by Nick Lake
The man tried to pull the knife away, only making things worse, sawing through her windpipe; Taro heard her cry turn to a whistling sound, as of air escaping a dead animal’s stomach. The dead man dropped the knife – it clung for a moment to her ruined flesh, then fell to the deck with a clatter.
Hana put her hands to her throat.
She paled, never taking her eyes off Taro.
Then she fell to the ground.
CHAPTER 37
FOR A MOMENT, Taro remained fixed to the deck, as if someone had nailed him to it. He could see Hana’s blood spreading, pooling in the cracks between planks. The world swayed and throbbed, not just from the motion of the boat. He was about to step forward, to beg Kenji Kira to kill him also, when something he had heard echoed again in his mind, something the dragon had said.
I will remain in your mind forever, once you take the sword.
What flashed through his mind after that was shame. Surely he should die, now? He had nothing to live for, not with Shusaku and Hana dead. But there it was, still, this desire to survive that was like an unquenchable fire in him. Though it wasn’t just that, he knew – there was something else, the seedling of an idea, but he barely dared to consider it fully, to give it voice in his thoughts, keeping it for now in the darkness lest the light burn it away to nothing, withering its leaves.
Kenji Kira stepped away from Hana’s blood, moving almost with horror. ‘Why are you smiling?’ he asked.
Taro hadn’t known it. He was just thinking about the dragon, and about the Genji, and how Kira had been stupid enough to man his ship with the dead. He didn’t know if this would work. But he knew it didn’t matter. Either it worked or he died, and he could live with either of those. In a manner of speaking. He noticed that the ship’s anchor was propped against the gunwale, just behind where Hana’s body lay, its rope coiled beside it, like nothing so much as a tiny dragon, wrapped around itself.
Good.
Concentrating on the dragon, he said the same words again and again in his head.
The Genji have broken free from hell. They have come to take the sword. The Genji have broken free from hell. They have come to take the sword. The Genji have...
The Genji were traitors. They had risen up against the Heike, who were descended from the son of Amaterasu. They were offenders against the gods, against the dragons. They were the cursed dead. Taro could only imagine how the dragon of the sea would feel if he saw them come back to this place. He felt his smile widen, heard a growing rumbling coming from beneath the sea. ‘Stop that!’ said Kenji Kira. ‘Stop whatever you’re doing!’
Taro felt a sudden rocking, the noise from below intensifying, the sound like that of a tsunami, just before it hits. ‘Too late,’ he said.
The dragon burst into the air like spray from a whale’s blowhole, only incomprehensibly bigger, the water falling like rain on those who stood on Kenji Kira’s ship, pattering softly on the deck, on the blood of those who had died fighting, on the blood of Hana, who had died a samurai.
With a roar like thunder, like a thousand thunders, the dragon reared up above them, tall as a hill, its tail over the sea and its head close to the clouds. It belched blue fire, the heat of it scorching. Taro smelled his own eyebrows singeing. The men turned to look up at it, some dropping their weapons, some gaping, some screaming and running, crashing into one another. Kira himself was looking up, entirely still, his jaw hanging open.
Taro was injured, but he had just drunk blood – it coursed through him like molten iron, making him hard, making him strong. He was up and moving even as the dragon’s head descended. He got an arm under Hana and cradled her as if she were an infant. He plunged his fangs into her neck, sucking her blood as he moved. Kenji Kira grabbed at him, but he was too quick; he was a vampire. Without even thinking about it, he pulled his mouth from her neck and pressed her face against his chest, her mouth against the wound where the stub of arrow still protruded, held her tight to him, a gruesome kind of suckling.
His fangs had entered her now, transmitting the infection. It needed his blood to enter her as well, to activate it.
He prayed for his blood to flow into her as, still embracing her, he grabbed the anchor – it was heavier than he expected, but he poured his qi, poured the blood he had licked from the deck into his arm and hauled it into the air, swung it over the side ahead of him – then jumped off the ship, and into the sea.
He wasn’t prepared for the speed.
The anchor plunged down, the light not so much dimming as going out, like someone blowing out a candle at dusk. His ears popped, sending daggers of pain into his head from either side. Behind, an intense flaring of heat caught his feet and ankles, as an explosion of blue lit the darkness. The dragon. He held on as long as he could, then let the anchor go. It disappeared instantly into the murk, the rope trailing after it. He caught hold of the rope now, waiting for it to go taut when the anchor hit the bottom, or the end of the line, he didn’t care which.
When it did, it snapped in his hand like a snake that had been playing dead coming back to life. Then he began to haul them up, one-handed, the other hand still holding Hana to him. He had no idea whether she would stir or not; he remembered turning Little Kawabata after dealing him a killing blow. But Little Kawabata had not been down for long before Taro dripped his blood into the other boy’s life. Had it been too long, with Hana? Was the injury too great? He wasn’t sure. It was remarkable, what vampire blood could heal – he thought of the sword that had transfixed his stomach before Shusaku turned him.
He remembered, though, that she didn’t want to be a vampire.
But that was another thing he didn’t want to think about.
Rising up along the rope, he could feel the heat, the sea like the heated water of the onsen springs in his village. A normal fire would be extinguished by water, but this was a dragon’s fire. What if they came to the surface and the water was still burning? Would they be incinerated? He had to hope not – he had no real choice but to come up, he would drown otherwise. Already he could feel that fraying at the edges of his vision.
Breaking the surface, he gasped for air, pulling Hana up so that her face was clear too. Where the ship had been, there was nothing. No – some charred pieces of timber floated haphazardly, the debris of some devastating disaster. There was a smell of bonfires, and cooking flesh, on the air. Taro felt sick. Turning to look for the largest plank to cling to, he saw a spar that was still burning – as he watched, it tipped, sinking into the sea, hissing as the fire went out.
Nearby, there was a bigger fragment of boat, with a skeleton lying on it. Impossible to tell if it was Kenji Kira or one of the others. Anyway, when Taro reached the wooden raft, pulling Hana behind him, he caught hold of it and the skeleton collapsed into dust, into ashes.
He was pleased. It meant that Shusaku’s skin, which Kenji Kira had pinned to his boat as a flag, would have been burned too, would be reduced as was the way of the Buddha, to particles on the breeze.
Taro was appalled, though, at the destruction he had wrought – appalled despite himself. He had been thinking of the dead that had attacked them so long ago, of course, when they had been travelling to the inland sea. How fire destroyed them. But he had not imagined this – that there would be simply nothing left, that he could erase a ship from the world with a thought.
Unless some of the dead had dived, like him? Panicked, suddenly, he kicked with his feet – something grabbed them! No. It was a jellyfish or a dead man’s hand; it slipped past his feet and was gone, into the depths. He had taken the anchor, had dived deep – nothing could have survived closer to the surface.
Cursing the pain in his chest and arm, he pushed Hana up, levered her and angled her until she was half on the makeshift raft. It was a laborious task. Eventually he managed to get her whole body onto it, then clung to the side, breathing hard. He could see boats setting out from the shore – no doubt they had seen the fire and would be coming to investigate. Hiro migh
t even be with them.
Something touched him again, on his chest, where the air and water met. He twisted, hard – felt this round, smooth thing bob against him. He snorted when he saw it. Of course. It was the Buddha ball, entirely unharmed, as far as he could see. The clear glass showed mist and clouds, drifting over the surface of the Earth. He tucked it into his clothes, realizing that it had been foolish to try to get rid of it. Not wrong – he still feared the thing – but stupid. The ball was for him and of him. He could no more throw it away than he could remove his head and set it down.
Taro touched Hana’s skin, stroked the back of her hand. It was cold. He trod water, moving with his hands along the raft until he was level with her head. Her eyes were open. A bad sign. He lifted his head as much as he dared, without tipping her into the sea. Saw how pale she was, how her beautiful black eyes gazed up at nothing, seeing a different sky.
He felt a tear swell, hotly, in the corner of his eye. He was shivering with the cold of the water, now that the heat of the fire was gone from it, but he didn’t care.
Hana.
Like the dragon, the word was in his mind. The word was his mind. It was a name and a prayer and a universe.
Gently he let go of the raft. He had one more thing to do, before he embraced oblivion, but he would have to die to do it. If Kenji Kira really was Enma, then being burned to nothing by the dragon was only half of killing him. For the second half, Taro had to—
Movement.
His name, spoken by a voice that he loved.
Hana rolled towards him, her eyes filled with red now, not bloodshot, but flooded with blood, where the whites should be. She spoke his name again, and he saw her canines, how they were lengthening even as she spoke.
‘What did you do?’ she said. ‘What did you do to me?’
‘I had to,’ he said, the words coming out trembling and unsure, with the cold that was biting deep into his bones. ‘You were dying. You were dead. I don’t know.’
‘My choice,’ she said, and he had never heard such fury in that voice he loved, such coldness and spite. ‘I’m samurai. I’m not a monster. I never wanted this.’
He almost let go then, felt his hand slip. She thought he was a monster. This was the truth, this had always been the truth. ‘I couldn’t live without you,’ he said. ‘I love you.’
She spat blood at him; his blood. She rolled back and screamed. He knew what she was feeling – knew, from when Shusaku had turned him, the fire and boundless energy that was in her blood, the bloodlust racing through her. Then she turned to him again. ‘I want none of you.’
As she said it, he knew she meant it. He had come to know her voice, its every tone and cadence. It was a voice he loved.
But now it didn’t love him. He could hear it.
He let his head sink back until the sea was around his ears, touching his face, caressing it, mingling with his tears, carrying them away.
He understood.
He was paying the dragon’s price.
CHAPTER 38
THE LOBSTER CREEL rose from the water like something appearing out of nothingness. It had taken them a while to find it. Only a small cork buoy bobbed on the surface, Hana having cut the line to the boat before she cast it adrift. So far, she had said nothing to Taro, except to tell him what she had done with the sword.
They were with the priest, on one of the boats that had set out from the shore to help them. The priest had asked questions to begin with, but had stopped when he saw that Taro had no intention of answering. The only thing Taro had said was that he was sorry about the man’s boat – and that he would repay him one day.
When the dragon of the earth was dead. When he had the throne.
Hiro, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen. He had not come on the boats. Taro realized that they really weren’t friends any more – it really was over.
Taro reached down and snagged the creel, pulling it from the water. Hana had pushed the sword through its bamboo bars before throwing it overboard. He unsheathed it and turned it in his hands, feeling its balance, its lightness. Amazing. He knew that there were swords of violence and swords of peace, but this was something different. It was a sword of power. He sensed that it would give you everything you wanted, even if it took away the one thing you might need.
‘Is that...,’ began the priest, before trailing off.
‘Yes.’
The priest said nothing. Just stared.
Hana was watching with empty eyes. Her throat wound had mostly healed over, and Taro had torn a strip from his cloak for her to wear as a scarf, covering her neck. Neither of them wanted awkward questions. As soon as Taro had the sword, she touched the priest’s arm. ‘I’d like to go back to shore now,’ she said. ‘Is there a place in the village I can stay a few days?’
The priest looked from her to Taro. ‘You’re not staying with—’
‘No.’
‘Ah,’ said the priest, clearing his throat. His hair had gone a lot whiter since Taro had last seen him, and there were lines spidering from his eyes. He had a kindly but weary expression, as if he would have preferred a quieter life but was willing to make the best of what came along. ‘Well, there’s always Taro’s hut...’ he said tentatively.
‘Yes, fine,’ said Taro. He had no intention of letting her stay behind here, not really. He could feel the Buddha ball, cold and hard as an alien growth, pressing against his flesh, could hear – because he knew how to listen – the whispering of his blood in her body. But he was hardly going to tell her that.
‘It will only be a short time, I think,’ said Hana. ‘Then I’ll be gone.’
‘Where?’ said Taro.
She didn’t look at him. ‘I don’t know. It depends on Hiro. If he wants to stay or not. Where he wants to go.’
He felt that like a dagger blow. She would stay with Hiro, but not with him. He took a deep breath and sheathed Kusanagi. ‘Let’s go, then,’ he said, his voice hollow as the empty, dripping lobster creel.
When they came to shore, he let Hana go with the others up to the village, telling them he would come to say goodbye before he left. For a long moment he just watched her walking up the hillside, the evolution of her stride as she went up from sand to scrub and then from there onto hard ground. She moved with a kind of lithe grace, her every step in tune with the world, a tribute to it.
Then, as was inevitable, she was gone.
He turned and walked along the dunes, his clothes still soaking, till he came to a rocky outcrop at the end of the beach, hidden from view by the huts of the villages. He climbed up and sat cross-legged, looking out to sea. He laid Kusanagi beside him. There was a risk of losing it, where he was going.
He could remember going into death from Mount Hiei. He knew how it was done – though he knew also that doing it again would be tricky. He focused, or rather didn’t focus, trying to make the sighing of the sea, the rustle of the wind in the pine needles, the sharpness and cool scent of the rock beneath him disappear. He strove for the understanding that neither he nor the outer world existed, that all was one, and all was nothingness. He concentrated on the impossible trick of making his mind no longer aware of its own existence. He sought mu. The enlightenment of the Heart Sutra, the understanding of the emptiness of all creation, the illusion of life, the betrayal of all living things, which would always be nothingness, in the end.
The sun went down.
The scent of pine, of salt, gave way to the scent of cooking fires.
And then he found it.
CHAPTER 39
HE OPENED HIS eyes – or rather, his eyes opened themselves for him, and he could see the glowing thread leading from him over the sea. He took hold of it, and walked beside it, onto thin air. Following it, he travelled the sea, vast and grey, then up and down mountains. He went through valleys and deserts, where time was short and infinite at the same time. He walked a journey that he would never be able to describe to anyone else, under strange moons and suns.
Fina
lly he came to the bridge, and his ninja training took over. He made himself shadow-walk, a way Shusaku had taught him of walking in the margins of the world, making his profile as small as possible. He ducked behind the wall of the bridge, all inlaid with jewels, when he saw Horse-head on the other side of the Three Rivers. The demon was stalking the bank with a forked weapon in his vast, meaty hands.
Then he saw Kenji Kira. The man was sitting in Enma’s seat, Ox-face beside him. Taro stared at the samurai general. He had been burned to ash, hadn’t he? But... of course. This was death. Kira was dead, whatever happened to him in the human realm. So there must always be a version of him in death.
Here in death, Kira was no longer a skeleton; his flesh hung on him a little loosely. Taro couldn’t quite see from here, but he had an impression of... what? Wear and tear, he supposed, a sense of attrition. Taro crept closer. Yes. There were holes in Kira’s face and arms – the man looked nibbled on, like he was a set of clothes, left in the darkness for moths or mice. Some of those holes – like the one that went right through his cheek – bore tooth marks.
This was why he had preferred to stay in the human realm, Taro realized, why he had killed Enma only to abandon Enma’s duties, letting the dead roam the land with him. Taro remembered Yukiko’s words to Kenji Kira when she killed him, which had seemed strange to him at the time. She had told him that he would be left to the flies and low creatures, for them to consume him, to carry him away in all directions in the air, and this had filled Kira with terror. Taro knew what Kira was afraid of now. He was afraid of being food, of rotting.
Taro thought further. This explained everything. Kenji Kira had made himself Enma so that he could go back and forth between life and death – because in death something had happened to him, some punishment for his many crimes that had left him frozen in this state of mid-decomposition, whereas in life he was clean, he was untrammelled bone. Kira had no interest in judging the dead, only in escaping the body death had given him. Probably he didn’t even know that the dead were escaping, getting loose into the world, thanks to his dereliction. Either that, or he didn’t care.