Kai Read online

  Zane shook his head. “I don’t think so. But at the time, I was so confused that I really didn’t pay much attention.”

  “You’re not going to make this detective thing easy, I can see,” Kai said, smiling.

  Zane stopped and pointed up ahead. “Well, I think that’s what you would call a clue.”

  Through the trees, Kai could see a small village. Smoke curled from a dozen chimneys and the air was filled with the sounds of men and women working and children playing. It reminded him of his own home. Somehow, that made him even more determined to help Zane.

  The two ninja swiftly reached the outskirts of the village. Zane immediately saw someone he knew, a large, balding tinkerer named Genn.

  “Hello!” said Zane. “It is good to see you again.”

  “Zane?” Genn said, glancing around, as if afraid someone might have heard him. Kai didn’t know the man, but his behavior made the young ninja a little uneasy.

  “What … um, what brings you here?” asked Genn.

  “I just wanted to see my home again,” said Zane. “This is my friend Kai.”

  Genn nodded in Kai’s direction, but his eyes never left Zane. There was fear in those eyes. “You picked a very bad time to come,” the tinkerer said, a little too quickly. “You know how, ah, busy we are at this time of year. Maybe … maybe you would prefer visiting some other day.”

  “Is something the matter?” asked Zane.

  Kai already knew what the man’s answer would be, and that it would be a lie.

  “No, of course not,” said Genn. “Just … just a busy time, that’s all.”

  “Then my friend and I can help and the work will go faster,” Zane replied.

  Kai and Zane walked into the village. Everywhere they went, they were met with looks of fear, anger, even despair. It didn’t take a genius to see that something was very wrong. But whenever they asked, they were told everything was just fine.

  Zane took Kai on a quick tour — the road on which he was found, the hut in which he had lived, and the icy lake he had been meditating in on the day he met Sensei Wu. At first glance, Kai saw no clues to the mystery of Zane’s past, but he had to admit he wasn’t looking very hard. He was too distracted by the reactions of the villagers.

  “Are they usually so disturbed around here?” asked Kai.

  Zane leaned against a tree and folded his arms across his chest. “I have to admit, I have seen happier faces at funerals,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, let’s make sure it’s not our funeral that’s being planned,” said Kai. “From now on, keep your eyes open. Somebody’s in real trouble here, and it might be us.”

  The two ninja spent the rest of the day chopping wood and doing other chores around the village. When they were done, they were ushered to the nicest hut in the village. Kai stood at the window of his room, watching the sunset, lost in thought. He wondered how Zane must feel being back here, where everything was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

  That night, the villagers held a feast for the heroes, or what passed for a feast in a place with little in the way of wealth or resources. Still, the people shared what little they had. Throughout the meal, no one seemed willing to look at either Kai or Zane in the eye. The conversation was strained and spoken in low tones. After a few hours, Kai began to feel very tired. He excused himself, went back to the hut, and fell sound asleep.

  He awoke the next morning. The bright rays of dawn were streaming in his window. Kai stumbled out of bed, wondering why it was so quiet. Normally, in a village like this, people were up and working hard before sunrise. Then again, this seems to be a pretty odd town, he reminded himself.

  Zane was just waking up. “I guess I am out of practice at doing anything but ninja training,” he said. “About an hour after you left the dinner, I started to feel really tired. I came back here and fell right into bed.”

  “Must have been all that exciting conversation at the party,” Kai said. “And I guess it knocked everyone else out, too, because I don’t hear anyone working.”

  Zane got out of bed, a look of concern on his face. “You’re right, neither do I. But that makes no sense. Genn’s right, this is the busiest time of the year for the village. Feast or no feast, they wouldn’t sleep in.”

  He went out the door, Kai following. The two stood in the village square, looking around. There was no one around — nobody working, no children at play, not even a dog lying in the morning sun. Zane went straight to Genn’s hut and knocked on the door. There was no answer.

  Pushing the door open, Zane went inside. Breakfast was set on the table, tea and a hunk of bread. A fire was dying in the hearth. There was no sign of anyone. The two ninja searched the place and the surrounding area, but saw no sign of Genn or his family.

  It was the same at every other house in the village. There was evidence of people having been in the homes just recently, but they were gone now. It seemed as if they had simply all disappeared at the same moment.

  “I can’t believe this,” said Zane. “How could it have happened?”

  “And why didn’t it happen to us?” asked Kai.

  “Maybe we should go get the sensei and Cole and Jay. What do you think?”

  Kai shook his head. “I know how you feel, but it would take hours to get back to camp and then bring them back here. Sensei Wu might not even want to take time away from training for our mission to investigate. No, we need to solve this ourselves.”

  Zane sat down on a bench, his head in his hands. “Kai … did we cause this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The people … they looked so afraid. Did someone or something target them because we were here? Did we bring trouble to my home?”

  Kai sat down next to him. “I don’t know, Zane. But, whatever happened, we’ll make it right. Whoever did this doesn’t know what trouble is — but we’re going to teach him.”

  The first question the ninja had to try to answer, of course, was whether someone did something to the villagers or they did it to themselves. They had obviously been terrified of something, so the possibility existed that they had packed up and fled in the night.

  “I could believe that, except for one thing,” Zane said when Kai suggested the theory. “They didn’t pack up. It doesn’t look like anything’s gone but the people.”

  “We’re missing the easy answer,” Kai replied. “Tracks — there’s snow on the ground, so there have to be tracks showing where everyone went.”

  But there weren’t any tracks. The two ninja searched the outskirts of the village, making a complete circle, and finding nothing beyond the marks left by squirrels and other small animals. In a number of places, there were faint lines in the snow, as if some kind of tool or machine had passed over. Whatever it had been, it hadn’t been carrying people, as the lines weren’t deep enough in the snow. Kai even tried climbing up on the roof of the tallest building, but all he could see in the distance was trees and snow. By the time he and Zane met up again, the Ninja of Fire was feeling extremely frustrated.

  “This is impossible!” he snapped. “Even if they were taken, there would have to be some sign. They didn’t just fly up into the sky and disappear.”

  “Maybe we’re thinking about the wrong direction,” Zane answered, pointing down to the ground. “Remember, Sensei Wu told us there are openings to the Underworld in various places. Maybe this is one of them. The skeletons could have stolen them away through such a portal, which would explain why there are no tracks leading out of the village.”

  Kai’s expression turned grim. “So Samukai took them the same way he took my sister. Zane, we have to find that portal and get them back.”

  Zane nodded. “Agreed. What does a portal to the Underworld look like?”

  Kai started to answer, then stopped. He suddenly realized he had no idea what such a thing would look like. It was pretty doubtful there would be a sign nearby reading, “This Way to the Underworld.” As stupid as some of the skeletons were, ev
en they weren’t that dumb.

  “Well, um, we’ll know it when we see it, I’m sure,” he answered finally.

  The two began a methodical search of the village, checking every house and every patch of snow-covered ground for any sign of an entry point. All the while, Zane was troubled. It wasn’t just the mystery of what had happened to his friends and neighbors. He knew worrying too much about them would distract him from spotting the answer to the puzzle. No, it was those lines he and Kai had seen in the snow all around the village. Their pattern seemed familiar somehow.

  It was now late afternoon. Zane had run out of places to search. He went to find Kai to share the disappointing news that he had found nothing. He discovered his friend in a shed behind one of the huts, banging around among the owner’s tools. Now and then, a hammer or a shovel would come flying out of the door.

  “It has to be here,” Kai was muttering. “They must have it well hidden. It’s probably under that pile of tools under there. No, I looked there already….”

  Cautiously, in case more tools came flying out, Zane opened the door to the shed. He was about to call out to Kai when he saw something hanging on the wall. Of course! It was so simple! No wonder they hadn’t found any tracks.

  “A rake!” he exclaimed.

  “What? Ow!” said Kai, turning to see his friend and banging his head on a shovel in the process.

  “The lines in the snow, the ones we saw all over,” said Zane. “They were the marks left by a rake.”

  “Who rakes snow? Shovel it, sure, but rake it?” said Kai.

  “Think about it,” Zane continued. “If you had left footprints in the snow and wanted to obliterate them, what would you do? Run a rake over them. There were traces, all right, but someone went to a lot of trouble to hide them.”

  Kai smiled. “All right, now we have something. I’m not sure what, but it’s something. Still, those marks were all over the outskirts. They don’t tell us which direction the villagers went.”

  Zane hadn’t thought of that. Still, it made sense. If they really wanted to keep things secret, it wouldn’t make sense to only rake over one trail. That would stand out too much if it was spotted. It would be more effective to run the rakes all around the village so there would be no way to tell which concealed trail had been the right one.

  “That’s true,” said the Ninja of Ice. “But perhaps —”

  “Quiet!” Kai whispered. “I thought I heard something.”

  Now Zane heard it, too. Someone was sneaking around outside. They might have been making an effort to keep quiet, but the crunching snow was giving them away. He edged over toward the small window in the rear of the shack. The glass was covered with a thick coating of frost, but Zane could just barely see that someone was moving around outside.

  Zane signaled to Kai that he would try to distract the intruder while Kai slipped around the right side of the building to nab him. As soon as Kai snuck out the door, Zane said loudly, “No, Kai, I don’t think we should just quit and go home. What? No, the people of this village don’t play practical jokes. I really don’t think —”

  There were sounds of a scuffle coming from outside. Zane darted outside to see that Kai had transformed into a fiery whirlwind using the power of Spinjitzu, and was battering a skeleton warrior senseless with the snow and ice stirred up by his tornado. As Kai slowed down, Zane ran forward and grabbed the skeleton.

  “What are you doing here?” Zane demanded. “Be warned, my friend here can do far worse than hurl snowballs at you.”

  The skeleton went from dazed to defiant in a matter of moments. “I won’t tell you anything. I don’t know anything.”

  “That I can believe,” said Kai. “You guys aren’t exactly hired for your brains … or your good looks, for that matter. Anyway, we don’t need you to talk, we know what happened. You boneheads kidnapped the people of this village and now you want a ransom, right?”

  The skeleton’s face brightened. “Right … I mean, no. We didn’t take the villagers. They, um, fled because they knew we were coming.”

  “And why were you coming to a tiny village like this?” pressed Zane. “What’s here that Samukai could be interested in?”

  The skeleton’s jaws clamped shut. He had evidently remembered he wasn’t supposed to be talking.

  “Hey, Zane, do you know what’s left of bone after a fire?” asked Kai.

  “No, what?” answered Zane.

  Kai leaned in very close to the skeleton warrior. “Not a whole lot.”

  “Okay, okay!” said the skeleton. “It’s … it’s …” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “It’s the treasure.”

  Kai and Zane looked at each other, then back at their prisoner, confused. “What treasure?” asked Zane.

  “There’s a legion on its way to get it,” the skeleton hissed. “We know just where it is in the village.”

  “Then why don’t you tell us, and we’ll all know,” said Kai. “Zane, do you know anything about a treasure hidden here?”

  Zane shook his head. “No, but I would certainly like to hear more.”

  The skeleton warrior suddenly wrenched himself loose from the grasp of the ninja and started running toward the shed. Before Kai or Zane could stop him, he dove through the small window and into the building.

  “Well, that was a silly thing to do,” said Kai as the two ninja ran around to the front of the shed. “Does he think we won’t be able to find him?”

  Zane grabbed Kai and shoved him down to the ground. “I think he was counting on us finding him. Duck!”

  A thrown axe sliced the air just above the ninja’s heads. It was followed by shovels, rakes, and knives, all hurled through the open door of the shed by the skeleton warrior inside. The storm of tools kept the two ninja pinned down.

  “He has to run out of ammunition eventually,” said Kai.

  “What if his aim gets better in the meantime?” Zane answered. “I have an idea.”

  The Ninja of Ice sprang to his feet, braced for battle. As the sharp tools flew at him, he batted them aside with eye-blurring speed. Then, somehow, he missed a strike. A hammer made it past his defenses and struck him a glancing blow on the head. Zane hit the ground hard and lay still.

  “Zane! Are you all right?” said Kai.

  The Ninja of Ice opened one eye. “Shhhh. It just looked like the hammer hit me, but don’t let our friend inside know that. Now you try.”

  Kai jumped up and ran for the shed. He made it halfway there before a thrown shovel brought him down, or seemed to. Like Zane, he lay still and quiet in the snow.

  After a few minutes, the skeleton warrior peeked out the door of the shed. Seeing both his enemies were unconscious, he smiled. Samukai would certainly reward him for finishing off two such dangerous foes. He picked up a shovel and took a step toward where Kai was sprawled on the ground.

  Then he stopped and thought. Didn’t Samukai say something about these ninja? What was it? Leave them a lamp? Leave them a loaf? No, no, that wasn’t it. I know it was important. Leave them … leave them …

  Alive! That’s it. Leave them alive!

  He dropped the shovel. It landed on his foot, making him yell so loud he almost startled Kai into moving. Grumbling, the skeleton hobbled off to the east and was soon out of the village.

  As soon as he was gone, Zane and Kai got to their feet. Keeping behind the cover of buildings, they watched as the skeleton limped toward the woods.

  “Once he is inside the forest, we will trail him,” said Zane. “I still think the skeletons captured my friends for some reason and he will lead us right to them.”

  “So you don’t think there’s a treasure here?” asked Kai.

  Zane gestured toward the simple huts all around. “Does it look like there’s a treasure here?”

  “Hey, my blacksmith shop just looked like a blacksmith shop,” Kai replied. “How was I to know a map to the Four Weapons of Spinjitzu was hidden there? You never know what someone might think is a good hiding p
lace.”

  Zane wasn’t paying attention. His eyes were on the skeleton warrior, who was now about fifty yards from the edge of the woods. Then, to the ninja’s amazement, the skeleton simply disappeared.

  The two ninja raced to the spot where the warrior had last been seen. The skeleton’s footprints in the snow abruptly stopped, but there was nowhere nearby he could be hiding. He was just gone.

  “Come on, we’ll search the woods,” Kai said. “He must be here somewhere.”

  “The sun’s setting,” Zane answered. “It will be pitch-dark in a few minutes. We won’t spot him and we might be walking into an ambush. Better to wait for morning.”

  “The sun’s setting,” Kai repeated. “The sun’s … Wait a minute! Something isn’t right here!”

  Kai ran back into the village, straight to the house he and Zane were sharing. He ran to his window and stared out at the darkness. “I can’t see it. That explains everything.”

  “Can’t see what? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Zane.

  “The sunset,” said Kai. “Last night, I saw the sun setting outside this window. But this morning, I saw the sun rising outside this same window.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Zane. “That would mean the window was facing west at night —”

  “— and east in the morning,” Kai finished for him. “A lot of ‘impossible’ things have been happening around here, and I think now I know why.”

  Zane frowned. “So it’s not the same window?”

  “You’re thinking too small,” said Kai, smiling. “It’s not the same house. It’s not the same village. We’ve been tricked, Zane. The only thing I’m not sure of is why.”

  The two ninja stayed up all night, keeping watch for an attack by the skeletons. None came. In the morning, Kai led Zane back to the spot where they had seen the skeleton disappear.

  “They couldn’t afford to move us too far from where we had been before, or we might have noticed that the stars were all different,” the Ninja of Fire explained. “But they had to make sure we couldn’t see the answer. Stand back.”