Frail Human Heart

by Zoe Marriott

  “Good point,” Aiko said hastily. “Rachel, would you mind—?”

  Rachel wrapped her arm around Aiko’s waist and slung her over one shoulder in a single, easy motion. “Not at all.”

  They took off in the opposite direction as the half-human howls of the dog-monsters filled the street.

  “Where are we going?” Aiko gasped. Houses blurred past her, but she could hear the yipping and barks of the dogs not far behind. “I think they’re following – can we outrun them?”

  “Probably for a little while at least,” Rachel called back, answering the second question first. “I’m pretty fast. But don’t worry. I know another place where we should be safe…”

  My sword hit the crystal floor of the chamber with a dry crunch. I stood, paralysed, not blinking, not breathing, and watched the hand in the pile of broken crystals close into a fist.

  Then that voice again. “Mio?”

  The spell broke. I fell on the crystals, clawing handfuls away, uncaring of the damage the crystals were doing to my unprotected skin or of the hacking sobs that shook my body. A second familiar hand burst out of the powdery mess. There was more coughing. I found an elbow, grabbed it and pulled. The pile slid, and suddenly a head and upper torso surged up, free.

  “Shinobu?” The word broke from my lips like a pane of glass shattering. “Shinobu?”

  He heaved his legs out with a furious kick and knelt up, leaning over me. An impatient swipe of a forearm pushed tangled hanks of hair back, and he stared into my face, eyes burning like black holes in his face. A line of moisture tracked down his cheek, washing through the dirt that coated his golden skin.

  “Mio.”

  His shaking hands caressed my face, tilting it up to his, and there, covered in blood and dust, we kissed, kissed, kissed again, hands entwining, sliding, clutching, until disbelief and grief and hope had burned away and all that was left was love.

  “You are real. You’re really real.” I kept repeating the words, as if they were some kind of mantra that could fix him in reality.

  “I am real. I am really real,” he whispered back again and again, and maybe he was doing the same thing as I was, pleading and promising at the same time. “I was with you. I stayed with you. All the time. As close as could be. When you unsheathed the blade and called its name – my name – the sword’s energy exploded through me again. But it was more this time. Stronger than anything I’ve experienced. I felt the prison, the cage around me, shatter and blow away, and I was blown away too. Back into my corporeal form. It must have knocked me out. The last thing I remember is seeing the roof of the ice cavern disintegrate. I woke up buried alive, and praying that you were all right, that you were near.”

  “Like when the Nekomata tried to pull the seals off the sword with its tail,” I said slowly, working it out. “It stripped you away and you materialized. It makes sense. It does make sense. This is real.”

  “I promise,” he told me, as if he could sense the cold slither of fear inside. He tucked the flyaway hair back behind my ears, his eyes searching my face. “I promise. Believe me, Mio. This is real. I will not let anything separate us again. Where you go—”

  “I will follow,” I finished, knowing the right response as if it had been written on my heart.

  “Always.”

  So I believed. I put my arms around him, and I believed.

  We didn’t move for a while. Didn’t speak much either. I just had to hold onto him and feel him − warm and alive, breathing, heart beating − beside me. Then my leg went to sleep. It was unbearably tingly, and I had to let go so that I could massage my calf.

  “Ow. Ouch. Wow, this is – this is definitely not romantic.”

  “Let me,” Shinobu said, smiling his half-cocky, half-shy smile. The sight of it made my insides tingle too – but in a much nicer way. He pulled me back against him again and draped my legs over his. Then he went to work, big hands kneading at the muscles gently, thumbs circling and pressing with exactly the right pressure. I tried not to make any embarrassing sounds.

  “We have to move on,” I said reluctantly. “I don’t know how much time is passing out there in the real world, or what’s happening. We need that wakizashi…” I stopped as I remembered the way that Ebisu’s unsheathing of the blade had felled Shinobu before. My fingers coiled up in the back of his hakama.

  “We need it,” he said firmly. “So we will find it. And this time we will get Ebisu to explain what it is and how it must be used. If it is dangerous to me and I must be fifty miles away when it is unsheathed, then so be it. I can come back. I won’t leave you again.”

  I nodded, my hand relaxing to stroke down the muscular line of his back. He made a faint growling noise, almost a purr, and then looked mortified. His hands fell still on my leg. “S-sorry.”

  I couldn’t help it – I snorted with laughter. “I love you.”

  He bowed his head over mine, glossy coils of dark hair falling around our faces. “Aishiteru zo, Mio-dono.”

  I didn’t have to ask what he meant. I could feel it, like sunlight falling on my face after a long, terrible journey through darkness. His lips found mine.

  CHAPTER 15

  INTO THE PAST

  F inally we peeled ourselves apart. Shinobu stooped and handed me the sword – it didn’t feel right to call it the katana, as it clearly wasn’t any more – and as I took it in my hands I realized we had a problem. The shape of the blade had completely changed. The shape of the saya had not. How was I supposed to fit a straight sword into a curved sheath? And what the hell was I going to do when we got out of the dream realm and the Shinobu-free blade started talking to me again? I’d have no way to shut it out.

  The sheer bliss of having Shinobu with me blunted my panic – but not completely. If there was going to be a future for us, I still needed to do my job. I had to free London from the attentions of the gods. With the sword constantly trying to wrestle control of my mind away, enslave me and destroy everything it saw, that task was going to be a lot harder.

  “But you are stronger now,” Shinobu said when I explained. “It is obvious in everything about you. My father would have called you a burned warrior. One who has walked through fire and not been consumed by it, only hardened.”

  I worried at my lip, unconvinced.

  Shinobu touched my cheek. “Let me try something.”

  When I nodded, he reached over my shoulder and freed the saya from the leather rings of the harness. It looked exactly the same as before. Gently curving, gleaming with golden cherry blossoms set in black lacquer. Whatever transformation the sword had undergone, it had left the sheath untouched.

  “The sword that we see is only an illusion. It has only ever been an illusion,” Shinobu said in answer to my questioning look. He hefted the lightweight saya between his hands. “Yet the blade has always fitted within this saya. What is more, the saya has always had the ability to dampen the sword’s energy − something no ordinary sheath could do. I think this is part of the same illusion that cloaks the blade, part of those seals that Izanagi laid on it to hide it and conceal its power. And if that is the case…”

  “Then the blade should still fit,” I finished.

  Shinobu handed me the saya. I took it into my left hand as always, gripping it near the top, and carefully fitted the sharp point of the blade to the koiguchi – the mouth of the saya – and pushed.

  The sword slid home smoothly. The guard clicked into place.

  “It worked.” I turned the sheathed sword over in my hands, hardly able to believe it. “My brain does not want to accept what my eyes just saw.”

  “A common state of affairs for both of us since we first met,” Shinobu said, smiling. He took the sword from me – and it was a nice side effect of the dream realm that I felt no strong urge to rip it out of his hands – and fitted it back into the harness so that it rested between my shoulder blades.

  “Let’s get going then,” I said, helplessly smiling back.

  We s
plashed into the turquoise water of the pool, making strenuous efforts to avoid the rusty looking piles of bones at the bottom. I was braced for the water to be icy cold like the pool in the glacier, but instead it was strangely warm. Not quite bath temperature, but definitely a pleasant surprise considering that we had no choice but to wade through it up to our knees. It also had a faint, eggy odour that I hadn’t picked up on before. I sniffed suspiciously.

  “Sulphur,” Shinobu said. “The water must come from a hot spring. We had them in our village. Everyone loved to bathe there, especially in the winter. We sometimes cooked eggs in the water, too, when we were children, and ate them. Onsen eggs.”

  I stared at his back. That was the second time he had mentioned his first life in the space of just a few minutes – and so casually, too, without even a hint of the painful hesitation that had always made me too worried to pursue the subject before. What had changed? Could something about this place be making him open up that way? My dad had certainly been a lot more forthcoming than usual in the ice cavern.

  I silently tucked the little jewel of information into the treasure box in my memory reserved solely for Shinobu, and promised myself that I would try asking for more details later on, after we were out of the dream realm, and I could trust that Shinobu really wanted to talk.

  He stepped to one side to avoid crushing a skull under his foot, and I moved past him, reaching the gap in the wall first. I crouched down to get a better look – and found myself being gently but firmly put aside by Shinobu.

  “Let me go first,” he said.

  “Why? I’m the smallest—”

  “Which means that if you go ahead of me, you may lead us down a passage that is too narrow for me to follow, and then you will have to back up. If I go first, we will only be able to take routes that we both may fit into.”

  His argument made perfect sense. It was also complete and total bull. He always insisted on going ahead of me, taking the lead and brushing me to one side. And he did it for one simple reason: he was determined to put himself between me and danger. That same instinct had led him to sacrifice himself three times now – once at my hand.

  No matter how many times I showed him that I wasn’t some useless, fragile burden, the issue kept coming between us. Why did he have to wrest control from me, over and over? What was he trying to prove?

  Why am I so much lesser than you, Shinobu? Why do you always try to leave me behind?

  I felt as if he’d returned to me only to stab me in the heart.

  “Mio-dono?” Shinobu’s warm hand closed around my wrist. “What is it?”

  The touch broke through my dark thoughts. The intense sense of rejection and betrayal disappeared, sucked away like dirty water swirling down a drain. I realized with a shock that my hands had clenched into knotted fists. I forced them to open so that Shinobu could take my hand properly.

  “Sorry.” I shook myself and looked up at him. “Sorry, I think I zoned out for a second there. I’m not sure…”

  “Are you all right? You looked…” He stopped abruptly. His fingers entwined with mine, wordlessly communicating his concern.

  I didn’t care if Shinobu was protective. Did I? Maybe I’d rolled my eyes over it a couple of times, but it had always struck me as kind of sweet and old-fashioned. It was just a part of him. So why had it suddenly set me off that way? I hadn’t even felt like myself for a second there − the feelings had been so strong. It had to be this place, messing with my head.

  The sooner we got what I’d come for and left, the better.

  “I’m fine − I promise.” I squeezed his hand and smiled up at him. His face relaxed. He squeezed my hand back, then ducked down and bent himself double in order to squash into the tiny opening in the wall. I was hot on his heels.

  The only way to move in the narrow tunnel was to crawl on hands and knees in the shallow bed of the little stream, which meant getting soaked in stinky water up to my chest. Ahead of me, Shinobu had no choice but to lie on his belly and use his elbows to pull himself along. The roof was so low that he could barely raise his head. I was very glad that we seemed to have left the last of the skeletal remains behind in the geode cave – there’d be no way to avoid them like this.

  I could see light shining somewhere beyond Shinobu. It was different to the dim bluish glow of the crystals all around us. Moving in the cramped tunnel was so uncomfortable that it felt like we were in it forever, but in reality I think it was only five minutes or so before Shinobu made a sound of relief and disappeared through a small, round opening that had appeared ahead.

  I popped out after him with a wet squelch, dripping water everywhere. “Euw, that must be what it’s like to be born…” My voice trailed off as I took in the room we had found.

  The walls and low ceiling were of the same purple-blue-and-white-striped crystal as the geode, but here the spiky crystals had been sanded down and shaped so that they blended into a smooth, shimmering surface. A sort of chandelier, made of polished blue gems, hung from the centre of the roof, providing more light. The stream we had crawled through to get here trickled out of the narrow tunnel mouth behind me and down into a shallow trench that encircled the room at the base of the walls, so that the space was filled with the low murmur of water. But what really caught my attention were the three doorways spaced equally around the curving walls.

  These weren’t roughly hacked-out openings or natural cave mouths. They were real doorways, with black lintels, and each one was blocked by a door of glowing crystal bound in iron. Inlaid in the crystal was curling script made of the same black metal. The first door, to my left, proclaimed PAST. The one directly ahead of me was PRESENT. And the one on the right was FUTURE.

  “This is different from anything I’ve seen so far,” I said with dawning excitement. “We must be getting close to the centre – close to the wakizashi.”

  “That means the hazards will be likely to increase,” Shinobu said, eyeing the doors with caution. “Each of these possibilities would seem to present its own perils.”

  “Not a shocker. Which one do you think we should pick?”

  He shook his head, giving me a serious look. “You are the sword-bearer. You should choose.”

  I blew out a long breath as I considered it. “I suppose … logically, if we have to face things that have already happened in our past, then that would give us an edge – because we’ve already overcome them once. We should know the answers. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes − and I agree.”

  “Good.” I grabbed the handle of the door marked PAST.

  The cold metal of the rod-shaped handle shuddered against the skin of my palm. Then it warmed, perceptibly, like a blush creeping over a shy girl’s cheek. The texture of the metal seemed to change in my grasp, and I felt silk wrappings and the solid rounded edge of a hilt ornament. It was like holding the katana’s grip again for the very first time.

  With a deep, gusty sound that was disturbingly human, the door began to swing open. Air swirled around me, tugging inquisitively at my hair and damp clothes and tickling my face and hands. Light spilled out of the widening opening, and I breathed in a sweet, heady scent that I couldn’t quite place.

  “Sakura,” Shinobu said softly, behind me. “It smells like the cherry blossoms in my mother’s garden.”

  I looked back at him over my shoulder, my hand still on the door handle that felt like a sword hilt. Words leapt to my lips, words I hadn’t intended to speak out loud. “Maybe it’s your dream we’re heading into, Shinobu. Your past.”

  Shinobu’s face changed. He reached out as if to pull me back – to step in front of me again. Answering an irresistible impulse, I shrugged his hand off and slipped through the doorway into the past.

  He was right: it was a garden. A great, beautiful garden spreading out as far as the eye could see. And everywhere I looked, masses of fruit trees were in bloom, crowding the sky with cloudy mantles of pink and white blossoms, filling the air with that intoxicating
perfume that somehow made me want to laugh, and dance, and sing. Carefully landscaped hills rose around me, topped with small Chinese-style pagodas of white and red and gold. The little stream of clear water circled my feet and then ran away to play under a series of crescent-moon-shaped bridges painted the colour of jade.

  “Shin-chan!” A small figure – a little girl dressed in a red-and-white kimono – skipped through the spiralling cherry blossoms on the path ahead of us. The wind tossed dark, unruly hair around her head, and when she glanced back, I caught a glimpse of a pair of bright, laughing eyes. “Shin-chan, come and play!”

  Shinobu was still hesitating on the threshold. Impatiently I grabbed his hand and dragged him into the garden. “We have to catch her.”

  “Mio – I…” His voice was choked.

  The door swung shut behind us with a deep, hollow thud.

  “Come on.” I pulled at his hand as I scanned the garden for the little girl. She had disappeared around the next bend. She was playing with us. Hide-and-seek. Laughter bubbled up inside me. “She’s waiting.”

  I tugged at his hand again and he came with me as I ran down the path. I barely noticed when my running strides turned into skipping ones, and then dancing ones.

  “Where are you, little princess?” I called out. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  Childish laughter echoed around us. Drifting cherry blossoms caught in my hair as the wind shifted. One landed on my tongue and without thinking I swallowed it. Sweet. I squeezed Shinobu’s hand and held it up above my head so that I could twirl in a circle. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  I glimpsed a blur of red and white ahead of us on a low, rounded hill crowned by a massive cherry tree that towered over all the rest. The tree’s gnarled, silvery trunk spoke of great age. “She’s up there.”

  I let go of Shinobu’s hand and raced up the hill, filled with inexplicable, joyful anticipation – desperate to find the little girl and learn who she was and how she had got here. There was another fleeting blur of a flowered kimono and tangled hair as the child whipped away from me to hide behind the tree. The faint gurgle of her giggles would have given away her location even if I hadn’t seen her.