heard Quin muttering her time chant, attempting to keep her focus.
Knowledge of self, Shinobu began in his own mind, knowledge of home…But the fight took all of his attention.
“Push forward!” Quin yelled. “Out through the anomaly.”
“I’m trying!”
He blocked blows and turned his shoulders in an attempt to separate two of the boys from the others so he might more easily push them back.
He’d already lost track of how long they’d been fighting. Time was lengthening. His muscles were moving differently.
“The anomaly’s closing!” Quin said beside him. There was desperation in her voice, and he heard her making a heroic effort to throw the boys back. “Push forward!”
“We’re too late,” he told her, his voice disconnected and far away.
The anomaly was out of reach and losing its shape. The light was disappearing. And then it was gone.
In the darkness, he heard Quin strike a vicious blow, and then she clicked on the flashlight she’d taken from Shinobu in the woods. She pointed it into the boys’ faces as she slashed at them again.
“Knowledge of self,” he heard her chanting, “knowledge of home, a clear picture of where I came from— Shinobu, say your chant!”
He was trying.
In the dancing beam of the flashlight, his arms moved automatically to block the two boys fighting him. How was he keeping up with them? His mind slowly turned over this question, and he saw the answer: he wasn’t keeping up with them. He was slowing down, and the boys were slowing down as well.
All except one. The largest of the boys was still fighting properly and much too quickly for Shinobu’s eyes to follow. Quin’s whipsword tore here and there as the flashlight beam bobbed and swung wildly. She was so good at keeping her focus.
“Knowledge of self,” Quin was saying, the words so fast that Shinobu could hardly understand them, “knowledge of home…Shinobu, take him!”
The oldest opponent tumbled into Shinobu. In the moving beam of light, he saw blood across the boy’s chest, and something else—the boy was wearing a focal.
A vibration. Daylight. Shinobu was yanked roughly from behind. He fell and landed on grass and soft earth.
He was breathing, he knew that much. He could feel the hilt of his whipsword in his hand. But the air, the breeze, the clouds in the sky, everything was moving too fast.
Quin was standing in the grass nearby, still fighting the boy in the focal.
“Shinobu!” she called as her whipsword crashed into her opponent’s. “Please get up!”
Quin…Quin…With a force of will, Shinobu clawed his way back into the ordinary time stream.
He became aware of the pain all at once. His injuries had sprung back to life in the fight: his ribs, his leg, the sword wound in his side. Everything had been aching for the last few days—since he’d forced himself to stop using the focal. But this fight had turned ache into full-blown pain.
He wouldn’t put on the focal. He’d promised himself. He didn’t know what might happen to him if he wore it again—
“Shinobu!”
He rolled to the side, ripped his backpack open, and grabbed the helmet. He’d brought it with them on their expedition to Scotland, and he’d hidden it from Quin, though somehow it had ended up at the top of the pack after he’d retrieved the flashlight for Quin. He’d brought the focal with them not because he intended to wear it but because it pained him to think of leaving it in Hong Kong, halfway around the world. But there was no choice now. He was in pain and Quin was in danger.
He lifted the focal to his head—
And something heavy landed on his chest.
“Give it back! Give it back!”
He was being battered by small fists. The littlest of the boys was straddling him, snatching at the focal and striking Shinobu wherever he could.
Shinobu grabbed a fistful of the boy’s shirt, saw freckles and blackened teeth, and smelled the rank odor of rotting flesh. He butted the boy’s head with his own. His freckled opponent went momentarily limp, allowing Shinobu to get up onto a knee. Then the boy seized at the focal desperately, his nails scratching Shinobu’s hands.
No one’s taking the helmet, Shinobu thought. It’s mine.
Planting a foot on the small boy’s chest, Shinobu heaved him away and pulled the focal onto his head.
A discordant vibration filled his ears, but he’d come to enjoy that feeling. Even before the focal had settled, Shinobu understood that it would see him through this fight. Already the pain was receding, replaced by a