Sisters of Heart and Snow

by Margaret Dilloway

  The players throw the yellow ball around—it’s like soccer played in the water, as far as Drew can tell. Chase has the ball when an opposing player jumps on his back, clinging to his neck like a monkey, and Drew stands up, her heart pounding. “Is that allowed?” she asks the mother sitting nearest to her.

  The woman shrugs. “It’s a rough sport. Kids have to be tough.”

  Chase throws the ball to another teammate, but still the opponent won’t let up. Suddenly Chase sinks underwater. The other boy still has his head up. Drew sees the other boy’s shoulder muscles straining. He’s holding Chase down.

  The parents murmur. Illegal. Not allowed. Even the woman next to Drew looks concerned. The ref doesn’t seem to notice, not amid all the other activity and churning water.

  “Hey!” Drew yells. She starts moving to the pool, ready to jump in.

  Chase’s face emerges. He takes a gasping breath and shoves the other boy away. “What the fuck?” The ref blows the whistle and points at Chase, says something Drew can’t hear.

  “Red card for swearing,” the woman next to Drew says, shaking her head. “He’s out for the game.”

  Chase swims to a sort of holding pen at the side.

  Drew can’t stand it. He’s getting penalized? She opens the gate to the pool fence and walks in and over to him. His coach squats next to him. Chase has red marks around his throat and angry tears in his eyes. “Are you okay?”

  Chase nods, touching near his Adam’s apple. “He held me under.” His voice sounds hoarse.

  Drew looks at the coach, a man in his mid-twenties. “You can’t let them get away with it. It’s not allowed, is it?”

  “Of course it’s not allowed,” the coach says. He looks grim. “But the ref didn’t call it. You better go sit down. He’s okay.”

  “Coach doesn’t let us play dirty,” Chase shouts for the other team’s benefit.

  The ref points at Drew. “Parents. Back in the stands.”

  Drew feels all the blood rush out of her head, or maybe into it. They can’t hurt her nephew and ignore it. For a moment she’s about to leave quietly, without a fuss. She thinks of Tomoe Gozen, of the injustice. She’s not letting this pass.

  Without thinking, she walks in two long strides to the ref, a man dressed all in white. “What the hell?” she asks, her voice low and tight. “That kid held him under by the neck. That’s not safe. He could have died. Don’t you care?”

  The ref won’t meet her eyes, just points to the exit. “You’re ejected. Get out of here.”

  “You’re not going to do anything?” Drew widens her eyes. True, she’s never played a sport, so maybe she doesn’t know what things are supposed to be like—but she’s pretty sure they’re not supposed to be like this.

  “I’m going to have your son’s team forfeit if you don’t get out of here,” he replies.

  Drew turns and leaves the pool area, her skin tingling. Wow. Does her sister know how dangerous this sport is? “Hey, who are that kid’s parents?” she calls into the stands as she goes by. “Come out and talk to me.”

  Nobody sitting with the other team will look at her.

  Drew doesn’t think she’s ever lost her temper like that. Never gotten booted or shamed like that in public. She felt like she was ready to fight somebody. To defend Chase. She’s never had anybody to defend like that before, just herself. She walks by the bleachers, shaking a little bit, a bit ashamed for getting kicked out. It doesn’t matter, she tells herself. They were wrong. That ref should be ashamed, not Drew.

  The woman who’d sat next to Drew grabs her arm as Drew passes, gives Drew the thumbs-up. “I would’ve done the same thing,” she says in a low voice.

  Drew looks up at the parents from Chase’s side. A few give her nods, their faces set. Drew walks out to her car, her shoulders back.

  MIYANOKOSHI FORTRESS

  SHINANO PROVINCE

  HONSHU, JAPAN

  Summer 1177

  No.” The syllable rose from Tomoe’s throat in a shout. “Yamabuki Gozen!”

  The baby, she thought. Not the baby.

  More than this, she was surprised to find in that moment how much she wanted Yamabuki to live. She had grown fond of the girl from the south. But Yamabuki stared straight ahead, unblinking.

  “I’ll go get Yoshinaka,” Kanehira said, turning and sprinting back toward the street.

  Tomoe hardly registered his leaving. She touched the girl’s face. Warm. “Yamabuki,” she said, and finally Yamabuki’s eyes focused and she awakened from her stupor. Tomoe sagged with relief. She looked for a wound in Yamabuki’s chest, the telltale torn shirt. Nothing. Tomoe knelt beside her, searching for the source of the blood. Had she lost the baby? Tomoe should have stayed. She could have held off dozens of men by herself.

  Then she saw the man behind Yamabuki, his body lying limp in the shadows. The blood ran from his head and into the flooring cracks. Dead. Tomoe put her arm around Yamabuki. “You are as brave as I thought.”

  Yamabuki shook her head. “I was lucky. Nothing more. I hid and attacked him from behind. He never saw me.”

  Their fingertips touched briefly. Now Yamabuki was bone-cold. Tomoe grasped Yamabuki’s hand and looked into the younger woman’s eyes. “Every woman is a tiger when she defends her child,” she said softly. “And you are a mother now, so you must be a tiger always.” She had to make Yamabuki and Yoshinaka’s son healthy. Strong. They could be as strong as Tomoe herself. Strong enough to survive the coming war.

  She stood and helped Yamabuki stand, half expecting that she would insist on lying down. To her surprise, Yamabuki stood without wavering. “I’ll make tea to calm our nerves,” Tomoe said. “Let’s go find Chizuru and leave this mess.” She offered Yamabuki her arm. The girl took it. Tomoe led her out into the mild afternoon light.

  Thirteen

  SAN DIEGO

  Present Day

  Drew wakes up to the sounds of cake mixers and shrieks from human children. She looks blearily at the clock. It’s eight o’clock, two Saturdays before Halloween. Who could be up so early, making so much noise? Chase must have people over.

  She yawns and stretches and thinks of Alan with a smile. She’s going to see him again tonight for dinner. The girls’ grandparents are babysitting. She wonders what she’ll wear, thinks the clothes she brought are probably unsuitable. She’ll ask Rachel if she can borrow something.

  Last weekend, a few days after they met for coffee, they met for a drink. At least, they’d intended to meet for a drink, at a theme restaurant inside a mall. Drew blurted out the name at random—one of those restaurants where everything’s fried in butter and the portions are bigger than your head. The place had been ear-splittingly noisy and crowded. Drew looked at Alan and saw a mirrored distaste on his face. Both of them laughed at the other’s reaction. Kindred spirits, Drew thought. A quote from her favorite childhood book, Anne of Green Gables. Oh my God, Drew, stop being so cheesy. Put it on a Hallmark card. Alan watched her patiently. Drew blinked, shook her head. “Want to just walk around?”

  He reached for her hand, squeezed it. “Certainly.”

  They walked to the bookstore first. “What do you like to read?” Alan asked.

  Drew froze. Oh no. If she told him the truth, he’d drop her. Should she make something up? They walked past the fiction tables and Alan stopped, looking down at the titles. “I don’t read too much,” she said in a low, apologetic voice. Her chest felt hot.

  He cocked his head, picking up a book with the back of a woman’s head on the cover. “Why is that?”

  She shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. I used to love to read.” She had the time. No kids. Rachel read more than she did—Rachel’s family room walls were covered in bookcases, so many books she’d made double rows on the shelves. Drew glanced at Alan’s face, but he’s just reading the back of the cover. “Do you hate me
now?”

  Alan put the book down with a laugh. “No. I’d hate you if you’d told me proudly that you only read short articles on the Internet. I have a vested interest in making sure people read. I’m a librarian, and I’m working on a novel myself.” Now he ducked his head in a shy way.

  Drew stood up straight. This was interesting. “What kind of book?”

  “Fantasy, actually.” He smiled with his mouth closed. “I suppose you don’t like fantasy. I tend to read outside of the genre myself, but for some reason I’m writing a book that’s got dragons in it.”

  He had so much going on in his head, Drew thought. She hoped she could keep up. “Dude. Of course I do!” She took his hand. “Show me what you like to read.”

  They’d spent hours wandering the smallish mall, throwing pennies in a fountain and talking. Alan talked about missing England. How he’d go back if his in-laws weren’t here. Drew told him about her mother and her sister and her nephew and niece. She told him about the band.

  Alan whipped out his phone. “Wait. I’m purchasing your music right now.” He looked up at her, the device dwarfed by his hands. “The original Out Stealing Horses, with Drew on tambourine.”

  “I wrote some music for that song, ‘Irregular Polygon.’” Drew pointed at the screen. The band had already risen to the low hundreds in the Alternative Albums charts since their new album came out. They were doing better without her. She didn’t see why Jonah wanted her back. They’d established their sound. They weren’t using the song she’d completely written, anyway.

  She told Alan about the possibility of rejoining the band. Alan listened thoughtfully. “I think you should do it. If only to show them.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to play with them?” They were in Target now, wandering the aisles. Drew idly picked up a bag of candy corn, chocolate. She’d never had this kind. Candy corn was Drew’s favorite Halloween candy. There were two camps of people in this world: those who liked candy corn and those who didn’t. One wasn’t necessarily better than the other.

  She shrugged, playing with the bag. “I sort of feel like I did in high school when somebody told me to join Academic Decathlon so I could put it on my college application. Like, it would be good for me, but I don’t particularly want to do it.” It was the first time she’d articulated these thoughts, aloud, to someone.

  “Well. I guess there are always times when we have to do things we don’t want to do because there are bigger things at stake.” Alan took the bag of candy corn from her hands. “I would say this is not one of those times.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No.” He was standing very close to her. “Have you ever heard of the Bus to Abilene?”

  Drew looked at him questioningly. “Why would I want to go to Abilene?”

  “It’s a story. A paradox, actually. There’s a group of people sitting around, and they’re all bored. Finally somebody says, We should go to Abilene. And so they all get on the bus. They get there and it’s not any better. Then somebody says, Whose idea was it? And they all say I thought you wanted to go. Turns out nobody wanted to go—the guy who suggested it only did it because he thought the others might be bored, not because he wanted to, really. All of them only went because somebody suggested it and nobody wanted to be the one to say no.” Alan tosses the candy corn into the air. “You should only do this if you truly want to do it. Not because somebody suggested it and it seems like it’d be easy.” She could smell his deodorant, a light citrusy scent that, thankfully, didn’t make her sneeze. So many men made her sneeze these days. All that body spray.

  Drew raised her head and looked at him. His lips curved up, then went back to neutral. “I don’t want to join the band again,” she admitted. “I don’t know what I want to do. But it’s not that.”

  She felt his arms go around her and she closed her eyes.

  They kissed.

  And then he bought her the candy corn.

  • • •

  Drew puts on a robe and opens the bedroom door warily. Seven or eight middle school kids are in the kitchen. There are multiple stand mixers in shades of bright orange, pink, and red, bowls, and cookie sheets arrayed on the counters, along with cookie ingredients. Chase wears a red-and-white-checked apron with a ruffle around his waist. Cinnamon and butter smells fill the air. It’s like Santa’s elves have invaded. “What’s going on?”

  Chase turns from the sink. “Bake sale.”

  Drew sniffs. Coffee. She stumbles over to the pot. “Does your mom know?”

  “Yeah. Of course.” Chase shoulders her aside to get out the egg carton. “She said not to bug you.”

  “What if there’s a fire?” a girl with dyed black hair asks.

  Drew raises an eyebrow. “Are you planning on starting a fire?”

  “No. But accidents happen. That’s what my mom says.” The girl carefully scrapes off a cup of flour with a butter knife. It’s a little under, and she scowls and dumps it out and starts all over.

  The kids are of all races. Drew’s never identified herself as Asian. She had a few Asian friends growing up, all American-born from families that had already been here for generations. Sometimes people asked her friends where they were from. “La Jolla,” they always responded icily (and honestly). Nobody asked Drew where she was from. Her mother didn’t speak of it. Claiming her Japanese heritage seemed fraudulent. Drew wonders how these kids identify themselves racially, or if they just categorize into types, like the goths and the jocks and the whatevers.

  A sullen-looking boy, his light brown hair hanging over one eye, dumps the flour into the wet all at once. “It works better if you add the dry ingredients a little at a time,” Drew says to him. “For next time.”

  “Whatever.” The boy haphazardly attacks it with a wooden mixing spoon. “Whatever. It’s all mixed at the end.”

  Drew takes the spoon out of his hand. “When you add the wet ingredients, the gluten starts developing. Your cookies will be tough. And, by mixing the dry ingredients separately, you make sure the salt and the baking soda are evenly distributed.”

  The boy looks up at Drew like he’s finally noticed that she’s a real person. Not invisible. “Oh.”

  “It’s science, really.” Rachel appears beside her, already dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with an apron over it all. “Luke got first place in the science fair last year.”

  “Wow,” Drew says, genuinely impressed. Luke blushes a little. “So this is no problem. It’s chemistry.”

  He squints at the mixing bowl. “I’m really more of a physics guy. So, should I dump it out or what?”

  Rachel shrugs. “Let’s see what happens. We can always make more.” She pours herself a cup of coffee.

  Chase cracks an egg. “Aunt Drew. Mom. This might go better if you, you know, leave us alone.” He stares at Drew pointedly. After she called out the ref, Chase had been embarrassed and asked her to not come to any more games. Though he did admit that she was right. “Nobody’s going to get drowned while we’re making cookies.”

  Rachel and Tom were horrified. Rachel threatened to call the water polo organization and report the ref. Chase said he’d quit if she did.

  “This is true.” Drew sits at the counter, sipping her coffee and feeling a bit hurt. She’d only wanted to help Chase. She won’t push him now, though.

  Rachel sits next to Drew. “That’s the boy whose mom said wouldn’t help,” she whispers, pointing at Luke, who mixes the batter now with greater care.

  Drew raises her eyebrows. “You showed her.”

  Rachel has the grace to not even look smug, the way Drew certainly would have. Drew would have taken a photo of Luke cooperating and posted it to his mother’s Facebook page. Rachel takes a sip of coffee. “I heard from Dad.”

  Drew’s pulse flutters in her throat. But Rachel doesn’t continue. “Annnnnddd?” It u
sed to be Drew who did that, who made Rachel answer more of the questions she asked. She hopes, illogically, that Rachel will grin and say that Killian said, Of course, and let’s drop this lawsuit and be a real regular family again.

  Rachel just shakes her head, though, signaling she doesn’t want to talk about it. Drew glances up at Chase, who is still visibly uncomfortable at the fact that his mother and aunt are hanging around, his back turned to them, every so often stealing a glare backward.

  “Oh,” Drew says softly. She takes too deep of a sip and coughs. A longing rises in her. When was the last time Drew and Rachel’s family was happy? Ever?

  She remembers one time, after Rachel won the freestyle event at the state championships when she was fifteen. How Killian took them to celebrate at a fancy steak house in a tower overlooking downtown and the harbor. The fancy tables and the wood paneling and the cigar smoke (back when people still smoked in restaurants). Hikari’s beaming face, the small candle on the table making her skin glow softly as the waiter tipped the bottle of champagne into little flutes, the wine bubbling over, Hikari licking it off the sides of the glass like a cat. Her father, already several scotch-and-sodas in, putting his hand on his wife’s back. The red setting sun. Rachel looking so proud and flushed, in a white summer dress that exposed her strong shoulders and back and highlighted her tan. Drew felt peaceful. A foreign sensation she only later named. She remembers thinking, This is what we need to do. We need to win. We need to win all the time. Then our parents will love us and each other. We can be happy.

  But nobody wins all the time.

  Look at Tomoe Gozen and Yoshinaka—she could literally be the best fighter in Japan, he the best general—and still they had to exist in the mountains, putting up with all sorts of hardships and setbacks.

  Drew’s coffee cup is empty. She gets up for a refill and picks up Rachel’s. Her sister’s is still full. She’s just been going through the motions of drinking. Now her sister stares off into space. “Are you okay, Rach?”