her hair long and her feet bare. She held my sword – this sword – in her hands, though she could barely lift the weight. I saw her, and I had life again. A half-life, surely, but better than what had come before. From that moment, I have been connected to her. Like a shadow, I have trailed in the wake of her brightness.”
“That’s … sweet? And also kind of creepy…” Jack said uncertainly.
I sat bolt upright in the booth, both hands flying up to my face. “You saw that? You saw me with the sword, when I was a kid? With my ojiichan? You were with me all these years?”
Shinobu nodded warily.
“Oh my God. I know where you were. I know where you were trapped. You were in the sword.”
CHAPTER 9
CAT FIGHT
I was…?” He stared down at the weapon.
“You were dying,” I said slowly, working it out. “You had the sword in your hand. And somehow – I don’t know how – something happened, and you ended up inside it. Like a genie in a bottle. It makes sense. That’s why you remember me from when Ojiichan first showed me the katana. I felt that connection. I felt something respond to me. That was you. That’s why I have been dreaming about you all these years. Shinobu, the blade was your prison.”
“The blade?” Jack repeated doubtfully. “He was in a sword? Is that possible?”
“Is a giant nine-tailed demon-cat possible?” I asked, rather sarcastically.
She blinked. “Fair point.”
After glancing at the barista to make sure her attention was elsewhere, I drew the katana out through the hole in my coat and laid it on the edge of the table. Shinobu stared down at it. His hand stretched towards me, as if to touch the sword, and then drew back. “I think…” he said. “I think you are right.”
“Ojiichan said the katana has been in our family for generations. Your Yamatos must be my ancestors. After you … disappeared, the Yamatos kept your sword.” I frowned. “The Harbinger said something about that. He said he had chosen us to protect the sword. But the sword already belonged to you, to us.”
“The sword has changed since it was mine,” Shinobu said softly. “It feels different; it pulses with a strange energy now. My sword was just a sword, a fine sword that I was proud to carry, but no more. The Nekomata showed no interest in it. It sought only my death. Now…”
“Now it’s obsessed with it. And it said it was coming back for it.”
There was a little pause.
“Wow, Mimi,” Jack breathed. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how to fix this. I tried to put the sword back last night, I did. I couldn’t do it. Why did I ever take it out in the first place? Why?” I drew in a shuddering breath.
“This isn’t your fault,” Jack said.
“That’s not what you said earlier,
” I reminded her. “You told me to put him back in the box.”
“You could not have known the danger,” Shinobu said to me. “To punish yourself now for that innocent mistake would be wrong. You would not judge another so harshly. Would you?”
Tentatively he reached across the table again. His fingers stopped a whisper away from mine, which were curled around the katana’s sheath, as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to bridge the tiny distance.
He had rubbed my bruised fingers in the hospital room, and I had dragged him onto the Tube, but those touches were different. As I stared at our hands so close together on the wooden table top, I could almost feel that breath of air between our skin spark with electricity.
My gaze connected with Shinobu’s. There was a physical jolt, like two magnets jumping together. Like two perfect musical notes meeting and singing as one.
“Guys?” Jack’s concern had transmuted to curiosity. Her gaze was like a heat-lamp burning the side of my face.
But I couldn’t look away. I didn’t think Shinobu could either. It was beyond either of our control. Because I knew those eyes… I knew those eyes. Didn’t I? The pattern of blue-grey flecks that moved in them and the lightning-quick thoughts and feelings that flickered behind them? His smell, the rhythm of his breath … so familiar… I knew how his silky hair would feel in my hands. I knew.
The door of the coffee shop opened with a cheery tinkle of the bell.
“You can’t bring them in here,” the barista called anxiously. “Only assistance animals are allowed.”
Have to hold on. Don’t let go.
The green blade sliced down—
“Shit!” Jack spat out the word.
I jumped, blinking, and shook my head dazedly, conscious of Shinobu suddenly sitting back on the other side of the table. What just happened?
“They’re not mine,” said a woman, sounding annoyed. “There’s loads of them hanging around outside. You ought to call the RSPCA.”
Jack’s hand clamped down on my shoulder. “Sorry to interrupt your moment, but I don’t think that’s a good sign. Look!”
I turned and saw the barista with a tray in each hand, desperately trying to shoo a pair of cats outside. One of them was obviously a stray, with mangy-looking tabby fur and ragged ears. The other was a sleek and well-fed grey, wearing a collar. Both of them were spitting at the poor barista. As soon as she opened the door to try and nudge them out, ten more swarmed inside. The woman who had just entered the coffee shop shrieked. The barista slammed the door hastily as the animals ran between her legs.
The cats formed a bristling wall, inching towards us in our booth in the corner. Outside, I could see more cats, dozens of them, pressing up against the windows and the door. Their eyes almost glowed. I could hear the low, mesmeric notes of their cat-yodelling through the glass.
The white-faced barista fled to the shelter of the counter, where she fumbled for the phone. She picked it up – then stopped and stared down at it like she couldn’t understand why it was in her hand. The woman by the door looked around in sudden confusion, her eyes sliding away from the wall of hissing, spitting felines like melting butter sliding off a knife. “Weren’t there…? Huh.”
The barista shook her head, put the phone back on the hook and smiled at the woman. “How can I help you today?”
The customer stepped over to the counter, already rummaging in her handbag. “Sorry, I zoned out there for a second. Can I have a large, double-shot cappuccino to go?”
Within seconds both women were back in their routine, acting like nothing had happened. That, even more than the eerie noises of the animals as they edged towards us, made fear quiver through my body.
“Is there another way out of this place?” Shinobu asked, easing to his feet.
“Must be,” Jack said. “Fire regulations and all that.” She shoved me out of the booth in front of her, giving me one second to shove the katana back into its carrier on my back before she grabbed my hand. “Come on.”
Shinobu took my other hand in a hard grip. The pair of them hauled me out of the cafe area into the narrow aisles between towering, haphazardly stacked bookshelves, Shinobu in front, Jack half a step behind. The overhead lights weren’t enough to fully illuminate the shadows back here, and the smell of dust and damp paper made me sneeze.
“I’ve never seen that many cats before,” I said breathlessly. “Where did they come from?”
“The Nekomata,” Shinobu answered, voice grim.
A moment later I heard a glassy crash behind us. The bell above the door jangled discordantly.
From the corners of my eyes, I saw dozens of small, sleek shapes flashing into the stacks around us. My ears filled with dry, papery, rustling sounds. I whipped my head around and caught sight of yellow and green eyes glowing everywhere in the shadows between shelves.
Overhead, piles of books began to shift. Scraps of browning paper fell down like dirty snow. A tattered Mills & Boon paperback fluttered past me, almost grazing my nose. An Agatha Christie mystery bounced off Shinobu’s arm. Jack dodged a massive, leather-bound Reader’s Digest of Myths and Legends.
“Look out!” Shinobu shouted. He hauled me forward, and I yanked Jack after me, just managing to avoid a landslide of back-issue magazines that filled the aisle. A large, black cat dropped into the space ahead of us, its back arched, hackles raking up as it growled. More felines landed behind it, adding their voices to its threatening song.
Shinobu whipped a massive encyclopaedia off a shelf with his free hand and winged it at the cats. The black one went flying and the others scattered.
“Ouch!” Jack kicked out without breaking stride and two more cats went sailing away. “I’m not into animal cruelty but if any more of these little buggers try to claw me I’ll turn them into earmuffs.”
I ducked to avoid a falling Stephen King and saw a green glow ahead, to the left. “There’s the fire door!”
Another pile of books toppled over into the aisle ahead of us. Shinobu turned and caught me around the waist, lifting me effortlessly over the obstruction. I had to let go of Jack or have my arm wrenched out. Jack scrambled over the books with a muffled “Oof!”, landed next to me and zoomed in front. She grabbed the metal bar on the emergency door, forcing it down. An ear-splitting wail sounded.
“Getting really sick of sirens!” Jack shouted as Shinobu and I shot through the exit. She slammed the door shut behind us. There were several heavy thudding sounds and a couple of yowls.
We stood in the narrow alley that ran behind the shop, catching our breath. Windowless, graffiti-covered walls closed in on either side. Most of the space was taken up with a huge industrial skip that overwhelmed the fresh, bready smells drifting from the bakery next door. The concrete made sticky noises underfoot.
“Actually, that was kind of fun,” Jack said.
I gave her a blank stare. “I don’t like you any more.”
She stuck out her tongue.
“How far is it from here to the house?” Shinobu asked, sounding tense.
“Ten minutes’ walk,” I said. “Why?”
Shinobu pointed. On top of the overflowing skip, a trio of cats was creeping into view.
This time it was me who swore. The first of the cats pounced. Shinobu spun away. It hit the wall where he had been an instant before.
We scrambled out of the alley on to the familiar road. Overhead, heavy, brownish-grey clouds pressed down, turning the afternoon as dim as twilight. People hurried by with their heads bowed and their eyes firmly fixed on their feet.
“Hostiles at twelve o’clock,” Jack snapped out.
“What does that mean?” Shinobu and I asked in unison.
“Cats straight ahead! You idiots both need to watch Top Gun.”
“Run for it!” I yelled.
As we pelted down the road, cats of every colour, size and condition leapt down from walls and rooftops, flying at us with savage hisses and sharp claws. Shinobu ploughed straight ahead, forcing
them to scatter or be crushed. I put both arms over my head, grateful for the thick fabric of my coat, and jumped and swerved wildly, trying to avoid them. Next to me, Jack was kicking like Jackie Chan on ten cans of Red Bull, knocking out would-be attackers by the dozen.
Every time I looked up I expected to see bystanders staring at us in shock or filming our antics on their phones. But even when I charged into a couple and accidentally knocked the woman’s briefcase out of her hand, no one else seemed to see what was going on. Their eyes just flicked over us and then away, as if we weren’t there. It was terrifying. We could be eaten by feral cats right in the middle of the street and no one would notice.
We swerved round the corner, and I felt a dizzying flood of relief as I caught sight of my own front door. I shoved my hand into my pocket, wrenched out the key and flew up the stairs, passing Shinobu. As I fumbled with the lock, Shinobu yelled behind me. A huge marmalade tom – a cat which belonged to one of our neighbours, and which I had known all my life as a lazy, friendly pet – flew out of the bush next to the steps with a tearing growl and went for his throat.
Jack seized the cat’s tail in midair and whipped it away into the street.
“You are very fast,” Shinobu commented, sounding impressed.
“Ten years of karate,” Jack gasped. “I wish I could say the same for Mimi, though. What are you doing? Picking the effing thing?”
The lock clicked and we all piled inside. The moment we were in, I threw the door shut, snapped the deadbolt and locked it again. Jack sat down on the bottom step of the stairs with a thump and Shinobu leaned against the door. There was silence except for the harsh sound of our panting.
“You know what?” I said. “I am never asking my parents for a kitten again.”
