Page 147 of Dragon 7

My little niece giggled, so tickled with everything.

Dear God! What are you doing to me? Please don’t let this be a dream. I will break if this is a dream. I will crumble.

And then Aki was on his feet again.

Aki!!!! Can you see me?!

Time carried me back in a blur and the Little Tiger giggled, and I came back to my earlier position, close to my father. The coldness turned me around even though I didn’t want to deal with this memory again. My father lay on the floor, dead on his back, sliced up by my knife.

Suddenly, his throat closed.

Dear God! I’ve really lost it.

The blood that had run from his throat traveled back up into the wound, and it knit itself shut.

I fell down next to him, holding my blade against my will and the blade lifted off his throat and traveled back and the blood on it cleaned itself, drop by drop, lifting off the steel.

Then all of my father’s tendons that I’d sliced and named began to reverse too. All the names returned to me—Hiroko, Riku, Nao, Sora, and Nura. Every name I had carved with a blade and a breath came up off the Fox's skin in the wrong order.

The cuts closed.

The tendons stitched.

The blood went back into his veins.

My voice ran the wrong way in my own throat, the names ungiving themselves, and the Fox sat back against the bulkhead with his face whole and his eyes alive.

And time kept on rewinding.

It’s all. . .happening again. . .

I passed Nura’s ghost.

She stood between me and the Fox in the white gown. Her eyes met mine through the reverse.

Then she was gone.

Time kept running backward while the baby giggled.

I passed Akiro's death.

Kenji's chain came up off Akiro's ruined face. The dented panel un-dented. Akiro rose off the floor and the smear he'd left on the metal traveled back into his skull and his eyes came alive.

He stood. The kusarigama's weighted ball swung back out of his face and into Kenji's hand.

I passed the broken arm.

The chain-ball lifted off the Fox's gun arm. The bone un-cracked, wet and loud in reverse.

The pistol rose off the floor and back into his shattered hand, and the hand made itself whole around the grip.

Soon, the Fox was alive again at the bulkhead with two guns, shooting at me.

And then time slowed.

The cold thing in my chest loosened.

The reverse stopped.