“People,” the boy shrugged. “Around Docktown.”
“Aiya.” Saito shook his head, passed the pipe along. “How comes it that children today speak so much yet know so little?” He fixed the boy in a squint-eyed stare. “A Stormdancer is more than the beast he rides. It takes more than the shoulders of a thunder tiger to stand as tall as heroes like Kitsune no Akira.”
“All praise.” Benjiro raised the pipe in a toast, exhaling a long trail of smoke that was snatched away by the wind.
“All praise,” Saito nodded.
“Why?” Kigoro looked back and forth between the men. “What did he do?”
Cries of dismay split the night, and the two cloudwalkers clipped Kigoro over the back of his head in turn. Feeling sorry for the boy, Yukiko raised her voice over the clamor.
“He slew Boukyaku, young sama. The sea dragon who consumed the island of Takaiyama.”
“Ahhhh.” Benjiro pointed at Yukiko and bowed, obviously a little the worse for smoke. “See, Saito-san? Not all youngsters are ignorant of this island’s great history. The Black Fox at least teaches his daughter the lessons of the past.” He gave another unsteady bow to Masaru. “Honor to you, great sama.”
“There’s no such thing as sea dragons,” the cabin boy pouted, glaring about at his fellows. “And there’s no island called Takaiyama, either. You’re making fun of me.”
“There are no dragons now,” Yukiko agreed. “But long ago, before the oceans turned red, they swam in the waters around Shima. They have a skeleton hanging in the great museum in the Kitsune capital.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Once.” She fixed her eyes on the deck. “With my mother and brother. Long ago.”
“What did they look like?”
“Fearsome. Spines of poison and teeth as long and sharp as katana.”
“. . . and there was none more fearsome than mighty Boukyaku, the Dragon of Forgetting.”
Yukiko glanced up as her father spoke. His eyes were fixed somewhere in the dark over the railing, far away in the deep of the night, his voice tinged with the rasp of smoke. He ran his finger down through his graying mustache and licked his lips. And as he began to speak, for just a fleeting moment, she was a little girl again, curled up by the fire with Satoru and Buruu, listening to tales of wonder.
“They say his tail was as broad as the walls of the imperial palace. And when he lashed it in anger, tsunami as tall as sky-spires rose in his wake. He could swallow a ship and all her crew with one snap of his jaws, suck entire schools of deep tuna down his gullet with one breath. He grew fat and huge on the plunder of the eastern ocean, and the fishermen of the island of Takaiyama—for such was its name, young sama—were close to starvation. So they prayed to great Susano-ō, God of Storms, asking him to drive Boukyaku from their waters.”
Saito leaned forward with his hands on his knees, and Benjiro stared at Masaru as if hypnotized. The drone of the engines and the song of the propellers seemed to fade away, and the sound of his voice was as flame to dazzled moths.
“But the great sea dragon overheard the islanders’ pleas.” The lotus pipe hung forgotten in Masaru’s hand, trailing a thin wisp of smoke. “And in his terrible rage, Boukyaku opened his maw and consumed the island and everyone on it: man, woman, child and beast. And this is why the holy Book of Ten Thousand Days speaks of eight islands of Shima, when now there are only seven.”
Saito leaned back, stroking his graying beard and looking at the young cabin boy. “And why ignorant pups like you have never heard the name of Takaiyama.”
“Was Boukyaku one of the Black Yōkai?” The boy looked to Masaru.
“No,” the Hunt Master shook his head. “Not black.”
“But he was evil.”
“There are three kinds of yōkai, young sama.” Masaru counted off on his fingers. “The white, such as great phoenix. Pure and fierce.” A second finger. “The black, spawned in the Yomi underworld; oni, nagaraja and the like. Creatures of evil.” A third digit. “But most breeds of spirit beasts are simply gray. They are elemental, unconstrained. They can be noble like the great thunder tiger, who answers the call of the Stormdancer. But like the sea dragons, they can seem cruel to us, just as a rip-tide will seem cruel to a drowning man.”
The boy appeared unconvinced. “So what does Kitsune no Akira have to do with all this, then?”
The cloudwalkers looked to Masaru. He stared down at the pipe in his hand for a long moment, and then continued to speak.