A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) (22 page)

Ume looked as though she might
continue to argue, but then she sagged backward, all the fight leaving her. She
took several deep breaths, and then she stood a little straighter.

"I'll help. If it means
breaking the curse and preventing others from dying, and this Master Kubo needs
me at his ritual because I was there when Kyuketsuki was defeated, I will help.

"But I admit nothing."

Kara had expected Sakura to be
in intensive care. Years of watching American television had prepared her for
breathing tubes and blinking machines, so she was surprised to find very little
of that apparatus when she entered Sakura's room.

"She's been like this since
last night," Miho said, stepping up beside Kara.

They stood there a long moment,
staring at their friend's unmoving form. An IV dripped fluid into Sakura's arm
and a single monitor beeped along with her heartbeat. Another — like a
small television screen — seemed to be measuring her body temperature
along with her pulse. Her left arm was in a cast and where her pale blue
hospital top had ridden up, bandages showed from underneath. The left side of
her face was bruised and swollen, but there were no stitches. Only the bruises
and bandages hinted at the trauma beneath. To someone who didn't know better,
she looked as though she might wake up — in quite a bit of pain — any
moment. Kara wondered what her parents would do if she died. After Akane's
murder, Sakura had been all they had left and they had ignored her for a year. No
one should have to lose a child, but to have them both die . . .

Miho took her hand and Kara held
on tight, squeezing.

"Kara?" Miss Aritomo
began. She knew the teacher was about to ask if she was okay, and she was very
much not okay. But the time for thinking about herself had passed.

Kara stood up straighter,
ignoring the aches and stiffness and the lingering chill in her bones. She
reached up with both hands — bandaged and not — and pushed her hair
back out of her face. The hospital gown she wore gaped at the back and she was
grateful for the robe, but she still felt exposed and vulnerable. She ignored
the feeling, narrowing her focus down to only the tasks that were ahead of
them.

"There's nothing we can do
for her here," she said, and let go of Miho's hand.

"But —" Miho
began.

Kara turned to her. "She's
in the doctor's hands. The only thing we can do for is get Hachiro and Ren
back, get Ume here, and make sure Kubo lifts the curse, so when Sakura wakes up
she can have a normal life again."

Miho fixed her with a hard look.
She wasn't ready to leave.

"I talked to her, last
night," Miho said. "And this morning. And I talked to you as well."

Kara frowned. "What do you
mean? I don't remember —"

"I wasn't sure if you were
going to wake up," Miho said, her voice firm, despite the sorrow in her
eyes. "The doctor said you would be all right, but I couldn't be sure. So
I talked to you. And to her."

Miho nodded at Sakura. Kara
looked at the unconscious figure on the bed, saw her chest rising and falling with
each breath, and for a moment all of her defenses were stripped away. She had
barely acknowledged that this was Sakura, a girl who had become more than a
friend to her, almost a sister. The harsh cut of her hair had been softened by
disarray. All of her rebelliousness, her spirit, was gone.

She could die. Kara took that
in, brought it close to her heart as though holding it in her fists. Her mother
had died and the loss remained with her, hurting her every single day. The
hardest part of dealing with such loss was in looking to the future and knowing
that she would never see her mother again, never hear her voice or her
infectious laugh, never have another hug or do a weird, goofy little dance in
the kitchen the way they often had when some silly television commercial jingle
got stuck in their heads.

Sakura could be gone.

Kara did not dare sit on the
edge of the bed, unsure how delicate her friend's condition might be. She knelt
on the floor and took Sakura's hand in hers.

"It's me, Kara," she
said, voice softly, feeling faintly ridiculous and grateful that only Miho
could hear her. "I just . . . I want you to know . . ."

She hesitated. In an apparent
effort to give Kara privacy, Miho walked across the room and stood looking out
the window.

"I love you, Sakura,"
Kara whispered. And then she said it louder. "You and Miho are the best
friends I've ever had. I could not bear to lose you. And I won't. We won't. I
promise you that we are going to fix this . . . all of it . . . and there will
be no more curses, no more demons, no more —"

"Ghosts," Miho said.

Kara started to nod in
agreement, but then she frowned. Something was odd about the way Miho had said
that. It hadn't sounded like she was being helpful, but more like she was
making an observation.

"Come over here," Miho
said, her voice small.

As Kara stood, she watched Miho
bend close to the window, peering out and squinting as though trying to make
out something at a great distance.

"Ghosts?" Kara echoed.
"Do you mean more than one?"

Miho stood back and gestured for
her to look. The view showed the street in front of the hospital, a busy Miyazu
City avenue with cars, people on bicycles and on foot, and a man selling fruit
from a small cart in front of a boarded up, abandoned shop across the road.

She saw Daisuke's ghost first,
standing by the fruit seller, but he wasn't alone. There were at least a dozen
others, most of whom Kara did not recognize. Sora stood in the middle of the
road, and a little electric car carrying the implements of a street sweeper
buzzed right through him. The ghost did not even seem to notice.

"I see Jiro," Miho
whispered. "And Hana."

Kara had not known Jiro, but she
saw Hana as well, along with Chouku, another girl who had been a victim of the
ketsuki, the monster that Kyuketsuki had set loose upon the school.

"No one else sees them,"
Miho said.

Kara nodded. She had noticed
that as well. People strolling or riding or driving by did not seem to register
the presence of the ghosts. It confirmed what she had previously suspected,
that only those already touched by the supernatural could see the ghosts.

"What do you think they
want?" Miho asked.

"I have no idea," Kara
said.

And that much was true. But
whatever the ghosts did want, she thought it must be important for them all to
gather like this. She hoped that Kubo would have an answer, because she feared
that if they could not figure it out, very soon they would
all
be
ghosts.

Sakura knew she was dreaming,
but only in that distant way which never seems to make the dream feel any less
real. Standing on the shore of Miyazu Bay, she gazed across the bay at the
black pines that grew thick on Ama-no-Hashidate and at the horizon beyond. The
air shimmered with a dim gold light that made it feel like twilight, or like
that moment just before a storm broke, when the air grew thick with static and
moisture and the promise of rain, and thunder would roll in from the distance,
like a stampede of horses about to come over the rise.

But there were no horses
here. No thunder. Just the quiet lap of water against the shore.

She wore her school uniform,
and yet not hers. Sakura personalized hers as much as possible with pins and
badges, and it had never really fit her well. But what she wore now was
pristine and crisp, brand new and a perfect fit. Perfect. That was her. The
perfect student. The perfect child. The perfect sister.

But, of course, she had never
been any of those things. That had always been Akane.

"Where are you?"
she asked, her voice echoing over the water.

But Akane did not answer. The
trees whispered back in her stead, and as happened so often in dreams, Sakura
realized that she had not noticed them until now. She stepped back from the
water and turned to study the trees. They were so close that their branches
seemed to be reaching for her, but it wasn't the trees that frightened her.

The ground sloped up from the
bay and at the top of that slope stood the silhouette of Monju-no-Chie school. Yet
when she glanced at the school she frowned, narrowing her gaze. Something
seemed off and it took her a moment to realize that the building seemed to have
shrunk.

No. It's not smaller. Just
further away.

Of course. So far.
Too
far. When the killers came for her, there would be no safety to be found there
for the girl who would die on the muddy slope.

Muddy
? she thought, glancing
down. And then it was. She could smell fresh rain, as though a storm had just
passed, and the ground was soft and spongy underfoot. The grass on the slope
was slicked down. In places — where it had been worn away by generations
of students making a path down to the bay — the soil had turned dark and
malleable. Mud.

Fear rippled through Sakura
and her breath came too fast, matching her racing heart. This was all wrong. She
glanced at the bay again, then spun toward the trees, wondering if that was
where the attack would originate. Who had killed her? Who
would
kill
her?

Not you. They killed Akane.

And then the memories swarmed
in. She looked out at the water where they had drowned her sister, but it had
not started in the bay. It had begun here, on this muddy ground. They had
beaten her savagely, kicking her nearly to death even before they got her to
the water.

But Akane was still here. Somehow
she knew that.

Grief rolled in like the
storm she had felt before had finally arrived. She wanted to shout at the
night, to cry to the heavens, to tear her hair and scream. Out of the corner of
her eye she saw something white flutter in the darkness and she spun to see
what it had been. A length of black hair flew behind as the figure darted into
the tree;, branches swayed, and it was gone. But Sakura knew the girl wouldn't
stay hidden for very long and she did not want to see her . . . the killer. Perhaps
they were all there, the faceless, merciless girls who had murdered her sister.

She found herself walking
toward the trees.

Maybe they've come for me this
time
, she thought. Immediately the idea took root and grew. She stood
staring into the trees, breathing hard, something rising up inside of her, a
scream, a plea, a certainty she had never put into words before. And, at last,
turning toward the water, she let it out.

"Why did you leave me
behind?" she screamed.

I did not leave you,
a voice
whispered in her ear — Akane's voice.
I'm still here.

Slowly, Sakura turned, and
she saw Akane standing on the muddy slope, a red bow in her hair, her smile
ironic and teasing all at the same time. Sakura rushed to her sister, crushed
Akane in her embrace, thinking of all of the times that they had fought and
said cruel things to each other, times she wanted to take back. The scent of
ripe plums filled her nose, Akane's favorite perfume, and Sakura laughed out
loud.

"It really is you!"
she said.

"Yes," Akane
agreed.

But Sakura felt her joy
shatter, felt the darkness flooding into her heart, and she stepped back from
Akane, shaking her head. After all, she knew. The school was too small, the
world too quiet, the light too surreal.

"You're only a dream,"
Sakura said, and even asleep, she began to dread waking. Grief wracked her with
sorrow.

Akane reached out and held
Sakura's face in her hands, held her tightly so that they were eye to eye, and
she shook her head.

No
, she said, without
speaking
. I am here. You are dying, but I am here with you
.

"Like the other ghosts?"

Akane nodded, and now what flooded
into Sakura's mind were not words at all. They were images, moments, spilling
out of her head and shifting the landscape around them. Sora's ghost on the
mountainside, in the falling snow. Daisuke on the train. She had not been there
to see Daisuke's ghost, but she could imagine it vividly . . . or perhaps it
wasn't imagination at all. Perhaps the image came from Akane.

"I don't understand,"
Sakura said. "What does this have to do with Yuki-Onna?"

Akane smiled. "Winter
ghosts. She's a ghost herself, in a way, the spirit of the woman who died on
the mountain during the season's first snowfall. And when Yuki-Onna comes, and
the snow falls, the spirits who have not yet moved on can rise with her."

Sakura shook her head. "But
why haven't you moved on?"

"I wasn't ready to let
go," Akane said. "None of us were. It was too fast, too soon. We had
people here to look after."

The world shifted around
Sakura. Akane still stood in front of her, but now they were little girls
again, no more than eight and nine, and they were in the bedroom they had
always shared growing up. Music played, but as it happened so often in dreams,
Sakura could not make out the tune. She inhaled the scent of ripe plums yet
again.

"I've been looking after
myself," Sakura said.

A terrible sadness filled
Akane's eyes. "Not very well."

Sakura felt cold. Her chest
hurt with every breath. Pain swept in, lancing through her side and clutching
her skull in an iron grip, and slowly sounds began to filter into her bedroom. Pokemon
lined shelves on the walls. Her little Catbus purse hung from the back of a
chair.

They had been so happy here.