Storm

by Amanda Sun

  He took off into the trees by another tower keep, this one larger than the first. Alone, I stared at the disappearing tour group, and then Tomo. I was terrified. But then I thought about Jun. If this could really help us stop him...if this could stop the ink for Tomo...we had to try it.

  Go on, the voice whispered to me. Go see the truth.

  With a deep breath, I ducked into the forested path behind Tomo. He squeezed my hand, and we moved forward together, past the guesthouse, toward the Three Sanctuaries buildings.

  It wasn’t far to go, but every step sounded in my panicked heartbeat. The imperial family used the Three Sanctuaries for weddings and ceremonies, so it wasn’t far from the guest lodgings in the Imperial Palace. A whitewashed wall surrounded the shrines, black paneling running like a stripe around the center. There was a large gateway on the left to enter, and inside I could see three tiled rooftops on the top of three tiny raised shrines of brown and white.

  “The Magatama is in the center one,” Tomo whispered.

  I was nauseous, ready for someone to grab me and deport me back to New York. Any minute now we’d trigger some kind of alarm. Maybe we’d already set off a silent alarm.

  “You okay?” Tomo asked quietly.

  “Don’t they have cameras all over the place?” I said. “It’s the Imperial Palace, for god’s sake. There’s no way they don’t know we’re here.”

  Tomo pointed toward the wall of the Three Sanctuaries. “There,” he said, and my eyes widened. A security camera. Three of them, in fact, on this side alone. I recoiled, the panic roiling in my stomach. We would be arrested. “We’re too far from the tour group to claim being lost idiots now.”

  Tomo grinned, his expression dark. “We could say we snuck off to make out.”

  “And just happened to fall into the courtyard of the shrines? Unlikely.”

  He lifted his hand into the air, like he was reaching for the cameras. He left his hand outstretched for what seemed like ages. “What are you doing?”

  His arm began to shake with the strain, his eyes closed as he concentrated. I heard whispers gathering on the wind, the sound of the ink swirling around us. I looked at the wall of the Three Sanctuaries. The security cameras dripped with ink, each of them completely coated.

  “There,” Tomo said, rising to his feet and walking toward the wall.

  I stared. I’d seen the ink write on him before, give him wings or shinai swords or scars that bled ink, but I’d never seen him use it on something. His drawings always attacked him; maybe the ink would make the cameras focus on us or something?

  He broke from the trees, and I hesitated, waiting for something horrible to happen. But nothing did, and so I followed him toward the gateway.

  “The security guard who checks the cameras will notice something wrong,” I said.

  “Of course he will,” Tomo said. “So we need to be quick. Come on.” He took hold of my wrist and we raced to the gateway. The doors were locked, but Tomo rested his fingers on the cool brass plate. Ink streamed from inside the lock, pouring down the wooden door. I heard the lock slide under the pressure. Tomohiro pressed the door open, stepping through.

  I looked around, waiting to hear the footsteps of guards approaching, of alarms wailing. Nothing. “Something’s not right,” I said. “This is too easy.” But Tomo didn’t hear me, already walking across the courtyard toward the shrines.

  The ink was spreading in wings on his back, dripping down his coat and swirling around him like a feathered cape. He looked like a giant raven, the feathers lifting as if attached to his arms. Streams of ink dripped off the feathers and lifted into the air, hanging in gravity-defying ribbons around the courtyard. I’d seen them like this once before, suspended around Jun when he’d played his cello.

  This wasn’t Tomo. It couldn’t be. He didn’t have such control over the ink, which meant Tsukiyomi must be taking over.

  The shrines looked like tiny houses on wooden stilts. Tomo walked up the wooden steps to the central one, swinging himself over the ornamental fence around the edge. He tried to slide the door of the shrine open, but it wouldn’t budge. There was no keyhole to flood with ink, no window to squeeze into. After we’d come all this way... I couldn’t see a way in.

  “No,” Tomo said, running his hands along the door frame. “There must be a way.”

  “I think the only way in is breaking down the door,” I said.

  Tomo shook his head. “That would be stupid.”

  “Says the boy who just broke into the palace of the goddamned emperor.”

  “Not the palace,” he protested. “The Three Palace Sanctuaries. And we can’t break anything, or we’ll end up on the news.” Tomo pressed his forehead against the door, his palms against the wooden beams of the little white huts. His copper spikes crumpled against the wall as he breathed in and out; his feathered wings continually dripped down and swirled back up like a reverse slow-motion waterfall lifting into the air. It creeped me out to see it collect like that, saturated around him. He had to be on the edge of control.

  “We’re running out of time,” I said. “The door’s locked tight, Tomo. What are we going to do now?”

  A smile spread across his face, a dark and delighted smile. I shivered.

  “We’ll make a new door,” he said. He reached behind himself and plucked a feather from his shaping and reshaping wings. The ink rushed in to fill the hole the feather left like a wave of dark blood. The plucked quill melted in Tomo’s palm as he crouched beside the doorway, rubbing the ink against the base of the floor.

  “Graffiti is your big plan?” I said. But he didn’t listen. He traced the line up the side of the building and arced it over his head, his fingertips tracing back down to the floorboards.

  A door. He was painting a door of ink.

  Tomo pressed his palms against the surface of the door, and it opened soundlessly into the shrine.

  My boyfriend just walked through a door he sketched with ink. He stepped in, and I followed, unsure what to say.

  A voice on the air giggled, then burst into a childish song. Monster, monster, where are you hiding? it sang. In the pit of your stomach, little girl. In the pit of your heartache. I’m hungry, little girl. What can I eat? The voice stopped singing, and turned to a harsh whisper. Let him eat the sword, it said viciously, or he’ll consume the whole world.

  I swatted at the air around me like the voice was a mosquito I could smack away. The ink ancestry in Tomo was reacting to the kami treasure. That didn’t make him a monster.

  So why did I feel so afraid?

  Tomo circled the altar, looking for the Magatama. It was nowhere to be found, but then again, it’s not like the priests would leave it lying on a table somewhere, right?

  “Where could it be?” I whispered, my hand against the wooden beam by Tomo’s makeshift door.

  “It’s hot,” Tomo said, running his hand along the altar. “Like a coal burning in the center of a fire.” He looked at the wall behind the covered table, to a large locked cabinet door. He touched the lock, the ink dripping onto the floor, and slid the doors open so hard they nearly slammed into the frames. Inside was a small torii-shaped shrine of wood and gold, pennants of white thunderbolts pulled taut across the center beam. At the foot of the miniature gateway rested a sleek black box.

  Tomo put his hand on the box and closed his eyes. The ink swirling around him lit with hints of gold, like a cloak of fireflies flashing around him.

  “Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” I said, taking a step back.

  The ink curved through his copper hair and spiraled into horns on his head. He looked like an oni, a Japanese demon.

  The box lid snapped open under his fingertips.

  “Tomo, the ink.” But he wasn’t listening.

  He threaded his fingers through a loop of cord, lif
ting the necklace slowly out of the dark velvet inside the box. The milky crescent-shaped jewel dangled back and forth on the string as he raised it up.

  “Yasakani no Magatama,” Tomo whispered, and the gem lit like a match, the buttery glass radiating with a fire that licked the insides of the jewel. The light grew, the whole shrine flooding with brilliance. I closed my eyes, the stark white shining through like a flashlight in my face. The world began to rumble, the floor shaking around me.

  And then, darkness.

  * * *

  “Katie?”

  Tomo’s voice echoed in my ears as I tried to rouse myself from the darkness.

  “Tomo?” I felt the grasp of his fingers as they curled around mine. I blinked over and over, the light surrounding us too bright at first to focus.

  “Can you stand?” Tomo’s face was near mine, his hair tickling against my cheek. But something wasn’t right.

  “Tomo,” I said. “Your hair.” Two ink-black horns spiraled through his copper hair like a strange crown. Golden beads dangled from the horns, the strings clinking together like part of a headdress. He leaned back from me and I stared at the robes adorning him, blue and purple and white draped around his body like waves of fabric. A thick golden cord tied in an elaborate knot around his waist. He looked like a prince.

  His strong arms wrapped around me and pulled me up to stand.

  “Where are we?” I asked. “Why are you dressed like that?”

  “I think we’re inside the Magatama,” he said, and I looked at the horizon, the sky made of milky glass like a dome of crystal built around us.

  “Inside?” I breathed.

  A woman’s voice echoed around us. “Inside the memory of the jewel,” she said.

  I’d know that voice anywhere, and so did Tomo. “Amaterasu.”

  “Only the memory of her,” the voice said. “She has long since left this world for other shores.”

  “But she gave this jewel to Emperor Jimmu before she left,” Tomo said.

  “She did,” said the voice, radiating all around us. “The jewel bears the marks.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What marks?”

  The sky around us flickered, turning a deep creamy orange. “The tears of Tsukiyomi formed this jewel,” she said. “He saw Amaterasu in the sky and loved her at once, but he knew not what to give her as a gift. What could be worthy of her? She had horses and weaving looms and a mirror in which to gaze at her brilliance. He was but a pale ghost of her light—he had nothing of his own to give. And so he wept, and the tears of his poverty formed the jewel which now remembers.”

  Tomo turned to look at the sky behind them, the movement causing his princely robes to whistle as they slid against each other. His skin seemed to glow in this light, everything clearer and sharper. He made a fine prince, I thought. He was more fit to rule than Jun ever could have been. I was still in jeans and a sweater; no magical transformation for me. Maybe it was his connection to Tsukiyomi that had caused the change?

  “This stone was made of his tears?” Tomo asked the voice.

  “It was a fine gift. It filled her heart with happiness,” the memory of Amaterasu said. “She wore it upon her breast as she crossed the sky.”

  I didn’t like where this was going. I knew where it ended up.

  The orange sky grew darker, a burned brown like some kind of oil painting. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Past the glass of the sky, a land of brown and white beams blurred on the horizon...was it the shrine, the real world? Was this a dream, or were we really inside the jewel?

  “But then the August Ones flung Susanou down from the Heavenly Bridge,” Amaterasu’s memory said. “He saw Amaterasu, and desired her. And she feared him, for he was deeply powerful, enough to frighten the August Ones to expel him.”

  The sky filled with brilliant light, returning to its creamy swirling clouds. I stepped back against Tomo and he wrapped an arm around me, the fabric hanging from his long sleeves. “To show he meant no harm, Susanou made a promise on the banks of the river. He gave Amaterasu his dagger to break, but in turn he demanded the Magatama jewel, the essence of Tsukiyomi’s love, his tears, his soul.”

  Tomo’s arm tightened around me, and I held on to the soft fabric of the robe. I shouted at the sky to make sure she heard me. “You gave it to him? A gift that important?”

  “She feared Susanou,” Amaterasu’s memory said. “And so she gave it away, so Tsukiyomi could protect her. Susanou shattered the jewel to birth new kami. But it also birthed the seed of Tsukiyomi’s rage.”

  I saw the sharp edges of the Magatama sky, now, the long scars etched into its glass surface. “It was pieced together again,” I said, lifting my arm to point to one of the fissures.

  “Yes,” the voice said. “Amaterasu gathered the glass shards until her palms were raw and broken, and she presented the shards to Tsukiyomi. The fire of his wrath melded the pieces like a hot iron. His love for her was manifest again, but flawed. And so the wound began to fester. The jewel bears the marks.”

  So that’s what had happened to it, why we kept dreaming of the shards digging into our skin. This was the beginning of the feud between Tsukiyomi and Susanou, the wedge driven between the two of them and Amaterasu. This was what generation after generation of Kami had suffered for.

  “Seek the mirror and the sword,” Amaterasu’s memory said. “It is nearly time.”

  “For what?” I said.

  “For the end,” Tomo said, and the sky around us flashed with a searing light that knocked us to the ground. The light faded, slowly, until I saw nothing but the dark wooden roof of the shrine ceiling.

  Tomo and I barely spoke on the train ride to Shizuoka. We’d awoken to a world of gold dust, the ink around us lifting into the air without a trace. Ducking through the door Tomo had made just before it became undone, we’d headed toward the public imperial gardens along an eerily quiet path, somehow not getting caught. I hadn’t seen a single guard. Were they just not worried about break-ins here, that cameras were enough? It didn’t make sense.

  We’d managed some polite chatter over dinner with Diane, who’d wanted to know everything I was willing to share about meeting my dad, but the effort of getting to the Magatama had exhausted everything I had left. Now Tomo and I sat side by side staring out the window, slumped low in our seats as Diane sat two rows away, pretending she wanted privacy to read her book. Did I mention how awesome she was sometimes?

  Tomo slept most of the time, his spiky hair pressed flat against the window frame, his face peaceful and quiet. You’d never guess we’d broken into the palace a few hours earlier.

  When we reached Shizuoka Station, Diane held out her hand to Tomo, who shook it slowly. “It was great to get to know you better,” she said. “Would you come by for dinner next week?”

  Tomo’s cheeks flushed; it wasn’t that common here to get invited over to someone’s house. But he nodded, his spiky hair flopping into his eyes with the motion. “Thank you, Obasan.”

  Diane nodded and glanced at her watch. “Only eight thirty,” she said. “There’s time for coffee if you want, Katie.”

  Seriously? She was giving me more time with Tomo after that stunt of his on the train? “Yeah, for sure,” I blurted out.

  “Be home by ten-thirty, though, okay?”

  “No problem,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Diane smiled and turned, slipping from view as she headed down the stairs from the platform.

  “She shouldn’t trust you with me,” Tomo said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Why? Because you can’t control your manly urges?”

  He laughed, but only once. “No. Because I’m the son of a demon, dummy.” The platform was almost deserted now, just a few stragglers left like us. I started down the other stairs of the platform, the ones that led toward the café attached
to the station tunnels. Tomo walked closely behind me, his footsteps nearly silent. “And I can control my urges just fine, thanks.” His arm snaked around my stomach, wrapping around me like a band of warmth. “For example,” he breathed, his face tucked against my ear, “I’d like to take control of my urge to kiss you right now.” His lips pressed against my neck and I felt like I might fall down the rest of the stairs if he hadn’t been holding on to me so tightly.

  He leaned away from the kiss, laughing softly as he released me and walked past me. “See?” he said. “It’s you who’s at a loss.”

  My cheeks flushed as I chased him down the stairs. “I can play that game, too,” I said, yanking on his wrists as I tried to reach up to his neck. He dodged, laughing, and I chased after him. When he reached the metal gates with the slot for his train ticket, he took off at a run, pressing his palms against the gate on either side and swinging his legs up and over the barrier. “Hey!” I shouted after him. “That’s cheating!” I fumbled in my pocket for my ticket, feeding it into the slot so the gates would pull back with their metallic grinding sound. I hurried through the gap, chasing after Tomo. I would pin him to the wall and kiss him, and then we’d see who cried mercy first.

  Tomo suddenly stopped running by the central hall, the white marble floors reflecting the lights that shone on the pillars holding up the towering glass ceiling. I crashed into him, grabbing his arm, ready to taunt him. But then I saw what he saw, and stopped dead.

  Jun leaned against one of the pillars, one knee bent as his foot pressed against the smooth stone. His arms crossed his chest, his spiked black bracelet covering his right wrist, and the blond highlights tucked behind his ears. His silver earring glinted with the station light as he slowly looked up, his eyes cold and unreadable as he smiled, just a little.

  “Takahashi,” Tomo said, his voice edged with darkness.

  “Yuu-sama,” Jun said. Was he mocking Tomo by using that lofty honorific at the end of his name? He could technically mean it, if he was elevating Tomo to princely Kami status. But it was obvious by his tone how he meant it. Tomo’s arm tensed under my fingers at the insult. “Okaeri,” Jun added. Welcome back.