“Why do you say that?” Ken’s brow furrowed in a really cute, perturbed way.
“There’s always an unspoken and with you. Something dangerous or terrible.”
“I don’t lie to you, Koi.”
“No, you’re just king of the partial explanation.” What a dysfunctional royal pair we make.
There was a deep, muffled thump from the back of the truck as Ken swerved suddenly onto an exit ramp, hugging the sharp curve. I was thrown to the left, brushing against his arm before I could use my grip on the dashboard to right myself. When we straightened out onto another smaller highway with no sound barrier walls, Ken sighed and rested both elbows on the steering wheel. For a moment, the road was clear, the silence fraught, and the scenery a soothing blend of pastoral lands dotted with the dark outlines of traditional peaked-roof houses.
“Do you remember how Ullikemi’s human servant, Mangasar Hayk, cut you and Marlin? How he used your blood in his word magic?”
“Of course I do.” My fingers rose to trace the faint seam Hayk had left on my cheek with his knife.
“I explained before that magic beyond our individual Kind nature requires blood. And great magic requires a release of essence—a birth or a death.”
“No one died when I released Ullikemi, I think. Not even Hayk.”
“Yes,” said Ken. “That was unexpected.” I wondered if that was what had caused him to covet me for the Council. Or wait, not the Council after all, but The Eight Span Mirror’s plans to release the Black Pearl. It was all so messy and I longed for someone to just tell me what was right and who was wrong. “Recall that you had just drained Dzunukwa close to death—”
“Unintentionally!”
“—as well as being under Thunderbird’s dream influence.”
“An ancient one like Ullikemi and the Black Pearl.”
“Herai-san believed the combination of Dzunukwa’s life-essence and the eating of two ancients’ dreams—Ullikemi and Thunderbird—provided enough power to release Ullikemi from the prison of its human myth form.”
I’d also eaten Ken’s dream at the end. A dream of me, a vision in the primeval forest. That image anchored me at the crucial moment when I was so full of dreaming that I was in danger of following Ullikemi into oblivion. Funny how he isn’t mentioning that.
“You don’t happen to have an extra ancient one hidden up your sleeve?” I glanced at an earthquake emergency-vehicle corridor sign we were passing featuring a simple cartoon of a giant catfish. Mom’s childhood was spent hearing tales of Madame Pele stomping her feet when quakes rocked the Islands, but Dad always blamed Oregon’s quakes on giant catfish who lived in fault lines.
I pointed at the next earthquake sign. “Wait. That’s not for real, right? There isn’t actually a giant catfish living underground in Aomori?”
“Of course not. That’s just plain myth.” The boy was too serious. He didn’t even arch an eyebrow at me this time. It didn’t bode well for whatever he was not telling me about the Aisaka River plan.
“We need a bunch of life essence? You, me, and Kwaskwi slicing open a volunteer vein won’t cut it?”
“Unfortunately,” said Ken with a somber gravitas that made my teeth hurt, “someone’s going to have to die.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“You’re just bringing this up now?” I screeched. All the curses and foul names I could come up with seemed tame compared to how I felt. He’d unlocked a whole new level of jerkface. He couldn’t trust me with this vital information until the very last second? I clamped my mouth shut and pressed fists to my eyes, holding back another useless round of angry tears.
Ken put on the right blinker and took the next exit, Towada High School.
He pulled up to the pay machine at the deserted exit tollbooth and twisted in his seat so he could give me that perfectly calm, absolutely irritating regard that boxed me into the role of emotional wreck. His eyes captured mine in dark, fathomless pools of complicated emotion.
I couldn’t stop the jitters boiling up from the nauseous mess of my belly. “How are we doing this, then?”
Ken pulled the ticket out of the visor and fed it into the machine along with some yen notes. The gate lifted, and he wrenched the truck into gear with more force than necessary. “You will eat my dream, the life-essence of my very primal self, and when I’m near true death, Yukiko-san will freeze me.”
“That is the stupidest plan I have ever heard. Are you kidding me?”
“It’s our one chance. To break Tojo’s power. Force Kawano-san out of his outdated view of the world. To right a terrible wrong. Isn’t it worth risking the Bringer’s life for that?”
“You don’t get to make me a monster! I won’t risk being responsible for your death—even if you are a jerkface.”
Ken pulled into a big parking lot while I breathed in outraged gasps. Turning off the engine, he bowed his head, staring intensely at his open palms resting on the steering wheel. “I’m responsible for quite a few deaths.”
I’d just called him a monster. I’d shoved his guilt and anguish over what he’d done as a Bringer back into his face. That’s not what I meant.
“This is suicide.”
“Yukiko-sama will freeze me in time.” His voice was steady and underneath that calm was a terrifying acceptance.
My door opened. Yukiko stood outside the cab, undeniably imposing even though I was several feet taller due to the height of the cab.
A streak of blue plummeted down from the sky in a long, ear-splitting scream. The sound abruptly ended, and Kwaskwi stepped out from behind her with hands on his hips. Crow’s feet and smile lines created deep grooves in his tanned skin, making the trickster appear old and tired for the first time since I’d met him. The pronounced cupid’s bow of his upper lip was obvious without his characteristic grin, giving him a full-lipped pout that felt too intimate outside a bedroom.
Even Kwaskwi is worried.
“The natives are restless,” he said. “Chop-chop.”
Yukiko craned her neck to look back over her shoulder where the sprinkling of trees dipped down an embankment of cat tails and tall grasses along a slow-moving, greenish-brown mass of water. Aisaka River, I presumed.
We were well into the morning now. Sunlight warmed my face. “Are we carrying the Black Pearl all the way down there?”
“Once Yukiko unfreezes the Black Pearl, the river should draw her to it,” Ken answered.
Kwaskwi jumped backwards with arms raised and palms outward. “No way. I know where this is going.”
“But if she doesn’t head to the water,” Ken continued, “someone will have to act as bait.”
“Just had to go and get your leg injured, huh sly fox? I hate being bait. Bait always ends up crushed or dead. Why can’t Yukiko be bait this time?”
Yukiko did that odd thing where her head twisted on her neck like a snowy owl so she could tilt her head up to unleash her full icy stare at Kwaskwi. Her lips retracted in a grisly caricature of a smile, revealing pointed canines and a glistening pink tongue.
Kwaskwi lowered his hands and cleared his throat. “Okay. Not Yukiko-san, then.” He gave me a hopeful, puppy dog look and then spat on the ground. “Forget it, baby Baku. You’re no good either.”
Yukiko reached out a closed fist as if she were about to salute Black Power, and then slowly, slowly opened her hand. A sound like a carpenter sanding—no, like a dozen carpenters sanding—came from the truck and the tarp poked out in a dozen directions. The Black Pearl was waking up.
“Maybe we should—” With a pop, the tarp lifted free of its rivets and the Black Pearl burst from the truck, heading straight for us like a black, shimmering ginormous arrow. Ken jerked me out of the dragon’s path by the arm. I was mesmerized by the shifting aquamarine, teal, emerald-blue of her eyes. Double-eyelid membranes fluttered open and shut while the Black Pearl writhed coiling and uncoiling, her tail whipping back and forth wildly.
Yukiko avoided the tail by shifting instantly from place to plac
e, not a hair out of place, but Kwaskwi had a harder time, hopping about like a mad momma-jay to keep from getting crushed.
“Now would be a good time,” Ken observed, “to run to the river.”
Kwaskwi twisted to dodge a lash of the Black Pearl’s tail, but instead of hopping away, he grabbed the tip and stomped on it with his steel-toed boot. The head stilled and then curled back on itself, regarding Kwaskwi with unblinking eyes.
Something powerful welled up inside my ribs in response to the glow of the Black Pearl’s eyes. An aching, precarious pressure, like the thrill of being upside down at the top of the Looping Thunder coaster at Oaks Amusement Park. The mysterious depths of her eyes called to me, promising hidden treasures. I stumbled forward.
“Koi!” Ken tugged at my arm again. I tried to escape his grip so I could get closer to those beautiful eyes. “What is it with you and ancient ones?” He slapped a palm over my face, breaking the spell.
“What?” I wrenched his pinky finger back to force him to release his hand.
“Don’t look at her eyes.” Ken’s hand dropped away.
Kwaskwi was waving his hands and yelling. “Come on, you overgrown, snake-headed monster. Over here! That girl is not the bait you’re looking for—all tendons and bones. I’m very meaty.” He jogged a short distance toward the river. The Black Pearl wavered, bobbing back and forth as if she was reluctant to tear away from our mutual stare-fest. Finally her eye membranes fluttered as if she were drowsy. Her neck drooped and her snout swung around to track Kwaskwi.
“How much did you take when you ate her dream?” Ken’s eyebrows knit together like worried caterpillars.
Released from the Black Pearl’s spell, I shivered, pins and needles running up and down my limbs as if they’d fallen asleep and only now reawakened. I scoffed. “Hell if I know. Dad hasn’t had a chance to cover dream eating measuring cups with me yet.”
“This part of the Aisaka is shallow. There used to be a fishing weir here for Ayu sweetfish. We have to get the Black Pearl into the river to release her, but we don’t want her to drown.”
“Release her in the river?”
“The river is her element. If there’s any chance of the Black Pearl returning to herself…” Ken trailed off, his attention caught by the fact that the Black Pearl’s initial frenzy had completely dissipated. Her head lowered to the ground, opaque eyelids closing.
Kwaskwi quit waving and stood with his hands on his hips. “She’s seriously lost steam, dude.”
Yukiko glided over next to Kwaskwi, pointedly looking at me and then the Black Pearl’s massive head in turn.
I remembered the sleek leather of her scales, and the moldy sock smell, and the gorgeous depths of her eyes. Her song had been so, so sad. She couldn’t give up now. The thought of the Black Pearl locked away again inside the cave made my chest hurt. I moved carefully over to her whiskered snout where it lay crushing dandelions on the lush grass. Ken sucked air through his teeth. “Be careful.”
“Unnecessary warning.” I pushed back the long windbreaker sleeve. Recently eating her dreams meant I could probably touch her without getting overwhelmed by her dream. There was really no other choice, though, I had to try. I rested the back of my hand on the tip of the Black Pearl’s snout. Movies and European fairy tales taught me that dragons gave off ambient heat, but the Black Pearl’s shimmering scales, streaked with purple and crimson at the snout, were cold. On the heels of that thought came a quiver of the whalesong from before.
“Wake up,” I said softly, prodding stiff fingers into the hollow underneath her ear wells. “Go to the river.” The whalesong vibrated more strongly up through my fingers, into my lungs and down to my belly, a current of sound flowing in stuttering ripples and eddies. I placed both palms along the scales underneath the Black Pearl’s right eye and took a deep breath. “Time to go home.”
The world began tilt-a-whirl spinning, but just as trees, river, Black Pearl began to blur together into dream colors, fear spiked through me and I jerked my hands back to clasp them at my chest. Not yet. We’re not ready for the full monty. Just a little prod to get you going.
The Black Pearl opened an eye, nostrils flaring in and out with silt-dank breath. Or maybe that was actually the Aisaka River, I couldn’t tell. Just an instant, long enough for a stray thought, and already I was leaning closer to the mesmerizing, shifting blue. Straining like I was carving a line through butter instead of air with my eyes, I turned away. Yukiko was frowning. Clearly unhappy. What was I supposed to do? Let myself be drawn in?
This is what Ullikemi had done to Hayk, what Thunderbird tried to do to me back in Portland. At first a seduction, a promise of beautiful connection, but then it would turn to control. I remembered Hayk’s glowing green eyes and the rasp of his voice when Ullikemi rode him. Morbanoid Koi spoke up. How different is that from dreaming the Black Pearl’s most intimate dreams?
“Touch her again,” said Ken, coming closer.
“I will drown if she lunges for the river with me attached.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
Kwaskwi gave an impatient huff. “Oh, here we go. Come on kiddles, can we skip the part where the Kitsune attempts to make you trust him again despite his secret motivations for bringing you to Japan?”
I stabbed a finger in his direction. “You are not helping.”
Kwaskwi shrugged. “This isn’t about me, Koi. Or Ken. Choose. Either you’re in or you’re out.”
He was right. The hurt part of me was holding on to these doubts because I wanted to lash back at Ken. He should feel the same precarious feeling I had in Japan, so far out of my comfort zone I might as well be moon-walking. But Kwaskwi was right. This wasn’t about me putting all my trust eggs in the wrong basket. It was about the Black Pearl, and on a deeper level, about whether I could live with myself if it was my fear that made us fail. I had to go deeper into her dreams as Baku.
Face carefully averted from the mesmerizing eyes, I put my palms on her scales again. Ken gave a surprised cry just as the world blurred, spinning on its axis. Underneath my hands the Black Pearl shifted, trembles rippling up and down her scales as I took from her the waking dream.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I was swimming again, the warm water of late summer caressing my belly and sides. The light glimmered above.
Somehow, underneath the pleasing rhythmic strength of my body I sensed an urgent need to keep going. I had to move forward. The pleasant hum of the sunshine on my back slowly faded. A chill crept over me, and an odd, bitter taste to the water flowed through gills on either side of my neck. Craning back, all I could see at first were the ripples, bubbles and disturbed river-mud marking my passage. Was that a shadow? An unfamiliar outline of something bigger than a river trout or eel?
The little Koi-flame, the buried awareness of my true self, flickered to life. Keep going. To the river. We have to get to the river.
But I am in the river.
Frustration rose up from my belly. That was definitely a shadow behind me, human-shaped.
Human?
I remembered blue coats and being stabbed and the terrible weight of the Baku in my mind, crushing the frantic beating of my heart. Danger! Human-shapes were dangerous and I had to get away. I flexed the powerful muscles along my spine to put on a burst of speed, but they reacted only limply, strangely atrophied as if I’d spent too long stagnant and slumbering. The bright, mammal scent of crushed grass coalesced out of the strange bitterness in the water. Not water. I was on land, and there was danger—
“There she goes!”
I opened my eyes, human eyes, as the Black Pearl gave a wobbly lurch toward the Aisaka. “You did it,” Ken said.
“She’s still half-asleep, seeing her own river dream. There was something weird in the water in her dream, but I didn’t do anything, really.”
Kwaskwi waved his arms and gave an ululating yell. Yukiko’s eyes went huge in surprise and she silently darted after the Black Pearl’s wildly thrashi
ng tail while Kwaskwi scrambled backwards madly, trying to channel their zigzag progress toward the Aisaka.
“There’s something odd about the river in that dream and how much it looks like this one,” I said wearily. Ken threw me a questioning look over his shoulder, but when I didn’t elaborate, he hobbled after the dragon parade.
The slight widening of the river at the closest bend looked as shallow as Ken had promised, but even water that rose only to my knees could hide treacherous currents. Ken said he wouldn’t let me drown, and I believed he meant that, but he was injured.
Kwaskwi reached the top of the embankment just in front of the Black Pearl’s sleek head. He held out his arms wide, crouching low. “Come on, girl. Almost there.” With an astounding leap, Kwaskwi flew into the air on legs like coiled springs, reaching for the upper branch of a grandfather willow tree halfway down the embankment. He caught the branch and swung round it like an Olympic gymnast. On the last upswing he curled himself into a ball and landed perfectly balanced on the branch.
Crouching jay, drunken dragon.
The Black Pearl couldn’t halt her headlong rush to the river and flopped into the water with a splash that sent droplets pattering down over everyone.
“Swiftly, now,” said Ken, wiping the back of his hand at water collected at the corner of his eyes like tears. “Before she gets her bearings.”
Kwaskwi sat on the branch, swinging his legs in the air, and pulled out his cell, orientating it landscape as he snapped pics of the coiling Black Pearl. I shot him an are you kidding look.
“What? The guys will never believe this otherwise.”
Yukiko started down the embankment and Ken tugged us after her, carefully gripping my clothed wrist. The wet grass was slick on the way down, and I found myself wishing for Dad or for Marlin; someone bossy who I could trust to know the right thing to do. Because even if it involved giant dragons and imminent drowning, at least I would be confident I wasn’t utterly mucking things up. This whole operation pinned too many hopes on me. Without a lucid Baku, The Eight wouldn’t be challenging the Council or possibly sending the entire Kind population of Japan into a fatal population tailspin.
Black Pearl Dreaming Page 16