Gloria Oliver (2 page)

The samurai ignored him.

As his death didn’t immediately manifest itself, Toshi’s eyes shrank back to normal. He made no attempt, though, to remove his hands from his mouth.

With dread-filled fascination, he watched the samurai’s fleshless hand as it took the rolled map and with another undid the string holding it closed. He observed the skeletal fingers as they spread the map out over the top of the counter.

All the old stories were true. Demons did walk the earth. But why was this demon here? He and Master Shun had done all Shinto prescribed in order to keep out of the reach of evil or mischievous spirits.

Shinto—The Way of the Gods—had made them aware of the spirits that inhabited every rock, tree, and mountain, and which spirits were best avoided, and how. The two of them had exorcised the shop and its living quarters above on New Year’s like they did every year, driving the evil spirits out and good luck in.

They’d gone to the temple and made the prescribed offerings. The prayer strips were all in place. Had the gods decided not to protect them? What had Master Shun done to bring such evil to this place?

“Are all known reefs and other hazards of the area contained within this map?”

The samurai’s voice reached out to him. He nodded rapidly, his hands still clamped over his mouth. He suddenly tried crawling back into the beam behind him as the samurai’s empty stare turned toward him, a flash of eerie green light momentarily filling the mask’s slits. Sweat poured down the side of his face as he realized with a start the samurai hadn’t seen his nod and was therefore still waiting for his answer. He forced his hands to move away from his mouth.

“Y—yes, sir.” He could barely keep his words from stumbling over each other. “It’s … it’s all there, as far as I know. Master Shun has spent a lot of money getting the gaijin to help him make accurate maps.”

He clamped his hands over his mouth again, knowing he’d just told more than he liked. The samurai’s stare shifted away from him back to the map.

“You can read this map? The numbers, the words?”

He hesitated a long moment before nodding as the samurai’s eyes turned toward him again.

“Could you guide someone with it if you had the gaijin instruments?” he asked.

Toshi stared at the samurai, caught offguard by the question. Should he lie? Very few people had the opportunity to meet gaijin, let alone learn their ways. The demon couldn’t possibly know the gaijin merchant they’d contracted had taught him a lot more than had been required. Even Master Shun didn’t know how much he’d learned. As a demon, he wouldn’t sense the lie, would he?

“Well?”

The deep voice didn’t sound happy to be kept waiting. Green fire flared in the snarling mask’s eyes, and Toshi knew he couldn’t take the risk. Though he had a horrible feeling he would regret his truthfulness, he nodded.

“Fetch me paper, ink and brush.”

He cringed against the wall, not understanding the reason for the request.

“Move.” The samurai’s fleshless hand dropped to the hilt of his katana.

Driven by the commanding tone as well as the unspoken threat, Toshi bolted from where he stood to the back of the store.

Searching for the items requested, he hurried back, the skin on the back of his neck prickling as he noticed the samurai standing between him and the door. He almost dropped the wooden inkwell on the counter as he tried to put the requested items down. Laying all the supplies within the samurai’s reach, he scurried back to stand against his wooden beam.

The samurai’s skeletal hand reached out and expertly took hold of the thin, long-handled brush. Through frightened eyes, Toshi noted as each of the delicate bones in the hand moved with careless grace. Goose bumps covered his arms and back as he saw there was nothing holding the bones together.

With elegant fluidity, the samurai inked the brush and then began to write. Despite himself, Toshi appreciated the evenness of the samurai’s strokes. The writing was very clear, and he had no trouble reading it despite it’s being upside down to him. With morbid curiosity, he read the message the samurai was writing for Master Shun. Literacy had been one of the few unexpected gifts he had gained since he’d been sold as an apprentice.

His face drained of color as he realized the meaning of what he was reading.

“No! Sir, please don’t do this,” he pleaded. “Master Shun doesn’t want to sell me. I’ve been his apprentice for too many years. You mustn’t do this, sir. You mustn’t do this!” Fear overwhelming his sense, he leapt forward to grab the offensive piece of paper. Before his fingers could even brush its surface, the samurai’s bony hand lashed out and caught his wrist.

Toshi stared in desperation at the glowing eye slits as an unearthly cold spread into his arm from the samurai’s fleshless hand. The cold moved through him like a living thing, paralyzing him where he stood.

Never loosening his hold on the boy’s arm, the samurai returned to completing his message.

As the grisly metal face looked elsewhere, Toshi found his eyes and numbed mind free again. He tried to scream so he could wake up Master Shun or attract the watch—anything that might get him away from this demon—but his vocal cords were as frozen as the rest of him.

He read the note again and again, noticing as the samurai finished it that it lacked a signature. Who was this demon? Studying the family crest again, Toshi thought he might have seen it somewhere before. Was it important?

The samurai reached down and brought out a hand-sized silk sack from within the lacquered armor. The jingle of coins echoed through the room as the samurai let the sack drop on the counter. He then reached within a small bag at his side and brought out a long bamboo tube. He carefully rolled up the map and placed it inside. Returning the tube back to the bag, the samurai turned his burning green eyes in Toshi’s direction.

“Come,” he commanded.

The intense cold that had kept Toshi rooted to the spot lessened. He walked hesitantly around the counter, the samurai pulling on his wrist. His worried eyes swept through the shop, a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach telling him this would be the last time he’d ever see the place he’d called home since he was six. With a sweeping sense of loss, of leaving all he had ever known, he stopped and planted his feet on the floor, not willing to let it all go so easily.

Without looking back, the samurai yanked his arm, forcing him to pitch forward. Landing hard on his knees, Toshi felt his eyes fill with pain-induced tears as the samurai then pulled him toward the door. The snarling mask, with its glowing eyes, glared at him without the slightest sign of pity or mercy.

With a soft
whoosh
, the samurai slid open the shop’s paneled front door and wrenched him to his feet.

“Now walk.” The samurai’s free hand landed on his sword’s hilt once more, reminding the boy of its silent but deadly threat.

Toshi looked away, hating the way he felt as he realized he had no choice. He slipped on his old sandals, sitting just on the outside of the store entrance, and stepped out of his old life forever.

Keeping his eyes on the dirt road, he walked on as the samurai set an easy pace away from the shop.

As they walked, a thin fog sprang up around them. He shivered, cold inside and out. In an instant, all that he was being forced to leave behind flashed through his mind: Master Shun, quirky and strange though he was; the Kawa family next door and their gaggle of children; the sweet dumplings he always bought during festival nights from the old woman near the temple; his room and his few possessions; the friends he’d made from the gaijin ship. His heart ached.

Very few lights were on in the bottom floors of the many two-storied buildings surrounding them on either side. A number of the lights in the living quarters on the second floor had already gone dark as well. Only the howling wind and the lonely call of a stray dog disturbed the silence as he was led down the street in the direction of the docks. He shuddered under the warm night breeze as the samurai strolled on as if he were lord of everything around him. Toshi refused to allow himself to look at him, to look at the monster that was ripping him away from all he knew. The scent of the demon’s clinging seaweed wrapped about him as they walked.

The buildings changed as they approached the docks. The wood-and-paper homes grew smaller as they crowded in side by side. The wail of a hungry child or a quiet, lonely moan occasionally escaped into the street, the smell of human waste and rotting garbage growing ever thicker. The samurai appeared to be oblivious to it all, yet for Toshi these sounds only too clearly reflected the despair and unfairness welling up inside him.

He slipped a hateful glance at the samurai. Of course, it wouldn’t bother a demon if there was suffering and misery in the world or that he was about to add to it. After all, wasn’t that what demons were for?

He quickly wiped at the tears threatening his eyes, determined not to show any weakness to this demon.

Though he hoped for it with every step, the samurai’s cold grip never lessened on his wrist. If only he got a chance to try to escape!

With unbelieving eyes, as they crossed the last street intersection before the docks, he spotted two samurai of the watch. Hope sprang into his heart, and he tried to scream for their attention as the demon pulled him on across the street. Though he tried and tried, no sound made it past his lips. The two men continued walking away, even as he felt his last chance for freedom being swept away by fate.

While his soul wailed with despair, his eyes lighted on a rock on the dirt road less than two feet in front of him. He felt an urge to look at the demon beside him, to make sure he hadn’t seen the rock. He forced himself to curb the impulse and kept his eyes glued to his one possible means of salvation. Leaving himself no time for thought, he dropped to the ground and swung one of his legs hard, tripping the samurai. The armored figure fell. Toshi lunged for the rock. Gasping, he felt the bitter cold from the fleshless hand that still held him pour greedily into his bones. He couldn’t feel the rock as he wrapped his fingers around it. His body slowed as he fought with every ounce of his being to lift his arm so he could throw the stone that might gain the attention of the watch.

Perspiration broke out all over his body from the effort as the flowing cold pierced him to the core. With a silent scream, he watched the two samurai disappear from sight as his arm froze in a throwing stance.

Hot pain blossomed on the side of his face.

Unable to move, he couldn’t keep from toppling to the dirt, the samurai’s blow knocking him off his feet.

A whispered hiss fell on his ear, his vision swimming before him.

“Fool.”

He would have cringed from the scorn in the samurai’s voice, but he couldn’t even do that. A hard yank brought him to his knees. He tried his best to ignore the grotesque mask and the glowing eyes before him.

“If you find someone willing to try to stop me from taking you, I’ll kill them. Their deaths will be on your head.”

The samurai’s voice was cold. Toshi looked away. He knew the demon would do as he said.

Another rough yank brought him to his feet. He gasped in pain at the hard pull, the rock he had risked so much to grab falling forgotten from his numb fingers. The samurai’s words continued to reverberate in his mind as he was dragged forward once again.

Why would a demon be willing to kill to keep him? Why pay Master Shun instead of just stealing him away? This wasn’t the way demons did things.

He offered no more resistance as the samurai pulled him onto the platform for the docks. He kept looking back, however, trying hard to engrave the memory of the home he was being torn from in his mind. He wiped his face with his sleeve, his eyes burning.

The majority of the boats tied close to them were long and flat-bottomed, most of them fishing boats. On the dock’s far side were the gaijin ships. Their tall masts and swollen bodies dwarfed all the other boats around them.

The samurai paid him no attention as he pulled him along and strolled down each of the platforms, gazing at all the ships gathered there. After several minutes, they came across a fishing boat with a small skiff tied to its side. He was dragged toward it, even as he wondered what the samurai was planning.

Moving through the fishing ship toward the single-oared boat, the samurai left three coins wrapped artistically in paper next to the ship’s tiller. Toshi’s eyes strayed to the small bundle, puzzled by the fact that the coins had been prepared as a gift. It then dawned on him what they were being left for. His brow furrowed. Why would a demon have need of a skiff?

With his one free hand, the samurai pulled on the rope tied to the small craft and drew it closer to them.

“Get in.” Flashing green eyes turned in Toshi’s direction with the barked command.

He tried to do as he’d been told. His legs, though, still filled with the samurai’s unearthly cold, were numb and unresponsive. As he tried to get over the edge of the ship’s rail, he shifted his weight too quickly and fell. Watching in startled fear as the boat beneath rose to meet his face, he felt his arm wrenched from behind. Pulled upward, he was kept from landing face-first into the boat. His legs continued to go down and smacked onto the side of the craft as he dangled there by his arm, but he barely felt the impact. This bothered him more than the fact he could have been hurt.

The samurai pulled him up further, until he’d gotten his legs into the boat, before suddenly letting go of his wrist. Toshi collapsed to his knees, the thread of cold pouring through his bones replaced by a jolt of warmth from his pumping heart.

The fog that followed them on the streets slithered from the fishing ship down into the skiff as if it hungered for them. He sat still on the bottom of the craft, trying to dispel the memory of the wooden deck rushing toward his face.

The samurai lowered himself into the skiff in a fluid drop, barely rocking the boat. Gazing down at Toshi for a moment, he slid his hand onto the shorter of his two swords before whipping it out of its sheath and slicing through the skiff’s mooring line in one smooth motion.