A Mortal Song

by Megan Crewe

  I drew myself up as straight as I could, ignoring the protests of my beaten body. “All right. We have the treasures. We’ll get through those ghosts out there... somehow, and then we’ll track Chiyo down. We could ask the kami in the lands around Ise. Maybe one of them saw something.”

  I’d just finished speaking when the ground lurched. I tripped, and would have fallen if Keiji hadn’t grabbed my arm. Rin turned toward Mt. Fuji, invisible in the distance. How badly had the ground shaken there if we could feel it even here, hundreds of miles away?

  “The mountain’s fire is close to bursting,” Rin said. “When time is of the essence, it cannot be wasted on maybes.”

  I stared at her. “Well, do you know where Chiyo is?”

  “I cannot always see what I wish to,” she said, her dry voice still thready from the ki she’d expended earlier.

  “It sounds like you’re saying that we shouldn’t look for her at all,” Keiji said.

  Rin gave him a crooked smile.

  “What?” I said. “Of course we’ve got to find her! We should already be searching, not standing around talking in riddles.”

  “There is no ‘got to,’” Rin replied calmly. “We have the treasures we sought. We make do with what we have.”

  “You’re not making any sense,” I said. “You told us before that if the conditions of your vision aren’t met, we’ll fail to save the mountain. What does it matter that we have the three sacred treasures if we have no one to carry them?”

  Rin inspected me from head to feet as if I were a painting she was considering where to hang. Then she met my eyes, a little light dancing in hers. “Are you sure?” she said. “I believe we do.”

  For an instant, I couldn’t breathe.

  “You can’t mean—”

  “I also told you before that a prophecy is far from fact. The specificities are often blurred. I saw a young woman with power, carrying the treasures. We have a young woman. We have the treasures. We have kami who would go beside you to lend you ki. And there is strength in you. I can see it. You have only to accept the role.”

  “But—you saw a girl ‘born of all the elements,’” I said. “That has to be Chiyo.”

  Rin shrugged. “Truth be told, the image I saw could have signified one raised by Kasumi and Hotaka as well as born of. It was a vision, not a treatise. We must take the best chance we have.”

  I looked to Takeo, who had been standing there silently. “You can’t think she’s right. You know we need Chiyo.”

  “There is reason in Sage Rin’s words, Sora,” Takeo said slowly. “You have the training—far more than we were able to provide Chiyo with in our limited time. You love the mountain. If we go now, we can attack Omori when he least expects it, defeat him and his ghosts before the first night of Obon falls. The longer we wait, the stronger they become, and the weaker the mountain. We can seek out Chiyo after. She... should be able to withstand their torment that long.”

  The strain in his voice told me he wasn’t sure of that, though. And what if we couldn’t make it up the mountain without Chiyo’s power on our side? It would be difficult enough with her now that Rin was exhausted and Takeo weary. If the vision had meant only her, and the demon slaughtered us, what would become of the world then?

  “But—” I started, and Rin plucked the sword out of the fountain. She spun it in her deft hand with an arc of droplets and held it out to me, hilt first.

  Instinctively, I reached to take it. The water-cooled grip immediately warmed against my palm. My fingers curled around it, my heart racing.

  “Accept that which you have so wanted,” Rin said, almost kindly.

  I had wanted this. Oh, how I’d wanted it. For Rin to be wrong, for me to be the kami I’d always believed I was. To feel ki moving through me the way it used to, as easily as it had come to Chiyo. I imagined myself soaring up the mountain, power humming through me, slicing through every ghost that had caused my loved ones harm. Watching them fall back before me in awe.

  I hefted the sword, testing its weight. It moved like a beam of sunlight. Mt. Fuji’s weapons were fine, but I’d never trained with a blade like this. Whichever kami had forged it had been not just a great craftsman and artist, but a genius as well.

  And yet, it didn’t look quite right. In Chiyo’s hands, the sword had gleamed like fire. Blazed with ki. But not the faintest tingle passed through my palm. It lay dormant, waiting.

  For her. Because the fire had been hers.

  My fingers tightened, but all I felt was that hard surface against my skin. To push energy through the blade, I’d need to take ki from our allies. Leach off their lives the way I had with Midori. How would that be so different from what the ghosts intended to do to their human captives?

  A certainty settled over me with that thought, easing the tension in my chest. Even if I charged up Mt. Fuji with the aid of a thousand kami, I would never be the slightest bit kami myself. This wasn’t my sword. It wasn’t my role. The mountain needed the right girl to save it, and that girl was Chiyo.

  As I lowered the sword, I realized I could accept that. As Haru had said, there was nothing wrong with being someone who supported the true hero. Chiyo was counting on me, on all of us, to back her up.

  I handed the sword to Rin. “No,” I said. “We have to find Chiyo. The mountain needs her.”

  “And they call me obtuse,” Rin muttered.

  “We must begin the search at once,” Takeo said, a little of his usual vigor returning at the prospect of taking action.

  Of course, we still had a more immediate problem. “How are we going to get past all those ghosts?” I said. “We barely made it through them when we had Chiyo’s help and a distraction.”

  After a moment of silence, Keiji dipped his hand into the fountain. “If the sword is like running water,” he said slowly, “then water destroys the ghosts too? Do you think there are any boats around here? We could take the river and sail past them.”

  Takeo’s face brightened. “An excellent suggestion,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ll need to search for a boat.”

  He led us along the path to where it veered down to the edge of the shrunken river. There, Takeo knelt and reached toward the water. The ghostlights on the opposite bank bobbed and drifted in the darkness. I could feel them watching us even if I couldn’t see their eyes.

  I paced the cracked earth as we waited. Once we got away from the shrine, we couldn’t just wander aimlessly if we were going to find Chiyo in time. Tomoya would have a plan. He always did. He’d tried and failed and kept trying, changing his strategy as he learned more about us. Because he was as human as I was, and he didn’t have to act in just one way.

  As blood sings to blood, I should be able to understand him and his strategies. How had he beaten us? He’d observed Chiyo’s confidence, recognized her devotion to Haru, and turned those things into a weakness. But he could be over-confident too, couldn’t he? There were people he was devoted to. When I’d accused him of not caring about anyone other than himself, he’d said, That’s exactly why I’m doing this. For my family.

  For the little brother he’d expected to join him; the one he thought would eventually come around.

  I glanced at Keiji. “You know Tomoya. Where would he hide, if he didn’t want to get caught?”

  “He’s mentioned places he used to work sometimes,” Keiji said, looking startled. “But he wouldn’t go somewhere he’d told me about, would he?”

  “I don’t think he sees you as a threat,” I said. “He thinks he’s going to win you over to his side in the end, that you’re still loyal to him underneath. He might even want to be somewhere you could find him.”

  Keiji nodded. “I could see that. And ghosts are supposed to be most comfortable in places they knew when they were alive. There were a couple districts south of Tokyo where he did a lot of business. I don’t know the exact spots, but that would give us a direction, right?”

  “It’s a starting point,” Takeo said. “And on
ce we’re close enough to her, I may be able to sense her ki.”

  Of course, then we’d have another ghostly army to face. Tomoya wouldn’t have spirited Chiyo and Haru away on his own. And he’d have his followers ready with nets and blood to weaken Takeo and Rin and any kami allies we gathered.

  I turned toward the main path, where the forms of the monsters we’d slain earlier were sprawled. Even those felled with swords had started to melt into stinking, oily masses. The smell prickled in my nose.

  Maybe we could learn something else from the demon and his ghosts. Omori had been open to using every creature willing to join his cause so that he could attack us where his main army could not. Tomoya hadn’t orchestrated his kidnapping alone.

  “We haven’t been able to find many kami able to fight,” I said, “and those who are, the ghosts can use their old tricks on. But if they can ask ogres and demon dogs and nukekubi to help them, why can’t we ask for help outside the kami? There are other friendly creatures who’d join us if we asked, aren’t there?”

  “I suppose there are some who might be willing to take up our fight,” Takeo said. “But kami don’t make a habit of asking for favors outside our kind.”

  “I think it’s time they did,” I said.

  He hesitated, and then bowed his head. “We should not turn away any help we can gain.”

  A gleaming body broke the surface of the night-darkened water in front of him. Takeo leaned over to speak with the fish—a kami who’d responded to his summons, I assumed. After a moment, it swished away. In a matter of seconds, it had gathered a mass of neighbors. Tight rows of finned bodies lined up in the water before us, forming a makeshift raft.

  Rin hopped on without hesitation. I followed cautiously. The scaly bodies formed a ridged but firm surface under my feet. I sat down on them as gently as I could. Keiji clambered on beside me, the oak-man and the monkey kami scrambling after him. I wasn’t sure what had become of Sumire and the others who’d gone with her, but I hoped they were only wounded and recovering.

  Takeo stepped on last, moving to the center of the raft with the sacred sword ready in his hands. The water rippled as the fish began to swim. They carried us to the middle of the river and then swiftly down it. A breeze ruffled my hair. As the trees on the bank flew by, the ghostlights shivered through them, chasing after us.

  “They don’t look happy,” Takeo said.

  A gunshot rang out, but Takeo deflected the bullet with a burst of ki. One of the nearby figures solidified—a scowling young man running along the bank. Just as we reached a bend in the river, he sprang at us, knife raised. Takeo shifted into a fighting stance, but the ghost had underestimated the distance. He plummeted downward a foot from the edge of the fishy raft.

  The second he hit the water, his body shattered into a sparkling mist. It faded into the breeze, and then he was gone, his ki returning to the world from which it had come.

  “Wow,” Keiji said, peering into the water as if the man might have reformed there.

  We swept under another bridge and out into the midst of Ise city. The scenery on the banks changed from forest to grassy soil to concrete and back again. Soon we’d left the ghosts and the shrine grounds far behind us.

  Takeo must have sent a request to the fish, because they drew up to the bank. “Thank you,” he said when we’d hopped off, and I gave a quick bow beside him. Then he turned to Keiji. “You said south of Tokyo? We should see if any kami northeast of the shrine saw your brother leaving in that direction.”

  The oak-man and the monkey spread out to search. Keiji and I stayed with Takeo, as did Rin, who hadn’t loosened her grip on her stick-cane. We rambled across the countryside, stopping when the two of them sensed a fellow kami was near. None reported having seen anything that sounded related to Tomoya.

  Finally, the monkey came scampering back to us. Takeo bent to confer with it. When he straightened up, a glint of hope shone in his eyes.

  “A swallow saw a transport truck drive away from Ise City around the right time,” he said. “The driver looked like a normal human being, but he had short hair with red streaks.”

  There weren’t many people with Tomoya’s sense of style. “The other ghosts with him must have been hiding in the truck,” I said. “He knew we’d be looking for them.”

  “We’ll just have to hope other kami took note,” Takeo said.

  We rushed onward, but after another hour, we hadn’t found any more witnesses. We stopped near a train track that cut through the fields around us. A train whipped by, rattling the metal slats.

  “Tomoya might be nearly to Tokyo by now,” I said. “We’ll have more time to search that area if we take a train before they stop running for the night.” And more energy. Takeo and Rin were already looking even more weary than before. At least riding the train would allow them to recover some of their spent ki.

  “If we go to Tokyo, I could get Tomoya’s car,” Keiji said, apparently thinking along the same lines. “That’ll drive faster than you can run, right? Then we can cover more ground. Assuming he did go to one of the same districts as before.”

  Takeo stared along the line of the tracks. “We must take the best chance we have,” he said. “If the kami can’t tell us where the ghosts have gone, we’ll rely on your knowledge.”

  We found a station a short dash along the tracks. As we waited for the next train, Takeo disappeared briefly with the other kami to recruit whatever creatures they could find nearby. When the train finally arrived, I sank into my seat. I was exhausted now, but my pulse was still thrumming with urgency.

  “You will need your strength for the times ahead,” Rin said with a surprising gentleness, and touched both me and Keiji on the forehead. A moment later, I was asleep.

  I woke up just as the lights of the great city began to streak through the train windows. Keiji was still sleeping, his head resting against mine. When I eased away to look around, his cheek dropped to my shoulder. His glasses dangled by the tip of his nose. I pushed them up and he shifted closer, a faint smile curving his mouth. A strange ache filled me, fierce and tender and breathtaking all at once, as if, while I was looking at him, nothing in the world could be wrong.

  Then the earth shook beneath the tracks, the train stopped abruptly, and all the things that were wrong came rushing back to me. The faces of the other passengers tensed, their hands gripping their seat arms. A little boy started to cry, so frantically no word from his mother calmed him. It’ll be over soon, I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t actually promise that.

  When we reached the station and disembarked, the kami sped us along to the spot where Keiji had parked his car. He drove us through the city, nervously checking the traffic around us, until we passed the southwestern suburbs of Tokyo. Then he turned us down the winding back roads that scattered the peninsula where he thought Tomoya had conducted most of his business while alive.

  Takeo sat in the front seat, staring through the windshield. We passed farmland and fringes of towns and rolling forested hills. Whenever he or Rin felt the presence of a shrine of any size or another kami habitation, we stopped so they could consult them. No one reported on Tomoya’s passing with any certainty—many trucks followed these roads, some said. But several of them agreed to help us with our search, heading out in the directions we hadn’t yet tried.

  As dawn colored the sky, Mt. Fuji came into view through my side window, then slowly slipped away behind us. In the thin light, I could see stalks bowing and leaves withering in the fields. Heat was already rising from the earth, strangely distant with the car’s air conditioning system sending its steady stream of cool air over us.

  “I can’t sense her at all,” Takeo said, his brow furrowed. “I’m extending my senses as far as I can.”

  “We haven’t covered the whole area yet, not even close,” Keiji said, but his arms quivered as he adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. None of us had gotten more than an hour’s sleep on that train ride.

  “We’ll fin
d her,” I said. “We have to.”

  The words had barely left my mouth when the ground bucked beneath us. The car lurched. My shoulder smacked the door hard enough to send a lancing pain down my arm. Keiji jammed on the brake.

  The tires screeched, but we stopped—in the middle of the road, with the engine rattling in time with the shaking of the earth. Beside me, Rin turned to peer back the way we’d come. “The fury arrives,” she said.

  I craned my neck to follow her gaze and choked up. Mt. Fuji loomed over the trees beyond the rear window. Smoke was billowing above its upper reaches, rolling out across the sky around it.

  “It’s erupting?” I managed to force out. “Now?”

  “Very soon,” Rin said.

  I spun on her. “How soon?”

  She looked at me as the ground finally stilled, with a flat expression that suggested I should know better than to ask. “As soon as the fire climbs from the depths to the peak. As soon as the last strands of control break. Soon.”

  I wondered if she wanted me to say I’d changed my mind. That I’d take up the sacred treasures after all, race to the mountainside right now. But even faced with that horrible image through the window, the idea felt utterly wrong. I’d let myself second-guess my feelings too many times in the last week. Almost all of my mistakes had come down to that. I had to believe I could see what was right—and what wasn’t.

  “Then we’ll have to move faster,” I said. And if we didn’t find Chiyo in the hours we had left... I wasn’t going to let myself think that.

  23

  “SO WE KEEP GOING?” Keiji asked from the front of the car. Takeo stayed silent.

  I was about to tell him to drive on when a furry red body amid the trees by the road caught my eye. A fox. It was staring toward the mountain, as if it understood what the scene before us meant as well as we did.