by A. L. Knorr
"You always put it away too early," I said, smiling. Every year was the same. "We live near the Atlantic—don't you know by now that spring means snow and freezing rain?"
"Don't swear," she said. She pulled a folded yellow document from her pocket. "Look what I got today." She waved it in front of my face.
"A subpoena?"
"Nooooooooooo." She drew out the word with artificial annoyance.
"A parking ticket?"
"No. Stop that."
I gave a fake and exaggerated gasp. "Jury duty?"
Her eyes grew wide and she gasped, too. "How did you know?"
"What?" I gaped at her.
She whacked my shoulder. "No. Shut up and listen, would you?"
"A love letter?" I tried one more time.
"Yes!" She bounced up and down. "From the au pair agency in Toronto. They have a place for me in Venice. Guess who is spending the summer in bella Italia?"
"No way." I held the school's front door open for her and we walked out into a fine wet mist.
"Way. And I can't get there soon enough," she said, pulling her collar up around her ears. "No one should live here. Brrrrrrrrrr." She shivered. "Would you come visit me there?"
"Uh..." The idea of visiting Saxony in Italy during the summer was heavenly. "Grandfather—"
"I know, I know," she interrupted. "He'll never let you go to Europe. I was completely shocked when he let you sleep over at Georjie’s house last year for her birthday. It’s the only nice thing he’s done for you like, ever. Have I ever told you that I'm not all that fond of your grandfather?"
I smiled and hooked her elbow as we took the concrete steps down to the sidewalk. "A couple of times. Even though you've never met him."
"A," she said, holding up a long finger, "whose fault is that?" She held up a second finger. "And two, I dislike him on principle. He never lets you do anything fun. It's like he's got you on an invisible leash."
I had to smile at her description. It was worse than a leash. I wondered what she'd say if I told her he wasn't my grandfather and that he'd basically stolen my soul. I cleared my throat. I was bound not to say any such thing. Instead, I said, "You might be surprised to learn that he's sending me to Japan."
"He's never once even let you have me over, your best friend—" Saxony continued, but then froze abruptly and pulled me to a stop. "Wait. What?"
Her face had gone even paler than normal, quite an accomplishment for a redhead with a porcelain complexion.
"Not for good," I said quickly. "Just for the summer."
"Really? I stand corrected. What for?"
I gave Saxony the lie that Daichi had told me to say. "He wants me to spend the summer with the Japanese side of my family, since I never knew them. They live in a small village in the mountains on the east side. It's supposed to be beautiful."
Saxony narrowed her eyes and studied my face.
"What?" I tugged on her arm to get her walking again.
"I'm just trying to figure out if you're happy about it." She matched me stride for stride. She gripped my elbow, and didn't take her eyes from my face.
My heart sped up the way it always did when I was under scrutiny, even from those I trusted. Too many lies had passed my lips for me to ever feel completely comfortable with anyone digging for more information. The irony of the situation was that I was dying to tell my story to my friends. What a relief it would be to express the suffering and loss I’d endured. I had been alone in it for so long. I shot Saxony a side eye. "And?"
She studied me intensely.
"Are you okay?" I asked. "You're not blinking."
She gave a sigh. "I gave up trying to read you about a week after meeting you." She relaxed her grip on my elbow. "So, are you happy about it? Do you even want to go?"
I shrugged and tried to put a neutral expression on my face. I had become a master at hiding my emotions—from my captor and from my friends. One of the reasons I liked spending time with Saxony was that she usually didn't dig too hard and she talked a lot. She was the extrovert I was safe hiding behind. But as she'd gotten older, she'd gotten better at asking questions.
"It is what it is," I answered.
She groaned. "I hate when you say that. Fine, have it your way.” She stepped around a patch of ice and pulled her collar up to her chin again. “Did I tell you that Jack plastic-wrapped the toilet last night? Was I that brain-damaged at fifteen?"
As Saxony talked, I relaxed into her world. Her family was so normal, so loving. Hers was a life I could watch from the outside with envy. Georjayna struggled with a mom who didn't care enough, and Targa struggled with a mom she felt responsible for. Only Saxony had the stability of an intact family. I wondered if it was where she got her confidence from. I'd seen her walk into a party where she knew no one and within an hour she knew everyone's name, had endeared some of the girls to herself, and had most of the guys following her around like puppies. She also annoyed some people to no end because she was always talking, laughing, always the center of attention. She was the perfect companion to divert eyes away from me. Saxony, Georjie, and Targa were my first close human friends. They’d become my anchor and the only good thing I had in my captivity. My mind went back to Daichi's words.
Bring me this wakizashi, and I'll give you your freedom.
Freedom.
I had been staring down the barrel of an endless, useless life. Servant to the whims of an elderly Japanese man who should have been dead a hundred years ago and who never shared his motivations with me for any choice he made. Who never told me why he'd brought me here, what he wanted, or how I might move on with my life one day.
Until now.
There was no way Daichi could be happy with our life the way it had become. I had never actually seen him happy. Why anyone as miserable as Daichi would even want to be immortal was beyond me. The waste of it sickened me. It twisted in my stomach and made me want to scream.
Every night for decades, Daichi had me phase into a bird and locked me in a cage. All I wanted at that time was to remain human, to have human dreams again, and sleep in a soft warm bed. Then when he finally let me remain human and had a bed delivered to the house for my room, the nightmares started. He never said anything about my night terrors. He never forced me to go back to my cage. I did that all on my own. The passing of time was easier to bear in bird-form, and I didn't have nightmares. It was a little better now. Sometimes I spent the night in my cage, sometimes in my bed, depending on my mood.
When he enrolled me in school and forced me to spend hours studying English and practicing to eliminate my Japanese accent, it served two purposes. It equipped me to be his go-between in the foreign place he'd moved us to, and it kept me so busy that I fell into bed exhausted and dreamed about grammar instead of that fateful day in the woods when my sister had betrayed and abandoned me.
When I finished the high school on the south side of Saltford, he moved me to a school in the north and started me over again. I was more than three years into my cycle at Saltford High and this time around it was impossible not to ace every class. I had no trace of a Japanese accent left, and the North American way of life had become my way of life. I couldn't allow myself to dream of what I would do if I had my life back. I wondered if Daichi felt even a hint of guilt about keeping a creature as powerful as I was behind bars for his own selfish purpose...whatever that was. A surge of dragonflies spiraled up from my stomach and battered my ribs from the inside when I thought about what little seemed to remain between me and my freedom.
"Hey?" Saxony squeezed my arm.
"What? Sorry." I blinked. We were in front of my house already.
"I said, when do you leave?"
"We haven't booked my ticket yet, but it'll be shortly after the school year ends."
Saxony nodded. "Same time as me. Let's make sure we get the four of us together before you and I go."
"Sure, that would be great."
We said goodbye and I wandered up the cinderblock ste
ps to our bungalow. A shiver of anticipation went through me as I thought about my impending flight. I would be flying, but there was no need to book a plane ticket. I'd be making this journey on my own wings, the wings of one of the few birds that could fly high enough to reach the Æther. Thirty thousand feet up, somewhere in the vicinity of earth’s ozone layer, lay the home of all spiritual energy and the force that had made my sister and I each what we were.
3
"They're in the back yard," Liz said, holding the front door open for Saxony and me. Her Prada bifocals were perched on the end of her nose. Her blond hair was still perfectly coiffed, even at the end of a long day, but the dark smudges beneath her eyes gave away her exhaustion. Georjayna’s mom had made partner at her law firm a few years back. Since then, I hadn't seen her without the dark circles. And since then, Georjie had felt almost motherless. "Come on through. It's the warmest evening we've had so far," Liz said. "But it’s still cool. There are blankets at the fire pit for you."
"Thanks, Liz,” Saxony said as we stepped into the massive marble entrance way. Four large panels of mirrored sliding doors hid their coat closet, and a wide curved staircase led downstairs to their indoor pool and games room where I had first met Saxony and Georjayna. A matching set curved upward to their loft and library.
“You know how to get there,” Georjie's mother replied, shutting the door behind us. "Have fun." She gave us a stiff smile and disappeared down the hall toward her office.
I followed Saxony past the enormous kitchen and through the sliding doors into Georjie's backyard. A few stars were visible in the cloak of darkness over Saltford, and a gentle breeze kissed my skin as we crossed the deck. Georjayna's house was built on a bluff overlooking the ocean and the lights of our small city peppered our view. The ocean stretched out black and endless into the dimming horizon.
"Hey!" Targa called from her place by the fire, stretching her arms wide. She had a bag of marshmallows in one hand. "You're here!"
"Yeah well, we heard there were s'mores here," said Saxony as we crossed the grass.
The fire crackled merrily, sending sparks toward the darkening sky. Targa and Georjayna's faces were lit by the dancing firelight, and they both had blankets draped over their legs. If I wasn't mistaken, there was a kind of excitement in both of them that hadn't been there at school.
"Come grab a seat." Georjie patted the blanket on the Adirondack chair beside her. "Iced tea?"
"Absolutely," I said.
Saxony and I settled into our chairs as Georjayna poured us drinks.
"Targa has news," Georjie said.
"Lemme guess,” said Saxony. “You've developed a crush on the new guy they hired at the body shop?" She took her iced tea from Georjayna and poked at the ice cubes with her straw.
"There's a new guy at the body shop?" Georjie asked. "How do you even know these things? Why do you know these things?"
"RJ," said Saxony, and took a swallow of her drink. "I was with him when he picked up a part for his car yesterday. Dude is cute. The new guy, not my brother,” she clarified.
“Your brother is pretty cute, too,” laughed Georjie. Pretty cute didn’t do RJ justice, the guy was a dark-haired Adonis.
Saxony rolled her eyes in a whatever gesture. “This new guy’s got that tortured mechanic thing going on." Saxony reached for two roasting sticks leaning against Georjie's chair and handed one to me.
"Ah, yes" smiled Georjie. "The tortured mechanic. Targa's dream guy."
Targa laughed. "Good guess. But, no," she said, handing the bag of marshmallows to Saxony. "I'm going to Poland."
"That was my next guess," said Saxony sardonically. "You're going where?"
"Gdansk," said Targa and Georjie together.
"That's a thing?" Saxony's eyes were wide as platters. She held a marshmallow over her stick, ready for piercing but forgotten in the moment.
"It's a port city in the Gulf of Danzig,” I said with a grin, “on the Baltic sea." It was easy to look super smart when you've been through school a few times.
"No surprise you know all about it, Jeopardy." Saxony threw the marshmallow at me. I caught it, pierced it with my own stick and held it out over the flames. "Why are you going there, T?"
"The Bluejackets took on a salvage contract there. It's a private one, for a rich Polish guy. He's setting us up with accommodation and whatever the team needs to do the salvage. My mom told Simon she'd only go if she could take me, so." Targa shrugged and grinned. "We leave in a few days."
"That's amazing, Targa," I smiled across the fire at my friend.
She smiled back and held my gaze. "Thanks, Akiko." Her eyes flicked to Georjayna. "Georjie has some news, too."
"You're going to Ireland after all?" I guessed.
"No way!" said Saxony. "For real, Georjie?"
"For real," Georjie said. "I haven't told Liz yet, but—"
"She'll be thrilled," finished Saxony with another eyeroll. "Finally got the place to herself."
"Easy," said Targa quietly.
"What?" Saxony sat up straighter. "It's true, isn't it?" She turned to Georjie. "Didn't you say that your mom was trying to oust you for the summer?"
"It's one thing for Georjie to say it," I offered. "It's another thing when someone else says it."
"Sorry," Saxony slouched and pressed her lips together.
Georjie sighed. "No, it's fine. Call it what it is, right?"
"And call Ireland green and gorgeous. How bad could it be?" said Targa. “I love the Irish accent.”
"Except for Akiko, we'll all be in Europe," Saxony said, bouncing in her seat. "We have to promise to text, okay?"
Georjayna and Targa agreed easily. I frowned. I didn't know what the task of retrieving the wakizashi was going to mean yet. If I committed to text the girls often, and then somehow couldn't, they'd get worried. It would be better if I set the expectation now that I wouldn't be chatty during my mission.
"I'll try," I said. "I'm just not sure how good the signal will be where I'm going. From what I know the family is kind of remote and I'm not sure how fond they are of technology.”
"Who doesn't have wifi these days?" asked Georjayna with a look of horror. "Seriously, where is your grandfather sending you, to a mountain cave?"
I smiled to cover the anxiety burbling up in my stomach. "Who knows. His descriptive skills are scanty at best."
"How come your grandfather isn't going with you?" Targa asked. "Doesn't he want to go back home for a visit, too?"
I kept my face neutral. It would be best to get off the subject of my trip to Japan, and Daichi, as soon as possible. "He's too old for that kind of traveling now," I said, and cast my eyes down at the fire to shut down any further questions.
We fell into a companionable silence, but I felt Targa and Georjayna's eyes on me for several minutes. I knew they wanted to dig, but I'd trained them well not to expect answers. Saxony slurped her iced tea and I almost laughed. She was so predictably unsuspicious.
Targa had actually met Daichi once at the farmer’s market. It had been a tense moment for me, introducing one of my best friends to my captor. I'd awkwardly introduced him as 'Grandfather' since I hadn't known his real name at that point. When she'd held out her hand for a handshake and he'd just given her a cold stare, I had almost breathed an audible sigh of relief. If he was unfriendly, Targa would be less likely to try and have a relationship with him.
Saxony finally broke the quiet. "Let’s promise to have a sleep over when everyone gets back." Her gaze swung to me, the only one who might risk not getting permission to come.
I smiled to myself when I thought that by that time, I wouldn't have to ask Daichi's permission to spend an overnight with my friends. I would be a free woman by then. Everyone agreed, and me along with them.
* * *
"How do you know the Æther will drop me out in Japan?" I asked Daichi as I set my backpack down on the kitchen table. "I've never ridden it before."
"I was old before I met you,"
said Daichi. He had a handful of Japanese yen laid out on the table. He stacked it and inserted it into an envelope. "Memorize this address," he said, pushing a scrap of paper toward me with a handwritten address in Kyoto on it. "And the number below will be the combination to open your storage unit.
Daichi set a piece of white paper out on the table as well as an ink pad. He opened it up and held out his hand. “Give me your thumb,” he said.
I let him press my thumb into the ink, and then stamp the paper with my thumbprint.
“Do you need me to scan that for you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “By now, I’m better with technology than you are.”
I gave a half-smile as I washed my thumb off at the sink. He was probably right about that. Who would have ever thought it possible that a man born in the 1800s would take to computers so well.
“Have you packed what you need?"
I nodded. "I think so. Two sets of clothes, a pair of sneakers, a small purse with my ID, the bank card you gave me, my passport, and my cell phone and charger." I took one last look in my backpack and frowned. "I'm pretty sure it’s illegal to courier a passport and cash, unless you're the government. What if they get stuck in customs?" I shuddered to think of opening the storage unit in Japan, finding it empty, and trying to execute my orders while in possession of only a silk bathrobe and useless slippers.
"It's illegal to steal an artifact from a museum as well," said Daichi, tilting his chin down and giving me a look. "If there is trouble, you find a way to call me."
Emboldened by how Daichi had taken me into his confidence with this task, I suggested an alternative. Something I had never done with any command before this one. "If the wakizashi is that important to you, why don't you just make the museum an offer for it? I can execute the transaction for you." I had no idea how Daichi had kept us financially looked after all these years, but he had to have a lot of cash at his disposal. As far as I was aware, he had never worked since the day he had captured me. Unless he had some online business I was unaware of, which, come to think of it, wasn’t hard to believe.