A Mortal Song

by Megan Crewe

  A wire flew over my head and jerked against my neck. Against the spot where the ogre’s claw had cut. A cold surge of panic flooded my mind. As the figure that held the wire pulled it tight, I flailed back wildly. The wire dug into my flesh, cutting off my air. A third ghost stepped toward me and bashed something hard against my forehead.

  My legs buckled. A hazy shape with Keiji’s voice flung itself into view, shouting, “Stop! Stop!” And then the world went black.

  I came to on the floor of a small room. Sunlight too thin to give me a sense of the time seeped through a narrow window high on the wall behind a stack of cardboard boxes. My mouth tasted like ash. I turned my head, and a jagged line of pain sliced across my neck where the wire had nearly strangled me.

  Somehow, I was still alive.

  I tried to move my arms, and my wrists strained against thick strands of rope. My ankles were bound too. My forehead ached. Ignoring my various pains, I wiggled my limbs, testing the knots. They didn’t budge. Something rough and powdery flaked off the rope against my skin.

  As I squirmed, my gaze caught the other body lying by the wall. It was sprawled there limply with its back to me, but in the dim light I made out Haru’s short, spiky hair and the collared shirt he’d been wearing. The image of the knife stabbing into his side flashed through my mind. I stared at his chest, willing it to rise.

  “Haru?” I said. The name came out in a croak.

  He offered no response.

  Dizziness swept over me. I let my head tip onto the floor.

  How had we ended up like this? The ghosts must have dragged us here after the fight. After they’d tricked us. That kami had tricked us. Why had he helped them? They’d been waiting for us on the floor above the entire time, until he’d gotten us exactly where they wanted.

  Even that didn’t make sense. Chiyo and Takeo should have been able to use their ki to slip through the walls of the room the ghosts had shut them in. But if they’d managed to escape, Haru and I wouldn’t be lying in this room.

  And Keiji... A sudden chill filled my chest. If he wasn’t here with us... How badly had the ghosts hurt him?

  I bit my lip. I couldn’t assume the worst. Right now I had to just think about getting out of this. We needed Chiyo. If she faced the ghosts with the sacred sword, the balance could tip in our favor. I had to find her and Takeo.

  And to do that, I had to find a way out of these ropes.

  The pain in my head had dulled to a mild throbbing. I inched my feet forward until I could see my legs. A heavy cord circled my ankles in several tight loops. It was an odd color, dark and mottled. No, that was something smeared on the rope—it had smudged my skin where the rope touched me. I bent at the waist, peering at it, and my stomach turned.

  The dark substance looked like blood. As if the rope had been soaked in it and left to dry.

  A putrid metallic smell reached my nose. I closed my eyes and took a few breaths through my mouth. The rough powdery stuff against my wrists—that was dried blood too, no doubt. Revulsion welled up inside me, but I found I wasn’t surprised. The ghosts had used the stuff on their weapons to make them more effective against kami, so why wouldn’t they treat their bindings the same way?

  Blood from the wound of something living was bad enough. Blood from a creature who’d died unwillingly, which I could only guess was how Omori had obtained so much—nothing was more toxic to kami. A rope or a net drenched in that blood would have burned the flesh of any it touched, rotted their ki, and left them sapped and helpless. This must be how the ghosts had overcome the kami on Mt. Fuji, and perhaps the kami who’d fought with us here in the keep too.

  Because I was human, it didn’t affect me the same way, but nausea turned my stomach all the same. How many innocent creatures had Omori already ordered killed just to coat his army’s weapons and traps? So much destruction wrought by that slight man with his brilliant smile.

  I groped along the rope at my wrists, cringing at the feel of the dried gore crumbling beneath my fingers. I couldn’t reach the knot.

  By jerking and shoving myself against the boxes, I managed to work myself into a sitting position. Maybe one of the boxes held something sharp enough to cut rope. If I could manage to open them.

  With another bout of squirming, I hauled myself onto my knees. My arms were no help behind me, so I nuzzled at the flaps of one of the lower boxes with my chin. A whiff of dust made me cough. I worked open the flaps, but inside there was only a heap of fabric that looked like some sort of costume.

  As I turned to the next box, a movement by the window caught my eye. I froze, peering toward it as surreptitiously as I could.

  A small brown shape swooped from the window ledge down to the floor beside me. A sparrow. I sank back against the boxes.

  “You,” I said. “I’m not sure you should have joined me in here.”

  The sparrow cocked its head at me as if it understood. I paused. I’d assumed because I could tell the bird wasn’t kami that it was just a bird. But I knew by now there were many other forces in the world, and I wouldn’t necessarily have recognized all of them. No ordinary bird would have followed us this long, this far.

  “What are you?” I asked, leaning closer. “You’re more than a sparrow, aren’t you?”

  The air around the sparrow sparked. I flinched backward as a shimmering figure formed in the air over the feathered body.

  It was a middle-aged woman, her hair pulled back into a braid that looped at the back of her head, what had once been smile lines around her mouth now tight with worry. She wore a rose-pink dress that ended just below her hips... where all of her ended.

  My sparrow friend had been home to a ghost.

  The edges of the woman’s body wavered. She must have had just enough energy to make herself visible to me, but not enough to become completely corporeal. She dipped down until her moist eyes were level with mine.

  I stared back at her. I’d seen her face before—I was sure of it. Had she been one of the Nagamotos’ friends, or another woman I’d observed in town? Maybe a traveler who’d visited Mt. Fuji? Whoever she was, some kami had guided her spirit into the sparrow when she’d died, through the same process I’d wanted to use with Mr. Nagamoto.

  “How do I know you?” I said. The woman motioned with her graceful hands, but I couldn’t follow what she was trying to convey.

  If she was a ghost, then she could have been acting as a spy for the others all along. She could be the one who’d told them about Chiyo, about Rin, about the prophecy.

  But then, if she was loyal to them, why was she here now, revealing herself to me?

  “The ghosts,” I said. “The ones who attacked the mountain. Are you—”

  She seemed to realize what I meant before I finished the question. Distress flickered across her face, and she shook her head so vehemently I believed her. Her hands fluttered again, sketching in the air.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Can you speak?”

  She opened her mouth. A little cry jolted out of me.

  There was nothing left of her tongue but a ragged stump.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

  Strangely, the woman smiled, a little wistfully. She held out her arms as if to say, Does it matter now? Then she brushed the top of the sparrow’s head with her fingers. The outline of her body faded until it was nothing more than a ghostlight, which glided down into the bird. It stirred and glanced up at me. Leaping onto the edge of the nearest box, it let out a burst of song.

  “That’s why the kami gave you a bird,” I said. “So you could sing again.”

  Maybe that was why she’d sided with us: gratitude. A kami had been kind to her, and now she was repaying us. How much had she observed of our enemies?

  “Have you seen Omori?” I asked. “Do you know what he’s planning?”

  The sparrow let out a distressed-sounding squawk and ruffled its feathers. I guessed that was the best answer I was going to get. But my friend mi
ght be able to help me in other ways.

  “I need to find something to get me out of these ropes,” I said.

  As I leaned over another box, the sparrow alighted on one higher up. It levered the flaps open with its body and dove inside, fabric rustling as it poked around. The one I pushed open held only a stack of file folders. I craned my neck, checking for writing on any of the boxes that might identify their contents, and noticed a metallic glint on the other side of the stack.

  “Over there,” I said to the sparrow with a jerk of my head. “Can you bring that thing on the floor to me?”

  The sparrow fluttered down. It leapt up a moment later and dropped the object on the floor beside me: a small box cutter someone had left behind. Rust spotted the blade, but I wasn’t about to be picky.

  “Thank you,” I said. The sparrow darted back to its window ledge perch with a chirp.

  I managed to maneuver the box cutter between my hands until I could extend the blade. Then I twisted my fingers to rest it against the ropes. I sawed at them tentatively, and then pressed harder when the blade held. Relief bloomed inside me at the feel of the first strands parting.

  My forehead was damp when I finally broke through the first layer of rope. I wriggled my arms until the cord began to unwind, and pulled my hands free. Then I sawed through the cord around my ankles and kicked that away too.

  I hurried to Haru, kneeling by him to touch his arm. His skin felt warm, but the air around us was warm too. Blood stained the front of his shirt and was pooled on the floor beneath him. His eyes stayed closed. Only the threadiest of pulses, if it was a pulse, pattered through his wrist against my probing fingers.

  I hated to step away from him, but without the ki to heal him, I’d do us both more good out there than in here.

  The door opened when I tried it. The hallway beyond was lit with only a faint haze that emanated from behind a door standing slightly ajar near the opposite end. Given the height of the window in the room I’d just left, I guessed I was in a basement. If the ghosts hadn’t moved us from the keep, then Chiyo and Takeo might still be trapped right upstairs.

  I crept toward the light, squinting at the shadowy walls, goose bumps crawling over my skin. Could the ghosts make themselves so dim that human eyes couldn’t catch even a hint of their glow? I checked my pockets, but they held only the folded printout of the Kenta Omori article I’d stuffed deep inside. Someone had taken my ofuda, my protective amulet, and the satchel with my bag of salt. Takeo’s short sword was gone too.

  If there were ghosts in the hall, they made no move to stop me. A dull clanging sound rang out as I neared the ajar door, like metal striking wood. I could see now that the stairwell lay just past it. As I hurried toward that, voices slipped from the lit room, one of which I recognized.

  “Would you stop that?”

  Keiji. I halted, my heart thudding.

  The clanging stilled, and then started again in slower, more even strokes. “It’s not a bad sword,” a deeper voice said casually. “Not bad at all. Interesting friends you’ve made. You didn’t tell me about this one earlier.”

  “I don’t know if Haru Esumi would call me his ‘friend,’ exactly,” Keiji replied. “Anyway, it didn’t seem important.”

  He sounded tired and tense, though not as scared as I’d have expected while he was being interrogated by a ghost. I peeked through the gap between the door and its frame.

  A fixture on the ceiling flooded the room with artificial light. In the sliver of space I could see, an arm was swinging Haru’s katana against the side of a wooden table. The blade left a nick with each impact. On the table itself lay a single key on a ring. Keiji was out of my view.

  The key—was that the one they’d used to lock up Chiyo?

  As I eyed it, the figure with the sword shifted in front of the gap. I stiffened.

  The skinny young man in his sharp gray suit, collar flipped high under an equally sharp grin, was holding himself completely corporeal. But I knew he was a ghost, because I’d seen that sharp grin and that crimson-streaked hair before. I’d seen him in Mother and Father’s chambers, legless and translucent, directing the charge against the guard who’d fallen while Takeo and I had escaped the palace.

  He glanced toward the other end of the room. “It’s my job to decide what’s important, little brother.”

  16

  I CLAMPED my teeth together to trap my expression of shock. I must have heard wrong. Or the red-haired ghost was only calling Keiji “little brother” to tease him. It wasn’t as if Keiji could have failed to notice his brother was dead.

  “Fine,” Keiji said. “But I think we’ve gone over everything now. You could have been clearer about what you were planning before.”

  “It still worked out well for us,” the ghost said. “Omori has been impressed by all my inside info—it got me made captain—and what we’ve done here is going to blow him away. I had to keep it under wraps in case things fell through, but a couple of my guys are heading to the mountain to tell him about it now. I just want to make sure I have all the loose ends tied up when we get his instructions for next steps.” He cocked his head, and his smile turned even sharper. “What’s the glum look for, Kei? Haven’t I thanked you enough?”

  “I just wish you’d told me what was really going on from the beginning,” Keiji said quietly.

  I choked on my breath. I hadn’t misheard. This was Keiji’s brother. The brother he looked up to so much, the only person he’d bothered to contact since he’d left home. The one he wanted more than anything to help...

  Fragments of our past conversations surfaced in my memory. A couple years ago he had this, ah, accident. It’s because of you I’m going to get my chance to fix things for him. And what the ghost had said, just now: All my inside info. Haven’t I thanked you enough?

  I leaned my shoulder against the wall, my legs suddenly weak. We’d assumed a kami trapped on Mt. Fuji had given away the fact that I’d escaped, that the ghosts had learned about Sage Rin and the prophecy from spying on Chiyo’s parents. But the Ikedas hadn’t known we’d be coming to the Imperial Palace instead of Ise. No one had known that except for the handful of kami with us, me, Haru... and Keiji.

  The way he’d insisted on joining our group. All those prying questions he’d asked. It seemed so obvious now. He’d been trying to help his brother, yes—help his brother defeat us.

  And I’d fallen for his act. I’d let him win me over with his grins, his flattering words. How much had he learned from me?

  Even as I wondered, my thoughts tripped back to last night at the shrine near Nagoya, to the look on his face when he’d told me I was the most amazing girl he’d ever met, and my heart skipped despite my queasiness. My stupid, fickle human heart.

  The voices warbling on in the room before me brought me back to the present. I couldn’t do anything about my past mistakes. All that mattered was how I reacted now. I made myself edge closer to the door.

  “There’s nothing special about this Haru?” Keiji’s brother said. “He’s just a regular human kid?”

  “As far as I know,” Keiji replied.

  My gaze dropped to a pale lump on the floor behind the table. My breath caught. My satchel—and Haru’s too, alongside Takeo’s short sword. Someone had tossed them in a corner. Had the ghosts dared to open the satchels with all that salt inside? I’d stashed extra ofuda in mine. The charms might still be there.

  All I needed was one. One, and I could banish Keiji’s brother back to the afterworld while there were no other ghosts around to interfere. Then I could make Keiji tell me where Chiyo and Takeo were. I’d have the key. I could free them.

  My mind was still whirling. I pressed my hand to my jaw. If I was going to get across the room in time, I had to think like a kami, act like a kami. Not let my human nature get in the way.

  But a kami would have had the power to blast right through, to fend off the ghost while she grabbed the satchel. I wasn’t sure I could even reach the table before K
eiji’s brother was on me, and I wouldn’t be able to accomplish much then. I didn’t even know if there were ofuda still in my satchel. Doubt melded my feet to the floor.

  “And they haven’t said anything else about the powers in this jewel?” Keiji’s brother was saying now.

  “No,” Keiji said. “What does it matter?”

  “Well, it would have been nice to know sooner about the magic sword—we didn’t expect to be losing people, not for good.”

  Losing people for good—what did he mean by that? They’d lost plenty to our ofuda too.

  “Still, you’ve done well, Kei,” the young man went on. “Don’t doubt that.”

  Keiji’s voice was so low I couldn’t decipher his tone. “Thank you, brother.”

  “Why are we back to formalities?” the ghost said. “You know you can call me by my name, conventions be damned. We’re equals.”

  “Sorry, Tomoya.”

  “Do you remember the first time Uncle heard you calling me ‘Tomo’? That was some epic rage. The man has no sense of priorities. But we never let him stop us.”

  He set down the katana on the table. Beside the key. My hands clenched. One way or another, I had to get it, to make this right—to make up for believing in Keiji, for losing Chiyo this morning, for all my weaknesses.

  I couldn’t get to the key without the ghost interfering. So I needed to get rid of the ghost. So I needed an ofuda.

  I could make a new one. Back in the room where I’d woken up—I could tear a few strips off the cardboard boxes. There might be a pen or a pencil lying around, or... or if there wasn’t, I’d prick my finger with the box cutter and write the characters with my own blood.

  Before I could move, the ghost spoke again. “I think I’d better see what I can get out of our captives. They might know more they didn’t tell you.”

  Chiyo and Takeo—so they were still here? I hesitated.

  “I’m sure they didn’t know anything I don’t,” Keiji said. “We talked about everything.”

  “You shouldn’t assume that,” his brother said. “We can’t trust anyone outside the two of us, Kei. Remember that.”