Chapter 6

“What’s it saying?” Bina asked.

“Pardon,” said Anri. “I'm a he, thank you.”

“Sorry.”

“He says he’s dead.”

Bina shrugged. “Well you did stab him.”

“Was dead before that,” Anri corrected, his voice the model of a finger waggling in the air. “Long before, actually. Can’t kill the dead. She’s just stuck me in her sword is all.”

Renko picked it up, and still had to hold it with both hands to keep the tip from slumping back to the ground. “Is that why it’s so heavy?”

“There’s no reason to bring my weight into it. But, yes, I’d assume so.”

“You’d assume?”

“Well, souls do have weight, don’t they? I suppose mine is a bit heavier than sackcloth and hay. I’m just learning that myself, isn’t that funny?”

“Hilarious,” Renko said, then propped the sword up by its point and knelt down in front of the blade. “Guess this makes you my prisoner, huh?”

“I think so, yes. I’ve never been a prisoner before, I don’t think. Doesn’t feel familiar. Maybe when I was alive?”

“How long until your pot buddy comes back?”

“Who, Dogan? He’s a kettle, he won’t like it if you call him a pot, and we’re not really friends. I mean he’s nice enough, when he’s not my boss. We used to just see each other in passing, but I got transferred to the stormworks, and—”

Renko flicked the flat of the blade with her finger, and Anri stumbled over in the reflection.

“That was unnecessary.”

“How long until he comes back?”

Anri got to his feet, though it didn’t appear like he was standing on anything. Perhaps you didn't need things like 'floors'  and 'spacial consistency' inside of a sword. Though you did, apparently, enjoy balance.

“Honestly,” he sighed, dusting off his sack shirt. “He’ll probably stop and fill himself up with sake before he comes back. Could be a while. He’s cast iron but he’s also a bit of a lightweight.”

“If you’re lying, I’ll throw you off this island, got it?”

“Yes, but the Loop would catch me. I’d probably land somewhere on the trail. Oh, maybe the pond. Give the fish a proper scare.”

Renko pinched the bridge of her nose, counted to three in her head, slowly. “Then I’ll put you in the sheath, and leave you no one'll find you.”

“Ah,” Anri nodded. “That would be unpleasant, yes. The afterlife can be quite dull without company.”

“Start there. We’re in the afterlife?”

“Of course you are, where else would you be? Oh, the living world, I suppose, but it’s really not too different. How did you get up here, anyway?”

“We rode the anchor,” Bina said. Renko slapped her shoulder. “Ow! Hey!”

“We’re asking the questions, dumbass.”

“Huh,” Anri huffed, leaning in to look them both up and down. His face warped as if through a fisheye lens. “Munedori has certainly changed, hasn’t it. Fashion’s a funny thing.”

“Don’t know where that is,” said Renko.

“We’re from Totono,” Bina added. “It’s kinda near Sendai, but like way west in the—ow, Renni!”

“Is that where we are, sticks? Munedori?”

“Naturally.”

Renko had glimpsed it, briefly, when the clouds cleared. At first it hadn’t looked too different from the countryside, until she focused and realized that there was nothing else but countryside as far as the eye could see. Rural, ancient, not a single road or powerline or cell tower in sight. Just the flickering torchlights of townships and the shadows of isolated towers in the mountains.

“We’re not in Japan?” Bina asked.

“I thought you said you were from Totono.”

“Totono’s in Japan,” Renko snapped. “And shut up. I said we’re asking the questions. A monster flew up here; wings, horns, about her size—” she nodded to Bina. “Not as scrawny.”

“Hey—”

“How do we find it? Talk.”

“Whatever for?”

“I said we’re—”

“Fine, fine,” Anri said with placating hands. “I’d like to know your intentions. There. Not a question, technically.”

Renko’s face split into a grin. She’d become sharper in the ascent, which was to say, pointier, not wiser. She couldn’t see her horns, or the fangs that her canines had tapered into, but there came with them a threatening puissance that she could most certainly feel. She liked it.

“Oh, I’m intent,” she said. “I’m very, very intent.”

Anri blinked. “Hm. Well that won’t be possible.”

“Explain,” Renko said. She liked few things more than being told something couldn’t, or shouldn’t be done.

“I already did. Told you, you can’t kill the dead.”

“I’ll settle for making it wish I could.”

“I see,” Anri said, folding his arms with an air of finality. “Then, I’d recommend somewhere in the boiler rooms, hardly anyone ever checks the supply closets. There’s the pond, but the trails are fairly well traveled, even the woods. I suppose if you’re not opposed to digging a hole, you could—”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I assume you’re going to make good on your threat, yes? Leave me somewhere isolated?”

“Or you could just, you know, answer my question?”

Anri turned his wooden nose up defiantly. “Certainly not, miss. Whatever sort of scoundrel I was in life, I assure you, in death I have no desire to assist in a genocide.”

Renko and Bina exchanged a silent barrage of exclamatory confusion.

“Dude,” she said. “What?”

“That’s why you’re here, right? An oni and a phoenix? Back from extinction to avenge their kind? I’ll grant you, it’s a noble idea, but the massacre of all humankind goes beyond the bounds of my postmortal sympathies.”

“Listen you idiot—”

“You’re very rude, you know—”

“The only one getting massacred, or extincted or whatever, is the monster that killed my mom, and her grandpa. That’s it. None of that other shit is my problem.”

“Ah. I see,” Anri nodded, and then shook his head. “No, wait. I’m confused.”

“Can I try?” asked Bina.

“Go for it.”

Renko dropped the sword into Bina’s arms, who was in no way prepared for the astounding weight it now possessed. It rested against her shoulder like a stray log, and it took every ounce of strength she had just to lean it against the wall.

She plopped down in front of it. Anri stood back, his narrow body taking up the whole length of the blade.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Bina, and that’s my friend Renko. I’m sorry I screamed before.”

“My fault for startling you, really. No harm done,” he said, and then chuckled. “Well, mostly.”

“Right, sorry about all this, too. I promise we’ll let you out.”

“No she doesn’t,” Renko said. “She does not promise that.”

“I do promise that,” Bina insisted, with an admirable attempt at a stern look. “He seems nice, and there’s clearly been a misunderstanding. Besides, he knows this place, and we don’t, so cooperating is good for both of us.”

“She makes excellent points,” Anri agreed. “Unfortunately, I still won’t be enabling a rampage.”

“But we’re not here for a rampage,” Bina said.

Renko, who would not have turned down a nice rampage if offered, scoffed, but decided wisely to say nothing.

“I’m afraid I’m not sure what else an oni and a phoenix could want here.” 

Bina thought. She was quicker at that than most people, so it didn’t take her long. “Answers,” she said finally. “That’d be a nice start.”

“To what questions, miss?”

“Well, someone came all the way to Japan from…”

“Munedori.”

“Munedori. They came all the way to Totono, and they…” she struggled with the words, eventually deciding the implication would do fine. “I’d like to know why they did it. It’s not normal where we’re from.”

“Miss—”

“Please, call me Bina.”

“Miss Bina, I can assure you that sort of thing is not normal here, either—anymore. It was all the rage awhile back, but nowadays, no, people aren’t normally snatched up like that.”

“Snatched up?” Renko shouldered Bina over so she could look in at their prisoner. “They weren’t snatched up, they’re lying dead in my goddamn living room!”

“Dead, yes, that’s how you get here. Normally, I mean, unless you’re brought, or apparently you ride the anchor.”

Bina's candlelight eyes grew into bush fires. “Are you saying our family is here?”

“It sounds like they ought to have gone to the isle in this Japan place, but, if what you’re saying is true, and they were taken, then yes. They should be around.”

“Where—” Renko started, only for Bina to nudge her back out of the way.

“Mister Anri,” she said, and she held her finger’s up in the three-fingered salute of the scout’s code. “I solemnly swear, on my life, on my health, on my dignity as an honor student, and, uhm,” she fished her grandpa’s pipe back out. “And on this…heirloom, that we mean no harm. All we want is to see our family again, and find out why they got brought here.”

Anri cocked a brow, or rather, a stitch sewn on to perform a brow’s duty to be cocked. “It is a rather nice pipe,” he said approvingly. “I'm inclined to believe you. But what about your rude friend?”

“Her too.”

He made a skeptical sound.

Bina gave Renko the kind of expectant, encouraging look a tutor gives a struggling pupil. Renko’s eyes rolled with emphatic, resigned annoyance. She scooted in beside her and put up three fingers. Behind her back, she crossed two more.

“Sure, whatever. I swear.”

“No rampage?”

Renko did her best to sound sincere. It wouldn't have worked on her mother. “I'll be on my best behavior.”

“Well,” Anri said with a satisfied smile. “I think it’s time for a tour!”