Young Samurai_ The Way of the Sword - Chris Bradford [2]
‘Help me…’ she moaned as searing pain exploded up her arm.
The ninja gazed unsympathetically at his convulsing student. ‘You’ll live,’ he replied, picking up the scorpion by its tail and dropping it back into its box. ‘He’s old and large. It’s the small female ones you have to watch out for.’
The student collapsed unconscious to the floor.
1
KNUCKLEBONES
‘You’re cheating!’ said the little girl.
‘No, I’m not!’ protested Jack, who knelt opposite his little sister in the back garden of their parents’ cottage.
‘Yes, you are! You’re supposed to clap before picking up the bones.’
Jack stopped protesting; his look of mock innocence didn’t fool Jess one bit. As much as he loved his sister, a slight girl of seven with light-blue eyes and mousey-blonde hair, he knew she was a stickler for the rules. Most days Jess was as harmless as a buttercup, but when they played Knucklebones, she became as strict and severe as their mother was about the household chores.
Jack picked up the five sheep’s knucklebones from the ground and started again. They were the size of small pebbles, their edges rubbed smooth from all the play he and Jess had subjected them to during the summer. Despite the oppressive heat, the white bones felt oddly cold in his hands.
‘Bet you can’t beat my twosies!’ dared Jess.
Taking up the challenge, Jack cast four bones on to the ground. He then threw the fifth bone high into the air, clapped and seized a knuckle out of the grass before catching the falling bone. He repeated the process with practised ease until he had all five back in his hand.
‘Onesies,’ said Jack.
Unimpressed, Jess plucked a daisy out of the grass in pretend boredom.
Jack recast the bones, completing the second round in a couple of easy swipes.
‘Twosies!’ he announced, before tossing the knuckles back on to the grass. Then, throwing one up in the air and clapping, he grabbed three before capturing the falling bone.
‘Threesies!’ exclaimed Jess, unable to contain her astonishment.
Grinning, Jack recast the knucklebones a final time.
In the distance, the sound of thunder rolled heavily across the darkening sky. The air was becoming thick and muggy with an encroaching summer storm, but Jack ignored the change in weather. Instead he concentrated on the challenge of picking up all four bones at once.
Jack tossed the single knuckle high into the air and clapped just as there was an almighty crack! A shaft of jagged white lightning scorched the sky, striking a distant hilltop and setting a tree ablaze. It burned blood red against the blackening sky. But Jack was too focused on the game to be distracted. He snatched up the four knucklebones before catching the fifth only a hand’s breadth from the earth.
‘I did it! I did it! Four in one go!’ enthused Jack.
He looked up triumphantly and saw that Jess had disappeared.
So too had the sun. Thunderous clouds as black as pitch now raced across a boiling sky.
Jack stared in bewilderment at the sudden ferocity of the weather. Then he became vaguely aware of something crawling inside his clasped hand. The knucklebones felt like they were moving.
Tentatively, he opened his hand.
He gasped. Scurrying across his palm were four tiny black scorpions.
They surrounded the remaining white knuckle, their deadly tails striking at the bone, each of their venomous barbs dripping lethal poison.
One of the scorpions turned and scuttled up his forearm. In a wild panic, Jack shook it off, dropping all the scorpions into the grass, and ran headlong for the house.
‘Mother! Mother!’ he screamed, then immediately thought of Jess. Where was she?
Large drops of rain began to fall and the garden was cast into shadow. He could just make out the five knuckle-bones lying discarded in the grass, but there was no sign of the scorpions or of Jess.
‘Jess? Mother?’ he cried at the top of his lungs.
No one answered.
Then he heard the soft singing of his mother coming from the kitchen:
‘A man of words and not of deeds
Is like a