Frail Human Heart

by Zoe Marriott

  Jack backed away from him slightly, and a quick glance at her face confirmed that he just wasn’t that lucky.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  “Sorry? For what?” She busied herself with opening the box of sticking plasters, apparently riveted by the process of picking out exactly the right ones. Unfortunately that just brought his attention right back to the nasty wound on her hand. He winced.

  “For letting you get all bitten up like that.”

  Apparently that was the wrong thing to say. She put the plasters down with a smack and looked him in the face. “What? Why is that your fault?”

  “Because … because if I were a better Kitsune, I could have stopped it. I could have … made a lightning wall to protect you, or used an isolation net, or—”

  “In the water? Wouldn’t that have fried me? Or Mio and her dad?”

  He slumped down miserably, not even attempting to stop his tail from drooping over the side of the toilet seat. “Not if I had proper control. It’s the same thing as the fox lights. They look so simple, but whenever I experiment, things end up exploding.”

  “Well…” Jack said slowly, sitting down on the edge of the bath. She reached for some toilet paper and wet it under the cold-water tap. “You’re only twenty, right? Other Kitsune can’t make fox lights till they’re a hundred, Araki said. Why should you be able to do something no one else can do?”

  She’s so nice. She’s far too nice. He sighed as he made himself confess. “I should be able to do that stuff. I’m supposed to be – you know – special.” He emphasized the word bitterly. “But I’m not. That’s why I spend more time hanging around in your world than my own. It’s just easier. People don’t know me here. No one expects anything from me.”

  Jack shoved the wet paper at him. “Here. Get the blood off.”

  Hikaru stared at the wad of wet tissue for a second, then took it and hesitantly started dabbing at his face with it. He could feel gloopy, half-clotted blood smearing across his cheek and forehead. “This is human medicine?”

  “Not if you do it like that,” she said, grimacing. “What are you even…? Never mind − let me.”

  She stood up again and grabbed the tissue, then leaned over him to carefully swab at his face. Hikaru stared at the frankly amazing view of Jack’s chest for half a second – OK, maybe a full second – looked down – legs, fantastic legs in very tight jeans – and then unthinkingly snapped his eyes shut. His cheeks flushed hot again.

  What are you, five? Closing your eyes doesn’t mean she can’t see you!

  Shut up, he told the critical voice, keeping his lids firmly closed. It’s just safer this way, OK?

  “So…” Jack began. He felt her take the paper towels away and then a gentle dabbing that came with a medicinal, ointment smell. “Why don’t you explain all this to me? You know, why you think you’re not special enough?”

  He opened his eyes to see her determined face and nearly sighed again. It was all so complicated and stupid and just … just horrible, really. But there was no way to explain it without … explaining it. Eugh.

  “Do you know how Kitsune reproduce? I mean, traditionally?”

  Jack bit her lip, eyes going wide. Her voice wobbled a little bit as she asked, “Ah … is that, like, the foxy missionary position or something?”

  He gave her an annoyed look. This was hard enough without stupid human jokes. “I’m talking about babies, Jack. The reason there are so many stories and legends about the Kitsune among humans is that fox spirits have traditionally mixed with humans. A lot. Get it?”

  “Ooooh,” she breathed. “Yeah, I get it. But why?”

  “Kitsune aren’t fertile. When male and female foxes mate … they hardly ever have kits. For thousands of years we only avoided extinction because a) we live for a very long time and b) we have the ability to interbreed with mortals. Foxes would head out into the human realm, take the form of a man or woman, and find human mates. Most of the time the children would be human, and the fox would stay with their human mate and live a mortal life with them, keeping their fox nature hidden—”

  “Hang on,” Jack interrupted, grabbing a plaster. “First of all, didn’t the humans notice that their husbands and wives had tails? And didn’t their families notice that they never got any older?”

  “We have ways of hiding our tails if we choose to,” Hikaru told her. He hesitated for a second, his heart suddenly louder in his own ears, then carried on, “And if a Kitsune falls in love with a mortal, they can choose to surrender their own immortality. To age at the same rate as their human beloved.”

  “Wow. OK, I know this makes me sound like Mio, but that’s really … nice. Romantic, even.” She leaned in again to press the plaster carefully over the wound on Hikaru’s forehead, then straightened and reached for the next one.

  “Not really.” Hikaru’s voice came out flat. “There was an ulterior motive. Once or twice in every generation one of those foxes or their human mate would bear a child that wasn’t human. A child that was Kitsune, with Kitsune characteristics: the immortality, the tail. When that happened, the law said that the Kitsune parent had to leave their mortal mate and any mortal children and return home to the spirit realm with the child. Then they had to either leave it there to be brought up by the other Kitsune, or abandon their human family forever to raise it themselves. That’s why some of the Kitsune – like my Aunt Midori and that annoying maid of hers, Miyako – are especially angry and bitter towards humans. They were left behind in the spirit realm by parents who chose to return to human families. They feel that the humans stole their Kitsune mothers or fathers – even though they wouldn’t exist without their human parents.”

  Jack stopped in the middle of pressing the next plaster onto his forehead. “Jesus. That’s pretty messed up. Why did the law have to be so – black and white? Why couldn’t people choose what to do for themselves?”

  Hikaru forced himself to shrug matter-of-factly. “There were good reasons for it. A Kitsune kit can’t keep to one form – they change constantly. Some of them are even born as foxes. They can’t control whether their tail shows or not; they can’t control their lightning. They could accidentally hurt their human family. And they’d pretty much destroy their Kitsune mother or father’s secret identity. In years gone by some kits and their parents were killed by their communities. The humans were convinced they were unnatural or possessed or evil. But … but it was a hard law. Too hard. The practice has almost completely died out now. Kitsune don’t have children with humans any more. Which means, most of the time, they don’t have children at all. You didn’t meet any Kitsune under the age of two hundred in the spirit realm, right? There aren’t any. We’re a dying race.”

  “I met you,” Jack pointed out.

  He laughed without meaning to. The sound was humourless, and both Jack’s eyebrows went up. “That’s the really fun thing. That’s why I’m … different. Why I’m supposed to be oh-so-special. I’m not just the first kit to be born here in this country. I’m the first kit in hundreds and hundreds of years to be born to two Kitsune parents. They were both over five hundred years old and I was a complete shock. So much of a shock that my mother died having me. My father left me and went back to the old country, leaving my relatives to raise me here. There’s only one other like me, one other ‘pure-bred’ Kitsune, in Europe. The king. My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent. The most ancient and powerful Kitsune we have. That’s why I should be able to control my powers, why fox lights and isolation nets should be a doddle for me. Everyone keeps expecting me to wake up one day and be … extraordinary. They say the king could make fox lights before her tenth birthday. Sometimes, when I lose my temper? I strike myself with my own lightning. That’s like … like a cat who’s scared of mice, or a dog who can’t bark. I’m a complete loser, Jack. I’m not worth—”

  He broke off suddenly and swallowed hard. He couldn’t make himself meet Jack’s eyes. You took it too far. Shut up now, bef
ore she thinks you’re even more pathetic. “Anyway. Yeah. So, I’m sorry.”

  There was a short pause. Jack moved to crouch down at Hikaru’s feet. “That is bullshit.”

  He shook his head miserably, still refusing to look at her.

  Jack grabbed his hands, her fingers cold and clammy, and gave them a little shake. “You are special.”

  He couldn’t stop his hands gripping hers back, but he also couldn’t hold her gaze for more than a second. “You just think that because you don’t know about Kitsune. It’s nice of you, but—”

  “Don’t call me ‘nice’ or you’ll piss me off,” she said sharply, squeezing his fingers. “I don’t know your relatives, but if they’re anything like Midori and the king, then they’re too busy manipulating everyone around them to be really honest with you, or anyone. You know that! You warned us about them yourself. They’ve messed you up with all this shit. Don’t let them tell you what you’re worth. You’re not a failure. You helped us; you listened to us when any other Kitsune would have just shrugged and walked away!”

  “That was selfishness. Anything to distract me from the endless, crushing weight of disappointed expectations.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. And when you stuck your neck out with the king and all the other Kitsune, and put yourself on the line to force them to fight alongside us? Was that selfish, too? What about at Battersea? Hiro and Araki were both killing themselves trying to open that loading-bay door, and even together they couldn’t do it. Then you came along and opened it in two seconds flat, on your own, so we could get in there and save Rachel. She would have died without you. A lot of people would have died. You came to help Mio and Shinobu, against the king’s orders, when you knew the Foul Women were about to swarm, when you knew their taint could kill you. You knocked about a thousand of them right out of the sky with your lightning. You’ve done so many amazing things, Hikaru. Your problem is that you’re so busy expecting yourself to be a screw-up that you don’t even notice how awesome you are.”

  “But—”

  “Listen. Really listen to me, right? I don’t have a dog in this race. I don’t have a reason to lie to you. You’re so much more powerful than you realize. You don’t give yourself any credit at all. But even if you were a Kitsune loser, even if you couldn’t hit the side of a bus with your lightning, you would still be an awesome person. A brave, funny, kind person. You would still be my friend.”

  Hikaru’s eyes – which just a moment before had flinched uncontrollably away from Jack’s face – now lifted irresistibly to stare at her, as if mesmerized. He couldn’t look away. She meant it, he could tell. She really did. He blinked dazedly. Then he felt a reckless smile slide across his face. He squeezed her hands back. “Jack…”

  CHAPTER 12

  CRACKS

  My dad and I swam rapidly through the clouds of jellyfish to the other side of the pool, clambered up onto the outcropping of ice which was all that remained of the shattered bridge on that side and left the dome behind with relief. I was pretty much expecting something awful to happen to us straight away, but the opening in the wall led to a plain old cavern − a vertical split in the glacier’s fabric, wide enough to drive a bus through at the bottom, but gradually narrowing as it climbed through the ice overhead. Muffled cracking and groaning noises echoed through the space, sending flurries of snow drifting downwards. The walls were the palest possible shade of blue and glittered like crushed topaz. They were marked here and there with carved symbols as tall as my dad. The zigzagging markings reminded me vaguely of the Japanese writing systems − hiragana and kanji − but my dad, who could read both, couldn’t make sense of them any more than I could.

  “They’re probably nonsense,” he said. “Like the flying sea creatures or those blood-drinking jellyfish. Real jellyfish don’t even have teeth. And the fact that we’re soaking wet and walking through a tunnel made of ice, but neither of us is showing signs of hypothermia. This is a realm of dreams – it seems to run on dream logic.”

  “Hmm.” He was right. I was definitely a bit goose-pimply and uncomfortable, but my teeth were chatter-free and I felt no urge to shiver. My fingernails were even pink. I’d been colder than this in the geography classroom in the prefab building at school. “At least it’s some kind of logic, I suppose. That’s better than our realm has to offer most of the time.”

  Even I could hear the flat, weary tone of my voice. Dad gave me a questioning look which I avoided by trudging on. For a short while the only sounds were of ice crunching under our feet and the faintly mournful groans and snaps from the walls, and I hoped that I’d managed to get away with it.

  “Do you think…?” he began.

  The tentative tone made my ears scrunch up around my shoulders. No, please, anything but more attempts at Talking About Our Feelings. Maybe I’d managed to project that thought telepathically, because he paused and didn’t go on. We walked in silence for another few minutes.

  “You know, your mother and I almost didn’t get married,” he said.

  I gave him a sidelong look of confusion. “What?”

  “We broke up a couple of times, actually,” he went on, as if I hadn’t spoken. “It was ridiculous because from almost the first time we met, I knew that she was special. Honestly, Aiko taught me how to be really happy for the first time in my life. I wanted to be with her more than anything. Yet I came from such a profoundly dysfunctional background and I’d barely managed to unpick half the ways that I was messed up. By God, it showed.”

  I fixed my eyes on my stomping feet, torn between the expected embarrassment at hearing my dad talk about my mum in this lovey-dovey sort of way and reluctant fascination because it was my dry, sardonic father talking this way. “What happened?” I asked quietly.

  A crack rang out above us, and a light powder of snow shifted down, silvering my father’s hair.

  “Your mother broke up with me – twice. Both times she said I was pushing her away and she wasn’t going to have a relationship where she was constantly walking on eggshells. I tried to work on it, and when she saw that, we got back together and got engaged. But then I … got scared.” He stopped, swallowed, as if pushing the words out had been painful. “The fact was, Aiko couldn’t possibly understand what she was letting herself in for with me. My family. And I couldn’t explain. So I broke up with her less than a month before the wedding.”

  I blinked at that. “Jeez. That’s … that was a pretty awful thing to do.”

  “I’m aware.” A few more crunching footsteps.

  When it didn’t seem like he was going to go on, I prompted, “You guys never told me about this.”

  “For your mother, the past is the past. The woman doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘grudge’.”

  “What about you?”

  “Oh, I can hold a grudge all right,” he said grimly. I heard the echo of Ojiichan’s voice in that grimness. And my own voice, too. The Yamato family legacy wasn’t just meitou and magic. It was festering anger and desperate unhappiness.

  “I hated myself,” he confessed softly. “For what I’d put her through, for being selfish, for being afraid. I went into this … this spiral of self-loathing and depression. I nearly dropped out of uni.”

  “But it didn’t end there,” I said. “You got her back, right?”

  He shook his head. “I got a phone call from a police station one night. Your mother was there.”

  “Was she mugged or something?” I asked, shocked.

  “She’d been at a peaceful protest rally when some troublemakers gatecrashed. Your mum got into a fight. I’ve no doubt that she gave as good as she got, but the sight of her all bashed up like that scared the life out of me. All I could think was that I should have been there. I could have taken those punches for her.” He shook his head, eyes determinedly fixed on the ice ahead of us. “Anyway, she needed someone to bail her out and take her to the hospital. She chose me, said she’d known she could call me for help, even though we weren’t together
then. It was basically her way of forgiving me. I broke down completely. Begged her for another chance.”

  “And she gave you one?”

  “Not straight away. She told me she’d never stopped loving me, but she wasn’t going to be the pincushion for my issues any more. I didn’t get to push her away, or walk away. Either I made my mind up, right then, to be with her and work things out, no matter what, or I could do her the very great favour of pissing off so she could find someone better.” His face lit up with a reminiscent smile.

  “So you promised?”

  “Yes. But I made another promise to myself that I never told her about, and it was just as important. I promised myself that I’d take the punches from then on. If my past jumped out and started swinging again, I’d make sure the bruises didn’t end up on her. The Yamato family weirdness would stop with me.”

  My dad dragged his gaze away from the cavern and looked me dead in the face. The intensity in his eyes nearly knocked me off my feet. “I broke that promise. I failed. Aiko’s out there right now, dealing with everything I swore to myself I’d shield her from. I’ve loved very few people in my life, Mio. You and your mother are at the top of that list. I’ve let you both down.”

  “Dad—”

  “I don’t need you to reassure me, or say that it’s not my fault, and everything’s OK. I know those things aren’t true. You’ve changed. I can see this … darkness in you that was never there before, and it scares me, because what’s looking at me out of your eyes is the same thing I used to see in the mirror. I’m frightened for you. I didn’t ever want to see you in the place where you are right now. Aiko could pull you out of that hole, but she’s not here. I’m all you’ve got. And I might not have shown it in the right way, I might have messed up, but I love you every bit as much as she does, Mio, I promise. Tell me what happened to you. Tell me what happened to Shinobu. Tell me.”

  “It was my fault.” The words sprang out of my mouth unbidden, and I clapped my hand over my lips in a reflex that came about a second too slow.