A movement out the window catches my eye. I peer outside, trying to discern what it is.
Something dark slithers away over the pond. The way it moves reminds me of someone.
“Gozu?” I whisper.
Jinx looks up, the blood draining from her face. “Did you say Gozu?”
I nod, hoping against hope that I’m one hundred percent wrong. Gozu was the oni bounty hunter we killed—I killed. The demon who also happened to be Jinx’s father.
Not that he ever acted like a father to her. He betrayed her to get to me.
But Gozu is dead. Gone forever.
Isn’t he?
I think back to the moment when I defeated him. He’d just disappeared. Poof. Who knows what happened to him, really? A chill shoots up my arms. Maybe—maybe he wasn’t dead after all….
“It can’t be.” Jinx has gone rigid, her eyes wide. “Xander, you’re seeing things.”
“I hope so.” I look out into the still, quiet garden. Not even a breeze stirs the plants. The lanterns cast golden shadows into the pond, reflecting off the golden house. The only creature I can see now is a large frog, iridescent green in the moonlight, that hops out of the water and onto a rock, where its gullet balloons and empties with a loud croak.
I must have imagined the oni.
I thought I couldn’t imagine things anymore.
Kintaro comes to my side so quietly that I jump. “What do you see?” he asks.
“Just plants and a frog.” I shrug. “I guess it was nothing.”
“We must make sure.” He claps, heads back to the table. “Kuma, please go and have a look.”
Kuma, without further talk about wanting to wrestle, lumbers outside. His burly form roams swiftly over the garden as he sniffs the air. The bear is blacker than the darkest shadow, and he’s certainly a lot bigger than anything that could be out there. I relax when I see Kuma bare his sharp, deadly teeth. We’re safe here. Certainly safer than we’d be anywhere else on this mountain tonight.
“No sense in worrying,” Kintaro’s saying to Jinx as I watch the bear. He murmurs something to her I can’t hear.
Outside, Kuma snuffles into the bushes. The sound of Jinx’s laugh makes me turn toward the table. “That’s hilarious,” she says to Kintaro, as though her laugh hadn’t already illustrated that fact. She eats a piece of pinkish fish.
Kintaro sits opposite her, smiling. “The salmon is my favorite. They come from the river in these very mountains. Every spring, when they spawn, Kuma and I stand at the waterfall and catch them as they try to go over.”
Jinx takes a bite so delicate I’m not sure she’s taken one at all. “Mmmmm. So buttery.”
“Of course we only grab the ones that have the best flavor. They have a slight blue tinge right under the gills.” Kintaro pantomimes grabbing a fish out of the air.
I take a piece of fish and put it in my mouth. Tastes like regular salmon to me. “I don’t think that’s possible. How can you have enough time to look at its gills as the fish is flying through the air?”
“Because, Xander, Kintaro isn’t like anybody else.” Jinx eats some rice, blinking at me rapidly in her patented Shut-up-Xander expression.
I shake my head in response. Sure, Kintaro saved our lives and is giving us some okay food. But does he have to sit there bragging about how great he is? We already know how great he is. He lives in a gold-plated house, for the love of Pete. I stretch my aching legs out to the side, ignoring Jinx’s pointed look. I’m supposed to be sitting cross-legged or kneeling on the tatami, as is proper, but I don’t care. “So, Kintaro, tell me about the old Angry Lord o’ Light. He doesn’t happen to have a phone number, does he?”
He pours a small amount of sake into a ceramic cup. “Phone number? Hmm. I don’t think he has any numbers at all.” Without asking her first, he pours some for Jinx, and then he moves toward my cup, but I clap my hand over it. No repeat of last time, when Tanuki, that badger-raccoon talking creature, got me drunk and captured. Actually, that was Jinx’s fault. I take a sip of water instead—better safe than sorry.
Jinx laughs, throwing her head back like she just paid two hundred dollars to see Kintaro perform. “Oh, Xander. A phone? How would Kintaro know about that?” I watch disapprovingly as she takes a sip of the sake. She makes a face like she just drank battery acid before she puts down the cup. “Mmm, that’s yummy,” she says unconvincingly.
Kintaro watches Jinx with amusement, smiling smugly at his ability to make her giggle. I fight the urge to hurl my rice bowl at his face.
Why am I so mad about this guy? What do I care if he likes Jinx?
He throws back the contents of his cup with one swig. “For Fudō-Myōō to appear, you need two things. First, the purest, deepest anger of the heart.”
“Got plenty of that.” I select a bit of pickled seaweed and screw up my mouth before trying it. It tastes like salt and oil. “Ugh. If I have any more of this seaweed, I’ll get the deepest anger of the heart, no problem. Or at least the deepest anger of my gut.” I put down my hashi, feeling queasy. “Would you happen to have some plain food? Like crackers?”
Jinx glares at me. I scratch my head. Yeah, maybe that was a little rude, but Kintaro can take it. He’s the Golden Boy.
“Our food is unsuitable for weaklings; it is true. Eat or do not eat; it is of no difference to me.” Kintaro pours himself another helping of sake.
See? I knew he could take it. I sip some water, hoping to make my stomach feel better.
Jinx leans over and puts her hand on our host’s tree trunk of an arm. “Kintaro, what was the other thing?”
“The other…” His brows knit. “Well, nobody knows.”
I almost spit out my water. “What do you mean, nobody knows?”
“Nobody’s ever seen Fudoō-Myōō. At least, not since anyone was here to remember.” Kintaro downs half his rice bowl.
Jinx and I look at each other.
“I thought you said you knew…” I say slowly.
“No. I said there were two things. I didn’t know what the second one was.”
To my immense satisfaction, Jinx rolls her eyes so hard I’m surprised her eyeballs stay in her skull. “All righty, then.”
I take another bite of the ordinary fish. Now what?
Jinx shakes her head slightly, her golden eyes shifting to a darker, more brooding brown. “We’ll figure it out, Xander.”
Glad somebody’s able to stay optimistic.
Kuma bursts in, startling me. He huffs and puffs with huge bear breaths. “Something has been here, Kintaro. Come tell me what you think.”
We follow Kintaro and Kuma into the garden. Kuma stands on his hind legs, pointing up into a willow tree. “Here.”
I peer upward. All I see are the vine-like branches of the tree, which we are stirring. “I don’t see anything.”
“Spirits live in willow trees.” Kintaro stares up into the silvery-green branches as if he’s searching.
“It’s a spirit, all right.” Kuma sniffs the air. “A vengeful one.”
My stomach clenches. “Gozu? But how?”
Jinx sighs. “Sometimes, when oni are killed, they don’t really die. They become something worse. A reiki. The ghost of a dead oni.”
Wait. “Oni can become ghosts?” I almost yell. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” An oni is bad enough, but a vengeful, angry oni ghost…I can’t even imagine.
“That could very well be it.” Kintaro has the thoughtful, calm tone of a scholar. As if he’s reading about an idea instead of facing something that could actually hurt us.
Even Jinx doesn’t seem alarmed. I, on the other hand, don’t feel calm at all. I want to run screaming back down the mountainside. “So what do we do about it? I can’t just wait for him to find me. How do we get the spirit out of here?”
Kintaro laughs.
A flush heats my face, and I know I must look as red as a stoplight. “What, exactly, is so funny?”
“If the spirit has hidden itself,
we cannot access it. Why waste emotion on something you cannot change?” Kintaro asks. “Come inside. My house is a safe space, I promise. Then, at daybreak, you can decide how to proceed.”
“How to proceed?” I throw my hands up. “How I’m going to proceed is by finding the Angry Lord of Light. Oni or no oni.”
Kintaro looks at me with an expression I’ve seen on my father’s face. As if he’s assessing me and approving what he sees. He gives me the slightest smile and nod, and I feel like Inu must when we pet him on the head. I smile back, in spite of myself. No wonder they call him Golden Boy.
We go back inside, and Jinx points to a line of dried beans sprinkled along the doorway. Fuku mame, like at our house. “See?” she says. “That’s why it’s safe here.”
“Safe-ish,” I correct her.
“Not a real word.”
“I make up words all the time. English is an evolving language.”
“Me talk pretty,” we hear from nearby. Peyton is sitting up and spooning rice into his mouth while holding a bowl against his lips. He’s now the color of a glacier, somewhere between white and blue, but I’m just glad to see him awake.
I run over to him. “Peyton!”
“Unnnh,” he grunts. He squints at me without focusing. “Ice cream?” Peyton reminds me of my father when he got his appendix out. When Dad woke up from the anesthesia, he had no idea who we were, and he kept babbling about squirrels attacking the doctor.
I sink down next to my friend. “No. Sorry, dude. We’ll get you some as soon as we get home. Your favorite: mango.”
Peyton lets the rice bowl fall out of his hands. I catch it before it hits the floor. “Go home now,” he slurs. Then he slumps over, and I gently lay him down. Peyton will just have to sleep by the table all night if that’s what needs to happen.
“At least he ate something.” Jinx kneels on the other side of the table.
I eye his nearly full rice bowl. “Not enough.” Maybe we should let Peyton stay here.
But Peyton is my responsibility, not Kintaro’s. What if somebody else needed saving and Kintaro ran off and left Peyton alone? And what about that vengeful spirit? This place might not be any safer than the rest of the mountain.
My brain feels like a dried-out old sponge. I can’t think about this any longer. I’ll decide by morning. At least we have a place to rest for the night. I tuck a jacket under Peyton’s head.
“Wait a moment, Xander, and I will move Peyton into a bed.” Kintaro moves the small table into a corner. He slides open a shoji-screen closet and removes a stack of futons—basically sleeping pads—dragging them out into the center of the room. I leap up to help him.
Jinx gets a pile of sheets from a shelf. “So, Kintaro, how did you come to be up here in the mountains all by yourself?”
“He’s not alone,” Kuma growls from his place near the hearth. “He has me.”
“So I do.” Kintaro smiles. He and I unfold the first futon, and Jinx tucks a sheet over it. “It is the most interesting story you’ll ever hear in your lives.”
Ugh. I’m sure it won’t be. Has there ever been anyone as full of himself as Kintaro?
“Really?” Jinx and I both say at the same time. In completely different tones, of course.
“Is it a long one?” I help Jinx with the sheet. “Maybe it’ll help put me to sleep.”
She shoots me a murderous look. “I’d love to hear it.” She flutters her lashes at Kintaro again.
“All right.” Kintaro starts talking. “A long time ago—”
“In a galaxy far, far away?” I lie down on the futon. “Let me get comfortable.”
Kintaro nods, and then begins again.
“A long time ago, there was a princess named Yaegiri. She lived in Miyako, or what is now Kyoto, in Japan. This was once the capital, a place of the greatest beauty and culture. Yaegiri was not only a princess but the most beautiful and brave princess who ever lived.
“A samurai named Kintoki fell in love with her, and soon they married. But this made Kintoki’s enemies jealous. They convinced the emperor that Kintoki was trying to overthrow him, and Kintoki was killed. His enemies took over the court, and Yaegiri had to flee into the mountains. She was with child, unable to move fast, and very scared indeed.
“A group of woodcutters, feeling sorry for her, let her live in a hut, hidden and far away from her enemies. Soon after, she gave birth to a little boy: me.
“With my first breath, I outcrowed the rooster. My first bath was in the freezing mountain waterfall, so cold it would have killed most newborns. Even the woodcutters told my mother not to bathe me there. But her doing so just made me stronger.
“I talked when I was only three months old. I walked at six months. The woodcutters were amazed, but my mother wasn’t. She took me with her when she worked in the forest, leaving me in a basket as she cut down trees. I listened to the language of the animals and plants. Children absorb more than you know.
“One day, when I was but a year old, my mother and I came across a bear cub and his mother. Now, mother bears tend to be extremely protective when you come between them and their cubs, which we had done. My mother screamed at me to run away, but I was not afraid. Neither was the cub. The mother bear was not angry as much as cautious, much like my mother.
“The cub and I circled and sniffed each other as our mothers watched carefully. Little did the mothers know that I could understand the language of bears. ‘Let’s have a wrestling match,’ the bear cub suggested.
“ ‘All right,’ I agreed.
“I did not know it, but I was speaking in growls.
“I leaped into the air, and so did the cub. We wrestled and my mother shouted, afraid I was getting mauled, but soon I pinned the cub to the ground, panting.”
“And that cub was me,” Kuma interjects.
Kintaro smiles. “Yes. The cub was Kuma. From that day on, he and I were inseparable.
“As I grew, I learned all the animal languages. The woodcutters gave me an ax, and I chopped down trees, always careful to avoid the ones with bird nests.
“One day, when I had just turned thirteen, a famous samurai came through the woods and saw me wrestling with Kuma. He asked my mother if he could train me. She did not want me to grow up to be a woodcutter and knew that my father would have wanted me to be a warrior. So I went with him. He became the shogun, the military leader of Japan, who was just as powerful as the emperor. I served him as a samurai for a long time.”
Here Kintaro looks at me. “I knew your forefather, Musashi Miyamoto.”
“Really?” I think maybe he means he knew of my forefather. “Is that why you use the two swords?”
“Indeed.” Kintaro’s eyes crinkle. “You know your history, Xander-san. I am impressed.”
“I’m the one who told him that,” Jinx mutters.
Kintaro continues. “And then I became tired of court life. I missed my mother and the solitude of the forest. So I returned.”
“And you built yourself a golden house for fun?” I ask.
“No. The people I saved from a monster built me a golden house.” Kintaro smiles briefly.
“That is the most interesting story I’ve ever heard!” Jinx flops down on a futon.
Kintaro takes four fluffy comforters out of the closet. “I thought it might be.” He makes a bed for Peyton, then picks him up as though my friend is a toddler and tucks him in.
Watching him do all that for Peyton makes me even more aware of how incapable I am. I should feel really grateful, but instead I feel annoyed and guilty.
I grunt. “It’s not as interesting as if you were born a weakling and became strong.” I make up my bed and climb in with all my clothes on. Not that I brought pajamas or anything. I look up at the ceiling and sigh.
“Like you?” Kintaro asks.
“Yeah, like me.”
Kintaro produces a small pillow that’s filled with something that crunches softly. He tucks it under my head. “This is buckwheat,” he says
. “It’s good for your neck.”
I move my head back and forth, feeling the small kernels. “If you say so.”
“Xander.” Kintaro’s eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles down at me. “There can be more than one hero.”
I adjust the pillow again. The buckwheat’s actually not as bad as it sounds, except for the crinkly noises it makes when I move. “I know.”
Kintaro puts the comforter up around my neck as though I’m his child. He sits down on the edge of the futon. And, like he really is my dad, I can feel a lecture coming on. “Me being here doesn’t make you less brave or worthy. You do not have to compete with me. I am your ally.”
I draw in a long breath. Now, that sounds like the kind of thing people say when they actually are competing with you. “You think you’re better than me, though, don’t you?”
He pats my shoulder. “I am not. But I hope that whatever I say spurs you on to greatness rather than crushes your spirit.”
I shut my eyes. “I guess you just know all sorts of things I don’t,” I say, not even attempting to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
“Of course I do,” Kintaro says.
I snort.
“I know more,” Kintaro goes on, “because I’ve lived for hundreds of years longer than you, Xander.”
Hundreds of years? I open my eyes and regard this Golden Boy superhero person. He’s hundreds of years old, but I’m the one with the gray hair. “I’m not even going to question that,” I say. Not in this world and this golden house, with its talking bear.
“Of course you never thought about it from Kintaro’s point of view,” Jinx interjects, her voice scratchy with fatigue. “You’re too stubborn.”
“Yeah, right. Look who’s talking.”
“Enough.” Kintaro stands and nods to me and then to Jinx. “Sleep well, you three. You will need all your strength tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Kintaro,” Jinx says. She sounds like she’s halfway to sleep.
“Yeah, thanks,” I say, too, but I might say it only in my head.
Kintaro turns off the lanterns.
Xander and the Dream Thief Page 12