by Nick Lake
But then Hiro looked up and smiled at him, his cheek covered by a makeshift bandage, his face stained with blood from defending his friend, and Taro felt a rush of love for the big wrestler who had not hesitated to take on multiple attackers when the time had come; and the redness that had come upon the world when he saw the throbbing of that vein was lifted, as mist at sunrise.
Taro realized that if he was hungry, Hiro must be hungry too. The seaweed he had gathered, dried, and eaten the previous night would not be enough to sustain him for long. He stood and opened the door a crack—full dark.
“Going hunting,” he said. He stalked through the trees, notching an arrow into his bow. The gut bowstring was wet and had probably lost some of its elasticity, but he hoped it would suffice for a close-range shot. Keeping his footsteps silent, concealing his shadow by moving from tree to tree, he had only gone a short distance before he saw a squirrel sitting on a branch. He lined up the shot and fired. The arrow flew true, if not with its usual power. It struck the squirrel behind its shoulder and knocked it from the branch. But it didn’t pierce far enough, and Taro had to break its neck as it lay there on the ground.
Taro carried the squirrel back to the hut and, skewering it on a thin green branch, roasted it over the fire. Then he handed it to Hiro. “Thank you for helping me,” he said.
“I swore to serve you always,” said Hiro. “Any anyway, I enjoyed the fight.” He laughed, but his hand went up unconsciously to worry at the fabric covering his wound.
When he had taken a few bites, he handed the roasted squirrel to Taro, who took it gratefully. He bit into the tender flesh of the leg, chewed, and swallowed.
And immediately gagged.
The meat seemed to have turned in his mouth into something sharp and raw, tearing at his palate and tongue as if barbed. He coughed and spluttered, spitting out the piece of food, clutching his throat.
Choking, he thought. Dying.
Yet he couldn’t feel the meat in his throat. He was sure he’d spat it out …
And that was when Shusaku clapped him on the back, roaring with laughter. “You think you can eat ordinary food?” the ninja asked. “You’re part spirit now. You can feed only on blood, for that is where the spirit lies.”
Taro took a deep breath, controlling his convulsions. “Human blood?” he said.
“Not necessarily. We can survive on animal blood. But human is better.”
“You said you don’t kill,” said Taro.
“And I did not lie. Tonight, if we are to keep our strength, we must find someone to ambush. But we will take only as much as we need to survive—no more.”
Taro saw Hiro shiver and cast down his eyes, and once again he was filled with fear that his oldest friend might reject him, now that he had become a monster.
He looked at the ninja, who was still chuckling about Taro’s misfortune with the squirrel. “You could have warned me,” he said.
“Yes, I could,” said the ninja. “But think how much better you have learned the lesson this way. You won’t eat flesh again.”
Taro scowled. “I’m going outside for a moment.”
Hiro began to stand, and Taro added, “On my own.” Hiro sat again, looking hurt, and Taro hated himself for it. But Hiro had not been inside Taro’s head just then, had not felt the thirst for blood. Hiro would doubtless feel differently if he knew how hard it was for Taro to resist the throbbing of those prominent blue veins.
“I just … need a little time, that’s all.”
“We should be going,” said Shusaku. “We need to use every hour of darkness we can.”
“I’ll be fast,” said Taro. He walked down the beach to the water, sat on the hard sand just before the surf and hugged his knees.
In the distance he could see an island, silver against the blue water as if it really were a drip from the sword that, it was said, had created the islands of Japan.
Now, Taro supposed, the island he could see was probably crawling with pirates, who since the fall of the emperor preyed increasingly on coastal vessels, fishing boats, and the merchant ships of the Portuguese, and had grown rich from the weakness of the shogun.
Yes, it shone from here, that island, in the moonlight—seemingly made of a rarer element than base water or rock. But up close you would see the ash of cooking fires, the rough, functional weapons of the pirates; you would see the stolen goods and the hostages and the dead.
Taro’s dream of leaving the village had shone once too, his idea of taking up weapons and serving a samurai lord and one day marrying that lord’s daughter. This, though, was the reality of adventure—a dead father, a lost mother, a newfound physical strength that also made him look at the veins throbbing in his friend’s neck, and want to drink the blood inside.
The island swam, disappeared, as if sinking into the sea, as Taro’s eyes welled with tears. He clutched his knees, feeling as though he would melt and run down the sand into the waves. His chest heaved, his breath rattled and gasped. The tears spilled from his eyes and ran down his cheeks. He had never cried like this, and felt as though the moisture would be all wrung out of him, leaving him a dried husk on the beach, twisted driftwood.
Father, he thought. Mother.
He missed them the same, and in that moment he didn’t know which was worse—to never again see the one who was dead and beyond the torments of this world, or to never again see the one who lived and who languished somewhere in fear and hiding.
Surrounding this thought, wrapping it as leaves wrap a flower bud, was a sneaky fear that spoke its terrible question to Taro over and over. Even if your mother lives, would she wish to see you now? You’re a demon. A kyuuketsuki. She is a simple woman, an ama; she will spurn you. Perhaps even now your father wanders the land of hungry ghosts, his soul made restless by his son’s affront to the Buddha.
And only barely acknowledged, crouching at the back of his mind like a weevil in rice, the worst thought of all. What if it’s all my fault that Father is dead and Mother is gone? If it weren’t for me, the ninjas would not have come.
He held his head, and he cried for them, and he did not melt into the sea but sat, aching, in the glowing moonlight—for in the end our bodies know only how to carry on surviving.
That is our strength, and our tragedy.
Sighing, Taro wiped the tears from his cheeks. It was time to go back to Hiro, and Shusaku. It was time to get moving. Perhaps that was all he needed—to move, to do things. He stood up and began to walk back up the beach.
When he put his hand on the door to the hut, he felt more than heard a thwip in the air, and then there was the shaft of an arrow protruding from his shoulder. He gasped, whirling around as another arrow struck his upper arm on the other side. Shadows moved in the trees surrounding the hut.
Taro blundered into the door, pushing it open, falling inside. The places where the arrowheads were lodged inside him were burning now, and as he staggered inside, one of the shafts caught on the doorjamb and snapped off, tearing his flesh. He screamed.
Shusaku was already up and clutching his short-sword. “Ninjas?” he asked. Hiro rushed toward Taro and caught him before he could fall. He eased Taro down to the ground.
“I—I think so,” stammered Taro. “Dark shadows. In the trees.”
Shusaku considered a moment. “They don’t know I turned you. Any ninja knows that it’s not an arrow or two that will kill a vampire. And that must also mean they don’t know I’m with you.”
“But … they were there, on the beach.”
“I don’t think so. I think these are others. Probably there are ninjas in every village surrounding Shirahama, waiting for you to show up. I should have thought of it. But this kind of operation, for a mere boy … it’s unusual.”
“Unusual?” said Hiro angrily. “That’s what you call it? We’re going to die! Taro’s badly hurt.”
The ninja shook his head. “We’ll get those arrows out in a moment. They won’t kill him. In the meantime, we have one s
lim advantage.”
“What’s that?”
“They don’t know I’m here.”
With that, Shusaku slipped out through the door. Taro had sunk to the ground just inside the hut, and he found now that by turning his head and shoulders he could watch as Shusaku glided out into the night. Arrows flew, but he ducked and weaved, avoiding them.
From the trees, holding wickedly gleaming swords, came the ninjas.
Then, so unexpected it seemed a dream, Shusaku began to twirl off the black silk wrappings that made up his mask. Continuing to move gracefully to avoid the arrows that flew toward him, he stepped out of his hakama and his robe.
Taro stared, gaping.
Where there had been a ninja—Shusaku—in dark clothes, and holding a wakizashi short-sword, now there was only a sword, shining in the starlight.
Shusaku had disappeared.
Yet his sword bobbed and danced in the air, advancing on the group of enemy ninjas, as if invested by a magician with the power of locomotion.
The ninjas who had advanced from the trees stared at the floating sword, and Taro heard them murmuring, nervous.
Then the sword fell to the ground and lay still.
There was a commotion among the attacking ninjas. One of them pointed at the sword, and another shouted something. Taro thought he heard the word akuryou, “evil spirit.”
The ninjas all took a step back.
Just then, one of them, standing farther back than the others, near the trees, suddenly fell to his knees. He pitched forward, the gleaming hilt of a dagger sticking out of his back.
“What was that?” said Taro, shocked.
“You didn’t see?” said Hiro. “Shusaku snuck up behind him and stole his dagger, then stabbed him with it. I’m not sure why he dropped his sword, though. And I don’t know why he didn’t want his clothes.”
Before them, the ninjas argued among themselves, brandishing their weapons at nothingness, backing up until they were facing outward in a tight-knit group, like a deadly hedgehog.
Suddenly one of the men dropped to the ground, with slack finality.
Again the ninjas panicked, jostling against one another, shouting.
“What in the gods’ name?” exclaimed Taro.
“It was him again,” said Hiro. “He smashed that one’s head in with a rock. Is something wrong with your eyes?”
“I can’t see him,” said Taro, wonderingly. “Where is he?”
“Walking around them. He’s naked. But his body is covered in something … tattoos, I think.”
Taro searched the scene ahead of him. He could see nothing but scared ninjas.
One of the men stepped forward from the group, and all of a sudden his sword hand jerked up. The sword sprang from his grip but didn’t fall to the ground—instead it hung in the air, pointing toward him. Then it slashed out violently as if of its own accord, and gutted the man.
Taro gasped. What was happening?
Smoothly, in a continuation of its previous motion, the sword spun in the air and took off another man’s arm and shoulder. Then the sword dropped to the ground. The men backed away from it, as if it were infused with dark magic.
One of the ninjas ran then, but he had not gone far when one of his fellows was divested of his spear, and that same spear moved bobbing along the sand, hovering at waist level, and plunged into his chest. The ninja ran on for several steps, then went down face-first.
That was it for the other ninjas. In chaotic concert they dropped their weapons and ran, dispersing in all directions.
Most of them escaped.
The spear rose magically from the back of the man it had killed, before arcing through the air as if thrown with some power, and hitting one of the fleeing men in the back of the neck.
Moments later, he and the other dead were the only figures visible. Taro felt sick. He didn’t understand how those men had died, but he understood one thing: It was a slaughter of those unable to defend themselves.
“This isn’t possible …,” said Taro. “Who threw that spear?”
“What are you talking about?” asked Hiro. “It was Shusaku. He killed all of them. But it was like … like they couldn’t see him.”
Taro turned to his friend. “Hiro,” he said. “I can’t see him either.”
CHAPTER 10
Oda no Hana cursed her calligraphy master.
Not out loud, of course. That would have been unladylike.
Sunlight shone through the open window, accompanied by a light breeze. The day was warm, so they were in an upper room of the castle where the windows were not covered with shoji paper. This was the calligraphy master’s one concession to Hana’s preference for outside pursuits. The windows of this upper room were narrow, so that an archer could fire from behind them without being hit. A shaft of light illuminated Hana’s desk.
She knew that the master meant well, but this was pure torture! The sunlight, unfiltered by paper blinds, only made her long more keenly for that which she couldn’t have.
Lady Hana would have liked to be outside, honing her skill with the sword. She trained with a bokken, but her skill was already a matter of public knowledge, and it had been whispered—sometimes in her presence—that she would one day be a sword saint just like her father, a kensei.
But Lord Oda did not want a sword saint. He wanted a gift, a bargaining piece, a pliant bride he could offer to whichever nobleman he most needed to forge an alliance with—whichever of his vassals or enemies he could bind closer to his person by marrying them to his beautiful daughter.
The times when Hana was able to escape the castle and practice her sword moves were very few indeed, and since she had given her father the message from the dead pigeon, they had stopped almost entirely. Her father, on the few occasions she had seen him, had appeared distracted, angry, and—yes—worried. She would not have believed it of the Sword Saint daimyo, whose eyes and will were made of the same steel as his swords. But he was afraid. And lately he would not allow her to leave the castle under any pretext. These last days, Kame had been confined to Hana’s room, submitting with increasingly poor grace to the indignity of food she hadn’t killed herself, its blood no longer flowing in its veins.
Hana gazed out of the window, looking at the oblong patch of sky above the main gate of the castle. A few wispy clouds drifted by, against the pale blue.
The calligraphy sensei rapped Hana on the knuckles. “You’re miles away! Concentrate, girl! You’re worse than the Tokugawa boy.”
The Tokugawa boy, who was sitting right next to Hana at the adjacent desk, looked up from where he was scrawling messy spiral on his paper with a wet brush. “I hate you!” he said. “Calligraphy is stupid!”
Lord Tokugawa’s son was a ruddy-faced boy of around four—far too young for calligraphy, of course, and Hana didn’t quite see why he had to sit there with her. She strongly suspected that it was meant to teach her some sort of salutary lesson, useful one day for her management of a samurai household. Patience, perhaps. Or the fortitude required not to gut an obnoxious four-year-old boy with one’s sword.
Little Tokugawa loved mud, frog spawn, and stone fights, and hated anything to do with sitting inside. On that point, Hana was in complete agreement with him—though on that point only. He was an arrogant brat, and she tried to keep her contact with him to a minimum. Some days she worried that her father might try to marry her to him. A four-year-old boy! She wouldn’t put it past Lord Oda.
The lesson crawled along slowly, like a dog with three legs. Hana applied herself to several new characters, deriving—despite herself—a certain pleasure from the brush’s progress across the white paper.
Suddenly there was a cough from behind her, and Hana turned, startled, her brush sketching a wild, unplanned stroke. Kenji Kira had entered the room, his tabi shuffling lightly on the polished wooden floor, as he placed his weight on his uninjured leg, dragging the wrecked one behind him.
Not that there was much weight to place—the
man seemed thinner every time Hana saw him, as if a hungry ghost from the lowest realm of samsara were feeding on his flesh. She had never seen him eat anything but rice, and he drank only water. She wondered how he remained alive. His eyes were sunk in dark pools, surrounded by bruises; his bones showed through his near-translucent skin like sticks bundled in a sack.
He bent over Hana’s desk and greeted her respectfully. Hana would be more grateful for the man’s respect if he didn’t convey it with such terrible breath. The man’s every word carried a scent of decay, as offensive to the nostrils as unconvincing to the ear.
In truth, she trusted nothing Kira said.
He was her father’s head of security—his spymaster, as Hana’s indiscreet maid Sono called him—and he had a wide remit of responsibility. Hunting fugitives, interrogating prisoners, quelling insurrections—he had done them all. There was, however, one insurrection he was powerless against: Hana did not return his obvious admiration.
Kira leaned his long, emaciated body over hers, forcing her to squirm aside, and plucked up her sheet of white paper. He examined the image she had drawn there, the character for “crane.”
“Your strokes are too bold,” he said in his nasal twang. He tutted at the mistake she had made when he’d surprised her. “You must aspire to a more feminine line if you wish to make a fine match for a desirable nobleman.” He smiled at her, revealing rotten teeth, and red, bleeding gums. “Unless, of course, you already have your eye on someone …?”
Hana shook her head. “Even if I did, it would be futile. I will marry whomever my father wishes me to marry.”
Kira bowed. “Indeed. Let us hope that he makes the choice wisely.”
Hana’s calligraphy master cleared his throat. “Sir Kira—did you wish me to end the lesson?”
“No. I merely came to inform Lady Hana that I am departing on a mission for her father, a very dangerous mission to recover a lost asset. It is a great honor, of course, that I have been entrusted with a matter of this magnitude.” Preening proudly, he ran his fingers through his greasy hair, which in the samurai way was long and tied back.