CHAPTER NINE

“Ramusak Ceh!” yelled Pon-suma directly in my ear.

I ripped my hand from the Black Pearl’s skin with a wrench that rocketed from palm to heart and down to my gut, like ripping my tongue from a frozen lamp post. “God damn it!” I pushed at the middle of Pon-suma’s chest, and he went flying, skidding away across the slime-covered floor. The giant tail came down on Ken with a sickening crunch, too loud in the dark space. My heart clenched. Static, along with pressure rising inside my skull, clouded my eyesight.

I hesitated.

Ken’s scream of pain penetrated the fog. Tugging my sleeves down to cover my hands, I pushed with all my might at the nearest dragon-coil. It shifted with a muffled thunder. I dropped to my knees, half-blind, searching with fingers for Ken’s face.

The scream stopped. “Don’t.” Ken’s words came out strangled through gritted teeth. “Don’t touch me.”

I pulled back hands sticky with blood, pressing fists into my sides instead, trying to contain the ballooning pressure. So cold. Why is it so god damn cold?

“Move the dragon,” said Pon-suma. It had shifted, now blocking our exit. On hands and knees, I scuttled between the dark blob that was Ken and the coils of green light where the Black Pearl had settled again.

“Shikari shite,” I said. Hold on. Panicking, I shoveled my hands between the nearest coil and the floor. With another full-body muscle spasm the Black Pearl’s dream crashed over me in a flood of sun-kissed water, ratcheting up the pressure ballooning my already full insides. The kernel of Koi-flame flared bright with Ken’s strength, his forest dream bubble holding against the Black Pearl’s torrent. I jerked the coil back with all my might, going ass-over-teakettle. I clocked the back of my head on the cave floor.

A pair of hands lifted my shoulders gently. Pon-suma’s voice said softly, “We have to carry him out together.”

I stood with his help, head reeling, static scrawling across my vision. “Too dangerous. He’s hurt.”

“He’ll die of hypothermia.”

“No,” said Ken, teeth chattering so hard he could barely speak. “Koi can’t—”

Whatever he was going to say was cut off with another muffled groan of agony as Pon-suma grabbed his shoulder and beckoned me over. We gripped forearms and slid Ken onto our makeshift sling, careful not to brush bare skin. He groaned again, a sound that ripped my already tender insides to shreds, but the solid weight of him straining my arms was an anchoring release for the pent-up energy of the dreaming twisting my guts like ropes.

Pon-suma managed to hold Ken one-armed while he wrestled the door open. As the door closed, the slithering, moist sound of the Black Pearl’s restless coiling chased after us, but the dragon didn’t try to follow. Halfway up the stairs, Ken bumping and limp between us like a broken rag doll, Pon-suma leaned against the rock wall. “Murase-san! Ben!”

There was no answer from the darkness above. The door was closed, the rectangle of light gone, but at least it was warm on the stairway. Ken lost consciousness. I bent my head to his face, relieved to feel his breath warm on my cheek, but I couldn’t keep hold of one thought for very long. My brain was filled with a whirling chaos of fear; the Black Pearl’s river, a stabbing bayonet, the bone-deep terror of seeing the Black Pearl’s tail come down over Ken’s body. What just happened?

Pon-suma moaned and muttered something in that strange language he’d yelled earlier under his breath. Ainu? Stupid. Ken is dying and you’re wondering what language that is? Pull yourself together!

“Why is it so cold?”

“Yukiko-san. This cave freezes energy,” said Pon-suma.

No time to unpack that information; we had to get Ken further up the stairs. Pon-suma’s foot slipped on something fluffy covering the top stair, and he came down hard, spilling all of Ken’s weight into my arms. Luckily the wall was there to keep us from falling any further. I barely managed to hold us both up, even with borrowed unnatural strength flowing through me from dream eating. Soft things floated in the air, stirred up by the draft of our movements.

Pon-suma reached out and plucked one from its lazy trajectory, comical in his dismay. It was a feather. A blue jay feather.

“Kwaskwi, open the god damn door or I will rip your head off,” I yelled.

The door slid open with a jolt, and a familiar wide grin in an oversized face blocked the sunlight. “You wound me, Koi. No thanks for the rescue? Imagine how tedious it was to travel hours with an angry Kitsune. And only J-pop on the radio!” Kwaskwi gave an exaggerated shiver.

Good to see you, too, Asshole.

“Help!” Pon-suma lifted Ken up, and Kwaskwi stepped back, allowing us to bundle ourselves back out into the fresh air. The pain blossom in my head began to wither, but I was still angry at Kwaskwi, myself, the stupid cave floor and the dent it put in my head, not to mention Pon-suma and the rest of his gang.

“We need to get Ken to the hospital,” I said, as we laid him gently on the grass. In the sunlight he was pale, bright spots of red high on his feverish cheeks, eyes working madly under shut lids and pant-legs frozen solid with blood or dragon slime.

“No hospital,” said Pon-suma. “Midori.” He glared at Kwaskwi. “What did you do to them?”

Kwaskwi gave an innocent shrug and pointed back down the path. Ben and Murase sat, tied to the historical marker signpost, blue feathers scattered all around them and poking out from their mouths like a gag.

Ben’s left eye sported a darkening bruise. Parallel, angry-red scratches marked both forearms, but Murase looked untouched.

“Ken, not me,” said Kwaskwi. He had on his creased leather jacket, chains, and royal blue flannel shirt, so couldn’t quite pull off innocent. “He might have been a little mad.”

“Let them go,” said Pon-suma.

“Anything for you, princess.”

Pon-suma ignored the accompanying smarmy grin and went over to Ben and Murase to begin untying them. With a retching gag, the two vomited up black bile and feathers, coughing as Pon-suma pounded them on their backs.

Kwaskwi put a careful hand on my shoulder. “Ken will be okay.”

All I wanted was to melt into that touch, give up fighting the pain and the pressure of the dreams I’d eaten, and let Kwaskwi take over, but I didn’t quite trust him. I wasn’t sure who anyone really was here in Japan.

Despite the fact that Ken had come for me, run into the Black Pearl’s den and now lay wounded on the grass, bleeding and unconscious, I wasn’t sure of him, either.

I wanted more than anything to believe Ken had done that out of caring for me. But he’d given my name to the Council. There was a betrayal here, and I didn’t know how deep it ran. I was shaking and starving and bone-tired and didn’t know how long I could stave off the tell-tale tremble of my lower lip.

Kwaskwi pulled me into a tight, one-armed hug, burying my nose in the warm leather of his jacket which smelled of Old Spice and sunshine. He let me go just as Pon-suma approached, Ben and Murase in tow.

Ben ran to her brother and knelt, checking Ken’s pulse at wrist and neck. “Steady, but weak.”

With a groan, Ken’s eyes fluttered open. “Don’t, don’t make Koi touch the Black Pearl! Ben, she’s not ready.”

“Too late,” said Kwaskwi. Ken tried to sit up, and groaned, clenching his fists around Ben’s wrists at the pain.

“What happened?” Ben demanded.

“The Baku couldn’t handle the Black Pearl. The ancient one broke the Bringer’s legs,” said Pon-suma. “We need to get him to Midori.”

“I’ll bring the car,” said Murase, and took off at a fast jog back toward the field.

“Koi?” Ken’s eyes were open, but he still seemed confused. I knelt on the other side of him. “I’m here. It’s okay.” I ached to touch him, to feel his solid reality, to reassure myself he was here, breathing.

“I found you.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m sorry. My sister is stupid.”

“Yes.”

“Savage,” said Kwaskwi. He stuck one arm out and bent his head into the crook of the other one. Dabbing? Seriously?

“Hey!” Ben protested.

I gave her my best Marlin Pierce stare-of-disapproval. “You kidnapped us.”

“Still!”

The car bumped over the grass and maneuvered past the sign to stop close to the white picket fence. Pon-suma and Murase came over with a blanket to improvise a sling. Ken reached out, grasping my sleeve. “She stays with me.”

“We’re all going the same place,” said Murase. We rolled Ken onto the blanket and into the back seat of the car, me squishing in awkwardly with Ken’s head on my lap. Pon-suma and Murase got into the front seat.

“What about me?” said Ben.

“You can go to hell,” said Ken in a voice like he’d swallowed gravel.

Murase rolled down his window. “Rendezvous at the museum.”

Ben looked at Kwaskwi. Kwaskwi gave his trademark grin and made little flapping wings at his sides. “I’m covered.”

“Let’s go!” I said. We pulled away, leaving Kwaskwi and Ben staring after us. I wanted to ask Ken if he’d found my rest stop message, what he’d had to do to reach me, and why he hadn’t told me of the Black Pearl, but he was in pain and that wasn’t a conversation anybody else needed to hear. Pon-suma and Murase most definitely spoke some English, so there was no private language for us. My whole life I’d had Japanese to talk about secret things with Marlin and Dad. This felt like a gag, words building up in the back of my throat.

“You’re okay?” Ken’s face looked oddly alien upside down on my lap.

“It was like Thunderbird,” I said. “I couldn’t break free. But your forest, it grounded me, helped me funnel the Black Pearl’s dreams around the core of myself…” I trailed off, aware of Pon-suma’s eyes watching us in the rearview mirror.

Ken blinked very slowly, and strength drained from his features, as if he was finally letting go of urgency. He was slack, exposed. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I knew you were strong,” he whispered. “Your ability to take power from a waking dreamer, it caught me off guard. So deep, so quickly. But you’re fine. You came back.”

He let a finger hover over my wrist tentatively. Asking permission for touch. His ability to touch me without forcing weird fragments on me was part of our growing intimacy. I got flashes of his forest, but I’d dreamed them so many times, they were almost my own. I gave him a nod letting him know the touch was okay. Nothing would transfer anyway, most likely. I was burned out.

I’d hurt him by drawing on his forest dream to break free of the Black Pearl. Is that why he didn’t want me to touch him in the cave? I pushed damp hair from his brow, and he turned into the caress, lips brushing my palm. Not afraid now.

“You have explaining to do,” I said sternly, but couldn’t stop the answering ache rising from inside me. Out of the Black Pearl’s cave, Ken’s inner nuclear reactor was back in business radiating that delicious body heat. Even hurt and helpless in my arms, his eyes, irises wide and pupils spilling over into the whites, made twin slashes of primal dark that speared right through me.

“Don’t let Murase-san or the Council bully you into anything more tonight.”

“I’m more afraid of what you can make me do,” I whispered.

Ken’s brows furrowed deeply. “Yes, there is that.”

That broke the spell of his eyes. I gave him a light smack. We were pulling into the museum’s circular drive. The bumpy ride over uneven concrete made Ken close his eyes and gasp in pain.

Midori held the front door open. Pon-suma and Murase lifted Ken from the car, leaving behind an empty, cold feeling on the front of my body. I followed after them back into the tatami kitchen room. Midori had them lay Ken out on a low table where she’d already arranged a bewildering array of first aid bandages, iodine, splints, sprays, tubes, and syringes.

“Your text said broken legs?” said Midori.

“The Black Pearl,” said Pon-suma.

Murase looked grim. “He shouldn’t be this hurt.”

“Yukiko-sama’s freezing of the Black Pearl’s cave drains energy as well,” said Midori in a lecturing tone. Then in a softer, more worried voice, “you’ve lost a lot of blood, young man.”

Ken closed his eyes again, skin pale and clammy. Midori turned on Murase. “Where is Ben?”

“She’s coming with the Siwash Tyee.”

I have to ask Kwaskwi what Siwash Tyee means. Later.

Pon-suma picked up one of Ken’s hands and held it out to Midori. “Blue-tinged fingertips.”

“He’s at risk for hypovolemic shock.”

“What’s wrong with him?” My question came out a bit hysterically high-pitched; I couldn’t seem to get a handle on the inner pressure of the dreams I’d eaten. I needed to go punch something or someone.

“Midori-san and Pon-suma-san are trained nurses. Ken will be okay.”

“You’re not O positive, are you?” Midori asked me.

I shook my head mutely. Ken needed the hospital if he was so messed up! Why were they all just standing around staring down at him? He was going to die! And they were all a bunch of heartless, manipulating creatures who couldn’t be trusted. They didn’t care Ken was literally fading in front of them!

“Koi,” said a voice suddenly behind me. Startled, I swung around, all my worry and fear and the restless energy I’d taken from the Black Pearl’s dream surging through me in a black roar of emotion that ended with my fist flying out in a punch. It connected to the middle of Ben’s face.

Ben went flying across the tatami. “Fuck!”

“Language,” said Midori.

“She punched me! On the same eye Ken did.”

My knuckles throbbed. I tried to make my angry face into one of apology. Midori bustled over to help Ben stand up, and then took her by the elbow. “Ken needs a transfusion. Go wash your hands and arms in the sink with antibacterial soap.”

“Silver cannula?” said Pon-suma. Midori gave a brisk nod, and then the two began breaking open antiseptic bottles, surgical tape, and other implements of torture.

Kwaskwi approached from the door with his hands held up in the air. “Don’t attack. Innocent bystander, here.”

I gave him the Marlin death-glare.

“Koi. You’re reacting from eating the Black Pearl’s dreaming. Do something with the energy, walk it off.” Ken’s quiet voice pulled me back to him. I reached for his hand, still hanging over the side of the table where Pon-suma had abandoned it.

Ken opened his eyes. “Go with Kwaskwi. I’ll be fine. Ben and Midori won’t let anything happen to me.”

He didn’t include Murase in that. I put my hands safely behind my back. “I can handle it.”

“If you’re leaving, leave,” said Midori. She was all gloved up holding a syringe filled with a clear liquid. Pon-suma slipped a large needle into a vein in Ben’s hand while pushing me aside with his bony hip.

“What, I’m free to go now?”

Pon-suma gave me an irritated look.

“We could go hit a bakery and get you some curry bread or chocolate croissants,” said Kwaskwi. “They might have mochas.”

My mouth filled with saliva. But no. No running away from this mess. Not even for a mocha. I shook my head.

Murase gestured over to the other table. “Let’s sit, then. We should discuss what happened.”

No shit, Sherlock.

Kwaskwi settled down next to me on the tatami while Murase fetched a small, traditional, long-handled kyuusu and looseleaf tea from the kitchenette. He poured water over the leaves from an electric hotpot and then set out a different set of tea cups of fine, green porcelain. The one nearest to me had a thin web of cracks in the side that had been plastered with a shiny, gold substance.

“We’re not the enemy,” Murase said.

Kwaskwi gave a laughing scoff.

“You kidnapped me and put me in a freezing cave with a giant dragon.”

“I don’t think she appreciates your flavor of friendship,” said Kwaskwi.

I punched him in the shoulder, making his chains rattle. “You also kidnapped and tried to force me into Thunderbird’s thrall when we first met.”

“True,” said Kwaskwi, utterly non-plussed. He turned to Murase. “So there’s hope for you yet.”

I punched him again.

“My eldest interrupted at an inopportune moment.”

“Wait, your eldest?” I repeated.

“That’s an interesting wrinkle,” added Kwaskwi.

Murase stiffened, giving a little nod. Murase was Ben and Ken’s father? He was full Kitsune, then. I glanced to where Pon-suma and Midori were finishing up binding a splint along Ken’s left leg while Ben sat quietly on a chair tethered by a tube to her brother’s inner elbow. Ken’s face showed a glazed, relieved expression. That syringe must have contained some bomb-ass pain killers.

Dad came walking slowly and stiffly into the room, the left side of his face creased with sleep but his eyes clear.

“Dad,” I said, pulling a few more zabuton cushions over next to me. “You’re awake.” And lucid. He nodded in response, eyes flickering over my torso and face.

Murase offered Dad tea in the gold-webbed cup with precise movements redolent of ceremony. Dad received it in both hands and bent over, bathing his face in the fragrant steam. “This cup is cracked and repaired, different from its brothers—it wears its unique history. Now it is more beautiful because it was broken.”

Was Dad having one of his confused spells? But he seemed so himself right now. Tired, yes, but inhabiting his body with the military posture he was known for before Alzheimer’s, or actually the fog that came from refusing to eat dreams.

“If only we all wore our histories so visibly,” said Murase.

“You already know I am broken, don’t make the mistake of thinking it has made me weak. If you take her to the Black Pearl again, you will make me your enemy.”

Something warmed inside me at the strength in Dad’s voice. He was almost the gruff Master Sushi maker behind Marinopolis’ busy sushi counter again—doling out commands to be acted upon at once or else. Murase stiffened, his face as grim as Dad’s. “We are organized far beyond what you remember, Herai-san.”

It was a threat coated in formal calm, and the hairs on the back of my arms stood to attention.

“Your family has done enough damage,” said Dad. “Don’t embroil Koi further in your politics.”

“You brought the Black Pearl here,” said Murase. “You gave the Council access to its dreaming. Your family created these politics.”

“No longer,” said Dad gravely. “I came back for my daughter, not to continue this travesty of what they call survival.”

Funny, I thought we were here to cure his Alzheimer’s dementia. What did he mean for me? It wasn’t me with the massive problems. Okay, some problems. But I was well on my way to my accounting degree and getting my life in order when his secret Baku past caught up with me.

“We strive not at cross-purposes, old friend,” said Murase.

Uh-oh. Breaking out the overly dramatic and formal Kind-speak meant things most likely were going to hit the fan. I sat up, trying to simultaneously weigh the meaning of Midori and Pon-suma’s fierce whispers behind us.

“I turned my back on the Council and its domineering, narrow-sighted machinations.”

“We are not the Council.”

“Then why do you engage in the same underhanded arbitrary strategies?”

Living with Dad had equipped me well for discerning Japanese-old-man seething under a calm exterior. Murase hadn’t moved, not a blink, in the past minute. Under Dad’s scorn he was frozen as a statue, holding back a great rage.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Midori came over, removing latex gloves streaked with Ken’s blood, and put a hand over Murase’s clenched fist.

“Forgive our ignorance and foolishness, Herai-san. We regret placing your daughter in danger.”

“We are all in danger,” grumbled Murase under his breath.

Kwaskwi pulled a steamed cheese-bread out of his pocket like a magician with a rabbit. “Well, you Eight Span Mirror folks are definitely in for it. Ken and I were only the vanguard.” He ripped open the plastic and set the cheese-bread on the table, giving me a sly sideways look like he was daring me to take it.

Midori exchanged a worried moment of wordless communication with Murase. An instant later she unhooked Ben from the makeshift transfusion. Pon-suma slapped a Band-Aid on her hand.

“What?” said Ben.

“The Council is coming,” said Ken. He yawned, eyelids slowly lowering over feral slits of darkness, a full Kitsune face.

“Go now,” said Midori. She ripped off her gloves and pushed Pon-suma between the shoulder blades.

Kwaskwi stood, stretching nonchalantly, but he wasn’t fooling anybody. He was preparing for a scuffle. I nabbed the abandoned cheese-bread. Kwaskwi didn’t react at all. His focus was solely on Pon-suma.

“Not running,” said Pon-suma.

“Tojo can’t find you here,” said Midori.

“I’m not afraid of the Kappa or the Snow Woman,” said Murase gruffly. “We stand our ground.”

Kappa? Seriously? Kawano was a half-froggy river sprite?

Midori knelt again next to him. “We lost our gamble they would only send the Bringer to retrieve the Baku, but we pledged no direct confrontation. If Kawano-san and Yukiko-san come here, they will have no choice but to punish our challenge to their authority. At least for the kidnapping.”

“Not if there was no kidnapping,” said Kwaskwi.

A bit of cheese-bread went down my windpipe. A coughing fit overtook me until Kwaskwi leaned over and thumped me on the back, hard.

“Hey!”

“You’re interrupting the criminal strategizing.”

“Dad?” He’d kept silent, but the set of his mouth and the glint in his eyes told me he was deeply unhappy. “Do you trust them?” I didn’t know if I meant The Eight Span Mirror or the Council.

“Give me your word you will not ask Koi to touch the Black Pearl again and we will lie for you,” he said quietly. “I brought Koi here to show her my hometown.”

It was hard to remember that this was actually Dad’s hometown, like a hundred years ago. “Are you sure?”

“Keeping you ignorant of Kind all these years, of what it means to be Baku, was a mistake. I thought I could protect you. Keep you from my troubles.”

And I ended up a socially awkward hermit afraid I was schizo.

“Isolation isn’t the right answer for the Council or for Hafu,” said Murase. “That is why The Eight needs you, Herai-san.”

“This is why you need them, Koi-chan,” Dad echoed.

“We are your people,” said Ben. “We’ll help you.”

“Unless the Black Pearl drives you bat-shit first,” said Kwaskwi.

“And you,” I asked softly, letting Dad’s familiar care-worn face block all the rest. “Where are your people?”

Dad stared straight back, challenge and sadness tangled in his words. “Gone. They’re all gone.”