The master manipulator, experienced Kitsune image I’d imposed over Ken since we landed in Narita airport crumbled into pieces, sending cracks shooting through the brick wall between us.
This pleading was of someone as lost, as unsure as I. Someone whose place in the world had been completely upended. If Portland could give me the space to figure out how to be Baku and human Koi at the same time, who was I to keep Ken from having the same chance to figure himself out? He was broken, yes, but his brokenness only made him more real, more true to me.
It was so clear to me now, the joy of running in a shadowed, green primeval forest—honest, true, pure—that was Ken’s primal self. It wasn’t a sham or Kitsune illusion. I needed to trust my instincts. Even Morbanoid Koi urged me to believe his sincerity, to give into what drew me to him when I first met him on the street in front of Marlin’s apartment, the sense that here was a person who saw me, who wanted to see me, and wasn’t afraid of the Baku inside.
Survivalist Koi pointed out having him in Portland might ultimately help Marlin.
“Okay, Pon-suma. Four tickets.”
I retreated into myself as Midori helped me finish off the curry, cutting the katsu into bite size pieces. The others kept up a conversation on logistics of our trip, and Murase and Kawano got into a heated debate about how the Council should spin the news of the Black Pearl’s release.
Midori fussed with my arm splint bandage, rewrapping it too tightly, and insisted on brushing the worst snarls out of my hair. She pulled it back into a low ponytail, and her cool, dry palms on my hair made me think of Mom and how Marlin had done the same for her so many times in the hospital because I’d been terrified of accidentally touching her. My eyes were cried out though, the dryness extending down my throat and into my lungs.
Then, Midori was helping me stand. She led me to one corner of the room and heaped up more zabuton into a semblance of a pallet. “Your father is here beside you,” she said. “No change. His pulse is steady, his color good, but still unconscious.”
I felt for his arm with hesitant fingers. Dad lay on his side. I felt for my phone, cradling it between my cheek and the zabuton. “Siri, text Marlin. I’m coming. I’m coming as fast as I can. Send.” Dad’s rhythmic breathing swept me into an exhausted, restless sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Pon-suma woke me at some ungodly hour of the morning. There was a flurry of hasty packing and irritated confabs. Meanwhile I confirmed that I was still blind, and the flame-kernel inside me was entirely dead, aching, and cold. Then Pon-suma trundled me and Dad into the back of the van he’d used to kidnap us ages ago. The front passenger door opened and shut and Pon-suma grunted.
“I’ll get you there,” said Ben, and then the van’s engines started.
“Don’t use this arm until you see a doctor in Portland,” said Midori. “You need a cast.” She must have been standing outside the open doors of the van. I nodded in her direction.
“And you,” she said next, “try to keep off that leg for at least one day.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Ken. His voice, suddenly emanating from the front corner of the van when I’d no idea he was even there set my heart racing. Great. Relationship goalz. Locked in a van for hours with my comatose father and a broken Kitsune. This is not what I would have chosen for my last day in Japan. I hadn’t walked the scramble crosswalks in Shinjuku, or ambled the gravel path under towering cypress to Meiji Shrine, or sat at a mom-and-pop stall at Tsukiji fishmarket at six a.m. eating insanely fresh sea urchin and salmon roe rice bowl.
Instead, I ate evil and released the dragon. No sushi for me this time. Just a tender spot where I thought I’d been carefully building friendship and intimacy. My chest hurt like my ribs were trying to knit together over a tenderized heart. I sucked in a constricted breath and was mortified to hear it leaving in a shudder.
“Here.” I held out my phone in the direction of Ken’s voice. “Has Marlin replied?” Let him think my emotional breakdown was entirely for Marlin. Which it was. Entirely.
The van doors slammed and Ben revved the engine. “No,” said Ken, “I’m sorry. No texts. No voicemails. And I’ve tried calling Kwaskwi three or four times.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I won’t tell you it will be okay,” said Ken.
“I wouldn’t have believed you if you had.”
“Will you believe anything I say now?” Ken touched my good wrist with a gently insistent grip that would not allow me to jerk away. A porcelain mug was placed in my hand, warm on the bottom from the hot liquid bathing my face with notes of burnt sugar steam.
“Oh my god,” I said, and took a sip. It was the bitter richness of Enoshima’s coffee. “How did you do this?”
“Kitsune magic,” said Ken. We turned a corner roughly, and he steadied the coffee by cupping my hand with both of his.
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. The fresh scent of ferns, and the cool mist of a forest caressed my face. Inside me, a little flame leapt to a weakly flickering, pale yellow life. I was still blind, even in this fragment. Ken’s fragment. But I was also still Baku, it seemed. So I would heal, after all. And maybe Ken would have something to do with that.
Too soon, the sensations faded away.
“Probably not,” I said. He kept his hands on mine. I waited, frozen, but for the taste and warmth of black gold slowly melting the stiff cage around my heart.
Ken sighed, and his hands dropped away. “Not Kitsune magic?”
“Not believe anything you say,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t prove yourself with actions.”
“You’ll give me another chance?” Somehow I was a hundred percent sure there was a crooked grin and an arched eyebrow on his face.
“For coffee this good, you can even sit next to me on the plane.”
From the front of the van came Pon-suma’s low chuckle, and then we were driving toward the south. Toward an airplane that would take me back to Portland—and home.
***
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The Last Dream of Her Mortal Soul, Coming Spring 2019
Even a dream eater can’t escape the final sleep…
Kwaskwi calls Koi home to help solve the murder of Dzunukwa, whose body is found in the witch’s hut in Forest Park with a haunting, strange quotation about dreams and death that seems to be calling out a Baku. Can Koi, saddled by a broken and lost Ken, help Kwaskwi figure out who is targeting Kind in Portland before others from her new-found family die?
Glossary of Characters and Terms
Portland Folks
Koi Pierce, Hafu Baku Dream Eater
Marlin Pierce, more or less human
Akihito Herai, Baku Dream Eater
Kwaskwi Wematin, some kind of Blue Jay Trickster, possibly of Cree Myth
Dzunukwa, Flesh Eating Ogress of Kwakwaka’wakw Myth
Mangasar Hayk, human professor who was bonded with the ancient Kind dragon spirit, Ullikemi.
Tokyo Council of the Pacific Basin Kind
Hideki Tojo, Kitsune Fox Trickster
Yukiko, Yukionna Snow Woman
Kawano, Kappa River Demon
Servants of the Council
Pon-suma, Horkew Kamuy White Wolf of the Ainu
Kennosuke Fujiwara, Kitsune Fox Trickster
Tomoe Gozen, Kitsune Fox Trickster
Eight Span Mirror Folks
Ben Fujiwara, Kitsune Fox Trickster
Ayumu Murase, Kitsune Fox Trickster
Midori, more or less human
Ancient Ones
Thunderbird, an ancient eagle spirit most likely from Coast Salish Myth
> Ullikemi, an ancient dragon spirit most likely from ancient Armenian Myth
Muduri Nitchuyhe, the Black Pearl, most likely from ancient Manchurian Tribal Myth
About the Author
K. Bird Lincoln is an ESL professional and writer living on the windswept Minnesota Prairie with family and a huge addiction to frou-frou coffee. Also dark chocolate—without which, the world is a howling void. Originally from Cleveland, she has spent more years living on the edges of the Pacific Ocean than in the Midwest. Her speculative short stories are published in various online & paper publications such as Strange Horizons. Her medieval Japanese fantasy series, Tiger Lily, is available from Amazon. World Weaver Press released Dream Eater, the first novel in an exciting, multi-cultural Urban Fantasy trilogy set in Portland and Japan, in 2017. She also writes tasty speculative fiction reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Check her out on Facebook, join her newsletter for chocolate and free stories, or stalk her online at kblincoln.com
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Black Pearl Dreaming Page 24