The Night Itself

by Zoe Marriott

  There was a hoarse groan behind me. The boy jerked back, his hand falling away from my face as if he’d only just noticed we were touching. Shock and uncertainty flared in his eyes, cutting off whatever fragile thing had been starting to grow between us. For a split second I actually thought I was going to burst into tears.

  And then I realized: that was Jack groaning.

  I cursed and pushed away from the wall, snatching up the katana and its saya from the ground and flying across the street to where Jack lay half-hidden under a pile of motorcycles. I shoved the sheathed blade through the belt loop on my jeans, then grabbed hold of one of the toppled bikes by the wheel, trying to figure out how to heave it off her.

  “Wait!” the boy said, appearing next to me. “Let me help you.”

  By some miracle of luck, several of the motorbikes had got tangled up with one another as they fell, forming a cage around Jack rather than landing on her and crushing her. I couldn’t see any blood, but years of watching Casualty and CSI told me that didn’t necessarily mean she was fine. As the boy pulled the last bike off I dropped to my knees beside her, not daring to move her or even touch her, in case she had hurt her back.

  “Jack. Jack, can you hear me?”

  Her eyes stayed closed. Now I knew exactly how she had felt after seeing that car hit me the night before, and why she had been so angry that I hadn’t put the damn katana away. This is my fault. This is all my fault. Oh God, Jack. What if she’s really hurt?

  The boy knelt next to me, took Jack’s wrist in a careful grasp and laid the fingers of his other hand over the top. “Do not fear. She is alive,” he said gently. “Her heart is beating strongly.”

  Jack groaned again and suddenly tried to roll over onto her side. I put my hand on her shoulder, holding her still. “Don’t move, Jack. Please just stay where you are.”

  “Jesus, I feel like I got hit by a bus,” she whimpered. “What happened?”

  “It was a motorbike,” I said. “Several of them. Help’s coming, OK? Stay calm. You’re going to be fine.”

  “Whoa,” Jack said, blinking at me blearily. “Deja vu much?”

  “I know,” I said, swiping tears off my cheeks. “But I don’t think you’re getting off as lightly as me.”

  “Your friend’s pupils are the same size, and they are reacting evenly to the light,” the boy said. “She recognizes you and understands you. I think she will be all right.”

  Fresh tears welled up and I scrubbed at them impatiently. “Thank you. I can’t even … for everything. Thank you.”

  “Ah, who’s this?” Jack asked. “I don’t remember… Oh my God, what about that thing?”

  “It’s gone,” I said, not feeling any need to mention that it had promised to come back, Terminator-style. “And this is… This is…” I blinked a few times. “I’m sorry but who are you? I mean, one minute I was all alone and the next you were just – there.”

  “My name is Yamato Shinobu,” he said, sitting back a little and letting go of Jack’s wrist. “But where I came from, I cannot say, for … I do not know.”

  The sirens wailed much closer now. I could hear tyres screeching as they circled, looking for signs of a disturbance. Shinobu’s head tilted as if he were trying to make sense of the sound – then his eyes lifted to the buildings surrounding us for the first time. He looked around, his expression part confusion, part awe. “This is a strange place,” he said softly. “I had not realized before how truly strange.”

  I shook my head. Lots of people were called Yamato, but… “You don’t know? You don’t know where you came from? Or – where you are?”

  “I…” The boy glanced over his shoulder and got swiftly to his feet. “I think I must look at this old man. There is a lot of blood. Do not concern yourself, Mio-dono – stay with Jack-san.”

  Before I could form a question that would encompass even half of what I wanted to know, he had slipped away to where the homeless man still lay in the alley.

  “What did he just call me?” Jack whispered.

  “He called you Jack-san,” I said absent-mindedly, watching him from the corner of my eye. “Which is like … Japanese for ‘Miss Jack’.”

  “Right. Cute. What did he call you?”

  I gulped. “I don’t know.”

  “Liar.” Despite her position on the ground, Jack managed to look menacing. “Spill.”

  “Er – well, if I remember my anime subtitles right – he called me … ‘Lady Mio’.”

  Jack blinked a few more times. “Hold up. Am I hallucinating now?”

  “Maybe it’s contagious,” I muttered. “Because I never told him our names.”

  Rachel doodled on the edge of her Jung essay in red pen. Her attempt at a rose had become a pool of blood, so she added a bloody hand print and then a curved, red-dripping dagger. Finally she swore, threw her pen down and tried her sister’s mobile for the seventh time.

  For the seventh time she got a recorded message saying that the phone she was trying to reach was unavailable. She muttered under her breath and switched to Mio’s number.

  “This is not funny,” she enunciated clearly once she had got through to the answering service. “I expect this kind of behaviour from Jacqueline, but not from you. You’ve been gone for hours. Ring me back and tell me where you are and what you’re doing right now or I’m calling my mother. That’s right, you heard me. And don’t think I won’t call your parents too, Mio!”

  She hung up, dropped her phone onto the table in the Yamatos’ kitchen – where she’d brought her essay after the girls had left, hoping that the light and space would help focus her brain – and prowled backwards and forwards under the glass roof of the extension, staring up at the bruised grey clouds. It had been sleeting steadily for the past two hours. Where were they? If they’d gone indoors somewhere and decided to stay for lunch they ought to have let her know, dammit. If they got into trouble it’d be her ass in the fire.

  She snatched a banana from the fruit bowl and ate it moodily, wondering if she really did dare call her mother, and if so, whether watching Jack quail under their parent’s wrath would be worth getting a scolding of her own for not looking after Jack better. Like she was supposed to put an ankle bracelet on the kid or something. Jack never listened to her anyway.

  She tried both phone numbers again while she finished off the banana. Still no answer. She left another snappy message, then went to toss the banana skin into the rubbish bin and swore when she found that it was stuffed full. The lid wouldn’t even go down properly. Disgusting. Grumbling and muttering the whole time, she changed the bag and tied the full one up, then pushed open the glass door that led out to the Yamatos’ tiny back garden, where they kept their wheelie bins under the overhang of the garage roof.

  She squinted up at the sky, then made a run for it across the scrubby grass. The sleet bored straight through the thin fabric of her jumper in icy needles, and by the time she reached the bins she was shivering, damp, and more annoyed than ever. Taking out the rubbish was Mio’s job. It was amazing how Mio, with her angelic face and perfect manners, managed to slither out of almost anything she didn’t want to do. And got away with it too, far more often than Jack, who always had to make a big deal out of everything. Rachel shoved the bag of kitchen waste into a wheelie bin, slammed the lid and braced herself to run back from the shelter of the garage overhang.

  Then she heard something.

  It was a pitiful mewing noise, weak and squeaky, like a tiny kitten. Rachel’s heart melted instantly. She made soft clicking noises with her tongue, creeping slowly round the edge of the garage, towards the thick yew hedge that separated the Yamato garden from the narrow alley at the back.

  “Here, puss, here, cutie,” she whispered. “Come out, darling.”

  Another pathetic little meow drew her forward, even though she could barely see where she was going. It was so dark back here that it was like night had come on without her realizing it, and the cold was intense. She needed to get t
he poor stray inside before the weather got any worse.

  “Come on out, precious. I’ll look after you.”

  There was another mew, close enough that Rachel was sure the cat must be nearly at her feet. She crouched down, extending her hand ahead of her, expecting to feel a tiny, shivering body and wet fur at any second. “There you are, puss. Are you hungry, hmmm? Are you hungry?”

  The cat meowed again, right in her ear. Rachel jumped, and her hand made contact with something. Something clammy and gelatinous, like a giant slug.

  It wriggled under her fingers.

  She jerked back with a cry of disgust, but a weight hit her shoulders, crushing her to the ground. The wind left her lungs in a pained wheeze. She could feel something crawling across her back, and she struggled to suck in enough breath to scream, but another damp, rubbery thing slapped across her mouth, choking the cry back down her throat.

  “Oh, yes…” whispered a low, gloating voice. “Yes, little girl. I am very hungry indeed.”

  I had a moment’s panic as the emergency services finally arrived; the sword was still tucked at my waist and highly conspicuous. I didn’t have time to get my coat off and put it in the shinai carrier. I cursed myself. You’ll get arrested!

  The boy – Shinobu – leaned towards me. “What is the matter?”

  “I can’t let them see…” I gestured to the katana, turning my back on the ambulance personnel swarming around the homeless old guy and Jack.

  Shinobu frowned, then nodded. “Stay still.”

  “What?” Before I could say anything else, the sword had disappeared from my belt loop. I gasped. I’d barely seen Shinobu’s hands move.

  There was a tug at the neck of my coat. In the next instant the solid, reassuring weight of the sword was in its place in the shinai carrier on my back and the flap of torn coat was flipped back over the top. Shinobu stepped away, his head turning as he checked if anyone had noticed. “It is hidden.”

  “How did you…?” My voice trailed off. I already knew the answer. He was incredibly fast. Inhumanly fast. I shrugged a little and felt the sword’s contented purr of energy as it settled into place. “Um. Thanks. Again.”

  He bowed solemnly. “You are welcome.”

  As the medics bustled around, stopping the homeless man’s bleeding and checking Jack’s skull was intact, the two police officers started peppering us with questions. I met Jack’s eyes once, and she nodded slightly. That was all it took. Our answers were identical.

  “Did you see your attacker?”

  Yes. It was a woman.

  “Can you describe her?”

  She had long, red hair. She was youngish, probably in her thirties. And wicked strong – she threw us both around like we weighed nothing. Maybe she was on drugs or something?

  “Did you know her?”

  No, she was a stranger.

  “Had you ever seen her around before?”

  Nope, sorry.

  “Would you recognize her if you saw her again?”

  Maybe, but it was all so fast and scary, you know? We never really got that good a look at her.

  I kept waiting for one of them to single out Shinobu for a question. He loomed behind us, a giant, kimono-wearing shadow, apparently torn between watching the EMTs work, and staring at the buildings, the road, the police cars and ambulance. Even the streetlights. It was like he’d never seen them before. I wanted to reach out and reassure him somehow, but I didn’t want to draw attention to him. He already couldn’t have looked more out of place if he’d tried. He seemed … lost.

  We got lucky. Maybe they assumed he didn’t speak English or something, because the police ignored him the whole time. So did the medics, which was strange considering they insisted on giving me a check-up, even though I told them I was fine.

  Finally the paramedics loaded the homeless guy into the ambulance – he’d lost a lot of blood, but he was going to be all right – and asked the police to bring me and Jack to the hospital so that Jack could have x-rays. Jack argued about that, but half-heartedly enough that I knew she must be feeling pretty bad. I helped her to her feet, and put my arm around her.

  One officer – a woman – walked ahead to open the door of the police car for us. Jack took two steps and staggered as her boot caught on an uneven bit of paving. She weighed a lot more than I did and my knees were still shaky anyway; for a second I thought we were both going to do a face plant. In a flash Shinobu was on Jack’s other side, propping her up effortlessly.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled.

  We got to the car. I loaded Jack in and went to follow her, then noticed that Shinobu was standing back, obviously confused about what he was supposed to do next. A motorcycle whizzed past us and he flinched and reached for the red sash at his waist as if he expected to find a sword there. I took hold of a fistful of his kimono sleeve. “Come on,” I said firmly, trying to tug him after me. “You’re going with us.”

  At first it was like tugging on a steel banister attached to a concrete wall. He stood motionless, staring at the car, and at the vehicles passing on the road. His fathomless eyes were confused and wary. Despite the towering size of him – he must have been over six-feet tall – there was something strangely vulnerable about him right then.

  I stopped pulling at his sleeve and closed my hand around his arm, squeezing gently. A little electric thrill sizzled across my palm. “Shinobu?”

  He looked at me. Some kind of weird understanding flashed between us: It’s all right. I’m here. You’re not alone in this.

  He nodded wordlessly. He let me pull him into the car after us.

  I took the middle seat. It was a good thing I was small. With two large and extremely muscular people book-ending me, there wasn’t much room left in the back. Being squashed against Jack wasn’t really a novelty, since she and I usually got the same Tube or bus home from school. Having my shoulder and thigh pressed into the boy’s was something else altogether. My skin tingled everywhere that was in contact with him, like he was giving out some form of radiation that only I could feel. It made me too aware of him.

  The male police officer climbed into the passenger seat and looked at us in the rear-view mirror. “Are you two all right back there?”

  “Two?” Jack repeated slowly. “But—”

  A couple of small puzzle pieces clicked together in my head. No wonder no one asked him any questions!

  I grabbed Jack’s hand and squeezed it hard. She snapped her mouth shut. We both turned our heads to stare at the boy. He looked back at us gravely, eyes shadowy in the dim interior of the car.

  “We’re fine,” Jack said. “Thanks.”

  The female officer got into the driver’s side and the car pulled away from the kerb, following the ambulance into traffic, where it immediately got stuck. Under the sound of the engine idling, Jack whispered, “Can they not … see you?”

  “I don’t believe so,” he admitted. His voice was low, but definitely not a whisper. I looked at the back of the officers’ heads. Neither of them so much as flinched.

  “I noticed earlier that they were looking through me. You were too occupied to realize,” he said, in answer to our shocked faces. “I don’t know how. Or why it is that you can see and hear me, when they cannot.”

  Jack put her hand over her eyes with a groan. “Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought.”

  “Are you going to be sick?” asked the female police officer urgently. “I’ll unlock the back door so you can lean out.”

  “No – she’s just got a headache,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Who is this guy?” Jack muttered. “Where did he come from? What really happened back there? I think my skull is going to pop if someone doesn’t tell me what the eff is going on.”

  “Look, you have to know something about all this,” I said quietly, looking at the boy out of the corner of my eye. “You knew who we were, our names even. How did you know that?”

  Shinobu’s expression was bleak. The chill of it
made my tingling skin go numb. “You will think I am insane.”

  That was eerily similar to what I’d been saying to Jack right before everything went to hell. I bumped his knee gently with mine. “After all the stuff I’ve seen in the past couple of days? I’m pretty sure I’m insane. So just spill it. Whatever it is.”

  He swallowed audibly. “I have seen this city and all these strange and wondrous things before. I have seen the both of you before. In my dreams.”

  CHAPTER 7

  REMEMBRANCE

  “Once upon a time, when all the lands that floated on the sea were new,” Ojiichan had said, “two powerful beings came into existence as suddenly as sparks of lightning blazing to life among the stars. The first being was to be a king, and he was handsome and commanding. The second was to be his queen, and she was beautiful and gentle. And these two fell in love, of course.”

  “Of course,” I muttered, my feet jiggling restlessly under the covers. Normally there was nothing better than one of my grandfather’s stories at bedtime, but that night I wasn’t interested in fairy tales. “Ojiichan, you said you’d tell me about…” I hesitated, then pointed at the ceiling. “You know.”

  One who remembers. One who endures. One who is hidden.

  Mine.

  Ojiichan raised his eyebrows. “And so I will. Are you going to listen? Or would you rather we read about Peter Rabbit?”

  I snorted with laughter at the threat, flopping back onto the pillow. “No, thank you.”

  He smiled. “Then no more interruptions. Now, for a time, the two were happy with only each other for company, but at last they decided that they wanted to have children; children that would be as perfect and beautiful as they were themselves.

  “It was here that for the first time something did not go as planned for the king and queen. Perhaps it was the queen’s desperation or the king’s arrogance, but their first children were not perfect, not beautiful. Their son was born without bones, and him they called Leech Child. Their daughter was horribly deformed, and her they called Faint Island. The queen wept over her poor children and their suffering, but the king… Oh, the king raged and stormed and cursed, and, at last, disgusted and unable to stand the sight of these imperfect children any more, he made to cast them into the sea.”