White Ninja

by Tiffiny Hall

  Jackson shuffles his feet. He steps back from Elecktra. She moves closer.

  ‘Go away!’ she yells at me.

  I can’t move. Jackson still doesn’t look at me.

  ‘Scram!’ she shouts.

  I search his face like it’s a crossword. No clue.

  ‘I just wanted to check tonight was still on?’ I say in a shaky voice.

  ‘Yep. Sure,’ he says cagily.

  ‘What’s tonight? What’s going on?’ Elecktra snaps.

  He looks at her and then smiles kindly at me. ‘I’m just helping Roxy with some homework.’

  Homework. I’m helping him find the White Warrior and this is how he refers to me — as someone who needs help with their homework. I take the cotton wool out of my nose and wait for him to look at me, but his eyes are downwards.

  I walk out of the locker room. I’ve never felt so Gate Two in my life.

  ‘So how are things?’ Jackson asks as I enter the dojang that evening after school.

  ‘How do you think?’ I snap.

  He reties the knot of his belt and whips the ends tight. ‘Seriously, are you okay?’ he asks.

  I ignore him.

  ‘Okay. Let’s start with kicks then,’ he says. ‘I’ll need you in bare feet. Our lesson today is basic side kick, blade of the foot to the jugular.’

  He shows me how to warm up my muscles, then leads me to the centre of the dojang mats, where we bow to each other and I follow him into a deep horse-riding stance. He takes one step to the right, tucks his left knee under his chin, then tilts his body back as his leg extends straight up from his hip, the blade of his sole reaching for the ceiling. Then he retracts his knee to his chin, his uniform crackling with the sharp move, and returns to horse-riding stance.

  ‘Go,’ he says.

  I take a step, pull my knee up to my chin, but I lose my balance and fall down. I’m a disaster. I try again and this time manage to whip my foot out to the side.

  ‘Blade of the foot,’ Jackson repeats, ‘push through the hip and then the heel.’

  I try to push through the heel, but my foot hates it.

  ‘Higher,’ Jackson says.

  I collapse onto the floor.

  ‘You can do better than this,’ he says.

  I glare at him. ‘Sorry if I’m not Elecktra,’ I say.

  ‘What’s she got to do with your side kick?’ he strikes back.

  ‘You would never tell Elecktra she was hopeless,’ I say, crossing my feet and arms.

  He looks at me, bewildered by my attitude. Something about his splintering gaze annoys me. He’s not paying enough attention! If I was Elecktra, those eyes would be riveted on me.

  I launch at him to bring his fractured gaze back to me. He grabs my wrist as I come at him, twists me under his arm three times into a submission hold. We are chest to chest.

  I curl my hands around his forearms and feel the hours of his ceiling push-ups and years of training, then hip-throw him over my shoulder. He break-falls and rolls back onto his feet, then stands up slowly, pulling on his bottom lip where he bit it.

  ‘Not bad,’ he says and smiles.

  He launches at me with a hammer-fist overhead strike and I roll out of the way into a climbing axe kick, stepping up onto his knee for extra height and stomping my foot to the ceiling. When I land, I see him as if through a sheet of water, shimmering, perfect, a battle light in his eyes. We fight with thunderous kicks, smashing blocks, twisting arm locks, slicing shuriken, until we are both keening with exhaustion. We run at each other full tilt and roundhouse kick at the same time. Our legs smash together, the insteps of our feet crunching bone to bone. We both yelp and break away, hopping and clutching our feet.

  ‘Ready to train properly now?’ Jackson asks, hobbling back to the centre.

  He takes my silence for a yes and tells me to sit down and lean back on my hands. Oddly, I feel much better.

  ‘Bring your knee to your chest and extend your leg and hold,’ he instructs.

  I do as he says. He gently takes my right foot in his warm hands and rotates my toes so they don’t point to the ceiling; rather the blade of my foot slices upwards.

  ‘In martial arts, the foot has three positions: ball of the foot, heel of the foot and blade of the foot,’ he says, showing me the different positions with delicate movements of my foot.

  I’m holding my breath, hoping he doesn’t notice the long brown birthmark that runs from the ball of my foot all the way across my arch to my heel.

  He bends my knee back to my chin, then glides my leg forwards again and twists my foot to show the correct position.

  ‘You’re really cool, Roxy Rox,’ he says. ‘Like the sister I wished I had.’

  How did I end up being his sister, with my own sister treating me like a distant cousin?

  Suddenly, Jackson yells, ‘Sabo! Quick, come here!’

  Sabo shuffles over and Jackson pulls up my heel and drags me forwards.

  ‘Look!’ he says.

  ‘Hey! Watch it!’ I squeal.

  Sabo and Jackson are studying the sole of my foot with their mouths open.

  ‘It’s a stupid birthmark. Sort of looks like a cat. I hate it,’ I say. ‘My family calls me ‘Cat’ as a nickname. I’m going to get it removed one day. Lasered off as soon as I’m old enough.’

  They continue staring, silent, blinking.

  I pull my foot away and cross my legs to hide the mark. ‘Forget it,’ I tell them.

  ‘Okay, sure,’ Jackson says, exchanging a look with Sabo. ‘But I’d say it looks more like a tiger than a cat.’

  ‘What? What are you saying?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he says, his eyes not meeting mine.

  I try to do the side kick again, but my foot won’t twist and turn the way it’s meant to and my hips feel stiff from all the training. My whole body aches.

  ‘Forget side kicks.’ Jackson pulls me to my feet. ‘Come with me,’ he says.

  Jackson takes me over to the wall of silver rings.

  ‘I didn’t know there was a ninja jewellery line,’ I joke, taking down a claw ring and putting it on my finger. I hold my hand out, as I’ve seen women do to show off their engagement rings.

  ‘Not jewellery,’ he says. ‘They’re knuckledusters, hand claws, finger spikes and hooks.’ He slips a hand claw over his wrist; the claws extend thirty centimetres past his fingers. ‘Used for slapping, punching, climbing,’ he says. ‘You can deflect a sword blade with your hands, or use the claws to catch the blade to twist or break it.’

  ‘But I bet there is a girl you’d like to give a ring to,’ I hint.

  He looks at me, confused. ‘These are lethal weapons, Roxy. You have to take them seriously.’

  I mimic his serious face. ‘Who taught you all this stuff anyway?’

  ‘My mother. She was killed by a samurai when I was young,’ he replies, opening and closing his fingers so the claws extend sharply and retract.

  I wait for a flash of emotion. But there’s nothing. A fog of awkwardness settles around us.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say and look away. The thought of my own mother being dead is too hard to imagine. She’s still away on her work trip and I miss her so much.

  Jackson selects a gleaming silver ring with a spike from the wall and slides it onto my finger. I watch him fiddle with the ring on my finger until the awkwardness evaporates.

  ‘The horn ring is the preferred weapon of female ninjas,’ he tells me. ‘Dip the end in poison and you’re good to go.’

  I stare at the horn ring. It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. In my crazy imagination, the man of my dreams bends down on one knee and presents me with a red velvet box. I open the box, tears trickling down my face, and inside is a diamond horn ring. I accept his proposal immediately …

  ‘The finger spikes are used to target pressure points,’ Jackson says, tearing me from my daydream.

  I needle the ring into the side of his neck to test it.

  ‘Hey, that hur
ts, Fancy Face!’ he yells.

  He hasn’t called me that recently. An inner warmth starts to glow.

  We practise walking along the dojang walls using the horn rings.

  Jackson introduces me to toe claws next.

  ‘What are these for?’ I ask.

  ‘The upside-down crawl,’ he says. ‘Ninja ceiling push-ups.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  Jackson flings himself up the wall, climbing knee to wrist and keeping low until he reaches the top. When he meets the ceiling, he turns sharply and lies flat against it, hooking the toe claws into his ninja slippers. When the climbing claws are in place, he shifts his weight and uses them as footholds, lying still and silent, waiting for his enemy to walk beneath so he can drop on them like a black spider.

  ‘That’s ninja!’ I call up to him.

  I launch up the wall with my own toe claws, but when I make a sharp turn as Jackson did to lie on the ceiling, I plummet back down to crash-land on the padded martial arts mats. Jackson laughs. He triple-spins off the roof and lands in front of me in crouching-tiger stance.

  ‘We’ll work on that,’ he says. ‘When you’ve mastered all fourteen ninja principles, the ceiling climb will get easier.’

  ‘I need a set of biceps,’ I say.

  He squeezes my arm playfully. ‘I think your arms are pretty good the way they are.’

  Here we go again — more blushing from me.

  After climbing training, we move on to walking training. Walking ninja ranges from small stabbing steps to creeping through leaf litter and shallow water. Jackson pours water onto the mats so I can practise the skating movements of sideways walking through narrow corridors or staying tight to a wall to avoid detection. Next are the running and sweeping steps, where I learn to transfer my weight gently from one foot to the other.

  Finally, Jackson covers the dojang floor with sheets of paper.

  ‘If you make a noise, you have to start again,’ he instructs.

  The paper crackles beneath me on my first stabbing step. ‘This is impossible,’ I say.

  ‘Only if you think it’s impossible.’ He runs the full length of the paper without making a sound.

  I practise my short stabbing steps, then sweeping steps and side-stepping steps until it gets dark.

  ‘We’ll have to wait to progress to the bamboo balancing,’ Jackson tells Sabo, who has been watching us.

  Sabo agrees that if I can’t walk ninja yet, there’s no way I’ll be able to balance ninja-style.

  My heart sinks. I’m as hopeless at walking just as much as I was the bow and arrow. Those cemetery warriors are going to slaughter me. That is, if Hero doesn’t get to me first.

  I follow Jackson outside, where a bamboo rope ladder with iron grappling hooks at the top end drapes over the dojang roof. Jackson races up the ladder with one foot on each rung. I climb the ladder with two feet on each rung, like a nanna. Still in bare feet, we walk across the roof to the back of the building, where the city lights are blinking in the twilight.

  ‘Jump,’ Jackson says.

  ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘Are you a ninja?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, looking over the edge at the drop of six or seven metres. ‘I can’t. I’ll kill myself.’

  ‘Trust me. You can jump from here to that rooftop over there.’ He points to a roof at least half a kilometre away.

  ‘That’s not jumping, that’s flying! That rooftop’s practically in another state.’

  I’ve done this before, twice, but the first time I was being chased by my mother with a sword and didn’t have time to think, and the second I had Cinnamon to balance me out and we were only leaping over small gaps, not canyons like this!

  ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Let’s forget flying and go back to the side kick. Balance on one leg, tuck your knee to your chin and hold,’ he instructs, walking behind me.

  I do as he says, grateful he’s moved on. The smell of pasta sauce wafts up as Jackson moves closer.

  ‘Now extend your leg up into a blade of the foot side kick,’ he says.

  I tilt my body and extend my leg up into the sky. My legs side-split easily this time, and I lock on my core to hold the position. After thirty seconds of holding my balance, I’ve heard nothing from Jackson. I pivot slightly on my supporting leg so I can see him. He’s on the other side of the building.

  ‘What are you doing over there?’ I call.

  ‘Teaching you how to fly!’ he yells back, then launches into a sweeping step run. I don’t even have time to retract my kick before he pushes me and I plunge forwards off the building, screaming.

  But then something magical happens. My body doesn’t fall but keeps propelling higher, my legs extend out into the splits, my toes reaching. My hair billows behind me and it’s as if every strand is thrusting me forwards. I glide through the air and land in a forward roll on the roof of the next building. I slowly stand up. Shocked. Was that another fluke? I think the trick is not to think about it.

  ‘You just flew! A very long way!’ Jackson yells, waving at me. He turns and walks down the side of the dojang with his climbing claws wedged between his toes. ‘See ya back there,’ he calls.

  ‘How?’ I call back.

  ‘Fly like before.’

  He makes it sound so easy. Like ‘walk’ or ‘run’.

  After a while, the sky has washed to darkness and I’m still on the roof. In the moonlight, I study the birthmark on my sole. Jackson called it a tiger. The tiger’s tail curls around my heel and he’s leaping across my arch, his hind legs extended across my heel and his front paws reaching into my toes. You can see his snarly mouth and whiskers.

  I plant my foot down, walk to the back of the building, take a deep breath and fill my mind with birds, wind, feathers, light. Then I run in sweeping steps as fast as I can. I have only one thought: Fly, tiger, fly.

  I feel my muscles contract as I crouch before the launch, then my legs twitch and release into an effortless split position, stretching higher and further. Every molecule of my being is extended and flexible. I feel the wind behind me, gusting me forwards, and I clear my mind of all thoughts of doubt and negativity. I focus on landing safely on the roof of the dojang. This time, I turn the forward roll into a tiger stance followed by a triple side kick, with a yelled, ‘Ay-yah!’

  There is no one here to witness my little victory, but sometimes the best wins are those that mean the most only to you. I punch the air in celebration. Now I know I’ll be able to go the ‘top way’ to school every day. No more Gate Two for me.

  SIXTEEN

  A warm breath against my neck wakes me from my sleep. I sit up and scream. There are three samurai around my bed with long swords pointed at my heart. They are wearing ruby silk kimonos, with a long piece of metal armour down the front of the body and tied around the front with a metal chain. Despite the clothes, and the shadows that distort their features, I recognise them: Hero, Krew and Bruce. Their eyes are bloodshot with evil.

  ‘What do you want?’ I say, my voice trembling.

  Hero scrapes his blade up to my shoulder. ‘I wish I could kill you,’ he sneers. ‘But it’s against the Bushido code to take vengeance that is not your own.’ His breath smells like sour milk.

  I truly don’t know what he’s talking about. Is this a nightmare? What vengeance?

  ‘I don’t know where the White Warrior is,’ I finally say.

  As soon as the words leave my mouth, Hero applies pressure to his sword. If I move, even breathe, the steel will pierce me.

  ‘You’ve got to train hard to be transported to the Cemetery of Warriors,’ he says. ‘I’ve been training my whole life for it. I’ll find the White Warrior first. Stay out of it!’

  ‘The White Warrior should be protected, not destroyed,’ I say.

  He jabs his blade into my shoulder. ‘Says who?’

  ‘But you’ll start a clan war!’ I say.

  His sword presses deeper and I feel it nick my skin. The pain needle
s to a single pulsating spot like a bee sting. This is no dream. Their swords are as real as my mother’s sword was when she ran across the rooftops.

  ‘No more words, filthy ninja?’ Hero taunts.

  It takes the strength of every cell in my body to fake courage. ‘If I’d known I was going to have company, I would have worn different pyjamas,’ I say. Pink ponies and the slogan ‘Hot to trot’ aren’t exactly threatening.

  Hero grinds his teeth with anger. He looks at Bruce and Krew and nods. The three of them run out of my room.

  I race after them and find them in Elecktra’s bedroom, their swords at her long throat. Elecktra continues to dream; her rosebud lips seem to exhale perfume.

  ‘Maybe I should just kill your sister instead,’ Hero sneers.

  ‘No!’ I whisper.

  Hero thrusts his sword towards Elecktra’s heart and I scream.

  Elecktra wakes. ‘What the heck is going on?’ she yells, jumping out of bed. ‘Are you spying on me?’

  Hero and his clan have disappeared out the window.

  ‘No,’ I say, searching desperately for a cover story. ‘I was having a nightmare. And with Mum gone, I thought …’

  ‘Fat chance, Roxy,’ she says. ‘Go back to bed. Go on!’

  I leave Elecktra’s room feeling sick. The world’s deadliest teenager just threatened to kill my sister.

  I creep downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of milk to calm me down. My heart feels like a pair of cymbals and won’t let me rest. I can still feel Hero’s breath on my neck, his sword stinging my shoulder. I almost feel paralysed with fear. I heat up some milk in the microwave, then sit on a stool to slowly sip the comforting drink.

  I smooth my hand across the wood of the table. I feel every groove of the boats’ journeys beneath my fingertips: the storms, the loneliness, the infinite horizon. I sympathise with them — being lost at sea must be similar to how I feel now. My palm glides across the slats: dark mahogany merged with bright maple; elm, oak and cedar parallel strips — all so different and yet forged together, a bit like Elecktra and me. My favourite part of the table sits under the coral-shaped bowl. The wood came from a boat that must have been repainted hundreds of times — it’s turquoise with brushings of pink and sapphire.