Frail Human Heart

by Zoe Marriott

  I never had a father, either, Izanami whispered. I was born from the dust of the universe, and the light of the moon, and the whispers of the stars. All I ever had was Izanagi. He was my brother, my husband, my everything. We were everything to each other. And then he left me behind. He left me all alone…

  “I understand. I know what he did. It was terrible.” I looked around me, straining to distinguish anything in the billows of grey fog. Her voice seemed to come from … everywhere. Where was she?

  Soon be better now. No more waiting. No more alone. Tick tick tick tock! A clear, tinkling little laugh, like broken glass raining down.

  “You were … you were very angry with me last time,” I said.

  I have been angry for years. Centuries. Millennia.

  A shadow – a vast, rippling thing – emerged on my left, looming over me. Were those wings? A cloud of hair, streaming in some wind that I couldn’t feel? The shadow swooped towards me. I ducked – but before it reached me it was gone, melting back into the fog.

  It will all be different soon. Everything will be all right soon. I am coming to fetch him. Soon everything will be as it should be, should be, should be. Tick tock! Not long now!

  The looming shadow spun through the fog to my right. I jumped, following it with my eyes, trying to keep it in sight. Its movements were jerky and somehow repellent, but … familiar?

  She was dancing. Izanami was dancing in the darkness.

  You are going to help me, little birdie, aren’t you? Now that you understand? You will bring him to where he should be, very soon, tick tock, twelve on the clock.

  “Yes,” I promised. “Yes, I will. But if you know that, then why don’t you call your monsters off? Leave London alone?” My teeth were beginning to chatter. I clenched my hands together.

  But then he might not come. Or you might change your mind, little birdie! I cannot allow that. No, no, no – not when I have waited so long, so very, very long, all alone!

  I gritted my teeth, rocked back by the rising wail of her voice. “All right! All right, I get it! I’m going to fight him. I’ll do everything that I can. I’ll do my best.”

  Oh, yes. You always do your best, don’t you? Another glassy giggle that sent chills slithering down my spine like worms. For an instant her shape was clear. Hands raised, hair flaring around her bleached white skull, she twirled almost close enough to touch. You will do your best for me. Remember that, for I will be with you soon. Tick tock. Time is running away, and soon, so soon, I will be with you…

  I opened my eyes. I was back in the spirit realm, lying on soft, warm moss beneath a canopy of silver leaves.

  “What is the matter?” Shinobu stirred next to me and ran his big, warm hands up and down my bare arms. “You are cold. Did you have a nightmare?”

  “I … I saw…” I said. My lips were numb. “Another true seeing. Izanami. She knows what we’re going to do. She’s all – hopped up – excited and jittering, like a little kid. She’s waited thousands of years for this chance. She’ll throw everything she has at the mortal realm tonight. And if we fail, she’ll rip it apart.”

  The words rang like some kind of terrible prophesy and then dried up, leaving me panting, shuddering with cold. Shinobu wrapped himself around me. He murmured comfortingly into my hair − endearments in English and Japanese.

  “Sorry,” I managed after a minute. “That was a hell of a wake-up call for you.”

  “I woke with you in my arms. Nothing else matters.”

  I took his face between my hands and kissed him. “I’m sorry,” I said again, in a completely different tone. “I’m sorry I couldn’t think of a way out of all this for you. I’m sorry I wouldn’t stay in the dream realm. I’m sorry I let you go after the Nekomata alone—”

  “Don’t,” he murmured. “Don’t. Where you go—”

  “I will follow.”

  “Always. We have loved one another as the night sky loves the stars. A love great enough to defeat time, and the gods, and even death itself. I will not allow anyone to say it was not enough. Not even you.”

  “All right,” I whispered, nodding. “OK. We – we should probably try to tidy ourselves up. We’ve been gone a long time.”

  The scramble to find all our hastily flung-away items of clothing, get the twigs and bits of moss out of our hair and identify all the grass stains in unmentionable places made me relax a little, and smile, and then laugh. Shinobu was right. I wasn’t going to be sad. Not in this tiny, precious gift of time when I still had everything I loved.

  Shinobu turned me around so that I faced away from him and carefully refastened my sword harness over my shoulders. The blade buzzed contentedly against my back.

  “There. Ready for battle once more,” he said, nuzzling the nape of my neck. The most delicious shiver – nothing like the Izanami-induced ones – worked through me. I sighed, my hands reaching back.

  “Guys? Guys!” Jack’s voice broke the spell. Shinobu and I both jumped, pulling apart guiltily an instant before her manic hair popped around the side of the tree trunk. Her eyes widened as she looked us over.

  “Crap. Your mum is looking for you, Mimi, and if she finds you looking like this, together, death will be upon you with swift wings.” She grabbed my hand and dragged me away from Shinobu. “You’d better skedaddle, Shinobs. Go braid your hair or something.”

  “Wait a second!” I protested. I turned back and kissed him quickly. “OK, now you can leave.”

  He caught hold of my top with one hand and held me still, leaning down to give me a sweet, lingering kiss that might have got completely out of control if Jack hadn’t still been clutching my other arm. She pulled me away, making impatient noises.

  “Now I can leave,” he said. With a flash of his cocky-shy grin, he whisked out of sight behind another tree. I had no doubt at all that the next time I saw him, he’d look as neatly sober as an archbishop at a royal wedding.

  “Come here,” Jack said. She finger-combed my hair, tugged at my clothes to straighten them out and then pulled a wad of tissues out of her pocket. “You cannot pull off the gothic-grunge look, believe me. Spit.”

  “Euw! What are you, someone’s granny?”

  “You have grass stains on your face, doofus. Spit or die. Your choice.”

  I spat. She scrubbed at my chin, put the tissues away and stepped back to survey me again. “Get that dreamy look off your mug! You might as well have a neon sign saying ‘Got Some’ on your forehead.”

  “Oh, God.” I sat down on a fallen branch that was nearly the size of a park bench. “Think unsexy thoughts. Think unsexy thoughts…”

  Jack sat next to me. She nudged me with her shoulder. “That good, eh?”

  “Jack, I’m trying to think about something else.”

  “Sorry, sorry. Try homework. Maths homework.”

  Eugh, maths. I’d seriously think myself lucky if I didn’t get a D.

  No. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t get any grade at all. I was never going to hand my maths homework in again. Or any other homework either.

  Just like that I came back down to earth. The bump was bruising.

  Jack frowned at me. “I think you should stop now. You went from blissed-out to sadsack.”

  I ran my hands through my hair. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just … I’m all over the place right now.”

  “Shinobu looked ‘all over the place’,” she said, giving me a sly, sidelong look. “Roughed him up a bit, did you? Since your mum’s not here yet…”

  My cheeks caught fire. “Not a chance.”

  “Oh, come on! I’m your best friend! You don’t have to tell me much – just a juicy detail or two.”

  I retaliated. “Only if you spill the beans about you and Hikaru.”

  Jack went poker-faced instantly. She fixed her eyes on a jewel-coloured snail the size of a jawbreaker that was slowly making its way over the fallen bough next to her. “We’re just friends.”

  “Of course you are. Oh, by the way, Egypt call
ed. They’d like their river back.”

  “Shut it. We’re friends and that’s all. I can be friends with hot girls. I’m friends with you, aren’t I? Although not for much longer if you keep this up.”

  “Whoa.” I sat back. “Hold up. You think I’m hot? Where’s Shinobu – I need to tell him that I just got a better offer.”

  She snorted helplessly with laughter, her tense posture easing a little bit. “I said shut it! Like you’d give that boy up. Even if he sprouted a second head. Or joined a boy band.”

  “Yeah, but if he ever dumps me, you’re my number-one backup. Mum loves you already – total bonus.”

  Jack sighed, her laughter dying. I waited. She sighed again, more deeply this time, and her shoulders slumped. “I just didn’t think of him like that. I liked him. I still like her. But I don’t know if… I’m not like you, Mimi. I’m not brave. I don’t want to put it all on the line and maybe get shot down in flames. Not yet. I’m not ready.”

  “You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met,” I said softly. I swallowed hard, then went on. “Not everyone lives to be a hundred, you know? Things happen. Chances slip away. People leave. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to change that. All you can do is grab hold of whatever makes you happy and hang onto it for however long it lasts.”

  Jack made a noise like a cross racehorse. “Did I ask for sensible advice? For all you know I might enjoy tormenting myself and being needlessly emo.”

  “Well, whatever happens, you know I’ve got your back, Maverick.”

  She put her arm around my shoulders in a sideways hug. “Oh my God, Mio. Don’t you know Top Gun quotes are totally not cool?”

  My mum arrived about three minutes later and found us giggling like pre-schoolers.

  “I see you found her, Jack. Why were you hiding all the way up here on your own, sweetie?”

  “I wasn’t hiding,” I said. “I didn’t get much sleep last night, so I came up where it was a bit quieter and had a nap.” One hundred per cent true. Although it had been quite a short one…

  “Well, that was probably a good idea. But now you’ve had a rest, come down to the feast. You’re missing out on dinner, and your father wants you to dance with him.”

  “Dad wants me to dance with him?” I repeated sceptically. “Or you want us to dance so that you can look on and smile mistily over the sentimental moment?”

  “Both.” She grinned. “It’s time to shake your moneymaker, kid.”

  I got up, grimacing. “Look, I’ll go with you, but only if you promise never, ever to say that again.”

  “Deal.”

  So I walked down into the green bowl of the amphitheatre. I ate and drank with the Kitsune and my family. Laughed at Hikaru and Hiro’s jokes. Danced with my dad, and Jack, and Shinobu, and then a whole bunch of Kitsune: some that I’d fought with at Battersea, and some who were complete strangers. Marvelled at Rachel’s previously unknown jiving skills. Eventually ended up leaning dozily on Shinobu’s shoulder, half-asleep. But most of all, I watched. I watched them all and stored these moments up – bright, warm fragments of life and happiness, of everything that was precious to me.

  Because I could feel the clock counting down towards the moment when I would have to say goodbye to all of it – all of them – forever.

  Tick … tock.

  CHAPTER 23

  BEFORE THE STORM

  E ventually, most of us dozed off there on the blankets at the bottom of the amphitheatre. Even me. I was right in the middle of giggling with Jack at the sight of furry heaps of sleeping fox spirits, their paws in the air, tails sticking out all over the place, and then – wham. Out like a light.

  I needed the rest, and it was a good one. If I dreamed at all, I don’t remember it.

  But when I woke up, the music had finished, the fox lights had drifted back up to the canopy of leaves and no one was dancing or laughing any more. The party was over. It was time to get ready.

  The Kitsune opened up their enviable armouries and began kitting themselves out. We humans were led into the trees and Hiro and Araki, with the help of a couple of younger Kitsune, brought out selections of borrowed armour and weapons for us. This stuff was far from scruffy, tattered hand-me-downs. The odd battle scar showed, but each item had been lovingly polished and cleaned, and I strongly suspected that the Kitsune had some sort of grow−shrink spell that made anything they offered feel like it had been tailor-made for the wearer.

  It was very reassuring to see my friends and parents re-emerge from behind the trees wearing tough Kevlar-plated coats and vests and steel-capped boots, and clutching a formidable array of knives, swords and, in Jack’s case, a naginata. My mum and Rachel had both refused any kind of edged weapon, but Rachel claimed a weighted wooden staff, while Mum picked out a gleaming baton. She tucked it and some pepper spray into a Batman-style belt.

  Shinobu gratefully accepted a new katana and my dad loaded himself up with every kind of sharp, pointy object on offer, from ninja throwing stars to wrist blades to a pair of long, single-edged tanto knives that he strapped to his outer thighs. I was surprised he didn’t jingle when he walked, but I had no doubt whatsoever that he knew how to use all the hardware he’d chosen.

  When it was my turn, I pulled on a white, long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of snug-fitting black jeans, then a sort of stab vest made of toughened black leather that laced up my sides, under my arms. The vest had diamond-shaped metal studs dotted over its surface and lightweight, tough plates of armour underneath. It allowed me to twist and move without feeling restricted, and my sword harness fitted perfectly over the top. I also picked out a pair of black mesh swordsman’s gauntlets which covered my lower arms to the elbow. They were reinforced with Kevlar on the backs of the hands and wrists, but were so fine over my fingers and palms that I barely felt I was wearing anything. They would help to keep my hands warm and my fingers flexible in the cold outside.

  I kept my own footwear. It was the same light, ultra-comfy pair of boots that the Kitsune had given me after we’d fought the Nekomata, and despite all my adventures in the dream realm, they had never let water in or shrunk. I felt a sort of loyalty to them. Maybe they’d bring me luck.

  Predictably, the moment that I stepped out, Hikaru, newly clad in the familiar white-leather ensemble from the Battersea battle, wolf-whistled me. Jack and Rachel began squabbling over whether my official code name ought to be Xena or She-Ra. I felt a headache coming on, so I shut them up by complaining that my hair kept falling into my face and bothering me.

  As the best braider, Rachel took charge, sweeping back the sides of my hair and working it into two tight French plaits that ran from my temples to the back of my head. Fine strands immediately slid loose to tickle my cheeks, but it was still a vast improvement. Rachel shrugged off my thanks, but I thought she was pleased that she’d been able to contribute something.

  A small part of me whined that all this was pointless. Some armour and a sensible hairstyle weren’t going to pull me out of the fire. In fact, I could go out to fight in my teddy-bear pyjamas for all the difference it would ultimately make to my fate. I recognized that part of me. It was self-pity. The truth was that anything which increased my chances of getting to and taking down Izanagi increased my family’s chances of having a world that was worth living in after I was gone. And I would have fought in my teddy-bear pyjamas if that was what it took to make that happen.

  “Araki-san,” I said, “could you do me a favour and escort these guys down to wait with everyone else? I need to talk to Shinobu in private.”

  “What about?” my mum asked, looking both worried and suspicious.

  “If she was willing to tell all of us, then it wouldn’t be private now, would it?” My dad put his arm around her shoulder and led her towards the rim of the bowl.

  Jack discreetly waggled her eyebrows at me, whispering, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  She and Hikaru went after my parents, and Rachel followed with a si
delong look that told me she shared Jack’s opinion.

  “They think we are going to … now?” Shinobu asked, torn between disapproval and amusement.

  “I wish we were.” I checked to make sure that they were all definitely out of earshot, then turned back to him. “I’ve been thinking about this fight, and how to make sure it goes down the way we want.”

  Instantly he sobered. “Go on.”

  “Izanagi is a coward. If I go strolling up to him with the Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven already unbound and blazing with god-killing energy, I think he’ll rabbit. He’s already been running from the sword, and Izanami, for centuries: one more retreat won’t bother him. And I don’t exactly know what powers he has, but I have seen him disappear almost instantly – like teleportation – and if he does it again, we’ll have no way of going after him. Our chance will be gone, and Izanami will…” My voice trailed off.

  “I understand,” Shinobu said, nodding. “What do you propose?”

  “He’s not scared of me. He’s contemptuous, and he knows he can snap me in half with one hand. We need to use that, use the element of surprise.” I touched the hilt of the wakizashi at Shinobu’s waist. “Button up your coat over this so that he doesn’t see we have it. I’m not sure how much energy it puts out, but with all the other powers that are going to be swirling around out there tonight hopefully he won’t sense it. He won’t know that we have the sword’s final name, either. Let me fight with the blade as it is now − only partially unbound − at first. He’ll see that it’s changed shape and he’ll think that’s as far as we’ve got in breaking the bindings. With any luck it’ll lull him into a false sense of security and he’ll stick around to try to take the sword from me again. Then, at the last moment, when his guard is down and he thinks he’s about to crush me…”

  “I’ll draw the wakizashi, and you will call the sword’s last name to unbind it.” Shinobu said it matter-of-factly, as if he wasn’t talking about ending his own life. “He won’t have time to run. But … he’s going to hurt you, Mio. Badly.”