A Mortal Song

by Megan Crewe

  Takeo nodded. “I haven’t heard of it, but perhaps Sage Rin will have.”

  “And he confirmed that they’re planning something for Obon. When the barriers between this world and the afterworld are thinnest. The ghosts will have more power then.”

  “And there may be even more of them,” Takeo said. “The dead often return to visit on those three nights.” He paused. “These three already had more strength than I would have expected. I thought before that the demon might be lending them power. Now I’m almost certain.”

  A chill trickled through me. “How much power must the demon have, to be able to share it with so many other spirits?”

  “More than any creature I’ve ever faced,” Takeo said grimly.

  “Do you think they meant the true Obon or one of the human dates?” I asked. People observed the holiday at different points throughout the summer.

  “The dead should know the real time as well as any,” Takeo said. “Which leaves us seven days until it begins.”

  “Seven days to stop Omori, then,” I said. “If the mountain can hold that long.”

  And the weather, and the tides, and all the other cycles the trapped kami should have been tending to. I swallowed thickly.

  We knew more than we had just five minutes ago. We knew because of me. Whatever Rin had said, whatever the truth was, I was still strong. But there was also so much more we didn’t know. And we had only a week to prepare to challenge a multitude of ghosts, a demon, and who knew what other creatures they had on their side.

  5

  I WOKE up to an unfamiliar pain. I lay still on the wooden floor in the small shrine where we’d taken shelter, adjusting to the sensation. A series of sharp pinches ran across my stomach, as if it were being jabbed by little scissors like the ones Ayame used to trim my hair. My thoughts drifted back to my last evening on the mountain, the whirlwind of washing and dressing in my rooms, the smell of the feast drifting through the halls...

  My mouth started to water as it had then, and the pain deepened.

  Oh. I was hungry. For the first time in my life, I was truly hungry.

  I sat up, and my hair slipped unhindered over my shoulders. Sometime during the night, Midori had left—to stretch her wings, to explore the shrine grounds. She had a life beyond me, after all. It shouldn’t have mattered to a kami, who could absorb nourishment from the world automatically. But a human—a human who no longer had the energy of the sacred mountain supporting her—

  To think that way, even for an instant, felt like giving up. I would not accept that Sage Rin’s story was true, not yet. I’d spent the last day and a half in nearly constant motion, fought my first real battle, and held back a multitude of fears. Maybe even a kami would feel hungry after that.

  The shrine’s guardian, an immense frog kami, was watching me from the top of the cedar altar. I picked up my birthday flute, running my fingers over the lacquered case before slinging it over my shoulder, and got to my feet. “Thank you for the night’s lodging,” I said, bowing.

  The frog blinked and lowered his head in a slight bob. A wisp of friendly ki brushed over me.

  As I stepped outside, Midori darted down to take her usual spot on my hair. My hunger pangs ceased at once. I plucked a plum from a tree and walked across the thin grass past a row of lichen-splotched stone lanterns. This small shrine, like so many of the thousands built by humans when they had thought of kami as more than fairy tales, had obviously been forgotten here on its mountainside in the high range that bordered the city. But I was glad it was here at all, with the protections strung and carved around its grounds, keeping out any malicious spirits that wandered this way.

  I stopped at the edge of the ridge that overlooked the vast city. It had been past midnight when we’d reached this final slope before Tokyo’s sprawling suburbs, and Takeo had suggested we rest and look for the girl by daylight, since she was hardly likely to welcome us if we barged in on her in the middle of the night. Then, the city had looked like a marsh of light, glowing streams winding around stalks of buildings, so bright the stars couldn’t compete. Even though it was less striking at dawn, I found it hard to glance away. Energy pulsed off the streets and high rises, so intense that wafts of it drifted over me where I stood. It wasn’t the warm caress of ki, but a cool, crackling power. And amidst it lived millions of human beings.

  And, possibly, one kami girl all that power had effortlessly hidden.

  My fingers squeezed the plum too tightly, and my thumb broke the skin. I forced myself to take a bite, and then another. The flesh was sweet but sticky sliding down my throat. A few drops of juice dripped onto my birthday robe. Since I’d been able to give myself a quick wash at a mountain spring last night, the fabric no longer clung to my skin, but in places it was more brown than blue or golden now. Still, a travel-worn kami robe was a thousand times more regal than any human clothing.

  A shudder passed through the ground under my feet. I peered toward Mt. Fuji, though the mountainside hid it from my view. My mountain lay miles distant from here, but it was far too easy to imagine the fire bubbling inside it, stirring restlessly. Wait, I pleaded silently. We’ll come as soon as we can.

  A sparrow alighted on one of the stone lanterns with a flurry of feathers. It eyed my half-eaten plum. “Are you hungry too?” I asked. I broke off a piece of the yellow flesh and held it out. The sparrow eyed me, then flitted over and snatched the bit from my fingers. It glided back to its perch, gulping the fruit down.

  A sparrow had visited me the evening I left Mt. Fuji, I remembered. Could this one know—? Could it have seen—?

  But the woods were full of sparrows. It wasn’t likely this one had followed us all this way. It didn’t know any more about what the demon—Omori—was inflicting on my parents, Ayame, and all those I’d grown up with than I did.

  Leaves rustled, and Takeo emerged from the trees beyond the shrine. His hair hung loose and damp, and his face was mottled faintly pink from a recent scrubbing. It made him look less serious, more boyish than usual. When he smiled at me, despite all the reasons I had to despair, my heart lifted.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  I wasn’t, but I inclined my head. “Yes.”

  We made ourselves invisible when we reached the first cluster of houses. The buzz of the city’s energy rose around us. It raced over my skin and reverberated into my chest. The ki inside me hummed in response, and a part of me started to believe again. It was a mistake. We would find the girl, and we’d know it really had been me all along.

  As we left the suburbs for the city proper, the buildings grew taller and shinier. The sidewalks bustled with people and the roads with cars and bicycles, engines roaring and frames rattling. Takeo’s brow furrowed as he examined the paper with Rin’s instructions. When he showed them to me, I shook my head. Not knowing the city, the names and numbers in the address meant little to either of us. The sage had managed to be obtuse after all.

  “We need a map,” I said. “Look for a store with books in the window.”

  When we found one, I borrowed an atlas of the city while the clerk’s back was turned, making it as ethereal as we were with a wisp of ki. I flipped through the pages until I spotted a name I recognized.

  “Here,” I said, pointing to it. “That’s the neighborhood Sage Rin wrote. Once we get there, I think we just follow the numbers.”

  “Now I’m glad you spent so much time rambling around in town,” Takeo said with a squeeze of my shoulder.

  We hurried through the streets toward the northwest end of the city, not far from where we’d entered. By the time we identified the location of the address Rin had given us, the sun had already started its descent through the sky. We found ourselves at a large concrete building with three scrawny maple trees out front. The summer heat radiated off the sidewalk and into us, even in our ethereal state. The smell of cooked rice was drifting from somewhere down the street. I ignored the gnawing in my stomach as we read the sign outside the building�
��s doorway.

  “A high school?” I said with a noise of anguish. How did Rin expect us to track down one girl inside this place, without even a name? All the sage’s talk about urgency, and she insisted on making everything as difficult as possible.

  “Let’s look inside,” Takeo said. We slipped through the door and swept along the empty hallways, stopping to peek through the windows in the classroom doors.

  The students sat in neat rows, wearing uniforms of stark white shirts, navy ties, and matching slacks or skirts. Some held themselves straight and attentive; others slouched in their seats, appearing more interested in their neighbors than in the teachers. None of them looked anything other than human.

  “She could have given us a classroom number at least,” I muttered as we reached the third floor. “There must be a thousand students here. How are we supposed to know which one—”

  I glanced through another window and lost my voice.

  Ah. That was how we were supposed to know.

  The girl in the middle of the second row of desks looked unusual even by human standards. Her hair, which was pulled into two wavy ponytails on either side of her head, had been bleached and dyed pale lavender. Her baggy socks bunched around her calves almost to her knees, and her shoes were painted with neon shapes that appeared to be mock lipstick prints.

  And she glowed.

  The glow seeped from the edges of her body, as if her skin couldn’t quite contain all the ki inside her. Around her, her classmates looked dull and faded. Less real.

  My throat tightened. Maybe this was why Rin had sent us here, instead of to the girl’s house or some less crowded place. Because here, seeing all the human students around her, there was no way we could deny that she was something else. That she was kami.

  And there was no reason for any kami to be here, a girl exactly my age, dressing and acting like a human, unless Rin’s story was true. Unless my parents had gone through with the switch.

  Which meant, beyond a doubt, I wasn’t kami.

  As I groped for words, Takeo touched my elbow. The familiar contact drew me from my daze.

  “We can’t burst in while the instructor is teaching,” he said softly. “When the girl leaves, we’ll take her aside. Do you know what time the classes would normally end?”

  I grasped onto that concrete question. My eyes found the clock on the classroom wall.

  “It might be different at different schools,” I said, “but in our town they finished at three thirty. If it’s the same here, we’ll have to wait a half hour.”

  “All right,” Takeo said. “That’s not so long.”

  I pulled myself away from the door. Away from the view of the girl who glowed. My restless feet carried me farther down the hall. My gaze roamed over the walls without really seeing anything, until it caught on a poster tacked to a bulletin board. I halted.

  On the poster was a photograph of the mountain—my mountain—above a spray of cherry blossoms. I stepped closer, reaching out to let my ethereal fingers trail over it. The lettering above the image said, Visit Mt. Fuji this summer! One of the clubs organizing some sort of trip, I guessed.

  Takeo came up behind me. “I can’t imagine how worried you must be for your parents,” he said.

  “I’m worried about everyone.” And I missed them. I missed the familiar halls and the familiar music that so often flowed through them, Ayame’s murmuring over my hair, Mother’s gentle arms pulling me to her.

  The last embrace she’d given me, the way Father had hugged me close, flashed through my mind. I blinked hard. Had they been thinking of me when we were together, or had they been imagining the daughter they’d given up for safe keeping? Their real daughter—the girl in that classroom over there.

  “I never knew,” I said. “I never even suspected.”

  No, that wasn’t true. I hadn’t known my parents were lying to me, but I’d worried there was something wrong. Something different about me, not quite what it should be. But at least before, I’d thought I’d known that they loved me anyway.

  I’d wondered why they’d hesitated to let me share in the kami’s responsibilities—what better reason could there be than that I’d never really been one of them? Just an inadequate human replacement they passed the time with while they waited for the day their real daughter could return to them.

  “They wouldn’t have wanted anyone to suspect,” Takeo said. “It must have hurt them to lie to you, Sora. They were proud of you—I could see it.”

  It couldn’t have hurt them as much as the truth was hurting me. What had they been proud of me for, anyway—using power that hadn’t actually been mine?

  “I know they did it for the mountain,” I said. “I hope it was enough.”

  “We will save the mountain,” Takeo said. “If the sage says this girl can defeat the demon, it must be possible. And today... you can take the life you were supposed to.”

  Today? The thought of Takeo leaving me behind hit me with a jolt of panic. “No,” I said. “I—I don’t want it.”

  I wanted the bed where I’d slept for the last seventeen years. I wanted the painted silk screens and the scrolls of poetry. I wanted the hum of the mountain’s ki close around me.

  I wanted, I realized as the ache inside me deepened, to truly make Mother and Father proud. For them to smile at me because of me and not who I stood in place of. Whatever their true feelings were, I’d loved them. Even now, it meant far more to me to see them rescued and safe again than to set eyes on the human parents I’d never met.

  A sudden hope whispered in the back of my mind. Maybe if I proved myself, they’d take me back. The mountain had lent me power once—it might again. With its help and Midori’s, I could protect the palace and help with our duties as I’d always intended to. If they’d have me, it would be far better to live as a fake kami than not a kami at all.

  “Sora...” Takeo started.

  “I’ll stay with you,” I said. “Sage Rin said the most important thing is that the girl is properly prepared. We can teach her faster with three of us. And I can still fight—I can help, at least a little, if we run into more ghosts while we’re getting the Imperial treasures and when we go to take back the mountain.”

  Takeo was silent for a minute. My shoulders tensed as I waited for his answer.

  “If that’s what you feel is best,” he said finally, “I’ll support you.”

  “You know you don’t have to,” I said. “If I’m not really—” It was still hard to say it. “You don’t owe me anything.”

  He turned me toward him and brushed a strand of hair back from my cheek. His jaw was set as firmly as I’d ever seen it.

  “I swore to serve my rulers’ daughter,” he said. “But I also swore to serve you, Sora. It would take more than a legion of ghosts to change that.”

  I stared at him, the tears that had threatened receding. There was a fervor in his eyes I’d never seen before. Could he possibly mean—

  A bell pealed overhead. I flinched, and the moment was gone. We hustled to the classroom.

  The teacher pushed open the door. Inside, the students had sprung up, grabbing their bags and collecting in groups. The largest group had congregated around the girl with the lavender ponytails. Mostly boys. Her glow might have been invisible to those without kami sight, but clearly they could sense it.

  “Hey, Ikeda,” one said, “we’re going for karaoke tonight. Wanna come?”

  “Ikeda, I grabbed you the last of those curry buns you like, if you want a snack,” another announced.

  “Did you finish the history assignment, Ikeda? I can help you.”

  “Maybe,” the girl said, addressing them in turn as a smile lit up her heart-shaped face. “Thanks! I’m already done.”

  Then a tall, stern boy with hair cut so short it couldn’t help standing up from his head strode into the room, and the girl went from smiling to beaming.

  “Haru!” she said, throwing her arms around him. She kissed him quickly, and his se
rious expression broke with a grin.

  “Are these guys bothering you, Chiyo?” he said, and turned to the other boys. “Scram.”

  The others scowled and grumbled but sidled away. Haru slung a proprietary arm across Chiyo’s shoulder. He gazed down at her as they wandered toward us, her bright voice filling the air.

  “Mrs. Kaneda forgot to give us our quiz—can you believe it? I’m never going to argue with more time to study. Oh, we should go to the store now! I want to get that phone case for you.”

  Her voice drifted away as she and her boyfriend headed toward the stairwell. Takeo nudged me forward, and we followed them, my heart thudding in a slow, painful rhythm.

  It was time to confront the girl my life really belonged to.

  6

  WE GOT our chance on the second floor, where Haru ducked into a classroom to talk to a teacher. The few other students lingering in the hallway were gathered around another bulletin board, their backs to us, and Chiyo was momentarily alone. Takeo shifted into corporeal form. My body balked, but I curled my fingers into my palms and made myself follow suit.

  “Miss Ikeda,” I said, and she spun around. Her eyes went wide as she took in my clothing.

  “Wow,” she said. “Is there a special event going on no one told me about?” Her gaze slid past me to Takeo. “And you’re all dressed up too. So cool! Did you bring the costumes from home? I didn’t think the drama club had anything that nice.”

  My mouth opened, but nothing came out. Standing there in front of her, my feet now solid on the floor, the reality of the moment crashed over me along with her effervescent enthusiasm.

  The moment we told her who we were, who she was, I would truly lose everything.

  Thankfully, Takeo’s world was not falling apart. “Excuse our intrusion,” he said, courteous as always. “I am Takeo and this is Sora, and there’s something incredibly important that we need to discuss with you. Is there a place we can talk alone?”