She stretched one arm and probed along the wall, testing the distance. She'd tried this many times in her imagination, and it had always seemed too far. And it was too far now. Then how had Elsbeth done it?
She was taller, of course. Longer reach. Ash's fingernails scratched at the house paint. "I can't."
"Let go of the window. Just lean and fall," Elsbeth said from above. "You can grab it."
"You mean jump?" Ash could reach the pipe that way, but if the pipe pulled loose, she'd land in the rosebushes fifteen feet below.
"Sometimes," Elsbeth said, "being small has advantages."
Ash frowned... getting it. The pipe would hold her. She could do it. And that sent a chill through her. Now, she thought, before you freeze up permanently.
Ash let go of the window frame and pushed off the sill with her leg. She snatched at the pipe and held on as her body swung over. The aluminum creaked, but held. Pain jabbed through her desperate fingers until her big toes found a hold on each side of a bracket that bolted the pipe to the wall.
Her fingers weren't very strong, but her toes were. So she used her legs to climb. The worst part was getting around the eave and onto the roof. Ash caught Elsbeth's extended hand, and Elsbeth pulled her up.
A cold breeze chilled her as they stood together on the tar shingles. Up here, above the streetlights, the houses along the street became a row of roofs with dark treetops to each side. The city-lit sky seemed to hang lower, and Elsbeth stood out against yellow-gray clouds.
It was beautiful, although Ash didn't know what she was doing up here. She worked her sore fingers and shivered. "Nice."
"Isn't it?" Elsbeth ran a finger daintily behind each ear, fixing her eyeglasses in place. "Now... follow me."
Ash glanced around – there was no where to go. "Where?"
Elsbeth raced up to the spine of the roof and down the other side. Ash took a few teetering steps, feeling the slope as her shoes gripped the rough shingles. As Ash reached the top, Elsbeth had reached the eave at the opposite end of the house.
She leaped the space between, landed catlike on the neighbor's house without a sound, and kept going.
Ash stared, unmoving, at the receding figure.
Elsbeth showed no hesitation. No fear. She leaped to the next house, and the next.
Ash couldn't believe what she was seeing.
Ninjas were real.
But the thing that gripped Ash and held her transfixed on the roof of her house, unable to blink, was the way Elsbeth moved.
Ash absorbed it all with her ballet dancer's eye – precision, elegance, aplomb, the way the set of Elsbeth's body preserved her balance. Perfect grace. She floated over the abyss between houses with ballon, the elusive quality of weightlessness every dancer strove for.
Beautiful.
Ash had to remind herself that she was not witnessing ballet, but she had the eerie thought that perhaps, in Elsbeth's movement, she was witnessing the thing that ballet had always tried to be.
I need this, she thought. And she had never felt so certain about anything in her life.
Ash set her feet, lifted her carriage, and raced down the roof, sprinting like a gymnast. She flew to the next house easily – she had performed jetés farther than that in the studio – and landed on the other side.
Whump!
Ash was loud. She pounded her way over the neighbor's house and leaped to the next.
She focused on her knees and toes, and her steps grew softer.
Six houses later, she reached the corner and found Elsbeth waiting for her. Every muscle in Ash's body ached, and she drew in the cold night air with huge gasps. "Why..." she began.
"My niece." Elsbeth smiled sadly. "You move like an intoxicated moose."
Ash caught her breath. "Why... didn't you tell me?"
"You needed to see for yourself."
"It makes sense. Ninjas, I mean. Small... fast. Graceful, nimble." Ash nodded. "Girls. I never thought about it before."
"We have always been a sisterhood," Elsbeth said. "That is knowledge you must guard, because if it became known that the ninja have always been women, we would find it much more difficult to hide. Stealth, Ash. Speed, deception, seduction. These are our weapons."
The last word caught in Ash's ear. She swallowed, and felt herself flush. "Did you say–"
Elsbeth shook her head. "When you are ready. You don't know any of the Wiles yet."
"The Wiles?"
"The Nine Wiles of the Ninja. The wisdom that lets us do what we do."
Ash had only heard that word in one sense before. "You mean like... feminine wiles?"
"Exactly," Elsbeth said.
7
"The Nine Wiles," Elsbeth said, "contain more than just wisdom. They will clear your mind of the shackles that hold you back. They will unchain you."
Ash felt her mind floating, struggling to deal with what she was hearing, like she was still in mid-air above all those side yards. Her sense of balance wavered, and the shingles creaked under her feet.
"Take my hand." Elsbeth's warm grip stabilized her. "It's time you heard the first Wile. Ready?"
Ash locked her eyes on Elsbeth's. "I'm ready."
"Choose," Elsbeth said.
Ash waited for more. "Choose... what?"
"Choose everything."
Ash frowned. It almost meant something, but–
"Centuries ago," continued Elsbeth, "there was a village at the edge of a forest. One morning, a wild boar wandered into the village square."
"What does this have to do with–"
"Shh. The first woman to see it cried out a warning and hid. Her brother had been killed by a boar when she was a child, and she was terrified of them. Another woman walked carefully up to the boar and scratched its back, feeling its bristles. Her father had been a pig farmer, and she had grown up around pigs. The boar reminded her of her days on the farm. As she scratched the boar's back, a third woman struck the boar dead with an axe. Her family had not eaten in two days, and she thought only of the boar's meat."
Elsbeth gently squeezed Ash's hand. "Now... why did these women react the way they did?"
"Oh, I see. Because they each had different–"
"Clearly," Elsbeth interrupted, raising a hand to cut Ash off, "because a wild boar had wandered into the village." She winked.
Ash nodded slowly as the pieces locked into place in her mind. The point wasn't that the women had different backgrounds that made them behave differently. The point was that they didn't know it. And that was careless, like going through life on autopilot.
Elsbeth pulled Ash's hand. "Remember. You must choose, every moment, how to react. What to think, what to believe, what to do. It's your responsibility. Never, never blame the boar."
"I get it." Ash squeezed back. "I think. But... that's it?"
"It's more than you realize." Elsbeth released her hand and stepped away from Ash, gliding backward over the roof. She glanced casually across the street. "You remember I said there would be a test?"
"Yeah," Ash said slowly. She felt her heart sink a little.
"Good. Here, then, is your boar for the evening." Elsbeth set her feet wide and crouched low on the sloping roof, her fists pressed together.
"Follow," she said.
There was a flick of motion and a snapping sound, and Elsbeth was gone. Two broken shingles lay where her feet had been. Ash whirled, searching, finding nothing but quiet night, and streetlights, and soft breeze moving the treetops.
She heard a faint snap on the roof of the house across the street. Elsbeth came out of a shoulder roll and crouched there, half-turned to face Ash. One hand pressed flat on the roof and the other, with two fingers, beckoned.
Ash couldn't move. Then she remembered to breathe, and looked to the broken shingles beside her, and back to Elsbeth. Sixty feet, maybe more. Impossible impossible impossible–
Choose.
But it wasn't fair! Ash was strong, and fast, but she wasn't superhuman. Nobody could do
that...
Except Elsbeth.
Ash fought panic, shifting her weight from toes to heels, heels to toes, grounding herself. She was a great jumper. Maybe she could do this.
But her breath hitched in and out of her lungs, drying out her throat, and her eyes filled with tears.
Because as soon as she decided to try, all she could see in her imagination was what would happen if she wasn't perfect. If she tried, and she didn't make it. If she tried, and somehow, not all of this was true.
She was going to hit the asphalt. Her body would break.
She was going to try this. And die.
"Elsbeth," she whispered. And the sobs came.
Ash couldn't stop them. She sat down on the roof.
A moment later, Elsbeth appeared beside her. She knelt and put her arm around Ash's shoulder. They were quiet for a time.
"I failed," Ash said.
She felt Elsbeth shrug. "Everyone does."
#
It rained the next morning, and everything outside seemed gray and dripping wet. Elsbeth offered to walk Ash to school. They bundled against the cold and started from the house, Elsbeth holding Ash's pink umbrella over them both.
"It will come," Elsbeth said. "You don't need to force it."
Ash listened to the gloomy sound of her boots on the wet sidewalk and said nothing.
At the far side of the school's field, Elsbeth stopped. "This is as far as I can go."
Ash turned to her. "Why?"
Elsbeth gazed intently at the school buildings beyond the fence. "This school is... everything."
Ash had to grin. It wasn't the word she would have used. "Elsbeth, what are you talking about?"
Elsbeth turned her back to the school and faced Ash, stepping close. "Built in 1910, originally called William Howard Taft High School," she said quickly. "Damaged in the quake of 1926, rebuilt and renamed Magnolia High. The school's library was originally housed in what is now the main office, but a new building was built for the library in 1935."
"How can you know all that?"
"You remember the secret I mentioned last night? The secret that we guard?"
Ash felt a chill. A thousand years of darkness. "I remember."
"The secret is a book. It has a lot of names. The Mutus Liber, the Silent Book, the Book Without Words. We scattered the book's pages and hid them around the world. One page is hidden," Elsbeth tilted her head. "In that library."
Ash leaned, peering past Elsbeth's shoulder at the somber gray bricks of the library building. "How can a book not have words?"
"The book contains a formula."
"A formula for what?"
"When you are ready. Each page is guarded by us. This page was guarded by your mother. And we think that those who seek the book have identified this library as its resting place."
"That's the real reason you're here, isn't it?"
Elsbeth nodded. "To protect the page from the enemy."
"Who is this enemy you keep talking about?"
Elsbeth was silent. "When you're–"
"I know, I know, when I'm ready." Ash turned the problem over in her mind. "Maybe I can help. How about if I get the page out of there for you? We can hide it someplace else."
"Too dangerous. We never move the pages unless we have no other choice. This page has been here for seventy years."
Ash would have risked it. She felt strangely empty after her failure last night, and wanted to make it up to Elsbeth. She wanted another chance.
A group of boys strolled toward the middle of the field, tossing a football back and forth despite the drizzle, talking and laughing. One boy was larger than the others. Mule.
Elsbeth turned to see where Ash was looking. "Ah. Your fearless friend. Ash... do something for me."
"Sure."
"As a student, you can go where I can't. If you notice anything peculiar at the school, let me know."
Mule saw them and started walking over.
"This is all so peculiar," Ash said. "What would I be looking for?"
Elsbeth passed the umbrella to her. "I'll leave you now. It's better if we are not seen together too often. Just look out for anything unusual, especially at the library. And let me know..." Elsbeth hesitated.
Ash felt a strange foreboding. "What?"
"Let me know if you notice anyone watching you." Elsbeth squeezed Ash's hand and departed.
8
The cuffs of Mule's jeans were wet from the grass, and his damp t-shirt clung to his broad shoulders. "Hey, Ash. Who was that?"
Ash tried to clear her head of Elsbeth's haunting words. "That was my aunt."
Mule grunted approvingly. "The stranger who came to town... she's kind of hot."
"Spare me." Ash checked the time on her phone. She had a few minutes before her first class. She could answer a question that had been nagging at her since last night. "Want to come to the library with me? I want to look something up."
"Oh," Mule said. "Research. Ol' Mr. Maunder's history report?"
"No. Guinness Book of World Records."
"Cool."
"Hey, you're a sporty guy. Maybe you know. What's the record for a standing long jump?"
Mule laughed, a deep and powerful sound. "Are you giving up ballet for track?"
"No, not exactly." Not exactly track, she thought.
Mule shrugged. "Beats me. I'm not much of a jumper. I tend to go through stuff, rather than over it."
"Let's go look, then."
They crossed the field to the buildings and weaved between the clumps of students that congregated by the lockers and at the lunch tables. Mule's heavy brow looked troubled.
"What’s wrong?" Ash asked, as they pushed through the library's outer doors. The nip of outdoor breeze on Ash’s cheeks was soothed by indoor warmth.
"Huh?” Mule said. “Nothing."
"Sure? You're thinking about something." They passed through the book detectors and under the banner that proclaimed Closing Soon – Return Your Books Now.
"I am a man of deep thoughts."
Ash giggled. Mule paused by the book return slot. "I guess I was just wondering."
Ash lowered her tone so she wouldn't draw the librarian's attention. "What?"
Mule didn't answer.
As they stood by the entrance, her eyes wandered over the tables and the stacks – the page was here, somewhere. And it had rested here for years, under everyone's nose. During all those hours of tutoring Mule, the page had been here, maybe just a few feet away.
"Well..." Mule examined the ancient carpet.
Where could it be? Ash wondered. The librarian's desk? The trophy case? Hidden inside one of the books? In the reference section, maybe, where the books couldn't be checked out?
And what was Mule's problem? Ash folded her arms, waiting.
"So..." Mule muttered, library-level. "How did your date with the principal's son go?"
Ash groaned. Had that only been last night? So much had happened since then. Mule had just ripped off a emotional scab she'd forgotten about, and Ash took a second to deal with the pain.
"That bad, huh?" Mule asked. He looked hopeful.
Ash forced the words out. "He didn't even show up."
Mule smiled. "That's lame. What a turd."
Why was he so happy? Ash glared at Mule suspiciously... and noticed, over his shoulder, one of the new security video cameras bolted to the ceiling, watching the library entrance where they stood.
Recording them.
Let me know if you notice anyone watching you.
Every muscle in Ash's body went into a holding pattern, freezing her. She didn't dare move – any move she made would be seen, caught, stored forever. The cameras! All over the school!
But they were for safety. Because everyone was so upset about the attack on campus – the switchblade attack on her, that Elsbeth said was the enemy testing her skills, to see if she was a threat.
But what if the cameras weren't a response? What if they were part of the p
lan? Could these people, whoever they were, be that sneaky? And that powerful? They would have to be running the school, to be able to put cameras everywhere.
But if it was them, there was no way Elsbeth could get the page out of the library now. They would see her.
Ash felt her body slump. She put her face in her hands.
"Ash?" Mule said. "Wow, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up. I didn't know."
What was Mule talking about? "No, no," she said. "It's not you, it's... let's get out of here, okay?"
Mule frowned. "But... we just got here. Standing long jump?"
Ash pulled at his elbow with both hands. "Never mind. There's somebody I want to talk to."
#
They found Spencer Marsh at his locker, with only a minute to spare before the passing bell. He smiled when he saw Ash approaching, but the smile vanished when he saw Mule behind her.
"Hi, Spencer," Ash said. "Can I talk to you for a sec?"
"Hi, Ash." Spencer never took his eyes off Mule, and creeped backward until he was pressed against his locker.
"Spencer," Ash began. "Everybody knows you're an expert at what's really going on at this school. You write about it all the time in the paper."
Spencer smiled nervously at her, and looked back to Mule. "I try to stay informed."
"That's so great. So, these new cameras..." Ash glanced around and spotted another camera at the far end of the row of lockers, pointed their way. "They record everything, huh?"
"Sure. They're motion activated, so as long as people are walking around in front of them, they record twelve frames per second."
"Sound?"
"Sound? No, no microphones."
"Uh-huh. And... they're everywhere?"
"Pretty much. Mostly doorways and stairwells, entrances and exits. The administration won't tell where every camera is located, even though the Friday Falcon has demanded to know. But students are catching on. They're looking for blind spots, you know, so they can smoke and make out and stuff." Spencer said all this to Mule. Mule seemed to enjoy the attention – he puffed himself up so he was truly huge, folded his arms and grinned serenely at the freshman. Spencer looked like he really needed to pee.
Ninja Girl: The Nine Wiles Page 4
