Yatagarasu Series
Volume 5:
Princess Tamayori
Author: Abe Chisato
Part 2: Restless Spirits
Shiho cried herself out on the crude bed that Nazukihiko had led her to earlier in the day. She fell asleep between sobs, exhausted and hopeless.
A Yatagarasu woke her. Not Nazukihiko, but the other man in black who’d followed him around the day before. She wasn’t sure if he could understand her language or not. Before she could say anything, the man said, “The mountain god has summoned you.”
“What?” Shiho asked. She sat up. She was somewhat relieved to have someone else to talk to.
The man looked younger than Nazukihiko. He tugged her arm when she didn’t start moving immediately.
A grating sound in the distance came into focus: the mountain god, shrieking wordlessly in anger. Shiho nodded and got to her feet.
But Shiho’s legs wouldn’t move. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to go…” She shook her head from side to side.
The Yatagarasu man grabbed her arm and steered her forward, not cruelly but very firmly. They traveled all the way to the room with the cradle before the man let her go.
“You’re late!” the mountain god yelled. “What were you doing? Speak!”
The enormous ape was carrying the mountain god as he would a human infant. The mountain god’s face was gray-blue and there were circles under his eyes.
Shiho opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
“I said speak!” the mountain god insisted.
“I was sleeping,” Shiho said.
The mountain god snorted. “I couldn’t sleep a wink. You dare to steal my sleep from me! You are a dreadful woman.”
“She is your mother,” the enormous ape said soothingly. He rocked the mountain god in his arms a bit awkwardly.
“She is,” the mountain god said. “But she is a terrible mother!”
Shiho remained silent as the mountain god’s gaze fixed on her.
“What do you have to say for yourself?!” the mountain god asked, flailing in the enormous ape’s arms.
“Poor mountain god,” the enormous ape crooned.
Shiho remembered that Nazukihiko had called the ape Ōzaru. Ōzaru grinned at her, his golden eyes shining with amusement or anticipation.
“Apologize! Say you’re sorry!” the mountain god commanded.
Shiho collapsed to her knees and said, “I’m very sorry! I’m sorry.” The floor was hard, cold, and uneven.
The mountain god cried himself out and fell asleep.
Shiho remained kneeling on the floor until the Yatagarasu man who’d brought her here hauled her up by the arm. The mountain god had gone somewhere else. She couldn’t hear him yelling or crying anymore. Ōzaru was nowhere in sight.
“You should eat,” the Yatagarasu man said in a clipped tone.
The man escorted Shiho back to the place she’d started thinking of as her cell. She found rice balls and water in a bamboo bottle waiting for her. She was hungry, but she was too nauseous to eat more than a few bites.
The man watched over her as she ate. “Are you all right?” he asked. “The food’s not poisoned. I promise.” He picked up a rice ball and ate it to prove his words.
Shiho shook her head. “I wasn’t worried about that. It’s just…” Terror made her stomach clench.
“I get that you’re scared, but you should eat and sleep whenever you can. You’ll collapse from exhaustion and weakness if you don’t.”
“I can’t eat,” Shiho said. “Not right now.”
The man frowned unhappily. “I don’t want to force you to eat, but I will if I have to. You must live. If you die, another innocent girl will come here and suffer. You understand that, right?”
Shiho nodded and took a few more bites of a rice ball.
The next morning was much the same. Nazukihiko came to visit her after another disastrous summons from the mountain god.
Nazukihiko sat beside her for a while, considering his words. He appeared mildly irritated. It was hard to tell if he was frustrated with Shiho or himself. “You must live,” he said. “The mountain god needs to be raised by a mother. That has to be you, or more women will die.”
Shiho sighed. “If the mountain god is going to kill me anyway, does it matter if I starve or get torn to pieces?”
Nazukihiko sat with that for a few moments. “If you manage to raise the mountain god successfully, I can give you safe passage in my own world. Death is not a certainty for you. Not yet.”
“It’s not?”
Nazukihiko shook his head. “I told you I wanted to help you, remember? I will assist you as much as I can.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “I might not be able to do everything you want, but I’ll do everything I can. I swear.”
That sounded like a lie. Nazukihiko was only willing to help her because her death would cause problems for him and other people. What he was saying didn’t make Shiho feel any better.
The mountain god needed a mother: Shiho understood that much. But she had no idea how to be a mother. She was terrible at it, and that meant the mountain god would kill her sooner rather than later. It made more sense to her to flee to Nazukihiko’s world before she was eaten. She couldn’t return to her own world, but it seemed possible to escape to safety. Nazukihiko hadn’t offered that to her, however.
“Do your best,” Nazukihiko said. “You are not without options. I am still planning ways for you to escape this place.”
Shiho raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t want you to die,” Nazukihiko said. “Believe that, if nothing else.” He sounded sincere, but his eyes were cold and dead.
“I know you don’t want me to die,” Shiho mumbled. When Nazukihiko handed her a rice ball, she ate it.
He’s lying about something, though, Shiho thought. If he weren’t, he would have offered to help her escape now and not later. If she managed to escape safely to his world, another woman might be kidnapped to take her place, but Shiho wouldn’t die.
A sweet, distinctly feminine perfume wafted over Shiho as she ate the rice ball. She felt like someone was rubbing her back. It felt very soothing. Shiho turned around, but no one was there.
The perfume was her mother’s. Shiho had almost forgotten about it. The soft rubbing of her back was also like her mother’s touch. Her mother had comforted her like that when she’d had nightmares as a child. She felt a little embarrassed at the memory, but also strangely nostalgic. She remembered so little about her mother. It had been more than six years since she’d seen her face.
Shiho shook herself free of the odd sensation with a little frown. Her bed was a rough clump of blankets and the air was freezing cold. Her joints ached. Of course her mother wasn’t here; that was impossible. Nazukihiko stood near her and the Yatagarasu man stood guard over them both. There was no one else here.
I’m all right, Shiho told herself. This was a lie, but a lie that she needed. She felt hungry for the first time in days. She picked up a rice ball and devoured it, chewing it thoroughly. It had gone cold, but she didn’t care. As she ate, she considered her situation.
She was here because she hadn’t listened to her grandmother’s warnings. She should have trusted her grandmother, but curiosity about her mother’s family had won out. She was a dumb kid who’d done a stupid thing, but that didn’t mean she deserved to be killed by the mountain god.
My grandma is probably looking for me by now, Shiho thought. That was a comforting prospect. Her grandma was resourceful and tenacious. She wouldn’t rest until Shiho was found. She was probably already in Sannai with the police.
The problem was that even Shiho didn’t know where she was. She’d been captured by monsters and taken to a strange place. How could the police find the mountain god’s realm? She couldn’t explain things to herself so that they made sense; she doubted that she could explain it any better to others.
Shiho was fairly sure that she was no longer in Sannai. She needed help. She had access to the mountain god’s realm and Yamauchi, where the Yatagarasu lived. If there were other places for her to go, she wasn’t aware of them.
Nazukihiko didn’t seem like a liar, but Shiho didn’t accept what he’d told her at face value. She had entered the mountain god’s realm from her own world. She remembered the cold spring and the long walk to this place. If there was a way between her world and this one, there had to be a way back.
As far as Shiho knew, Nazukihiko didn’t want her dead, but he also didn’t want her to go home. What could the motive be for that? She had no idea. She would pretend to go along with the mountain god’s wishes, waiting and planning. There would be an opportunity for her to escape eventually. She had to survive to see her grandma again.
This plan required Shiho to pay special attention to her surroundings and the people around her. She’d already wasted time in a depressive fugue. That had to end now. Her stomach was full and she had a plan; her spirits lifted considerably.
That day, she noticed routines. The mountain god, the Kuisaru, and the Yatagarasu all had schedules that they followed with little deviation. Nazukihiko and Ōzaru, the monstrous ape, were treated with deference by everyone but the mountain god. Ōzaru was chiefly in charge of caring for the mountain god. Nazukihiko and Shiho were at his beck and call. Monkeys with yellow eyes patrolled the long tunnels and kept a close watch on Shiho in case she attempted to run off. Nazukihiko occasionally visited Shiho to check on her and bring her food. He kept watch at the cave entrance, taking turns with the other Yatagarasu.
Ōzaru was usually at the mountain god’s side, but not always. Like Nazukihiko, he had watch duty on one of the tunnel entrances. He also slept in a different room, not in the mountain god’s chamber. For the most part, though, Ōzaru and the mountain god were together for all of their shared waking hours.
The monkeys that had been in the mountain god’s chamber on the day of Shiho’s arrival had vanished somewhere; Shiho never saw them. Perhaps they’d gone back to where they came from after it became clear that Shiho wouldn’t bolt. Or maybe they just weren’t usually present in the mountain god’s chamber. For the first two or three days, she’d passed by one of these underlings in the tunnels. The monkey always gnashed his teeth and nipped at her, irritated. But then Shiho would be sent on some errand or summoned to the mountain god’s presence, and she wouldn’t see the underling again. After the first few days, she stopped seeing that monkey altogether.
Shiho was fed, though not enough, and she was permitted to sleep every night. She might have had some kind of breakdown if she hadn’t been allowed to sleep. She dreamed of her mother every night and sensed her presence all around. The dreams enhanced her vitality, making her feel rested and full even though she was slowly starving. Paying attention to her surroundings and following the mountain god’s commands gave her structure. She wasn’t comfortable, but she was settling into what others expected of her. By the third day since her decision to bide her time and look for an escape route, the mountain god’s frequent tirades no longer bothered her at all.
People could get used to anything. Shiho was impressed by her own adaptability. She was starting to hear patterns in the mountain god’s insults. They varied by time of day and by who was present, but there was a lot of repetition. She was learning, though she didn’t yet know how to put this new knowledge to use.
Ōzaru’s presence or absence had a notable effect on the mountain god. Ōzaru’s presence made the mountain god irritated and insufferable; he never stopped shrieking. Ōzaru egged him on, feeding the mountain god’s anger.
Nazukihiko also seemed to irritate the mountain god, though he rarely spoke when he was summoned. Sometimes Shiho got a break from the mountain god’s abuse because he was distracted by his hatred for the Yatagarasu. Shiho had watched Nazukihiko be screamed at for hours on end. Nazukihiko never reacted to this. He was as calm as the surface of a frozen lake.
“You filthy ravens. Cowards, traitors—your spirits are rotten through; that’s why you’re all black. It’s filth.”
Ōzaru was always supremely pleased when the mountain god’s wrath fell upon Nazukihiko. “Birdbrains, the lot of them,” he said. “They’re hopeless. You can’t trust them to do anything.”
On the rare occasions when Ōzaru was absent, the mountain god was much calmer. He still hurled invective and shouted at Shiho and Nazukihiko, but he seemed less sure of himself. He sounded almost sarcastic, like he wasn’t sure if he was insulting others or himself.
One day, when Nazukihiko and Shiho were alone with the mountain god, Shiho dared to ask a question.
The mountain god had been shouting for an hour; he’d tired himself out and lapsed into silence. “You traitor. I can’t stand to look at you. Get back,” he said. He sounded more sad than angry. That was unusual.
Nazukihiko lowered his head and stepped back, deferential.
“Why do you call Nazukihiko a traitor?” Shiho asked. The question slipped out of her mouth before she could stop it. The mountain god was so different when Ōzaru was gone. She didn’t want to waste this chance. She was used to saying what she was thinking in her old life and hadn’t been able to suppress that habit in herself.
Shiho braced herself for insults, for excuses, for shouting.
They didn’t come.
The mountain god sighed heavily. “He abandoned me,” the mountain god said. “When I was weak, he shut me away and never returned. I no longer need the ravens. I forgot about them as they forgot about me.” He laughed low in his throat, a bitter sound.
Shiho hadn’t expected to get such a calm and comprehensible answer to her question. The mountain god truly was different when Ōzaru wasn’t with him. He’d grown since Shiho’s arrival. He was no longer infant-sized. He was ugly, but he could walk under his own power and was about half as tall as Shiho. She hadn’t expected the mountain god to age like a normal child, but this rate of growth was somewhat alarming. His eyes showed clear signs of his intelligence. He looked and sounded more like a human than a monkey now.
“You’ll betray me, too,” the mountain god said darkly.
Shiho opened her mouth and then closed it. She didn’t expect the mountain god to believe any pledge of loyalty that she might give.
“Enough,” the mountain god said wearily. “Get away from me. Go.”
Shiho returned to her chamber silently. She lay down and tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. She’d spent her days in observation and planning, but she’d never expected to have an actual conversation with the mountain god. She hadn’t expected him to be calm or intelligent enough for such a thing to happen. There was too much she didn’t know or understand—too much that she couldn’t plan for. She needed help.
The mountain god was like a human. That monster was human, or close enough that the differences didn’t matter.
Something had happened between the Yatagarasu and the mountain god that Shiho didn’t understand. Was the mountain god’s anger toward Nazukihiko justified?
***
Shiho. Shiho, wake up, a woman whispered in her ear.
Shiho’s eyes opened. A woman in a white kimono stood before her. She’d never seen the woman before, but there was something vaguely familiar about her. She smelled like her mother’s perfume…
Oh. Eyes wide, Shiho took in the woman before her. She thought she’d been dreaming of her mother, but she’d never seen her mother’s face in her dreams. Maybe she’d been dreaming of this woman instead. She tried not to let her disappointment show.
The woman was young and had kind eyes. She couldn’t be much older than twenty. She wasn’t especially beautiful, but her voice was round and full and musical, and her smile was gentle. Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes, but they didn’t fall.
Shiho sat up.
The woman placed a finger to Shiho’s lips and shook her head. “Quiet, quiet. Please just listen to me, Shiho.”
Shiho nodded. She hadn’t seen the woman’s mouth move, but she’d heard her voice clear as day. How odd.
“Come with me. I will guide you. You can escape.”
Shiho’s eyes widened. “Really?” she whispered. She’d suspected that Nazukihiko had lied to her. She knew that there had to be some way back to her own world.
The woman nodded. “They cannot see me. We must move quickly and quietly.”
“I understand.”
The woman smiled faintly, but then her face twisted in anguish. “I am so sorry. It is my fault that he ended up this way.” She spread her arms wide. “So many innocent girls have been killed because of me. They should not have died. They did nothing wrong.” Her voice shook. She looked directly into Shiho’s eyes. “My voice no longer reaches him. I cannot bear to watch him kill people any longer.” Tears flowed down her cheeks, shining like crystals. “Stand up.” She extended her hand to Shiho.
Shiho reached for the woman’s hand, but she couldn’t grab it. The woman was like a ghost.
The woman gestured for Shiho to follow her.
“Who are you?” Shiho whispered.
The woman smiled reassuringly. “I am Princess Tamayori. I serve the mountain god.”
***
“The girl is gone!” the guard standing beside Nazukihiko shouted.
“That’s impossible!” another guard shouted.
This passage was constantly being watched. It seemed unlikely that the girl would have escaped from this place through this passage.
Guards asked Nazukihiko if he’d left his post. Other guards received the same kind of interrogation. No one had left their posts that night. Shiho had vanished into thin air.
“I don’t know! I don’t know how the girl disappeared!” a guard shouted, desperate.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Just a moment ago. She got up to relieve herself—I kept my back turned for a while, then turned around again. When I turned back, she was gone.”
“What should we do?” Nazukihiko’s attendant whispered to him while the other guards were being questioned.
“Call for reinforcements,” he commanded without raising his voice. “We must find the girl before the Kuisaru do.”
“Yes, Your Imperial Highness.”
After Nazukihiko’s interrogation was done, he went to the room where Shiho had slept for the past week or so. One corner was partitioned off to give her some privacy while she relieved herself and bathed. He moved the partition away, revealing a narrow gap in the stone wall.
How strange. He didn’t remember seeing that before. The gap was narrow—far too narrow for a Kuisaru to squeeze through—but Shiho might fit, with effort.
Nazukihiko placed his hand to the gap and felt cool air blowing through it. The gap connected to some other passage—perhaps one that wasn’t patrolled.
The other guards had arrived by the time Nazukihiko discovered the gap.
“No way,” one guard said. “She got out through there?”
Nazukihiko examined the gap more closely, confirming that he and the other Yatagarasu were too tall and broad to pass through it. “We’ll return to guard duty for now,” he said. “None of us is able to follow her.”
“This is my fault,” a guard wailed. “If I’d kept a closer eye on her, this never would have happened.”
Nazukihiko shook his head. “This would have happened to any guard who was on duty. Don’t blame yourself.”
His attendant returned with four Yatagarasu. “This is who I managed to get on short notice. More are coming,” the attendant said.
Nazukihiko nodded. “The girl fled through a passage that we weren’t aware of. We have no idea where it leads. Summon someone small and slender so that they can follow her. You all patrol the tunnels and pretend to search for the girl. We must not allow the mountain god or the Kuisaru to discover this passage.”
“The girl escaped, you said?” Ōzaru chuckled nastily. “What is it that you didn’t want us to discover, hm?”
Ōzaru stepped out of the tunnel. He towered over Nazukihiko’s Yatagarasu reinforcements. The mountain god was in his arms, eyes wide and mouth agape.
“We hoped to capture the girl before her flight was noticed,” Nazukihiko said smoothly. “I apologize. I should have reported this right away.”
“This is your responsibility, bird,” Ōzaru said gleefully.
All of the Yatagarasu tensed.
“Perhaps these wretches deliberately let Shiho escape,” Ōzaru said speculatively. “To think that they would betray the mountain god in such a way. I am aghast at their incompetence.”
“That isn’t what happened,” Nazukihiko said patiently. “We were just—”
“Be silent! You betrayed the mountain god again! Do you think you will ever be trusted?” Ōzaru laughed.
This was a bad turn. Nazukihiko felt alarm bells going off in his mind, but he ignored them. His reinforcements gathered around him as Ōzaru’s underlings cut off their escape. If he didn’t think of something fast, there would be violence—and he couldn’t countenance violence against Yatagarasu.
“Ah, mountain god,” Ōzaru said obsequiously. “Perhaps you cannot understand this yet, but this foul bird and that girl were involved. You cannot trust either of them, only me.”
“That girl and…?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Ōzaru nodded. “They are traitors to you, mountain god. Just like you always say. The raven allowed the girl to escape so that he would be free to take over as the mountain god.” He grinned widely, baring his teeth.
***
Shiho heard and saw everything.
She’d escaped through the narrow passage, but the Yatagarasu had noticed her absence almost immediately. She’d watched them warily from the other side of the gap. She was waiting for them to leave when Ōzaru and his underlings arrived. She could hear what Ōzaru and Nazukihiko said clearly through the gap.
It didn’t seem like they could see Shiho from where they were. She hoped they couldn’t, anyway.
Hearing the Yatagarasu and Ōzaru was not the same as understanding. They weren’t speaking Japanese, but something else, something heavily accented and obviously foreign. Shiho couldn’t understand a single word.
The voices were agitated. Shiho guessed that the Yatagarasu were being reproached for allowing her to escape. As she looked anxiously through the gap, a bright flash of light cocooned the mountain god, temporarily blinding her.
Shiho screamed. Her voice was drowned out by a boom of thunder. She stepped away from the gap and leaned against the rock wall behind her, breathing heavily.
Her sense of smell came back to her first. There was a foul odor wafting in from somewhere—a reek like burning flesh and hair. Shiho almost threw up, but there was nothing in her stomach. She got down on her hands and knees, retching.
What’s happening? Shiho struggled to focus. Her vision was spotty and the thunder she’d heard made her ears ring. Her head ached horribly. She didn’t want to look through the gap again, but if she didn’t look, she’d never know what was going on.
At first, she saw nothing but a white haze like thick fog. The fog lifted slightly, revealing blackened human figures.
The Yatagarasu.
They were dead, their bodies pitch-black and smoking. Some had died while crouched down with their arms protecting their heads.
The ringing in Shiho’s ears was a constant irritant. She heard screams and words, but she couldn’t make out what people were saying. She wasn’t even sure what language they were speaking.
Nazukihiko knelt on the ground, clasping a Yatagarasu corpse to his chest. He spoke harshly, like a man coughing up blood, but Shiho couldn’t understand a single word.
Some of what he said obviously wasn’t words. Names? Was he calling out the names of the dead Yatagarasu?
“Sumio! Shigemaru! Hiroe! Koroku!” Nazukihiko screamed.
Shiho shuddered.
Ōzaru cradled the mountain god in his arms and laughed.
How much time had passed since that horrible flash of lightning? A minute? An hour? Shiho couldn’t tell.
“We must go,” Princess Tamayori said gently.
“Huh?”
Shiho looked through the gap again. Ōzaru, the mountain god, and Nazukihiko were gone. Even the bodies of the Yatagarasu were gone. She didn’t remember them being taken away.
“Come.” Princess Tamayori gestured to Shiho.
Shiho followed Princess Tamayori in a daze. They walked for a long while until they reached the cold spring where Shiho had bathed. The silence and stillness all around her was unnatural. Nothing seemed real.
Exhausted and stunned, Shiho forced herself to keep moving. Her pulse pounded in her ears, making her headache worse. “My fault,” she whispered. “That… that was my fault.”
“No,” Princess Tamayori said. “You are not to blame. The mountain god kills on a whim, over the most trivial of matters. Many monkeys and ravens have died for no reason at all. I have seen this many times. It was never like this before. But what happened today is not your fault. Not at all.”
As they walked, Shiho noticed a change in the air. It was warmer and a bit humid—nothing like the cold, crisp air of the mountain god’s realm. They passed through a cave and into a stand of trees. It was night, and raining. Shiho smelled the rain on the cedar trees as she gulped down deep breaths of cool air.
“After we leave the mountain god’s realm, the monkeys will not be able to pursue us,” Princess Tamayori said. “Come. We’re nearly there. Follow that path, and you will be free.”
Princess Tamayori pointed to a narrow animal trail through the trees.
Shiho walked down the muddy, hilly path. The rain became worse. She missed her footing and tumbled down a hill. She rolled to a stop, covered in mud and small cuts. She looked around for Princess Tamayori, but she couldn’t find her anywhere.
Then there was light—not torchlight or candlelight, but electric light. Civilization.
Shiho had returned to her world. She got to her feet and hurried toward the light. It was coming from a small, squat single-family house. Three cars were parked in the open garage. A canoe had been strapped to the top of one of the cars.
This house was like dozens of other houses she’d seen in the Dragon Marsh on her journey to her uncle’s house. She looked around for neighboring structures and found none. She wasn’t in Sannai Village, but she was probably close to it. She couldn’t walk much farther without collapsing. She was injured, exhausted, and starving.
Shiho walked up to the house and knocked on the door. “Excuse me! I’m sorry, is anyone home? Help!”
The door slid open, revealing a man in his thirties wearing silver-rimmed spectacles. “You okay, kid?” he asked casually. “What happened to you? Come inside and dry off.”
Shiho was so relieved to be safe that she collapsed on the spot.
***
“I’m Tanimura Masaru. I live in Tokyo for most of the year, but I come here during the summer to escape the heat.”
“Is this a vacation home, then?” Shiho asked.
“Something like that.”
Shiho had awakened in a room lined with bookshelves. A large desk sat under the room’s only window. The ceiling fan was turned on. She’d told Mr. Tanimura the broad strokes of what had happened to her. Surprisingly, he believed her, or at least pretended so well that she didn’t think his reaction was fake.
“That village is an odd one,” Mr. Tanimura said. “I never thought they were sacrificing people or anything like that, though. You’re lucky to be alive.” He scratched the back of his head in irritation. “I’ll call the police. They can get in contact with your grandmother.” He opened a phone book on his desk, muttering to himself. “The local police could be in on it… should I call the prefecture’s police? Hmm…”
The fluorescent lamp on his desk illuminated the freckles on his nose. He looked like a kind, good-natured man. He put a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it. His hair was brown and permed in an unusual style. He had told Shiho earlier that he worked as a manager of a small company. He didn’t seem old, but he might be older than he looked.
“I only have a cell phone. Have you ever used one?”
“No.”
“Then could you tell me your home phone number?”
Shiho did. Mr. Tanimura picked up a large metal brick with numbers on the front. He put in Shiho’s phone number and then handed the brick to her.
Shiho heard the phone ring, but no one answered. The call disconnected before it could go to voicemail.
“That’s strange,” Mr. Tanimura said. “This place usually gets pretty good service. Maybe the rain is scrambling things a bit.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Shiho said.
“We’ll keep trying to call your grandma. Don’t worry, you’ll get through to her eventually. I’ll take you into town so you can file a police report.”
“Thank you.”
“Before that, are you hungry? Of course you are; you should eat something. Then we’ll go.”
“Uh…” Shiho looked down at her muddy clothes. “I’d rather have a shower than a meal. Would that be okay?”
“Of course, of course.”
She probably should eat before she bathed, but she could still smell the burning stench of the Yatagarasu bodies hovering around her. She wanted to get clean so that she could breathe without choking.
“I’ll call the police, so you can go and take a bath, okay?” Mr. Tanimura asked. “I drew a bath just before you came, so the water’s still warm. I hope that’s all right.”
Mr. Tanimura guided Shiho to the bathroom. He placed some clean clothes on the side of the sink and shut the door.
Shiho shucked off her filthy white kimono and turned on the shower. She scrubbed at her hair and skin to get clean, rubbing soap all over her. The walls were thin; she could hear Mr. Tanimura speaking into his cell phone.
Mr. Tanimura had left Shiho an oversized T-shirt, a pair of thick jersey pants, and a sweatshirt to change into. Shiho emerged from the bathroom in clean clothes and found a steaming cup of instant noodles waiting for her.
“The police are coming here,” Mr. Tanimura said. “They’ll be arriving soon.”
“Oh. Okay,” Shiho said.
“You don’t need to worry about anything, Shiho. You should eat. Sorry, it’s just noodles—I can’t make anything else quickly without going shopping, and I didn’t want to leave you alone.”
“It’s fine.” The cup of noodles had a cooked egg floating on top. It tasted so good that tears sprang to Shiho’s eyes. “Thank you for the meal, sir.”
Mr. Tanimura sat down on a red chair with casters and waited for her to finish eating. After Shiho set her chopsticks aside, he smiled and said, “Before the police get here, could you tell me what happened to you in detail? You don’t have to, of course. I was thinking I could write it down and hand it to them to spare you some trouble. I know more about Sannai than most people, and I might be able to fill in a few details about the people involved in abducting you.”
Shiho nodded. “I don’t mind telling you. My uncle Shūichi met me in Tokyo and invited me to Sannai. That’s when I was drugged and kidnapped.”
Mr. Tanimura listened to Shiho’s account, silent and attentive. He didn’t interrupt her even once.
Shiho hadn’t told him about Ōzaru, the Yatagarasu, and the mountain god before. She wasn’t sure he’d believe her. After relating her rude awakening in the chest, she faltered. What should she say next?
“I think I understand,” Mr. Tanimura said quietly. “The villagers wanted to use your mother, but she died, so they went out of their way to lure you in from Tokyo. I knew there was some connection between Sannai and Yamauchi. What you’ve just told me makes a lot of things clearer.”
Yamauchi. Shiho frowned. She hadn’t told Mr. Tanimura about Nazukihiko’s world. How did he know that word? Had she mentioned it and forgotten?
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Mr. Tanimura shouted.
That was no way to talk to a police officer. Shiho looked askance at Mr. Tanimura.
“I’m glad you’re here, Shiho,” Mr. Tanimura said. “I believe you’re familiar with my associate—”
Before he could finish speaking, Nazukihiko barged into the room, drenched from head to toe.
Shiho sprang up reflexively, but there was nowhere to run.
“Were you followed, Nazukihiko?” Mr. Tanimura asked.
“No. Thank you for contacting me,” Nazukihiko said. He shivered.
“No way… Because—you!” Shiho trembled and pointed at Nazukihiko. “What is going on?!”
Mr. Tanimura chuckled good-naturedly. “I am Tanimura Masaru, the manager of a small company in the human world.” He snapped his fingers, transforming instantly into something alien and monstrous. “But I am also Junten, the King of the Tengu.”
“Tengu…?”
“The Yatagarasu do business with my people. Nazukihiko is my best customer.”
Shiho looked up at the—man?— before her in disbelief. His voice hadn’t changed at all when he transformed. “You deceived me!” she shouted.
“And I’m sorry about that,” Junten said. “We have our own circumstances, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
Nazukihiko faced Shiho. “Why did you run?” he asked. “I told you I’d help you when the time came.”
“You shouldn’t blame the girl,” Junten said. “It’s obvious why she couldn’t trust you.” He scratched the back of his head with a clawed hand.
Nazukihiko glared at him. “I know that. But I never lied. It stings to be disbelieved. If she’d believed me, my people would still be alive.”
The memory of the Yatagarasu corpses made Shiho want to vomit. Her shoulders slumped.
Nazukihiko always seemed emotionless, like he didn’t care about anything. But he obviously cared about his people. Right now, he looked like he was about to cry.
“I’m sorry,” Shiho said softly.
Nazukihiko said nothing in reply.
Junten sighed heavily. “So, now we’re here. We can’t possibly return Shiho to the mountain god’s realm, so what’s our next move? We can send Shiho home now, surely. Her being in the mountain god’s realm now won’t make any difference.”
Shiho’s eyes widened. “What? You’ll send me home?”
Junten nodded. “I lied to you, but I’m not a monster. As long as you don’t talk to others about what happened to you in Sannai and elsewhere, I’ll leave you alone and make sure everyone else does, too. I’ll also give you enough money to travel wherever you want. Your grandmother can accompany you. You will be safe. I don’t care what happens to the people of Sannai, but the mountain god’s realm is another matter. It connects to Yamauchi. It concerns me if harm befalls the Yatagarasu, you see.”
Shiho blinked. “So… if the Yatagarasu need the ritual that I was kidnapped for… you’ll let the people of Sannai keep doing it? More girls will be sacrificed and killed?”
Junten looked uncomfortable. “It is somewhat unpleasant, but yes. Let me ask you in return: right now, do you have any way to stop it? What can you do to prevent more women from dying?” The smile that Junten gave her did not reach his eyes.
“The only reason that Sannai’s crimes haven’t been exposed is that the villagers are smart. They use orphans or outsiders so that no family ever comes looking. They find girls who won’t be missed and use them for their ritual. Even if you told the police, they’d find some way around whatever restriction was put on them. It will take time, but they are patient. There are records of this ritual going back generations upon generations.”
A pause. Junten sat down on the sofa that Shiho had vacated shortly before. He sank heavily into his seat. “The village is their base, but the villagers have connections. In business, certainly, and probably in law enforcement as well. And they might not need to be in Sannai to perform the ritual. They might be able to conduct it anywhere. There’s too much we don’t know.”
“So what?” Shiho asked. “We just let them get away with it?”
Nazukihiko gasped. “No. No, that’s not what we’re doing.”
“Then what?” Shiho asked. “How do we stop it?”
“You don’t need to do anything,” Nazukihiko said. “Everything I’ve been doing is for the purpose of ending this horrible ritual.”
“It is?” Junten asked.
“The Yatagarasu have decided on rebellion. At dawn tomorrow, we will kill the mountain god.”
The bottom fell out of Shiho’s stomach. She felt cold through. “What? Are you going to kill the mountain god? How?”
Nazukihiko shook his head. “You don’t need the details. The mountain god is called a god, but he does not behave as one. He is insane. He cannot be made sane or pacified. The only option left is to strike him down. You have no part in this, Shiho. We will send you home. From now on, don’t mention us to others. Pretend that none of this ever happened to you.”
***
Junten escorted the shocked Shiho into an empty bedroom. Then he returned to the living room and sat down next to Nazukihiko.
“This plan,” Junten said. “Isn’t it a little rushed? I thought the Yatagarasu were all about maintaining the status quo.”
Nazukihiko said nothing. He stared straight ahead.
Junten narrowed his eyes. “You’re favoring that arm. Are you hurt?”
Nazukihiko stiffened. He’d concealed his right hand in his robes this entire time. He slipped the hand out of his sleeve, revealing charred flesh, bone, and drying blood.
“That’s not an ordinary burn, is it?” Junten asked.
Nazukihiko shook his head. “No. It is the mountain god’s curse.” Five of his people were dead. The guard charged with defending him was horribly burned and hovered on the boundary between life and death.
“We Tengu have good medicine,” Junten said. “I will give you some.”
“I thank you for your concern, but this is a wound that cannot be healed with any medicine.”
“How can you be certain?”
“The last Golden Raven before me, Naritsuhiko, also received this curse.”
“You have his memories now?”
“Some of them.”
True Golden Ravens shared memories across generations. Unlike ordinary Yatagarasu, true Golden Ravens were born with special powers to help them govern Yamauchi. Nazukihiko’s predecessor had died far from home, his body unclaimed for a century. This interrupted the flow of shared memories to true Golden Ravens. Even now, Nazukihiko only had a handful of his direct predecessor’s memories. He couldn’t remember anything from the true Golden Ravens who lived before Naritsuhiko. The lack of memory transfer had led to Nazukihiko being rejected by his own people.
Nazukihiko had often wondered why Naritsuhiko had sealed the Forbidden Gate that connected Yamauchi to the realm of the mountain god. Now he understood things better. Naritsuhiko had died in an attempt to spare all Yatagarasu from death. The mountain god had been insane then, and things had only gotten worse.
“There is no time to waste,” Nazukihiko said. “This curse will kill me in time.”
Junten harrumphed. “Can’t anything be done to save you? Anything at all?”
“The curse progresses based on the mountain god’s emotions. It killed my predecessor. It will soon kill me. It’s inevitable. I can feel his anger.”
Steam rose from Nazukihiko’s wounded arm. The wound must be painful, but Nazukihiko didn’t show it.
Junten frowned. “I wondered why you were in such a hurry. I guess that explains it.”
“If we do not hurry, I will die for nothing. If we kill the mountain god, there is a chance that the curse will stop progressing.”
Reckless, Junten thought, though he didn’t say this aloud. He understood Nazukihiko’s desperation. Yamauchi had suffered frequent invasions by Kuisaru—monstrous, mutated monkeys who consumed human and Yatagarasu flesh to grow stronger. Those invasions had started a few years ago and were becoming more frequent. A great earthquake had forced the Forbidden Gate open. Kuisaru had poured through the gate, ready to attack the Yatagarasu.
Before the war could start, the mountain god had intervened.
“The Kuisaru are my divine messengers,” the mountain god had said. “They shall serve me, just as the Yatagarasu do.”
The mountain god didn’t care that the Kuisaru were eating Yatagarasu. To his mind, the Yatagarasu deserved it for sealing themselves off a century ago. He viewed Naritsuhiko’s actions as betrayal. Since Nazukihiko and Naritsuhiko shared part of a mind, the mountain god also viewed Nazukihiko as a traitor.
Nazukihiko thought that the mountain god had caused the earthquake. If he hadn’t done it, then the Kuisaru had. He couldn’t let things go on this way. His people were at war, but they had no way of fighting back against the mountain god’s edict and the Kuisaru’s savagery. He’d accepted servitude to the mountain god in a desperate bid to save his people.
The mountain god was clearly angry with the Yatagarasu. Nazukihiko had tried to appease him to no avail. His last option was to kill the mountain god. He knew that it was a dangerous, impossible idea, but there were no other options left to him.
“What happens when you kill the mountain god?” Junten asked. “Won’t that affect Yamauchi somehow?”
“It will. I don’t know how. But Yamauchi is already affected. There’s no other choice.”
Junten nodded slowly. Nazukihiko could take human form in this world because he was a true Golden Raven. Ordinary Yatagarasu couldn’t take human form in this world. If they tried to emigrate, they would all turn into ordinary ravens in the human world.
“The girl escaped, so we have no other options,” Nazukihiko said dully. “The mountain god said he would kill any Yatagarasu that dared defy him. I think it’s clear what we have to do.”
“What will you do about the Kuisaru?”
“My people can handle them. The Kuisaru are not gods. I’m not asking humans or Yatagarasu to commit deicide. I’ll do it myself. If I’m lucky, I’ll become the new mountain god. If I’m not…. who knows what will happen?”
“You were born with one foot in the realm of the gods,” Junten said. “I’m not asking you for wishful thinking. If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no work for tinkers. No. Tell me what you actually think is going to happen.”
Nazukihiko wasn’t a liar by nature. He didn’t lie now—not when Junten was staring at him like he was trying to pierce him through to his very soul.
“My people hope for me to become the next mountain god, but the truth is that I don’t know what will happen. I’m not holding anything back. If I do nothing, the Yatagarasu will be slaughtered, and I can’t accept that. I have to do this if I want the Yatagarasu to live. What that life will look like… I honestly have no idea.”
Junten nodded, quietly satisfied. Nazukihiko was right, and there was nothing left for him to say.
“Yatagarasu have always relied on the sun. We will kill the mountain god tomorrow at dawn.”
Translator's Notes
It is typical for Japanese families to share bathwater as a water conservation measure. Family members will shower and clean themselves separately prior to getting into the bath. It is less common for strangers to share bathwater, but Mr. Tanimura’s request would not be considered too strange by a Japanese guest.
In mythology, Yatagarasu serve Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun, and not the mountain god. This is reflected in their abilities. Ordinary Yatagarasu can only transform into ravens and back into human form during the day.
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