by A. L. Knorr
"That was my next guess," said Saxony sardonically. "You're going where?"
"Gdansk," said Targa and Georjie together.
"That's a thing?" Saxony's eyes were wide as platters. She held a marshmallow over her stick, ready for piercing but forgotten in the moment.
"It's a port city in the Gulf of Danzig,” I said with a grin, “on the Baltic sea." It was easy to look super smart when you've been through school a few times.
"No surprise you know all about it, Jeopardy." Saxony threw the marshmallow at me. I caught it, pierced it with my own stick and held it out over the flames. "Why are you going there, T?"
"The Bluejackets took on a salvage contract there. It's a private one, for a rich Polish guy. He's setting us up with accommodation and whatever the team needs to do the salvage. My mom told Simon she'd only go if she could take me, so." Targa shrugged and grinned. "We leave in a few days."
"That's amazing, Targa," I smiled across the fire at my friend.
She smiled back and held my gaze. "Thanks, Akiko." Her eyes flicked to Georjayna. "Georjie has some news, too."
"You're going to Ireland after all?" I guessed.
"No way!" said Saxony. "For real, Georjie?"
"For real," Georjie said. "I haven't told Liz yet, but—"
"She'll be thrilled," finished Saxony with another eyeroll. "Finally got the place to herself."
"Easy," said Targa quietly.
"What?" Saxony sat up straighter. "It's true, isn't it?" She turned to Georjie. "Didn't you say that your mom was trying to oust you for the summer?"
"It's one thing for Georjie to say it," I offered. "It's another thing when someone else says it."
"Sorry," Saxony slouched and pressed her lips together.
Georjie sighed. "No, it's fine. Call it what it is, right?"
"And call Ireland green and gorgeous. How bad could it be?" said Targa. “I love the Irish accent.”
"Except for Akiko, we'll all be in Europe," Saxony said, bouncing in her seat. "We have to promise to text, okay?"
Georjayna and Targa agreed easily. I frowned. I didn't know what the task of retrieving the wakizashi was going to mean yet. If I committed to text the girls often, and then somehow couldn't, they'd get worried. It would be better if I set the expectation now that I wouldn't be chatty during my mission.
"I'll try," I said. "I'm just not sure how good the signal will be where I'm going. From what I know the family is kind of remote and I'm not sure how fond they are of technology.”
"Who doesn't have wifi these days?" asked Georjayna with a look of horror. "Seriously, where is your grandfather sending you, to a mountain cave?"
I smiled to cover the anxiety burbling up in my stomach. "Who knows. His descriptive skills are scanty at best."
"How come your grandfather isn't going with you?" Targa asked. "Doesn't he want to go back home for a visit, too?"
I kept my face neutral. It would be best to get off the subject of my trip to Japan, and Daichi, as soon as possible. "He's too old for that kind of traveling now," I said, and cast my eyes down at the fire to shut down any further questions.
We fell into a companionable silence, but I felt Targa and Georjayna's eyes on me for several minutes. I knew they wanted to dig, but I'd trained them well not to expect answers. Saxony slurped her iced tea and I almost laughed. She was so predictably unsuspicious.
Targa had actually met Daichi once at the farmer’s market. It had been a tense moment for me, introducing one of my best friends to my captor. I'd awkwardly introduced him as 'Grandfather' since I hadn't known his real name at that point. When she'd held out her hand for a handshake and he'd just given her a cold stare, I had almost breathed an audible sigh of relief. If he was unfriendly, Targa would be less likely to try and have a relationship with him.
Saxony finally broke the quiet. "Let’s promise to have a sleep over when everyone gets back." Her gaze swung to me, the only one who might risk not getting permission to come.
I smiled to myself when I thought that by that time, I wouldn't have to ask Daichi's permission to spend an overnight with my friends. I would be a free woman by then. Everyone agreed, and me along with them.
"How do you know the Æther will drop me out in Japan?" I asked Daichi as I set my backpack down on the kitchen table. "I've never ridden it before."
"I was old before I met you," said Daichi. He had a handful of Japanese yen laid out on the table. He stacked it and inserted it into an envelope. "Memorize this address," he said, pushing a scrap of paper toward me with a handwritten address in Kyoto on it. "And the number below will be the combination to open your storage unit.
Daichi set a piece of white paper out on the table as well as an ink pad. He opened it up and held out his hand. “Give me your thumb,” he said.
I let him press my thumb into the ink, and then stamp the paper with my thumbprint.
“Do you need me to scan that for you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “By now, I’m better with technology than you are.”
I gave a half-smile as I washed my thumb off at the sink. He was probably right about that. Who would have ever thought it possible that a man born in the 1800s would take to computers so well.
“Have you packed what you need?"
I nodded. "I think so. Two sets of clothes, a pair of sneakers, a small purse with my ID, the bank card you gave me, my passport, and my cell phone and charger." I took one last look in my backpack and frowned. "I'm pretty sure it’s illegal to courier a passport and cash, unless you're the government. What if they get stuck in customs?" I shuddered to think of opening the storage unit in Japan, finding it empty, and trying to execute my orders while in possession of only a silk bathrobe and useless slippers.
"It's illegal to steal an artifact from a museum as well," said Daichi, tilting his chin down and giving me a look. "If there is trouble, you find a way to call me."
Emboldened by how Daichi had taken me into his confidence with this task, I suggested an alternative. Something I had never done with any command before this one. "If the wakizashi is that important to you, why don't you just make the museum an offer for it? I can execute the transaction for you." I had no idea how Daichi had kept us financially looked after all these years, but he had to have a lot of cash at his disposal. As far as I was aware, he had never worked since the day he had captured me. Unless he had some online business I was unaware of, which, come to think of it, wasn’t hard to believe.
Daichi's face sank into an expression akin to regret. "Once. I could have. But now...it has taken too long just to find it." His expression cleared. "Enough questions. When you have the wakizashi, you call me."
"I will have to fly back on a plane with it," I mused. "There is no way it will stay intact through the Æther, and I definitely couldn't carry it all the way home as a bird. I’d drown in the ocean a few miles off the coast, no matter what species I became."
"Don't worry about that," said Daichi gruffly. "Focus on getting it out of the museum without getting caught. Let me worry about the rest."
My stomach did a flip of terror at the word 'caught' and I swallowed hard. The realization of what I was going to do began to sink in. Somehow, I was supposed to break this artifact out of a museum without setting off any alarms, without alerting any staff, and without any patrons seeing me do it. Would the ability to phase into a bird even be of any use to me in this scenario? I closed my eyes. It's for your freedom, Akiko. I had to find a way.
As though he could sense my rising tension, Daichi stood up. "It's time," he said.
"I'm ready." I sounded more confident than I felt. I didn’t want to give Daichi any reason to doubt me and retract the opportunity. There was too much at stake for me to fail.
Daichi and I made eye contact and held it for a moment. "Luck, destiny, and the Æther are both on our side," he said. He put a gnarled hand on my upper arm. "Now, go."
"Goodbye, Grandfather," I said. I went to my bedroom and shucked my clo
thing. I tied the silk robe around my neck and phased into a common crane. Within my slender wings was the ability to soar higher than almost any other species. I hopped down the hall and back into the kitchen.
Daichi stood at the back door, one gnarled hand on the door handle. He opened the door and cool fresh air swirled into the kitchen, beckoning me. I strutted past Daichi's legs and through the now towering exit. The bright afternoon sky stretched out above me, endless space and freedom.
I hopped off the porch as a gust of wind blew through the yard, then I caught the updraft and pointed my beak to the sky. I didn't look back as the house and Daichi spiraled away beneath me, shrinking to the size of monopoly pieces. Thirty-thousand feet up. Into the ozone. That was where I would find it—the Æther. The wind picked up and blew me around, helping me surge ever upward. The air grew cold and wet as I disappeared into thick clouds and could see nothing but bright fog. Up and up and up I continued, my wings tireless and powerful. The silk at my neck became damp with condensation.
The air grew thin and still I flew. Breaking through the clouds, I didn't look down at the tops of the fluffy cotton below me. Up and up I spiraled, resting my wings and soaring on updrafts where I could. The atmosphere above me stretched out like an endless becalmed sea—a desert of silence and space.
The snapping of distant thunder and the flash of a bright light took my breath away. My vision went first. Or was I just so high up that there was nothing to see? Silence closed in around me. Surely, I had to be close. So close. I lost all sense of up or down, left or right. My senses shut down. I felt no wind any longer, no cold. The aching of my wings and the feel of air brushing against my feathers faded away. The sensation of the damp silk robe at my neck disappeared. I felt nothing. Nothing but a small, cold, empty place deep inside me. Like I'd swallowed an ice cube and there it sat, melting in my gullet.
I surrendered to the Æther, to the trust I had that it would carry me where I needed to go. All I had up here was that cold empty space inside me, and my memories.
Chapter 4
There came a point when I realized that my parents treated my sister Aimi and I differently than other parents treated their children. Maybe it was observing the way children were told to keep silent whenever we ventured out in the village. We had chores and responsibilities, but we were allowed to speak and were asked for our opinions. We were permitted to take our creature shapes as we wished as long as we were far from town and we knew for certain we were not being observed.
Aimi would take her Kitsune shape, always a fox, and I would take to my Akuna Hanta wings. I could take the shape of any bird I wanted, though how that meant I could hunt demons I couldn’t have explained. We would play in our forest for hours, passing our youth as happy as any child could ever wish to be. As we grew older, our parents would inform us of the goings on in the village, and of changes in Father’s business, good or bad. I began to see a pattern in what happened after they did this. If something wasn’t working out in our favor, our parents would lay the situation out to Aimi and I over dinner. Aimi would listen intently, and say very little. But a short time afterward, the winds of fortune would shift in our direction and everything would turn out okay.
No one else in our village knew what we were and so never gave us any special treatment. Least of all the neighbor’s son, Toshi, who played tricks on me relentlessly. He would snatch the sticks from my hair on a windy day, making the long black strands whip around and become hopelessly tangled. He'd drop a toad in my lap and run away laughing as I gagged with revulsion. He'd wait behind our outhouse until I needed to use it and then throw caterpillars in through the moon shaped window. The path I took into the woods to gather plants and mushrooms for my mother wound by his house and he waited in the bushes to jump out at me and set my heart to pounding.
I came to abhor my daily trek by his house so I took great pains to make a new and secret path to avoid falling into his traps. A game of cat and mouse ensued, where Toshi would wait until he knew I was leaving the house and follow me, trying to discover my secret path. I would lead him through the woods, meander through the swamp, up over the rock slabs, and through the brambles until his father would call for him and he'd have to abandon the chase.
I had begun to feel that I had won when he stalked me less and less. Soon weeks would pass without him hounding me and I began to relax. Then I began to miss his attentions. I learned rapidly as I became a teenager that Toshi was unlike other boys of our village. He did not look down on girls and shun their company. Boys and girls were strictly segregated in different schools and social activities, but that had never prevented Toshi from paying attention to me. He always had a good-natured smile for me, even as he teased me mercilessly, there was no malice in it.
Eventually thoughts of Toshi faded away. Life went on and my duties changed from those of a little girl to those of a young woman. I became wrapped up in the secret world inside our own house. I played only with Aimi, as the other girls in our village were as boring as worms by comparison. She whispered secrets of the Æther to me in the dark of our shared room, and we talked of venturing further abroad in our creature shapes, and even of eavesdropping on the closed-door meetings the men of the village attended, to see who was going to be wedded to whom next. It would have been strictly for the thrill of being there when no one knew it, because our father would come home and tell us anyway.
Several summers had gone by before I gathered my herb basket and decided impulsively to take the old path, the one that wandered by Toshi's house.
The rhythmic sharp sound of chopping wood echoed off the trees and rock slabs. Expecting to find his father, I rounded the bend and their yard came into view. My body became still as my eyes fell on the man wielding the axe, but my mind was a tempest. Broad square hands gripped the wooden handle, and his thick black hair was tied half-back to keep out of his eyes. The high forehead and widow’s peak reminded me of drawings I had seen of ancient samurai.
I could not have stopped myself from staring even if I had been in a crowd. Sweat-slick skin pulled taut over the figure of a grown man. He moved with the grace of someone at home inside himself, not the gangly clumsiness of the boy I remembered. How could this creature be Toshi? Could he have changed this much? What had happened to the boy who used to torture me?
A twig snapped under my foot and he looked up. His eyes fell on me and we gazed at one another. There he was. Toshi. He squinted toward me, the sun in his eyes. It took a moment, but recognition melted the line between his brows and an enormous grin split across his face. He lifted a sweat-drenched arm, seemingly unembarrassed to be caught naked to the waist.
"Akiko!" he called, a little out of breath.
I gasped as he dropped his axe and crossed the back yard with an easy stride, his footsteps silent in his fabric boots. He made his way through the trees and into the shade, stopping not far from me.
"I can see you more easily now," he said. "I almost didn't recognize you. When did you become a woman?"
"When did you become a man?" I countered, unable to stop the spread of my own grin. I knew that no other girls in our village would dare address a boy in this way. The respect my father gave to Aimi and me in the privacy of our home gave me confidence unheard of in other girls.
Toshi inhaled at my daring, and was perhaps emboldened by it. His teak-colored eyes took me in, the only part of this man who reminded me of the boy I once knew. "But you're beautiful!"
I laughed with delight. It seemed Toshi also did not like the formality normally imposed upon young people of our age. Men did not speak to women like this. I was already surprised he'd approached me, as it was custom for young men and women to have a chaperone in order to be together. Apparently, Toshi didn't care.
"And you are bold," was all I could think to say, as heat flushed my cheeks.
He laughed and it too, reminded me of the boy. "We are old friends."
"Friends? You tortured me to no end when we were young. That wa
s friendship?" I raised my eyebrows and crossed my arms, my basket dangling over my forearm. "I hope we never become enemies."
He dropped his gaze and chuckled, a black strand of hair falling over his face. "Don't you know," he said as his eyes flicked back up to mine, "that's what boys do when they like a girl?"
I gasped. My whole body flushed with an unexpected heat. Where had little Toshi gotten his confidence from? My heart swelled, and just like that, he had me. His good-natured, lop-sided grin swept my feet out from under me and I knew what I wanted then. More than any Hanta life, I wanted Toshi.
"And men?" I asked, breathless. "What do men do when they like a woman?"
His eyes widened in surprise. "I see I am not the only one who has found courage."
He took a step forward and I took a step back, both of us smiling. My heart pounded like a hammer and everything in me had come alive in a way that it never had before. I never knew these feelings were possible.
"Men go after what they want," he said, taking a lunge toward me.
I squealed and ran, lifting my skirts as I bolted away from him. My basket discarded and forgotten, I tore through the woods, fueling my legs with Hanta fire. Laughing, we pelted through the trees, Toshi hot on my heels. His fingertips would graze my shoulder, my waist, but always I would dodge away. His surprise at my speed delighted me even further. What amazed me even more, I realized—as the trees whizzed by and I scrambled up over the rock slabs and boulders—was that I trusted him completely. The only other man in whose company I felt safe and respected up to that point was my father. Why that was, I could not explain, it was only something I could feel and settle into.
My heart in my throat and Toshi's footfalls behind me, I ascended the boulders leading to the rock slab overlooking the coast and Tai Island. It was my favorite place in the world. It might have been more popular, except it was so difficult to get to. By the time I crested the last boulder, my legs were shaking, my body was as hot as a coal, and my chest was heaving. Toshi finally caught me and swung me around in the sunlight as it beamed down on the huge clifftop. Moss cushioned our footfalls and tiny stones scattered as we kicked them rolling with our slippered feet. The wind picked up tendrils of our hair and cooled my face and neck.
