CHAPTER TWELVE

“What’s gotten your feathers in a twist?” I asked.

Pon-suma padded into the room, implacable as always, but decidedly not looking at Kwaskwi. Kwaskwi dumped his bags onto the table. A heavenly aroma comprised of equal parts something fried and something pickled wafted my direction.

“I’ve had enough of what passes for hospitality here,” he snapped. “White Fang over there gave me the keys to the guest shack. Let’s go eat somewhere not drenched in duty and honor and politics.”

Was that a blush pinking Pon-suma’s cheek? No way. Had Kwaskwi made some kind of stupid move and been rebuffed? I couldn’t think of any other cause for the tetchiness. But I wasn’t about to look a gift blue jay in the mouth. “I’m not leaving Dad and Ken here to their tender mercies.”

Kwaskwi made an exasperated sound and threw his hands up in the air like Mom when she faced Dad’s stubborn silence during an argument. He sauntered around the table, giving Yukiko a wide berth, and then bent over and slipped his arms under Ken’s back and legs, lifting Ken as gently as if his tall frame weighed no more than a Teddy Bear.

“Be careful!”

“He’s out cold, feeling no pain. Don’t fret.”

“I can’t carry Dad by myself.”

Yukiko lifted a hand. Murase startled, but she rested it on my clothed shoulder. Even with the cotton barrier, a numbing sense of chill spread down my shoulder into my chest, slowing my heartbeat for a long, stretched-out moment. Murase cleared his throat, breaking the spell. “Yukiko will see that Herai-san rests until you and the Council return tomorrow morning.”

I leaned over the table and Yukiko’s hand fell away. I’d tasted her dream. She would protect Dad because he could help the Black Pearl. It was Murase I needed to be sure of. “Nothing disturbs Dad. If you want me on your side.”

Murase nodded gravely. I knelt next to Dad fussing with the cotton towel covering him, making sure his pillow was plumped.

Kwaskwi made an impatient clucking noise and headed toward the door. Scared he was going to bash Ken’s splinted legs on the door frame, I jumped up and wedged myself in between the frame and the boys.

“What about dinner?” I said in English, the consonants feeling oddly harsh in my mouth after so much time spent in Japanese.

“It’s already at the guest shack.”

“Should I be scared you keep calling it a shack?”

Kwaskwi gave his trademark wide grin, showing more front teeth than usual. I followed him out the main doors and onto a little path curling around the back of the museum leading into a thicket of towering cryptomeria, needles bristling ominously in the gathering twilight. Japanese beeches shivered and rustled beyond.

The Eight Span Mirror’s guest shack was a hunched over, traditional cedar-beam and earthen-walled box, thatched with a steep roof mossy with neglect and likely housing a horde of mice and spiders.

“Seriously?”

“Oh, it gets better,” said Kwaskwi maintaining that over-sized grin.

I skipped ahead to open the sliding outer door and help Kwaskwi wrangle the unconscious Kitsune inside. We found ourselves on a packed-earth genkan entrance with a built-in shoe cubby and a huge step up to the raised tatami mat floor of one big room. Kwaskwi started to lay Ken down.

“Whoa, not there.” Toeing off my shoes, I hopped up onto the tatami and made a beeline for the sliding doors on the far side I guessed were hiding a closet. Bingo. Japanese style folded futons in a dyed-indigo pattern and fluffy, white comforters covered in clean-smelling cotton were neatly stacked inside the closet shelf. I lugged out a futon and spread it near the floor-inset charcoal brazier at the center of the room.

“Please tell me this isn’t the kitchen,” I said.

Kwaskwi carried Ken over. Only a slight gasp marked Ken’s transition from arms to futon, but he did not lie peacefully. His breath came unevenly and his hands made jerky clenching movements. Midori’s drugs were wearing off.

“Okay, I won’t tell you the only way to heat water is the brazier. Or about the Japanese-style squatter toilet in the outhouse.”

“Sure know how to butter up a girl,” I said, settling down cross-legged at a low kotatsu table laden with more convenience store plastic bags. The heater slung underneath was sadly not turned on. I started rifling through the bags: convenience store pasta carbonara in a plastic tray, tonkatsu pork cutlet sandwiches with crusts removed, and konbu and pickled ume plum rice balls. No way was I going to fire up that charcoal for the pasta, so I snagged the sandwiches. The salty-sweet Bulldog sauce created a harmony of pork goodness in my mouth and the cutlet was soft as butter. The first bite woke up my stomach. I was ravenous.

Kwaskwi watched me gobble down the sandwiches. When I reached for a pickled plum rice ball, he covered the pasta container with crossed arms. “Mine,” he said. “But this,” he held out his hand palm down, concealing something with his sleeve, “might make up for lack of a real toilet. Thank me later.” He flipped his hand over.

My cell phone! “How did you…?”

“Pon-suma slipped it to me.” With deft chopstick action, he began slurping cold pasta carbonara directly from the tray.

Yikes. There were thirty texts from Marlin, ten from my Portland Perlmongers contact, Ed, offering gigs, and two from Ken. Feeling disloyal to Marlin, I opened Ken’s first.

I’m sorry.

Koi, hold on, I’m coming. Trust me.

A tear welled up hotly and dripped down my right cheek, a salty condiment for my rice ball. I snuffled.

“Not the thanks I was looking for,” said Kwaskwi. I wiped my nose with a sleeve and then reached out to squeeze his clothed arm.

“This is…you don’t even…I could kiss you.”

“Whoa there, little lady,” said Kwaskwi with a sudden John Wayne accent. “Not that the thought didn’t cross my mind before, but now I have colder, less damp fish to fry.” Kwaskwi gave my arm a little pat, and then pushed my hand off his arm. Beside us on the floor, Ken gave a deep groan.

Oh you silly, silly boy. What are you doing? Why did he change so much when we got to Japan? It was a constant ache inside my chest that he seemed more a tool of the Council than the generous, strong man who helped me handle a murderer and a dragon in Portland without trying to control my Baku decisions or man-splain the Kind world. I waded through Marlin’s angry texts, and wrote a long message back telling her Dad and I were fine. But my thoughts kept returning to Ken.

He had come for me. And now he lay there, broken. This wasn’t the first time he’d walked into danger for me, either. When I was under Hayk’s control back in Portland and I’d barely known Ken seventy two hours he’d rescued me too. More tears trickled down my nose. The rice ball was gone, and there was no more Oolong tea left in the bottle Kwaskwi had handed me after the sandwiches disappeared.

Food couldn’t be my distraction anymore. I had to decide who I was going to trust. The Eight Span Mirror? Ken? The Council? Weird that the man sitting across from me, still slurping spaghetti carbonara like his life depended on it, was already in the trust category.

I’d never touched Kwaskwi’s bare skin or experienced his fragment but I felt in my bones that broad grin and restless energy were backed by a fiercely loyal heart. Naïve? Probably. I’d even googled his name, and found nothing but Google Books versions of Abenaki and Algonquin dictionaries. Apparently “kwaskwi” meant either push forward or run through. I’d also googled blue jay tricksters and suspected the Salish tribe stories like Blue Jay Finds a Wife were closer to Kwaskwi’s origin than the plains tribe verb definitions. Really, I knew very little about him.

I understood he wouldn’t always choose my side or even jump in to protect me if it meant ripping his leather jacket, or went against the interests of the Pacific Northwest Kind, but Kwaskwi had always been straightforward. He didn’t hide the fact that he saw me as a little Baku feather in his Siwash Tyee cap—an asset for the U.S. Kind.

He hadn’t outright defied the Council yet, but there was definitely antagonism there. Maybe Kwaskwi and his people were tired of living under rules made by a bunch of cranky, old Japanese men. I’d lived in America all my life, and despite having Japanese heritage, the fact that Kwaskwi was from my side of the Pacific meant something. “Why do you defer to the Japanese Council?”

Kwaskwi looked up, noodle suspended mid-slurp. He coughed and had to take a swig of his Cherry Coke before he could speak. “Why do you?”

Because I don’t know anything, and I was trusting Ken to do the right thing. “I didn’t think I was.”

“You trailed after the Council’s lackey like a Belieber with a backstage pass, and now The Eight Span Mirror has you feeling up the Black Pearl without foreplay or even dinner first.” Kwaskwi rested elbows on the table, steepling his hands together and fluttering his fingers like a movie villain. “Question your own issues with daddy figures lately?”

“Oh, totally.” I sighed. “I just can’t decide on which daddy figure to latch onto. Murase? Kawano? How can I decide when I don’t know the history? Isn’t there a textbook or a Kind Wiki I could read?”

Kwaskwi pointed a chopstick at my nose. “You are funny. It’s why I keep you around.”

“I thought it was because I’m Baku and owe you a debt.”

Kwaskwi cocked his head at an angle, almost like a blue jay eyeing a delicious worm. Exhaling slowly, he laid palms flat on the table. In a series of infinitesimally small changes—angular, muscled shoulders sloping down, lips closed in a smile, a widening of dark irises, and jarringly uncharacteristic stillness—he took on an aura of seriousness. “Hafu like Midori or your sister Marlin who don’t manifest Kind attributes sometimes are raised ignorant of their true parentage, but you are unique. You are powerful Kind. Like the ancient ones: Ullikemi, the Shishin, and the Black Pearl. It’s easy to forget how much Akihito kept from you.”

Oh great. Pulling out the overly-formal Kind-speak. Serious Kwaskwi meant things mattered more than I had the energy to care about.

“Japan’s Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere from World War II was built as a mirror to Kind politics. They wanted to create a bloc of Asian and Oceanic nations independent of European influence. The U.S. Atlantic states are autonomous, beholden to neither Europe nor anyone else, but the Pacific Seaboard bows to the Council.”

Another history lesson. “But the Allies won. And you have Thunderbird! How can the Japanese Council have so much power over the U.S. Pacific Northwest?”

“Thunderbird is free,” said Kwaskwi, a cutting edge to his voice I’d only heard once before back in Portland, when he’d berated me for betraying his name to Mangasar Hayk. It was easy to be fooled by that wide grin and his easy-going wit and forget that Kwaskwi was the boss of the Portland Kind. He most likely had a dark history of his own. “I forgive your insulting question because you are so cute. And ignorant. Our ancient ones are revered and not kept as magical batteries to swell the power of beings who were never meant to wield it.” Kwaskwi’s upper lip pulled up into a sneer. “We do not keep comfort women or force prisoners into death marches, or rape cities.”

I was too weary for Kind politics or more World War II talk. Especially since I’d left my cardigan in the museum, which meant my Tcho Mokaccino bar was out of reach.

Wait, I’d already eaten it back in the van. Without chocolate, the world was a meaningless, howling void. Rummaging fruitlessly in the plastic bags, I asked, “Is it like Kawano said about the low birthrate for you guys, too? Are there no baby blue jays or baby bear brothers running around Portland?” I put my head down on a pillow of crossed forearms. I needed chocolate, and I had to pee, but exhaustion weighed my shoulders like a clumpy, old comforter. There was no way I was going to visit a stinky outhouse before I fell asleep.

“Portland is different,” said Kwaskwi. “We are a vital community. You’ll see when we get back.”

If we ever get back.