Samurai Summer (6 page)

It was too difficult for him to understand everything. He didn’t say anything, which was lucky, but he waved back and shut the window. Three minutes later, as I was almost to the
edge of the forest, I saw him crawl across the grounds like a snail, pass through the gates, get up, and come over to me.

“Damn it, Sausage!”

“Where are you going, Kenny? Are you running away?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“You keep
your
voice down.”

He gestured at the forest. It was dark like the inside of a cave in there. No light seemed to penetrate, not even the moonlight that still shone out here. Sausage’s face looked blue in the glow, like war paint.

“Are you going to run away this time?”

“Go back to bed,” I whispered. “They could have seen you.”

“Then the chances of that will be even bigger if I go back.”

“You can’t come with me.”

“Why not?”

“It’s dangerous.”

“Then you need my help.” He slapped his hand on his hip. His little sword hung at his side. We hadn’t made Sausage’s big sword yet. He looked around. His face was covered in shadows. No more war paint. He looked older, too, like his own big brother, if he’d had one.

“What’s so dangerous?” he asked.

I looked toward the main camp building. We couldn’t stand here any longer. Someone could look out the window at any moment and see us. We would be easy to spot where
we were standing—white against the black forest. Maybe Matron could see us.

I pointed at the forest and walked in among the trees. Sausage walked two steps behind me. I could hear his breathing. It sounded like he had run four times around all the bases in burnball. He was scared. I was a little scared myself. His fear must have infected me. And now I had to look out for him. I had to make sure he made it back to the dormitory in one piece.

The moat seemed wider at night. I looked up and the glowing sword was still suspended there, right above our heads. It hadn’t moved farther off like the moon usually does when you come closer. The castle lay in a glade. It was lighter here than among the trees, but it was still dark.

“We’ve never been here at night before,” said Sausage.

I didn’t answer. I was trying to see if there was anything out of place.

“It looks bigger than it does during the day,” said Sausage.

“Quiet!”

“What is it, Kenny?” He looked around and stood closer to me. “Did you hear something?”

I moved closer to the moat—or the ditch, rather, since there was no water in it yet. I bent down. It looked like
footprints in the dirt. Big footprints. Sausage bent down next to me.

“See something?” I asked.

“Could be boots,” he said.

“Size twelve,” I said, “or bigger.”

“Did someone that big find our castle?”

“Looks that way.”

“Matron?”

“The size fits, anyway,” I said.

“So what do we do?”

“Nothing,” I said. “We don’t do anything ’til we know something.”

“We have to investigate, don’t we?”

“Yes.”

I walked cautiously across the bottom of the moat, up the other side, and across the outer courtyard. There weren’t any footprints there; the ground was hard. I climbed over the inner stone wall. We had lugged the rocks through half the forest to build it. Once we had finished building the workshops and warriors’ quarters on top of the wall, no one would be able to make it over. Not even a giant with a size-twelve boot.

A forest bird’s shriek startled us like a warning call. We stopped short behind the wall of the inner courtyard. So far, only one of the side towers had a roof. It was built out of
earth and twigs and pine branches. We had barely started on the main tower. The bird shrieked again.

“Let’s go back,” said Sausage.

“You wanted to come along.”

“That was… before.”

“Do you want to be a warrior or not?” I asked. “Or was that just before too?”

Sausage mumbled something I couldn’t hear. The bird shrieked a third time—a shorter call. It was cut short, like someone had chopped its head off in mid-screech.

“It’s only a bird.”

“Maybe it saw something.”

“It saw
us
,” I said, and continued toward the towers. “It got nervous.”

Sausage waited behind me. I walked slowly around the first guard tower, then around the second. I passed a side tower. Then I stood on the floor of the main tower. There was nothing here. We were alone in our castle.

I went back to Sausage.

“There’s nobody here but you and me,” I said.

“But what about the footprints?”

“They must have been left by someone who walked through here yesterday. A hunter maybe.”

“What if he comes back?”

“I don’t think he will.”

“Maybe he’ll tell everyone.”

“Why would he do that?”

I turned around to face the castle. I tried to see it like a grown-up would.

“He didn’t even realize what it was. All he saw was a hut, if he even saw that much.”

“If Matron finds out, she’ll come here and destroy it,” said Sausage.

“She won’t find out,” I said.

“But what if she does, Kenny?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to think about Matron when I was in the castle.

“What if?” Sausage repeated.

“Then there will be war.”

The moon blade had grown fainter once we were back in the dorm, as though someone was slowly rubbing out the light with a rag. Soon the sun would rise again. This summer it always rose.

Nobody saw us as we snuck back up to the dorm. Not that we noticed anyway.

Were the footprints a sign? Was that what the moon
wanted to show me? Was it even a footprint at all? We would have to examine it in daylight.

I closed my eyes. I must have fallen asleep. I dreamt something, but whatever it was, I had forgotten it by the time I woke up.

After the morning wash, I remembered it. The cold water on my head perked me up and I could think clearly, and the sun in my eyes quickly brought me back from the kingdom of sleep.

I had dreamt that I was riding in a car with my dad. We had never had a car, and I didn’t have a father anymore, so it was definitely a dream—especially since I was the one driving. We were going really fast, but I never saw any sign of a road. It was just sky and pastures. When I turned the wheel, the car followed just as smooth as silk. It was like flying. I hadn’t ever done that either. “You’re doing just fine,” said Papa. “Where should we go?” I asked. “Out of here, just out of here,” he answered. So we got out of there, just out of there. High above lakes, fields and tractors, over treetops.

All of a sudden, we were parked in front of a castle. It was ours and it was finished. It was almost an exact copy of the powerful Matsumoto castle from the 1500s. There were
several smaller towers that together formed a main tower. “I’ve been here,” said Papa. “You have?” I asked. “Didn’t you see my footprints?” he answered.

“Should we go look at the footprint now?” Sausage was done with his pretend washing. He waved at the sky with his unused toothbrush. “It might rain and then the footprint will be washed away.”

The sky was blue, just like the sky I’d driven the car through. I hadn’t noticed what kind of car it was in my dream. I hoped it was American. A new Ford Thunderbird.

“There won’t be any rain this summer.”

“But shouldn’t we head over there?”

“Gather the troop,” I answered.

Sausage’s face lit up like the sun. It was the first time he had been assigned that task.

We marched out to the edge of the forest behind the building. There wasn’t going to be any burnball today. And I didn’t want Kerstin to see us either, or Ann. I didn’t know how I’d be able to explain them to the rest of the troop. I still hadn’t solved that problem.

The glade looked like it did last night, only lighter. Not a lot of sun made it down here. That was why we had chosen
it. From thirty feet away you could hardly even tell there was a glade.

Sausage led us to the moat. He had been along last night after all. It was only fair.

“There it is!” he said and pointed at the ground. “See it?”

“No,” said Micke.

He looked annoyed. He must have thought that he wasn’t ranked second after me anymore, that Sausage had been given that position. But if Micke couldn’t understand that it was just for now, just for this short moment, then maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a samurai lord, a
daimyo
. A
daimyo
has to understand several things at once. Understand that things change, and change back.

“Of course you can see it,” I said. “It’s a boot print.”

“Mm-hm,” said Lennart.

“Whose could it be?”

That was Janne.

“It’s a big one,” said Sven-Åke.

“Must be a man’s,” said Lennart.

“Or Matron’s,” said Mats.

Janne let out a laugh.

“Not even she would dare come out here in the middle of the night.”

Sausage looked proud when Janne said that.

“Probably some farmer who got lost.”

That was Micke.

“In the middle of the night?” asked Lennart.

“Day or night makes no difference to them,” said Micke.

“What, like a sleepwalker, you mean?” said Janne.

“Farmers plow day and night,” Micke continued, ignoring Janne. “It’s light all the time.”

“Only right now they’re taking in the hay,” said Lennart.

“They haven’t been doing any plowing anyway.” Janne looked around. “And there’s no hay here either.”

“It could have been a hunter,” said Sausage.

“Anyway, he’s not here now,” said Micke.

“He might come back,” said Sausage.

“Then he’ll lose his head,” said Micke.

“Gotta be a big one,” said Sven-Åke, “judging by his shoe size.”

“Who cares?” said Micke. “So much the better.”

“How many heads have you collected so far, Micke?” asked Lennart.

“What do you mean by that?” said Micke. He spun around toward Lennart.

“How many heads have you chopped off so far?”

“Thirty-eight, counting yours,” Micke answered and grabbed at his sword.

“Stop it!” I shouted.

Micke hadn’t managed to pull out his sword yet.

“You can fight later,” I said. “Right now we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Half the troop was out in the forest collecting fir branches and brush. The other half was working on the inner wall. There was plenty of stone. All you had to do was dig a little and you found some. Beyond this part of the forest there were fields surrounded on all sides by stone fences. They were like walls. You would have thought there wouldn’t be any rocks left after the farmers had built all those walls, but there seemed to be tons of them still in the ground.

If stones had been worth something, we’d all have been rich. But none of us knew what it was like to be rich—no one here at this camp. This was a place for poor people. You only had to speak to anyone here for half a minute to realize that. You just had to look at the moms and dads who came and visited once every summer, if they came at all. And none of them came in a Ford Thunderbird. Hardly anybody came in a car at all. Most of them walked from the turn-off and huffed and puffed their way through the front gate, just as drenched in sweat as Mama had been.

Janne didn’t have a mom or a dad. Not that he lived with, anyway. He had been living at an orphanage and now
he was here. Then he was going to be sent to live with a foster family that he hadn’t even met yet. They had a farm up north somewhere.

“You’ll probably get to drive a tractor,” said Sausage when Janne told us.

Janne nodded but didn’t say anything.

“Maybe they’ve got horses,” Sausage continued.

“If they don’t, they’re not really farmers,” said Sven-Åke.

“Do they have any kids?” asked Mats.

Janne just shrugged.

“Then you’d have brothers and sisters,” Mats continued.

“I’ve already got brothers and sisters,” said Janne, and walked off.

Just when I was thinking about that, Janne came back into the glade with an armful of fir branches. It seemed like my thoughts had made him come back. He laid the branches on the ground and walked up to me.

“Do you really think we’ll get the castle finished before the end of the summer, Kenny?”

“Of course,” I answered.

He looked like he doubted it.

“We get to decide when it’s finished.”

“And then what?” He opened his arms wide and said, “Then we’ve gotta leave all this. Just when we’re done, we have to leave it.”

“That’s true for all samurai,” I said. “You’ve gotta leave the castle sometimes.”

“But they come back, Kenny.”

He turned to me again. He looked me right in the eye. We were the same height. I wondered if we’d still be the same height when we were grown up.

I can’t remember how tall my dad was compared to other grown-ups, and Janne had no idea what his dad looked like.

“We’re never coming back.” He pointed with his hand again. “The castle’s just going to stand there and rot.”

“There’ll be other summers.”

“Not for us, Kenny. You know that.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll be too old next summer.”

I didn’t answer.

“This is the last summer,” he continued. “The last samurai summer.”

“There will be others after us,” I said. “Sausage will be coming back and so will Sven-Åke and Mats.”

“Yeah, yeah. But for us it’s over.”

“Camp, maybe, but not everything else.”

“What do you mean ‘everything else?’”

“There will always be another summer. And you’ll still be a samurai.”

Just as I said that, I heard a distant rumbling in the sky.
We looked up but didn’t see anything. Then the airplane appeared. It was gliding along, right above the glade, like an eagle. It was on its way to secret places, new places. I thought about my dream. I was imagining myself sitting up there looking down at myself. Big Kenny looking down at little Kenny.

“I’d like to become a pilot,” said Janne. We were still gazing upward even though the plane was gone now. The rumbling from the engines lingered in the sky like thunder. The airplane was a thunderbird. A Thunderbird.