Ami looked up. The owl women were in full flight, vanishing in the distance. Ami felt her hands tingle with pins and needles as sensation returned. Able to manipulate her fingers once again, she wasted no time but twisted the ring to pewter, shrugged the wirepoon gun into her palm, and swung quickly up to the roof of a nearby warehouse, one that was not smoldering with fumes. From there she swung to the top of a telephone pole, which gave her a good view of the street. She shot arrows into the wolf nearest the young man with the bell, and then the next nearest, and so on, until the wolves fled.
She saw brightness one street over and heard a commotion. She was eager to talk to the boy with the bell and question him, but she did not want to stand by idly while the knight was killed by the giant beast. Half-weightless, she leaped from rooftop to rooftop.
Ami landed on the roof a boathouse directly fronting the river in time to see the great lumbering beast leap from the end of the wharf and dive into the river water. Again, the ungainly beast was surprisingly maneuverable in the water, and it arrowed downward into dark depths. The lance was still sticking into the monster, and blood was trailing it as it dove.
The knight pursued it to the edge, burning sword dazzling brightly in his hand. Ami felt sorry for the lad, who was no doubt disappointed that the monster had so neatly escaped him.
Without hesitation the great red steed leaped a prodigious leap into the air, and man and rider plunged into the dark and cold waters, and were swallowed. Ami’s jaw dropped. She had not realized that knights committed ritual suicide like samurai.
Then she blinked in disbelief. It was not suicide after all. She saw the light from the sword moving under the water. Whether the horse was swimming or running along the muddy bottom, she did not know.
But the knight did not give up the chase. The burning light from the sword moved into deeper water and dwindled in the distance, moving downriver toward the sea.
Ami stood, watching the water and hoping the knight might reemerge; but time passed, and the river flowed.
3. Arson
She returned to the Mr. Vegetable warehouse. She was surprised to see firetrucks and firemen already there, hosing down the smoking building. She was not surprised to see the young man with the bell, book, and candle gone. No wolves were to be seen.
However, she was more surprised—but perhaps should not have been—to see the warehouse directly opposite the Mr. Vegetable also on fire. Flame poured from the upper windows of the Catoblepas Discreet Shipping warehouse, and oily black smoke rolled endlessly out into the night.
She was still getting beeps from her bugs, which were still somewhere inside the warehouse. However, as the flames spread, the signal stuttered and stopped. No doubt the metallic parts of the tracking devices melted. The warehouse roof collapsed inward on itself.
Someone or something had cleared the wolf corpses away, taking her arrows with them.
Ami crouched in the shadows atop a roof not far away, scowling beneath a smiling fox mask. “I owe someone my life, and I don’t know his name. He is the one who took Elfine unless there are two medieval knights on red horses galloping the streets of New York and New Jersey after dark on the selfsame night, which I doubt. I don’t know my name. I’ve lost Elfine, and I have spent three mini-grenades and lost four arrows and one throwing knife, none of which I know how to replace.”
Her stomach rumbled. She also had no money and no friends and no way to get a meal or a place to sleep.
Chapter Ten: Werewolves and Elfs
1. Perplexing and Confusing
Ami found an all-night coffee shop run by a little old Korean man who rested a shotgun on pegs above the chalkboard where his daily menu was written. The shotgun may or may not have been loaded, and may or may not have been legal, but the two cops sitting wearily near the door of the shop were treated to free coffee, and perhaps they thought that such a weapon on display was what allowed the shop to remain open at hours when all others were locked up behind iron grates.
The officers stared when a young Japanese woman in a skintight dark catsuit, black thigh boots, and opera gloves walked into the coffee shop, her mask tucked under one arm. The cool wind of the hour before dawn gusted just as she opened the door, and her cape billowed. Both the officers, a young man and an old, had red hair. She wondered if they were Irish.
Both stared at her hips as she walked by. She was not sure if they were merely admirers or if the knives and weapons in her belt were obvious.
Ami asked the old owner if she could use the lady’s room.
Inside were two stalls, a changing table, and a sink. She took out both her kimono decorated with foxes and moths, and the suit of expensive and tasteful American clothes obtained by fraud.
She set them on the countertop, one to either side of the sink, and looked at her herself in the mirror. Without Elfine around to cast a glamour, Ami did not look as pretty as she had before. Her eyes were puffy with tears and weariness. Her face was pinched with anxiety.
She looked down at the lovely kimono. If she wore that on the street, anyone seeing her, Irish or not, would notice and recall. She knew she had enemies. She did not know their numbers or tactics or long-term goals. But whether they were few or many, with agents on every street, she did not know.
Even the underwear Elfine had given her was too expensive. It looked too nice to be underthings: it was a black lace one-piece garment of a type Ami did not recognize. It might have been a bustier, or it might have been a leotard. It covered more than most bathing suits. In fact, it was more modest than what Elfine herself wore.
Wearing the kimono would, at least, be honest, assuming it was actually hers. But how much did it increase her chances of being caught? A little? A lot?
Was wearing the expensive clothing Elfine had pilfered for her excused by the nature of the emergency in which Ami was trapped?
But that question could not be answered without some way to weigh the gravity of the wrongdoing on the one hand versus the gravity of the danger on the other. It was true that if Ami remained uncaptured and alive, she had some chance of making amends for past wrongs to whomever she had wronged if she broke the law, but if she died, both she and her cause were lost.
That was a particularly painful thought since she did not know for what her cause she fought. The knight who abducted Elfine had called her a thief. And the gear she carried would certainly be useful to someone in that profession.
Ami looked in the mirror. The girl in the mirror had bright, honest eyes and thin, determined lips. It was not the face of a thief.
She spoke to herself quietly, watching the lips move on the face in the mirror. “Someone built this suit for me. It is well crafted—a work of genius. Someone trained me. I almost heard his voice in my ear when I first woke. For what purpose? What mission?”
A bewildered shrug in the mirror answered her. “I don’t remember.”
The girl in the mirror’s lips moved as Ami said softly, “What if it was for an important purpose? A mission? A cause?”
She scowled. “I am hungry and all alone. The mission is forgotten. The cause is misplaced. If I cannot remember it, I cannot serve it.”
“A misplaced cause is not a lost cause!” She said to her reflection sharply, “Just because you have forgotten what purpose you serve does not mean your life is purposeless!”
She sighed. “It does if I don’t know what to do! Elfine might have been a scatterbrain, but she always had a plan.”
But her face in the reflection was confident. “Someone is relying on you—someone in trouble like Elfine, but forgotten. Can’t you feel it?”
She said, “Maybe so, but I don’t remember who is relying on me or for what.”
But the words she had heard in her dream—if it had been a dream—when first she had woken in the hospital room returned to her. Let not the soul of thy beloved be drawn into darkness.
But who was her beloved? A family member? A teacher? Elfine?
She looked at the r
ing on her finger. Was she married? Or engaged? Perhaps her beloved was husband, or fiancée. Who had given her this ring, and why?
To answer her, there was nothing. Her amnesia was a blank blackness in her soul, saying no words, revealing no past.
She saw herself straighten up in the mirror. She squared her shoulders. “Does that mean you can fail him? Let him down? Let him die? Whoever he is, someone needs your help. You are on a case!”
Her doubts answered. “And if I turn out to be merely a thief or an assassin, or if the suit is not mine? What if there is no mission, no case?”
The girl in the mirror shrugged. “There must be. That knight told you to get off the case, didn’t he?”
“That means there is a case. And…”
“And?”
“And Elfine said that whenever someone tells you to get off the case, that is when you don’t!”
She nodded, and the reflection nodded with her. “I am glad we agree. What is the next step?”
The look of determination on the face in the mirror was not as good as having Elfine come up with ideas, but it did help because, now that her mind was clear, the next step was clear as well.
2. The Next Step
She put on the expensive but normal-looking stockings, shoes, blouse, skirt, and jacket. Her supersuit and gear she could stow in her cape pocket, which she then carried draped over one arm as if it were a folded raincoat. Rather than return through the coffee shop and be seen by the officers, she retreated through the kitchen to a storeroom and then into a back alley.
She twisted the ring to iron, yanked it off, watched it turn clear as glass and vanish from sight, and then put it carefully back on her finger.
Hitchhiking might have been illegal in New York, but it was not as illegal as cheating the toll, and it was much more comfortable than clinging to a truck roof.
She stood by the roadside with her thumb up and smiled, and was picked up at sunrise by a sixteen-year-old boy driving a sixty-year-old VW bug.
Her worries about having to come up with a story turned out to be nothing. The boy was a talker. He told her of his past and his hopes, said he was working as an intern in an experimental theater group in Manhattan, and told a confusingly elliptical story about some sort of appliance or application having to do with cellphones or smartphones, which segued into his analysis on the growth and decline of an interpretive jazz dance artist, whose career he was debating with an anonymous user. He recited the brilliant points he had made in the argument and spoke of how he would use the pain he had suffered to improve his stage craftsmanship. Then, he complained about his girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, who may have been the debate partner, or the dancer, or both, or neither.
Ami rode in the passenger’s seat, smiling politely and nodding politely, not taking her eyes from him while contemplating what blows and holds would be most effective when fighting a man strapped into a parallel seat, with a low roof and dashboard limiting motion in every direction, should he turn into a monster.
He did not turn into a monster. Instead, no doubt encouraged by how her gaze had not left him, when it came time to drop her off at the Nineteenth Precinct building on East 67th, he jumped up, circled the snub nose of the car, and held the passenger’s door for her. He asked her for her number, and she told him it was forty-nine. While he blinked in confusion, she thanked him and walked quickly away.
The precinct house was a four-story building of red brick and white granite cornices. The windows were arched, and two lanterns burned on either side of the arched door.
A metal detector whistled at her when she entered the door. An officer had her remove her shoes, and he waved a hand-held detector up and down her body while she held her hands over head. He stared at her a moment, smiled at her, the young, pretty and harmless-looking girl, and then waved her on by.
There was almost no one in the waiting room at this early hour. A janitor was mopping the tiles. A drunk was sleeping in a chair. There was a woman in uniform manning the front desk. Ami approached and bowed. The policewoman’s eyebrows went up.
Ami said, “I wish please to speak with officer Dom Damiano.”
“And you are…?”
“Hanako Yamada.” It was the Japanese version of calling herself Jane Doe.
“And why do you want to see Lieutenant Damiano, Miss, ah, Yamaha?”
She bowed again, “It is about my sister. She is missing. She is about my height and weight—we are close enough to share clothes. At the hospital I was told the lieutenant was the man who found her. I would like to find out if he has any additional information about where was she found.”
“Did you file a missing person report? I can have someone take down your statement. If you would just fill out this information…” She passed Ami a clipboard and form.
The form asked for all the information she did not know about herself, starting with her name, address, mailing address, place of work, father’s full name, mother’s full name, mother’s maiden name, home number, day number, emergency number, cell number, driving license number, voter identification number…
While she might have been willing to tell one or two innocent lies in a good cause, she knew she would look foolish and be caught immediately if she lied about something she did not know what it was. Answering all the questions about numbers with forty-nine might lead to immediate suspicion. And what was SSN? It had nine blank spaces to be filled in, but the form did not indicate whether these were letters or numbers.
Ami bowed again and passed the form back, “I am so sorry. I cannot read or write English. May I not simply speak to the officer?”
“Lieutenant Damiano is not on duty today. That information is so we can contact you when he gets back on duty. And if you have information about a missing person, you really should give us a statement so that we can find her. It’s very important that you cooperate.”
The policewoman stared carefully at Ami’s face. She continued, “I can have someone help you write down your information and statement. You do want Lieutenant Damiano to be able to help you?”
Ami said, “I am sorry to trouble you. Did he leave a written report I could see?”
The policewoman spread her hands, “That would be up to him or the captain. Usually, we don’t share information about ongoing investigations with the public, especially those who cannot read English, but seeing as you are family, I am sure something can be arranged. Now, tell me how to spell your name, Miss, ah, Yamoto, was it?”
“I am so sorry.” She bowed again. “I don’t know how to spell it in Roman letters. It means mountain ricefield.”
The policewoman’s stare became hard and flinty. “It would be written on your driver’s license, miss.”
“I am so sorry, I don’t have one of those.”
“Your library card.”
“I am so sorry. I am not from this country.”
The policewoman looked her up and down. “But you shop here. Do you have a bank account? A passport? No?”
“It is missing.”
“Miss, if your passport has been lost or stolen, you are required to report that. What exactly was your sister doing before she went missing? And why didn’t you file a missing person report?”
“I– ah– was ill in bed and could not come here.”
“And where exactly is this bed? Where are you staying?”
“I don’t know the name. It was a friend’s apartment. In a tall building.”
“Honey, we have a lot of tall buildings in this town. Does your friend have a name?”
“Elfine Moth.”
“And where is he now?”
“She.”
“Where is she now?”
“She is gone. Away. Gone away.”
“So. Your sister is missing, your passport is missing, and your friend is missing. Do you know anyone who is not missing?”
Ami was unnerved, so she bowed again, unable to think of anything to say.
“Miss, sit down right there. I th
ink you should speak with one of the detectives.”
Ami nodded obediently and sat down, folding her cape over her hands, and placed them in her lap. She waited until the policewoman turned back to typing. When the janitor left and there was no one else in the room except for the sleeping drunk, she felt for her ring. She twisted the invisible ring on her finger twice clockwise and twice counterclockwise. A dark mist rose up and surrounded her.
The lights in the room seemed dim and distant, and the walls no longer seemed quite parallel or perpendicular to each other. The sounds echoed and lingered strangely.
Ami rose and quietly walked out of the waiting room. The eyes of the officer manning the metal detector at the door did not focus on her. She stood by the door, as motionless and silent as a tree until someone came in. He was a yawning fireman from the Hook and Ladder company next door, carrying a box of doughnuts, and calling out a cheery good morning. Ami slipped through the door behind him as it was closing.
3. He Hath the Strength of an Unicorn
Outside, on the sidewalk, there was a crowned lion sitting on one side of the precinct station, shining like gold. To the other side, shining like the moon, was a bearded unicorn, larger than a stallion and more graceful than a stag.
The unicorn turned its head toward her. “In the wilderness, in whose hand is the keeping of the law?”
Ami froze in shock. The voice was like the sound like floodwaters rushing.
The lion said, “The keeping of the law is in the hand of the king!”
His roar was the cry of a brass trumpet. Ami knelt, clutching her ears.
The unicorn said, “And who shall keep the law while the king sleeps?”
The lion said, “Let the thief catch the thief, and let the vigilante avenge the blood, that when the king wakes, he shall spare you.”