A Mortal Song

by Megan Crewe

  Keiji’s grip tightened. “Hey!” he said. “That’s amazing. They really are there.”

  Like all living things, he had his own ki. It whispered against my palm. He didn’t have enough to use it for anything more than staying alive, unless he trained like the human warriors and monks Ayame had told me stories of. But it was there, as my own must have been even when Midori left me.

  I caught the quiver of his awe, a mix of pride and fear at finding himself here, and underneath the rest, a pang of sadness. A sort of sadness I recognized too well: loss, and desperately missing what was gone. It made me want to curl my fingers between his, as if I could somehow ease the pain. I looked over at him, wondering where his sadness came from.

  “How can you do this?” he said, turning to me in the same moment. “If you’re not even—”

  His gaze shifted to the back of my head.

  “Ah ha! The dragonfly’s a kami, isn’t it? It’s helping you.”

  I had the urge to rip back every shred of ki I’d shared with him. The closest I could manage was to pull away my hand.

  “I told you before, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  His smile went crooked. “Ack, sorry. I wasn’t trying to upset you.”

  When I didn’t answer, he dropped to his knees, as easily as if it were something he did every day. “Please forgive me,” he said, holding out his hand beseechingly. “I meant no offense.”

  “Does that usually work?” I asked, keeping my eyes fixed on the courtyard. From the corner of my vision, I saw Keiji shrug.

  “I haven’t tried it enough to draw a clear conclusion. Should I kowtow to the floor? Would that help?”

  He started to without waiting for a response, and I found myself grabbing his shoulder before his forehead touched the ground. “Stop it,” I hissed. “You look ridiculous. Chiyo can still see you, you know.”

  He glanced up at me, his expression fraught but a mischievous gleam in his eyes. “I’ll stop if you smile.”

  My lips twitched of their own accord. “Okay, that’ll do,” he said. He pulled himself to his feet and leaned back against the railing.

  “Anyway,” he said, “I already told you I’m not after Chiyo. So I can make a fool of myself for you if I want.”

  My pulse skipped in an oddly giddy way. “Well, I don’t want you to,” I said, ignoring it. “We’re trying to save the world’s most sacred mountain from an invasion of demons and yakuza ghosts and who knows what else—I don’t think foolishness is going to do us any good.”

  Keiji’s head jerked around. “Yakuza ghosts?” he said. “What does that mean?”

  “It seems the demon who’s leading the ghosts, he used to be a man, a man who was murdered.” Kenta Omori. “And he was a criminal when he was alive. Chiyo and I did some research on the computer—she called him yakuza. From what she said, some of the other ghosts might be too.” I paused. Curiosity itched at me despite myself. “If you don’t care about impressing her, then why was it so important to you to come with us?”

  “I don’t want to see the world taken over by some demon any more than you do,” he said, and hesitated, tweaking his glasses. Suddenly he looked almost as vulnerable as when he’d been sleeping on the shrine floor. “And I was kind of hoping, if I do help... Do you think maybe afterward the kami would do something for me?”

  “I—I don’t know,” I said. I’d been thinking the exact same thing for the last day, but hearing the idea come out of his mouth caught me off guard.

  “It’s not even for me,” Keiji said hastily. “I mean—it’s my brother— A couple years ago he had this, ah, accident, and now he can’t do most of the things he used to. He always looked out for me, you know? But now it’s so much harder for us to even hang out, and he’d just like things to go back to more like they were before. And I would too. If they could.”

  The loss I’d felt in him. He lowered his eyes, as if embarrassed to have said so much, but his wish was so much less selfish than mine.

  “I’d imagine Chiyo’s parents would do what they could,” I said. “They did heal Mr. Ikeda’s sister. And of course they’d want to repay you for helping Chiyo.”

  “You really think so?” he said.

  “I’m sure of it.”

  He gave me that slow grin that made my heart thump, as if we were conspirators together, and held out his hand on the railing.

  “Let me see again?” he asked, tilting his head toward the courtyard.

  I’d almost forgotten about Chiyo’s training. My emotions seemed to have scrambled into a completely different but no less tangled jumble. Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame Keiji for that, though. I laid my fingers over his. He kept watching me for a moment longer before turning to the yard. It hurt a little, for no reason I could explain, to lose his gaze.

  Takeo and Chiyo were standing side by side near the edge of the courtyard, using one of the stone lanterns as a target. At first it looked as though they were simply staring at it. Then the lantern rocked and tumbled over, and Chiyo raised her hands with a cheer.

  He was teaching her how to send out ki without moving. Shifting your energy was ten times harder when you didn’t use your limbs to direct it. And she had just toppled a stone figure that had to weigh more than she did.

  Maybe we could leave for Sage Rin’s valley as early as this afternoon. That was something to be glad for.

  “I’m starting to think it’s the ghosts who should be scared, not me,” Keiji said with a laugh, but a tremor of anxiety echoed through his palm into mine. “When we go to get the Imperial treasures—is it going to be like last night? That was pretty freaky.”

  “There’d be no reason for the demon to send ghosts to protect the treasures unless he knows about the prophecy,” I said, “and I can’t see how he could. My— Chiyo’s parents would never give that information up, and none of the other kami know.”

  “Good to hear,” he said. “Oh!” He dug into his pocket with his free hand. “I had some convenience store sweet breads in my bag. Figured you might be hungry too. You want one?”

  At the sight of the doughy circle in its plastic wrapper, my stomach growled. My hand twitched, and I caught myself just before I reached out.

  He was offering because he assumed that, like him, I needed food. Because of his guess that I was human, not kami. If I took it, I’d be proving him right.

  Suddenly the thought of keeping up the charade any longer exhausted me. What did it matter? He’d figured out the truth; he didn’t believe my evasions. He didn’t seem to have any intention of giving away my secret to Chiyo. And I was hungry.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Even though he couldn’t see anything there while my hands were otherwise occupied, Keiji surveyed the courtyard as I unwrapped and wolfed down the sugary bun. When I’d finished eating, my mouth sticky but my stomach satisfied, he turned back to me.

  “Did they tell you?” he said. “When you were growing up on the mountain—did you know you’d been switched?”

  There was a relief in being able to admit it. “No,” I said. “I found out three days ago.”

  He winced. “That’s got to suck. You think you’re the star of the show, and it turns out you’re only the understudy.”

  “Understudy?” I said.

  “Like in theater.” When my confusion didn’t fade, he went on. “I was in drama club one year. When you put on a play, you have all the actors, and then you have understudies for the biggest roles. People who learn all the lines and cues just in case the real actor gets sick or something. But they don’t usually end up doing anything more than prompting lines from the side of the stage. I had to do that a few times.”

  The awful sorrow that had overwhelmed me when I’d played my flute yesterday welled up again. “It’s not so bad,” I said, to myself as well as to him. “They needed me. They still do.”

  As my words drifted out into the air, Chiyo flashed back into her corporeal state with a shudder. “Hey,”
she said, frowning at Takeo even as her voice stayed bright. “You broke my concentration. No fair.”

  Takeo returned to the physical plane as well, his dark eyes troubled. “Omori isn’t going to care about fairness,” he said. “If we’re to leave here safely, you’ll need to be able to hold that shield up much longer. Let’s begin again—we have a lot more work to do.”

  11

  OVER THE NEXT HOUR, Takeo pierced Chiyo’s inner shield five more times. Each time it took him a little longer, but fifteen minutes was still far from enough for us to safely make the journey to Rin.

  After a while, my worries made me so restless I couldn’t stand to watch anymore. It seemed we’d found weakness in Chiyo after all: for all her power, she lacked endurance. And she was going to need an awful lot to survive a full onslaught.

  I collected more bark and burned more wood for charcoal, and sat inside the shrine building inscribing a stack of ofuda. When there was enough that each of us could carry a large sheaf of the charms, I distracted myself tending to the shrine. With each minute I spent there, its neglect pained me more. Taking on the jobs human priests were meant to do, I washed the dust from the red altar cloth, swept the floors, and rubbed clean the walls and railings. The shrine kami drifted around me, puzzled but murmuring their gratitude.

  During my work the ground trembled twice with Fuji’s anxious stirrings. By mid-afternoon, the sun had burned all the clouds from the sky and the breeze had died, leaving a sharp heat that crackled against my skin. Summer was always hot, but not like this. In the absence of so many kami, the weather was starting to echo the fire churning inside the mountain.

  Another yelp carried from the courtyard as Takeo knocked down Chiyo’s protections yet again. My fingers tensed around the cloth I was holding.

  “Do you know anything about a demon named Kenta Omori?” I asked the shrine kami. The two women shook their heads. I dug out the article Chiyo had printed off for me and read it over twice, but nothing in the folded pages gave me a better sense of the man who’d become our demon.

  Keiji had been sitting in the shade of the trees behind the building, but he must have gotten uncomfortable after the breeze had disappeared. When I came back inside, I found him bent over a book he’d propped up on his bag, three more scuffed but sturdy volumes stacked beside him. There was something arresting in the earnest dedication with which he studied the page that made me stop and watch a moment before I forced myself to interrupt.

  “Have you found out anything more about demons and ghosts?” I asked.

  His head snapped up; he clearly hadn’t heard me come in. Then his face relaxed with his usual crooked grin. “I’ve read all these before,” he said. “Just refreshing my memory and seeing if I can make any new connections. It’s definitely unusual for a demon and ghosts to be working together like this.”

  I sat down on the floor across from him. “What about just the demon?” I said. “He’s the source of most of the ghosts’ power anyway. It’d be easier to fight him if we understood why this Omori attacked Mt. Fuji at all.”

  “Well, if he started as a guy who was murdered, there’s always the revenge thing I mentioned before. You see a lot of that in the folktales.”

  “But why would a criminal businessman from Tokyo want revenge on the kami? None of us would have hurt him.”

  “Yeah.” Keiji rubbed his chin, considering his books. “Well, if demons are filled with negative emotion, I’d guess that’s got to cloud out logic. He might not be thinking straight. Or... kami have a lot of power, right? Maybe it isn’t really about Mt. Fuji—he just wants to use the power there for something else. Like revenge on the people who did hurt him.”

  “I don’t think there’s any way he could take that power,” I said. “And he’s already got lots of his own.” A chill trickled through me. “What if he’s so angry and spiteful that he wants to see the whole world fall into chaos?” His plan could be nothing more than to watch from the palace as all the kami’s work fell to ruin.

  “That’s possible,” Keiji said.

  All we had were possibilities, nothing definite. I made a noise of frustration and got up. “I’m going to see if Takeo can use any help.” I paused. “Thank you for looking for answers.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” Keiji said, nudging his glasses up. For once he sounded serious, not teasing. “I hope I can find something more useful.”

  The sun had long set when Takeo finally called an end to Chiyo’s training, with a tentative note of victory. Even with both of us working on her, she’d managed to hold her ethereal shield steady for a full two hours, without so much as wavering even at the end. Now she sprawled on the steps of the shrine building near Keiji, who was licking the last bits of juice off his fingers from his dinner of fried lotus root, bamboo shoots, and wild mushrooms. My stomach pinched. He’d told the shrine kami that he was particularly hungry to ensure they brought enough for us to share the meal, but I hadn’t gotten the chance to sneak away from Chiyo’s curious eyes yet.

  “So, are we leaving to see this sage person now?” Chiyo asked.

  Takeo glanced at the sky. The near-full moon and the brilliant stars cast a faint light over us, but within the trees all was dark. “As much as I hate to delay, I don’t think we should risk traveling now. You’re worn out, and if Omori penetrates your shield at night it’ll be much easier for his ghosts to find us. We’ll rest and leave at dawn.”

  “I thought you wanted to go back for Haru,” Keiji remarked.

  Chiyo shook her head. “I didn’t really know... I’ve learned a lot today,” she said with a wry smile. “I’m sure he’ll understand. He doesn’t have any way of making shields of ki or whatever. I don’t want to bring him into the middle of this fight until I’m sure I can protect myself and him.”

  Takeo’s gaze settled on me. Thinking of how I needed extra protection too? “We’ll be coming back to Tokyo within a few days anyway,” I said quickly. “The jewel is kept in the Imperial Palace’s shrine.”

  “Right,” Chiyo said. “I’m supposed to get the sacred treasures before we go take back the mountain.” For just an instant, her easy confidence seemed to falter. Then she clapped her hands together with a fierce grin. “No problem.”

  “We’ll save the jewel for last,” Takeo said, “since it only amplifies the others’ powers. And if the ghosts in Tokyo spot us and realize what we’re doing before we have the sword and the mirror, they’ll get in our way.”

  “So the treasures really are super-magical?” Chiyo said. “I thought that was just a myth... but I guess a lot of things I thought were myths aren’t.”

  “They were all the possessions of one of the first great kami,” I said, my mind slipping back to long-ago evenings perched on Ayame’s lap. “Amaterasu, who guided the sun. The mirror was clear enough to reflect her full beauty, and the jewel captivating enough to draw her out of hiding when her brother offended her.”

  “He’s the one who found the sacred sword, before he gave it to her,” Keiji added when I paused. “If the stories I’ve read are true, anyway. It was in one of the eight tails of this huge dragon he killed—so strong the blade chipped the sword he already had and so sharp it could slice through grass like the wind.”

  Takeo inclined his head in acknowledgement. “And all three were given by Amaterasu to the first emperor, to show her support of his rule. They’ve been in the care of humans ever since.”

  “So how far do we have to go to get the sword and the mirror?” Chiyo asked.

  “They’re kept in shrines dedicated to Amaterasu,” I said. “The sword in the city of Nagoya, and the mirror at the large Ise shrine.”

  “How long exactly do we have?” Keiji said. “People observe Obon at different times in different places.”

  “Humans pick the dates that are convenient to their interests,” Takeo said. “The symbols are what matters the most to them. But the true Obon, when the barrier between the worlds thins, changes every summer, depending on th
e moon. Tomorrow we have four days left.”

  Hearing him say it out loud made me shiver. Four days seemed like hardly any time at all.

  A similar uneasiness crossed Keiji’s face, and he looked as if he was going to say more. He was interrupted by a staticy melody that started to play from somewhere near where he sat. He leapt to his feet.

  “My phone,” he explained, and headed down the steps as he dug it out of his pocket.

  Chiyo’s eyebrows rose. “You get reception up here? What company are you with?”

  Keiji didn’t answer, already opening the phone to his ear. His shoes rattled over the pebbles as he disappeared around the side of the building. “Hi. Yeah, of course it’s me. Hold on.”

  “I wish I had my cell,” Chiyo said. She tipped her head back against the platform. “I feel like I could fall asleep right here.”

  I slipped past her before she could decide to head into the shrine building for the night. As promised, Keiji had left part of his dinner on a plate in one of the cupboards. A package of corn puffs that must have come from his personal stash of snacks lay beside it.

  I grabbed a handful of the vegetables, so hungry I hardly missed having chopsticks to eat properly, and popped them into my mouth. As I gulped them down, and then more, the grumbling in my stomach subsided. I willed the flow of ki I was drawing from Midori to shrink.

  “If you want to leave for a little while, you can,” I told her. She replied with a flicker of contentment.

  A ruffling of feathers by the side door caught my eye. Palming the last of the meal and tucking the corn puffs under my arm, I stepped outside.

  A familiar sparrow was perched on the corner of the shrine’s roof. You again, I thought, studying it. Maybe it was only a coincidence, but I was starting to feel sure it was the same bird. I sent a thread of ki toward it, wondering if I’d managed not to notice it was kami, but my silent greeting provoked no response. Maybe it had been helped by a kami once, and now it took comfort in our presence. Even a regular sparrow might have been frightened witnessing the ghosts swarming Mt. Fuji. And Takeo and I would have been the only ones it’d seen escape.