Frail Human Heart

by Zoe Marriott

  I cartwheeled through the pool, tossed around like an ice cube in a cocktail shaker as the squid tried to tear my fingers from the hilt of the sword. I forced the sword down into its saya with every bit of strength I had. More tentacles whipped out at me, stretching thin as they wrapped around my body, drawing me downwards away from light and air and help. I struck out desperately with my left hand and managed to latch onto one of the delicate ice pillars that held up the bridge, anchoring myself in place.

  In the thrashing chaos of bubbles and boiling lungs and don’t let go don’t let go don’t let go, I caught my first proper glimpse of the creature that had hold of me. It was huge − its mushroom-shaped hood at least as big as an armchair − with glaring yellow eyes the size of dinner plates. It was now exactly the same colour as the deep blue water around it, but against clouds of white bubbles it stood out as clear as day.

  The squid’s limbs pulled at me, trying to peel me away from the bridge. I kicked out. My boot hit the monster in the left eye, knocking it sideways. I kicked again – this time it reared back to avoid the blow. My ribs felt as if they were tearing into shreds, my heart as if it was about to burst inside me. I had to breathe!

  Something black flashed by. My father fell on the squid’s back and wrapped his arm around its body. He plunged his sword deep into its vulnerable eye.

  The squid’s convulsion ripped me from the bridge. Even under water, I could hear the monster’s roar. It shook me again, then bashed me into the pillar, driving the last bit of air from my lungs. My vision blurred – and my hold on the katana loosened, just for a second.

  The hilt jerked upward, half freeing the blade.

  Power exploded. The shock wave turned the water into an impenetrable, churning sea of bubbles. I felt the energy hit the ice at my back and the squid that still held me at the same instant.

  The pillar disintegrated. The squid’s tentacles quivered and then relaxed, falling away from my skin with a faint sucking sensation. I slammed the katana back down into his sheath and struck out for the surface.

  My head broke through. Water streamed out of my mouth, eyes, ears and nostrils as I gasped for air. I blinked frantically, clearing my eyes – just in time to see the bridge, its central pillar now nothing but a melted stump, begin to crack and fracture under Hikaru and Jack’s weight.

  “Get off the bridge!” I screamed.

  My dad’s head popped up beside me. “Are you—?”

  Seizing his shoulder, I dived, forcing him under with me. Jagged shards of ice lanced down into the water all around us as we swam deeper, out of range of the deadly missiles.

  My father gripped my arm and pointed. There, below us, the body of the giant squid drifted in a dark trail of its own blood. Thousands of the tiny jellyfish were swarming around it. I stared in disbelief as I realized that they were attacking it, hooking themselves onto the body and stripping the flesh away in savage, circular wounds to get at the blood. The monster was already a ragged mess, half its tentacles gone. My father shook his head, sending his hair floating around his face, and then drew one finger across his neck in a slashing motion. If my father’s sword or the katana’s energy wave hadn’t killed it, these harmless-looking creatures would have finished the job. Thank God the squid hadn’t drawn blood on me or my dad…

  The rain of ice had stopped. We swam back up again, bobbing to the surface like corks. I was already looking for the others when I heard Hikaru’s yell.

  “Help!”

  I whirled round in the pool and saw Jack and Hikaru struggling to tread water by one of the smooth, curving dome walls. The pool was boiling around them. They were beating at the water with their arms, clearly trying to fight something off. As Hikaru lifted one of his hands, I saw a trio of the jellyfish clinging to his skin – feeding from him. His skin was streaked with blood.

  We swam furiously towards them, cutting through the dense swarm of jellyfish creatures that seethed in the water. I could see dozens of the little monsters coating Jack and Hikaru from neck to foot, attacking any exposed skin. I expected to be bitten, but they paid no attention to me or my father at all.

  “Get them off!” Jack shrieked. Blood poured from a shallow slice above her eyebrow. “Get them off me – ow!”

  “It’s the blood – they’re attracted to it,” I said. “We have to get you out!”

  Kicking at the clouds of jellyfish and scraping them away from her where I could, I muscled Jack a few feet across the pool towards the closest wall. The ice was straight and as smooth as glass, but above us, where the ice bridge had broken off, there was a shallow dent in the surface – hopefully deep enough for a foothold. I pushed her at it. “Climb!”

  She scrabbled at the wall, soaked boots sliding off the ice and sending her slipping back down into the water. I grabbed a double-handful of her backside – she squeaked – and gave her a boost. She shot upwards out of the pool and managed to dig one foot into the shallow dip. Clinging to the ice with her other hand, she began clumsily tearing the jellyfish off, crushing them between her hands with noises of furious disgust.

  “Hikaru, quickly!” I reached out for him.

  “Get out of the water,” he growled. Blood trailed down the side of his face too. I could see a pinprick of burning white light in the centre of each of his pupils. His expression was terrifying.

  My dad shoved me towards the wall of ice. “Discretion is the better part of valour, Midget Gem. Out we go.”

  Jack, jellyfish-free, shuffled sideways, making room. Dad and I clawed our way up the wall, struggling to fit one foot each onto the narrow foothold. I ended up leaning into Jack’s back, squashing her into the ice, while my dad squashed me into her. My wet fingers stuck to the ice and went numb, but I managed to find another barely adequate handhold and hang on.

  The second the three of us, sodden, dripping and exhausted, were up on the ice, Hikaru began to croon. The sound was deep and rumbling, like a far-off storm. I saw his tail thrash under the water, displacing dozens of jellyfish which simply drifted back and attached themselves to his fur again.

  Big mistake.

  The copper brush of Hikaru’s tail sparked, then flared with white light that shattered into lightning. Bolts radiated from him in every direction, striking the underwater walls of the pool again and again, leaping from the water to crawl along the ice of the dome, shooting up to hit the sun-shaped peak. The water frothed. The ice let out a series of sharp, frightening cracks. Thunder shook the air. I closed my eyes, ducked my head and waited.

  Finally the noise died away.

  I opened my eyes, faintly surprised to see that the dome was still standing, even if it was riddled with cracks and breaks which had destroyed the intricate coloured patterns. The flying sea creatures had disappeared to who knew where. And the surface of the pool was clogged with the floating bodies of thousands upon thousands of dead jellyfish.

  Hikaru flopped onto his back with a splash and drifted in the water, arms and legs limp. His hair and clothes were steaming. But there were no savage fish stuck to him any more.

  “So. You’re completely immune to lightning, then?” I asked, trying to sound matter-of-fact about what I’d just seen.

  “Uh-huh. My own, anyway.”

  “Ooookay,” Jack drawled. “Remind me not to annoy you. Like, ever.”

  Hikaru gave a strained snort of laughter. “Nrrgh. I’m freezing. And my head hurts.”

  “That’s what you get for showing off. Think how the jellyfish feel,” Jack said. I could see her preparing to slide out from the dog pile of me and my dad and drop back into the water with Hikaru.

  “No, Jack, don’t!” my father warned urgently. He was staring past my shoulder into the pool.

  We followed his gaze. The electrocuted fish were moving. At first I thought they were somehow coming back to life, but then I realized that a whole new crop of the tiny, ravenous creatures was rising up from the bottomless depths of the pool. Some of them were feasting on the dead bodies of their
unfortunate cousins – but a lot more were already beginning to converge on Hikaru.

  “Come here right now,” Jack ordered Hikaru fiercely, trying to reach down for him.

  “Huh? What? Oh, shit.” He thrashed towards us.

  There wasn’t enough room for four people on the tiny ledge – there was barely enough room for three. I shoved back, dumping me and my dad down into the water again as a tide of the tiny fish surged around the weakly struggling Hikaru. The explosion of lightning had taken pretty much everything he had − he was about twelve stone of floppy deadweight. Even with me and my dad working together, we could barely get enough leverage to shove him up out of the water – and we couldn’t lift him high enough to get his feet on the dip in the ice. He kept slithering back down, and every time he did, more fish attached themselves to him. He let out a choked yelp of pain as one latched onto his neck. When he yanked it away an alarming torrent of blood streamed down his throat, driving the fish into a fresh frenzy.

  “Come on!” Jack reached down frantically, trying to catch one of his flailing arms. Her grip on the ice failed. She teetered off her precarious perch and bellyflopped back into the pool. The jellyfish swarmed on her instantly and she screamed.

  If you are in desperate danger and can see no other way to escape … try to find your way to water and call my name…

  “Call him!” I yelled, choking on the tide of icy water her landing had displaced. “Call Ebisu!”

  “No – we’re not leaving you!” Jack shrieked. “Get off – argh!”

  “You’re being eaten alive,” my dad bellowed. “Do it! Call him − call him now!”

  “Ebisu!” Hikaru shouted. “Ebisu, help! Please!”

  “Oh, hell. Fine. Ebisu! Help!” Jack yelped.

  For a long, breathless count of ten, I thought nothing was going to happen. Then shimmering blue-green light burst around them, nearly blinding me. I flung one hand up to shield my eyes, involuntarily letting go of the back of Hikaru’s top. Jack shrieked again – high-pitched and helpless – and her voice was joined by Hikaru’s. For a count of two breaths, both of them were screaming, non-stop, at the top of their lungs, and I couldn’t even open my eyes to see why. Then the sound twisted and blurred, like a corrupted digital recording, and cut off.

  When I lowered my hand, they were gone.

  Dad and I were floating alone in the icy water, and the swarm of jellyfish was already dissipating.

  “Well,” my father said croakily. “Nice to know that it works, anyway.”

  “If it did,” I whispered. “If he got them safely. He said he might be able to pull us out. He said it was risky. What if it went wrong? What if—?”

  “It worked. He pulled them out. It worked. They’re fine.” Dad’s voice was firm, but he didn’t know any more than I did. He was just more hopeful. Jack and Hikaru could be caught in some awful magical limbo for all we knew. They could be dead.

  No. No, I can’t think like that. I have to keep it together.

  We both trod water in silence for a moment, trying not to stare at the empty space Jack and Hikaru had left behind.

  Finally, I gave in to the urge, braced one hand against the wall of ice and reached back to pull the sheathed katana from his harness on my back. I wanted to draw the blade, check him for water damage, wipe the metal down. But besides the fact that the shattered bridge and dead squid proved what a very bad idea that was, the saya and the silk wrappings were both dry as a bone under my cold, wet fingers. The water hadn’t even touched the katana, let alone hurt him.

  “I think I’ll keep him in my hand from now on,” I muttered. And if that was for comfort as much as for safety, no one needed to know but me.

  CHAPTER 11

  FLESH WOUNDS

  H ikaru and Jack arrived on the floor of Ebisu’s shop in a cascade of water. They clung to each other mindlessly, shuddering with the sizzling pain of the transition.

  Is this what being hit by lightning feels like for mortals? Hikaru wondered, before Jack’s breath, laboured and hot in his ear, distracted him. He wanted to open his eyes and check on her, but the attempt forced out a choked grunt as a spasm of agony seemed to move right through his skull, and his eyelids squeezed even more tightly shut in response. He could feel her trembling, mashing her face into his shoulder. His fingers curled into the back of her top, and he drew her in against his body, as if he could somehow protect her from the pain.

  Slowly – very slowly – the sensation that every atom of his body was trying to rip its way free of all the others began to fade.

  It might have been a few minutes or an hour later that a familiar voice near by made Hikaru jump, forcing him to open his eyes at last.

  “You two look like something the cat coughed up.”

  Ebisu. The old man was perched on a tall stool by his till, cane in one hand, a steaming cup of green tea in the other. At first glance he looked the same as when they’d left him, but a second, closer look revealed that the tea was shaking in his grip, the green liquid threatening to slop over the rim, and his fingers on the silver head of the cane were white-knuckled.

  “Thanks,” Jack croaked, pushing clumsily away from Hikaru. She tried to sit up, but ended up flopping limply onto her side instead. “You’re looking a bit peaky yourself there. You OK?”

  “As well as could be expected. I’m afraid we – you – almost didn’t make it,” Ebisu confessed, gently placing his tea on the counter. “Are you both … er … in one piece?”

  Hikaru stared down at himself in sudden alarm, then at Jack. There weren’t any missing bits that he could see. “I think so?”

  “Good, good. That’s … good.” Ebisu sighed, his bent frame seeming to crumple a little more. “Two at once was rather more difficult than even I had guessed.”

  “But we did make it,” Jack said urgently, trying to sit again, and this time succeeding. “So you’ll be able to get Mio and her dad back, right?”

  “I hope so,” Ebisu said.

  Hikaru couldn’t help feeling that was quite a bit less reassuring than a Yes or even an I think so. Jack’s expression said she was having the same misgivings.

  “If things play out the way I hope they will, they may not need my help,” Ebisu said, more firmly. “We shall cross that bridge when we get to it. They most likely have a long way to go yet.”

  “I guess,” Jack said, rubbing water – and some blood – out of her eyes with a shaking hand. “Um, sorry about the mess.”

  Hikaru finally forced himself upright, and looked around. They had washed up right in front of the massive stone doorway into the sunken city. But where before there had been a sort of curtain of light, now a sheet of gently rippling water hung between the arched stone lintel and the floor. It was silvery and highly reflective – like a living mirror.

  “A scrying pool,” he said, recognizing it. “My grandmother has one.”

  “You were watching us?” Jack’s expression flashed with alarm, and Hikaru remembered the discussion they’d had about Ebisu while they were floating in the cistern.

  “Scrying pools only show images,” Hikaru told her, with a quick, reassuring wink. “There’s no sound, but the pictures can be seen over great distances, even between dimensions. My grandmother can use hers to look a short way into the future sometimes.”

  “I hope she’s not wasting her time on that endeavour right now,” Ebisu said. “All there is to be seen is shadows and blood, blood and shadows. Anything could happen over the next twenty-four hours – and I mean anything. The only constant is young Mio. Mio is the key. Her choices will save or destroy us all. And if she falls, we all fall with her.”

  Jack and Hikaru stared at the old man in appalled silence. He blinked and seemed to shake himself. “Where are my manners? You need to dry off and do something about those nasty bites. Why don’t you head upstairs and use my bathroom? There’s antiseptic and plasters in the cabinet, and clean towels and so forth hanging up. I’m afraid your entrance disturbed the scryi
ng spell, but by the time you’re finished up there I should have it tuned in again, and we can check on how Mio and Takashi are doing.”

  In the greater pain of their abrupt re-entry into the mortal realm, Hikaru had almost forgotten about the damage the jellyfish creatures had done – but once the old man had pointed it out, the wounds immediately began to throb again. He offered his hand to Jack and together they heaved themselves to their feet and headed for the stairs.

  Ebisu’s bathroom was mostly untouched. The only signs of Izanagi’s rampage were a few long cracks in the walls, and a handful of shattered tiles that had fallen into the olive-coloured bathtub. Hikaru grabbed two towels from a rail under the bathroom cabinet, and handed one to Jack before sitting down on the toilet-seat lid and pulling off his wet hoodie.

  The towel was a strange orange colour, but it was fluffy and smelled fresh. He put it over his head and went to work on the heavy, dripping strands of his hair, watching out of the corner of his eye while Jack peeled her sodden jacket and the sweatshirt underneath away, then stripped off wet boots and socks too. In just her damp purple T-shirt and jeans she rubbed vigorously at her arms and neck with the towel. As she started work on her hair – which was taking on a strong resemblance to a pink and purple dandelion clock – Hikaru noticed she was favouring her right hand a little. There was a particularly deep bite wound there. It looked raw, and it was still bleeding.

  “That’s a bad one,” Hikaru said.

  “Yeah, the little buggers got me all right. But you’re a lot worse off than I am. We need to find some plasters for your face.”

  Her hip nudged his shoulder as she rummaged around in the medicine cabinet above his head and emerged triumphantly with a box of plasters and a tube of ointment. “I’ll put this on the back of your arms where you can’t reach,” she offered as she turned round. “And you can do mine.”

  Hikaru hastily forced his eyes away from her jean-clad bum, which was directly level with his face. He felt his cheeks starting to get hot. Oh, great and little gods, please don’t let her have noticed…