White Crane (4 page)

With Grandfather’s words rattling through my head, I whisper, “Shape-shifter,” and stand very still.

Yoshi laughs. “No way! What does Sensei say?”

Sensei had a pet wolf when he was a boy. “When I yelled at it, it whimpered,” our teacher said. “When I yelled at it again, it bit me. Only a wild dog is wise enough to teach with its teeth. The wolf is a not a shape-shifter. The wolf is a mountain dog.” Sensei’s teeth are old and yellow, pointed like a wolf. Teaching teeth.

Closing my eyes, I think of Grandfather and Sensei, both sleeping in the sun. Which one do I believe? Ki-Yaga winks at me. He’s right, of course.

Pitching my voice soft and low, I mimic Sensei. “The most dangerous creature is man.”

Yoshi grins. “If you’re the scariest thing in this forest with me, then I’m not afraid.”

I wish I was brave like Yoshi.

“Something strange is happening. The animals know, and I can feel it. Maybe there is a danger here,” I say. My imagination starts to run, and I walk faster to keep up with it.

Yoshi shrugs. He starts to sing loudly; he’s not worried at all. His voice soars out over the valley.

Gray sky turns murky yellow-green, the way it sometimes does before a storm. The wind rises, and I feel my face change color to match the sky.

When I told Sensei how the thunder and lightning frightened me, he yelled in my ear. “Who is louder? Me or the storm?” His eyes flashed like lightning.

I didn’t need to think. My eardrums told me the answer.

“You are louder, Master.”

Sensei nodded. “Yes. And you are not afraid of me.”

I felt better then, and I feel better now. If my voice didn’t scrape like fingernails on bamboo, I would sing with Yoshi. Whenever I sing, my friends tease me.

“Who trod on the cat’s tail?” Taji sticks his fingers in his ears.

“Sometimes it’s okay to squash a cockroach,” says Mikko.

I am feeling braver, and I decide to ask Yoshi the unasked question.

“Yosh?”

Yoshi is singing so loud, he doesn’t hear me.

“Yoshi!” I shout.

“You don’t have to yell,” he says.

I do, but a movement in the undergrowth silences me.
Tanuki.
Another shape-shifting dog of the darkness. It’s small and fat like a badger, but secretive and shadowy like the wolf. Its unearthly wail pierces the gloom.
Tanuki
don’t bark — they scream. My stomach knots, and my heart smashes into my chest. Shrieking, the
tanuki
runs across the path in front of me and down the cliff.

It’s just a dog, I remind myself.

The wind howls, long and low. Like a wolf.

“I’m frightened,” I whisper. The White Crane huddles in the grass.

“Walk closer. You’re safe with me,” Yoshi says, scanning the shadows for movement. He’s worried now.

If I don’t keep talking, the silence will swallow us both.

“Why won’t you fight?” My voice is thin and squeaky. Scared.

Beneath our feet, the ground shakes and trembles. Earthquake!

Cra-ack!
My crutch snaps. I try to catch myself and step back where the path’s edge is crumbly and dry. My one foot slips into the air. The White Crane frantically flaps its wings.

“No-o-o!” Yoshi screams. “Not again!”

Down the mountain I roll. Like an egg.

Faster and faster. Over and over. Dust fills my nostrils and gathers in my ears. Around and around until everywhere hurts. The roaring earthquake fills my head with darkness.

I can hear someone groaning. It’s me.

A great shadow looms over my head. I cringe as the shape crouches, ready to spring. Instead it purrs inside my ear.

“Go to sleep, Niya.”

Claws extended, it prods my blanket around me, before slinking back toward the cliff edge. Then, with a growl, it disappears down the mountain, leaving me to sleep in peace.

When I open my eyes again, I realize I’m back on the path, huddled beside Yoshi, my head thumping louder than Sensei’s drum.

“Are you all right?” Yoshi asks.

I’m not, but I nod anyway. Now I know how a squashed cockroach feels.

“What happened? I thought I fell off the mountain.”

“You did,” replies Yoshi. “I climbed down and carried you back up. I almost fell off myself.” Yoshi’s face is striped with orange-brown mud.

I sneak a look over the cliff edge and see the slide of my fall. It’s a long way. Looking makes my head spin. When I press my hands hard over my ears, the spinning slows and the thumping dulls.

“Thanks. You saved my life.”

When we began the journey to the village, Yoshi and I were friends. Now we’re samurai blood brothers, lashed together like bamboo poles in a raft. Where Yoshi leads, I’ll follow.

“It was a long climb,” he says. “Night fell before I was back. Then, when I tucked your blanket around you, I saw you didn’t have your sword. So I went down again to search for it.”

A samurai kid keeps his heart and soul in his sword. The thought of my blade abandoned on the mountain punches me in the stomach. My fingers reach for Izuru’s hilt, and the White Crane’s feathers flutter reassuringly against my hand.

“Double thanks. I owe you.”

“You sure do.” Yoshi grins. “While you were snoring, I made a list of things you can do to repay me — polish my chopsticks, lick my sandals clean, give me your desserts for a month . . .”

Making a rude noise, I let him know what I think of his list.

Yoshi grins wide, like the cat that swallowed the sparrow. “I have a secret,” he says.

“What? Tell me.”

“Guess.”

I can’t think of anything, so I throw my sandal at his nose.

“I’m not going to just tell you,” he teases as he tosses it back even harder. “You’re supposed to be smart. You have to figure it out.”

I will. Even if it takes all the way down to the village. The early morning sun reminds me that a day has been lost under the earthquake. It’s quieter inside my head now, so I struggle my way upright.

“Are you okay to walk?” Yoshi offers me his arm to lean on.

His other arm hangs crooked by his side.

“What happened to your arm?” I hadn’t noticed before. Yoshi is good at hiding things he doesn’t want other people to know. He’s got more than one secret.

“Stupid accident. I climb down and up a cliff face twice and nothing happens. Then I trip over a small rock in the dark and this. . . .”

He grimaces as he shows me where it hurts. I know what to do. All samurai are experts when it comes to bones. You break lots of them if you train as often and hard as a samurai kid. Since I came to the Cockroach Ryu, I have broken a finger, my right arm, and my nose. My nose should be indestructible, the number of times I fall on it when I’m training. But once Taji swung his wooden practice sword and I wasn’t paying attention —
smash.
Flatter than a rice pancake.

“My arm can wait until we get to the village,” says Yoshi.

His strained white face tells me it can’t. This isn’t Yoshi’s big secret. He’s not smiling now.

“I need some twine and a splint.” I can use bamboo. It grows all over the mountain, and you can use it for everything. You can even eat it! Bamboo pickles are second only to honey pudding and vanilla rice cream.

With Yoshi holding me steady, I swing Izuru to cut two poles from a small bamboo clump uprooted by the earthquake. A short stem for Yoshi’s arm and a larger one to replace my broken crutch. After chewing slices of bamboo to soften the fibers, we twist them into string.

Yoshi lies flat on the ground with his arm out straight. Carefully feeling along the bone, I find a lump but no break. I push harder to be sure.

“Sorry,” I whisper as Yoshi grunts in pain. “I’ll bind it to the splint so it doesn’t hurt so much.”

“Thanks,” Yoshi mumbles through clenched teeth.

He’s braver than me. The White Crane cringes in sympathy as it remembers its broken wing. When Sensei set my arm, I screamed like a
tanuki
dog.

Something important tugs at my memory. Yoshi bellowing as I fell off the mountain.

“Why did you yell ‘Not again’?” I ask.

Watching Yoshi’s face crease in pain, I wish I’d kept my mouth shut.

“It’s because of me Sensei sent us racing an earthquake down the mountain,” he says. “It was my fault you fell off the cliff.”

I shrug. “It must’ve been something important. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

This isn’t Yoshi’s secret, either. His shaking voice and sad eyes tell me this is an older, deeper secret.

Yoshi takes a deep breath. “I need to.”

I wait quietly while he wrestles with the words. It’s a harder fight than any competition event. Finally he speaks.

“I didn’t grow up in a town, like you. Before the
ryu,
I lived in a mountain village, even smaller than the one below. One day, I was in a wrestling match with my friend. I was seven years old and he was ten, but I was much bigger than him. I threw him for the match point, and he hit his head on a rock.”

Silence sits between us.

“He died.” Yoshi coughs to hide the tears choking his throat. It’s as quiet and eerie as the time before the earthquake. Something equally powerful is happening.

“The wrestling ring overlooked the rice fields. When his dead body rolled over the edge, they wouldn’t let me help bring it back. I was just a kid. I had to wait.”

“It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.”

Yoshi looks at me sadly.

“It doesn’t help to know you accidentally killed someone. It feels as bad as if I did it on purpose.”

“You went down the mountainside this time. You rescued me. It cancels out.”

He doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t argue.

“I don’t want to fight again,” he mumbles, turning away to hide his wet eyes.

“You don’t have to.” I pat him on the back, hoping it will help.

“At the Trainee Games, our team will lose a point for every event I don’t enter.”

He’s right, and we need every point we can get. Last year we were novices, but this time, we’ll have passed through our Coming-of-Age Ceremony. We will be warrior-level trainees. The rules will be different. When someone wins an event, they’ll get a point. If someone doesn’t complete an event, the team will be penalized a point. We’ll be lucky to score a zero.

Yoshi looks miserable. “I’ll be letting everyone down. Even Taji is competing in archery, and he can’t see the target.”

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t wrestle or sword fight. Sensei says there’s more to being a samurai than combat skills. What about origami, haiku poetry, or calligraphy? You’re good at all those. Maybe you will win a point.”

He still looks sad.

“It doesn’t matter, Yosh. Being together in a team is the important thing. We’re not going to slay any Dragons. Unless they laugh themselves senseless watching us try. When they see me hopping around the ring . . . Hey! It might work. I think our chances are improving.”

Yoshi tries to grin, but his smile slips off and lands at my foot.

When I am sad, I like to walk. Levering myself up with the bamboo pole, I hope walking will help Yoshi, too.

“Let’s go. We need to collect the supplies and get back to the
ryu.
Sensei might need us,” I say.

We know Sensei and our friends are safe. Cockroaches are very hard to kill, our master told us. It would take more than a mountain shifting to exterminate them.

The path is broken and twisted, crumpled like the pieces of paper Kyoko tosses aside when she is trying to make an origami cockroach. Leaning against each other for support, Yoshi and I climb over mashed mounds of dirt and stones. The big flat halfway rock is gone, and a pile of rubble sits in its place. Newly chipped edges push and poke at the bottom of our straw sandals, but they’re no match for Kyoko’s clever weaving. Kyoko makes all our sandals, and an extra finger means an extra strand of straw. Our sandals are tough as leather.

It’s getting harder to find the path.

“It is never easy to know which path to take,” Sensei says. “But once the path is taken, it will tell your feet where to go. And if you do not have two feet, it will tell your one foot twice.”

My foot is a good listener, so I lead the way down.