The Name of the Blade, Book Two: Darkness Hidden (12 page)

Now it was his voice that trailed away.

Perhaps none of this would ever have happened
.

Perhaps Shinobu would have lived out his mortal life happily
.

Perhaps our family would never have had the katana
.

Perhaps we would never have met
.

A pang of misery went through me at that last thought. But I knew it was selfish to feel that way – and I knew what Shinobu meant. What would I be doing right now, if things had been different? Hanging out with Jack and Rachel, getting ready for Christmas, laughing and messing around, living a normal, carefree life with no idea of the darkness that lurked out there. I would never have had to know this pain, this fear, all this guilt and sadness.

Or maybe not. The tiniest of changes in history could have massive effects. I had seen enough Doctor Who to realize that. If Shinobu had lived, everything might be different. Maybe the Yamato family would have made entirely different choices, or died out centuries ago, and I would never have been born. There was no way of knowing. There were no certainties.

I would have given a lot for some certainty right then.

I have the katana. But even if I could figure out how to unsheathe it and unleash its energy without letting it inside my head, I still don’t know how to control it and make it do what I want instead of what
it
wants. It’s almost useless to me, except as a way to destroy things. It healed me after the car accident, and made me stronger, but I had no choice about either of those things. The sword does what it wants, and I’m powerless to stop it
.

How can it be right that I possess the weapon so many creatures are willing to die to get hold of, and yet I’m the one who’s running and hiding? I’m the one that’s afraid and powerless…

Give me what I want
, the sword had whispered into my mind. I heard it now so clearly that it was almost as if the sword was speaking to me again.
I will give you power. Such power as mortals have dreamed of since the dawn of time
. Only I didn’t want power or strength. Not unless they would let me fix what I had done when I took the sword from its hiding place. I just wanted to set everything right and end this nightmare.

The katana throbbed heavily under my hands, its warmth rippling against my skin in a strange, beguiling rhythm. For an instant my instincts urged me to fling it away from me. But it was so warm and comfortable in the nest of blankets, curled up next to Shinobu, and I was sleepy. Before I could even move, the knee-jerk reaction had passed, fading away as if it had never been.

I let my eyes fall closed.

The girl is waiting for Shinobu
.

The woods are still and silent, their vivid red colour dimming as the sun dips below the horizon. Standing on one of the smooth stones in the garden, she shivers in the evening shadows, eyes straining against the dusk for any sign of him. Through the rice-paper screen she can hear her mother and father speaking, their voices low and tense with worry. She knows what they are saying, even though she cannot make out their words. “He should have been back by now. He should have come back.”

They are right
.

I should have fought harder.

I should not have said those things.

I should never have let him go alone.

A sudden wind stirs the leaves, chilling the girl to the bone as it whips around her, sending long strands of hair into her face. She brushes them aside impatiently – and something moves under the trees. Her heart leaps with fear and hope
.

But it is not him. In the next instant she knows it. That is not his shape, not his walk
.

I should not have let him go alone.

I should have held on…

It is another man who walks towards her out of the gathering darkness. She recognizes his long, pale face and dark robes. It is the newcomer, the wanderer Yoshida-sensei. He carries something in his hands, and when she realizes what it is, the knowledge strikes through her like a knife. She jams her knuckles against her lips to hold in a cry of denial
. My sword.
The sword that Shinobu took with him when he ran away from her to fight alone
.

I should never have let go.

Suddenly the vision shifts. The tree limbs dance, their colours blurring, growing dim before my eyes. I am lying on my back, my hand clasped over my heart. The heat of my own blood pours through my fingers, scorching me. I am grown so cold, so numb
.

Mio…

I hear footsteps crunching in the fallen leaves. Something moves in the corner of my eye. I twitch, but I cannot move. I catch a glimpse of a pale face, eyes glowing bright with excitement. Too bright. The light makes me flinch. Yoshida-sensei? What is that in his hand? What is it that he lifts above me?

Mottled green-brown, curved like a leaf, it gleams in the red light of the setting sun
.

Why? Why, when I am already dying…

The green blade flashes down in the red light—

A gentle shake of my shoulder had me jerking bolt upright.

“Who – what?” I flexed cramping fingers around the katana’s hilt, rubbing my face with my other hand. For a second, vivid, disturbing images from my dream danced in front of my eyes. They shredded away from me before I could make sense of them, leaving me with nothing more than the familiar feelings of sorrow and frustration.
Argh
.
Stupid dreams
.

“How long was I out?”

“Most of the night. It is nearly dawn,” Shinobu said.

“Never mind that!” Rachel’s voice broke in excitedly from somewhere above me. “Look.”

I took my hand away from my eyes and gasped when I saw that Shinobu’s face was lit with dancing copper light. The whole kitchen shimmered with it. We cast long black shadows over the wreckage strewn across the floor. Rachel was pointing to the garden. I turned to look.

My eyes skipped uneasily past the body of the Shikome to the unruly mulberry bush that grew by the garage. It was glowing, incandescent with all the shades of autumn. Red and gold and bronze rays pierced the foliage, and the leaves tossed wildly, as if there was a high wind in the garden. Their movement made the copper light flash like the neon displays at Blackpool Pier.

I’d only seen this light shining from the mulberry twice before. Both times Hikaru had stepped out of the bush within a few seconds. But there was no sign of any of the Kitsune now. The bush just sat there, glowing and rustling and flashing.

“What are they waiting for?” I muttered.

“Maybe…” Shinobu said slowly. “Maybe they want us to go to them.”

I looked from him to the urgently blinking lights.

“But you need someone to create a rift in the veil between this world and the spirit realm. You need someone to hold it open while you pass through.”
And you need to be sure that whatever is waiting for you on the other side is something that doesn’t want to eat you…

“Maybe there are other ways,” Rachel suggested, shifting from foot to foot impatiently. “Come on, we have to try! The Kitsune might know how to help Jack!”

She was right. If those lights went out while I was hesitating, I’d want to drown myself.

“OK.” I kicked blankets away from my legs and got up, adjusting my grip on the saya and hilt of my sword as I did so. Shinobu picked up his katana and wakizashi and shoved both sheathed blades into his sash.

“You go in the middle,” I told Rachel. “And go quickly. We don’t know what else might be waiting out there.”

She nodded jerkily. “One, two…”

“Three,” Shinobu finished.

We squashed through the doorway together. My head wanted to tilt back to check the sky, and my ears strained for the telltale thunder of wing-beats. I fixed my eyes on the light and ran. I reached the glowing mulberry bush half a step ahead of Rachel and two ahead of Shinobu.

After skidding to my knees in front of it, I crammed myself under the spiny branches, shoving the katana in ahead of me. A twig nearly poked my eye out, and I hissed as it scraped my cheek but didn’t slow down. As I was ferreting my way under this bush, Shinobu and Rachel were stuck out there in the open, unsafe space of the garden.

Shinobu was stuck alone with Rachel…

I kept crawling forward, twigs scraping my scalp and back, wet soil squelching under my knees, and the stink of cat pee in my nose. I was expecting to take a tumble at any time. Last time we’d done this, the ground had dropped right out from under me and sent me plummeting helplessly into the earthy darkness of Between – a sort of airlock space that the Kitsune conjured up whenever they opened a gateway into the spirit realm, to stop anything nasty making a run for it from either side.

Come on, where are you? Where’s the rupture?

A huge earthy paw reached up out of the ground and engulfed me.

The air left my lungs with a squeak, my vision swam with distant silvery shapes, and I thought my eardrums were going to burst. I could feel myself moving, but I was immobilized, trapped and powerless.

Then, with a sound exactly like a belch, the paw released me.

I landed face down in soft, sweet-smelling grass.

For the space of a few relieved gasps I lay there, letting the water stream from the corners of my eyes onto the mossy cushion of greenery under my cheek. There was another belch and a thud, and I turned my head to see Rachel flat on the grass beside me, looking as messed up as I felt. Her hair stood out around her head in a fuzzy halo, and there was a long streak of mud across her chin.

“What – what was—?” she gasped, making no effort to move.

Then Shinobu popped up through the grass in a sort of wave of soil that broke under him and then rolled over, flattening out to smooth green as if it had never been there. He crouched alertly, his eyes darting from me to Rachel. “Are you both unharmed?”

Rachel shrugged.

I nodded limply. “What about you?”

He took a deep breath, moved his shoulders experimentally, and nodded back. His hair had tumbled down out of its plait, and he had a dirty smudge on his cheek.

“Hikaru did tell us last time that it could’ve been worse…” I muttered.

“My ears are burning,” a familiar voice called out dryly. “I hope you’re saying nice things about me.”

A glossy, copper-coated fox with a bright white blaze on his chest and a white-tipped tail was approaching us. His eyes – a vivid, unforgettable green that I’d never seen on any human, but which somehow looked perfectly natural on him, even like this – glinted at me.

Hikaru in his fox form.

I managed a smile for him. “We were just wondering if you’d managed to get out of those white leather trousers on your own, or if you needed help. And a shoehorn.”

“He is probably still wearing them, under the fur,” Shinobu said, dead-pan.

Hikaru let out a hoarse barking noise. Fox laughter. I took the opportunity to heave myself to my knees and look around properly. We were in a tunnel. Not surprising, as the entire Kingdom of the Kitsune was underground – the Underground actually. It occupied the space scooped out by London’s Tube lines and stations. But this place was vastly different to the soggy, shadowy chambers we’d passed through last time.

The walls and ceiling that curved around us were made of massive swathes of vivid purple-and-white flowers. The blossoms looked a little bit like wisteria, but the petals were much bigger and more deeply coloured. They stirred gently as I watched. Silvery white light shone around and through them. The tunnel extended as far as my eye could follow, both in front of and behind us. It felt like being inside the giant stone in Jack’s prized amethyst thumb ring.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“A place I’m pretty sure no other humans have been allowed to visit,” Hikaru said, sitting down with his front paws placed neatly together. “This is the entrance to His Majesty’s palace. It took a butt-load of hard work to get you here, and we don’t have all day. Jack needs to hurry up and get her sweet self through that rupture.”

My breath caught and suddenly, stupidly, my eyes prickled with tears. I realized that some part of me had been waiting for Jack to appear here too. Since we’d become friends, Jack had been a part of every adventure, every mess I got into, either one step ahead of me or one step behind. She was always
there
.

I blinked rapidly as I glanced at Rachel. Her face was stony. Clearly it was up to me to break the news. I took a deep breath. “Jack’s not coming.”

Hikaru’s ears and whiskers drooped. His unrequited crush on my best friend was still burning bright. “Why?” he blurted out. “I mean – is she busy or something?”

Rachel’s eyes narrowed. She opened her mouth.

I jumped in hastily. “Jack’s sick. That’s partly why we need your help.”

Hikaru’s head jerked up, his jaws gaping open to reveal sharp fangs. It was the first time I’d ever seen him speechless. Then he was on his paws, tail lashing the air behind him. Tiny sparks of white lightning crackled up and down the thick brush of copper fur. “Please tell me it’s just some stupid human disease. Something she ate – or – or – a headache or something, right?”