by Vance, Ramy
“Oh yes he does,” Jean said as he unpacked an inflatable rowboat, dropping it in the water just after pulling the cord. The thing fully inflated before hitting the surface. “He loves his new name and loves me for giving it to him.”
“Sure he does,” I said, and hoisted myself over the edge and into the floating balloon. “After all, who doesn’t love pun-based nicknames?”
↔
We paddled to shore, where a crisp beach waited for us. It was the kind of place dreams were made of, with raw, sienna-colored sand that no human foot seemed to have trounced on until now.
“Holy wow. Bella would love this place,” Jean murmured under his breath, evidently just as impressed as I was.
Keiko surveyed the land with an approving nod. “The gods are gone, but they have not taken all of their divinity with them.”
“True that,” Jean said.
“True that,” I agreed, pulling back my sleeve and looking at my map.
Now that we were on the island, it morphed, the ebbing blue and orange lines now showing the outskirts of the island we were on like we had just zoomed in on Google Maps. But even though it now only showed the island, it showed the whole island.
We were closer, but still not close enough to know exactly where we were.
I wondered if we just wandered about, whether we’d eventually hit a spot where the map would zoom in even more.
Jean looked at my arm. “Cute freckles.”
“I’m not looking at my freckles, jerk.”
“I know,” he said. “You’re looking at your invisible map. What’s it telling you?”
“That you’re an ass.”
“Not a very impressive map if it can only state the obvious,” he said without missing a beat.
I groaned, but couldn’t help cracking a smile. “You’re not funny.”
“I am,” he said, walking ahead of us. “And before we part ways, I’m going to have you keeled over in laughter.”
“Mukatsuku,” Keiko said after him, her face distorted by her disdain.
“Amen to that, sister,” I agreed.
↔
As much as we all would have loved to stay on that secluded, perfect beach for the rest of our lives, we had a museum to find. I lugged the backpack Jean had given me up the beach toward the tree line, wondering how many stone guardians, yokai and other nasties waited for us in there.
From the way Jean carried his shotgun, I deduced that he wondered the same. Keiko, on the other hand, didn’t even bother pulling out her telescopic baton.
After all, this was her island. Or at least, the island that housed the community she’d grown up in.
Breaking through the tree line, Jean looked at his Mickey Mouse watch and started singing “Swing on a Star” by Bing Crosby. He got to the first verse before saying, “No magic,” then gestured for us to take the lead, presumably so he could watch our backs (and because he gave me a wee bit of a pervy vibe, to also watch our backs).
Keiko marched into the brush and I had to walk at double speed to catch up. Once I was next to her, matching her speed, I said, “You didn’t need to come.” I had meant to say it as a way of thanks, but me being socially awkward, not-entirely-in-touch-with-my-feelings me, it came off more as an admonishment than anything else.
Keiko took several steps before acknowledging me, her expression one of deep thought, like she was wrestling with telling me something. “I did,” she finally said. “I owe you a great debt for what you did for my grandmother.”
Bullshit, I thought. I’d spent years studying, hunting and terrorizing humans, and in that time, I’d seen it all. The nervous tics, the unconscious gestures that betray a lie or a bluff. The subtle things the body says even when your lips say something else.
And just because Keiko was a young, beautiful noro didn’t mean she didn’t have some of the telltale signs of a lie. Hers was holding in her breath a fraction of a second too long before speaking. That, and the fact that she hadn’t looked at me since we landed on this island, told me she wasn’t here just because of some ancient family debt.
She was here for reasons of her own.
I considered calling her out, telling her to fess up, but instead I decided to let it go. Besides, I thought, it’s not like I can force her to tell me the truth.
“I am telling the truth,” she said, annoyance in her voice. “I am here to repay our debt to you.”
“Shoot,” I said. “You weren’t meant to hear that.”
“Then why did you say it?” she asked, obviously unfamiliar with my eccentric (and terribly cute, right?) habit of thinking out loud.
“Ahh, I didn’t mean to,” I said.
“But you said—”
“What I mean is that I didn’t mean to say that you weren’t telling the truth. I meant that you aren’t telling me the whole truth.” If I was already in a hole, might as well keep digging.
She paused, held in her breath for that fraction of a second too long, and said, “It was my grandmother’s greatest wish that she meet you once again. I’m here to make sure that you live long enough to see my grandmother before she dies. But if it is the truth you want … I am not here because I like you. In the few hours I have known you, I have been attacked, my car destroyed, then arrested and finally coerced into giving the U.S. military access to one of the gods’ greatest secrets.”
“Got it,” I said. “Now we’re starting to get somewhere. Still not the whole truth, but at least you’re giving me more of it—”
“Mukatsuku,” she spat. “Who are you to know my truths?”
I couldn’t tell if she meant that like “who are you to know if I am telling the truth?” or that I was unworthy of her truths. Either way, she’d just admitted that she was holding back on me.
“I’m just an ex-vamp trying to make amends for hundreds of years of death,” I said in my best Julia Roberts Knotting Hill voice. I’m just a girl …
But Keiko either didn’t like that movie, or she wasn’t in the mood.
“There is only one way I know of to make amends for the horrors inflicted by one such as you,” she said. “Seppukura.”
That got me to stop marching. She took on ahead, not slowing down just because I had.
I watched the noro speed ahead. So, not a Julia Roberts fan, I thought. And that had gotten serious real fast; she’d just asked me to kill myself. And not in a fun, playful, bantering way. She meant the full-on ritualistic, very painful way. But she’d told me to kill myself.
In Japanese culture, especially Okinawan, the worst thing you can say to someone is, “Kurosi tai.” I want to kill you. It is the equivalent of using the s-word combined with the f- and c-words and the just-about-every-other-letter-in-the-alphabet word.
So it wasn’t something Keiko said lightly.
And as ubiquitous as seppukura was in Japanese culture, it wasn’t part of Ryukyu culture, and it wasn’t something a noro would ever advocate.
For someone like Keiko to suggest that meant one of two things: she really didn’t want me to hand over the keys to the museum to Jean, or she wasn’t who she claimed to be.
I thought back to the Okinawan guards who had refused to train their guns on her and how she was able to summon the makaru Meres Griffin … not something a normal human could do, so her not being a noro was out.
Which meant that she was here to stop us from getting to the museum (I was getting sick of referring to it as the God’s Museum of Everything). If that was the case, how far was she willing to go and did we just invite a cute and very capable assassin on our little jaunt?
I shook my head. I had to be wrong about her. If she didn’t want us to find the museum, then why get us so close? Why stop the meres from killing us? Why volunteer to help in the first place?
Yeah, I thought (making sure my mouth was closed), I’m probably wrong about Keiko and she isn’t some priestess with a plan.
↔
We walked in silence for many hours, Keiko marching ahead wi
thout looking at a map or stopping to get her bearings through some other method like a compass, gauging where the sun was or listening for a stream.
She just marched and I was beginning to think she was trying to commit murder by hiking. Jean was apparently thinking the same thing, because he asked several times if we were there yet like a six-year-old does to annoy his parents.
Keiko ignored him, keeping her steady march through the thick tropical forest. And even though we weren’t following a path, I noted that she somehow managed to navigate the forest without ever having to double back or cut down any plants to make space to get through. She always managed to find terrain just tame enough for us to walk without really slowing us down.
It was starting to get dark when Jean’s comments went from, “Are we there yet?” to a more serious, “Let’s set up camp before it gets dark.” Although I agreed with him, I didn’t say anything lest she suggest I climb the highest tree I could find and jump off.
Jean was losing patience and I could hear him starting to pick up the pace, presumably to catch up with Keiko and stop her maniacal march, when she suddenly broke through the tree line and stopped.
We caught up and breaking through the tree line myself, I saw the very last thing I expected. It was a sight that I would forever remember as one of the most startling, bewildering things I’d ever encountered.
A hotel that was in the middle of nowhere.
Hotel Castles for the Rich and Dead
The forest abruptly ended, revealing an open field with stone gardens that wove from the forest line and up a hill toward what must have been an old, Edo-period Japanese castle.
I felt like I had been transported back in time to sixteenth-century Japan. And I would have kept that feeling if it wasn’t for a giant aluminum structure standing next to the building with the Kanji symbols for “water” and “tower” inscribed under a very modern-looking logo.
We walked toward the castle, weaving our way through the stone zen garden where two giant, spider-like creatures called jorogumo used their spiked legs to rake the stones with expert care. I’d seen a jorogumo before: they were incredibly fast, using their eight legs to hop about with the same agility and grace as their insect-sized counterparts. But here, tending to this garden, their actions were deliberate, slow. Meditative.
Mulling about on the pathways between the gardens were several yokai. I saw a kitsune with its nine fox tails lounging on a bench, a shirime who was thankfully sitting on his butt, thus not exposing the eye he had in the place used by most of us during our daily ablutions, a rokurokubi who bowed at us as we passed, her giraffe-like neck towering over an otherwise normal-looking female body, and a tengu practicing tai chi in the distance, his red, taloned feet moving with a grace I’ve rarely seen.
There were even two futakuchi-onnas walking hand in hand.
I quickly counted the yokai and, turning to Jean, said, “You see sixteen of them, right?” I was concerned that some of them might be the attacking ghosts from earlier.
Jean shook his head. “Seventeen.” He pointed at a stack of smooth, white rocks where a thunderbird from Native American tradition sat.
“Ahh,” I said, annoyed with myself for missing that one, but doubly annoyed that Jean had seen it when I hadn’t. I’m not competitive. Really, I’m not.
The thunderbird followed our progression through the garden with a calm, watchful eye. Normally thunderbirds were wild beasts covered in crackling, electric energy, but the only electricity this one exuded was a light current that jumped between its peaceful eyes.
Whatever this place was, it possessed a serene quality pervasive enough to tame one of the most volatile creatures in all creation.
As soon as we walked over the hill and beyond the yokai and stone gardens, we saw the hotel, which from the outside looked like an old Japanese castle. Wooden, sloping roofs, clay shingles, arches … I felt like I was in a scene from Ninja Scroll.
I would have mistaken it for an actual castle except for the kanji and hiragana (two of the three Japanese alphabets commonly used) sign that sat just above its copper-colored doors. It read The Celestial Solace Hotel.
We walked up the middle path toward the entrance and as we made our way, the yokai all bowed in our direction.
And by “our,” I mean in Keiko’s direction. We were more of a suspicious afterthought.
↔
We walked to the massive entrance, where two giant knockers waited for us. Keiko pulled one of them twice, paused for a second, then knocked it a third time.
The door clicked open and a giant nuppeppo appeared. Think animated lumps of human flesh, but don’t get these guys confused with the blob (a real creature, by the way). The blob had no control over its mass, rolling about and consuming everything in its path. The nuppeppo, on the other hand, was a creature that, although it looked like a ball of flesh-colored Play-Doh, had full control of itself.
This one had two stumpy legs that it shuffled about with and when it opened the door, it had created a little hand for itself that it contracted when it saw us.
But despite the short legs, this thing had shaped itself tall. Which made sense: the doors were huge, and the knocker that Keiko had just pulled not even really human-sized.
The nuppeppo looked down at us with two dimples that sat somewhere in the top of its mass before the flesh in its middle split apart, making a tearing sound (what ripping a piece of flesh-like paper would sound like), creating what I assumed was its mouth.
A mouth that smiled.
Then spoke.
“Keiko-sama,” it said, “hisashiburi.” The flesh morphed into something that vaguely resembled a human body that bowed, before turning into a shape that reminded me of a giant muffin.
“Masamitsu-san. Yes, indeed it has been a long time,” Keiko said in English, obviously for our benefit.
“Tomodachi-da?” Masamitsu’s mass asked.
“Yes,” Keiko said, “my friends.”
The mass’s skin ripped again (sending chills up my spine), giving us another smile before letting us in. I wondered what it would have done to us if Keiko hadn’t given us her “friendship” seal of approval.
↔
The inside was just as lavish as the outside, with marble flooring that led to a molasses-colored desk in immaculate condition. We walked by two shoulder-height vases that I immediately recognized to be from the Ming dynasty.
In the center of the room hung a magnificent chandelier that looked like frozen lightning, each electric tip piercing into a diamond of light. “They’re real stars,” Keiko said, following my gaze.
“No way.”
“Honto ni,” Keiko said. “Real stars. They are from the collection of the BisMark, an Other of great power. He bequeathed the chandelier to this hotel before the continents separated.”
“Wow,” I said, staring up as we passed under it, “talk about capturing lightning in a bottle.”
This place was magnificent, with every decorative item being older than most pyramids. On the walls hung several tapestries depicting various scenes, one of which reminded me of— “Hold on a second,” I said pointing at the center tapestry. “That’s not one of Katsushika Hokusai’s paintings, is it?”
Keiko gave me an appreciative smile. “Indeed. Katsushika Hokusai was a friend of the Celestial Solace Hotel. Before he died, that is.”
“You’re messing with me.”
“No mess, just awe,” she said, pointing to the front desk where a tanuki sat on his, well, on his beanbag reading a newspaper. Tanuki looked like raccoons except that their … ahem, family jewels were the size of a gazebo. They used their assets in battle, as a defense mechanism and, seeing him now, as a seat.
“Aki-sama,” Keiko said with a deep bow.
The tanuki looked up from his newspaper and, removing his reading glasses, gave Keiko a fang-filled smile. He looked at us and seeing us as gaijin, spoke in English. “Keiko-sama, you honor us with your presence.” He folded the paper, l
ooking at its date before saying, “We did not expect a noro to grace us with her presence until then. Are you here to attend tonight’s New Year’s party?”
But from the way the tanuki spoke, I knew that the raccoon-like creature already knew the answer to his question. Back in the day, the tanuki were divine judges, often ruling over disputes between gods, let alone Others. They were some of the most respected creatures in all of creation, despite their vulgar appearance.
Looking at the creature now, part of me wondered if their incredible balls (argh, I hated that word) helped them when dealing with bitchy gods. I mean, they could literally throw their weight around and … well, you get the idea.
Keiko shook her head. “I fear that our presence is for other, less festive reasons, and I ask permission to stay here one night while continuing our quest.”
Aki eyed us both carefully. “These two have much blood on their hands, Keiko-san.”
“I know.”
“And much of that blood was taken for ill purposes.”
“I know,” the noro repeated.
“But not all of it. Much was taken to protect others.”
Keiko nodded. I was starting to understand what was happening here. He was judging us. If we passed, we got to stay. If we failed … I wasn’t sure what happened then.
“If I may …” I started, but before I could say another word the tanuki shot me a look of such authority that I froze in place. I was so stunned by his gaze that I thought he must have burned time to have such an effect.
But he hadn’t; it was just who he was. A creature that demanded respect.
I diverted my gaze, but I could still feel him looking at me. “Blood stains them both, for good and ill. But their deeds are in balance. They may stay,” he said to Keiko.