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Knifebox by Hane Shinohara
Knifebox The child could not have been more than seven years old. Drab peasant garb hung from his skinny frame, slipping off one shoulder and tied at the waist with a bit of twine. Another piece had ineffectually tried to keep scruffy spikes of black hair into a manageable tail. Dirt smudges on his face. Skinned knees. The calloused hands of a farm child. Laid open from sternum to navel. Intestines peeked, steamed in the chill air. It was a miracle there was nothing missing. Blood turned the dust into a red mud paste, caked on the boy’s bare feet (he had been running, running to escape) and splashed up his strong, wiry legs. It stained the pristine fabric of Hazel’s robe as he knelt, throat dry, to gather the corpse to him. “Go,” he said softly to his shadow. The tracks of the guilty were clear in the churned crimson mud, the lingering sense of youki still strong in the blood heavy air. The man who loomed at his back did not hesitate, drawing both heavy revolvers as he took up the trail. No bloodhound matched Gato in the hunting of youkai. Nor did any predator match his vengeance when he found his prey. The grim cadence of gunfire shattered the quiet evening. Hazel ignored it as one would ignore the familiar roaring of a river outside one’s window, too commonplace to notice any longer despite the volume. With gentle hands he closed the vacant eyes, brushed blood soaked tendrils of bangs back from the small forehead. The faint glow of the pendant soaking up guilty souls only heightened the lines of pain etched into the boy’s face, the grimace of terror his mouth was twisted in. The words came easily to him, slipping past the tightness of his throat and the shadows of his troubled blue eyes, easing out into the silence like an offering. “In pace requiescat. By the grace of God, you will live again.” He took a breath, letting the conviction fill him. The pendant shone, warming skin even through his heavy robes, searing with the gift of life. “Okinahare.” It rushed out of him like wind, like the tide, and he kept his eyes closed to savor the lasting moment. He made no pretense of understanding the power God had granted him. He knew only that it worked because he believed, and that was enough to save the life of one innocent. But the sight that greeted him when he opened his eyes again had not changed. The boy still slept the eternal sleep. No heat, no color changed his skin, no gold appeared under fine, trembling eyelashes. Perplexed, Hazel tried again. “Okinahare.” The pendant flared once more, brighter, with the greater force the bishop had put behind his call. The light died over a corpse still a corpse. Something cold moved within him. Lost your saintly touch, have you, priest? Lucifer spoke with the voice of Doubt. Hazel shook his head, lips parting slightly. He must have faith. He must believe. He was the chosen one, touched by God and given this power, sent to deliver these people from evil…. You’ve done a fine job of it so far. Look how you saved this one. Seven years old. Seven years of life, of laughter, of earth and sky and security. How quickly torn asunder. How easily rent from the order of the world. The boy’s blood flowed hot over Hazel’s gloves. He tried, and failed, to speak a third time, to call on God’s power for the child’s sake and his own. The cold voice that welled from somewhere deep within his soul was laughing at him, and he couldn’t make the words come. The pendant was dark, and heavy, biting into his neck as though it weighed a thousand times more. The rough cord choked him like a noose. Why would it not light? Why would God refuse his prayers? You are Forsaken. No! Hazel bit his tongue to keep from screaming the denial out loud. He was not forsaken. He had never faltered in his quest. All of his life had been devoted to the work of the Lord. There was no other champion for the quest of true compassion such as he, they’d all told him, he was special, he was the chosen… He was not …left alone… Forsaken, how easily rent from the order of the world. What sort of savior are you? “Come back,” he whispered to the dead thing, rocking over it in his own misery. “Come back, please.” The boy in his arms was growing colder, heavier. The rush of scarlet dried in tracks down pale cheeks. Seven years old and left alone in the dark…. The voice laughed at him. Hazel shuddered, breathing quick and unsteady, staring sightlessly over the corpse. Something ached inexplicably in his chest, right where the pendant hung heavy over his robes. Something fluttered with dim wings in the back of his head, and try as he might, he could neither corner nor escape it. Don’t you remember? He did not. He did not. The color of the sky? It was black. The color of your hands? They were red. And his eyes? They were gold. You remember. He did not. He refused to. His fingers scrabbled for the pendant, for the pain in his chest. Do you remember, priest? “NO!” he screamed, throwing everything in this last denial, beseeching the God of his birth to save him now from the Devil’s words, because they were lies, and the righteous feared no twisted fabrication, and his God his Lord was the sword of truth and the wicked would not stand before His judgement… In his fist the pendant burned, pulsed, and his world exploded into darkness. ***** He awoke to Gato’s face and Gato’s familiar golden eyes. “You fainted.” The dark skinned man sounded neither surprised nor concerned, merely matter of fact. Hazel tried to say something, but Gato was looking at the body of the child. “…..a young soul should return to his ancestors quickly, or he will lose his way in the dark.” Gato did not ask why the boy was not resurrected, if Hazel had stayed behind, or why he had not even begun preparation for a burial. The bishop found himself wanting to snap something about foolish pagan beliefs, but shame bridled his tongue. Gato’s compassion might do more for the lost innocent than Hazel’s failed resurrection had. Mutely, the silver haired man accepted the shikigami’s hand to pull him to his feet. Mutely, Hazel watched as Gato built the pyre in ancient custom, and sacrificed one of their travel blankets to shroud the small body in. Gato knew words for death and the honoring of souls that Hazel would never admit being fascinated by. Hazel kept to the side and out of the way, rubbing absently at his chest where the ache remained. When the deed was finished, they continued on their way. Gato stayed closer than normal as the only concession to Hazel’s apparent infirmity, and the bishop was too exhausted to tell him to knock it off. They did not speak of the child. Hazel wouldn’t speak of the voice, or the failure of the pendant. Nor would he ever speak of such things, and reveal that this was not the first time it had happened. |
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