Blood Ninja (4 page)

Taro’s father was older than his mother—older than almost anyone else in the village, in fact. But it seemed cruel that this illness had taken him down into sleep and forgetfulness, before Taro and his mother could say good-bye. Taro just hoped now that
his father would recognize him—only once—before he died, and they could speak before his shade went to the next realm.

Taro touched his father’s wrinkled hand—cold, and hard—then kissed him again on the forehead. He had been worried about losing his father for a long time. And he felt like he might at any time lose his mother, too—she could have drowned there by the old wreck, or worse—been possessed perhaps by some vengeful spirit. A chill passed through his body. He didn’t know what he would do if his parents were taken from him.

Returning to the main room, Taro sat down again, as his mother passed him a bowl of rice.

“He’s asleep?” she asked.

Taro nodded. It was a pointless question—his father was always asleep.

They ate, after that, in silence, but the warm food seemed to have a restorative effect on his mother, who got up with some of the old springiness in her body, and began to clear away.

She seemed now as strong as ever. Her face was lined by the years and the harsh water of the sea, but there was still prettiness in the sparkling eyes and the pleasingly oval line of her jaw. She smiled and was illuminated almost by a kind of inner light that only the kindest and wisest of people possess. She gestured to a bowl of mussels. “I brought up some abalone, too. I should be able to sell it to the trader, if he comes tomorrow.”

Taro in turn pointed to the brace of rabbits where they lay in the corner. It was a ritual of theirs to show each other their day’s gatherings. “They’re fat,” he said. “Must have found some green grass somewhere.”

His mother nodded. “Your father stirred, this afternoon. I thought he might wake, but he only mumbled and then slept again.” Her eyes flashed to the shoji screen that separated off the sleeping area. The whole shack was no more than six tatami mats in size, and the restricted space did not allow for much privacy.

“Do you think he’ll die?” Taro asked, his voice cracking as if giving way under the weight of the question.

Taro’s mother looked up, startled. When she spoke, it was with childish force. “No. Never. He wouldn’t leave us alone like that. He never has.”

Taro looked down, abashed. “Of course. It’s just … painful. That’s all.”

His mother looked at him, her eyes kind. “Yes. But what do I always say?”

Taro smiled.
“Ame futte ji katamaru.”

Land that is rained on will harden. Suffering makes us strong.

Taro’s mother nodded, as if that settled it, but Taro pursed his lips. He was suffering; so was his father. But no good would come of it.

His father would only die, and soon. Taro knew it.

It was now fully dark outside and the room was dim, lit only by the fire and by a couple of whale-fat candles. The people of the village didn’t kill creatures of the land, preferring to subsist on the fruits of the sea and avoid killing as the Compassionate One had taught.

But if a whale beached itself on the shore, every available man, woman, and child would be summoned to strip it of its natural bounty: meat, bones, and blubber would all be taken and put to good use.

Taro wasn’t quite ready for sleep yet, so he reached over and picked up his bow, running his hand along its smooth wooden belly, checking the tautness of the string.

“It’s still as good as new,” Taro’s mother said, looking at the weapon in Taro’s hands with a strange, wistful expression. “Just like he said it would be.”

“Like who said?”

The wistful expression left his mother’s eyes and was replaced by a hard, flat look. “Oh, your father, of course.”

Taro balanced the bow in his palms. It was beautiful—curved like a beach, smooth like pebbles washed by the sea, as hard as whale ivory. On the inside of the bow, hidden from casual view, was carved a tiny insignia: three hollyhock leaves inside a circle,
pointing to the center. Taro’s father had made the bow when Taro was a baby, sensing somehow that he would need it. But when Taro had asked about the insignia—which was not repeated on any of the tools his father had made—he had only shrugged. “I felt like carving leaves,” he’d said.

Taro’s mother was still looking at him strangely, as if about to tell him something. He frowned. “This bow,” he said. “I have never seen Father make another. I’ve never seen him carve
anything
. Did he not—”

She cut him off with a sharp gesture, turning at a sudden sound from the other side of the screen.

Taro stood very slowly. It sounded like someone was moving very quietly in the part of the hut where his father slept. Just as he began to move toward the screen, he heard a dull thud as of a body falling.

Father
.

Taro walked around the screen and stifled a scream. His father’s body lay at an angle on the sleeping mat …

… and his severed head lay on the ground beside it.

In the semidarkness the blood surrounding Taro’s father was black on the ground.

Then, as if forming itself from the pool of blood, a figure dressed all in black moved quickly forward, drawing a blade that gleamed in the darkness like a fish glimpsed in deep water. He wore a black mask that revealed only his eyes.

Ninja
.

Taro had time to fix his eyes on the dagger moving toward him, before another blade burst through the man’s chest. The assassin coughed, looking down at the sword point in wonder. Blood bubbled out of his mouth and down the folds of black cloth that masked his face.

He fell, and as his body slumped, another man in black who stood behind him slid the blade from his torso, with a grunt of satisfaction.

Taro blinked.
That ninja just killed that other—

Just then, his mother screamed.

Taro turned and saw a third dark-clothed figure crouched behind his mother. The ninja moved his arm almost imperceptibly, and a knife appeared in his hand. He went to slit Taro’s mother’s throat.

“N—,” Taro screamed, his cry cut off by a hand that came from nowhere and covered his mouth. The figure at Taro’s side pushed him to the ground, just as he pulled something from his cloak and threw it at the man who knelt behind Taro’s mother. Taro saw a gleaming star stick in the man’s masked face, then the ninja fell soundlessly to the ground. Taro had never seen a throwing star before, but he knew this was the legendary weapon of the ninja—the six-bladed
shuriken
.

“Wha—,” started Taro.

“Shut up,” said the man in black beside him. “First, do you trust me?”

“No.”

“Good. That would be stupid, as you don’t know me. But I’m afraid you’ll have to try. Otherwise you will die. Come here.” He stepped over to Taro’s mother, who sat still, her eyes wide and staring.

“You’re … not going to kill us,” she said. “I thought, earlier, when I heard what the merchant said …” She trailed off.

The ninja looked at her blankly. “No, I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to leave, with your son.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but the ninja interrupted. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep him safe. I’m sent by a friend.”

Taro’s mother’s eyes opened wide, then she nodded.

“You will need to lie absolutely still,” the ninja continued. “We are going to make it look as if you are dead. Lie here until there is complete silence, until the screaming stops. Then get up and run. Go to a monastery, go anywhere you like, as long as there is no one there who knows you. Take a different name. Take a vow of silence. But
disappear
. Do you understand? You may never see your son again, but you will live.”

She nodded, mutely, tears streaming down her cheeks. The ninja arranged her on the ground, then took a stick of some dark
red substance from his sleeve and drew a cut across her neck. He followed this with blood from a vial concealed under the folds of his mask. Then he turned to Taro. “To you, she is dead. Yes?”

Taro shook his head, tears welling hotly in his eyes.

The ninja slapped him. “Do you want her to die?”

Taro shook his head again, still crying. “I c-can’t leave her,” he mumbled. There was also his father’s body, lying headless on the sleeping mat it had occupied for so long, getting stiffer and colder by the moment. Taro was sickened by what had happened to his father, by the way that this once strong fisherman had been laid low by illness, then dispatched into death by an assassin who had not hesitated to murder a sleeping man. Would anyone even mourn him, if Taro and his mother were gone?

The ninja sighed, appearing to hesitate. Then he unshouldered a light fabric bag, as black as his clothes, and withdrew from it a pigeon, its wings tied. The pigeon cooed lightly but seemed undistressed—Taro guessed that it was an experienced messenger.

“I had this for an emergency, but I suppose this counts as one, since if your son doesn’t come with me, you will both die in the next few moments.” The ninja tucked the bird into Taro’s mother’s robe. “When you are safe, write a note for your son. Tell him where you are. The bird will reach me.”

“Thank you,” whispered Taro’s mother. The ninja grunted, irritably, as if he were conscious of making a mistake, and annoyed with himself for being unable to resist it.

Then she gave Taro one look—one single look in which all her love was encompassed. Taro almost cast his eyes down, embarrassed—for she looked at him as if he were a scroll containing the words that would save her soul.

She turned away. The ninja looked at Taro, and sighed again when he saw Taro’s eyes cut to the screen behind which lay his father’s body. “He’s dead,” said the man. “You will do him no honor by joining him.”

“But …,” mumbled Taro. “I shouldn’t just let him lie there. I should help his soul by—”

The ninja raised a peremptory hand. “Help his soul by taking vengeance on his killers,” he said. “Not by dying with him.”

Numbly, Taro nodded. He looked one last time at the screen, then gripped the bow in his hand.

The ninja looked at it. “Do you know how to use that thing?”

Taro nodded.

“Good. There are others coming. We will need to fight.”

Taro looked at the dead man behind his mother’s seeming corpse, then at his savior. They were dressed identically, in loose black robes and with black scarves covering their faces, leaving only the eyes visible. “You are with them,” he said, wonderingly. “And yet you save me.”

“Yes,” said the man, simply.

“Did you kill my father?”

“No. Enough questions.” He pulled out a short-sword. Less elegant than a samurai’s
katana
, it nevertheless had a brutal, businesslike air. Then, without warning, he slashed at Taro with the sharp edge. It was a trap! Taro dodged backward, felt the blade slashing his kimono, had time only to think
I can’t die now—

—and the black-clad man stepped back, holding a piece of Taro’s robe. “We don’t have much time,” he said as he stepped over to the doorway and pinned the scrap of robe with his sword to the wooden jamb. The fabric was positioned so as to be visible from the outside. “They’ll soon wonder why we haven’t come out. Get over here and draw your bow. Get ready to fire.” He beckoned Taro, positioning him on the side of the door opposite the scrap of robe. “They’ll think you’re waiting to ambush them on the other side.” And with that, he crouched, putting his finger to his lips.

Sure enough, a moment later another ninja whirled into the room, the blade of his sword making a silvery circle in the air as he brought it down where he thought Taro was standing. The sword met only thin air, and the man let out a grunt as the sword struck the side of the door, where the scrap of silk fluttered in the breeze.

Taro didn’t hesitate. He let go of his arrow, and it crossed the
narrow space at the speed of thought, burying itself in the man’s neck. The ninja dropped to the ground.

“Good,” said the crouching ninja. “A true warrior’s instinct.”

Taro looked down at the dead man, and suddenly a terrible sickness rose in his throat. He doubled over and was sick. He had never killed a man before—and he had done it so easily! He had barely paused. He was a monster!

“Ah. A warrior’s instinct but not a warrior’s stomach. Come, there are still more and we must hurry.” Quickly, the man crossed the open doorway—shimmying to the side as a silver star sang through the air at body level—and took back his sword from where it had bit into the wood.

He grabbed Taro’s arm and pulled him to the back of the room. “We’ll break out through the shoji,” he said.

The ninja kicked a hole in the thin wooden wall and stepped through, pulling Taro behind him. Outside was black as ink, the only sound the beating of the waves on the rocks below. Then the light of a torch flared nearby, and a voice called out. “Hello? Is everything all right?”

The huge form of Hiro loomed out of the darkness. The ninja beside Taro reached for something in his robes, but Taro put a hand on his arm. “No. He’s my friend.”