Dragonfire Read online

  I know you’re always running out of battery.

  Just a little something to keep you connected

  ‘til you get your real present tonight.

  Hope you like it.

  Happy birthday.

  Love you

  “Love you too, Dad,” she muttered softly with a faint smile that spoke volumes.

  She tore off the paper off in a rush and was pleasantly surprised by what she found beneath. With a smile and a short ‘Hmmph…!’ of appreciation, she placed the gift back on the kitchen table, hid the wrapping paper and then proceeded to lift her phone to capture the moment.

  “Soooo… here we have the first present for the day…” she began brightly, engaging video capture on her phone and concentrating on her words as she hurriedly cleared away the unwanted wrapping paper. “A solar-powered phone charger and power-bank…” she narrated, switching to dual camera mode to show the gift in the main screen but also keep her face showing in a small box in the bottom corner. “Not a new phone… but very nice all the same…”

  A quick review of the recording, and the footage was immediately uploaded to social media. Her first ‘like’ a few minutes later was from Percy (of course…!); she’d have been very put out if it hadn’t been.

  With the important work now done, she proceeded to make a coffee and butter a few pieces of toast, pausing occasionally to check as a dozen more likes and birthday messages popped up on her phone via Facebook and Instagram, the senders’ memories conveniently jogged by her initial post. She read through them quickly, liking a few in return and smiling to herself as she basking in the glow of birthday glory. She then laid the phone on the bench and synced it with the portable Bluetooth speaker already sitting in the centre of the kitchen table. There was always time for a few tunes, played a little louder while she had the house to herself, and some Rita Ora, Selena Gomez or Imagine Dragons would do quite nicely.

  She set her phone’s music player to shuffle and turned toward the toaster to her left, only to be frozen in place midway through inserting the bread as the extremely loud opening lyrics of Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog blared out from the speaker on the table. Desperately slotting the slices into the toaster as quickly as she was able, she snatched the phone from the bench, killed the music and checked what was actually in her music library at that moment.

  “Led Zeppelin… AC/DC… Iron Maiden…?” She muttered in disbelief as she read down the list of latest additions. “Oh… my… God… Nickelback…? Daaaaaad…!” She moaned in frustration. “Again…?”

  Her father liked using her laptop to browse sports websites and look for cheap car parts for his never-ending (barely-started) muscle car restoration project, all of which was fine, but he also liked to sometimes change the music selections on his own phone through iTunes. As Nev’s device automatically connected to her computer when they were both powered up, he’d also inadvertently loaded what appeared to be an entire gigabyte of crusty old rock songs onto her phone while updating his own playlists, something that happened far more often than anyone should have to put up with.

  “Eww… Midnight Oil now…? Oh, for goodness sake…!”

  Nothing to be done about it now – there was barely enough time for her to throw together a little something to eat – but that evening after the presents, there would be serious words to be had, accompanied yet another tedious lecture on ‘Using iTunes 101’ for someone’s dad.

  Honda Yoshinori stood on the front porch of his old, weatherboard cottage and stared out at the dawn sky, drawing the air deep into his lungs and releasing it again as his exhaled breath swirling about his head in faint clouds of condensation. He’d experienced some hardship in his seventy-five years – tough times he sometimes doubted many young people today could endure – yet as he stared up into that cloudless blue sky, he knew that far worse was yet to come… and that it was coming soon.

  His hand instinctively found itself in the pocket of his dark blue dogi training robes, touching the omamori amulet he’d travelled four hours by bus to collect. He didn’t take out the fabric charm, instead taking some comfort in the feel of it inside the pocket. The amulet was yaku-yoke – a ward against evil – and he always kept it with him wherever he went. He wasn’t sure he believed in the power of such a talisman, but he was also pragmatic enough to recognise it never hurt to hedge ones bets.

  Omamori were only intended to last twelve months, and this one was almost due for replacement. Part of him almost felt relief that after waiting for so long, the day he’d been waiting for had finally come: Shinto temples weren’t easy to come by outside of Japan, and he’d already made that same bus trip again on someone else’s behalf in the last month. Making yet another arduous journey back to the city at his age, so soon after the last, was something he was happy to avoid.

  With a sigh of thoughtful resignation, he turned and made his way back inside, taking the first door on the left and entering his small, sparsely-decorated bedroom. The curtains were partly-drawn, barely allowing enough light to see what he was doing, but so many years living alone in the same house had left him completely aware of where everything was regardless of what he could or couldn’t see.

  A long, narrow box of dark, lacquered wood lay atop the mattress on the near side of the bed, its top secured by a pair of shiny, metal latches. The polished lid carried no markings other than the large engraving of a stylized gold dragon that covered almost its entire length. He reached down and felt a sudden shudder ripple through his body as his fingers touched the surface, as if he’d been struck by an unexpected chill. He swayed slightly for a moment, regained control of himself and uttered another prayer as his hand dove into his pocket again for the omamori. He drew the amulet out into the open, wrapped about his right hand by its braided cord, and this time there was no ill sensation as he placed his fingers gingerly upon the lacquered wood. He didn’t care whether or not it was coincidence that he felt better when holding the charm, just so long as the nausea abated.

  Definitely today… he thought to himself …and I think it knows, somehow… His mouth suddenly felt dry, and he paused again for a moment before lifting the lid and reaching inside. Still so far away, still disconnected from this world, yet it senses something all the same. Is it the knowing that accelerates everything now…? Is this a cause and effect, or would it happen anyway…?

  An almost overpowering sense of foreboding had swept over him the night before. Similar feelings of nausea and unease had been coming infrequently now for five months or more and had increased significantly in the last few weeks, to the point where he was suffering from sudden attacks of fear and weakness almost daily.

  It was the sheer magnitude of the battle he’d foreseen the preceding night – and there was no doubt in his mind that it was a battle– that had finally convinced him the time had come. He’d barely slept, spending most of the preceding twelve hours preparing the contents of the box that now lay on his bed… contents he’d kept carefully hidden away for most of his adult life, waiting for just this moment.

  Reaching down again, he lifted out the contents of the box and held them reverentially in both hands as if offering to up to the gods, all the while bowing his head low and whispering another prayer to his ancestors. He stood motionless for a few seconds, silently begging the ancients for guidance, before slowly and carefully returning the contents and closing the lid. Flickering images had come in reply to his prayers… nothing coherent, but enough to know that something terrible was indeed going to happen: that it would happen to her. He sighed again, saddened by what he’d seen in the vision: it seemed unfair that someone so young and innocent should be dragged into something that would most likely cost them their life.

  “Enough pity, you old fool!” He admonished himself grumpily, realising he was wasting precious time. “If you complain long enough, do you think this will wrap itself…?”

  With a grimace and a renewed sense of purpose, he turned and strode out of the room in search of
wrapping paper and adhesive tape.

  At the age of twelve, Nev Anderson had found hand-written adverts for martial arts lessons posted on the community notice board of her local supermarket and the idea had stuck. The simple sketch of a stylised, Japanese dragon at the top of the page had captured her imagination in a way that been impossible to shake. Being only twelve, she’d of course been forced to fight hard for her father to even think about letting her try, but she’d persisted and had won out in the end… and had never looked back.

  Three times a week, every week since, she’d turned up before school to go through an hour of intense training in kenjutsu and other associated martial arts. It had been tough at first, the old man allowing little consideration for her age, but it wasn’t in Nev’s nature to give up and her determination and natural aptitude had made her an excellent student. The double garage at the rear of Honda’s property served as a quite-serviceable training dojo, with bamboo panelling on the walls and ceiling, plenty of paper-covered skylights for natural illumination, and a floating floor that was well-sprung to allow for the heavy footwork that went hand-in-hand with kenjutsu.

  Kenjutsu was an umbrella term covering all forms of Japanese swordsmanship, and unlike the more widely-recognised kendo, which made use of protective masks, padding and flexible, bamboo swords (called shinai), the old man’s open, flowing method combined a range of complimentary and differing styles drawing from a number of schools including kendo, iaido and even nitōjutsu (a style involving the use of two swords simultaneously).

  Neither Honda nor his star pupil (his only pupil, as far as she could tell) had ever made use of protective padding during the five years Nev had trained with him, and rather than practice with the flexible shinai, they instead made use of traditional Japanese bokken – wooden swords carved and polished to replicate the feel and balance of real katana. The use of these weapons as training equipment required far more care, as they were heavy, rigid weapons that could cause serious injury or even death, if poorly used in the hands of the inexperienced.

  Nev had been badly bruised many times over the years, and even lightly stunned once or twice (although she’d never dared tell her father about that, for fear of being banned from going back). Such heavy blows were rare however and were generally only received in return for an exceptionally poor attack or parry: it was never clear whether her sensei’s (instructor’s) savage ripostes had been accidental or an unsubtle form of punishment, but she’d always clearly remembered and corrected each mistake as a result.

  Both wore traditional dogi robes of dark blue: loose-fitting garments tied at the middle that allowed great flexibility and freedom of movement, with Nev’s also wearing of bike shorts, T-shirt and a snug-fitting sport crop-top over her underwear, in deference to her own modesty.

  Impossible as it seemed, training that particular morning was even more intense than usual. Never one to go easy, Honda drilled her mercilessly, and after forty solid minutes, she was breathless and sweating profusely. He bade her come at him with repeated attacks, launching successive blows from multiple directions, yet try as she might (as always) she’d rarely managed to land a single strike on her instructor in spite of his advancing age and apparent lack of mobility everywhere except inside the training dojo. In return for her ineffective attacks, she’d received at least half a dozen superficial bruises to take away as souvenirs, as was also usually the case.

  Bruises were generally the worst she came away with nowadays: she’d become too quick and adept at dodging or parrying his retaliatory ripostes to receive anything worse than that over the last year or so. Their bokken clacked together now and again as blows were parried or deflected, or (more often) slashed through empty air as the dodged and evaded each other’s attacks, and as dazed as any connecting strike was likely to leave her, Nev probably would’ve been even more stunned to discover that the bokken themselves – one of which she was permitted to take with her for practice at home – were carved from the wood of the Loquat tree, each valued at over a thousand dollars.

  “Enough, Tatsuko…” Honda announced finally, lifting a palm as a signal to stop as he stepped away. As usual, he used the Japanese ‘pet name’ he’d given her by the end of her first week, five years before: one that had stayed with her ever since. “You’ve done well… very well this morning, considering how strongly I have tested you…”

  “Sensei…!” She acknowledged simply with a deep bow with hands clasped in front of her chest, hiding a proud smile all the while: open praise from Honda was as rare as a diamond, and was to be similarly cherished.

  “We shall rest now, but not too long…” he added slowly, the hint of a wry smile crossing his lips. “It should not do for your father to receive a call because you were late for school… already, he does not like you being here, yes…?”

  There was no anger or recrimination in his tone, making Nev feel far more sadness and embarrassment as a result. She was actually a little surprised he’d mentioned it at all; she knew that he knew how her dad felt about the training, but it generally wasn’t in Honda’s nature to openly speak on sensitive or personal matters.

  “I – I’m sorry, Sensei…” she stammered awkwardly, walking over to where her black duffel bag lay against the near wall and slipping the sheathed bokken casually inside. “He doesn’t mean anything by it… he just…” But her words trailed off as she realised she had no idea what else to say, and she instead followed him meekly out of the dojo and along the rear porch to the back door of the house.

  “He does not like his daughter… his teenage daughter… spending too much time alone with an old man, yes…?” Honda asked simply, again with no malice as he stepped straight through into the kitchen, although perhaps this time with notable sadness. “Sit, Tatsuko… sit. We shall take tea and talk, you and I,” he added, moving over to where a round, cast-iron kettle of Japanese design sat atop his gas stove. She was so used to hearing that name now that she mostly didn’t even register when he said it, and considering how much she hated the long version of her real name anyway, it hardly seemed to matter.

  The kitchen was as sparsely decorated as the rest of the house, with just the bare essentials of stove top, oven, fridge, sink and benches complemented by a tiny, circular table in the centre partnered by just three chairs of varying parentage. On the other side of the sink, a long, narrow box wrapped in plain, brown paper lay on the kitchen bench, and although it was impossible to actually tell, Nev suspected that considering its shape and length, it might well contain a set of bokken. Honda occasionally ordered replacements from overseas, and had there not already been a difficult conversation in progress, she might well have been a good deal more interested in its contents.

  “He – he’s not a bad person, Sensei…” she offered apologetically from the doorway, reluctant to enter the house now as feelings of guilt-by-association washed over her.

  “What is ‘bad’ about being protective of one’s only child?” Honda asked pointedly, one eyebrow raised as he turned to glance at her for a moment. “That I am Nihongo – Japanese – is also a problem, I think, but not for the same reason… Sit…!” He urged more insistently, pointing at the nearest of three chairs placed randomly around his small, circular kitchen table.

  “His grandfather fought in the war… was taken prisoner…” she tried to explain, suddenly feeling very awkward about how to approach so sensitive a subject as the Second World War with someone of Japanese ancestry. Although Nev’s logical mind mostly understood that her father, an otherwise decent and reasonable man, was sometimes guilty of racism because of how he’d been raised, it nevertheless always made her feel incredibly uncomfortable and more than a little ashamed.

  “…And died at the hands of my countrymen, yes…?” Honda asked knowingly, lowering his eyes momentarily as he too felt a fleeting sensation of associated guilt on a far greater scale. “I suspected something like this – I have seen such reactions many times in my life, and one should be cautious in a
ssigning blame: these feelings are passed down through generations, and only through the passing of further generations will they ease and disappear.

  “It may surprise you that I too lost my father to that Pacific War,” he added, indeed surprising her with part of his history that hadn’t previously been revealed. “He was kamikaze… shot down when I was just two years old. Do I blame the American gunners, protecting themselves and their shipmates? Of course not… that war left a stain of dishonour on the history of my people, and shameful acts were committed in the name of the Emperor during those terrible years.

  “Hatred is a difficult thing to be free of, particularly when it is born out of pain…” Honda observed gently, his back to her now as he checked there was water in the kettle and ignited the burner beneath it. “Your father never knew his grandfather, but it is honourable that he should remember him. Do you not honour your mother’s memory also?”

  “Why so hard at training today, Sensei…?” Nev asked, blurting the words out far too quickly. She’d always been extremely sensitive regarding mother and was desperate to change the subject.

  “The truth…?” He asked, letting the question slide as he waited patiently for the water to boil. “The truth is that you have already learned everything an old fool such as I can teach. Most of this last year has been nothing but practice, and only the loneliness of an old man has prevented me from telling you this a long time ago. I pushed you harder today than I ever have before, and you performed as well as I expected.”

  “But – but, Sensei…” she stammered, fighting to prevent sudden tears from welling at the corners of her eyes at the shocked implication of what Honda had just said. “How – how can there be no more training… what – what will I do…?”

  “You have learned less than I imagined if you are so quick to believe you need no longer practice to maintain your skills, Tatsuko,” he pointed out drily as he used a wadded tea towel to lift the hot kettle from the burner by its handle and carefully place it on a circular heat pad at the centre of the small table. “Indeed, more time on practice and less with this ‘Instagram’ and ‘Snapchat’ would serve you well…”