by Amanda Sun
We stepped up the stairs into the darkness of the dimly lit exhibit. Ishikawa—Satoshi—was right. It was like a minimuseum, with gray-carpeted walls and artifacts mounted on clear plastic encased in glass. There were cases full of small magatama jewels and rusted swords, curved like katanas in sheaths of tarnished brass and silver. One case had a suit of samurai armor that looked like the one Jun had been wearing in my dream.
“Anything here, Yuuto?”
Tomo shook his head as he passed a display of demon masks. “I don’t get it. It should be here, but... I don’t feel it anywhere.”
“We could try a different building,” I said. “The main shrine, maybe.”
“No,” Tomo said. “I mean, I don’t feel anything anywhere. The Magatama I could feel a mile away, and same with the mirror. It’s like it had a heartbeat, a voice on the wind.”
He was right. I’d heard the voice of them, too, a faint whisper, but still something calling me. But it was silent here. No voice, no whisper, no tingle on my skin of something more.
Tomo left the museum building and we followed him through the gardens. The rain rippled on the streams and stone channels that threaded through the shrine grounds. We passed two shrine maidens carrying boxes of charms, their bright red hakama skirts swaying as they hurried toward shelter from the rain. Dark slate clouds blanketed the sky, the morning sun barely lighting the paths through the trees.
I wanted to ask Tomo again if he felt anything, but the dark look of confusion on his face answered my fear. “Did they know we were coming somehow?” I asked quietly. “Did they hide the sword?”
“I’d still feel it,” Tomo said, his eyes desperate.
“Guys.” Satoshi was standing inside a nearby shrine building, his hands on his hips as he looked up at the ceiling. We stepped under the shelter of the porch roof, slipping our shoes off to join him. “I think I know what happened.”
There was a broad painting near the rafters of the roof, an ancient-looking woodblock that was peeling at the edges. The artist had painted angry waters tossed with black inky waves, the surface foaming and swirling with some sort of storm. The ocean lashed against the rugged cliff of gray paint, where the colored dots of an army stood perched, pennants unfurled in the wind. In the swells of the surging waters, a small figure swam, his arms raised. Nearby, another larger figure flailed as a wave swept her toward the sharp rocks below the cliff. And at the bottom of the painting, a sword, sinking to the bottom of the sea.
Tomo stared, his eyes wide.
“It’s not here,” Ishikawa said. “The Kusanagi is gone.”
“What do you mean it’s gone?” I said, staring up at the rafters of the shrine. How could some hundreds-of-years-old painting have anything to do with finding the Kusanagi now? “The emperor uses the three treasures for ceremonies, right? He’d notice if it was gone.”
“He means the real one is gone,” Tomo said. “It’s been gone for over six hundred years.”
I stared at them like they’d grown new heads. “Explain?”
“This painting,” Satoshi said, pointing to the inscription beside it. “It’s Emperor Antoku. He was overthrown by the Minamoto clan, one of the most powerful samurai families in Japanese history.”
“Kami?” I asked.
“Probably part of the ongoing Kami war, yes,” Tomo said. His voice sounded so tired. Everything linked back to the kami, back to his own destiny.
I squinted at the painting. “So Emperor Antoku is that tiny figure in the water?”
“Antoku was a child when they attacked,” Ishikawa said. “It says the larger figure is his grandmother. She pushed him off the cliff to help him commit suicide.”
I nearly choked on my own spit. “Sorry?”
Tomo nodded. “What else could he do? The whole army had cornered him onto a cliff.”
Like throwing yourself into the ocean was the only reasonable option. I couldn’t even imagine. “How...how old was he?”
Ishikawa squinted at the inscription by the painting. “Seven. He was Taira no Kiyomori’s grandson.”
“Seven?” My stomach turned. He wouldn’t even have understood what was going on at seven years old. I could picture him holding his grandmother’s hand, trusting her as she shouted at him to jump into the water. I shivered at the thought.
Tomo frowned. “It says she threw the treasures into the ocean, too. The mirror was recovered by one of the Minamoto who jumped into the water after it, and the Magatama jewel washed up on the nearby beach. But the sword sank to the bottom of the sea.”
“But...the sword the emperor uses...” I said.
“It’s a copy,” Ishikawa said. “Obviously they’d make another one over the next six hundred years. And it’s probably kept in Tokyo.”
“The mirror wasn’t the original, either,” I said. “We can just go back to Tokyo and get it.”
Tomo tucked his bangs behind his ears. “Even if it’s kept there, it doesn’t matter. It’s not the Kusanagi no Tsurugi. The mirror was different. A replica sword won’t cleave a kami from a body.” He clenched his fingers into a fist. “It means all of this was for nothing.”
Satoshi clapped his hand onto Tomo’s shoulder. “Yuuto, don’t say that.”
“I knew I shouldn’t believe there was more for me,” he said darkly. “I’m the same as I always was—just the bastard son of some world-hating demon.”
Anger welled up in me. “Don’t say that,” I said. “We’ve come this far—there’s got to be a way.”
“There isn’t,” he snapped. “There is no way for me, Katie. There never was. This whole trip was a waste of time.”
His words stung as I tried to hold back my tears. Without the Kusanagi, there was no way to stop Tsukiyomi. It was only a matter of time before he took over Tomo, and before Jun took over Japan.
Ishikawa saw the pain on my face. “Yuuto,” he said, while he looked at me. “Pull it together, man.”
But Tomo’s face crumpled in disappointment. “That’s the point, Sato,” he said. “I can’t. I’m going to... I’m going to...” He crouched on the balls of his feet, his hands pressed against the dark wooden floor of the shrine. “I’m going to lose myself,” he whispered.
I sat on the floor beside him, wrapping my arms around his arm, pressing my ear against his shoulder. “I won’t let you,” I said. “We’ll find another way.”
“Without the Kusanagi, there is no other way,” he said. He looked up, and I could see the tears glistening in his eyes as he held them back, as he fought to stay in control. “You need to get the hell away from me, Katie. For real, this time. Forever.”
I closed my eyes, screaming at myself to think. All the dreams wouldn’t have led us here if it was a dead end. Did the ink in us just not realize that it would be impossible? How else could we get the sword? It hadn’t been found in six hundred years. If it was still at the bottom of the ocean, wouldn’t it be useless? Rusting away, maybe covered in seaweed or coral or something, completely absorbed by ocean life. How could we use a dulled sword like that to cut away a kami soul?
“Wait,” I said. “Couldn’t you draw it? A replica wouldn’t work, but if you drew it, it would have the power of the kami in it, right? It would be alive, like all your sketches.”
“She has a point, Yuuto,” Ishikawa said. He reached a hand out of the shrine, to see if it was still raining, and then closed up his umbrella. “Couldn’t you draw your own Kusanagi?”
“I don’t exactly have a good track record of drawing weapons, Sato.”
Ishikawa touched the front of his shoulder, where the bullet had gone through. “You think I need reminding?”
Tomo stared at the floor as he thought. “Katie...do you remember the first thing that happened to me, the first time the ink in me woke up?”
Tanaka had told me th
e story when I’d first started at Suntaba School. I nodded. “You’d drawn the kanji for sword for Calligraphy Club,” I said. “The stroke that flicks across the bottom cut your wrist open.”
“I think that was the Kusanagi,” he said. “This is what the ink’s always been trying to achieve, since that first drawing. It’s always tried to attack Tsukiyomi’s blood in me. It’s why the nightmares always whispered to me that I was a murderer, that I was a demon. They weren’t speaking to me, Katie. They were speaking to Tsukiyomi. But if I can’t draw the sword without dying myself...” He shook his head and rested his chin against his knees.
“Then draw Orochi.” It slipped out, before I could stop it.
Ishikawa smacked his umbrella lightly against my arm. “Idiot.”
“Orochi?”
Ishikawa rolled his eyes. “You think an eight-headed serpent won’t kill him just as easily?”
“But the sword is in one of its eight tails,” I said. “If you can get the sword that way, it won’t cut you while you draw it.”
“Again, you somehow forget the eight-headed dragon. With eight heads. And the number of heads is eight.”
“Sato, enough,” Tomo said. “It kind of makes sense. The way Amaterasu spoke about Orochi back there... I kept thinking, Why do I feel so afraid? What is this terror gripping my heart? Orochi is long dead. I must have known, somehow... I must have known what was coming.”
“Oi, matte yo,” Ishikawa protested, putting his hands up in the air, his umbrella hooked over his wrist. “Wait, wait. You’re actually considering drawing this eight-headed beast of horrible legend?” Tomo answered with silence, and Ishikawa widened his eyes. “No, no, no. There’s no way this could go well. Did you forget the giant dragon you drew in Shizuoka? The gun that shot me in front of Hanchi? The freaky demon face and wings that sprouted from you before you collapsed on the street? Your powers are totally unstable, Yuuto. There’s no way in hell you can survive drawing Orochi.”
Tomo rose to his feet slowly, stepping out of the shrine’s shelter and onto the muddy gravel pathway out of the shrine. “You’re right, Sato,” he said quietly. “I’m not stable enough to draw Orochi.”
“Tomo?” I stepped toward him, my umbrella folded under my arm.
His face was stone. “That’s why I’m going to ask Takahashi.”
I couldn’t form the syllables he’d said into meaningful words. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Are you a complete idiot?” Ishikawa said. “Takahashi isn’t going to help you draw Orochi to get a sword that will stop him.”
But Tomo was already walking toward the entrance of the shrine, toward Jingu-Mae Station and the way home.
“He’s lost his mind,” Ishikawa said to me.
“Agreed.” I ran ahead to catch up to him.
Tomo didn’t even wait for me to ask. “Takahashi is the only Kami I know who’s powerful enough to draw it,” he said. “He’s stable, and his drawings come off the page. It’s no good if it won’t come off the paper.”
“Yeah, but last time we saw him he threatened your life,” I said. “He’s not going to help you unless it means helping him. And the point of the Kusanagi is to save you and stop him.”
“Then I’ll have to give him something he wants,” he said, like it was as simple as that.
“Like?”
He stopped to put his return ticket to Nagoya Station through the slot in the metal gate. The doors burst open with a chime. “Look, I don’t know yet. I’ll figure it out on the way, okay?”
“Couldn’t he just draw the sword?” I asked.
“I don’t trust him to give it to us,” Tomo said. “He’d just use it against us, wouldn’t he? But Orochi fought against Susanou. I don’t think the drawing will be on Takahashi’s side. My only hope is to get to the blade before he does.”
“Drawing that monster is suicide,” Ishikawa chimed in. “You know that, right?”
We boarded the waiting train, leaning against the opposite doors as we talked.
Tomo shrugged. “So maybe I can get Takahashi to draw him bound in chains, or deep asleep or something.”
“How about a drunken stupor?” Ishikawa suggested, and I raised an eyebrow. “What? That’s how Susanou defeated the original Orochi. Got him drunk and cut his heads off.”
“Nice,” I said. “Could you do something like that?”
Tomo nodded. “But there’s only one person who can draw Orochi, and it’s Takahashi, no matter how badly I don’t want that to be true.” The train doors closed and we lurched forward as we rattled down the track. “It’s always been Amaterasu, Tsukiyomi and Susanou. Even now, we can’t complete this without Susanou’s descendant.”
“It’s a huge risk,” Satoshi said.
“Yeah,” Tomo said. “But it’s the only one we have the choice to take.”
I was silent as the train raced toward Nagoya Station, as we slipped through the crowd and boarded the bullet train for Shizuoka City.
My phone buzzed then with a text from Diane. I swallowed my panic, hoping she’d believed my message that I was at Yuki’s for a sleepover. Yuki had known to cover for me if she checked in.
Out shopping with Kanako, the text said, her teacher friend. Yuki can come over to the house if she wants. A pang of guilt shadowed my heart, but it’s not like I could help what I had to do. I dialed Yuki and put the phone to my ear. It rang and rang, and went to voice mail. I hung up.
“Calling your aunt?” Tomo asked.
I shook my head. “Yuki.”
Ishikawa grinned a little too widely, trying too hard. “Checking in with the cover story, huh?”
Tomo’s cheeks turned pink, but he smiled. “Shut up.”
Ugh. Opting out of the conversation, I dialed Yuki again. Please pick up and save me from this awkwardness.
The phone clicked, but it was a guy’s voice who answered. “Moshi mosh?”
I waited for my voice to catch up with my brain. “Tanaka?”
He sounded sheepish. “Uh...hi, Katie-chan. What’s up?”
“I...why do you have Yuki’s phone?”
“Oh, um.” There was a rustling sound, like he’d stumbled or something. A raven called in the distance. “Yuki’s in the bathroom right now. When you called back, I thought maybe it was urgent. You okay?”
I bit my lip to keep from laughing. “Fine,” I said. “I can call later.”
“Sure, okay,” he said. “Yeah, um. Yeah.”
“Tanaka, wait,” I said. I hesitated, unsure what to say. “Can...can you keep Yuki safe today?”
“Doushita?” he asked, his voice quiet with concern. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I’d feel a lot better if you stay close to Yuki.”
He paused, like he was going to pry for more answers, but he didn’t. “No problem,” he said. “You can count on me.”
“Thanks.” I hung up, not sure exactly what I’d walked into. There could be a totally innocent explanation. Maybe. But it wasn’t time to worry about that. We had more serious things ahead. Knowing Yuki and Diane would be out of the way today made me feel better about the danger ahead.
“Do you still have Takahashi’s keitai number?” Tomo asked.
I fumbled with my phone. “Yeah, here.”
“Text him to meet us at the Minami Alps.”
“The what?”
Tomo took my phone and punched in the kanji for me before passing it back. “He’ll know where they are.”
“I’m coming, too,” Ishikawa said.
Tomo shook his head. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I’m not scared of that dipshit, Yuuto. I’m coming with you. You can’t stop me.”
I sent the text, my hands trembling.
Jun had been my f
riend once. I prayed silently that he would remember that, before the end.
* * *
We rode yet another train out of Shizuoka City, the houses thinning around us, the busy world shrinking away. The mountains rose up before us, nearly as tall as Fuji itself, all of them lush with trees that would be green again in the coming spring. The chill of mountain air permeated through the train windows.
“The Minami Alps,” Tomo said. It was a popular hiking spot, he’d explained, but not when the weather was this freezing. I knew what he was thinking, of course. Meet somewhere others couldn’t get hurt. I pulled my scarf tighter around myself as we stepped out of the train and into the wilderness.
We must have walked for half an hour, until we couldn’t even see the train station, until there was nothing but trees and fading sunlight filtered among them. The path through the woods curved into a clearing, and we stepped away from everything we knew, to face the fields of the Minami Alps.
The autumn forests pressed against the borders of the clearing, the mountains loomed like shadows—a painting of a dying world. In the summer, it must have been lush and green, with wildflowers swaying in the breeze. Now the winter had almost overtaken it, as the bitter cold of fate had overtaken me. Everything was on the edge of death, holding on to that last hopeless hope of one more breath. Just one.
Fuji loomed in the distance, along with other jagged peaks that blotted out the late-afternoon sun. It was hard to imagine we’d been in Ise this morning and Nagoya at lunchtime, where we’d slurped down kishimen noodles and failed to find the last of the Imperial Treasures. The sun would set in an hour, and then it would be bitterly cold in this exposed field.
“Do you think he’ll actually come?” I asked as Tomo leaned against a nearby cedar tree.
“He wouldn’t come for me,” Tomo said, his head tilted back against the rough bark. “But he’ll come for you.”
I felt a flush of heat down my neck. “That’s not true. We found out he was only using me because of the ink inside me, right? I was nothing to him.”
Ishikawa sighed, patting my shoulder. I winced, the bruise still fresh. “Greene,” he said, shaking his head. “When are you going to learn?”
