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Chapter 4:
Memory
*************
It’s no secret that Ryo once had a crush on Mia
Koji. But he got over it, as did
Sage. Sage loves Maya as if she were
his entire universe, the only thing worth having. Ryo simply was attracted to Mia for a little while because, in his
words, “he was young and eager to have a relationship.” Then he met some other girl, I can never
remember her name for the life of me, who he only knew for a very short
time. I remember someone mentioning
that it was a little amusing that Ryo and she met only because she was trying
to kill my father… He really loved her.
She was killed… Ryo hasn’t loved a woman that way since.
Cye says that Ryo’s a loner. He’s wrong.
Ryo was never alone. He carried
the loved ones he’d lost inside him always.
I know that sounds terribly corny…actually, it is corny…but
that’s the only way I can put it.
Mom used to think that the reason
Ryo liked me so much was because I was the first of his nieces and nephews that
he saw. Ryo lived in California for a
long time after the Ronins moved to America.
Kento, Cye, and Sage all settled in the Denver area. Mom was from Chicago and Dad met her
there. They moved to Brooklyn just
before I was born. That’s where we
lived until I was four years old. When
I was three months old, Mom got a promotion at her job. She had to go to California for a month and
a half for special training, but she didn’t want to leave me. Dad couldn’t get off work.
Their solution was to arrange for
Mom to stay with Ryo while she was in California. So, she took me and caught a plane to a city close to the area
Ryo was currently calling home. Mom
told me about how Ryo first met me.
She said, “I walked up to the door
and he opened it before I even touched the doorbell. He offered to take my bags from me. You were all wrapped up in a blanket and I was holding you in one
arm and my suitcase in the other. He
took the suitcase and you!”
Ryo didn’t realize that I wasn’t
baggage. Somehow, in all the planning,
my parents had each thought the other had told Ryo about me. As it turned out, neither of them had and he
didn’t even know I existed. When Mom
told him that the bundle of blankets he was holding was a little girl, she said
he nearly panicked.
While Mom went to work and
training, I stayed with Ryo. I spent
nine hours a day, five days a week with Ryo.
By the time Mom and I went home to Brooklyn, he was quite fond of
me. A year later, Ryo moved to
Colorado. And when I was four, Mom and
Dad decided to move there, too. Ryo was
a frequent visitor from the day we moved into our new house. Once, when I was about eleven years old, Ryo
was staying with me while my parents were both out of town. Not aware that he wasn’t home, Cye came by
to ask Dad something.
What he found was me sleeping in
Ryo’s lap on the couch. I woke up when
he said, “Aww, how cute!” Ryo chased
him around the house while I sat there laughing.
I’ve always felt almost as close to
Ryo as to my own parents.
…We know when there’s something
wrong with each other…
***********************
“G’way!”
Ryo
grinned. He tapped his niece’s forehead
again. This time she just grunted,
which was more of a response than he’d received the other five times he’d done
it. “Les, get up,” he said again.
She stuck
her tongue out at him, pulled her blankets over her face, and rolled over. “Worse ‘n tin cans,” he heard her slur.
“Hey,
that’s uncalled for,” he laughed.
She didn’t
respond.
“Okay, if
that’s how it’s gonna be…” He walked out of the room.
A minute
later, the Hashiba girl found herself being dragged in her tightly wrapped
blankets across the wood floor of her room and out the front door of the
cabin. She growled and pulled herself
free of the blankets, only to land on the needle-strewn ground with an irritated
grunt. She scrambled back to her feet,
indignant.
“Alright, I
don’t care how much older and wiser than me you are, you’re goin’—” She stopped
short as she turned around and found herself looking directly into the harsh,
muddy golden eyes of a cat…
A really big
cat.
“Down,” she
finished.
From behind
her, Ryo laughed. “Well?”
“Netherhells…”
Ryo laughed
again. “Lessa, meet Goldette. Goldette, this is Lessa.”
“Aw, jeez…”
Lessa remained motionless, excepting that low groan. “Nice kitty. Good kitty.”
Goldette
was a mountain lion, a cougar. She was
obviously healthy, as could be told by the perfect reddish-gold of her fur, the
bright snap in her eyes and the delicate perk of the tips of her ears. The cougar held the corner of Lessa’s
blanket in her mouth. Even as Lessa
noted that, Goldette dropped the corner.
It had two small holes in it where the big cat’s sharp canines had
pierced the fabric. She sat regally on
the forest floor that was the cabin’s front lawn, watching Lessa with interest.
Lessa
couldn’t help closing her eyes and whispering the litany that she always found
herself reciting when confronted with something slightly…upsetting…such
as this. “Oh god, oh gods, oh nether
realms, oh crap, oh man, oh boy, oh jeez, oh freak…”
Ryo
sauntered down from his porch to stand beside the girl. “What’s the matter, Lessa? Cat got your tongue?”
“Big,” was
her only reply.
Ryo sat
down on the ground. “Yes, she’s
big. Now, are you gonna stand there all
day or what?”
Lessa
automatically glared at him, then froze when she realized that she’d
moved. “Ohhhh…”
She
abruptly was knocked off her feet from behind.
She quickly threw her arms up over her head. “Oh god, oh gods, oh nether realms, oh cra—”
She was
bumped again and shut up. When nothing
happened, she opened one eye carefully, ready to scream.
Once again,
the cat was staring her in the face.
“Eh,” said Lessa. Goldette
bumped her full in the face with her own forehead. Lessa was so surprised that she fell backwards and just lay
there. Goldette stood over her, Ryo laughing
in the background, and then nuzzled the girl’s cheek.
“Oh. Aw, I knew all along that you were a sweet
one.”
“Sure. That’s why you kept saying ‘oh god, oh gods,
oh—’” Ryo began to mock, but was silenced when his niece shoved him back to the
ground he’d just stood up from.
Lessa shook
herself, yanking needles and leaves out of her hair. “So? What’s the story?”
“Story?” The man stood up, walking back towards the
cabin. Goldette padded after him
elegantly.
Lessa
closed the door behind her. “Yeah. She didn’t just appear. I was here just four months ago and there
was no big kitty running around.”
Ryo went
into the little kitchen alcove off the den/dining room and took a pot off the
burner. There were six eggs boiling in
the hot water in the pot. He wrapped
each egg in a big napkin and placed them in a large Zip-lock bag. Without really looking at what he was doing,
he reached over to the small bit of counter beside the sink and grabbed a
couple of apples out of a basket and a little bottle of salt. He tossed one apple to Lessa and bit into
the other himself.
“Story…” he
mumbled as he chewed. He opened the
refrigerator and gathered two bottles of frozen water, a bag of big grapes, and
a container holding something made up of lots of tiny little white beadlike
things. He bundled it all into a cloth
bag, the apple still in his mouth, and thought. His face lightened and he swiped three oranges from the fruit
basket.
“Ryo!”
“Oh,
right,” he said, pulling the apple from his mouth. He glanced at Lessa’s apple and laughed. “You already ate almost all of it!”
She
scowled. “So?”
“You eat
like Kento and your dad. I bet Allie
would throw a fit over that. She hated
the way they scarfed down food.”
“Uh, Ryo,”
she snorted, “Kento still does eat that way.”
“Right.” He laughed and shouldered the bag, walking
towards his bedroom and opening the closet.
“Goldette showed up six months ago, actually. I just woke up one morning, got it into my
head to go for a walk, and happened to run into a nine-month-old puma cub that
sat smack in the middle of a deer path.
Of course, I wasn’t going to take the chance that its mama was around so
I turned back and walked home again. The
whole time, she was right behind me.
She spent the day in my yard, just sitting there like she was
waiting. I did chores all day,
whatever, always watching for the mother, and the cub never took her eyes off
me. The next morning, I came out, and
there she was, right where I’d seen her last.”
Lessa
waited a moment, watching Ryo root through the contents of the closet. “…and?” she asked, when he failed to
continue.
“Well,” he
turned around smiling, “then she stole my yoroi.”
“What?” She
couldn’t help but be surprised.
“She stole
my yoroi.” He handed her a sheathed
katana and a very old cloth bag. “Hold
onto those. Go get your bow…No, not
your arrows.” Lessa was confused for a
moment, but did as he said. He led the
way out of the cabin, Lessa following with an exasperated expression.
As she left
the cabin, she automatically reached behind her to swing the door shut, only to
nearly trip over herself as nothing met her hand. She turned around, confused, to discover the cougar had closed
the door. “Oh…okay…” She hurried to
catch up to her uncle, Goldette easily getting to him first without even
trotting. When Lessa was alongside Ryo
she grabbed his arm. “So then what
happened?”
He
laughed. “What do you think? I got all huffy-puffy, thinking she was with
the Dynasty or something. Ended up
chasing her up one side of the mountain and down the other without stopping to
think about supplies. It was a whole
week and two days before I got back home.
And I probably wouldn’t have made it that far if not for her help. She kept me fed, bringing me little “gifts”,
but never letting me get close enough to get Rekka back. Once I woke up to discover that she’d
dragged me about fifteen miles. She
even brought me a bucket of water once…I never did figure out where she got
that bucket…”
Goldette
actually looked smugly proud. She all
but pranced ahead of them, batting a small branch off the path at one
point. Lessa couldn’t help laughing.
“Anyway,
when we got home, she returned my yoroi.
I think the whole thing was her way of proving that I should trust
her. After that, she was always
around. Naming her was quite a
challenge. If she didn’t like a name I
tried, she’d knock me around a bit. But
she liked Goldette. And I kept getting
a vibe from her. I remembered finally
that that was the sort of vibe I used to get from Blaze. I think she’s like him.”
“Oh?”
Ryo
nodded. “By the time you came up to
visit four months ago, Goldette had taken to going on hunting trips by herself
every other day. She was on one when
you came up.”
“Oh.”
“And that’s
all.”
Lessa
shrugged. “Okay. So, where’re we going?”
“To train,
duh!”
She
sighed. “Oh…but why do I need a
katana? Tenku uses archery.”
“Your
father knew how to use a sword. There’s
always a chance that you might lose your primary weapon in battle; you have to
have a backup plan.”
“Eh, good
point. So, I’ll be training with a
katana and bow and arrows. I can
handle that.”
“No. You’ll be training with a katana, bow and
arrows, naginata, tetsubo, yari, no-datchi, the whole nine yards.”
“What?!”
“The guys
and I decided that the more weapons you were able to use effectively, the
better. We have plenty of scars that
could have been avoided if we hadn’t been biased in our skills with weapons.”
“Ah, but
Ryo—”
“No
buts! It’s for your own good.”
Lessa
halted in her tracks.
Ryo turned
around. “Les?”
Do you
remember…
…I know
what you’re thinking…
Don’t
you ever do that again!
I didn’t
know.
We
shouldn’t have come here…
…I know
everything…
She
won’t last the night. I’ve won and you
know it!
There
will be others…
No! Don’t do it!
Promise
to remember…
…I
promise…
“Lessa!”
Lessa
jerked and stared at him. “Ryo, I—”
Ryo saw the
fright in her eyes and pulled her close.
“It’s okay. You’re safe.” Gods, she’s shaking all over. And she’s so cold!
The girl
pressed her face to his chest, trying to get as close as she could. She didn’t cry but she almost wanted
to. “They were all so loud…” she
gasped, her breathing ragged. “He was
mad. He wanted to…and she…”
Ryo stared
down at the top of his niece’s head, noting that there were a few black hairs
still amongst the blue. I must’ve
said something, he thought. I
must’ve reminded her of something. It
couldn’t have been about her parents, could it? He let her cling to him, stroking her hair soothingly. “You’re okay, honey. You’re safe with me. It’s okay.
Sshhh…”
They stood
there for a few minutes, in the middle of the forest, Goldette looking on. And as he comforted his friend’s daughter,
Ryo was left to wonder.
What had
they gotten themselves into?
***********************
“I can’t!”
Ryo looked
up at me with a sigh and a faint grin.
“You can. If you’d just
stop being so negative…”
“I am not
being negative! I’m being…uh…”
“Negative?”
“Shut
up!” With a scowl, I plopped to the
ground, dropping the katana at my side.
“It’s just so hard. Can’t I just
use my bow?”
“No. You’re going to learn at least three types
of weaponry. We’ve been over this four
times already. Don’t argue with me
again.”
“I’m not
arguing. I’m complaining in an unruly
fashion.”
“You’re arguing.”
Goldette
made a groaning noise and rolled over onto her back, wiggling around in the
pine needles. She’d been trying to
scratch her back all morning and simply hadn’t succeeded. I flopped onto my stomach and stretched out,
reaching for the cougar. As I scratched
her back, she closed her eyes in pleasure.
I pulled myself over to the big cat and snuggled up against her.
“Did she
just growl?” asked Ryo.
I looked
sheepish. “Eh, that was my
stomach. I’m hungry.”
Ryo threw
his hands up in the air. “Why me?” he
said, teasing. He stood up, walked to
the edge of the little clearing and pulled the bag that the food was in off a
tree branch. “Lunchtime, Goldette. See you in a while.”
The
mountain lion stretched and yawned—a very toothy yawn—and stalked off into the
forest, presumably to catch her own meal.
Ryo handed me one of the frozen water bottles, which by now were
half-melted. He unwrapped two of the
boiled eggs and started shelling them.
“Boiled
eggs?” I looked at the eggs doubtfully.
“Yeah. They’re a good traveling snack…as long as
you eat them before the sun spoils ‘em.”
He handed me an egg and the tiny saltshaker. “Just sprinkle a little—a little—salt on the egg, and bite
in. It’s good, trust me.”
I did as he
said and was surprised to find that he was right. Ryo smiled at the look on my face and handed me another two
eggs. “Shell your own food,” he said.
When we’d
finished all the eggs, he brought out the container that held the little white
beady things. “Okay, whussat?” I mumbled
around a mouthful of egg.
“It’s
called couscous. It’s a Moroccan
pasta. I like it; though some people
don’t. Wanna try some?”
“I dunno…”
Ryo
shrugged and used a plastic spoon to shovel a mouthful of the…couscous…into his
mouth. He made a show of looking like
he was tasting heaven or something.
“Alright,
haha. I’ll try some already.”
Once again,
Ryo was correct. “Mmm…dis is gwood.”
He
laughed. “Don’t talk with your mouth
full.”
“Thorry.”
After we’d
finished off the couscous and I’d gulped down most of my water, Ryo stood
up. “Back to work, kiddo. Get that bag there.”
I grabbed
the old cloth bag and peeked inside.
“What are these?”
“They’re
arrows, silly.”
“I know
that!” I said, rolling my eyes. “But
why couldn’t I have just used my own?”
Ryo
grinned. “Those are Rowen’s.”
I
froze. “Dad’s?”
“Yep.”
I
blinked. I slowly drew one of the
wooden shafts out of the bag. It was
perfectly balanced, and as I peered along the shaft, I discovered it was
perfectly straight too. The head was a
simple grey stone, sharpened to a lethal edge.
The flight-stabilizers—tail feathers—were carefully aligned, pure
white. What really caught my eye was
the delicately inscribed figure of a kanji on the midpoint of the shaft, carved
very lightly so it wouldn’t disturb the arrow’s balance and darkened
with a dark orange coloring. I’ve
always wanted to learn Japanese and to read kanji, but I’m afraid my knowledge
only went as far as the Ronin symbols.
“Justice?”
I asked, looking to Ryo.
He
nodded. “Look at the others.”
There had
to be at least fifty of the beautiful things in the bag; I took seven more in
my hand. Each kanji was darkened with
its corresponding color. “Wisdom,
Virtue, Trust…Life… But what are these?”
“Loyalty,
Endurance, Piety, Obedience,” said Ryo.
“Those are the Warlords’ kanjis.
Rowen made these arrows himself, a few months after the last
battle. He spent two months just
assembling them. Sage and I helped him
carve the kanjis, with his instruction of course. He would’ve killed us if we messed one up.”
“What’d he
make them for?”
“To use,
duh.” Ryo laughed at my scowl. “Okay,
he made them to use for practice and whatever else. He couldn’t very well use Tenku’s, could he?” He took one of the arrows from my hand. “Rowen loved these things. He kept one by his bed at all times. And watching him send them flying…it was
something else, Les.”
I traced
the Life kanji, deep dark blue, and closed my eyes. I could almost feel Dad touching the arrow, setting it along his
bow…
Let it
fly…
“But why
were they at your place?” I asked.
Ryo pulled
me to my feet and handed me my bow.
“Your mother didn’t like the idea of deadly weapons being easily within
your reach and your dad couldn’t have them in the same house with him without
wanting to have at least one nearby. He
couldn’t resist the ‘itch’. So he had a
friend keep them when you were only four months old. And when you moved here, he gave them to me. He came up here to practice with them when
he could, you know.”
“But I
remember…” I trailed off, recalling the tension of a bowstring under my
fingers, the sound of a flying arrow’s song as it rushed to strike…
Ryo looked
confused. “What do you remember?”
“I remember
these arrows. I remember using them.”
Ryo’s eyes
widened. “No, you never touched them
before today. And you couldn’t remember
seeing them. You were just a baby.”
“Really, I
do.” I fingered the feathers on one of
the arrows.
He shook
his head. “I don’t get it… We’ll have
to talk to the guys about it. Maybe you’re
remembering through Tenku. Rowen’s
memories.”
I
sighed. “Maybe.”
“Alright,
enough chit-chat. Time to get back to
business. You can practice with those
on your own for a while. I’m gonna take
a nap.”
“What? That’s not fair!”
“Shush,
young grasshopper. The master has
spoken,” he said in a silly accent, chuckling.
Ryo stretched out on the ground and closed his eyes.
I shrugged
and placed the butt of an arrow against my bowstring. A mere millisecond later, the projectile was lodged in my chosen
target, a tree limb at least two hundred yards away. I was shocked. Since when
could I fire that fast?
“Ryo—”
“The yoroi
enhance abilities that are involved in their use,” he told me, not even opening
his eyes. “For example, Cye can stay
underwater for an impossible length of time even without Suiko on.”
“Oh.”
“Now, let
me sleep.”
I scowled
at him but turned back to my practice.
On a whim, I pulled the entire quiver out of the bag and slung it over
my shoulder. It felt perfectly natural,
it felt right. Glaring through
the thick foliage of the trees at the arrow I’d already fired, I decided to try
something. I took a deep breath and
narrowed my eyes, then lifted my hand.
Thwapthwapthwapthwapthwapthwapthwapthwapthwap.
Another
nine arrows now were stuck in the tree, perfectly aligned vertically with the
first arrow. I beamed, delighted with
myself.
Ryo opened
one eye blearily and noted all of this.
“Yeah, well, now you gotta go get ‘em, hotshot.”
I glared at
him, but he’d already closed his eye again.
Grumbling to myself, I started walking towards the tree. When I got there, I set my quiver and bow on
the ground and started to shimmy up the tree and carefully plucked the arrows
from the bark. Then I jumped to the
ground and after checking each arrow’s line, I placed them back in the
quiver. As I stood up, I heard a cry of
alarm come from the clearing where I’d left Ryo. I whirled in that direction, and called out my uncle’s name as I
ran to see what was wrong.
I never
even felt the blow when it came.
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