The Keeper

by Natasha Mostert

  It was time to go. The Retreat waited. Without giving the quiet seated body behind her a second glance, she walked forward.

  • • •

  Outside in the dark street, the Thief watched the Keeper’s house, his eyes fixed on the open window on the top floor. He could feel her energy and the quality of the air around him was altered. He sensed her pale form, the soft push of her thoughts. She was stepping up to the open window. Her arms were held wide and her head tipped back, showing her white throat. The next moment, she tipped her body forward, showing no hesitation, no fear. Zenpo ukemi. It was a perfect forward breakfall with no flinching or flailing of arms.

  The Thief closed his eyes and watched the Keeper take flight.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Stepping out was a conscious act. Finding the Retreat was a serendipitous one. There had been times when her search was futile and she had to break the meditation and try again. But tonight she found it almost immediately; one moment she was still falling into nothingness and the next her feet touched solid ground.

  The first time she had visited the Retreat was on behalf of Benny, her first charge. She had only just turned eighteen and Molly had still been alive. Benny had quick feet, a tough, wiry body, and enormous ears, which seemed to glow when the light was behind him. He had been in her keeping for only seven months before he retired. That was when she took on Valentine. Bill and Okie had followed in short succession. ‘Three charges,’ Molly had warned. ‘Don’t stretch yourself too thin, Mia. Three only.’

  Every time, just as one of her charges was about to enter the ring, she’d step out and head for the Retreat to draw healing energy from within its walls. This was where she came to recharge her own chi to pass on to her charges. Fa gung. It was a centuries-old ritual and it was essential that her charges keep her informed of their schedule. Valentine had always, always alerted her to his upcoming fights. Why hadn’t he done so the last time?

  No. With deliberation she shut her mind to Valentine. If she thought of him now, she would become hesitant, her internal energy blocked, and she would be of no use to Okie.

  The Retreat was still out of sight, hidden by a turn in the path. For a moment Mia stood still, her senses alert. The moon was up high, but the large trees surrounding her threw deep shadows. The track ahead looked as deserted as though no one ever came this way and, underfoot, the moss was smooth and untrampled. When she pushed to one side the gate barring her way, the catch felt stiff.

  But as she let the gate swing shut behind her, her heart lifted. Home, she thought as her bare feet followed the mossy path. Home. And as she walked down the moon-ribbed track, she knew there were ghostly footprints underneath her bare feet, unseen markers leading her on, left by Keepers who had entered before her, many years in the past. Sometimes she would dream of them: of women with long necks and silver eyes, holding hands through the ages, drawing their dreams together even though the dream they shared and the burden they carried were no longer celebrated or understood.

  Keepers were shamans, healers and protectors. Found in every part of the world, the Orient was still considered their spiritual home. In Ancient China and feudal Japan the Keeper’s presence was accepted and her role welcomed. The relationship between the warrior and the woman who guarded him was one that drew respect. The Keeper was an integral player in a world part poetry, part violent death.

  Keepers were usually yoginis, Reiki masters and martial artists. Martial arts might seem a strange pursuit for one who healed, but healing and martial arts had always gone hand in hand. Even today, Mia knew, if you visited China or Taiwan and made yourself known as a traditional martial artist, people would start telling you about their ailments.

  But the world of traditional martial arts had also been a world of obsessive secrecy. The significance behind many of the movements was taught to only a few trusted students or family members. Over time a vast body of martial-arts knowledge was lost as vital information was buried, hidden or outlawed. The Keeper became part of the world of ‘hidden teachings’. It was a claustrophobic world and the lack of oxygen caused the Keeper to sicken. In the mind of the masses, her role became distorted. She was considered no more than a prostitute for men who engaged in ritualised combat—a hanger-on, a groupie—her protective fire ignored.

  The track underneath Mia’s feet was narrowing. She was almost there and her heart started beating fast. She turned the bend in the road and there it was.

  The building was long and low and you approached it from the side. The walls were stone and the roof made of bamboo reeds. The thick wooden door, leading to the rooms inside, always stood ajar.

  There was a smell of jasmine here in the clearing and wilder scents too. As she walked up the shallow timber steps, her presence made a group of fragile wind chimes shiver and their silvery sound filled the air. Painted on the half-open door in front of her was the Keeper’s mark: two long-lidded eyes, and inside one of the eyes a circle and three lines entering it at an angle. The circle symbolised energy; the three lines represented the bridge that can be crossed to access it.

  Placing her hand lightly on the half-open door in front of her, Mia paused. In this place resided the spirits of wise women. One did not rush into such a place. One entered it with awe: grateful for the inspiration and healing energy that was kept safe within its walls.

  She pushed the door fully open.

  • • •

  Dragonfly watched as the Keeper placed her hand against the door and it opened wide.

  He had not entered the clearing himself and was still standing just inside the edge of the woods. The Retreat was bathed in moonlight; he was in shadow. The boughs of the trees around him creaked in the night.

  He had never been here before but the place was as he would have imagined it to be and he felt a vast contentment. There was a satisfying sense of solidity to the thick walls and the low, sweeping eaves of the roof. The slab of stone surrounding the door was etched with symbols and even from this distance he recognised them: earth, fire, water, metal and wood—the five gogyo symbols, which the Keeper shared with practitioners of ninjutsu. They were transformation symbols, all of them, and told of energy and its use in combat and escape. On the right side of the door the gogyo symbols were depicted in their productive cycle: every energy manifestation giving birth to another. On the left side were the symbols in their destructive phase: every energy manifestation being destroyed by another.

  She had disappeared from view. The Thief stared at the house with longing.

  • • •

  The lamps inside the Retreat were always turned low. Mia stepped into the Great Hall and found the vast space filled with buttery light and soft shadows.

  The highly polished floor, pleasant against the soles of her feet, gleamed. The embroidery thread in the wall hangings shimmered, as did the rich crimsons and golds of the ink drawings on washi and silk that lined the walls.

  Captured by threading needle and paintbrush were enigmatic symbols and ghost-like figures: brave samurai; warring monks; sloe-eyed women with cloud-like hair and pale fingers. There were men with heavy shoulders and muscled thighs; women with saffron streaks on their foreheads and obsidian mirrors hanging from their waists.

  Here was a portrait of the tragic red-haired Brigante Keeper who had lived under the female ruler Cartimandua and whose charge had poisoned her, the reason lost in the mists of time. There, looking pensive, a Keeper who had lived after the Second World War as an Okinawan priestess on the island of Henza. In her hand she held a three-foot-long tattoo stick; at her feet was her charge, his entire body covered in ink.

  There was even a painting of the treacherous Keeper Tembandumba, Queen of the Jaga, who had hoped to revive the Amazonian cult with its man-killing ethos. As Mia looked into the queen’s heavy eyes, she remembered the cold December night Molly had told her the story of the Keeper who had declared war on all men, turning her intent from healing to maiming. ‘Keepers can destroy as well as heal,
Mia. They are creatures not only of light, but—if they allow themselves—also of darkness. Energy can be reversed. Fa chi can be dangerous. Never forget that.’ She remembered how Molly’s words had transported her from their house, with its snow-rimmed windows, to the steaming forests of the Congo, where a mad queen ordered mothers to kill their sons and make an ointment of the fat of their skins. ‘Magige samba,’ the queen would whisper: ‘smear on you the magic paste and you will increase your life force and live forever.’

  The Great Hall held many treasures but Mia passed them by without a glance. She had explored these talismans and energy objects before and tonight her only thought was to reach the dojo.

  Finally. She entered the cool, austere space. There was no colour here, no scrolls or symbols, only sixteen mats and a room framed by mirrors.

  Mia bowed deeply to the empty room, to the spirits of the teachers who had breathed here. She took her position. As she started her formalised Ba Gua circle movements, she thought she heard far behind her the tinkle of wind chimes. For a moment she hesitated, but then she continued. It must be the wind.

  • • •

  The energy of this place was palpable. The Thief walked through the open door on silent feet.

  He ached to explore but satisfied himself with merely glancing at the treasures on display as he passed through. Books, tortoise shells, bleached bones and bundles of dry herbs beautifully arranged in a simple wooden box. Cups of sand and an array of polished half-staffs displayed in another. A niche entirely devoted to Chiyome Mochizuki, the sixteenth-century miko head who had trained a group of runaway girls to become Keepers for the Takeda family. And everywhere the Keeper’s mark: pairs of eyes looking down at him from the walls, the ledges, even painted on the timber floor underneath his feet. It felt unnerving to be under the gaze of so many eyes.

  He and the Keeper were not the only living creatures here tonight. As he stepped out of the vast hall and into a narrow passage where the planes of light shifted and deepened, the walls on either side of him seemed to move. It took him a while to realise that he was looking at thousands of black crickets. Their wings glistened darkly. Vaguely he recalled that in Asia the cricket was considered the symbol of intelligence and luck and fighting spirit. The crickets covered the stone walls like a living wall-hanging and he made his way through the passage carefully, trying not to brush against them. They were eerily quiet: no chirping, only their antennae moving, ghost-like. He looked at them, fascinated and, at the same time, just slightly repulsed.

  The dojo was right ahead. He could see the Keeper’s reflection in the mirror. Her face was completely relaxed, her limbs moving fluidly.

  He stepped fully inside.

  Let’s see what you’ve got.

  • • •

  When the figure appeared behind her, Mia was so surprised, she lowered her guard. The next moment she went flying through the air. Even though the surface was padded, the shock when her shoulder connected with the ground took her breath away.

  He had thrown her clear across the room. She scrambled to her feet in a low crouch and looked up at the figure watching her from the other side of the dojo. He was dressed all in black and he wore a hood, allowing only his eyes to show. Like some villain in a B-grade film, she thought angrily. Despite the ache in her shoulder, her confused brain refused to accept his presence. He had no right to be here. This was a Retreat: a place of contemplation and ritual, not of violence.

  How long had he been lurking? Why hadn’t she sensed his presence earlier? She was certainly sensing his chi now; it pushed against her, confusing her, and she felt it viscerally against her skin. And it was interfering with the energy of the room, making it seesaw chaotically.

  He moved forward with a smooth, deadly glide, a kind of skipping step in which his back foot kicked the front into movement. It allowed him to travel the distance between them with stupefying speed, and her anger suddenly turned to fear. The next moment he was striking at her with a snapping wrist movement—a mantis attacking—his fingers pointed. She just managed to evade this inside body strike by stepping away at an angle.

  He was so fast. And he seemed to sense her moves even before she had executed them. As she tried to defend herself against his attack, she knew she was signalling, allowing him to read her intentions. Her movements were predictable. Her thoughts were interfering and anxiety was blunting her defence. Desperately she struck at him with a hammer blow, tensing her shoulders violently. He brought up his arm and blocked.

  Never use force against force if your opponent is bigger than you: the greater force will win. If there was one thing Chilli had taught her in all the many years she had studied with him, it was exactly this most simple and logical principle. And it was the one that she now threw out of the window first. By pitting her own physical strength against her attacker’s, she had put herself toe to toe with a man far stronger and more powerful. Her best chance would have been to continue moving around and into his attack, using circular and slipping motions, going with his flow, listening to his rhythm, waiting for an opening to use the right angle or lever against him. Aiki: turning his body against his mind, borrowing his force instead of spending her own. But, of course, she had not. And now she was about to pay for her stupidity.

  Their arms connected and it felt as though he had struck her with a lead pipe. Vaguely she realised he had targeted the radial nerve. Moving forward smoothly, he pushed against her shoulder and at the same time swept her ankle with his right foot. Shao twei—ankle cut. His precision was terrifying. The blade of his sole cut into the nerve-sensitive spot at the back of her foot and the scything power of his sweep was devastating. Her leg collapsed.

  He was on top of her now, as she lay dazed and in pain. The face looking down at her, draped in black cloth, was unnerving. He was smiling, she could tell by the way the skin puckered round his eyes. She sensed his thoughts, as clear as though he had spoken them.

  You die in here. You die out there.

  She lunged at him, trying to rip the hood off his face, but he grabbed her hand and bent her ring finger violently away from her palm and she screamed and fell back.

  Gently he smoothed the hair away from her forehead and then touched her face deliberately—the eyebrows, the cheekbones, the jaw. She tried to move her head away but he still had hold of her hand and the finger twist this time was so violent she screamed again and felt tears come to her eyes. Slowly, slowly, his other hand travelled down the side of her neck.

  His thumb came to rest on her collarbone, his middle finger on the hollow in her throat.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  THE BOOK OF LIGHT AND DUST

  FOR ROSALIA

  XXXXI

  I came to you today with many questions, my curiosity burning.

  How strong are you? How will you hold up? Are you air or are you water? Do you contain fire or let it loose? So many questions and, after our single battle, not enough answers.

  I looked into your eyes and I thought of how we search for love as though it were a jewel lost in a sea of sand. If only we can find it, we think. If only we can close our grasping fingers round it, press it to our heart, make it our own—irrevocably our own—then our lives will be transformed.

  Love and life: locked together throughout evolution like binary stars. Is the desire for love as strong as the desire for life? Which is the prime directive; which the secondary, weaker force? Love conquers all, we say, as though it truly has the power to defeat that older, darker imperative.

  Does it?

  The one is flint, the other gossamer. The one is oxygen, the other is song.

  I wonder…

  There can be only one answer.

  THE WAY: FLOATING VALLEY

  BLACKLIGHT: DIR: GB10 GB20, FRC: 1, TIME: 2, SUs: GB2

  WHITELIGHT: mas. B1 10

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The Lancaster Tavern was smoke-filled, pulsing with heavy-metal rock and filled to capacity. Colourful and vibey, t
he Tavern was not a venue for the faint of heart. The action in the ring was often bloody and the spectators loud and critical.

  A pot-bellied man wearing a T-shirt with an image of Ken Shamrock and the words ‘I can see dead people’ blocked Mia’s path. He burped loudly and a stale whiff of beer wafted over her. As she squeezed by him, she felt her mobile phone vibrating briefly against her hip. Someone had sent her a text message. But she was carrying two water bottles and the big man was hard to get around, so she ignored it and continued to weave her way past tables crowded with spectators to where she could see the rest of the Scorpio gang huddled together on the other side of the ring. After depositing the water bottles on to their table, which was already chock-full of beer cans, peanuts, Krispy Kreme doughnuts and other silly food, she pulled out a chair next to Lanice.

  Lanice looked at her critically. ‘What’s up with you, Mia?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You don’t look so good, girl.’

  ‘Had a bad night last night.’

  Which must be the understatement of the century. She was still frightened out of her skull and had no idea why she was attacked in the Retreat or who her attacker was. The last thing she remembered was lying on the mat, a figure in black staring down at her, his hands on her. Her next memory was of waking up inside her house.

  You die in here. You die out there. An unambiguous threat. Who was this man?

  ‘Have a Krispy Kreme.’ Lanice pushed the box over to her. ‘Come on, it has the glaze on it and everything. Good for you.’

  Mia felt a hand on her shoulder and looked round. It was Nick. He looked different. He had shaved his head in a buzz cut—the style many fighters affected when they were preparing to go into the ring—and it made him look stern. With a little shock, Mia realised that Nick’s own fight was only two weeks away.