by Dani Hoots
“Chikashige-sama, I came to talk to you about some important information that I bring to each clan leader from Izumo,” Akikumo explained. I froze when I heard the word Izumo. It was the location that all the gods traveled to in the tenth month and where Okuninushi resided. He was the kami of nation building, farming, business, and medicine. He was an important god for humans, but he was also the ruler of yokai, spirits, and all things unseen to the humans.
I knew Akikumo attended the festival in Izumo each year with the rest of the gods, but he never mentioned being given information to pass along. He kept a lot to himself, however, when it came to why he traveled and what he did. I never asked questions about it either, as it was never my place. He would tell me when he wanted to.
The human glanced around. “Let us discuss this somewhere private. Come with me.”
He led us through the street where many humans of all different social statures were walking through. I could tell by the teeth but also the dress. I said nothing but kept close to Akikumo, his clothing smelling like the familiar sandalwood and jasmine scent. Anytime I smelled it now, I felt safer and more relaxed. It was almost the scene of what I would consider home, even though we never really stopped moving around. Akikumo did have a home, but we were rarely there.
I looked over at the human, who seemed to know Akikumo. They must have met a few years back when Akikumo visited this village. He didn’t stay long, yet this human acted like he was his friend. Could humans really be that trusting?
We entered the dwelling, the scent of a spiced wood filling my nostrils. After spending time learning from Akikumo, I could tell it was cinnamon. It had been a while since I breathed in such a scent. It was rather calming but warming at the same time.
Chikashige led us to the main room and gestured to sit at the table. I followed Akikumo as he sat down in the middle of the shoin-zukuri-style room, laying his katana at his side. Chikashige sat down across from us and opened a box. Inside was a mochi.
“Please, Tsuki-san. Take one.”
I quickly grabbed it and started to munch on it as the two conversed on matters that didn’t concern me. Sweet rice and bean filled my mouth, and I felt as if I were in paradise. I wished I could find mochi more often as it was hard to make and cost a lot. Even in yokai markets it was a prized food. I guess if a human offered me this for nothing in return, I could grow to like them.
“Now.” The human put the box away. “Tell me about what you came here for.”
Akikumo nodded. “I have been sent by Okuninushi to give you a warning a century to come. There will be visitors from distant lands who will bring stories of a god that doesn’t let any other god be worshipped. He wants to make sure your faith will stay loyal to those that have protected you in the past.”
Chikashige narrowed his eyes. “People from a distant land? Like the Mongols?”
Akikumo shook his head. “Farther than that. They will come with war in mind, but they want to threaten your relationship with the kami. I have come to warn you to make sure your descendants understand that the kami created you and have protected you for generations upon generations.”
Chikashige seemed to ponder this information for a moment. “Why do you think we would turn to their god and leave our own?”
“I am just bringing you the warning that Okuninushi-sama gave me. It is up to you to figure those things out.” Akikumo stood up. “Now, I believe I owe my daughter some aburaage. I will be in the market area if you need anything else.”
The man stood up and bowed. “Thank you for your help, Akikumo-sama.”
Akikumo held out his hand and I grabbed it. With that, he led me into the marketplace where we got to enjoy some aburaage.
Chapter Seven
Present Day—Kyoto
I GLARED AT THE BOY who stood in front of me, not that he acknowledged my existence. His brown eyes were glued to his phone as he slid his thumb up and down the screen.
Seriously? Inari thought this kid would be a great priest? His hair was shaggy and bleached, which was rare to see in Japan. I examined his piercings, jeans, and button-down shirt he had open part way and shook my head. There was no way.
“Tsuki-san, are you listening?” Ichika frowned at me. Her face appeared older as she was disguising herself as a human who had served the shrine for a long while. These humans, including the shrine priest, did not know we kitsune existed. I stayed in my normal teen-appearing form, as I didn’t show my face to the shrine priests so he wouldn’t be suspicious I didn’t age. I worked and played behind the scenes.
I nodded. “Yes, Ichika-sama.”
“You are to go on this journey to the Hida Mountains for Inari-sama. This is not a vacation, nor is it a time to goof off.”
I heard Yamato snicker. I rolled my eyes. “I know.”
She handed me the map Inari had made for me to search for Akikumo. “I do not understand why Inari-sama thought you would be the most capable of handling something like this.”
Inari told no one what I would really be doing in the Hida Mountains. My guess it was to keep others from mocking me or because they thought Ichika would try to stop it as I might run away to stay with Akikumo once I found him.
Which was exactly my plan.
Then I would just send this delinquent back on a train and he could report to Ichika for me. Yes, this was going to all go according to plan. I would write an apology letter to Inari and thank them for everything. It would be the right thing to do after all this was over.
“Yamato!” The head priest Hata Mitsue came over. I tried not to laugh at his large black hat. Why did humans who serve the shrines wear those? Ichika scolded me once for stealing one off the head of a priest a few decades back. I thought the entire thing was hilarious, but she disagreed.
“Yes, tousan?” Yamato didn’t look away from his phone as he regarded his father. Ichika thought I was bad—this kid was much worse.
“You will treat these women with respect! Ichika-san has served this temple longer than you have been alive!”
Yamato seemed to smile at that comment and put his phone away finally. “I’m sorry, tousan. I will do better.”
Mitsue bowed to Ichika and me. “I am sorry for his disrespect. I promise you on this trip he will be on his best behavior.”
“As will Tsuki-san.”
Yamato and I looked straight at each other. Yeah, both of us knew that wouldn’t happen. We both grabbed our backpacks and said goodbye to our two parents. Ichika wasn’t actually my mother of course, but that was what we told Mitsue. The story was I was a shrine maiden in training for another shrine and was going on a pilgrimage to strengthen my bond with the kami of Japan. Ichika talked Mitsue into making Yamato take the same pilgrimage as she believed he could be a priest one day. Mitsue never considered his son would take over the Inari shrine, but after much convincing, he agreed to the proposal.
So I was stuck with Yamato for a while. Lucky me.
I stayed in my human disguise, with a simple blue-and-white floral yukata as it was summer, and we ventured down the mountain and into Kyoto. Never did I imagine this town could become so huge. The farther we descended the mountain, the thicker the miasma of the human city became. I started coughing, a disgusting stench filling my mouth and nose. I almost wanted to vomit from the foul odor. It was like a mix of rotting flesh, valerian root, and horseradish. My nose hairs felt as if they had been burnt and I would never smell fresh air ever again.
Yamato glanced over his phone at me. “Are you all right?”
I nodded. “I’m fine. It’s nothing someone like me can’t handle.”
“You mean a kitsune?” he asked with a slight smirk.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What makes you say I’m a kitsune.”
He laughed. “I can see through your disguise. Also, I’ve seen you around causing mischief. There are quite a few of you on the mountain, but you are the only one who doesn’t have nine tails yet. Then Ichika-san seems to be one of your chief leaders.
Her disguise matches how long she has known my father, but it doesn’t fool me.”
Inari was correct in their assessment about this boy being able to see yokai. He had never interacted with any of us, however, as I would have heard from the other kitsune about it. So even if he’d seen us, he did a great job at hiding it. Did Ichika even know?
“Why don’t you tell your father? I would think someone like him would appreciate a son who can see yokai.”
He ran his fingers through his dark blond hair. “As if. I have always been able to see yokai, even when I was a child. I used to cry to my haha and chichi, but they never believed me. That’s when I learned not to talk about it to anyone. That, and after I started getting picked on at school.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Your own parents didn’t believe you?”
“Nah. No one does. It’s not like they can see the yokai. I don’t blame them, as most people don’t even believe in all that stuff anymore.”
That made no sense to me. Did they not remember all the tales of us? This really was a human-centered world now—a world I wanted no part of.
We made it all the way down the mountain and stood at street level. I coughed some more. This miasma was so thick, how could humans even breath? This stench was sickening.
“Are you sure you are okay?” he asked again.
“I’ll be fine. We won’t be in the city for long. Besides, we are heading to the mountains where it won’t be as bad. So, which way should we start walking?”
“To the train station. Didn’t Ichika-san give you train tickets?”
I looked at him, a little confused. “What... what is a train?”
He smacked his hand on his face. “Really? Have you not left the mountain for that long?”
I nodded. “I have not left the mountain since Aki-chan dropped me off. Without him, I do not understand the point of interacting with humans.”
Yamato laughed. “Well, I can’t blame you for that. Humans do suck.” He scratched the back of his head. “Well, the train station is this way.”
I eyed him as we started forward. “Why are you agreeing to all this? You don’t seem one to take orders from anyone, whether it be your parents or a kitsune.”
He shrugged. “I suppose it’s because I want to get out of my parents’ house. And perhaps it’s because I thought traveling with a cute kitsune would be fun.”
Blushing, I folded my arms. “Baka! Don’t get cocky. I don’t like humans, and that is that.”
“And yet you blush.”
I raised a finger, and a blue flame appeared at the tip. “Do you want to survive this journey?”
He held up his hands. “I joke, I swear! I’ll stop.”
I extinguished the flame. “Good. I didn’t want to have to come up with some story for Ichika-sama. It would have been a hassle.”
“Well, I’m glad I didn’t have to put you through that much trouble.”
I rolled my eyes as we walked farther into the city.
Although I could view a lot of this city from the mountain, the area was still different from what I could ever have imagined. People occupied every street and walkway, no matter which way I looked. They didn’t even seem to glance our way as we too walked on this strange, hard ground. I glanced down to find the ground gray and solid, as if made of rock. I never remembered there being rock like this in Kyoto. What was this substance? And why did no one else take note of it?
The buildings stood a lot more crowded than I remembered them. How could humans live like this? Sure they could go up where the shrine was for nature, but we were already five minutes outside the shrine, and I couldn’t feel a connection to nature at all. My hands shook.
“Are you okay?” Yamato glanced over.
I nodded. “I’m fine.”
I didn’t like how he kept asking that. Why would a kid like him care? Although I suppose many who looked at us thought we were the same age. Little did they know that I was much, much older than anyone around us.
Looking up, I found strange strings that hung from one pole to the other. They were dark and I could not make out what purpose they served. At first I thought they were supposed to hold lanterns, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
I pointed up at them. “What are those?”
Yamato glanced up at what I was pointing at. “Those are electric wires. Never touch unless you want to see how strong your powers are.”
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. Just don’t touch them.”
What he said was confusing, but I decided not to ask any more about them. They were too ugly to wonder about any longer.
The most surprising thing was that yokai still occupied the area, yet no human seemed to respond to them. Yamato still looked down at his phone, as if purposefully ignoring them. Rumors stated that if some of these spirits realized you could see them, they would attach themselves. Or at least that was what some teens said to scare each other as they ventured up the shrine trail. I doubt many yokai wanted humans to see them. Maybe things were easier that way.
A little kappa wandered onto the sidewalk, screaming as people were almost stepping on him. Yamato sidestepped, so he didn’t hurt him. I bent down and grabbed the kappa youngling and placed him on my shoulder for the time being until we were out of the crowd.
“Thank you!” the kappa’s squeaky voice said in my ear.
“Don’t mention it.”
As we passed under a bridge and out the other side, I noticed a small pond.
“Here you go, little guy.” I placed him down on the grass. “Go in the water where your friends are.”
The kappa waved and hurried off to be with his friends. I turned back to Yamato, who was watching the kappa.
So he could see it. It was one thing to see a kitsune like me, who was powerful, but another to notice something that didn’t possess much spiritual energy yet. If he bore this much spiritual power, it was no wonder Inari wanted me to help him on the right path, whatever that was. Much time has passed since any priest could see us yokai.
“You better hurry or we will miss the train out of here and have to wait a few hours for the next one.”
My eyes widened as I hurried off after him. He was right—we barely made the train as the doors closed the moment we stepped on, which scared me. It clearly wasn’t yokai who closed them. How did they close like that? I turned to Yamato, wide-eyed.
He laughed. “You have much to learn about this world.”
Chapter Eight
Late Summer 1542 (Muromachi Period)—Nagasaki
I TRIED TO STAY UNDER the tree cover as the rain dumped down from the gray sky. My purple-and-black kimono clung to my skin. Everything I owned was wet—even the snacks I wanted to eat later. The rain had ruined them, all thanks to the fact we still found ourselves near the ocean during the late summer months. Sometimes the days would be perfect, but on a day like today, when a typhoon made its way across southern Japan, the rain never seemed to stop.
Glancing over at Akikumo, I found him sitting cross-legged with his eyes shut, his own white kimono soaked and stained from the mud and grass. He always liked to meditate during these conditions. I didn’t quite understand why he chose to but I took a seat next to him and prayed that we would find somewhere to replenish my snack bag. He owed me more snacks, as he was the one who wanted to come back down here. We were supposed to be heading north already to go back to his home in the Hida Mountains, as we hadn’t been to that region in quite a while.
We spent most of our time in the Kujuu Mountains this past century, as that was where his home was on the Kyushu Island. The area was pleasant in the winter, but I found the summers a lot hotter than I liked, and typhoons always came at the end of the season and they never seemed to end.
Currently we found ourselves traveling once again until Akikumo stopped and meditated like this. Then the rain came and soaked through everything I owned. He was a lot more patient than I, that was for sure.
Akikumo made me visit any human settlement he went into now, and I was getting used to them once again. I stayed near Akikumo, however, and didn’t interact more than I needed. So far no incidences had occurred.
As I sat there across from Akikumo, I saw his ears twitch. Although his okami ears appeared similar to my kitsune ears, he always seemed to be able to hear farther than I could. I didn’t know if it was because he meditated and listened or if the difference was something physical. He picked up noises over ten thousand steps, but I barely heard past fifty. Perhaps if I meditated like him, I one day would be able to do the same.
Closing my eyes, I decided to practice as well. I sought out anything that wasn’t rain. I listened as the water hit the ground all around us and picked out the sounds as it hit the leaves on top of the trees. Wind roared through the branches, but all those things stood close to me. I wondered how far Akikumo could hear right now.
I peeked an eye open to find him still sitting there, his ears occasionally twitching. I wagged my two tails back and forth, which would distract him from what he was listening to.
“I know you are doing that on purpose, Ketsue-chan.”
I stopped and tried not to giggle. He was so easy to get a response from. He never got mad at me either, as I saw his lips turn in a slight smile. I watched him some more since I was already bored with trying to listen. His hair was drenched and clung to his face and clothes. All I could hear was rain, and all I could smell was wet trees and dirt. I wondered when I could bug him again, or how long he would hold this for. As I was about to see how far I could move before he would say something, both his ears moved straight up and his eyes shot open.
