Chapter 60

My shout echoed through the temple grounds. But mine wasn’t the only voice crying out.

A priest in long robes ran toward us as Professor Nakamura fell over with a gasp of pain. He kicked the bloody sword aside and knelt at the professor’s side.

“Your jacket,” the bald priest said. “Press it to his stomach. I’ll call an ambulance.”

I obliged, but I didn’t know if it would do any good. The professor slipped out of consciousness.

“There,” another voice called. “There they are.”

It was Sébastien’s voice. Two flashlight beams fell on my face.

Blinded by the bright lights, I couldn’t see who held the second one until Lane Peters lifted me off the ground and into his arms.

“We need to stop the bleeding until the ambulance arrives,” I said.

“I’ll call,” Lane said.

“The priest already did that.”

“What priest?”

“A bald guy in long robes. You can’t miss him. He has a scar or a birthmark on his head.”

“There’s nobody else here, Jaya.”

I looked around the dark forest of statues. “He was here a second ago…”

Where had the priest gone? And why did I have a vague feeling I knew him? Had I seen him the first time I visited the temple?

Professor Nakamura was still unconscious, but the sword was too large and unwieldy to turn it on himself with precision. He was still alive, but he needed more help than we could give him.

The sirens that filled the air were a welcome sound. We roused Tamarind enough that she could half-walk out of the temple, leaning on Lane’s shoulder for support. A female officer emerged from a police car, and an ambulance pulled up behind it. .

“We’ll need two ambulances,” I told her.

“No way,” Tamarind said. “I’ve been through too much to miss this magic show. What? I wasn’t unconscious so long that we missed the whole show, was I?”

Lane’s lips twitched. “You didn’t miss it. The show started late, and Yoko was performing a tribute to Akira when we left to find you.”

“No ambulance,” Tamarind said, “until I see the Indian Rope Trick.”

I knew better than to argue with Tamarind.

The ambulance took Professor Nakamura away. We explained to the police what had happened, and Sébastien stayed behind with them while Lane and I helped Tamarind back to the show. An ambulance technician had bandaged her arm while we spoke to the police and declared the wound wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. While we retrieved our abandoned cell phones, Lane gave her his coat in place of her own blood-soaked one. I was coatless as well, but had enough adrenaline running through me that I barely felt the cool night air.

“I can’t take your coat,” she said. “How will you stay warm?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Lane said, kissing the top of my head. “I have my ways.”

  

With Tamarind’s injury, we didn’t want to squeeze through the crowds. Instead we watched from the back. On the sloping hillside, even though we were far away, we had a perfect view of the stage below us. Lights from a magic lantern cast shadows of butterflies fluttering through swaying stalks of bamboo. Only the video camera rigging near the open stage and the clothing worn by our fellow spectators signaled we were in the twenty-first century instead of the eighteenth.

As we got into place, the shadows flickered out and fog rolled in. Yoko stood alone in a solitary spotlight, fog swirling behind her. She wore flowing red robes that matched her red hair, which was tied into nine ponytails. Her face was painted white, and even at a distance I could see the bright red of her lips.

A second spotlight appeared and drew my eye to a sparkling object in her right hand. The kitsune spirit ball. She tossed it into the air and it disappeared. The spotlight flickered, and her face was transformed into that of a fox. The crowd exploded in applause and squeals.

Yoko bowed and stepped back. The spotlights didn’t follow her. The lights flickered in place, and when they came back, a fox sat in the spotlight. If it hadn’t been translucent, I would have sworn the fox was real.

Beside me, Tamarind gasped. Lane and I both checked to make sure she was gasping from awe rather than pain.

The fox watched the audience for a few moments before darting off the stage and disappearing from view. As it did so, Yoko fell to her knees, as if her own life force was attached to the fox. Her voice echoed through the field. Yoko spoke Japanese, but the performance transcended language. Through the actions that unfolded on the stage, I understood the story she was narrating. The story of a traveler who’d come to Japan and witnessed its magic.

Flickering spotlights cast the shadow of a sailing ship in the fog. The wavering light made it appear the ship was sailing in a fierce sea. A man appeared from the darkness and jumped out of the shadow ship. It was Hiro, dressed as an eighteenth-century merchant.

Hiro lifted Yoko to her feet. The flickers of light on her white face showed her as a woman one moment, and a fox the next. Trapped between forms, she fell back to the ground.

Hiro spun around, and when he again faced the audience, he was dressed not as a merchant, but as a ninja. He knelt over Yoko and shook his head. In the blink of an eye, Sanjay appeared next to him. They were in a field without the trap doors of an elaborate indoor theater. Where on earth had Sanjay come from?

“I’d clap if I could use my damn arm,” Tamarind whispered in my ear.

Sanjay wore the white robes of an Indian fakir and held his bowler hat in his hands. He set the hat on the ground and waved his arms above it. A length of rope emerged from the hat and stretched slowly skyward.

The fakir commanding the rope motioned for the ninja to climb it. To my surprise, Hiro was able to do just that. Wrapping his hands around the rope, Hiro deftly climbed to the sky, high above the audience—then disappeared.

The crowd went wild. The film crew swung their cameras from the stage to the sea of faces filled with wonder. The impossible Indian Rope Trick was possible.

Sanjay shouted up at the disappeared Hiro. Getting no reply, he climbed up himself. Once he too had disappeared, Yoko jumped up and grabbed the bowler hat that rested under the rope. With a wicked smile on her face, she clasped the hat and pulled a series of objects from it, beginning with a flower and ending with a bottle of sake. Her spirit ball wasn’t inside. She shrieked with rage.

A meteor-like object fell from the sky, causing me and half of the audience to jump back. Was it my imagination, or had the ground shaken? Emerging from a puff of smoke next to Yoko was the object that had fallen from the heavens: Hiro. He held an object in the palm of his hand. A shiny glass ball, flecks of gold reflected in the light.

Yoko lunged for her spirit ball. Hiro ducked out of the way and ran to the rope, which still hung in the air. He gave it a tug and the rope fell to his feet. As it fell, it wound itself into a neat pile, almost two feet high. Out stepped Sanjay from the center of the coil of rope. He was now dressed in his black tuxedo. Hiro tossed the spirit ball into the pile of rope, and the desperate kitsune followed. She jumped into the coil of rope disappearing from view. Sanjay raised his arms, again commanding the rope to stretch into the sky. In place of Yoko, what remained on the ground was a heap of silky red fabric and a smiling fox. It ran off into the night.

The fakir and the ninja had performed an impossible feat, and the kitsune had recaptured her spirit ball. She was going home. They all were.

  

Tamarind, Lane, and I slipped away while the crowd was still applauding wildly.

“We need to get you to the hospital now,” I said.

“Okay, Mom.” Tamarind accepted Lane’s arm for support as she rolled her eyes at me. “Hey, why aren’t either of you calling an ambulance?”

“Do you need an ambulance?” I asked as we walked across the trampled grass. “You refused one.”

“That was only because I wanted to see that amazing show. Now it’s time to ride in a cool ambulance. Did you know they don’t just have sirens but also a person who speaks politely through a megaphone letting people know exactly what they’re doing? Like ‘We’re turning left at the intersection’ and ‘Please be advised we’re going through a stop sign.’”

I heard more cheering behind us. The magicians must have been doing an encore. I hoped Tamarind wouldn’t insist on going back. Even though I didn’t think she needed an ambulance, she did need to get to a hospital.

We weren’t the only people leaving early. A bald man in black and yellow robes was walking away as well.

The field began to sway before my eyes.

“Jones?” Lane said. “What’s the matter?”

“I forgot something,” I said, trying to steady my breathing. “Take Tamarind to the hospital. Let me know where you end up, and I’ll meet you there.”

I heard Tamarind speaking to Lane as I ran after the priest.

“Do you believe her?” Tamarind was saying. “She’s terrible at lying. I bet she wants to see the encore.”

The priest was walking away in the direction of the site of Akira’s death. Or rather, what I now knew was the site of the magician’s faked death.