Chapter 9: An Unlikely Mission, An Unlikely Alliance

The shouts did not meld into my dreams and become part of the scenery. They cut into my subconscious and burst me from my sleep. I leaped out of bed before I had even awoken properly and stumbled around in the dark. I crashed into the hallway and banged my head on the wall. That was when I remembered my name and where I was. I stood and groped my way along the wall. The shouting outside was muffled, coming from the other side of the temple, at the front. I hurried along the passage, feeling my way, sightless.

“Gonnosuke!” I called when I passed his room. “You here?” I heard no response, so I continued down the hall. “Gon--!” Someone knocked against me. I fell. “Ow... Gon?” I cast about nervously, but the darkness was impenetrable. I heard breathing nearby. “Who’s there?” I whispered.

“D--Dee?”

“Huh?” The light, lyrical accent in the voice was familiar.

“It’s Chayne. Sorry I ran into you.”

“Oh! You. I can’t see--are you okay?”

“Yeah... Did I get your name right?”

“Actually it’s Dojima, but that’s no big deal. Umm...I have to get a candle somewhere. Wait here.” I stood slowly and continued down the passage, trying to recall the map of the temple in my head. There were so many corridors and dead-ends to keep track of. I hoped Bokkai still had the candles burning in his chamber.

“Wait, Dojima,” Chayne said from behind me and a glow filled the hallway. I blinked in the sudden brightness. He held a burning candle in his hand. “I found it in one of the rooms.”

I thought nothing of it. “Okay. Let’s go.”

We slipped through the halls quickly, going towards the shouts, which were dying down. The floor was cool and smooth beneath my feet, though every now and then a small stone would pinch me. I would normally have been nervous, but the fact that Chayne was there somehow forced me to not succumb to my anxiety. My heart was thudding and my palms were damp but I continued on.

“Do you know what’s happening?” Chayne asked abruptly from behind me. The candlelight flickered.

“No,” I said. His face was pale. “Are you sure you’re all right? Why don’t you go back to bed?”

“N--no. I’m okay. I’ll be fine.”

We reached the entrance hall then, and beyond the veranda we saw the temple monks standing like a barrier before the forest, holding torches and chanting various prayers. Bokkai sat cross-legged on the veranda. We came up behind him. Chayne blew the candle out, and Bokkai stopped his low murmur of prayer and gave us a quick once-over.

“What are you doing?” he asked us.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“A demon was spotted down in the village. We’re exorcising it.”

“You can exorcise a demon?” I asked, incredulous. I had thought only evil spirits could be exorcised. And how could he exorcise it from the forest? And what on earth was a demon doing here? Or, rather, what was a demon doing here on earth?

“What demon?” Chayne said.

Bokkai gave him a cool glance. “You probably drew it here,” he said icily.

One of the monks ran towards us at that moment, brandishing a torch. “Bokkai, Ryuji and Saya are on their way. They’ll chase down the demon for us.”

“What demon?” Chayne repeated.

The monk looked at him, wrinkled his nose, and said, “From Faux-Lune, eh? You probably drew it here.” He turned on his heel and went to join the others.

“Go back inside, Dojima,” Bokkai muttered, then clasped his hands together with renewed vigor and chanted so loudly we couldn’t pursue the conversation any further.

I rolled my eyes. “Go back in, if you like,” I said to Chayne. “This will be over soon.”

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere...yet...” I said in a low voice. The monks below us had turned their attention to the forest, from where a rustling noise emerged. Then Saya and Ryuji appeared, dressed in black, their swords secured at their sides. Saya had hidden her brilliant hair with a dark cloth, which looked eerily like a shroud.

She gave me a nod as she and her father approached Bokkai. Ryuji seemed bigger now, and the flames of the torches made his shadow even greater in size.

“Where’s the demon?” he asked Bokkai without bothering with a proper greeting.

“In a moment--where is Souichi?”

Just then, Souichi emerged from the forest, limping and panting and clutching a stitch in his side. He waved to show he was all right but then he collapsed on the ground. Pulled by a sisterly instinct, I hurried down the steps to him and shook his shoulder.

“Sou,” I said. “What were you doing? Are you hurt?”

“N--no. Just...ran...too much...”

“Did Bokkai send you to get Ryuji?”

“No...my ma...she saw the demon and told me to get Saya...” He raised his head for a moment and then let it fall back down. “Uh...I’m beat...”

Relieved, I slapped him on the shoulder. I hit him rather hard, too, since I was still annoyed about the muddied floors. “You idiot. Get up before the monks walk all over you.”

Souichi groaned again and got on all fours. He crawled over to the steps leading up to the veranda. He climbed them one by one and made it halfway into the temple before he fell on his side. I thought he might have actually been hurt, but then he began to snore. I rolled my eyes and rejoined Chayne, who was listening intently to what Bokkai was telling Ryuji.

“...and that it just dashed back into the trees. Urumi said it had ghostly white hair down to its waist and it moved as quickly as a lion.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Ryuji interrupted with a smile. “Which way does she think it went?”

“Into the mountains.”

Ryuji rested his hand on the handle of his sword and turned his analytical gaze up to the distant peaks. The moon was waxing again; the mountains looked like slumbering giants. All together, the shuddering leaves, hissing winds, and groaning trees sounded like their snores.

“Ryuji,” Saya said.

Drawn out of his thoughts, he turned to her with a scowl. “What is it?”

Saya’s face had a different expression now as she fixed her eyes upon her father. She looked almost vulnerable, as if she were struggling with something inside herself, and simultaneously struggling with her father’s overpowering will. “Let me do it.”

“What?”

“Please,” she said. “If you leave it to me, I know I can do it.”

Ryuji turned a baffled look to Bokkai, who shrugged, indicating that he would take no part in the discussion. Ryuji peered back at Saya, and a few tense seconds elapsed. Finally, he gave a shout of mirth and said, “Sure--sure. Do what you want. Bring the demon back here after you catch it.”

A smile blossomed on Saya’s face. “I won’t let you down again.” She adjusted her sword and took a step to towards the forest, but Chayne said:

“Wait, Saya!” He brushed past me and leapt down the steps. Ryuji blocked his path, his lips curling. He snarled wordlessly. Frightened for him, I took Chayne’s side, hoping to divert Ryuji’s deep-set anger.

“Faux-Lunian, is that right?” Ryuji said, crossing his arms.

Chayne straightened his back. “Yes. I am,” he said steadily.

Ryuji narrowed his eyes. “What business do you have hunting down a demon?”

“None whatsoever. But I think I can help.”

“Saya doesn’t need your help.”

Chayne reddened. “I know that--”

“So what do you want?”

Apparently realizing he’d been caught, Chayne wasted no time in blurting out what had been on his mind. “Return my sword.”

“What?” Ryuji cried, a crimson fire rising to his cheeks. Bokkai jumped to his feet and, pushing me aside, came face-to-face with Ryuji. It happened so fast, the disaster was so narrowly avoided, I stared in confusion as Bokkai summoned his sagely powers to silently calm Ryuji’s anger.

“Ryuji, leave this to me,” he said in a barely audible voice.

Although Ryuji was a head taller than the old geezer and more than ten times as strong, he assented. He told Saya he would meet her at the temple, and then he retreated indoors. A monk followed him, asking him if he would be interest in some tea tonight.

Once Ryuji was gone, and Bokkai had seen him retreat into the temple, he turned his attention to Chayne. “You’re up and about,” he said almost accusingly.

Chayne rotated his left arm in its socket and rubbed his bandaged shoulder. “It’s still sore, but yes.”

“So you’ll go now,” Bokkai said, his voice hard-edged; it was not a suggestion. I looked critically at his face, and to my surprise detected a bitterness in his eyes.

“I suppose so,” Chayne said. He was not about to beg shelter from him.

“Don’t suppose. Just do it. We have enough orphans to deal with in this temple.”

“Hey...”

“Silence, Dojima.”

I bit my lip.

“So...when will you be leaving?” Bokkai asked.

“As soon as you return my sword.”

“Hmph.”

Chayne’s eyes widened. “Where is my sword? I know that man took it.” He indicated where Ryuji had gone.

“Do you think you can waltz in here, threaten one of our villagers’ lives, receive our hospitality, and then walk out the way you came in? You’re dumber than Gonnosuke!” Bokkai cried.

Chayne was taken aback and, having no idea who Gonnosuke was, only absorbed this singular piece of data--that his sword would not be returned.

“What do you want me to do then?”

“Leave.”

“No. I mean, what do I have to do for you to return it?”

“Nothing. You’re not getting it back.”

Chayne inhaled sharply. His hands shook. “What?”

“You heard me,” Bokkai snapped. “Go home.”

“My father gave me that sword.”

“Then you should have honored it better. Go home to your mother.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Of course you don’t. If you did, she would have stopped you from doing something so incredibly stupid.”

“Like challenging Saya?”

“Like risking your life for that godforsaken father of yours.” I had never seen Bokkai so angry. He was clutching his prayer beads so tightly that the veins in the back of his hand were bulging and his knuckles were turning white; I expected the string to snap at any moment and spill the beads across the ground. “Not only does your country send over troops to fuel our silly revolutions, but now they’re sending idiots to bother our villages!”

Something clicked in the back of my mind as I remembered Saya’s words and the hurt of my heart. When I looked at Chayne, I did not bother to hide the accusation in my eyes. It was true--I had not forgotten.

“That’s not my fault,” Chayne persisted.

“If you want to go, go already!” Bokkai’s face had gone red with fury.

Suddenly, Saya--who had been silent up until then--stepped in. “Bokkai...” she said, laying a steadying hand on his wiry arm. Bokkai pushed her off. He glared at Chayne, but I realized that his rage was not against this young boy, but against the thousands of men Chayne represented to him...and to me, too. Bokkai looked at Chayne and saw instead Lothair and Wyatt and Dilan and the hundreds of faceless others from Faux-Lune. Fighters much more skilled than Lothair. Politicians with more venom than snakes. Soldiers and killers.

But Chayne was Chayne, and he did not falter. In that moment, all the hatred I could have unleashed against him, and all the crimes I could have blamed him for, faded into the background. From then on, he would be Chayne to me, and no one else.

“I won’t go home without my sword.”

“GO!”

Chayne raised his chin stubbornly, yet his eyes wandered to Saya and then to me, and he saw my distress. He lowered his eyes.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” he mumbled. “I apologize for my behavior. I will leave tonight.”

“Good.” Bokkai, not caring whether Chayne died out in the forest or fell victim to the river below the village, stalked past us after Ryuji.

His footsteps creaked loudly on the steps, leaving a still silence in their wake. The other monks, who had been watching uneasily, sighed and returned to their prayers. Chayne gritted his teeth when the doors within the temple slid shut noisily. His fists shook with defeat.

A smile spread across Saya’s face. “Smart decision,” she said, patting Chayne on the shoulder. Her voice had a conspiratorial bent to it. “Don’t worry--Ryuji hid your sword at our house. I’ll get it for you if you come with me.”

Chayne blinked a few times, then lowered his eyes. “Thank you.” The relief was evident in his voice.

“Are you really going to leave today?” I asked him.

He nodded slowly. “Yes...” He hesitated, and then, impulsively, he clasped my hands in his and bowed. “Thank you for saving my life.”

I blushed at his earnestness. “O--okay...”

Saya smiled at me and then said to Chayne, “Let’s go.”

Chayne gave me a nod of farewell before turning to Saya. In that split-second, before they could take another step and leave me stranded alone on an island of my own making, I felt my first stirrings of decisiveness.

“Wait a minute,” I said. I grabbed both their arms. “Take me with you.”

“Dee?” Saya asked, eyebrows raised.

“Don’t--don’t leave me here by myself when Bokkai’s in a bad mood,” I said quickly.

Saya laughed. “Okay.”

I grinned, but inside my heart was pounding with amazement at what I was doing.

“All right. Now, let’s go,” she said, and the three of us bade the monks farewell and set off into the forest.