A Mortal Song (8 page)

Research
. My thoughts tripped back to the Nagamotos’ house, the computer in the living room where I’d watched Mr. Nagamoto look up potential clients, and his son and daughter run searches for school projects. So much information appearing like magic with a press of a button, about anything they might want to know. Or anyone.

Chiyo was beckoning me. “Do you have a computer?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “Why?”

“There’s something
we
need to research.” Our lives might depend on finding out just who this Omori was—if we even could.

T
he walls
of Chiyo’s bedroom were painted the same lavender hue as her hair and plastered with posters of young men and women in garish clothing making exaggerated expressions. Chiyo pushed open the door to her closet and contemplated its contents.

“Let’s get your fashion situation sorted out first,” she said. “You’re taller than me, but I think these pants or these shorts should work. You pick.” She held up a pair of jean shorts with shredded hems and white calf-length capris.

I pulled my gaze away from the small computer on the desk beside her bed, curling my fingers around my robe’s sleeves. I
did
need to change, but her offerings seemed a poor substitute. “I’d like to keep this too,” I said.

“Well, yeah,” Chiyo said. “I’m not going to steal your clothes! Not really my style anyway.”

I studied her as I pointed to the white pants. Her ki was glowing freely again, her eyes sparkling. How could she seem so happy after everything we’d told her?

Then I thought of Ayame, who could find something to fret over even when all was right in the world. Of Mother, whose cool-headedness never faltered. Maybe it was Chiyo’s nature to be cheerful and confident no matter how dire life got.

Besides, she was hardly getting the worse end of this deal.

“And this shirt should be good—it’s too long on me, really,” she said, handing me a loose cotton blouse. “It’ll look great with your hair—I wish mine would stay that straight when I grow it long.” She fluffed the waves of her ponytails.

The shirt was the same shade of green as the leaves on the cherry trees that bloomed by the entrance to the palace. A rush of homesickness filled my chest.
I’ll trade you
, I wanted to say.
My hair for your everything else.

Instead, I squeezed into the tiny bathroom in the hall, bumping my elbows against the sink and the wall as I untied the robe’s sash and squirmed out of the layers of silk. Midori fluttered over me as I folded them quickly and tugged on Chiyo’s clothes. The pants had pockets at the hips that I shoved my remaining ofuda into. The fabric hugged my legs, and I could only imagine how tight the pants were on Chiyo’s curvier figure. I slung my flute case back over my shoulder and wiggled the narrow sheath of Takeo’s short sword through one of the belt loops. The weapon felt unwieldy now that I knew the charms made much more effective weapons, but we might run into creatures other than ghosts—like those ogres in the woods.

Like the demon. Omori.

Changing had rumpled my hair—the smooth, straight hair Chiyo had admired. I turned away, running my fingers through it and pushing open the door. My parents had called me beautiful on my birthday, but that must have been the glamor of the mountain’s ki, the dress, and Ayame’s makeup. The girl I’d glimpsed in the mirror now looked completely ordinary.

When Midori and I hurried back into Chiyo’s bedroom, I found she’d changed as well, from her school uniform into a yellow tank top and flower-print shorts. She was standing by the window, clutching the cord for the shade.

“Look!” she whispered, waving me over.

My heart started to thud. Had we been found out already? I joined her at the window, but I didn’t understand what she’d wanted me to see. The sidewalks and road were still and empty. Then a shiver of movement near the end of the block caught my gaze.

A funnel of wind, slim as a tree trunk and nearly as tall, was whirling beside one of the telephone poles. It veered away, zigzagging across the street, carrying dust and leaves and crumpled wrappers with it. They whipped around and around, so fast they blurred before my eyes.

“I was just going to close the shade, and I saw it,” Chiyo said. “Is that... dangerous?” She sounded more curious than scared.

“I don’t think so,” I said. Nothing about it looked magical, but it wasn’t exactly natural either. A chill crept over my skin. The troubles were already beginning. “One of our duties is to oversee the weather,” I went on. “A lot of kami were visiting the palace when the demon attacked—and now they’re trapped there, unable to fulfill their usual responsibilities. Some of them would have worked with the wind. There aren’t enough kami still free to keep control over it.”

“So the wind is getting a little wild?” Chiyo said, and I nodded. “I guess it’s not so bad.”

“It’ll get worse, not better, if we don’t rescue the mountain,” I said.

“Can you stop it?” Chiyo asked, lifting her chin toward the funnel, and I thought I heard a faint pleading note under her good cheer. She believed I was kami too. We hadn’t told her otherwise, and Midori’s lent ki would be giving me a glow that was more than human. I didn’t see any point in complicating matters by revealing I’d lied to the Ikedas.

Maybe, with Midori, I had enough power to calm the whirlwind. I just wasn’t sure how to. Because Mother and Father had been waiting for Chiyo to come, so they could teach
her
.

I drew in a breath, groping for an excuse, and outside the window the whirlwind shuddered and scattered. “Wow!” Chiyo said with a laugh. “You didn’t even move.”

It hadn’t been me, just the randomness of the wind. She should have been able to sense that—but at the same time I was desperately glad for that flash of admiration. My stomach knotted.

I scanned the street once more. “Are the ghosts you talked about really looking for us?” Chiyo asked. Her back tensed. “You don’t think, if they realized we’re here— Would they hurt Mom and Dad?”

“They shouldn’t know anything about you,” I told her. “As long as we stay where no one can happen to see you, we’ll all be fine.” We had no reason to believe that Omori had sent his ghosts here—but not knowing what his plans were, we had no reason to assume he hadn’t. The others we’d run into had been patrolling far from Mt. Fuji.

“The computer,” I said, leaving the window. “Let’s see what we can find out.”

Chiyo plopped down at her desk. “Okay,” she said. “What are we looking for?”

I sat down on the edge of her bed where I could see the screen. “Omori,” I said. “We think that’s the name of the demon.”

“Oooh,” Chiyo said in a spooky tone and typed in the name and the characters for “demon.” She scrolled through the results, clicking open a few windows. “Hmmm. It looks like there was some warrior guy named Omori got tricked by a lady demon, way back. Do you think that’s related?”

“I don’t know.” It didn’t make sense for a man who’d fought demons to now be helping one, but I supposed we couldn’t know for sure. “Can you print that information off?”

Chiyo nodded, and the printer beneath the desk hummed. She flipped through several more pages of results and pursed her lips. “It’s all just that one story.”

“Try looking for just ‘Omori’?” I suggested.

Her fingers clattered over the keys, and a new list of results sprang up. “Hmmm,” she said, “Omori station, another Omori station, some company named Omori... Hey! Check out this guy named Omori here in Tokyo—he’s a businessman, some big exec. And look at this!”

She pushed away from the computer so I had a better view of the window she’d opened. It held a grainy photograph of a slender middle-aged man with short dark hair, shaking hands with an older man in a formal robe. The caption read,
Kenta Omori greets Yamaguchi boss Ryo Shimura.

“What’s Yamaguchi?” I asked.

“Oh, right, I guess you wouldn’t know,” Chiyo said. “They’re yakuza—criminal underworld people? Gangsters. Dragon tattoos and chopped-off fingers. Yamaguchi’s one of the top gangs. I wonder if this Omori guy was mixed up with them.”

“One of the ghosts we encountered was missing part of his finger,” I said, leaning against the bedpost to peer at the screen. I’d seen a tattoo on that other one’s back too. “What else can you find about Kenta Omori?”

Chiyo followed a few more links, skimming the articles. “Yikes!” she said. “He was murdered. Shot. Four years ago. If that’s how he went, I bet he
was
yakuza. They’re not giving many details—the newspapers are really cautious talking about the gangs... Hey, here’s a better picture.”

The photograph she’d found showed a younger version of the same man. He was just as slender, his hair trimmed as neatly, but his mouth was curved in a broad smile I wouldn’t have imagined him making after seeing the first picture. He stood with a relaxed confidence, as if he knew he was going to get things done and no one could change that. It was a few seconds before I could tear my eyes from his face to look at the other people in the picture.

Kenta Omori had one arm around the waist of a woman I assumed was his wife. She looked delicate and graceful in her demure suit, her expression shy but pleased. She cradled an infant in a frilly dress against her chest. Another child, a little boy, grinned where he stood at his father’s side.

I stared at them. Could our demon really have once been this man? But if he’d been involved with the gangs Chiyo had talked about, he’d been a criminal too—maybe become one after this picture was taken. The characteristics of the ghosts I’d noticed might be a coincidence, or he might be recruiting his former colleagues from among the dead.

“Chiyo!” Mrs. Ikeda’s voice carried from downstairs. “Dinner is ready.”

“We can’t know for sure who we’re dealing with yet,” I said quickly. “Let’s print off some articles about him too.” I could scour them for more clues later, and we could show what we’d found to Sage Rin.

Chiyo tapped a few keys. “I wouldn’t have thought kami would know much about computers,” she remarked.

“We keep an eye on humans,” I said, thinking of Mr. Nagamoto again. Of magma surging down the mountain toward his little house, if we didn’t make it back in time.

Paper emerged from the printer, heavy with ink. Chiyo passed the pages to me. Kenta Omori’s amused face smiled up at me for an instant before I folded it away and slid it into my pocket.

* * *

I
might have wanted
to skip dinner and rush straight into training if my human body hadn’t betrayed me. Even with Midori perched in my hair, when we reached the dining table and the smells of rice and fried pork wafted over me, a stab of hunger cut through my belly. I hadn’t eaten since the plum that morning, but obviously now, away from the mountain, my body needed much more sustenance than I was used to. I had to take some of the burden off of Midori. My hands trembled as I waited for the others to assemble so we could start the meal.

I’d eaten feasts at the palace, but no food had ever tasted as rich as that simple dinner. In spite of the screaming of my stomach, I forced myself to chew slowly, to reach my chopsticks toward each new bite gingerly, so as not to give myself away. Still it seemed the pork cutlets, rice, and miso soup disappeared far too fast. To my immense gratitude, Mrs. Ikeda was determined to prove how welcoming she could be. She brought out salad and fish cakes and pickled vegetables. Keiji returned, wearing a blue T-shirt and brown cargo pants in place of his school uniform and carrying a bulging messenger bag, in time to take part in the small dessert of strawberry ice cream. As I swallowed the last spoonful, my hunger finally retreated.

After he’d helped clear the table, Mr. Ikeda turned to Takeo.

“Can you spare us just a few minutes more with Chiyo?” he asked. Takeo nodded briefly, and the older man turned to his adoptive daughter. “Would you play for our guests, just a song or two?” he said. “It’d be nice to hear you one more time before you go.”

Chiyo flopped down on the couch. “It’s probably my last night here. I’m not going to spend it showing how badly I can mangle the piano keys. That’d be painful for everyone.”

His face fell, and an impulse to make it brighten, to do what she wouldn’t, lit inside me. A little music would raise our spirits before we began the evening’s work. I lifted my flute case.

“I can play something, if you’d like to hear one of the songs from the mountain.”

“Yeah, let’s hear what kami music sounds like!” Chiyo said. I opened the case, and when I raised my head, the instrument in my hands, everyone had crowded into the living room around Chiyo: the Ikedas, Keiji, Takeo. They were all watching me.

I hesitated. Then Takeo smiled. He looked almost like a stranger in the buttoned shirt and linen slacks Chiyo’s father had lent him, but he’d kept his ceremonial belt around his waist and his bow and quiver at his shoulder, and I’d have known that smile anywhere. My fingers found the holes in the polished bamboo as if they belonged there. I brought the flute to my lips.

I meant to play one of the joyful tunes we would have danced to during my birthday celebration. But as I inhaled deep into my lungs, my fingers changed my mind for me. They slipped into the low, gentle melody of the first song I’d learned as a child.

It was the song Mother used to sing to me when I was young and too restless to fall asleep, and it had always soothed me then. Now, the notes floating out into the air sounded only sad. A soft lilting sorrow that swelled inside me and spilled on my breath into the flute. I thought of Mother sitting beside my bed. Of Father, beaming as he handed me this birthday present. And suddenly the sadness was welling up in my eyes, catching in my throat.