Aika

“My mother never loved me. My father passed away, but my mother needs to raise me as her own. It’s like I’m not even my mother’s daughter!”         

The Japanese Chin, who was listening, sat. The pathway in the middle of the cherry blossoms—for it was spring in Japan—was semi-full of people walking, skating, riding bicycles and sitting in park benches. “What do you want me to do about it?” It cocked its black and white but not Border Collie head.

“Don’t go back to China. It’s your native home, but—”

“But nothing.”                                                              

Balling her fists, the woman inhaled and then smiled to herself. She turned away, walking towards a small gazebo high up on a small grassy hill.  

“Hey, where are you going?” The annoyed dog called.

The woman just shook her head, and sat down. She pulled out a very small notebook and started writing. When she heard panting and felt her dog right beside her, she ignored him. His panting didn’t go noticed.

And the thing is, my mother never wanted me to. I mean, what kind of mother shuts her daughter out of life? She works too much, coming home way past sunset. And getting up way before sunrise. Even on weekends, she has to go. Can’t she sleep in—for once?!

“I see—”

“Shut up!”

The scold drew the attention of a couple of people, but the woman didn’t care. Her father wasn’t there to put an arm around her shoulders. The Japanese Chin knew that. He was all she had.

“Who are you writing to?”         

“No one!”

The book slammed closed.

“Just wondering.”

The woman whipped open the book, and wrote and wrote and wrote. She made temples places where talking dragons would live, homes with very small pet dragons that breathed fire for fireplaces and morphed into other pets like the Japanese raccoon dog. Stone dragons that decorated the scenery outside office buildings and gazebos came to life once people entered and exited, wishing them a good appointment or farewell in their health. Even the Japanese Chin—which the Japanese Chin got excited about—came along. He said, “Wow! Look at all those distinctively colored dogs! I’d like to befriend…them…”

His head bent backwards, like one would when faced with a dangerous foe, and his eyes bulged. “Okay—sorry!” Hurt, he jumped off, blinked and then disappeared down to the walk. Soon, he came to a spot where some hotdogs were lying flat out in the open. He smelled them. They didn’t taste very good, and he spat them out. A man freaked, and the Chin dashed, but then smiled. A little taste of adventure! He ran and ran, and soon it was dark.

“Aika! I need to get back to her.”

The Japanese Chin sped through the streets, zigzagged through crowds and hurried along sidewalks until he met up with the girl. “Aika! Aika.”

But the lantern held up high proved him wrong. The Japanese Chin shook his head and continued looking. Alone and scared, he blinked. Remembering how hurtful she was to him, he changed his mind. “Never mind. I’d rather stay—”

“Here?”

The Japanese Chin jumped. “Huh?”

A group of intimidating cats—scrawny with nothing but skin covering them and bones showing themselves off through the ugliness—circled the Chin. He swallowed, but he didn’t want to look intimidated. He forced himself to look tough—but they’d just laugh. So he said calmly, “Look—I’m just looking for my owner. She was around here—or somewhere in a gazebo. I don’t know…”

“Hey!”

One of the cats stared mockingly at his tail, but the leader—decked in a plaid Fedora hat—jabbed him. “Remember: you don’t listen, and you don’t get no dinner. Got it, Fishes?”

“Yes, sir.” The cat meekly stepped back, but the Japanese Chin didn’t dare laugh. The venomous glance from this cat told him he’d be that dinner in no time. The leader stepped forward. “Sorry for that little interruption. We’re actually the Coolies. We’re here in the dark, because that’s when all the fun happens.”

“Okay.” Breathing fast, the Japanese Chin listened, but his mind was racing. Blinking, he jerked his head every time the cats asked him questions. Very slowly, he started moving away, but the cat from before kept jabbing at his tail and nose and ears. Snapping at him, the leader slowly turned towards him. “You can run—or you can hide with us.”

The Japanese Chin decided to run. Cackling resounded, but he soon saw something—

“The gazebo!”

Rushing towards it, he leapt inside, but Aika wasn’t there. Her notebook was lying on the hardwood floor. “Aika!” The Japanese Chin thought. Was she stolen? Those cats didn’t seem like they had owners. Where could she have gone? She was nasty. Maybe she apologized and came looking for me. But I would’ve heard her voice calling for me. I’m always right there.

The Japanese Chin blinked and was about to curl up for the night when he flipped open the notebook. Looking at all the Japanese characters, he read them all. Eyes widening, he bolted back to the cats and told them that they could eat him alive if they just help get his master back and safely home.

“Yeah.” The annoying cat from before picked his teeth with a claw. “Like we’d do that. Besides, who do you think we are—the helpers?”

“No. But you need to—”

“Forget it, buster.” He turned back to playing cards.

The bonfire roared before the Japanese Chin. The Chin shook his head. Maybe I need to do this alone. He raced back to the notebook, and headed right inside it. Landing on all fours, he looked before him. There in a palace was a freakishly big throne with emeralds and rubies all around it. The woman looked eerily familiar…

“Aika?”

“It’s ‘Your Majesty’ now!”

She rose, and her attendants immediately came to her aid. No, she told them. Not now. The Chin came to worship me.

Worship?! The Japanese Chin narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t going to worship some girl, master or not. He wasn’t her servant. He was just her pet dog—and maybe not even that. He shook his head, but everywhere he went, dragons—stone, wooden and steel—came alive and blocked him from going anywhere. He growled, and ordered them to back off. They all laughed. The Chin’s mind flashed back to the cats. He then thought slyly, “If I can resist a cat gang, I can beat these dumb dragons!”

He lunged, teeth bared. The dragon surprisingly responded with a roar of pain, and the Chin dug into its flesh. Running along its slithery, sleek body, the Japanese Chin headed for its eyes. Claws out, he swiped at both of them, and the dragon emanated a flame of fire. The Japanese Chin attacked the others, but couldn’t fight them all off. He had to escape! He darted away, and back to the woman who had called him her pet.

“Come on, Aika! You remember me.”

She was sitting now, and he ran up to her, and hopped up onto her scarlet gown-covered lap. “Please—I’m your dog.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am! Just because your mother…” The Japanese Chin thought very carefully about how to say this next sentence. He sighed, and sat. “Just because your mother abandoned you for work, doesn’t mean I want you to abandon me.”

The Japanese Chin was ordered to go to the dungeons and lick the place clean. He went willingly, no barking or anything. After the door slammed shut, and the dog was shrouded in darkness, the dog blinked to help his eyes adjust. No light. Nothing but straw. The dog sneezed.

Then a slithering sound came. Did she turn into a snake? The dog waited. The door opened. “Here’s your dinner!” A tin bowl was thrown into the place, and something foul filled the room. The door slammed, and the dragon slithered away, laughing insultingly. The dog almost gagged. Something fell on to him, and after holding his breath and then releasing it, he read the neon blue letters.

Eat it!

He thought. I’m here all alone. I must do something about this problem. What would Aika do?

Sitting there, the Japanese Chin didn’t hold his breath. He didn’t give in to the foul smell. It was all around him—what was the point of resisting if he would just breathe it in again? He closed his eyes. His owner wrote, and somehow came up with imagining herself into this place. Maybe if he had a pen…Dogs don’t use pens! He knew that.

He thought still, and then, smiling, he wagged his tail. Taking a paw, he wiped it on the paper. The neon blue letters went with him—at least the e and i. And then he rearranged it to make it say Aite. He didn’t have the letters for his master’s name, so he did his best. He blinked. Oh, Aika. Come on. I know you can believe me. Then a brilliant idea came to mind.

I’ll write myself out of here.

He wrote and then ran up to the door, scratching and barking. It was hours before he stopped. Exhausted and his throat raw, the Japanese Chin fell onto the straw, and closed his eyes. The next day—or maybe midnight that night—he awoke. Someone dumped a tin can into his cell, and he pulled himself together to lap up the precious water. He asked whether he could be moved to another cell, for the smell was killing him. The dragon granted his request. The Japanese Chin thanked him until he was told to be quiet, and smacked him in the bottom with his tail before ensuring he was in the jail cell. Shutting it, the dragon wished him good night as he slithered away. The Japanese Chin just watched him leave.

“Well, it doesn’t smell in here!”

“It did!”

Jumping, the Japanese Chin swirled around. “What—who’s there?”

“It’s just me.”

A dragon! The Japanese Chin stared, and then said, “What’s going on? You’re a very small dragon.”

“Yeah—my owners didn’t want me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Aika—”

“That’s my owner!”

“Yeah—well, she wrote a story about how I was abandoned, and now here I am. She’s writing books, and shelving them. Even as we speak. I was cast out.”

“So you’re a character in her own novel?”

“Yeah. I come from the library.”

“What—never mind.”

“No, ask away. I’m here all day!”

“What library?”

“Oh—the one that’s in her story. If the story contains characters who’ve been abandoned, they go to the dungeons. To slave under Her Majesty.”

“You’re not doing anything about it?”

“What’s there to do anything? Like I said, I’m here all day!”

“You can. Come on!” The Japanese Chin ran up to the dragon, and grabbed his tail with his mouth. Pulling it, the Chin then saw that the dragon didn’t move but just lay there, his eyes blinking emotionlessly. “Come on—you’ve got it in you! Let’s go.”

The dragon didn’t answer. The Chin blinked, and then widened his eyes. “Oh no! Did I kill him?” Just as he was checking him over, the dragon recoiled and blew a small bonfire in the middle where a small little pile of leaves practically waited to turn to ashes. The Japanese Chin regretted his decision about running away from those cats. “Maybe…”

“Huh?”

“Just talking to myself.”

“Oh.”

Turning away from the dragon, the Japanese Chin spoke to himself. But he didn’t want to leave without this dragon. He felt he was abandoning everyone—his owner, the cats and now this dragon. Maybe if he would stay, none of this mess would—

“Hey, it’s not your fault!”

The Japanese Chin looked over. “You—”

“Know feelings. I can sense how you’re feeling just by looking at you.”

“My owner’s always been sad and troubled over her mother’s workaholic nature. She’d never come home, even on her birthday. She’d have to celebrate it alone, with me. She’s upset, so she’s creating this world to impress upon everyone she’s angry with her mother.”

The dragon blinked. “I wish I could just light this place—”

“Blow fire over here. Melt these bars.”

“Wait.” The dragon told the Japanese Chin whether he had anything to write with. The Japanese Chin said yes, that if he had brought over the sheet of paper. Wait, the dragon said. He grabbed some straw near the fire, and grabbed a pen out of the fire. I mean, grabbed a flame of fire, and shaped it into a pen. Then he wrote on the straw. Then he made a dragon out of the straw, and told it to go deliver the note to the witch. The Japanese Chin asked whether they could do this. The dragon replied that the dragon was made of straw, so—

“Yeah, he could get through. I got it.”

“Okay.”

As the straw dragon brought the Japanese Chin his piece of paper and then they both got to work reuniting the dragon to his parents and fixing other things the dragon said he knew went wrong in his story. As they wrote, the Japanese Chin said, “What about the fact that it did stink? How’d the smell go away?”

“This fire has taken it away. It burns down and goes away, and then the leaves become good again, like new. They’re magical leaves. So the fire and I are friends!”

“Oh.” The Japanese Chin nodded, and then went back to work. The dragon shook his head.

“You just love getting on to the next thing, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“You know, how about slowing down a little bit? Relax. Enjoy the moment.”

The Japanese Chin blinked. He was always blinking. Why couldn’t his owner—his Akita—smile down at him—

The whole time he wrote, he blinked. He thought. When he was brought forth before his mistress, the Japanese Chin looked up at her with sad, apologetic eyes. She returned the look with cold, distant eyes. “Did you even want me?”

“Yeah.”

“To get away—”

“Look, you don’t have a mother! You don’t know what it’s like—”

“Yeah, I do. Remember picking me up from the pound? Remember taking me away from my mother? Remember me staying up for hours, barking and crying?”

The Japanese Chin panted satisfactorily when he sat a moment of agreement in that woman’s eyes. Decked in royal blue and satin black all the way to the floor, the woman wore a crown of glittering silver. It was beautiful. The Japanese Chin’s eyes fell to the garments. They were all silk. The throne was stone and emeralds and rubies. This palace, the Chin inspected, was grand and pretty, but it wasn’t home. It wasn’t where the Japanese Chin wanted to be. And he knew his owner didn’t want to be here, either.

“You don’t want to be here, Aika. You want to be home—”

“Waiting for my mother?”

The Japanese Chin sighed. He thought, and maybe, he said to himself, he shouldn’t press so hard on others’ feelings. Maybe, like her mother, Aika wouldn’t come home. This was her life. The Japanese Chin said, “Please—return me to reality. If you don’t want to come, fine. But please—release me. I know I’m not going to do anything but roam the streets, but—”    

“Go!”

The Japanese Chin ran into the gazebo. The cats came to mind. I guess the cats were right—I’m not deserving of anyone. She won’t want me even if I give her to her mother. Or her mother to her. He thought of interrupting her mother. The Japanese Chin ran away to China, and met some other Japanese Chins. But all of them had homes. He wandered the streets, looking for a home.

The Japanese Chin felt bad for abandoning the dragon who had to save all those stories. He returned inside the notebook, teaming up with the dragon to save all the worlds. But some stories were impossible—Aika wasn’t going to rewrite the sad endings. Soon, her palace was neglected, and the smell was too much. The Japanese Chin charged at Aika. “I’ll rewrite those endings!” Her arm matched her gown—scarlet. Her eyes widening, she threatened to spear the dog. Her guards threw him in the dungeon with the foul smell. No, she said. In this book.

The Japanese Chin saw the word pirate before finding himself adrift a huge ship. Someone with boots and a mug of beer in his hand towered above him.

“Aye! What have we ‘ere, eh?”

The Japanese Chin stared up into the eyes of a pirate! But he wasn’t Japanese. He was American. He spoke in a language the Chin didn’t understand—pirate talk. The Chin hated it. He managed to escape by writing himself out of the book. Nothing he did could save Aika’s characters.

“They’ll all going to have to save themselves.”

The Japanese Chin—

“Lost?”

He spun around. It was that pesky cat!

“No!”

The Japanese Chin grinned as the cat reared back in surprise, and dashed away.

Anywhere.

Maybe I’ll have my own ending.

And he did. A boy found him shivering by a puddle of oil.

“Oh!”

He adopted him, snuggling together every night.

Neither work nor writing distracted him.

When the boy brought a girl into his apartment, they always had dinner and then went out somewhere. Depressed, the Japanese Chin looked in the water by the sea. He sighed, but then ditched the water, ditching Japan.

Returning to Aika.

I believe in her. And she’s mine!

Aika admitted she was jealous of the Japanese Chin’s ability to be so faithful.

She grabbed him.

“I’ll never abandon you again!”

“Don’t be your mother.”

And the Japanese Chin blinked back happy tears.