15: ??????????
The ninja forest took up a large section of parkland bordering Mecha and the harbour. The trees were the largest he’d ever seen in any urban space. They were mostly beech varietals and red or white pine, but there were little glades full of willows that leaned over trickling creeks, and ranks of Erman's birch and elem standing guard at the borders of the forest. And, of course, the cherry trees. They stretched out their arms in perfect supplication, their signature blossoms replaced by snow. Or maybe, Javier thought, they were just sad at having their tops so ruthlessly trimmed down. Not a single one of them had been allowed to grow up rather than out, and it made for a middle level of coverage in the more open areas of the park. It reminded him a great deal of the forest where he’d iterated Xavier.
It was the perfect place for his children to hide.
“The next ninja show will be starting in fifteen minutes, in the Ueno arena.”
Javier looked around. He could see no speakers, even in the naked trees. It occurred to him that the trees might not even be real – maybe some of them were just hollow tubes with wires inside.
He was getting tired of not knowing what was real.
The path to the Ueno arena led down to the beach. Getting there was a trick in his stupid swishy pantaloons, or whatever they were, so he slipped off his sandals and started jumping. The pantaloons created an unusual amount of drag on his flight, but his feet and hands still worked as usual. He leapt from the path to a copse of willows, listened for the sound of the harbour, then vaulted over the willows to a stand of pines.
“Hey, aren’t you the saint, today?” a voice above him said.
In the tree was another vN, this one wearing an angry blue mask with polished tusks poking free of a grimacing mouth.
“I just checked your schedule,” the ninja said. “You’re the saint.”
Javier decided to play along. “Oh,” he said. “I guess I’d better go change.”
“The show starts in fifteen minutes! Get moving!”
“Sorry,” Javier said, and hoped he hadn’t just gotten his son fired.
He ditched the worst of the clothes before finding a florist that catered to the fans in line. The eighteen yellow roses they sold him at the mobile florist outside the tent were long-stemmed. Javier requested that they trim them down and arrange them into a ball and then tie them with a white ribbon.
“That’s a very unique request,” the girl behind the counter said.
“It’s for a
quinceanera
,” Javier said, and left.
Now he was standing in line outside the arena, wishing he could at least sweat some of his nervousness out. Maybe he should wait. Maybe he should come back later, when they were done with their work. He didn’t want to get them in trouble. Shit, he had nothing for Xavier. That wasn’t good. He wished there was some way for him to have kept Holberton’s bike. The boy might have liked that. Maybe. If he could forgive him. But no present he could give them was going to make up for what he’d done. No matter how carefully he tied the ribbon.
“¡Parete!”
His head picked up. He looked around. No. Maybe he’d just misheard some Japanese. It happened. The vowel sounds were basically the same, there were just more of them.
A leaf fell across his nose, and right into the flowers he was holding. Of course. He should have looked
up
, not
around.
She was there, wearing some sort of ninja costume, jumping from tree to tree. She paused atop one bough, and bounced on it so that it groaned a little. Then she was gone.
Javier decided to skip the line. He took to the trees. The bough dipped beneath his weight and almost twanged as he left it. In the cold, their voices seemed to carry longer distances.
“It's not my fault,,” she said, in Spanish. He had no idea how she could both talk and jump so quickly at the same time. She was fast. And light. She barely disturbed the snow as she jumped. Keeping up with her took more effort than he’d expected. Maybe he was finally getting old. "There are all kinds of magnetic fields around this city. They screw with our brains. Of course I can't remember everywhere I go at night. But I always bring you food, so you should stop complaining!"
"I'm not complaining!” a voice called, from the trees. Xavier. “I just wish you would wake me up before you left!”
“Aww…”
“You're the one who always says we have to stick together,” Xavier said. "But I wake up and you're gone."
"Not so loud! The humans already have really weird ideas about us!"
Beneath him, a dry branch snapped. Javier instantly hung back, and jumped a little higher into the nearest tree. It was a huge old pine, prickly as hell, but it hid him effectively once he hugged it right. Below, his daughter walked along the outstretched bough of a willow.
“Is that you, Xavier?” she asked.
Nothing. The boy was hiding. Maybe this was game they played a lot. Maybe it had made her the confident leaper she was.
“Come on, this isn’t funny.” She jumped a little higher. “Xavier! I don’t like not knowing where you are!”
“They’re coming to get you, Anza…”
Anza. That was her name. As Javier watched, she jumped right into the tree beside him. Christ, but she was so little. So small. Such a perfect blend of himself and Amy. Looking at her felt like watching a film of himself played backward. Like him, but also unlike him. Like Amy, but also unlike her.
“
I’ll
be coming to get
you
, if you’re not careful!” The look of irritation that crossed her face was so similar to Amy’s that he almost laughed. He hoped it was Amy’s expressions that had taken root, and not his. He wanted something more of her, here, with him. And he saw it there in the way she pressed her fists to her hips and the way she carefully planted her feet on the wood. “You know it’s dangerous, Xavier. You know we’re not supposed to be separated.”
She jumped right into his tree. Right on the other side of him. “Xavier, just quit hiding and come on out.”
“I’m not him,” Javier said.
She peeked around the trunk of the tree. Little needles nested in her curls. Her eyelashes were full of snowflakes. And he understood, now, why had always left his boys behind. As they grew, they reminded him more strongly of himself and Arcadio. In abandoning them, he had been trying to abandon the parts of himself that he most despised. But seeing his eyes in her face, his curls on her head, he could forgive himself. For the first time in Javier’s life, he understood why the Tin-Man had wanted a heart. It would be better, if he knew what exactly it was inside him that was breaking.
“Are you my brother?” She winced. “I mean, one of my brothers? One of the other ones?”
He shook his head. “No, baby. I’m your daddy.” He held out his mess of flowers.
Xavier chose this moment to crash into the tree above them.
“Esperanza, come on! No fair! Just because you can…” The boy trailed off. The tree rocked with their combined weight and competing pressure. The wind sounded in it. It carried the sounds of tourists and barkers and botflies singing through the air. “Dad?”
He thought of Arcadio. “Guilty.”
“Xavier?” Anza brought out a shark knife. It reeked of bile. “Run. Tell Mitch. Now.”
Damn, but his little girl was fast. If she weren’t currently trying to kill him, he’d have been pretty damn proud. “Can’t we talk about this?” he asked, as he jumped into the willow Anza had just occupied.
“You killed our mother!”
She had him, there. He bounced off a willow bough and into a brake of beech. She was smart, pushing him into the deciduous trees and out of the evergreens that might keep him hidden. And every time he jumped, he disturbed the snow in the trees. He might as well have tagged them with spray paint.
“I didn’t! Powell did! Mitch!”
“Liar!”
Javier rolled his eyes. Why had he thought that a daughter would be easier? “I know you think he’s your friend, baby, but–”
“Don’t you baby me,
cabrón.
”
She landed just a little below him. She swiped for his feet, but he tucked them up just in time. Then he was in the air. He aimed for a broken-down old elm. It was badly scarred by lightning, and it creaked under his sudden impact. Parts of it were frozen. The outermost branches crashed around him. He was exposed. He held his hands up.
“I don’t want to fight you,” he said.
She was on his back instantly. The knife went to his throat. If she depressed the lever, his body would fill with vomit vapour, and he would melt.
“That’s too bad,” she said.
“Wow.” He forced himself to smile. To be funny and light. Goofy dad. “When they hired you to play a ninja, they weren’t messing around.”
She snorted. “I’m the star attraction.”
“Is it the hair? I bet it’s the hair.” He turned his head a little so he could face her. “I really like your hair, by the way.”
She pinked up, but her mouth kept a straight line. “I am seriously going to kill you right now,” she said. “Right after you tell me who sent you.”
“Oh, honey.” Javier jumped backward, against the tree’s trunk. Her arms loosened, and he pinned her up against the icy trunk with one arm while he grabbed her slashing wrist with his other hand. He buried the knife in the tree, and depressed its lever.
“First of all,” he said, “I had you the moment you jumped on me. If my own dad caught me pulling that amateur hour bullshit when I was your size, he’d have whipped my ass until it smoked.”
Anza rolled her eyes.
“And second, who the hell gave you
this?
” He gestured with the knife. “Any daughter of Amy Frances Peterson, shit, any great-granddaughter
of
Portia the fucking godless killing machine
, can probably annihilate her target with her bare hands. This shit is beneath you. OK?”
He tossed it into the snow. Anza’s eyes tracked its progress and then rose, mutinously, to glare at him. “
Mitch
gave it to me.”
“Well, isn’t that nice. You got a knife from the man who really killed your mother.”
She tried to kick him. He grabbed her ankles. “You’re strong,” he said. “I get that. You’re a phenomenal jumper, already. Hell, they pay you for it. But I am
bigger
than you, and I am
better
at this than you are. Now you might think I’m an asshole, but I think we can both agree that what I just said is true.”
Anza said nothing. He held her in place.
“He raped me, Esperanza. He raped me, and he failsafed me, and he got me to poison your mother. I didn’t know what it would do to her. I promise you that. I didn’t know.”
Anza swallowed. “Even if that’s true, what are you even doing here? I thought you went back to be with the humans.”
“Is that what he told you I did?”
“Well,
yeah
. Xavier said you used to… Well…” Her blush deepened. Oh, he was over the moon for her already. “He said the others, our brothers, told him stories…”
“Those stories are true.”
“So what are you doing here? Why aren’t you off…” She squirmed. “I don’t know! Doing whatever it is you do with humans!”
He had seen this reticence before. This squeamishness. Of course.
“You don’t like humans, do you?” he asked.
She looked away. “Sure I do! I like them! They’re great! Mitch is great!”
The smoke inside his body changed its orientation immediately. For a moment, he felt carved out of pure diamond. When he spoke, his voice came out low. “Does Mitch touch you?”
She shook her head. “No. He doesn’t like me that way.”
He was starting to let her go. He was remembering Powell’s record. It fit. “Does he like Xavier that way?”
Her eyes met his. Snowflakes were still caught, unmelted, in her lashes. His lashes. Amy had always said she liked his better than hers, because they were so much longer and darker. And in her last act of creation, she had iterated her favourite parts of him into their little girl.
“It’s OK,” he said. “You can tell me.”
“I…” Her lips pursed. “I think so. And… I know it’s OK, because Xavier likes him, too, and because he’s normal, but…” Her eyes filled with tears. “But…”
“But you know it’s wrong.” Javier rested his hands on her shoulders. She really was so little. Too little. Too little for this job, anyway. “Because when your mother made you, she didn’t include the failsafe.”
Anza collapsed against him. She cried into his chest. “I’m supposed to be protecting him! I know it! It’s the only reason Mom would have made me! But I… I…”
“But you can’t protect him from the thing he wants most,” Javier said, stroking her hair.
Anza pushed herself away from him a little. She looked at him from the corner of her eye. “Now that you’ve dropped in, are you just going to leave? Everyone says you leave.”
He lifted his brows. "Everyone?"
"You know," she said. "My brothers."
"I'm sorry, sweetheart, but they're... gone," Javier said. "The ones from the island, at least. The others, the ones Matteo and Ricci never found, I don't know about them. Maybe they're out there, somewhere. I hope so, anyway."
Anza shook her head. "If I'm alive and so is Xavier, and so are you, then why would our brothers be gone? Don't you think Mom would have saved them, too?"
He smiled ruefully. "Of course I do. I just don't know if she had the time."
Anza peered up at him. "It was scary, wasn't it?"
His eyes welled up, and he felt the moisture start to crystallize. His body lacked the organic heat necessary to turn them into real tears in this cold. He blinked them away and nodded. "Yeah. It was scary." He leaned down. “But I didn’t cross the Gulf of Mexico, ride through the American Southwest, and cross the Pacific Ocean just to drop in,” he said. “I’m here to help you clean house.”