Foxfire (An Other Novel) (20 page)

After a small eternity, I whisper, “Yukimi?”

She says nothing.

I know she can’t hear me, but I say it anyway. “I’m sorry, too.”

Gwen flutters from the curtain and lands on my cheek like a soft kiss. I close my eyes, sinking toward unconsciousness.

Blood red leaves drip into frostbitten air. Brittle grass crunches beneath my feet. I walk along a gravel path lined with wild chrysanthemums—white chrysanthemums, for the dead.

The trees hiss in my ears.
What is your name
?

“Tavian,” I say.

What is your name?

I try again. “Octavian Kimura.”

Your name? Your name? Your name?

My ears ache from all this echoing, and I cover them with my hands. There’s something wrong with this forest … it feels empty, when I know there should be someone here.

“Where are you?” I call.

A gust of leaves swirls through the trees and coalesces into the shape of Shizuka in a crimson kimono. She glides to me, her eyes glowing amber, the wind stirring the fur of her tail.

“You are not ready,” she says.

I shake my head. “I am.”

“You should not be here.”

Frowning, I advance on her and touch her arm. It crumbles into leaves, and Shizuka disappears into the wind. I back away, staring at my hands, not knowing what I did wrong.

Farther into the trees, I hear a familiar man’s voice.

“Where is it?”

I push deeper into the forest, my footsteps nearly silent.

“Nowhere,” a woman says. Yukimi.

Ahead, a thicket of dry grass sways in the wind, taller than my head. I drop down and press myself low to the ground. Beyond the crosshatching of grass, ragged black hair flies in the wind. I crawl nearer on my hands and knees, my hands crunching dead leaves.

Yukimi and Akira stand opposite each other. Her face looks creased by exhaustion—but not the permanent creases of age, and no white streaks her hair. He wears a mud-flecked suit and his shoulders sag with fatigue, but his black-eyed stare never leaves her eyes.

“I know you hid it,” Akira says, his voice taut. “It. A boy or a girl?”

Yukimi stares at him with a perfectly blank face. “A boy.”

“Let me see him.”

“No.”

Akira lunges toward her, and in one swift motion grabs her wrists. “You can’t hide him from me forever. You thought you could come here to Hokkaido, and I wouldn’t follow—”

“I knew you would follow,” she says calmly. “Let go of me.”

“Tell me where you’ve hidden him. Yukimi, it’s freezing out here. You can’t leave a little baby outside in this weather.”

“Let go of me.” Her eyes glisten. “You’re hurting me.”

Akira’s grip tightens around her wrists. “No.”

Her eyes flash orange, and she clenches her hands. White light seeps between her fingers. Foxfire.

“Stop.” He shakes her so hard her head jerks back. “Not on me.”

“I will,” she says through fangs, “unless you
let go of me
.”

Slowly, deliberately, Akira peels his fingers from her wrists. Even from here, I can see the red marks on her skin. My heartbeat pounds in my ears, and I feel the urge to hurt him.

“I know he’s here. I know my son is here.” Akira’s voice cracks.

“You want to take him back to Tokyo,” Yukimi says, and it isn’t a question. “Back to Zenjiro.”

“Zenjiro is his grandfather,” Akira says. “He will be safe with his family.”

“And I’m not his family?” she says, a mild expression on her face.

Akira’s nostrils flare. “You aren’t fit to be a mother.”

“And you’re fit to be a father?” She laughs, harshly. “Delusional.”

He slaps her, knocking her head to the side. “Don’t mock me.”

Wind blows Yukimi’s hair slantwise across her face, hiding her expression. “I wish things didn’t have to end this way, Akira. I wish you could remember how we used to be together.”

“Where is he?” He steps so close they almost touch.

“I will never tell you,” she says.

Akira’s face twists into something ugly, and he lunges. She seizes him in an embrace, her lips meeting his, and kisses him so fiercely he freezes in his tracks. Tension dissolves from the muscles in his shoulders, and he leans into her arms—slumps into her arms.

Yukimi steps to the side, and Akira falls to his knees.

My breath snags in my throat. I creep nearer to see what happened—but Yukimi’s eyes glitter with wildness, and I don’t want to get too close to her, or the bloody blade in her hand.

Akira speaks in a strangled voice. “You … bitch.”

She looks down at him. “Don’t let those be your last words.”

He falls onto his side, then rolls onto his back, clutching the wound between his ribs. Tears slide from his eyes and cling to the curve of his jaw before dropping onto the leaves.

“You … ” He gasps. “You broke my heart.”

“I know,” she says.

Akira tries to reply, but he coughs, blood bubbling from the corner of his mouth. He’s shuddering violently now.

Yukimi kneels beside him. “I loved you,” she says, “Akira.”

He reaches for her, his fingers bloody, and she slides her fingers into his and holds his hand until his arm falls, limp, beside his side—and he must be gone, because he’s not blinking anymore. She sits beside him, silent tears creeping down her face.

“Goodbye,” she whispers.

Then, with her hands still covered in his blood, she climbs to her feet and walks into the grass. I stalk after her, my heart beating so fast I’m not sure it’s beating at all. Yukimi crouches over a thin rivulet of a stream and washes the blood from her hands.

There’s a whimper in the grass.

She bends, paws away a tangle of leaves, and picks up a tiny gray-furred kit too small to open its eyes. It paws blindly at the air, squirming, and she holds it close to her breast.

“We’re safe now.” She kisses the kit. “Kogitsune.”

A choked cry escapes my throat.

Yukimi looks up, and I scramble away backwards.

I can’t let her see me. I can’t let her know what I’ve seen. That I know the truth. That she killed my father.

twenty

Y
ou’re unusually quiet,” Yukimi says.

It’s half past six. We’re sitting in the dining car of the Hokutosei, eating a breakfast of omelets and fish.

I shrug and take another chopstick-full of food. “Nervous.”

“Understandable.” Yukimi dabs her mouth with a napkin.

My stomach feels like worms have taken up residence. I’m not the least bit hungry. I stare out the window. Tokyo was getting a little salt-shaker snow, but Hokkaido is blanketed in white.

Hokkaido. A thrill zips down my spine.

I’m finally back in my childhood home. Although that phrase sounds much too cozy and nostalgic for the way I feel about it.

“We’re getting off at Mori,” Yukimi says. “Do you remember Mori?”

I shrug. “Probably. Where are we going from there?”

“Into the forest.”

Do Akira’s bones lie buried in the forest of her dream, mingled with twisted old tree roots in the dirt?

I shudder, then lower my voice. “How’s your leg?”

Her face closes off again, like I knew it would. “Not now.”

We finish our breakfast in silence.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Yukimi says.

I perk up. “They have showers?”

“You needed to make a reservation last night.”

“Oh.” I poke at my omelet some more. “Okay.”

Yukimi sighs. “But you can have my reservation.”

I meet her eyes for the tiniest of glances. “Thank you.”

When I head into the shower with a borrowed towel, I make sure to hide the little moth on the towel’s underside. I lock the door to the changing room and start pulling off my clothes.

“The door’s locked,” I say.

The moth shivers, beating its wings rapidly, then flutters to the floor. It grows and grows into a giant moth, then blinks into the shape of a human—Gwen. She gasps and climbs to her feet.

“That was
bizarre
, Tavian,” she says.

“Not too loud,” I say in a low voice.

“I don’t think I’ve ever shapeshifted for so long,” she whispers. “My brain was starting to get all mothy.”

I nod. It’s distracting to stand so close to her in such a tiny space. She’s totally naked, of course, and brushing against me in a way that would be more than welcome at any other time.

“We’re getting off the train soon,” I say. “At Mori.”

“What’s in Mori?”

I stare at the pattern of tiles on the floor. “My father’s grave.”

“That’s not what I—Tavian, are you okay?”

I shuck off the rest of my clothes, then step into the shower and hit the button for hot water. Eyes closed, I tilt my face toward the spray and let it wash away the tears I know must be on my face.

Gwen slips in after me and hugs me.

“She killed him,” I whisper. “My mother killed my father.”

“How do you know?” Gwen’s voice sounds odd, like she’s already suspected this, or thinks it’s obvious.

“I slipped into her dream last night.”

She withdraws from me and smoothes her wet hair from her face. “So you aren’t sure if it was a memory.”

I scrub my face, hard. “It has to be.”

“Well.” Gwen takes a deep breath. “You’ll have to ask her yourself.”

She looks so miserable for me that I draw her into a tight embrace. I bury my face in her wet curls and concentrate on the realness of her skin against mine. She sighs, and I kiss her neck, her cheek, her lips. We stand together, wordless, beneath the water.

And it’s almost a moment where I can forget.

I recognize the trees, even beneath their draperies of snow. And even if I didn’t, the look of deep-buried sorrow in Yukimi’s eyes would betray her. She walks by my side, limping through the snow.

“We’re almost there,” she says.

Above us, a crow glides over the frosted trees. Gwen managed to shapeshift again after eating smuggled food, though I’m still amazed at her endurance. Myself, I feel like lying down.

Yukimi’s nostrils flare. She sniffs the wind, circles beneath the bare-branched trees. I could tell her that yes, this looks like the place in her dream. But I don’t have the guts to do it.

“Here,” she says.

“The ground is frozen,” I say, stalling for time. “Obviously.”

“And obviously, I brought a shovel and a strong young man with me.”

I narrow my eyes. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Yukimi laughs, and I’ve never heard a more empty laugh. She drops to her knees and starts pawing the snow away with her bare hands, even though it must be at least three feet deep. I sigh and kneel beside her, scooping handfuls of snow out of the way.

My fingernails scrape dirt, and I stop digging. “Yukimi?”

She slings her backpack off, grabs a small shovel, and attacks the frozen earth. Acid rises in my throat. I can’t look, I won’t look—a crow caws hoarsely above me. I glance up, and I see a black comet streaking against the overwhelming whiteness. Gwen? She lands with a thump in the snow and struts toward me in that jerky sort of crow walk.

“What does she want?” Yukimi says.

“She?” I stare at her. “You know—?”

“It was obvious. She said she was a shapeshifter. And that crow doesn’t smell like an ordinary crow.”

Well, obviously my sense of smell isn’t that good.

Gwen nips at my sleeve and tugs. I frown, and she hops back and shapeshifts. She huddles there naked, nothing left of her crow body except the imprint of her wings in the snow.

“Tavian,” she says, her teeth chattering. “The inugami.”

Yukimi straightens, the shovel clenched in her hand. “Where?”

“I saw them coming.” Gwen hugs herself tight. “A pack of dogs.”

I peel off my jacket and hand it to Gwen. “Here.”

She shakes her head. “I’m changing back.” Squeezing her eyes shut, she shrinks into the black body of the crow again. She pumps her wings, whirling snow around her, and takes flight. In a few minutes, she’s gone again.

“We have to get out of here,” I say to Yukimi.

“Wait.” Yukimi bends over the ground—the grave—again. “Almost.”

I swallow back the returning acid in my throat. I walk away from her and stand near a tree, scanning the snow for any sign of the advancing inugami. Wind whisks clouds away from the face of the sun, and the diamond glittering of the snow dazzles me.

“Tavian!”

I turn and see Yukimi kicking clods of frozen dirt and snow back onto the shallow grave. I hurry to help her. I’m not going to leave my father’s bones out in the open for animals to gnaw on. No matter what kind of man he was. Was that a bone under my foot? I recoil with instinctive revulsion, before I can stop myself.

“You can go,” Yukimi says. “Leave here while I distract them.”

I meet her gaze. Sunlight shines sideways through her amber eyes.

“Forget it,” I say. “I don’t abandon people in the snow.”

“I can’t run quickly like this,” she says, “and you can’t create any illusions like that. You go. I’ll stay.”

I smooth the last of the snow over the grave, my hands numb. “No.”

Yukimi growls. “I didn’t do this just so those dogs could get you.”

“Neither did I.”

In the distance, cawing ricochets off the trees.

“They’re coming.” I grab Yukimi’s arm and drag her after me. “Run!”

We struggle through the deep snow, our feet sinking deep, our breath clouding the air. Both of us are weak, like foxes who have run far too long already. But the dogs are coming.

“Let me stay,” she says.

“I know why you want to stay,” I say, my tone mocking, my throat tight. “You think everything will be better if you make your last stand by Akira’s grave and die where he did.”

She twists her hand from my grasp, her fangs bared. “That isn’t true.”

She’s angry. Good. That will goad her into going faster.

“Then let’s get out of here,” I say.

A chorus of baying and barking rises above the trees. The sound injects adrenaline straight into my blood, and I break into a sprint. Yukimi keeps pace, but she’s limping badly now.

“Wait,” she gasps.

I turn back to see Yukimi bending double. In the forest ahead, the first of the inugami burst into the open. Katashi. His breath steams the frigid air; his tongue lolls from his mouth like he’s craving another taste of Yukimi’s blood. Yukimi grabs fistfuls of snow. Inky darkness seeps from her fingers into it. She tosses the black snow high into the air, and it blurs into a twisting thicket of brambles that hits the ground and grows into a wall of thorns impossible to run through.

Yukimi smiles thinly, her lips white. “Now we run.”

We plunge onward while the dogs yelp and bark behind the brambles. I wonder how long the illusion will hold. I’m panting hard, my lungs and legs burning. We dart down a ravine, and I skid and fall. The barking sounds distant now, so I sit for a second to catch my breath. Yukimi drops down next to me, clutching her wounded leg.

Blood seeps through her jeans and stains her hand.

“We need to hide,” I say. “Maybe as foxes—”

“No,” she says. “It’s too dangerous for you.”

“I can’t keep running.”

Yukimi exhales in a puff of white. She reaches into the pocket of her jacket and hands me a scrap of white fabric knotted around a small, hard object—a bone. One of Akira’s finger bones.

My mouth instantly turns sandstone dry. “Why are you—?”

“Shhh.” She takes a switchblade from her belt, rolls up her sleeve, and slides the blade along her arm. “Damn it, where did I put that?” Bleeding, she fumbles in her jacket pocket.

“We can do this later,” I say, my voice unsteady.

She shakes her head, then pulls out a tiny bottle and lets her blood drip inside. “You need this now.”

“But—”

Yukimi presses the bottle into my hands. “Don’t lose this.”

She’s leaving me. Again.

“No.” My voice cracks. “You can’t.”

“I have to.” She sighs. “And I have to tell you … ”

That she killed Akira. But I already know.

Yukimi slips her hand behind my head and draws me closer, her breath hot in my ear. “My name is Kazahana.”

My heart stops beating for a moment.

And then she’s withdrawing from me, shedding her clothes and the last shreds of her humanity, disappearing into the shape of a fox. She comes to me, not limping so badly on four legs, and licks one of the tears from my face. Then she bounds into the forest.

Straight toward the inugami.

“Wait!” I say.

Yukimi runs as if she doesn’t hear me. I scramble after her, but she’s a red streak across the snow. I’m losing her.

“Okāsan!” I shout.

She doesn’t stop.

I run, stumble, climb to my feet again. My throat’s so tight it’s choking me. Between the trees ahead, I see Katashi and Ushio and the rest of the dogs swerve in their tracks. They circle around the fox, trap her, fling themselves on her and drive her down.

A root sends me sprawling. I strain to lift my head.

I can’t see her anymore. I can only see the dogs, and bloody snow.

I struggle to my feet and start limping forward. A black horse gallops from the trees. Gwen.

“They have Yukimi,” I say. “We have to help her.”

Gwen shakes her head, then tosses her mane and trots to me. She nudges me with her nose, away from the inugami and the blood. I try to sidestep, but she fixes me with a stare from her golden eyes, like a true pooka.
Ride
.

The fight slips from my muscles, and I climb onto her back, clinging to her with fistfuls of mane.

I look back. All I see is a little scrap of red on the snow.

On the last night of the year, I stand silently in a secret temple room while all of Tokyo celebrates Shōgatsu. I want to be out there with my grandparents and Gwen, listening for the temple bells, eating mochi and sipping tea together, but of course I can’t. Instead I stand here, wearing a coarse cotton robe, and watch as Shizuka grinds my father’s bone to dust. The silver embroidery on her smoke-gray kimono shimmers by the light of the candles. She purses her lips.

“Is it going to work?” I say.

Shizuka nods, and pours the bone-dust into a bowl of polished granite on the table. She trickles my mother’s blood over the bone, then whispers a few words too old for me to understand.