A Mortal Song (10 page)

I led the others through a maze of alleys at a frantic pace. After several breathless minutes, we darted out across a wider street and nearly barreled into a group of half a dozen ghosts. “Hey!” one hollered, and they lunged at us in a mass of filmy bodies. I managed to whirl around them. A translucent blade nicked my elbow, the pain stinging through my ki. Takeo drew his sword with his free hand just as another ghost heaved a net at him. He managed to wrench it to the side with a grunt, but his protection over Chiyo faltered. Her body flamed brighter, and Keiji yelped as if he’d been burned.

We dashed on across the sidewalk, my heart thudding as quickly as my feet. My lungs were starting to ache. A rasp had crept into Takeo’s breath. He managed to dampen the fire in Chiyo’s spirit again, the light within her shuddering dimmer, but she whimpered.

More legless figures slipped through the gates and walls, converging around us. How much of Omori’s force had he sent to Tokyo? If we stopped moving for a second, they’d overwhelm us.

“The city’s full of them,” I said to Takeo as we whipped around a corner. “We can’t stay here. There’s no way we can get enough distance to escape them completely. Even if we make it to a shrine, they’ll know exactly where we are. Do you think we can reach the mountains? We’ll have a better chance if we can get a long head start on them and then lose them in the forest.” And there were shrines there too, like the one we’d slept in last night.

“I think that’s our best chance,” Takeo agreed. “Join your ki with mine—if we can keep her dimmed enough, it’ll be harder for them to continue tracking us once we pull farther ahead.”

I ducked close to Keiji, who threw his other arm around me. “I’m sticking with you,” he declared, even as his voice shook. I reached behind his back toward Chiyo and found Takeo’s hand. Midori’s wings trembled against my hair. Ki surged through me and back to Takeo. The light inside Chiyo contracted. I sent every particle I could spare into my legs and
ran
.

We fled through a parking garage and under a bridge. When we seemed to have lost the ghosts momentarily, we veered toward a train track where we could speed unimpeded beside its snaking path through the suburbs. The wind buffeted us, yanking at my hair. My chest ached and my legs throbbed, but I pushed myself forward. All that mattered was reaching the vast stretch of trees I could now see beyond the urban sprawl.

We raced on for several minutes, bracing ourselves when a train roared past, but as the dark line of the forested slope grew, we had to slow down. Our energy was fading. Midori’s fatigue echoed through me, and I sent her a wisp of apology.

Then a cluster of ghosts drifted through the track-side fence ahead of us.

“There!” one of them said. “I told you I saw something.”

I knew without a word spoken between us that neither Takeo nor I had the strength to outrun them, not anymore. We had to face them, exhausted as we were.

In a swift movement, Takeo shrugged off Chiyo’s arm and laid her on the ground beside the tracks. Keiji crouched next to her, panting. I dug out the rest of my ofuda, and Takeo drew his from his belt.

The ghosts charged at us. My body repositioned itself automatically with the moves I knew by heart. I struck one figure across the belly, sending ki to my hand so my corporeal body would connect with her ethereal form, and shoved her into the path of one of her companions. Both fell. I slapped ofuda against their foreheads as they tried to scramble around, and a third ghost hurled himself at me with a swipe of a switchblade. I ducked, heaving him across my back. The charm I struck out with missed by an instant. He spun around and raked at me with his knife. The tip caught my wrist. I grabbed his forearm, fast enough this time, and yanked him into my waiting charm. His body dissolved, but my wrist still panged. I didn’t have enough energy left to heal.

A
bang
thundered through the air. Takeo flinched as he struggled with a burly ghost carrying an axe, a circle of blood blooming on his shoulder.

“That one’s got a gun!” Keiji yelled, waving his arm.

A ghost at the fringes of the fight had used his ki to turn corporeal so he could make full use of his weapon. With newly formed feet planted solid against the ground, he was sighting along the pistol as he waited to get another clear shot.

One of his ethereal companions leapt at me, wrenching my hair dangerously close to where Midori perched. I swung around, slamming my fist into the ghost’s ribs with a jagged edge of ki. He staggered backward, and I darted around him.

The gunman saw me at the last moment and jerked around, but I slammed into him, ofuda in hand. He disappeared beneath me.

The wild lash of the ghost’s ki had licked over my body as I’d felled him. So strong, even while he should have been using most of his energy to stay solid. It must be all that power the demon was lending his ghostly followers.

Maybe I could gain a little power for myself here. Confirm who the demon was, at least.

The ghost who’d grabbed my hair was charging at me again. He’d unfolded a net like the one the earlier ghost had been carrying. A strange, rotten smell hit my nose as he hurled it at me.

“Kenta Omori will never succeed!” I shouted as I dodged to the side.

“He’s better than any of you,” my opponent snapped.

That was all I’d wanted—I didn’t have the time or energy to press for more. But even that small delay cost me. As I threw out my hand with its clutched ofuda, the ghost managed to whip his net at me again. Just before my charm hit his forehead, the interlocked ropes swept over me, brushing Midori’s thin body. At the contact, she flinched, and the last flicker of her ki connecting to me went out like a snuffed candle flame as the ghost vanished.

“Whoa!” Keiji said. “Not one more step. Back off. I mean it!”

I swayed around, every muscle in my body quivering, my limbs feeling abruptly heavy. Midori adjusted her grip on my hair, but she must have been too drained of ki to share any more. Takeo had just banished the man with the axe, but two more ghosts were springing at him from opposite sides. Three had ignored us and were flying straight for the spot where Chiyo lay crumpled, writhing in agony.

Keiji’s human eyes couldn’t have made out more than three faintly glowing streaks of ghostlight, but he must have recognized what they meant. He’d braced himself in front of Chiyo as if he’d be able to hold them off on his own, his jaw tight and his hands balled into fists. I felt a twinge of admiration, seeing him display such nerve, but they’d be able to sweep right through him.

Still not the slightest ribbon of energy traveled from Midori into me. My vision of the ghosts was fading. My skin turned cold. I was losing my grasp on the spirit realm.

But I couldn’t stop now.

I reached down inside of me and clamped onto a shiver of energy that came with a touch of Mt. Fuji’s warmth. The last shred of the ki the mountain had lent me. Without that, I was nothing. But we were nothing without Chiyo anyway.

I pushed that ki into my legs and hurtled my body forward, thrusting out with a charm in each hand. I knocked into two of the ghosts, and they snapped out of this world with a shimmer. The final ghost swerved past me, her knife aimed at Chiyo’s chest. I kicked out and knocked her to the ground. Rolling over, I wrenched out one more ofuda. It caught the back of her head. Her body disappeared into the air.

I slumped, aching and empty. Takeo halted a few steps from me, his arms sagging to his sides, his hair come loose from its knot and drifting to his shoulders. I forced myself to look around.

We were alone on the train tracks. We’d defeated all of them. A rush of unsteady laughter tickled up my throat.

Chiyo’s breath was ragged with pain, and there was no shrine in sight, but we’d protected her. I’d held my own. Takeo would tell Mother and Father. Chiyo would tell them. Then my kami parents would have to say that I could stay, that I’d earned at least that one reward.

If we rescued them. If we saved Mt. Fuji. As I hauled myself to my feet with no power but my own human muscles, I felt just how far away that goal still was.

I
woke
up the next morning with a sense of peacefulness that seemed strange, considering that every part of my body was aching. A bird was twittering outside. Leaves rustled in a soft breeze. I arched my back, stretching out my arms, and reached instinctively for my flute case. My hand found only bare floor. Because I’d left it in Chiyo’s living room last night. The memory of our flight from the city rushed back to me, and I sat up abruptly.

We were safe now. I had only blurry impressions of our last exhausted dash through the night, but here I was in the inner room of the shrine where we’d taken shelter, on a mountainside just beyond the edge of the suburbs, though it didn’t appear to be the same one Takeo and I had stopped in before.

The summer heat was already rising through the dark wooden walls. I pressed my hands against the cooler floorboards and willed myself fully awake. A wisp of ki tingled through me. I swallowed hard, remembering how drained I’d been after our final battle. Midori wasn’t here right now, but she would have recovered some of her energy as she rested. She must have passed a portion on to me before she’d gone out. Yet it didn’t quite reach all the way down to the deepest ache inside of me—the hollow spot where I’d been holding the last of Mt. Fuji’s gift without realizing it.

The room around me held a small altar ringed with faded paper charms and coated with dust, a row of built-in cupboards along the back wall, and Keiji, lying at their foot. Takeo and Chiyo must already be up. How would Chiyo be feeling now? The one thing I remembered clearly was the firelight washing out of her body the second we’d stepped onto the shrine grounds.

Keiji was still dozing, his bag tucked under his head like a pillow. His glasses had fallen off during the night. I reached over and righted them so the lenses wouldn’t get scratched. He shifted with a murmur, the wiry muscles in his arms flexing.

Asleep, his face looked much softer than it had last night when he was grinning and offering to keep my secret. Or when he’d grimly faced the ghosts he could barely see. Chiyo and Haru shouldn’t have been so dismissive of him. I suspected most humans would have run screaming at the sight of all those ghostlights. Keiji had been terrified, clearly, but he’d stayed with us. He’d been willing to fight for us even if he didn’t know how.

Unbidden, my mind conjured up the image of his copper-bright eyes opening, his lips curling into that slow, knowing grin. An unexpected warmth washed over me. Shaking myself, I stood up.

I walked to the open door and stepped onto the narrow platform outside. My breath caught at the view. I hadn’t realized Mt. Fuji would be visible from here. Pine trees towered over the shrine grounds on three sides, but to the south the land sloped away, and the familiar craggy peak rose between the two nearer mountains.

A mournful shudder seemed to pass through the air, from it to me.
I’m coming back
, I promised, my fingers curling into my palms.
Just hold on
.

Chiyo’s voice carried across the wide yard in front of the building. “Yes, I get it; I know the whole plan.” I turned to see her and Takeo standing by the torii, a plain structure of unstained cypress wood. The tall pillars of the gate and curved lintel fixed over them were designed to soothe the spirit of anyone walking through, but it didn’t appear to have had an effect on Chiyo. Her hair had frizzed overnight, her bangs puffing from her forehead in a lavender cloud. She was twisting the rest back into her usual ponytail. An energetic flush colored her cheeks.

“I
know
I can’t hang out in the city anymore,” she continued. “Last night was awful. Believe me, I’m looking forward to taking down a whole world of ghosts now. We just need to go back quickly and get Haru, and then we can start.”

Takeo shook his head. “I understand that he’s very important to you,” he said. “But it’s too dangerous for any of us to go back to Tokyo so soon, even briefly. Our enemies know we were there—they’ll be combing the streets for us.”

“But we agreed that Haru would come with me, remember?” Chiyo said. “I don’t want him to think I’ve run off on him. And he’ll be a lot of help. He’s the top competitor in our school’s kendo club, and he practices with real swords too—he could teach those spooks a lesson.” She sliced the air with her arm.

“The one destined to save the mountain is you, not him,” Takeo said. He was speaking calmly, but I could hear his voice becoming ever so slightly strained. “We can’t risk losing you for the little assistance he may give us.”

“You’re just not going to listen, are you?” Chiyo let out a huff of breath and gave Takeo a fiercely cheerful smile. “I’m going to go see if those kami ladies who’re looking after the shrine have any way for me to call him and my parents, but this conversation is
not
over.”

She marched off around the side of the building. As I watched her go, a thread of uneasiness wound around my stomach.

The city had already been swarming with ghosts last night. The ones we’d encountered must have been in Tokyo when the spell had started—otherwise, even with Omori’s demonic powers strengthening them, they couldn’t have followed the light to Chiyo’s neighborhood that fast. Had they somehow known the girl they wanted was in Tokyo? Or did Omori have so many ghosts at his command that he could send thousands of them all across the country while holding Fuji’s palace?

How had he known to target her at all?

Takeo sighed. I walked down the wooden steps to join him, noticing the rot creeping through the cracks on the railing. Grit and pine needles scattered the granite tiles between the four stone lanterns in the courtyard. This was another shrine humans no longer cared much for.

“Chiyo looks as if she’s recovered from last night’s attack,” I said, but Takeo’s grave expression didn’t budge.

“She is well,” he agreed. “I just don’t see—” He grimaced, raking his fingers through his unbound hair. “Why can’t she understand how urgent this situation is?”

Only five days left until Obon. His frustration echoed through me. But that was the problem: Chiyo didn’t feel it. “We grew up knowing the responsibilities of being kami,” I said. “We grew up knowing kami were
real
. She didn’t. But I think she’s starting to see.”

“She is,” he said. “And we have put a lot on her. Of course it’s difficult for her. But I don’t see why she has to seem so...
happy
all the time.”

I looked up at his solemn face and had to clamp my lips together to stop an unexpected smile. Apparently the greatest challenge to Takeo’s steadfastness was one cheerful girl.

Well, I could be the strong one when he needed that, couldn’t I?

“We need to get her to Sage Rin,” Takeo went on. “Perhaps she can get through to Chiyo. But I worry the demon’s magic will reach us again.”

“Do you have any idea how Omori knew about her—or what sort of spell could have affected her like that?” I asked.

“I’ve been thinking on it,” he said. “The best answer I can come up with is... There’s a sort of magic that allows a connection between two things. One might build a figure with a specific person in mind, using a part of them in its construction: a hair or a fingernail, or an item they had a strong emotional connection to. Blood sings to blood, heart to heart, spirit to spirit. If done correctly, the sorcerer could act on the figure and have the effects travel to their victim.”

“But Omori shouldn’t have had anything like that of Chiyo’s,” I said. “He shouldn’t even have known she
exists
.”

“No,” Takeo agreed. His jaw worked. “And if it were as small a connection as that magic allows, Chiyo’s instinctive defenses should have been enough to block it. So I suspect the demon drew on deeper ties of blood, heart, and spirit.”

His tone turned my skin cold. “What do you mean?”

“Any kami in the palace could reveal that the daughter of their leaders must have escaped—the demon would only have to break one. Even without knowing of the prophecy, this Omori would suspect that girl would try to fight back. He must hope to disable her before she has the chance. He meant to get at
you
. But to do so, in a way to create such an immense effect, I think he must have acted on one of your—her—parents. He... must have set one of them on fire and cast that fire into their daughter’s body. So it hit Chiyo.”

My throat closed up with a sudden swell of nausea. If he’d put Mother or Father through such torment— If he was
still
doing it, trying to strike out at Chiyo again— How long could they survive, even as strong as they were?

I drew in a breath, trying to bury that horror under my determination. If we were going to get to them in time, there was still so much we had to do.

“Then we need to start training Chiyo right away,” I said, managing to keep my voice from quavering. “We wanted to teach her the basics before we started traveling anyway. We’ll begin right away and go to Sage Rin when she can defend herself.”

“That requires we get Chiyo to agree to the training at all without her young man here,” Takeo said.

I reached for his hand. “She’ll come around,” I said. “It’s been less than a day.”

His fingers tightened around mine. Ki hummed between us, warm with gratitude. And I felt what he was too loyal to my parents to say out loud.

He wished their true daughter, the girl of the prophecy, was me.

The shrine platform creaked behind us. I started, dropping Takeo’s hand.

Keiji was watching us from the doorway, his shaggy hair sticking up in tufts across his head. He gave me a crooked grin.

“I don’t suppose there’s anything like breakfast here?” he said.

Takeo paused. “I apologize,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of that. We kami don’t need to eat as you do. I’ll see if the shrine guardians can help.”

“Don’t worry about it then—I packed supplies just in case,” Keiji said. He bobbed his head and ambled off. “Good morning, Ikeda!” he called as he disappeared behind the building, and a moment later Chiyo strode into view. The shrine’s kami trailed behind her: two willowy figures with waterfalls of pale hair.

“So,” Chiyo said brightly, halting in front of Takeo. “About Haru. There’s no way for me to even talk to him from here.”

I didn’t want her to get any more caught up in that argument. “Chiyo,” I said, stepping forward, “even if we did go back for him, you’d need to be able to fight off our enemies first—you know that too. Why don’t you let us begin the essential parts of your training, and after that’s finished, we can decide what our best next step is?”

Chiyo considered me. Then she clapped her hands together. “All right,” she said. “Fine. Teach me about this ‘ki’ and how to use it to stop demons from messing with me, and then I’ll take down anyone who gets in my way.”

We arranged ourselves in the middle of the courtyard. Takeo let me take the lead. I supposed my mastery of ki work meant something, even if the energy I’d moved through myself had come from the mountain. Now, Midori settled close on my head with a tickle of curiosity. I wondered if she even remembered the long ago time when she hadn’t been fully competent in her powers.

I thought back to my earliest lessons with Father, his rumbling voice filling the training room as he guided me. Then a different image wavered into my mind: the ghosts stabbing him with their knives the way they had the palace guards. I swallowed thickly. It was by training Chiyo that we would save him and everyone else.

As much as I wanted to hurry, I knew if I tried to rush Chiyo and she tensed up, her progress would take longer. I reached inside me for the calm, reassuring tone my teachers had taken with me. “The most important step is being able to feel your ki,” I told her. “Once you have a sense of it inside you, all you have to do is learn to control it.”

“What does it feel like?” Chiyo asked, peering down at herself.

“Like a sort of energy, rippling through you... It’s almost like standing under the sun with its beams raining down on you, warm and bright, except the glow is inside you. Close your eyes while you’re looking for it,” I suggested. “That makes it easier to focus.”

Chiyo lowered her head. After a few seconds, the faint shimmer that never quite left her body quivered and intensified, and then contracted into her skin. “I think I’ve got it!” she said. “Wow. That’s—that’s so cool. So weird I never noticed it before.” She opened her eyes. “You know, I never really got cold in the winter, even when I’d forget my hat or gloves. I bet this is why.”

She had so much ki radiating through her, of course she’d find it quickly. “Good,” I said. “Now let’s try one of the basic practice exercises.”

“What about going invisible? You’ve got to teach me that.”

“Shifting out of our corporeal state takes a lot of concentration until you get used to it,” Takeo said. “It’s better if you learn how to manipulate your energy in simpler ways first.”

“Fine, fine,” Chiyo said. “Lead on!”

“Let’s try exchanging ki with direct contact,” I said, taking her hand. “Pick a feeling or an image you want to share with me. Picture it flowing with your ki from your mind through your body to my hand. It might take a while, so don’t—”

A jolt of pain shot up my arm and blasted into my chest so violently it rocked me on my feet. My fingers slipped from Chiyo’s. I gasped, clutching my shoulder. The burning aftershock seared through me and slowly died away.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do that,” Chiyo was saying. “I was getting ready to send this gorgeous flower I saw by the fountain, but all of a sudden I remembered last night, and everything got mixed up.”

The pain had left a tingling in my palm. I drew in a breath, gathering myself.

She had so much power. I’d never felt anyone’s ki that intensely before.

Well, she was going to need that power to be able to crush a demon and an entire army of ghosts.

“It’s okay,” I said. “That’s the control part you need to work on. Want to try again?”

“If you want me to—” Takeo began, and I shook my head quickly. Was he already doubting me?

Had he seen how completely I’d drained myself last night?