I nod and squeeze her hand, my throat closing up. “Thank you.”
She lets go. “I have to calm down the baku.” She moves past me.
“Hey, you.” It’s Jinx, sidling up to me, grinning from ear to ear. “Maybe now’s not the best time for a date. Even if she is a princess.”
“Whatever.” I guess I deserve this, after teasing her about Kintaro. I change the subject. “That fireball? That was awesome. How’d you do it?”
Jinx holds out her hand, palm up, and a ball of fire appears just above it. “I don’t know. It just sort of flicked on when I got frozen. Like a reaction, like a doctor poking at your knee to make it jerk.”
“Wow.” I stare at the white blaze. “You know, maybe it has to do with that flame the Angry Lord of Light gave you.”
“Could be.” She closes her fingers around the fireball, extinguishing it. “However I got it, it’s mighty handy.”
“And here you were, complaining you didn’t have a power.” I punch her softly in the shoulder.
“Right now I’m just worried about getting out of here.” Jinx looks at the oni king’s remains and shakes her head. “Who knows how long that bubble will hold him?”
“Guys!” Peyton shouts from the window ledge. He points outside. “We have a problem.”
Now I can hear people shouting and yelling near the palace. Over that is a strange cackling sound. With mounting dread, I see that the formerly white sky is dark with creatures. Oni are swarming the courtyard.
My heart drops. Even with my powers back, how can I defeat all of them? I pick up my sword from where it skittered away. I’ve got to protect the princess.
There’s one simple thing I can do for her. I run to the door, take the beans from Kintaro’s house out of my pocket, and sprinkle them along the edge of the frame.
Kaguya materializes next to me, the baku safe in her arms again. “Xander…that won’t hold them off for long.”
“But it’ll help a little,” I say. “Until we figure out what to do.”
The princess considers the oni-king bubble. Ozuno is slowly rising, re-forming into a dark shadow of a man. Then she looks out at the oni in the courtyard. “This isn’t good.”
“Understatement of the year,” I mutter.
She races to the far side of the throne room and grabs what I thought was a decorative piece on the wall—a long white pole. At one end is a two-foot-long blade. Kaguya spins the weapon around like a vengeful baton twirler. “Naginata.” She holds it out to let me examine it. “I can strike at a distance with this.”
“Cool.” I try not to sound too impressed, which is hard because she looks very Bruce Lee with it.
She sticks two fingers in her mouth and whistles louder than a football ref. Two short blasts, one long. “Battle signal,” Kaguya replies to my questioning glance. “Now my soldiers will know this is not a drill.” She gives the pole another twirl. “I can buy us a little time until they come.”
Peyton flies down. “There’s no way for us to escape on foot,” he says. He glances at the sinuous shapes looping through the sky, cawing and roaring. “And maybe not even on wings.”
I cast about the throne room for anything else that could help us. Why doesn’t this palace have cannons? But there’s nothing. The room’s basically a big box with only one door, leading to the courtyard.
“We’re sitting ducks in here,” I say to Kaguya. “Let’s go. We’ll figure something out along the way!” I gesture at the door.
But the princess shakes her head. She takes a seat on the throne, her weapon in one hand, the baku in the other. She stares sightlessly at the oni gathering outside. “No, Momotaro. I will remain here.”
“But you can’t!” I point to the courtyard. “Those things will tear you apart! Come on!”
The baku bleats mournfully, her eyes downturned.
Kaguya shakes her head. “No. I will not leave Yumenushi-kyo. I will die with my people.”
I recognize the name Yumenushi-kyo: the City of Dreams. This reminds me that her people manufacture the dreams of everyone on earth. Oh jeez. There’s even more at stake.
“I understand,” I say to her, shrugging helplessly.
The princess beckons me to her. I climb the steps to the throne. She gestures again, as if she wants to tell me a secret, and puts her hand on my forehead. “There is one last thing for you to discover.”
“What?” I whisper.
The princess continues, her breath on my face. “You have great untapped power.”
“I do? How do I tap it?” She smells like fresh milk and lavender. Her hand grows warm, or maybe my forehead’s making it heat up.
“The Angry Lord of Light.”
“What about him?” The Angry Lord of Light. What did he teach me? To use my emotions. To conquer my enemies without touching them.
Her hand grows hot. A shudder moves through my body, from my forehead down to my feet. I lose my balance and grab the throne’s arm to steady myself.
The princess meets my gaze with her dark eyes, as if willing me to understand how to interpret this.
I straighten, noticing a strange sort of zinging energy moving through my body. Like I was just mildly electrocuted. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
Jinx gasps.
“What?” I turn to her.
Peyton points to my face. “Dude, your eyes—they’re all white. Can you see?”
“Really?” I blink. “Yeah, I can see.”
Jinx steps forward. “Your eyes look like my fireballs.” She holds out her hand and creates a flame to demonstrate.
I do a quick assessment of my body. “Everything feels perfectly fine.” Well, maybe a little amped up…My heart is hammering like I’ve just raced three Ironmans and downed ten Red Bulls. A sensation of readiness pulses through me, as though I’m on the starting line of a race, waiting for the starting whistle.
Peyton swoops up to the ceiling again. “Well, we’re not going to be perfectly fine in about thirty seconds, Xander. You have to do something.”
I jump down from the throne and face the courtyard packed with oni.
Turns out I have less than thirty seconds.
A bird glides into the window above us. I recognize it instantly as an itsumade. Who could forget? First of all, it goes around cawing, “Itsumade,” its very own name. Second, I’ve fought this kind of oni before. They’re nasty, fire-breathing killers.
Peyton meets it in midair, dodging the stream of fire it blasts at him. Jinx stands directly under it and shoots a streak of flame up from her palm. She misses, and the bird flies toward the princess.
Kaguya stands on the throne, the naginata in both hands. As the creature comes close, she leaps through the air and swings the weapon in a fast arc. The itsumade’s head rolls across the room.
I guess the princess can take care of herself pretty well.
I check the bubble to see if Ozuno’s fully re-formed.
The bubble’s still there, as solid as ever, but it’s…empty.
Where did Ozuno go? I can only hope he returned to the underworld and isn’t hiding somewhere nearby.
That’s it!
The underworld. I know what needs to happen.
The oni are piling up behind the line of fuku mame beans. They’re in the perfect position.
To my utter surprise, my pulse slows. I raise my arms as if I’ve done this a million times before.
They’re glowing.
I’m a beacon. A protector of the land.
The shrieking stops as the oni pause in their creation of mayhem. They turn as one to stare at me.
Gulp. This is not exactly what I had in mind.
Again as one, they abandon whatever they had their claws on and come at me instead. The cacophony resumes.
I extend my arms out to the side, and their glow becomes brighter still. I’m acutely aware of every sound: Jinx and Peyton shouting, the oni grunting eagerly, the baku panting nervously, and the princess breathin
g steadily. Underneath my feet, I feel the hum of the moon’s energy. My mind clears, and I remember what the good ol’ Angry Lord of Light showed me. How I could send my good or bad stuff out into the world.
Snarling, hissing, and growling, the oni swarm at the doorway like poisonous red ants climbing up a honey-covered piece of meat.
I imagine them all going to the underworld. Ozuno, too.
Then I inhale deeply. When I exhale, I push all my energy outward.
It explodes like a silent firecracker and looks like the birth of a tiny sun.
I stagger backward, blinded as if a million paparazzi had just taken my photo. The silence is deafening.
“Jinx? Peyton?” I yell, turning around and around, my arms groping the air. I’m relieved I can hear my voice.
“Here!” they call, stepping out from behind the throne, Baku in between them. All three of them have black halos.
“Are the oni gone?” I ask.
“Every last one,” says Jinx. “And there’s no sign of Ozuno anywhere.”
I sink to my knees, feeling like I’ve stayed up for two nights and three days. All I want to do is sleep.
“That was awesome!” Peyton pats me on the back. “Light was shooting out from every pore of your body! Man, you should have seen yourself! It was like a crazy laser show!”
I manage a weak smile. My vision clears. “So I guess that’s what I inherited from my mother. That, and her pointy chin.” I flex my arms, which are no longer glowing. I try to will the light to come back, but nothing happens. Maybe I need to recharge, or maybe I have to do something else to make it work. I’ll experiment later. Carefully.
I look around the room. “Where’s the princess?”
Jinx shakes her head. “She disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” I repeat. Oh man, I hope I didn’t send her to the underworld, too. I go over to the throne, where I last saw her.
Something gleams from the seat. A silver-white chain, with a pearl the size of a large gumdrop attached. I pick it up.
The pearl is not perfectly round, and it’s a deep gray-black color on one side, and a pinkish cream on the other. Like the light and dark sides of the moon. A decorative silver piece anchors the pearl to the chain.
“Looks like she likes you back,” Jinx observes.
“It’s not like that.” I put the necklace around my neck, sticking the pearl under my shirt, where it thumps comfortingly against my heart. “She wanted me to have a souvenir is all.”
“Yeah. Because she likes you.” Peyton caws his laughter.
“You guys don’t get it. She’s like Kintaro—ancient.” I sink into the throne. Suddenly all the adrenaline and energy drain out of me. Maybe doing that thing with my eyes sapped every spare calorie I had. I close my eyelids, my legs feeling like useless rubber.
“Come on.” Jinx pulls me up. “You can sleep when you’re dead.”
“I can carry you if you want,” Peyton offers. “Both of you.”
Reluctantly, I stand. I take one last look around the throne room to make sure we have everything. I have my sword and helmet; I pick up Fudō’s rope and attach it to my belt. The baku jumps up on the throne and bleats, as if she’s reassuring me she’ll be all right here in the palace. I wish I knew where Kaguya went, and whether she’s safe.
“Let’s go home,” says Peyton.
“You got it, buddy,” I say. “There’s just one little thing I need to do first.”
Peyton picks up Jinx and me, and we soar directly from the palace window ledge into a silvery cloudy space, where no land at all is visible beneath us.
I look back, and I can already see the moon, like some kind of giant Christmas ornament, getting smaller and smaller as we drop away.
“Hold up for a sec, Peyton,” I say.
He hovers, beating his huge wings up and down. Jinx looks at me strangely.
“This won’t take long,” I say.
I close my eyes and picture the moon covered in Bubble Wrap, a kind that only Princess Kaguya can undo. There, that should protect them. I just hope it lasts until she gets back. If she gets back…
“Okay, I’m ready to keep going now,” I tell Peyton, who looks amazed by what I just did. And could that actually be admiration on Jinx’s face?
He swoops down through the clouds. When we clear them, there’s a forest below us, with a welcoming red torii.
We land hard on the ground and run through the gate without stopping. It doesn’t hurt this time. “We’re alive!” I shout. “We’re alive!” We all break out in crazy laughter.
Some passing hikers shake their heads at our rowdiness. “You kids better not litter,” the older lady in the group chides us.
At the waterfall, we skid to a halt. Peyton pats his back. “My wings are gone,” he says regretfully. “Guess that means we’re back in the real world.” Then he pats his front. “But I still have all my organs, so that’s something.”
“Being intact is definitely a bonus.” I raise my fist, and he bumps it.
Jinx rolls her eyes. “The bromance is also intact, I see.”
“Come on, Jinxie.” I raise my fist for her. “I’ve got one for you, too.”
“Jinxie?” Reluctantly, she bumps fists with me, then Peyton. She wipes her eyes, looking back toward the gate. “Do you think the princess is okay?”
We all go silent for a moment. “I don’t know,” I say at last, my stomach twinging. By taking my dreams, Kaguya showed me what nobody else could—that I really do want to be Momotaro. I won’t be abusing my powers anymore. “But did you see how she handled that naginata? I think she’ll be all right.”
I’ll talk to Dad about her when we get home. I just hope I won’t have to go on a quest to find her. Not for a while, at least. I still have a lot of training to do.
I put my hand on Jinx’s shoulder. “Can you still make fire?”
Jinx holds out her palm. A flame shoots up, three feet high. “Whoops! Didn’t mean to make it so big.” It sizzles out.
“Cool.” I recall what Ojīchan said to me about powers coming through different people. “I guess Fudō’s powers work in this world, too. Or maybe that power is independent of him because you’re half-oni.”
Jinx flexes her bicep. “Or maybe it’s because I’m a strong, independent woman.”
“That’s kind of unfair.” Peyton wrinkles his nose. “I wish I could fly all the time.”
“Well.” I shrug. “Like your dad says…”
“Life isn’t always fair!” we all chorus.
“Check this out!” Jinx blasts from both hands, almost hitting me. “Yeee-hawwww!”
Good thing I’m still wearing the helmet. “Jinx, for cripes sake, stop!”
“Careful.” Peyton adjusts his backpack. “Accidentally setting people on fire is not going to make you the homecoming queen.”
“Like I’d want to be homecoming queen.” Jinx takes out her dagger. It’s got some gross yellow stuff on it that I don’t want to look at too closely. She carefully wipes the blade clean with a leaf. “I’ll leave that for Lovey.”
Lovey. Just hearing her name makes me wince. But I’ll have to do something to show her I’m sorry for breaking her nose. Maybe I could bring her a nice warm bowl of worm stew…. Nah. Maybe I’ll drop some books off at her house so she has something to do while she heals. Though I’m not entirely sure she can read.
“Now let’s go home already,” says Jinx.
Peyton takes off down the mountain, his long legs flying almost as well as his wings. “Best plan I’ve heard in ages!”
Jinx sprints after him, her speedy muscles making up for what she lacks in size. I, of course, am left standing behind, still wearing the samurai gear. For a second, I consider putting some jets on my sneakers again. But that thought melts away almost as soon as I think it.
Instead, I jog slowly behind my now out-of-sight friends. And in a minute, I find Peyton and Jinx stopped under an oak tree, their hands on the trunk like they got there in
a tie, waiting for me.
Dusk is settling over the mountain when my house finally appears in sight. Crickets chirp, and the cooling air evaporates all the sticky sweat on our skin. I slap at a buzzing insect on my arm. I’ve never been so glad to see a mosquito.
Mom and Dad are sitting on the back porch with Inu between their feet. Of course the dog sees us before they do, and he stands up. Woof! Woof! He races toward us, a bullet train heading straight for Xandertown. Before I can say Whoa! I’m flat on my back, and his tongue is slathering my face. “Stop, Inu!” I say with a laugh. Peyton pulls him off me, and the dog attacks him with the same gusto, slobbering all over him. Then Inu goes for Jinx, who falls to the ground laughing.
Next Dad and Mom are hugging us. “We got your note.” Dad kisses the top of my head. “It’s been two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” Peyton screeches, leaping up and waving his arms. “Please tell me my parents didn’t call the police.”
“We, ah, had to arrange a bit of a trick there.” Dad winks at me. “Your mother had to work her Irish charms.”
I cringe. “Irish charms? Ew. Dad, that’s Peyton’s father we’re talking about.”
Mom giggles. “Nah, it’s a fairy trick. A bit of talk and Mr. Phasis was convinced that you and Peyton had gone on a wee trip with Obāchan.”
“A trip?”
“To an ice cream factory.” Obāchan appears in the door. She looks fantastic—strong and healthy, with glowing skin. We all surround her for a hug. She kisses each of our heads in turn, and I don’t even mind it.
“Yum,” says Peyton. “Now that’s a trip I would enjoy. Much more than boot camp.” He wrinkles his beak-like nose, and I know he’s thinking about how he’s going to have to face his father soon.
“You don’t need to go far,” says Obāchan. “The good news is, I have homemade ice cream in the freezer.” We cheer. “The bad news is, it’s red bean–flavored.”
Peyton and I pretend to gag, but Jinx looks up, eager. “That’s my favorite!”
“Then you’re in luck!” Obāchan waves my friends inside.
I linger on the porch with my parents. It’s so good to see them again, bright and alive and not zoned out in front of the TV.
Xander and the Dream Thief Page 22