A Mortal Song

But even the mountain’s fury wouldn’t stop Omori. Tomoya had said so himself. If there were no people on or near Mt. Fuji for him and his vast army of followers to possess come nightfall, he’d take his whole force to wherever the people were. Not even the mountain’s obvious anger had been enough to convince him to free enough kami to calm the volcano. He mustn’t want to risk them interfering with his plans.

  Chiyo was still unconscious when we approached Mt. Fuji’s foot. My heart sank.

  “Put on the music,” I said. I needed something to hold me above despair. Keiji grinned tightly and popped in the CD he knew I meant. The swirling guitars and pounding drums followed us all the way through the evacuated streets of the Nagamotos’ town.

  “I told those I spoke to around Ise to meet us here with whatever other help they could summon,” Takeo said as the road slanted upward. “They should be waiting as close to the palace as they could get.”

  No ghostlights showed themselves amid the trees. With the volcanic haze choking off the mid-afternoon sun, it was nearly as dark as evening. An ashy, smoky smell penetrated the car. I wondered for a moment if perhaps Omori had evacuated already, taking most of his legions with him. But we weren’t even halfway to the tourist stop when a pale figure waved to us from the road’s shoulder.

  It was Ayame. Despite the horrors she’d faced here, I supposed she’d felt more frantic about staying in Tokyo not knowing what was happening than joining the battle.

  Keiji parked, and Takeo immediately leapt out.

  “It’s an interesting army you’ve put together,” Ayame said to Takeo. Tree fairies, spirit wolves, another dreameater, and even a few foxes lurked in the trees amid the few dozen kami who’d gathered to meet us. “They’ve scouted all around the mountain. Not far above here, ghosts are patrolling and ogres are watching the road. They’d tip you over in that machine.” She wrinkled her nose at the car. Then her gaze fell on Chiyo’s slumped body inside. Her hands fluttered. “Is she all right?”

  “Her spirit is regaining strength,” Rin said. “Soon she wakes.”

  But what state would she be in then?

  While that uncertainty hung over the rest of us, we grabbed every material we could find to write out more ofuda and distributed what remained of our supply of salt. Takeo strode amid our allies, cautioning them about the ghosts’ and ogres’ preferred tactics. This was a larger group than we’d ever had before, but it was hard for me to imagine them being enough for us to force our way through the massive army that must be smothering the mountain above us.

  So much depended on Chiyo. Even weakened, she’d have more power in one hand than I had in my entire body. At least I’d found her. With her on our side we had a chance, however small.

  Some twenty minutes after we’d arrived, a squirrel kami who’d been acting as a sentry came scurrying over. It chittered something to Takeo, who straightened up, his face dark.

  “The ghosts have become aware of Chiyo’s arrival,” he said. “They appear to be moving to bring the battle to us.”

  “Well, then, what are we waiting for?” a thin but bright voice asked from the back of the car. Chiyo had sat up, her lavender ponytails still drooping, the sacred sword clutched between her hands. Her face was pale but determined, her eyes glinting fiercely. She stood slowly, raised the sword with one arm, and tucked the mirror under the other.

  “Tonight we take back our mountain!” she said, as if Mt. Fuji had always been hers, as if she’d lived there her whole life instead of me. I wondered if she could feel its call now—if it was already reaching out to her to pull her home. The gathered spirits cheered.

  Chiyo glanced at Takeo. “It’s Omori who’s giving the ghosts most of their power, right?” she said, and he nodded. “Then the most important thing is finding and destroying him. He’s probably at the palace, so don’t stop climbing until you get there.” She tipped her head back to eye the smoke-drenched sky. “I can see we don’t have a lot of time.”

  Her words had barely carried into the air when our allies higher up the mountain gave a shout. A torrent of ghostlights was rushing down through the forest toward us.

  Chiyo sprang forward with a battle cry, her sword ready. The kami and the other assembled creatures surged up around her, Takeo and Rin among them. I hurried after them, my tired human feet stumbling through the underbrush in ways theirs did not. Keiji clambered up the slope beside me, his jaw set. Over the anxious beat of my heart, the rhythm of the music from the car echoed inside me, tugging me onward.

  Ahead of us, the corporeal kami struck out at and dodged foes I could barely see. A spirit-wolf lunged to meet the charge of a demon dog. A band of tree fairies let loose their tiny arrows into the legs of an ogre lurching toward Chiyo. Keiji and I ducked as a keening flock of flying heads soared by. Several of the ghostlights streaked around the main thrust of our resistance, and we slapped our ofuda out at them.

  At the front of the charge, Chiyo was moving slowly but steadily through the glowing mass of ghosts. Light blazed from her sword, arcing along the blade and shattering every ghost it connected with. The mirror emitted a paler gleam that seemed to slow the enemies that drew near her. It lit her skin like moonlight.

  My breath caught as I watched her, forming a tiny ache at the base of my throat. I would never have power like that. Not even a fraction of it. But I knew with complete certainty that Chiyo was the girl Rin had seen in her vision. The girl who could save us all. Without her, our meager force would have already fallen.

  For a second, the sword’s blaze flickered. I saw Chiyo’s shoulders tremble as she slammed it into the next wave of enemies. She was fighting hard, but she was far from fully recovered. And we still had so much distance to cover.

  More of our enemies poured down, circling Chiyo as she pushed up the slope. A monstrous cat sprang at me and I barely managed to stab out with my sword as it dodged. It fell back, limping, but I didn’t like the way my arm wobbled. Chiyo wasn’t the only one worn ragged. Exhaustion was starting to dull my senses.

  I felt it even more when a group of ogres barged toward us. Keiji let out a yelp as one’s claws slashed across his forearm. I threw myself in the ogre’s way, only to be smacked into a tree trunk by its elbow. Head reeling, I shoved myself toward it again, but as I jabbed at its chest, the other two converged on me.

  “No!” Keiji cried. He grabbed one’s legs, and it staggered into its companions, knocking both of them off balance.

  I scrambled out of the way. Facing the five of them, sweat trickling down my back and the scent of smoke searing my lungs, I realized this might be the moment when I died. Keiji had grabbed a branch, but we couldn’t fend off this many of them between the two of us with our meager weapons. Our more powerful companions had already pulled too far ahead to notice we needed assistance.

  They shouldn’t help us anyway, I thought. A cold but calm resolve pierced through my fatigue. I pointed my sword toward the ogres while they righted themselves. Chiyo’s other allies should stay with her. At least Keiji and I would be keeping this bunch distracted from her for a little while longer.

  As one of the ogres stepped toward us, another snorted. “Leave these weaklings,” it said. “It’s the girl with the sword we need to catch.”

  A protest stuck in my throat. I dashed forward as they turned away and sliced at the back of one’s thigh. An instant later, another kicked me in the side so hard I felt a rib crack. I hit the ground and wrenched myself around with a gasp. The ogres had already outpaced us, loping on their gangly legs up the mountainside.

  A pack of nukekubi shrieked by overhead, ignoring us completely. Apparently they’d gotten the idea to ignore the human “weaklings” too. I couldn’t even deny the logic of it.

  “Are you okay?” Keiji asked as I swiped my sweat-damp hair back from my face. I glanced at him, and my pulse stuttered at the sight of the blood streaking down his arm.

  “Are you?” I said, and he pressed his arm against his side.

  “It’s just
a flesh wound,” he muttered, and then, sounding more serious, “I’ll manage. It didn’t get me too deep. But what do we do now?”

  I peered up the mountain. I could no longer see Takeo, Rin, or Ayame amid the whirl of ghostlights and wrestling bodies. I could barely make out the flash of Chiyo’s sword. Was it slower than before?

  “We try to catch up,” I said.

  My rib ached and my calves throbbed, but I pushed myself on up the slope as fast as my feet would carry me. Keiji kept pace, his breath coming raggedly. Finally we drew closer to the edge of the battle. But only, I realized after a moment, because Chiyo’s forward momentum had all but stopped. I paused several feet behind the ghostlights at the thinnest fringe of the fray. Keiji bent over, clutching his branch as he braced it against the ground.

  Chiyo’s sword was still whipping through the ghosts around her, felling ogres and demon dogs in turn, but for every one she dispatched two more seemed to barrel into the same space. Her form was hidden in the midst of our enemies and allies, but I thought the light of her ki was flickering again. My stomach knotted.

  What good would I be doing, really, if I threw myself at the stragglers just to be killed? I needed to find a way to actually help.

  “We have to get rid of some of the ghosts above her,” I said to Keiji. “Let’s see if we can circle around the battle—if they’re going to treat us like we aren’t a threat, we might as well make use of that attitude.”

  He nodded, and we staggered onward, veering to the right to give the main mass of ghosts a wide berth. As we climbed, others darted past us through the forest, paying us no mind even when I managed to catch one with a quick ofuda. As the veil between the worlds started to thin, perhaps Omori could summon them straight out of the afterworld again, and banishing meant merely a momentary delay now.

  A gloom settled over me. If that were true, even if we made it to the front of the battle, what difference could we make there? I might be able to take out an ogre or two before a spirit or beast killed me, but that wouldn’t be enough to get Chiyo any closer to Omori.

  As I thought his name, a small shape fluttered over us: the feathered form of a sparrow. It dipped from tree to tree, heading up the mountain along the same course. I stared after it as we trudged on.

  So Mrs. Omori was with us until the end. Maybe she hadn’t completely given up on her husband, even now.

  A tremor rattled the ground beneath us, and then another. The smoky smell had coated the inside of my mouth.

  “I really hope the mountain doesn’t decide to kill us before we can save it,” Keiji said with a shaky laugh.

  I stared up the slope. “Omori can’t know what’ll happen if the volcano erupts. Doesn’t he care that he could end up buried in the palace? He’s never going to get some new life for himself then.”

  “It’s almost Obon,” Keiji said. “He might not be able to think about anything else at this point, with all that demonic fury warping his mind. What’s a little danger compared to fulfilling his life’s—well, his death’s wish?”

  The image sprang into my mind abruptly of Tomoya walking up to that shrunken stream, the one the rest of his ghostly soldiers had shied back from. The one that had meant his doom. But he hadn’t seemed to consider his safety.

  Because it wasn’t his safety he’d been acting for. He’d been thinking of Keiji, always, in his own warped way. Could it be that Omori wasn’t doing all this for his own gain, but for someone else’s, and that had blinded him to his own precarious position?

  Anything was possible. Every account I’d heard and read of Omori suggested his death had wrenched him far from the principles he’d once held. Would the Omori who’d spearheaded disaster relief efforts approve of provoking another crisis? Would the Omori who’d insisted on a family breakfast every morning not care to acknowledge his wife’s spirit? Would the Omori who’d provided amply for the woman who’d cleaned his house believe people who couldn’t fight off a ghost’s invasion had no right to their own lives?

  My calves were cramping. I stopped for a moment, leaning against the trunk of a nearby pine, and realized we’d passed the main thrust of the battle. Chiyo’s light was gleaming through the trees slightly below us now. And in the few minutes I stood watching, I didn’t see it move forward an inch.

  You are the only one of us who has been in Omori’s presence, Takeo had pointed out yesterday. Of any of us, other than his speechless wife, I must know him best. I’d seen him hesitate. There might be a part of him, however tiny, that wasn’t completely consumed by his fury.

  Losing my life taking down one or two ogres might not be worth much, but if I could get Omori’s ear and make his faith in this war waver... If I could distract him, even for a second, from channeling all that power to his army, it might give Chiyo the opening she needed.

  “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 mo
untain. 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.”