Crossing Midnight #2

"The Shrine"
(Part 2 of 3)
written by Mike Carey
pencils by Jim Fern
inks by Mark Pennington

Kaikou Hara is now in a world of magic and fable, a storyteller's world.  Following the brutal dismemberment of his dog Sen, Kai must face the suspicions of the police, the reckless retaliation of his sister for the mysterious blade-wielder responsible, and the inescapable feeling that he's being pulled into something he doesn't at all understand.  Toshi may be impervious to blades, but Kai seems to have an uncanny ability to deflect the magic wielded by the strange samurai trying to abduct Kai's sister as his servant.

Seeking answers to the samurai Aratsu's claim that the twins' father promised him Toshi long ago, Kai asks his grandmother, who remembers her son's prayer to the kami of their family's little wooden shrine.  She then relates the story of how their ancestor Nijira Hara was given the shrine by a strange nobleman in exchange for bringing her husband Hisaneo home unharmed by any sword.  Carey's prose excels in storytelling of this variety.  There's an elegance and simplicity to his exposition that elevates it above its peers and makes it particularly suitable for these magical fables.

Crossing Midnight #2's finest surprise, however, comes in its final pages, when Toshi and Kai's childhood friend Saburo, lost in the world beyond the Torii Arch when they were kids reappears looking the same age he was then.  Kai reads a poem aloud, which tethers him to his world, before he is transported into the presence of Saburo's master, a dragon shown only in shadow.

[February 2007]