by Zoe Marriott
“Thanks for taking care of her,” I said. “Although – why did you bring her here? I thought you were going back to the house.”
“Ah.” Rachel made an apologetic face at me as she climbed to her feet. “Um. Bad news there, I’m afraid. The house is surrounded by a pack of wild-dog things that apparently really like the taste of human. I only just got your mum away from there. I’m not saying that you couldn’t fight your way in, Mio, but … London is a war zone right now. And it’s getting worse all the time.”
We sat on the floor of Ebisu’s shop on a blanket that my mum had spread out to catch crumbs, while everyone – Jack and Rachel, Hikaru, Shinobu, Ebisu, my parents and I – sat on cushions to devour a meagre selection of cheese slices, slightly stale crisps and nuts from Ebisu’s kitchen. It was … bizarre. The oddest thing of all was how downright normal it all seemed. Just a jolly indoor picnic with an immortal fox spirit, a trapped god, a five-hundred-year-old warrior boy and the rest of the gang. You know. The usual.
“Well, I suppose it’s better than nothing. I’m kind of surprised you even have food in your kitchen,” Jack said to Ebisu around a mouthful of peanuts. “Do you actually need to eat?”
“Jack!” Rachel elbowed Jack, ignoring her sputter as she choked. “I apologize for her manners. She wasn’t raised in a barn, honestly.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Ebisu said placidly, sipping yet another cup of tea. “I do need to eat, but not what you would call food. We eat energy. The ambient energy of the universe, generally, although other kinds of energy will do. The nexus here keeps me quite well fed. But that doesn’t mean I can’t eat human food, or enjoy it. Sadly, however, I haven’t had time to do my Internet shopping this week.”
“This is perfectly fine, thank you, Mr Ebisu,” Mum interrupted tiredly, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Can we get back to the subject at hand, please? I’m – I’m really trying to make sense of this.”
“Sorry, Mrs Yamato,” Rachel and Jack chorused.
“Mio, I – you were telling me that you’re going to need to find some random location in London, where hell – literally, hell – is going to be … unleashed, and that once you’re there, you’ll break the spell, or whatever it is, on the sword – which will free Shinobu and turn him back into a normal human – and then you’re going to have an actual fight with Izanagi-no-Kami, Father of the Gods, and – and somehow force him into the Underworld.” She stopped and looked around as if for support. “This … doesn’t strike anyone else as a bad plan? The worst plan. I mean, the absolute. Worst. Plan. Takashi?”
“I’m not exactly doing cartwheels of joy over it,” my father said. He rubbed Mum’s arm soothingly, and she let him, displaying her usual inability to cling to a grudge.
“Well then, say something!” she demanded. “This is our little girl. I’m sure… I mean, there has to be some other way?”
“There isn’t,” I contradicted flatly.
“Mio…”
“Sweetheart, I’ve seen Mio fight,” Dad said soothingly. “She’s … formidable. Amazing. She’ll have the sword, which protects her and makes her stronger, and she’ll have all of us. I believe she can do this. It may have been what she was born to do.”
Jack chimed in, very obviously trying to lighten the mood. “Seriously, until you’ve seen Mimi fly through the air, do a backflip off a wall and decapitate a demon in one swipe, you’re not really going to get it.”
“It is pretty impressive,” Rachel agreed.
“And what about that time when she summoned the sword’s power with its true name and caused an earthquake in the spirit realm?” Hikaru said enthusiastically. “That was great! I’ll never forget my Aunt Midori’s face!”
My mum looked at them, then stared at me as if she wasn’t sure she even knew me.
I put both hands up to soothe my burning cheeks and block out her expression. “Can you all please stop talking about me like I’m not here?”
Shinobu ran one finger tenderly down the line of my spine, telling me without words, I haven’t forgotten you’re here.
“Look, Mum,” I said before she could start ranting again. “I understand this is a lot to take in and you’re freaking out. But this isn’t up for debate. We don’t have any other options. If Izanagi isn’t sent to Yomi, Izanami will never stop pursuing him – or the sword. You’ve seen what it’s like out there. And Izanagi will keep hounding me, too, and I don’t even know what he’ll try to do to me if he catches me again. The Yamato family have been enslaved by the sword’s compulsion for five hundred years. The sword has already ruined so many lives − it nearly ruined Dad’s.” I saw a telltale glimmer in her eye at this appeal to family feeling and knew I was on the right track with my argument.
I swallowed, then pushed on. “I’m going to have kids someday, Mum. I don’t want to have to go through what Dad went through. I don’t want them to have to experience what I have: fighting and killing and fear and nothing to show for it but living to pass the curse onto the next generation. It has to stop. I have the chance to make that happen today and I’m going to take it. Nothing that you or anyone can say will stop me.”
Mum stared at me for a second, speechless. Then her eyes welled up and she turned her face into Dad’s shoulder. “Oh my God, she grew up. When did that happen? Did we give her permission to do that?” she asked, her voice muffled.
“Nope.” Dad patted Mum’s back, turning suspiciously shining eyes away from me.
Jack mimed gagging and Hikaru let out a foxy snort-laugh that she hastily turned into a cough when Rachel glared at her. Because I knew it was expected, I gave them all the finger. They thought I was just doing my thing – spinning the situation to get my own way like I always did. I had no way to tell them how much this hurt – or how much I was going to hurt them all by tomorrow morning.
I didn’t even dare look at Shinobu. I suddenly wondered how he felt about kids. For that matter, how did I feel about them? I’d never get the chance to find out now, would I?
Mum pulled away from Dad, sniffed briskly and wiped her face with a paper napkin. “All right, fine. You have to do this. But – but I’m coming with you, Mio! And so is your father. You’re not heading out on this − this mission alone.”
“We’re coming, too,” Rachel said seriously.
“Duh. Like you needed to tell her that,” Jack said. “She knows we wouldn’t kick her out to fight on her own.”
“In it together,” Hikaru agreed with a decisive nod. “From beginning to end.”
But she was wrong about that. In the beginning it had been just me, the sword and Shinobu. In the end, that was how it would be again.
Pushing aside doubts and sadness, I gave Hikaru a serious look. “We’re going to need the Kitsune to make this work, though. We have to talk to your king.”
“I wish I could help with that,” Ebisu said sadly, shifting on his little stool. “But I’m afraid the Kitsune wards on the spirit realm are too strong for me to break. I can’t open a rupture for you.”
“Should we head back to our house and use the rupture under the mulberry bush?” Jack asked.
“That’s not a good idea,” Rachel cut in before Hikaru could answer. “There is a lot of bad stuff sitting between us and the house, believe me. We almost got swallowed by some kind of giant slime-lizard thing at the end of this road. Isn’t there somewhere closer?”
Hikaru ran her hands through her hair distractedly. “We have rupture sites all over London, but the house is the closest one by a long way. Damn, if only I was old enough to open my own.”
“Aren’t you?” Jack asked.
Hikaru stopped tugging on her hair and stared at Jack. A strange look passed between them – almost like Hikaru was asking for reassurance. Jack quirked her eyebrows and nodded.
Hikaru took a deep breath. Then she squared her shoulders. “Maybe. Maybe I am. But I need, like, greenery. Soil. Something to anchor to. Anyone got any ideas?”
“I think I can
help,” Ebisu said. “Come with me.”
He limped his way to the STAFF ONLY door and into the tiny lobby filled with bundles of piled-up newspapers. Instead of heading back up the rickety stairs, though, he pulled open the outside door to reveal a glimpse of a dingy courtyard floored with cracked concrete that was stained vivid green with algae. He stepped to one side, leaning on his stick, and gestured Hikaru outside.
I hung back at the STAFF ONLY door with Shinobu, Rachel and my parents behind me, as Hikaru went out into the courtyard with Jack and looked around. Her copper eyebrows crimped together. “I guess this counts,” she said. “But normally beginners use something really solid and alive. Like a big tree or a hill. This would be more tricky.”
“Could Hiro or Araki do it?” Jack asked, naming the two other fox spirits that we’d met and fought alongside. Both of them were over three hundred years old. What is Jack up to with this?
Hikaru rubbed her hands together anxiously. “Maybe? Yeah, I think so.”
“Then try,” Jack said. “If you can’t make it work, then we’ll think of something else, OK? But I think you can. I really do.”
When the fox spirit still looked anxious, Jack reached out – apparently without thinking – and put her arm around Hikaru’s shoulder for a quick hug. Hikaru’s expression conveyed shocked pleasure. I felt my eyes widen. Rachel let out a huff of surprise. Jack wasn’t a hugger − or much of a toucher at all, really – except with people that she absolutely trusted and felt close to. As far as I knew, that was her mum, her sister and me.
And now, apparently, Hikaru.
Jack turned away from Hikaru to look at the rest of us. “Come on outside, everyone. We’ll give it a go, just to see if it works.”
Hikaru was gazing down at her sneaker-clad feet, but I could see just the faintest quiver of a smile. Sadness pierced me as I realized that I wasn’t going to get to see whatever happened next between these two. By the time they got their act together, I would be gone.
“OK, Mimi?” Jack asked. I looked up and realized that everyone else had filed past me into the garden – apart from Shinobu, who was hesitating on the threshold with a concerned look.
“Yep, sorry. Just thinking.” I went forward quickly, brushing Shinobu’s hand with mine to reassure him.
There wasn’t really enough room in the courtyard for all of us, even with Ebisu staying inside. We jostled around, trying to find places to put our feet without stepping all over each other or brushing against the slimy green concrete walls. Mum drew me towards her so that I ended up standing between her and Dad, and Shinobu stationed himself on Dad’s other side.
Looking back at the shop, I saw a half-dead-looking vine of some kind clinging tenaciously to the battered white render around the door. That meant Hikaru would have a little bit more to “anchor” to than just the algae out here. That was good. Probably. Well, I hoped so, anyway.
“Are you all as far back as you can get?” Hikaru asked.
A couple of us shuffled a bit to show that we’d done our best. She rolled her eyes. “Fine. All right then. All right.” She turned back to stare at the doorway. “Brace yourselves, cupcakes. Time to go through the looking glass.”
Behind Hikaru’s back, I saw Jack cross her fingers.
CHAPTER 20
“OOPS” IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT
H ikaru shook out her hands and pressed them together, palm to palm. Her tail lashed once, then began swishing rhythmically, making wide figures of eight in the air behind her. Tiny sparks trailed from the tail, lingering like the light patterns left behind by a sparkler. She began that deep, musical crooning low in her throat, and I felt all the hairs on the back of my neck jump to attention.
My mum grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Her eyes were wide with a combination of apprehension and excitement. On my other side, my dad stood solidly, gaze riveted on Hikaru. His shoulder brushed mine. I would never admit it to anyone, but this was sort of … nice. Having them both with me now, just for a little while, before…
Slowly, tendrils of fizzing white electricity began to squirm to life against the wall of Ebisu’s shop. They wove into place around the drooping vine, sprouting as we watched, growing into a new plant − a glowing rectangular vine of electrical magic that encircled the door. Ebisu, who was still standing in the doorway, tilted his head to one side as if listening, then smiled at Hikaru. He bowed a shallow, stiff bow to all of us and stepped back, pulling the door shut behind him.
I guess that’s goodbye from him, then.
“It’s working,” Jack said. “It’s working!”
Hikaru’s mesmerizing song grew louder. Her tail swished faster, blazing with sparks. The electric vine around the door brightened. The light was so intense now that it was hard to look at it. But I had to look, because Jack was right – it was working. The space inside Hikaru’s vine was beginning to fade away into darkness.
Hikaru’s tail lashed upwards, the white fur tip alive with electricity. A jagged spear of lightning jumped from it and hit the glowing vine. She shouted something − a phrase in some strange language that I didn’t know. The words boomed through the little courtyard, making us all stagger as a deep grinding shook the concrete underfoot.
Then silence. Hikaru dropped her hands. “Wow. Huh. That … that actually wasn’t so bad after all,” she said, panting a little.
“You nailed it!” Jack jumped up and down and punched Hikaru on the shoulder. “I knew you could! In your FACE, Midori! Whoop!”
“Thanks,” the fox spirit said, laughing as she gave her arm a quick rub. The look in her eyes when she smiled at Jack was almost painfully obvious. Jack seemed to see it a second after I had. Her exuberance drained away, and she bit her lip.
Hikaru’s face fell. She sighed and made a gesture towards the rupture. “Well, everyone pile in, then.”
The doorway was narrow, so we went in two by two: Jack and Rachel entered the darkness first, followed by Mum and Dad. When Shinobu and I followed, I immediately found myself squashed up against my dad’s back.
He tried to make room for me, but there wasn’t really anywhere to go. In front, Jack made a little squeaking noise, as if she was being crushed.
“Right, this is the trickiest bit,” Hikaru said. I felt her cram herself into the rupture directly behind me, and Shinobu grunted as if she had maybe stood on him. “Sorry. Give me a minute.”
The light from the courtyard opening snapped off, leaving us in total darkness.
“Hmm,” I heard the fox spirit mutter. “Might as well go for it, I suppose. Geronimo!”
A deep rumbling sound shook the narrow space around us. I put my free hand out to the side for balance and felt the dry soil and whiskery roots trembling under my palm. Tiny bits of earth pattered down on our heads.
“Ick!” That was Rachel. Jack shushed her.
Somewhere ahead of me, a tiny shaft of light suddenly broke through the blackness. The light grew, widening slowly into a circle, like a pupil dilating. Hikaru was leaning into me now, and I could hear her harsh breathing. I braced myself and took her weight. The rumbling deepened, and the hole grew even wider.
“Is it … wide enough … yet?” Hikaru asked raspily.
“Yep. It’s perfect,” Jack called back cheerfully. Actually, peering between my parents’ shoulders, I could see that we’d all probably have to step high and duck a bit to get out – but it seemed cruel to quibble. I kept quiet, and so did everyone else.
The rumbling stopped. The circle stopped growing. Hikaru let out a relieved sigh and straightened up. “All right, it’s fixed.”
Jack and Rachel trooped forward, followed closely by Mum and Dad, who were clearly eager to escape the cramped, earthy cave of Between. I was about to congratulate Hikaru when I heard a muffled scream – Mum – and an angry voice shout, “Halt intruders!”
Behind me, Hikaru whispered, “Oops.”
I bolted forward and leapt out of the entrance – only to plough into the back of my dad for the se
cond time. This time I didn’t stop to say sorry. I zipped around him and shoved my mum behind me into Shinobu’s arms, knowing he would keep her safe.
We were in the heart of the Kitsune Kingdom, at the bottom of the deep natural amphitheatre of mossy turf that the fox spirits used as their court. High above us, crowding around the rim of the amphitheatre, were ancient trees with trunks so vast that four people standing with their arms extended couldn’t encircle one of them.
Hikaru had opened the rupture in the small, smooth hillock that sat at the centre of the court.
The king’s throne.
It was difficult right now to make out the rich green-gold of the tree trunks, the silver canopy of leaves that formed a roof high above, or even the rows of grassy steps lining the walls of the amphitheatre which the Kitsune usually sat on when the court was in session. The whole place was enveloped in dim twilight. The last time we’d been here, thousands of glowing fox lights had drifted among the trees, providing light that was as clear and steady as the sun. At the moment there were only four fox lights, bobbing just above our heads. They belonged, I guessed, to the extremely well-armed and very pissed-off looking pair of Kitsune guards, in human form, who were ranged in front of Jack and Rachel.
Jack and Rachel, wisely, were standing completely still, with their hands in the air.
“What are you doing here?” one guard demanded. She was a three-tails, and she held a modern composite bow. The nocked arrow was aimed directly at Rachel. “How did you appear in our realm this way?”
“Did you come to spy, humans? To steal?” the other guard – a two-tails – hissed. He held a long wooden spear with an angular metal blade, and as he spoke, he jabbed at Jack’s face. She flinched back instinctively.
Crap, this is bad.
Rachel’s hands shot out and plucked the spear from the guard’s grasp, then snapped it in half across her knee. “Don’t point. It’s rude.” She dropped the pieces contemptuously on the ground.
