A Mortal Song

by Megan Crewe

  When Midori and I hurried back into Chiyo’s bedroom, I found she’d changed as well, from her school uniform into a yellow tank top and flower-print shorts. She was standing by the window, clutching the cord for the shade.

  “Look!” she whispered, waving me over.

  My heart started to thud. Had we been found out already? I joined her at the window, but I didn’t understand what she’d wanted me to see. The sidewalks and road were still and empty. Then a shiver of movement near the end of the block caught my gaze.

  A funnel of wind, slim as a tree trunk and nearly as tall, was whirling beside one of the telephone poles. It veered away, zigzagging across the street, carrying dust and leaves and crumpled wrappers with it. They whipped around and around, so fast they blurred before my eyes.

  “I was just going to close the shade, and I saw it,” Chiyo said. “Is that... dangerous?” She sounded more curious than scared.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. Nothing about it looked magical, but it wasn’t exactly natural either. A chill crept over my skin. The troubles were already beginning. “One of our duties is to oversee the weather,” I went on. “A lot of kami were visiting the palace when the demon attacked—and now they’re trapped there, unable to fulfill their usual responsibilities. Some of them would have worked with the wind. There aren’t enough kami still free to keep control over it.”

  “So the wind is getting a little wild?” Chiyo said, and I nodded. “I guess it’s not so bad.”

  “It’ll get worse, not better, if we don’t rescue the mountain,” I said.

  “Can you stop it?” Chiyo asked, lifting her chin toward the funnel, and I thought I heard a faint pleading note under her good cheer. She believed I was kami too. We hadn’t told her otherwise, and Midori’s lent ki would be giving me a glow that was more than human. I didn’t see any point in complicating matters by revealing I’d lied to the Ikedas.

  Maybe, with Midori, I had enough power to calm the whirlwind. I just wasn’t sure how to. Because Mother and Father had been waiting for Chiyo to come, so they could teach her.

  I drew in a breath, groping for an excuse, and outside the window the whirlwind shuddered and scattered. “Wow!” Chiyo said with a laugh. “You didn’t even move.”

  It hadn’t been me, just the randomness of the wind. She should have been able to sense that—but at the same time I was desperately glad for that flash of admiration. My stomach knotted.

  I scanned the street once more. “Are the ghosts you talked about really looking for us?” Chiyo asked. Her back tensed. “You don’t think, if they realized we’re here— Would they hurt Mom and Dad?”

  “They shouldn’t know anything about you,” I told her. “As long as we stay where no one can happen to see you, we’ll all be fine.” We had no reason to believe that Omori had sent his ghosts here—but not knowing what his plans were, we had no reason to assume he hadn’t. The others we’d run into had been patrolling far from Mt. Fuji.

  “The computer,” I said, leaving the window. “Let’s see what we can find out.”

  Chiyo plopped down at her desk. “Okay,” she said. “What are we looking for?”

  I sat down on the edge of her bed where I could see the screen. “Omori,” I said. “We think that’s the name of the demon.”

  “Oooh,” Chiyo said in a spooky tone and typed in the name and the characters for “demon.” She scrolled through the results, clicking open a few windows. “Hmmm. It looks like there was some warrior guy named Omori got tricked by a lady demon, way back. Do you think that’s related?”

  “I don’t know.” It didn’t make sense for a man who’d fought demons to now be helping one, but I supposed we couldn’t know for sure. “Can you print that information off?”

  Chiyo nodded, and the printer beneath the desk hummed. She flipped through several more pages of results and pursed her lips. “It’s all just that one story.”

  “Try looking for just ‘Omori’?” I suggested.

  Her fingers clattered over the keys, and a new list of results sprang up. “Hmmm,” she said, “Omori station, another Omori station, some company named Omori... Hey! Check out this guy named Omori here in Tokyo—he’s a businessman, some big exec. And look at this!”

  She pushed away from the computer so I had a better view of the window she’d opened. It held a grainy photograph of a slender middle-aged man with short dark hair, shaking hands with an older man in a formal robe. The caption read, Kenta Omori greets Yamaguchi boss Ryo Shimura.

  “What’s Yamaguchi?” I asked.

  “Oh, right, I guess you wouldn’t know,” Chiyo said. “They’re yakuza—criminal underworld people? Gangsters. Dragon tattoos and chopped-off fingers. Yamaguchi’s one of the top gangs. I wonder if this Omori guy was mixed up with them.”

  “One of the ghosts we encountered was missing part of his finger,” I said, leaning against the bedpost to peer at the screen. I’d seen a tattoo on that other one’s back too. “What else can you find about Kenta Omori?”

  Chiyo followed a few more links, skimming the articles. “Yikes!” she said. “He was murdered. Shot. Four years ago. If that’s how he went, I bet he was yakuza. They’re not giving many details—the newspapers are really cautious talking about the gangs... Hey, here’s a better picture.”

  The photograph she’d found showed a younger version of the same man. He was just as slender, his hair trimmed as neatly, but his mouth was curved in a broad smile I wouldn’t have imagined him making after seeing the first picture. He stood with a relaxed confidence, as if he knew he was going to get things done and no one could change that. It was a few seconds before I could tear my eyes from his face to look at the other people in the picture.

  Kenta Omori had one arm around the waist of a woman I assumed was his wife. She looked delicate and graceful in her demure suit, her expression shy but pleased. She cradled an infant in a frilly dress against her chest. Another child, a little boy, grinned where he stood at his father’s side.

  I stared at them. Could our demon really have once been this man? But if he’d been involved with the gangs Chiyo had talked about, he’d been a criminal too—maybe become one after this picture was taken. The characteristics of the ghosts I’d noticed might be a coincidence, or he might be recruiting his former colleagues from among the dead.

  “Chiyo!” Mrs. Ikeda’s voice carried from downstairs. “Dinner is ready.”

  “We can’t know for sure who we’re dealing with yet,” I said quickly. “Let’s print off some articles about him too.” I could scour them for more clues later, and we could show what we’d found to Sage Rin.

  Chiyo tapped a few keys. “I wouldn’t have thought kami would know much about computers,” she remarked.

  “We keep an eye on humans,” I said, thinking of Mr. Nagamoto again. Of magma surging down the mountain toward his little house, if we didn’t make it back in time.

  Paper emerged from the printer, heavy with ink. Chiyo passed the pages to me. Kenta Omori’s amused face smiled up at me for an instant before I folded it away and slid it into my pocket.

  I might have wanted to skip dinner and rush straight into training if my human body hadn’t betrayed me. Even with Midori perched in my hair, when we reached the dining table and the smells of rice and fried pork wafted over me, a stab of hunger cut through my belly. I hadn’t eaten since the plum that morning, but obviously now, away from the mountain, my body needed much more sustenance than I was used to. I had to take some of the burden off of Midori. My hands trembled as I waited for the others to assemble so we could start the meal.

  I’d eaten feasts at the palace, but no food had ever tasted as rich as that simple dinner. In spite of the screaming of my stomach, I forced myself to chew slowly, to reach my chopsticks toward each new bite gingerly, so as not to give myself away. Still it seemed the pork cutlets, rice, and miso soup disappeared far too fast. To my immense gratitude, Mrs. Ikeda was determined to prove how welcoming she could be. She brough
t out salad and fish cakes and pickled vegetables. Keiji returned, wearing a blue T-shirt and brown cargo pants in place of his school uniform and carrying a bulging messenger bag, in time to take part in the small dessert of strawberry ice cream. As I swallowed the last spoonful, my hunger finally retreated.

  After he’d helped clear the table, Mr. Ikeda turned to Takeo.

  “Can you spare us just a few minutes more with Chiyo?” he asked. Takeo nodded briefly, and the older man turned to his adoptive daughter. “Would you play for our guests, just a song or two?” he said. “It’d be nice to hear you one more time before you go.”

  Chiyo flopped down on the couch. “It’s probably my last night here. I’m not going to spend it showing how badly I can mangle the piano keys. That’d be painful for everyone.”

  His face fell, and an impulse to make it brighten, to do what she wouldn’t, lit inside me. A little music would raise our spirits before we began the evening’s work. I lifted my flute case.

  “I can play something, if you’d like to hear one of the songs from the mountain.”

  “Yeah, let’s hear what kami music sounds like!” Chiyo said. I opened the case, and when I raised my head, the instrument in my hands, everyone had crowded into the living room around Chiyo: the Ikedas, Keiji, Takeo. They were all watching me.

  I hesitated. Then Takeo smiled. He looked almost like a stranger in the buttoned shirt and linen slacks Chiyo’s father had lent him, but he’d kept his ceremonial belt around his waist and his bow and quiver at his shoulder, and I’d have known that smile anywhere. My fingers found the holes in the polished bamboo as if they belonged there. I brought the flute to my lips.

  I meant to play one of the joyful tunes we would have danced to during my birthday celebration. But as I inhaled deep into my lungs, my fingers changed my mind for me. They slipped into the low, gentle melody of the first song I’d learned as a child.

  It was the song Mother used to sing to me when I was young and too restless to fall asleep, and it had always soothed me then. Now, the notes floating out into the air sounded only sad. A soft lilting sorrow that swelled inside me and spilled on my breath into the flute. I thought of Mother sitting beside my bed. Of Father, beaming as he handed me this birthday present. And suddenly the sadness was welling up in my eyes, catching in my throat.

  I jerked the flute from my mouth, blinking. “I’m sorry,” I said, as evenly as I could manage. “I need to go outside for a minute.” And then I dashed, half-blind, for the front hall.

  Takeo started after me. He reached for me when I stopped to fumble with the door handle, but I pushed his hand away. “No,” I said. “I just need a moment alone. I’ll be all right. You—you find the best room for the training.”

  I ducked outside, hearing him through the door making some excuse to the others. Maybe telling them that I was missing the kami friends and family we’d left behind on Mt. Fuji, that I was afraid of what would become of them if we didn’t return soon. But as I brought my hand to my lips just in time to smother a sob, I knew that wasn’t the whole truth. That the answer was much more selfish.

  As much as I was frightened for them, in that moment I was even more afraid of what would become of me.

  9

  I’D JUST CONVINCED the tears to retreat and the hitch to leave my breath when I heard the doorknob turn behind me. It couldn’t be Takeo—he’d never intrude when I’d told him I wanted to be alone. I stepped to the side of the tiny concrete porch, clutching the flute. The evening air shifted around me, thick and tinged with ozone: the smell of a brewing thunderstorm.

  Keiji poked his head through the doorway. When he saw me, he seemed to decide it was safe to come out. He closed the door behind him, scooted past me, and hopped up to sit on top of the gate. The heels of his sneakers tapped the metal bars.

  “You know, if I were the one who just found out I had magical powers, I’d be a lot more grateful to hear it than Chiyo is,” he said in his offhand way. “I don’t suppose you could tell me I’ve got some secret ability I never knew about too?”

  My fears were still twisted tight inside me, but somehow the arch of his eyebrows and the playfulness of his tone made me smile.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Not as far as I know.”

  “Oh well. I guess I’ve been doing all right as a regular human being so far.”

  He grinned back at me, in a slow, easy way that lit up his coppery eyes despite the dusk falling around us. As if he really was happy being what—who—he was.

  “So what’s up with you and what’s-his-name?” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The tall guy with the sword. Are you two a couple or something?”

  To my annoyance, I blushed. It didn’t seem fair that I could feel scared and amused, irritated and embarrassed, all at once. At least when I’d thought I was kami I’d been able to pretend I had a nature that was somewhat consistent.

  “No,” I said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “No offense intended,” Keiji said. “I just wondered.”

  Something Chiyo had said came back to me. She’d asked Keiji if he was turning into one of her “admirers.” He had been paying enough attention to her to notice her talking to us. “Isn’t it Chiyo’s boyfriend you should be worried about?” I said.

  He shrugged, bumping his legs against the gate. “He assumes every guy who hangs around her must be trying to date her. Untrue.”

  “You had some other reason for watching her?”

  “A better one,” he said. “I knew there was something going on with her. She’s cute, I guess, but not so pretty it makes sense that half the boys in school would be chasing after her. And the teachers would never let anyone else get away with hair that wild. And she never seems fazed by anything, like she just floats above bad grades and arguments and... there had to be more going on with her than met the eye, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I said quietly. I did.

  Keiji fell back into his previous self-mocking tone. “So I was trying to figure it out. I’d already eliminated a whole lot of possibilities—vampire, government cyborg experiment, mystical princess from another dimension. I’ll admit, I hadn’t thought of kami.”

  “You seem to be taking it pretty calmly,” I remarked.

  He paused. “Like I said before, I’ve done a lot of reading into the supernatural. And if you keep your eyes open, you see things that can’t always be explained. It’s nice to know I wasn’t just imagining all that. And it’s pretty hard to argue with the demonstrations you and your sword-wielding friend have given.” His grin returned.

  My sword-wielding friend might have already started Chiyo’s training. I glanced toward the door. “I—”

  “So, I guess you lived on Mt. Fuji?” Keiji said before I could excuse myself.

  “Yes. All my life.”

  “That’s, what, like a hundred years? Do kami get old?”

  “Seventeen,” I said. “And they do. Just slowly.”

  “Seventeen,” Keiji repeated. “So if Chiyo’s so powerful because she’s kami, how did those ghosts manage to defeat all the kami who were already on the mountain?”

  I stiffened. “They had a demon leading them,” I said. “Takeo thinks it was lending them power. And there were many more of them than there were of us.”

  The truth was, though, I didn’t know exactly how the ghosts had overwhelmed the palace. The mountain had been our safe haven for uncountable centuries. The demon couldn’t have more energy than all the kami put together. If it had only been a matter of numbers, the kami would have gotten the upper hand as soon as the ghosts exhausted their weaker ki. There had to be something more.

  “And Chiyo’s the most powerful of any of us,” I finished. “And she’ll have the sacred treasures.”

  Keiji leaned forward, and the glow of the lamp over the doorway reflected off his glasses. “So it’s really all on her,” he said. His smile fell. “Just how messed up is the world going to get if she can’
t get rid of them?”

  “She can,” I said, wishing I completely believed it myself. A vision is not a guarantee. “But while we’re preparing... The rhythms of the natural world have already been disrupted. So many of the kami who helped keep it in order are trapped. It’s too much for those who are left. The weather, the tides, the earth, the volcano in Mt. Fuji... but we’ll free the mountain before the situation worsens too far.” I hope.

  “Why did this demon and a bunch of ghosts come after the kami anyway?” Keiji said. “I don’t remember ever reading about ghosts getting together to fight kami. I’ll check my books just in case, but it can’t be that common, anyway.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “They never bothered us before.” The information Chiyo and I had found about possible Omoris hadn’t offered any clue to that either. It still didn’t make sense to me.

  “None of you had, like, pissed off some ghosts recently or something? There has to be a reason, right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, my frustration slipping out before I could catch it.

  “Sorry,” Keiji said, his voice softening. “I’m just trying to understand. From the stories that have been recorded, however much truth is in them, it sounds like ghosts are pretty big on revenge. And demons—take the meanest person you can imagine doing the most horrible selfish things, and that’s who’ll turn into one. The more you can tell me, the more I might be able to figure out what’s going on. How to stop them.”

  “So... a person can turn into a demon?” I said. I had a vague sense that I had heard the idea in a tale somewhere, but we hadn’t talked about demons much on the mountain. At least, no one had with me. I’d thought of them as beings like kami or ogres, who simply came into existence as they were from the start.

  “I don’t know how common that is,” Keiji admitted. “And maybe those myths aren’t true at all. But there’s more than one story where something happens around a person’s death that makes them so incredibly angry or vengeful they become consumed by the emotion and it transforms them. Did it seem like this demon was created that way?”