Ninja Nights - John Stormm (howl and other poems .txt) 📗

TALES OF THE WITCH CLAN
NINJA NIGHTS


     The ninja team followed their shidoshi, gum soled tabi moving soundlessly across the packed clay forest trail. To cover their numbers, the five men moved in single file. The shidoshi stopped in his tracks, and spread his arms. This was the signal for the team to melt silently into the surrounding woods. He counted, one, two, and turned to see he was alone. Very good. The practice was going well today, and he would arrive a full half hour early to the rendezvous. The master might well be impressed with his efforts at training these men. But then, the master was a very unpredictable man. If he could truly be called a man. The shidoshi clicked his tongue, in what might sound like a single cricket chirp. He then held his arms out in a crescent shape, and the team silently reappeared on his flanks in a shallow, semi-circle formation known as the deadly Crescent Moon. He was very proud. The men were in top form today. He brought his hands together and pointed forward, and the team fell back into the single file formation.


     Jonathan Storm advanced his team to the rendezvous point. Perhaps he would get there before his father, and set up a mock trap with the team. It was almost, too much to hope that they might actually surprise him, but there was never a better trained team to try it with. There was Seth , Goldberg, Jones, and O’Brian in this group. All of them had, at least some military experience. The National Guard, the Marines, and Army Rangers were represented in this group. Jonathan smiled to himself. If nothing else, these men would experience the impossible.

As they were approaching the campsite, Jonathan could smell the faint whiff of a wood fire. He slowed the team down, and entered the area in full stealth mode. There, seated on a log, in front of a smokeless campfire, was the familiar black leather, broad brimmed hat and duster. The old man’s back was to them. Jon spread his arms into a crescent, and the team silently formed at his flanks and began drawing their mock weaponry. Plastic knives and chalked tennis balls appeared in five sets of black gauntleted hands as they formed a silent semi-circle at the master’s back. Within ten feet of their mark they let their weapons fly with devastating effect. The chalk marked the black leather coat, at the points of impact. The hat and coat slumped down on the log, empty of all but the sticks that had held them in place. The team looked on in amazement at the uninhabited hat and coat.

“They NEVER look up,” came a familiar voice from high in the tree, on the other side of the campfire. It was an old ninja proverb. Jon and the team looked up to see the master, dressed in his black ninja gi with the red belt of rank, standing on a branch, about twenty five feet off the ground. The old man smiled and waved, as he casually kicked a twelve foot long log, with ropes attached to each end, out of the tree. As the log hurtled earthward, the rope hidden in the underbrush, behind the team, raced to its master, catching the entire ninja team, behind their legs and sweeping them onto their backs on the forest floor. Jonathan blinked for only a moment, only to find his father standing in their midst, marking the team with a chalked, wooden sword.


     “You’re early,” the master said cheerfully. “That was good planning.”

“I notice that it didn’t help,” Jon said ruefully, brushing himself off.

“To the novice, we say?” prompted the master, cupping one ear to hear.

“Expect the unexpected,” groaned the team in unison.

“To the advanced student, we say?” Storm prompted, yet again.

“BE the unexpected,” they responded.

“Well, I was. Wasn’t I?” the master quipped. “What did you expect?” and he turned to clean off his hat and coat.

* * *

     It was a weekend long ninja practice meet. They came out, in minimal ninja equipment, on Friday evening. They would stay Friday night through Sunday afternoon, living off the land and learning not to leave a trace of their existence in the process. True invisibility. They used their short bladed ninja-to as long knives and machetes, to build shelters and tools to harvest wilderness food for survival. The weather was warm, sunny days, with cool, moonlit nights. Even if they made mistakes, they wouldn’t be terribly uncomfortable.

Several pine bough, lean-tos sprang up immediately, and a couple tree hammocks, with the small smokeless fire pit Storm had already provided. Some cattail piths, cut with the reeds for bedding, along with some berries, duck potatoes, milkweed greens and sulfur shelves made up an ample dinner, prepared in a half dozen mess kits. The master dug into his duster pockets, and pulled forth, a fistful of packets of ranch dressing, and some salt and pepper packets that he passed around to the grateful woodland diners. It was his way of telling the boys that he thought they did very well today. Jonathan thought so to, even though they failed to mark his father. They almost never do, but he expects them to always try.

His father believes the advanced warrior must be as much wizard, as warrior. Regardless how well they become such, each will come away knowing something about their world that they didn’t know before. Any food droppings and leftovers would be deposited neatly on a rock, outside the campsite’s perimeter. Some thought it a mystic offering to the woodland spirits, which are said to be plentiful here. The master was familiar with these, but insisted the practice gave the night prowling raccoons and such, a tasty treat and distraction away from the camp itself. The stronger smelling attractants would be in easy reach for them. With ready food, they would be less inclined to dare come closer to the sleeping humans.

Jonathan found ninja practice, an endless source of amusement and comedy. In a dive into the tall grass, Goldberg learned that most important of all lessons, ‘Look before you leap.‘ In that face first dive, while fading soundlessly, if not odorlessly, into the tall grass, he learned that the lovely white tailed deer he had spied so often, left reminders of their existence, in little piles. He was formally nominated, by his class, for the not-particularly-coveted, Disappearing Circle Award. Seth Balrog, as originator of said award, would be officiating at tonight’s campfire.

Seth was retelling the incident, of his first night practice in the woods with Jon and the master. An S.U.V. had appeared on the road in the woods. Jonathan and old Storm seemed to fade out of existence. Suddenly deprived of any night vision, and not knowing the whereabouts of his two companions, he had become disoriented. Seth began running in circles, looking for a place to hide. Dressed in the familiar, black ninja garb, all he really had to do was adjust his posture to disguise his human silhouette, and look down and away from the light, and tuck his fingers so that no skin with recognizable features was exposed. That is what Jon and old Storm had done, and Seth immediately mistook their dark forms for shadowed underbrush. Seth had stopped running in circles when he found a tree to hide behind. As he found it rather suddenly, running into it, he hugged the trunk and hid on the side facing the coming vehicle. Fortunately, his black hooded night suit, rendered him unseen from the truck’s driver, who had his eyes, pretty much on the road for crossing animal life. From that point on, they would all joke how Seth had used the mysterious Disappearing Circle technique to confuse all onlookers into the illusion of invisibility. In the group’s newsletter, ’Shadows Of Tong Kwoon,’ the Disappearing Circle Award became the ninja version of the comic section of the newspaper. Goldberg was assured that his story would grace this month’s issue.

The campfire story telling then quieted down to the usual ghost stories about ‘The White Lady’, a Rochester phenomenon that was known to haunt these woods. The most common, local version of it was that she was the ghost of a lady, who lived in one of the finer homes near by. She and the ghosts of her two white German shepherds, would avenge any young woman whose virtue was brutally taken within the north eastern area of Durand Park woods. The predators responsible would never be seen or heard from again, at least, not in any recognizable form. Jonathan had heard just about every version of it, and was looking about for his father. There, at the very edge of the fire light, stood a lone dark form, peering into the darkness beyond. Jon left his comrades to their story telling to join his father. The tell tale sounds of dry leaves crunching and the occasional twig snapping, gave evidence to Jon, that his father was watching the night prowling creatures visiting the rock they left their food offering on. It seemed that daylight and darkness were all the same to his father. Jon’s night vision was excellent, but his father actually seemed to be comfortable in the dark.

“People might think you were antisocial, preferring the darkness, out here, to the campfire,” Jon said quietly. He did not want to disturb the animals nearby.

“People think all sorts of strange things, Jon” his Dad replied in a hushed tone, “Some think I’m a biker. Some think I worship the devil and make blood sacrifices. My mother thinks I’m as evil as my father. It took time, son, but I gave up claiming any responsibility for what people think.

I’m comfortable, and I’m where I belong.”

“Living on the edge?” Jon said wryly.

“Yes,” the master said. “…on the edge of their little world, peering into the darkness beyond, knowing intimately those things which go ‘bump-in-the-night’, as it is as much my world as theirs. I am a responsible citizen of more than one world and species. Not fully one or the other, but carrying within, the best of both, as you do.”

“Who are we responsible to?” Jon asked, knowing himself as his father‘s son.

“I thought that would be obvious,” his father chided, “We are responsible to any who are smaller or weaker than ourselves, and to the One who framed the worlds with His Word. To whom much is given, of them, shall much be required.” The old wizard went on, “Doors open into other worlds every day, and who among them, is ready to see it? Some go mad when their ‘reality check’ bounces.” Jon glanced at his father, for his odd quirk with metaphors. His father continued, “For instance, if that foraging skunk at the offering rock, was a rabid wolf instead, who among the human celebrants, huddled around their campfire, would have any idea that they might be stalked by something they can’t see, because their eyes are not adjusted to that kind of light? But you and I, we know what is out here. We belong somewhere between the mysterious and the mundane. That rabid wolf would have much less chance against the likes of us, than ignorant humanity. I say again, I won’t claim responsibility for anything they believe, but I am accountable, before the Maker of Worlds, for what I know, and I station myself accordingly.”

“So this is what makes you the wizard protector?” Jon asked.

“Actually, I was made what I am, and this is what I am best suited to do,” his father explained, “ and you as well. The ninja lessons are to train