Deadly Wish: A Ninja’s Journey

  Jinnai stumbled a pace or two away from me. “Stay close,” I told him, reaching out to snag his sleeve.

  “Where did she go?” he whispered.

  “Where did who go?” I demanded impatiently. As far as I could tell, we were all here. That was the problem—we couldn’t leave.

  “She’s gone. She left. She left me.” Jinnai’s face crumpled with misery, and he looked six years old instead of seventeen.

  “I’m sorry,” Otani mumbled, laying a hand on the hilt of his shorter sword, loosening it in the sheath. “I should be dead, too, I should be dead, I should be …”

  Yuki’s face was wet with silent tears.

  Jinnai twisted his arm against my grasp. I dug my fingers in. “What did I do wrong?” he muttered, shutting his eyes, shaking his head. “They all like me. Everyone does. Everyone but her.” His eyes opened to stare at me. “And you,” he whispered.

  “Ichiro!” I shouted frantically. “Which way?”

  Every time my eyes shifted to a tree close by, I felt as if another, out of my line of sight, shuffled closer still.

  “I don’t know,” Ichiro gasped. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I can’t do anything right. My sister could tell. My uncle, too. Even my father, he knew. How weak I am. How useless. Everyone always knew.”

  We were trapped. The forest had us, and it was all my fault. My friends had come to find me, and they were going to die for it.

  Still clinging to Jinnai, I used my other hand to swing the flickering torch at the encroaching trees. “Get back!” I shouted. “Get away!”

  But I didn’t know how to fight this kind of demon.

  Yuki slid to her knees. “Don’t give in,” I growled at her.

  She held a small black berry, oozing sticky juice, between her fingers. She looked down at it, and then back up at me. She pointed.

  “That way?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  I held the torch high and dragged Jinnai along, shouting at Ichiro to bring Otani, following Yuki as she darted between two trees. Did she truly know which way to go? Or was she only pursuing a phantom that the trees had stirred in her brain? I didn’t know. But I knew that movement might save us. Standing still was death.

  And Yuki did seem to know where she was going. She ducked under a curtain of glossy green leaves that nearly swept the ground. I didn’t dare hesitate. Pulling Jinnai behind me, I did the same. Ichiro and Otani shoved their way through a moment later.

  We were under a vast dome of branches, free of the prickly closeness of pine and cedar. Here there was space to move and air to breathe.

  More of the small black berries that Yuki had found earlier crunched beneath my bare feet. A sharp, stinging smell rose to my nose. Camphor. We were under the canopy of the ancient camphor tree I’d glimpsed from the bell tower.

  The crisp scent, something like medicine, seemed to clear my mind a little. Otani and Jinnai stood, blinking in bewilderment, and Ichiro shook his head in wonder.

  Yuki laid both hands on the deeply furrowed trunk of the camphor tree. She touched her forehead to it.

  “This isn’t one of the bakemono trees,” Ichiro said reverently. “It has its own spirit.”

  He put both hands together and bowed respectfully. Then he gave me a pointed look until I did the same.

  “It’s protecting us?” he asked Yuki.

  She looked up and nodded.

  “But we can’t stay here,” I said. We couldn’t cling to this tree forever, no matter how kindly it might feel. I still had to reach the harbor.

  The forest had nearly defeated us before. Was there any way through it?

  Well, there was one. My hand twitched toward my pocket.

  The fox had warned me that the demon in the pearl would try to trap me, forcing me to make one last wish.

  Had it succeeded? Was I caught between making a wish and setting a demon free—or staying here until we were forced by thirst or hunger out among the demon trees once more, to drown in our own misery?

  Yuki blotted her wet face with her sleeve and pointed again.

  “You can get us out of here?” Otani asked, his voice ragged. He turned to me. “How does she know?”

  I looked at Yuki, saw the certainty on her face. I shrugged.

  “She knows,” I said.

  Yuki didn’t even seem to need the sputtering torch I still held as she led us between close-set trunks and clinging branches. She’d always been at home among plants, I thought, as I sweated and stumbled in her wake. Even a forest of bakemono trees could not steal that from her.

  The dark thoughts might be crowding in on her, as they were on me. But still, she knew her way.

  I hoped.

  Otherwise, we were all doomed. And the pearl would lie shining among serpentine roots and heaps of evergreen needles, among my bones, until the day—

  No. I recognized those thoughts. I pushed them away.

  Now, even with my night vision ruined by the torch I held, I could glimpse a gray shimmer up ahead. Moonlight on stones. Then I was ducking under one last, low branch, pulling Jinnai with me, twisting free of a clawed twig that tried to snatch at my hair, turning in the fresh, cool air to see Otani and Ichiro stagger from the trees as well.

  We were out. We were free.

  Before us was the temple wall, more than twice my height. Behind us, the forest melted away to a stand of cedars only a few trees thick, with a camphor in the center and a garden on the other side.

  Otani rubbed both hands across his face, not so much to clear away tears, I thought, as to hide for a moment. Jinnai shuddered. He dropped my hand. Ichiro drew in a long breath and let it out slowly.

  “None of it was true,” he said firmly, looking at each of us in turn. “That was a demon turning our own thoughts into weapons.”

  “Are you so sure, little monk?” Otani let his hands fall, and his face, showing dimly in the torchlight, was bleak. But at least he did not seem inclined to atone for the deaths in his past by drawing his sword against himself.

  “Are you giving up the fight so easily?” Ichiro answered, with just the right steel in his tone to make Otani’s back stiffen.

  “We can’t spend time talking,” I told them. Thanks and gratitude and even regret would have to wait.

  Ichiro nodded. “Kata still has to get to the harbor.” And he turned his gaze to the temple wall.

  “I’m no spider,” Otani objected, looking up as well.

  I surveyed my little army. Yuki, Jinnai, and I all knew how to scale a wall. Ichiro might have learned some new skills during his two years in a temple full of warrior monks, but climbing walls was unlikely to be among them. As for Otani, with two swords through his belt and heavy armor under his rough clothes—there was no chance.

  “The two of you go around. Not back through the wood,” I said quickly, and thrust the torch into Ichiro’s hands. “If you meet any monks, Ichiro can talk them into letting you out through the gate. Meet us at the harbor if you can. Yuki, Jinnai—” I nodded at the wall.

  “Wait.”

  Before we could start to climb, Jinnai gently took my bloody hand in both of his. Working swiftly but precisely he used a strip torn from his cloth belt to bind up the cut across my palm.

  “Hands are important,” he said quietly, glancing up at me as he tied the bandage. “My mother taught me that.”

  His fingers were warm, and the tight bandage eased the pain I had not been letting myself feel. I looked into his clever, narrow face, ruddy in the torchlight, and felt words shrivel on my tongue.

  What did I owe him—all of them? Thanks? Apologies? Promises? Warnings?

  I didn’t know. All I could do was nod my gratitude to Jinnai. He smiled.

  “Here, Flower,” Otani said, dropping to one knee and cupping his hands. I stepped into the support he’d made, and he lifted me to his shoulders. From there I easily found cracks for my toes and fingers. It was not long before I was at the top of the wall.

  Otani gave the same he
lp to Yuki and Jinnai, and they followed. As they climbed, I glanced down at Ichiro and Otani, the monk and the bandit, in their pool of torchlight below us.

  We couldn’t risk noise. I lifted a hand in farewell. Ichiro smiled back. Otani gave me a mock bow.

  One by one, Jinnai, Yuki, and I dropped down onto the streets of the dark and sleeping town.

  “No more alleys,” I told Jinnai. He nodded and dashed along a lane of shuttered shops. Yuki and I came after him. We turned quickly left, then right, and arrived at the wide avenue that led downhill from Ryujin’s shrine to the harbor.

  The air was fresher here, and the night was beginning to fade. Blue tinged the gray along the horizon. Jinnai was running easily alongside me, Yuki at my back, and now we could see the boats, dark dreaming shapes in the water, bristling with masts that stood straight and black against the slowly lightening sky.

  Thin threads of smoke were spiraling up from the small huts near the shore, and a few fishermen were emerging, heading for their boats. They were on their way to catch the retreating tide—and I needed to do the same.

  The huge ship I’d had my eye on earlier was still at the jetty. Two square sails had been hoisted, ready to fill with wind and move the vessel away from the shore. Only the anchor rope at the stern and the lines tied to the jetty were holding it in place.

  I began to spit curses in short bursts between my teeth each time one of my feet hit the ground. We’d be too late. Once the ship pulled away from the jetty, how could I sneak on board?

  “They’re still loading cargo,” Jinnai puffed at my side. “There, look!” Two bearers were jogging up the jetty, carrying a bundle slung from a pole balanced on their shoulders. A man standing near the ship—I took him to be in command, from his wide-legged, confident stance and his exasperated shouts—waved at them to hurry.

  We did the opposite, slowing down as we approached the harbor. No need to catch all eyes with our frantic pace. By the time we reached the stony beach, we were walking sedately, even as impatience and frustration burned in my gut and heart.

  We ducked beneath the jetty, and my hand flicked my knife out. A figure was sitting slumped on the wet, muddy stones, her back against one of the pilings. She lifted her head. Blood was smeared across one cheek. Dull eyes tracked our approach, and I felt a snarl rise in my throat.

  Okiko? Here?

  But in the next moment I realized I’d been wrong. This was not the traitor who’d sold me to Saiko.

  This was her sister.

  SEVENTEEN

  Yuki threw herself down by Aki’s side. Her quick, deft hands tugged the girl upright, patting at her shoulders, her ribs, her stomach. A faint cry escaped Aki’s lips when Yuki pressed too hard.

  Yuki’s eyes met mine. She held up bloody fingers.

  “I’m sorry, Kata,” Aki mumbled, her words slurred. “I couldn’t kill her.”

  I came to kneel beside her.

  “She betrayed the mission,” Aki whispered. “She betrayed …” Her voice trailed off, as if she were waiting for someone else to finish her sentence.

  “You. Me. Everything,” she said weakly, when no one did.

  I knew that even if Yuki could stitch up Aki’s wound, stop the bleeding, keep infection at bay, she would never be whole again.

  I’m the one who is sorry, I wanted to tell her. I should never have sent you the black feather. I should never have called on your help.

  But I had no time. The tide was slowly but steadily pulling away from the land.

  I turned to Yuki instead. “Stay with her. Take care of her.”

  Yuki nodded. And then, her voice husky and raw as if every word hurt, barely audible over the low growl of the surf against the shore, she said the only thing that could have saved Aki.

  “We are all your sisters now,” she told her.

  I got back up, sheathing my knife, to take hold of Jinnai’s sleeve and pull him away. Yuki also rose, lifting Aki to her feet. She helped the injured girl up the beach.

  I should have left the twins to their acrobatics, Yuki to her herbs and potions, Masako to her family. I should never have drawn them into a mission that was none of theirs.

  These were not thoughts whispered to me by some demonic forest hungry for my life. These were simple truths.

  If I’d left my friends alone, Aki and Okiko would still be sisters. Otani would not have been within a breath of drawing his sword against himself. And Jinnai would not have risked his soul.

  My heart contracted inside my chest, withered to powdery dust, and fell apart, leaving me hollow, empty, alone.

  Except, of course, for Jinnai.

  “What next?” he asked, watching soberly as Yuki helped the limping Aki away.

  I wished I knew. If I’d had more time to study the ship earlier, I might have a plan. As it was, I just had a single, faint hope—a hope that might serve Jinnai as well as myself by getting him far away from me.

  “Can you create a diversion?” I asked the thief.

  “What kind?”

  “Anything. Steal something from the cargo. Push the captain off the jetty. It doesn’t matter, as long as they’re not watching what I do.”

  Jinnai nodded. He took a step or two into the ocean, eyeing the jetty overhead. He seemed ready to jump up and swing himself onto the boards, but a stone turned underfoot and he fell into the water with a startled squawk.

  The stone Jinnai had slipped on, green with moss and slime, rolled into deeper water as if he’d kicked it loose while falling. Then it bobbed to the surface.

  A stone? Floating?

  As Jinnai sat up, soaked and shivering, the stone sprouted clawed arms, spindly legs, and a head like a turtle’s—except I’d never seen a turtle with malignant eyes and a mouthful of spiky teeth.

  Jinnai saw the kappa at the same moment I did, and floundered away with a look of horror and a great deal of splashing. I leaped, grabbing hold of a beam overhead, the holes and hollows in the ancient wood giving my fingers purchase. Then I swung my feet to kick the vile little creature out to sea where the current seized it and swirled it away, just as startled heads appeared over the edge of the jetty to stare at Jinnai.

  I don’t know what Jinnai might have originally been planning for his diversion, but he had enough sense to seize the chance that the kappa had given him. “Help! I can’t swim!” he shrieked theatrically, flinging himself backward, thrashing with his arms, and effectively hiding the fact that the water all around him was barely three feet deep.

  I dropped back into the shadows under the jetty as voices called and feet pounded overhead. He’d given me my chance; now all I had to do was take it. Quickly I ran and dove, skimming the surface of the shallow water and sinking down deeper as soon as I could.

  Long strands of seaweed swept around me, as if I’d dived into a nest of snakes. I pushed through, stroking for the black bulk of the hull ahead of me. My chest tightened with the need to breathe, but I didn’t dare come up yet. Even with all of the commotion Jinnai was making, the ship’s crew might spot my head breaking the surface.

  I caught sight of a single long line that stretched from the ship’s stern to the bottom of the harbor—the anchor rope. Grabbing hold of it, I let it guide me to the surface. When I came up for breath at last, I was between the thick anchor line and the stern of the ship, hopefully sheltered from view.

  The sailors had gotten a rope down to Jinnai, still in the water. He was clinging to it and loudly calling out his gratitude and blessings on his preservers. Silently I sent my thanks and perhaps a word of apology his way, drew in a second breath, and sank again.

  When I opened my eyes under the water, squinting from the sting of the salt, a face was looking directly into mine.

  My first thought was that I had encountered a corpse. Her skin was an unhealthy white, with a faint sheen like mother-of-pearl. There seemed to be no end to her long black hair, which swirled around us like the seaweed.

  But as she slowly opened both her black eyes and
then her wide mouth, I knew she was alive.

  She also looked familiar.

  I’d seen this face before, in quiet pools, in a cloudy image deep within a brass mirror. This woman adrift in the water looked exactly like me.

  “First you,” she whispered, her words coming out in a mass of silvery bubbles. She reached toward me with two thin, clawed arms that sprouted at what would have been her shoulders had she been human. “Then him.”

  I realized with horror that the tendrils and curls of seaweed I had just swum through were not seaweed at all. They were the long, green-black strands of her rippling hair and the coils and curves of her endless body. That body was long enough so that her head would attack me here, while her tail dealt with Jinnai near the shore.

  She was a nure onna. A snake-woman.

  I pivoted in the water and brought up a foot to kick at her face, while my right hand snatched my knife from its sheath. She looked quite surprised. Perhaps she was accustomed to prey so startled or frightened by her appearance that they didn’t muster much of a fight.

  Still, she was quick enough to dodge my kick, which was slowed by the weight of the water. Something soft slipped over my ankle and yanked tight. The nure onna laughed, trapping me in a net of bubbles, blinding me even worse than her drifting hair and the sting of the salt.

  My left hand, flailing through the water, snatched the anchor line and clung as the pressure around my ankle tried to pull me down.

  For a moment my body was taut, my lungs constricting, my throat beginning to ache for air. Grinding my teeth with the effort, I bent the knee of the trapped leg, bringing my ankle up high enough that I could aim a blow with the knife in my right hand, slashing at the loop of the snake’s body that held me like a fetter.

  The nure onna shrieked as my knife hit its target. The pressure on my ankle loosened, and I shot up so that my head broke the surface. Across the water, I caught a quick glimpse of Jinnai, struggling in earnest now, clinging to his rope but unable to pull himself up. I had no doubt that a loop of the snake-woman’s tail held him, the same way she’d tried to hold me.