by A. L. Knorr
Aimi gave another shocked cry of surprise and lost her footing as the stones moved under her feet. She fell forward and sprawled across the rocks, crying out in pain. My tamashī spilled out of her grasp and rolled across the stones toward the man.
His wizened face blossomed with shock and his eyes widened in surprise, the light from my tamashī reflected in his pupils. He moved faster than a man of his years had right to. He grabbed the hat from his head, bent, and caught the light into it. A sigh of amazement issued from his throat as he cradled my tamashī in his hat.
In front of me, Aimi's form shimmered and she transformed into a fox. She disappeared inside her dress as her clothing collapsed into a heap. She leapt from the gaping neck, snarling and snapping at the man. He took a step back and raised his cane to strike her.
"No!" I cried.
Aimi lunged. The man brought his walking stick down hard, but Aimi bolted between the man's legs and the cane snapped in two on the rocks as she disappeared into the undergrowth. It was the violence of his blow that penetrated my heart with fear. He’d had intent to injure her.
"Aimi!" I yelled. The instinct to follow her was strong, but I couldn't leave my tamashī.
"What are you?" the man said, his voice raw and dry. Something in his face told me that he had some ideas about what we were. He'd just seen Aimi transform in front of his eyes.
I stared at him, my eyes wide as saucers. Sweat trickled down the hollow of my spine.
"That's mine." I held out my hand. "I need it back, now, please."
He took a step forward. "Are you Kitsune?" I couldn't see the light from my tamashī, closed in the cap the way it was.
I shook my head and reached for the hat. Was I going to have to tackle this man to get my tamashī back? My mouth had gone as dry as a desert and my hands trembled with adrenalin. Should I become a raptor and batter him with my wings? Snatch the hat in my talons? Just the thought was enough to transform my body. My robes fell and the shape of a peregrine falcon shot upward from the neck of my dress. In a flurry of feathers and clutching talons I climbed and gathered momentum to dive at him.
His face tilted up to watch me, his expression transforming from surprise to amazement. "Akuna Hanta," he whispered with understanding. He took a staggering step backward as I circled over his head. He gasped and opened the hat. The glow from my tamashī lit his face and the forest around both of us.
I dove, screaming a falcon's cry as I went.
He lifted my tamashī to his lips and I pulled up as I realized what he was about to do, turning my talons toward his face. I was too late. A piercing shriek tore from my throat as my light disappeared into his mouth. He ducked as my talons snapped closed where his face used to be. I swooped and shot upward again, preparing for another attack.
"Down." The command cracked through the air like thunder.
Some undeniable force pulled me down like a typhoon shoving me toward earth rather than lifting me to the heavens. I screamed in confusion and sprawled into the dirt at his feet, my wings open, my chest and beak in the soil. My whole body trembled, and I screamed again in terror. What was happening? Where was Aimi? Why was she not here to help me?
The man's shadow fell over me, and with it, a desperate cold.
"You will give me years," he said, taking off his outer robe. "Destiny has finally answered my call."
The last thing I saw before he threw his jacket over me were the green eyes of a blue-black fox watching from the underbrush. A horrible thought rose in my mind as the darkness suffocated me—that Aimi had known he was there and had lured me toward my doom. For with me out of the way, there would be nothing to stop her from marrying Toshi.
Chapter 11
From the hotel, I had to take the train southwest of Kyoto to a poorer suburb. The wealth of Kyoto began to dissolve as the minutes passed until I found myself looking at what could nearly be identified as slums. My heart slipped down into my shoes and I began to doubt my intuition about the janitor who had compelled me to do what I was doing. What if he was just crazy? I shook my head. He knew what I was. How many humans could tell an Akuna Hanta just from looking at them? None, in my experience, except for Daichi, but he’d seen my tamashī.
I stepped off the train at the right stop and used my GPS to make my way to the address. It was a tiny house, squashed in a row of tiny houses with not so much as an inch between them and no space between the sidewalk and the front door. The windows were blocked with white paper and a dim glow lit them from within. I stepped up and knocked.
The door opened and Inaba stood beside it, smiling, his eyes crinkling. He was dressed in a traditional Japanese robe, black with gray stripes. He wore his robe crossed high at his neck, and it struck me as odd-looking, like he’d purposefully done it up high to hide something, a necklace or a charm, perhaps. "Come in, come in, please," he said, stepping back from the door and leaving room for me to enter through the narrow doorway.
The smell of incense hit my nose and my gaze was caught on two candles burning on a shelf on the wall. Between the two candles were the photographs of two people: one was a teenage boy; he was smiling into the camera and shared the shape of Inaba's brow. The other was of a woman, unsmiling but serene, with her dark hair parted in the middle and tied back.
"I am Inaba." My host bowed to me. "I'm sorry we didn't have time for proper introductions at the museum. The supervisor is quite strict about the cleaning staff interacting with patrons."
"Akiko," I said. I followed him into the small space towards a low table.
"Please, come in Akiko. It is an honor to have you in my home, and to learn your name." Inaba sat down cross-legged at a low table and gestured for me to take the place across from him. A bowl sat at each place with another bowl placed upside down on top of it to serve as a lid. "You must have so many questions," he said. "I am not the greatest cook in the world. My wife was superb, but I'm afraid her talents did not rub off on me." He lifted the lid from his bowl. The smell of miso and onion mingled with the scent of incense. "Please, enjoy. I don't stand on ceremony anymore."
I lifted the lid from my soup and inhaled the delicious salty smell. My stomach growled and I realized I hadn't eaten since that morning when I'd had a bowl of cereal at the hotel. "Thank you for feeding me. It's very kind of you. But, please tell me before I die from curiosity." I looked him in the eye. "How do you know what I am?"
He picked his bowl up and took a sip of the steaming soup. His eyes met mine overtop of the ceramic, his eyebrows up high and his brows wrinkling. He set his bowl down. "I am surprised you would ask. As far as I know there is only one thing that could give away a Hanta in human form."
The surprise on his face made me shift in my seat uncomfortably. "I have been excessively sheltered," I said. It was the only explanation I had the ability to give.
"You have a smell like ozone. It's an odor I equate with lightning and thunder. Only creatures of the Æther have this scent, and Hantas have it the strongest. If I had not been saved by a Hanta one time in my life, I would not have known. The few people who smell you probably attribute it to a passing breath of fresh air. But I know better now." He lowered his voice and his eyes got a dreamy look. "It will be a beloved scent to me until the day they put me in the ground."
My skin prickled at the memory of Toshi whispering that I smelled like the air after a storm. My nose and eyes tingled and I blinked to clear them. I hadn't allowed myself to think about Toshi in years and suddenly he was as frequently in my mind as the sword I had come to retrieve. The pain that had dulled down to emotional scar-tissue over the years was once again acute and I steeled myself against the swell of grief that swept over me. "When was the last time you met a Hanta? Can you tell me what happened?"
Inaba nodded. "I have wanted the opportunity to tell someone my story for a long time. The Akuna Hanta is something that has faded completely into myth. No one would believe my story unless they'd been through something similar." He sat back and held out his arms
. "Looking around, you may find it hard to believe that I was once a very wealthy and powerful man." He lowered his eyes. "I was. But no amount of wealth or power could possibly be worth what it cost me."
My gaze went up to the shelf where the two photographs sat. I nodded in their direction. "They were your wife and son?" It seemed safe enough to assume something had happened to separate Inaba from his family, for there were no signs of anyone else’s existence in this small house aside from his.
He nodded. There was always the suggestion of a smile about his lips, but his brown eyes were heavy and sad. "I was already a member of the yakuza when I fell in love with Mihu. After we were married and she became pregnant with our son, she begged me to give up my yakuza life. But once you are a part of the organization, it is not so easy to get out. I understood my wife's fear, but we had a nice home and plenty of money, all because of the yakuza. I was not ready to leave. I knew I would one day. It is a violent and stressful life, but first I wanted to put aside enough money that we would never have to worry."
"Yakuza," I said, the word was unfamiliar to me. I broke it down into its three components and their Japanese meaning. "Eight, nine, and three?"
Inaba nodded. "That's right. The lowest score in the game of oichokabu, that is where the name originated. It literally means 'worthless.' The yakuza's roots are low, coming out of the Edo period some 350 years ago. At the time, they were nothing more than a bunch of misfits, peddlers, and gamblers. Now," he picked up his steaming cup of tea, "they are tens of thousands of members strong and operating in plain view of the police, who are too afraid to do anything about them."
I pictured a gang of street brawlers breaking windows and throwing homemade bombs into shops. Somehow, I thought that my imagination was more fueled by American movies I'd watched than reality. "So, they are like a gang? What do the yakuza do?"
"They are more than a gang." He laughed without any real humor. "And what don't they do is easier to answer. Where there is money, they have a hand in the pot—financial crimes, prostitution, drugs, corporate bribery. They are ruthless businessmen," he tilted his head, "and women, too, without any observation for the law. They follow their own laws. They are so much a part of the fabric of life in Japanese cities that they own or manipulate in some way all of the largest corporations in this country."
The blood drained from my face and I stared at my host. My life in a small village all those years ago had never been touched by corruption. The Japan Inaba was talking about was unfamiliar to me.
He put up a hand. "They are not always bad," he went on. "They are often the first to help in a crisis, provide aid after devastating natural disasters, and they even did much of the cleanup after the Fukishima disaster. They like to think they are the protectors of the weak." He shook his head. "I can speak so easily of them as something separate from me now, but truthfully, if Japan's government ever finds a way to bring them down, I should go down along with them. I had a hand in setting up the current regime. By the time my son Hiroki was born, my tattoos were already half complete, and I was losing my grip on reality."
"Your tattoos?" My eyes grazed his sleeves and his collar, looking for a trace of ink. I had seen photos of irezumi before, the Japanese full body tattoos, but never in person. "What do your tattoos have to do with anything?"
Inaba laughed. "Everything," he said, holding his arms out. "They have everything to do with it. And they have something to do with you, too."
My brows drew down in confusion and I wondered where this was going. "When you asked me to come here tonight, I came because I was under the impression that you would be able to help me locate the wakizashi. What do your tattoos have to do with that?"
"I did not mislead you, Akiko. Please," he put a hand out, "let me continue. You are the second Akuna Hanta I have encountered in my lifetime. There must be a reason for that, given that most people think you are a myth. Our meeting at the museum was not by chance. Let me help you."
I nodded. "Sorry to interrupt. Go on." I took three big swallows of the soup and it warmed my belly. I set the bowl down and waited.
"Traditionally, the yakuza choose the designs of tattoos because of the benefit they believe the symbol will bring them. Tigers for protection, koi for good luck, skulls to show respect for one's ancestors, and so on."
"Superstition." I nodded. Grandfather was superstitious, I had seen him salt our entrance and front steps before to dissuade beggars. My parents had been superstitious, too. Only Aimi seemed to be free from the chains of superstition. The irony in that almost made me laugh considering that she was a creature believed to belong to superstition.
Inaba leaned forward. "You could call it superstition, if you wanted. But I have since learned that it is an artfully executed deception."
"What do you mean? By who?"
"Do not make the mistake of thinking that those symbols do not hold power. I am living proof that they do. Rather, realize that the power that they have has been misconstrued. Carefully misrepresented over centuries to make men think one thing, when really the opposite is true. Their survival depends upon this deception holding fast, for if anyone knew what they were really doing when they tattooed them on their skin, no one would ever do so again."
"Whose survival?"
"The Oni."
My mind flashed back to paintings I had seen in my youth of a red-skinned ogre wielding a spiked club. I shivered.
"Ah, I can see from your face that you know what I am talking about." Inaba jabbed a finger toward me. "Am I also correct in guessing that you have not yet faced one of these entities? That your sheltered life has prevented you from doing your job?"
"No, I have never faced one." The idea of actually facing one of these creatures seemed an impossibility. If there were red-skinned flesh-eating ogres roaming the land, everyone would know about them. And if they were real, how was I, as a bird, supposed to kill one? The idea was absurd. There had to be more to it, and apparently this man knew what that more was. "What does this creature have to do with your tattoos?"
He sighed. "My arrogance had me choose the Oni for my irezumi. Most yakuza will allow the artist to choose the design, but I wanted an image that would strike fear into the hearts of my enemies and tell my yakuza brothers I was not to be challenged, so I made my own choice. Two Oni, one on my chest and the mirror image of him on my back. Irezumi are applied by hand with needles. It is a very slow, very painful process. Only a few yakuza manage to complete the entire body."
My eyes flashed to the fabric of his robe, so high up on his neckline. "And did you?" I couldn't help but want to see what was hiding under his clothing. Was it like the Oni images I remembered from my childhood?
"Yes. But no sooner had I completed the Oni on my torso when my thinking began to change. It was very subtle. There was no moment of possession that I can recall. It was a slow, insidious transition that I was unaware of at first. I no longer had thoughts of leaving the yakuza to retire. Instead I slid into thoughts of usurping the power of those above me, of setting traps for my brothers to remove them from my path and absorbing their income. The yakuza is close-knit, like a family. You swear allegiance to a symbolic father and to the community. There is nothing more important to the yakuza than the yakuza family. But, I no longer cared about these relationships, and even my wife and son came to mean less and less to me. I thrived on chaos, violence, and death. I began to crave the feeling of blood on my skin. It was not constant, you understand. Sometimes the Oni was there, ruling me from the inside. And sometimes its presence was not so apparent. It was in these moments that I became aware of what was happening. But the moment I thought of doing something about it, like praying, or arranging for an exorcism, it would rise up and swallow my intention with its own. I was no longer in control of myself."
"You believe this happened because of your tattoo?"
"At the time, no. It wasn't until after the Hanta saved me that I knew it was the tattoo that started it."
"I
'm still not sure how that is possible. A tattoo is just ink."
He looked at me thoughtfully, searching for a better way to explain himself. "It's not the ink that matters, it’s the image. Think of the Oni drawing like a brand or a logo. Someone or something, in this case a malicious spirit, owns the rights to that image. By tattooing its brand on my body in such a way, I was essentially giving it permission to access me, to own me."
A chill swept over my body and I shivered. "So how is it that it no longer has this access?"
"Two reasons." Inaba held up two fingers and I was reminded that he was missing the tip of his right pinky finger. I made a mental note to ask him about that next. "One—the Akuna Hanta rescued me. Two—I no longer have the tattoos."
My brows went up in surprise. Tattoos were permanent, and irezumi in particular covered the entire body. It would be impossible to remove them. "You had them removed? But how? I understand a small tattoo can be removed with a laser over many treatments, but—"
Inaba pulled his robe open, revealing his chest. His body from the collarbones down was a thick webbing of raised, scarred flesh. He looked like a burn victim. He had no nipples, for they too had been removed. "I had them flayed from my body."
Chapter 12
I leaned forward, my jaw growing slack as I took in the horror that was his skin. "You had the entire thing cut out? How did that not kill you?" My eyes roamed his chest. A network of deep crooked lines, like a topographical map or a jigsaw puzzle, crisscrossed everything I could see. Each piece of raised, scarred flesh in between the crevices was roughly the size of a man’s palm.
"I did it in pieces, not all at once. There are lasers that will break up the ink and make them fade, but I needed all of the ink gone. I knew I wouldn't be free of the Oni otherwise. So I went to a specialist and she flayed it off, one piece at a time. When one patch had healed enough that the pain had gone away, I moved on to the next."
