“Always return to your breathing, your center,” Sunny Joe said, carefully watching Freya’s movements.
Freya was lying on a rug in the center of Sunny Joe’s living room. She had assumed a balancing pose: face up, body off the floor, her entire weight on her elbows. Her pose was technically correct, but Sunny Joe could tell that her center was not stable. Her breathing was shallow, and her balance unsteady.
Sunny Joe had never seen Freya this weak, not even when she first moved to the reservation. He pulled a small box of wooden matches from his pocket. Without warning, he opened the box and tossed them in the air above her.
Freya recognized her favorite exercise, and saw the matches appear above her as though they were floating. She leapt from her elbows to a standing position, placing her balance on her left heel while striking the matches with the fingernails on both hands. Several of the matches caught fire mid-air, but Sunny Joe was not looking at the small fireworks display. He was watching Freya’s eyes. Her eyes entered what most people called ‘the thousand-yard stare,’ which, if done properly, allowed the mind to access more information than it could normally handle.
Each of the matches became a target and a dazzling show of sparks lit the air above her. But as impressive as the display would be to anyone watching, Sunny Joe noticed a surprising number of matches that were struck on the wrong end, or that Freya missed completely.
As Freya’s frustration increased, her breathing became shallower, allowing still more matches to pass her defenses. Finally, she turned away in defeat, allowing the remaining matches to fall to the floor.
“I’m sorry, Grandfather. I can’t do it,” she admitted.
“This ain’t about the matches,” Sunny Joe said, sitting down.
“How many did I hit?” she asked.
She had never ignited all three hundred matches, but she always averaged over a hundred.
“Thirty-eight.”
Freya turned away from Sunny Joe in shame. “I’m sorry, Grandfather,” she said, trying to keep her tears at bay.
“You’re gonna have to stop that,” Sunny Joe said, leaning forward. “You’ve been walling everyone out of your life and now, since you’ve been back from Lakluun, you’ve even been shutting out Stone and me. You don’t need to go it alone. There’s only danger at the end of that road. My Pop was that way; he thought keeping people out was the only way to protect them. He was wrong.”
“But I don’t know how to change how I feel,” Freya sputtered. “What should I do?”
“I think you’re gonna have to try to open up more. I know that’s not easy — not for either of us. It’s who we are. But it helps to have a friend to talk to. I’ve got Mick, and you need someone, too — someone who’s not your brother or your grandfather.”
“But who would I talk to?” Freya asked. “These dreams — the memories of what happened in Lakluun…I can’t discuss them with anybody. You’re the only one who’s been through this.”
“That’s not true. A friend is a friend, even if you’ve had different experiences. I think you should talk to Mick’s wife, Kathleen. She’s nice, and she listens. I’m not trying to manage your schedule, but I think she could help you out a lot. As for the Shiva stuff…well, it’s new to me, too. I just don’t know enough about it.”
“Well, what did you do when it happened to you? How did you get rid of it?”
“It never happened to me,” Sunny Joe said, motioning for Freya to sit beside him. “But it happened to my Pop.”
“Wait,” Freya said in shock. “What do you mean, ‘this never happened to you?’ You’ve never been…overtaken by Shiva?” Her voice trembled slightly as she said the name.
“Nope,” Sunny Joe said.
“But why not?” Freya said.
“I’ve never been in a situation that called for it.”
“How did your father get rid of it?”
Sunny Joe looked down for a moment before returning eye contact.
“I knew we had to talk about this, so I guess now’s just as good a time as any. But first, you know that Masters of Sinanju live to be a hundred and forty, maybe even a hundred and fifty years old?”
“Yes, and Master Chiun believes that he can live past that with his dragon bone soup,” Freya said.
“Now, see, I don’t go around blathering how old I am. It’s no one else’s business. But let’s just say for the sake of argument that I’m in my seventies.”
Freya looked at him with a furrowed brow. She had never really thought about how old he was. Even though Sunny Joe looked old, she would never have guessed that he was seventy.
“Early seventies. I know I don’t look that old. It’s part of the deal we get with good Sinanju livin’. But follow along. My Pop was twenty-eight when I was born.”
“Which would make him about one hundred years old,” Freya said. “So why didn’t he live as long?”
Sunny Joe leaned toward Freya. “I promised you that I would always tell you and Stone the truth. You can’t train someone with a lie, because you’ll have to unfold everything later and start over. No one around here talks about it, but my Pop died when he was seventy-two.”
“What happened?”
“If you ask anyone on the reservation, they’ll tell you he had a freak heart attack.”
“But I thought we couldn’t have heart attacks?”
“You’re right, we can’t. Those people aren’t lying — they just don’t know the truth.”
The silence between them made Freya forget her problems for a moment. She had never seen Sunny Joe so apprehensive and vulnerable.
“My Pop shot himself a few days after handing the tribe over to me,” Sunny Joe finally said. “I celebrated my ascension to Sunny Joe the day before his funeral.”
“What?” Freya asked in disbelief. “Why?”
“The day before he died, he was upset about something. I asked him what was wrong and he said ‘Everything.’ I told him that since I was gonna be Sunny Joe, I’d take care of it. He said ‘You cannot protect me. Everything is going to burn.’”
Freya shivered uncontrollably as feelings of déjà vu and terror washed over her.
“That’s why I was worried when you said the same exact thing this morning,” Sunny Joe said. “After I…found him, I gave Pop a proper Sinanju burial in the Cave of the Fathers.”
“You took us there when we first moved here. I thought that your sadness was a commemorative one for your ancestors. I had no idea.”
“There was nothing I could do about it. Men choose their own paths.”
“But what happened between him and Shiva?”
“He only talked about it once. He said that Shiva won’t manifest unless you’re in mortal danger, wounded to the point of death. I told him that it sounded like a good thing to me. If you ever got in serious trouble, Shiva would save you, but he said that it was terrible — like being a puppet trapped inside your own body.”
“That’s exactly how it feels,” Freya said. “I will never forget it. Even though my bones were broken, Shiva restored me to full health. But it did not do that in order to help me…it just wants to keep its host alive.”
“That’s what he said, too. And I don’t know what triggered it, but I know that he was always worried about losing control and killing everyone here.”
Freya involuntarily winced.
“That is what I am afraid of, too,” she said softly, unable to make eye contact. “When it happened in Lakluun, anyone who was standing in my way was killed.”
“Well, that’s not true, is it? You didn’t kill Eleanora. Didn’t she…”
Sunny Joe turned to look toward the door as he heard approaching footsteps. Every person had a distinct heartbeat, even when it was pumping faster or slower than normal. This heart Sunny Joe recognized almost as well as his own.
It was Mick’s wife, Kathleen.
She was a few years younger than Mick, and Sunny Joe could still see the same fiery strength that had always defined her. It was that strength that he was counting on. He knew that Freya needed a strong female hand in her life, and Kathleen was the only woman Sunny Joe could totally trust. She was also the only woman he had ever dated other than his late wife, Dawn, a fact not lost on Mick. The only serious arguments between Mick and Sunny Joe had been about Kathleen. Mick only felt safe to marry Kathleen after Sunny Joe married Dawn. Kathleen became Dawn’s best friend; she had always thought Mick’s jealousy was cute, but never pushed him on it.
Freya saw Sunny Joe’s reaction to the door. The look on his face was one of focus and acknowledgement, and though Freya was not good enough to hear approaching heartbeats through walls, she knew enough not to question something Sunny Joe considered serious enough to stop midway through a sentence.
Sunny Joe walked toward the door and opened it before Kathleen could knock. He smiled.
“I hate when you do that, Billy,” Kathleen said, referring to Sunny Joe by the only name she ever had — and ever would — call him.
Freya relaxed her posture as Kathleen entered. She had passed middle age, but her body stubbornly held onto its figure. Freya could tell by her clothes that, like her, Kathleen did not follow anyone else’s fashion rules.
Freya tried to smile as Kathleen entered. She knew that Sunny Joe meant well, but it was difficult for her even to speak to him and Stone. How could he expect her to speak to a stranger?
“Freya, this is Mick’s wife, Kathleen,” Sunny Joe said.
Kathleen’s eyes softened as she saw Freya. She could tell the girl was trying to smile, but no amount of Sinanju training could hide the fact that she had been crying.
When Sunny Joe first asked her for help, Kathleen had refused. As she watched Freya, though, she could see the girl’s pervasive, heavy sadness. Kathleen agreed to help, but on her terms. Sunny Joe was good at training her how to kill, but Freya needed someone to train her how to live.
“Hi, Freya. I’m glad to finally meet you,” she said with a broad, genuine smile.
Freya stood and shook her hand before sitting next to her on the couch.
“So, Billy tells me that he has no idea what he’s doing when it comes to you.”
“Well, now, I only said that I wanted some help,” Sunny Joe said, a bit embarrassed.
“Can’t handle a Mistress of Sinanju, is that it?” Kathleen asked.
“Mrs. Kathleen, Grandfather has trained me very well,” Freya said in Sunny Joe’s defense.
“Even with…female issues?” Kathleen asked.
Sunny Joe tried to hide his embarrassment with a grunt. “That’s not really in my wheelhouse, Kathleen.”
Kathleen winked at Freya. “Well, I’m not gonna pretend to be your Momma, but I’ve raised two girls, so I’m probably a little more helpful with some things than Billy is,” nodding slyly at Sunny Joe.
“I do have a few questions that Grandfather would rather not answer himself.”
“Well, he said that I could borrow you this afternoon and we could get to know each other. Is that all right with you?”
“Sure,” Freya said uneasily.
“Honey, you need to know from the start that I don’t put up with lying, even polite lying. If you don’t want to go, just tell me.”
“No, I do. I am looking forward to it. Grandfather, should we resume training tomorrow?”
“That sounds like a good plan,” Sunny Joe said, escorting them to the door. “Go on, have some fun.”
“Freya, can you wait outside for a moment?” Kathleen asked.
Freya exited and Kathleen shut the door behind her.
“Billy, I don’t know what Mick’s told you, but he’s worse off than he seems.”
“I don’t have to be told,” Sunny Joe said. “I know.”
“Then you know that he doesn’t have much time left. Look, he didn’t tell me anything, but he mumbles in his sleep. Last night in one of his dreams, he asked you to teach him how to breathe.”
“Between you and me? We already had that conversation and he even admitted that it should never have come up.”
“I’m a nurse, so it’s hard to believe half the stuff you tell him, but…if there’s a chance that learning how to breathe like you could heal him, you need to do it.”
“Fact is, it’s hard enough to train young people how to breathe properly. Stone took over a year and even if Mick could, he doesn’t have that long.”
“The man who has broken just about every tribal rule he sees is suddenly tied to tradition when it comes to the life of his best friend?”
“You don’t understand,” Sunny Joe said.
“What, you don’t think he can keep a secret, Billy? He knows things about this tribe that you’ll never know! And he’s had your back ever since you were kids. In every single council meeting, he has to clean up something you said to offend Paul or the council’s stupid traditions! It’s not like he’s going to compete with the House or start training other people.”
“Careful, Kathleen. You know that I’ve bent some of the rules, but that doesn’t mean I can start breaking all of them now.”
Sunny Joe looked in her eyes. They held the same beauty that had captured his attention fifty years earlier, and now they were welling up with tears.
“I love that man, Billy, and I would never forgive you if you let something happen to him.”
There was a moment of silence between them and Sunny Joe moved toward Kathleen to console her. Kathleen closed her eyes and held her hand up as she regained her composure.
“Don’t try to make me feel good. I’m going to help with Freya, because it’s the right thing to do. All I’m asking is for you to do the same.”
Kathleen wiped her eyes with her sleeve before she opened the door.
“C’mon, let’s blow this popsicle stand,” she said to Freya.
Sunny Joe watched them drive off, and stared into the distance long after Kathleen’s taillights had disappeared from view.