Eight Million Gods-eARC

by Wen Spencer

  Nikki blew on her chicken to cool it down. “In the ninth century, something like the black plague hit Japan along with several earthquakes and tsunamis. It was decided that evil spirits were the cause, and the Emperor created a ceremony to beg Susanoo for help. He sent an envoy to the Yasaka Shrine to arrange that portable shrines holding the kama shintai be carried to the palace. In the meantime, he had sixty-six spears erected around a pond at the palace gardens.

  “Jesus,” Miriam muttered. “This isn’t going to be needle in a haystack, but a needle in a pile of pins.”

  “Why sixty-six spears?” Pixii said.

  “Because at the time, there were sixty-six provinces in Japan. When the shrines arrived at the garden, the spears were dipped into the pond. The basic idea is that a spear represented a particular province, so as that spear was cleansed, the corresponding area was rid of evil spirits.”

  “Did it work?”

  A week ago, she would have laughed at the idea of it “working.” She had thought it was a successful publicity stunt and nothing more. “Well enough that they’ve been holding the festival for a thousand years.”

  “And you know all this because its part of your book?” Pixii asked.

  “Yes,” Nikki said. “The thing is that the festival isn’t completely the same. About six hundred years later, one of the shoguns stopped the ritual with the sixty-six spears, but the Yamaboko Junko continued.”

  “So what is Yamaboko Junko?” Pixii said.

  “It’s the parade with the floats,” Miriam said.

  “Oh!” Pixii rolled her eyes. “D’oh! Yes, I watched it last year. The carts are amazing.”

  Nikki finished her chicken and glanced around for someplace to throw the stick away. Miriam pointed out an overflowing cardboard box between two food booths.

  Nikki licked her fingers clean of the BBQ sauce. “The cart at the head of the parade is the Naginata Hoko—the spear float.”

  Pixii frowned. “So, the heavenly jeweled spear might be at the shrine or on the float or could have been one of the sixty-six spears that disappeared four or five hundred years ago?”

  Nikki shrugged. “Or it’s somewhere else entirely. It’s a wild guess that Iwanaga Hime will find it here in Kyoto—if she hasn’t found it already.”

  They reached the shrine as night fell. By then they had stopped for chilled pickled cucumbers on a stick and grilled corn dipped in soy sauce.

  “If we’re running on empty, then our blood sugar will drop.” Pixii rationalized out the delays. “And then we’ll get stupid. Oh! Candied grapes! You’ve got to try them.”

  The shrine was full of pools of bright lights and deep shadows. More little stands lined the walkway into the shrine. Nikki wasn’t aware at first that they’d crossed over into holy grounds until Atsumori took hold of her hand.

  “Oh.” She glanced behind her and saw that, yes, there was a torii marking the entrance to the shrine.

  “There are many gods here tonight, on the eve of this festival.” Atsumori tightened his hold on her hand. “The air trembles with their presence. You should be careful.”

  “Iwanaga Hime?”

  “Hush.” Atsumori waved her to silence. “To say a god’s name aloud is to call their attention to you. Tomorrow, all those enshrined here will be escorted through the city. They have been awakened and readied for their journey.”

  He meant Susanoo, his wife, and children, who were all enshrined at Yasaka.

  “Maybe we should have come up with code names,” Nikki said.

  “So on top of everything else, we’ve got—” Miriam caught herself before saying Susanoo’s name aloud. “The locals to worry about?” She sighed. “Code speak it is.”

  “I don’t suppose asking where—it—is would be smart.” Pixii had gotten a chocolate-covered banana while Nikki wasn’t paying attention. “It would be like accusing—him—of stealing—it.”

  They all nodded—that seemed particularly unwise.

  At the foot of the hills surrounding Kyoto, the shrine’s grounds sloped gently upwards into woods. Trees screened off the city, and it suddenly felt like Yamauchi’s mountain—as if they’d stumbled into a god’s private pocket world. The buildings were all frame and stucco, freshly whitewashed and trimmed in brilliant orange. Details of the molding in the eaves were all done in gold leaf that shone in spotlights, seeming to be islands of tranquility in a sea of darkness.

  The kaguraden was lit up by hundreds of paper lanterns, strung into three tiers around the roof of the open stage. Only as they drew close, and the crowds parted, did Nikki realize that the mikoshi were out for display on the dance floor. The three portable shrines were elaborate gold-leaf miniature houses with little bell turrets, domed roofs and festooned with red tassels. A stylized phoenix crowned the mikoshi, tail spread like a peacock’s to make a sunburst in gold. Tomorrow after the parade, the three mikoshi would be taken through the town, giving the gods a tour of the city. By now, surely Susanoo, his wife, Kushinada, and his sons were enshrined in the little golden shrines. She couldn’t tell them apart; they looked identical to her. The centermost one seemed like it should be the one that would hold the most honored position.

  “Are they home?” she whispered to Atsumori.

  “Depends on your definition of home. This is their shrine.”

  He meant the entire shrine, not just the tiny portable ones.

  “Oh.” She scanned the courtyard. When Atsumori had said that there were gods present, she had thought he meant in a less active method than out walking around. There was a line of people at each of the pull-ropes to ring the prayer bells. There were children darting through the crowds, intent on their own missions. The vendors shouted their wares as they expertly cooked their food. Noh actors were on a smaller side-stage area, in the middle of some story that involved a warrior hero and an old couple imploring him for help involving their beautiful daughter. The audience all had video cameras held up so they could capture the action.

  With a flash and a puff of smoke, the daughter disappeared. The hero picked up a huge elaborate hair comb that sat in her place and showed it off. Nikki realized that the play was Susanoo fighting the eight-headed serpent. He’d just transformed his wife into a comb to put into his hair. He wanted her to see how brave he was in battle, even though his plan was to disguise himself as her and get the serpent drunk before fighting it. The whole comb thing took the fight from clever to insanely screwball.

  Maybe we should go and come back tomorrow night, when the mikoshi are housed at the city center.

  Someone suddenly caught hold of her free hand and tugged her through the crowd.

  “Hey!” she cried and tried to pull free, but she was held fast. Then she recognized the person dragging her through the crowd. He—she was wearing a yukata instead of a schoolboy uniform and her hair was longer, but the face was the same. It was Inari. “What are you doing here?”

  Inari laughed. “Do you not know anything of what you’re meddling with?”

  “No!”

  Inari laughed again. “I have big ears, and I’ve been hearing all the trouble you’ve been stirring up. I know both of you are young, but you need to act with more caution. Do not disturb my father.”

  Nikki opened her mouth and then snapped it shut as she realized who “father” had to be. Inari meant Susanoo. They reached the great gate, and Inari surprised her by continuing down the steps to where bronze foo lions stood guard.

  “Go.” Inari pointed at a Lawson’s convenience store across the street. “Go.”

  And while she was trying to come up some reason to stay so that Miriam and Pixii could find her, Atsumori went and she found herself crossing the road.

  “Yes, yes, I know I said I would not do this, but listen to me, Nikki-chan. I did not sense the weapon within the shrine. There is nothing great or holy beyond that which resonates with those who are enshrined there—which the spear would not. There is no reason for us to stay and argue.”

  Nikki
fumed but realized that the crosswalk signal had flicked on the moment that Inari had pointed across the street, clearing the way for her. She sighed but finished walking to the other corner. There was an actual glass phone booth just a few feet from the crosswalk. Wondering if Inari had somehow magicked it there, she stalked to the phone booth.

  Miriam was keeping her phone turned off so Sato and his goons couldn’t track her with it. Luckily, Pixii was still off the radar.

  She answered her phone on the first ring. “Moshi moshi.”

  “It’s me.”

  “Where the hell did you go?”

  “I got kicked out of the shrine by a cross-dressing god.”

  There was a long pause. Then, “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, I’m fine. I’m across the street at the Lawson’s. Atsumori says . . .” Nikki paused, remembering that Pixii was still inside the shrine grounds and thus the need for code speak remained. “Atsumori says what we’re looking for isn’t there but everyone is out and about, enjoying the crowd—so you should be careful.”

  “Eeek, okay. I’ll grab SexyNinja and be there in five.”

  Nikki hung up and stared at the phone. While they were here in Kyoto, she should try to call Ananth. No. Not yet. They still hadn’t found the spear. They shouldn’t use a phone so close to Susanoo’s shrine. It would blast “we know what you’re doing” loud and clear to Sato as he intercepted the call. And certainly not right after calling Pixii.

  32

  Shrine Maiden

  Nikki went to the Lawson’s to wait for Miriam and Pixii. Apparently being across the street from a major shrine made the entire area vaguely holy—or maybe it was Kyoto in general—or maybe Atsumori was somehow god of convenience stores. Either way, Atsumori would randomly appear as she moved through the store. She tried hard to ignore him.

  The store was doing a brisk trade in drinks, reminding her that while she’d eaten she hadn’t drunk anything yet. The bottled water made her think of Leo. While fumbling through her cloth purse for money, she ended up holding on to a pen.

  She could write. Just a little bit. Just to see if he was okay. That he wasn’t thirsty.

  There was a startled squeak behind her. She turned to see a girl staring at Atsumori as he set a Weebles-Wobble doll rocking in place.

  “Stop that!” she hissed without thinking.

  The girl glanced to Nikki, and her eyes went wider with fear. She started to back away.

  Nikki looked behind to verify that no monsters were creeping up behind her. Nothing. At least that she could see. What was so scary about her? “Sumimasen.” She apologized, although she wasn’t sure for exactly what. The girl was still backing away, looking horrified.

  And then it clicked. The only group of strangers looking for her was Sato’s people. Well, Shiva and her mother—but they wouldn’t be using a teenage girl with a shrine maiden’s bowl haircut. She had the same too-pale, faintly bruised look as Simon. She had to be one the girls that Iwanaga Hime was burning through. It might even the owner of the bag.

  Nikki pointed at the girl. “Umeko Kuroki desu?”

  The squeak of fear seemed to confirm Nikki was right. Umeko dropped the bag of chips she been holding and bolted for the door.

  “No!” Nikki dashed after her.

  The poor thing was staggering before she got a dozen feet down the street from Lawson. She whimpered as Nikki caught up with her. There was an opening to a courtyard beside the store. Nikki dragged the weeping girl into the darkness.

  “I’m not going to—oh damn—Atsumori! Help.”

  “I’m trying to, but she’s more solid than I expected. She would have to invite me in.”

  Which meant probably all the girls that Iwanaga had burned out had volunteered.

  “Why?” Nikki’s horrified question came out in Atsumori’s lower pitch. “Why are you helping her?”

  “We have to!” Umeko dropped to her knees and sobbed out the words. “She came to Kirishima Shrine and talked with Konohana Sakuya Hime. She scolded her younger sister, berating her for not helping her all these years. Konohana Sakuya Hime gathered us together and said that we were to serve her older sister as if she was her. She said we were like blossoms, fated to grace the world with our beauty and then fade much too young.”

  “She gave you to her sister?” Nikki would have to have a long talk with Atsumori about family trees. Who exactly was Iwanaga’s sister? For that matter, was Susanoo really Inari’s father? Was all this nothing more than a family feud on epic proportions?

  “It is the only help that she could risk,” Umeko said. “If she did more, Amaterasu Omikami would be angered.”

  “And you went along with this?” Nikki cried.

  “I had to! My family has served Konohana Sakuya Hime for a hundred and ten generations. My mother couldn’t conceive a child, so she came to Kyoto and visited Umenomiya Shrine and prayed to Konohana Sakuya Hime for a child and stepped over Matage-ishi. That’s why I was born—because our princess blessed my mother with a child. I owe my life to Konohana Sakuya Hime.”

  “You don’t owe anyone! It’s your life. You don’t just give it away! Iwanaga is going to kill you.”

  “Because you took him away!” Umeko wailed. “She had him and she barely needed us.”

  “He wasn’t hers to take,” Nikki snapped. “She was killing him. It was just a matter of time.”

  “Give the girl to us!” Umeko caught hold of the skirt of Nikki’s yukata. “Please, kami, she only had to call your name and you stepped right into her. Let us have her in the gaijin’s place. You have your sword—you have no need of her.”

  Nikki pressed her lips tight on Atsumori’s snarl of anger. Think! The girl is off-guard and talking. What do I really need to know?

  Doubtful this girl knew where Leo was, but she might know about the spear.

  “Where’s the heavenly bejeweled spear?” Nikki asked.

  “I don’t know! We’ve been looking everywhere for it. We’ve been checking every one of his shrines. One of his priests carried his shintai from Hiromine to Kyoto in the eighteenth year of Jogan. A hundred years later, the Emperor devised the ritual of the spear. It has to be here in Kyoto!”

  Still, they were talking about a thousand years where the spear could have been shifted by anyone. Well, someone who could see it, which made the numbers fewer. Kyoto was a city full of shrines; surely it was equally full of divinely gifted people. Then again—Susanoo was probably fiercely guarding his prize.

  At least Sato and Iwanaga were at the same point as they were.

  “Go home and tell your goddess that her sister is going to destroy the world.”

  “She knows! She says nothing in the world lasts forever, not even the world itself.”

  Nikki wanted to scream in frustration and anger. This wasn’t helping Leo! With the spear still lost, he was all she could think about and yet she wasn’t getting anywhere closer to him. She wanted to know he was okay, that she hadn’t killed him with neglect.

  “We should kill her,” Atsumori said.

  “No!” Nikki snapped.

  “She will tell them . . .”

  “That we know what they’re doing. Yes, yes, but they’re already looking for us.”

  “That we are in Kyoto on Shijo-dori,” Atsumori finished. “Tanuki can track with their noses, and they cannot be that far away. We would have to fight or flee the city.”

  A sword fight in this jostling crowd of people? And if the tanuki had guns again?

  “And you can’t take her over?” Nikki asked just to be sure.

  Atsumori was silent a moment before answering. “I cannot take her over without her consent, but I believe I can make her forget this conversation, that she ever saw us.”

  “Will it hurt her?”

  “Not as much as beheading her.”

  Point taken.

  Nikki stood in the shadowed courtyard with the teenage girl sobbing at her feet. How did it all come to this? She didn’t want to hurt this
girl. Their choices were only “bad” and “worse.”

  “Make her forget,” Nikki whispered.

  It started to rain gently, as if the sky were weeping along with Umeko.

  Atsumori took the girl’s head in their hands, tipped it back, and leaned down to kiss her forehead. She smelled faintly of flowers. She was trembling within their hold, tears slipping hotly over their fingers. Nikki closed her eyes, not wanting to see Umeko’s fear. She felt her lips touch the shrine maiden’s feverish dry skin.

  Umeko jerked and gave a quiet high whine. Nikki whimpered in sympathy. The trembling became shaking. And then the girl gasped—more from surprise than pain—and went limp.

  They eased her onto the ground. Atsumori tried to turn away, but Nikki forced them to stay and check her pulse. It beat strong at the column of her neck.

  “She will awake momentarily,” Atsumori whispered. “We must be away quickly.”

  She found Miriam and Pixii at the Lawson’s. She was trying to keep her face neutral, but they both hugged her tight without a word.

  “We need to get away from here, now,” she said.

  They didn’t ask questions. They nodded and they went.

  33

  Naginata Hoko

  A mile down Shijo-dori, across the shallow Gion River, and in the heart of Kyoto center, they found the Naginata Hoko. It sat at the intersection of Shijo-dori and Karasuma-dori, a few blocks from where the parade would officially start in the morning. It was a three-story-tall wooden cart. The black wooden wheels alone were taller than Nikki. Painted bright red, it was hung with rich colorful tapestries showing kirin galloping through clouds. Tucked up under a peaked roof, a dozen musicians clad in white and blue yukata’s perched on the edge of the cart, their backs to the crowd. They were playing chimes along with the accompaniment of drums and a shrill flute. There were ribbons attached to their instruments that trailed down over the sides of the float to large bells and brilliant-colored tassels that jumped and leaped like fish on a line with every bright chime of their instruments.