A Mortal Song

by Megan Crewe

  “Your phone! I have to call my other parents. They knew about the prophecy too.”

  “Oh. Oh!” He handed over the phone, and Chiyo flipped it open.

  “The ghosts could have figured out which house was hers,” I said to Takeo. “At least a few of them saw what street she lived on. We did talk about how a sage had prophesized Chiyo’s victory—did we mention that we would be going back to her?”

  “I can’t remember,” he said grimly. “But the rest might have been enough.”

  “No signal,” Chiyo said, her voice squeaking. She snapped the phone shut. “Maybe the top of the ridge would be better.”

  “Wait,” Takeo said. “You shouldn’t go alone. If you two keep guard while Sora and I check the rest of the house—quickly—then we can all leave together.”

  Chiyo frowned. “If those ghosts have hurt Mom and Dad...” she said. The glow of her ki flared to the surface of her skin. I wondered if Omori could sense her distress. An image of the smoothly confident man from the photo chuckling over the destruction he’d wrought flashed through my mind, and I shivered.

  Takeo strode to the staircase. I hurried up after him, through a room as ransacked as the ones below, and up another flight, and another. I hesitated on the fifth floor, nudging the heap of robes strewn across the boards with my toe. The ogres had left nothing useful behind.

  “Takeo,” I said, “I don’t think we’re going to find—”

  “I know.” He rested his hand against the wall and grimaced at the floor. Then he raised his head. “I wanted to talk to you alone for a moment. I think you should go, Sora.”

  “Go?” I repeated.

  “Back to the city. To your real parents, if the ghosts haven’t found them. To wherever else you can take shelter if they have.”

  “But... why?” I protested. “The Ikedas don’t want me. I don’t want them. Takeo, you said you’d support whatever decision I made. I want to be here.” Without Rin, Chiyo was going to need my help more than ever.

  “I did say that,” Takeo acknowledged. “And I wish I could keep my word. But I promised I would keep you safe too, and that’s far more important. I don’t think I can do both. If it was just a matter of strolling into the shrines... but it’s not. You see, don’t you? If Omori knows about Sage Rin, he may very well know everything. An army may be waiting for us when we arrive to look for the treasures. If you let Midori go, and you stay far away from us, no one will know you had anything to do with Mt. Fuji. You’ve helped us so much already.”

  Not nearly enough. But Takeo was right. If Omori knew about the prophecy, he’d also know how Chiyo was to defeat him. He’d tell his thousands of allies to do whatever they could to stop her.

  How could she fight his whole army before she had even one of the treasures?

  “It’s too dangerous,” Takeo went on. “We can’t know what we’ll face at Amateresu’s shrine in Nagoya.”

  I blinked, my eyes going hot. “And you don’t think I’ll be able to manage. Because I’m human.”

  “Sora.” He made a strangled sound and turned toward me. Suddenly his arms were around me, solid and secure as always, his face bent close to mine.

  “That doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “My decision has nothing to do with that. I don’t know if any of us will come out of this alive, even Chiyo. Sage Rin said nothing is certain. And now, with her gone... I can’t let you come when I don’t know what’ll happen to you, when our enemies are too powerful for even a sage to defeat. If you were hurt because I failed you... If I lost you...”

  I’d never heard him sound so anguished before. My hands found their way around his back. My world had tipped over. The only clear things were the strength of his embrace, the tremor in his voice, and his words. He cared about me so much. More than I’d let myself hope. But I couldn’t—

  Of course I could. In the midst of all the fear and uncertainty, I calmed as I clung to that one definite thought. I could erase in one moment all memory of the kiss that never should have happened and replace it with something right. Something I could hold on to, no matter what else the demon threw at us.

  I eased back, my nose brushing Takeo’s jaw, and looked up at him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m overstepping. I have no place—”

  “Takeo,” I said, and when he stopped talking to hear what I would say, I rose on my toes and kissed him.

  Takeo responded at once, his arms tightening around me. His lips were smoother, firmer, than Keiji’s, and as they parted against mine I prepared for that spinning, singing feeling to race through my body.

  Except the music didn’t come.

  I felt sheltered in Takeo’s embrace. Like waking up from a nightmare with Mother’s lips against my forehead. It was warm and comforting and not at all the uncontainable rush I wanted it to be. I leaned closer, trying to pull everything I could out of the kiss, but my heart kept beating in the same steady rhythm.

  What was wrong with me? I wanted Takeo. My mind knew that. So why didn’t the rest of me?

  It seemed like a betrayal to be kissing him and not feeling all the things I’d felt with someone who wasn’t him. That was wrong. I braced myself to pull back, to apologize, to I-don’t-know-what.

  Then a cry echoed up the stairs.

  I flinched away from Takeo with far less grace than I’d intended, but it didn’t matter. We were both running for the stairs before I had time to think about it.

  “Get out of here!” Chiyo shouted, and something clanged, and Keiji said in a tone so grave and terrified it made my chest ache, “I really think you should listen to her.”

  A pungent, oily smell filled my nose as we dashed past the third floor. I skidded down the next flight and caught myself just before I hit the bottom step.

  Two tall, gangling creatures, one with a shock of white hair and the other bald and lumpy-headed, were circling Chiyo and Keiji, who were trapped in the middle of the room. Another, with curved horns that jutted along its shoulders, stood at the top of the stairs that led to the first floor. It glanced at me, and I saw it had no nose, only yellow reptilian eyes and a grin full of jagged teeth.

  Ogres.

  Chiyo stood in a defensive stance, her hands raised, ki glowing between them. Our enemies weren’t attacking yet—she shouldn’t have been wasting her energy. But she hadn’t had time to learn that, had she? Beside her, Keiji brandished a bamboo walking stick that must have been the only weapon he could find. It quivered in his grip.

  Takeo had slid his bow from his shoulder. He nocked an arrow and drew back the string in one fluid movement: a perfect line from him to the nearest ogre’s head.

  The ogre by the lower staircase leapt at us, faster than I’d have thought a creature that large could move. Its knobby fingers wrenched at my side as I dodged it. I shifted into the ethereal state instinctively, but the thick ki that oozed off the ogre’s body dragged on me as if I were still perfectly solid. I stumbled across the floor, pulling the short sword Takeo had lent me from its sheath.

  With a thud and a crack, Takeo’s arrow twanged into the wall over my head. I whirled around. The ogre had pinned him down, and Takeo was struggling to draw his own sword while keeping the thing’s hands off his neck. His bow hung in two limp pieces over the stairs.

  “I think we should bring these ones back,” his attacker said in a rough warbling voice like water over gravel. It slammed both of Takeo’s arms against the stairs and turned its head to its companions. “The kami, at least. They match what our new friends said to look for, don’t you think?”

  “Ogres running errands for ghosts?” Keiji said, his voice shaking. “Well, now I’ve got no respect for you at all.”

  “The human dead are claiming the spirit world,” said the creature closest to him. “Only the stupid don’t join the winning side.” It swiped at Keiji’s stick. Keiji winced and dodged backward, jabbing the bamboo staff toward its abdomen. The ogre snapped off the top third, sending the piece clattering to the floo
r.

  “Stop!” A blast of energy rippled from Chiyo’s hands and hit the ogre in the chest, so hard it staggered backward. As she struck out with another surge of ki, I raised my sword and lunged at the ogre that held Takeo.

  It hadn’t expected me. One of its arms thrashed out as I grabbed its legs and plunged the sword into its calf. I clung on, holding my breath against the stench of its skin, and heaved back. At the same moment, Takeo kicked its belly. The creature gave an oof and we both toppled over.

  My tailbone jarred against the floor, my ankle twisting. I bit back a gasp of pain. Midori’s wings hummed by my ear, anger winding through her distress. The ogre whipped around, and I threw a ball of ki into its eyes. It reared back, sputtering, right into the swing of Takeo’s sword.

  The kami blade sliced straight through its neck. The ogre’s body slumped over me, its head rolling across the floor to smack into Rin’s broken table.

  “Mitsuoka!” Chiyo shouted, and reached out to Keiji. He tossed the walking stick to her and ducked. Ki flared along the length of the bamboo staff. As the second ogre charged at them, she rammed the end of the stick into its face. The wood sizzled through the mottled flesh of its forehead. The creature spasmed and crumpled to the floor. Chiyo stared at its shuddering body.

  That had to be the first time she’d killed anything. And in her distraction, the last of the ogres hissed and stabbed out at her with its knife-like claws.

  I squirmed out from under the headless body, reaching for the sword still imbedded in its leg. Takeo jumped down the stairs. The ogre must have heard the whistle of his blade. It spun suddenly and flung itself under his strike and toward me, just as I dashed forward.

  I tried to stop, but my feet slipped on the polished floor. As I threw myself backward, the ogre caught the flying strands of my hair. Midori’s ki pulled away from me like roots ripped from the earth. The ogre’s fist closed around her with a sickening crunch.

  “No!” I choked out. I slammed at the creature’s leg with my heel, but it was already wrenching me around as it dodged Takeo.

  “Let go of her,” Chiyo yelled as I raised my sword to hack at the fingers that held me. A blinding glow seared through the room. The ogre gurgled and grabbed at the only solid thing within its reach: me.

  With its last gasp of life, it dug its claw under my chin and slashed straight through my throat.

  I fell. The ogre did too, fouling the air with the stench of its burning flesh. My mouth opened, but no sound came out. My throat was full of pain and a hot, wet rush. My head hit the ground, my cheekbone cracking.

  My lungs seized. I stared across the floor toward Midori’s mangled body. Her wings had been crumpled like tissue paper, her exoskeleton smashed. The facets of her round eyes gazed dully at nothing. My own eyes filled with tears.

  If you hurt them badly enough, if they’re already weakened, kami can die. Midori had given me so much of her ki for so long, she hadn’t had enough left to heal from an injury that serious.

  And I wasn’t any kind of kami.

  I watched the scarlet puddle spreading out from under me. That’s my life, I thought. My life spilling out and slipping away, just like that.

  Icy, spidery fingers wound through my spirit and gripped on. They tugged at me, down, down toward the gaping darkness of the afterworld. It was so big, so big and so dark and so empty...

  Panic jittered through my mind. No. I tried to reach, as if I could hold myself in the world of the living if I found something to grab on to, but my arms wouldn’t move. I couldn’t feel my feet. A chill crept through my chest.

  I was sinking, sinking far too fast to catch.

  13

  AS MY VISION HAZED, figures scrambled around me in a blur of motion. Shouts echoed past my failing ears. The room grayed.

  A shaky touch brushed my temple. A voice babbled frantically. The light contracted, swallowed up by the cold, empty dark—

  A brilliant glow burst in my head, sending a blast of energy rippling through me. It faded, and then sparked again. My muscles jolted. The taste of rot flooded my mouth. I gurgled, shuddered, and wretched. The brightness flared once more, and my lungs heaved. Air rasped into them down my newly sealed throat.

  I coughed, the effort rattling my body. My stomach turned over. As I gagged, my lips brushed a pool of something viscous soaking the floor beneath me. The hands that had touched me flitted away from my face.

  “Sora?” Takeo said. “Sora!”

  I turned my gaze slowly. My vision doubled the figures around me and then blended them back into one. Takeo was crouched at my side, his jaw tight. Chiyo knelt by my head, smiling even as her shoulders trembled. And Keiji stood by my feet, his hands fisted, his mouth set in a firm, pale line as if he were trying not to vomit.

  Which maybe he was. That stuff on the floor—that was blood. My blood. He’d just watched me all but die.

  The only reason I hadn’t died was that Chiyo’s ki had saved me.

  The memory of that yawning blackness rose up, blotting out every other thought, and I started to shiver. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. My body quaked as I drew my knees to my chest. My arm was wet, my cheek sticky. More blood. Strands of hair streaked crimson across my shirt. I shivered harder, squeezing my legs and pressing my face against them.

  I was supposed to have centuries before I faced that place. Millennia. So many years I got weary counting them. Not seventeen. Seventeen was nothing.

  But I was human, and this was how humans died. In an instant, a claw ripped across a throat.

  My neck still ached. When I swallowed, my throat stung. My eyes burned, but crying seemed somehow pointless. Crying didn’t even begin to express the terror knifing through me.

  Terror, and a swell of shame.

  I hadn’t died, but Midori’s body was still lying crushed and strewn on the floor, too far gone for even Chiyo’s power. Midori, who had stayed with me, played with me, and guided me on my adventures for as long as I could remember. Who had let me keep up this charade of being kami at the expense of her life. How many years had she had?

  I closed my eyes. A fresh bout of tremors swept through me. Next time Chiyo might not be here. Next time the darkness might take me too, and I would never come back.

  “Is she all right now?” Chiyo asked.

  “Physically, she’s weak, but she’ll recover,” Takeo said, his voice strained. “But she’s never... When you’re a kami, it’s so hard to be killed, you never really think about death. You never worry— The shock—”

  There was a pause. Then Chiyo said, faintly, “So she isn’t a kami then, right? Or she’d have been able to heal herself. You were helping her seem kami with some trick that stopped working. But why would you bring a human girl—?” She paused. “She’s the one, isn’t she? The one they switched me for. That’s how she knew how to act like a kami. Why didn’t she say something? My parents—her parents—she’s supposed to be with them!”

  “She wanted to help you,” Takeo said. “And she did. But I’ve already talked with her. She’s going back to Tokyo. This is my fault. I should have made her stay behind before.”

  “Isn’t that up to Sora?” Keiji broke in. “You can’t just decide something like that for her. If she wants to—”

  To fight more ogres? To face more ghosts with their blades and guns while only the thinnest dribble of ki moved through me? To risk tumbling down into that void, where my spirit would gradually disintegrate into the vast pool of energy that fueled the world. Until I was gone completely.

  The thought made my eyes well up and my fingers curl, clutching at the air. I wasn’t ready for that.

  “No,” I said. My knees muffled the word. I turned my head. It felt like a great weight on my neck without Midori’s buoyant presence.

  “No,” I repeated. “I’ll go back.”

  We couldn’t go anywhere right away. My limbs were so weak I could barely sit up, and the presence of spilled blood was upsetting Takeo’s and Chiyo’s ki. In just
a short time, their skin had turned sallow and their movements gone shaky. I suspected they felt almost as sick as I did.

  Chiyo tried to follow Takeo and Keiji as they went to get water from the valley’s stream, and collapsed to her knees by the stairs. “I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine,” she said, but the battle and the energy she’d expended healing me had obviously taken their toll. Takeo brought her to the first floor and left her there to gather herself as he and Keiji continued their errand.

  With the bowls they brought, I washed my clothes and hair. Then they rinsed Rin’s floor until the water ran clear. Despite their efforts, dark stains marred the smooth boards. I wondered if this house would ever be clean enough for Rin to return and live here comfortably.

  If she still lived at all.

  My mind darted back to the rising cold and the blackness, and I bit my lip.

  As we left the old cypress, Takeo carrying me on his back as if I were seven years old again, Chiyo gasped and stumbled against a tree. “Omori,” she gritted out. Takeo clasped her shoulder, and the distress in her expression softened as he must have helped her reconstruct her inner shield.

  “We’ll find a shrine,” he said. “You both need to rest, somewhere we don’t have to worry about his magic intruding.”

  We came across a tiny shrine on the other side of the valley, with a wooden structure more for presentation than to provide any real shelter. But the protections did their work. Chiyo lay down at its base and immediately fell into a deep slumber, her body and ki finally relaxing. I set myself down on a mossy patch of rock by the stone trough of the shrine’s small purifying fountain. Human visitors were supposed to rinse their hands and mouths with its water to cleanse themselves inside and out, but I couldn’t believe that would purify my spirit, not right now. When I blinked, I still saw the broken pieces of Midori’s body.

  I should have released her from her service. I should have accepted what I was, stayed where I belonged.

  “I’ll search the forest for any kami who might know what’s become of Sage Rin,” Takeo said, and vanished amid the trees.