“But Amaterasu didn’t give him orders; she gave you orders.”
“I can make him understand. Guji Ishida is absolutely committed to Amaterasu’s will. He can contact every Amaterasu kannushi across the country and have them probe for any unusual Izanami shrine servant behavior. We can’t accomplish anything close to the same on our own.”
Judgment weighed in Yumei’s eyes. “The servants of Amaterasu returned to your shrine yesterday. They have been sending sohei into the woods to search for you.”
She straightened, a notch of tension easing in her spine. Four days ago, when she’d returned to the Shirayuri Shrine, she’d found it abandoned by the humans who lived there and taken over by Izanami and her vassals. She was relieved to hear that everyone seemed to have returned safely.
“Guji Ishida is probably there then,” she said. “He must be frantic to find me.”
“If you’re going back,” Shiro said, dropping her dinner, the box now empty, beside his, “it will have to be now. Izanami has retreated for the time being, but if she’s as determined to kill us as she seemed, she’ll be back.”
“I can return to the shrine and talk to Guji Ishida right away.” Her nerves fluttered but she ignored the feeling. “We could have the information we need in a few days.”
“Go then,” Yumei said. “We cannot waste any more time.”
“Go? Now?”
“No, of course not.” Shiro stretched his arms over his head, arching his back. “Let’s wait until December for the added challenge.”
“But it’s the middle of the night.” When he just raised his eyebrows, she pushed to her feet. “You’re right. There’s no time to waste.”
Chapter 3
Suppressing a yawn, Emi followed Shiro through the dark trees. He wound among them, breaking the icy crust of the half-foot-deep snow. She gazed absently at his back and swiveling ears as her mind rushed ahead of them to the Shirayuri Shrine.
Since she’d slept through most of the past seventy-two hours, her sense of time was foggy. It didn’t seem like that long, but almost five days had passed since she’d run away from the Shirayuri Shrine. Before she fled, she’d been about to meet Ishida for the first time in six months. His visits were brief but regular; twice a year, he would check on her current accommodations and bring her new omamori.
Beneath her kimono, the flat silk bag on a thin tie rested above her heart. Inside it, a special ofuda—a paper talisman inscribed with a protective invocation—disguised her ki so yokai wouldn’t recognize her as a kamigakari. If Shiro was right about her changed scent, the omamori could no longer protect her.
Shiro halted, raising a hand. She stopped abruptly, anxious thoughts of yokai attacks competing with the image of beautiful, deadly kami gliding through the trees toward them.
His ears twitched, following sounds she couldn’t hear.
“Caw.”
Above their heads, one of Yumei’s crows canted its head and called another flat, derisive note. Shiro dropped his arm.
A few dozen yards ahead, barely visible in the moonlight, a deer trotted through the trees, her almost-grown fawn running after her. Emi exhaled, relief carrying away her trepidation. As the two deer vanished into the darkness, she glanced up again at the crow. Yumei had declined to accompany her back to the shrine, leaving the job to Shiro, but it seemed he’d still sent a few karasu to watch over them.
She fought off another yawn, wishing the Tengu had volunteered to use his mysterious teleportation skills to spare them the long trek out of the mountains. She’d been exhausted since the fight with Izanami; she’d slept more in the last few days than she normally did in a week. Shiro, too, had done a lot of sleeping. He’d been badly wounded in his battle with Ameonna and her dog-like servant, and he had fought Izanami on top of that.
Taking advantage of Shiro’s pause, she trotted a few steps to catch up with him. They walked together for a few minutes before she spoke, her quiet voice uncomfortably loud in her ears after the long silence in the forest.
“Do you have any theories,” she began, “about how Izanami has imprisoned the Kunitsukami?”
“Only that I doubt it was by brute force.” He shrugged. “That’s all I can guess. She must have found some way to weaken them first. Otherwise, she would need one Amatsukami guarding each Kunitsukami at all times, and without Amaterasu, she’s one short.”
“Weaken them …” she repeated in a murmur. “Amaterasu accused Izanami of tricking her into destroying Inari. ‘Destroying’ sounds more permanent than weakening.”
Shiro’s jaw flexed.
“Inari has been missing for a hundred years,” she continued, “and Izanami started killing Amaterasu’s kamigakari a hundred years ago. Izanami must have tricked Amaterasu into doing her dirty work by getting rid of Inari, then Izanami got rid of Amaterasu.”
She glanced at him, hoping for his opinion, and saw the tightness in his face. Her cheeks flushed at her carelessness. “I’m sorry, Shiro. I didn’t mean to … Let’s talk about something else.”
How inconsiderate was she? Inari was the patron of kitsune, and Shiro had been searching for the Kunitsukami for years—and here she was, casually talking about the destruction of his master.
He walked stiffly, ears not quite flattened to his head. She looked around wildly for inspiration, seeing nothing but snow and trees.
“My first big solo performance in a ceremony was the Winter Hearth Blessing dance,” she said in a rush, stumbling over roots hidden in the snow as she worked to keep up with him. “I was fourteen and not particularly graceful, but Guji Ishida decided I would do it anyway. I practiced for months.”
Shiro’s jaw finally unclenched and he blinked at her, curious and a little bemused as she continued.
“On the day of the ceremony, I was so nervous. The Shion Shrine is huge. Thousands of people were gathered for the winter festival. I remember standing on the stage, waiting to start and seeing all those faces staring at me. There were so many they were all a blur.”
She huffed, watching her breath turn to white mist from the cold. “By some miracle, I managed to do everything perfectly, even the parts I had trouble with in practice. I was holding an onusa—a wand with folded paper streamers; have you seen them before? Anyway, part of the ceremony involves waving the onusa through the smoke from a small brazier on the stage. I was doing the dance so perfectly, but the onusa was fancier than the one I’d practiced with and the paper streamers were longer. When I passed it over the brazier, the ends touched the coals and caught fire.”
He snorted, humor lighting his eyes and chasing away the shadows. Stopping on the path, he asked, “What did you do?”
“I didn’t have many options. I was holding a wand with flaming paper streamers that were burning up faster than I could think. So I gave my arm a sort of elegant wave and set the paper down into the brazier as fast as I could. It instantly whooshed into two-foot-tall flames and I just sort of twirled around and waved my arms like it was all part of the dance.”
“What did the spectators think?”
“They loved it. They thought it was an exciting new variation of the regular, boring dance. Guji Ishida was less pleased.”
“It sounds like a magnificent recovery to me.”
She smiled, fighting a blush at his praise. “My friend—” Her throat tried to close and she swallowed hard. “She said she would never have known except for the look of sheer panic on my face when it first caught fire.”
He tilted his head. “What brought on that story?”
“Oh, I just thought you should know you haven’t witnessed my most spectacular dance mistake.”
“I see.”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him back into motion. The scarcely visible trail began to slope downward, and somehow, as he followed a half step behind her, it didn’t seem necessary to release his hand. His fingers were warm and strong, curled lightly around hers as she led the way. She didn’t like seeing those dark shadows in his
gaze, the distant pain he usually hid so carefully.
Not that long ago, he’d told her she seemed lonely and afraid and he wanted to know why. She wondered now how lonely and afraid he was beneath the sly grins and confidence he normally projected.
Her hand tightened on his. She would remove the onenju and give him back his memories. She would not fail.
The path became more discernable, following the slope of a mountain with a steep drop on one side. Around the time she realized the trail was familiar to her, they rounded a bend. Just beyond, a fallen tree blocked the path, its splintered branches covered with snow. It was a familiar spot.
“Ah,” she said. “The tree.”
“The tree,” he agreed. His eyes glinted mischievously and then he moved. His arms came around her, scooping her off the ground and against his chest.
“Shiro!”
He bent at the knees, gathering himself, then sprang. Barely jostling her, he landed lightly on the other side of the obstacle—an impossible jump for a human but easy for a yokai.
“Show-off,” she muttered.
“If I let you climb over it again, the sun would rise before we reached the shrine.”
“Hardly. Put me down.”
“Why do you take such issue with me holding you?”
She opened her mouth but the words died on her tongue.
His stare challenged her to speak, to argue with him, but she didn’t know what to say. She was a kamigakari; she wasn’t supposed to touch men or yokai, and he was both. That’s what she should say.
“Why are you so determined to hold me?” She almost cringed. Why had she said that?
“You’re shivering.”
“I am?” She didn’t think she was, but she couldn’t disagree that he was deliciously warm in the chilly night air. If the exertion of walking hadn’t been keeping her blood flowing, she would have been frozen to the bone.
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you want me to put you down?”
Do you want me to move?
Heat flushed through her entire body as his question triggered the memory of his face inches from hers, his warm body pinning her to the floor. The way his mouth had hovered just above hers, his pupils dilating with anticipation, and the way she had closed her eyes in surrender.
It was a memory she had fought to keep out of her thoughts for the past four days. With the long hours of sleep and Yumei’s almost continuous presence, she hadn’t spent any length of time alone with Shiro since. But the recollection of him pinning her to the floor and almost kissing her hadn’t been far from her disobedient thoughts.
“I—I—” She tried to find words, wondering if he’d meant to mimic his question from that night.
His arms loosened and she slid down him until her feet touched the ground. But his arms were still around her, keeping her trapped against him. Butterflies danced in her stomach. Why couldn’t she read his face? What was he thinking?
“You’ll be careful, little miko?” he murmured.
“Careful?”
“And not just with that Guji of yours. Izanami will be waiting for you to turn up somewhere unprotected.”
“I—yes. I’ll be careful.”
How could his eyes hold her prisoner like that? She tried to remember how to breathe.
“You promised me,” he said softly. “That means you have to come back.”
“I will,” she whispered. “I won’t break my promise.”
That mischievous smile twitched his lips. Then he scooped her right off her feet again and leaped forward. She flung her arms around his neck as he bounded down the trail in his deer-like run that ate up the miles. In mere minutes, he slowed to a trot.
Ahead, a familiar shape appeared. The two thick posts and parallel crossbeams of the red torii gate marked the edge of shrine grounds.
He stopped a few yards away and set her down, not even winded from his sprint. She wobbled a couple steps and gave her head a shake, still a little dazed.
“The karasu already checked it out,” he said. “No kami, just some kannushi and a dozen sohei who’ve been scouring the woods for you.”
When she’d run away that night, her red kimono flying all around her, she’d somehow never imagined returning and having to face all those she’d abandoned. Would they believe her tale of Izanami’s attack and Amaterasu’s possession?
They would have to believe her. She wouldn’t give them a choice.
She glanced back at Shiro. “You’ll be nearby?”
“As close as I can.”
Those words in his deep, purring voice kept repeating in her ears as she approached the torii, preparing to reenter the world of the kami and once again don her role as kamigakari.
Though dawn was still an hour away, a warm glow already emanated from the house’s windows. The sohei inside were likely preparing to head out at first light to resume their search for her. Though the warrior priests were well trained in combat and yokai exorcism, they weren’t woodsmen and would no doubt appreciate the end of their wilderness excursions. After her own trek through the mountains, she was thoroughly chilled, and the prospect of a warm heater and a cushion to sit on was enough to overcome her dread of facing everyone.
Though she’d intended to go straight to the house, when she reached the garden, her feet turned in the opposite direction. An odd, disbelieving daze came over her as she slowly crossed the footbridge and stopped at the edge of the courtyard.
She remembered her first view of the Shirayuri Shrine so clearly. Framed by the torii at the top of the long stone steps, the huge sacred tree, its golden leaves fluttering in the brisk breeze, had cast dappled shadows across the long courtyard. Weather-worn koma-inu statues, the stone sentinels forever standing guard over the home of the kami, had protected the two-story hall of worship with its peaked roof and curling eaves.
She could barely recognize the quaint shrine in the scene of destruction before her.
A deep, jagged fissure had split the courtyard stones, leaving an ugly black scar across them. The earth had buckled in a dozen places and several fallen spruce trees lay across the shattered stonework. A centuries-old maple had landed on the stage pavilion, collapsing the roof.
The hall of worship was a hollow shell. The walls had been torn apart, the wood blackened from fire. Something—like a giant raven yokai—had smashed through the front of the building, demolishing the delicate woodwork around the entryway. The koma-inu statues were no more than shattered chunks of stone scattered amongst the wreckage. Only the sacred oak tree had survived the destruction unscathed.
Her throat tightened. The beautiful little shrine, so well cared for by Fujimoto and Nanako, was little more than ruins. With the six-foot-wide fracture in the earth, repairing the courtyard would be expensive at best and impossible at worst. And the shrine, which had stood for hundreds of years, was probably unsalvageable.
During the terrifying battle four days ago, she hadn’t given any thought to the destruction; the lives at stake had been far more important. But seeing it all now, the damage done by Yumei and the kami he’d battled, then by Izanami’s catastrophic power, she wished there was some way to undo it. Wiping at her cheeks, she turned to go back to the house.
On the other side of the footbridge, Katsuo stood in the center of the path.
Though his hair was tousled like he’d just gotten out of bed, he was fully dressed in his sohei uniform with a katana at his hip. A hot, squeezing sensation shot through her at the sight of him. When they’d last parted, she’d asked him to kiss her—then she’d bound him in place with an ofuda so he couldn’t follow her into the forest. Guilt had clung to her ever since.
“Emi?” he said, so quietly she almost couldn’t hear him. His face was as white as the snow, his eyes wide.
“Katsuo.” Pressing her hands to her thighs, she bent into a deep bow. “I’m so sorry for—”
His rapid footsteps thudded on the wooden footbridge. She looked up as he bore down on her. She squeaked in surp
rise when he grabbed her, crushing her to him in a tight hug.
“K-Katsuo?” she stuttered.
“You’re alive,” he said hoarsely. “When I saw you standing there in that white kimono, I thought you were a ghost.”
She blinked. A ghost? She supposed, with her white kimono and loose, tangled hair, she did look like a lost spirit. Held tight in his arms, she tipped her head back to peer up at him. Had he forgotten he wasn’t supposed to touch the kamigakari, or did he just not care?
He took a half step back to peer down at her, holding her upper arms as though afraid she would vanish if he released her.
“You are alive, right?”
She gave him a weak smile. “Yes, very alive.”
His grip on her lightened and he let out a long exhale, his stare darting all over her face. “Where have you been?”
“In the mountains, mostly,” she mumbled, looking at the ground. “I’m sorry for letting you worry for so many days. I didn’t intend to be gone that long.”
“In the mountains? For five days? What about shelter and food …?”
“I was … at the Tengu’s home.” When his eyes went wide with a mixture of horror and anger, she rushed on. “He’s not the best host, but he isn’t that bad. He brought food, but he wouldn’t get me a brush for my hair and he got mad when I asked for something else to wear. His crows wanted to eat me but he told them to leave me—”
“His crows what?”
“I guess I smell good? They wanted to eat my ki.”
His jaw clenched. “Why were you there at all?”
“It’s a long story, but I didn’t have much choice after …” Her attention flitted toward the ruins of the shrine.
He released her and stepped back, following the direction of her gaze. “The townspeople said there was an earthquake. All the damage seems to be here, though. They hardly felt the tremors in Kiroibara.”
“An earthquake is a mild way to describe Izanami,” she replied bitterly. The town a mile south of the shrine was lucky to have escaped any damage.