A Mortal Song (30 page)

“I’m going to make for the palace,” I said to Keiji. “For Omori. I’m going to try...”

I wasn’t totally sure what I was going to do. But blood to blood, heart to heart, or spirit to spirit, I had to find a point of connection that would sing through the demon’s rage before Mt. Fuji spilled its own.

Keiji dipped his head. “Where you go, I’ll follow.”

So we climbed on, over roots and around bushes, into the thickening smoky air. My eyes started to water. The sounds of the fighting faded. My feet dragged over the dry earth, every muscle protesting now, but I forced myself to keep walking.

The landscape was becoming more familiar. When the babbling of the palace spring reached my ears, I turned to tell Keiji we were almost there, and found I was alone in the woods.

The battle raged on down the slope to my left. Sparks of ki leapt. Shrieks and hisses echoed through the air. Evening was falling, but the glow of so many ghostlights lit up the forest like an eerie dawn. I squinted through the dim light. I couldn’t make out any movement on the slope below me. Keiji might have stopped to rest two minutes ago, or ten, and simply fallen back without speaking, worried if he’d said something I might have felt I had to stop too.

I swayed on my feet. My hair was sticking to the perspiration on my face; every breath burned in my lungs. But Keiji hadn’t wanted me to hang back for his sake. He’d be safer farther behind me.

Gripping branches, I hauled myself onward and upward. After several more steps, something sticky squelched under my feet. A rancid smell clogged my nose, thicker even than the volcanic odor. I gagged as I recognized it.

The tree trunks around me and the pine needles that scattered the ground had been splattered with gore: dark splotches of blood and gristle and I didn’t want to know what else. To prevent the kami from reaching the palace, presumably, Omori had drenched the ground around its entrance with his brand of poison.

Our other allies could make their way over this, though—if they had a chance to break through the onslaught.

I picked my way along, careful where I laid my hands. The sounds of the battle dwindled further, and with them the light. But a few seconds later I caught sight of the main entrance to the palace up ahead.

Omori stood at the cave’s mouth, watching the fighting, his lips set in a confident smile. The energy within him seeped from his skin in a pulsing glow. A semi-circle of ghostlights hovered around him, but it was a small one.

Creeping from tree to tree, hidden in the dark beyond the ring of ghostlights, I approached the cave. The gore felt nauseatingly slick beneath my shoes, but it muffled the crackle of the pine needles. I palmed more ofuda and touched the gentle weight of the satchel on my back. I still had Omori’s possessions, the things Mrs. Kobayashi had given me. Maybe those would help me break through his obsession.

Just before the clearing, I stopped and gathered myself with an indrawn breath. The last controlled breath I might ever take. My fingers clenched around the ofuda. I didn’t let myself think of the risk, of the possible consequences. I had to get in there and say everything I could to get Omori’s attention, to provoke a response. I sent a brief, silent prayer to the mountain. Then I hurled myself at the nearest ghost.

In the second it took for the ghost to realize that its ethereal form couldn’t break the protection of my amulet, I’d banished it and the two on either side, crashing through their circle. Omori turned, but I couldn’t face him with the others at my back. With every shred of strength left in my body, I flung myself around the ring, smacking out ofuda as the ghosts charged to stop me. The last one slashed his knife across my shoulder the instant before I banished him. I pressed my now-empty hand to the wound and spun toward Omori, who was striding over to me.

For all the power that buzzed around him, he was no taller than I was. But the hum of his ki radiated over me, humming off-key in a way that made my bones wobble and my words stick in the back of my mouth. I forced them out.

“After the Tohoku earthquake, Kenta Omori initiated a massive aid effort in Sendai,” I blurted out. “He dedicated it to his wife, Emiko.”

Omori paused a mere two feet away from me. His energy coursed off him so furiously it stung my skin, but I thought I felt the slightest quiver in it. He cocked his head.

“Is that your plan, young lady?” he said conversationally. “Are you trying to cut me down by stating facts?”

I was, I thought over the thumping of my pulse. The sword at my side was useless. My words could be a weapon if I wielded them right.

“Far more people may die
because
of you if you let Fuji erupt with all its kami trapped inside,” I said. “Is that the legacy you wanted to leave behind?”

I couldn’t even imagine a quaver this time. Omori chuckled, and a fresh sweat broke over my skin. He was playing with me. He could have blasted my human body to bits in an instant if he’d thought I posed any true threat.

“What does it matter to you?” he inquired.

“Why
doesn’t
it matter to you?” I said. “Why do you care so much about giving all these ghosts another life, but not about the lives that will be lost?”

“They’re already lost,” he snapped with a flare of heat. I flinched backward, the sting prickling deeper into my face. Then his voice faltered, just for a moment. “They’re all... They’re already lost to me.”

“Who?” I said quickly. “The people you used to work for? Go haunt
them
if it’s revenge you want—they can’t stop you. The people who worked for you still remember you. Mrs. Kobayashi told me how grateful she was for all you did for her and her husband.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “They were innocent,” he said. “They deserved more. They deserved
lives.
”

His rage boiled back to the surface. He stepped toward me, that dissonant ki flaring in his eyes. But my eyes had caught on his hand, on the brief rub of his thumb against his ring finger. Against his wedding band.

Lost. Innocent. Deserved more.

He’d focused on Mrs. Ikeda first in the audience room: the woman closest to the age Mrs. Omori was at her death. He’d stopped when I’d reminded him of a child’s connection to her mother. That quiver, earlier—I’d mentioned his wife’s name.

“Emiko doesn’t want this,” I said. “Your children wouldn’t want this. Emiko hates what you’ve become. She wants you to
stop
.”

He halted again, and this time I felt the ripple in his energy for sure. His face grayed.

I saw it clearly then. Of course it was the loss of his family by such horrible, unfair means that had brought him so low, twisted him so monstrously, so much more than simple concern for himself would have. Hadn’t Keiji let himself become complicit in a grievous betrayal rather than challenge his brother? Hadn’t
I
been willing to give up who and what I truly was in the hopes of staying with the family I’d grown up with, when they weren’t even my own? Love was such a powerful thing, but it could bring guilt and desperation. It could obscure everything else that mattered. Maybe I had more in common with Omori than I’d imagined.

Omori shook himself, his energy surging off him to sear my face and arms. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snarled, raising his hands. I stumbled backward, and the second blast he threw at me knocked me off my feet. I rolled away from him, biting back a whimper.

Speaking wasn’t enough. He’d gotten so caught up in his desire for power that he didn’t remember who he’d wanted that power to save. I needed... I needed...

My sword of words had failed. But I had a sort of mirror, too.

My shoulder hit a tree trunk. I pushed off it, jamming my fingers into my pocket as I pulled myself around. My joints groaned, but I managed to yank out the folded papers I’d been carrying since the first time I’d seen Omori’s face. As the demon loomed over me, I tugged open the photo of the man with his family and thrust it up between us like a shield.

Omori froze. His eyes widened, fixed on the picture.

“
Remember,
” I said, my voice shaking. “Your wife. Emiko. Your children. You lost them. You wanted the power to get them back. But you thought you had power before, didn’t you, and it only turned your colleagues against you. It’s because of that power your family died. Getting more, hurting more people to get it, that can’t make anything right.”

Omori extended his arm. His fingers grazed the paper that held his family’s image. “Emiko,” he said. “Jun. Nobuo.” His gaze slid up to meet mine and sharpened into a glare. “They shouldn’t have died. They didn’t deserve any of it. And then the kami left them to wander the afterworld alone, so lost I haven’t been able to pull them out. Why shouldn’t I make the mountain’s spirits fix that mistake? I will never stop fighting for them.”

My jaw went slack. Oh. He thought—

She’d tried to show him, but he’d never been able to see.

“That’s not true,” I said. “Emiko? You’re here, aren’t you?” I glanced around and spotted the brown shape of the sparrow gliding down onto a branch above me. Omori followed my look. He frowned, his demonic energy coiled around him, swirling and sizzling, restrained but ready to strike.

He couldn’t see her even now. How could I clear the haze of rage from his eyes enough to let him recognize the truth?

A sword, a mirror... and a
jewel
. I dropped the papers to fumble with my satchel. Omori’s head jerked down toward me. My fingers closed around his wife’s ring.

“Emiko,” I said. “Show him!”

I thrust my hand upward. The sparrow leapt down, snatching the ring from my fingers. As Omori reached as if to grab my wrist, she landed on his elbow. The emerald gleamed by her beak. Omori stared at it, and the energy blazing around him finally shrank all the way inside his skin.

The air shimmered around the sparrow, and the woman’s filmy image appeared above it, her hand held out to her husband.

“Emiko,” Omori breathed.

She tapped the sparrow’s head, and it chirped. Two butterflies dipped over the top of the cave and swooped to perch beside her. The forms of two ghostly children shuddered into sight. Omori sank to his knees, his arm still held outright, tears streaking down his cheeks.

“I failed you,” he said. “I wanted to be strong enough to stop it from happening, to find you, to bring you back... But it wasn’t in my power. As before.”

His wife laid her hand on his shoulder tenderly. He shivered at her touch. I straightened up against the protests of my legs. All at once I could see exactly how this could end. But I couldn’t do it myself. I needed Chiyo.

“You have other kinds of power,” I said. “You have the power to save all the people and creatures on and around this mountain from the destruction you’ve almost wrought, before your rage returns. Accept your death. Release the mountain from the prison of blood you’ve built, withdraw your support from the dead who are fighting for your cause, and let the sacred sword purify your spirit so you can be absorbed back into the world. Your family will live on without suffering, and you will still be with them no matter where they travel.”

Omori looked around him at the gore-splattered forest, and revulsion contorted his mouth. “I... I did this,” he said, as if he didn’t quite understand. He regarded his wife. “What the girl said—is that what you wish?”

Mrs. Omori pressed her hands to her chest and inclined her head. His expression firmed. As he leapt to his feet, the sparrow and the butterflies fluttered to the side. He strode down the slope, burning a trail through the gore as he went. His family wisped after him, and I limped along behind.

“Stop!” Omori shouted as he approached the fringes of the battle. The nearest ghostlights stilled around him. “This must all stop, now!”

His army parted as he pressed onward, toward the spot where Chiyo was standing. Her face was flushed and her shoulders slumped, but her fingers still held tight around the hilt of the sacred sword. She pulled herself taller as her closest enemies fell back to make way for Omori. He stopped a few feet from her and raised his voice.

“This fighting will end! The pain, the suffering, it is over
now
. There has been too much already. I sacrifice myself to end this war.”

He knelt before her, his arms spread wide, his face prepared. Chiyo smiled, weary but brilliant all the same.

“The mountain forgives you,” she said, and lowered the sacred sword to his forehead. The second its blade touched his skin, the demon-warped spirit of Kenta Omori dissolved into glittering dust.

All across the forest, the ghostlights dimmed. Hundreds blinked out of existence in the time it took me to draw another breath, as if Omori’s power had been the only thing holding them here. Which it quite possibly had. A wail went up as the others scattered. A few, strong enough to keep fighting and apparently unwilling to give up the idea of regaining bodies, rushed at the kami again, but Chiyo dispatched their weakened forms with a few sweeps of her sword. Their monstrous allies hesitated and seemed to decide the tide had turned too far for their liking. Ogres and demon dogs slunk away into the shadows.

My ankles twinged. I sank down onto the warm earth. My head was throbbing and my mouth cottony, but inside I felt light as air.

“Sora!” Keiji crouched beside me. I shifted toward him, resting my face against his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his sigh of relief. He rested his chin on the top of my head as he hugged me.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I nodded, my throat too raw for speech.

“I saw it,” he said. “I caught up right when you were showing him the picture. You were amazing. And you didn’t even need any treasures.”

That wasn’t true. I’d just had a different sort. Insight. Recognition. Compassion.

Rin had said her vision could have just as easily been of me or Chiyo. Perhaps it had actually meant us both, together, with the strength we each had where the other faltered.

“You know what?” I said. “I’m glad I’m human.”

I heard Keiji’s smile in his voice. “Me too.”

W
hen the last
of the ghosts had been dealt with, Takeo took my hand and Rin Keiji’s. They helped us across the path Omori had cleared through the brush and blood and pulled us through the palace entrance into the main hall.

The smell of long-dried blood made the kami wince, and I realized my work wasn’t done. “Bring in the tree fairies and the wolves and the others,” I said.

Takeo nodded. “The rest of us will tend to the mountain’s fire at once.”

The kami with no training stayed behind to help guide our other allies in. As they joined us, I directed them to buckets, cloths, and water. We trudged in and out of the rooms, scrubbing at the surfaces, untying the ropes and nets that bound the prisoners. Freed, the palace kami stumbled to their feet to embrace us, many touching my face in wonder.

“Sora, you’ve returned!”

“Sora, I’m so glad you’re safe.”

“Sora, I hadn’t dared to hope...”

Several rushed off as fast as their tormented bodies could carry them to help soothe the mountain. As we moved on, Fuji’s ki began to tingle up through the floor into the soles of my feet. It felt hot and unsettled, but it calmed more with every moment that passed. Trickling over the walls and floors, it erased the remaining traces of Omori’s gory rule.

Finally we came to a room that held not just kami, but the scattered human prisoners the ghosts had collected as well. Chiyo, who’d been following behind us, squealed and kissed Haru so deeply the fairies twittered. He wobbled a little when he stood, and the scratch along his neck had scabbed, but he appeared mostly unharmed. Tomoya must have thought Omori would like him for a “specimen.”

Farther down the hall, I hurried through an all-too-familiar set of chambers, past the audience room where Omori had conducted his deadly experiment and into the room beyond. At the sight of Mother and Father lying beaten and wounded but alive, my legs locked. Chiyo rushed past me, throwing her arms around her kami mother with a shower of healing ki. I hung back by the doorway as the other kami with us helped their rulers to their feet.

“I heard that Sora is still with you,” Father said hoarsely. I stepped forward tentatively and found myself swept up in one of his massive hugs, then wrapped in Mother’s arms.

“I—” I started to say when they released me, but I couldn’t think of how to continue. My eyes were full of tears, my head spinning with exhaustion and too many emotions I had no words for.

“You,” Mother said, her smooth hand caressing my cheek, “need to heal as much as we do. You and your friends must stay as our guests, and we can talk more when we’ve all had time to recover.”

I had just enough energy left to nod in agreement.

* * *

A
yame caught
me with a stag kami at her side on the way to my old rooms. She looked my bedraggled body over and tutted under her breath. “Kami or no, this is not how anyone sleeps in my palace. Katsu will tend to your injuries, and then I’m seeing you into a bath.”

I stood limply as the stag lowered his head, casting cool streams of ki over my burns and bruises with his antlers. The pain in my side melted away as my broken rib knit back together.

“The mountain,” I said to Ayame. “The fire—is it—?”

“We reached it just in time,” she said, smoothing her hand over my forehead. “It’s settled, for now.”

When the healer had finished, Ayame drew me into the bathing room. I scrubbed and rinsed myself in a daze, let her drape silky nightclothes over me, and crashed into my bed.

When I woke up hours later, blinking sleep from my eyes as I gazed at the room around me, for a moment I almost believed it was still the night of my seventeenth birthday. I’d taken a nap and gotten lost in the wildest dream. But when I rolled over and felt the aches Katsu’s magic hadn’t quite reached, tasted the residue of smoke in my mouth, I snapped back to reality.

We’d saved the mountain, the people around it, everyone. I stretched out on the feathery futon, reveling in that realization. All the fears that had been dogging me, all the catastrophes I’d spent the past days imagining, they were defeated now.

The light filtering in from outside suggested it was mid-morning. As its beams washed over me, it occurred to me that while the war might be over, my life was hardly settled.

Apprehension muted my joy just slightly. I got up and put on the plainest robe I could find in the cedar dresser before Ayame could arrive to fuss over me. Then I hurried down the hall to the rooms of Mt. Fuji’s rulers.

Takeo was standing outside the door to their private chambers. The panel the ghosts had shoved the guard through on my birthday had been replaced. Takeo’s expression brightened when he saw me, and I remembered the exact wording of my last order to him.
Until Mt. Fuji is safe...

“Takeo,” I said, coming to a halt. What could I say to him—my protector, my teacher, my friend—after everything we’d been through? Our friendship could never be the same as it had been. And his responsibilities lay elsewhere now.

He bowed. “I’m glad I was able to serve you as long as I did,” he said. “If you should ever need... anything...”

I touched his arm when he faltered. “I know,” I said softly. A lump was rising in my throat. The conversation after this was going to be even harder. “Thank you, so much, for everything.”

He tipped his head with a whisper of ki through my fingertips that told me those were the only words he’d needed to hear. That he knew how truly I meant them.

“I’ll tell Their Highnesses that you’ve come,” he said. He ducked inside and returned a moment later to escort me in.

I stepped into the room where once two kami had given their supposed daughter a flute as a birthday gift while she prepared to beg to learn the kami’s most precious talents. That evening seemed another lifetime ago. In a way, I supposed it was.

On the other side of the low table, Mother looked as collected and Father as indomitable as ever, but they both had a teary glint in their eyes. Looking at them, I felt just how little remained of the girl who’d sat before them all those days ago. That Sora had never fought ghosts, never kissed, never tiptoed to the edge of death.

That Sora hadn’t known she was human.

The pain I’d been braced for flared up, but duller than I’d expected. I’d already taken so many steps away from them.

“My girl,” Mother said, and they both rose. “So now you know. I’m sorry we lied to you. It seemed to be the safest way to ensure the secret didn’t slip out.”

“It’s been a pleasure to call you our daughter,” Father said gruffly. “I can still remember when you were small enough that I could carry you with one arm...” He folded both arms over his chest awkwardly. “I hope you can forgive us.”

What would my life have been like if I’d known from the start? Always aware the ki within me wasn’t really mine, that what I thought of as my strength was borrowed? I’d have been spared the shock, but wouldn’t my happiness for the seventeen years before have also been less?

“I don’t know whether I wish you’d told me or appreciate that you didn’t,” I said, choking up again. “I loved it here. So much. I know why you did it. I can’t be angry about the actions that helped save this place.”

“We do love you,” Father said. “We’ve thought of you as ours as much as Chiyo is.”

Mother held out her hand. “We’d be so delighted if you stayed here as part of our family, Sora. The mountain won’t hesitate to lend you its power again. No one here wishes to say good-bye to you, the two of us least of all.”

“It’s up to you,” Father added. “If you think you’d still be happiest here.”

Gratitude swelled inside me, drowning out the rest of the turmoil. But I already knew my answer.

“Thank you,” I said. “More than I can say, thank you. But I think I’ve pretended to be something I’m not for long enough. There’s a lot I can offer the world as a human too.”

“Of course there is,” Mother said, but as she blinked, a few tears slid down her cheek. Father cleared his throat. My own eyes overflowed, and I stepped toward them. They met me, enclosing me in an embrace from both sides. Their ki flowed through me, tinged with love and sadness. And I saw that the family I’d assumed I’d lost was still here after all. For a second, the pain burned deeper, despite my certainty that my decision was right.

“I’ll still think of you as my parents,” I said. “Even if I have other ones now. I—I don’t want to lose you. I’ll come to see you whenever I can.”

“The palace will always be open to you,” Father said as he squeezed me tighter. “And this mountain will welcome you home if you ever change your mind.”

* * *

W
hen I slipped back
into the main hall some time later, cried out but lighter in spirit, Keiji was leaning against the wall nearby. He looked as if he’d been waiting there for a while. His tapping foot stilled when he saw me. His gaze took in my robe, my smile.

“Hi,” I said when he didn’t speak.

“Hi yourself,” he said, a little shyly. He straightened up, but then he just stood there, as if he wasn’t sure he should be there at all.

“I think you’d really like it, living in Tokyo,” he said in a rush. “There are tons of things kami don’t have—at least, I don’t think they do—that I haven’t had a chance to even tell you about: other kinds of music, and movies, and clubs—and Disneyland, we could go there—I bet there aren’t any kami amusement parks. Or malls. Or—”

“Keiji,” I broke in. “What are you talking about?”

He lowered his head, his shaggy hair drifting over the top of his glasses and shading his coppery eyes.

“I know you’re probably thinking of staying here,” he said. “And I know they’d let you. Of course they’d let you. So I thought I should mention all the things you’d be missing.”

“I’m not staying,” I said.

“Really?” He glanced up so eagerly I almost had to laugh.

“I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do,” I said. “I have to talk with the Ikedas, get to know them, I guess. And I’m not sure how school will work, since I haven’t had a normal human education.”

I paused, seeing the twist of his mouth. Why did he seem so out of sorts even now that—

Oh. He was waiting to hear something else entirely. I hadn’t thought of that, because it was hard to believe he couldn’t hear how loudly my heart sang as I looked at him.

“At least I’ll have some help figuring all that out,” I said, taking his hand. “I mean, I hope I will.”

A grin to match mine spread across Keiji’s face. He swept into a low bow, brushing his lips against my fingers. “I would enjoy nothing more than to stay by your side, my lady,” he said.

And then I did laugh.

* * *

I
had
to brave a hundred more good-byes before I left. My kami grandparents hugged me in turn, whispering words of encouragement. Ayame took me by the shoulders and kissed my forehead, and then chided me about taking care of my hair. The other familiar figures of the palace came one by one, offering bows and squeezed hands and sometimes more tears.

By the time Chiyo and our kami parents had walked with Keiji, Haru, and me to the palace entrance, I was drained but ready. The midday sun greeted us outside. An early morning thundershower had washed away the smell of smoke and all remaining sign of Omori’s bloody defenses. I tipped my face to the hazy blue of the sky, the rain-fresh air rejuvenating me. Then I turned toward the foot of the mountain, where the dark roofs and winding roads of the town lay hidden beyond the trees.