Shadow Warriors

Chapter eleven

Several hours later, Lexi left to go to work, and Sarah found herself dialing Mr Takamori's number. Axin was on her mind from the moment she woke up, and she needed to know more about him.

"Miss Weller, is everything alright?" Mr Takamori's voice answered.

"Good afternoon, Mr Takamori, I hope I'm not bothering you."

"Not at all. I am waiting for the movers to arrive to take all my belongings to storage. I will be flying to Japan on Tuesday to spend some time with my family. Is there something I can help you with?"

She bit her lip, wondering if this was a good idea. But he already signed the contract, so backing out over something as trivial as asking about a painting didn't sound like something he would do.

"Mr Takamori, I was hoping I could ask you a favor. That painting of the Shadow people... Could we speak more about it?"

She heard the smile in his voice. "Of course. Why don't you come to the summer house, I have many books here for you to read about it."

She smiled. "Thank you. I can be there in an hour."

"Alright. I will see you then." The call ended and Sarah darted to her bedroom to dress.

A quick call to Lexi assured her that she had a car to drive to the Hamptons with, and before she knew it, the old Japanese lady was leading her to Mr Takamori's office.

"Thank you so much for seeing me about this, Mr Takamori," Sarah said, shaking his outstretched hand.

He smiled. "I don't mind at all. I appreciate the fact that you are curious about my country's history."

He gestured for her to sit at his desk and he went to the books lining the back wall. He pulled three of them out and placed them on the table in front of her before he sat down.

"Those are the only ones I have that have English translations in them."

She glanced at the books, their old, worn spines and the gold edges of the pages.

"Thank you. How did this legend come to be?"

"A very long time ago," he reached for the top book and began looking through its pages, "a rice farmer in the Saga district, in the south of Japan, woke up in the middle of the night to a noise outside. He went to look and found all his chickens were dead. He called his son, a boy named Hashi Kiyomasu, to help him find the wild animal that killed them. They went into the rice fields together, under the full moon and searched for whatever killed their chickens.

"Hashi's father instructed the boy to go check the lower fields, while he checked the top ones. Hashi did as his father said, and when he got to the bottom of the rice fields, he found what he described as a monster with red eyes, sitting on a rock, watching him. A massive bird, with eyes of fire, and a body of spikes and scales." Mr Takamori turned the book in his hands to face Sarah and slid it closer to her. She reached out for it, and glanced at the picture on the page. Most of the writing was in Japanese, but the image was clear as day. A massive winged creature, looking a lot like what she saw Axin turn into, sat perched on a rock, looking out of the page.

She ran a finger over it, a small smile playing on her lips and Mr Takamori continued, "Hashi wrote in that book later, that the creature looked wounded. A long, deep gash in its side, dripped blood into the field below the rock. Then he heard his father screaming, so Hashi ran up the hill to see what had happened. His father was dead. Like the chickens, he was ripped apart. Hashi called for the winged creature to come to help him, to hunt the thing that killed his father, but the creature was too badly hurt.