The lanterns hover. The parade has stopped. Her skin prickles. They are so close. “But who are they?” she whispers. The sudden stillness unnerves her; even the rain seems to have stopped, and she feels the hush deep in the fibres of her muscles, a terrible pressure like the moment before a storm breaks. They are waiting, she realises, and she is late.
The bakeneko’s voice echoes, a faraway song: “Perhaps you should go and find out.”
When she looks up—the glow of the lanterns seared pale into her retina, ghostly in the branches—the bakeneko is gone, and its cloak hangs from a bough like a shed skin. She pulls it down, slips it on; it is warm against her damp skin. The fabric smells strange; a musty animal odour, yes, but something else. Temple incense and old ash. The sweet-fragrant scent of cedarwood. She pulls the hood up over her head, obscuring her face in shadow. It will have to be enough. The night parade is waiting for her.
* * *
The first thing Airi realises is that the lanterns are not lanterns at all, but flickering orbs drifting between the trees, awash with flame. Kitsune-bi; fox-lights, red-gold glow and deep shadow, casting the monstrous procession in sharp relief. They are everywhere; beside her, a fur-covered beast in scarlet hakama trousers, black-lacquered teeth bared in a grin, or perhaps a snarl. Bird-beaked tengu, their eyes bright and keen as crows. An elegant woman, long white neck and sleek-silk hair and smooth spider legs erupting from her kimono, splayed and skittering. And there, on the very edge of the parade, the child. She regards the beastly circus with benign curiosity, the way a child might regard a room full of relatives.
Airi moves through them with care, barely daring to breathe as she weaves between the squat, slick-skinned kappa, a cluster of chittering tanuki. The low murmur of inhuman voices forming peculiar words. They are legion, these yokai. They choke the forest path with their numbers, astonishing in their variety; monsters plucked from her ojisan’s tales and still others, anomalous but oddly familiar: the corpulent caterpillar smoking a pipe, the raggedy-eared hare sipping deep green sencha from a chipped cup; creatures from another tale, another place, yet they too have joined the procession, and it seems all beasts are welcome here. The night parade, the bakeneko had called it: They will leave this forest and pass through into your world. And still the child sits among them as though none have noticed her obvious humanity.
The child looks up at her as she approaches, unafraid. Airi kneels; the cloak pools around her, swallowing her feet and ankles. She extends a hand; her exposed fingers feel vulnerable, the slender bones of her wrist, the veins pulsing just beneath the skin. “Let’s go,” she whispers, and the child’s eyes widen a little at the sound; those words, that language, the sound of home. She reaches out, hesitant, one grubby palm unfolding, the dirt-caked crescents of tiny fingernails. The call of familiar skin.
A hand on her shoulder. Rank fox-stink strong in her nostrils, sweet carrion-breath. “She is not one of yours,” a voice says, barely a murmur. “If you leave now, I will let you go. I will tell nobody you were here. But if you persist, I will tear off your head and throw your body to the oni.”
Airi swallows hard. She is aware of the carnival of beasts gathered behind her, around her; of the nervous sweat beading her skin, pungent with adrenaline. The flimsiness of her disguise.
“Do you doubt me?” The brush of skin against her neck, smooth and hot; sharp-tipped fingers tighten around her shoulder. In the corner of her eye, the bright gleam of teeth. “Oh, but you shouldn’t. Leave the child and go while you have the chance. You don’t belong here, girl. They’ll sniff you out soon enough, and they will not show you mercy as I have.”
She speaks between clenched teeth, a furious mutter. “She’s just a child. What use is she to you? Why won’t you let her go?”
“She belongs to me.” A hand at her throat, now, grasping her chin, the wrench of taut muscle as the kitsune twists Airi’s head around so that they are face to face, eye to eye. She is beautiful, long-limbed and powerful, skin like burnished gold; dressed all in red silk, an arterial queen. Claws rake Airi’s neck, playful as a lover. “Her coward father cast me out. He sent me away from my own child. Ashamed of his fox-wife. But she has my blood. I carried her and I gave birth to her and she is my daughter.”
The kitsune releases her grasp. Airi staggers back, rubbing at her chin, her face, the bright sting of ribbon-thin lacerations. Her breath comes in shallow gasps. The kitsune’s eyes are black diamonds; a carnivorous gaze. When she turns back to the child—so soft and vulnerable—there is a glossy beetle caught in her clumsy grasp. Her eyes light up in delight, enchanted by her treasure. She beams at Airi, white pebble-teeth and bright girl-eyes, unmistakably human. The girl crams the beetle into her open, smiling mouth. Teeth crunch against carapace, spraying fragments like black glitter. The hint of a gauzy wing melting on her pink tongue.
“She has my blood,” the kitsune says, and there is such pride in her voice.
The terminal dance of black matchstick legs as the girl chews, open-mouthed, unselfconscious. Airi’s gut roils; the kitsune snickers as Airi backs away, choking down her revulsion. It proves nothing, Airi tells herself, fixing her nauseous gaze on the undergrowth, the lazy drift of a wayward fox-light; children eat worms and dirt all the time, if you let them. It does not make her half a kitsune. Somewhere in Osaka a terrified mother and father are searching frantically for their daughter. Isn’t that all that matters? Isn’t that why she came all this way?
Green eyes bloom in the air before her. “It would be easy to distract them,” the bakeneko says, disembodied. “Can you run? If they catch you, they will kill you.”
They are moving behind her, this seething, monstrous mass; they are a dam on the verge of bursting. The parade is about to begin. “I don’t know,” Airi says. She is so tired, so hungry. The forest gloom is pervasive, monotone; she dreams of the human clutter of Shinsaibashi, awash with the white noise of a hundred conversations. The neon headache of Dotonbori, comforting in its permanence. It feels as though she has been lost here for weeks. “There’re too many of them.”
“Chaos makes them stupid.” The floating mouth curves upwards, a Cheshire grin. “What other chance do you have? Join the parade? Your disguise won’t last that long.”
“Why would you do this?” She tries to meet the bakeneko’s gaze but its eyes are maddeningly evasive; its grin remains static even as the eyes dance lazily in the dark. “Why help her get away?”
“Oh, it’s not for her.” The eyes close, blinking out of existence. “It’s not for you, either. They were gods once, did you know that? They were powerful deities. But an unworshipped god decays over the centuries. They still dream of godhood, these yokai, even as your kind turn them into mascots and trinkets. I could feed you to them, certainly. They would make short work of your flesh, chew your bones into powder. But it’s over too soon. Chaos is so much more fun. Get ready to run, girl. Don’t stop until you see daylight.” The grin dissipates. “Don’t stop until you’re home.”
* * *
The bakeneko’s gambit reveals itself in a mad flourish; the manifestation of a human form in among the monsters, screaming as it holds the child aloft. It howls in the language of the yokai, a strange and lilting dialect fit for the gods they once were, and never will be again. The child’s chin is speckled with beetle shell, her eyes wide and confused as the yokai turn, first confused and then enraged; this human intruder in their midst, who dares address them in their own sacred tongue, who dares hold in their mortal grasp the kitsune’s own child. The bakeneko’s approximation of human skin is uncanny; it is too smooth, too perfect; beautiful and androgynous and utterly false, but the parade converges upon it with ready anger, a monstrous tide sweeping in, engulfing the bakeneko’s faux-human body. And Airi, on the periphery of the crowd, watches as the child is buoyed along by hands and paws and wings; one by one, towards her yokai-mother, conveying her so carefully; all must have prizes, she thinks, as they visit their savagery upon the intru
der in their midst. How, Airi wonders, can she join the throng, intercept their false fox-child? How can she insinuate herself among them with their blood so high, their senses incendiary?
“Quickly,” the bakeneko’s voice echoes. “The illusion will only keep for so long.”
The yokai writhe and thrash, hunting for a trace of the insolent red-garbed human. Airi turns to the bakeneko; no floating eyes or half-moon grin, but there, sitting precisely where she had been before, is the child, unruffled by the chaos unfolding around her. Airi scoops her up quickly, tucks her beneath the folds of her cloak; the girl is heavy in her arms, but she is still, and quiet. She does not protest as Airi moves, slowly at first, tiptoeing away from the parade; the irony of skulking fox-like into the forest, the human turned trickster.
* * *
Don’t stop until you see daylight, the bakeneko had said. A pinprick of pale green light glows in the distance, between the trees. That way must be home, she thinks; where the sun rises, the night parade cannot follow. She is exhausted, but she is so close. The girl presses her face into Airi’s shoulder, arms too tight around her neck. She runs, and as the air is torn ragged from her smoker’s lungs, the burn of acid flooding underused muscles, she realises dimly that the forest is quiet. There is only the sound of her own laboured breathing, the rhythmic thud of feet on wet mulch. Could she have outpaced them so soon? She chances a look over her shoulder, back into the depths of the forest, where no motley shadows lurk in pursuit; but there, close by, three slow-drifting fox-lights burning blood-gold in the gloom, and that is enough. She clutches the girl tighter, forces herself to keep going. To run where they cannot follow, these kitsune-bi, these bright, watchful eyes: I will find you. I will come for you. I will destroy you. Into the light. Towards the rising sun.
* * *
Osaka hits her in the face like a clenched fist. It is barely morning and yet the sheer sensory overload is paralysing; thick petrol and the rumble of engines and people, so many people, like brightly coloured flags in the breeze, smoking and talking and knocking back hot, canned coffee. The sun, migraine-sharp in a sky so blue it makes her teeth hurt. She made it. She is home.
The gravel gnaws at her knees as she sinks to the ground; so warm, so solid and dry. The bundle beneath her cloak is still; sleeping, perhaps, or scared stiff, but safe. With trembling fingers she pulls the cloak from around her shoulders, peeling the wet fabric back like a shed skin. The sun feels so good she wants to weep. It has only been one night, she scolds herself, but it feels as though she has been gone for days; it feels as though she walked those torii-lined paths forever.
“Mummy, is that lady okay?”
She looks up. A young boy in crisp school uniform stands at the mouth of the park, flanked by his well-dressed mother. She regards Airi with wide-eyed dismay, her discomfort evident in the stiff set of her shoulders. Airi looks down at herself; her grubby legs are tattooed with glistening lacerations, her shoes clotted with thick mud. Wet hair and sodden clothes and skin so cold she almost looks blue. The girl in her arms, so still, so quiet. She must look insane, a mad scarecrow of a parent.
“It’s okay,” she says, because it is okay. There is warmth, and there are people, and the child is safe. The yokai cannot come for her here, where the sun burns so brightly. This is not their world. “I just… I need to find this little girl’s parents. She got lost and I brought her home, and her family must miss her so much. Please, will you help me?” She holds out her arms, her precious cargo. A flash of wisteria blue. The boy’s mother utters a horrified yelp as the child disintegrates into wet leaves, fragments of bark, crushed-twig limbs dangling limp from empty sleeves. A scattering of glossy black beetles disappearing into the bushes, away from the light.
The boy’s mother tugs at his hand, urgent, hurrying him away; Airi feels the weight of his gaze upon her as she turns, still clutching the bundle of twigs to her chest, back to the bushes, the infinite forest hidden within. The smell of temple incense filtering up through the leaves; the barest flash of jubilant teeth fading into the dwindling shadows like an afterimage: a grin without a cat. The leaf-girl, scattered and withering in the sun. A plush white rabbit, abandoned in the middle of the park. All of these things are true.
What Makes a Monster
L.L. MCKINNEY
Beyond the world of mortal man lies a place called Wonderland. A place of visions both delightful and dark, where marvels ride the winds and evils claim the shadows. There, humanity’s dreams coalesce into a magnificent, ever-changing landscape that is as vast as the imagination. And there, humanity’s fears manifest in deadly creatures called Nightmares, with jaws that bite and claws that catch, ever-creeping towards the veil separating the two worlds. It is the charge of Guardians born of Wonderland to train Dreamwalkers born of humanity in the ways of slaying these beasts, for if the monsters are allowed to linger in the mortal plane, the havoc they wreak would leave all in ruin and rot.
* * *
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
* * *
Dusk didn’t just settle over London, it fell heavy and thick. All day long, chimneys spewed while furnaces spat, but at the twinkling orange of twilight, the steam and machines sputtered their last. All went quiet as the final plumes of smoke and soot fattened the night sky.
An army of lamps hissed and hummed, stalwart sentinels watching over abandoned streets and boulevards. They did their best, but on nights like tonight, it was all for nothing.
On nights like tonight, a sort of restlessness clung to the air, strangling light from the stars and breathing life into the void. On nights like tonight, shadows chased people into their homes, crawled down alleys, and coiled under bridges. On nights like tonight, the flicker of gassed flames did little to drive back the dark. It was the sort of night Bodie’s maman said sent the Devil prowling. The sort of night you heard about in stories, where you couldn’t tell if it was the wind or something far more sinister howling. The perfect night for hunting monsters.
The cold clung to Bodie’s limbs like a living thing, leaching what scant warmth her layers of clothes provided. The men’s coat she wore helped little. Numerous worn holes and poorly patched tears in the wool allowed the winter wind to bite and scratch at her. Granted, the coat was intended to conceal the sword strapped to her back, not to stave off frostbite, but heavens above why couldn’t it do both?
“Because nice coats are expensive,” Anastasia had said earlier, about an hour before sundown, without looking up from a map of Whitechapel. Five points were highlighted with red Xs, with one X at the center circled twice.
Bodie had snorted a laugh as she fingered the patched and thin sleeve that was part of her intended disguise. “Plan to use it as part of my dowry after we’re done?” Bodie lifted one of the cotton shirts and held it up to her chest. She gazed into the nearby looking-glass. Her fractured reflection revealed beige but faintly rosy cheeks that still held a bit of plumpness from her youth. A dusting of freckles covered them and her nose. With her brown coils branded into submission thanks to a hot comb, then pinned into curls atop her head, she made a passable lady. But that wasn’t Anastasia’s plan.
Anastasia ticked a thin, red brow, but her attention remained fixed on the map. “Expensive coats draw attention, and you need to do the opposite. Can’t have anyone figuring you out before you’re done.”
“And you think the coat is what will give me away? Not…” Bodie cupped her breasts through her shirt.
Now Anastasia did look up. “I think people are suspicious, and someone of possible rapport skulking through these alleys at night will have them assuming the worst, potentially alerting the Yard. Also, I have a way to deal with…” Anastasia gestured at Bodie’s still cupped hands. “That.” Her slight accent clipped the words in funny places.
Before Anastasia, Bodie had never heard someon
e with a Russian accent speak French. In truth, she’d never heard a Russian accent at all, only the nasal way Englishmen chewed on her mother tongue. Anastasia’s voice was rather pleasant, where theirs were… decidedly not.
That same voice now called to her from the folds of her breast pocket, the sound muffled against the fabric. “In a moment,” Bodie whispered. She glanced up and down the street before ducking around a corner.
Checking to see that the lane was clear, she plucked a small bit of glass from her pocket. A tiny mirror rested in her gloved palm, but instead of looking at her own face, Anastasia’s peered up at her from the glass.
“You were supposed to report in three minutes ago.” Anastasia’s pale cheeks were nearly as red as her hair where it fell around her face. The green of her eyes sparked with anger, and a little fear. “Every fifteen minutes exactly.”
“No need to panic.” Bodie kept moving. She glanced up from the mirror every few steps, taking in her surroundings. The clap of her heels echoed along the cobblestones. “I’m still in one piece.”
“Thankfully. What kept you?”
“There was a bit of a row outside a pub. Crowd had gathered. It wasn’t the ideal situation for pulling out and talking to a magic mirror.”
“Otlichno. Have you seen anything?”
“Not yet.”
Of course that was the moment a shadow darted in and out of the corner of Bodie’s vision. She stopped as her head whipped around to find herself standing at the mouth of an alley. Darkness poured down the walls and deepened just a few steps from the street.
“Wait a moment.” She squinted, waiting for her eyes to adjust.
Gradually, the outline of a few crates faded into view, but beyond that, nothing. She was prepared to move on, but something kept her rooted to that spot. An inkling, a twinge at the base of her skull. Her eyes weren’t playing tricks, she’d seen something.
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