"All right, well - If you must blink," Kubo struck an opening chord on his shamisen. "Do it now."
Red and grey paper flew from Kubo's pack, folding itself into a small red boy, and two identical, broad-hatted women. Dark green paper swirled around them like menacing smoke. They crowded the paper boy in with deliberate, threatening movements, until a golden sheet of paper snapped between them and the child, became a figure of a woman, and exploded in a paper flurry that dispersed the grey sisters and the green paper "smoke."
"Our hero, chased from his village by the terrible daughters of the Moon King, his mother gone after using the last of her power to save him from her evil sisters, was no longer alone." Kubo announced, as the fleeing paper boy found his feet, looked around at his solitude, and made a few tentative, searching circles. "His quest for the Sword Unbreakable began with the help of his new friends -"
The white paper launched to the foreground of Kubo's playing stage and folded itself into a monkey again, its movements animal and quick through a complex martial arts sequence that defied the realm of what should have been actually possible to depict with origami.
"Monkey! His mother's last magic brought her to life to protect and guide him, no matter how hard, no matter the cost!"
The dark green paper flew back into the exaggerated shape of a four-armed Samurai, fitted an impossibly intricate paper arrow to the string of a paper bow, pulled and aimed, four more tiny arrows held in his lower set of arms.
"And Beetle - once a mighty samurai, now a cursed half-man, half-bug, wandering the Farlands with no memory and no quest - until our hero brought a quest to him!"
The twang of his rolled-paper bowstring could almost be heard as he fired one, two, three, four, five arrows, and each paper arrow split the one before it down the middle.
"Together they journeyed through sleet and cold, through sun and cloud, out of the cold, distant Farlands and down, down the mountains, to the very gates of the Temple of Bones -"
Kubo's plucking took on an ominous tone as he described their approach to the Temple of Bones. The last time he'd told this story, he'd emphasized the action of the battle, but now, he took his time setting the scene - leading his audience down the eerie bone-strewn jade path, into the wide temple where an enormous skeleton hand held a single sword beneath a roof so tall it could not be seen in the darkness.
The foolishly enthusiastic Beetle tripped the very obvious trap by pulling the sword from the open hand of bones, bringing to life an enormous, jagged-toothed paper skeleton that loomed behind Kubo with a head full of paper swords. The fight for their lives commenced as the Gashadokuro snatched the paper figures in turn, raising them to its broken teeth to bite their heads off, foiled each time by interference from whoever was free of the skeleton's two hands at the time. Kubo wove in moments of suspense and terror and glory for each fighter - Beetle's arrow pinning the falling Kubo to the wall through the neck of his robes, Monkey's relentless strength breaking free from the skeleton fingers to smash sword after sword in search of the Unbreakable one - until, when Kubo's friends were moments away from literally losing their heads, the tiny paper boy plucked the Sword Unbreakable from the demon's skull, and sent it crashing down to the floor of the Temple of Bones.
He could have focused entirely on the suspense and the fear of the battle, but he found time to fit in emphasis on Monkey's determination and skill, and all of Beetle's silly jokes. He'd cared deeply for his companions on that quest, that was clear in the telling.
"But their next great journey was about to begin," he said, when he'd left the trio on the beach of the Long Lake, "For now their quest would lead them on - in search of the Breastplate Impenetrable. For all stories have an end -" he finished, with the way he'd become accustomed, in these last years, to ending his tales - "but there is no end of stories."
The tale was not by any means a traditional campfire story, but only because Kubo had no frame of reference for what scary stories campfires called for.
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Red and grey paper flew from Kubo's pack, folding itself into a small red boy, and two identical, broad-hatted women. Dark green paper swirled around them like menacing smoke. They crowded the paper boy in with deliberate, threatening movements, until a golden sheet of paper snapped between them and the child, became a figure of a woman, and exploded in a paper flurry that dispersed the grey sisters and the green paper "smoke."
"Our hero, chased from his village by the terrible daughters of the Moon King, his mother gone after using the last of her power to save him from her evil sisters, was no longer alone." Kubo announced, as the fleeing paper boy found his feet, looked around at his solitude, and made a few tentative, searching circles. "His quest for the Sword Unbreakable began with the help of his new friends -"
The white paper launched to the foreground of Kubo's playing stage and folded itself into a monkey again, its movements animal and quick through a complex martial arts sequence that defied the realm of what should have been actually possible to depict with origami.
"Monkey! His mother's last magic brought her to life to protect and guide him, no matter how hard, no matter the cost!"
The dark green paper flew back into the exaggerated shape of a four-armed Samurai, fitted an impossibly intricate paper arrow to the string of a paper bow, pulled and aimed, four more tiny arrows held in his lower set of arms.
"And Beetle - once a mighty samurai, now a cursed half-man, half-bug, wandering the Farlands with no memory and no quest - until our hero brought a quest to him!"
The twang of his rolled-paper bowstring could almost be heard as he fired one, two, three, four, five arrows, and each paper arrow split the one before it down the middle.
"Together they journeyed through sleet and cold, through sun and cloud, out of the cold, distant Farlands and down, down the mountains, to the very gates of the Temple of Bones -"
Kubo's plucking took on an ominous tone as he described their approach to the Temple of Bones. The last time he'd told this story, he'd emphasized the action of the battle, but now, he took his time setting the scene - leading his audience down the eerie bone-strewn jade path, into the wide temple where an enormous skeleton hand held a single sword beneath a roof so tall it could not be seen in the darkness.
The foolishly enthusiastic Beetle tripped the very obvious trap by pulling the sword from the open hand of bones, bringing to life an enormous, jagged-toothed paper skeleton that loomed behind Kubo with a head full of paper swords. The fight for their lives commenced as the Gashadokuro snatched the paper figures in turn, raising them to its broken teeth to bite their heads off, foiled each time by interference from whoever was free of the skeleton's two hands at the time. Kubo wove in moments of suspense and terror and glory for each fighter - Beetle's arrow pinning the falling Kubo to the wall through the neck of his robes, Monkey's relentless strength breaking free from the skeleton fingers to smash sword after sword in search of the Unbreakable one - until, when Kubo's friends were moments away from literally losing their heads, the tiny paper boy plucked the Sword Unbreakable from the demon's skull, and sent it crashing down to the floor of the Temple of Bones.
He could have focused entirely on the suspense and the fear of the battle, but he found time to fit in emphasis on Monkey's determination and skill, and all of Beetle's silly jokes. He'd cared deeply for his companions on that quest, that was clear in the telling.
"But their next great journey was about to begin," he said, when he'd left the trio on the beach of the Long Lake, "For now their quest would lead them on - in search of the Breastplate Impenetrable. For all stories have an end -" he finished, with the way he'd become accustomed, in these last years, to ending his tales - "but there is no end of stories."
The tale was not by any means a traditional campfire story, but only because Kubo had no frame of reference for what scary stories campfires called for.