Dragon Island (18 page)

“What are you doing here, anyway? You are supposed to be at home in isolation, contemplating your trespasses. But here you are, committing still more by sneaking out of the village yet again.”

“Ha,” Kitsune scoffs. “If it were not for me committing my so-called trespasses, you and Raymond-sai would be warped, skulking Onryu right now!”

“I, for one, appreciate you saving us, Kit—”

They cut me off again before I can finish my sentence.

“We said, be quiet!”

Yelp! Whimper, whimper. Whine, whine.

“I had the situation well in hand, Kitsune.”

“Ha!”

“I’m only stating the facts.”

“Maybe the facts as you see them on ‘Ishiro Island,’ but not here as they really are on Kaiju Island!”

Having had enough, Kitsune spins on her heels and stomps off to the room’s far corner. Facing the wall, she collapses into a sitting position and cradles her head between her hitched knees.

Ishiro sighs, his body deflating.

“Kitsune, I—”

Without looking up, Kitsune raises a hand in warning.

Ishiro shakes his head in defeat and returns to his seat on the floor, though his eyes remain locked onto Kitsune’s back.

It’s like being home with Mom and Dad all over again—right before they divorced.

Acrophobia (ak-roh-fo-bee-eh) n. – Intense fear of heights.

—
Webber’s Dictionary
(2009)

T
he morning after the Onryu attack, Kitsune and Ishiro will barely speak to one another.

Or me either, for that matter.

We all just sit, trying not to look each other in the eye as we share a silent breakfast of my white peaches.

As if rampaging dragons and bloodthirsty monsters weren’t enough to deal with, now the only people I can talk to here on this crazy island are giving me the cold shoulder.

I rub my now free wrist and think about just saying, “To heck with it!” and taking off. But the horrible truth is that I’ve nowhere to go. Kitsune is the closest thing I have to a friend in this horrible place—her village the only place to potentially lay my head in safety.

We leave the cliff-side dwellings shortly after sunrise and make a quick stop to rinse our faces and pits in a creek running through the forest undergrowth. Then it’s back on the woodland path leading into the mountains.

We trek upward and onward in total silence for miles. I try to occupy my mind by focusing on my surroundings.

The air is thick with the damp, sickly sweet smell of earth and vegetation. I hear the calls of strange birds in the giant trees all around us as they try to out-sing the cicadas. I let my eyes relax, and I see tiny kami fairies striding underfoot and flittering through the air like leaves on the breeze. It’s like being in an enchanted, primordial forest.

No.

Scratch that.

It’s not like being in an enchanted, primordial forest, that’s exactly what it is. One full of miracles, magic—and potential danger—at every turn.

But all the wonder and magic in the world are no substitute for good old human conversation. When the sun hits its zenith in the sky overhead, I decide that I can’t endure this distance we have placed between ourselves another single second longer.

“Look, guys,” I say, “can we talk this out?”

Kitsune cuts her eyes in Ishiro’s direction.

“I’ve nothing to say to him!”

“Nor I to her!”

“But if I did,” Kitsune retorts, “then it would be that he is a braying, thick-headed aryx!”

“And if I had something to say to her,” Ishiro snaps, “it would be that she is a fickle, stubborn-willed obake who does not know her place!”

Kitsune jerks to a halt and whirls on Ishiro.

“Oh, you did not just say that!”

Ishiro folds his arms.

“I did. What of it?”

“If I were not my father’s daughter, I would slap you!”

“If you were not your father’s daughter, I would—!”

Kitsune jabs a finger in Ishiro’s face, halting his words.

“Don’t you say it! Don’t you dare say it!”

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” I say as I push them apart and slide in between them. “This isn’t at all what I meant by talking it out.”

“There is no more talking to be done, Momotaro-sai,” Ishiro growls. “It is no mystery where Yamanba resides. We will go there and do what we must, and that is all.

“Agreed, Kitsune?”

Her face red with anger, Kitsune nods.

The two of them abruptly turn and continue walking up the mountainside.

I shrug then reposition the bag of peaches strapped on my back.

“That worked out well.”

D
ays later, our destination comes into view and my stomach immediately begins to feel queasy with apprehension.

“Yamanba’s castle,” Ishiro says.

Ishiro, Kitsune, and I stand at the forest’s edge in whistling wind beneath a gray afternoon sky, overlooking the mist-filled divide that separates us from Yamanba’s medieval Asian castle.

The castle rises up from the sea of fog surrounding it like the ancient neck of a surfacing plesiosaur. Its tiled roof and white-washed walls sit high atop a massive, pillar of stone block. A person looking out one of the castle’s many rectangular windows could take in the island for miles in any direction.

The thick gray mist beneath it stretches out across the horizon, concealing the terrain below.

“How are we supposed to—?”
Kitsune points to my right. I turn, tracking the direction of her arm. The beginning of a rickety, swinging bridge of rope and wood is posted into the cliff edge beside us. The bridge snakes up and out across the mist in the direction of Yamanba’s castle, becoming fishing-line thin before disappearing from sight all together.

I throw up my hands and look at the gray sky above. “Why isn’t anything ever easy?”

Ishiro moves past Kitsune and I to inspect the bridge. He eyeballs the riggings tying earth, bridge, and supporting stakes together, then tugs on them. When he is certain they appear sturdy enough, he takes a tentative step onto the bridge. The wooden plank under his foot moans in protest, but holds.

He grasps the two parallel ropes serving as handrails and places his entire weight on the bridge. The bridge groans threateningly, but remains secure.

Ishiro walks farther out onto the bridge, his confidence building with each step despite the high winds tearing at him. Twenty yards out, he grunts and gestures for us to follow him.

Kitsune slinks out onto the bridge, moving both nimbly and cautiously. She reaches Ishiro without incident and they both look back at me expectantly.

I groan, slide my pack off my shoulders and drop it on the ground. I don’t want to place any more strain on the bridge than I have to.

“Here goes everything!”

I step onto the bridge. It creaks and I jerk my foot back like a swimmer who has just stuck his big toe into freezing water.

“I can’t!” I cry, the wind half-swallowing my voice.

“You can!” Kitsune calls.

“You must.” Ishiro yells.

Oh, boy! I feel like a kid taking his first, nervous step out onto a high dive. Except in this case, if I don’t get things right, the consequences will be a lot worse than some little water-induced belly smack!

I take a deep breath, grab the hand-ropes and, before I can stop myself, pull my body out so that I have no choice but to plant both feet on the bridge.

The running boards creak as I land but don’t give way. The bridge sways in the wind for a moment, then settles.

A huge, relief-filled breath presses its way out of my mouth.

“Keep coming, Raymond-sai.”

“You are doing well, Momotaro-sai.”

I glance over the side of the bridge, peering down into the gray haze swirling indefinitely beneath us. I push down the panic threatening to rise in my mind and put one foot forward. Then another. Then another.

A few steps later, I begin to wonder what I was so worried about. Heck, since coming to
Kaiju
Island
, I’ve survived dragons, monsters, and robots. This will be a piece of cake!

It’s with this thought in my mind that the boards beneath my feet suddenly splinter and disappear. I flail my arms and legs in the sky, looking like a Wile E. Coyote trying to defy gravity and swim through the air. But this is no cartoon, and I scream as I plummet into the mist below.

According to Buddhist tradition, the Tengu (plural) were monstrous bird creatures whose appearance heralded impending war...

—Excerpt from
Kaiju!
by Shigeru Kayama and Takeo Murata (1954)

A
s I fall through the air, my life flashes before my mind’s eye.

I see Mom and Dad happy one moment, then going to bed in separate rooms the next.

The back-patting hands of my approving teachers become the school bully’s pounding fists.

I stay up late, crafting a homemade valentine for Laura Singleton only to tear it into a hundred tiny pieces when I stumble upon her kissing Thomas Bartowski behind the school bleachers.

Next, I’m at a Japanese karaoke lounge, singing happily with Dad.

Then I’m sitting across from him at the dinner table in his apartment, both of us ignoring each other as he checks his blackberry and I play my PSP.

Finally, I’m on the airplane, peering out the window into the darkness as the monstrous red eye opens like a bloody wound in the night sky over
Kaiju
Island
.

Kitsune’s luminous face is smiling brilliantly on the TV of my brain when I finally land with a splat.

Shockingly, the splat doesn’t come from me.

The wind has left my lungs, and my back is stinging like you would not believe, but I’m alive.

After a moment, I catch my breath. I move my arms and legs, utterly amazed to find them intact and working perfectly.

That’s when a rank, musky odor floods my nostrils.

I tilt my head up. My gaze focuses, piercing the mist. I see that I’m lying on my back at an angle, my lower body half-submerged in a mound of thick, brown muck.

Considering the mound’s overpowering smell and gooey consistency, I’ve a pretty good idea where I’ve landed.

You guessed it.

I’m in a pile of Daikaiju dung.

Kitsune’s voice drifts down on the wind from above. We are unable to see each other through the misty void separating us.

“Raymond-sai?”

“Are you there, Momotaro-sai?”

“I’m okay,” I yell. “I seem to have landed in...something that broke my fall!”

“Thank Gryphina!”

“Wait there,” Ishiro calls. “We are coming to get—!”

Suddenly, Kitsune screams, drowning out the rest of Ishiro’s words.

“Kitsune!” I call.

“Tengu!” Ishiro barks.

The sound of battle erupts overhead.

I stare upward, willing my eyes to pierce through the haze. It’s not enough. The fog surrounding me is as thick as ever.

“Kitsune—! Ishiro?”

A shadowed, avian silhouette appears out of the mist and grows incredibly fast within my field of vision. I roll, my limbs tearing away from the mire just in time for me to dodge the creature that lands with a smack in the dung where I was only nanoseconds before.

Sprawled before me is yet another strange evolutionary offering from
Kaiju
Island
. The birdman—what I’m guessing Ishiro called a ‘tengu’—lying on his back beside me is humanoid in form for the most part. He is even wearing robes and a set of beads. But that’s where the similarities to our species end.

A long, beak-shaped nose protrudes beneath a pair of blinking, three-lidded eyes full of malefic intelligence. Symmetrical feather wings ten feet across jut in either direction from the robes at his back. The tengu’s scaly, taloned hands are closed around Ishiro’s sword where it grows like a bloody sapling from the creature’s chest.

Its piercing eyes fix on me and, moving much faster than anyone in his condition should be able to, the tengu seizes my shoulder with a taloned hand, piercing my clothes and skin and drawing blood.

I yelp in pain!

The tengu mutters a few shrill phrases in what I’ve been incorrectly calling Tohonese (Judging from this and the words the oni spoke in the cave, the dialect isn’t exclusive to Kitsune’s people). The only word I recognize is ‘Yamanba,’ but it’s obvious the birdman is making a threat.

Or a dark promise.

Then his eyes glaze over and his hand falls away from my person, his appendage now as lifeless as the rest of him.
    
“Kitsune!” I call.