Storm (10 page)

“But...it didn’t work, did it?”

Amaterasu shook her head sadly, lifting her hand to hold the Magatama tightly. “He became angry with Ukemochi for serving him dirty food from the earth instead of preparing nectar from the High Plains of Heaven. And so he murdered her, another
kami
. Our kin.” Her eyes closed, tears brimming in the corners. “I knew then how dangerous he had become.”

I thought of Jun on the tatami, sword by his side. “And so Susanou killed him.”

Amaterasu opened her eyes, gleaming like the sun. “No, child. I did.”

The thought of it made me dizzy, made the dream break into bleached-out fragments. I willed myself not to wake up. Not yet. “I don’t understand.”

“He trusted me,” Amaterasu said. “He loved me. I was the only one who could get close enough to do it. I betrayed him, Katie, to save the world.”

I struggled to stay asleep. I could feel myself lifting, rousing to the real world. “You said I would betray Tomo. Is that what you meant?”

“The mirror shows the truth,” she said. “The jewel bears the marks. The sword saves all. These three, the Sanshu no Jingi, will mark the way.”

“But Tomo isn’t Tsukiyomi,” I stammered. “We only need to keep the ink in him dormant. He doesn’t think the world is rotting, Jun does.” The sun beamed above us, the bamboo lighting in brilliant flames of white-green.

“Takahashi Jun must be stopped,” she agreed, placing the Magatama in my hands. The smooth surface felt cold against my skin. “The treasures will bring Susanou’s fate to him. Susanou’s descendants were never meant to rule. Nor were Tsukiyomi’s.”

“But Tomo doesn’t want that. He’s not like that.”

“A monster on a leash is still a monster,” Amaterasu said, her voice echoing with the sound of other voices rising on the wind. “You must kill him, before he remembers himself. Before it is too late and he hungers again. Betray him. Kill him.”

“No!” I shouted to the voices, and the light burst around me, the morning sun beaming through my bedroom window.

* * *

I remembered the dream so clearly. It didn’t fade, no matter how many other things I threw myself into. Other dreams became hazy, full of confused feelings or remembrances, but not this one. I remembered it too clearly.

In class, Suzuki-sensei wrote math problem after math problem on the board, but I found myself scribbling the three treasures in the margins of my notebook. The mirror shows the truth, she’d said. The jewel bears the marks. The sword saves all. The Sanshu no Jingi will mark the way. If it was hopeless, why did Amaterasu give the treasures to Jimmu? All this time, the ancestors of Tsukiyomi had survived. I mean, some of them had met terrible ends, but they hadn’t died as teenagers. They hadn’t destroyed the world.

Maybe the mirror, the sword and the jewel could have some kind of effect. I looked at my sketches, wondering if I needed to cross them out. I carefully ran my finger along the sword in case it was sharp, but it was only smooth, cool paper. But the mirror worked; I looked into it, and a tiny piece of my eye looked back. I held my pen tip over the mirror, watching it reflected in black and white on the page. Creepy. I scribbled out the mirror, drowning it in ink.

My phone buzzed deep within my book bag. I looked around, making sure no one had heard it. Yuki had, but she rolled her eyes. Suzuki-sensei was still lost in the problems he was copying from his paper onto the board, his shirtsleeves dusted with yellow chalk. I lifted the phone carefully out of my bag; it buzzed again in my hand.

Suzuki-sensei heard it this time, and turned around. I crammed the phone under my notebook, praying he wouldn’t see.

“Sorry, Sensei,” Tanaka said, and Suzuki stopped scanning the room, focusing on him instead. “I’m expecting a call from my parents.”

“It can wait until break, Tanaka,” Suzuki said.

“Yes, sir,” Tanaka said. He reached into his book bag and pulled out his white phone, which he turned off with a great show. Suzuki turned back to the board, satisfied.

I let out a shaky breath while Tanaka turned and winked at me. I winked back—I had the best friends ever. I reminded myself to bring some of his favorite
onigiri
tomorrow from the
conbini
.

I waited a moment, then carefully slid the phone out from under my notebook. A text from Tomo—not so surprising.

I know what to do. Meet me at the gate at lunch.—Tomo

I dropped the phone into my bag and tried to concentrate on the math on the board. He knew what to do? Had he figured out how to stop Tsukiyomi? There had to be another way. There had to.

When the lunch bell rang I grabbed my coat and quickly changed my shoes, running out to the gate.

He was there, waiting, his bangs fanned over his eyes and his bike leaning against the wall of the school.

“What do we do?” I asked, but he shook his head.

“Not here. Let’s go get a burger at the station.” He offered the seat of his bike, and I sat down and wrapped my arms around his waist as he pressed his feet against the pedals.

“Because it’s noisy there and no one will hear us?” I asked.

“No, because I’m starving and want a burger.”

Typical.

We sat in a booth at the burger place, and Tomo took a huge bite out of his before he spoke.

“I had a dream,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. I winced and passed him a napkin, and he grinned. “What, you don’t like cavemen?”

“Spill the news, not the toppings,” I said, and he rolled his eyes. “I had a dream, too.”

“Amaterasu spoke to me,” he said. “It was the clearest dream I’ve had in ages. Finally something makes sense.”

My eyes went wide. “She talked to me, too.” I took a bite of my teriyaki-and-corn burger.

“Uso,”
he said. “No way. It must mean we’re on the right track. She told me we need the treasures to stop Tsukiyomi.”

“That’s...sort of what she told me,” I said, wondering how much Amaterasu had told Tomo. Had she told him I would betray him? I hesitated. There was no room for secrets anymore. “Tomo?”

“Mmm?” He sipped at his vanilla shake.

“Amaterasu...she told me that I would betray you. But I want to tell you right now, I would never do that.”

Tomo looked grim for a moment, but then shrugged. “I know that,” he said. “The dreams tell me things all the time that aren’t true.” He used his fingers to number the things he’d heard, folding them into his palm for each one. “There’s no escape, that I’m a murderer, a demon, that there’s only death. You know, the usual.” He took another sip of his milk shake.

“You’re not...freaked out by that?”

“It loses its effect after ten years.”

I shuddered. Ten years of dreams like these?

“The dreams are just dreams, Katie. You don’t have to live by their rules. But I do believe that the Sanshu no Jingi are involved. The Kusanagi is a legendary sword that could slice through dreams, even cut spirits from bodies. That’s what we need, right? To cleave Tsukiyomi from my body.”

I narrowed my eyes. “That doesn’t sound believable,” I said. “How do you cleave a spirit from a body?”

“I dunno,” Tomo said. “Maybe like in ancient times. They used to bleed a fever out of someone, right? Use the sword to cut someone, and bleed out the ink. A normal sword wouldn’t work, but the Kusanagi would. And maybe you need the mirror to see where to make the incision.”

“You sound like a manga plot.”

Tomo laughed. “Well, we don’t have many leads. Amaterasu said to seek the treasures, so that’s what I’m doing. After I finish this burger, of course.” He wolfed it down, making a big show of using the napkin. “The treasures are in Tokyo. I think it’s time for a field trip.”

“Yes and no,” I said. “Only the Magatama is in Tokyo. The mirror is in Ise, and the sword is in Nagoya.”

Tomo blinked. “I see you’ve been researching, too. Fine, we’ll start in Tokyo, and then make our way to Nagoya and Mie Prefecture.”

“Aaand I’m totally sure my aunt will be fine with us traipsing around Japan.”

“Let me talk to her,” Tomo said.

I shook my head so fast the restaurant blurred. “How do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Okay,” he said. “Then you could tell her you’re going alone?”

“I doubt she’d agree to that, either. And how are you going to get past your dad?”

“He doesn’t care much,” Tomo said. “Anyway, Tokyo’s just a day trip. I can be back before he notices. I mean, dads. Seriously.”

My thoughts reeled. “Tomo, wait. My...my dad. He’s staying in Tokyo this weekend. He wanted me to meet him.”

Tomo tilted his head to the side and leaned back against the red pleather of the booth. It squeaked under the movement. “You want to meet the guy who abandoned you? That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

“It’s the perfect cover for the trip.”

“Katie, you don’t have to meet the man who deserted you just to give us a cover story.”

I waved my hand back and forth, another Japanese gesture I’d picked up. “It’s not like that. I’d been thinking about doing it, anyway, you know. About meeting him.”

Tomo looked at me carefully, tilting his head so his bangs fanned into his right eye. “Why would you want to do that?”

“I have a lot of questions,” I said. “About why he left. I want closure, Tomo. And, anyway, without Mom, I feel kind of...well, alone.”

“You have me,” he said, pressing his hands against the table. The sleeve of his shirt caught awkwardly on his wristband. “And you have your aunt.”

“I know,” I said. “But I can’t help but think,
What if?
I mean, why’s he in Japan? That’s weird, right? It must be the universe telling me something.”

“I guess,” Tomo said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “One stone, two birds, huh?”

“That reminds me,” I said, the mention of birds bringing back the frantic tapping of the raven on my window the night before. “Why did you send me a paper raven?”

He leaned forward, his eyes crinkling in confusion. “A what?”

“A sketched crow or something,” I said. “You could’ve at least told me it was coming. It scared the hell out of me. I thought it would break the glass.”

He looked startled. “Wait, you saw a sketched raven at your window?” I felt the doubt spread through me, the slow heat of panic. He didn’t even know what I was talking about.

“You didn’t draw it?”

He shook his head.

“Maybe it was Takahashi?”

“Why would he draw a paper raven?”

Tomo took hold of my wrist, leading us quickly out of the burger place. We turned around the corner, but there was nowhere we could see that was quiet.

“Over there,” he said finally, pointing to some trees near the station. Hardly private, but at least it was a less populated corner to stand in. We stood with our backs to the travelers as Tomo pulled his notebook from his bag, fanning through the pages. Sharp teeth jutted out of the book, trying to slice into his fingers as they flipped past. The wagtails beat their wings against the paper, feathers lifting onto the autumn breeze and fluttering away over the station.

He flipped to the start of the blank pages, then carefully turned it over to the last drawing.

A raven, like the one I’d seen.

“That’s the one,” I said, pointing at it with my finger held safely away from its sharp beak. It pecked at the page angrily, pacing back and forth on its legs. “It even had three legs like that.”

“I don’t remember drawing that,” Tomo breathed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pen, scribbling through the raven so quickly the page ripped. The raven let out a strangled noise and sat still; it wasn’t dead, though. It watched us carefully with its beady eyes from the ink cage Tomo sketched around it. Tomo swore beneath his breath as he closed the book.

“You don’t remember?”

“Like the drawings of Amaterasu—I mean, when I drew you as her,” he said. “The ones I did in my sleep. I’m still doing it. I can’t believe I drew that.”

“A raven’s not so bad,” I said. “Better than a dragon.”

“You don’t understand,” he said, running a hand through his hair. The way he looked at me, exasperation in his eyes... I knew he didn’t mean it, but I felt so different at that moment. I didn’t fit in. I couldn’t. How could I know what a three-legged raven meant? I came from a different culture. I didn’t even know that was a thing. “It’s the
Yatagarasu
.”

“Yatagarasu?” I slowly wrapped my tongue around the word.

“It’s a special raven,” he said. “It’s Amaterasu’s messenger. It first appeared to Emperor Jimmu. And it was trying to get to you?”

I nodded, my thoughts in a tangle, my stomach in a knot. “Good thing or bad?”

He sighed, shoving his notebook back into his bag. “I’m not sure. Give me your phone.”

I passed over my
keitai
, and he started to search for the bird’s meaning. “You really need to update your phone,” I said. I wanted to think about anything else right now than bad omens.

He snorted. “I like my old
keitai
,” he said. “I don’t want to use my dad’s money. I want to earn my own way.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I wasn’t sure if that was a good fight for him to pick, or a dumb move that left him back in the past century.