WHAT?
Well, you love her so much, right? She’s your dawning and dusk, I get it. So, if you don’t mind me asking, why the hells are you flying my sorry ass around instead of being back there with her?
A long silence, battered by brief thunder.
… SHE ASKS WHAT I CANNOT GIVE.
Oh, really.
REALLY.
Might be I’m only eighteen summers aboard this ferry-ride, but couldn’t say I’ve seen many fixes where folks genuinely can’t give what others ask. Most times it’s all about won’t.
WON’T?
Won’t pay the price. Won’t do the dance. Won’t kiss the girl.
Yoshi felt a grudging warmth in the thunder tiger’s chest, something approaching a smile. Buruu dipped into the cloudbank, swooped up again with that same sense of abandon; a small child skipping across a field of sky.
YOU ARE A STRANGE ONE, BOY.
Yoshi laughed.
Hells, Mockingbird, coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment.
*
Day frayed into night, and Yoshi did his best to sleep despite the cutting chill. They flew above the cloud cover, the white noise of distant rain like a lullaby. Anxiety chewed at him, and he could feel that same emotion building inside the thunder tiger’s head. The farther away from Yama they drew, the worse it got. Close to dawn, Yoshi decided he’d used up enough of the arashitora’s minutes.
Listen, you’d best be getting back. Yukiko will be fretting on you.
WE ARE NOT YET AT THE JUNCTION.
I can walk from here. Maybe catch a handcar. Just drop me on the railway tracks.
AS YOU WISH.
Buruu swept down through the clouds. Thunder swelled, drumming on Yoshi’s ears in a hymn of iron and engines. The cloud was thick as mud. Wet and freezing cold.
They were virtually on top of the sky-ship before they heard it.
As they swooped out of the gray, a three-man scout corvette flying Phoenix colors was cutting through the air alongside them, its arrow-tip inflatable adorned with a sunbird in flight. Yoshi and pilot caught sight of each simultaneously, both gawping in shock.
“Holy shit!” Yoshi cried.
The pilot roared in alarm, his marksman swiveling his shuriken-thrower just as Buruu came to his senses, banked hard and fell into a dive. Wrenching his controls, the pilot followed, motors screaming, spewing blue-black behind.
Yoshi and Buruu dropped like a stone, but looking over his shoulder, the boy was alarmed to find the tiny ship keeping pace. A chattering burst of shuriken fire filled the air, razored steel disks whizzing past his shoulders, skimming off Buruu’s metal wings, and with a bang and a bright burst of sparks in his eyes, clipping the right side of his head.
“Ow, godsdammit!”
Yoshi reached up to the impossible pain, fingers coming away red and gleaming.
They chopped half my ear off!
OH. THAT IS TERRIBLE.
Fuck you, I needed that!
Buruu was spiraling down, trying to gain distance on their pursuers. Another burst of shuriken fire cut between the rain, Yoshi pressing low to Buruu’s back.
THEY ARE SWIFTER THAN OTHERS I HAVE FOUGHT.
Up! Go up! No way they’ll climb faster than you!
The thunder tiger pulled out of his dive and tore up toward the hidden sun. There was an awful moment as Yoshi glanced over his shoulder again—right down the ’thrower’s barrel, down into that bottomless black, just waiting for it to open up and him along with it.
Fly, godsdamn you, fly!
HOLD ON TO ME.
The beast pulled up, wings tearing the iron-gray, Yoshi clinging with fingers and thighs and teeth. They looped up and over the sky-ship, the boy treating Buruu to the most imaginative burst of profanity he could conjure. The corvette’s marksman lost sight of them, screaming for coordinates as Buruu completed his loop-the-loop, descending like a thunderbolt.
Their path took them through the dart. Not over or past, simply through—the dirigible shredding like paper, the ultralight frame disintegrating amidst the high-pitched scream of breaking metal and escaping hydrogen. The crew wailed as they tumbled free, trailing long sashes of bright Phoenix orange all the way down, like ribbons from the tails of dying kites.
Yoshi was sure the sound of them hitting the ground would come back to visit when the lights went out.
Izanagi’s balls …
ARE YOU WELL?
Yoshi pressed hand to head, wincing as he touched what was left of his ear.
Hurts worse than my manparts, but I’ll live …
He felt the thunder tiger tense, something close to fear rippling through the beast’s mind. Buruu’s eyes were fixed on the southern horizon, a low growl rumbling in his chest.
PERHAPS NOT MUCH LONGER.
What?
LOOK.
Yoshi squinted into the haze and rain.
I can’t see anything.