A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) (6 page)

Somehow, Mai seemed not to be
bothered by the cold at all. Wakana smiled at that. If there had ever been a
girl who adapted to change quickly, it was her roommate. Once upon a time, Mai
had been relatively quiet and unassuming, though she had enjoyed the popularity
that had come with being a member of the soccer club and a friend of Ume's,
back when Ume had still been the one the others would follow. But when Ume had
left, Mai had stepped into that role. Most of the soccer club girls, she said,
just wanted someone to set the pace, someone to follow, and Mai had decided she
would rather be that girl than follow any of the others.

Wakana had never had an
interest. They had been roommates, but opposites in many ways. Wakana had
remained quiet and mostly innocent. But then their lives had been overrun by
nightmares. Daisuke — Wakana's best friend, who might have been her
boyfriend if either of them had been brave enough to initiate even a single
kiss — had been abducted and murdered by the Hannya. It had taken Wakana
as well, but she had been rescued by Mai and some others, including that gaijin
girl, Kara Harper.

For the rest of her life, she
would be grateful to Mai. The girl wore a scar on her face that would be with
her forever, and it would always remind them both of what they had faced, and
of what Mai had done for Wakana. Which was why Wakana had decided that this
term she would join the soccer club. She had not really wanted to make friends
with some of those girls — though they had turned out to be nicer than
she'd expected — but Mai had asked her. There had been no pressure, but
Wakana had been happy to be asked, and she knew it would make Mai happy to have
her in the club. They had become inseparable now, almost like sisters. They had
come close to death together and they shared secrets they could never tell the
other girls.

If Mai wanted to lead, Wakana
would gladly follow.

"You two are going to end
up off the path and lost in the woods!" Aka said.

"Don't worry so much. We're
fine," Mai told her.

Wakana smiled. They both liked
Aka, but the girl had a tendency to get bossy. Mai wouldn't let her get away
with it.

"Hey, look," Mai said,
tapping Wakana's arm.

The whole group began to slow
down a little, whispers and mutterings rippling through the class. Fat white
snowflakes had begun to drift lazily from the sky. A light gust of wind sent
them dancing and swirling, but then the breeze died down and the snow eddied
and fell.

"Come along!" their
teacher, Mr. Gushiken, called. "You have all seen snow before. Let's stay
on schedule so that we can return to the buses before dark. We will be stopping
for a break at a clearing ahead with the rest of the school. Ten minutes only."

"Ten minutes," Mai
said. "Mr. Yamato said fifteen."

"It's snowing now,"
Aka replied. "They want to get us back."

"I don't see why we need to
stop at all. We should never even have come onto the trail," Wakana said.
"We saw the view. That should have been enough."

"Oh, it's not that bad,"
Mai said. "It's only a little snow. And the weather center said it would
pass quickly. I want to enjoy it while I can. It's very pretty."

Wakana rolled her eyes. "Okay,
it's pretty. But I'd rather see it out a window."

Mai laughed and shook her head.
"If you never bother to explore it, the world outside the window might as
well be a painting."

"Who said that?" Aka
asked.

Mai gave her a hard look. "I
did. Didn't you just hear me?"

"I thought you were quoting
someone. It was a great observation."

"Do you think I'm not smart
enough to make such an observation?" Mai demanded.

Wakana dropped back a step,
letting the two girls argue. Normally it amused her. She liked to listen to
them spar. But right now her nose hurt from the bite of the cold and her feet
hurt. So far there was only a little snow, but if it fell harder and much of it
accumulated, she worried that it might ruin her shoes. They were really not
meant for winter hiking, mostly because she would never have been here if she'd
had a choice, so she had never had any reason to buy shoes that would be good
in the snow.

Listen to yourself
, she
thought, upset by how shallow her concerns seemed. This trip had put her in a
bad mood from the second it had been announced. Tomorrow would be better. She
would be back to normal, sitting in a nicely heated classroom, and then a warm
dormitory.

The snow began to fall a bit
harder and the gusts of wind seemed to come more frequently, and blow a bit
harder. If she was not mistaken, the sky had darkened somewhat since the snow
had started. She wondered how recently Mr. Yamato had checked with the weather
center.

Mai and Aka seemed to have
finished their argument, so she quickened her pace and fell into beside them. With
a glance over her shoulder, she saw that the next group — led by Miss
Aritomo — was only fifty yards or so behind them, many of them out of
sight around a bend in the forest trail.

Through the falling snow, they
seemed almost unearthly.

With her head turned, she wasn't
paying attention to the path underfoot, and her shoe caught on a raised root. Wakana
stumbled and fell to her knees on the snow-flecked trail. Frustration and anger
lasted only a moment, replaced by amusement at the absurdity of her situation. If
someone was going to fall, of course it would be the one who most wished she
were anywhere but here.

Smiling, Wakana started to rise.

Off in the trees, a boy stood
watching her. Even in the deepening shadows of the dimming day, even through
the veil of falling snow, she recognized Daisuke immediately. For just a
moment, her mind distracted by so many other things, she forgot that he was
dead and her smile began to widen.

Then she felt it vanish and she
took a step back, heart filling up with fear.

"Wakana!" Mai asked,
grabbing her arm, helping her rise the rest of the way to her feet.

She blinked and looked at Mai,
at that thin white scar, their mutual reminder of what they'd seen, and
learned, and lost.

"I asked if you were okay,"
Mai said.

Wakana looked back, but the
ghost was gone. A light gust blew snowflakes into her eyes and she wiped them
away, the chill biting into her skin.

She told herself she had
imagined him there. What else could it have been?

"I'm fine. Let's go,"
she said. "I won't be happy until I'm off of this mountain. I need a
gallon of hot tea and some chocolate."

Mai smiled. "I like the
sound of that."

They hurried yet again to catch
up to the others, Wakana quietly wondering if even a gallon of tea would be
enough to make her warm again.

Kara scraped snow off the ground
and packed it in her hands, giddy with mischief. Hachiro and Ren were busy
hurling snowballs at Sora, so her boyfriend did not see her approaching. She
threw it straight and true, pegging Hachiro in the back of the head.

He spun around, eyes wide with
surprise, ready to retaliate. But when he saw that she had been his attacker,
he grinned and gave chase, pursuing her through the snowy clearing while she
tried to stop laughing long enough to plead for mercy. Hachiro grabbed her by
the hood of her new jacket, stopping her short, and threw a handful of snow
down the back of her shirt.

Kara went rigid and cried out as
the freezing snow slipped down her back, melting against her skin.

"Oh, you're dead!" she
said, untucking her shirttail to let the snow fall to the ground. She stalked
toward Hachiro and he backed away, hands raised, grin growing wider.

"You started it," he
said. "Good aim by the way. You should play baseball."

"Flattery will not save
you," she said.

Hachiro stood his ground,
surrendering. "Do what you will."

Kara smiled. If her father weren't
wandering around amongst the students and teachers, she would have kissed him. Instead,
she just shook her head.

"Sorry, Hachiro. It isn't
me you have to worry about."

He frowned, confused, but only
for a moment. Sora and Ren bombarded him with multiple snowballs. Kara had seen
them sneaking up on him and had maintained his attention to give them the
chance to make extra snowballs.

Miho and Sakura walked over,
applauding lightly.

"I love this," Kara
told them. "It feels like home."

"How much does it snow in
Massachusetts?" Miho asked.

"It depends on the year,
like anywhere else," Kara said. "But some winters there's snow from
late November until the beginning of April. A few years ago we had so many
storms in a row that in my front yard it was above my waist."

"It must seem like another
world, like something magical," Miho said, with a dreamy look on her face.

Sakura scoffed. "It sounds
like torture. I'd throw myself in front of a bus."

Kara laughed and looked around. The
boys were tiring of snowball fights, but other students were not ready to give
up yet. In the gently falling snow they raced around, chasing one another. Some
made snow angels and others were building tiny snowmen out of the inch or so
that had already fallen. Miss Kaneda and Mr. Yamato had paused the group here
so that they could take a short rest before hiking back to the observatory and
then down to the buses waiting in Takigami Park, but nobody seemed inclined to
rest. The falling snow made them want to play, as if they were still much
younger children. Only a handful had taken snacks out of their backpacks,
probably because with the fresh snow on the ground there was nowhere to sit
down.

Kara glanced around in search of
her father and Miss Aritomo, eyes narrowed to slits as a gust of wind blew
snowflakes into her face. She didn't see them, but knew they wouldn't be far
from their students.

"Hey," Sora said as
the three boys trudged over to them. "I just saw Reiko. She said there's
an amazing view from an overlook down a path over there."

He pointed vaguely toward the
trees.

"She shouldn't have left
the group," Miho said.

"It wasn't just her,"
Sora explained. "We should go look."

Kara glanced toward the trees,
searching for an opening. The snow had started to fall a bit heavier, obscuring
her vision, but still did not seem to be amounting to much of a storm.

"How much time do you think
we have?" Hachiro asked.

Sakura tugged her hat tighter
down over her ears. "At least five minutes before they try rounding anyone
up, and you know it'll take at least that long to get everyone organized and get
them to stop fooling around. They won't be leaving for at least ten or fifteen
minutes."

Miho frowned, wiping snow from
her cheek. "Are you sure?"

Ren put his arm through hers. The
two had become close friends during the previous term. "You'll be fine. I'll
protect you from the Yeti."

"The Yeti lives in the
Himalayas!" Miho said, arching an eyebrow at him.

"There, you see?" Ren
replied. "Nothing to be afraid of."

"Come on," Kara said,
looping her arm through Hachiro's in imitation of Miho and Ren. "I want to
see."

The six of them trekked across
the clearing together. When Hachiro spotted Mr. Yamato, they gave the principal
a wide berth, not wanting him to stop them before they got started. When they
reached the trees it took them only a moment to find the path that Sora
declared must be the one Reiko had mentioned, and they followed it with more
purpose and energy than any of them had shown during the rest of the day's
hiking.

At first, Kara liked the
stillness of the path. In the gray winter light, with the snow falling, eddying
in gusts of wind, it was so quiet that it felt as though the six of them were
entirely alone on the mountain. She liked that idea, being with her friends on
an adventure. Ren marched Miho forward, still arm in arm with her, leading the
group. They laughed and bumped each other. Sora and Sakura had been paired up
by default, and Kara thought they seemed a bit awkward together.

Kara and Hachiro brought up the
rear, hand in hand, and for a few minutes, it felt like a winter wonderland.

Then, out of nowhere, the wind
gusted hard enough to bend the trees. Kara and Hachiro staggered and he let go
of her hand as the huge gust subsided.

"Wow!" Kara said,
reverting to English in her surprise. "What the hell —"

The wind blew again, branches swaying,
and with a crack a thick bough broke off of a tree just behind them, falling
across the path. The gusts continued, settling into a powerful gale that swayed
the trees all around them. Snow blew into their faces and across the path,
falling even heavier than before.

"We should go back!"
Miho said.

"I'm sure it's just a
little further," Sora replied, glancing around at them. "We all have
to hike back in this. What difference does it make?"

Kara shrugged and looked at
Miho. "At least we'll have a story to tell."

"All right," Miho
agreed. "But everyone stay together."

Ren snuggled up beside her and
they marched on. The wind continued to blow and the snow to swirl, but it felt
as though they were traveling through a tunnel. She glanced up and saw that above
the tree line the sky had turned completely white.

On impulse, she tugged Hachiro's
hand, pulling him to a stop. When he glanced down, she stood on her tiptoes,
wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, and pulled him down for a long,
lingering kiss.

"It does feel like magic
here," she said.

Hachiro looked nervous and
unsure, and when he spoke up, she understood why.

"I love you, Kara."

Her breath caught in her throat,
her heart skipping a beat. She swallowed, now just as he nervous as he seemed. Then
she nodded. "I love you, too."