A Mortal Song

by Megan Crewe

  “You’re not making any sense,” I said. “I’ve lived on the mountain my entire life. I know who my parents are. I know what I am.”

  Rin continued, calm and certain. “So we placed her where one seeking to hurt the kami would never look. Where a different sort of energy would mask any hint of her heritage. One child was exchanged for another in a secret trade. The true daughter has lived among humans, away from notice, ignorant of her unawakened powers—safe. Her human counterpart was raised on the mountain.” She finally cast her gaze toward me.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said. “I’m a kami. If Mother and Father said they were going to carry out this switch, they must have changed their minds and not told you.”

  “The appearance of things is no real proof,” Rin said with a shrug. “What the rulers of the kami ask for, the mountain grants, and it has been lending you its energy since you were an infant. You have no more ki of your own than any other human. Even now, a little of Fuji’s power lingers in you—and for anything else you feel, I believe you owe thanks to the friend perched in your hair.”

  Midori. Her wings hummed protectively at Rin’s words, but a tendril of her ki wound close to me as she clung on. She gave no inkling of denial. She hadn’t been with me when I’d tried to start the fire. And since our flight from the mountain the energy inside me hadn’t felt the same, had it? My throat closed up.

  I shook my head against the sudden doubt. No. It couldn’t be true. I belonged with Mother and Father. I belonged to the mountain. I knew that like I knew how to walk, how to breathe.

  Rin had turned to Takeo.

  “Kasumi and Hotaka have placed a great responsibility on you,” she was saying. “But I can see you have learned much of the fighting arts, which are far from my specialty. It is unfortunate that the threat has come upon us so much earlier than we anticipated. For the true daughter to save the mountain, she must be on the mountain—and she will need training, and the Imperial treasures too. She will have much power even now, but no sense of how to use it. She cannot hope to win back the mountain unless she is properly prepared. You must retrieve her, teach her to use enough of her talents so that she can defend herself out in the world, and then bring her here so I can assist with the rest. I am able to make use of the full extent of my power only here in the valley.”

  Takeo bowed his head in acknowledgement. Did he believe Rin’s story?

  “Will that be enough?” he asked. “No force has ever overcome Mt. Fuji before, and yet this demon and his ghosts broke its every defense in a matter of minutes.”

  “It all rests on the girl,” Rin said. “And the sacred treasures that will channel her power.” She took on the same tone she had when relating the prophecy. “The sword’s blade will split open the uneasy dead. The mirror will turn around their attacks. The jewel will amplify all energy used for good. Seek the weapon first, as it may cut the way through to the others.”

  Takeo still looked uncertain. “So, then, according to your vision, if we bring this girl to the mountain with the treasures, she’s sure to win?”

  “There are no definites,” Rin said in her usual dry voice, her mouth twisting. “A vision is not a guarantee. All that can be said is that if the prophecy is not fulfilled, failure is certain.”

  “Then how can we—” Takeo started, and Rin shook her head.

  “Many a thing becomes clear through the doing,” she said.

  Nothing, she’d said to me. You have to do nothing at all.

  “Please,” Takeo tried again. “Anything else you can tell us—”

  Rin’s eyes narrowed as she cut him off. “I’ve said all I can say until I speak with her.”

  “What about me?” I broke in. “What am I supposed to do during all this, according to you?”

  Her gaze barely flickered my way. “That’s none of my concern,” she said, and then, to Takeo, “This one might be returned to whence she came, to replace what will be lost.”

  Whence I came. To my supposed human parents? My hands balled.

  “All right,” Takeo said, the tensing of his jaw telling me he was backing down unwillingly. His fingers found mine beneath the table and squeezed them. “How will I find the girl?”

  The gentle touch of his ki reassured me. He believed in me still.

  Rin had to be wrong. My parents must have decided not to make the switch. I couldn’t accept anything else.

  “It should not be very difficult,” Rin said. I expected her to offer a tangled series of directions, but instead she stood and walked to the cabinet beside the stairs. She took out a sheet of paper and a small bottle of ink and painted several neat characters.

  “She’s in Tokyo,” she said, handing over the paper. “The more city energy around her, we thought, the easier to hide her ki. Go to this address, and she will be there.”

  So simple and exact. I stared at her as Takeo considered the paper.

  “You’re obtuse even in how obtuse you decide to be,” I said.

  Rin laughed. This time, her gaze lingered on me a little longer. “It’s rare that anyone truly appreciates my nature.”

  “Is there anything more we should know?” Takeo said.

  “There is always more to know,” Rin said with a huff of breath. “That does not mean you will know it now.”

  I got up as Takeo did. “We will go, then, at once,” he said. “Before the demon takes its plans any further.”

  The sage inclined her head.

  “Yes,” she said. “Make as much haste as you can without carelessness. The worst can worsen. As one of the guards of the palace, it was part of your duty to calm the mountain’s fire, was it not?”

  Takeo nodded. All of the guards took shifts soothing Fuji’s volcanic temper.

  “Now Mt. Fuji stirs,” Rin said. “The ground shakes, the anger builds, unsettled by the binding of the kami and the presence of so many malicious spirits. If the balance remains unrestored, that fire may break its silence for the first time in three hundred years.”

  The volcano was threatening to erupt. The thought of that fury of ash and lava raining down on all those towns below wiped everything else Rin had told us from my mind. I closed my eyes, unable to shake the images. A flood of molten rock crumbling the walls of the Nagamotos’ house. Searing through the park where I’d watched artists painting the spring and autumn colors. Swallowing the cafes once filled with chatter. My stomach knotted.

  If the mountain burst, it would not be just the kami under attack, but every living thing in the vast range of the destruction. And once the fire spilled over, nothing any human or kami could do would stop it.

  All of Sage Rin’s words haunted me as Takeo and I raced toward Tokyo, hoping to reach the city by the end of the day. Even without Mt. Fuji in sight, the heat of its anger seemed to tinge the heavy breeze. And though between Takeo’s hand around mine and Midori’s tiny feet entwined in my hair, ki thrummed through my body, I couldn’t completely ignore the question of how much of it belonged to me. Could I really have been borrowing so much from the mountain all this time, without knowing it?

  It serves no purpose wondering that, I told myself. When we saw the girl Rin had sent us to, we would know—that the sage had been mistaken, surely. And then we could move forward from there. Right now, the only important thing was reaching her before the volcano erupted.

  As evening fell, I got my first glimpse of Mt. Fuji in the distance to our right, its peak haloed by clouds. We paused for a moment to scan its slopes. The mountain looked no less stable than before. We’re coming, I thought to it.

  Or, at least, Takeo was. The doubts I’d tried to smother crept up again.

  I hadn’t dared to speak of Rin’s claims, and Takeo had respected my silence. Now the question popped out before I could catch the words.

  “They never said anything like this to you, did they? My parents? About me being... About any of it? They never gave any sign I wasn’t really...”

  “No,” Takeo said. “I remember the
excitement when it was announced that Her Highness was with child, when you were born. Everyone rejoiced. That was part of the reason I decided to dedicate myself to serving the mountain as soon as I was old enough—and I saw the joy they took in you with my own eyes, when I arrived and every day after.”

  I directed my thoughts up to Midori where she perched on the back of my head. “And you?” I said. “How much power have you been lending me?”

  The dragonfly responded with a teasing tickle that amounted to saying if I hadn’t insisted on running myself ragged so often, she wouldn’t have to assist—although she was quite happy to. Which wasn’t really an answer.

  “But I don’t really need you to... to have any power at all, away from the mountain, do I?” I made myself ask.

  All she gave me was a mental shrug. I couldn’t tell whether she was avoiding answering or whether she honestly didn’t know.

  “Sora,” Takeo said, “do you remember the bear?”

  “Of course,” I said, the memory rising up. But what did that have to do with this?

  “It was such an honor to be chosen as your principal guard,” he said haltingly. “I was anxious to prove I was worthy of the honor, to myself as much as anyone, and that distracted me. When you stumbled on that bear and she moved to attack, I was so frightened that she might hurt you that all I could think was to draw her toward me instead. I should have had us both turn ethereal, and she wouldn’t even have been able to reach us. Instead I shouted, and she swung toward me, and then you threw yourself between us with that blast of ki, as if it were your job to defend me.”

  “That didn’t do us much good either,” I said as my cheeks flushed. “It only made her angrier. I should have thought to turn ethereal.” I hadn’t been able to stand the thought of my stalwart playmate being hurt himself, and that had knocked all the sense out of my head.

  “You protected us both,” I went on. “You did think of it, and you shifted me too, so the bear couldn’t touch me. That’s what matters.”

  “And I’ll continue protecting you as long as I’m with you,” Takeo said. He didn’t look at me, but toward the mountain. “That is the duty your parents gave me, and I carry it out gladly. But that story is who you are, Sora. Even as a child, you were brave and strong and willing to give of yourself for others. You’ve never seemed like anything less than the best of any kami I’ve known. Until today, no one gave me the slightest reason to think otherwise. And no sage’s words could alter my admiration of you.”

  Until today. In spite of his kindness, the memory of Rin’s words pricked at me as if he’d scraped open a cut that had just scabbed over. He wasn’t saying it couldn’t be true. He was saying that even if it were, it wouldn’t matter to him.

  I supposed that had to be good enough.

  “Whatever happens, I won’t let any harm come to you,” Takeo added. He turned his head toward me then, his dark eyes so sure that the doubts within me stilled for just a moment.

  “I know,” I said. “I’m glad you’re here.” As long as he was, I wasn’t completely without my home.

  “It is still an honor,” he said quietly. Then he glanced ahead of us. “We should keep moving. We have a long way to go.”

  Who knew how much longer the mountain would hold—or what the ghosts might be doing to my parents and the others even now?

  With ki streaming through us, we resumed our dash across the field and on into the forestland on the other side. We’d only been traveling a few minutes more when three figures floated out from between the trees far ahead of us, crossing our path. Two men, one young and one middle-aged, and a young woman. Below their waists, their bodies faded away into nothingness.

  Ghosts.

  “...all the things I’ll do,” the young woman was saying.

  “I wish Obon were tomorrow, and we could start already!” the young man replied. Then the three of them spotted us and went still.

  Takeo tugged at my hand, urging me to run on, but my body had stiffened.

  Everything that was happening to me, it was because of them. If not for the ghosts, I would still be on the mountain. I would know my family and friends were safe. I would know who I was.

  And we had no idea what they or their demon leader wanted or intended to do next. Maybe I couldn’t blame these three for all of my misery, but they had to know at least that much. Surely Takeo and I, with our training and ofuda, could defeat this trio and force the answers from them. Rin had admitted that her vision of victory wasn’t guaranteed. We needed every advantage we could get.

  As the ghosts stalked toward us, I gripped the charms in my sleeve. “We need this,” I whispered to Takeo. “We’ll banish two and question the last one. It’ll be easier to defeat the rest if we know what they’re planning.”

  “Hmm, look at this,” the woman ghost said, coming to a halt several feet away. “Not much of a rescue force, if they’re hoping to take back their mountain.”

  “Check out their get-up,” the young man said. “They look like they figure they’re royalty. Where are you headed, Miss Fancy?”

  Takeo gave me a terse nod. “Stay close,” he murmured.

  “I don’t see that it’s any of your business,” I said to the ghost, sliding one foot back into a ready stance. My heart started to thump. I’d fought innumerable battles in the palace’s training rooms, but never against an enemy who truly wanted to hurt me.

  A tingle raced over my scalp where Midori perched. The thick sash and wide sleeves of my robe weighed on my waist and arms. I could have fought the ghosts in their filmy forms while I stayed corporeal, bending my ki and theirs around my solid body, but the fight would be simpler if my clothes weren’t holding me back. I shifted, the lightness that came with my ethereal state sweeping through me.

  “Could be they’re scouts, like us,” the woman said. “D’you think we should take them in? You’ve got the rope, right?”

  The older man patted a bag hanging from his shoulder. The ghosts spread out as if to surround us. “Why are you fighting us?” I asked. “Kami have never done anything to you.”

  “You’ve never done anything for us either,” the young man retorted, and sprang.

  I stepped to meet him, drawing my short sword to block his knife before it could scrape at my spirit. Ki sparked between the ethereal blades. The young man’s knife was smeared with dried blood. On my head, Midori shivered, a wave of revulsion passing from her into me. The blood of a wound, as with any product of sickness or violence, was like poison to kami. As I pressed forward, looking for an opening to use my ofuda, I tried not to notice how little the blood was affecting me.

  I lashed out with a charm, but my opponent ducked, his shirt collar lifting to reveal the edge of an intricate tattoo at the top of his back. He swung at me and I whirled out of the way. We circled each other. He hissed at me through bared teeth, but for all his ferocity, I could tell he had little formal training. Swordplay was a sort of dance, to a music you had to hear in your head, and there were gaps in the rhythm of his movements. Gaps I could slip through. When he wove to the side and then jabbed his knife toward my neck, I dodged and smacked my ofuda against his face.

  The charm hit his nose more than his forehead, but it worked. The lettered strip of bark sank into his ghostly skin, and his form wavered, contracting in on itself. He disappeared with a crackle of ki.

  Across from us, the woman grunted in surprise. Takeo wrenched away her striking hand and swiped at her head with one of his own ofuda. She vanished as quickly as her companion had. Beyond her, the third ghost’s eyes had widened. He spun around and fled through the trees.

  I bolted after him. “Sora!” Takeo called. I couldn’t risk slowing. The ghostly man hurtled straight through trunks and branches it was easier for me to dart around, but that meant he moved faster. The distance between us was growing.

  Frantic, I threw all the energy in me to my feet and hurled myself at him. I slammed into his filmy body, knocking him to the ground. He scrambled ov
er, shielding his face with a hand that was missing most of its smallest finger, the stubby end mottled with scar tissue. I set the tip of my sword at his neck and drew out another ofuda. My chest was heaving, my limbs trembling with the effort I’d just expended, but I couldn’t suppress a small smile of triumph.

  “Why are you following this demon?” I demanded. “What do you hope to gain?”

  Takeo came up behind me. The man’s gaze flitted between us and settled on me. He glared silently. I pressed the sword down with a sharpening of ki. He winced as it pierced his translucent form, but his mouth stayed firmly shut.

  I couldn’t do any real damage with my blade, only cause his spirit pain—and the thought of attempting to torture him the way his people had the kami made me queasy. My mind skipped back to the conversation we’d interrupted. The younger-looking man had mentioned Obon.

  Maybe this one would be less resistant to talking about things he thought I already knew.

  “We’ve heard about your plans for Obon,” I said, hoping I sounded convincing. “What makes you think you can hold the mountain that long?”

  “Are the two of you going to take it from us?” the ghost sneered. “Omori will crush you in an instant. And when the veil thins, we’ll get what we deserve.”

  He whipped aside his hand and jolted upright. I realized what he intended too late. His head brushed the charm I’d held ready, and he snapped out of our world beneath my hands. I stared at the space where he had been, turning his threat over in my head.

  “They’re very devoted,” Takeo said. “Willing to sacrifice themselves for their cause, whatever it is. That will make them harder to fight.”

  The lack of blame in his voice dulled the sting of my mistake. “At least we learned something,” I said, pushing myself to my feet. “This ‘Omori’ he mentioned—that must be the demon, don’t you think? Now we know its name.”