The headache was already there before Mido touched me.
Three weeks. Sitting right behind my eyes. Not sharp enough to make me stop, just there, constant, like somebody pressing their thumbs into my skull and forgetting to let go.
Locker room in Tokyo smelled like menthol and old leather. Cutman taping my hands, Delroy talking low in my ear about staying off the ropes, keep the jab pumping, don't chase. I nodded through all of it with that throb ticking behind my face. Told Delroy it was the weight cut. Told the doc it was jet lag. Didn't tell Mum anything, because Mum would have told me pull out, and men like me don't pull out over headaches.
I was Anthony Jarrett. Twenty-three, undefeated, heavyweight champion of the world. Born Kingston, raised Trench Town until Mum saved enough to get us on a plane to Vegas when I was twelve. First gym I ever walked into smelled like bleach trying to cover sweat and it never quite did. Coach looked at my skinny twelve-year-old arms and said you got long levers kid, learn to use them. I learned.
My future was always one thing. Ring. Belt. Another man across from me trying not to drown.
Tokyo was supposed to be easy money.
Round six. Heat coming off the lights, sweat burning my eyes, mouthguard tasting like old rubber. Mido. Twenty-one. Too small on paper. Footwork the tape never showed. Jab popping out of nowhere and gone before I could answer it.
Plan died by round three and we both knew it.
He clipped me. Pop. Side of the face. Nothing. I've eaten worse in sparring hungover on a Tuesday.
Except the sound it made inside my head was wet. Wrong. Like something tore back behind my eye and leaked.
I reset. Tried to cut the angle. Watched his shoulder like Delroy drilled into me since that first gym off Flamingo with the busted heavy bag.
He didn't load up. No big swing, no crowd pleaser. Just a straight right, plain, right down the middle while my front foot was still planting.
My legs were there. My balance just wasn't.
Canvas came up fast. Cheek, shoulder, then my arms wouldn't answer. Ref shouting over me. Delroy screaming something from the corner, words all running together into noise. Bell? Maybe the bell. Maybe my ears. Couldn't tell which and that spun my stomach worse than the knockdown.
Tried to push up.
Right hand gone. Couldn't feel my face.
Then click. Out.
Not black. Gray.
No up, no down, no floor. Just gray everywhere, flat, like somebody wiped the world clean and forgot me in the middle. I tried to look at my hands. Gloves on. Or something like gloves. Soon as I stared straight at them they went fuzzy at the edges, wouldn't hold still.
"That part throws people."
Voice came from nowhere. Everywhere.
Man standing there. Or, not standing, because there wasn't ground. Just there. Black hair tied back. White gi. Bare feet. Hands tucked in his sleeves. Looked forty. Looked four hundred. Couldn't pin it.
I blinked at him. "No tunnel? No choir? No dead granny?"
"You disappoint cleanly."
"What's that mean."
"You're not crying yet."
Asshole. Good. Pissed off was better than whatever the hell the other option was.
"Am I dead?"
He just looked at me.
A laugh ripped out of me, short and ugly. "Nah. Nah man, that's wild."
Then it hit all at once and not in order. Mum. Delroy wrapping my hands slow, careful, like if he did it right nothing bad could get in. My flat with the mail piled up I kept saying I'd open. Running shoes by the door, brand new, never laced. Last time I called Mum she told me drink water, stop eating so much damn salt. I told her I'm heavyweight champion of the world, Ma. She go, "And you still my pickney, so drink water." Tired. Not proud tired, just tired tired. Like loving me was a long shift she never clocked out of.
My hands were shaking. Couldn't tell if it was scared or dead or both and I didn't want to know.
"Six rounds and a headache," I said. Voice cracked. "That it?"
"You had more than six rounds."
"You know what mi mean."
He pulled one hand out his sleeve. "I can send you somewhere else."
I stared. "Reincarnation ting? Magic world? Monsters?"
"Yes."
"You serious."
"Very."
Ten seconds of that sounding insane, then it stopped sounding insane because I was already dead talking to a barefoot man in a bathrobe in nothing. At a certain point you just say yeah.
"What world."
He opened his palm.
Mountains. Big ugly forests thick enough to swallow towns. Things with teeth like farm equipment. Men in gis smashing rock with their hands in a courtyard, barefoot kids doing handstands on posts. A little bald man on an island. Sky too big.
My stomach jumped even though I didn't have a stomach.
Then the kid.
Brown skin. Black hair in a thick, wild afro. Eyes too hard for that young face. Not my face, no, but the brow, the jaw, yeah, I knew that shape. Like somebody tried to draw me from memory and got close.
"That him?"
"Yes."
He looked ten. Twelve if he was vexed. Four-eleven, shoulders already too wide, neck too thick, everything packed tight. Not normal kid muscle. Dense. Compact. Wrong in a way that made you look twice and then look again.
"How old?"
"Six."
"Six my ass. Look pon him."
"Six. Healthy. Exceptionally so."
"What kind of potential in that body?"
That little smile again. Knows-something-you-don't smile. "The kind that grows into whatever hits it. Given time. Given pressure."
"How much?"
"More than you can spend in one life. Perhaps more than two."
Small. Slow. Starting over. Hated the thought. Then I thought about a world full of freaks who can split mountains with their fists.
I grinned before I meant to. Couldn't help it.
"Send me."
Gray ripped. Cold hit me so hard I forgot my own mother's name.
---
Water. In my nose, my throat, choking. Coughing till my ribs screamed.
Small ribs. Kid ribs.
Pushed up too fast, nearly ate stone. Hands caught me. Small hands. Brown. Scraped knuckles. Six-year-old fingers with wrists thick like rebar. Made a fist and something in the forearm jumped, coiled hard. Felt nasty. Good nasty.
No mirror. Puddle in the rock.
Crawled over.
Yeah. Trouble. Brown skin, sharp face, big eyes that weren't soft at all. Wild afro matted wet. Ten easy, twelve if you caught him scowling, which I was. Four-eleven and built like a little pitbull, shoulders straining at nothing, muscle sitting low and tight where a six-year-old shouldn't have any. The kind of build that makes strangers look twice and wonder what his parents fed him.
"Rass," I said out loud. Voice came out high. Young. Hated it instantly. Sounded like somebody else using my mouth. "Nah man, this some foolishness."
Stood up slow. Center of gravity all wrong, low, light. Legs wanted to bounce before I told them to. Bounced twice on my toes just to test it and the body answered too fast, nerves hotwired, like it had been waiting for somebody who actually knew how to use it.
Strong. Stupid strong for the size. Something humming underneath, quiet, making the whole frame run hotter than it should.
Took a few steps. Stopped trying to walk like Anthony Jarrett, big man heavyweight walk, let the little body show me what it knew. Better. Still wrong, just a different wrong.
Cave smelled damp and old. Ashes in a fire pit, cold. Rotting mat in the corner. Cracked clay bowl. A stick leaned against the wall, wrist thick, ends chewed up like somebody had been hitting rocks with it. Kid-sized handprints in the soot near the fire. Somebody lived here. The kid lived here. Alone, by the look of it.
Found clothes. Rough tunic, shorts, stiff with salt. Pulled them on. Tight in the shoulders. Tight everywhere. Body already outgrowing its own rags.
Wall by the mat had letters scratched in, crooked, kid hands: R-Y-O.
Ran my thumb over them. Not a memory, exactly. Just weight. Like somebody handed me a name and said carry it.
"Aight then. Ryo."
Cave mouth opened up to blue. Ocean. Sun white hot, making me squint. Wind coming off the water salty enough to taste. One sun. Good.
Wind hit and everything else hit with it. Earth gone. Mum never getting a phone call back. Delroy telling reporters I died doing what I loved because what else you gonna say, he got clipped in round six by a headache.
Sat on the rock a minute. Didn't cry. Throat closed up though. Even dead, even stuck in a six-year-old body with an afro and a pickney voice, first thing my brain did was inventory.
Water. Food. Way down.
Jabbed at the air. Snap out snap back. Fast for the size, yeah, but sloppy, I didn't know the levers yet. Tried a cross, nearly spun myself over my knee. Hips were quick though. Quicker than they had any right to be.
The climb down was worse than it looked. Loose rock, thorn bushes grabbing at my ankles, heat coming off the stone in waves. Sun should have been cooking me, wasn't. Heat just sat on my skin, rolled off.
Rock gave way under my foot, no warning, gravel slide, and down I went.
Hit the water hard. Salt up my nose, spinning, kicked on pure animal and broke the surface coughing, swearing in a way that would have got my mouth washed out when I was small. Swam in fast, too fast, arms churning, hit sand and lay there staring at a sky that wasn't mine.
Sun dried me in minutes. Goosebumps gone before I even noticed them.
Then that sound. Dry. Close. Right behind my ear.
Rolled without thinking.
Snake hit sand where my throat was. Big wedge head, thick body, mottled brown, already coiling to go again.
It came again. Stepped left, barely, short legs almost got me killed, fangs cut air by my hip. Shoulder burned from moving that fast.
Watch the coil. Head lies. Coil don't.
Third lunge I dropped my weight, slid outside, stomped my heel down on its neck. Missed clean, caught half. Thing whipped, tail cracked my calf so hard my eyes watered. Stomped again. Harder. Felt it give.
Still.
Stood there breathing through my mouth, hands shaking so bad I had to clench them. Checked my ankle. No holes. Missed me.
"Twice in one day," I croaked. Voice still high, still strange. "Wah gwaan. Mi nearly dead again, rahtid."
Sand crunching behind me. Spun around, fists up, on my toes before I thought about it.
Bald man. Skinny. Sunglasses. Pink shirt with big stupid flowers all over it. Wooden staff. And next to him, I swear to God, a tortoise the size of a suitcase just standing there looking at me.
He looked at me. Looked at the dead snake. Looked back.
"Kid. You always stomp vipers before breakfast, or is today special?"
I stared at him, at the tortoise, back at him. "Bredren, mi just fight a serpent inna di sun and yuh asking bout breakfast? Yuh mad?"
He blinked. Tilted his head. "What did you say?"
"The snake dead. Mi alive. That di report."
He turned to the tortoise. "Did you catch any of that?"
The tortoise blinked slow. "I believe the boy said the snake is dead and he is alive. The rest was… rhythmic."
Laughed before I could stop it. High kid laugh, wrong coming out my mouth, but real. "Rhythmic. Yuh hear that? Mi talk rhythmic."
The old man, Roshi, apparently, pushed his sunglasses up and looked at me different. Like a trainer seeing a kid hit the bag and the bag loses.
"You're not from around here."
"Nuh really, no."
"That accent. Never heard anything like it. Where'd you learn to talk like that?"
"Far." Shrugged with these new small shoulders. "Long story. Nuh important."
"Uh huh." He didn't believe me, but he let it go. "And you always go around killing poisonous snakes with your bare feet?"
"First time. Hope last time."
He barked a laugh, belly laugh, caught off guard. "Kid, I like you. Stone cold. You just killed a kanaba with your bare foot and you're not even tall enough to reach my knee."
"Mi reach higher than yuh knee. Nuh test me."
He laughed harder. "What'd he say?"
"I believe he threatened your knees, Master Roshi," the tortoise said, very serious.
Roshi wiped his eyes. "Alright, funny talk. You hungry?"
Stomach growled loud enough to hear over the surf. "Starving. But mi nuh eat snake fi breakfast. That a emergency food."
"Emergency food," he repeated, grinning all teeth. "You got a word for everything, eh?"
"And yuh got a ugly shirt. We even."
He turned up the beach, staff tapping sand. "Come on then. Feed you before you start speaking full gibberish and I have to guess what you want."
Followed him. Didn't have a better plan. Turtle fell in slow beside me, huffing a little.
"Your energy is unusual," Turtle said low, so Roshi wouldn't hear. "Very unusual. There's something sleeping in you this world has not seen before."
Looked down at him. "Yuh feel that?"
"I smell it. Like rain before it comes."
Didn't answer. Just walked, small shadow stretching long, afro-headed kid with blood on his foot and a dead heavyweight rattling around in his head, following a strange old man in a pink shirt toward a little dome house on the point.
Back started itching halfway up the path. Low, between the shoulder blades, deep under the skin, like a muscle waking up I didn't know I had. Hot. Mean. Gone as fast as it came.
Didn't think much of it. Kid body doing weird kid body things. Kept walking. Sun on my neck, sand still stuck to my feet, stomach growling loud enough to embarrass me.
The island didn't feel like an ending. Felt like somebody left the door open on purpose.
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