Seven Deadly Shadows

by Courtney Alameda

  Short answer: she doesn’t.

  “Hey,” Shiro says to me, pulling me out of my thoughts. “I’m here for you, okay?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I say, brushing the rest of the tears off my face with my sleeve. “I’m embarrassing you.”

  “Hardly,” Shiro says in a gentle tone. “Fujikawa-san deserves to be mourned.”

  “That’s true . . . just not in public,” I say with a dark half chuckle. “I don’t want to make anyone on this train uncomfortable.”

  “You won’t,” Shiro says, popping up from his seat and looking to the fore and aft of the train car. “Nobody’s sitting close, and nobody’s listening.”

  “Well, then I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

  “You could never,” Shiro says, eyeing the woman heading down the train’s center aisle with a food trolley. “But I’ve found grief is easier to handle on a full stomach, and the trolley hostess has ekiben. You hungry?”

  The thought of food makes my stomach squelch. “Not really.”

  “Here’s the thing—you and I are sort of on the run,” Shiro says, lifting a hand to flag down the attendant. “Ronin’s yokai may try to follow us to Tokyo. We may have to avoid the police, depending on whether your parents decide to cover for you. Eat whenever you can. Doesn’t matter if you’re hungry. Eat.”

  “Sounds like you’ve done this before,” I say.

  “Yeah, kind of,” he replies. His gaze seems far away, as if he’s looking through time at a memory that still aches.

  Before I can press him for an explanation, the hostess approaches with the food trolley. She offers us a shallow bow. We order several ekiben—bento box meals made specifically for train riders. I choose an ekiben containing artfully arranged rice, sautéed salmon, a tamagoyaki omelet, and vegetables. Pink and white tofu flowers accent the meal, making it almost too pretty to eat. Almost. Each part of the meal enjoys its own little compartment, beautiful, organized, structured. I wish my life made as much sense.

  The moment I remove the ekiben’s wooden lid and the scent of vinegared rice hits my nose, my stomach growls. I haven’t eaten since lunch.

  “Itadakimasu,” Shiro says, grinning at me. It means let’s eat and is customarily said before meals. He presses his palms together and bows his head over the food. The normalcy of the act comforts me. Rituals and cute tofu flowers can’t heal the loss of my grandfather or the shrine, but they do dull a little of the pain.

  “Itadakimasu.” I’m not quite able to return Shiro’s smile, but I’m grateful all the same.

  We eat in silence, listening to the musical whir of the train as it rushes down the tracks, carrying us ever closer to Tokyo. With the hour approaching nine o’clock, it’s not surprising to find the train so empty—we’ll be arriving in Tokyo well after midnight. Shiro promises me that his mother is “more active at night,” whatever that means.

  “Tell me something,” I say as I poke at a piece of tofu with my chopsticks, trying to decide if I’m still hungry enough to eat more. “Why do the yokai think a shard of the Kusanagi is hidden in the Fujikawa Shrine? It’s a part of the Imperial Regalia belonging to the Emperor, which I thought was stored at the Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya.” Honestly, I didn’t know the sword had been shattered into pieces in the first place. None of the stories say anything about that.

  Shiro picks up a piece of octopus with his chopsticks. “The sword in Nagoya is a fake.”

  “Excuse me?” I say.

  He pops the tentacle into his mouth and chews, thinking. “So in the first century, there was this emperor named—”

  “Sujin, I know,” I say. “Because the Imperial Regalia confers power on our emperors, Sujin had copies made to protect the originals. At least one set of copies was thrown into the sea when the Taira clan lost the Battle of Dan-no-ura. Another was stolen in the fifth century by a Korean monk, or so the story goes. But the Imperial Family still retains the originals.”

  “You know your history,” Shiro says with a wry smile. He pushes his half-empty ekiben box across his fold-down table, offering it to me. “Octopus?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He slides it back, plucks out another piece of fish with his chopsticks, and tosses it into his mouth. “Anyway, once the copy of the Kusanagi was recovered, the Atsuta priests refused to let anyone see the copies or the real Imperial Regalia. Why?”

  “Historical records aren’t clear,” I say.

  “Why, Kira?”

  “Because . . .” I gasp as the idea hits me. “Because it wasn’t the copy of the Kusanagi that was stolen, but the real thing?”

  “Exactly. All the stories are just that—stories,” Shiro says, replacing the cover on his ekiben, setting it down on the empty seat beside us, and reaching for a second box. “During the last blood moon, like, five hundred years ago, someone thought it would be a good idea to break the sword and send the pieces to shrines all over Japan. The Fujikawa Shrine must have received one of them.”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me,” I say. “There are thousands of shrines—it would take ages to find them all.”

  “But not forever,” Shiro says. “Shuten-doji now holds all of the pieces but one.”

  I press my palms against my ears, mostly in jest, and squeeze my eyes closed. “So Shuten-doji needs one more shard of the Kusanagi no Tsurugi to reforge the blade,” I say slowly, as if I don’t really want to hear the answer.

  Shiro dips his head in a nod. “Yup.”

  I drop my hands in my lap. “If he finds it, he’ll use the sword to kill the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, thus bringing an eternal night down upon Japan.”

  “And . . . y’know . . . ,” Shiro says, flattening his fox ears against his skull, “the rest of the world. . . . ”

  Understanding steals over me slowly, drawing the light out of my soul. I recall the demon’s parting words at the shrine: The next full moon will rise as a blood moon, weakening the Sun Goddess’s power over this world. When that happens, our lord Shuten-doji will return to this mortal plane to make the Light suffer for the oppression of our people.

  “We need to go back,” I say, throwing my napkin into my bento box, tossing my manners aside, along with my better sense. “We only have a month, Shiro. We need to get back to the shrine, to stop them from—”

  “Kira, listen,” Shiro says, placing a hand on my wrist. “Shuten-doji’s yokai fled as soon as the police arrived. It’s safe, at least for now, and you and I need allies. We need my mother, and we need Goro, okay? We can’t face Shuten-doji alone.”

  I suck in a breath. He’s right.

  At least I hope he’s right.

  Seven

  The Red Oni

  Tokyo, Japan

  By the time we step out of the labyrinth of Tokyo Station, darkness still crowds the sky. The city’s lights gild the undersides of the clouds. I grew up in a large city, but Kyoto isn’t Tokyo.

  Tokyo boasts ten thousand distractions. Candy-colored lights dance along every building in sight. The streets swell with people. Skyscrapers soar overhead. The residents here are fashionable and cosmopolitan; a lot of the young people on the streets look like idols. While I love Kyoto for its grace, beauty, and the wisdom in the city’s bones, Tokyo makes my heart thump. I could lose myself here, disappear in the masses of people and the colors, and forget what happened at the shrine. At least for a few minutes.

  “I don’t see anyone following us.” Shiro scans the area as we head to the nearest subway station. “That’s one small thing to be happy about.”

  “Don’t be too happy just yet, there are a lot of yokai around,” I say, searching the crowds on the street. One woman reaches up to scratch the back of her head. When she turns, I glimpse the glistening lips and teeth of the second mouth embedded in the back of her skull. She’s a futakuchi-onna, a yokai woman with two mouths. A faceless noppera-bo catches a cab. Spherical hitodama glow around an elderly woman’s shoulders, protective and bright. Every creature goes abou
t their individual business, ignoring Shiro and me.

  We take a train to the Shibuya district, then turn away from the city’s glitter and glow, moving down dark alleys and into a seedier area. Litter swirls across the sidewalks here. Black wads of flattened gum add age spots to the concrete. Trash cans spew their contents, stinking of rotten meat and urine. The stench isn’t helped by the narrowness of the streets—buildings huddle together, their awnings stretching like sagging wings overhead. Men whistle at us. Shouts echo off the buildings’ faces. Sirens, too.

  Finally, Shiro stops in front of a building cast in bruised light. I pause beside him, reading the sign hung at a crooked angle above a dancing, horned yokai figure: The Red Oni.

  Oni are ogre yokai, and Shuten-doji is their most famous leader.

  The wind swirls around me, yanking at my clothes. Hugging myself, I rub one hand up and down my arm, wondering when it got so cold out here. My bracelet prickles with heat. “This seems like a stupid idea,” I say.

  “The bar’s a little . . . over-the-top, yeah?” Shiro says, tapping his index finger on the tip of my nose. He inclines his head toward the door and pushes it halfway open for me. “But I promise, Mother isn’t allied with Shuten-doji.”

  “You didn’t think your brother was allied with him, either,” I say, tucking my hair behind my ears, and not a little nervously.

  He frowns. “I know, but this is the best chance we’ve got. C’mon.”

  The inside of the bar is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before—a graffiti mural swirls across the walls, showing a reclining, bare-breasted woman with a snake’s tail where her legs should be. In the bruised, red-and-violet light, her tail’s tip curls, beckoning me closer. Overhead, twisting tree roots grow through the ceiling, reaching for the bar’s patrons like clawed hands. Tiny tree spirits cling to the gnarled branches, rattling their heads like dried gourds. Liquor bottles glow behind the bar, their colors jewel-like in the diabolical light.

  Entering the room feels like walking into a solid wall of water. I choke on liquor-laden air, hardly able to breathe with the increased spiritual resonance in the room.

  The moment the door closes behind us, everything halts.

  Every conversation, every movement, everyone falls still, despite the bass throbbing through the place. Kuchisake-onnas stare, grinning with their wide-cut mouths and their spike-sharp teeth. A dodomeki’s hundreds of eyes swivel in his skin, each one of them narrowing as it focuses on me. Almost a hundred yokai have crammed themselves into this tiny space. Their gazes make me feel like I’m standing naked before them all.

  To anyone else, this would look like a normal dive bar in the heart of Shibuya—one full of ambitiously fashionable people, perhaps, but nothing supernatural. The few true humans in the bar don’t seem to realize they’re surrounded by monsters, or have any clue what’s about to happen to them. Perhaps they’re too drunk to sense anything is amiss in the first place.

  A hiss slips among the patrons, skittering into my ears on thin, spidery legs:

  That girl can see us.

  No, she must be wearing a glamour. Ask her who made it for her, it’s fetching.

  That’s no glamour, I swear!

  Don’t be silly—

  It’s true!

  She shouldn’t be here, we’re supposed to be safe here.

  After what happened at the shrine, these whispers make my stomach shrivel like a persimmon left to rot. I never imagined the yokai feared us humans as much as we fear them. Or perhaps they fear us more—some of modern Japan has stopped believing in yokai, but the yokai never had the privilege to stop believing in us. Not all yokai may be evil, but most don’t consider themselves allies of Amaterasu, either. To some, I will look like the predator, the exorcist, a danger.

  To others, I look like prey.

  I wrap one hand around Shiro’s elbow, whispering, “Where are we?”

  “Standing on the outskirts of hell,” he says under his breath. “You know how I’m always telling you to relax?”

  You say it so often, it’s almost a catchphrase. “Yes?”

  “Do that, but stay alert,” he says, and takes me by the hand as he leads me into the bar. I follow Shiro through the crowd, scowling when someone tries to trip me. Whispers of priestess sizzle in my wake. Snarls and growls snag my bones. The yokai draw away from me, as if brushing up against me might burn them to ash.

  The bartender turns toward us, drying a mug using a hand towel. She looks human enough, but as her body moves away from us, her head remains stationary, balanced on a sinuous, snakelike neck. She’s a rokurokubi, or a “pulley neck.” The creatures are found in brothels and are fond of drinking lamp oil, according to the old tales.

  “You know the rules, kid,” the bartender says to Shiro, tilting her chin toward me. “The girl isn’t welcome here.”

  “We have important business with Lady O-bei,” Shiro says. “Is she seeing supplicants tonight?”

  Supplicants? I wonder.

  The bartender nods at a lantern overhead, one lit with tiny red fireflies, all of which are beating themselves stupid against the glass. Bug corpses fill the lantern’s bottom third. “Her Ladyship will be unhappy to learn that you’ve brought a miko into our midst.”

  “Mother will live,” Shiro says.

  “An odd choice of dying words,” the bartender says with a frown. She motions to a serving girl with white antlers branching off her temples. “Go, then. Koemi will announce you to the Twilight Court.”

  As we follow the girl toward the back of the bar, Shiro falls into step with me, taking my elbow. “Nothing will be what it seems, once we’re on the other side,” he whispers in my ear. “Not even to eyes like ours.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “Death,” he says. “Yomi. Hell. Whatever you want to call it, we won’t be in the land of the living anymore.”

  Before I can ask what he means, the antlered girl leads us up a precarious set of wooden steps. The stairwell is so narrow, it forces Shiro and me to walk single file.

  When we reach the landing, I find myself caught between two glowing hallways. On my right, the corridor appears to stretch into eternity, red light splattered all over the walls. The left hallway stretches just as far, its carpet and doors stained with a violet glow. Shrieks, groans, and cries filter through the thin walls. I’m not sure whether they’re made in pleasure or pain, but they turn my cheeks scarlet.

  A third hallway lies straight ahead, drenched in shadow. We venture into the dimness, and the shape of a torii gate materializes. Dry leaves crunch underfoot, startling me. Where did all these leaves come from? They stir in the dank wind blowing through the gate.

  The antlered girl pauses at the gate’s threshold, bows to us, and disappears without a word.

  “You’re sure about this?” I ask Shiro.

  “Nope,” he replies, straightening his leather jacket. “But there isn’t a better place to start looking for answers. Ready?”

  “Not at all,” I say. “Let’s go before I lose my nerve.”

  We step through the torii gate, making sure to take the left path. Just in case.

  Light seeps through the shadows, leaving me half-blind. I squint, stepping into a large, airy courtyard that glitters like something out of the old tales. An enormous Japanese maple tree grows at the center of the room, its branches growing through the ceiling’s open space. Its fiery, red-orange leaves dance in a breeze I can’t feel. Tiny spherical hitodama float among its branches, illuminating the tree from within and setting its colors aflame. Moss covers the ground, boxed in by wooden verandas and shoji screens that lead to other rooms. It’s an impossibly large space, worlds bigger than it appeared from the outside. The air here feels different in my lungs. More substantial, almost, as if I’m breathing in ghosts. Electricity crackles along my skin, making all the little hairs stand on end.

  I straighten and turn, taking in the beauty of the place. This is Yomi? I wonder. Who knew hell could
look like heaven?

  A woman sits on a veranda on the opposite side of the room, surrounded by a court of yokai. With her moon-pale skin, chrysanthemum red lips, and sculpted hairstyle, she has all the beauty of a classical geisha, yet no human could hope to attain this level of physical perfection. She laughs at something one of her courtiers says, her voice bright as a pealing bell.

  Who is she? I wonder. Is that Shiro’s mother? She’s not a kitsune.

  I follow Shiro off the veranda, across the wide courtyard, and under the spirit-lit tree. The small ornaments in the woman’s hair chime as she turns her head to look at us. She rises and conversation ceases. All eyes turn in our direction.

  “Leave us,” she says, pressing her painted lips into a thin line. “All of you.”

  A golden kitsune rises from her seat in the court. “But Lady O-bei, we shouldn’t leave you alone with—”

  “I can handle a human girl, Minami,” O-bei snaps. “Don’t be a fool. Go.”

  The yokai withdraw from their seats. Silent. Obedient. Some of them fade straight into the shadows; others disperse across the room, slipping behind the room’s elegantly painted shoji screens or disappearing down corridors. The golden kitsune, Minami, is last to leave. She pauses at the threshold of an open shoji door, glaring at Shiro before she turns away with a flick of her tails. The door slides closed on its own, hitting the wooden jamb with a loud thwack!

  O-bei moves down from the veranda and into the mossy courtyard, her gaze fixed on Shiro. Her furisode may be the most magnificent kimono I have ever seen, its colors a cascading purple ombré that starts as lavender at the shoulder and falls into bruised eggplant by her feet. Embroidered butterflies shimmer on the fabric, decorating the entirety of the kimono’s long train.