Respiration (Rebirth Series Book 3)

Book summary

Respiration follows Heavenly Clan Grandmaster Jay and his family as they face dangers spanning continents. Jay’s journey intensifies when Yakuza leader Umehara threatens his family and their spiritual legacy, forcing him into battles against dark forces. Blending spirituality and action, this adventure spans from America to Japan and beyond.

Excerpt from Respiration (Rebirth Series Book 3)

Chapter 1

Jay looked down at Kimi as they walked west from Broadway to their building. What a shame that she wouldn’t always be this adorable, scrawny, dark-haired, black-eyed eleven-year-old. Yet yes, sometimes in his mind she would be. The other two older children accused him of having a favorite, and he did. That favored one was each of them, but of course in different ways. And the youngest two, so very young, were still terra incognita, and charmed him down to his toes.

But his sense of the world around them now shifted, sharpened. He was the grandmaster, and what he needed—needed to know, needed to do, needed to let go of, even needed to have would come to him always, minute by minute.

He returned to the recent topic of his thoughts—how like the very wind a human’s breath was. He created change within himself by means of his breath. What did the wind create? It cooled. It comforted. It destroyed.

Kimi took his hand. She had good instinctive awareness. Night was coming on, and a chill seized Jay momentarily. His eyesight dimmed, and he heard sounds not of the day-to-day city.

Four young men were approaching, and they looked at him the way a bird of prey would look at a rat scurrying along the sidewalk. Predatory behavior was on their minds, but what imaginations they had. He warmed Kimi’s small palm in his. “Are you cold?” he asked in Italian, this being Italian Day. He gave the girl’s hand a gentle squeeze.

“Dad,” Jay heard Aaron call from behind. The streetlights came on. Aaron shuffled closer, picked up Kimi and stopped while Jay continued on ahead. Aaron was aware in a way he, Jay’s oldest, didn’t even understand.

Jay often heard music, songs inside his head. Ah, yes the tune now, this was from the movie Meetings with Remarkable Men, a little joke from the ocean of his mind. He was the remarkable man these street trolls were about to meet.

He stopped as the first man approached and the others crowded behind their leader, aiming toward Jay. They were going to be surprised.

“Put me down. I can fight,” called Kimi. And she could. Jay believed she could defeat all four of them. At once. But not tonight. And Jay’s seventeen-year-old, Aaron, Jay knew, was waiting to see his father fight. No one ever saw Jay fight, and he, the grandmaster, was the object of much curiosity. Jay understood that. But all he had to do was breathe, like the wind. To respire. Was the wind respiring?

He breathed out gently, as he didn’t know exactly what the energy behind his breath would do, and he didn’t want to harm these reckless boys. Too badly. He exhaled and the one at the head of the brigade stumbled. Ah, that told Jay what a little puff of air would accomplish. The young man’s hands went down against the concrete to rescue himself from a fall. Jay stopped. The kid stood as if he thought something had tripped him up—a crack in the sidewalk or maybe his own shoelaces or clumsiness.

Jay sighed lightly and the wind kicked up. Yes, the very wind was under his control. He let out yet another breath as if sweeping the sidewalk… lightly, of course, and the others in the “gang” worked to maintain their footing. But how could they… against the wind. They scrambled up and in the other direction. They realized, finally, the wind had come for them. From him.

Jay stopped and let an unrelated couple pass, and by the time they were gone, so were the marauders. Jay turned to look at Aaron and retrieve Kimi. Aaron’s eyes were wide in reaction. Kimi had been held against her brother’s chest for protection, and she hadn’t seen a thing.

“I’ll cook,” Jay said. And he took Kimi from his son’s arms and set her on the ground, then he gave Aaron a sort of taunting smile. See, you didn’t catch me fighting them, his expression said. But surely this was even better than a few commonplace martial arts skills. And Aaron did take the moment seriously; Jay could see that.

The three moved forward, toward home, Kimi babbling in Italian, and her accent was good. Naturally, as she imitated her father to perfection.

In their large luxury building with beige basket-weave brick exterior, they rode the elevator up. Jay found the key in his pocket and opened the door. He could probably have opened the door with a breath.

Fat-free pasta sauce would make a soup, the best tomato soup he had yet to find. He thanked long-departed Margaret who had saved his life so many years ago with a can of tomato soup.

Where was Yua, his older daughter? Turning his thought to her, he placed her under his protection. He ever had them all in the umbrella of his energetic shield.

He set the table for five. Those who didn’t eat now would surely eat later. He then brought out the little ones’ high chairs. Although they called the babies twins, they were actually about a year apart: Haia, the older at a little over two, their girl, named to be nimble in her martial art, and Akio, at thirteen months, their boy, who was to be a bright man, a hero. Kimi had already lived up to her name—delight. Yua was love and affection.

Their oldest, Aaron, had the name of the older brother of Moses, called as a priest to the people. Aaron was Jay’s own birth name, though he had named himself Jay and had taken the name Aaron for his son. Interpreted as a Japanese name, Jay stood for kindness and benevolence. Jay’s wife, Gen, had a most mysterious name, the meaning of which depended on the kanji used in writing the syllable. Perhaps she could be thought of as Genji, the source of the family. She was their source, his source for sure.

Aaron sat in his usual seat and stared at their father, who had warmed the previous day’s steamed potatoes and brought them out with salad leftovers to which he had added grapes and cooked vegetables from the morning. Ordinarily, Jay could expect some grumbles from Aaron about the plainness of the meal, but now the young man was simply focused on Jay.

Kimi came and took her place at the table. “I like that new soap in the bathroom,” she said. “It smells clean.” She smiled. “Oh, look, asparagus.” Her eyes were bright. She had no childlike prejudice against vegetables. In fact, to her they were a caviar.

Jay sat down and said a few lines of a praise prayer in Hindi from Sri Ramakrisha. Sure, this was Italian Day, but still.

“Did you hypnotize them?” Aaron asked, finally released to bother his father with questions.

Jay shook his head no. “I don’t want to control people’s minds,” he said. “Not at all.”

“How did you get rid of them then?” Aaron wanted to know.

“Grandmaster Goku told me to channel the forces of nature, so I work on that. The wind has become a partner. The wind, the sun, the rain, the sparrows, the trees, the leaves, the clouds in the sky, all these are our allies.” He frowned. “Sounds pantheistic, but he didn’t mean everything has a will of its own. He meant the universe is in all things and that we can link up with their energies. For good. Only for good.”

The door opened and the three of them turned around to see who had arrived. Naturally, it was their maternal source and the two most recent babies.

“Daddy killed some bad guys,” Kimi told her mother in Japanese. “I didn’t see it though.”

Chapter Two

Gen was about one-hundred percent certain her husband of eighteen years hadn’t killed anyone, so she merely raised her eyebrows and brought in Haia and Akio. Jay came to greet and gather the small ones and put them in their high chairs, his smile on Gen. He was an agreeable man and was more likely to burst into tears over some matter than murder an aggressor. Of course, he could be dangerous if push came to shove, but push never came to shove since he was well capable of indicating his dangerous side in place of acting on it. “Daddy didn’t kill anyone,” Gen said firmly.

People saw her as a sop, a pacifier, she knew, a woman who always bent to her husband and followed his will. And that was true. She had been trained to the role by growing up in Grandmaster Goku’s household and serving him. But when a student followed one grandmaster and then the other, this was logical because of the energies someone of this type cast off, the highest level of vibration, which pleased a pure soul, as Grandmaster Goku put it. That was the case for Gen.

Of course she would follow the grandmasters, as luck would have it; the environment they created elevated and soothed, presenting a life’s role.

Were only male grandmasters of this degree? No, stories of the princess in whose wake the Heavenly community followed showed the head of their lineage from the twelfth century to be of this type as well. And Gen’s continual thoughts were not only of herself and her children, they were of the Heavenly people of today, the future of the Heavenly clan and their way of life.

Jay was chatting with the little ones in one of his languages and washing their hands with a wet cloth. Gen’s smile met Jay’s. He would feed them. An engineer, she had worked all day in Sensei’s office on a project designing circuits, while taking care of Haia and Akio. Now she would go lie down and rest for a few minutes. But on her way, she acknowledged her two older ones. Having five was a lot of work. ‘”Sit down and have some dinner, Mama,” said Aaron. He always seemed to yearn for her company.

“I will, in a few minutes,” she promised. She’d try not to fall asleep.