CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Truck key, I presume?”

The corners of Yukiko’s mouth curled up ever so slightly. Amusement at the situation she found us in? Or something else? I refuse to feel like a teen caught making out on the front stoop.

Ken bent down to pick up his dropped makeshift cane. “Lead on.”

Yukiko’s expression didn’t change, but the air grew a bit sharper with the scent of icicles. Ken’s breath made a frosty cloud. Slowly, Yukiko raised her other hand and pointed a slender, bone-white finger tipped with a sharpened, crimson-painted nail in my direction. She doesn’t want me along?

Ken shook his head, eyes pleading, but Yukiko did not relent. Her hand closed into a fist like she held something by the handle, and then jerked toward her chest in a flap of billowing sleeve.

Again Ken shook his head.

The Rebel Alliance are not all on the same page.

“What does she want, Ken?”

Ken sighed, bringing his free hand up in a fist to rub his eyes, flinching at the pressure against the darkening bruise on his cheek. He squared himself off against Yukiko. “The Black Pearl has waited long enough. Do you really want to risk Murase-san or Tojo-san discovering us while I explain? We won’t get another chance.”

Yukiko tossed the keys toward Ken. He snatched at them, but they fell just out of his reach into the wet grass. With a grunt, Ken leaned over to pick them up. Anger propelled me forward, stepping on the keys before his fingers could touch them.

Ken looked up with a confused frown.

“I am going nowhere without explanation.”

“There’s no time.”

“Make. The. Fucking. Time.”

Yukiko arched an eyebrow in utterly condescending amusement.

“The Council never asked my opinion. Murase didn’t tell me what he was sending me in to. Dad never explained. You all just assumed the good little Baku would march blindly along with your plans. Well, not tonight.”

Ken straightened, eyes flickering from my mouth to Yukiko to the trees and back like he’d get burned if his gaze settled anywhere too long. “We have a truck,” he said quickly. “You and Yukiko-sama will keep the snake weakened long enough for us to muscle it into the truck. We will drive to the Aisaka River where we can release the Black Pearl and wake her completely from your father’s Baku-induced dream prison with some level of safety. From there it’s downstream to the Pacific Ocean at Hachinohe, and then through the Tsugaru Straits and west to Sakhalin Island where she can enter the mouth of the Amur River.”

“The detailed itinerary wasn’t the problem I’m talking about.”

Ken hobbled closer. “I know what the problem is. It’s not trusting your own heart. I know you, Pierce Koi AweoAweo.” My full name in that husky voice made little hairs stand all up and down my arms. “Your loyalty, your true caring. You are horrified by death. You value people, even ice hags and dragons. You freed Ullikemi from his long imprisonment, even though it cost you. You forgive, you are not overcome with bitterness and recrimination, and your intentions are without malice or greed. This gave me hope. For me. For the Black Pearl.”

“Hate to interrupt the Oscar-worthy monologue, but Tojo’s kempeitai patrol is about to get lucky.” Kwaskwi dropped down from a low-hanging branch of the tree nearest Yukiko. She nodded gravely when he flashed her his usual wide grin. He nodded at Ken. “Looking mighty hale there, Lazarus.”

Ken used my momentary confusion to tap me between the shoulder blades so I stumbled forward on the path.

“Et tu, Brute?” I said to Kwaskwi. He held up his hands in surrender. “Whoa there, I’m just eavesdropping. I’m not mixed up with Emo boy’s nefarious plans.”

“Now’s not the time for your brand of joking, Siwash Tyee,” Ken said gravely.

Yukiko glided after Ken, unconcerned about our latest addition.

“So you knew nothing about this?” I waved in Ken’s direction.

“Just following along for the ride,” said Kwaskwi. “And protecting my assets.” He cuffed Ken’s shoulder. “Massive points for fooling the trickster.”

“This is not your fight,” said Ken formally, but he continued herding us forward with his stick and palpable urgency.

“I am a stakeholder,” said Kwaskwi, showing even more teeth. “And I’m curious, too—I can’t imagine any scenario where this plays out without you getting your asses handed to you by Tojo.”

If only this headache would go away. It was hard to think, to muster up and arrange all the things I wanted to batter Ken with before I followed him to the Black Pearl.

In my heart, I knew from the first time I touched her that I couldn’t leave the Black Pearl dragon chained here for Tojo and Kawano to use. She was a prisoner, in pain. It was wrong on so many levels and I couldn’t leave her without trying to help. For the same reason I couldn’t ignore Ullikemi’s wild ache to be free. But was I strong enough? Ken seemed to think so.

Mom had also called me strong way before I believed it. When she was trying to tell me it was okay to leave the hospital, escape her dreams of dying. She’d been unable to sit up, but I’d tucked the Captain Adriamycin red satin devil pillow Marlin sewed for her underneath her head so she could look at me without craning her neck.

“Do you know why I named you Koi?” she had said. “Because you were always so sturdy, so strong, even when you were just a keiki. And I wanted you to remember, when it got hard.” Here, Mom’s voice had cracked. She coughed, and I took her water tumbler from the side table and carefully held the plastic straw to her lips, inflamed with mouth sores despite the Biotene the nurses urged on her.

She swallowed with such obviously painful effort my own throat ached.

“Koi can live on any continent, in almost all temperatures. Survive even in the muddiest water. And that’s what you’ve got, yes?” I looked through the glass window where the OHSU nurses in their annoyingly flower-patterned scrubs hustled back and forth down the corridor.

“Muddy water,” Mom repeated.

“It’s okay,” I said, pulling down my sleeve to hold her hand again.

She batted weakly at my sweater-covered fingers. “You’ve got to take care of yourself when you spend all day stirring up what lies on the bottoms of ponds.”

I hadn’t understood then, just thinking she was spouting more of her Marine biologist pop psychology. But she’d been alluding to the family monster in the room: Dad’s and my weird dreaming.

Then Mangasar Hayk shattered my careful world of denial and took Marlin to force me to help him use Ullikemi’s power to wield magic that messed with people’s memories. I got Marlin back and set Ullikemi free with a little help from Ken. Now I truly believed in my own strength. But that strength came with some attached strings that I don’t think Mom would ever call good.

My Baku hunger had almost drained Kwaskwi’s friend the ice hag, Dzunukwa, of her life. The heady rush of energy I got from eating a living, waking Kind dream was invigorating and terrifying. Dad had chosen to stop eating dreams for years and risk living in a senile fog rather that give into the hunger for the Black Pearl. What was the Nietzsche quote? Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

I shivered, wishing I had my cardigan or that terry cloth towel-blanket thing. Ken and Yukiko walked forward utterly focused, their eyes sharp as glass with determination.

Why did I think Japan would hold the key to helping me figure out the Baku bits of myself when Dad had run away from Kawano and the Council decades ago?

No more running away. That was my mantra now. No more hiding out in my apartment. No more relying on Marlin for social interaction. I was inextricably tangled in the Kind zaniness, unable to go back to my normal life. I have to see this through. Just not sure I know what I’ll be when I reach the other side.

We emerged from the wooded path onto a gravel road. Everyone’s footsteps but Yukiko’s crunched jarringly loud despite the night chorus of crickets in the tall, plumed grass lining the sides of the lot.

Restlessness like biting ants crawled up and down my spine, the energy from eating Ken’s dream fizzing and popping inside me like Marlin’s eighth grade experiment dropping mint candy into cola.

I needed to do something.

In the shadowed far end of the lot under drooping beech trees squatted a wattle-and-daub walled, traditional Kura storage building with a peaked roof of curved tiles. One high dark window peered down like an eye.

All my years of horror movie watching told me this was the last place I wanted to be, but Ken strode confidently around the corner so I followed reluctantly, hoping spiders were the scariest thing the Kura contained.

The other side of the Kura sported a weirdly modern, metal sliding door. Ken and Kwaskwi raised it slowly, minimizing the noisy rattle, to reveal the cutest little truck I’d ever seen. Covered in a green tarp on top, the bottom was yellow with the picture of a surprised Panda with huge eyes and ‘Sakai Moving Company’ emblazoned in hiragana block letters.

“Get in the passenger side,” said Ken.

“You’re driving with that gimpy foot?” said Kwaskwi. He exchanged a concerned glance with Yukiko. “We’ll meet you at Jesus’ Grave.”

The two waded into the plumed grass and then disappeared under the beeches’ shadows, Yukiko a flash of white that was suddenly swallowed by the warm darkness. A flock of jays lifted in an eerily silent cloud from the tree canopy and headed east toward the sliver of rose horizon. Morning was upon us. Ken opened the driver’s side door. “Please, Koi,” he said in English. A concession. “This is not the way I wanted things. I regret much, but I can’t regret you being here.”

The base of my throat tightened with anger, with a torrent of hot words about illusion and mothers and what else he could regret, but I was already moving toward the truck. He swung himself up into the cab. I slid into the passenger’s seat. Instead of buckling in, I sucked in all that Baku restless energy from eating his dream and slapped Ken across the face with an open palm.

His head cracked satisfyingly against the driver’s side window, the red imprint of my palm rising up like a sunburn over the indigo bruises.

There’s my strength, my pure heart. Bastard. “I regret being here.”

Ken sat up, head bowed, breathing in gasps while his hands gripped the wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. Hurting.

What am I doing?

Part of me was glad. Glad to wield physical strength against him, while the sane part of me urgently whispering about becoming a monster was drowned out by the rush of satisfaction. Let him feel pain. Ken had muddied the water here, it was his fault we’d come to this. I was just taking care of myself.

Without a word, he turned the ignition key, and pulled out of the lot slowly.

The truck’s motor and open windows made talk blessedly difficult. The slap had released the pent up energy from dream-eating, but blowback hangover was happy to fill in the vacancy. Eating powerful Kind dreams made me super-cranky, kind of like PMS on steroids. If only I could remember that.

My stomach informed me it was ravenous, and my throat felt dry and scratchy like I’d contracted strep. We jostled and jounced our way to the Tomb of Jesus while I pulled out my phone and caught up on Marlin’s texts. She was a shade less histrionic with the emojis since I told her Dad had several lucid periods. She had messaged a snapshot of Dad’s prescriptions and pill schedule laid out on her kitchen table. The familiar pineapple and palm-leaf patterned tablecloth underneath made my heart give a little twinge. I missed her affectionate bossiness but was simultaneously heartily relieved she wasn’t here. One less Pierce-Herai to worry about.

Gosh, Dad hadn’t had his pills in over twenty four hours. They were back in Tokyo with our luggage. But did it matter? Yukiko’s freezing magic seemed to work better than actual Western medicine on keeping the not-eating-dreams-induced dementia at bay.

The truck came to a stop. We were here. Ken pulled onto the concrete path leading to the grassy mounds and cut the engine. “You don’t,” he swallowed audibly. “If you are afraid—”

“Keep digging that hole, buster,” I cut in. Then modulating my tone to something less knife-edged, I looked out the front windshield. “Don’t patronize. Don’t pretend this isn’t exactly why you cozied up to me in Portland. It’s insulting.” Ken reached for my hand, I snatched it away, pressing it close to my chest. “What the hell? No touching.”

“There’s so much I want to…”

The boy seriously needs to finish his sentences. “I get it. We’re here to release the Black Pearl before the Council can stop us. I don’t like how I got maneuvered here, but it’s clear this is the right choice. Tojo gives me the creeps. But somehow, despite the kidnapping, I like Midori and Ben.”

“That’s good,” said Ken, folding his arms across his chest. Probably consciously mimicking my body posture or some other kind of psychological bullshit. At least he wasn’t using Kitsune illusion to make his face prettier. “So you’ll try?”

“Yes, I’ll try. But don’t take it the wrong way. I’m not doing it for you.”

“I know,” he whispered in Japanese. “But that doesn’t stop me from wishing…from wanting to be near you, or loving how you can’t keep from helping. No matter what happens, I wanted you to know that.”

“Aw hell to the no.” I jammed the door open and dropped out of the truck. He did not get to pull out the L-word. Not kosher. It was time to get this freak show on the road and deal with Ken and the angsty turmoil later.

Yukiko stood motionless by the mound with the biggest cross, while a dozen jays perched on the crossbeam above her. She nodded as I scrambled over the white picket fence, and then she glided over and put a hand on my chest bringing me to a sudden halt.

“What?”

Those glacier eyes caught my gaze, enfolding them in icy attention that momentarily soothed my aching head. Then chill breath slithered down my neck and arms. It felt like I was being probed body and soul. Unwilling to risk accidental skin-to-skin contact, I waited. She arched an eyebrow and tilted her head to one side like a quizzical bird.

“It’s okay. Yes, I do this willingly,” I said. “Even if the pretense that brought me here was a lie.”

She nodded again, lowering her hand to my stomach. She tapped it twice, the corner of her mouth raised ever so slightly.

Ken had somehow maneuvered himself over the fence. “She’s telling you to eat something before you go down there.”

Still caught in Yukiko’s gaze, I answered sharply, “Great idea. Who’s got a breakfast buffet hidden in their pockets?” The jays lifted, jostling each other and ruffling wings in silent laughter.

“Actually…” Ken stepped up. “I was saving this for an emergency,” he said, pulling a thin rectangle from his magic pocket. “And I guess hoping for forgiveness points.”

“Shut up and give me chocolate,” I said.

“Right.”

I am really angry and betrayed and food will not make me forgive you.

But Ken had brought Dagoba Xocolatl, not only artisanal but Oregon chocolate. The bar loaded with my heaviest emotional baggage about food, Dad, and the break-up of my family.

Marlin and I inherited our need for theobroma cacao straight from Mom, who scorned the typical Hawaiian milk chocolate macadamia stuff as tourist fodder and taught us to eat bean-to-bar chocolate from a small company on Kauai. Dad, on the other hand, would grumble in surly, male Japanese the equivalent of real men don’t eat sweets at dessert time.

Except for Xocolatl.

For some reason both Mom and Dad loved the chili bite. Even when Mom was nauseous from the Adriamycin, she could keep that down. And Dad would literally snatch the last square from Marlin’s palm if she was inattentive.

The wilds of Aomori didn’t contain a store that sold this, so Ken must have brought it all the way from PDX. Chocolate doesn’t give him the right to use the L-word. This doesn’t make up for manipulation. But I was horrified to discover tears welling up in a hot veil over my eyes.

Chewing the dark spiciness, the exact shade of Ken’s eyes, I hid my stupid reaction by tugging at the grass panel at the top of the mound I knew hid the secret entrance. The jays suddenly lifted away from the crossbeam, flying in a swarm clockwise around the cross and then shifting counter-clockwise: a swirling, blue-feathered funnel. They released a piercing cry and then pinwheeled out in all directions, revealing Kwaskwi leaning casually against the cross, arms resting on his chest. Such a drama queen.

“Having trouble with the secret lever?” He reached down and pushed at something at the base of the cross. The panel slid open, revealing the narrow opening. Yukiko floated into the opening with boneless grace and disappeared down the stairs. I coughed, the delicious chocolate bitterness turning to a chalky bile.

“Are you coming?” I said to Kwaskwi, jerking a thumb at Ken. “He’s injured.”

“I’m sensitive to cold. It gives me a sinus headache.”

“You don’t need the trickster,” Ken scoffed.

“You were planning to send her down into the icy cave of an ancient one with only Yukiko?”

“She’s Baku, she is strong.”

“And you’re several kinds of idiot, Bringer.”

Ken bristled. “I do what I have to do. Don’t doubt Koi. She’s more than capable of eating a few dreams to make the Black Pearl groggy enough not to lash out but still awake enough to move. I’ll come down as soon as Yukiko releases the cold.”

“Without even giving her a jacket?”

Ken sheepishly shrugged off the windbreaker and held it out to me. I gave him an incredulous look. “Keep it.”

“You’re mixing politics with your love life, and we all know that usually turns out rosy,” Kwaskwi muttered.

I shoved a hand in the direction of both boys. “Enough. Kwaskwi are you in or out?”

“Is this a favor you’re asking? If so, I’ll need a token.”

I glared at him. I am so not in the mood for this. “You’re doing this out of the goodness of your soul. Also so I won’t grab your smirking face and eat the dreaming heart right out of you.”

“Ah,” he said, smiling even more broadly. With a courtly bow and overly grandiose sweep of his arm toward the entrance he added, “If that’s the case, after you, madam. The Black Pearl awaits.”