“Be careful child,” says Kali gravely.
You gulp nervously at Kali’s warning. It’s hard enough to work out regular girls, let alone fickle Japanese warrior women that keep on threatening to cut you open, and Miko has been nothing but fickle since you first met her.
Still, you volunteered to talk to her. Kali smiles encouragingly as you uncurl your feet and stand up. “If I don’t come back out, tell my parents that,” you being, trying to bolster your courage with a witty one-liner, or a least a one-liner of some sort. You tail off as you remember that there is a fake Will filling in for you back home – no one but Joe knows you are gone. “I better come back out,” you finish quietly.
Kali’s smile widens a fraction. “Relax Will,” she says. “The worst that can happen is Miko will give you another tongue lashing.”
“Yeah,” reply convincingly, reluctantly dragging yourself towards Miko’s bedroom. No, the worst she can do is that she can take that sword of hers and cut you down like a stalk of grass – and not one of those oversized ones from the story either.
You knock gently at the door to Miko’s room and wait. There is no response, so you open the door gently and walk in as softly as you are able.
It’s dark, and Miko is only recognisable as a huddled shape on the bed. Surprisingly, she’s making quiet, muffled, snuffling noises.
“Are you ok,” you ask, genuinely concerned.
Miko rolls over on the bed. It’s impossible to tell for sure, but you guess that she’s facing you. “Why don’t you tell me,” she asks acidly.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” you reply quickly, waving your hands frantically. “I mean if I was really rooting around inside your memories I’d be making a better job of this… Uh… That sounded better inside my head,” you garble.
Miko sits up on the bed. “You are hard to dislike Will Prescott,” she says stiffly.
“That’s good, right?”
“No,” she replies sourly. “It means you are a shapeless Sulva chameleon who will say anything to get people to like him. Her,” she spits.
You open and shut your mouth wordlessly, like a fish stuck out of water, unable to think of anything “I’m sorry,” you eventually manage.
“I’m sorry,” parrots Miko, capturing your whine perfectly again. “If I had my way I’d cut that thing out of you,” she snarls.
“This is about your father,” you say, not quite sure where the words come from. “The fox that killed him was disguised as you. When you see me like this, it reminds you of that.”
Silences falls over Miko’s room for a few brief moments. You are briefly aware that you aren’t even breathing, so still are you standing. Then Miko breaks the spell with a low growl. “Get out.”
“I…” you stammer.
“Out,” shouts Miko, starting to rise from the bed. You hurriedly step back outside her bedroom, slamming the door behind you.
“That went well,” you mutter as you sit back down opposite Kali. She gives you a long, slow look that seems to go straight through you. “She threw me out,” you explain.”
“Oh?” Kali arches an eyebrow.
You look guiltily at the floor and curl up comfortably in the chair “I might have said that I reminded her of her father being killed,” you say quietly. “Like in the story you wrote.”
Kali’s eyebrows shoot up further still. “That was… perhaps unwise,” she says. “Yet at the same time.” She pauses for a few second. “You and Miko have become quite tangled child, drawn into conflict even. I would expect as much from Miko, but you? Is it another link to Catilindria, or Sulva reflecting Catilindria.?” You realise that she is talking more to herself than you now and lose track of the meaning of her words. You wait patiently for Kali to address you again. “Perhaps you said the exactly right thing to Miko child,” continues Kali, looking directly at you again. “To force her to confront her past, how it is obstructing her duty as your mentor now. To do it in such a Catilindria-like way though. Fascinating.”
“Is there an exactly right thing to say to you as well,” you ask absentmindedly.
Kali blinks a couple of times and clasps her hand to the chest in a seemingly involuntary reaction. “Gracious child, what a question to ask.” For a moment it seems like her self assurance and poise has been shaken, but you dismiss the idea as your imagination. Kali seems as composed as ever. “Perhaps I should ask you a question first.”
Is she changing the subject, you wonder. “Sure.”
“What did you think of Miko’s Chronicle, did you like it,” she asks, but she does not give time to answer and instead continues. “I sometimes fear that I do not have the words to put together a story, even though I can understand stories as I take them apart.” She sighs and you sense that it would be better not to interrupt her. “When I was a girl I would draw pictures. Sometimes of my parents, sometimes of the tenement that I lived in and sometimes of other things in the town I grew up in, like the abbey there. Always I would draw the sky as a narrow strip of blue at the top of the paper and the ground as a green strip at the bottom. You could look at the picture and recognise it for what it was, but no artist would draw or paint like that. My stories are the same I think.”
“No,” you say, standing up. “No, it was good, I liked it.”
“Thank you,” says Kali with a faint half smile. “It does me good to hear that. You don’t think that I was too heavy handed in foreshadowing the number eight in the piece,” she asks. You aren’t quite sure what she means, so you make an ambiguous gesture that could be easily interpreted as a yes or a no. It seems to satisfy Kali. “I was worried that in having Charles being the only character who’s words are rendered into Japanese I was perhaps trying to be a little too clever,” she adds. “Or that I accurately described the martial act that Miko and her father practiced…”
“It was really good,” you interrupt.
“I am too self conscious about it,” she admits.
“You worry too much,” you reply. You reach over and give Kali’s hands a gentle, friendly squeeze. “Ow, what was that,” you say, pulling your hands away and shaking them.
“A static shock child,” replies Kali, her assurance flooding back. “I think you need to be a little more careful with the furnishings in the apartment.”
“Yeah, right, sorry,” you say sheepishly. “Perhaps I should go to bed, it’s getting late.”
“Of course,” replies Kali. “Remember to record any dreams that you have in the journal I gave you.”
You nod and retreat to your bedroom. After such a long day, your bed is very inviting and you fall into a deep slumber almost as soon as your head hits the pillow.
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