Eight Million Gods-eARC (40 page)

“Me?”

“You.” Susanoo tapped him again on the nose. “You are not as helpless as you think. Heaven shimmers within you. It’s why you can see the monsters when no one else can. It is why I chose you and not your brother. All you need is a little boost—so you know what it feels like not to be helpless.”

Haru’s heart felt like it was trying to climb up his throat and run away. “I don’t understand.”

“You will.” Susanoo pressed his finger against Haru’s left check. “Left is for the girl child. The right is for the boy . . .”

Haru blinked furiously. He was alone in the
haiden
of Yasaka Shrine. The conversation that had been so vivid was fading at the edges, like he had just woken from a dream. His right eye burned slightly, but as he blinked, the feeling went away. He didn’t feel any different. Had he just imagined Susanoo?

Nikki lifted her pen from the paper. “Oh my God, he hid it in his eye.”

“It’s just like how Inuyasha’s father hid his sword.” Miriam named the famous manga character. “But I think it was the other eye.”

Nikki nodded. “If Susanoo has done this to every celestial child since the start of the festival, he’s been at it for a thousand years. Someone is bound to have picked up on it.”

“Oh yeah, and that one clan in Naruto,” Pixii said.

“That’s . . .” Miriam motioned at her eye and then caught herself before going off on a fangirl rant. “That’s totally different.”

Nikki looked at the wall and back at the paper. “This was weeks ago, just after their names were picked. All my other scenes with the twins are from Nobu’s viewpoint. There wasn’t any mention of this.”

Miriam nodded. “Nobu was all about learning the stupid dance.”

“Oh no,” Nikki cried. “That’s right. They were going to switch places. Nobu was learning the dance so he could take Haru’s place.”

“But if Haru has the spear . . .” Pixii said.

“Then the spear won’t be on the float,” Nikki said.

Had the twins switched places? Was it Nobu on the float, the unknowing target? She knew him better. Nobu was a boy with an irrepressible smile and fierce protectiveness of his brother. Nikki realized now that part of Haru’s “fearful nature” was the fact that he could see the monsters that roamed Japan freely while Nobu couldn’t. And like Miriam, Haru had chosen not to tell even the person closest to him about what he saw.

Nikki clicked her pen, considering Nobu. Thinking of him was filling her with unease, the kind that normally accompanied a character’s death. “Something is going to happen to Nobu.”

Miriam glanced at the clock between the beds. “The parade just started. If the boys switched, then Nobu is being carried to the float. It would be a good time for Iwanaga’s people to grab him.”

If the boys switched
. Nobu assumed that they would, but he didn’t know that Susanoo had put the weight of Japan on Haru’s shoulders. To Nobu, the entire festival was supposed to be nothing but an extended party, and he was miserable that his brother wasn’t enjoying it with him.

Nikki pressed the tip of her pen to the paper, and a window opened in her mind’s eye. Nobu was watching the parade from the deserted community hall, sulking. He’d been there as everyone involved with the Naginata Hoko prepared for the parade. The two-story storefront tucked between two tall office buildings had seethed with nearly a hundred people scrambling to get ready. It had been controlled chaos as almost everyone involved had been part of the preservation committee for generations. All the gear possibily needed to roll the ten-ton cart several miles through the city was readied and double-checked. The musicians climbed through the second-story window and into the cart and started to play. The men who had positions on the cart’s roof scrambled up like monkeys. The pulling team drank water, went to the bathroom one last time, and then assembled out on the street.

Nobu had tried to take his brother’s place. In the confusion, it would have been easy. Not even their father could easily tell which one was which when they were pulling a switch. Haru stepped forward when they held out the ceremonial clothes and let them dress him up and apply the heavy white makeup until he looked like the dolls that all the other floats had instead of real children. When they were done, their father carried Haru away on his shoulder.

Nobu watched alone as the floats went past, following after the Naginata Hoko. He was going to be scolded later for not moving to where he’d be able to see Haru do the Taihei-no-mai dance that they’d practiced together. Nobu’s phone was silent, but he
knew
that Haru would be still nervously tapping away messages, trying to tell him how scared he was, up on the high float, with hundreds of thousands of people looking at him.

* * *

Nikki lifted her pen.

All seemed peaceful—just a little boy sulking in an empty building. If it was a movie, however, the music was already ominous, warning that a monster lurked in the shadows, tensing to strike. What was going to happen?

Her writing was a divine gift. She could see, if she tried hard enough. She just needed to jump forward in time. She lowered her pen again.

Nobu cried out as the claw caught him under the ribcage and tore upwards . . .

Nikki jerked back from the paper. “Oh no!” She dropped the pen and the notebook. She could feel the pain, the fear, the hot spill of blood . . . She whimpered, holding on to her stomach where the claw had struck.

“Easy.” Miriam caught her and held her. “Is it Nobu? Is he at the parade?”

Nikki pointed at the paper and then realized she had only written the single sentence. “He’s at the community center.”

“The what?” Miriam said.

Nikki pressed palms to her eyes and forced herself to think past the flash of death to the peaceful scene that she shad een moments before. “The community center on Shijo-dori. It’s like the Naginata Hoko clubhouse as far as I can tell. Something happens after the parade starts. Something comes after him.”

“If we hurry, we can save him.”

Nikki wasn’t sure—so far she’d never been able to change a scene once it had been written.

35

Display of Faith

The subway was packed, and everyone got off at the Shijo-dori stop. As a solid wall of people, they moved out of the subway station and onto a sidewalk even more crowded. They were only a few buildings down from the community hall, but they had to push and shove their way through the crowd to reach the building.

The door was shut but wasn’t locked.

The room beyond was still set up as a stall for Yoiyama. Unsold charms and tickets to tour the Naginata Hoko were scattered across tables and the floor. A dozen children in dark
yukata
were rooting through boxes and closets in the back of the room. They jerked about to stare at Nikki with black eyes.

“Nobu!” She called out, weirdly sure that none of these kids were him. They seemed too young, barely more than toddlers.

“They’re not human.” Atsumori drew his
katana
.

The children leapt to the walls and ceiling and scurried like a black wave up the stairs to the second floor. They moved with a loud rustle of claws on wood that raised the hair on the back of her neck.

“Oh holy fuck!” Pixii gasped.

“What are they?” Nikki charged after the monstrous children. Where was Nobu? What had they done to him? Was he dead already? In the scene, he’d been on the second floor.

“Spider whore young,” Atsumori said. “Careful. Their mother won’t be far.”

“If she hurts him, I’ll kill her,” Nikki snarled.

The second floor was one room with a large open window looking out over the street. A
hoko
was rolling past, the upper deck level with the window. Nikki caught a flash of something large disappearing up onto the roof of the building. The rustle of claws went overhead as the monstrous spiders ran across the roof.

Nobu was pinned to the wall with strands of silk. He was making frightening little whines. She cut him down, and he clung to her, still making the noise.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” She realized she was speaking English. “Atsumori, ask him if he’s hurt.”

It took several minutes to establish that he wasn’t hurt, just scared to death.

As they tried to calm him down, she realized that she’d managed to alter his ending. She had saved him. She could see the future and then change it.

When Nobu finally started to talk, he bawled “I told her!” over and over again.

“Told her what?”

“She wanted to know if I’d ever seen any monsters before. I—I—I told her Haru saw monsters all the time. Then she asked if he’d ever seen any gods. And I told her—I told her that Haru had seen Susanoo.”

Shijo-dori was completely blocked off and the crowd filled the sidewalks, held back by low wooden fences in some places, yellow tape in others. Of course the good Japanese people were allowing the flimsy barrier to actually hold them in check while
gaijins
stepped over it to take their pictures until police shooed them back into place.

Atsumori shimmered inside of her, leery of possible attackers in the crowd. Nikki could understand all the random comments around her that she knew had to be in Japanese. She pushed her way through the thickly packed crowds to the curb and then realized she’d lost the others.

The parade had already started. One of the big floats was stopped before an official who stood in full ceremonial robes under a bright red umbrella. A boy marched up to the official. He wore the pale blue
kamishimo
over a white kimono that functioned as the parade’s official uniform. He cut a cord wrapped around a small box that he was holding. Stiffly, the boy put away his dagger, opened the box and held it out to the official while bowing.

Nikki gazed upwards. The pole that rose up from the top of the float had a crescent moon at its tip. This was the Tsuki
Hoko
, dedicated to Susanoo’s brother, god of the moon.

The official had taken a scroll from the box, read it, and nodded. The boy took a fan from his belt, flicked it open, and signaled the crew on the float that they were cleared to move. Two teams in white shoes and shorts, a white festival
happi
and straw hats, over twenty men on each team, had been crouched on the ground. They stood now, picking up two massive pull ropes. Bracing themselves, they waited for two men standing on the front of the float holding fans. Together the crew leaders waved their fans. “Not yet.” They called to signal the teams to get ready. “Okay, here we go!”

The pullers heaved on their ropes, and the great float shuddered and then creaked slowly forward on its wooden wheels. Once moving, Newton’s first law took over and the massive cart rolled down the street.

Miriam caught up with her. “Atsumori has to be doing something to let you go through the crowd like that. I think we lost Pixii.”

“I’m here!” Pixii pushed her way out of the crowd, a small package of fury wrapped in a colorful
yukata.
“Damn, Japanese might be polite to your face, but my God, they get handsy in a crowd.”

“This is Tsuki
Hoko
.” Nikki pointed up to the crescent moon. “Naginata Hoko is somewhere ahead.”

Nikki started to turn back to merge back into the crowd. Atsumori, though, had her step over the yellow tape that was strung at knee level.

“We do not have time to go that way,” he said. “Come. I will deal with anyone that objects.”

“No killing people! There’re ten thousand cameras on us right now, and we haven’t even unsheathed the
katana
yet.”

“Cameras will not see us,” Atsumori reminded her as he took off in as long a stride as the
yukata
allowed. “I wish we were in your normal garments. This is not what I would chose to fight in.”

“I did not pick these clothes,” Nikki reminded him. “Beggers can not be choosers.”

“We look smexy.” Pixii trotted to keep up.

“If we get into a fight, I’m stripping,” Miriam growled.

Pixii laughed. “You strip and there’s going to be a whole lot more cameras than ten thousand trained on us.”

“I at least have a bra on,” Miriam pointed out.

“Like anyone would even look at me with the wonder twins out to play.”

“I am not big-chested!”

“We’re in Japan!” Pixii said. “Everything is smaller.”

“Can we not have this discussion now?” Nikki cried, throwing up her hands.

They passed a smaller float, one being led by a troop of child musicians wearing headbands, lime-green
happi
and colorful shorts. For some reason they reminded Nikki of frogs. Miserable frogs, as the sun was baking off the asphalt, pushing the temperature toward the mid-nineties, at least.

Beyond the children, they were intercepted by a police officer with a black cap and white gloves. He waved them toward the curb with his pristine hands.

“Go back behind . . .”

“You are to let us pass.” Atsumori reached out and put a hand on the officer’s chest. “We have important business, and you will not delay us.”

The police officer swallowed hard and bowed slightly. “I see. Go on your way then.”

“These are not the droids you are looking for,” Miriam murmured as they continued.

They passed two small
yama
floats and reached the intersection of Kawaramachi-dori. There was a big
hoko
being prepared to make the ninety-degree turn. Slats of bamboo were being placed under the massive fixed wooden wheels and made slick with water. The pullers had looped the heavy rope around the front of the float and moved up the street. With the team leaders shouting instructions and coordinated fan waves, the crews dragged front of the great cart sideways.

Nikki stared upwards at the tall cart, trying to tell which one it was as it slewed through the turn. There was a doll in place of a celestial child, face painted white, robed in a rich kimono and wearing a massive gold crown.

“This is Kanko
Hoko
,” Atsumori stated. “It is always the fifth float.”

She glanced ahead. There were another three small yama floats and, far in the distance, the Naginata
Hoko
.

Nikki strode forward, eyes locked on the lumbering cart ahead. She felt like she was chasing an annoyingly fast-moving, massive turtle. They were gaining on it, but slowly. What was she going to do when they caught it? Climb up onto it and try to search Haru for the spear? Yeah, yeah, that would go over well. There were probably twenty men on the float, not counting the four on the roof. Another forty were pulling the cart, and at least a dozen were overseeing the movement of the cart. In other words, there was a small army between her and Haru. Add in the facts that the silly thing was three stories tall, moving at a steady clip, and she was afraid of heights. Scaling it was so not going to happen.