by Amanda Sun
“Katie?” I looked up at Tomo. In the moonlight he looked so strange, a dark figure on a dark horse—well, deer-dragon-horse thing.
A demon on his unnatural steed.
I stepped forward, lightly touching the kirin’s neck. The ink was warm to the touch, but it trickled down my fingers like water, without marking my hands. Below the ink, the scales of the kirin were as cold as polished metal. It pawed at the ground, the creak of its muscles like scrunching up a paper ball.
I reached for Tomo’s hand, and Ishikawa gave my knee a push to help me up. The kirin felt tense and unstable underneath us—suddenly the plan didn’t seem like such a great idea.
“Sato?”
Ishikawa shook his head, the moonlight catching on his bleached hair. “I’ll stay here and keep watch. I don’t need to look into some rusty mirror to know the truth of who I am. Go on, Yuuto. Go admire your reflection, ne?”
Tomo nodded, and suddenly the kirin lurched to the side as we turned to face the fence. I wrapped my arms tightly around Tomo. The animal shifted from hoof to hoof on its spindly legs. “Are you sure it can support two of us?” I asked.
“The ink is part of me,” Tomo said. “Would I let you fall?”
I didn’t have time to answer before the kirin bolted forward. I pressed my lips together to keep from screaming. The kirin didn’t run in a straight, smooth line like a horse, but leaped like a deer, swaying from side to side as its legs extended and collapsed like tent poles. I was sure my leg would be crushed against a tree trunk before we even made it to the fence, but somehow the creature dodged every obstacle. It let out a low noise, halfway between a whinny and some kind of tribal horn.
And then it pushed hard against the ground with its back legs. We were flying for a moment, the world whirling past. The kirin collapsed on the other side of the wall, rolling as we tumbled off its back and onto the hard cold ground. The kirin lay there for a moment, its antler scraping against the dirt, the blue gems buried in the grasses. Then it rose slowly, its legs bending as it shook back and forth, as the ink flooded down its sides in tiny waterfalls of black.
Tomo spat out a mouthful of dirt, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, my shoulder throbbing like fire where it had hit the ground. “Although I’m pretty sure I’ll have a huge bruise on my arm tomorrow. And I skinned my knee.”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me up.
We’d made it—the inner shrine of Naiku. Dull orange floodlights lit up the two shrines inside the fence, the larger one just in front of us, the other next to a large empty square of dirt. “They rebuild the shrine every twenty years,” Tomo murmured as we moved forward. “Right now it’s on the left. Then they’ll build on the right and destroy the left one.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “It’s Amaterasu’s shrine. They want to keep it new and clean. Or maybe the power builds up after a while.”
Behind us, the kirin nuzzled at the grass. If you didn’t know it was there, you could barely see it, black on black. Even the faint blue glow of the jewels swinging looked like tiny fireflies flitting around.
The shrines looked like tiny Yayoi huts, raised on stilts and built from unpainted wood. Tomo grabbed the railing of the shrine and hoisted himself up over the side. He reached down for me and pulled me up with more strength than I’d expected.
I knew what was happening. It was the power in him growing—the mirror was close.
Tomo gently slid the door of the shrine open. There wasn’t any security or locks to worry about here—the fence was meant to keep everyone out. No one could scale it, they thought. No one except a desperate Kami.
A large relic took up the center of the altar, the object covered by a dark cloth and surrounded by a variety of offerings. A bowl of rice, a silvery baked fish and a small black bowl of sand with two long wands of incense smoldering into the air. It smelled like the incense at Toshogu Shrine in Shizuoka, a mix of strong perfumes and bitter herbs.
“The mirror?” I asked. Tomo’s fingers trembled as he ran them over the black cloth.
“The Yata no Kagami,” he breathed, closing his hand around the softness of the fabric. He pulled it slowly and it slipped from the surface of the mirror, fluttering to the floor.
The back of the Kagami was like the one in my dream, like a large brass shield embossed with strange geometric designs.
Tomo’s eyes widened, his face one of pained shock. I moved around the altar, to see what it was he saw.
I hesitated, unsure what to do.
The mirror’s surface was cracked, a handful of glass shards reflecting a broken Tomo back to him.
“It’s...it’s shattered,” he whispered.
The room flooded with heat and light, and I raised my arm to cover my eyes.
“You shattered it many eons ago,” a voice said. Amaterasu stood at the shrine door, her kimono shining with gold and silver embroidery.
“Okami,” Tomo said, but the figure shook her head.
“Amaterasu is long gone,” she said. “I’m only what’s left of the memory, trapped in the mirror.”
“We came to...to learn the truth,” I said. “The mirror shows the truth, right?”
She smiled sadly. “This is not the Yata no Kagami.”
Tomo breathed in sharply, the air choking in his throat with a strange noise. “I don’t understand.”
“The mirror melted in a fire over a thousand years ago,” she said. “But they reshaped it anew. It holds the same spirit.”
“Is that why it’s broken?” I asked.
Amaterasu raised her hand slowly, pointing toward Tomohiro. “Don’t you remember?” she asked.
He looked pale, his breathing shallow. “I broke it.”
She lowered her arm, her hand disappearing in the folds of her kimono sleeves.
I tilted my head—this was totally confusing. “What?”
“When I was Taira no Kiyomori,” Tomo said. “In my dream. I must have shattered this mirror a hundred times.”
I scrunched up my nose. “But...that was a dream.”
“It was a memory,” Amaterasu said. “The ink that slumbers in him is from Tsukiyomi and from me, the descendent of my son. The memory has descended with him.”
Tomo fell to his knees, pressed down by the weight of the truth. “Then, the reason I dreamed of Taira and Tokugawa...”
“They, too, shared the blood of two kami.” She nodded. “The kin of Tsukiyomi and Amaterasu are drawn to each other, generation after generation. The union brings only destruction, and the cycle continues.”
“How do we stop it?” I said.
She looked at me, her gaze as cool as porcelain. “It cannot be stopped.”
But it could. She’d told me in the last dream that it could, if Tomo faced the whole truth of himself.
“Is this everything?” I said. “Is this the complete truth of Tsukiyomi?”
“Isn’t it enough?” she said.
Tomo was on the ground, trembling. All those nightmares he’d had...they were all rooted in truths he’d forgotten, the whispers of “murderer” and “demon” his heritage. Taira had killed countless soldiers in his siege against the imperial throne, as had Tokugawa. Tomo’s history was one written in blood.
But it couldn’t continue. That wasn’t who Tomo was. I wouldn’t let him follow that path.
I shook my head. “It’s not enough,” I said. “It’s just a reflection of the past.”
Amaterasu smiled, her eyes lighting up.
“You have noticed,” she said. “The missing shards.”
“Tell us,” I said. “Please.”
She looked from me to Tomo, and then rested her hand on the top of the mirror.
“You know of the jewel,
forged by Tsukiyomi’s tears and shattered by Susanou’s cruelty,” she said. “Made anew by bitter rage. Tsukiyomi saw the world through this warped lens. He thought the world a place of rot and corruption, of filth and putrid distortion. He festered in this belief until his heart became black and twisted.”
“Amaterasu asked Ukemochi to prepare a banquet to change his mind,” I said, remembering. “And instead he killed the host.”
The memory nodded. “When Amaterasu heard what he had done, she knew she must stop him. She longed to protect what the August Ones had made. But she is a being of light—she hated the darkness it brought upon her soul to plot against him.”
Tomo cried out, the sound jolting me out of the story.
I stumbled around the altar to his side. “Tomo?”
“The memory sears his heart,” Amaterasu said.
Tomo hunched over on the floor as he gasped for breath.
Amaterasu clasped her hands in front of her. “The truth is so sharp it cuts. Is it better to stop?”
But we had to know the whole truth to save him. We had to know how to stop Jun.
“Tomo,” I said, wrapping my arms around him. “You’re still you, okay? You’re not Tsukiyomi. You can still fight.”
He nodded with effort, gritting his teeth. “Continue,” he panted. “Please.”
Amaterasu slid her hand along the side of the mirror. “From Tsukiyomi’s tears the Magatama was forged. From his hatred...something else.”
The light in the shrine dimmed, the incense flooding my nose with too strong a smell. The world felt oily; I didn’t like this at all. I didn’t want to know.
But we had to. We had to.
“What was it?” I whispered.
Amaterasu bowed her head. “Yamata no Orochi. The beast of never-ending hunger.”
Once there was a demon so hungry he devoured the world.
“Orochi was Tsukiyomi’s curse on mankind, a hatred so potent it became flesh and blood. No human could withstand it.”
Orochi. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t think why. What was it even supposed to be?
“Susanou had nowhere to dwell but this land. Thrown from the Heavenly Bridge, exiled to the lands below, if Orochi destroyed the world, he would vanish with it. And so he fought the blight of man.”
The ground began to rumble. An earthquake? No...something else. The oily feeling spread across me, like something was spilling outside the shrine. “Tomo?”
The memory of Amaterasu continued. “In the end, hatred gave way to survival. There is nothing more dangerous than a creature whose existence hangs in the balance.”
The world was shaking, black and strange. We had to get out of here. Something was wrong.
“If you want to save yourself, Yuu Tomohiro, retrieve the Kusanagi, and cleave away the loathing of Tsukiyomi.”
The cry of an eagle pierced the shrine, and Amaterasu vanished like a candle snuffed out, only the blackness of night surrounding us.
Tomo collapsed onto the floor, released from the suffering the mirror had put him through. “Tomo,” I said, panic rising in my throat. “We need to go.” I grabbed the black cloth and threw it over the mirror.
He sat up, rubbing his head. Outside, the kirin let out his strange mournful bay. I pulled Tomo toward the door of the shrine and we jumped down from the railing to the ground.
“What is it?” he asked.
The eagle cry shrieked through the air again. In the darkness, the kirin hopped nervously from hoof to hoof, the jewels on its antler gleaming brightly.
From outside the fence, we heard a loud shout.
I froze. “Ishikawa!”
There was no time. We stumbled toward the kirin, Tomo pushing me up first and then pressing his foot through the thin waterfall of ink until the toe of his shoe took hold in the metallic scales. He pulled himself up onto the creature and we were off, galloping in awkward bounds toward the fence. I was in front, but it was Tomo’s drawing, and I hoped to god he was the one steering. The world blurred in front of me, dark and terrifying. The ground rumbled, and the air filled with the sound of rushing wings. What was that noise? I didn’t want to find out.
With a strong push against the ground, the kirin was airborne, the cold night wind rushing past our faces. When it landed this time we were ready for it. I squeezed fistfuls of its mane, the hair sharp like straw between my fingers. The creature stayed upright this time and sprang between the trees, sprinting as it panted in long breaths that rattled its rib cage.
That’s when I realized. The kirin was running for its life.
I looked behind us, the shape of an eagle blotting out the moon. Only it was larger than an eagle—way larger. Its wingspan was the length of two people, its feathers black as night and its eyes gleaming white as it searched the forest for us. It had three sets of sharp talons, and they reached out to try and snare us in the forest maze.
“The Yatagarasu,” Tomo shouted into the wind. The raven of Amaterasu.
“The one you drew was a lot smaller!” I shouted back. I wished I was home with Diane, tucked into my bed.
The bird grasped at us and came away with claws full of tree branches.
“They must have a Kami at the shrine,” Tomo yelled. “A powerful one.”
I looked at the feathers as they oozed ink like blood, the soft golden dust rising from the raven’s back. It was a sketch, no doubt about it.
That’s when I remembered that Ise Jingu had been protected by a member of the imperial family for the entire course of its history. Not just to oversee rituals, I realized, but to keep the mirror safe from other Kami, from anyone who wanted to steal it.
“That’s one hell of an alarm system,” Tomo shouted as the kirin bounded through the trees.
Just as we burst from the cover of forest, the raven circled back toward the shrine. Relief surged through me as it disappeared from view. It was only a guardian, after all, designed to scare off intruding Kami.
The kirin slowed, run to exhaustion. We slid off its back as it knelt on all fours, the lights in the gems dimming. “That thing was huge,” I panted.
Tomo hunched over, his hands on his knees. “If it’s drawn by an Imperial Kami, then the artist would be a close descendant of Amaterasu,” he said between breaths. “Makes sense she’d called a Yatagarasu, but we’re just lucky that Kami has control over her powers.”
Suddenly the kirin stood, its eyes glowing too bright.
My stomach twisted. Here was Tomo’s loss of control, come at last.
The kirin darted into the forest, chasing after the raven.
Tomo’s eyes widened. “No!”
We heard the baying of the kirin as it bounded through the woods, the outraged cries of raven as it turned back.
“Sato,” Tomo said. “He’s still in there!”
Lightning flashed in the sky, and the earth rumbled. Melting feathers of ink caught on the wind, blowing past us and into the city. The raven shrieked in the distance and lifted into the sky, its feathers dripping to the earth as it struggled to fly. Tomo pulled his sketchbook from his bag, his pen in hand, and flipped to the page with the kirin on it. The creature lay on its side, its belly sliced open, metal scales scattered like slippery fish on the ground.
Tomo looked away as he swiped the pen through the drawing. The kirin let out a horrible cry in the forest as the tears gathered in my eyes. The beating of the raven’s wings got quieter as it returned to the shrine, as it, too, melted away, scratched out by its mystery Kami.
Death around every corner. I was so tired of it all.
It needed to end.
We sat in silence in the hotel room, a square paper lantern on the table flickering its light across our faces. We’d laid out the futons, but sat on top of them, thinking over what had happened. Ishikaw
a hadn’t returned yet, but he’d sent a text to let us know he was okay. He’d seen a couple priests entering the Naiku Shrine, but we hadn’t heard his warnings over the voice of Amaterasu’s memory. The shout we’d heard had been to draw the priests off us, and he said he’d lost them somewhere in the mountains. He’d scaled a tree to look around, and was waiting until things calmed down to make his way back to town. I’d raised my eyebrows at Tomo, who’d run a hand through his hair and grinned.
“Sato’s good at not being seen,” he said. I guess a life of petty crime was paying off in a weird way. “By the way,” he added. “Thank you.”
I stared at him. “For what?”
He pressed his hands into the tatami and shuffled toward me. “For reminding me in the shrine,” he said. “That I’m not Tsukiyomi. That I’m me.”
I tried to laugh. “Of course you’re you. Don’t be stupid.”
“Oi,” he said, pretending to be annoyed. But we couldn’t shake the fear of what we’d gone through, the truth of what had happened long ago. Tsukiyomi had unleashed a monster into the world, and Susanou and Amaterasu had had no choice but to stop him.
“I’ve heard of Orochi before,” Tomo said.
I shuddered when he mentioned the name. “What is it, exactly? Is it real?”
“According to the mirror, it was. The Great Serpent. It had eight heads and eight tails, and it devoured humans.”
Eight heads and eight tails... I blinked. “Like a hydra?” Now Tomo was confused. “It’s a beast that had multiple heads. Every time one was cut off, two grew in its place.”
“I don’t think it’s like that with Orochi. Anyway, eight heads are enough.”
“So assuming it actually lived at some point, if it’s long dead, why tell us about it?”
“The Kusanagi,” Tomo said.
“What?”
“The last of the Imperial Treasures. The sword was cut from the tail of Orochi.”
“Then we have to go to Nagoya to find the Kusanagi and get the last of the story,” I said. “About what happened after Susanou killed the hydra.”