Wakou / Wakou (ePub)

It's 1277 and Japan's Tsushima Island has still not recovered from the Mongol invasion of three years prior. Two of the invasion's survivors comb the beach, looking for food, scraps of cloth, and wood suitable for burning. They are girls, but they have chopped their hair short and wear the rags of street boys to deter desperate men from interfering with them. One of the girls is Rin; her parents were slaughtered before her eyes when the invaders found their village. Her house was burnt to the ground while the Mongol troups rounded up adult men and women to take back to Korea as slaves: the children and infants were brutally murdered in front of their screaming parents. Her own escape is part of our story...and how she met her companion.

Rin's companion and savior is not really a girl at all. She is a demon. She assumes a human appearance, although her skin is grey and her hair as lank as wet seaweed. Rin calls her Sameko - little shark. When she is threatened, she reverts to her true form, a seven-foot blue monster with a gaping maw, sharp fangs, horns...you know, just call to mind the Japanese demons you've seen pictures of, and that's him: Moritaka. The only thing which links Moritaka to Sameko is the third eye in the middle of their foreheads. Sameko's third eye is always closed, because when she opens it she transforms into Moritaka immediately.

One day, Rin sees a familiar silhouette walking towards her and Sameko on the beach they frequent. She stares for long moments in disbelief, but finally calls out a greeting: "Uncle! Uncle Zaku, is that really you?" The man is as stunned as the girl: he had thought everyone in his extended family had been slaughtered. Zamakitsune - or "Zaku" to family and friends - has a proposition for the two "boys." He has salvaged three Korean warships abandoned by the Mongols and has constructed a single serviceable ship. His proposal? He asks if they would like to go pirating with him and his small crew. His ship is not far from the beach the girls call home. He can take them there in just a few hours of walking.

Rin accepts the offer tentatively, but Sameko is over the moon! Pirating! How exciting is that going to be, do you think? Her wide grin displays her rows of tiny grey teeth...and in moments, when she thinks they are threatened by more men approaching from the west, those little teeth morph into the huge fangs of the demon monster, Moritaka. Rin manages to calm the demon, and soon Sameko is restored to them. Zaku, being a wily and resilient person - "kitsune" means "fox," after all - soon sees that having a demon for a crewmate could be a real asset for his pirating gambit.

The rest of their adventure is detailed in Wakou - a word which means Japanese Pirate. Join the crew of the pirate ship Samu - yes, Zaku has already named his ship "The Shark."

As with any decent story of medieval Japan, we have a motley crew of hardy survivors, all of them from different backgrounds. They have two things in common: they lost everything to the Mongols, and they must all learn how to pirate. And, spoiler alert: yes, we have a samurai. Our story would not be complete without one.

Join the crew of The Shark. Board foreign ships, fight their crews into submission and relieve them of their valuable cargo...unleashing Moritaka as needed to convince them to surrender! Take your plunder to China, to what is now the bustling port city of Ningbo of the Sung Dynasty, the last hold-out in all of China from Mongol invasion and rule.

Sail, swim, fight, and learn to love again...and perhaps again.