Zoe
July 2009. Tokyo, Japan.
Most people considered the methodical beeping of a heart monitor to be reassuring, Zoe thought; she found it a torment. It informed her that the boy she watched was alive, but he was not with her. He lay in the bed with his long blond eyelashes twitching in time with his dreams, with parasitic tubes thrust into his body, and there could be no denying that he was at least one world away in thought. Perhaps two.
The nurses said that these contraptions helped him to live while he slept. If sleeping were such a dangerous thing, she'd countered, why did they want her to do more of it?
No one had an answer for that.
Zoe rested her chin upon one folded arm. Her fingers played with the itchy hospital linens. You would have to be a coma to get any sleep in this place, she thought. Perhaps it was for the best, though. Maybe in these dreams his monster couldn’t get to him.
She cast a wary glance behind her at the open door. The nurse at the station beyond it looked up, as if feeling Zoe's eyes upon her, and the glare that she offered was easily read: "Do not shut that door again, young lady."
The sixteen-year-old sighed and returned to staring at Jun. Her back itched as though the open door was staring at her. She hated this about hospitals--there was little in the way of privacy, especially for children. The explanation--"it keeps bad things from happening"--once again fell flat. Observation had done nothing for Jun.
"Wake up," Zoe whispered in English. She would speak no Japanese here; the less people that could understand her, the better. Jun's eyelids twitched and the heart monitor beeped on exactly as before.
"You said that I abandoned you," Zoe continued on as her eyes blurred the image of his fingers and the line feeding into his hand, "Is this your way for getting back at me? Because I left before you got better? If you keep doing this, they're just gonna think you're more crazy. No matter what you do, no matter what you say, the more that you act out the 'crazier' you become. You know that. It doesn't matter if you have your reasons. They don't wanna hear them."
Heavy footsteps on the tile outside. As though a string inside of her--like a tube, the same as the ones feeding Jun--had been tugged, Zoe knew that this was a sound she should pay attention to.
The steps drew closer to the steady beat of the heart monitor. Though the urge was strong, Zoe refused to turn around. When the footsteps stopped outside Jun’s door she realized that she didn’t need to.
“Go away,” Zoe ordered as her fingers clutched the bedsheets. There was a hesitation, tangible in the air itself, and then they drifted two paces into the room.
“Stop!” Zoe squeezed her eyes shut. The footsteps stayed in their place. “He doesn’t need you. We don’t need you. We don’t want you, we don’t love you, and we don’t want anything to do with you.
“Go. Away.”
If not for the incessant beeping of the monitor, Zoe thought that time might have stopped dead in that instant.
Then, a single step moved away. It paused again, seemingly uncertain of itself, and then another retreating step. One by one, the footsteps moved back down the hall until they were no more. Zoe sniffed loudly and opened her eyes to the restless face nestled in a bed of blond curls. Her hand inched across the bed linen until her fingers twined with his.
The only light came from the trail of sizzling embers that spewed over the ground like a carpet of death. Pop, crackle, pop; they proclaimed their tentative hold on life to any left to hear it.
Throat clogged with smoke and the taste of bile, Zoe pushed herself to her knees and then to her feet. Her skin was scraped through her clothes and chain mail drug at her arms. She fought with it, clawing her way out of the warped tangle of armor until she could hold it before her. Gulping at the soot marks and the torn, blistering chinks, she dropped it into a sorry heap and stumbled away.
She picked her way, stumbling, through the blistering field. It was as though some giant god had swept its hand across the Beltane fires and sent them pouring over the hillside. In the red haze, lumps that looked suspiciously like bodies lay stuck in the piles of char and ash. Zoe turned her burning eyes away from them and watched where she put her feet, instead.
It felt like an eternity before the heat of the field was behind her, before the smoke drew its dagger-like fingers from her lungs and her eyes cleared of soot. Nothing could erase the stench of the dead, the tortured moans of the dying.
Anger and sickness swam conjoined in her stomach, threatening to toss whatever was there. She fought it as she marched on, trailing bits of armor behind her. A glove here, a belt there; her sword hit the ground with a dull thunk and she stopped to stare at it. After a moment, she knelt beside the blood-stained weapon and picked it up by the hilt. It looked heavy, but she did it with ease as unfamiliar muscles flexed in her arm. Her hand was wrong too, she realized with a frown; the nails were chipped, it was too angular, and the skin unmarred by the freckles that clouded her body.
A cry, some kind of bird she thought, jolted her from her musings and she dropped the sword again. Looking up through the forest of fire-scarred trees, Zoe found that she'd stumbled to the edge of a moonlit meadow. Here the foliage was unwasted, the water glistened in a babbling brook, and Jun sat among the ferns with a fawn in his lap. The clothes he was wearing were weird, like something one saw in a Robin Hood movie.
He jerked when she stood up, back straight and eyes turned to the dark side of the forest--away from her. The fawn, however, looked right at her.
Zoe frowned at it; there was something weird about the fawn. For a moment her vision swam, an outline of something larger, and then the world snapped back into view. She blinked and rubbed her eyes, and then waded forth through the ferns to plop down at his side.
Jun still didn't look at her. Just about to punch his shoulder, he hissed a warning, and Zoe found her gaze being drawn to the black forest. "What--?"
He hissed again, and his hand grabbed hers. The fawn looked up too, ears erect as it watched the trees. Try as she might, Zoe couldn't see anything. It was an effort not to smile. She squeezed his hand and waited for him to realize there wasn't anything there.
Eventually he did. Jun’s shoulders relaxed, and he took his hand away, returning his attention to the fawn he'd been petting.
"Where are we?"
His curls obscured his eyes, as always, but Zoe thought she could feel him looking at her as his head turned, ever so slightly, in her direction. "I don't know."
"I don't know either," she looked at the fawn, who stared up at her. Zoe lifted a hand to pet it, hesitated, and then set her hand upon her knee instead. "There was burning."
Jun grunted in response, and his hands closed into a fist over the fawn's back. Her gut rolled, but Zoe leaned closer and put a hand to his shoulder. The boy turned his face further away and then two dark eyes filled her vision. The fawn hovered millimeters from her face, it’s dark eyes big as dinner plates, as it hissed: "We don't want you here."
"Zoe."
She blinked sleep weary eyes at the comatose boy before her. Her left hand was still twined with his, but the right moved to rub one eye. Fingers settled upon her shoulder and she jerked upright.
Dr. Mizuno flinched, and Zoe knew she wasn't supposed to have seen that. A thrill of glee that she'd caught the doctor by surprise overrode the guilt. Schooling her features to be sure that nothing but hostility showed, the blond scooted her chair away and finished rubbing the sleep-grit away. Mizuno looked down at her, silent, for a long moment before turning to look at Jun. "I had a feeling that you would be here. We had an appointment."
Zoe clasped Jun’s hand again, and she leaned forward against the edge mattress. Her back ached, but Mizuno didn't need to know that.
The doctor sighed. "I know you're upset about Jun. That's good--really good--but it can't come at detriment to yourself. You don't want Jun to wake up and find you've been neglecting your studies or treatment, do you?"
Zoe snorted and rolled her eyes. It was pointless to explain how much crap that was. She closed her eyes again. The hand returned to her shoulder and from the weight of it, Zoe peeked between her lashes to see Mizuno squatting next to her chair. This, she knew, was to put the doctor on "her level." They believed that it showed the patients that they were on Their Side.
Bile crawled at her throat when she remembered how she'd used to believe it.
"Zoe. I realize that you and Jun were close. And I know that he's hurt right now, and how difficult that must be for you. We like the fact that you come to sit with him, but this is getting to be a little much. Just come down to the cafeteria and get something to eat with me, take a shower, and do a little school work. You can come back for evening visiting hours."
She cast a wary look at the Doctor. Mizuno seemed as though she meant it. Zoe frowned and glanced back up at the sleeping boy. Jun didn't say or do anything, just as he hadn't said or done anything for three weeks. She nodded, and released his hand. “Fine.”
Mizuno rose with her and reached for her arm. Zoe pulled away, turned on her heel, and marched herself to the cafeteria.
Dinner went down by shovels, the better to get her away from Mizuno. To her credit, the doctor seemed to understand her distaste and didn’t try to talk. When she was done, Mizuno walked her to her room and left her be.
It was only the promise of returning to Jun that got Zoe to crack open her school books. “Pointless,” she muttered as she flipped through the history text. Settling on a chapter about the Meji rebellion, she settled against the wall to the back of her bed.
Slowly her gaze was pulled from the page, where the characters had long since disappeared and the pictures reduced to fuzzy splashes of colour, to the parking lot beyond her window. There, under the familiar tree, was the tiny blue bubble Mizuno called a car. Tears pricked Zoe’s eyes as she recalled a time she’d been so happy to see just that.
Squeezing them shut, she tossed her book aside and flopped face-forward into her pillow.
Her steps echoed along the empty corridor, fast and quick as the heart pounding against her ribs. There was no light but the glow of the moon through arched windows, interspersed along one side of the hall.
Another set of steps rushed from an opening to her left. She passed and heard them fall into place behind her. “Is it true?” he hissed.
“It is,” she replied--or she thought she did. There was something wrong with her voice, beyond the lump of restrained tears.
They came upon a staircase that spiraled down into pitch darkness. Neither hesitated in running down it, skipping two of the steep, uneven steps at a time. Zoe’s mind screamed, convinced she would topple down them at any second, yet her feet seemed to know where it was they were going.
Her hand, unfreckled and calloused, reached for the door at the bottom.
A car honked in the parking lot below. Zoe jerked, moaned, and slapped her hand to her face. She drug the heel of her palm against one eye and sat up. The room was exactly as she’d left it, save that her roommate had returned and now laid, sleeping, in the bed adjacent to her own.
Turning to the window as the car honked again, Zoe blinked at the twilight beyond. When had it gotten so late?
Sitting in front of the main entrance to the hospital was a small white van marked with the hospital’s emblem that was blocking the main pass through. The car sitting behind it honked a third time, and then several figures rushed from the building. One of them was Mizuno, the other Bachiko.
A chill ran down Zoe’s spine as she saw them wheedling the red-headed girl to get into the van. Mizuno was making placating motions with her hands, as the two orderlies bulled the child until she was inside. In another moment they slammed the door. Mizuno stepped to the side, arms crossed about herself. Another of the doctors bowed to Mizuno, and then got in on the passenger side.
Launching herself from the bed, Zoe ran full stop toward the hospital entrance. Startled nurses and orderlies yelled in her wake. Mizuno was coming in the doors when she reached them, and Zoe skidded to a halt. “Where is she going?”
If Mizuno was surprised, she didn’t show it. She watched Zoe carefully a moment, then looked behind them and held a hand up to the orderlies that had followed after the girl. “It’s okay,” she told them, “There’s no problem here.”
Though they grumbled, the orderlies returned to their duties with hardly a backward glance. Mizuno pursed her lips. “Did you want to see Jun?”
“I want to know what you’re doing with Bachiko.”
People were not staring in that pointed, Japanese way that Zoe had come to both love and loathe. Mizuno fidgeted in place, and Zoe crossed her arms over her chest. How many of them, she wondered, were marking her as a foreign delinquent? The back of her neck prickled, hairs raising on end, and she wanted nothing more than to press it to a wall.
“Come with me, please,” Mizuno said, in English this time. She went for the elevator, and Zoe trailed behind.
The second floor held a sky walk into the “normal people” hospital. It was guarded by a double door and a nurse’s station, and no one moved to stop them when they went past. They were the only persons on there, as usual.
“She is being transferred to another hospital. This facility was not appropriate for her.” Mizuno glanced at her. “You need not worry, she will not be back.”
“What do you mean ‘it wasn’t appropriate’?” Zoe frowned.
Mizuno shook her head. “I cannot discuss another patient’s treatment with you, Zoe. Not in such detail.”
“It’s because of us, isn’t it?” Zoe stopped in the middle of the sky walk. Mizuno turned back to look at her; she sighed and went to the window to look out at the darkening sky.
“No, Zoe,” Mizuno said after a moment, “It was because of her actions. This is primarily an open patient facility, as you are well aware. We found a more suitable situation for her.”
Drifting to the doctor’s side, Zoe gazed with her out the huge, floor-to-ceiling windows. “She’ll be okay, right?”
“Of course.” Mizuno’s reflection shifted to watch her. Zoe stared resolutely ahead. “You still care about her.”
“No! Yes.” Carding one hand through her hair, Zoe stomped her heel once. “No! No I don’t. Not now. She’s...” Faltering, Zoe wrapped her arms about herself and rubbed them.
“She was your friend?” Mizuno was still watching her, in that side-long Japanese fashion, and Zoe turned away.
“She was Bachiko.” The girl shrugged and walked toward the end of the sky walk. Mizuno followed presently. At the hospital end, the doors only opened with a key-card; the other side had no guard of nurses or orderlies. There was a station a little further down the hall, however, in the children’s wing.
Jun was laid in a room where the nurse on duty could monitor him. Unlike the other patients, he didn’t have family that checked on him or sat with him. Zoe went to her seat the moment they entered the room, and Mizuno didn’t try to stop her.
After moving it to his beside, Zoe plopped down onto the hard seat and leaned her elbows onto the mattress. Mizuno remained by the door a moment longer; Zoe could feel the woman’s presence at her back. Finally she turned, and Zoe counted the footsteps drifting away.
“Dr. Mizuno.” They paused at the nurses’ station. The nurse continued, almost too softly for Zoe to hear, “Are you sure that this is okay?”
“A little longer,” Mizuno replied after a moment. “Give it a few more days.” The footsteps continued their journey, but Zoe was no longer counting.
She raised her eyes to Jun’s still face, and reached for his hand. “Please. Wake up?”
The morning dew chilled her naked feet, the grass sending up swarms of crickets and a crushed, rain-fresh smell that brought tears to her eyes. She scrubbed them away, and blinked until her vision cleared. All around her, the meadow was a brilliant carpet of emerald ferns, a rainbow of wild flowers, with golden sunlight pouring from the heavens. It was, in a word, impossible.
She knew that there was nothing like this on earth--except maybe in doctored nature magazines. In the distance a bird sang to itself. Nothing else moved; not a stir of wind or hum of cricket. Goosebumps raced up her arms as she took a cautious step into the meadow.
It was the same one she’d found Jun in before, though it was morning now, and the boy didn’t seem to be in sight. Neither was that fawn, and, for that, Zoe was grateful.
A sharp giggle came from beneath the trees.
Zoe turned to face them, but there was nothing beneath the trunks but more ferns. “Hello?” she called, one hand moving to the sword at her hip.
Though mildly surprised at the weapon’s presence--as well as her response to it--Zoe was grateful for the solid hilt beneath her palm. Another giggle came, to her back now. She tipped her head in the right direction, but waited.
A third, to her left. A fourth to her right.
“Stop toying with me! Who are you?”
The giggling stopped. Zoe waited, hardly daring to breath, but no more sounds came. A cricket dared to sing, followed timidly by his fellows.
“Jun?” Zoe called, her voice quavering.
“Excuse me,” said the night nurse as she shook Zoe’s shoulder. Zoe jumped back. Her seat fell over, spilling her to the tile.
“Oh!” the nurse gasped and moved to help her up. The girl struggled away and scrambled up on her own.
“What?” She grabbed the chair up and righted it, glaring at the woman who’d woken her.
For a moment the nurse merely stared at her. Then she gave Zoe one of those damned, false smiles and gestured to the door. “Visiting hours are over, miss. You need to return to the...other wing now.”
Zoe looked to Jun, still lying where he had been. “I’ll find you,” she muttered to him in English. Before the nurse could call the orderlies, she left and allowed the woman to trail her back over to the sky walk. The nurse let Zoe through, the card-reader beeping when she scanned it, and made sure the door closed behind her.
Stopping again in the middle of the walk, Zoe looked up at the sky. The moon was a pale crescent in its bed of stars. She shivered, and chaffed her palm against one arm.
Shocks ran down her arms with each blow, but still she pressed on. Her opponent was in fine form that evening; he pressed her through the routines like a madman, never seeming to tire. It wasn’t his aggressiveness that bothered her, though, nor even the angry set to his lips.
No, it was the silence which got to her. The impersonal feeling of the fight--as though they really were two enemies met upon the battlefield.
In the end he tripped her, sending her sprawling across the straw covered floor of the salle. The tip of his sword hovered a millimeter from her throat, her own kicked to smack uselessly against the far wall.
For a moment they stayed that way, sapphire eyes boring into her own.
He sheathed his sword in an instant and strode from the practice room. She remained to stare at the rafters and wonder where the good days had gone.
Someone rapped at her door. Zoe didn’t move from the window; the blue bubble car was in its spot, begging to be stared at. She looked at the cityscape instead. Behind her, the door opened, shut, and her visitor stood before it, watching her. The clock on her bedside table ticked on in amiable ignorance of the human’s discomfort. After it had counted by a full two minutes, the visitor shuffled his feet.
“Zoe,” Cain rubbed the back of his neck with the hand that wasn’t clutching a familiar, bedraggled teddy bear. She could see him in the window, once she focused on the dim reflection, and something stirred at the sight of her beloved Mr. Ruffles.
Zoe’s shoulders slumped, and she turned to face her brother, holding one hand out. Cain snorted, but handed the bear over so that she could squeeze it. “Brat,” he accused and settled on the end of the bed.
“Jealous.” The girl stuck her tongue out at him and kissed the stuffed bear’s head. Cain’s nose wrinkled a little, and he shook his head. “It’s just a stuffed toy, and I know where it’s been.” Nevertheless, a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth, and when he looked at her again, it was easier to ignore the lines etched prematurely at the corners of his eyes and between his brows. “So, I get no acknowledgement at all?”
Zoe glanced at the door to make certain that it was closed. She stood on her knees and waddled close enough that she might loop her arms around her brother’s shoulders. His arm wrapped about her middle, and he held her close for a long moment.
“So,” he said into her ear, “I heard you beat the hell out of some chick?”
“Ugh.” Zoe pulled away and settled back onto the bed with a sigh. “Mom sent you to lecture me, is that it?”
Cain turned a look upon her that made her fidget like a naughty toddler. “ Mom is in Aspen. She doesn’t know.”
“They went to Aspen?”
The boy--man, she reminded herself, he was in college now--ran one large hand into his thick, blond locks and stood up. “Dad’s been there on business, Zoe. They’ll still be there a couple more months. It took us weeks to convince her to go along with this, so don’t you dare--“
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she yelped and then jerked her eyes down to the bear she held. A knot in her gut belied her words and then Cain’s knee dropped onto the bed.
“Yeah, you did.” He crossed his arms and stood there until she looked up at him. The man sighed and flopped back down onto the end of the bed, which squeaked in mild protest. “Zoe. She’s…This has taken a lot out of her, okay?”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Cain lifted a brow, and Zoe’s lips tightened. Once again her eyes dropped, but two calloused fingers took her chin between them. “Look at me…I know this isn’t easy on you, but it isn’t easy on her either, okay? It isn’t easy or fun for any of us, and we…Zoe going around beating people senseless because you don’t like them…you can’t just--”
“It wasn’t like that.” Zoe pulled away and scooted back down the bed to her pillows. “Bachiko attacked me!”
“That isn’t what the doctor said.” Cain frowned.
“Yeah, well maybe the doctor doesn’t know everything.”
Cain stared at her for a long time, his face unreadable even to someone who had known him her whole life. Zoe refused to gulp or to spew the apologies that clogged her throat. He stood up.
Halfway to the door, Cain turned and there was something in his eyes which hurt a lot more than anger. “You know we love you. We want you to get better. But sometimes I wonder how much you really care about the rest of us, because you sure don’t seem to think about how this affects anyone but you. I don’t know what it is that you’re so upset about, but if you’re not sharing everything with your doctor…”
The man shook his head. Though his mouth opened to add something, he closed it again without saying a word. In another moment she was alone again, but for a bear to remind her of what she’d once had.
It was still in her arms when she went to Mizuno’s office later that afternoon. If the woman thought anything of the decrepit toy, she said nothing and offered Zoe some tea. The girl took it, if only to be polite, and they sat in silence most of their hour.
“Zoe, about Jun--”
“I don’t know what to do.” Zoe interrupted. Mizuno paused, tea midway to her lips, to watch Zoe. The girl shrugged. “Well, I don’t.”
“Do about...What don’t you know what to do about?”
Squeezing Mr. Ruffles, Zoe put her nose to the bears head and watched his paws. “Everything,” she said eventually. “Anything. The whole world’s gone to hell, and I can’t fix it.”
Mizuno sipped her tea. “I’m glad that you’d want to ‘fix it’, Zoe, but is that really your responsibility?”
“Whose would it be?” Zoe muttered. She shrugged and drew her feet up into the seat; Mizuno didn’t try to stop her, though she glanced at the feet on her furniture. “I couldn’t help him. Can’t help myself. Couldn’t help her. Everything I try to do fails. Sometimes I think I’m supposed to.”
“Fail?”
Zoe nodded. “I always lose, every time. No matter how hard I try, how much time or energy...we’re never going to win, are we? So what’s the point. He was right. It doesn’t matter.”
“Zoe,” Mizuno cooed, and frowned. “You do matter, what you do--”
“Gets people killed!” The girl snapped. “So what’s the difference? If someone’s blood has to be spilled, shouldn’t it be mine? It will be eventually, and we both know it.”
Her pulse rang in her ears; her heart hammered against her chest. She got up, jerking away when Mizuno reached for her, and slammed the office door behind her. Breaking into a trot, bear dangling by its foot, Zoe got halfway down the hall before she heard Mizuno call her name. With a growl, she urged herself into a run.
“Zoe!” Mizuno yelled again. Nurses were paying attention now. One of them grabbed a phone; she could hear the woman calling for ‘backup.’ How many times had she done this now? It felt like millions, yet she never managed to do what Jun had done--she never could escape.
An orderly appeared before her, gigantic in the doorway. She tried to change her course, but her slippers skidded on the tile. The man grabbed her and held on until Mizuno caught up. One look at the doctor and the energy seemed to drain from Zoe’s body.
“Show her to her room, please,” Mizuno asked the orderly. He nodded and kept one hand to Zoe’s shoulder as she walked with him back to her prison. Her fingers loosened, and Mr. Ruffles fell, abandoned, to the floor.
The heat was suffocating. Running forward, Zoe choked on her own screams as fresh tunnels of fire rose to block her path. They pushed her forward, to the side, back--forcing her path like a dog with sheep.
There were others, too, trapped within the blaze. They screamed along with her, but their forms were black and charred, wilting beneath the onslaught. She tripped over one as he collapsed, and went sprawling into ash and embers. Coughing, hacking, the girl scrambled to her feet and tried to rub the soot from her face. When her vision finally cleared, she opened her eyes and saw that the fires had died.
She stood in the field of embers and stared up into the moon-less sky.
“The strongest link,” he whispered beside her, “will come when we least expect it.”
“A new moon?”
She looked in time to see him nod. The man beside her was hardly more than a shadow, slightly darker than the others around them. It was a trick, she thought, something that he was doing though she couldn’t imagine how. He was watching the moon, though, and she looked to it too. It was hardly more than a sliver in the sky.
“When it disappears,” he murmured. “That’s when.”
“Are we sure we have to do this?”
“Yes,” she thought he said, though it was so faint she couldn’t be sure. When next she dared to look he was gone.
The door opened and an orderly waved his flashlight about. Zoe squeezed her eyes shut until he’d marked their presence off on his clipboard and shut the door again. Sitting up, Zoe sighed and looked about the room. Soft light streamed in from the parking lot, enough to see Mr. Ruffles sitting across the room on an extra chair in the corner. Someone must have brought him back to her.
Tears pricking her eyes, Zoe scrambled off the bed and across the floor. She hugged the bear to her chest, breathing in the familiar scent of it. In all actuality, it probably didn’t smell like anything at all--but Zoe imagined she could smell her mother’s perfume, or the suikazura in their backyard.
Looking down at the chair Ruffles had been sitting on, Zoe also remembered a certain visitor who had sat there weeks before. She hadn’t seen that freakish green jacket in a long while now, and the thought of him made her sneer. As she returned to her bed, Zoe also caught sight of her guitar case in the corner.
She hadn’t played since that day. That song.
That song.
The nurse looked up briefly from her paperwork when Zoe appeared, guitar case strapped to her back and Mr. Ruffles in her arms. It was tempting to try, again, to shut the door. Unwilling to argue about it, she unstrapped her guitar and set it down beside the boy’s bed. Mr. Ruffles was placed next to Jun’s hand.
Guitar strap over one shoulder, Zoe took her seat and held the instrument loosely in her hands. She’d tuned it before she’d come, so she wouldn’t have to struggle in front of everyone. That didn’t make her feel less a...target.
Shaking her head, the girl set her fingers to the strings. Slowly at first, but with rising confidence, she strummed out the long familiar tune.
She’d never been quite sure where it had come from. It wasn’t something she’d heard anywhere that she could pinpoint--not a commercial, nor a TV show, not anything on the radio. Neither was it a lullaby, though it was paced as one.
A soft moan came from the bed. Zoe looked up, fingers stilling, but Jun had not moved. After a moment, she took up the song again. His eyelids twitched, just faintly. Her fingers continued to play on, loop after loop, as his head lulled, millimeter by millimeter, to face her. “Come on,” she whispered.
Someone’s hand clamped down on the neck of her guitar, killing the music with an off-tune thwang.
Zoe looked up at the large, dark eyed man standing over her. “Who is this child?” he demanded of the nurse, who had come flustering out from behind her desk. Zoe scrambled out of her seat and yanked her guitar away. The man glowered at her.
“Tanaka-san,” said the nurse, bowing at the door. “I apologize, we did not know that you were coming.”
The man looked at Jun, then back to Zoe. “You’re one of those well-wishers, are you? Volunteer kids?”
“No. I’m crazy.”
That seemed to trip Tanaka up some. He stared at her a moment, and then it was as though the fire had been knocked out of him. “Are you, now.” One hand drifted to touch the bed his son laid upon, and he looked down again at the sleeping boy. “A friend, even so, I hope?”
She nodded.
Tanaka and Jun could not look any less alike, Zoe thought. The father was well past his prime, with a receding hairline and well-worn creases in his skin. What hair he did have seemed dyed, for she could just make out the barest silver touch at his roots. Where Jun was a tiny, slim boy-child, Tanaka was tall, broad shouldered, and barrel chested. She wondered what Jun’s mother must have looked like, to produce such a child.
“It’s good to see that he has a friend.”
He touched Mr. Ruffles, and she startled. “Is this yours?” She nodded, again, and he handed the bear to her. The man glanced at her guitar, then shook his head. “Nurse, where is his doctor?”
“Which one, sir?” the woman asked, glancing at the charts in her arms.
“Both of them.”
“I’ll go find them.” The nurse ran off, presumably to do just that, and left the pair of them alone. They stood together for several minutes, each staring at the unmoving boy. Then, slowly, Tanaka turned and wandered back into the hall. He stayed there until the nurse returned to escort him away.
Soon after, the nurses shooed her away so that they could work.
Sitting alone in the rec room, Zoe stared out the window and ran her thumb lightly over the scar on her left wrist. The feeling made goosebumps up her back, but still she continued. Humming to herself, she didn’t look up when a chair scooted out at the table beside her.
“Sullivan-san...”
“What do you want?” Zoe closed her eyes and rested her forehead upon the glass.
“I thought we might play a few rounds again.”
“Why? You let me win.”
“Did I...” From the sound of it he was already setting up the game. Zoe sneered at his impertinence, but she sat up and took a look at the chess board. Chiba was still wearing that godawful green jacket, she noted with disgust. “I promise I won’t this time, if that’s what you want.”
“What I want,” she muttered. Reaching for a pawn, she moved it out onto the board. Chiba lifted a brow at her words, but he matched her move. The game was on.
They said nothing through the games, and when he left he did so quietly. Of their four games, Zoe won none; she was fine with that. After clearing away the game, she returned to her room and tried to sleep.
The fields were honey and gold; standing so tall with wheat that the five of them could get lost for hours. In the distance were the sounds of the forge--the clinks and bangs and scrapes as scythes were sharpened, plows patched for the impending harvest. But that day was distant for now, an eternity to them whom could not yet imagine the end of summer.
There were no rules to their game, yet they played it: chasing through the wheat, catching sight of one another only in the flash of clothing or laughing voice. It was the prince who took the tumble first, when they came upon the end of the fields, rolling down the hill toward the river. The others followed suit until they laid a writhing pile of boys beneath the heavy limbs of the orchard trees.
“There’s an apple in my ass,” complained one, just to set the others laughing once again. They hit him and scrambled to their feet.
Snagging fruit from the trees as they passed, they marched the rest of the way to the river. “I still can’t believe he let us go,” mused one, a golden-haired boy with a farmer’s tan. “Kalunite’s been on my ass about practice.”
“It isn’t his fault you dance about the salle like a maid with a broom,” another teased, the complainer from earlier. His long, dark locks were pulled back into a tail which he twirled around one finger whilst “impersonating” the blond. “I’d say you could use all the practice you can get.”
The blond got up to chase him, eventually catching him and punching at his arms while the rest looked on, cheering for both and neither.
“Well why shouldn’t we have some time to ourselves?” The prince gestured with his apple. “We work hard as anyone, learning all that strategy nonsense and sword play.”
“And court.” They all grimaced, the loud mouthed pair finally given up on beating one another to a pulp.
“True,” said that strange voice from her dreams. “But it is weird.”
A heavy shadow fell across the river bank and all five looked up. A silver streak flew across the sky like a chariot. Behind it, hung in the sky despite the daylight, hung the slim crescent of the moon.
It was waning. Zoe rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she stared out her window at the moon. It was hard to see, now, it was so slender against the sky. The pit of her stomach lurched. “When it disappears,” she mumbled.
She sat up and stared at Mr. Ruffles. “When it disappears,” she said again, stronger this time. Slipping from the bed, she found her slippers and then padded to the door.
A quick check into the hall saw no one. Zoe slipped from her room and tiptoed down the corridor. There was a single light on at the nurse’s station where one of the orderlies was filing paperwork. She could hear the music blasting from his headphones even here.
Waiting for a moment when his back was turned, she ran across the open space and hid, squatting, behind the counter. Praying fervently that no one would come along and see her, Zoe inched herself around the rounded counter, toward the hall on the other side.
Peeking about the corner of the counter, she watched as the orderly finished with his filing, gathered up some other loose papers. He turned toward her. She ducked back behind the counter and plastered herself to it as he walked past, humming to his music.
The orderly bee-bopped his way down the hall she needed, so she was left with little choice but to follow in his wake, ducking from one hiding spot to another. A trash can here, an alcove there, a roller-cart of cleaning supplies she was certain a janitor would find her molesting at any second.
At the elevator, the orderly got on, and the doors closed. Zoe breathed a sigh of relief.
From that point on her journey was swifter. Listening diligently for other midnight travelers, she made her way past quiet labs and therapy rooms, past more bedrooms both used and not, until she came to the station beside the sky walk.
There wasn’t anyone there, and she grinned. Checking both ways down the adjoining hall, she darted across, opened the door, and stepped out into the dark corridor. Trotting down the hall, she didn’t stop until she reached the other door, grabbing at the handle and--it was locked.
Zoe stared at it for a long moment, before the blinking LED on the card-reader caught her attention. “Dammit!” She banged her fist against the wall, then sunk to press her back against it. Drawing her knees up to her chest, she wrapped her arms about her legs and thumped her forehead against her kneecaps.
Looking up through the glass ceiling, she watched the moon as it spied upon her--laughing.
“Is it true?”
He raced after her down the flight of uneven stone steps. She reached for the door at the bottom and burst through the side entrance to the audience chamber.
The king was upon his throne, his wizened head bowed in grief. The queen sat beside him, her hand in his. Zoe searched her the woman’s face for some sign of pleasure in this, some note of amusement--but there was none. Content with that small comfort, she jogged to her place before the throne where their two brothers-in-arms waited.
She and the other--the blond one, though he was much older now--bent to one knee before their king.
Silence. No one dared to move or breath.
Then, with all the grace and dignity of his station, the king rose to his feet and lifted his chin. Only those closest to him, his own generals and his son’s companions, knew what such an act cost him in energy and pain. The king was not young, nor whole, and she wondered if this might be the death of him after all.
“As you are all surely aware by now, my--the prince has fled. He has turned traitor and put his lot in with our enemies. Let his name be blackened from our records and our hearts, his claim upon our throne rendered invalid, and life forfeit should he ever step foot upon these sacred grounds again.
“They rally their armies against us, now. We will do no less than the same. Send for the heralds and call my lords and their men.”
Those terrible, sapphire eyes, so like the prince’s, fell upon the four companions before him. “I trust you will fulfill your duty.”
“Yes, my Liege,” the largest of them said. The others followed suit, but there was no joy from any of them. He moved to reclaim his seat, and his wife held her hand out for his. As she took it, her dark eyes met Zoe’s.
There was shouting at the end of the hall. Zoe looked up to find herself still in the sky walk, the king and his wife long gone. She frowned. Rising to her feet, Zoe started back across to her proper side of the hospital.
Mizuno was angry with her; Zoe wasn’t sure that she’d ever seen the woman truly angry before, and it left her with a queasy sort of feeling.
“How can I let you go?” The doctor frowned down at her. “You’ve already been in there far more often than is allowed under regular policy, you aren’t even trying with your school work anymore, you’re storming out of therapy sessions, and now this.
“All on top of that nastiness with Bachiko...” Mizuno took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “No. I’m very sorry, but no. I cannot allow you to go over there any more. Not until something changes.”
“His father didn’t seem to mind!” Zoe’s hands curled into fists at her side. Mizuno glanced at them, as though fearful of being hit, and then shook her head.
“What Tanaka-san minds or does not mind is not my concern, Zoe. You are. It is for your health alone that I am putting a stop to this. Please, take a look at your homework. Then we can talk.”
“But the new moon--”
Mizuno had been moving for the door, but she stopped at that. Zoe looked away again, even as she felt Mizuno’s eyes upon her. “The new moon? What about it?”
“It’s tonight, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I think so.”
Zoe stared out her window. That atrocious blue car underneath it’s tree. How she wanted to destroy it. “Get out.”
The door shut behind the doctor, and Zoe strode over to the window. She paced in what limit space the room allowed--her roommate was gone to group therapy, so it didn’t matter. Tearing at her hair, she growled and muttered nonsense to herself. It did no good to curse people, but she did it anyway.
“It’s going to come, and if I can’t get to him, and then we can’t fulfill our promise and the king will die, and what am I going to do?”
She spread her hands in avid gesture to the bear sitting upon her bed. “What do I do, Ruffles? I need a plan.”
Her skin itched like a mad thing, the scars upon her wrists seemed to pulse. Zoe tore at them with her nails, trying to silence the urge. “It just...No one would believe me, you know? They never will, never would. How can I tell them? The moon...the moon is just like it...GAH.”
Red dripped down her arms. Zoe stared at it, as it spilled from the scratches she’d made. Not as free flowing as a real cut would be, no, but it didn’t work this time. The itching didn’t stop. Shaking, she flopped onto her bed and grabbed her bear. She pulled it to her chest and hugged it tight as the tears came.
The entire world was ice, but that didn’t seem to bother her. Her breath frosted before her eyes, and yet...she felt nothing. Still marveling at this, it took Zoe a moment to notice the woman kneeling upon one knee before her. The woman reached a hand up to her.
She was made of ice, like everything else, but there was breath in her chest, and when Zoe took the offered hand, it was warm. The demon’s eyes rose to meet hers and it smiled. “Mistress.”
Sunset fire bathed the room when she woke. Despair still clawed at her throat. “What do I do?” she whispered to Mr. Ruffles.
“You do what you must,” said the bear. Nodding, Zoe got up from the bed.
No one stopped her as she went down the hall to the hospital’s entrance, but several of the orderlies and nurses gave her the eye. They would care if she tried to run, she knew, and they would stop her if she went for the sky walk. There was only one other alternative.
Zoe eyed the double doors at the main entrance to the hospital. She went past them, to the rec room. Turning her bear about, she kissed its forehead and then set it upon the chess table. Leaving it there, she headed back the way she’d come.
The screaming began as she reached the doors. In the confusion, she ran out them and toward the main branch of the hospital.
In the short time it took her to get there the demon had run through one of the walls in the psychiatric ward, sending more people out and getting the attention of the other ward’s occupants. Zoe pushed her way through the gathering crowd and into the building; no one tried to stop her.
The nurses’ station adjacent to Jun’s room was empty. Zoe shut the room’s door and drew the blinds over the viewing windows. She shoved her chair under the doorknob, like she’d seen in movies, and then fell to her knees beside the bed. Grasping Jun’s hand between both of her Zoe pressed the boys fingers to her forehead. “Wake up. Wake up!”
A red haze bathed the meadow and its occupants. Jun was no where in sight, but the fawn stood in the middle of the field, staring her down. Zoe twisted the hilt in her hand, feeling the familiar weight of her sword.
“We don’t want you here,” the fawn hissed between pointed canines.
“One last chance, demon.” Zoe held her sword up, pointed at the creature. “Let go of him.”
The fawn’s head lowered, its hoof pawing the loam. It charged as two points on its skull erupted into wicked, six-pronged antlers. Zoe parried, like she might’ve a swordsman, but the fawn sent her skidding back on her heels, the dirt and grass tossed up behind them.
It tried to toss her aside, but she rolled with it, coming back up to ward off another attack. They danced around the field as though it were one of her practices with Endymion. Try as she might, she could not get an attack in--she was left to defend herself as the demon went wild.
“Weakling!” It laughed as it tossed her aside again, and stood to watch her struggle to her feet. She thought there might be more, but it pawed the ground in ready for another charge. This time, she rolled away from it.
Coming up from the roll, she brought her sword up and caught the demon’s flank. It crumpled onto three legs with a howl.
Zoe smirked, getting to her feet as it struggled onto its own. “You,” it hissed, its bulbous eyes flashing red. It tossed its antlers, but its charge was slower this time. She dodged again, this time merely jumping to the side. Her blade caught along it’s side, running from neck to flank.
The demon toppled and once again tried to stand.
Zoe stood above it, staring down at the creature that had held her friend in thrall. “Please,” it begged. “I’ll obey. Master, I’ll obey!”
Her sword cut cleanly into it’s heart. She held it there until the body stopped twitching, until it blackened and disintegrated.
Sagging to her knees, Zoe stood there with her hands on the sword hilt. She closed her eyes, weeping softly, until there was a rustle in the ferns nearby. Jun fell to his knees in front of her and they stared at one another a long moment.
“There’s a monster on the moon,” he said.
“I know,” she whispered. “Jun, I’m so sorry. I didn’t--”
He lurched forward, knocking her sword aside, to wrap his arms around her. She hugged him in return, face buried in his ash-covered curls. “They’re coming, Zoe. We have to be go to them.”
“Who’s coming?”
“The others.”
Zoe pulled back to look at him. He seemed clearer now, somehow, not so muddled. Tears pricking her eyes, she nodded and held a hand up for him. He clasped it in kind, and they knew that their bond was settled.
The hospital door burst inward, knocking the chair back into the equipment beyond. Zoe shrieked and scrambled backward, away from the broken door.
Two orderlies spilled into the room, moving to grab her and haul her to her feet. “Zoe!” Mizuno gasped, coming in the door after her. “What on earth are you doing?”
“I told you, I had to get here before the new moon.”
“You see?” A man entered the room behind her, silver haired and cross. “Mizuno-san, I cannot believe you let this to go on for so long. To allow this child--”
It was a nurse in the doorway who noticed first. Her startled gasp broke through the argument as she dashed to Jun’s side. He moaned softly, one weak hand trying to lift off the bed. The nurse shushed him as others went to get readings off the monitors attached to him.
“I told you,” Zoe stated to the doctors. The silver-haired doctor just gaped, but Mizuno’s expression was unreadable. She met Zoe’s eyes and held them.
