Authors: Zoe Marriott
“Like in
Snow White
?”
“Er, no. It went something like the king and queen were the most beautiful people in the world, and they loved each other very much, but they had children that were – not right. Deformed. And the king only loved beautiful things, so he threw the babies into the sea.”
“Whoa. What a dick.”
“Yeah. And then the queen died. Her husband refused to accept that she was gone, so he followed her into the land of the dead, but when he found her she refused to leave with him because, you know, she was dead and it wasn’t right. But the king said—”
“He would love her to the ends of the earth, and to the darkest depths of the sea, and to the highest heights of the sky,” Shinobu broke in softly. “The world itself was not as great as his love for her, and he would never leave without her. And so she, weeping with joy, agreed to go with him, back out into the light.”
There was a short, charged silence. I propped the katana against my knee and defiantly rubbed the goose pimples off my arms. “Is that a common fairy tale too?”
“It is the story of Izanagi and Izanami, the father and mother of all the Japanese gods.”
“Gods?” I repeated.
“Correct.”
Jack shrugged impatiently. “Well, that’s a sweet, romantic story and all, but I can’t see what it has to do with us or the sword.”
“That is not the end of the tale,” Shinobu said. “Can you remember the rest, Mio-dono?”
“No, because my dad came along. And the next day…” I took a deep breath.
“Oh, hell,” Jack said. “That was when—?”
I nodded wordlessly. Jack shifted down the sofa and put her arm around my shoulder. Finally I managed to ask, “So what did happen next in the story?”
Shinobu took a deep breath. “The god Izanagi took his wife’s hand and began to lead her out of Yomi—”
“Where?” Jack interrupted.
“Yomi. The Underworld. A place of endless darkness and endless night, populated with all the creatures of men’s nightmares.”
“Not a top holiday destination then,” Jack said.
Shinobu cracked a tiny smile. “I would not want to visit it. Izanagi did not like it either. He had succeeded in his quest and was sick of darkness. So he took the comb from his hair and made it into a torch to light their way. His wife, Izanami, cried out, and when he turned to look at her … he saw that she was rotting. Her flesh had decomposed, and her skin was covered in maggots and parasites. She had eaten the food of Yomi and was truly dead.”
“Yuck,” said Jack.
“Izanagi was terrified and disgusted. He could not stand anything that was flawed or imperfect and despite all his promises, his love for his wife was destroyed. He flung her away from him and ran. Izanami followed him, sobbing, broken-hearted and begging him not to abandon her after he had given her hope. But he ignored her. And she became filled with rage and hate and sent all the nightmarish monsters of Yomi after her husband to kill him, so that he would be forced to stay with her in the Underworld for ever. However, Izanagi’s fear had given him swift feet. He reached the entrance of the Underworld ahead of his pursuers, and blocked it with a giant stone, so that Izanami could never escape.”
“I stand by my original opinion. This guy is a dick,” Jack said.
“Pretty much,” I agreed quietly. “Is that the end?”
“Not quite. Izanagi performed the rites of divorce there, outside the entrance to Yomi. Izanami screamed at her husband through the stone that she would kill one thousand humans for every day that she was trapped in the darkness without him. And Izanagi, uncaring, replied that he would ensure one thousand
five hundred
were born each day to replace them.”
“Lovely. Thanks a lot, Izanagi and Izanami,” Jack said. “But I still don’t get why Mio’s granddad would make a point of telling her that story right after showing her the sword. There isn’t even a sword in it.”
“Again, it is a tale that all Japanese children know. It may mean nothing,” Shinobu said. Despite the reassuring words, his face was troubled.
“You might as well say it,” I told him.
He sighed, then reluctantly went on. “After her husband abandoned her, Izanami became the Goddess of Death. Mistress of Yomi and its denizens, the creatures of darkness.”
It took me a beat to join the dots. Then the goose pimples I’d just got rid of prickled up over my skin again. “Let me guess. That’s what the Nekomata is, isn’t it? A creature of darkness. So when it kept going on about its ‘Mistress’—”
Shinobu shook his head. “The monster could have been speaking of any supernatural creature more powerful than itself. The stories say that Yomi is teaming with malevolent spirits. We must not leap to conclusions.”
I picked up the katana in both hands. It sat across my palms, glinting in the light. “Do we have anything else to go on?”
“The Goddess of Death,” Jack repeated flatly. “Are you kidding me?”
All at once it seemed ludicrous. I groaned. “I don’t know. She’s apparently been killing people off since the beginning of time without any help. Why would she need some big, macho sword to make her happy?”
“Bang goes that theory,” Jack said, relieved. “What about this Harbinger guy? Where does he fit into things?”
“I have no idea. He said that if I didn’t protect the sword –
boom
!
– end of the world. That was when he skewered Shinobu to the floor.” I shuddered.
Shinobu shifted to kneel beside the sofa. I felt a tentative touch on my leg, above my boot, and fixed my eyes on the pattern on the katana’s saya, holding my breath. Long, warm fingers gently circled the delicate bones of my ankle. Little electric sparks of excitement bounced up and down my leg.
“There is no need to be upset,” Shinobu said. “Although it was painful, I was not injured.”
“It
was
injuring you,” I said, risking a look straight into his eyes. “He said that he was repairing ‘damage’ to the sword. But I could see you dying. You were fading away into nothing.”
“‘Fading away,’” Shinobu repeated. His palm slid down to rest on my foot. I shivered and Jack rubbed my shoulder again, thinking I was still upset.
“So, wait,” Jack said. “The Harbinger didn’t want to take the sword for himself. He wanted to repair it? He was telling to you to protect it? Is it possible that he’s one of the good guys?”
“No.” I shivered again, and this time it was nothing to do with Shinobu. My grip on the katana tightened, fingers clenching until they felt numb. “The Nekomata has nine tentacles and fangs like knives, and it’s still not as scary as him. Whatever the Harbinger is, he’s definitely not one of the good guys.”
H
alf an hour later, the pizza and Coke were all finished and Jack had just slumped into an exhausted sleep on the other side of the sofa.
I slid down to the floor to make a pile of the boxes and cans on the coffee table, tucking the katana in next to my right leg so that I could feel it close.
My left knee bumped into Shinobu’s thigh.
His long legs were lying, slightly bent, under the coffee table, and his elbows were propped on the edge of the table top. I glanced up at him. His eyes dropped hurriedly from my face. I waited for him to look at me again, but when he did, I found my gaze slipping away from his.
“So, earlier,” I began, slightly rushed, as I arranged empty Coke cans in a line. “You know, when I was fighting the Nekomata and you were all ‘strike the heart’? Exactly where is the heart on that thing anyway? I mean, the middle of it moved around. A lot.”
“When I fought it, I located the heart by observing the placement of the creature’s head relative to the limbs in its mantle.”
“Oh. Right.” I tried to imagine “observing” anything in the middle of the screaming terror of facing that thing, let alone acting on it, and failed.
“Not something that you were taught in your kendo lessons,” he said after a moment. His voice was gentle.
“Nope.” I abandoned the mess on the coffee table and picked the katana up instead. Then I tried to make my voice sound light and careless. “They pretty much expected your opponents to have just the four limbs. And you don’t aim for the heart anyway – that’s not a point-scoring thrust.”
He nodded. “It is a shame they did not teach you better.”
My hackles went up. “I was one of the best in my class, actually.”
“I know. Your form was always excellent, and you were fast and graceful. But your kendo is a sport. It teaches you how to score points. Not how to kill.”
“I … I’m not sure anyone can teach me that. I’m not sure I’ve got it in me.”
Is that really true? Or do I just wish that it was?
“Everyone has it in them. You must only be frightened enough, desperate enough, angry enough. The trigger is different for each person, but it is there, nonetheless. It is the dark side of our humanity, I think.”
In my mind, I saw Shinobu attacking the Nekomata. The lightning-fast, ruthless movements, the way his body turned into a blur when he struck. How the Nekomata had cringed from him when he held the katana.
It
had feared
him
.
Shinobu was the one who had taken the monster down today. In the kitchen he’d practically laid it out for me, and I’d still managed to muff it up. Looking back, it seemed impossible that I hadn’t lost the sword and my life. If it hadn’t been for him, I would have.
There was a part of me worried that if I got that good, I’d end up hurting people. It had felt safer to get really good at blocking my killer instinct, my natural aggression. But the instinct was still there. It was what had saved Shinobu, and probably me and Jack, from the Harbinger in the hospital today.
Didn’t that show something? If I kept holding myself back, was it possible I could get myself – or worse, someone else – killed?
Jack and Rachel needed me. And I needed help.
I gulped. “Shinobu, do you think you could teach me to fight like that? Because right now I feel … completely unprepared. Actually, completely unprepared is an understatement.”
“It would be my honour.” To my surprise, he stood up, pushed the coffee table into the gap between the two sofas and then stepped away, gesturing for me to rise.
“Right now? I don’t want to wake Jack.”
“Then be quiet,” he said simply, his voice a low murmur.
He had me take up the beginning kendo stance and grip the hilt of the sheathed blade. My injured arm ached a little, but I pushed the pain down as Shinobu walked round me, examining me with focused, intense eyes. With a few words, he improved my grip, altered the placement of my legs and corrected my posture.
“Your teachers cared about making your form pretty. I care about you not dying. In a real fight the only thing that matters is drawing blood without gifting any to your opponent in return. The only point you wish to earn is to hurt or damage him enough that he will draw back and give you room to strike again, until he either retreats for good or falls down dead at your feet. That is your focus. Your own survival. Nothing else matters.”
I nodded slowly. “OK.”
“Try to relax your muscles,” he said, standing behind me. Both hands hovered in the air above my shoulders. The warm, callused skin of his thumbs brushed the back of my neck as he shifted. I nearly bit my tongue.
“The instinct to tense is natural,” he went on. “But it works against you, telegraphing your strikes to an experienced opponent. In armour this risk is not so great, but fighting as you are now, it is a deadly weakness. Stay relaxed. Stay loose and flexible. Allow yourself to dodge and move quickly, to change course if you must, without giving your enemy the advantage of tracking your movements.”
I nodded again, taking deep, calming breaths and hoping that he couldn’t hear my heart hammering away against my sternum.
Shinobu instructed me to go through one of the basic kata, a set of minutely choreographed movements that drilled the elements of sword work into muscle memory. At first I tried to move quickly, carelessly, because I’d completed the kata so many times before, because my bad arm was itching and it made me impatient. He stopped me and made me begin again, slowly, so that he could correct me as I moved.
His body flowed through the space of the living room alongside mine. Unconsciously, I fell into rhythm with him, my limbs echoing the economic, unhurried grace of his.
“The sword is a part of you,” he murmured. “Remember that. It is part of your own body, the razor-edged extension of your own flesh and bone. It is the shining point of your will moving through the world, making your intentions reality. A true warrior reveals his own soul with every flash of his sword. Remember?”
I kind of thought I did. This didn’t feel like anything anyone, even my grandfather, had ever taught me but – it felt right.
Natural
. Like some part of me did remember. Like I was reconnecting with something that I had always instinctively known, deep inside.
The pain in my arm faded. The awareness of Jack sleeping on the sofa faded. Everything faded except the sword and Shinobu. We flowed smoothly from one kata to the next, unspeaking. It was like a dance. A dance that we knew as well as breathing. One we had been born to dance. Together.
Finally, as if we had agreed it beforehand, we both came to a halt. I found myself standing in the shelter of Shinobu’s larger body, the shape of him pressed lightly into my back, his hands lying over mine on the hilt as gently as a silk scarf wrapped around my skin.
I turned my face towards him, my head coming to rest on his chest. I could feel his heart pounding under the skin there. His eyes were already waiting for mine. The grey clouds in the darkness glowed with something like exultation. His gaze slowly drifted down to my lips.
He’s going to try to kiss me again
.
And this time I’m not going to stop him
.
I felt my face flush, my heart rate flipping out of control. I drew in a shaken breath. “You’re very good at this. Have you taught someone before?”
His face broke into a sudden, heart-breaking grin. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. “Of course I—”