Crossing Midnight #3

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

The gulf between Kaikou and Toshi continues to grow.  As Kai is semi-abducted into another world by a poem, his lost childhood friend, and a dragon demi-god, Toshi steals a pistol from the local bad-boy and drug dealer.

Carey's pacing for his series is deliberate, giving away almost nothing in cheap exposition.  We readers, like his characters, discover this world and its mysterious stakes as Kai and Toshi slip farther and farther into this world that they don't understand.  Aratsu's smile at the end of the issue is all the more sinister because we, like Toshi, do not know exactly why or how his plans are coming to fruition.

"She though she saw Aratsu smile as he beckoned her to follow him.  And it seemed likely enough.  Because everything had come full circle.  And everything hd turned out exactly as he wished it."  (Crossing Midnight #3: 23)

It's all the more fearsome in light of the foreboding warnings Kaikou receives earlier in the issue.  Less a warning than a threat of death, Rinjin, the dragon demi-god, makes clear his desire that Toshi refuse Aratsu's final request, which of course she doesn't to save her mother's life.  Rinjin's information about Aratsu is useful if still somewhat vague and difficult to piece together, but it's Police Constables Sato and Yamada's crystal clear note, an unmistakable allusion to the unusual birth of the Hara twins on either side of midnight, that really rattles Kaikou. 

By the end of "The Shrine," Toshi has foolishly accepted the terms of her father's sacrifice before their birth, agreeing to become servant to Aratsu.  The mysterious "Master of Swords," as he calls himself, brings the story well into a world adjacent but entirely unfamiliar to the world in which Toshi and Kaikou were raised.  And Kai already feels the dissonance, the loss of normalcy which nearly brings him to tears.

[March 2007]