Chapter #62Miko's Chronicle, part 4 by: imaj   Miko knelt there, quietly sobbing for what seemed like an age. As her tears finally subsided, a little spark of hope formed within Miko. Her father had fought with one of the practice swords. She glanced towards the portrait of Amaterasu, daring to hope. It was untouched.
Calmly, Miko stood up and walked to the portrait, not wanting to be excited, not wanting to show emotion in case she was mistaken. She looked at the wooden frame of the picture, running her hands along the bottom. She shouldn’t have known this, but she had seen her father do it once years ago. If she pressed here, and then here and finally there then she should be…
There was an audible click. The wall panel below the painting fell open to reveal a hidden alcove. Miko stooped down to look inside: Her father’s sword was still there.
Miko stood straight back up and took a step back. She looked at the picture of Amaterasu again, looking at the representation of the goddess straight in the eyes. “I know I shouldn’t take this, ok” she begun. “But my father is in trouble somewhere. He’s alive, I know he’s alive because if they’d killed him I’d have found his… I’d have found him here.” She bit her lip nervously. “I’m going to take this sword to my father. I’m going to res… I’m going to help him escape and rescue my mother.” After a moments though she added. “Please forgive me.”
Miko knelt by the alcove and reverentially removed the sword from its stand. She removed the blade from its sheaf, gasping a little in admiration. The blade was a little under a metre in length and curved gently inward. There was no maker’s mark on it, just the distinctive wave like pattern that ran along the side of the blade. Miko grasped the hilt with both hand and hefted it experimentally. She should put it away, sheave it until she could deliver it to her father, Miko thought.
Miko heard a noise from the corridor leading to the training hall. “Susa,” called a voice from the corridor. “Susa, are you down here,” shouted the voice; male, heavily accented.
Miko snapped round to face the doorway. She lifted the sword into a guard stance and tried to calm herself. Her mother and father were gone, had they come for her too?
A lone figure entered by the doorway opposite. Miko almost did a double take: The interloper was a foreigner, a westerner, in a simple charcoal grey suit. His white shirt was open at the collar. His face was ruddy, perhaps he has spent too much time in the sun? That was the sort of thing these foreigners did. It was in stark contrast to the pure white of his beard. What shocked Miko the most was simply how small he seemed. He was certainly smaller than her father, how could someone like that have defeated him?
“What have you done with my parents,” asked Miko coldly.
The man mutter some unintelligible. “I haven’t done anything with your parents girl,” he said slowly and carefully. “You must be Miko, I’m…”
“I will ask you one more time,” interrupted Miko. “What have you done with my father,” she shouted. The words reverberated against the walls of the training hall. The scattered detritus on the floor rolled about and old man staggered backward.
Miko couldn’t read the expression on the mans face, shock or something like it? He said something to himself again in a language that Miko did understand. “Look girl, I know you’re hurting right now but…” he added.
Miko stopped listening. She raised her father’s sword above her head and charged the man, channelling her rage, her anger and her fear. She roared as she swept the sword downwards in a mighty blow that should by all rights have cleaved the interloper in two.
She missed, the old man had moved out of the way somehow.
The sword bit deeply into the wooden floor. Miko tugged at it a couple of times until it came free. She twisted round, searching for the man. He had somehow managed to move several paces clear of her. “You move fast for a fat man,” she panted.
“I’ll take that as a compliment, I think,” he replied. “I’m a friend of your father’s Miko. My name is Charles…”
“Lies,” interrupted Miko. She started advancing towards the man, this time more circumspectly.
“I’ve got this letter he sent me,” he continued, reaching inside his suit jacket. He pulled out a folded piece of paper and held it out. Miko went for a darting strike to his outstretched wrist, figuring that he had no blade of his own to deflect the blow.
She missed again. It wasn’t that he dodged, or was fast enough to move out of the way, he simply wasn’t there when the blow arrived. The piece of paper he had been holding floated to the ground gently.
“Stars, you’re fast girl,” he said, breathing heavily. “I just want to talk.”
“Tell. Me. Where. My . Parents. Are,” shouted Miko, advancing on the old man again.
The old man shook his head and sighed. “I’ll come back when you’ve calmed down Miko,” he said sadly. “Why don’t you read the letter, it’ll explain everything.”
As Miko made ready to thrust the sword at the old man, he started glowing. Dimly to start with, but the glow rapidly intensified. It quickly became blindly bright, forcing Miko to raise an arm to cover her eyes. The light kept on getting brighter, to the point where Miko started to think she could see the very bones in her arm silhouetted.
Just as suddenly, the light vanished. Miko lowered her arm, blinking a couple of times as she did so. The training hall seemed darker than it was before somehow. She looked around, the only trace left of the old man was the letter he had dropped.
She picked up the letter and unfolded it. The careful neat writing on the paper matched her fathers, but the bulk of the letter was written in another language, perhaps English. There were only a few Japanese characters sprinkled in the text.
Miko let the letter flutter out of her hands, unsure what to do next. She had been running on a mix of fear and rage since she’d arrived home but now she felt drained and exhausted. Almost mindlessly, she returned the sword to its scabbard. Instead of return it to its hiding place she grasped it close, unwilling to let go of what might well be her last link to her father.
Miko made her way listlessly back through the house, closing the stairs in the basement behind, closing the front door that she’d left open during her frantic search of the house. She returned to the living room, finding her bag where she had left it. Miko removed her mother’s comb from where she had left it. With her fathers sword held tightly in her right hand and her mother comb in her left, Miko hugged herself tightly.
She drifted upwards to her bedroom. She didn’t stop to disrobe, or to drop the sword and comb. She didn’t even climb under the bedcovers. Miko just collapsed on top of her bed and quietly sobbed herself to sleep.
*****
To rest your eyes for a moment: "The Perils of a Paranormal Polyglot"   | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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