by Megan Crewe
As I hurried on, my eyes caught on more glints of ghostlight than before. Omori certainly hadn’t left the mountain unguarded. I scanned the landscape, ignoring the invisible soldiers. A few steps later, my shoes squished into damp soil spotted with mossy rocks. I’d almost stepped in the stream without noticing it. It was shallower than I was used to, but a steady trickle ran over the pebbles.
I’d come too far down—the entrance I was aiming for lay a short climb above me. Kneeling, I splashed water on my face and cupped it in my hands to drink. The coolness filled me, clearing my head.
Pure running water was as much a bane to evil spirits as blood was to kami. As long as I stayed close to the stream, the ghosts should avoid me.
I ambled on up, passing the main entrance without a glance. From the corner of my eye, I could see the cave was clotted with ghostlights. Even if I could have gone through that way now, I’d have been caught before I reached it.
But there was another way I didn’t think the ghosts would have discovered.
I had to veer away from the stream as I left the cave behind, retracing the route Mother had led me along when I was younger so I would know the way if I needed it. I spotted the old cedar tree first, its swooping branches leaning into the cliffside, and then the jagged boulders like a line of teeth beneath it. I pushed past the thicket around the stones until I was hidden from the rest of the forest. No ghostlights lingered here. Relieved, I squeezed behind the trunk of the tree. My fingers caught on the edge of the crevice hidden there—the emergency passage for kami who’d been too badly injured to enter the palace through ki.
I slipped into the tight space. In the darkness, the passage appeared to end just a few feet from where I stood. Only if you walked right up to that wall could you make out the sharp turn that led farther into the mountain. If things had been as they should be, a kami would have been guarding this spot to ensure no human or malicious spirit accidentally found its way in.
I trod across the rough stone. The passage twisted and widened, ending at a sliding door. The light of the palace glowed through the panel. I eased close to the wooden frame and listened.
The hall on the other side would once have been echoing with footsteps and friendly voices. Now there was only dull silence—broken, abruptly, by a hoarse cry. It echoed through the wall and then sputtered out almost as quickly as it had risen. My back went rigid.
That had sounded like Father’s voice.
Ayame had said they were torturing him and Mother to the brink of death. If only I could save at least them... I ached at my helplessness.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow, Chiyo would free everyone.
If she was able to get the mirror today. If, even with the sacred treasures, she was able to make Rin’s vision real.
I shook those anxious thoughts away. Maybe what I observed here would help her accomplish that.
I nudged the door open and peered through the gap. Normally too, the palace would have been humming with the mountain’s soothing ki, but my human senses had no awareness of it. I doubted it would have felt soothing right now, but the absence made the hall seem doubly empty.
If Ayame had described her room’s location accurately, the one the human prisoners were in should be just a few down to my right. I crept down the hall. The rancid smell of long-dried blood seeped through the closed doors. Here and there, the gore had been spattered so thickly it showed through the painted screens like shadows marring the delicate images. Dark smears colored the floorboards. I caught a low moan and a pained murmur, and had to force myself to keep moving. Ayame’s room had been clean. When I found that one, I’d know the human prisoners were beside it.
A flutter of movement overhead made me press against the wall. I had the instinct to sink right inside it—but of course I couldn’t do that as a human. My gaze found a small brown body perching on a wooden beam. Mrs. Omori’s sparrow. I hadn’t expected her to follow me back here.
Just then, a swarm of ghostlights emerged from a room up ahead. I froze. There were more than a dozen of them, all swirling around a cluster of solid human forms. At least a few of the figures had their wrists bound behind them with rope, while others were shoving them on down the hall, away from me. Guns or knives hung from those figures’ belts. Corporeal ghosts directing their human prisoners, I guessed.
My pulse skittered. I was minutes too late. And if even one of the ghosts glanced my way, I’d be caught. There was no way I could banish so many of them on my own before one of them used a weapon on me.
Maybe they were only moving the prisoners to a different room, and I’d get my chance later. I held my breath until the ghostly caravan had turned a corner leading deeper into the hall, and then I slunk after them. I’d just come up on the corner myself when a voice carried from behind me.
“Hey, you lost one!”
I whirled around to see a corporeal ghost striding toward me. My hand leapt to my pocket again, but I already heard the thud of footsteps behind me. My fingers clenched. I could try to fight my way out of this, and undoubtedly die. Or I could play along with the mistake he’d made. Play just one more harmless human until I had a better chance.
I let my arms go slack. “Why are you doing this to us?” I protested as the first ghost grabbed my wrist. My voice quavered of its own accord. “Let me go! I want to go home.”
One of the ghosts who’d come up behind me frowned. “This one wasn’t in the room when we got the others,” she said.
“Well, she must have managed to wander off before you showed up,” the first ghost said. “Good thing I noticed before Mr. Omori did.”
“What’s going on?” I said with a panic I didn’t really need to fake.
“Come along,” the woman said brusquely. She gripped my shoulder and propelled me around the corner. The cluster of ghostlights there parted, and the groping fingers of the other corporeal ghosts dragged me into their midst. I bit back the protest that rose in the back of my mouth.
I ended up inside the ring of ghosts next to the four figures with bound wrists: a young woman whose bleeding forehead showed she’d put up a fight, a stout older man who was trembling uncontrollably, and the thin, smooth-faced man and short, bob-haired woman who’d been introduced to me as Chiyo’s parents. The Ikedas stared. Catching their eyes, I pressed my lips flat together, pleading wordlessly for their silence.
They both lowered their heads. As the ghosts hustled us down the hall, I kept my own head low and flicked my gaze from side to side, my heart thudding. I counted ten corporeal ghosts around us, some already with blades in their hands. At least as many ghostlights floated around them. And the deeper we went into the palace, the longer we’d have to run to reach our escape route. At least the ghosts hadn’t bothered to tie my wrists—a small mercy. I brushed the grip of Takeo’s sword through the fabric of my shirt, trying to hold on to hope.
After a minute, I realized we were heading to Mother and Father’s suite of rooms. The ghosts ushered us through their outer chambers, leaving my exit point farther and farther behind. As we approached their audience room, a rich, measured voice rang out through the open doorway. Even though I’d never heard it before, its expansive timbre immediately brought to my mind the smiling figure from the photograph in my pocket.
“I’ve given you time to recover your strength. You’ve had many demonstrations of what will happen if you refuse. But if those demonstrations haven’t been enough to convince you, I can arrange another. It’s entirely in your hands.”
Omori. It had to be. I’d wanted to learn what I could about the man, but suddenly I felt completely unready to meet him. My skin tightened as we stepped over the threshold.
After the emptiness of the palace’s halls, the audience room felt suffocatingly crowded. Corporeal ghosts stood in a semi-circle turned toward the platform where Mother and Father would have sat. Ghostlights glowed amongst them. A kami crouched by the platform’s edge, flanked by three other ghosts. One was training a gun on him, another a knife. A t
hird was poised with a thick net caked with dried blood.
The kami wore the same guard uniform Takeo had for my birthday celebration. Omori had known the right kami to target, as precisely as he’d conducted his business ventures, I thought with a chill. Who would be more loyal, more unwilling to let their rulers suffer, than the ones who served as their protectors?
Only one figure stood on the platform itself. Omori’s head was cocked, his arms crossed loosely over his chest as he studied the guard. He looked even more slight in person than he had in the photographs: his shoulders were narrow within his charcoal suit, his nose and mouth almost dainty. But the sight of him made my heartbeat shiver. Thin as he was, an aura of power flowed around him like a dark flame, so fierce even my human eyes could see its course. The hairs on my arms rose at the hum of ruthless energy rolling off of him. I could believe he was lending strength to thousands of ghosts just from the sense I got standing across the room from him.
His gaze slid over us, and I shifted behind the Ikedas. He wouldn’t identify me as a threat, but the kami guard would recognize me.
“Thank you,” Omori said to the ghosts who’d brought us in. “Now we can begin.”
He turned back to the guard. The ghost with the knife dug the tip of her blade into the kami’s shoulder. His face tensed with the effort to suppress a wince.
“Enough, Inoue,” Omori said with an eerie calm. “We aren’t here to hurt this gentleman. He simply needs to make his choice. Your lord continues to suffer the more you delay,” he added, directly to the guard. “Why do you hurt him?”
“I’ve told you, what you ask for can’t work,” the kami said.
“You’ve told me you’ve never tried it,” Omori said. “That’s all we’re going to do today. Try.”
At that moment, the feathered shape of the sparrow flew across the room toward him, looking as if it intended to land on his shoulder. My breath caught. Would he see his wife? Would that—?
She dipped toward him, and he brushed the tiny bird aside with a wave of his hand and a ripple of his awful energy. It propelled the sparrow off toward the wall. He didn’t even glance at the bird, his gaze fixed on the kami guard as if nothing had happened.
“You must release us,” the kami was saying. “To imprison the mountain and its guardians like this—we can’t tend to the wind and the rain, we can’t soothe Fuji’s temper. Everyone in the world is suffering because of your actions.”
Omori shook his head. “We could be gone by the end of Obon, if you do as we require quickly enough. We only took the mountain at all because it was clear you wouldn’t help us without an incentive. If you had been willing to reason, this could all have been avoided. What are a few thousand lives—lives we are owed—in comparison to the whole world?”
“The people you want to take over deserve their lives too.”
“Well, whichever spirit is stronger will win, I suppose,” Omori said. “It will be a fair struggle. Is that not the way of nature—to struggle to survive? If they want that life more, they will keep it. I’ll ask one more time. Will you do as I’ve requested, or do you require further convincing?”
The kami didn’t speak. The hum of Omori’s energy heightened, reverberating through to my bones. He made a gesture so quick I barely saw it. One of the ghostlights disappeared into the wall. A second later, a hiss of pain filtered in from the neighboring room, followed by a strangled groan.
Father. He was so close. I balled my hands as a broken cry split the air. He sounded nearly dead already.
The kami guard looked toward the wall. With each noise, he quivered. There was a crack that sounded like bone breaking, and then a gasp and a muffled whimper, so hopeless and unlike my image of Father that I had to grit my teeth to hold in a cry of my own.
“All right.” The kami extended his arm to Omori. “All right, I’ll try, just stop!”
“Good,” Omori said. With another gesture, the sounds on the other side of the wall ceased. He stepped off the platform and strolled toward our group. A fresh sweat broke over my skin.
The ghosts around us parted so Omori could look each of us over. His attention seemed to settle at once on Mrs. Ikeda. He rubbed his chin, an unearthly glint in his eyes.
No. My mind raced, thinking back through everything Mrs. Kobayashi had told me. She’d mentioned repeatedly how much he’d cared for his family. Had any fragment of that emotion lingered? He’d watched his children dying at his wife’s side...
His lips had just parted as if he were about to speak when I blurted out, “Would you steal someone’s mother from them?”
His gaze snapped to me as the energy around him flared. “What do you know about loss?” he demanded, fury crackling through his voice. My muscles had tensed, and it was all I could do not to cringe backward. But as I ducked my head, the waves of power settled against his body again. I saw his thumb curl across his palm to rub the thick gold wedding band on his finger.
“Let’s start with her,” he said.
Panic jolted through me in the instant before one of the ghosts cut the rope on the arms of the young woman with the bleeding forehead. He’d pointed at her. I swallowed thickly as Omori strode back to the platform, the ghost shoving the young woman after him. She stumbled, her head bowed. No fight was left in her slumped shoulders. I hadn’t meant to turn his eyes on her. But how could I save all of us?
As the woman stopped in front of Omori, the other ghosts edged forward, eager to watch. After a few seconds, only one stood directly between me and the doorway. And everyone’s attention was on the spectacle in front of them, not the remaining human prisoners.
This might be the only chance I’d get.
I displaced my shirt and carefully pulled the short sword out of its sheath, hiding the blade against my forearm. “Who gets the honor of being first, Mr. Omori?” a ghost who looked no older than fifteen called from the crowd. “Who gets to have her?”
Omori chuckled, but as his gaze roved over his assembled followers, an odd expression passed over his face. He looked almost lost. The flow of energy around him ebbed just slightly. His thumb rose to rub his ring finger again.
“Something is missing,” he murmured.
Then he drew himself up straighter, and all hint of confusion vanished. I kept watching him, tensed, searching for another clue to what I’d just seen. What had happened? Something had affected his power.
“Inoue,” he said. “You’ve served well. Would you like her?”
The young woman flinched as the ghost walked up to her, knife still in hand. Inoue grinned, showing a row of uneven teeth, then turned to Omori and bowed.
“More thanks than I can give, Mr. Omori,” she said.
Lowering my eyes, I set the sword against the thin rope that bound Mr. Ikeda’s wrists. I didn’t have time to observe further. This father, my human father, I might be able to save.
His arms twitched, then stilled as he realized it was me. The rope frayed quickly under the pressure of the blade.
The other two ghosts who’d been minding the kami guard propelled him forward. He considered the young woman, and she stared back, her eyes blank, like a rabbit gone numb with fear.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The coil around Mr. Ikeda’s wrist split. He caught the rope so it didn’t patter on the floor. I eased half a step to my right so I could reach Mrs. Ikeda’s arms.
The kami guard raised his hands, shimmering with ki. He slid them into Inoue’s chest. My eyes widened. I’d never seen the spirit transfer done, only heard about it.
Inoue whispered a prayer under her breath. Her body started to fade. Within it, the kami’s fingers clasped around the spot where her heart would have been. A light sparked between them. As he drew it out, the ghost’s form contracted around it until it was gone. He turned toward the human woman, placed his palms over her chest, and pushed.
The young woman gasped. Her body spasmed. My sword broke through the last strands of the rope at Mrs. Ikeda’s wrists.
I glanced toward the man standing beside us. He was a stranger to me, but he didn’t deserve to be here any more than the Ikedas did. I set my sword against his bonds as well.
The young woman’s legs buckled. She fell to her hands and knees. Coughing and gagging, she dribbled spit on the floor. The kami knelt beside her, smoothing his fingers over her brow, and her sputtering subsided.
The old man shuddered with the breaking of the rope. As I jammed my sword back into its sheath and palmed several ofuda from my pocket, the woman by the platform swayed to her feet. She looked down at her hands, flipping them over before touching her cheeks, her collarbone, her belly. An awed light filled her face.
“Thank you so much, great one,” she said, bowing to Omori. Her voice had a distant quality, as if it came from another room.
My gut twisted. The transfer had worked. The ghost, Inoue, had wrenched the young woman’s body away from its proper spirit.
And any moment now, the others were going to stop staring at her and start deciding which human they’d take next.
20
“RUN!” I murmured with a brief jerk of the Ikedas’ hands toward the door. Then I was running—smacking an ofuda against the cheek of the ghostly man blocking our way, spinning to banish a second who turned at the sound of my feet. My pulse thumped in my ears. My parents rushed past me, the older man stumbling after them.
“Straight through the chambers and then down the hall to the right,” I called to them. A third ghost leapt at me, and I caught him with another ofuda.
Before any of the other spirits reached me, I bolted through the doorway. The others had already made it to the end of the next chamber. Our feet pounded across the woven tatami floors. I was suddenly glad the ghosts hadn’t bothered with the politeness of closing the sliding doors after they came into a room. We had a clear path all the way to the hall.
A blur of ghostlight flickered around me, and cold fingers penetrated my skin. A faint warmth flowed from the amulet at my chest, deflecting them. The chill receded, but a ghost solidified beside me, her finger on the trigger of her gun. I tossed an ofuda into her face. Three more ghosts shifted into corporeal form between me and the other escapees, charging after them. I pushed my legs faster and threw myself at the ghosts with charms fanned in my hands. As their forms blinked away, I rolled across the floor and back onto my feet with an ease that surprised me.