CHAPTER SEVEN

For the next couple hours in the van, Midori and Ben kept up intermittent conversation that was jarringly banal. Apparently there was a Youtuber called “Susuru” who filmed himself eating ramen every day at a different Tokyo restaurant. You would think people who kidnapped other people would use their time more productively. Like for ninja training, or world domination. Yikes. Meanwhile, Dad dozed on and off and Pon-suma stayed in the back, keeping an eye on Dad’s condition.

After the fifth time he picked up Dad’s wrist and used a phone to time his pulse, I decided my campaign of disdainful silence wasn’t causing any guilt. “So are you a nurse or something?”

Pon-suma gave a little shrug. “Nursing assistant at a senior home.”

I pictured a bunch of people like Ken, Rockabilly, and the Snow Lady sitting around in wheelchairs. “A Kind home?”

Now he frowned a bit, eyebrows knitting together. Oh. Stupid question, I guess. Pon-suma shook his head. “He is not lucid.”

“Dad dozes a lot.”

“The sedative should have worn off by now. Yukiko-sama did this?”

“Yukiko? The Snow Lady Council member back at Yasukuni shrine? No. He’s been this way for four years. The doctors diagnosed him with Alzheimer’s. That was before I found out he was a Baku refusing to eat dreams.”

“Refusing?” Pon-suma was not happy. He didn’t wait for a reply. “Ben,” he called out. “Problem.”

Ben turned around, saw Pon-suma’s expression and crawled into the back of the van. “We’ve just passed Ninohe-machi. Only forty minutes until we reach Herai-mura and lunch.”

Pon-suma grabbed her forearm. Apparently he was an arm-grabbing kind of boy. “Herai-san refuses to eat dreams.”

Ben turned to me with an expression identical to Ken’s when I’d gone charging into a homicidal professor’s office alone to rescue a kidnapped Marlin. Same angry caterpillar eyebrows and narrow, dark eyes. “How long has he been this way?”

“I’m not sure,” I stammered. My mini-migraine stubbornly refused to go away, and Ben’s resemblance to Ken was making my emotions all wonky. The apricot soy latte I’d downed out of desperation actually seemed to have made my caffeine-cravings worse and now I was getting the third degree.

Well I wasn’t afraid of Ken’s angry caterpillar expression, and I certainly wasn’t going to cave to his sister either. Dad was picking up on the suddenly tense atmosphere. His breath came in agitated, short gasps, eyes rolling like marbles underneath his eyelids.

“Look, I only learned about this, the Kind, like a couple weeks ago. Since then I’ve been busy with an Armenian sea-dragon trapped in a human myth and his evil human servant who kidnapped my sister. Not much chance for quality daddy-daughter time.”

“If Herai-san can no longer eat dreams, then all this is for nothing. We will—”

Pon-suma interrupted. “There’s another way.” He indicated me with a jerk of the chin. “She’s Baku.”

“Only a Baby Baku,” I said. “Completely inexperienced.”

“Baby?” repeated Ben.

“Kwaskwi’s nickname.”

Pon-suma made a little negative waving motion under his nose.

“Herai Akihito was Baku here in Japan for over half a century before he abandoned his homeland. Once he understands what we are working toward, he will not refuse,” said Ben. Something vibrated loudly in Ben’s shirt front pocket. She gave a startled smile.

The extra-long curves at the corners of her mouth, visible only with the smile, and the easy familiarity of her expression was a dead ringer for Ken’s salesman face. The elegant, long fingers and strong wrists also made me think of Ken. I had a thing for hands. That made me angrier.

“Who is the Black Pearl? Tell me what you want from Dad.”

Pon-suma shook his head and reached down to take Dad’s pulse again. Ben slipped a Docomo phone out of a pocket. She swiped a few times. “My brother is quite persistent today. Is there something I should know about your relationship to him?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Ken usually gives me a little more leeway.”

“You said he wouldn’t follow right away,” said Pon-suma in that calm voice. I wonder how angry he had to be to lose the serenity.

“Yeah, well,” Ben shrugged. “I didn’t know we’d be stealing the Baby Baku as well.”

“You are planning to bring Dad to Herai-mura to eat the Black Pearl’s dreams?”

Pon-suma nodded at me. Still no smile, but he seemed to approve of me figuring out stuff. “And the Council doesn’t want him to eat the Black Pearl’s dreams?”

“You could frame it that way,” said Ben.

“What the hell is the Black Pearl? A Kitsune?”

Ben gave a delicate snort. “No, not a Kitsune. She is a far more powerful ancient one. The Black Pearl is a river dragon. The Amur River, or the Heilong Jiang, depending on what century you’re talking about. It borders Mongolia and China on the East coast.”

A river dragon. One of Ullikemi’s fragments flashed through my head. Strong, sinuous body in blue-black ocean depths, straining upwards with a terrible yearning for a glimmer of sun.

Ullikemi was also an ancient spirit. His dreams packed quite a wallop. Kind dreams were so vivid I couldn’t fight them off during the day, as I did with human ones, but Ullikemi’s dreams had been completely overpowering. Like getting a fire-fighter’s hose in the face; myself, Koi, my own feelings obliterated. The only reason I’d survived our encounter was because Ullikemi had needed my help to be freed from the prison human myths had made of the Vishap Stone.

Now there was another dragon. No wonder Dad had seemed desperate in his warning. “I am not exactly a dragon expert. I’m not sure I’ll be able to help.”

“Well,” said Ben. “I guess we’ll find out. This is Herai village.”

Rice paddies and some other small-plant crop had surrounded us for the past half hour. Now we drove under a white highway sign that pointed to the right and said “Grave of Christ” in English and Japanese. Midori turned onto a city street of concrete public buildings interspersed with bipolar traditional but modernly sided two-story houses. Their curved, ceramic roof tiles in blue, ochre and sometimes pink, smugly regarded us from both sides. We turned again, and then pulled onto a private drive in front of a brick building with a white awning and a gigantic white cross on the roof.

Museum of the Legend of Jesus read the sign out front.

“For real?” Marlin would have loved this. Too bad I couldn’t message her a pic.

Pon-suma gave another serious nod and then slid an arm under my semi-conscious Dad. He wrestled him out of the van and force-marched him into the building. I scampered behind. A noren cloth hung in the inner hallway, jarringly embroidered with white crosses and the ancient Buddhist symbol for temple—a red swastika. Beyond the noren was a room dotted with display cases and posters chock full of dense text. I only got a glimpse as Pon-suma and Ben bypassed the main hall to enter a “staff only” door to the right. This led to a large room with a cluster of desks covered in the usual busy-office piles of paper on one side and a low table made of polished wood surrounded by zabuton floor cushions on the other. No land lines on the desks. I sighed. Everyone had a cell phone these days, even Jesus museums.

Midori stepped into the room behind me and indicated the zabuton next to where Ben and Pon-suma had propped Dad.

“Sit. I’ll make tea.”

“No chance you have a Keurig or Nespresso hidden somewhere?”

Midori flashed a patently false smile and then went to the wall and slid open a panel to reveal a small kitchen-cubby with sink, microwave, and a hot water pot. While she fussed with loose-leaf tea and glazed ceramic cups that looked like they should be on display in an art gallery, I sat down, stretching out my legs. Ben entered the room through another door, accompanied by a man. He was much older, hair grizzled gray and cropped short like a marine.

“So you are Herai Koi? I am Murase Ayumu. Welcome to the town of Jesus’ Tomb.”

This was so weird I let the whole wrong-last-name thing slide. “Yes. Okay, we’re here. Now what?” It struck me that Murase was the name Princess Stewardess had thrown at the airport attackers, threatening them that Murase wouldn’t be pleased by their attack. Was this their second kidnapping attempt?

Murase’s placid expression did not waver. “Now we drink tea, and I tell you why The Eight Span Mirror needs a Baku.”

Midori came over with a loaded wooden tray. She knelt in a graceful motion and then set the cups in front of everyone, including Dad. Murase continued as she poured. “Fujiwara-san has told you about us, already, yes? That we are Kind who do not see eye to eye with the Council?”

Fujiwara? Did he mean Ben or Ken? “Sort of. Your welcome envoy at Narita didn’t leave the best impression.”

Murase’s eyes narrowed. Despite Princess Stewardess invoking his name, none of these people were Red Shirt or any of the other attackers. “I apologize if your first experience in Japan was unpleasant, but The Eight Span Mirror are not to blame.”

Yeah, right. I waved to indicate the room. “Not sure what Jesus or mirrors have to do with the Kind.”

“Technically, this isn’t about Jesus,” said Ben.

“But it’s important to understand the context.” Murase sipped his tea thoughtfully. “In the early nineteen hundreds, the Herai villagers began to have weird dreams. They had an overwhelming desire to bathe their newborn children in the river. Babies were toted around in rush baskets commonly found in the Middle East. Men grew beards. Women wore veils and felt a strange sadness when they went to the village well for water.”

I wrapped my hands around the teacup, hoping the warmth would anchor me. Fatigue, my mini-migraine, and the total crock of shit this Murase was peddling made this all feel dangerously unreal. Like a hallucination. It was hard to take any of it seriously. Midori had returned to the table with the biggest, reddest apple I’d ever seen. She knelt, took out a pocket knife and cut a long, unbroken single spiral of skin. The firm flesh struck me with its sweetness from across the table.

“And this was because Jesus was buried here?” I couldn’t help the incredulous tone. My mouth literally dripped with saliva now from the smell of the apple.

Midori slid toothpicks into the perfect, white slices of apple and placed them in a cut-glass dish in the center of the table. “Aomori regional specialty,” she said.

Ben and I reached for apple at the same time. She gave me a grin—again so much like Ken I wanted to smack her. It was hard to remember I wasn’t supposed to trust her when she kept setting off reactions mistakenly stemming from the intimacy I shared with her brother.

“It’s unclear where the anthropologist who discovered the ancient texts alleging the graves are those of Jesus and his brother, Isukiri, got his inspiration. But it was a convenient cover for what really happened.”

“The Black Pearl,” mumbled Ben through a mouthful of apple.

I bit into a piece and had to take a beat to appreciate the single most delicious piece of fruit I’d ever experienced. Like I’d been eating cardboard all my life until now. What the hell was in the water here?

“You’re familiar with events leading up to the Great Pacific War and the North China Incident?” Murase asked, steepling his finger over the steaming teacup.

“I think Americans call it the Boxer Rebellion,” added Ben.

I nodded my head slowly. “Bunch of foreign powers invaded China. Something about peasants rebelling.”

Midori muttered something under her breath about Americans and ignorance. Ben gave her a wide-eyed quelling look. Murase just continued. “Japanese troops went inland as far as Hokushin, North China. I was a sergeant in a troop that made it all the way to the Heilong Jiang.” He lifted his chin in Dad’s direction. “Herai Akihito was my captain.”

Something heavy settled in my belly: the tea’s bitterness suddenly unpleasant. I knew Dad was older than he appeared, but I knew nothing of his life before Portland. This didn’t sound good. Where was Kwaskwi when I needed a sarcastic quip or snarky banter to deflect what I suspected was a heavy, emotional freight train of a revelation barreling full speed my way?

“We were soldiers caught in a nationalist fever of the Meiji Restoration. The ignorant Yihequan, the Boxers, massacred innocent Christians. Our job was to create a lasting place of peace and prosperity in the Pacific Basin.”

“I’m sure Koreans and Filipinos would have a different view of that,” I said, suddenly uneasy that Yasukuni shrine, the headquarters of the Kind Council, was a place not only Kamikaze pilots were honored, but also generals who most likely were responsible for things like raping Nanking or massacring Manila.

Ken couldn’t be blind to that history. So either his loyalty to the Council meant that Kind had nothing to do with World War II military decisions or that Ken was mixed up in a Council that condoned bayoneting babies. Oh crap. What was the name Ben had called Rockabilly? Tojo? That had to be a common name. Rockabilly couldn’t actually be the World War II prime minister convicted as a war criminal. Right? Please!

“The army had to cross the Heilong Jiang, but the Black Pearl lashed out at any Kind who dared come near. It wrecked the army’s boats and sabotaged bridges. Pressure from military headquarters, both Kind and human, was mounting, and then the Council gave permission to remove the threat of the Black Pearl permanently.”

Midori and Ben both looked overcome with sadness. The Kind turning against an ancient spirit. Even with as little as I knew about Kind history, this seemed wrong.

“So they sent Dad.”

“Yes,” said Murase. “Captain Herai boarded a raft, waited for the Black Pearl to show itself, grabbed its tail, and hung on for dear life. I was standing on the far bank, well away from the water, and I was soaked to the skin by the time the Black Pearl stopped lashing Captain Herai around. It went quiescent. Captain Herai convinced the rest of the Kind in the army that we couldn’t kill it. That it was valuable. We coiled it up into a railroad car and shipped it back home.”

“Here?”

“The Council wanted the Black Pearl far from the population and their base of power in Tokyo. But not too far away. This was unprecedented, keeping an ancient one from another country prisoner. Your father brought him back to his hometown.”

“Dad stayed in Herai village to keep eating the Black Pearl’s dreams? Then how did he get to the states?”

Murase sighed. “Captain Herai spent the end of the Pacific War eating many grievous dreams. The fall of Manchukuo, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the post-war famine.”

“The only thing Dad ever told me was he couldn’t take living in Japan anymore, but it wasn’t just the war suffering here, was it?” I imagined eating the dreams of starving children. I’d wanted to throw up after experiencing Professor Hayk’s memory-dream of his murder of a boy. What would it be like to be surrounded by soldiers whose dreams were all atrocities?

Ben shrugged. “He disappeared after MacArthur and the Occupation left.”

“He ran away from the Black Pearl?”

“I think so,” said Murase. “But only Yukiko-san and Kawano-san know for sure.”

“A pair of fascist fools,” said Ben.

Midori returned the wide-eyed quelling look to her with interest, but Ben was on a roll. “No sense of shame. No sense of responsibility. Stupid old traditions blinding them to the changing world. If the Americans hadn’t forced a no army constitution down Hirohito’s throat, we’d still be marching toward Northern China—”

“I’m sure Miss Herai doesn’t need a politics lesson.”

Time for some straight answers. “I don’t. But you obviously need me and Dad. You need a Baku. Why now?”

Everyone but Murase suddenly couldn’t look at me. Ashamed? Murase sipped his tea noisily, straining it through his front teeth. Stalling. Ben broke the silence. “You and Herai-san are the last known Baku to exist. There’s no one left strong enough to hold a dragon—and the Black Pearl is restless, possibly waking from her long, quiet sleep completely. If she isn’t freed, they’ll either kill her trying to keep her here, or she’ll die trying to free herself.”

The last Baku? My sinking feeling turned into a full-blown heart drops to your stomach, roller-coaster dive. So many questions. I was temporarily paralyzed. Why were there no other Baku? Why was the Black Pearl waking now? The Council wanted Baku to eat the Black Pearl’s dreams to keep it quiet, but The Eight Span Mirror wanted Baku to eat dreams for some other reason?

While my thoughts swirled around and around Murase’s face seemed to relax, grow fuzzy at the edges, and then resolve itself into a gentler, more symmetrical arrangement. A salesman face like Ken used when he wanted to make me trust him. Murase was Kitsune. Or was he Hafu like Ken and Ben? “You must be tired and hungry, let’s get you some of Midori’s famous cold noodles in sesame sauce.”

“I would literally kill for noodles in sesame sauce right now. But I’m going to walk out of here and flag down the first person driving past if you don’t stop stalling. Just tell me what you want me to do!”

The corners of Pon-suma’s mouth twitched. Murase sighed. “The Council wants to keep the Black Pearl sleeping. It’s one of the most powerful dragons in the Pacific Basin. The Black Pearl’s ambient magic ensures the Council’s powerful position. Japan lost the war, but the Council still rules. The Kind influences human politics. As long as we hold the ancient one, China’s growing global ambition will be held in check. North Korea won’t dare attack us.”

“We used to be able to rely on our treaty with the U.S.,” said Midori. “But who knows what will happen there, now. Okinawa keeps protesting. The Philippines are kicking out U.S. bases. Your politics are growing insulated and prejudiced. The world is turning isolationist.”

“Brexit isn’t our fault. And we didn’t elect the Filipino President, either.” I was a little stung by the dig at America. As if some long-dormant patriotic gene came awake the moment I left my own country.

And the U.S. was my country.

Ben pushed her teacup away. Her gaze, as annoyingly dark and penetrating as Ken’s, fixed on me. “The Armenian dragon in Portland. You released it, didn’t you? That’s what Ken said.”

Was that a good thing? I nodded slowly. Ben’s palm slapped the table, making the cups clatter. “Let’s bring her now. She can do it. She’s Baku!”

Murase sucked air through his teeth. “It’s too soon.”

“Ken is on his way,” said Ben.

“What?” said Pon-suma.

“I forgot to turn off my own cell phone. He tracked me here,” said Ben.

Pon-suma gave a disgusted snort. Midori shook her head. Ken was on his way. Relief settled over me like one of mom’s brightly patterned island quilts. On the heels of the relief came prickling pride. Stupid to feel relief at the thought of Ken being here. I couldn’t trust him completely after his actions with the Council and his not telling me all this Eight Span Mirror nonsense. There was an Eight Span Mirror somewhere in the Amaterasu goddess myths. It was annoying not having my phone to look that up. “Do what? What’s too soon?”

“Touch a sleeping dragon, take the dreams into yourself,” said Murase quietly. “And then use that power to release her.”

Her. A female dragon. Well that was new. And somehow worse in some tangled, sexist way I didn’t want to acknowledge to myself. “So my crash course on Kind politics didn’t cover this, but you said the Black Pearl has ambient magic? She’ll what, take that back to China? Won’t that upset the balance of power?” Way to go, Koi. Using phrases like balance of power. As if you understood what was going on. Fake it til you make it.

“Now you see why the Council is so keen on making sure Herai-san is under their control,” said Ben.

“The Council’s ambitions are thinly disguised fear,” said Murase. “Fear of having to listen to new voices, fear that their outdated world view will crumble. If we release the Black Pearl, the Council loses the luxury of fear. They will be forced to find a more inclusive way to survive.”

For a moment, I wondered at the passion behind Murase’s words. I had an inkling of what it must be like to be ethnically Hafu in Japan—I’d heard the stories about the Zainichi Korean, the second largest ethnic majority that was still treated like outsiders. Was it the same for Kind Hafu? Did the Council unfairly treat those with a human mother or father? Ken had never talked about that. Like he never talked about a lot of things. Important emotional things.

I bit my lower lip. Okay, Dad. Now would be a massively superb time to wake up. But no, relying on Dad was just as bad as waiting for Ken to rescue me.

“Let me talk to my father. When he wakes up, I can ask him the same questions.”

“Yes, but he may not wake up for hours,” said Ben. “You are awake, here, now. Ken just texted me two minutes ago. He’s already in Morioka. We need to do this.”

Murase gave me a smile with eyes filled with slow-moving currents of grief. “It’s time for you to meet the Black Pearl.”