A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series)

by Christopher Golden, Thomas Randall

  Sakura and Miho were staring at her in confusion and Miss Aritomo and Mr. Yamato were watching her father, obviously surprised that the Harpers seemed to know the old monk.

  "I am restless when the world is most quiet," Kubo said. "Old habits are difficult to break. Fortunately, the fattest, tastiest fish are also restless in the quiet hours, and so I ride to the bay to retrieve them for my plate."

  He gestured toward the others. "Please, come in."

  Kubo walked along the rōka to the nearest of the shōji — the thin paper doors — and slid it open. Another step up brought them into the old man's i-ma, or living space. The house Kara lived in with her father had movable partitions and sliding doors called fusuma, which were something like shōji but thicker. The layout of the house could be changed to suit any purpose, and each room except for the kitchen and bathroom could become bedroom, living room, dining room, or office with very little effort. But most of Kubo's cottage was taken up by a single large i-ma. Tatami mats covered the floor in square sections. At the center of the room was a large table that she recognized as the sort that came with an electric heater beneath it that would emanate warmth to those around it.

  "If you will make yourselves comfortable, I will serve tea," Kubo said.

  "We would be most grateful for something to warm us," Mr. Yamato replied.

  Kara knew that respect and honor were paramount in Japanese culture, but still she was impressed by the reverence that Mr. Yamato showed to the Unsui. The old monk had been a friend of his grandfather's, but she thought his deep respect came from a deeper acknowledgement of the spiritual nature of the old man. Or maybe she was reading too much into it.

  Miss Aritomo busily arranged pillows and indicated where the girls should sit, and then the adults sat, too, so that by the the time a fusuma slid aside and the old man shuffled into the room, slippers shushing on tatami mats, they were all settled there. Kara watched the way he balanced the tray, thinking someone should help him. And yet the cups did not rattle and the teapot did not seem too heavy for him.

  Kubo set the tray upon the table and went back to slide the door closed.

  When he had settled down on a pillow of his own, he poured tea for his guests. No one spoke. Kara felt the urgency of Hachiro's predicament, as well as the sense of peril that hung above them all thanks to the curse of Kyuketsuki, but no one would rush him. She used the time, instead, to study the old monk.

  Despite the whiteness of his hair and beard, she would never have guessed his age to be above seventy, and even then only becaues of the lines on his face. They seemed more like echoes of all of the smiles and curious frowns of his life than like wrinkles. Physically, he seemed almost as fit as her own father, who could not have been more than half Kubo's age. And the simple way he dressed warmed her to him as instantly as had his smile upon greeting them.

  But now, as he regarded each of them in turn, she saw a sad gravity in his eyes.

  "Please," Kubo said, picking up his own tea cup.

  He sipped, and the rest of them followed suit.

  "Master Kubo," Mr. Yamato began, "we are honored that you have invited us into your home, and humbled by your hospitality. My grandfather liked to say that he never had a better friend than Kubo, and I hope that we will continue that tradition between our families."

  The Unsui smiled. "I have no family, Yamato-san, and your grandfather was a better friend to me than I to him." The old monk tipped a wink at Miho, who smiled shyly. "I got your sensei's grandpa in a lot of trouble, once upon a time."

  Mr. Yamato smiled as well. "Any help you can offer would be gratefully received."

  Kubo flapped a hand in the air, once again reminding Kara of a bird.

  "I require no gratitude," he said, as though offended. "If these snows have brought Yuki-Onna to our city, I will do all that I can to help. I have not heard of the Winter Witch appearing in my lifetime, though my grandmother claimed that her mother's most handsome brother had been taken by the Woman in White one cruel December."

  Kara held her breath. With those words alone he had commanded their attention. A year ago she would have heard the story as nothing more than superstition and folklore, but now she took it as a given that others had encountered Yuki-Onna before.

  "Do you know how we can make her go away?" Kara asked.

  Kubo sipped his tea. The others all ignored theirs, waiting for his reply.

  "I do not know of any way to drive her back to the spirit world," The Unsui said, and Kara felt her heart sink. "If the weather turns and the snows melt, then she will vanish with it."

  "But that might not be until spring," Sakura said.

  Kubo nodded grimly and sipped his tea again. Holding the small cup in his hands, he surveyed his gathered guests.

  "Tell me the story of how you believe we have come to this moment. Leave nothing out."

  Mr. Yamato and Kara's father looked at Miss Aritomo.

  "It began with Kyuketsuki," the art teacher said. "Kara, you should tell it."

  Kara shook her head. "No. It really started with Akane, and that isn't my story to tell."

  Sakura fidgeted, glancing around as though searching for an escape from this moment. Miho pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and tucked a lock of her long hair behind her ear, retreating into her old shyness, her sympathy for Sakura making her unwilling to push the matter.

  At last Sakura looked up at Kara, who pleaded with her silently. But they all knew that Sakura would have to tell it. Too much was at stake for her to refuse The Unsui's request.

  Sakura looked at Kubo. "My sister's name was Akane Murakami," she said. "And she died for a boy she did not love."

  It pained Sakura to tell the story. When she had finished, she sat in numb silence and listened to the others unspool the rest of the tale. Kara began with her arrival at Monju-no-Chie school and talked of death shrines and cats and nightmares. Miho talked about the Noh play they had intended to do in the fall. Mr. Harper and Miss Aritomo told the story of the Hannya that had possessed the art teacher and nearly killed them all. And they all shared the telling of the blizzard that had killed Sora, with Mr. Yamato explaining the efforts of the police and other searchers to locate the missing boys.

  Through all of their words, Sakura only listened. She thought about Akane, and how she had made peace with her sister's death, and a truth began to take shape in her mind, sharpening and clarifying itself with every passing minute. She had come to terms with Akane's death, but would never be able to make peace with the fact that her sister had been murdered. She had let her anger go and given in to her sorrow, but now that her parents had finally begun to break out of the spell that grief had put them under, Sakura's own anger had begun to resurface.

  It had been hard enough to stand at her sister's funeral and know she would be gone forever, but she had moved on the best she could.

  Yet how could she move on when the echoes of Akane's death continued to wreak havoc upon her life? All of their lives. As she listened to the stories being told, it only drove home even more that her sister's murder was the axis upon which all of this death and anguish spun. How could she move on, as long as the curse of Kyuketsuki loomed over her?

  The answer was painfully obvious.

  She couldn't.

  The voices around the table had fallen silent. Everyone watched Kubo, the air thick with expectation. Sakura studied his thick, wiry eyebrows, perhaps the most expressive part of his face. They had dipped into frowns and leaped with smiles throughout the visit thus far. Now, though, those eyebrows gave no hint as to his mood.

  When at last he began slowly to nod, Sakura felt a small flame ignite within her, though it took a moment for her to recognize it as hope — the hope that one day soon they could put all of this behind them. She had become accustomed to being cursed, and even begun to accept that they might have to all leave Japan to escape it, and to leave Miyazu City right away to get away from Yuki-Onna . . . though she wasn't sure that would even w
ork.

  "Master Kubo?" Miss Aritomo said, prompting the Unsui.

  The old monk looked at her, those bristly eyebrows came to life again, tilting downward in a solemn expression of contemplation.

  "Yes," he said. "There may be a way."

  "Please, Kubo-san," Kara's father said quickly. "Tell us."

  "In a moment," Kubo said.

  He unfolded himself from the floor and stood, hurrying to the same door he had used when he had made them tea. Moments later, he shuffled back in and across the tatami mats with one fist closed and the other holding lengths of black twine.

  Seating himself once more upon the pillow, he laid the twine across his lap and opened his clenched fist. Upon his palm lay four stones of a dull gray hue. They would have been entirely ordinary except for two characteristics that all four shared. Each had a single hole directly in its center, and each was a perfect circle. They varied in size, but not in the perfection of their roundness.

  "These come from the stream beside my home," Kubo said, as he strung the first of them onto a length of twine and handed it to Kara's father. "Emperors have been born and died in the time they have spent there, the water wearing them smooth. The holes I have made myself."

  They all watched in confusion as he strung a second and handed it to Miss Aritomo, and then a third, which he gave to Mr. Yamato. The fourth he strung and then tied the ends of the twine to keep it from falling off.

  "I don't understand," Mr. Harper said.

  "Go on," Kubo said, gesturing to Kara. "Tie them around the girls' necks. They are simple charms, but will help protect them from Yuki-Onna."

  "They're rocks!" Sakura found herself saying, and more sharply than was proper. "What should we do, throw them at her when she comes to kill us?"

  The Unsui sat up straighter, expression darkening, and suddenly the kindly old man had been replaced by a great master.

  "I have wandered in flesh and spirit for longer than you three girls have breathed the air of this world. There are things in it which, even after all you have seen, you will likely never understand — a delicate balance between earth and sky, between body and mind, between seen and unseen. And the unseen requires faith."

  Ashamed, Sakura lowered her head. "Forgive me, Kubo-sensei."

  The old monk smiled. "Of course. Now listen, and behave. The stream made the stones round and smooth, but I put the eyes in them —"

  Mr. Yamato tied one around Sakura's neck and she held it between thumb and finger, realizing that by 'eye' Kubo meant the hole in the center.

  "There are old words, old prayers, that can provide protection, and I have spoken those words over these stones myself. They are defenses. Wards against evil. Ancient spirits do not see humans for their faces, but for their essence, and your essence can be hidden behind masks or with the help of certain charms."

  Sakura immediately thought of the masks they had worn when they had stopped the Hannya, and understood at last how the masks had helped them. From the look on Miho's face, she saw that her roommate had made the same connection.

  "But we can't wear masks all of the time," Kara said. "In school or in the city, for instance."

  The Unsui nodded. "Exactly. But with these . . ." he gestured to the necklaces. "If Yuki-Onna comes for you, even if she stands in the same room with you, she will be blind to you. Her terrible gaze will slide away from you, slip off of the stone or through its eye. She may know something is there, but she will not see you, and that will give you time to escape her."

  Sakura saw Mr. Harper take Kara's hand and squeeze, obviously relieved and hopeful but also so frightened for his daughter. She almost wished her own father were here, but if he had been, she knew he would never have believed, or understood. This was something she had to do on her own.

  "The fourth is for your friend Hachiro, when you find him," Kubo said, handing the stone on its string to Kara.

  Kara lit up. "Then you think he's alive?"

  Kubo nodded once. "He may be. If so, he may need this."

  "But, Master Kubo, this cannot work forever," Miss Aritomo said. "If Yuki-Onna can't be stopped or driven away, more people will die. Even if we save these girls, the demon is still on the mountain and it may be a very long winter."

  "And Hachiro is still up there," Kara said quickly, looking around at her friends and then her father. "But with these . . . wards . . . we could help look for him and Yuki-Onna wouldn't know we were there."

  Kubo raised both hands to calm them. When he had their attention, he poured himself another cup of tea and lifted it to his lips.

  "I have not heard any story where Yuki-Onna was defeated or banished," he said, before sipping his tea and putting the cup back down. "But this is different from the tales I have heard. Such spirits are ancient and faded. They are quiet now, drifting into the past like smoke rising into the sky. It was not simply the death of the woman during the winter's first snow that brought Yuki-Onna here. It was the curse that Kyuketsuki placed upon you, the call for vengeance which that demon sent out into the spirit world. The power of Kyuketsuki's curse seems to have helped guide and summon both the Hannya and Yuki-Onna, given them the strength to manifest. If we can break the curse —"

  They all bolted upright.

  "You can break the curse?" Miho squeaked.

  "It may be possible," Kubo allowed.

  The adults all exchanged glances. Miss Aritomo took Mr. Harper's free hand, gazing at him hopefully.

  "Then Yuki-Onna would go away?" Mr. Yamato asked.

  The Unsui shrugged. "If I am correct, yes. Without Kyuketsuki's curse to help anchor her, she will not be strong enough to remain in our world."

  "Can you do it?" Kara asked. "I mean, can you do it now? They haven't found Hachiro and all I can think is that she's hiding him somehow, and if you could break the curse and send her away —"

  Again, the old monk raised both hands and they all fell silent.

  Sakura felt her heart pounding in her chest. Was it possible this could all really be over?

  "I believe I can perform the ritual needed to break Kyuketsuki's curse. But there is one element that is out of my control, and which you must arrange before it can be done."

  "What is it?" Miho asked eagerly.

  "If your friend Hachiro is alive, she has kept him so because she something about certain handsome boys intrigues her, as though she seeks some young man to be her eternal companion. But the stories that speak of this also say that when she tires of these boys, she destroys them. Hachiro must be retrieved from the mountain. But not only for his own sake. You must all be there when I conduct the ritual, including Hachiro, because you were there when Kyuketsuki was defeated and driven from the world. It will not work unless each of those who were present take part in the ritual."

  Sakura felt her face flush with horror and her breath caught in her throat.

  "But that means . . ." she began.

  "Yes," Kubo said, and in his eyes she saw that he knew precisely what he was asking of her, and how much it would hurt. "You must find Ume, the girl who murdered your sister, and ask for her help.

  "Without her, you will carry this curse with you forever."

  Chapter Ten

  Boredom was bad for Mai. Over the past year, whenever she had grown restless or distracted, she had tended to get herself into trouble. One of the favorite punishments meted out by the teachers at Monju-no-Chie school was to make the offender sit on her knees in the hall for long stretches of time. Not only did it hurt after a while but it was probably the most interminably boring thing Mai had ever experienced. So she tried to control herself in school even though the temptation to talk or write notes to friends or draw horribly insulting sketches of teachers in her notebooks was often too much to resist.

  It was a vicious circle, really. Boredom led to misbehavior, which led to punishment, which led back to boredom.

  Outside of school, it wasn't so bad. The teachers gave plenty of homework, which kept her mind busy. Mai had alwa
ys managed good grades — she was smart and happy to work and study hard — and when she wasn't doing homework she could always go shopping in the city or play soccer with her friends.

  Winter created problems for her. The soccer club could still play in the school gym, but they never felt like real games to her. Snow was the hated enemy of soccer players everywhere. And though most days the weather wasn't so cold or stormy that she would be prevented from going into Miyazu City to go shopping, the gray skies weren't exactly inviting. They didn't make a girl want to link arms with her best friend and wander from shop to shop trying on new outfits.

  Which probably explained why she was dancing to awful J-pop in the middle of her dorm room in short-shorts and a tiny tank top, filming herself on her laptop's webcam. She tried to sing along to the song — some silliness about boys on motorcycles by a girl group called Kuza — but kept laughing at her own ridiculousness instead. She'd put her hair up in pigtails and wore bright, sparkly red lipstick, and the entire effect was to make her look like the happiest prostitute on Earth, but looking at herself in the mirror had made her giggle at her own ridiculousness.

  Boredom.

  From the other side of the small dormitory room, Wakana shouted at her. Mai glanced at her. The words had been drowned out by the music, but she got the gist. Wakana was working on the research paper that Harper-sensei had assigned for his American Studies class, which seemed entirely pointless to Mai, considering that classes were currently suspended.

  Wakana shouted again.

  Grinning, Mai broke off from her hip gyrating dance to race over to the bed and grab Wakana by the wrists.

  "Stop it!" Wakana said, brow furrowed in a deep frown. "No, Mai. I'm trying to —"

  Mai hauled her off the bed and pulled her into view of the webcam. Wakana wore pajama pants and a faded pink t-shirt that she often slept in, a clip holding her hair out of her face. She looked very cute, but Mai knew it was the last outfit in the world she would want anyone to see her in. Soon enough they would have to go downstairs for dinner and they would both get changed, but Wakana's eyes flared with alarm at the thought of being on camera. She tried to pull away but Mai gave her a pouty look and tugged her back, raising her arms and dancing like she was in a nightclub in some sexy movie scene.