Foxfire (An Other Novel) (6 page)

“Be careful,” Tsuyoshi mutters, as he parks the car, “and don’t meet strangers in the eye.”

“Why?” I say. “Isn’t it safe around here?”

Tsuyoshi shakes his head. “Homeless people.” He unbuckles his seat belt and slides out. “
Bakemono
.”

Bakemono. Changed thing, as in yōkai who shapeshift, or those whose bodies were once human but are now supernaturally, irreversibly changed. The word has overtones of the monstrous—like the scary stories kids at the orphanage told, after the lights went out and they thought I couldn’t hear their whispers.

So are there are both homeless people and bakemono in the park? Or are the bakemono
homeless?

“There,” Tsuyoshi murmurs.

At the other end of the path, a stunted old man hobbles nearer, leaning on a blue umbrella like a walking stick. He’s wearing a muddy gray tracksuit and battered running shoes. His gray beard probably hasn’t seen a comb in ages. He keeps his gaze lowered politely as he passes us, or maybe he’s looking for fallen change.

“No,” Tsuyoshi whispers. “Not a bakemono. A man.”

I don’t bother pointing out that as shapeshifters, kitsune are bakemono too—even those myobu we’re going to see. Of course, myobu are too
respectable
to be monsters, and I suspect Tsuyoshi would smack me if I called them “bakemono” to their faces.

“Another one,” Tsuyoshi says.

“Where?” I whisper.

I’m getting a sick little thrill from spotting the homeless and worrying that they might be dangerous, might be Other. This time, it’s a woman squatting by a garbage can, picking through a take-out box of noodles with chopsticks. She’s wearing nothing but rags, and her long black hair curtains her face, hiding her features. A man jogs past, and she cranes her neck toward him in a fluid, boneless motion.

Tsuyoshi sucks in his breath. “Bakemono.”

“How can you tell?”

The woman answers my question when her neck snakes longer and longer, like silly putty, even while her body stays motionless. She arches her neck high over the jogger, keeping pace with him, as if she’s going to sink fangs into his back. What is she? The word dances around the edges of my memory. I swear Gwen just told me, that there was a picture of this particular yōkai in her textbook.

“
Rokurokubi
,
” Tsuyoshi whispers. “Long neck woman.”

The rokurokubi sighs and withdraws from the jogger, her neck retracting into itself. She spots us and blinks her doe eyes.

“
Ohayō gozaimasu
,” she says. Good morning.

I bow to her, just because it’s better to err on the side of polite.

The rokurokubi loops her neck toward Tsuyoshi to get a better look. “I am very hungry,” she says in English, her voice breathy. “I would love a bite to eat.”

Don’t rokurokubi prey on men? Or is that a myth?

Tsuyoshi stares the rokurokubi in the eye. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any food.”

The rokurokubi drifts close to me. “If you could spare a few yen … ”

Oh. Oh! She’s begging for change, that’s all. I dig out a five hundred yen coin from my pocket.

“Take this,” I tell the rokurokubi.

H
er body shuffles forward to meet her head, until her neck looks nearly normal. She cups her hands and I give her the coin. Our fingers brush for a second—her skin feels chapped from the cold, but nothing odd. Normal.

“
Arigatō gozaimasu
,” she says. Thank you very much. She shuffles away into the darkness, her head bowed, her hair swaying in the wind.

Tsuyoshi blows out his breath in a plume of white. “That was brave.”

God, I feel like such a jerk. Assuming she was going to mug us, or worse, just because she’s Other.

To my grandfather, I shrug. “It was the right thing to do.”

He arches his eyebrows but says nothing.

We wind along a road through the trees as sleepy birds chirp in the canopy. A woman jogs past us, her black ponytail bobbing, her running shoes crunching the snow. At a bend in the road, an iron fence opens to a moss-streaked stone
torii
, an arched gate marking the boundary between the mundane and the sacred. Beyond this torii, framed by its tall columns, rows of smaller torii—wooden, painted persimmon-red and black—stand in orderly ranks, guiding a path between their posts.

“Almost there,” Tsuyoshi says.

We pass through the torii, the stone steps beneath our feet worn by thousands before us. The vivid red of the gates looks stark against the frosted leaves of bamboo. The path ends at a shrine to Inari, its sweeping roof hung with white paper lanterns, red banners, and straw ropes—all the traditional Shinto trappings. A pair of snarling stone foxes, both wearing red bibs, stand guard on either side.

“Kitsune,” I say, the word a cloudy whisper.

Something white and delicate drifts before my face. I hold out my hand. Not a snowflake—a cherry blossom. An ancient, gnarled tree shades the shrine, laden with flowers.

A shiver crawls down my back, and not because of the cold.

Cherry blossoms,
sakura
, are cherished for the way they fall in their prime, a beautiful death, a reminder of mortality. To have an ever-blooming tree, with sakura untouched by winter—it makes the hair on my arms bristle. The air reeks of yōkai magic.

“Illusions,” I say. “The blossoms, maybe the entire tree.”

Someone coughs quietly.

Tsuyoshi dips into a low bow. I do the same, to be safe, and peek up through the fringes of my hair. Silk rustles like wind through leaves. Indigo, shot with gold, slithers along the flagstones—a kimono, worn by a woman. A twelve-layered kimono, exactly like those worn by court ladies a thousand years ago. Her eyes glitter like slivers of amber, and a sleek white tail peeks coyly from the folds of her garment. A jolt of recognition travels my spine. She smells, very faintly, of fox.

six

M
ay I help you?” she says, her voice silky.

Tsuyoshi slips a silver case from an inner jacket pocket, flips it open, and slides out a
meishi,
or
business card, with a calculated slickness that can come only from decades of practice. I know from Dad that Tsuyoshi only half-retired so he could keep the honorary title of Chairman and the prestigious meishi that go with it. The temple fox murmurs her thanks, then whips out a meishi of her own from her kimono.

Clearly they mean business.

I glance at the myobu’s meishi. It’s elegantly printed in gold on fine rice paper. Her name: Shizuka. Her rank: some Japanese I can’t entirely read, but I recognize the characters for
miko
, shrine maiden.

The two of them bow again, and then Tsuyoshi looks at me. His cheeks darken. “And this is my grandson, Octavian Kimura. I spoke of him earlier.”

Despite being a meishi-less embarrassment, I try a charming smile.

“Yes.” Shizuka blinks, her thick eyelashes like black wings. “Follow me.”

She glides beyond the Inari shrine and opens a small gate. Behind the gate, a narrow path winds through the bamboo. I follow close behind her, trying not to sniff the air, wondering if she can tell that I’m also a kitsune.

We reach a greenhouse topped by a high-arching glass dome. Shizuka unlocks the door and waves for us to enter before her. Inside, the air is the perfect temperature of a May morning, thick with the sweet scent of citrus leaves and the musk of earth. Shizuka slips off her shoes, and we do the same, moss squishing beneath our feet. A jade pool glimmers beneath the apex of the dome, shaded by an exquisitely gnarled lime tree no taller than I am, but likely five times as old.

“Please, sit.” Shizuka settles on a mossy boulder by the pool.

Tsuyoshi pinches his trousers at the knees and tugs them up as he sits on another boulder. His posture is ramrod straight, the briefcase still clutched in his hand, but his forehead is slightly creased, like this is improper somehow. I’m left with the floor itself.

Shizuka looks at me, her eyes half-closed. “Your mother or your father?”

“Excuse me?” I say.

“Who was human?” she says.

“His father.” Tsuyoshi says. “His mother was a nogitsune.”

“Ah.” Shizuka’s face remains calm, but in that one little word there’s a delicate touch of scorn. “May I see the papers?”

Tsuyoshi slips an envelope from his briefcase and hands it to Shizuka. When she opens the envelope, I glimpse the word “orphanage” clear across the front. Blood rushes into my face. My adoption papers. If this myobu wants to know my pedigree, she’s going to be disappointed. My parents didn’t leave much of a trace.

Shizuka squints as she reads. “Hokkaido. Few kitsune live there.”

I shrug. “I met one or two when I was young.”

She glances at me over the top of the paper. “Do you have any recollection of your mother’s name?”

“No.”

“Your father’s?”

“No. I never met him.”

This is sounding really bad, isn’t it? Poor little kit-fox Tavian, raised like a wild thing by a delinquent field fox mother who was crazy enough to live in the frigid north.

I keep my face carefully empty. “She promised to tell me her true name once I had one of my own.”

“I see.” Shizuka’s eyes glimmer brighter. “You are nameless.”

I press my fingernails into the palms of my hands. I don’t need her to tell me this is bad. Like faeries, kitsune guard their true names zealously. A true name unlocks a kitsune’s innermost power, and can be used to control the kitsune itself. That’s all I know, humiliatingly enough.

“Octavian,” she says, like she can tell my mind is wandering.

“Yes?”

“Watch.”

Shizuka flicks back the long sleeves of her kimono, all twelve layers, and dips her fingers into the jade pool. She lifts a fallen lime leaf, glossy with water, in the palm of her hand. With a sideways glance at me, she flexes her fingers ever so slightly. The leaf shimmers in her hand, its emerald color lightening to silver. A coin.

Tsuyoshi grunts appreciatively. “Beautiful.”

Beautiful? A simple illusion. Though I’d rather not tell them how my kitsune mother tricked vending machines, or how I copied her once I found out counterfeit coins could pay for street food, as long as I ran fast enough after the silver faded away.

“Now you,” Shizuka says.

She drops the coin into the pool, and it sinks for a second before bobbing back to the surface, a leaf once more. I fish out the leaf from the water and hold it in my hand.

I concentrate on the color of the leaf, imagining how the greenness will bleed away, baring gleaming silver. And the shape of the leaf … that will ripple like molten metal, reforming into a circle. One, two, three seconds pass. Sweat breaks out on my forehead. A little air hisses from between my lips, and at last the illusion takes hold.

Shizuka looks first at the coin, then at my face. “Fascinating.”

“It normally doesn’t take so long.” I toss the coin into the pool. The moment it’s no longer touching my skin, it returns to a leaf. “Illusions have been harder since … my sickness.” I assume Tsuyoshi already told her.

Shizuka studies my face, then reaches into the pool and pinches the water between her fingertips. She lifts the water, shaping it into a fine silver chain that sways and flashes. Not silver—the links
are
water. She drapes the chain over my hand, and I feel its cool slipperiness before it dissolves into a trickle of liquid a second later.

“Try that,” she says.

I nod, but my mouth fills with the metallic taste of fear. I’ve never even seen that before, and working with nothing but water looks impossible. What does she want to prove? That I’m a half-breed nogitsune upstart who can’t compete with her myobu talent?

I clench my jaw and dip my fingers into the pool. I focus on the water clinging to my skin, dripping into perfect tiny links … interlocking links … my chest tightens with pain. I glare at the pool, blood flaming in my face.

Damn it. I’m not this weak. I can do this.

Darkness edges my eyesight. My face goes cold as the blood drains away. My heartbeat flops inside my ribs and I slump, my limbs as limp as jellyfish tentacles.

“Octavian!” Tsuyoshi grips my shoulder.

Shizuka’s hand descends upon my wrist and warmth flashes through my skin. Slowly, my heartbeat returns to its normal rhythm.

“That is enough,” she says, her voice low.

I clench and unclench my jaw. “I know I could have done it, before … ”

“It is amazing,” she says with an arched eyebrow, “that you have managed to do so much with so little. You are a half-breed, and undoubtedly completely untrained.”

I guess that’s a compliment? “Thank you,” I say.

“Are you aware,” she says, “of how rare half-breed kitsune are?”

Tsuyoshi shakes his head. “We know of no others like Octavian.”

Shizuka folds her hands in her lap, her gaze downcast. “That is because the others are dead.”

A jolt of alarm gives my bones a bit more solidity. “Dead?”

“A human body is simply too weak to contain a kitsune’s power. A half-breed such as yourself lives on the brink between surviving and being consumed by the magic within.”

Consumed. When I close my eyes, I see maggots of electricity worming inside me. So I came all the way to Japan to get a diagnosis from temple fox, and it’s fatal. Fantastic.

You should not exist.

Tsuyoshi stares into the pool as if it holds the future. “But why now?”

“He has grown beyond the foxfire of a kit.”

I furrow my brow. “Foxfire? Do you mean the white balls of light?”

Shizuka’s smile bares sharp teeth. “One might consider those a manifestation of a kitsune’s magic. There is much to learn.”

I could let myself be insulted, but she’s right.

Shizuka stands, her kimono slithering itself straight around her. She clasps her hands demurely. “Unfortunately, we are out of time, and another visitor awaits me.”

Tsuyoshi climbs to his feet somewhat stiffly and clears his throat. “Thank you. We are most indebted to you and would greatly appreciate any future assistance.”

I unfold from my cross-legged position, wincing at my stiff muscles. Shizuka bows, and Tsuyoshi bows deeper in return. Is that it? We’re leaving? My grandfather glances at me, and I also bow, though perhaps not deeply enough to be polite.

“Excuse me for leaving,” Shizuka murmurs, “and take care.”

Take care? Take
care?
Maybe I’m losing my mind, but I see a gleam in the myobu’s eyes as she shows us to the greenhouse door.

And people think nogitsune are the evil ones.

I grit my teeth as I step out, determined to show no sign of weakness. You know what, I’m not even sure I believe her nice little theory about my kitsune magic eating away my human body. If half-breeds are so incredibly rare, how does she even know how they died? Maybe kitsune hardly ever have children with humans. Or they make such terrible mothers that their kits die off quickly enough to be forgotten.

Wow, aren’t we bitter?

Are you still a kitsune? Can you still change?

Did my kitsune mother know I was doomed? Is that why she left me?

I realize I’m walking alone. “Ojīsan?”

I glance back to see Tsuyoshi handing a small envelope to Shizuka with a bow. “A token of our appreciation.”

Shizuka smiles, her face sweet. “Thank you.”

Tsuyoshi returns to me, his expression betraying no-thing.

“A token of our appreciation?” I repeat.

“A gift,” he says, “for the restoration of the shrine.”

I glance at the perfectly trimmed shrubbery and spotlessly painted shrine buildings. Doesn’t look like this place needs much restoration, though I doubt Shizuka would turn up her nose at a check—which is vastly superior to the traditional offering of tofu decorated with a red maple leaf. Those twelve-layered kimonos aren’t cheap.

“Well, that was … interesting,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “That’s the first time I heard any of that about kitsune, half-breeds, and foxfire. I’m not sure what to think.”

Tsuyoshi thins his lips. “Do you doubt Shizuka?”

Did I sound that sarcastic?

“I would rather not believe that I’m going to drop dead.”

“This is serious,” he says, his voice cutting. “We need her help.”

“It didn’t seem like she wanted to help.” My throat clenches. “Or could.”

Tsuyoshi marches down the path. “We will see.”

Maybe he has more faith in his “gift” than I do.

Tourists and visitors cluster around the shrine to Inari, chatting, laughing, and posing for photos by the kitsune statues—for luck. If only they knew who walked between them, dragging misfortune behind him like a tangle of dark seaweed pulling him down.

We return to the condo at noon, to the sound of laughter in the kitchen—Gwen and Michiko. Gwen is red-faced, her curls tamed into a ponytail, and wearing a too-small apron. Michiko stands beside her, guiding the wicked knife in Gwen’s hand. Chopped veggies sit in neat heaps on the granite counter.

“Tavian!” Gwen says, glancing up.

“Watch your fingers,” Michiko says.

Gwen’s face gets even redder, and she sets down the knife before looking back up at me. “We’re making
bento
. Aren’t they cute?” She holds out a lacquered lunchbox.

I’m mildly horrified that Gwen is showing such an interest in making adorable pandas out of sticky rice and seaweed, nestled in a forest of broccoli trees. Back home, her idea of cooking encompassed sandwiches and boxed mac and cheese. Japan is definitely corrupting her, making her more girly-girl. Not that it’s a bad thing.

When I don’t smile big enough, Gwen’s eyes narrow. “What happened? What did the myobu tell you?”

Tsuyoshi clears his throat. “It was helpful.”

Michiko looks at her husband, and he nods slightly. She purses her lips. I have no idea what they just communicated.

“Lunch is nearly ready,” Michiko says.

Tsuyoshi and I both wash our hands, then wait at the table. I plaster a hopeful, happy smile on my face for Gwen’s benefit, though I have a suspicion it looks more like the death grin of a cadaver.

Gwen sits beside me. “You okay?” she whispers.

I nod.

Michiko sets bento boxes in front of each of us, then takes her place at the table. I get the cute pandas Gwen made; Tsuyoshi chuckles at the smiley boiled eggs in his bento. We eat in silence. Try as I might, my tongue can’t taste any of the food, but I pretend it’s delicious. What a waste.

Afterward, Gwen drags me to my bedroom.

“All right,” she says, shutting the door halfway. “Tell me.”

I stand by the window, open my mouth, and shut it again. I roll back my shoulders to stretch my spine, then sit cross-legged on the floor. There’s a tiny hole in the bottom of my sock, and I poke at it.

“What do you want to know?” I say in a low voice.

“Everything.”

Well, shit. I have to talk now, don’t I?