by A. L. Knorr
"What are you doing? You hate walking in bare feet. You've hated it since you were little." My mother’s eyebrows shot up.
"Try it," I said. "It feels glorious. It's something I learned to like while I was in Ireland."
She slipped off her sandals and stepped onto the grass. "I haven't done this since I was child," she murmured. She had two bunions, one at the base of each big toe.
I took her hand. "Isn't it nice? Close your eyes."
She closed her eyes and tilted her face up to the sun.
I let the healing powers flow through me, up my legs, into my torso, down my arm and into her hand. It was easier now than it was before, like removing a dam and just letting the water flow.
"Oh," my mom said, startled. "Oh, Georjie!"
"It's all right," I whispered.
"It feels wonderful." She laughed out loud and the man in the wheelchair looked over at us. I let the healing power overflow and reach out toward him and the woman. I didn't direct it with intention, I just let it go where it wanted, like flowing liquid.
I watched as my mother's skin plumped out, her hair lost its brittle texture, and the gray at her roots filled in with blond. The skin on the back of her hands thickened and turned from translucent to opaque. The bunions on her feet shrank and her toe bones straightened. My eyebrows shot up as I watched the IV needle push out of her skin, the tape pulled away from her as the adhesive could no longer hold. The needle fell out and dangled from the IV tower.
Eventually, the healing energy stopped moving so much. It sort of swirled and drifted through me, then became slow and lazy.
"How do you feel?" I asked
She opened her eyes. "What did you do?"
"I learned a trick or two, in Ireland," I said. "Don't let it alarm you."
She gazed at me thoughtfully. Her eyes misted and she pulled me into a hug. "I am so sorry, Georjie."
"What?" I blinked, startled. "No, Mom. I am. I mean, neither of us has been perfect, but I… I'll never bulldoze you like that again."
She shook her head and pulled back. "I've been so absent. Ever since your father left, I haven't known what to do. All I knew was work. I thought that if I didn't let myself think, or feel..." She touched a hand to my cheek. "If I didn't let myself love you, then I wouldn’t be hurt when you left home the way I was when your father left." She shook her head. "I know they’re not the same thing at all. What an idiot I've been. What a mistake. We've lost so many years, living like ships passing in the night."
"Let’s not lose anymore, Mom."
She shook her head. "No. No more. Can you forgive me?" Tears ran freely down her face now.
"Forgiveness is easy when you realize that you aren't perfect, either."
It was a start. I'm not going to tell you that everything has been just hunky-dory for me and my mom ever since that day. We still argue, we still get on each other’s nerves, and I'm still trying to figure out how to feel ticked off without letting my emotion turn my powers on. It's getting easier. And yes, I put into motion the changing of my name from Sutherland to Sheehan.
The doctor, a distracted looking man with a comb-over and thick glasses, discharged my mom later that day, pronouncing her fully recovered. Denise was happy, but she looked at me askance more than once, like she thought something smelled funny. I never explained anything to her, and I don't think my mom has either. It's good that she works for my mom, so she's not permitted to be nosy.
Because none of my friends were home from their adventures yet, Mom booked some time off work and we've been having a bit of a staycation. That's how I've been able to pen these memoirs. I guess I'll leave them for now. Close them up. I still have a lot of searching to do about who I am and what I've become. Maybe, when I know more, I'll write more.
You might think that my mom would grill me about what happened, but she didn't. Even though we've begun mending the bridge between us, it’s still foreign to bare our souls to one another. One step at a time.
I called my Aunt Faith to thank her and to say goodbye. I didn't tell her any of what happened, either. For now, it’s a secret between Jasher and me. I didn't know what Brendan thought, but I decided to let Jasher handle that. We've spoken a couple of times. He is going to help his father rebuild his home, he says the O’Brien property is already full of plantlife. He’s also planning a trip around the world. He doesn’t waste time. We tossed around the idea of me joining him next summer, after graduation. I get a little overexcited when I think about it.
After I said goodbye to Faith, I passed the phone over to my mom.
That was an hour ago. They're still talking.
Chapter 38
I saved my work, closed my laptop and went through the house to the kitchen. I made myself some tea and took it with me through the patio doors and into the back yard. The moon was full and her soft light dusted everything, illuminating Saltford with her cool magic.
I closed the screen door behind me and walked down our garden path in my flip flops to the fire pit. I sat in one of our hand-made Adirondack chairs and listened to the crickets chirp. Only two months ago I was sitting in this exact place, only I was moaning about leaving my friends and having to go to Ireland for the summer. I was complaining about Liz and her ignorance about me and my life, the ravine between us. I looked out over the ocean, the sparkling lights along the harbor. They didn't call our neighborhood Bella Vista for nothing.
I kicked off my flip flops and curled my toes in the cool grass. Immediately, the life force of the vegetation and soil around me glowed with colored light. It was soft, and every species pulsed gently with its own rhythm. I knew them all by name now, just like I knew the fae.
My eye was drawn by a brighter, harder light coming from the harbor. I stood and walked to the crest of the hill at the end of our yard.
A line of bright, almost harsh light made its way under houses and roads and down to the harbor. The illuminated line went into the water, glowed blue as it lit up the ocean, and continued on toward the horizon. It grew dimmer and dimmer as it descended into the depths of the Atlantic, until it finally disappeared from sight.
My heart sped up as my eyes followed the same line of light in the other direction. I turned, my gaze following it underneath Saltford and straight west. My breath hitched when I saw another thick glowing line intersect with the first one. They crossed, making a perfect intersection with ninety degree angles at each corner. The light at the intersection appeared so bright that it swallowed up whole buildings. Every tree, shrub, and blade of grass growing in the path of this line was shining like a supernova. The second line ran south and north as far as my eyes could see. Third and fourth lines, these ones not quite as bright as the other two, intersected and passed through the point where the other brightest two crossed. The slightly dimmer ones ran north-east and south-west, and north-west and south-east.
"Ley lines," I whispered. Goosebumps rose on my arms and neck as the night breeze stirred my hair. Saltford had been built on four ley lines, and they intersected right under my high school. The large brick building was so swallowed by light that I could barely make out its shape. How many times had I looked down from the crest of this very hill, at that very building, and never seen the ley lines? Did anyone else know they were there?
What was it Faith had said about them? Her words came back to me in broken echoes.
An undetectable matrix of energy lines criss-crossing the earth...
Linking sites of supernatural significance...
Rich with electromagnetic power...they attract supernatural activity...
My eyes followed the brightest ley line again, out into the Atlantic, down into the water. Its light turned blue as it submerged and then faded away into the horizon, heading due East. Where did it go? All the way around the earth? What else had been built on top of this same ley line? What did it connect Saltford to?
I looked back at my high school, barely visible against the bright light. I toed my way back into my flip-flo
ps, putting a barrier between the soles my feet and the earth. Immediately, the ley line disappeared.
What did it mean for a school full of teenagers to be spending most of their days in a building that had been erected right on top of intersecting ley lines? What did it mean for Saltford?
Epilogue
Targa: How’s things with the cuzball?
Me: I’ll keep him. But I’m pretty sure we’ll never think of one another as cousins.
Saxony: Holy change of tone. What happened?
Me: We got close.
Targa: How close, exactly?
Me: A story best told in person.
Saxony: That’s mean!
Me: Well neither of you two have coughed up any gory details!
Saxony: Good point.
Me: I’m home now. I’m waiting for you with bated breath.
Targa: So early? How come?
Me: My mom hasn’t been well. She’ll be okay though.
Saxony: You have a mom? I thought you just lived with a roommate named Liz?
Me: Turns out we’re related. Either of you two know what’s going on with Akiko?
Saxony: I think she’s gone underground for some Japanese crime syndicate. We may never hear from her again.
Targa: As long as she puts the crime on hold long enough to be at our sleepover…
<<<<>>>>
Prologue
The moans of the wounded and the dying filled the narrow valley. The full moon, big and bright and already high in the sky, cast its cold blue light over the battle scene. Long thin shadows from arrows and spears embedded in the earth and in flesh slanted across grass, mud, and dark pools of blood. Crows gathered in the branches of nearby trees, their throaty screams alerting other scavengers from miles around. A few brave birds descended to the mud between the bodies, preparing to pick apart their dinner and usher the dead toward the slow transition into dust.
The dark shape of a small black fox darted from the trees to skirt the perimeter of the battlefield. Sniffing the air and stopping to listen, she salivated heavily at the smell of hot blood still pumping from the veins of the dying. At the sound of a moan she bolted into the shadows, her movements quick and sure-footed. She cocked her ears toward the sound, and moved swiftly to investigate.
A dying warrior lay face up to the ghostly moon. Shallow breaths lifted his armored chest with the quiet creak of leather and clink of chainmail. A dark pool gathered between his left arm and his torso as his life poured from his body and soaked into the earth.
The small fox approached on silent paws, stopping to listen before taking a few more steps. Her head low and her ears forward, she inched up to the still-warm and fragrant pool of blood. As a long and final sigh escaped the samurai, her pink tongue darted out to taste the vitamin-rich liquid, the death of one passing on life to another in a cycle as old as the earth itself.
When the fox had raised eight litters, killed and eaten a thousand rodents, escaped a hundred predators, and seen the snows go and the rains come a dozen times, her weak and aged body crawled into a familiar hollow under a juniper for the last time.
The flesh and bone of the samurai whose blood sustained her all those years ago had long since returned to the earth. The memory of that battlefield faded from her fox mind, a nearly insignificant event in her short life. There was room only for the present moment, for the death stealing into her bones and making her shiver.
She settled into her hollow, curling her thick tail over her paws and in front of her nose. She watched the light of another full moon through the thick needles of the bush as her breathing grew shallow and short. She knew what was coming, and she faced it alone, unafraid, and without self-pity. She was tired. She let out a long sigh and her ribs sank as she surrendered.
On any normal day with any normal fox, those ribs would not rise again. But life gives way to life, and as the earthly fox dies, the spirit of the samurai warrior awakens, and the ribs do rise again.
Chapter 1
Is there a limit to how many lies one person can tell? My life was so saturated with them that I was afraid to open my mouth for fear of ensnaring myself in one of Grandfather's falsehoods. They say that if you tell a lie for long enough, you'll eventually come to believe it. But that would never happen to me. It couldn't. I would never forget who I was, where I came from, and what had happened to me. It didn't matter how many lies Grandfather commanded me to tell, or what ridiculous story he had dripping from my lips to protect himself. I would always know the truth, and he couldn't change that.
The truth.
The truth was not that I was his granddaughter. I was his captive.
The truth was not that my family died in a plague that swept our village. I had been taken from my home against my will.
The truth was not that my mother was Japanese and my father was Canadian. Both of my parents were Japanese. Grandfather made up the lie to fabricate some connection to this land, to explain our presence in this country.
The truth was not that I was a sixteen-year-old girl. I was nearly a century old.
The truth was not that I was human. I just looked like it.
I disliked walking home alone after school because these were the thoughts that most often clutched my mind. Normally, I walked home with Saxony every day, since we lived in the same neighborhood. But today she had a phone interview with the au pair agency she had applied with, so after saying goodbye to Targa and Georjayna, I had left Saltford High on my own.
Though it was April, the weather was bitterly cold and gray. Snow and ice crusted the streets and bare branches reached up to condemn the cloudy sky.
The suburb we lived in was quiet today. Very few cars passed me, and no one walked the sidewalks. It was too miserable outside for playing, and the playground I passed was abandoned.
Our bungalow was the second to last house on our street. Even from a distance it looked unwelcome. The windows were dark and the curtains drawn. I walked up our front yard, stepped up onto our small deck, and entered our coatroom.
"I'm home," I called out in Japanese as I kicked off my boots. I pulled on my slippers and hung my parka on its hook.
"Akiko," came Grandfather's voice from the small front room.
I poked my head around the corner. "I'm here," I repeated. "Need anything?"
"Sit," Grandfather said, gesturing to the couch across from his chair. His laptop was open and it sent a blue glow onto his lined face.
I frowned. When Grandfather asked me to sit, it usually meant he had something more complicated for me to do. He hadn't asked me to sit in years. Most of my commands these days were mere errands—groceries, translating something for him, mailing something at the post office, making dinner, doing laundry, cleaning the house, shoveling the front walk. I was the world’s most exotic house keeper.
I sat and waited.
He steepled his withered hands and gazed at me from across the coffee table. "My name is Daichi Hotaka," he said.
My mouth dropped open. I could do nothing but stare. My heart began to pound. Something was going to change, something had happened. My mind raced. What had happened? Why, after all this time, was he finally telling me his name? My hands instantly felt ice-cold. I didn't know what to say, so all I did was wait, skin prickling with anticipation. With effort, I closed my mouth.
“I have been searching for something that was stolen from me many years ago.” Nothing about his countenance changed, but I could sense a vibration of excitement about him that I had never felt before. “I have finally found it.”
He reached a hand out and spun the laptop to face me.
My eyes dropped to the screen. It showed a video on YouTube entitled 'Ryozen Museum to Display Artifacts from the Bakamatsu Period. Early summer.' My eyes scanned the text below the video: The Ryozen Museum of History in Kyoto, Japan, specializes in the history of the Bakumatsu period and the Meiji Restoration. The museum is dedicated to the often violent events that brought an end to the Tokugawa regime at the
climax of the Edo Period.
Daichi had frozen the screen on a closeup of a wooden rack carrying four samurai short swords. Three of them were in black sheaths, and one of them was in a blue sheath with some kind of pattern on it. He pointed a twisted finger at the short sword with the blue sheath. It looked like the design on the sheath might be of trees, but the screen was blurry so it was difficult to make out.
"Bring me this wakizashi," he said.
My eyes widened and flew to his face. Had I heard him correctly? I swallowed hard, my mind a torrent of questions. This was more than just an errand. This was a mission, and probably an illegal one. "It is in Kyoto, Grandfather," I said. "You want me to go back to Japan?" A torrent of emotions crashed through me like a tsunami. After all this time, he was going to let me visit our homeland? Alone? We hadn’t been back in Japan since we left over a lifetime ago – me caged and in the form of a bird. Grandfather had never expressed a desire to go back, but then again, he rarely expressed desires more complex than hunger. I had long ago given up hope of setting foot in Japan again.
He nodded. "It will be on display soon, and not for very long." He placed his hands flat on his thighs and leaned forward. "The time for this is now. I have spent years looking for this sword. We may never have another chance.”
"I am to—" I paused, processing his command and what it meant. "Steal it?"
His eyes gleamed and he stared at me unblinking. He took a long slow breath and each moment that passed raised gooseflesh on my skin. "You bring me this wakizashi, and I will give you your freedom."