A Mortal Song (12 page)

The awful sorrow that had overwhelmed me when I’d played my flute yesterday welled up again. “It’s not so bad,” I said, to myself as well as to him. “They needed me. They still do.”

As my words drifted out into the air, Chiyo flashed back into her corporeal state with a shudder. “Hey,” she said, frowning at Takeo even as her voice stayed bright. “You broke my concentration. No fair.”

Takeo returned to the physical plane as well, his dark eyes troubled. “Omori isn’t going to care about fairness,” he said. “If we’re to leave here safely, you’ll need to be able to hold that shield up much longer. Let’s begin again—we have a lot more work to do.”

O
ver the next hour
, Takeo pierced Chiyo’s inner shield five more times. Each time it took him a little longer, but fifteen minutes was still far from enough for us to safely make the journey to Rin.

After a while, my worries made me so restless I couldn’t stand to watch anymore. It seemed we’d found weakness in Chiyo after all: for all her power, she lacked endurance. And she was going to need an awful lot to survive a full onslaught.

I collected more bark and burned more wood for charcoal, and sat inside the shrine building inscribing a stack of ofuda. When there was enough that each of us could carry a large sheaf of the charms, I distracted myself tending to the shrine. With each minute I spent there, its neglect pained me more. Taking on the jobs human priests were meant to do, I washed the dust from the red altar cloth, swept the floors, and rubbed clean the walls and railings. The shrine kami drifted around me, puzzled but murmuring their gratitude.

During my work the ground trembled twice with Fuji’s anxious stirrings. By mid-afternoon, the sun had burned all the clouds from the sky and the breeze had died, leaving a sharp heat that crackled against my skin. Summer was always hot, but not like this. In the absence of so many kami, the weather was starting to echo the fire churning inside the mountain.

Another yelp carried from the courtyard as Takeo knocked down Chiyo’s protections yet again. My fingers tensed around the cloth I was holding.

“Do you know anything about a demon named Kenta Omori?” I asked the shrine kami. The two women shook their heads. I dug out the article Chiyo had printed off for me and read it over twice, but nothing in the folded pages gave me a better sense of the man who’d become our demon.

Keiji had been sitting in the shade of the trees behind the building, but he must have gotten uncomfortable after the breeze had disappeared. When I came back inside, I found him bent over a book he’d propped up on his bag, three more scuffed but sturdy volumes stacked beside him. There was something arresting in the earnest dedication with which he studied the page that made me stop and watch a moment before I forced myself to interrupt.

“Have you found out anything more about demons and ghosts?” I asked.

His head snapped up; he clearly hadn’t heard me come in. Then his face relaxed with his usual crooked grin. “I’ve read all these before,” he said. “Just refreshing my memory and seeing if I can make any new connections. It’s definitely unusual for a demon and ghosts to be working together like this.”

I sat down on the floor across from him. “What about just the demon?” I said. “He’s the source of most of the ghosts’ power anyway. It’d be easier to fight him if we understood why this Omori attacked Mt. Fuji at all.”

“Well, if he started as a guy who was murdered, there’s always the revenge thing I mentioned before. You see a lot of that in the folktales.”

“But why would a criminal businessman from Tokyo want revenge on the kami? None of us would have hurt him.”

“Yeah.” Keiji rubbed his chin, considering his books. “Well, if demons are filled with negative emotion, I’d guess that’s got to cloud out logic. He might not be thinking straight. Or... kami have a lot of power, right? Maybe it isn’t really about Mt. Fuji—he just wants to use the power there for something else. Like revenge on the people who
did
hurt him.”

“I don’t think there’s any way he could take that power,” I said. “And he’s already got lots of his own.” A chill trickled through me. “What if he’s so angry and spiteful that he
wants
to see the whole world fall into chaos?” His plan could be nothing more than to watch from the palace as all the kami’s work fell to ruin.

“That’s possible,” Keiji said.

All we had were possibilities, nothing definite. I made a noise of frustration and got up. “I’m going to see if Takeo can use any help.” I paused. “Thank you for looking for answers.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Keiji said, nudging his glasses up. For once he sounded serious, not teasing. “I hope I can find something more useful.”

The sun had long set when Takeo finally called an end to Chiyo’s training, with a tentative note of victory. Even with both of us working on her, she’d managed to hold her ethereal shield steady for a full two hours, without so much as wavering even at the end. Now she sprawled on the steps of the shrine building near Keiji, who was licking the last bits of juice off his fingers from his dinner of fried lotus root, bamboo shoots, and wild mushrooms. My stomach pinched. He’d told the shrine kami that he was particularly hungry to ensure they brought enough for us to share the meal, but I hadn’t gotten the chance to sneak away from Chiyo’s curious eyes yet.

“So, are we leaving to see this sage person now?” Chiyo asked.

Takeo glanced at the sky. The near-full moon and the brilliant stars cast a faint light over us, but within the trees all was dark. “As much as I hate to delay, I don’t think we should risk traveling now. You’re worn out, and if Omori penetrates your shield at night it’ll be much easier for his ghosts to find us. We’ll rest and leave at dawn.”

“I thought you wanted to go back for Haru,” Keiji remarked.

Chiyo shook her head. “I didn’t really know... I’ve learned a
lot
today,” she said with a wry smile. “I’m sure he’ll understand. He doesn’t have any way of making shields of ki or whatever. I don’t want to bring him into the middle of this fight until I’m sure I can protect myself
and
him.”

Takeo’s gaze settled on me. Thinking of how I needed extra protection too? “We’ll be coming back to Tokyo within a few days anyway,” I said quickly. “The jewel is kept in the Imperial Palace’s shrine.”

“Right,” Chiyo said. “I’m supposed to get the sacred treasures before we go take back the mountain.” For just an instant, her easy confidence seemed to falter. Then she clapped her hands together with a fierce grin. “No problem.”

“We’ll save the jewel for last,” Takeo said, “since it only amplifies the others’ powers. And if the ghosts in Tokyo spot us and realize what we’re doing before we have the sword and the mirror, they’ll get in our way.”

“So the treasures really are super-magical?” Chiyo said. “I thought that was just a myth... but I guess a lot of things I thought were myths aren’t.”

“They were all the possessions of one of the first great kami,” I said, my mind slipping back to long-ago evenings perched on Ayame’s lap. “Amaterasu, who guided the sun. The mirror was clear enough to reflect her full beauty, and the jewel captivating enough to draw her out of hiding when her brother offended her.”

“He’s the one who found the sacred sword, before he gave it to her,” Keiji added when I paused. “If the stories I’ve read are true, anyway. It was in one of the eight tails of this huge dragon he killed—so strong the blade chipped the sword he already had and so sharp it could slice through grass like the wind.”

Takeo inclined his head in acknowledgement. “And all three were given by Amaterasu to the first emperor, to show her support of his rule. They’ve been in the care of humans ever since.”

“So how far do we have to go to get the sword and the mirror?” Chiyo asked.

“They’re kept in shrines dedicated to Amaterasu,” I said. “The sword in the city of Nagoya, and the mirror at the large Ise shrine.”

“How long exactly do we have?” Keiji said. “People observe Obon at different times in different places.”

“Humans pick the dates that are convenient to their interests,” Takeo said. “The symbols are what matters the most to them. But the true Obon, when the barrier between the worlds thins, changes every summer, depending on the moon. Tomorrow we have four days left.”

Hearing him say it out loud made me shiver. Four days seemed like hardly any time at all.

A similar uneasiness crossed Keiji’s face, and he looked as if he was going to say more. He was interrupted by a staticy melody that started to play from somewhere near where he sat. He leapt to his feet.

“My phone,” he explained, and headed down the steps as he dug it out of his pocket.

Chiyo’s eyebrows rose. “You get reception up here? What company are you with?”

Keiji didn’t answer, already opening the phone to his ear. His shoes rattled over the pebbles as he disappeared around the side of the building. “Hi. Yeah, of course it’s me. Hold on.”

“I wish I had
my
cell,” Chiyo said. She tipped her head back against the platform. “I feel like I could fall asleep right here.”

I slipped past her before she could decide to head into the shrine building for the night. As promised, Keiji had left part of his dinner on a plate in one of the cupboards. A package of corn puffs that must have come from his personal stash of snacks lay beside it.

I grabbed a handful of the vegetables, so hungry I hardly missed having chopsticks to eat properly, and popped them into my mouth. As I gulped them down, and then more, the grumbling in my stomach subsided. I willed the flow of ki I was drawing from Midori to shrink.

“If you want to leave for a little while, you can,” I told her. She replied with a flicker of contentment.

A ruffling of feathers by the side door caught my eye. Palming the last of the meal and tucking the corn puffs under my arm, I stepped outside.

A familiar sparrow was perched on the corner of the shrine’s roof.
You again
, I thought, studying it. Maybe it was only a coincidence, but I was starting to feel sure it was the same bird. I sent a thread of ki toward it, wondering if I’d managed not to notice it was kami, but my silent greeting provoked no response. Maybe it had been helped by a kami once, and now it took comfort in our presence. Even a regular sparrow might have been frightened witnessing the ghosts swarming Mt. Fuji. And Takeo and I would have been the only ones it’d seen escape.

“Hoping for food again?” I asked, holding out a mushroom. The sparrow tilted its head. When I set the mushroom on the platform’s railing, it swooped down to peck at it.

As I wandered off the platform and along the edge of the forest, a voice reached my ears: Keiji’s, raised.

“If you won’t even tell me— Okay, okay, I’ll try. I know. I’m sorry. Right. Okay. I’ll see you.”

Footsteps crunched through the fallen pine needles, and his form emerged from the darkness amid the trees. His expression was grim as he snapped his phone shut. When he saw me, he came to a halt.

“Sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to listen—and I didn’t hear much. I was only walking by.”

“That’s okay,” Keiji said.

“Are you all right?” I asked. “You sounded... upset.”

His shoulders hunched. “I’m not really. I just— That was my brother. Who was being a typical older brother, thinking he knows everything, not really listening. But he does know a lot more than I do, so maybe he’s right and
I
should listen more.”

“Is
he
upset?” I asked, suddenly curious. “That you’re out here, I mean? Do your parents know where you are?”

“My parents are dead,” Keiji said matter-of-factly. “Since I was two. And my aunt and uncle are probably glad to have one less ‘problem’ on their hands for the moment. At least my brother cares. I shouldn’t get on his case—if he hadn’t been trying so hard to make things better for me, maybe he’d still be fine.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. Here I’d been wishing I didn’t have two sets of parents, when he had none.

“Hey, don’t be,” he said, a trace of his usual smile returning. “It’s because of you I’m going to get my chance to fix things for him. May I escort you back to the shrine? I promise to stay off my knees.”

“I should hope so,” I said, falling into step beside him as we ambled toward the shrine building.

“You know, it’s really not so bad kowtowing, if you’ve got the right girl in front of you.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“I’m not sure,” he said easily. “I just thought it sounded good. Did you like it? If not, I’ll keep trying.”

“No!” I said before he could make good on that offer. “I mean, no, don’t keep trying. It was wonderful.”

He laughed, and as I watched the light coming back into his face, I wondered what else he would have said, if I’d told him to keep going.

* * *

T
he sun was blazing overhead late
the next morning when the five of us reached the valley of the doves. The forest around us felt like an oven, baking us as we climbed to the final ridge. The dry soil crumbled at the lightest touch of my feet, and the leaves on the bushes and saplings were starting to yellow.

I counted back through the days and realized I couldn’t remember the last rainfall. Certainly it hadn’t rained since Omori had taken Mt. Fuji. Even the thunderstorm I’d smelled brewing two nights ago had dissipated without a drop.

Between the dryness and the unusual heat, the crops must be starting to die, the streams shrinking. Was the absence of so many kami only affecting us here, near the mountain, or was it already echoing throughout the world?

Maybe Rin would know. I wanted to leap straight into the valley, but we were already racing along as fast as our legs and ki could carry us. Ahead of me, Chiyo gripped Keiji’s wrist, lending him energy so he wouldn’t slow us down. She’d suggested leaving him behind as we’d been getting ready to set off, and I’d blurted out that we could hardly abandon him miles from any means of getting home. Takeo, managing to stay loyal to both of us at once, had pointed out that this way would give her extra practice controlling and maintaining her energy. But we’d both been watching her closely in unspoken agreement, checking for any sign that Omori might have resumed his magical attack. It seemed too much to hope that he would have given up on that strategy after just one failure.