by Tiffiny Hall
‘Cim,’ I begin to ask, but when her eyes set sadly on Hero and his friends loitering inside Gate Two, I stop. Now is not the time.
Bruce snarls at me; he has a strapped hand from our fight last week. Hero has a black eye that looks like hundreds of purple spiders have crawled under his skin and exploded. No one has ever stood up to him before, and he won’t want anyone to know it was a Year Seven who gave him a dose of his own poison.
Cinnamon is shaking, setting her red afro abuzz. The bullies have already started yelling at her.
‘Long sleeves today!’ Hero shouts. ‘Hiding your porky arms?’
Cinnamon pulls her sleeves down over her wrists and closes her eyes. We have a short-sleeved and long-sleeved school shirt option. I know Cinnamon usually wears the long sleeves because the short sleeves dig into her arms. I hear her whisper ‘Rescue’ under her breath. Our school counsellor has advised the Gate Twoers to find ourselves a ‘happy word’ to help us deal with bullies. A happy word isn’t going to stop Hero and his clan spitting on us. Despite the constant anti-bullying workshops the school has us involved in, the bully-blocking program is clearly not working. School counsellors should spend less time in their offices and more time in the playground.
‘Did you get an invite to Chantell’s?’ Cinnamon asks, opening her eyes and turning to where Chantell is handing out clutch-sized pink envelopes.
‘Nup.’ I try to sound unperturbed. It doesn’t work. I stutter on the P. ‘You?’ I ask.
Cinnamon rattles her afro.
‘Why don’t we go anyway?’ I suggest.
Cinnamon shakes her chin vehemently as Rescue pops his tiny head out of her pocket. I’m surprised she’s brought him to school again, but she tells me she’ll be leaving him in her locker. I guess he’ll just spend the day sleeping. It’ll certainly be safer there than in the toilets.
Inside Gate One, I see Jackson with Elecktra. They’re facing one another and talking; it looks like she’s interviewing him to see if he’s a suitable date for the red carpet that exists in her mind.
‘C’mon,’ I tell Cinnamon, pulling her away from the gate.
‘Where are we going?’ she asks.
‘To class,’ I say, taking her hand.
‘But class is through Gate Two,’ Cinnamon objects.
‘No. We’re taking Gate Three today.’
‘What do you mean Gate Three?’
‘The top way,’ I say. ‘Assembly doesn’t start for another twenty minutes, so we have time.’
I walk well away from the school gates and she follows me reluctantly. ‘We could get into trouble. Someone will see us,’ she says, grimacing.
‘No one ever looks up,’ I tell her.
Cinnamon keeps checking over her shoulder for teachers. Her afro tickles my ear every time she turns her head.
‘Okay. We’re here,’ I say.
Cinnamon looks around, confused. ‘Where’s Gate Three?’
‘Up there.’ I point to the nearest roof.
I drop my bag and take out my ninja hood. I put it on.
Cinnamon laughs. ‘What are you doing?’ Her face is still the colour of Shrek, but I can’t ask her why until Hero’s taunts have worn off.
‘I’m going to tell you a big secret,’ I say. ‘But you must promise not to tell ANYBODY.’ Cinnamon steps closer and leans in, crosses her heart with her finger. I see total honesty in the depths of her oceanic-blue eyes and my secret spills forth. I tell her about my ninja encounter with Jackson, the hunt for the White Warrior, our mission to defeat the ancient masters in the Cemetery of Warriors. Cinnamon is captivated by my every word. I exaggerate my story with an eyebrow symphony, arching them up, plunging them down, and my hood adds extra flair.
‘Wow,’ she says at the end of it. ‘That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.’
I don’t think anyone has ever said anything I told them was cool before. I grin.
‘I promise I won’t tell anyone you’re turning ninja,’ Cinnamon says. ‘I thought I noticed your invisible hands, but didn’t know if it was real or not. So, where’s this Gate Three then?’
I take her hand again and turn us to face the brick terrace house beside us. I have no idea if this will work. I close my eyes as I did when I was holding the ninja star and a flash of my mother chasing me over the rooftops with crazed power and skill fills my mind. I open my eyes, feeling peaceful. In broad daylight we might be caught, but that makes it all the more exciting.
‘On three,’ I say, ‘jump.’
Cinnamon nods, then says, ‘Wait!’ She lifts Rescue out of her pocket and tucks him into her school bag, then zips it up. ‘As Sergeant Major would say, “Ready ready.”’ She mimics his gruff voice.
Cinnamon’s courage today is impressive. I hope this works. I shake out my legs to limber up. Twist my arms around my torso, crack my neck, then take two deep breaths.
‘Three!’ I yell.
We both jump at the same time, and in a leap I fly Cinnamon up to the roof of the house.
‘Oh my goodness!’ Cinnamon screams, looking down at the street. ‘This is totally awesome!’ She giggles with excitement. ‘How’d you learn that?’
‘Apparently, it’s all there, in me. I just have to learn how to use it. Want to try again?’
‘Ready ready!’ she squeals excitedly.
I take her hand and fly her over a driveway. Her brilliant red hair crackles as we leap from rooftop to rooftop, giggling. I concentrate on powering us forwards with the fire in my blood; that same fire that burned in the playground and singed the bench. I feel the air pockets bursting on my face as we slice through the air, hand in hand. As we near the school, I veer us to the right and we leap across the roof of the school building behind Gates One and Two. We come to a stop on the roof of the music department.
‘We made it,’ I say.
Cinnamon is buzzing. ‘That felt like fireworks,’ she says. ‘Best ride I’ve ever been on!’
I smile the biggest grin. That means a lot, as she’s one of the few people I’ve ever met who’s actually been to Disneyland.
We jump down to the ground and I rip off my hood just as the bell rings and the hallway floods with kids on their way to assembly.
‘Thanks,’ Cinnamon says, hugging me. ‘I’ve never done anything like that.’
‘You know how Lecky always tells us to “get over ourselves”?’ I say.
Cinnamon looks at me and nods.
‘Well, I reckon she’s right. Sometimes we do hold ourselves back.’
‘I’m sick of being sweet and shy,’ Cinnamon admits. ‘Sometimes I wish I could be strong.’
‘You can. Look at what you just did!’
She looks back over her shoulder at all the rooftops we flew over.
‘Cim,’ I say gently, ‘what have you put on your face?’
She looks away. ‘Mum’s make-up.’ She hesitates, then says, ‘To cover up my —’
She doesn’t finish, but I know what she means.
I study her face. ‘It’s a bit green,’ I say.
‘I used a paintbrush from the geography classroom,’ she says, casting her eyes downwards and twisting in her shoes.
‘Maybe it had a bit —’
But Cinnamon cuts me off. ‘I’d rather be green than have pimples,’ she says.
I hug Cinnamon. She wipes her chin on my school shirt, leaving a pale green smear. We giggle as we walk off to assembly.
THIRTEEN
I enter the dojang, bow and kneel in the centre of the mats.
‘The shinobi shozoku looks good on you,’ Jackson says, kneeling in front of me, wearing his ninja suit too.
So, I have commenced my ninja training. Pretty hardcore for a girl who wasn’t even adorkable a few days ago. I feel so cool now! Jackson and Sabo have outlined a detailed program that’s meant to get me ready to enter the Cemetery of Warriors to find the White Warrior.
My program is based on fourteen core martial arts principles:
1. Mixed
martial arts
2. Unarmed, hand-to-hand combat
3. Ninja stars and nunchucks
4. Spear and sword
5. Climbing
6. Elemental power: fire, explosives and water
7. Tying and escaping rope
8. Concealment
9. Magic
10. Espionage
11. Disguise
12. Stealth strategies
13. Bully blocking
14. Character building and spiritual awakening
And five white-belt ninja skills:
1. REAX (reflexes and reactions)
2. Ninja nutrition
3. Survival skills
4. Self-defence
5. Psychological warfare
I know: piece of cake. If you’re a baker. I’ve been a nobody my whole life and now I’m expected to be the best somebody you can be, a real stealthy, speedy ninja! I just hope all those years of Hulk juice kick in.
The walls are emblazoned with the afternoon sun humidifying the room. Outside the dojang, the world moves through the rice-paper walls in shadows and I feel like a shadow myself. But in the dojang everything is focused, clear and aware. I feel so alive.
Jackson and I have been kneeling for a while, breathing deeply and speaking to our hearts to practise slowing down the beats to a gentle strum. Jackson’s lips twitch as he ponders for a moment, then suddenly he yells, ‘Catch this!’
He spears his body towards the ceiling and spins once, sending a spinning hook kick to graze past my nose. I catch his heel mid-kick and pin it to the ground. His body lands hard against the mats and I twist his leg into a submission hold. We are so close and I blush.
‘Caught it,’ I say. To cover my embarrassment, I add, ‘What type of ancient warriors are we talking about in the cemetery?’
I release him so he can answer.
‘There’s Hanzo, head of the ninja clans. He will test your focus,’ he says. ‘He has a shield across his mouth and black skin around his eyes that melts into his shinobi shozoku. He’s the grossest thing imaginable.’
He throws a kick, but I jump, land the sole of my foot on his ankle and stamp down. He throws a right kick; I leap and stomp it down. He kicks again, this time a double front kick, and I leap into the air, land with both feet on top of his and stamp him back to the ground. He tries again and again, but every time I am too quick, my foot blocking his next move.
Jackson grabs my ponytail from behind. I spin under his arm, brushing my nose against his wrist, and come out the other side next to his elbow, where I strike, with my hand in a Y-formation, the side of his neck. He ducks, hooks the heel of my foot with his palm so I crash back onto my coccyx, then, holding firmly onto my heel with his right hand, he runs his left hand down my leg and jars my kneecap. I pretend to be in pain, then draw my knees back to my chest and explode my heels into his chest. He flies backwards, then lands, only to rebound in the air and charge back towards me. As he approaches, I reach for his ears with my feet, clamp his cheeks with my ankles, as I saw him do to Private Lincoln, twist my hips and flip him. He spins four times and lands on his feet.
‘Not bad,’ he says.
A ‘not bad’ feels like a ‘totally awesome’ coming from him.
I jump to my feet without using my hands. Jackson and I stalk each other, circling the mats. Sabo watches and cracks a smile.
Jackson screams, ‘Ay-yah!’ and rushes me with a flying side kick. I roll my chin backwards as he flies over me, the heel of his foot skimming past my chin, just missing my nose as I backbend and touch the floor with my hand. When he has passed, I straighten up again.
‘Who else?’ I ask.
‘Shaolin Monk, master of Kung Fu, will test your movements,’ he says.
Sabo flings us our ninja stars and we flick them out into the dojang and start chasing them like furious fireflies. Jackson flicks his and I chase it, then I flick my star and he flies after it. I can already tell that star chasey is going to be one of my favourite games. The ninja stars fly into the ceiling and we hook kick after them, with a triple spinning kick, tapping them with our toes and propelling them in any direction our feet choose. We strike and block each other’s stars. Then we race the stars, spinning them out and backflipping across the room to beat them. I win.
‘That it?’ I ask, panting.
‘Nope. The Apache Warrior will test your invisibility, then comes the finale.’ Jackson pauses to suck in air. ‘The Gladiator is the last warrior and he will test your weaponry.’
Four warriors, four tests. A bit much for any ninja-in-training, let alone me. I swallow hard.
‘Speaking of weaponry,’ Jackson says, sinking into a deep tiger stance double knife-hand strike, ‘that’s what the Tiger Scroll of Fire is all about.’
‘Why fire?’
‘The ancient Two Sword School that trained the first ninjas referred to combat as fire,’ he says. ‘The samurai traditionally only use the sword, but the ninjas …’
‘The ninjas’ weapons are everything that exists,’ I finish his sentence, copying his long stance, upper block, horse-riding stance, mountain block, flick of the hair.
Sabo brings over two katana swords. Jackson takes the one with a black leather handle and I take the one with the red leather handle. The blade is shorter than that of a typical samurai sword.
‘Shorter blade for increased mobility. You wear it on your back with the hilt over the shoulder,’ Jackson says, demonstrating. I copy him.
‘The sword can be used in five ways,’ he says.
He takes me to the wall, leans the sword, hilt up, against it and uses the guard, the tsuba, as a step to launch himself up onto a ceiling rafter. Then he pulls the sword up via the sageo, a cord attached to the scabbard, which he’s tied around his ankle.
‘For example, climbing,’ he says, opening his arms in a ‘ta-dah’ action.
I lean my sword up against the wall and step up onto it, but it slips and I fall. My ego bruises.
‘Again.’ Jackson laughs.
Sabo offers me a hand and, with his help, I step up onto the sword and struggle onto the beam. But I forgot to tie the sageo around my ankle, so Sabo has to pass the sword up to me. Could I be more hopeless?
Jackson motions me to step back. He grips the sword’s hilt in one hand and its scabbard in the other. He hesitates, then draws the sword out of the scabbard. A cloud of something explodes into my eyes — burning like shampoo, chlorine. ‘What the —?!’ I scream, struggling to keep my balance on the rafter.
‘It’s a combination of metal shavings, pepper and sand,’ Jackson says proudly. ‘Works a charm.’
‘I can’t see!’ I yell as the world bombards me with jagged flashes of orange and green.
‘The sword can be used for climbing, as a blinding device, as a probe for exploring ahead in the dark,’ Jackson says, counting them off on his fingers. ‘In combat, of course, against single or multiple assailants — whirl it around in a circle holding the sageo and you’ll increase its reach.’ He pauses for a moment, then adds, ‘Oh, I forgot you can use the tube as a blowpipe, or a snorkel for water-based missions.’
‘How could you forget that one?’ I mutter, squinting at him through puffy eyelids as I shake my hair over my eyes to hide them from the glare of light.
Jackson leaps off the rafter and lands in the centre of the dojang, where he collects his ninja stars. I follow, stumbling as I land. I’m still acclimatising to the traditional two-toed tabi that are like sock shoes and can put you a bit off balance if you’re not used to webbed feet. I’m also still half-blind.
‘Beats capsicum spray,’ Jackson assures me when I complain. He hands me a utility belt to tie around my waist. It contains a bamboo tube filled with gunpowder, metal shavings and pepper; a medicine canister with various compartments for herbs and poisons; a pen and pad for gathering intelligence; and a rope with a grappling hook at one end for climbing, which can also be used as a weapon for dragging people off their feet or off wall
s. I don’t know where I’m going to meet these people who will need to be captured or hurt, but Jackson tells me that ‘a ninja’s enemies are everywhere’.
He hands me my ninja star, also known as a shuriken, meaning ‘hand hidden blade’. ‘There are 350 types of shuriken, from the traditional needle-like blades to more modern shapes. There’s the cross, star or triangle with swivelling blades that unfold from two points to four, six, eight, twelve,’ he says.
‘Talk about ninja accessories,’ I say. How am I going to learn all this in time? What if I get transported before I’m ready?
He laughs. ‘You don’t have to learn them all; you only have to remember. It’s in your blood. Instinct.’
In the dusty light of the dojang, we advance to other projectile weapons in the ninja armoury, such as the travel bow, a hinged bow that can be folded into a walking stick to avoid detection. Jackson shows me how to make an emergency bow out of bamboo. I feel nervous as we sit cross-legged in our uniforms carving the bows. Elecktra is the artistic one.
‘Do you know how to make your own arrows too?’ I ask.
‘Yep,’ he says.
Jackson stands and walks over to a chest of drawers in the corner of the dojang. His scent of freshly washed clothes and home-made pasta sauce follows him; I get a whiff and smile happily. He takes out a tray of miniature arrows.
‘These are some I prepared earlier,’ he says. ‘Poison-tipped.’
‘But they’re so little.’
‘They can be shot from a tiny bow, or out of a blowpipe made from a short length of bamboo, or even a simple roll of paper from your notebook,’ he tells me.
‘Wow,’ I say, studying the tiny needles.
‘Spitting needles have been around long before Hero started using them at Gate Two,’ he says. ‘This is how ninjas used to communicate. They used the darts to send messages — to get intelligence to besieged forces inside a village, for instance.’
My heart sinks at the mention of Gate Two. In the dojang, I feel capable and strong, but when I step outside I am myself again. Gate Two Roxy.
