Samurai Summer Read Online Free Page A

yawned, wider than I needed to.
    “Can I go to sleep now?” I asked.
    “Going to dream about the missing bag of Twist?”
    I nodded.
    “Go on up then. But don’t let me catch you down here again after bedtime.”
    What was she doing down here herself in the middle ofthe night? Stealing candy? Or drinking liquor? I thought she smelled of alcohol when she bent down over me. But that could have been something from the kitchen. The kitchen smelled strange.
    I walked back through the mess hall and up the stairs. A seagull screeched from the lake. It sounded like a screech of terror.
    “Where have you been?”
    It was Sausage. He sat up in his bed when I entered the dorm.
    “Shhh! You’ll wake everyone,” I whispered.
    “I thought I heard someone say something down there.”
    “It was nobody,” I said.
    “So you didn’t chop Matron’s head off?” Sausage snickered.
    “Not this time.”
    Sausage waved his hand. It was a small hand—about three times smaller than mine and three thousand times smaller than Matron’s.
    “Can’t you sit here and talk for a while?” he whispered. “I can’t sleep.”
    “We mustn’t wake the others,” I whispered back.
    “Just for a little while, Kenny.”
    “Lie down and count sheep.”
    “I did that already. I managed seven hundred sheep heads.”
    “Like a real samurai,” I whispered.
    “Do you think I can become a real samurai, Kenny?”
    “Tomorrow we can start working on your sword,” I answered.
    I moved closer to his bed. I didn’t want the whole dormitory to wake up and cause Matron to come rushing up here and start shouting.
    “Is it really true that the samurai preferred a wooden sword to a real sword, Kenny?”
    “Some did.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “I already told you, Sausage.”
    “Tell me again.”
    “We can do it tomorrow. When we start making your sword.”
    “Does it take long? To make a sword?”
    “We’ll have to see. I don’t know.”
    “Can’t you tell me about that duel with the wooden sword? Or the wooden oar?”
    “I’ve already told you, Sausage. Twice.”
    “Tell me again. I think I’ll be able to sleep after that.”
    I sat on the edge of the bed. I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep anyway until Sausage was asleep.
    “It was a fight to the death,” I began.
    I told Sausage about the most famous duel between two samurais. In 1612, Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro, thetwo greatest warriors in Japan, faced each other. Musashi’s mother died when she gave birth to him. When he was seven years old his father died too. His uncle, who was a priest, took care of him and raised him to be a samurai. When he was thirteen years old he killed his first adversary in a duel. It was a grown man, an experienced warrior. Three years later he defeated a real samurai. After that he left home for good. He roamed the country looking for other samurai to duel with. He had become a wave man.
    “Why were they called wave men?” asked Sausage.
    “Because they drifted around the countryside,” I answered.
    “And they fought with wooden swords?” asked Sausage.
    “Most didn’t,” I said, “but Musashi did.”
    “What was it called again?”
    “The wooden sword? It was called a
bokken
.”
    “That’s what we’re going to make for me, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “The ones who had wooden swords used to beat the ones with steel swords, right?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “Musashi preferred a wooden sword, didn’t he?”
    “Yes.”
    Sausage smiled. He acted like he was Musashi already just because he was going to get a wooden sword. He was childish, Sausage. He was ten years old, but sometimes heacted like he was four. Like now, when I sat here like his old man telling him a bedtime story.
    “Keep going, Kenny!”
    “No samurai in all of Japan had survived as many duels as Musashi,” I said, “and when he met Kojiro he was twenty-eight years old.”
    “That’s pretty old,” said Sausage.
    “No, no, he was still