by Zoe Marriott
Guilt clawed at me with ragged nails. I reacted the only way I knew how: defensively. “What was I supposed to say? How was I supposed to explain this? I didn’t think you even knew what a Shikome was!” The last word cracked, turning into a semi-hysterical giggle.
“Do you think this is funny, young lady?” he fumed. “Typical! You live in your own little fantasy world where no one ever has to grow up or take responsibility for their actions and you expect everyone else to clean up after you when it all goes wrong!” He dragged his hands through his hair and yanked, as if he was tempted to rip it out.
I flinched. Shinobu felt it and wordlessly touched my cheek, trying to comfort me. I turned my face away from the touch. Dad’s right. He’s always right. I started this. It is all my fault.
“Not a single word! Not a single call!” My father was still raging, pacing up and down the hall. “Do you have the faintest idea what I’ve been going through? How it felt to get that call from Rachel, and then nothing? Just silence! I have been completely in the dark. I can’t believe how reckless – how utterly stupid – you have been!”
“Dad, I’m sorry, I—”
“I’m not interested in I’m sorry!” he yelled, ripping the katana out of his belt and flinging it down on the hall tiles with a crash of metal. I flinched again. “You’re always sorry but it never, ever stops you! You are exactly like my father!”
SNAP.
I actually heard the crack inside me as all the fear and guilt of these terrible last days broke free – and caught flame. Rage engulfed me. I shoved away from Shinobu, ignoring the wobble in my legs and my aching head and the shake in my hands. I barely felt them.
“Screw you.” My voice was low and wavering, venomous.
My father’s face twisted with outrage. “What did you say?”
“You heard me,” I spat. “You want to talk about I can’t believe? I can’t believe you have the nerve to bring Ojiichan into this! Like it was all his fault? At least he made some effort to prepare me for this nightmare. At least he tried to warn me about the sword. If I’m like him, then I’m glad. At least I’m not like you!”
He made a slashing gesture with his hand. “You are completely out of line—”
“SHUT UP!” The scream tore itself out of my chest, ripping my heart with it as it went.
My father took a shocked step back. Then he squared his shoulders and moved towards me. In a reckless, lightning-fast move, I drew the katana and pointed the shining tip at his face.
“Don’t come near me. Don’t you dare. You knew about the sword, didn’t you? You knew about the monsters. I am your daughter and you left me completely alone in this. You – you left me completely in the dark. You buggered off on your holiday and left us here with this thing in the house.”
Fine wisps of white, vaporous fire were flickering down the sword’s length, drifting around my hands like smoke. The caresses felt like the katana’s version of comfort.
So much pain. So much sadness. Poor little mortal girl…
“Stop it now,” my father said quietly. His face had gone ashen. “Put the sword down. You don’t understand what’s really going on.”
“You’re going to walk in here and say I’ve got no idea what you went through? Did you think for a second about what I’ve been through? The awful things I’ve seen? Did you spare one second to think about what I’ve had to do to stay alive? What I’ve had to become?”
“Mio-dono,” Shinobu said softly. He placed his hand on my shoulder.
I shrugged it off without looking at him. “The only comfort I had in this – this horror was believing you and Mum were safe. You were far away, you had no idea about any of what was happening. And now I find out that you did know? That you knew everything all along?”
“I was trying to protect you—”
Don’t believe him.
White sparks crackled down the shining curve of the blade. “Liar. You left me. I hate you for this. I swear to God I will hate you until the day I die.”
Both Shinobu and my father recoiled. And I didn’t care. This was too much. I just didn’t care any more.
My father recovered first. “Mio—” he began weakly.
“Don’t. Bother.” I ground out. My voice was going raspy and rough, and I realized I must have been shouting at the top of my lungs. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. All I want is for you to get away from me. Go back to Paris. Go to hell. Just leave me alone.”
I rammed the smoking, flaming sword back into its saya, turned away from both speechless men, and marched up the stairs, adrenaline and rage carrying me up onto the second floor. I walked into the main bathroom, kicked the door shut, and bolted it behind me.
Then I burst into tears.
CHAPTER 16
WILL SET YOU FREE
The tentative knock at the bathroom door came about ten minutes later.
“Go away, Shinobu.” I tried to snarl the words but they came out as a wobbly whisper. Pathetic.
The knock came again, less tentatively this time.
“I said go away!”
Silence.
Lying there on the chilly tiled floor, aching, trembling and covered in three different kinds of blood, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that both those men downstairs – both men that I had trusted, and loved, and who were supposed to love me back – had betrayed me. I clutched the katana convulsively to my chest.
Maybe I could forgive Shinobu for his lies. He’d been selfish, but at least I didn’t doubt that he cared about me. He’d died for me, and he’d do it again if I let him.
But my father…
The man who had spent my whole life telling me the kendo I loved was a useless anachronism? Knew how to wield a katana. Had walked into this house wearing one like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The man who had hated my grandfather’s stories about Japan and condemned them as gruesome nonsense that was only fit to give me nightmares? Knew what a Shikome was. And how to kill them.
He had looked at the sword, my sword – my fingers tightened around it even more, and it responded with a sharp buzz of energy – without the slightest bit of surprise. Even when it burst into flames at his throat.
He had known.
And he had hidden it all this time.
The scale of that betrayal made the foundations of my life shift and crumble away to dust beneath me. The man I thought was my father, the rigid, uptight dentist who disapproved of fantasy and fairy tales on principle and believed in order and logic and common sense – the man that I had grown up with, fought with, fought so hard to please and then fought even harder to piss off?
That man didn’t exist.
He had never existed.
And the man who should have prepared me for all this – could have warned me – the man who could have prevented this whole disaster? Had hopped on the Eurostar and left without a backward glance. Had left me to make the biggest mistake of my life, or anyone’s life, without the faintest attempt to stop it.
There was a quiet scratching noise at the door, like an animal begging to be let in. With an effort, I lifted my head off the tiles and squinted blearily at it.
It swung open.
My father stood on the other side, tucking a credit card back into his wallet.
“Seriously?” I rasped out, letting my head drop to the tiles again. “What part of eff off and die is so hard to understand?”
There was a long pause.
“Oh, Midget … what have we done to you?”
I’d never heard that tone of voice from him before. Guilt, regret, sadness; they were all there. Maybe he’d been too caught up in his self-righteous shit before to notice the state I was in. Well, if he felt bad now – good. He deserved to. My bitterness was strengthened by the knowledge that a few days ago I would have reacted to that evidence of concern like a neglected puppy to a kind word. But it was too late for a soft voice to melt my anger at this stage. Light years too la
te.
I heard a familiar long-suffering sigh, and stiffened, curling up tighter around the katana. It felt like my only anchor to reality right now. The irony was toxic.
Then suddenly I wasn’t on the bathroom floor any more, but in my father’s arms.
“What are you doing? Put me down – leave me alone!” Treacherously familiar dad-smell enveloped me, but I refused to be comforted. I squirmed weakly.
“I’ve tried that already,” he said matter-of-factly, hefting me across the hallway and kicking open the door to my room with no visible signs of effort. I’d had no idea he could lift a dumbbell, let alone a nearly grown woman. “It didn’t work. It’s time to try something different. The truth.”
He put me down carefully on the bed and straightened up. I scrambled back until I was sitting against the headboard, trying to get as far away from him as possible. My strained muscles and bruises protested against the movement. I couldn’t hold in a tiny whimper of pain. He frowned.
“I’ll get you some painkillers—”
“Stop it!” I burst out. The words were raw and thick with tears, and I hated that he’d made me break. Now he could see how much he’d got to me. “Stop pretending to care! Just stop it! Get out!”
I turned away, burying my face in my forearm. The tip of the saya jabbed into my ribs but that was just another tiny thread in my blanket of misery right now. I couldn’t bring myself to care.
After a moment, I heard my father’s footsteps retreating, and the sound of the door swinging to. I stayed where I was, gritting my teeth to keep the sobs inside.
The rattle of china made me look up again. I hadn’t even heard the door open.
My father set a TV tray down on my bedside table and one of his first-aid kits on the edge of the bed. The tray held a mug of tea, a plate of buttered toast, and a bowl of soup.
“You can hit out at me all you want, Mio,” he said, folding his arms. “This time I’m not going to fight back, or walk away. I’m your father.”
“Congratulations,” I sneered. “It only took you fifteen years to figure that one out.”
I closed my eyes again, huddling against the bedhead. I didn’t know why he was suddenly acting all nice, or what he wanted, but I wasn’t playing along.
Dad settled the tray on the bed in front of me. Then, moving faster than I would have thought possible, he somehow got me propped up against the pillows – and the next thing I knew, the tray was over my knees, and a mug of tea was in my left hand.
“Stop doing that! Stop – stop arranging me like a child!” I shrieked, banging the tea back down onto the tray. “Where’s Shinobu?”
“Downstairs waiting for you and me to finish talking,” he said. “Don’t worry, I haven’t tried to chase him off. I doubt if I could. He read me the riot act after you ran up here. He told me a little bit about what you’ve been through. You need to refuel before I patch you up.”
I knew I was gaping at him again, but I couldn’t help it. Who was this calm, imperturbable, care-taking person, and what had he done with my father?
“It’s getting cold,” he said, seating himself in the creaky old chair that went with my desk/dressing table. “You hate cold toast.”
I felt slow and bewildered, as if I was trying to make sense of a dream. Nothing was unfolding the right way, the way I would have expected it to. The smell of the food was making my stomach do crazy leaps inside me, but I wasn’t sure if it was hunger or nausea. I probably did need to eat. I clearly wasn’t getting rid of my dad until I had at least made an effort.
I tucked the katana in tightly next to my leg and picked up a piece of toast.
My father smiled. It was infuriating.
“What do you want?” I snapped.
“I want to tell you the truth. Keep eating.”
I munched on the toast and washed it down with some tea, then picked up the soup spoon. “There. I’m eating. Satisfied?”
He shook his head. “You are so angry. So like me.”
I dropped the spoon. “What?”
“I’m not trying to insult you. It’s the truth.”
“You’re out of your mind. In what bizarre universe are you and I anything alike? You’ve spent my whole life trying to change me and fix me and make me over into something else! Why would you do that if I’m so like you?”
“Because you’re my little girl and I just – I wanted you to be happy. I wanted you to be … safe.”
The words Safe from what? formed in my mouth. They died unspoken as I looked down at the katana, and my bruised, bloody fingers wound around the saya like a knot of skin and bone.
My father nodded. “Exactly.”
I picked up the tea again with my free hand. “All right. Start talking.”
“You must have figured some of this out already, I think. Our family has dedicated itself to protecting that sword for the last five hundred years—”
“I know that. No thanks to you, since you’ve lied to me my whole life.”
“And I would do it again, if I thought it would work.”
I gaped at him, stunned that he had the front to admit it. “Why?”
“I never, ever wanted you to be involved with the katana. I never wanted you to know about any of it. Understand, Mio – growing up a Yamato was like growing up in a cult. And the cult had one belief, one principle, one rule that was to be followed no matter what. That the sword was more important than any of us.”
I frowned. “Ojiichan wasn’t like that.”
“Oh yes he was.” My father stared down at his boots, face hidden from me. “He didn’t know why the katana was so incredibly important, or why it had been entrusted to us, or even what it really was. But as far as he was concerned, that was just the way things had always been. The way things were. The sword was everything. The reason for our existence. The reason for my existence.”
He looked up, and my mouth went dry, despite the tea I had just drunk. There was something in his eyes. Something terrible. A kind of dull suffering, worn-out and weary, and yet still overwhelmingly hurtful. The kind of suffering that might be carried for a whole lifetime without someone ever getting resigned to it…
“Ojiichan couldn’t have believed that,” I said, suddenly moved to try and comfort. “You don’t – I mean, he loved you. He did love you, Dad. He loved both of us.”
“Of course he did,” my father said wearily. “But you’re old enough by now to know that there is no universal definition of love. To my father, ‘love’ didn’t mean giving the people he cared for choices and freedom and letting them be happy. It meant moulding them into what he thought they should be. There were no other options.
“Do you know why he brought me to this country? It wasn’t because my mother died, Mio. It was because she wanted to leave him, and she wanted to take me with her. But his family had dwindled until he was the only one left, and he couldn’t risk having the line of Yamato sword-bearers broken. So he stole me in the middle of the night and fled here. He gave her no warning, no trail to follow. He just told me my mother was dead, and he took me away. I was too young to realize what had really happened.”
One of my hands crept up to my mouth. “He wouldn’t – he couldn’t have – that can’t be right.”
My father ignored my feeble interruption. “From the moment that I was old enough to walk, he trained me. Sword work, fighting skills, concealment, endurance, the names and weaknesses of every monster in every myth, and most of all, he trained me to revere the sword. The sword was everything.”
Ojiichan’s voice echoed in my mind, passionate and persuasive. Swear on your life. Promise me, Mio.
“But you don’t believe that,” I said slowly. “Do you? So what happened?”
“My mother died. For real. Father had kept track of her, so he knew when she got sick, and when the cancer finally… Well, I believe he loved her too, in a sense, even though he left her behind in that brutal way. I suppose the shock of knowing that she was gone made him – vulnerabl
e. Opened a chink in his armour. And because the burden of his lie had always troubled him, and he wanted absolution, he confessed to me. That my mother had been alive all those years. That she had searched for me until the day she died.”
His voice choked off, and he grimaced, clearing his throat. “I gave him what he wanted – because I always did. I told him what he wanted to hear. That I understood. Forgave. But it wasn’t true. I didn’t understand. And I don’t think I’ve ever forgiven him. Not even now. I don’t think … I don’t think I ever will. Because she never knew what happened to me, or where I was, or if I was dead or alive. I’ll never know… Anyway, a year later, the day he had been waiting for all my life came around. I was finally sixteen and he ceremoniously took the blade from the box to hand it – and the title of sword-bearer – over to me… I looked at it, and him. And I asked: Why?”
“Why what?” I breathed.
“Why any of it,” he said, eyes flaring with sudden intensity. “Why we followed the rules, believed in monsters and magic, and trained until we bled. Why we dedicated our lives to an item which had never benefited our family in any way, or lead to anything except sacrifice and loss. Why things had to be the way they had always been.”
There was a pause as my father stared at the sun shining in through the window. Eventually I spoke. “How did he take it?”
“About how you would expect,” he said dryly, turning his eyes back to me. “I ran away for a while. Over a year, actually. All his training had taught me how to take care of myself, at least. I lived rough.”
Ran away? Lived rough? Dad? He threw a fit if I hung the dishtowel up the wrong way!
Maybe … maybe that’s why he throws a fit if I hang the dishtowel the wrong way…
“When I eventually came back, my father had changed. He looked years older. He’d had a taste of what he put my mother through. Searching for me everywhere, not knowing if I was alive or dead – he thought I was gone for good, that he’d lost the only person he had left. So, even though he still thought I was wrong, he told me he would accept my decision. He promised he would respect my right to choose my own path. To prove it, he took the katana and locked it in the travelling chest with a brand-new, shiny lock, and gave the key to me to keep. It was a symbol that I could trust him.”