Blood Ninja Read Free Page B

his knees in front of Hiro, he gestured to the dead shark. “There,” he said. Then he passed out, and Hiro ran screaming for help, and it wasn’t till three days later that Taro awoke and asked how the little orphaned boy was doing.
    Now the two of them never spoke of that day. Hiro kept the jaws on his hut, Taro kept the scar on his shoulder, and that was that. The two boys had grown up as brothers, and even now that Hiro lived on his own, they spent most of every day together. Taro’s mother had wept when Hiro had left their home, waving smoke from the cooking fire away from her face, impatiently, as if it were that which had made her eyes water and not Hiro’s going. But it was a small dwelling place for four, especially when one of them was as big as Hiro. The best way to repay them their kindness, said Hiro, was to give them their home back.
    As the two friends entered the village, the sun dropped below the mountains to the west, setting fire to their peaks.
    “Well,” said Taro. “Another day gone. What shall we do tomorrow?”
    “I had it in mind that I might visit some friends for tea,” said Hiro.
    “Ah. I was going to have a new kimono made. I thought perhaps a pattern of peony flowers and birds. Then I might visit my sword smith and pick up my new katana .”
    None of these things would happen: Taro would spend the next day hunting with his bow, as always, and Hiro would spend the day wrestling strangers, as always.
    Taro and Hiro walked past the wooden houses of the village, light spilling from the paper shoji windows onto sun-dried ground. But no light shone from the hut Taro shared with his parents, and as he approached it, he frowned. His mother should have been back by now, lighting the fire, preparing food. He had been looking forward to showing her his rabbits.
    Taro glanced at the bay, scanning it for the forms of the ama, black against the now-dark water. When he saw the boat, he let out a sigh. He could see his mother’s little boat over on the far northern side of the bay, below the promontory on which stood an ancient red torii shrine, its sweeping roof resembling a dragon’s back. The other amas were nowhere to be seen—perhaps they were on the other side of the finger of rock, diving near the shrine to the Princess of the Hidden Waters, who protected the amas from harm.
    But even the Princess of the Hidden Waters would be no help to Taro’s mother if she got into trouble in those waters.
    “What’s wrong?” said Hiro, sensing Taro’s anxiety.
    Taro pointed to the boat. “My mother. She’s very near the wreck.” As he spoke, he saw her head break the surface, her dark hair matted to her scalp as she pulled herself into the boat and took up the oars.
    “Gods,” said Hiro. “What’s she doing?”
    “I don’t know,” said Taro. “She told me she wasn’t going to dive there anymore.”
    Everyone knew that the part of the bay in which his mother was diving was unsafe— especially the ama. It was his mother and her friends who had told Taro about the royal ship that had gone down there centuries before, and how its wreck had cursed the waters. They spoke of the hungry ghosts of its sailors— gaki —that had been left by the suddenness of their drowning forever barred from enlightenment, and could only now relieve their eternal hunger by causing others to drown as they had drowned.
    The amas spoke of an enormous octopus, which had stolen one ama away, and made a wife of her corpse.
    But above all, they spoke of the dangerous, unnatural currents, and the possibility of death for anyone who dived there.
    Taro turned to Hiro. “You go home. I want to make sure she’s all right.” He hurried down the hill toward the shore.
    It was bad enough that one of his parents should be dying, without his mother killing herself too.

 

    CHAPTER 3
     
    Taro watched his mother’s every move as she put some rice on to boil. He kept his eyes on her movements all the time. He knew that amas