Frail Human Heart

by Zoe Marriott

  “Wow.” Jack hopped off the last step and moved up beside me. My dad and Hikaru were close behind her. “This is a Medieval water cistern. I saw one like it on holiday in Italy when I was a kid.”

  Hikaru’s mouth was a wide “O” of surprise. “I’ve got to admit, after all the talk about abandoned sewers, this is a nice surprise.”

  “I’m just glad the stairs didn’t end up being endless,” my dad said. “I have that dream all the bloody time.”

  I bit my lip. Was this a part of the sunken London that Ebisu had described, or were we already dreaming, or half-dreaming? Maybe this was Jack’s dream of the place she had seen in Italy. Surreptitiously I scuffed my foot over the dock. It felt solid and made a pretty normal sound. But then, dreams always did seem real…

  “Is that for us, do you think?” Jack asked, nodding down at the water. I turned and for the first time noticed the boat. It was shallow and flat-bottomed, with a boxed-in section at the back for someone to stand on. In place of seats, dark green cushions lined the bottom. The sides were painted the same dark green. It almost faded into invisibility against the water.

  “It must be, unless we want to swim for it,” I said. “Does anyone know how to drive one of these things?”

  Jack and Hikaru shook their heads emphatically.

  My dad sighed. “I suppose I can figure it out.”

  The boat was tied to a cleat on the side of the dock. My dad knelt down and pulled the boat in closer so that it floated parallel to the dock. Getting the idea, I went down next to him and grabbed the other end of the little craft to hold it steady. Jack skipped off the dock and sat down on one of the cushions easily enough. Hikaru hesitated, put one foot out, wobbled, made distressed foxy noises, and finally stepped into the punt, where he stood uncertainly, waving his arms around as if he was trying to balance on marbles. His antics made the boat rock, and Jack rolled her eyes at him.

  “Sit down, Furball. Capsize this thing and I promise there will be a slow and hideous revenge.”

  Hikaru collapsed next to her, panting. “Sorry. I’ve – er – never been on a ship before.”

  “It’s a boat, not a ship. Don’t be a baby.”

  He pulled a mournful face. “You are so mean to me.”

  “Oh, you love it.” Jack elbowed him in the side, which made the boat rock again. Hikaru let out a tiny whimper.

  My father ignored them pointedly. “Could you pull a couple of those lights off the walls before you get in, Mio? They might be handy later.”

  I obeyed him, handing the flickering iron-bound torches to Hikaru and Jack. “Don’t set fire to anything,” I said firmly as I climbed in.

  The movement of the boat reminded me of standing up on the bus. I sat down in the middle section, holding onto the cleat in an effort to steady the boat as my dad took up a standing position on the flat part at the back of the little craft.

  “Can one of you hand me the pole, please – without tipping me off this thing?” he asked.

  “I see it. Hang on.” I unhooked a long, polished wooden stick from under the rim of the punt and carefully lifted it upright so that my dad could grab the end. Then I sat back and waited.

  Dad gave us all a look of terrible patience. “Someone also needs to untie us. Once again, without tipping me off.”

  “Oh, right! I’ve got it.” Jack jammed her torch into a little bracket in the side of the boat and clambered over Hikaru’s knees. She was practically sitting on his lap as she unknotted the rope from the dock. Hikaru’s eyes rolled back in his skull and his expression wavered between guilty bliss and seasick terror as he held his torch up out of Jack’s way.

  When Jack had finished with the rope, my dad cautiously pushed the punt out from the shelter of the dock. Straight away the little craft began to drift, heeling to the left as it headed for the gap between two of the stone pillars. My dad’s eyebrows snapped together with concentration as he used the pole to nudge us away from the left pillar so the boat didn’t scrape into it.

  “There’s a very strong current here,” he said. “I don’t think I can move this thing against it, so cross your fingers it’s taking us in the right direction.”

  “It ought to be,” I said. “Ebisu said as long as we keep moving forward we’ll be guided where we need to go.”

  “Personally, I think Ebisu’s a bit too helpful,” Hikaru mumbled as he fitted his torch carefully into the bracket on his side of the boat.

  “What?” Jack frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Hikaru cleared his throat. “I just mean … he’s so nice, isn’t he? All jolly and endearing. A bit like – what do you call him? − Father Christmas. Not so much like a Kami.”

  “Well, he’s been trapped in human form for a long time. He might’ve picked up a few things. Plus, he’s a god for children, right? Maybe he’s just naturally nice,” Jack argued.

  “Or maybe,” my father suggested as we drifted between another set of pillars, deeper into the cistern, “he’s desperate to be freed from his bindings, and he thinks that helping Mio is the best way to make that happen.”

  Everyone looked at me again. Why was I always supposed to have all the answers? I sighed. “Izanagi threw Ebisu away like trash. Whatever other motives the old man might have, I think his main ambition is to see Izanagi’s plans ruined. Which is exactly what we want, too. The difference is that we want it to happen without any more mortals getting hurt, or our world being fried in the process. I don’t know if Ebisu ultimately cares more about the mortal realm or his revenge, or which he’d choose if he had to. So we find the wakizashi and we get as much information out of him as we can, and then we make our own decisions. And we remember that Ebisu might look like a harmless old man, but he’s not. He’s a god. We’re insects to them. We need to make sure we’re never in a position where we can be crushed.”

  There was a short pause as that sank in.

  Jack looked a little shocked. “When did you get so cynical?”

  “The fate of the world is at stake,” I said, faintly defensive. “Not a great time to be laid back about stuff.”

  “Well, I can see I shouldn’t have worried that you were being too trusting,” Hikaru said. “Never mind.”

  But they were still all staring at me, especially my dad. I didn’t know what else to say, so I pretended not to notice them looking and turned to study our surroundings. We had passed through a final set of pillars, leaving the cistern behind as we floated into a dim, narrow tunnel. The walls were brick, dirty and crumbling, and the roof was low. My dad ducked, tucking the pole under his arm.

  “There’s something up ahead,” he said. “I can see more lights.”

  Hikaru tilted his head to the side. “Do you hear that? Sounds like a river.”

  “It had better not be white water,” my dad said. “I am not equipped for that.”

  The strange tunnel widened out even more, the inexorable flow of the water taking us through a massive jagged hole in the brickwork that looked as if it had been caused by an explosion. The sound of rushing water was audible to us humans now, too. We drifted under more shattered walls – stone this time – and then my jaw dropped as I took in the tall Gothic arches, stonework windows and the ceiling that swooped away above us. The arches of that ceiling, revealed by the golden flicker of our torchlight, were painted with flaking pictures of angels. Giant angels, with richly coloured robes and cloud-like wings.

  “It’s a church!” Jack exclaimed.

  “A cathedral, I should think,” my dad corrected. He pulled the pole up – probably the water here was too deep to use it – and rested it on the wood between his feet. “An old one, too. Looks pre-Reformation.”

  Whatever coloured glass once filled the panes of the tall church windows had long since disappeared. Spectacular silvery streams of water crashed through the intricately cut stone, cascading down the walls and foaming into the river that flooded the old cathedral and rose halfway up the walls.

  “Human churches are
cool,” Hikaru said, staring wide-eyed.

  “Yeah, no. The waterfalls aren’t a normal feature,” Jack said flatly. Her grandmother insisted on dragging Jack, Rachel and their mother, Beatrice, to church with her on most of the principle feast days. Jack hated it, but there was only one person in the world that she feared more than her mother, and that was Granny Rassin. No one messed with that old lady. I’d rather fight the spider-woman again, alone, than get on her bad side.

  Something rushed by my face with a sharp whistling sound. I jumped, scanning the air around me, but I couldn’t see a thing. The katana’s energy was a calm, even hum against my back – no warning of danger. Had I imagined it?

  Jack let out a yelp. Her flaming torch jerked up out of its bracket and sailed over the side of the boat. It landed in the water with a fizzle, fire instantly extinguished. Suddenly the looming space of the cathedral was a lot darker, and its shadows a lot deeper.

  “What the—?” Jack looked around her wildly.

  “Hikaru, grab that torch!” my dad snapped out.

  The whistling sound came again – from two different directions this time, seeming to cross in front of my face. Hikaru grunted with pain as an invisible force knocked him sideways. The flickering light in his hand lurched up. Hikaru yanked it back down into its place in the bracket, and was repaid with another impact that snapped his head back like a slap.

  Jack knelt up, flailing her arms. “Leave him alone! Stop it!”

  More rushing and whistling surrounded us. The boat rocked wildly. I struggled to keep my balance, my hand flying to the grip of the sword as I jumped to my feet.

  “Mio, don’t!” my father cried. “Remember what Ebisu told us. Everyone get down.”

  I curled down over my knees. Jack did the same. In a fluid movement, Dad raised the punt pole and began twirling it around his head and body, swapping it from hand to hand as if it weighed nothing. He swept the pole one-handed over the top of the punt, twirled it and swept again. The whistling sounds were immediately joined by deep growls that rumbled all around us, coming from everywhere and nowhere.

  “Dad, I think you’re making it worse—”

  It was already too late. The pole suddenly stuck in the air, as if he had smacked it into wet concrete. Then it wrenched sideways, yanking him with it. His foot skidded. I shot up out of my crouch and grabbed hold of him with both hands. We collapsed into the bottom of the boat, along with a few bucketloads of water as the punt nearly tipped over. The pole went spinning away into the white foam of one of the waterfalls.

  Hikaru let out a strangled cry as the torch catapulted out of his hands and hit the water.

  We were plunged into darkness.

  CHAPTER 8

  CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

  A iko Yamato tapped her short fingernails on the armrest of the passenger seat in her husband’s Mercedes. The small noise was like a drumbeat in the silent interior of the car.

  In the driver’s seat, Rachel Luci, whom Aiko had always considered such a nice, responsible young woman, stared straight ahead at the traffic jam that they had driven into about ten minutes outside the airport. Rachel’s face gave nothing away, but her hands flexed on the steering wheel, bunching into fists, then relaxing, then bunching up again. Aiko ran through the facts in her mind.

  Rachel was the one who had been left in charge at the house to take care of Mio and Jack.

  Rachel was the one who had unexpectedly called Aiko’s husband in Paris a mere two days into their second honeymoon and told Takashi something so shocking that his face had turned the colour of rice pudding, and he had started packing before he even got off the phone.

  Rachel was the one who had come to pick her up – driving Takashi’s precious car.

  Therefore: Rachel was in this up to her neck.

  Aiko had heard enough chatter at the British Embassy in Paris to know that there’d been an outbreak of some weird illness in London, and she’d had a small panic attack about that before Takashi had finally phoned and promised her that none of them had caught it. A subtitled news bulletin playing at the airport had assured her that whatever the mystery illness was, it was under control now with no fatalities, and it had helped that the first thing Rachel had done, after finding Aiko and taking her bag, was to assure her that everyone was fine. So clearly that wasn’t what had sent Takashi running home. But for some reason after that Rachel had clammed up like a … well, a clam. Takashi wasn’t answering his phone any more, and neither was Mio. No one was talking.

  Aiko opened her mouth—

  “Why don’t we listen to some music?” Rachel said, her voice just a shade too loud and cheerful. She punched the button for the radio, and the car was flooded with the sound of a whining cello and a throbbing piano. Takashi must have left it tuned to Classic FM. Personally, Aiko preferred Radio One.

  She folded her arms.

  “Rachel…”

  “That was ‘Meditation from Thais’, played by Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott,” said a plummy male voice. “And now Sandy Fisk, bringing us our news bulletin.”

  “Thank you, Steven.” A woman’s voice, slightly breathless, filled the car. “I’m here in London this morning, where there is panic in the streets after—”

  Rachel’s hand shot out so quickly that Aiko jumped in her seat. The radio clicked off.

  “So! How was Paris?”

  “I didn’t get the chance to see too much of it. Although the waiting room in the British Embassy was really nice. Outstanding carpets. Just what you would expect of the French.”

  Rachel cleared her throat. “And how was your flight?”

  “You’ve already asked me that, dear. Now—”

  “Well, I’m sure you can’t wait to get home! Even short flights are so tiring. You’ll probably just want to rest when you—”

  “I’m not tired,” Aiko interrupted firmly. “For heaven’s sake, what is the big secret? Mass murder? International espionage? What the heck have you all been up to?”

  Rachel coughed out a short burst of laughter. “Good one, Mrs Yamato. But you know me – boring. Bit of cooking. Homework. Catnapping. Ha ha. Nothing to worry about.”

  The car in front of them inched forward about half a foot. Rachel suddenly became extremely concerned with disengaging the handbrake and moving the Mercedes forward to close the gap. She crunched the gears slightly, and both of them winced.

  “Look, I’ve been driving for twenty-two years and I still have to practically beg to get behind the wheel of this car. There’s no way Takashi would lend his precious to a beginner driver unless there was some sort of earth-shattering emergency. So what was it?”

  Rachel gulped audibly. “I don’t – um…”

  “Spill the beans. Cough it up, kiddo.”

  “Mrs Yamato, I think this is personal business between you and Mr Yamato and, no offence, but I’m not getting in the middle of it.”

  Rachel’s restless hands went still on the wheel as Aiko let out a short scream of frustration that almost seemed to rock the car. “Rachel Louise Luci! I have known you since you were seven years old and I know when you are lying to me. You are already in the middle of it, and I am fed up to the back teeth with being the only bloody person who has no idea what is happening to my own family! Tell me what is going on!”

  Aiko felt the strange trembling sensation rock the car again and thought, I’m even angrier than I realized.

  But Rachel didn’t seem to be listening any more. She was sitting bolt upright, her eyes riveted on the windscreen. There was a muffled shout – almost a scream – somewhere up ahead. A moment later Aiko saw someone in the other lane of stopped traffic shove open their car door and run, abandoning the vehicle right where it was.

  The car shook again, shifting palpably on its wheels.

  “An earth tremor?” Aiko was momentarily distracted.

  Rachel undid her seatbelt, flung open the door and hopped out of the car. Her neck craned back as she stared up at the sky. Aiko put her window down
and poked her head out. The sky was empty, dull and grey with low clouds. What was she supposed to be looking at?

  Up and down the road the cars shuddered in place. Aiko heard the Mercedes’ suspension squeak. Other drivers were responding to the tremors now: leaning out of their windows, opening doors.

  “We have to go,” Rachel said.

  Aiko watched in disbelief as Rachel reached back into the car, turned off the ignition and snatched the keys. “What in the world – we can’t just leave the car! Takashi would cry like a baby! And my luggage is in the back.”

  “I really don’t think Mr Yamato will care about the car. Forget the luggage. Come on.”

  “Come where? If it’s an earth tremor, we can’t outrun it.”

  Rachel had already slammed the car door and was zipping around the bonnet to Aiko’s side. She wrenched the passenger door open so forcefully that the hinges groaned.

  The car bounced on the spot, wheels hitting the tarmac with a thud as it came down. The long grey strip of the road seemed to ripple, and Rachel clung to the door to keep her balance. Actually, this is getting a bit alarming now, Aiko admitted to herself.

  Rachel glanced over her shoulder once, shuddered and then fixed serious eyes on Aiko’s face. “Unbuckle your seatbelt and get out of the car now, or I’ll do it for you. I’ll carry you if I have to.”

  There was no temper in her voice, and no panic. Just a simple, calm statement of fact. It got through to Aiko in a way nothing else could have. She hastily undid the seatbelt, grabbed her carry-on bag and stood out of the car.

  “What are we running from here, Rachel?”

  The road leapt underfoot. Aiko staggered. And about ten cars ahead, a sleek silver Jaguar flipped up on its side like a Tonka Toy in the hand of a giant, invisible child.

  The Jaguar’s engine screamed. Its wheels spun. The driver’s door flew open – Aiko could see someone frantically trying to climb out. Before they could, the smooth bullet shape of the car crumpled. Then it rose into the air and flew.