by Zoe Marriott
“Careful now, Mio,” he had whispered. “He’s heavy.”
So much heavier now than it had been then. I’d been too young to understand what was lying in my hands. I’d been too young to understand the weight Ojiichan had given me to carry.
“He is yours, Mio.”
He’d been warm. So warm under my touch. As if he was already mine.
“Yours to guard and protect.”
I was nearly there. I could feel something stirring in my memory – what had Ojiichan said next?
The stench of ozone hit the back of my throat. I choked, my eyes snapping open. I took in the scene. Shinobu and Hikaru were holding Jack back by her arms. Midori was on her feet, green lightning whirling around her tails. The king had just opened his jaws to bark an order that was going to come too late. I saw with crystalline clearness exactly what was going to happen next.
“… the One who remembers. The One who endures. The One who is hidden.”
“The Hidden One…”
But that wasn’t the sword’s name. It couldn’t be. The sword was Japanese – not English. Ojiichan had been translating for me, telling me the meaning of the sword’s name without actually saying it. Was there a word – a name – in Japanese that meant all those things? There had to be.
Remembrance. Endurance.
Hidden.
In one of those sudden, blinding leaps of intuition, I realized it.
Twice I had called Shinobu’s name in panic and fear, and twice the sword had responded, flying into my hand just when I needed it. Shinobu was a Japanese name. It could mean many different things depending on the characters used to write it. It could mean warrior, or purity. It could mean…
Recall.
One who remembers.
Strength.
One who endures.
Stealth.
One who is hidden.
The Hidden One…
Shinobu was the name of the boy.
Shinobu was the name of the blade.
Midori snarled at Jack. “I shall deal with you myself.”
Thunder boomed through the bowl as a jagged finger of lightning streaked from one of Midori’s tails and reached for my best friend. The fine hairs all over my body responded to the electricity in the air, standing upright like soldiers.
I ripped the sword from the saya as I whispered: “Shinobu.”
Yes?
The word rang through me. It came, not from any outside source, but from inside me, from the cells that made up my bones, my blood. The voice was neither male nor female, neither young nor old. It was simply other – chiming, musical, metallic. Inhuman.
The green lightning changed course mid-strike and came for me.
“Mio!” Shinobu let go of Jack and lunged towards me.
Jack’s mouth gaped open in a gasp of horror.
Hikaru shut his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to look.
The green lightning struck the tip of the katana.
This is really going to hurt—
Colourless flames exploded from the place where my fingers touched the sword’s grip. They swallowed Midori’s lightning and engulfed the blade. The hilt seemed to jump in my hand, trying to jerk away. Instinctively, I tightened my grasp.
Are you ready for me?
I didn’t know how to answer. So I whispered, “Yes.”
White energy detonated from the katana. It rushed out from the centre-point of the blade towards the green terraces. I stumbled and nearly went to my knees, digging the saya into the ground with my spare hand to stay upright.
The shock wave hit the sides of the amphitheatre with a boom. The ground leapt underfoot. Shinobu, Hikaru and Jack went down like paper dolls. Kitsune toppled. The ring of ancient trees groaned, their branches tossing, sending silvery leaves cascading down into the bowl.
The sword’s grip vibrated and shook in my grasp. I dropped the saya and brought my left hand up to clasp the hilt, fighting to hang onto the sword. The wound on my shoulder burned. I didn’t know what would happen if I let go, but I knew that it would not be good for any of us.
“Shinobu!” Was I calling the boy or the blade now? I wasn’t even sure myself.
The white energy battered against the earthen walls, then began to flow backwards, faster and faster, slamming into the blade, coalescing around me in a white hurricane of power. A thin, blindingly bright column of light shot from the sword’s tip, dragging the blade inexorably upwards until I was holding it over my head, pointing it straight up. The light pierced the canopy of leaves above me. I followed it with my eyes.
I saw a darkness beyond the light that wasn’t darkness, but the shadows of galaxies forming and dying. Suns spinning and blowing out. Planets imploding and falling to dust and flaring back to life again. I saw … power. Power that could swallow the world.
Ready now?
“Not – really…” I muttered between gritted teeth.
Too late.
The column of light fell, shattering into thousands of star-bright sparks. I shrieked with pain as they set me alight. I could feel my bones crack and snap, muscles unravelling and recoiling like thread, muscles expanding and reforming under my stretching skin.
With a shrill ripping noise, my outer clothes – coat, jeans, T-shirt – shredded. My feet burst out of my boots and socks with a loud pop. I realized, in the midst of my agony, that I was growing.
“Shinobu,” I whispered. “Please. Please stop.”
The manic vibration of the hilt gentled in my hands. Wailing, white energy smoothed away, disappearing like mist in the wind. Shinobu’s flaming blade cooled, turning blue, then dull red, and finally returning to black and silver.
Shinobu is only one of my names. You will need to learn the others before the end. But it will do for now.
My arms, abruptly too heavy for me to hold up, dropped sharply. The sword whistled through the air and buried itself in the smooth grass at my feet. My bare feet. I stood alone, clad only in a tank top, underwear, and a dusting of silver leaves.
CHAPTER 20
THE KINDNESS OF GODS
The grey squiggles were back in my eyes, and there was no chance of concealing the wobble in my legs. Everything started to slide away sideways. I was going to pass out. Again. How many times was that now in a two-day period? I was probably setting a record…
A pair of strong, familiar arms wrapped around me and held me upright, enveloping me in folds of black fabric. My father’s old leather coat. An oddly comforting mixture of smells, Dad’s aftershave and Shinobu’s smoky piney scent, made me breathe in deeply.
“Thanks,” I muttered.
My voice sounded as if I’d gargled with a pint of vodka and puffed twenty cigarettes as a chaser. I had been screaming. Only I hadn’t heard myself over the sounds of the world – and my own body – breaking and reforming around me.
“You’re welcome,” Shinobu said, his voice rumbling through my chest. One of his hands – not feeling quite as big as it had before – cupped the back of my neck. He stroked my hair. “Mio, are you … are you all right? You were on fire.”
“Backatcha, baby,” I said blearily, leaning my head on his shoulder.
Shoulder? Five minutes ago I’d have been leaning on his chest. Which meant I must be, what, at least four inches taller? That realization just made me feel all the blearier. My whole body ached, ached, ached. The only thing that didn’t ache was my injured shoulder, weirdly enough. I felt bony and fragile, like you do the first time you get out of bed after being really ill, and the grass was cold under my toes in the remains of my ruined boots and, oh, there everything went sideways again…
“Here,” Shinobu said. He drew one of my hands through the arm of the coat, supporting my weight with his other arm around my shoulder. Then he pushed something into that hand. Something faintly warm and familiar. The katana’s saya.
“Thank you,” I said again, with more feeling this time. I let Shinobu pull my other hand through the other arm of the coat and fasten the buttons
as if I were a five-year-old, waiting until he’d finished before I carefully guided the blade back into the sheath.
Immediately I felt better – physically, at least. The silvery wriggles disappeared from my vision and my body seemed to firm up around me. I realized I was still draped against Shinobu like a fainting maiden and made an effort to straighten up as I remembered what I looked like right now. Heat flooded my face.
He saw, didn’t he? Shinobu saw. Everyone saw.
Why did it have to be my Hello Kitty underwear?
It seemed safer to concentrate on the humiliation than … well, anything else. Like the enormity of what I had just witnessed. The sword’s power. What it had just done to me. What it might mean for us all. There was certainly plenty of humiliation to occupy me; I was going to be embarrassed by this when I was a hundred and five. Shinobu’s gaze was aimed at me like a searchlight and I didn’t know where to look.
The Kitsune were starting to stir, uncurling from defensive balls and climbing to their feet. I could feel their eyes on me again, but I had no idea what they were thinking. The bowl-shaped place was almost completely silent apart from the faint, shivery noise of the leaves that were still showering down on us. A second later Jack sat up nearly at my feet.
She squinted up at us for a minute. Her face was strangely blank, and I felt a chill of worry. Had she reached the point of total freak out? Hard to blame her…
“I think,” she said, “that I’m going to call you She-Ra from now on. Say ‘By the Power of Grayskull!’ ”
I let out a watery laugh. Thank God for Jack. “Just when I thought you couldn’t be a bigger geek.”
“And yet I’m not the one dressed up like a refugee from The Matrix. A strip-o-gram refugee.”
I looked down at my bare legs sticking out of the bottom of the coat, which only came to my knees now. “Touché.”
I reached out my free hand at the same moment as Shinobu, and together we pulled Jack to her feet. She tottered a bit, shook her head, and blew out a breath. “Whoa. What a rush. Hey, did you grow again? You did! Look, we’re the same height!”
“Congratulations,” Hikaru said, from his prone position in the grass. He looked like he’d been caught in a force-ten gale, which I supposed he had. His hair was in his face, his clothes were a mess, and he had leaves poking out everywhere. “I think that pretty much settles things. Right, Granddad?”
“Don’t call me that in the court,” the king said absently. His ears slowly perked back up from where they had been flattened against his skull and he lifted a paw and licked it, as if to reassure himself that it was still attached. “But yes. I can’t think of any more questions. Midori-san?”
We all looked at the white fox.
She was out cold, flat on her back, paws in the air. Miyako was down too, lying in a heap at the base of the hill.
“She never did like surprises,” Tetsuo said, sniffing at the air as if he could smell what we were all seeing. He seemed unruffled by what had happened as did Hiro, who was calmly grooming one of his tails. “I’d guess the shock of having her lightning stopped dead like that was too much for her. She won’t come around for a while.”
“And when she does, she’ll be miles away and out of my fur,” the king said with satisfaction. “Midori attacked a guest of the court while they were under a right of safe passage, and without my leave. She’s earned herself a half-millennium banishment, at the very least. Outer Hebrides, I think.”
Tetsuo chuckled softly.
An unpleasant idea slithered into the back of my mind.
I’d thought Midori was using us to challenge the king’s authority and he was powerless to stop events from spiralling out of control. But maybe it was the other way round. Maybe the king had allowed Midori to challenge him, allowed us to bait her, because once she went too far he would have a reason to get rid of her without admitting that she was a threat to his reign.
If it hadn’t been for me figuring out the katana’s true name at that exact moment, Jack might be dead.
I could feel my eyes narrowing. Involuntarily I brought the katana up, clasping the saya and hilt so that I could draw quickly. Shinobu, apparently reading my mind, placed a steadying hand on my shoulder.
“We can’t prove anything,” he said, the words an almost inaudible breath in my ear that made me shiver. “And even if we could…”
Who are we going to protest to?
Hikaru, who was on his knees now, frowned at us, then turned to stare at his grandfather in dawning suspicion. At that moment Jack stepped forward and offered Hikaru her hands. He hesitated for a second, then took them and let her pull him up, although it didn’t look like he actually made her exert much effort. He smiled at her, squeezing her fingers in his.
The king looked quickly away from his grandson, something like shame flickering through his eyes.
I was right. The whole thing had been a set-up. The king was willing to risk all of us, even Hikaru, to achieve his own ends. That was probably the reason he’d agreed to this audience in the first place.
He really doesn’t play favourites.
Ignoring Shinobu’s gentle squeeze on my shoulder, I stepped forward and caught the king’s eye. You did this. You put my friends in danger. You owe me.
The vivid, green eyes widened, sparking with anger. Then, reluctantly, he gave me a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
“I think our new ally needs some assistance with her, ahem, apparel,” he said to the assembled foxes. “And then we can discuss how to run this cursed Nekomata out of our territory.”
I didn’t know if the Kitsune had houses or maybe dens hidden among the trees, but a minute or two after a pair of giggling fox girls had led me into the silver-and-gold forest and then disappeared into the shadows, they came back with a set of new clothes for me. The soft, wide-legged, black trousers and short kimono top – almost exactly like a kendogi – fitted me as if they had been tailored to my newly elongated body. The white sash for my waist was just long enough, and the sturdy boots were the perfect size too (which told me that I was going to need a lot of new shoes, because I’d gone up two sizes). The Kitsune girls even had a pair of brand-new cotton socks for me to wear.
“How is your throat?” the first girl asked sweetly when I’d finished dressing. “Would you like some water?”
I gave her a confused look.
The other one added, “We thought you might be a little thirsty. You know, after all that screaming.”
They both giggled.
Most superheroes got to be cool, dammit. I wanted a refund on this whole deal.
The girls carried on giggling and whispering as they led me back out of the trees. Only the sight of their tails – they both had two – poking out of their flowery little kimonos made it possible for me to believe that they were a couple of hundred years old each. My mum’s voice piped up in my head: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
I could really have done with my mum around right now.
I’d insisted on taking the katana with me into the trees. Since the fox girls were walking ahead of me and paying no attention, I pulled the sword out of my sash and tried a few passes with it, leaving the saya in place for safety.
Hmm. I kept walking, trying a couple of low front kicks and then a mid-level side kick, movements that Ojiichan had drilled into me as soon as I learned to walk. I hadn’t done any of the exercises he’d taught me in a while, but my muscles still remembered.
They remembered almost too well. I was faster now. I could feel it and hear it in the way the air whistled around my skin when I shifted. My injured arm was barely aching any more either. The hilt of the sword heated in my grip, as if it approved of this new speed.
It ought to. It had given it to me.
The blade was sentient. Deep at its core was an intelligence of some kind, far more dangerous and wilful than any of us had realized. It had decided I needed to be taller, faster – maybe stronger too, but there was no
way to test that now – and just like that, I was. The sword was already changing me. At the moment it was only my body, but what might come next?
As I grappled with that thought, we emerged from the trees. Below me the terraces had emptied, but the bottom of the bowl around the central mound was filling up with Kitsune in human form. Some of the fox spirits were in modern clothes, others in traditional Japanese garb. Some were dressed in armour from a time and place completely unfamiliar to me. They all had one thing in common. They were loaded with weaponry.
I don’t know why I had assumed that ancient fox spirits would turn their noses up at guns. I mean, some of them were carrying swords or bows – I even saw a war-axe – but nearly every one of them had a couple of guns holstered on their hips too. Several were carrying massive pump-action shotguns and wore bandoliers of ammo slung across their chests. They looked like something out of a zombie movie.
A shiver of definitely-not-Kitsune electricity touched the back of my neck as the fox girls bowed and disappeared back into the trees. I turned to see Shinobu striding round the rim of the amphitheatre towards me.
He was wearing a new outfit – the twin of mine. A plain, black katana and shorter wakizashi blade were thrust into the red sash wrapped around his lean waist, and his liquid prowl announced to the world that he knew exactly how to wield them. He’d rebraided his hair, but long, glossy strands blew loose around his face as he moved towards us, drifting back to reveal the smoky depths of eyes that were completely focused on me.
The Kitsune who stood in his way parted before him without a murmur. The men looked impressed and the women looked flirtatious. Actually, some of the men even looked a little flirtatious. Shinobu didn’t seem to notice any of them.
“Shin—” I began. Before I could string together the remaining syllables, he went down gracefully on one knee, bowing his head before me.
“All is as you commanded, Mio-dono,” he announced, his deep voice pitched to carry to the foxes around us. “The Kitsune are rallying. Soon we will be ready for you to lead us into battle. Do you have any more instructions?”
“What are you—?”
