by Ramy Vance
Keiko took several steps before acknowledging me, her expression one of deep thought, like she was wrestling with telling me something. “I did,” she finally said. “I owe you a great debt for what you did for my grandmother.”
Bullshit, I thought. I’d spent years studying, hunting and terrorizing humans, and in that time, I’d seen it all. The nervous tics, the unconscious gestures that betray a lie or a bluff. The subtle things the body says even when your lips say something else.
And just because Keiko was a young, beautiful noro didn’t mean she didn’t have some of the telltale signs of a lie. Hers was holding in her breath a fraction of a second too long before speaking. That, and the fact that she hadn’t looked at me since we landed on this island, told me she wasn’t here just because of some ancient family debt.
She was here for reasons of her own.
I considered calling her out, telling her to fess up, but instead I decided to let it go. Besides, I thought, it’s not like I can force her to tell me the truth.
“I am telling the truth,” she said, annoyance in her voice. “I am here to repay our debt to you.”
“Shoot,” I said. “You weren’t meant to hear that.”
“Then why did you say it?” she asked, obviously unfamiliar with my eccentric (and terribly cute, right?) habit of thinking out loud.
“Ahh, I didn’t mean to,” I said.
“But you said—”
“What I mean is that I didn’t mean to say that you weren’t telling the truth. I meant that you aren’t telling me the whole truth.” If I was already in a hole, might as well keep digging.
She paused, held in her breath for that fraction of a second too long, and said, “It was my grandmother’s greatest wish that she meet you once again. I’m here to make sure that you live long enough to see my grandmother before she dies. But if it is the truth you want … I am not here because I like you. In the few hours I have known you, I have been attacked, my car destroyed, then arrested and finally coerced into giving the U.S. military access to one of the gods’ greatest secrets.”
“Got it,” I said. “Now we’re starting to get somewhere. Still not the whole truth, but at least you’re giving me more of it—”
“Mukatsuku,” she spat. “Who are you to know my truths?”
I couldn’t tell if she meant that like “who are you to know if I am telling the truth?” or that I was unworthy of her truths. Either way, she’d just admitted that she was holding back on me.
“I’m just an ex-vamp trying to make amends for hundreds of years of death,” I said in my best Julia Roberts Knotting Hill voice. I’m just a girl …
But Keiko either didn’t like that movie, or she wasn’t in the mood.
“There is only one way I know of to make amends for the horrors inflicted by one such as you,” she said. “Seppukura.”
That got me to stop marching. She took on ahead, not slowing down just because I had.
I watched the noro speed ahead. So, not a Julia Roberts fan, I thought. And that had gotten serious real fast; she’d just asked me to kill myself. And not in a fun, playful, bantering way. She meant the full-on ritualistic, very painful way. But she’d told me to kill myself.
In Japanese culture, especially Okinawan, the worst thing you can say to someone is, “Kurosi tai.” I want to kill you. It is the equivalent of using the s-word combined with the f- and c-words and the just-about-every-other-letter-in-the-alphabet word.
So it wasn’t something Keiko said lightly.
And as ubiquitous as seppukura was in Japanese culture, it wasn’t part of Ryukyu culture, and it wasn’t something a noro would ever advocate.
For someone like Keiko to suggest that meant one of two things: she really didn’t want me to hand over the keys to the museum to Jean, or she wasn’t who she claimed to be.
I thought back to the Okinawan guards who had refused to train their guns on her and how she was able to summon the makaru Meres Griffin … not something a normal human could do, so her not being a noro was out.
Which meant that she was here to stop us from getting to the museum (I was getting sick of referring to it as the God’s Museum of Everything). If that was the case, how far was she willing to go and did we just invite a cute and very capable assassin on our little jaunt?
I shook my head. I had to be wrong about her. If she didn’t want us to find the museum, then why get us so close? Why stop the meres from killing us? Why volunteer to help in the first place?
Yeah, I thought (making sure my mouth was closed), I’m probably wrong about Keiko and she isn’t some priestess with a plan.
↔
WE WALKED in silence for many hours, Keiko marching ahead without looking at a map or stopping to get her bearings through some other method like a compass, gauging where the sun was or listening for a stream.
She just marched and I was beginning to think she was trying to commit murder by hiking. Jean was apparently thinking the same thing, because he asked several times if we were there yet like a six-year-old does to annoy his parents.
Keiko ignored him, keeping her steady march through the thick tropical forest. And even though we weren’t following a path, I noted that she somehow managed to navigate the forest without ever having to double back or cut down any plants to make space to get through. She always managed to find terrain just tame enough for us to walk without really slowing us down.
It was starting to get dark when Jean’s comments went from, “Are we there yet?” to a more serious, “Let’s set up camp before it gets dark.” Although I agreed with him, I didn’t say anything lest she suggest I climb the highest tree I could find and jump off.
Jean was losing patience and I could hear him starting to pick up the pace, presumably to catch up with Keiko and stop her maniacal march, when she suddenly broke through the tree line and stopped.
We caught up and breaking through the tree line myself, I saw the very last thing I expected. It was a sight that I would forever remember as one of the most startling, bewildering things I’d ever encountered.
A hotel that was in the middle of nowhere.
HOTEL CASTLES FOR THE RICH AND DEAD
T he forest abruptly ended, revealing an open field with stone gardens that wove from the forest line and up a hill toward what must have been an old, Edo-period Japanese castle.
I felt like I had been transported back in time to sixteenth-century Japan. And I would have kept that feeling if it wasn’t for a giant aluminum structure standing next to the building with the Kanji symbols for “water” and “tower” inscribed under a very modern-looking logo.
We walked toward the castle, weaving our way through the stone zen garden where two giant, spider-like creatures called jorogumo used their spiked legs to rake the stones with expert care. I’d seen a jorogumo before: they were incredibly fast, using their eight legs to hop about with the same agility and grace as their insect-sized counterparts. But here, tending to this garden, their actions were deliberate, slow. Meditative.
Mulling about on the pathways between the gardens were several yokai. I saw a kitsune with its nine fox tails lounging on a bench, a shirime who was thankfully sitting on his butt, thus not exposing the eye he had in the place used by most of us during our daily ablutions, a rokurokubi who bowed at us as we passed, her giraffe-like neck towering over an otherwise normal-looking female body, and a tengu practicing tai chi in the distance, his red, taloned feet moving with a grace I’ve rarely seen.
There were even two futakuchi-onnas walking hand in hand.
I quickly counted the yokai and, turning to Jean, said, “You see sixteen of them, right?” I was concerned that some of them might be the attacking ghosts from earlier.
Jean shook his head. “Seventeen.” He pointed at a stack of smooth, white rocks where a thunderbird from Native American tradition sat.
“Ahh,” I said, annoyed with myself for missing that one, but doubly annoyed that Jean had seen it when I hadn’t. I’m no
t competitive. Really, I’m not.
The thunderbird followed our progression through the garden with a calm, watchful eye. Normally thunderbirds were wild beasts covered in crackling, electric energy, but the only electricity this one exuded was a light current that jumped between its peaceful eyes.
Whatever this place was, it possessed a serene quality pervasive enough to tame one of the most volatile creatures in all creation.
As soon as we walked over the hill and beyond the yokai and stone gardens, we saw the hotel, which from the outside looked like an old Japanese castle. Wooden, sloping roofs, clay shingles, arches … I felt like I was in a scene from Ninja Scroll.
I would have mistaken it for an actual castle except for the kanji and hiragana (two of the three Japanese alphabets commonly used) sign that sat just above its copper-colored doors. It read The Celestial Solace Hotel.
We walked up the middle path toward the entrance and as we made our way, the yokai all bowed in our direction.
And by “our,” I mean in Keiko’s direction. We were more of a suspicious afterthought.
↔
WE WALKED to the massive entrance, where two giant knockers waited for us. Keiko pulled one of them twice, paused for a second, then knocked it a third time.
The door clicked open and a giant nuppeppo appeared. Think animated lumps of human flesh, but don’t get these guys confused with the blob (a real creature, by the way). The blob had no control over its mass, rolling about and consuming everything in its path. The nuppeppo, on the other hand, was a creature that, although it looked like a ball of flesh-colored Play-Doh, had full control of itself.
This one had two stumpy legs that it shuffled about with and when it opened the door, it had created a little hand for itself that it contracted when it saw us.
But despite the short legs, this thing had shaped itself tall. Which made sense: the doors were huge, and the knocker that Keiko had just pulled not even really human-sized.
The nuppeppo looked down at us with two dimples that sat somewhere in the top of its mass before the flesh in its middle split apart, making a tearing sound (what ripping a piece of flesh-like paper would sound like), creating what I assumed was its mouth.
A mouth that smiled.
Then spoke.
“Keiko-sama,” it said, “hisashiburi.” The flesh morphed into something that vaguely resembled a human body that bowed, before turning into a shape that reminded me of a giant muffin.
“Masamitsu-san. Yes, indeed it has been a long time,” Keiko said in English, obviously for our benefit.
“Tomodachi-da?” Masamitsu’s mass asked.
“Yes,” Keiko said, “my friends.”
The mass’s skin ripped again (sending chills up my spine), giving us another smile before letting us in. I wondered what it would have done to us if Keiko hadn’t given us her “friendship” seal of approval.
↔
THE INSIDE WAS JUST as lavish as the outside, with marble flooring that led to a molasses-colored desk in immaculate condition. We walked by two shoulder-height vases that I immediately recognized to be from the Ming dynasty.
In the center of the room hung a magnificent chandelier that looked like frozen lightning, each electric tip piercing into a diamond of light. “They’re real stars,” Keiko said, following my gaze.
“No way.”
“Honto ni,” Keiko said. “Real stars. They are from the collection of the BisMark, an Other of great power. He bequeathed the chandelier to this hotel before the continents separated.”
“Wow,” I said, staring up as we passed under it, “talk about capturing lightning in a bottle.”
This place was magnificent, with every decorative item being older than most pyramids. On the walls hung several tapestries depicting various scenes, one of which reminded me of— “Hold on a second,” I said pointing at the center tapestry. “That’s not one of Katsushika Hokusai’s paintings, is it?”
Keiko gave me an appreciative smile. “Indeed. Katsushika Hokusai was a friend of the Celestial Solace Hotel. Before he died, that is.”
“You’re messing with me.”
“No mess, just awe,” she said, pointing to the front desk where a tanuki sat on his, well, on his beanbag reading a newspaper. Tanuki looked like raccoons except that their … ahem, family jewels were the size of a gazebo. They used their assets in battle, as a defense mechanism and, seeing him now, as a seat.
“Aki-sama,” Keiko said with a deep bow.
The tanuki looked up from his newspaper and, removing his reading glasses, gave Keiko a fang-filled smile. He looked at us and seeing us as gaijin, spoke in English. “Keiko-sama, you honor us with your presence.” He folded the paper, looking at its date before saying, “We did not expect a noro to grace us with her presence until then. Are you here to attend tonight’s New Year’s party?”
But from the way the tanuki spoke, I knew that the raccoon-like creature already knew the answer to his question. Back in the day, the tanuki were divine judges, often ruling over disputes between gods, let alone Others. They were some of the most respected creatures in all of creation, despite their vulgar appearance.
Looking at the creature now, part of me wondered if their incredible balls (argh, I hated that word) helped them when dealing with bitchy gods. I mean, they could literally throw their weight around and … well, you get the idea.
Keiko shook her head. “I fear that our presence is for other, less festive reasons, and I ask permission to stay here one night while continuing our quest.”
Aki eyed us both carefully. “These two have much blood on their hands, Keiko-san.”
“I know.”
“And much of that blood was taken for ill purposes.”
“I know,” the noro repeated.
“But not all of it. Much was taken to protect others.”
Keiko nodded. I was starting to understand what was happening here. He was judging us. If we passed, we got to stay. If we failed … I wasn’t sure what happened then.
“If I may …” I started, but before I could say another word the tanuki shot me a look of such authority that I froze in place. I was so stunned by his gaze that I thought he must have burned time to have such an effect.
But he hadn’t; it was just who he was. A creature that demanded respect.
I diverted my gaze, but I could still feel him looking at me. “Blood stains them both, for good and ill. But their deeds are in balance. They may stay,” he said to Keiko.
As he spoke those words, I noted the tension in Keiko’s body, her fists balling up as if she was angered by Aki’s decision. What was going on here?
The tanuki handed over three keys to Keiko before turning to Jean and me. “Gai-koko-jin, please understand that this place is a sanctuary. Under no circumstances will I tolerate violence of any kind.”
“Understood,” I said.
Jean, on the other hand, shook his head. “You mean physical violence. I mean, Mr Tanuki, Judge, Sir … I’ve got this problem with my mouth and I’m not sure I can play nice for a whole night—”
“Of any kind.”
“OK, so live by Thumper’s rule.”
All three of us gave Jean a curious look.
“You know: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” he clarified.
“Oh, thank the GoneGods,” I said in an exasperated tone. “You’ll finally shut up.”
Much to my relief, both Keiko and Aki chuckled. I leaned in so Jean could hear me. “Now that’s how to be funny.”
IT’S LIKE DISCOVERING THE WORLD’S FLAT
M asamitsu escorted us to our rooms, three little hands popping out of his flesh to carry our bags. He was surprisingly spry for a blob and as we walked, I found myself wondering what his BMI was.
But that was a fleeting thought, especially with all the beauty surrounding me. When we came onto the second floor, we were greeted by the sound of a tinkling fountain that reminded me of a hollow tube being kno
cked softly on the edge of a surface.
I paused at a railing that overlooked a courtyard in the center of the hotel. Below me, another zen garden with a pond of yellow, white and black koi and the fountain that lay at the edge of it.
I almost wished we were staying for longer than a night.
And my room was no different with ancient Persian rugs, lamps that must have been made around the time glass was invented and a duvet that was so soft it was probably stuffed with angel feathers. If only Egya could see this … then he’d know what true First Class looked like.
My mind jumped to Egya and Deirdre sitting in some cell while I was off trying to get my soul … ahem, I mean, save the world. I needed to complete my mission and get them out of whatever hellhole they were in. Then again, knowing Deirdre, she was probably naked and driving the lonely soldiers crazy, each one of them falling over each other to win her favor. And as for Egya, he was probably the best thing these guys had since Bob Hope (the kid could hold court when he wanted to).
Shaking my head free from thoughts about them, I refocused on the task at hand and checked my map. It hadn’t zoomed in any farther and I was beginning to wonder if we were in the right place. After all, who was to say that this place was the right place? Just because Kenji had heard a rumor didn’t make that rumor correct.
For all I knew, we were on the wrong island. Hell, the wrong ocean. Who knew? I was beginning to think that Keiko knew something I didn’t.
But whatever she knew, she wasn’t sharing, so I’d just have to wait and see. I took a shower and was shocked at how amazing the water pressure was. Once done, I got dressed in a fresh pair of clothes that I found in the backpack. Sadly, the only clothes provided were green, camouflage army fatigues. Luckily there was also a pair of scissors and an emergency sewing kit. Using both and my impeccable sense of style, I cute-ified the outfit, making it less army and more ironic chic. The only part of my new outfit that I really struggled with were the sleeves. I was partly worried that more mokumokuren would show up and do their drone-hover-stare thing at my arm, but I was mostly worried about mosquitos. This island was teeming with them.