A Mortal Song

by Megan Crewe

  Keiji paced by the edge of the narrow grounds. He approached me once, right after Takeo left. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked. “Cup of water? Sweet bread? Magic tricks?”

  He wanted me to smile, but his grin was so hesitant, his posture so awkward—so different from his usual easy composure—that I had to look away. That was also my fault, wasn’t it? I’d acted as if I wanted him, wanted something more than our tentative friendship, and then I’d shoved him away. In my thoughtlessness, I’d broken him too.

  “I don’t need anything,” I said shortly. “Thank you.”

  After that, he left me alone.

  Every few minutes, I tested my strength. Without Midori’s ki, the ground beneath me was muted, as blank of feeling as the breeze that grazed my face. At the same time, my awareness of the world inside my skin had sharpened. Delicate bones, so easily cracked. Trembling strings of muscle on the verge of tearing. My human body was a fragile husk that one harsh breath might split in two.

  It took two hours before my legs would hold my weight. Another before I could take more than a few steps. I hobbled to the shrine building. A stubby pencil and a few sheets of rice paper lay on a shelf in its shed-like interior. I tore the papers into strips and poured all my focus into printing the characters Takeo had taught me. Every ofuda was a death possibly averted.

  I didn’t notice Chiyo had woken until she leaned over my shoulder. “Got another pencil?” she asked.

  “I’m almost done,” I said. “How do you feel?”

  “Ready to blast a whole lot of ghostly butt,” she said, her eyes sparkling. I wondered what her ki would have looked like if I could see it. “Where’d Takeo get to?”

  I told her and added, “I’m sure he won’t be gone much longer.”

  She picked up a stick to poke at the earth beneath us. “So you didn’t just know my kami parents,” she said after a long moment. “They looked after you.”

  “Yes,” I said, my fingers tensing around the pencil. I hardly had the energy to sustain that old rush of jealousy, but ever fiber of my being resisted this conversation.

  “What are they like, as parents?”

  “They’re wonderful,” I said truthfully. “Patient and kind and caring. You’ll be happy with them.”

  “I wish—” Chiyo started, but I didn’t have to find out what she wished about the parents I would probably never see again, because Takeo emerged from the forest just then. A small group of kami followed him: a marten, a pheasant, and a finch with bright yellow spots on its wings, a doe that regarded us with a slow blink of its dark eyes, a boar snuffling its long snout over the ground beside it, a monkey that chittered what sounded like a remark of excitement, and two humanoid figures who must have pulled themselves from trees or flowers.

  “You brought company!” Chiyo said.

  “No one is certain what happened to the sage,” Takeo said, “other than there was a great commotion here this morning. But they’ve offered to come with us to Nagoya and help us retrieve the sword in any way they can.”

  My spirits lifted a little. It wasn’t an army, but it was much more support than we’d had before. I pushed myself to my feet, stiffening my legs to keep myself from wobbling. “So you’ll go straight for the sword now?”

  “I think we should at least discover what waits for us there. We’ve already lost most of a day. If Sage Rin is... unable to join us, then we must push forward as well as we can. When we’re able to.”

  His gaze settled on me. He had to see the effort it was taking me to hold myself upright. I hoped he’d believe it was only grief and worry affecting me now. The thought of the ghosts and ogres roaming beyond the shrine’s boundaries sent a stab of fear through me, but I held my tongue. Chiyo was obviously recovered. They couldn’t delay any longer on my account.

  “I’m well enough to leave,” I said.

  Takeo hesitated. “Are you sure?”

  “Definitely.”

  Takeo held my hand during the run toward Nagoya, steadying my body if not my mind. As night fell, every shifting shadow made my heart thump out of rhythm. It was fully dark when we reached the edge of the city that held the sun kami’s shrine and the sacred sword within it.

  Chiyo immediately demanded Keiji’s cell phone, which had refused to locate a signal in the mountains, and gave a little cheer when she checked the display. She dialed, bobbing on her feet as we hurried toward the train station.

  “Mom? Are you okay?” She gave us a thumbs up, beaming, and scooted a little ahead as she lowered her voice. “You wouldn’t believe what we’ve been doing.”

  The sight of her joy broke me from my daze. I wasn’t worried that she’d tell them about me—I’d asked her to let me be the one to explain, and she’d immediately agreed. But her reaction had a bigger implication. “The ghosts didn’t hurt the Ikedas,” I said. “Then how...?”

  “They might have simply spied on Chiyo’s parents and overhead them discussing the situation,” Takeo said. “Which means they may not know everything.” He exhaled with what sounded like relief.

  Maybe they could retrieve the sword safely. A pang echoed through my chest. After I left, I wouldn’t know. I’d have no idea what was happening.

  I touched the raw skin along my throat, and those worries quieted under an icy flash of panic.

  To anyone walking by as we approached Nagoya Station, it would have looked as if we were a group of four. The kami Takeo had gathered had made themselves ethereal as soon as we’d entered human habitation. We did have one fully visible companion, though. I caught sight of a sparrow darting between two telephone poles and wondered if it understood what we were doing here.

  Two towers rose over the roof of the boxy station building, looking like massive tree trunks that had been cut just below their branches. I released Takeo’s hand and headed to the nearest doors, but stopped just outside them. People were scattered throughout the wide, bright hall on the other side, streaming this way and that. I had to walk in there as if I were one of them. I didn’t even know how to take a train. Wouldn’t we need money to buy a ticket?

  Chiyo tugged open the door next to me and ambled inside. I pressed my palms to the glass, watching her go, so confident and at ease. As the last strands of Takeo’s energy slipped away from me, my awareness of the surface beneath my fingers numbed, as if a layer of cotton separated my skin from the door. The spot on my head where Midori used to perch felt horribly light. I blinked back the tears that sprang into my eyes.

  I could still feel the high rises with their glowing advertisements all around me. We were in the midst of a human forest made of neon, metal, and concrete, its energy so blatant I wouldn’t have needed eyes to sense it. But I didn’t feel a part of it at all.

  Chiyo returned a minute later, bounding past the doors. “The last train for Tokyo already left,” she said. “But there’ll be another at six in the morning.”

  “All right,” I said. So what was I going to do for the rest of the night?

  Takeo paced to the edge of the sidewalk, where a line of taxis stood waiting, and back toward the station. His jaw tensed when he looked at me.

  “I should have taken you straight to Tokyo myself before we came here,” he said. “It was my mistake. I’ll take you now.”

  “And waste another day?” I protested. “No. You can’t.”

  I wanted to be away from here, I wanted to be somewhere that felt secure, but Mt. Fuji needed him. Chiyo needed him. And not even Tokyo was safe until the mountain was recovered.

  “What’s so awful about her waiting until morning?” Chiyo said. “She can hang out here, we’ll drop by the shrine and get the sword, everyone’s happy.”

  Takeo shook his head. “I have a duty,” he said. “I have to— I can’t just—”

  My heart wrenched. He did have a duty: to her, to everyone on the mountain, to all who were already being harmed by Omori’s scheme. Any loyalty he felt to me should have been a distant fourth. But it wasn’t. It was nearly o
verwhelming him.

  That was my fault too.

  “Takeo,” I said, the words like stones in my mouth, “we should talk. Alone.”

  Without waiting to see if he’d follow—of course he would, it was in his nature to do as I asked—I walked away from the others, past the corner of the station building. Lights shone from several of the high windows overlooking the street. I stared up at them, focusing on them instead of the darkness. Those were what humans used for stars.

  I turned when Takeo’s footsteps halted behind me. He set his hand on my shoulder. Beyond him, Chiyo was brandishing a stick she’d picked up in the forest—a sturdier version of Rin’s bamboo staff—in mock-battle with one of the kami I couldn’t see. Keiji just stood there, watching Takeo and me, his arms folded tightly over his chest. He’d insisted he was staying, I assumed still hoping for that reward to help his brother. But then, his efforts on the kami’s behalf hadn’t gotten anyone killed.

  I made myself look up at Takeo’s face. At the dark eyes that had always reassured me. And said what I’d known since the moment before the ogres had attacked.

  “What happened in Sage Rin’s house,” I said, “I shouldn’t have done that. I thought—I thought that was how I wanted things to be with you.”

  His hand dropped to his side. That was the only sign I’d hurt him. “But it isn’t?” he said.

  “I love you,” I said softly. “I’ve loved you since my first memory of you. But... I don’t think I do quite like that. I love Mother and Father and Ayame too. I just assumed...” I’d assumed, because he was young and handsome and there, that he was exactly what I wanted. Maybe he had been, before all this. But I couldn’t ignore what I’d felt and what I hadn’t when we’d kissed. I couldn’t let him take more risks for me when my heart wouldn’t sing for him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have presumed. You’re having to deal with so much.”

  “And I’m dealing with it,” I said. “What you need to deal with is rescuing everyone else we love. We’re running out of time. If Omori doesn’t already know our plans, he may figure them out soon. Go with Chiyo to get the sword. I’ll...” I considered staying behind here, alone, while the others vanished into the night, and my gut clenched. “I’ll stay out of the way, somewhere near the shrine. And first thing in the morning, I’ll go to Tokyo.”

  Takeo lowered his head. “I feel as if I’m failing in both of my duties as a guard of the palace.”

  “No,” I said firmly, and managed to smile. “Of course not. I’m alive. You have Chiyo. Tonight you can see her one step closer to saving the mountain. So let’s get started. I’d like to know she has one of the treasures in her hands before I go.”

  Amaterasu’s shrine lay in almost a direct line along the train tracks, so we followed them rather than the streets where we’d have to dodge the traffic and pedestrians. With Takeo’s hand around mine and Chiyo’s clamped on Keiji’s wrist, we slipped through the fences. Thanks to Takeo’s ki, the world beyond the boundaries of my body snapped back into focus. A peaceful murmur emanated through the city’s frenetic energy.

  “Come on!” Chiyo said.

  We dashed past the massive office buildings and department stores that filled the city’s core. They gave way to smaller apartment complexes mingled with individual houses and shops, dark and still beneath the clouds that streaked the sky. We had just come into sight of another long train station when the shrine’s murmur swelled, beckoning us.

  On the other side of the station, streetlamps washed the road with a yellow light. Across the street from us, trees rustled overtop a short stone wall. Other than the occasional passing car, the area appeared deserted. But it was impossible to make out much in the shadows beyond the wall.

  “We’d be able to see more from higher up,” I said, motioning toward a concrete walkway that was angled over the road like a bridge. Takeo nodded and we walked over. My body had continued recovering during our travels from Rin’s valley, and I found I could climb the steps almost as steadily as I normally might have.

  The shrine grounds encompassed what amounted to a small forest within the city. Even from above, the sweeping branches of the trees blocked any glimpse of the buildings. Only a narrow asphalt drive was visible, penetrating the trees as it veered through a gap in the shrine’s wall.

  As I peered through the dim light, the shadows on the drive shifted and swirled. A cold sweat broke over my skin.

  They weren’t shadows at all. They were ghosts. A swarm of translucent, legless figures was drifting across the inner road, in and out of the forest.

  “Oh, wow,” Chiyo said. She raised her stick defensively. “I thought ghosts couldn’t go into shrines—isn’t that what all the protections are for?”

  “They can’t go in,” I said as the realization hit me. “Not really. They’re sticking to the edges of the grounds. They mustn’t be able to pass the line of torii—that’s as far as they can manage. You’d just have to get past the gates, and then they wouldn’t be able to reach you.”

  But in that gap of fifteen or so feet between the wall and the first of the gates, hundreds of ghosts were gathered. I swallowed thickly. Omori must have known exactly what we were planning. Were just as many waiting near the sun kami’s shrines in Ise and Tokyo while thousands still held Mt. Fuji captive? Or had he correctly determined that we’d want the sword first, and this was the largest portion of his army?

  How much else had that demonic businessman with his assured smile determined about us, while we still knew so little about him?

  “Should we wait until morning?” Chiyo asked. “Do ghosts have anything against sunlight?”

  “Not from what I’ve read,” Keiji said, his face drawn.

  “I’m not aware of a weakness like that,” Takeo agreed. “And I’m sure their orders are to stand guard indefinitely. More may join them if we give them time.”

  So many unsettled spirits—where had they all come from?

  “Then we should go in tonight,” Chiyo said. She paused, studying the flow of ghostly bodies. “There are a lot of them, but I bet I can blast through. I feel totally strong again. And we’ve got help.” She turned to her small troop of kami. “Are we ready to fight?”

  The kami raised their voices in a cheer. The two human figures waved the ofuda we’d shared with them.

  “Oh,” Keiji said, and dug into his messenger bag. “We also have...” He thrust a half-full bag of salt toward the woman-shaped kami with petal-like hair named Sumire, who I’d gathered was the spirit of a violet. “I, ah, borrowed it from my aunt and uncle. Salt is purifying, so it should repel malicious spirits. I’d have brought other stuff too, but I didn’t have a chance to go shopping.”

  Takeo still looked uncertain. “If we had more time...” he said. “But we don’t. I suppose ghosts require little subtlety. It would be a matter of simply ‘blasting’ through.” He eyed Chiyo and rested his hand on his sword’s grip. “Don’t try to engage them—any time you slow down, you give them a chance to get the upper hand. Use your energy to repel those that come near you, and don’t stop until you reach the gates. The rest of us will protect your sides and back.” He glanced toward the drive. “I don’t think they’ve noticed our arrival yet, so we’ll have an element of surprise. That may carry us through.”

  Chiyo waved her stick in the air, her face set with determination. “Let’s go smash those ghosts back to where they belong!”

  “Good luck,” I said, squeezing Takeo’s hand. He held on for a second longer before letting go.

  Chiyo darted down the walkway, ki glittering under her feet. The other kami followed her charge. Without Takeo enhancing my sight, they faded away before my human eyes. The figures on the drive blurred into a shimmer of ghostlights: glowing spheres that bobbed through the motions of their patrol, most so faint I could only make them out if I squinted. I stepped to the railing, my fingers closing around the cool metal.

  When Chiyo
’s force reached the sidewalk, the kami shifted into corporeal form. Without hesitation, they raced up the drive.

  I flinched as ghostlights flared along the edge of the shrine forest. They swirled around the drive so densely that in a moment I could no longer see Chiyo or Takeo except for blazes of ki and glints of sword. Here and there a light blinked out as an ofuda must have found its mark, but in less than a second, another glow replaced it. I leaned forward, the railing digging into my palms, trying to follow Chiyo’s progress.

  Keiji was still standing on the other side of the walkway. “You could have gone with them,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re a kami or not. I’ve seen you—you can fight. You didn’t have to listen to him.”

  “I’m not staying back because of Takeo,” I said, more sharply than I meant to. I dragged in a breath, fear prickling down my throat and into my lungs. “If the others had to look out for me, it’d be so much harder for them to fight. And what can I really do by myself? Without a kami helping me, the ghosts can hurt me without me even being able to touch them.”

  They could kill me. I could imagine too clearly how their weightless hands would reach into my chest, grab, and twist... I closed my eyes, suppressing a shudder.

  “What about you?” I said.

  “I don’t know anything about fighting,” Keiji said. “After this morning, I’m glad just to have all my limbs still attached.”

  When I looked again, the ghostlights were circling like a whirlwind around a ki-bright center where Chiyo and the others must have been struggling on. They were maybe halfway to the gates now. Had the ghosts managed to stop them completely?

  “Hey!” Keiji said. At the same moment, my gaze snagged on a figure running up the drive from the street—a tall, lanky figure carrying a basket over his arm. He burst into the front ranks of the shimmering army of ghosts, reaching into the basket and throwing something that made the lights around him wince away. Then he turned to throw another handful, and the ghostly glow lit his stern face with its topping of spiky-short hair.