Asura Girl

I stood on my side of the gorge wondering how Steve and John got across, they were already disappearing into the shadow of the cliff. Damn it! Left behind again. “Hey!” I called after them, but it was too late, and there I was, alone. Alone? I looked around and it was true. Nobody but me. I’d been so busy following Steve and John that I hadn’t noticed that all the other passengers had gone off somewhere else. The train, too, was now only a tiny line on the horizon; and what good would it do anyway, going back to a train that was no longer running? On the other hand, if I stayed by the tracks, at least I could catch the next train that came along. That was probably the best plan: wait for a train and get dropped off somewhere. Better that than end up sleeping out here by the gorge. But just as I decided I would go back, I heard someone call my name. “Aiko! Hey! Aiko!” A voice that could speak Japanese calling my name! A voice that sounded familiar. I ran back to the gorge, and there, a hundred yards away, on top of the cliff silhouetted against the blue sky, stood a boy, waving in my direction. Akihiko Sano.

Sano?

What was Sano doing here? Everybody’s been looking for him. What was he doing out here in the middle of nowhere America or Mexico or wherever the hell we were?

“Hey!” I called, waving to him.

“Hey!” he called again and waved back. “Come on up!”

“How?” I yelled. “There’s no bridge!”

“There’s an airplane right over there!” he called. “Use that!”

I walked toward the spot where he was pointing and saw he was right—sort of. Hidden behind a nearby pile of rock was a helicopter, not a plane. One large propeller on top—and totally rusted out. It must have crash-landed here ages ago.

“You mean this?” I called up to Sano.

“Yes, yes,” he shouted. I studied the heap of twisted metal. A one-man helicopter, but with the cockpit mostly ripped away and the seat in tatters. It was half buried in sand, and the iron arm and shaft were red with rust. No way this bucket of shit was going to fly. “Hop in and get up here!” Sano called.

In this? Seriously?

What the hell? I slid into the ruined seat, which was a bit tricky since the chopper was tipped over in the sand, but as I pushed into the backrest, the whole thing seemed to pop upright out of the dune. Okay. But was there any fuel in the tank? I looked down at the instrument panel next to the control stick—and realized that there were pedals below, pretty much like on a bicycle. Was that really how you flew this thing? Pedals? Seriously? I brushed away as much sand as I could and grabbed the stick. Then I tried pushing on one of the pedals. Pretty sticky. I pushed harder. Still not much give. But slowly they began to move under my feet; and as they did, the propeller just above my head began to spin. I got situated and pumped a little faster. The propeller spun faster too. I started pedaling for real and the propeller began to whirr. Was this thing actually going to fly? I pumped as hard as I could, and there was a whooshing sound, and a gust of hot air shot down on me. Unbelievable. By now the propeller was spinning so fast it was scary. Bwuuuuuuuun! The copter bucked sideways for a second and rose up in the air. I barely moved the stick, but it lurched forward and I was about to crash into a tree. So I yanked the stick toward me and shot up even higher, barely missing the treetop. I eased off on the stick and leveled out. Okay, Aiko, you can do this! I rotated the stick slightly and headed the chopper over the gorge, then slowed a bit as I got closer to the cliff. Using Sano as a point to steer by, I headed up and over the top.

“Awesome!” he yelled, waving up at me. I didn’t really have a free hand to wave back. “But whatever you do,” I heard him call, “don’t look down.” Shit. I was already looking down—and realizing that the blue river at the bottom of the gorge wasn’t really a river at all, it was more sky, sky in the opposite direction from the first sky. And somehow I could tell that I was seeing the souls of lots of people coming and going in this river of sky. Sky below, and crowds of souls milling around. They were definitely human shaped, bluish white—almost translucent—and there were lots of them trailing along, like they were swimming…and they were pretty much nude.

Was this for real? I was seeing dead people. Lots of them.

And they were all going off to the right, down the valley. I spun the helicopter around in that direction, and in the distance I could see this spooky red sunset and below it an ominous, purple night sky. The souls were heading off in that direction, toward the white boundary between the bright sunlight and the dark sky below…or maybe the boundary was actually formed by the river of pale blue souls itself as it trailed off into the distance.

“Hey! Over here!” Sano was calling again, and I swung the helicopter around in his direction. I was pretty close now, but his face looked fuzzy somehow.

Was it really Sano? If it was, he should be missing a toe…

I tried to check his foot, but it was blurry too. Not that I could have seen his toes at this distance—through his shoes…

“Over here!” he was still yelling. “That’s right.”

It must be Sano. But what was he doing here? Why didn’t he go home to Chofu?

I suddenly had a bad feeling about all this. Something didn’t seem quite right…So I pulled back on the stick a