Samurai Son (28 page)

For a moment Akira simply stood there, uncertain if the Tengu was coming back.
 
After a few minutes, he decided the creature was gone for the day and walked over to the food.
 
He sat down and drank the tea, which was lukewarm by this time.
 
He drank from the flask of water and looked at the fish and rice.
 
He was hungry but also sore and felt his legs and arms stiffening up with each small movement.
 
He needed to stretch.

He stood up and, in horse stance, slowly brought his head to one knee then to the other.
 
Even though he had claws instead of feet, they
ached
like his normal feet.
 
He stretched his arms and slowly stretched the wings.

Akira heard the cry of a hawk overhead and looked up.
 
The red hawk landed in the trees nearby and preened its feathers before looking at him with its large yellow eyes.
 
Akira shook his head and went back to eating his food.
 
No doubt another Tengu spy.
 
But the hawk reminded him of Ikumi.
 
But it couldn’t be Ikumi, he told himself.
 
He would know her even in hawk form.

Despite himself, he felt hot tears well up in his eyes.
 
He finished his food and walked over to his bed within the branches.
 
He threw himself on the boughs and wept.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

After a week’s passage, Tenko walked up the stairs that led to Kuan Yin’s temple.
 
He had dreaded this day and spent many sleepless nights worrying about Kasumi and the next price Kuan Yin would demand from him.
 
He frowned as he thought of one of his tails gone.
 
It had taken him centuries to grow each tail; the price of Kuan Yin’s help was high.

But the girl was a demon killer.
 
That Tenko was sure of.
 
Few Neko had the ability to change into tigers; those who did often became great demon killers.
 
And this one might be the one of the prophecy,
Tenko thought.
 
If so, then even Tenko had a duty to save her.

He stepped into the temple, and immediately his nose twitched as he caught the scent of cedar and sandalwood.
 
Tenko’s form shifted to his fox body, and he walked up to the goddess.
 
Kuan Yin was waiting for him.

How is the girl?
Tenko asked, not bothering with formalities.

If the goddess was affronted, she did not show it.
 
She smiled.
 
“The girl is doing better under my care, but it will take a while for her to heal.
 
If you wish me to continue, I must have another one of your tails, kitsune.”

Tenko snarled.
 
I gave you a tail.

“It is not enough.”

Have mercy on me, Kuan Yin,
the fox replied.
 
I need my tails if I am to help her.

“Certainly a powerful kitsune such as yourself can spare one tail?” Kuan Yin chided.

Tenko turned and grasped one of his tails and yanked.
 
He wanted to cry out as he tore it from himself but clamped his jaws tightly.
 
He laid the tail before her.
 
I give you my tail,
he said,
but I need to know how she is doing.
 
May I see her?

Kuan Yin waved her hand.
 
Within the air her hand touched was a portal that opened to another place.
 
Within the portal, he could see Kasumi, now in her human form, lying on a pallet with blankets covering her.
 
She appeared to be in a deep sleep.

Will she recover?
 
Tenko looked hard at the goddess.

Kuan Yin smiled gently.
 
“Her recovery will take time, kitsune.
 
The demon that followed her was very powerful.”

How long?
 
She needs to find the boy named Akira.

Kuan Yin shrugged.
 
“It will take as long as necessary.
 
Come back in a week’s time.”
 
With that, she vanished, taking his tail along with her.

Tenko frowned.
 
He didn’t quite trust the goddess, but he felt he had no choice.
 
He shook himself and sat for a while, staring at the statue of Kuan Yin, before slipping over to the altar and gobbling down the rice cakes and fish left by visitors.
 
What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them,
he thought before leaving the temple.

#

The days passed into weeks while Akira trained with the Tengu.
 
Every morning, the Tengu had food prepared for him before he trained, and every afternoon, he came back to the boughs he now called his home.

The training was mostly martial arts with occasional magic.
 
He quickly learned to control the winds with his voice and call up waterspouts, lightning, and storms.
 
As his magic talent grew, he learned to see the Tengu and other kami, even when they were in their invisible forms.
 
Then he learned how to shape change.
 
That had been the most fun of all as he learned to take the forms of a hawk, a tree, and even another person.

Usually by the end of the day, he was so exhausted that he could do little except eat and fall asleep.
 
Occasionally a female Tengu would join him in the evening when he was not too tired.
 
By then, he hadn’t the will to send her away.
 
Akira found that even a Tengu companion was better than nothing against the unremitting loneliness he felt.
 
But even their love was cold, and he felt used when he woke up alone in the morning.

One morning Akira woke before dawn to the rough cry of a hawk nearby.
 
The sky was lightening, but the stars still shone overhead.
 
The Tengu woman he had had sex with the night before had left as the others had done, and he was cold and alone under the blankets.
 
He thought about turning over and going back to sleep, but he heard the hawk’s cry again.
 
Something within the bird’s cry—a sense of urgency that he couldn’t reconcile easily—echoed in his soul.
 
He sat up and looked in the predawn sky.
 
Hawks were creatures of the day, not night, and they didn’t hunt this early.

He could just see the hawk’s darker outline against the lighter sky.
 
The same hawk had been following him again.
 
Akira had thought it was a Tengu spy, but now he wasn’t so certain.
 
The Tengu had other ways of spying on him, and with his compliance, they had given him some freedom, albeit not much.

The hawk reminded him of Ikumi.
 
He wondered what became of her and whether the Tengu would ever free her from being a hawk.
 
It was tempting to think the hawk above him was Ikumi, but he knew the chance of it was slim.
 
Ikumi was long gone, and the Tengu had forced him to become one of them.

But was he truly one of them?
 
In the past weeks, he had become indifferent to his plight, allowing his emotions to well up only during times such as these.
 
He felt alone, like an outcast because he could never truly be what they were.
 
The Tengu didn’t feel the emotions he felt; they didn’t seem to even desire contact, except perhaps sex.
 
Even then, after the novelty wore off, sex wasn’t satisfying either.

“I’m not Tengu,” he whispered.
 
“I am the son of a samurai.”
 
But he was also the son of a Tengu.
 
Deep within his mind, he knew he couldn’t be what the Tengu wanted him to be.

The hawk called again, and this time Akira answered it.
 
He took two steps before springing into the air and changing his form into a hawk.
 
He beat his wings and flew up into the predawn sky.

The stars had already winked out.
 
To the east, the sky lightened with the approaching dawn.
 
The air cooled as he climbed, and he had to work to keep aloft without the thermals to provide buoyancy.
 
The other hawk cried and turned toward the mountains, away from the coast.

He followed her—for the hawk was female—and headed west.
 
The hawk led him inland, over rice paddies and tea terraces where the farmers tended their crops.
 
The sun’s rays lit the eastern sky and turned the rice paddies crimson.
 
A warm, gentle updraft came from the ground, and the two hawks hovered over the fields.

The female hawk turned her head and circled once before flying toward a village near a walled compound.
 
Akira followed her, wondering what the hawk would show him.
 
As she flew toward the village, his heart quickened.
 
This was Yutsui, the town near his father’s home.
 
That meant that the walled home beyond was his own.
 
The hawk had showed him the way home.

He cried aloud in both joy and longing, his voice reedy and thin in the cool dawn air.
 
Akira didn’t care.
 
He wanted so desperately to go home.
 
He looked to the other hawk, but she was gone.
 
He slowly circled Yutsui, drawing in the sights, sounds, and smells of the village as he flew.
 
He then turned and started his descent toward his home.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Week after week, Tenko entered the shrine of Kuan Yin, asking if Kasumi was well enough to return to Tsuitori.
 
Kuan Yin was always equivocal and showed the kitsune Kasumi while she slept.
 
Each time, he had been forced to give up one of his precious tails.
 
Each time, Kuan Yin took the tail and left, telling him to return in a week.

Tenko was not amused by this, suspecting the goddess of
outtricking
him, the trickster.
 
But she had promised to make Kasumi well, and he doubted that Kuan Yin would go back on her word.
 
Still, each time she took a tail, it angered him, and to show his displeasure, he ate all the food offerings for her.

He was running out of tails.
 
He had given seven to the goddess.
 
Still, he suspected he knew her game, and in the end, he hoped to have the final trick.
 
Tenko didn’t bother taking human form anymore while he was in the temple.

Kuan Yin was waiting for him as he stepped toward the shrine’s altar.
 
She had a small smile on her face.
 
“I see my little kitsune is back.
 
You’ve been causing trouble.”

Tenko smiled but it was more like baring his teeth than a warm smile.
 
What sort of trouble?

“It appears that the food offerings people have left me disappear on the days when you’re here.”

Tenko swished his two tails thoughtfully.
 
What an extraordinary coincidence.
 
I wonder how that happened.

Kuan Yin’s mouth drew into a thin smile.
 
“I think we both know, troublemaker, what happened to those offerings.”

Tenko shrugged.
 
Where is Kasumi?

“She is safe.
 
She will stay with me.”

Then I do not know where the offerings have gone.
 
In fact, I suspect the offerings will disappear every day from now on.
 
Tenko swished his tails.

“You have been taking my offerings.”

Have I?

The goddess frowned.
 
“You won’t get Kasumi back.”

The kitsune shrugged.
 
I’ve already resigned myself to that.
 
When I leave here, I shall tell everyone that the goddess of mercy is not merciful and does not honor her word.
 
Instead, she takes Tenko’s tails and leaves him empty pawed.

“But evidently not empty bellied.”
 
Kuan Yin laughed.
 
“Very well, little fox.
 
Give me your tail, and you shall have Kasumi.”

Kasumi first, if you please.

Kuan Yin looked as though she might get angry but instead smiled.
 
“Very well, my little fox.”
 
She waved her hand, and Kasumi stood there in her human form, dressed in a fine kamishimo and hakama and carrying the two samurai swords.
 
She looked confused as she looked from Kuan Yin to Tenko.

“What is going on?”
 
Kasumi looked at the fox.
 
“Tenko?”

Tenko grasped one of his tails and pulled it off.
 
He handed Kuan Yin the tail.
 
We are now even,
he said.

“What about my offerings?” Kuan Yin asked.

You have my word, I will not take your offerings,
the fox replied.

Kuan Yin snorted.
 
“Very well, my little kitsune.
 
Until we meet again.”
 
With that, the goddess vanished.

Kasumi stared at the place where Kuan Yin had stood.
 
“Who was that?
 
Where have I been?”

Tenko hopped up to the altar and began eating the rice cakes and other offerings.

“Hey, what are you doing?
 
You promised you wouldn’t do that!”
 
Kasumi stepped forward to shoo the fox away.

Tenko snarled and snapped at her hand.
 
I lied.
 
That’s her price for taking my tails.

Kasumi looked down as if noticing for the first time Tenko had only one tail now.
 
“What happened to your tails?”

Nice of you to notice,
sneered Tenko.
 
That was Kuan Yin’s price for healing you from the demon-sickness.

“That was Kuan Yin?”

Tenko nodded his head.
 
You don’t remember anything, do you?

“I was sick from the demon,” Kasumi said.
 
“I must have passed out.
 
Then I woke up here—in this clothing.
 
What does that mean?”

It means it’s time for us to find your young samurai,
the kitsune said.
 
I’ll fill you in on what has happened while you’ve been gone.

#

Akira flew over his old home.
 
A thrill ran through him.
 
He could go home; perhaps he could even find his father and tell him what happened to Ikumi.
 
Maybe Takeshi could figure out a way to find Ikumi and bring her back home.
 
Maybe Akira could find Rokuro and train with him again.
 
Maybe he could finally prove he was the samurai they wanted him to be.

Even as he circled to land, he knew his life would be terribly different.
 
The Tengu would not allow him to return to the same life.
 
Even so, he couldn’t help wondering if just by telling his father of their abduction that maybe Takeshi would be able to come up with a solution.
 
Maybe he could negotiate with the Tengu.

Akira swooped down toward home.
 
Suddenly he heard a scream above him.
 
He twisted in midair in time to see a Tengu carrying a naginata and heading right for him.
 
Unlike the practice weapons, the blade was made not of wood, but of steel.
 
Akira turned into his Tengu form.
 
He barely had time to draw his katana and parry the naginata as the deadly scythe-like pole arm came crashing down on him.

Akira’s wings beat furiously as he tried to keep his speed and height in the air.
 
The other Tengu had the higher position and the advantage, with both position and weapon.
 
Akira blocked the next blow, turned, and plummeted in a dive.
 
The Tengu followed him, swinging his naginata as he did so.
 
Akira felt the blade clip his tail feathers but didn’t stop as they approached the ground.
 
He twisted around and let the Tengu overshoot his position.

Akira didn’t look back.
 
He fled in the opposite direction as fast as he could fly.
 
He hoped he could outrun the Tengu.
 
Then he saw a group of armed Tengu heading toward him.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.
 
The Tengu did not answer him but flew straight at him.
 
Akira turned again and dived, hoping to put trees between him and the Tengu.
 
As he did, he saw three more Tengu come up from the forest.

Akira drew his wakizashi as well.
 
It appeared that he would have to fight his way out.
 
And at ten-to-one odds, he doubted he would win.
 
But,
he reminded himself,
I am samurai.
 
I should not be afraid to die.

The other Tengu slowed as he stood in ready stance: katana held nearly parallel over his head and wakizashi in his left hand, ready to block or cut.
 
He watched them as they circled warily.
 
Akira kept his eyes on them as he considered his options.
 
He decided to call out to the winds to help him, assuming any would.

The South Wind came to his bidding, bringing storm clouds from nearby.
 
The wind blew, separating the Tengu from him.
 
The clouds rumbled with thunder as he called them, and lightning flashed around him.
 
The Tengu circled like a pack of angry dogs as Akira called lightning down on them.

At first Akira’s power rumbled through the Tengu like a tornado.
 
The whirlwinds were so strong, he charged straight into them and attacked with such ferocity that even the Tengu fell back.
 
But their numbers were great, and soon Akira found himself fighting for his life.
 
Bo and katana slammed into him, and though they bruised him and cut him, he continued fighting in fury.
 
His body healed as fast as the other Tengu’s, and the slices and cuts did little damage.

Their sheer numbers overwhelmed him, and for a moment before he was knocked unconscious, he saw the Tengu as a gigantic wave crashing down on him.
 
He had the desperate sensation of drowning before he fell unconscious and knew no more.