by Tiffiny Hall
I point to them. ‘How come you have my powers?’ I’m freaking out, but trying to stay calm.
Jackson’s face snaps awake when he suddenly realises. Hero scrunches his nose, then gasps.
‘You were dead, right?’ Hero says to me. ‘And we both saved you. We saved the White Warrior — or touched you when you were dead. Whatever. Your powers must have transferred to us.’
Jackson flashes invisible. ‘I have invisibility, water and earth.’
‘And I got fire and wind,’ Hero says.
We stare at each other in disbelief.
‘Well, fix it,’ I say.
‘How?’ Hero asks.
‘I don’t know. But I have to get back to Mum. Please, take me home,’ I tell them, holding out my arms. Jackson takes my hand, then reaches out for Hero’s arm. Hero nods and summons wind. I don’t want to admit it, but their powers seem stronger than mine. I feel sick. This is so. Very, very. Bad.
We fly home above the beach, across the trees, over the snailing Lanternwood streets, holding hands. If things weren’t falling apart, I’d probably really enjoy this moment with Hero and Jackson finally getting along. But there’s a noose around my neck and I can’t breathe. The night is closing around me like a hot mattress. Cinnamon’s grin gnarls into my brain. She attacked me! I have no powers. I wanted normal. But now I realise, normal isn’t safe.
EIGHTEEN
A huge white cat sits on the path and meows a sad greeting when we arrive out the front of my yellow apartment.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Hero says. The cat meows back. ‘No, we won’t be staying long.’
Jackson and I look at each other. So Hero’s one of those people who talk to cats.
‘That’s Twix. She thinks our front yard is a toilet. We have to wear slippers to get the morning paper,’ I tell him.
Hero nods sympathetically at Twix. Jackson rolls his eyes.
‘Mum,’ I call as I enter our apartment. ‘Muu-uum!’ I yell upstairs. Silence. ‘Lecky? Art?’
Mum’s voice spooks us. ‘Here,’ she says.
We spin around and see Mum in her ninja blacks. Her dark gleaming eyes narrow at Hero.
‘Mum, I have to tell you something —’
She holds up her hand and shoots her gaze to the ceiling as we hear feet land on the roof and scurry down the walls outside. My breath traps. It’s happening earlier than we anticipated.
Jackson and I move into a fighting stance. Hero stands still, watching my mother suspiciously. He clenches his fists and I slap his hands. He relaxes his knuckles. I shake my head.
Suddenly our kitchen window shatters and three samurai burst into the room. Jackson and I attack, but Mum leg-sweeps us both to the floor simultaneously as more samurai run down the stairs from our bedroom windows and even more barge through the front door. We are surrounded by at least forty samurai in the house. Jackson shoots Hero a deathly stare and grits his teeth. Hero shrugs and opens his palms to the ceiling. This wasn’t the plan. We were meant to all meet peacefully on neutral ground; breaking in wasn’t part of the deal. The Chiba clan encircles us.
‘Mum?’ I say. She flashes me a glare.
We stare at the samurai in their red kimonos and silver armguards. The room is tomb quiet until the sound of a key in the front door. It rattles three times, then we hear, ‘Damn door,’ followed by a kick and the door swings open. Art is laden with plastic shopping bags, which hit the walls as he wrestles himself into the room. He is wearing a wetsuit with rubber booties and a high-vis vest. He has recently joined the search-and-rescue team and refuses to acknowledge that the outfit is not like that worn for gym class or golf — you can’t wear it around to do errands.
Art sees his girlfriend in her ninja suit surrounded by samurai and squeaks, ‘Bad timing?’
Mum rolls her eyes and rips off her ninja hood, her blonde hair erupting out of it. One samurai gasps. Mum’s hair has that effect on people, completely unexpected and wild because it doesn’t match the coolness of her eyes. Only those really close to her can see the reflection of the beautiful seams of gold that ripple through the brown.
‘You’re late,’ she announces.
‘The shops were busy and I couldn’t find a park and —’ Art realises she isn’t talking to him.
A samurai with very hairy knuckles and a black ponytail with a streak of silver down one side of his head steps forwards. That streak of silver is famous. I recognise him instantly as Judge Shima, the head of the Chiba clan. He is the only samurai who transported to the Cemetery of Warriors as a boy and battled three out of four warriors. They say he forgot how to transport home and was lost in the cemetery for sixteen days. He survived by sucking water out of moss and eating bark. He had to fight to live every single day. No one is more deadly than the Judge. He makes every decision for the samurai. He bows to my mother.
‘Detained,’ he says, his voice as low as a foghorn.
‘Could have knocked.’ Mum looks over at her smashed kitchen window.
He shrugs. ‘You’re representing the Emishi clan?’
‘Yes,’ she says.
‘You have information on the current climate?’ the Judge asks.
Art huffs. Mum glares at him. ‘We’re not checking out the weather,’ he argues.
Mum purses her lips and mouths, ‘Zip it.’
Art dumps the shopping bags on the kitchen table loudly, then walks over to me and puts a hand on my shoulder. His skin smells of logs, ashes and toasted marshmallows.
‘The Chiba clan agrees that if we are going to defeat the darkness, then we have to work together. Everybody fights,’ the Judge says.
Art clears his throat. ‘Not everyone. Some are on Rescue.’
‘Everyone,’ the samurai says, then a smile messes with his expression as he takes in Art’s rubber suit. ‘Maybe not you,’ he amends. ‘You look like you couldn’t even handle a paper opener, let alone a sword.’
Akita’s eyes bulge. Blood rushes to her cheeks, her fists crunch to hammers. For a second I think my mother is about to knock this guy’s head off.
‘Do you want my information or not!’ she yells. ‘And I’ll have you know, I’ve taught Arthur everything I know. He could fight with the best of us.’
Art holds up the peace sign and says, ‘But I’m more of a lover than a fighter.’ He winks. The Judge’s eyes narrow.
Mum turns away from Art and walks a slow lap of the samurai encircling her. Their swords pierce the green rug and reflect Art’s most recent jungle mural on the living-room wall. Jackson is twitching. The samurai’s shadows swamp my house like smoke.
‘The Tigon, a monster that is half-tiger and half-dragon, is after the White Warrior’s powers and he won’t leave until he gets them,’ Akita says.
‘The Tigon. That’s what I saw! The ferocious Tigon!’ I whisper to Jackson. His eyes are wide. He looks as stunned as I feel. For a moment I forget that I’m the White Warrior, or used to be. Now that I’m powerless, I don’t know who I am. Mum is deliberately not looking at me. I bite my tongue to ribbons, so hard I taste blood, then gulp. The samurai shadows thicken. They’re all after the White Warrior’s powers too. They all want me dead. Now they have to compete with the Tigon. If they were smart, they’d use him as a distraction to hunt me down. I feel the room closing in, shrinking. If a fight breaks out, Mum, Jackson and I will be outnumbered. The best fighters in the Chiba clan are here. I can tell by their swords. Only the most deadly, those who have defeated many ninjas outside of Lanternwood, have red leather handles.
‘Why would the Tigon want the White Warrior’s powers?’ the Judge asks. ‘He is already powerful.’
Mum clears her throat. ‘Because the powers were his to begin with,’ she whispers.
The samurai look at each other and take a step forwards. I see the Judge’s eyes darken with a secret. ‘Extemporise,’ he says.
‘The Tigon is the original White Warrior,’ Mum takes a deep breath, ‘but he went crazy with his powers. He destroyed not pro
tected, when his, um …’ She hesitates.
‘Spit it out,’ the Judge says.
‘He finally discovered that the child his wife had before him was fathered by a samurai. The child he had raised as his own carried samurai blood! The mother had tried to hide it, but the child was “turning red”, as they say. She was doing samurai things that the mother could no longer hide. He killed everyone in their village with his powers, so the legend of the White Warrior cursed him. He became the Black Warrior — human by day and a tiger dragon by night. His powers were transferred to his child, then extracted by the child’s mother into the Tiger Scrolls to keep the child safe from him ever seeking revenge.’
My head explodes. The curse of the Black Warrior exists because the original White Warrior went crazy?
‘We understand the Tiger Scrolls have been reclaimed by the child. The scrolls sang to every samurai, we all heard them. Did the Tigon hear them too?’ the Judge asks.
Akita hesitates. She lowers her eyes, then flips them up quickly to stare the samurai down. She nods, almost in a deep bow. I see a wisp of shame contort her face. Have I disappointed her? Is she upset she couldn’t protect me? The thoughts puncture my heart like a straw in a juice box.
Everyone is looking at me. They all know who I am. Was. I am mute with fear. Say something. Anything! But I can’t process thoughts with everyone looking at me. Hater, vengeful, father. Words come, but the wrong words. I try to puzzle it all together. I see Jackson doing the same, his face twisted. If I’m the child who reclaimed her powers, and my sister is samurai with another father, then the Tigon must be … I look up at my mother. The expression in her deep brown eyes swallows me whole. She confirms it. My lips feel sewn shut. I begin to shake. Then I gulp down the cotton in my mouth and blurt, ‘The Tigon is my dad?’ The room blinks. I can’t breathe. ‘And he wants revenge?’ I’m frozen not because my father is the Black Warrior, but because he came back for his powers and not for me. That makes him a monster, not his tail or his fangs.
‘I’m gonna kill your dad,’ Hero growls. He jumps up onto the kitchen bench and leaps out of the smashed kitchen window.
‘No! Hero, wait!’ I yell after him.
Jackson runs after Hero, bounding onto the bench and out the window, but he is not as fast as Hero, who can now run with the wind. I push past the samurai to the front door, hearing their feet turn towards me.
‘Roxy!’ Mum yells. ‘Wait!’
I run after Hero and Jackson as fast as my normal legs will carry me. As I weave through the snaking boulevards, I lose the samurai pounding behind me. Flying with the wind has given me a bird’s-eye view of every nook and cranny. No one knows the streets of Lanternwood like I do.
My father cursed, the original White Warrior, now the Tigon. No wonder he’s been trying to find me at school, at the dance and again at Mushroom Rocks. He’s been looking for me. Waiting for a moment to pounce and reclaim his powers.
Lanternwood whooshes past me in blurs of shadow and light. I run towards the lanterns at the end of town in the direction I think Hero would have gone, as he and Jackson have now completely disappeared. I’m no longer running from the samurai, but it feels like I’m running from myself. The blood pumping through my veins, charging my legs, is my father’s blood, cursed blood, blood filled with secrets and betrayal.
I reach the outskirts of town and the horse paddocks where we had the flop of a school dance. Memories of Elecktra in her kimono gown warm my heart. Jackson kissing me in the moonlight floats back to me. I touch my lips and miss him so ferociously my stomach lurches like it does when it’s starving. I remember Hero saving me from the Tigon that night and opening up to me for the first time. Will Hero become my friend now? My thoughts are struck by the memory of the Tigon’s deafening wings. They wake me up as I catch my breath and break to a jog.
I approach a horse, reaching my hand through the sleeve of darkness to pat its nose. The horse huffs and allows me to stroke it. When my eyes adjust, I realise the horse is Elf. I snatch my hand away, as if he, like Cinnamon, has turned on me. But Elf is gentle, leaning into my palm, craving touch the way Cinnamon’s kitten, Rescue, figure-eights through Cim’s legs for attention, purring like an engine. Elf sighs out of his nose, making it hum under my caress. I rub my skin against him.
‘My father is a monster,’ I whisper into his wet nose, which brushes my shoulder. I’ve always yearned to know more about my father. Now that I do, I wish I could take it all back. At least in the mystery, or be it fantasy, he loved me and wanted to meet me, not hurt everyone that I love. I stare up at the sky, as Mum did that night at school. I now know she was looking for him, the Tigon. Could she still love him? After everything he has done?
The world stills. The grass stiffens, the clouds become stone, the air freezes. I look around. A deafening noise bursts my eardrums. The sky rips apart. A flash of claw, a gust of icy air. Thunderous beating tears holes in the clouds. The Tigon has arrived. His blue-orbed eyes fire in the darkness. His tiger head snarls, his paws tread the night air as his dragon tail slashes the horizon. His fur is midnight black, wearing the night as a cloak.
‘Take me!’ I yell up at him. ‘I’m here! I’m what you want!’
The Tigon crashes his wings. I brace to be attacked, but instead, Elf flies up into the air. I grasp at his hooves, too late. Fierce beating spins Elf around in circles in the sky.
‘Elf!’ I scream.
Then the beating stops, the horse disappears and I fall to my knees, sobbing. What is he waiting for? My hands groove into the grass where Elf’s hooves once stood. I’m panting with fear. Blood roars in my ears. I slowly lift my head and see someone across the paddock. I squint. Art stands with his legs apart, still wearing his black wetsuit.
I wave at him. ‘Did you see that? What are you doing? If Cinnamon’s mum called, I’m really sorry. She attacked me first!’
His hair isn’t a mess for once, but slicked back in a single wave that flags in the wind. My stomach seizes. His hair has changed! Before I can take in the horror of that thought, the terrifying flapping noise returns in the distance, flattening the clouds to pancakes. The flapping sounds far away, but Art hears it too. He tilts his head slowly to one side, then straightens it; he doesn’t crack his neck so much as look like he readjusts something on the inside, cracking his soul into a different position perhaps. Art’s eyes gloss from blue to black. They are wiped completely clean of any trace of him. I stare in disbelief. What is wrong with everybody? Is it the Tigon’s wings making people go crazy?
Art opens his mouth, a big black hole, his chest expands, then out of his mouth explodes a channel of fire. I leap backwards as it charges towards me, flames licking my nose and embers igniting the surrounding grass.
Art marches towards me. This is the point when I would summon wind and escape, but I’m still powerless. He picks up pace. His face is twisted in an unhuman expression. His knees lift high with power as he advances, his feet ripping the grass with his striking steps. For the first time in his life Art looks athletic, too athletic. I run.
The stomping is soon at my heels. I feel a sharp bite on the back of my leg. I trip and fall, then roll quickly as fire streams over my shoulder. I leap onto my feet and Art is less than an arm’s length away. He breathes fire again. I duck the lethal blast. He closes his mouth, the fire tunnel evaporates and behind it, Art is closer than I expected. He reaches down into one of his socks pulled up over his wetsuit and slides out a machete. I recognise it as the old one that Mum hides in her wardrobe, the emergency machete.
I’ve never fought without powers before. I remember Sabo’s advice: when in doubt, run. I turn my back and sprint across the paddock, but Art is too fast. I glance around and see the point of the machete gleaming over my shoulder. I reach the fence and ready myself to jump over it, but my foot slips. I place my hands on the fence again to hoist myself over, when the machete slices through the wood beside me. I turn and Art retracts the machete. I grab his weapon arm and pull
him into me, then pummel him with knees and elbows to the chest. He breaks away from me and slashes the machete through the air. I clear the fence with one leap.
Across the next paddock I see a shed. If I can make it in there, I’ll find some weapons. I run towards it, feeling Art’s breath blister my neck. I reach the door, but it’s locked. Before I can pick the lock, the machete tears through the corrugated iron beside my arm. When I turn, Art is leaping at me. I catch his heels mid-air, throw him down to the ground, then nail him with a spinning hook kick, my heel to his shoulder. He crashes on the earth, still holding tight his weapon. I rattle the door again. There must be another entrance.
Art recovers quickly, his black eyes hunting my every move. He thrusts the machete at me and I fall into a backward roll, kicking him in the ankles as I spin up into a fighting stance. He stumbles, but doesn’t fall over. I leap and grab his ears with my ankles, then backflip, catapulting his body over me as I roll. Art’s face smears into grass and bursts into an allergic reaction. The machete flies out into the paddock. I scramble to retrieve it, but Art is too quick. I throw a kick and misjudge my distance. He evades and slashes me with the machete in my arm. My T-shirt turns red. It takes a moment for the pain to reach my brain, then it powers through me, making me scream.
Art takes a breath, his chest expands. I grasp my arm and run as fire blisters from all directions, fireballs exploding at my heels. I feel heat on my back, but there’s no time to turn around. No time to look. More fire streams beside me. I don’t stop. The heat intensifies on my back. I reach my good arm behind me to my shoulder blade and my fingers burn. I’m on fire! I dive into the grass to snuff out the flames on my T-shirt, then force my body to keep running. My lungs inflate to sails. I’m breathing hard, like through a mask. My muscles twinge with the pace, but I can’t stop, I have to get back home, find Mum, talk to Lecky. This curse must be reversed.
NINETEEN
Twenty minutes later, I turn onto Shipjing Boulevard. The street lamps are dead. There are people everywhere wandering the street. They stop and stare at me. Together they take a deep breath, their chests expanding, sucking in all the oxygen around us. They make big Os with their mouths and breathe out an ocean of fire. I watch the orange mass swallow the distance between us. I spin and run in the opposite direction. The flapping overhead returns. Has he cursed the whole town?