He is here, Xander. He is here. Be careful.
“Here?” I look around the study. “Who’s here?” But my father still can’t see me, doesn’t seem to realize I’m standing right next to him.
He sighs and swivels his chair to gaze out his window. I do, too.
The Pacific Ocean ripples in a vast sapphire expanse. The same as the day we left.
“Oh no,” I breathe. “Dad, what happened?”
I glance back at Dad. His chair is empty.
And I realize then that he was the ghost, not me.
The ocean is still covering California, and my father’s not rescued. I’ve failed. I’m going to fail.
“Dad!” I shout. I sit up, grab the headrest in front of me. I’m on the plane. Phew. It was only a dream—another extremely intense dream.
Who’s here?
A sense of unease shakes me around the ribs. Nobody’s here. We’re alone. I’m just nervous about this adventure. Nothing more. It’s not real. I hope, after all this is over, I can actually get a good night’s sleep for once.
Speaking of which, I wonder if Jinx is asleep. I was supposed to be on guard. Shoot.
There’s some light coming in through the windows now—enough to show me that Jinx’s seat is empty. I turn on the flashlight and shine it down the length of the plane. No Jinx. I see that the door’s open a crack. I make my way outside.
“Jinx?” I whisper into the wind.
I hear movement on top of the plane, near the embedded nose.
She is perched on top, staring at the sky.
I can see why.
The sky is no longer black. It is lined with lemon-yellow crackled clouds that are punctured with orange-colored holes. Through these holes stream funnels of crimson light that plunge straight down to the horizon. From there, light bounces back up and zigzags across the sky in shades of deep blue and royal purple. The colors shift and change, fading in out, as if some celestial being is controlling this really awesome light show.
I sit next to Jinx. “Wow,” I breathe.
She sniffles. “I thought you were asleep.”
I glance at her. Her face is sopping wet with tears. She catches my eye and turns away, embarrassed. Well, I don’t like it when people see me crying, either. I pretend like she’s not. “I woke up. Thanks for taking my shift.”
“No problem.”
“Is this like the aurora borealis or something?” I’ve never been far north enough to see the northern lights.
“Not really. It’s all the weird gases from the volcano and the oni and their energy.” Jinx gulps audibly. “You wouldn’t happen to have a tissue, would you?”
“Nope.”
“Drat.” She uses the hem of her T-shirt to wipe her nose. “Oh well. It’s already dirty, right?”
“Yeah.” Now I steal another look at her. Her upper left arm has some kind of mark around it, like a rope burn. I touch it gently—the flesh is indented. “Oh my gosh, Jinx, what happened?”
“Eh. No biggie. I hurt myself opening the door.” She laughs. “Some clumsy monkey I am.”
I wonder how that injury could have happened by opening a door. But maybe it was even simpler and she feels dumb about it. Like the time I was running to get my popcorn out of the microwave and tripped on a rug and split my forehead open on a table edge. I told my grandmother I was running because I thought the microwave was on fire.
I shiver, rocking back and forth on my bare feet. “It’s cold out here. Want to go back in?”
“Just wait.” She points at the sky.
The colors swirl together now, all separate bands, undulating back and forth and up and down from the ground. They swell into a big sphere, and then, like a miniature multicolored sun, they finally melt into one another until all becomes black once more.
I lean back on my hands. “That was awesome.”
“Yeah. Now we should get inside.” She starts to scramble down, but winces with a sharp inhale.
I shine the flashlight on her wound. The mark looks like a combination deep bruise and light burn. “Ouch, Jinx. That’s bad.”
“Yeah. But really, I’m okay.” She shoots me a smile that I can tell is fake.
I have an idea. “I’ll be right back.” I slide off the plane and run back inside to the galley. I open cupboards until I find it. Sure enough, there’s a big white box with a red cross on the side. I open it, take out a roll of gauze, and go back out to Jinx. “Let’s wrap it. It’ll feel better.” I hold up the gauze.
“Yeah, yeah.” She grabs the gauze from me and begins wrapping her own arm. “I can do it faster by myself.”
I let her. Just when I think we’re starting to become friends, she proves me wrong.
Suddenly the gauze drops from her fingers. She bends to pick it up and it falls again, then flies upward like a demented moth and wraps itself around her head.
“Xander!” She claws at the cotton. “Help!” The gauze flies around and around her face as if it’s possessed.
I rip at the gauze. It doesn’t feel like cotton now; it feels as substantial and muscular as a snake. Oh no. My sword’s inside the plane.
Determined not to let it hurt Jinx, I grab the end of the gauze and jump off the top of the aircraft, hoping it’ll come with me.
Instead, Jinx falls down with it still wrapped around her.
Whoops.
We land in the sand, Jinx on her back, and me beside her in a crouch. She sticks her hands in between her neck and the gauze, between her mouth and the gauze, leaving herself some breathing space.
Nothing’s working. I race inside to get my sword, wishing I hadn’t been sitting all the way up by the cockpit.
Then I hear that inhuman, un-animal shriek.
“Itsumade!”
Oh crud.
I grab my sword and run back out.
The demon bird is hovering over Jinx, who is still wrestling with the possessed gauze. The bird swoops down and lets out a puff of fire.
I leap toward the bird, my sword swinging before I can even think about what I’m doing.
I’m too late.
As I leap, the fire catches the gauze and, like a candlewick, it goes up in flames. Poof.
I scream and pierce the bird’s chest with the sword.
The demon bird falls over.
“Jinx!” I fall to my knees, sure that she’s gone.
Her face is covered in black ash. My heart sinks.
Then she coughs and spits and wipes her face. “Ugh. Really? An ittan-momen. I swear, we have the worst luck.”
“You’re okay!” I clap my hand on her shoulder. “You’re not burned?”
“No. The itsumade just got the ittan-momen. That oni actually saved my life.”
“Ittan-momen?”
“That, believe it or not, is cotton that tries to suffocate you.” Jinx stands, brushes sand off her legs. I must be giving her a stupid, openmouthed look, because she laughs in spite of herself. “You should see the expression on your face.”
I shake my head. “But why did the itsumade help? I didn’t know—I thought it was burning you alive.” My heart skips. “Was I not supposed to kill it?”
“No, you had to.” She points to it, lying limp on the ground. “Itsumade—the word it screams—means How much longer?” She walks over to it, begins scooping handfuls of sand over its body. “These things were people who died in a famine, thousands of years ago, in ancient Japan. They never got put to rest properly, and they turned into these nasty critters.”
“Oh.” That seems particularly horrible.
“All it wanted was a resting place.” She pushes more sand on top of it. “And you gave it one.”
I help her bury the monster.
“You’re not freaked out?” Jinx asks.
I don’t stop working, digging into the sand up to my elbows. “I’m mostly sorry for it. Poor oni bird who used to be a person thousands of years ago.”
Jinx sits back on her haunches, panting from the effort. �
�You know what, Xander? You’re not as bad of a Momotaro as I thought.”
That’s probably the biggest compliment she’s ever paid anyone in her whole life. “Thanks, Jinx.” I throw more sand on the bird. “I appreciate it.”
“And, Jinx,” she imitates my voice, “you’re not as bad of a monkey as I thought. That’s what you’re supposed to say. Sheesh.”
I nod at her. “Good monkey.”
At dawn, we get up for real and Jinx pokes around in the galley again. “Oatmeal packets and Coke.” She waves them in the air. “Breakfast of champions.”
Coke seems safe enough. Would that expire, ever? I pop open the can and take a cautious sip. If I don’t look at any expiration dates, I won’t freak myself out. It tastes mostly like Coke—kind of syrupy, but not too bad.
I glance outside. The sky’s a clear purple. Somehow I’m getting used to that color. “Is it cold again?”
“It’s always a bit cold around here. I’ll be right back.” Jinx goes outside, carrying a bag of something. I figure she wants to do her business and needs privacy. I tried to use the bathroom on the plane, but opening that door turned out to be not such a good idea. Talk about stinky.
But then Jinx raps on the window and motions for me to follow her. When I get out there, she’s got a rock in each hand. She strikes them together over a metal cup with a small amount of syrup-colored liquid in it. “What are you doing?” I ask.
“Making us a hot breakfast.” She taps and taps some more until, finally, a little spark comes off the rock and the liquid whooshes into a full-blown fire. “Jet fuel. It burns fast and hot.”
She sets another cup on top of the fire and fills it with water from a bottle. When the water’s boiling, she wraps the cup with a towel, takes it off the flame, then pours the instant oatmeal into it. She presents it to me with a little bow. “For you.” She hands me a plastic spoon, too.
“Thank you.” I bow back, feeling a little guilty, like I’m not pulling my weight. Jinx isn’t so bad. Look how helpful she’s being.
“My mother always said there’s nothing like a hot breakfast to shore up the soul on a tough day.” Jinx sits cross-legged in the sand, waiting for another cup of water to heat.
I take a spoonful of the oatmeal. Peaches-and-cream flavor, my favorite. Even the dehydrated peaches taste like heaven. The warmth goes into my core and down to my numb toes. I gobble it all down. “Your mother was right.” This is the first time Jinx has mentioned her mother. I squint at her in the bright morning light. “Do you live with your mom?”
“Not anymore.” Jinx concentrates on stirring her oatmeal and won’t meet my eyes. That’s all she wanted to say, I guess.
“I miss my dad and grandmother,” I offer into the silence.
She frowns, blows on her cereal. “Haven’t you ever been away from home before?”
“Yeah. For camp.”
“Then what’s the big deal?” She tips the cup into her mouth.
“You mean besides the fact that my dad is being held hostage by a contingent of monsters?” I let out a muffled belch and consider saying Excuse me, but when I see Jinx scooping the last bits of oatmeal into her mouth with her fingers, I decide she doesn’t care. “I just want to get home, is all. Have things get back to normal.”
“What’s normal?” Jinx peers at me with curiosity, as if she really wants to know.
“Hanging out with Peyton. Playing video games. Sleeping in my own bed. All that good stuff.” I remember the feel of Inu next to me as I slept on my bed, wrapped in an old quilt my mother’s mother made a long time ago, and tears spring into my eyes. I turn before Jinx can spot them.
“Sounds about as exciting as a bag of rocks.” Jinx wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “I have news for you, my friend. You’re Momotoro. You’re never going to be normal again.” She stands up and kicks sand onto the fire. It takes at least a bucketful before the flame finally goes out.
We set off away from the plane right after we finish breakfast. Jinx takes the airline bag she found and packs it with water bottles, oatmeal, and more of those handy metal containers. The sun’s up, but it hasn’t heated the desert yet. Icy fingers of wind tickle my ribs.
You’re never going to be normal again. The phrase repeats itself in my head as I put one foot in front of the other. It used to be that my biggest worry was keeping chip crumbs off my keyboard. No more of that. I am the Momotaro. Saver of worlds.
A sour taste rises in my throat. Am I really ready for this? It doesn’t matter anymore—I’m already here, and unless a Momotaro can time-travel, I have to keep moving forward.
The temperature rises as we hike all day through the sand, stopping only occasionally to rest and eat rice balls under the purple sky. Jinx folds us paper hats from magazines she found in the plane, and these keep our heads nice and shaded.
It’s late afternoon when the ground shakes, making the dunes roll like the ocean. I drop into a crouch, my sword clattering behind me. “What is that?”
Jinx freezes, her eyes going wide. “Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh? What’s uh-oh?” The dune we’re walking on shudders. Then it rises, and the sand swirls around me. I can’t see.
“Jinx?” I reach out for her and grab hold of something, but I’m not sure what.
The sand falls away as I’m lifted by a rising piece of land. The air clears, and I can now see treetops below me. Where am I? I try to walk. The ground is squishy and crisscrossed with shallow ridges. It smells like a dirty rest-stop bathroom.
“Xander!” Jinx calls. She sounds far away.
Suddenly I’m looking into an enormous blue eye the size of a semitruck’s tire. “Hello, boy,” a deep voice rumbles in Japanese. “How did you enter the land of oni?”
I glance down again and realize I’m standing in the palm of a hand. I jump up, but that’s a bad idea, because he’s still lifting me.
Jinx waves and shouts up to me, “It’s a daidarabotchi. A giant.”
“Really? I thought it was a midget.” Great. Another monster. “What do I do?”
What I thought were plain old sand dunes are now gone. The giant was taking a nap under the sand, and the dunes were his knees and belly and whatnot. He must be fifty feet tall. Not something I want to fall off of.
“I don’t know!” Jinx yells back. “Try talking to him.”
Dude. Talk? That won’t work. The hand moves and I crouch for balance, trying to hang on. “Please don’t eat me.”
The giant chuckles. “I don’t eat. I collect.”
“Collect?” I squeak.
He holds me at arm’s length and now I can see his whole face. Humanlike. A wide nose with flared nostrils, and nose hair so long I can see it waving with his breath. But his skin’s orange and, of course, he’s not human at all.
“A half-Asian boy,” he says in a voice that sounds like a jet engine. “Very rare in these parts. I don’t have one.” He holds up his other hand. In it he’s got a shaft of steel, deadly sharp on one end, between his tree-trunk fingers. It’s a huge pin. He makes a tsking noise. “Now, try not to wiggle. It will only hurt for a moment, but it hurts worse if you move.” He pinches me between his forefinger and thumb. The piles of dirt under his nails are bigger than me. The piece of metal comes at me like an arrow.
He’s going to stick me with that pin, like a butterfly collector, and put me on a wall someplace. I scream. Without thinking, I unsheath my grandfather’s sword and jab it, hard, under his fingernail.
His shout’s like a bomb going off. “ITAI! ITAI!” It hurts! “I told you not to squirm.” He drops the pin and shakes the hand that held it. His grip around me loosens.
Jinx appears at the giant’s shoulder. How did she get up there? She looks like a gnat compared to him. She motions me to come toward her. To crawl across his huge arm.
I gulp. Don’t look down.
I put my sword away and start crawling. The hairs on his arm are like a black forest. A stinky black forest. A huge louse scuttles by
, the size of a small terrier, and I shriek.
“Where did you go?” The giant examines his arm.
“Here.” Jinx kicks him in the Adam’s apple.
“Ouch!” He claps his hand to his throat and drops me in the process. It’s like falling off the side of a mountain.
Somebody catches me. Somebody with golden wings. “Peyton!” I shout.
“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to wake a sleeping giant?” Peyton grips me under my arms. Jinx clings to his back, like Yoda did to Luke. Her face is about two inches away from mine.
Peyton flies for a minute, to grassy hills farther away from the oni volcano. Hopefully these are giant-free. He sets me down next to my dog.
Inu’s whole body wriggles with glee. He jumps up and hugs me, licking my face. I laugh and scratch his head, his chest, his sides. “Inu! Hey! Did you miss me, boy? Huh? I missed you.”
Woof, woof! Inu barks, then whines. I pet him some more.
“Okay, boy, down,” I tell him at last. Inu goes over to Jinx and repeats his greeting with her. She giggles with delight. I turn to Peyton and give him a half hug. I swear, he’s bigger than I remember. His hand dwarfs mine. “How did you find us?”
Peyton shrugs, smooths down his shock of hair. “It wasn’t hard. A giant man suddenly stood up in a desert. I could see him from a mile away.”
I squint at him. “Did your voice get deeper?”
“Maybe,” he says, and, yeah, it’s definitely deeper. He sounds like a television announcer. He strokes his chin. “Look. I even have real stubble.”
“No way.” I’m getting on my tiptoes to admire his growing beard when every hair on my body stands straight up, like I’m about to be hit by lightning. Peyton and I both tense. What’s going on?
Inu leaves Jinx and starts growling, his ruff poofing out around his neck.
“Xander,” a deep voice says from behind me.
I turn slowly. But I know who it is before I see him.
“Welcome to the land of oni. We’ve been waiting for you.”
Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters Page 16