“She’s right,” Amelia sighed. “It’s time.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Lorenzo disputed.
“It’s what you’ve trained me for,” I said. “They’ll raise me like their own. They won’t even notice. Use me.”
Amelia hugged the girl. “We took you in as our own,” she said. “You were just a little girl left at our door step, all alone and scared. Now, you’re almost an adult; you’re old enough to make your own decisions. If this is really what you want, fine, but remember, we’re your real family. Whatever the Kan tell you or try to do to you, they will never be your family.”
“Are you sure? We can talk about this.” Lorenzo caressed the girl’s shoulder. I nodded and he hugged me. “A plane with our employees is taking off to New York tonight. You’ll have to go with them.”
“Will I get a chance to say goodbye?” the girl said.
“There’s no time,” Lorenzo urged. “We should go now if we want this to work.”
The girl peered into the dining room as she watched the two children eat and play with their food. Lorenzo placed a hand on her shoulder and they disappeared down a corridor.
***
“For five years I was training with the Kan,” the girl continued. “Studying their ways, watching them run experiments on people. The Mori knew about them, but they wouldn’t act. They were too concerned with starting another war, and they didn’t want their company to suffer. Their reputation was at risk, but so were the lives of many. When I came to tell your parents, they were outraged. What started as a biotech company became a lab that turned people into monsters. They wanted to pull out. It wasn’t until a few months ago that the Mori decided to send your family a warning. It was the only way for the Kan to take your inheritance, and to run your family’s company in Italy.”
I flipped the lunch box over and closed my hands around the girl’s throat. “You knew this whole time?!”
“Celio!” Eli apprehended me. “Let her go.”
Enura hurried back and pushed me away. “Are you okay?” he asked as the girl coughed.
“She knew the whole time! She could’ve warned our parents but she let them die.” I covered my face and headed out of the cave. “She let them die.”
Eli handed the girl her water pouch.
“I don’t deserve your kindness,” the girl said. “It’s true. I couldn’t save your mom, but I saved you both. She would’ve preferred it that way. Who took care of you after your house burned down?”
I remembered when Eli and I had run out into the field. We made it into the treehouse as we watched our house collapse into flames.
“Come with me,” a farmer had said from the porch. He helped us down and took us into his home. He nursed our wounds and took care of us for weeks as news of our inheritance and our family’s company were taken by the Kan. I plotted my revenge for days until one day, the farmer removed a wooden floor board and uncovered a box.
“Take this,” he had said.
I peered in to see bundles of money hidden inside.
“You can use it to go anywhere, lead a new life as new people,” he said. “Everyone thinks you’re dead. You can be successful at anything you do and be whoever you need to be to survive.”
My head throbbed as it all came back to me.
“She left you that money, Celio,” the girl said with glimmering eyes. She rubbed them with her sleeve and put her contacts back in. “I tried to warn your mom, but she wouldn’t listen. She knew the Kan would stop looking for her if they thought you and your family were dead. She wanted you to have a good life.”
Tears burst forth, spilling down my face. My chin trembled like a small child and I looked towards the light in the sky as if it could soothe me. I heard myself screaming from the inside, and it took everything out of me. My trembling hands punched at the ground. I couldn’t stop. Everything was trembling, even the ground. Eli held me in silence. My tears soaked her chest as I clutched onto her jacket. I was the one Eli always cried on, why was it different now?
Once I calmed down, I wiped my eyes and turned my back on everyone as I stared at the forest. A cool breeze blew from the mountains, carrying leaves with it. I watched them fall into the maze below. “We can’t let them get away with it,” I said after a long silence. “We need to go after every single one of them. They don’t deserve to live, not after what they did.”
“Revenge will not solve anything,” the girl warned. “If you’re going to take them down, we’ll have to do it the right way.”
“We?” I yelled at the girl. “There’s no we. There never was and never will be. You’ve done enough.” I grabbed my bag.
“Where are you going?” the girl yelled after me.
“Far away from you!”
“That’s a bad idea.” The girl stood in my way. “Your mother died to protect you; you can’t let her death be for nothing. Don’t ruin your future going after the same people your mother has been trying to protect you from. Let me help you.”
I slapped the girl’s hands away.
“Come on, Eli. Let’s get out of here.” I reached for her hand and she snatched it away.
“No.” Eli shook her head. “She’s right. We need to stay here. She can help us.”
“Did you not hear a single word she said?!” My mind began to shut down, unable to think anymore. I barged out of the cave and froze at the edge. I could still see the forest around me, like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from, like the world that I knew was so far away. I picked up the rope from the ridge and looked back at Enura. “Take me down…now!”
Enura looked at the girl and she nodded. She rested her hands on Eli’s shoulder and watched Enura lower me down over the ridge. Anger and bitterness left me as I tipped my chin up, hoping Eli would change her mind. The last thing I saw were Eli’s eyes piercing into mine, fixed and unchanging. My heart froze and my legs almost failed to hold me against the wall.
Goodbye, Eli.
Chapter Seven
Nick
Shlick. Shlack. Shlick. Shlack. The sound of metal scraping against metal woke me up. The soldier grasped a stainless steel whisk between his hands, as he turned it in the sieve. Back and forth the green weeds scraped against the ends of the sieve.
“Oww.” I straightened my back and looked down at my leg, which had been wrapped in bandages. “How long was I out for?”
Sweat drenched the forager’s clothes. He rolled up the sleeves of his jacket and wore a white flannel shirt underneath. Water boiled in a pot situated over a small hearth. It looked like a small glint of fire from a candle or stick that touched the bottom of the pot.
The forager scooped the dull brownish-green paste the weeds had formed and pushed them through the sieve to break up the clumps. He picked up a wooden spatula near a tea caddy and forced the paste through the sieve followed by a smooth stone. It shook the sieve until the entire paste dropped into the tea caddy. He poured the water from the pot, whisked the mixture until there were no lumps left in the liquid, grabbed the bamboo scoop again and scratched at the leftover paste in the sieve. With another hand under the scoop, the forager approached me. I pulled back.
“Don’t move!” He lifted off the white bandages from my leg and poured the liquid over the gash.
I grunted. “What is this stuff?!”
“Be quiet!” The forager pushed me back down. “You come into my temple, bleed all over the floor and expect me to nurse you?” He pulled on the bandages tightly. I winced. “It takes an hour to stone grind matcha leaves into powder.” The forager wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
I found a gas lit lamp placed over the shelf among other red lit candles that lined the bottom of the walls. The green wallpaper revealed swirls of stems and leaves that reached the ceiling. A change of clothes piled up in the corner below the shelf. The garbage bags next to it reeked.
“You’re not a soldier, are you?” I looked at the empty contents of the black military bag behind the ta
ble. Weapons lined up the matted floor.
“I could say that it’s a pleasure to meet you, Nick, but it really isn’t.” The forager pinned the bandages tighter.
“Oww.” I winced. He dropped my ID onto my lap. My bag lay open by my side. “Uh-thanks?”
“I want you out of here as soon as you drink this.” The forager blew the fire out under the pot, poured some more water into the tea bowl and clasped it with tongs. He poured it into a white stone cup and handed it over to me.
It smelled like hay.
“It’s mixed with the spring water of Wakitsubo Lake.” The forager rubbed his white and grey beard.
The green liquid tasted bitter, but felt creamy and tender after a couple more sips.
“Good.” The old man turned to put away his tools. I eyed the cooking fish skewered over the hearth in the corner. The smoke rose through a black pipe that lined the corner of the wall and pierced through the ceiling.
I pulled myself up on my right leg, slowly lifted my left leg into a straight position, lowered the folds of my khaki pants over it and lifted my jacket off the floor. Holes from the fishing hook punctured my jacket’s right shoulder where my badge number used to be.
That darn boy, so scrawny but so clever like this old man.
I felt for the belt, but found its pockets empty.
“Where are my things?” I asked as he lifted a fish from the fire. He skewered it to form a wave, as if the fish swam upriver, and roasted it over the charcoal. My stomach grumbled.
“Do you like sweetfish?” The old man turned his head back to me.
“This is really good,” I told him, and spent the next few minutes gnawing on the third fish over a piece of bread on the center table. The old man wrapped the fish with lemon, cucumbers and mint.
“Ayu fish is the best in Aomori.” The old man plucked the bones out of a fish in his hands. “The farmers call it Ayu, as in one year. We catch them days before they die.”
“So you’re a fisherman and a farmer?” I squeezed a lemon over the white flesh. “I haven’t had a cooked meal in a while. So much for trying to find a new job.”
“You?” The old man began to laugh.
“It’s really not that funny. I invested my entire life into a, let’s just say, a research that went wrong. I’m practically unemployed.”
“With those tools I found on you, I thought you were a plumber.” The old man continued to laugh.
“Well it’s much better than being a farmer.”
“No, no. I’m not a farmer.” The old man waved his hand away. “I’m more of a garbage collector.”
I rested my arms back and pulled myself away from the table slowly. “That darn lake,” I hissed from the throbbing pain in my leg.
“Those lakes are dangerous. You’d be wise to stay away from them.” With two fingers, the man pulled his hair back and revealed a scar under his eye. “You see this? Better to die by the claws of a bear than to die here.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t break my neck on the way here. I’m lucky to have found this…what did you say it was? A Zen temple?”
“It’s the temple of the white kami—it’s better if you don’t ask questions. I’m not supposed to help any contestants.”
“Well, does a Zen temple have a bathroom?” I balanced myself on both feet.
“Down the hall.”
I slid the wooden door open, limped into the dark, flicked one of the matches from my pocket and held it up in the air. A painting of a bald man with a grey moustache and beard stared down at me. He wore a navy blue robe and held a katana with both hands, ready to strike.
The next several portraits showed unknown faces of more men in robes until I reached the end of the hallway where a large family portrait hung from the wall. The bald man with the katana now sat in a wheel chair surrounded by five other members of what looked to be his family. A younger man with long grey hair stood on the left side of the chair and shook the hand of another man, bald, who stood on his right. They had the same eye color and body build—very much like brothers.
Woman dressed in red and yellow Japanese robes held on to their man’s arm. Six children crouched down in front of them, but none looked straight ahead like the rest. They seemed to have been nudging each other and fighting over their spots.
There was but one boy whose eyes caught mine in the portrait. He had a few strands of silver hair. I brought the match closer to his face and his red eyes brightened. He didn’t smile and he had dull features about him, but his eyes carried a sense of danger, as though he was waiting for someone. Strangely, the soldier, the forager, the farmer, and the garbage collector, who all seemed to describe this old man that lived in this temple, were not in any of the portraits.
Who is he?
I lit another match to take a better look at the boy, and found another portrait next to the family one. The boy with the red eyes stood next to a taller man. He wore the same expression, while the man behind him rested a hand over his shoulder. When I crept closer I realized the man was much younger, like an older brother. I brought the match closer to the mole he had over his lip.
VHOOM.
The wall vibrated and made the sound of a vacuum.
VHOOM.
It came from behind a door. I slid it open, found boxes and bags piled on top of each other and walked through the narrow zigzag path between the mountains of garbage until I reached a corner where a small red flame beamed on and off.
Charcoal flooded the ground and felt warm, as they wobbled under my feet, reminding me of the pain in my leg. I grabbed onto the wall of boxes and bent down to take a look at where the charcoal led. They piled up under a hole in the corner and, when the flame beamed, a wide gush of smoke rose up the pipe hole, creating an explosion of dust and debris that clouded my face. I backed away, coughing and wheezing, and tripped over something on the floor.
I kicked away the charcoal, found a silver bracelet and pulled on it. The fallen charcoal exposed a dead hand underneath.
“Ahh!” I tossed the hand back into the char. Flies buzzed around in the dark and the smell of decay flooded through my nose when I touched the boxes.
Clothes, weapons, car keys, hair, shoes and bags and more bags of dead things covered the walls on my left, and papers and phones, and wires and rope and a muddy shovel covered the walls on my right, and badges and badges of all numbers lay by my feet mixed in with the char. Traces of things burned at the top of the mountain of charcoal. The smoke travelled up the pipe line.
I flicked on the last match and realized that I stood in front of a stovepipe hole. Trails of garbage led to the fire where everything in the room lined up to be burned. Some badges had letters on them; the white paint was peeled off, revealing a rusty metal underneath.
“A tracker?” I scrubbed the RF transmitter clean. The black paint of various badges protruding from a bag burned at the rim. Number six lay next to the bag. When I straightened up again I realized that it was actually a nine.
I picked up the badge.
6.
I turned it upside down.
9.
Which one was it?
“Seems like you found your way just fine.” The old man’s voice echoed behind me. I pushed the badge up my sleeve and turned.
“Ah, there it is.” He lifted a root from a box. “Sweet Japanese ginseng.”
“I should probably go.”
“You were looking for your tools, weren’t you?” The old man lifted a box and piled it on top of another to widen the path back to the door. “I cleaned them for you by the fire.”
“Thanks.” I walked through the door and paused. “You wouldn’t happen to have any lithium batteries lying around, would you?”
“Like I said, I’m not supposed to help—”
“You really think a battery is going to help me win?”
The old man sighed, raised a finger in the air, and then paced over to a shelf. “There.” He put it in my hand. “Oh, I also left the mo
ney—”
“You can keep that.” I felt the badge against my wrist. Losing a couple of bills didn’t make a difference now. “You’ve got a weird family of pictures, eh?”
“They’re not my family.” The old man closed the door behind him. He lifted a jar off a shelf and opened it. Fireflies flew out, lighting up the hallway.
“I always go out at night and catch some before the next new hatchlings die. I spent my entire life on failed research too. See?” The old man raised the root in the air to point at the fireflies. “We’re more alike than you think.” The root touched his lips; he took a bite, hummed a tune in between murmurs and grabbed a cup of tea off the table when we walked through the sliding door again.
“I’m okay, thanks.” I waved it away. I looked out the open door on the other side of the hall, where the sky changed to a light blue with the rays of the sun weakening. If it wasn’t for the time, it would have looked like morning.
“I should get going.”
“Stay out of that water, now.”
“Will do.” I stepped outside onto the wooden veranda and walked towards the red gate. The thin streaks of white in the sky and the color of the approaching sunset quivered in the reflection of the water. I realized that I didn’t know how to get back to the base. I turned around to the temple again. When I touched the thin crack between the sliding door and the edge of the wall, I heard the old man talking on a black phone with a raised antenna.
“Hana,” he said in Japanese.
I grabbed the lithium battery and slotted it into the camera. I held it up to record him.
“I miss you. How’s Shouta? He must be eighteen now, eh? I look at the contestants’ faces and wonder if I will ever see my son—if he will ever visit me in the forest…if he looks like me.” The old man sighed and took another bite of his ginseng.
“…It’s so lonely here,” he continued. “Only the voices of the birds and the dancing Ayu fish keep me company, but after one year they’ll be gone just like the contestants who come here and are never seen again. Even the fireflies die. I can’t help but feel responsible for every one of their lives…The Mori are really going far this year. Pushing these kids to their limits and using them to fight their battles—”
The Foragers Page 8