A Touch of the Master's Hand

One Sip at a Time

I hate piano lessons, thought Cole sulkily as he kicked a stray stud down the street of the suburb he lived in.

A great forest loomed to the right of him. The little offshoot of Ninjago City lay to his left, and like everywhere round about, it was safe for a nine year old to walk about by himself to where his dad worked to get piano lessons from a stranger. There was no crime anywhere near Ninjago. It was the safest city on earth. Cole knew this, but he sure did not think of it as the happiest place on earth.

The sun may have been shining brightly, the autumn leaves may have been the most brilliant crimson red, and the scent of the sea invigorating, but it sure was not Cole's home.

They had moved here less than a year ago, and Cole hated everything about it, but he especially hated piano lessons. This may not have been an unusual thing to dislike in itself for other children who had no interest in such things, but only a few years before Cole would have said it was his favorite thing to do when he surpassed recorder lessons. He had gotten pretty good at both for his age. He had been quite proud of himself and eager to move on to trying more challenging instruments like a fighter moving from a bokken to a sword, but these days it was all just a pain, like everything his father wanted him to do.

As he was trudging along with a roll of his eyes and deep childish grimace he heard music playing. For a split second he almost thought it was a recorder, but he soon knew it was some sort of flute. He knew his instruments well. Spinning around he lifted his head of black-mop hair up towards the deep forest, but it was not coming from there. He winced and cocked his head. After a moment, he turned and saw that a weird old man had just come out of a sandwich shop at the top of the hill Cole had just been in the process of descending from.

His sandwich the old man had just plopped into a sack over his shoulder, but everything after that was not at all like a normal person. He had a very well-kept and yet very old looking bamboo flute, and although it was not too unusual to see a bamboo hat in a place called Ninjago City, Cole had never seen anyone with a beard like that that was not fake. His clothes were impressively ancient in style; though he was sure they were not nearly as old as the flute or the man, and although he was walking straight across the road into the ragged rocky ground inside the entrance of the forest, he was only wearing sandals on his feet.

Cole stared dumbfounded as though the whole world had stopped. As the old man crossed the street playing his flute, a car that suddenly had slipped out of nowhere on the other side of the hill honked at him. It did nothing to disturb the old man, nor did it penetrate Cole's mind in the least.

Now, if Cole had known anything about the tale of the Pied Piper he might have been a bit more hesitant to follow a weird musician trouncing about hauntingly, but Cole was not much for those kinds of fairy tales. On the other hand he had heard of the mysterious old ninja master who lived by himself in the mountains in the forest. The legends about him were as many as they were fantastic, and as the man disappeared into the thick of the red trees and yellow brush, Cole wasted less time chasing after him than he would have a mythical animal.

It was almost as if at that moment he was struck with an epiphany that since he found no joy in his home life, he could become a rebel, a fighter, a vigilante, a hero, a Zorro— in a word, a student of the great and legendary Master Wu, the only person on earth who knew the secrets of spinjitsu, the rarest form of ninjitsu on the planet.

Sprinting after him as fast as he could, Cole called out to him.

"Hey, wait! Wait, wait, wait!"

At first he thought he had not been quick enough, but suddenly the old man was right as his side.

"What do you want?" he demanded quietly.