A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) (26 page)

"Yes," she said.
"They are."

Up ahead, she saw Kubo turn to
the left in front of a steep, rocky ledge, and she realized that they had
reached the cave he had asked her to tell Kara about. Hope gave her a spike of
renewed vigor and she picked up her pace, pulling Mr. Yamato by the hand. If
they could get out of the storm they would have a moment to think, Kubo might
be able to create some kind of mystical shield to hide them completely, Kara
would catch up to them, and then they would just have to somehow get back to
Sakura, find Ume, and —

The wind scooped her off the
ground, her boots dangling beneath her. Miho spun, arms outflung, breath stolen
from her lungs, ice crusting her whole body. And then she fell, hit the snow
and rolled. When she looked up, she saw that the others had all been tossed
around as well. They lay sprawled in the snow, trying to climb to their feet,
as the ghosts scattered to hide in the trees.

Kubo stood alone, unmasked,
unprotected.

As Yuki-Onna glided toward him,
floating above the snow, the storm carrying and caressing her. Her jaws opened
wide, rows of teeth stained with blood, white hair flowing.

With a gesture, she stole Kubo's
breath. He clutched at his throat, and ice began to form around his face and
hands, covering his eyes.

Mai sat in the passenger seat
while Ume drove them toward Takigami Mountain. At the hospital, only a few
flakes had fluttered lazily from the sky. But now she leaned over to look
through the windshield and could barely see the mountain ahead. The snow was
not coming down terribly hard, but the mountain was a white blur. Winter had
claimed it, hidden it, almost as if it had been dragged from this world into
another.

"Don't go to the parking
lot," Sakura said from the back seat.

"What?" Ume said,
frowning. "Why?"

"Take the next left. When
it forks to the right, go that way. I will tell you when to stop."

Mai shuddered. She thought she
heard something different in Sakura's voice. Something . . . other. She turned
in her seat and studied the girl in the back seat. Sakura had changed quickly
in the hospital, pulling on a thick sweater and jacket, black pants and boots. She
had removed the bandages wrapped around her head. They were spotted with blood,
which had gotten sticky and matted her hair in one spot. Mai thought someone
had said there were stitches in her scalp, but that the doctors had not been
sure how much damage might have been done to her brain. Her skull had been
cracked or fractured or something like that.

But not anymore.

"Sakura?" Mai
ventured.

The girl in the back seat looked
like Sakura. Same eyes, same nose, same severe, jagged haircut. But something
in her expression seemed different, and the voice . . . she did not sound the
same.

The girl in the back seat shook
her head.

"You're not Sakura?"
Ume asked, a fearful tremor in her voice.

"Ume!" Mai yelled.

The storm had become blinding
now, the visibility perhaps ten feet beyond the nose of the car, and with her
attention on the rearview mirror, Ume had nearly driven them into a ditch.

She spun the wheel to right
them. The tires skidded, the rear of the car slewing sideways. One or two
tense, heart-pounding seconds passed and then they were shooting along the road
again. A road appeared on the left.

"There," Sakura said,
pointing.

Ume braked carefully and took
the turn onto the side road, then rolled onto the side road bent over the
steering wheel, looking for the fork.

"So where is Sakura?"
Mai asked. She hadn't meant to, wasn't sure she wanted the answer, but the
words had just popped out.

Sakura looked at her — or
someone did, using Sakura's eyes. "She's here. We're both here."

Ume's voice, when she spoke, was
a mouse-squeak. "Akane?"

The ghost, the girl in the back
seat, said "Keep your eyes on the road."

"I'm sorry," Ume said,
voice still small and broken.

Mai wasn't sure if she was
apologizing for nearly crashing the car or for something else, for her greatest
sin, and she did not ask. This was between Ume and her heart, between Ume and
the ghost of the girl whose life she had taken.

A moment later, Ume turned right
at the fork and they were driving through several inches of snow, the tires
slipping, then catching. The mountain loomed up on the right, the bottom of the
slope and the woods less than a hundred yards away.

"What now?" Mai asked.

"Follow the ghosts,"
said the girl in the back seat.

Mai was about to ask what she
meant, but then Ume squeaked again and Mai looked up, and they all saw the
apparitions looming in the storm ahead. They were pointing to a small pull-off
that looked to lead up the mountain.

Ume went where the spirits
indicated. Neither she nor Mai said a word. Mai's breath was caught in her
throat. But she could not truly say she was surprised. After all, it had been a
winter of ghosts.

Kara and Miss Aritomo approached
the cave from the south. Snow had gotten into their clothes, up sleeves and
inside collars, and with the cold came a terrible despair. More than once Kara
thought of turning around, but her friends needed her and it was a long way
back to the parking lot, now. Miss Aritomo must have considered it as well, but
neither gave voice to the temptation. Or if Yuuka did speak, Kara did not hear
her over the rage of winter that churned around them. They had given up trying
to talk to each other. Kara trudged after the ghosts and Miss Aritomo trudged after
Kara, and in that way they found themselves on a trail that seemed almost cut
into the mountain slope, and then the dark mouth of the cave was there, looming
up on the right.

She saw Kubo first. The old monk
seemed frozen, jagged ice forming on his arms and snow frosting his beard and
hair. And yet he was still moving. Kara saw his hands in motion, fingers
contorting, and suddenly the storm seemed to die around him. Not everywhere . .
. not where Kara stood, or anywhere else on the mountain. But suddenly it
seemed as though Kubo stood inside some protective sphere. The snow parted
around him, blew past him, and like a wet dog he shook off the ice that had
clung to him.

Only then did Kara see
Yuki-Onna. She had been hidden by the pines above the mouth of the cave but now
she glided into view, her beautiful face contorted into ugliness by fury and by
evil. Her jaws were wide, her teeth bloody, and she screamed in frustration and
pointed elongated fingers at him.

"Kara, hide!" Miss
Aritomo said, trying to pull her into the mouth of the cave.

The snow on the ground flowed
together like crashing waves, freezing into a solid ridge of jagged ice, all
rippling across the ground toward Kubo. The old monk seemed to inflate as
though from a deep breath, held out his hands in a meditative pose, and hung
his head. Two feet from where it would have impaled him, the ice ridge
shattered and fell away.

Kara wanted to cheer. As she
moved nearer, she saw others in the snow beyond Kubo. At first she thought they
were more ghosts, but they began to rise from the snow and her heart soared at
the unmistakable sight of Hachiro. She knew him by size alone, by the tilt of
his head and the way he held himself. Ren and Mr. Yamato and Miho were with
him.

Hachiro's alive!
She
couldn't believe it. She had not allowed herself to believe anything else, but
in her secret heart the doubts had started to grow. Her body flooded with
relief and then that was washed away by an overwhelming surge of love that
filled her so completely that she could barely breathe. It warmed her, burning
the cold from her bones, at least for a few moments.

But then Kubo turned to look
directly at her — somehow he had sensed her there — and she saw the
urgency and the pain in his eyes.
What are you doing just standing here? s
he
thought. Kubo had made it clear he did not believe he could destroy Yuki-Onna
and Kara had just stood watching.

She spun toward Miss Aritomo.
"The ritual. We've got to do the ritual."

"How? We don't have Sakura
or Ume!"

Kara heard a cry of pain echo
across the mountainside, and then the storm swept it away. She turned to see
Yuki-Onna and Kubo. The witch gripped the old man by the throat, lifting him
off the ground, and whatever mystic rite had protected Kubo from her could not
prevent a physical attack. The snow spun around him now, and Kara stared in
horror as the old monk's flesh began to turn blue in the snow woman's grasp.

Kubo was freezing to death.

Miss Aritomo grabbed Kara's arm
and spun her around again, pointing down the mountain at a group of ghosts
making their way toward them. They passed through the trees, insubstantial,
untouched by the storm . . . or at least some of them did.

Kara wiped snow from her eyes. Three
of the figures were not ghosts. She saw Mai and Ume, and then she recognized
the third.

"Sakura?" she said,
jaw dropping in astonishment. "But how —"

"The ritual!" Miss
Aritomo shouted.

Kara glanced at Kubo — saw
ice crystals and gray, dead patches of frostbite blossoming on his cheeks —
and then she ran to meet Sakura and the ghosts.

The ghosts were insubstantial,
but Yuki-Onna existed in two worlds at once. She was both tangible and
intangible, spirit and storm and flesh, and when the ghosts attacked her, she
screamed and began to beat at them, snap her jaws at them, tear bits of them
away with those shark teeth.

But they had diverted her, and
her grip on Kubo broke. He fell to the ground.

The storm faltered, the snow
slowing, the wind lessening . . . but only for a moment. The Woman in White
stretched out her arms as though conducting a symphony and suddenly the wind
could touch the ghosts as well . . . and yet Kara could no longer feel it. The
wind had begun to blow in another place, a world between life and death where
these spirits had lingered, clinging to the lives they did not want to leave
behind.

"Hurry!" Kara snapped.

But she need not have bothered. Sakura
grabbed Ume by the hand and dragged her toward Kubo, and Kara's mind spun with
the sight. Sakura had been unconscious, even comatose, with major damage to her
skull. How she was up and running Kara had no idea. It seemed impossible. Kara
had grown used to impossible things, but they were always terrible, and here
was something that was both impossible and wonderful. She had to force herself
to focus on the ritual, on Kubo, instead of on Sakura and Hachiro and Ren, and
the fact that they were all, for the moment, still alive.

Because Kubo was dying. A sweet,
funny, venerable old man, this monk, but also a mystical adept, the only one
who could perform the ritual that would break the curse on them.

"Master Kubo!" Kara
cried as she ran to him and dropped to her knees in the snow.

He looked ancient, now, sickly
and shaking with cold. His eyes were tired and almost opaque, but not blind. He
saw her, and he glanced around at the others. Mai and Ume hung back, but Sakura
came close, almost gliding herself, a kind of ethereal beauty about her and a
serenity in her eyes that seemed so strange in the midst of the rage of this
storm, with the ghosts trying to restrain Yuki-Onna so close by.

Miss Aritomo ran to Mr. Yamato,
the two of them shouting to be heard over the wind, telling Kara and the others
to hurry. Miho and Ren came over to Kubo and dropped to their knees opposite
Kara.

Hachiro knelt in the snow beside
her. His eyes were haunted, his face gaunt with starvation, and she knew he had
been through hell these last three days. But he reached down and took her hand,
held it tight, fingers twined with hers, and she saw that the Hachiro she loved
was still there, deep down inside this tormented boy.

All those who were there when
Kyuketsuki had been destroyed and driven from the world,
Kara thought. Not
just the cursed — her and Miho and Sakura — but all of them. Hachiro
was beside her, but Ume had still not approached.

"Ume, come on!" Kara
shouted to be heard over the storm.

But the tall, statuesque girl,
the former Queen of the Soccer Bitches, only shook her head. She tried to back
away but Mai put an arm around her and urged her forehead. Ume stared at the ghosts
and Yuki-Onna, tearing at one another, and she began to cry, her tears freezing
on her cheeks.

"Ume, it must be now!"
Sakura said.

Kara frowned. It had sounded as
though two voices spoke in unison, two people speaking from one mouth. Was that
just the storm, some weird echo? Kara studied her face and realized it had a
hardness, a grim twist of the mouth, that were nothing like Sakura at all.

And then in an instant, her
expression changed, softening. Even her eyes seemed to lighten with a kindness
and understanding that hadn't been there a moment before. Sakura held out a
hand.

"Ume, please," Sakura
said, and now her voice, and her face, were hers alone.

Yuki-Onna tore free of the
ghosts and rushed at them. The ghosts howled like the wind — Kara realized
she had heard them before but they had sounded so far away and now they were
right here with her, closer than ever somehow. The spirits grabbed hold of
Yuki-Onna again.

"Little monk, I will have
your flesh and blood!" the witch screamed, reaching out to slash at the
air with her elongated fingers, now icy claws. She could not see Miho, Sakura,
Ren, Hachiro, or Kara thanks to the wards Kubo had given them, but Mai was
unprotected, and so were the teachers . . . and so was Kubo.

Mr. Yamato and Miss Aritomo ran
forward, trying to help the ghosts protect the old monk, reaching for
Yuki-Onna.