by Amanda Sun
Tomo’s voice was as dark as night. “I will never submit.”
“Then I’ll force you,” Jun muttered, and there was a rush of ink. I could hear it, could smell its sour metallic scent. I felt like the ink inside of me lit on fire. Blackness spread across Jun’s back, dripping down to the grass as it twisted and shaped into feathery raven-colored wings. The wings flapped back and forth, spraying his arms with inkblots that trickled down to his palms. They pooled in his hand and poured into the shape of a black kendo shinai, which he held out toward Tomo.
“You’re falling apart at the seams,” Jun said. “You’re going lose your mind to the Kami side of you, and there’ll be nothing left to do but break you.”
“You can’t stop me,” Tomo said, his voice growing deeper, louder. “I have the power of Yomi at my fingertips. You think you can stand against me?”
I caught a whisper on the wind, like a crowd of voices speaking at the same time. It had been a long time since I’d heard it last. It gathered, louder and louder. A flash of lightning lit the clearing, and the thunder rumbled closer than before. The rain started to leak from the gray layer of clouds.
“You can’t stop me,” Tomo said again, and his voice had changed. His eyes were flooding with blackness like pools of ink. I was losing him.
“Tomo,” I said. “Stop it. You’re losing control!”
“I’m sorry, Katie,” his strange voice said, his eyes on Jun as he started to circle him. His voice echoed as if many others were saying the same words, their timing just a bit off. The ink dripped into his hand until he held a shinai, too. It dripped, drop by drop, into wings on his back as black as night. “This is what I am. This is what I will always be.”
“Please,” I pleaded.
“I will rule this world,” Jun said, and his voice, too, was darker, larger. My breath caught in my throat. I’d never seen Jun lose control before, never heard him sound like that. I flashed a look at Ikeda, her face crumpled with worry, but she made no move to stop them.
Jun’s voice echoed with a tone that wasn’t his, the discord of the hundred voices whispering in my ears. “This is your last chance to earn my allegiance, Yuu Tomohiro. If you don’t yield, I will take you down.”
A sinister smile curved on Tomo’s lips. “Try it.”
Jun leaped at him, swinging the dripping shinai. Tomo’s shinai cracked against it, and the ink splattered around them.
I backed away until the sharp bark of the tree pressed against my back.
“Jun,” Ikeda finally called out. “Leave it.” He didn’t answer her. “Your wrist!”
Tomo heard her and struck at his weak wrist, but Jun pulled his arm back before he could hit it. He swung at Tomo and the shinai smacked him in the back, knocking him forward onto his knees. Ink feathers tumbled from his back and caught on the wind, lifting up into the clearing.
Jun swung his shinai to hit him again, but Tomo rolled out of the way and kicked at Jun, knocking him backward.
“Guys, cut it out!” I said. “This isn’t going to solve anything.”
“They won’t listen,” Ikeda said. “You said Yuu is descended from Susanou, right? And Jun from Amaterasu. That means the kami haven’t stopped fighting for thousands of years. The warriors change, but the fight doesn’t.”
The shinai cracked together and lightning forked through the sky, followed by a loud crash of thunder. The rain started to pour from the dark clouds, smearing the ink in trails down their faces.
Jun smashed his shinai into Tomo’s leg and he collapsed into the mud. I gasped, running forward to help him.
“Stay back!” Tomo shouted, lifting his arm up to me. Jun’s shinai slammed into his back and he fell forward into the mud, his arm still outstretched.
“Stop it!” I shouted at Jun and pulled at his shoulder.
The moment my fingers touched his shoulder, a shock went through me like I’d touched an electric fence. Every nerve in my body alerted, like I was seeing things more clearly, more sharply than before. The rain sounded louder. The echoing voices thundered in my head. The touch jolted Jun back, too.
The ink in me was awakening. I could feel it, like noticing someone who’d been sitting quietly in the corner, watching. Waiting.
Tomo was on his feet and he dropped his shinai, shoving Jun back with both hands. Jun was still stunned from the shock between us and he fell easily, thumping hard against the ground.
Tomo fell on top of him and punched him in the jaw.
Jun cried out, and the falling rain turned to ink. Lightning struck the top of Mount Kuno beside us, where Tokugawa’s shrine stood. Tomo looked up at the inky rain, and Jun took the chance to shove him off and get to his feet. He stretched out his empty hand, and the ink collected in it like a pool of dark water. It stretched out until he held two shinai, one in each hand.
“Is that it?” Jun taunted, his body hunched as he heaved in breath after breath. “I was expecting better from the Demon Son.”
“I’m not finished yet,” Tomo said, the ink stretching into a second shinai in his left hand. “You’re still breathing.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” Jun said. And then he flapped his inky wings and lifted into the sky.
Tomo bent his knees and yelled out the loudest kiai I’d ever heard. He pushed off the ground and they were both in the air suddenly, shinai cracking against each other like some kind of synchronized movie fight.
I knew there was a style of kendo that involved a shinai in each hand, but I didn’t know either of them knew how to do it. And maybe they didn’t. Maybe they were going on pure instinct. Each crack of the swords against each other caused a flash of blue lightning and a rumble of thunder. The rain drenched the clearing, leaving puddles of ink everywhere.
“They’re going to kill each other!” cried Ikeda through the bursting rain. Would they go that far?
Jun would. He had.
Oh god. We had to stop them.
Tomo’s copper hair was slicked to the sides of his head, the ink running through in streaks of black. The feathers on their backs melted and reshaped under the relentless pelting of the rain. Jun shrieked at Tomo, and Tomo yelled back, and they crashed into each other again, their wings beating hard against the sky. The grasses below me bowed over from the storm.
Susanou was the kami of storms. The harder they fought, the worse the storm would get, and I didn’t know how to stop it. The clearing was flooding, and with this much ink around, what if Tomo lost his mind? I had to stop Susanou’s blood from awakening in Tomo.
Ikeda was right. Susanou and Amaterasu would never stop fighting. I couldn’t stand against Susanou alone. I needed an ally.
Tomo’s drawings lay scattered and torn in the mud, blotted badly by the rainfall of ink. I grabbed the nearest one, but it was too smudged to be of any use. I reached for Tomo’s notebook and opened the cover. All the drawings inside flailed in the storm and ripped at the pages, trying desperately to get out. The crossed-out koi were biting each other’s tails in a chain, trying to form themselves into a long, sleek dragon. The horse we’d ridden in Toro Iseki was bolting and rearing, whinnying in terror. The wagtail beat his wings so hard that he flipped the pages of the notebook back to the beginning. I saw his sharp talons pressing through the layers of paper as I forced my way through the pages.
I grabbed one of the Amaterasu drawings and slammed the notebook shut. I reached for the pen hooked over the cover page.
Nervously, I traced the final line from my ear to my chin to make the drawing complete.
Nothing happened. As usual, my Kami power was too weak to do anything but send Tomo’s and Jun’s powers spiraling out of control. Just like I couldn’t destroy the dragon Tomo had drawn, I couldn’t complete his drawings either.
Jun slammed Tomo in the sky and he fell with a crash into the pool. Water slo
shed up in a fury of white foam and murky ink. I crumpled the drawing in my hand and raced over. I reached the edge of the water just as Tomo came up sputtering for air, his wings melted and drowned. The pond was only chest deep, but Tomo slipped and stumbled in the pool, his energy gone. His eyes had returned to normal; the human part of him was in control.
Jun hovered above like a dark angel, watching, a black shinai in each hand.
I helped Tomo out of the water and onto the shore, where he collapsed.
“He’s strong,” he panted.
“You’re stronger,” I said. “You just need stay in control.”
“Get away from him, Katie!” Jun yelled from above. “He’ll only bring more sadness and destruction.”
“Urusai!” I shouted at him. “Enough, Jun!”
He shook his head slowly. “I should’ve finished this the last time,” he said in the voice of many, holding his two shinai out at angles away from his body. “He’s an abomination. There were never meant to be Kami like him. He’s unnatural.”
Unnatural. He didn’t fit in, like me. Neither of us belonged. But that meant we could carve out a space where we belonged. I didn’t believe he was dangerous. I knew there was more there. Potential lay before us. Possibility and choice.
I grabbed Tomo’s right arm and wrapped his fingers in a fist around the pen. I placed the paper underneath, just as Jun pulled back the shinai, ready to descend on Tomo.
Jun flapped his wings once, backing up higher into the air for the assault.
Holding Tomo’s arm, I drew a shaky line connecting the sketch’s ear to her chin.
The lightning and thunder pulsed at the same moment. It boomed in my ears so loudly I screamed.
Jun plummeted from the sky and into the second pool of water, sending angry caps of foam spitting onto the grassy edges.
The rain slowed, and it took a moment for the blinding bright light to fade. Ikeda raced to the pool where Jun had fallen, reaching into the dark waters and pulling him out.
The ground started shaking violently, the sound of it like thunder.
“Earthquake,” Tomo said. “Come on!” We limped away from the giant tree in case it decided to heave itself over. Everything shook and I lost my footing, stumbling into the mud.
The earthquake stopped as Jun leaned forward on the edge of the pool. He coughed the water out of his lungs. His wings had dissolved in the water like Tomo’s, his eyes clear as he regained control.
Tomo helped me upright and then stared back at Jun. At the edge of the water, the black ink that had seeped from Jun’s back twisted upward, wriggling as it formed the body of a snake.
“Oh my god,” Tomo said suddenly. “I’m not the descendant of Susanou.”
“What?”
He slowly raised his pointed finger toward Jun. “He is.”
“Lies,” Jun barked, but Tomo shook his head and pointed toward the snake. Jun looked back, his eyes wide.
“Susanou’s messengers,” Tomo said. “It makes so much sense. You’re the one who’s dangerous, Takahashi.”
“Impossible,” Jun said. He splashed his hand through the ink, grabbing where the snake’s neck would be. He throttled the column of black until it splashed back into the water. “I have control over my powers. You don’t.”
Tomo shook his head. “I don’t think you do. I saw your eyes, heard your voice. You’re as unstable as me. You’ve trained a bit.... So what? You still have the nightmares. You still black out, don’t you? You’ve killed, Takahashi. You’ve gone to darker places than I have.”
“I was younger then,” Jun snapped. “You had your share of accidents, too.”
“The earthquake,” Tomo said, “and the fireworks that rained down. Even this ink rain—they didn’t happen until you were here.”
“So what?” Jun said. The water curved around his cheeks and dripped down his chin. “You and your dragon caused that storm in Toro Iseki. And Katie said she’s felt tremors before, just her.”
“It’s not about starting storms or tremors,” Tomo said. “You called up those snakes, like the ones Susanou fought in the myths. You want to take over Japan like he did. You’re the one who takes lineage from him, not me.”
Ikeda wrapped an arm around Jun but he shrugged it off, stumbling to his feet. “You don’t have any proof.”
“Neither do you,” Tomo said.
“My control is my proof,” Jun said, stretching his palms out to his sides. “My power is my proof. I’m an imperial descendant of Amaterasu. I will be a king, Yuu. And you are heir to nothing but the darkness and filth of Yomi.” He spat as he spoke, and I saw the distaste in his eyes, not for Yuu, but the lack of lineage. The shallow desire for a princely line.
“You’re wrong,” said a voice like mine, but I hadn’t said anything. It had come from the edge of the forest, where the slope cut away near the ropeway to Kunozan. I turned to look.
She was gleaming in the darkness like a papery ghost. The edges of her face and hair were Tomo’s jagged pen lines, the hair left white and colorless where mine was blond. It was drawn up in a tight bun with curls that draped over the top of her head. A hairpiece of white cherry blossoms dangled down in plastic chains in front of her forehead, like the hair ornament I’d worn to Abekawa Hanabi. Her eyes were doelike and gentle, but she held her head with confidence and poise, which made her innocent nature look like an act. She had that air to her like someone who knew way more than she let on.
She wore an old-fashioned kimono, not at all the kind worn to summer festivals. It looked more like the ones from seijin-shiki, the ceremony when you become an adult and don those elegant furisode kimonos with the superlong sleeves that reach to the ground. And believe me, those were some elaborate outfits. Flowers of every size and shape had been sketched into her kimono, all colorless and empty. The color of the kimono shaded from white to gray to black on the hem and sleeves. Large phoenixes and chrysanthemums tumbled across the skirt of the fabric, and a thick gray obi was tied stiffly around her waist.
The paper version of me, the drawing Tomo had made.
She was beautiful, more beautiful than I was, and elegant. I blushed as I realized she was how Tomohiro saw me, how he had sketched me. But was that true? He’d sketched in his sleep. I hoped I looked like that in his subconscious, full of strength and sure of myself.
“Katie?” Tomo said with caution, looking at the paper girl.
She stared at him with her large eyes, her pupils pools of black ink.
“Yes,” she said. “And no.”
“Masaka,” Tomo whispered, and he stepped back. “The drawing...you’re from my dream.”
“It was the only way to reach you,” she said. “It was the only way to push you toward your destiny.”
Jun’s voice rang out from beside the pools. “You drew Katie?” he shouted. “Are you an idiot? Don’t you know that could hurt her?”
I felt nauseous as I looked at her. Tomo’s drawings often gave me motion sickness, but not like this. I took in deep breaths of the cold air, trying to steady myself against the tree trunk.
“He didn’t have a choice,” said the paper girl. “I forced his hand while he slept.”
“Why?” Tomo said. The ink dripped through his copper hair and down his face like black tears.
“Because you are at war,” she said. “You don’t know who you are.”
“He’s the heir of Yomi,” Jun said. “Susanou’s descendant.”
The paper Katie looked at Jun, her eyes shining like black stones. “No. You are.”
Jun laughed darkly and stumbled forward, Ikeda holding him upright. “Of course you’d say that. You’re from Yuu’s subconscious.”
“Nevertheless,” she said, “there is no escape for you.” There was a beam of bright white light, and I had to shield my ey
es. When the light faded, she held the giant shield from the drawing. She twisted it, with effort, the whole shield groaning as it turned in the muddy grass. It wasn’t a shield at all. It was a mirror, a huge mirror lit by the same papery-white glow as the rest of the girl.
I was filled with a horrible sense of dread. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to see this.
“Don’t fear the mirror,” the paper Katie said to me. “Your ink is weak, and not yours, but it is from Amaterasu.”
But Jun was transfixed. He limped forward, stumbling. He must have hurt his leg when he hit the water. He gently pushed Ikeda away, leaving her behind as he dragged himself toward the mirror.
I could see him reflected in it as he approached. He looked the same, but his clothes in the mirror had changed. He wore a dark montsuki, a men’s kimono, the jacket long and black and flared over the white-and-gray-striped hakama skirt. A white knot was tied just above the hakama and trailed up in two white cords that vanished under the coat.
I waited, half expecting the image to grow horns or growl at him or something, but it didn’t. Nothing happened, as far as I could see.
But Jun saw something else. He gasped and fell to his knees.
“What is it?” I said. “What happened?”
The paper girl looked at me and blinked her eyes, the sound of it like crinkling paper. “He sees himself,” she said. “He’s always known the truth. He just refused to face it.”
“No,” Jun whispered, looking at his hands. His voice rose as he spoke, each word wavering. “It can’t be. It’s not true! They did this to me. They took Oyaji from me!”
“And Tomo?” I said. I couldn’t wait any longer. “He’s not descended from Susanou?”
The paper girl shook her head. “Yet there is only death for him, because of his struggle.”
“Struggle?”
“Tomohiro is from two Kami lines,” the paper girl said. “His father was descended from Amaterasu. His mother is the heir of Tsukiyomi.”
