by Julie Kagawa
“You do not need to share that bit of information with certain people present,” the miko said in a loud, firm voice. “And we have gotten rather far afield of our original goal. Umi Sabishi should not be far from here, is that right, Taiyo-san?”
The noble, his face carefully expressionless, nodded. “That is correct, Reika-san. If we continue south down this road, we should reach it before nightfall.”
“Good.” The shrine maiden shot the ronin a dark look before stalking away. “Then let us get there quickly,” she muttered, her dog trotting along behind her. “Before certain uncouth individuals have a tragic accident along the cliff face and find themselves swept out to sea.”
We continued following the road as it wound south along rugged cliffs and sweeping drops to the ocean. Overhead, the sky slowly turned a mottled gray, with distant rumbles of thunder over the sea. Eventually, the cliffs flattened out, becoming a rocky coastline with a few scattered trees twisted and bent with the wind.
“Here, Tatsumi,” Yumeko announced as a sudden breeze tossed our hair and clothes. The air had grown heavy and warm, laced with the smell of brine and the approaching rain. The girl held a wide-brimmed straw hat, the kind farmers wore in the fields, and gave me a smile as she thrust it at me. “You might need this.”
I shook my head. “Keep it. The rain doesn’t bother me.”
“It’s not real, Tatsumi.” Yumeko’s smile turned faintly embarrassed as I frowned. “It’s an illusion, so it won’t stop the rain from hitting you. But since we’ll be going into a town soon, I thought it would be better to hide your...” Her gaze flicked to my forehead, and the horns curling through my hair. “Just so people don’t have the wrong idea. Okame said something about torches and angry mobs, and that sounds unpleasant.”
One corner of my mouth curled. “I suppose we should try to prevent that.”
I reached for the hat, surprised when I could curl my fingers around the brim, feeling the rough outline of the straw in my hand. It didn’t feel like an illusion, though I knew kitsune magic would manipulate the person to see, hear, even feel what they expected. If I concentrated on the hat itself, knowing it wasn’t real, I could suddenly feel the thin edge of a reed in my hand, the anchor that Yumeko had bound the magic to.
With a faint smile, I put the hat on, hiding my demonic marks from the rest of the world, and nodded at the kitsune. “Thank you.”
She smiled back, causing an odd twisting sensation in the pit of my stomach, and we continued on.
As evening fell, so did the first drops of rain, growing in strength until it was a steady downpour, soaking our clothes and turning everything around us gray. As Yumeko had predicted, the hat did not keep my head dry; cold rainwater drenched my hair and ran down my back, though being able to see the brim of the hat as the rain hit my face was an odd sensation.
“I think I see the town,” the ronin announced. He stood atop a large boulder on the side of the road, peering into the storm with the ocean behind him. “Or at least I see a bunch of blurry shapes that could be a town. I’m going to say it’s a town, because I’m sick of this rain.” He leaped off the boulder and landed on the muddy path, shaking his head like a dog. “I hope they have a halfway decent inn. I don’t normally say this, but I think I could use a bath.”
“How amusing,” said the shrine maiden as we started down the road toward the cluster of dark shapes in the distance. “I think that all the time.”
“I don’t know why that is, Reika-san,” the ronin shot back, grinning. “You smell quite pleasant most of the time.”
She flicked a pebble at him. He dodged.
The path continued, becoming wider and muddier the closer we got to Umi Sabishi. A few isolated farms dotted the plains surrounding the village, but I couldn’t see anyone outside or working the fields. Which might’ve been on account of the rain, but a feeling of disquiet began to creep up my spine the closer we got to the town.
“Interesting that there are no lights,” the noble mused, his sharp eyes narrowed as he peered down the road. “Even through the rain, we should be able to see a few glimmers here and there. I know Umi Sabishi is surrounded by a wall. I would expect to see the lights of the gatehouse at the least.”
A wooden gate flanked by a pair of watchtowers marked the entrance of the town. The gate stood open, creaking softly in the rain, and both towers were empty and dark.
The ronin gave a soft whistle, gazing up at them. “That’s not a good sign.”
As he spoke, the wind shifted, and a new scent brought me up short in the middle of the road. Yumeko turned at my sudden halt, eyes questioning as she glanced back. “Tatsumi? Is something wrong?”
“Blood,” I muttered, causing the rest of them to stop, too. “I can smell it ahead.” The air was drenched with it, heavy with the scent of death and decay. “Something has happened. The town has been compromised.”
“Keep alert, everyone,” the shrine maiden warned, pulling an ofuda from her sleeve. At her feet, her dog bristled and bared his teeth at the gate, the hackles on his spine standing straight up. “We don’t know what’s on the other side, but we can assume that it’s not pleasant.”
I glanced at Yumeko. “Stay close to me,” I told her softly, and she nodded. I drew Kamigoroshi, bathing the gatehouse in purple light, and prodded the wooden door with the point of the blade. It groaned as it swung back, revealing the dark, empty town beyond.
Wooden buildings lined the street as we stepped through the gate into Umi Sabishi. Most were simple structures, standing on thick posts a few feet off the ground, weathered by decades of sea air and salt. Stones placed atop the roofs kept them from blowing away in a storm, and there were several buildings that leaned slightly to the left, as if wearied from the constant wind.
There were no people anywhere, living or dead. No bodies, dismembered limbs, even bloodstains, though the town itself bore signs of a terrible battle. Screens had been slashed open, walls had been torn down and items lay abandoned in the streets. An overturned cart, spilling its load of fish baskets into the mud, sat buzzing with flies in the middle of the road. A straw doll lay facedown in a puddle, as if the owner had dropped it and was unable to return. The streets, though saturated with water and churned to mud, had been gouged with the passing of dozens of panicked feet.
“What happened here?” the ronin muttered, gazing around with an arrow nocked to his bow. “Where is everyone? They can’t all be dead, we would’ve seen at least a few bodies.”
“Perhaps there was some sort of catastrophe and they all fled the town,” the noble mused, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword as he observed the empty streets.
“That doesn’t explain the state of the buildings,” I said, nodding to a pair of restaurant doors that had been ripped in half, the bamboo frames snapped and the rice paper shredded. “This place was attacked recently. And some of those attackers weren’t human.”
“Then where is everybody?” the ronin demanded again. “Was this place attacked by an army of oni that ate the townsfolk to a man? There’s no blood, no bodies, nothing. You’d think we would see some sign of what happened.”
The noble gazed around, and though his voice was calm, the hand resting on his sword hilt gave away his uneasiness. “Should we keep going forward or turn back?”
I looked at the others. “Forward,” the shrine maiden said after a moment. “We’ll still need a ship if we want to reach the Moon Clan islands. We certainly can’t swim there. Let’s head for the docks. Maybe there will be someone left who will be willing to let us sail with them.”
“Um, Reika-san?” Yumeko’s voice, wary and suddenly tense, drew our attention. “Chu is... I think he is trying to tell us something.”
We glanced down at the shrine maiden’s guardian, and my instincts bristled. The dog had gone rigid as he glared behind us, eyes hard and curly tail up. His hackles stood on end, his
lips were curled back to reveal teeth, and harsh growling sounds emerged from his throat.
I looked up the street. A body, blurry and indistinct, was shuffling toward us through the rain. It moved with an awkward, staggering gait, weaving unsteadily on its feet, as if it was drunk. As it drew closer and the growling from Chu grew louder, it resolved itself into a woman dressed in a ragged shopkeeper’s robe, a pair of scissors clutched in one hand. A smiling white mask covered her face, the kind used in Noh plays, and she stumbled barefoot through the mud, swaying erratically but still coming right for us.
It was then I noticed the broken haft of a spear shoved completely through her middle, staining one side of her robes dark red. An absolutely fatal wound, but it didn’t appear to hurt or slow her down in the slightest.
Because she’s not alive, I thought, just as the dead woman lifted her masked face...and suddenly put on a burst of speed, rushing us like a possessed marionette, scissors raised high.
Chu’s growls erupted into snarls. The ronin let out a curse and released his arrow; it flew unerringly forward and struck the woman in the chest. She staggered a bit, slipped in the mud and kept moving, letting out an unearthly scream as she came.
The noble’s sword rasped free, but I was already moving, Kamigoroshi in hand as the corpse lunged at me with a wail. I lashed out, dodging the scissors as they stabbed down, cutting through the woman’s pale white neck. Her head toppled backward as her body kept moving forward several paces, driven by momentum, then collapsed into the mud.
A nose-burning stench rose from the twitching corpse, the smell of blood magic, rot and decay, but no fluids pumped from the hole where the woman’s head used to sit. All the blood in her body had already been drained.
Yumeko put both hands to her mouth and nose, as if fighting the instinct to retch. Even the shrine maiden and the ronin looked a bit ill as they stared at the still-quivering body. Silence fell, but through the rain I could sense movement all around us, countless eyes turning in our direction.
“Don’t stand there,” I snapped, whirling on the group. “We have to keep moving! A blood mage wouldn’t raise just one corpse. The whole town is probably—”
A clatter from the teahouse across the street interrupted me. Pale, smiling figures were emerging from the darkened interior, staggering through the doors and crawling from the holes in the walls. Even more stumbled out of the buildings we’d passed, or staggered from the alleys between structures, lurching into the road. The smell of death and blood magic rose into the damp air, as the horde of the smiling dead turned hollow, sightless eyes on us and began swarming into the street.
We fled, heading deeper into Umi Sabishi, the shrieks and wailing of the undead ringing all around us. Smiling, masked corpses shambled into the road, reaching for us with grasping fingers, or swinging at us with crude weapons. The noble and I led the way, the Taiyo slashing at the dead that got too close, severing arms and heads with deadly precision. Chu, transformed into his enormous guardian form, rampaged around us in a blur of red and gold, crushing the bodies in his path or flinging them aside. The ronin’s arrows didn’t help much; unless beheaded or their legs were taken off, the undead ignored normally fatal wounds and kept coming. But he kept shooting, knocking them back or making them stagger, giving the Taiyo and me more time to cut them down.
Yumeko’s fox magic filled the air around us. She never attacked the corpses directly, but multiple copies of the four of us joined the fray, distracting and bewildering the undead, who didn’t seem to know the difference. The illusions erupted with small pops of smoke when they were torn apart, but more would always appear, and their presence greatly kept the swarm at bay as we fought our way through the streets.
“Samurai! Over here!”
Through the chaos of battle and the groans of the dead, I thought I heard a voice. Glancing up, I caught a glimpse of a sake house on the corner of the street, wooden walls and barred windows seemingly untouched by the dead. A sugidama, a large ball made of cryptomeria needles, hung over the entrance, its withering brown color an indicator that the sake brewed within was ready to be consumed. A figure peered out of that doorway, one arm beckoning to us frantically. If we could get there, it might be a haven from the corpses swarming the town.
“Everyone!” The noble spared a quick glance at the rest of our party. “This way!” he called. “Head for the sake house!”
More dead crawled from empty doorways and windows, and behind us, a large swarm of smiling, masked corpses staggered into the street.
“Kuso!” swore the ronin, fitting another arrow to the string. “There’s no end to these bastards.” He started to raise his bow, but the shrine maiden snatched the arrow from the string, making him curse in surprise.
“What—?”
“Yumeko.” The miko pointed back the way we’d come. “Block our path. Okame...” She pulled an ofuda from her sleeve, shoved the talisman halfway down the arrow shaft and handed the arrow back to the ronin. “Here. Aim for one in the center. Everyone else, look away.”
Yumeko turned, sending a wall of blue-white foxfire roaring up to block the end of the street. At the same time, the ronin raised his bow, the ofuda fluttering along the length of the arrow. I saw the kanji for light written on the paper talisman, just as Okame released the string. It flew unerringly down the road and struck the chest of a corpse shambling toward us, a torn parasol clutched in one bloodless hand.
Brilliant light erupted from where the arrow hit the body, sending it and the ones around it stumbling back. “Go!” Reika cried, and we sprinted forward, dodging the reeling undead, until we reached the sake house on the corner. The human I had seen, a smaller man with a soft, rounded face and the finer clothes of a merchant, gaped at us as we came through the door.
“Samurai!” he gasped as I pushed the heavy wooden door shut and the ronin shoved a beam through the handles. “You...you are not of the Mizu family! Have you come from Yamasura? Are there more of you on the...?”
His gaze suddenly fell on me, and he let out a little shriek, stumbling back a few steps. “Demon!”
“Quiet, fool!” The shrine maiden’s voice cut like a whip. “Unless you want the dead outside to beat down the door.”
He immediately fell silent, though his face was white as he backed away, clearly torn between fear of the dead outside and the demon in the room with him. I didn’t have to look at myself to know the fight had brought out the claws, fangs and glowing red eyes, and that fiery runes were crawling up my arms and neck. And if that pathetic human kept staring at me, I was going to show him he had every right to be afraid.
I caught myself with a shiver. Savagery still pumped through my veins, the desire to rip apart everything that stood against me. Taking a furtive breath, I tried calming the rage inside, forcing it back below the surface. I felt the claws and fangs disappear, the glowing tattoos fade away, but the bloodlust remained, needing only a tiny push to erupt into violence again.
Yumeko stepped forward, hands raised in a soothing manner as the man’s frightened gaze flicked to her. “It’s all right,” she told him. “We’re not going to hurt you. We want to help.”
“Who...who are you?” the merchant whispered. His gaze darted over all of us, wide and terrified. Chu had shrunk back into a normal dog, and Yumeko’s kitsune features were invisible to most, but between the explosions of light from the shrine maiden’s ofuda, Yumeko’s foxfire and a mythical komainu rampaging around us, we hadn’t been subtle. “Have you come to save us?” the man went on, a bewildered look crossing his face for a moment. “I thought...there were more of you.”
A groan just outside the door caused us all to fall silent. The merchant turned a white face toward the entrance, then beckoned us farther inside. Swiftly but silently, we moved into the sake house, away from the door and the shuffling dead just beyond. Farther in, more people emerged, peering from corners and behind de
corated fusuma panels. Several men and a few women and children, all staring at us with eyes that were both hopeful and fearful. I hung back, keeping to the shadows, as Reika and the others pressed forward. The last thing we needed was for someone to panic and alert the dead swarming just outside.
I felt a presence behind me, and Yumeko softly touched my elbow, sending a shiver up my arm. Silently, she pressed a straw hat into my fingers and continued into the room. Her hand trembled when it touched mine, whether from fear, adrenaline or something else, I wasn’t sure, but it made my stomach curl in response. I slipped the hat on, covering the horns, and followed her into the room.
Reika stepped forward, facing the strangers that had edged into the open, and the presence of a shrine maiden seemed to calm them somewhat. “Don’t be afraid,” she announced, her calm, firm voice soothing the tension. “We’re just simple travelers who came to find passage on a ship. Can you tell us what happened here?”
There was a moment of hesitation, and then a woman stepped forward, a small girl clinging to her kimono. “They came from the darkness,” the woman whispered. “Last night, the dead swarmed the streets and started killing everyone. Those who fell rose again as corpses and joined in the massacre. We had no chance. The town was overrun in a night.”
“Where were the samurai?” the noble asked. “Umi Sabishi is not defenseless. Surely there were guards, warriors, who could protect the town.”
“We don’t know,” another man said. “Everything was chaos. But there are those who claim they have seen corpses with blades wandering the town, so we can only assume most of the samurai fell in the first attack.”
“And there are no other survivors?”
“There were two men here earlier,” said the woman. “But they left. They said they had to get to their ship at the end of the docks. But...” She trembled, her eyes wide and terrified. “That’s where all the dead seem to be congregating. As if they’re being drawn to the warehouse down by the harbor. If you go that way, they’ll tear you to pieces.”