by Wen Spencer
Narrowly missed.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” She dived at the stuff from her wet purse laid out to dry.
“Is that a good oh or a bad oh?” Pixii mumbled from the bed.
“It’s a bad oh!” She had brought Simon’s passport and wallet with her to Kyoto on some off chance that she had to prove to someone in Shiva that she knew what had happened to him. “Possibly a very bad oh.”
There was a grunt from the lump that was Miriam.
Nikki had discovered that people were like dominos. If they were too far apart when they fell, then they didn’t influence the path of characters you expected them to impact. If a body were dumped in the woods, it could be months before someone found it. A husband on a business trip wouldn’t realize his wife and children had been butchered until he got home. A serial killer could choose a victim and stalk her, but a grandfather’s death on the other side of the country could yank her out of danger.
It was one thing for characters to meet if only one of them was in motion; if both were moving, it was like trying figure out when subatomic particles collided.
Simon was very well traveled; there were dozens of stamps showing him entering and leaving countries around the world. At the end was the stamp that showed him entering Japan. Leo said that Simon had disappeared two months ago . . .
Miriam and Pixii came to eye the wall.
“What did you find?” Pixii said.
“Simon landed on June first late in the day.” Nikki waved his passport as proof. “According to the scene I wrote, he waited until the next day to go to Izushi by train, and he didn’t get there until nearly dark. The next morning was when he called Leo from the construction site. It means that he was taken by Iwanaga on June third.”
She took out purple Post-It Notes and started to number them. “Three.” She slapped it onto the wall slightly above her head. “Iwanaga’s at Izushi’s at dusk.”
“Four.” She put the next one at shoulder level. “She’s in Osaka with Kenichi.”
“Five.” Nikki stuck the note nearly at floor level. “She and Kenichi go to visit her sister in Kirishima Shrine—which is at the foot of Mount Kirishima on the island of Kyushu. Kirishima, which I only know since the silly thing erupted a few years ago, is one of the farthest points south you can get short of Okinawa. It takes her the whole day to get down there by train. I don’t have a scene of this, but Kenichi bitched about it later because she used his money to get them there and back.”
“Six.” It, too, went near floor level. “Her sister gathers together her shrine maidens and tells them that they’re going to Osaka. She gives them a day to get ready. Seven. The shrine maidens head north, taking all day to return to Osaka. Proof: the Shikansen ticket that was in Umeko’s student ID holder.”
Nikki put the purple seven at waist level to indicate travel. She took out one of the orange Post-It Notes and wrote seven on it and put it at eye level. “Also on the seventh is the first event of Gion Matsuri in Kyoto.”
Miriam shook her head. “I still don’t get the—Oh! Oh, holy shit!”
“The light goes on,” Pixii said. “But I’m still in the dark.”
“After the seventh, Iwanaga sends out all but one of her shrine maidens to every shrine that she thinks has a remote chance of holding the spear. They’ve had over a month to cross off hundreds of possibilities. They would have started with his shrines and worked down through his kids’ and anyone with half a chance of maybe holding onto it for him as a favor. But they didn’t find shit.”
Nikki tapped the orange Post-It Note. “Haru is picked to be Chigo, the celestial child for the Naginata Hoko on the seventh. It starts a five-week-long ordeal for him and his twin brother, Nobu. Haru is fitted for clothes and taught what to do in half a dozen ceremonies. He goes through multiple purification rituals. He’s isolated from their mother and sisters. At a certain point he’s not even allowed to touch the ground—he’s carried like a god.”
“The thing is—they’re always in motion. A moving target is difficult to hit. The shrine maidens search all the Kyoto shrines, but they don’t find anything.”
Pixii nodded, seeing her point. “Because the boys are never in the same place they are.”
“Inari probably made sure of it,” Nikki said, remembering how Inari practically flung her at Umeko. He’d dragged Nikki out of the shrine and pointed across the street at the store where Umeko was shopping. How many other times had he influenced her prior to that moment? Was their first meeting really at Inari’s Shrine or had the god been manipulating her life longer than that? The biggest weird coincidence had been Officer Yoshida sitting down beside her after being at Gregory’s murder scene and overhearing her talk of George’s murder. Had Inari engineered that collision point?
“We know that the spear isn’t on the Naginata Hoko,” Nikki said. “But the legend says that the float defeats evil spirits as it is paraded through Kyoto. Not before the procession. Not after the procession. During. Assuming that the spear in question is the heavenly bejeweled spear, one has to reason that it will be on that float.”
Miriam gasped. “Haru is the only thing that isn’t on the Naginata Hoko tonight that would be on it tomorrow!”
“Right.”
“Couldn’t it be just the clothes?” Pixii said. “They dress him up like one of those dolls. There’s the gold phoenix crown and the makeup and the entire ceremonial Shinto robes.”
“Or he who can’t be mentioned might have just replaced Haru,” Miriam said. “He had this contest of power with his sister. Each took an item belonging to the other and ‘birthed’ people out of them. She created three women out of his sword, and he formed five men out of her necklace. If that wasn’t freaky weird enough, one of the men was the grandfather of the first emperor.”
Nikki winced and tried to not let that little data point distract her. “I would know if he had replaced one of the boys. Something would have changed in my book. Either I wouldn’t have been able to write Nobu’s point of view or there would be all sorts of foreshadowing that something really weird was going on with Haru.”
“Okay, that’s spooky weird,” Miriam said. “But yeah, Nobu didn’t read any different, and he didn’t notice any change in Haru.”
“And it’s not the clothes,” Nikki said. “If it was just the clothes, they’d put them in a box and parade them around.”
“Yes, that’s the Japanese for you,” Pixii said.
Nikki tapped Haru’s name on the wall. “For a thousand years, they’ve gone through the bother of picking a child from some of the oldest and most powerful families in Kyoto. And then they treat them like gods for a month.”
“So—what—he who won’t be mentioned hides it on him?” Pixii guessed. “Where? Why?”
Miriam picked up a pen and notebook. “Couldn’t—couldn’t you just write and find out?”
Nikki considered the pen and paper. “I guess I could.”
Haru’s stomach was full of crazy looping butterflies of fear. It was dawn on a weekday, and the Yasaka Shrine had been completely empty when they entered. The trees had screened off the streets and muffled the noise of the traffic. He found the silence unnerving, like the god had gathered them close and now held them lightly in the palm of his hand. He tried not to be scared when the priest told him to go into the haiden and wait alone.
Haru pressed his hands together as if he were holding his cell phone and was texting his twin. He did it in class sometimes, since this year they weren’t in the same room and they weren’t allowed to use their phones in school.
Wish you were born first, Haru pretended to text his brother. It’s silly that I get everything because of five minutes. You’re much braver than me. Why was I picked for this? You would have been better at it.
Of course, his brother would text back a collection of kanji that was nonsense but made a funny face. Nobu didn’t like to admit that he didn’t know something, so it was the only answer he could give.
Haru moved h
is fingers on the phantom keypad. I’m scared.
“There is no reason to be scared,” a man said.
Haru looked up. He hadn’t heard the man enter the worship hall. He was a tall young man in a regal kimono. He settled in front of Haru with the rough ease of a farmer. He had big strong hands and wide shoulders, but his face was as handsome as a model’s. Maybe he was an actor.
“I’m not,” Haru lied.
The man smiled. “That’s good. Tell me, do you know the story of the eight-headed serpent?”
Haru nodded. He’d been carefully coached on how to answer these questions since his name went into the pool of possible celestial children from his neighborhood. “Susanoo was in Izumo when he came across an old man and woman crying over their daughter. When he asked, they told him that they had eight daughters, but all but the youngest had been eaten. Soon a great serpent would come and eat her, too, and there was nothing they could do.”
“Nothing that they could do,” the man whispered. “What an awful thing, to be so helpless. Do you not think?”
Haru had not considered it before. He slowly nodded.
“To lose all your siblings that way. To know that your death is approaching. To hear it move in the darkness. To know it’s coming for you. My beloved still has nightmares of it.”
Haru wasn’t sure what they were talking about anymore. The man had the blackest eyes he’d ever seen. “Eh?”
“When you save someone, you don’t really fully save them. They stay afraid because they were helpless before you arrived, they were helpless while you saved them, and they were helpless after you killed the beast. The only way you can truly save someone is to let them save themselves.”
Somehow this seemed to suggest something awful for him. “What exactly am I saving myself from?”
“Monsters,” the man whispered. “I know that you can see them. Some of them act like people. Wear clothes. Buy smokes. Walk the streets at night. You know they’re real.”
Haru froze.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” the man said gently. “The festival is so all the monsters that cause earthquakes, tsunamis, flood and famine and diseases can be quelled. They want me to do it.”
Haru realized in the depths of those dark eyes, lightning flickered. He looked down and struggled to breathe. This was Susanoo himself right here beside him. Talking to him.
“If I do it,” Susanoo said, “it will solve nothing.”
Haru forgot his fear. “You’re not going to do it? You have to! They say that the Great East Japan Earthquake and the tsunami were because the festival went wrong that year.”
Susanoo grinned and reached out to tap him on the nose. “You are going to do it.”
“Me?”
“You.” Susanoo tapped him again on the nose. “You are not as helpless as you think. Heaven shimmers within you. It’s why you can see the monsters when no one else can. It is why I chose you and not your brother. All you need is a little boost—so you know what it feels like not to be helpless.”
Haru’s heart felt like it was trying to climb up his throat and run away. “I don’t understand.”
“You will.” Susanoo pressed his finger against Haru’s left check. “Left is for the girl child. The right is for the boy . . .”
Haru blinked furiously. He was alone in the haiden of Yasaka Shrine. The conversation that had been so vivid was fading at the edges, like he had just woken from a dream. His right eye burned slightly, but as he blinked, the feeling went away. He didn’t feel any different. Had he just imagined Susanoo?
Nikki lifted her pen from the paper. “Oh my God, he hid it in his eye.”
“It’s just like how Inuyasha’s father hid his sword.” Miriam named the famous manga character. “But I think it was the other eye.”
Nikki nodded. “If Susanoo has done this to every celestial child since the start of the festival, he’s been at it for a thousand years. Someone is bound to have picked up on it.”
“Oh yeah, and that one clan in Naruto,” Pixii said.
“That’s . . .” Miriam motioned at her eye and then caught herself before going off on a fangirl rant. “That’s totally different.”
Nikki looked at the wall and back at the paper. “This was weeks ago, just after their names were picked. All my other scenes with the twins are from Nobu’s viewpoint. There wasn’t any mention of this.”
Miriam nodded. “Nobu was all about learning the stupid dance.”
“Oh no,” Nikki cried. “That’s right. They were going to switch places. Nobu was learning the dance so he could take Haru’s place.”
“But if Haru has the spear . . .” Pixii said.
“Then the spear won’t be on the float,” Nikki said.
Had the twins switched places? Was it Nobu on the float, the unknowing target? She knew him better. Nobu was a boy with an irrepressible smile and fierce protectiveness of his brother. Nikki realized now that part of Haru’s “fearful nature” was the fact that he could see the monsters that roamed Japan freely while Nobu couldn’t. And like Miriam, Haru had chosen not to tell even the person closest to him about what he saw.
Nikki clicked her pen, considering Nobu. Thinking of him was filling her with unease, the kind that normally accompanied a character’s death. “Something is going to happen to Nobu.”
Miriam glanced at the clock between the beds. “The parade just started. If the boys switched, then Nobu is being carried to the float. It would be a good time for Iwanaga’s people to grab him.”
If the boys switched. Nobu assumed that they would, but he didn’t know that Susanoo had put the weight of Japan on Haru’s shoulders. To Nobu, the entire festival was supposed to be nothing but an extended party, and he was miserable that his brother wasn’t enjoying it with him.
Nikki pressed the tip of her pen to the paper, and a window opened in her mind’s eye. Nobu was watching the parade from the deserted community hall, sulking. He’d been there as everyone involved with the Naginata Hoko prepared for the parade. The two-story storefront tucked between two tall office buildings had seethed with nearly a hundred people scrambling to get ready. It had been controlled chaos as almost everyone involved had been part of the preservation committee for generations. All the gear possibly needed to roll the ten-ton cart several miles through the city was readied and double-checked. The musicians climbed through the second-story window and into the cart and started to play. The men who had positions on the cart’s roof scrambled up like monkeys. The pulling team drank water, went to the bathroom one last time, and then assembled out on the street.
Nobu had tried to take his brother’s place. In the confusion, it would have been easy. Not even their father could easily tell which one was which when they were pulling a switch. Haru stepped forward when they held out the ceremonial clothes and let them dress him up and apply the heavy white makeup until he looked like the dolls that all the other floats had instead of real children. When they were done, their father carried Haru away on his shoulder.
Nobu watched alone as the floats went past, following after the Naginata Hoko. He was going to be scolded later for not moving to where he’d be able to see Haru do the Taihei-no-mai dance that they’d practiced together. Nobu’s phone was silent, but he knew that Haru would be still nervously tapping away messages, trying to tell him how scared he was, up on the high float, with hundreds of thousands of people looking at him.
Nikki lifted her pen.
All seemed peaceful—just a little boy sulking in an empty building. If it were a movie, however, the music would already be ominous, warning that a monster lurked in the shadows, tensing to strike. What was going to happen?
Her writing was a divine gift. She could see, if she tried hard enough. She just needed to jump forward in time. She lowered her pen again.
Nobu cried out as the claw caught him under the ribcage and tore upwards . . .
Nikki jerked back from the paper. “Oh no!” She dropped the pen and the noteb
ook. She could feel the pain, the fear, the hot spill of blood . . . She whimpered, holding on to her stomach where the claw had struck.
“Easy.” Miriam caught her and held her. “Is it Nobu? Is he at the parade?”
Nikki pointed at the paper and then realized she had only written the single sentence. “He’s at the community center.”
“The what?” Miriam said.
Nikki pressed palms to her eyes and forced herself to think past the flash of death to the peaceful scene that she had seen moments before. “The community center on Shijo-dori. It’s like the Naginata Hoko clubhouse as far as I can tell. Something happens after the parade starts. Something comes after him.”
“If we hurry, we can save him.”
Nikki wasn’t sure—so far she’d never been able to change a scene once it had been written.
35
Display of Faith
The subway was packed, and everyone got off at the Shijo-dori stop. As a solid wall of people, they moved out of the subway station and onto a sidewalk even more crowded. They were only a few buildings down from the community hall, but they had to push and shove their way through the crowd to reach the building.
The door was shut but wasn’t locked.
The room beyond was still set up as a stall for Yoiyama. Unsold charms and tickets to tour the Naginata Hoko were scattered across tables and the floor. A dozen children in dark yukata were rooting through boxes and closets in the back of the room. They jerked about to stare at Nikki with black eyes.
