Storm (15 page)

Tomo peered ahead. “We’ll need to get behind it, to the Three Palace Sanctuaries. We should be able to sneak past when they take the turn up Yamashita Dori. The trees are a little bare for cover, but we should manage.”

“You really researched all this, huh?” I said. “You meant to ditch the tour group from the beginning?”

He shook his head. “I looked up where it is, that’s all. The rest is instinct.”

“Instinct won’t get you past security, Tomo.”

Tomo took my hand; his body was shaking from the deep breaths he was taking, and his face almost glowed with adrenaline. I’d only seen him look this way when he was in a kendo match, or when he had thrown himself into a drawing. “We need to find the Magatama,” he said. “At all costs.”

“And you think it’s in there?”

“You can’t see it?” he said. I stared, but saw nothing. “I don’t mean with your eyes,” he said, playfully tapping the back of my head. “It’s like a sun. It’s radiating heat.”

I squinted, trying to catch a pulse of flame or infrared light, but nothing. “How can you tell?”

“I can feel the heat, like a burning flame. And, you know, the internet says it’s in the Kashiko-Dokoro shrine to Amaterasu, so that helps.” I rolled my eyes.

We walked slowly toward the edge of the Imperial Palace guesthouse. It’s not like we were trying to break into the actual palace where the royal family lived, I thought, but I’m sure we weren’t the first to try and wander the grounds on our own. There would definitely be guards and surveillance cameras.

“We can’t do this,” I said.

“Turn back if you need to,” Tomo said. “The tour group is still there.”

“Tomo, you’re going to get in huge trouble.”

“Only if I get caught,” Tomo said. “And I’ve got a few good excuses ready.”

“Like? The police already have their eye on you from that fight with Ishikawa.”

“Like I got lost, like I blanked out and didn’t know I was here.”

“Oh, please, like they’ll believe that.”

“Then I’ll tell them I’m a Kami and that Takahashi is going to destroy the world. I don’t know! I’m just not going to get caught, that’s all.” He let out an exasperated breath, his glance racing across the grounds like we were wasting time. “Katie, this is the answer to everything. The world is changing, and we need the jewel to stop it. I promise we won’t take it, okay? I just need to see it.”

He took off into the trees by another tower keep, this one larger than the first. Alone, I stared at the disappearing tour group, and then Tomo. I was terrified. But then I thought about Jun. If this could really help us stop him...if this could stop the ink for Tomo...we had to try it.

Go on
, the voice whispered to me.
Go see the truth.

With a deep breath, I ducked into the forested path behind Tomo. He squeezed my hand, and we moved forward together, past the guesthouse, toward the Three Sanctuaries buildings.

It wasn’t far to go, but every step sounded in my panicked heartbeat. The imperial family used the Three Sanctuaries for weddings and ceremonies, so it wasn’t far from the guest lodgings in the Imperial Palace. A whitewashed wall surrounded the shrines, black paneling running like a stripe around the center. There was a large gateway on the left to enter, and inside I could see three tiled rooftops on the top of three tiny raised shrines of brown and white.

“The Magatama is in the center one,” Tomo whispered.

I was nauseous, ready for someone to grab me and deport me back to New York. Any minute now we’d trigger some kind of alarm. Maybe we’d already set off a silent alarm.

“You okay?” Tomo asked quietly.

“Don’t they have cameras all over the place?” I said. “It’s the Imperial Palace, for god’s sake. There’s no way they don’t know we’re here.”

Tomo pointed toward the wall of the Three Sanctuaries. “There,” he said, and my eyes widened. A security camera. Three of them, in fact, on this side alone. I recoiled, the panic roiling in my stomach. We would be arrested. “We’re too far from the tour group to claim being lost idiots now.”

Tomo grinned, his expression dark. “We could say we snuck off to make out.”

“And just happened to fall into the courtyard of the shrines? Unlikely.”

He lifted his hand into the air, like he was reaching for the cameras. He left his hand outstretched for what seemed like ages. “What are you doing?”

His arm began to shake with the strain, his eyes closed as he concentrated. I heard whispers gathering on the wind, the sound of the ink swirling around us. I looked at the wall of the Three Sanctuaries. The security cameras dripped with ink, each of them completely coated.

“There,” Tomo said, rising to his feet and walking toward the wall.

I stared. I’d seen the ink write on him before, give him wings or shinai swords or scars that bled ink, but I’d never seen him use it
on
something. His drawings always attacked him; maybe the ink would make the cameras focus on us or something?

He broke from the trees, and I hesitated, waiting for something horrible to happen. But nothing did, and so I followed him toward the gateway.

“The security guard who checks the cameras will notice something wrong,” I said.

“Of course he will,” Tomo said. “So we need to be quick. Come on.” He took hold of my wrist and we raced to the gateway. The doors were locked, but Tomo rested his fingers on the cool brass plate. Ink streamed from inside the lock, pouring down the wooden door. I heard the lock slide under the pressure. Tomohiro pressed the door open, stepping through.

I looked around, waiting to hear the footsteps of guards approaching, of alarms wailing. Nothing. “Something’s not right,” I said. “This is too easy.” But Tomo didn’t hear me, already walking across the courtyard toward the shrines.

The ink was spreading in wings on his back, dripping down his coat and swirling around him like a feathered cape. He looked like a giant raven, the feathers lifting as if attached to his arms. Streams of ink dripped off the feathers and lifted into the air, hanging in gravity-defying ribbons around the courtyard. I’d seen them like this once before, suspended around Jun when he’d played his cello.

This wasn’t Tomo. It couldn’t be. He didn’t have such control over the ink, which meant Tsukiyomi must be taking over.

The shrines looked like tiny houses on wooden stilts. Tomo walked up the wooden steps to the central one, swinging himself over the ornamental fence around the edge. He tried to slide the door of the shrine open, but it wouldn’t budge. There was no keyhole to flood with ink, no window to squeeze into. After we’d come all this way... I couldn’t see a way in.

“No,” Tomo said, running his hands along the door frame. “There must be a way.”

“I think the only way in is breaking down the door,” I said.

Tomo shook his head. “That would be stupid.”

“Says the boy who just broke into the palace of the
goddamned emperor
.”

“Not the palace,” he protested. “The Three Palace Sanctuaries. And we can’t break anything, or we’ll end up on the news.” Tomo pressed his forehead against the door, his palms against the wooden beams of the little white huts. His copper spikes crumpled against the wall as he breathed in and out; his feathered wings continually dripped down and swirled back up like a reverse slow-motion waterfall lifting into the air. It creeped me out to see it collect like that, saturated around him. He had to be on the edge of control.

“We’re running out of time,” I said. “The door’s locked tight, Tomo. What are we going to do now?”

A smile spread across his face, a dark and delighted smile. I shivered.

“We’ll make a new door,” he said. He reached behind himself and plucked a feather from his shaping and reshaping wings. The ink rushed in to fill the hole the feather left like a wave of dark blood. The plucked quill melted in Tomo’s palm as he crouched beside the doorway, rubbing the ink against the base of the floor.

“Graffiti is your big plan?” I said. But he didn’t listen. He traced the line up the side of the building and arced it over his head, his fingertips tracing back down to the floorboards.

A door. He was painting a door of ink.

Tomo pressed his palms against the surface of the door, and it opened soundlessly into the shrine.

My boyfriend just walked through a door he sketched with ink.
He stepped in, and I followed, unsure what to say.

A voice on the air giggled, then burst into a childish song.
Monster, monster, where are you hiding?
it sang.
In the pit of your stomach, little girl. In the pit of your heartache. I’m hungry, little girl. What can I eat?
The voice stopped singing, and turned to a harsh whisper.
Let him eat the sword
, it said viciously,
or he’ll consume the whole world.

I swatted at the air around me like the voice was a mosquito I could smack away. The ink ancestry in Tomo was reacting to the
kami
treasure. That didn’t make him a monster.

So why did I feel so afraid?

Tomo circled the altar, looking for the Magatama. It was nowhere to be found, but then again, it’s not like the priests would leave it lying on a table somewhere, right?

“Where could it be?” I whispered, my hand against the wooden beam by Tomo’s makeshift door.

“It’s hot,” Tomo said, running his hand along the altar. “Like a coal burning in the center of a fire.” He looked at the wall behind the covered table, to a large locked cabinet door. He touched the lock, the ink dripping onto the floor, and slid the doors open so hard they nearly slammed into the frames. Inside was a small torii-shaped shrine of wood and gold, pennants of white thunderbolts pulled taut across the center beam. At the foot of the miniature gateway rested a sleek black box.

Tomo put his hand on the box and closed his eyes. The ink swirling around him lit with hints of gold, like a cloak of fireflies flashing around him.

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” I said, taking a step back.

The ink curved through his copper hair and spiraled into horns on his head. He looked like an
oni
, a Japanese demon.

The box lid snapped open under his fingertips.

“Tomo, the ink.” But he wasn’t listening.

He threaded his fingers through a loop of cord, lifting the necklace slowly out of the dark velvet inside the box. The milky crescent-shaped jewel dangled back and forth on the string as he raised it up.

“Yasakani no Magatama,” Tomo whispered, and the gem lit like a match, the buttery glass radiating with a fire that licked the insides of the jewel. The light grew, the whole shrine flooding with brilliance. I closed my eyes, the stark white shining through like a flashlight in my face. The world began to rumble, the floor shaking around me.

And then, darkness.

* * *

“Katie?”

Tomo’s voice echoed in my ears as I tried to rouse myself from the darkness.

“Tomo?” I felt the grasp of his fingers as they curled around mine. I blinked over and over, the light surrounding us too bright at first to focus.

“Can you stand?” Tomo’s face was near mine, his hair tickling against my cheek. But something wasn’t right.

“Tomo,” I said. “Your hair.” Two ink-black horns spiraled through his copper hair like a strange crown. Golden beads dangled from the horns, the strings clinking together like part of a headdress. He leaned back from me and I stared at the robes adorning him, blue and purple and white draped around his body like waves of fabric. A thick golden cord tied in an elaborate knot around his waist. He looked like a prince.

His strong arms wrapped around me and pulled me up to stand.

“Where are we?” I asked. “Why are you dressed like that?”

“I think we’re inside the Magatama,” he said, and I looked at the horizon, the sky made of milky glass like a dome of crystal built around us.

“Inside?” I breathed.

A woman’s voice echoed around us. “Inside the memory of the jewel,” she said.

I’d know that voice anywhere, and so did Tomo. “Amaterasu.”

“Only the memory of her,” the voice said. “She has long since left this world for other shores.”

“But she gave this jewel to Emperor Jimmu before she left,” Tomo said.

“She did,” said the voice, radiating all around us. “The jewel bears the marks.”

“Why?” I asked. “What marks?”

The sky around us flickered, turning a deep creamy orange. “The tears of Tsukiyomi formed this jewel,” she said. “He saw Amaterasu in the sky and loved her at once, but he knew not what to give her as a gift. What could be worthy of her? She had horses and weaving looms and a mirror in which to gaze at her brilliance. He was but a pale ghost of her light—he had nothing of his own to give. And so he wept, and the tears of his poverty formed the jewel which now remembers.”

Tomo turned to look at the sky behind them, the movement causing his princely robes to whistle as they slid against each other. His skin seemed to glow in this light, everything clearer and sharper. He made a fine prince, I thought. He was more fit to rule than Jun ever could have been. I was still in jeans and a sweater; no magical transformation for me. Maybe it was his connection to Tsukiyomi that had caused the change?

“This stone was made of his tears?” Tomo asked the voice.

“It was a fine gift. It filled her heart with happiness,” the memory of Amaterasu said. “She wore it upon her breast as she crossed the sky.”

I didn’t like where this was going. I knew where it ended up.

The orange sky grew darker, a burned brown like some kind of oil painting. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Past the glass of the sky, a land of brown and white beams blurred on the horizon...was it the shrine, the real world? Was this a dream, or were we really inside the jewel?

“But then the August Ones flung Susanou down from the Heavenly Bridge,” Amaterasu’s memory said. “He saw Amaterasu, and desired her. And she feared him, for he was deeply powerful, enough to frighten the August Ones to expel him.”

The sky filled with brilliant light, returning to its creamy swirling clouds. I stepped back against Tomo and he wrapped an arm around me, the fabric hanging from his long sleeves. “To show he meant no harm, Susanou made a promise on the banks of the river. He gave Amaterasu his dagger to break, but in turn he demanded the Magatama jewel, the essence of Tsukiyomi’s love, his tears, his soul.”