The Night Parade (17 page)

“Is this true?” Saki asked the object spirits.

“Look around at all the trees that have been snapped,” said the prayer beads. “They destroy everything they touch. They can't help themselves.”

“Ogre not bad. Just heavy!” The red ogre brandished his fists as if he was ready to restart the fight.

Saki held up her hands before the ogre could raise his club too high. “Look, I think there's been a mistake. But if you give me a chance, I think I know how we can fix it. Will everyone listen to me for a minute?”

Slowly, each spirit nodded in turn. None of them seemed particularly happy about standing next to one another, but at least they'd stopped fighting.

“Okay, I want you all to come out so that you face one another.”

The red ogre opened his mouth, but Saki raised a finger and cut him off before he could say a single word.

“No, no arguments! You said you'd listen. You can't back out now.”

“I hope you know what you're doing, sweetheart,” the tanuki told her. “We don't got a lotta time to waste, you know.”

Saki shushed him. “Trust me.” Despite the confidence in her voice, her stomach did a flip. She could hardly keep from fighting with her own brother, and they were related. Still, it was worth a try. “Could everyone who likes to have fun please raise their hand? Or their strings, or whatever.”

Slowly but surely, each one of the ogres and the object spirits held some appendage in the air. The tanuki had his paw up behind her. Saki raised her own hand as well.

“Who likes to sing songs?” None of the spirits dropped their hand. “Who likes to dance? Who likes to tell jokes?”

Saki paced between them.

“Don't you see now? You all like to do the same things. But just because you're different, you think that you can't be friends.”

The prayer beads shifted. “Be that as it may, we cannot forget what they've done to us all these years.”

“Ogres? Do you have anything to say?” Saki asked.

“If click-clack not sorry, ogre not sorry too!”

Saki heaved a sigh and buried her face in her hands. Through the lattice of her fingers, she thought of her own battles with her brother and his favorite way to finish them. Maybe Jun had the right idea all along. She swiveled on her heel. “All right, fine. If you can't settle this with words, we'll use our fists instead.”

“Uh, sweetheart.” The tanuki tugged on her clothes. “I thought the whole idea was to get 'em to stop bashing each other on the head?”

“Not that kind of battle.” Saki raised her fist in front of her. “One game of janken. The loser apologizes first.”

A light glimmered in each of the spirits' eyes. Even the ones without eyes bounced in excitement. None of them were very good with words, but they all loved games. The red ogre raised his fist on behalf of his group, but the object spirits stopped to look at one another. Saki's face fell.

“Oh, right. You don't have hands.”

The cotton shroud floated down from the tree branches. It did a loop around Saki's head and contorted itself into a ball, relaxed and folded itself in half like a pair of scissors, then went rigid and flat once more. The object spirits cheered.

Saki grinned. “Perfect! All right, one representative for each group. Are you ready? On my mark… Go!”

The red ogre clenched his hand in a tight fist as the cotton shroud curled into a ball.

“Two rocks. It's a tie!” Saki declared. “Try one more time.”

The tension in the air was as thick, but the wind had shifted. Each spirit was alive with anticipation and excitement, but their anger was fading. As the cotton shroud went rigid and the ogre drew out two thick fingers, a cheer burst from the other three ogres at the victory. But they weren't the only spirits excited by the game. Though the object spirits shared a groan, the impassable wall of resentment had melted away.

At Saki's urging, the prayer beads bowed and wiggled forward. “I do suppose we were a little quick to judge… Our apologies.”

Saki turned. “What about the ogres?”

The red ogre slumped out of his celebration and twiddled his thumbs. “Ogre sorry take soft white from friend. Ogre not mean bad.”

Saki held out her hands to the beads and the red ogre. The prayer beads hopped into one of her palms as the ogre touched a massive fingertip to the other.

The object spirits had broken out of their tight group and edged closer with slow, careful hops. The three sandals took the initiative. They hid a leaf underneath one of their bodies and shuffled the others around, then wiggled to prompt the nearest ogre to guess which sandal had hidden the leaf. The green ogre pointed his finger, and the sandal rose up to reveal the ground beneath. No leaf. With a scratchy giggle, the chosen sandal jumped up and smacked the green ogre in the face.

Saki stiffened. The green ogre gave a stunned blink as the yellow and blue ogres looked down at the object spirits.

Opening their great, wide jaws, both ogres burst into laughter. The green ogre, catching on to the joke, started to laugh as well, and the rest of the object spirits joined them. Halfway through another round of chuckles, the green ogre sneezed all over the sandals, which only made everyone laugh harder.

The red ogre and the prayer beads exchanged knowing glances and turned to Saki.

“Ogre find new friend. Nice girl make friend. Ogre much happy.”

“Yes, thank you, Saki. We'll try our best to be more hospitable to our neighbors.”

Saki blushed. “I'm just glad you didn't go smashing each other up. Or me. And I really hate to run out like this, but…” Her relief had turned to cold, creeping dread. The trees blocked out most of the sky, but there was still no sign of a mountain anywhere.

“Yes, I almost forgot. You're headed up the mountain to see the Midlight Prince. After the help you've given us, we'll gladly show you the shortcut,” said the beads. “But we must move right away. The road is very long for small spirits like ourselves.”

“Not problem!” The red ogre pounded a fist to his chest and flexed his muscles. “Ogre take friend. Ogre run fast.”

Before Saki could open her mouth, the red ogre swept her onto his shoulders. The prayer beads shimmied up to join her atop the ogre's head, then looped around one horn. Saki curled her fingers around the other.

“Hey, wait for me!” The tanuki wiggled his rump and launched himself up. He caught Saki's shirt with his claws and scrambled up between the ogre's horns. “Ladies and gentlefolk, strap your strings, lock your hinges, and clench your lids on tight. We're going for a ride!”

When the rest of the ogres had picked up the last of the object spirits, the ogres ambled down the footpath to the main road. With their sweeping strides, they emerged from the forest after only a few paces.

“This doesn't seem to be much faster than walking.” Saki frowned and gripped the red ogre's horn tighter.

“Just you wait, sweetheart.” From his perch, the tanuki winked.

When the last ogre emerged from the trees, all four of them stopped. The red ogre let loose a howl, his voice shaking the leaves of the trees. Three more howls joined his, rising into the night until the stars themselves gave a shudder. At the end of the howl, the ogres bent and launched themselves into a wild sprint.

The ogres bounded down the road, their feet slamming the earth with enough force to shake the trees. Saki bounced up and down with each stride as her teeth clattered in her skull. The experience was halfway between a horseback ride and sticking her head out the car window. The air rushed into her nose and stifled her breath.

The landscape sped by like watercolors in a rainstorm. Only the moon hung steady in the sky. Above the canopy of trees, the gilded walls of the palace appeared in the distance. The building that had seemed as big as a mountain the night before was now little more than a fleck against the horizon. Saki's heart dipped, and she pried her eyes away from the skyline.

The road opened into a flat plain, and the ogres slowed to a jog. The plain was nothing more than a wide expanse of rocks and shrubs, except for a series of high wooden poles that stretched to the sky. Shapes moved at the top of each pole, but Saki couldn't get a steady look until the ogres stopped moving. When the red ogre swung her down to the ground, Saki's jaw dropped.

“Are those…are those
fish
on top of those poles?”

The tanuki tumbled over her head before landing with his four paws on the ground. He shook the dirt off his fur and scratched his nose. “Yup. Those are air koi. Don't see much of them where you come from, do you, sweetheart?”

“How do they survive out of the water?”

The red ogre untangled the prayer beads from his horns and handed them to Saki. “Can't eat. Too high.” The ogre pouted.

The prayer beads rearranged themselves in Saki's hand. “The air koi are spirits, like the rest of us. Air is like water to them. They capture the wind with their mouths and store it in their bellies. The more they store, the higher they float. When the air koi are at the highest point on the poles, the wind is ready to harvest. After their air is taken, the koi start right back at the bottom of the pole, and the whole process begins again.”

Saki squinted and stood on the tiptoes of her geta. The closest koi swam around its pole and flapped open its mouth with every shift in the breeze. “They look like they're pretty high up already.”

“Lucky for you,” said the tanuki. “We can use the wind to take us all the way up to the palace. No gates, no guards, no problems. All's we gotta do is wrangle one down.”

The tanuki waddled over to the closest pole, made from single tree trunks like the smooth, unblemished wood of the torii gates on the Pilgrim's Road. The grain of the wood was soft under Saki's fingers.

“How are we supposed to get one down?”

“The mechanism is quite simple, really,” said the prayer beads. “One takes hold of the pulley at the bottom and—oh. Oh dear…”

The umbrella held up a line of cord from the pulley. Its end was sawed off. A whole section had been removed, so it was impossible to even tie it back together.

“Not to worry,” the beads assured her. “We'll just have to move on to the next one.”

The next pole's pulley was cut as well. A murmur of worry spread from one ogre to another as the object spirits fanned out to check different poles. Each reported the same news: none of the pulleys were working.

Saki sank down to her knees next to the red ogre's gnarled foot. Though each of the ogres expressed some concern with grunts and awkward pats to her shoulder, none of them had much of an idea what to do. They fanned out around her and picked their noses as the object spirits hopped around in a desperate search for a working pulley. Saki drew her legs to her chest as a sickening despair crept up behind her. This had been her last chance, and she wasn't even close to where she needed to be. They'd hit a dead end. After tomorrow, she would have no way to remove the curse. Saki sniffed and wiped a tear from her cheek.

“Look.” The blue ogre pointed up at the sky. “Floaty.”

Saki ignored the ogre's nonsense and buried her face in her knees.

The other ogres were transfixed. The tanuki scraped Saki's arm with his paw.

“Sweetheart, you might want to take a look at this.”

Saki lifted her head and pushed her hair away from her face. Above them, a butterfly flapped a pair of delicate, incandescent wings. The creature fluttered down slowly until it landed on Saki's knee.

The ogres huddled around to look, and their eager breaths blew the creature's wings from side to side. Saki cupped the butterfly like a sputtering candle to keep it from blowing away.

The butterfly's soft light bathed the air around it in warmth. When it spoke to her, Saki felt the words in her heart rather than her ears.

“You are the human girl who has come to walk the Night Parade.”

The object spirits hurried back from their searches to stop and stare at the mysterious butterfly. With all the spirits gathered around, the butterfly's light glowed even brighter.

“I am sent by the Guardian of the Shrine,” the butterfly told her. “I am to help you reach the Palace of Souls.”

“Is this true?” asked the prayer beads. “I had no idea you were a personal friend of the guardian.”

“Uh, neither did I,” said Saki.

The tanuki nudged her. “The guardian is the Lady of Bells, remember? The one I was telling you about? Sheesh, she must like you a lot to keep sticking her hilt out like this.”

“For the Lady of Bells herself to send an envoy…” The beads were stunned into silence. The rest of the object spirits drew back in reverence.

“The silver spirit sent you?” Saki asked the butterfly. “We tried getting there on our own, but all of the pulleys are broken. Can you fly us up to the palace instead?”

“Alas, I cannot hold any soul but my own,” the butterfly said. “This obstacle, however, was no accident. The one called the New Lord had ordered that all spirits of the Night Parade should halt your progress before you reach the Midlight Prince. The lesser known roads, such as this one, are not as traveled, but this is most certainly the work of his followers.”

“I don't know what I've done to upset him. I just want to lift my curse!” Saki pleaded. “What the fox did wasn't my fault.

“He doesn't sound like a lord at all. He sounds more like a bully. How can we get past him to see the prince?”

“Once you are on the Path of the Gods, he cannot follow you. It is a secret road beyond the shrine, open only to the sure of heart. He has not yet polluted the innermost sanctum.”

“But he'll know that I'm coming.” Saki touched her grandfather's metal charm as a slip of fear wriggled into her chest.

“Yes. If that is so, then you must be stronger than the darkness,” the butterfly said.

The silver spirit had told her to hold close to courage. As far as she'd come, she couldn't let herself turn back now. The ogres and the object spirits edged closer. The honest concern on their faces lit a beacon of hope in Saki's heart.

“Okay. I'll try. Just tell me how to get to the palace.” She would figure out the rest later.

The butterfly flapped its wings. “Outside of riding the wind, I know of no other way. This road goes everywhere and nowhere. In the time you have left, you may never reach the Palace of Souls.”

Saki dug in her pocket for the marbles. There was no other choice. A weight settled on her shoulder as the red ogre patted her with two huge fingers.

“No worry. Friends help.”

“But there's nothing we can do. None of us can reach that high,” Saki told him. Whether the marbles would work or not was another story.

Before she could undo the pouch, the prayer beads hopped into her lap. “He's right, Saki. We might need a little coordination, but we should be able to reach the rope if we work together. Trust us. If we didn't figure out how to work together, nothing in the village would ever get done. Have you ever seen a sandal or a jug build a hut by themselves?”

Saki let go of the marble pouch and cracked a tiny smile. “I've never seen a sandal or a jug build a hut at all.”

“Here,” said the red ogre. “Look at ogre.”

He grunted instructions to the blue and yellow ogres. They stood by the closest pole and crouched down. The red ogre climbed their backs like steps and braced his feet on their shoulders. With the extra height, the dangling rope was much closer.

The green ogre took his turn. He climbed to the top of the ogre pile and took a seat on the red ogre's shoulders. He reached up to grasp the rope, but the tip swung just out of his reach.

The two ogres on the bottom began to growl from the strain. Their feet slipped in the dirt, and both the red and green ogres swayed.

“Be careful!” Saki jumped to her feet and rushed to help support the weight before all four of them would topple over. She bent her knees and pushed up. Her meager strength wouldn't keep the yellow and blue ogres from collapsing, but maybe it would buy them a few more seconds. Straw brushed against her leg. The object spirits clustered around either side of the ogres' feet and added their own strength to the tower.

The tanuki hurried over, wiggled his rump, and jumped up to catch his claws in Saki's shirt once more. With careful footsteps, he climbed up to perch on her head.

“Ouch! Hey, that hurts! What are you doing? This isn't the time for messing around.”

“I got that, sweetheart.” He jumped from the top of her head to the arms of the ogres, one leg dangling over the ground until he heaved himself up. “But your buddy in green needs at least a tail-length more. He's never gonna catch that rope on his own. Be back before you can say ‘banzai'!”

The bulk of the two ogres on the ground blocked Saki's view of the top. The only measure of the tanuki's progress was his huffing and puffing as he scaled the tower of ogres. The weight pressed heavier and heavier with every breath. Just when Saki thought she was about to be crushed, the ogres relaxed, and the object spirits fell over one another on the ground.

“Hey,” called the tanuki. “Can I get a little help here?”

Saki stepped back and craned her neck to see the top of the pile. The tanuki held the rope between his paws as half a dozen air koi wriggled on the line. The wind caught in their bellies was so light that the tanuki might have floated away had the green ogre not kept a tight grip on his furry tail.

“Coming down! Everyone who doesn't wanna get stepped on, get outta the way!” the tanuki cried.

The ogres tumbled from their pile one by one. The ground shook as their feet hit the earth, rattling Saki's teeth. With the line in firm ogre hands, the tanuki perched between the red ogre's horns and waved his tail back and forth like a drill sergeant.

“Heave, ho! Heave, ho!”

The ogres tugged the air koi all the way down the pole to the ground. The koi were three times bigger than Saki and about thirty times bigger than their water-bound relatives, but their scales were the same white, orange, and black. Their mouths opened and closed as they tried to suck up any stray veins of wind along the ground. Strands of whiskers floated around their faces, tickling Saki's cheeks when they swam past her head.

With the weight of the four ogres underneath them, the air koi were anchored to the ground. The silver spirit's butterfly messenger darted between the giant koi and landed on Saki's arm.

“Excellent work,” said the butterfly. “Now you can follow me to the Palace of Souls where the prince and my mistress await.”

“There's still one minor problem…” Saki turned to the object spirits. “Any suggestions for how to get the wind out of these fish?”

“Not to worry,” said the prayer beads. “Ogres, could you hold down a koi for us?”

The three sandals helped the ogres tie the pulley line to the ground as the air koi wriggled. The ogres caught one of the koi between their big arms and wrestled it to the ground. Two ogres pinned the fins down while a third held the tail. The red ogre gripped the air koi's floating whiskers until all it could do was flap its mouth in distress.

The prayer beads clicked against Saki's wooden geta. “We will be sad to see you go. If you ever have need of our help, you know where to find us. Those of our kind who have not yet awakened may also aid you, if you ask them. But you already have a powerful ally in the guardian.”

The tanuki pulled her over to the air koi's flapping mouth, and the red ogre stepped aside with a bow of his head. “You'll need something to keep you up there,” said the tanuki.

The umbrella poked its way through the group. It lifted its paper up and down to mimic a bird flapping its wings.

The tanuki scratched his ear and tilted his head. After a moment, he nodded. “Yeah, I s'pose you'll do. Saki, hold tight to that handle.”

Saki took the umbrella with both hands as the cotton shroud wrapped around her waist and twisted into a knot, tying her to the wood of the handle. The tanuki climbed up her back one last time and settled into the loose space between Saki and the shroud.

“All right, sweetheart. You ready to fly?”

The butterfly flapped past the string of koi and drifted up into the night.

“Wait.” Saki swallowed hard. Her palms began to sweat. “You mean, like, right this very second?”

The tanuki waved his tail and hollered back to the red ogre. “Let's go!”

Saki took one look over her shoulder. The red ogre made a running jump, hurtled into the air, and landed with a heavy thump on the bloated body of the air koi.

A gust of wind hit Saki's back. The burst filled the umbrella, and the strength of the push launched them into the air. Saki's scream was lost in the rush of the air, and she clutched the umbrella handle so hard that her knuckles turned white. Her feet dangled below her, the only solid ground one long, perilous fall away.