With a final jerk of my arm, the saw blade slipped free. The top half of a baseball bat dropped to the ground.
“I’m a little confused as to what this whole thing is,” Moya said, making a circular motion with her hand.
“I have to get close enough to Shibaten to hit him, right?”
“Um, no. That’s a terrible thing to do.”
I tied one end of a string to the handle and the other to my wrist.
“So let me get this clear,” she said. “We’re not feeding your gym teacher to a kappa?”
“Gods, Moya, that was never the plan.”
I gave my sawed-off bat a little test, dropping it down my coat sleeve and catching the handle.
Moya watched and then said, “Well, it sounds like you’ve thought this through. Hitting a kappa in the face probably won’t make him mad, or make him fold you in half like a lady’s purse.”
“I’m not just going to hit him,” I said. “Haven’t you heard that nursery rhyme? ‘Spill the water from his head. He’ll fall down just like he’s dead.’ A kappa draws its energy from a cavity of water on the top of its head.”
“So you created the new plan with the help of a children’s nursery rhyme?”
“All I have to do is spill that water on Shibaten’s head and he’ll become as weak as a box of kittens.”
“What is it with you and kittens?”
“They are totally harmless! Cute and harmless. Like Shibaten will be.”
“I dislike your definition of cute.”
I zipped up my jacket. “If I can get the jump on Shibaten, I’ll drain his energy and make him swear an oath to never leave the river again.”
Moya clapped dryly. “Brilliant,” she said. “Absolutely nothing could go wrong with a plan like this. And I should know—I have experience setting traps for creatures that totally don’t work at all.”
I balanced the bat handle on the palm of my hand. “How do I look?”
“Like you have no idea what you’re getting into.”
“No different from how I look any other day, I guess. Let’s go.”
We walked out into the street and turned toward Kusaka River. The sun was just reaching its highest point, and as we walked I started sweating through my winter coat.
“So,” I said, pulling down the front zipper to let in a little air. “Why his eyes?”
“What?”
“Why did Shibaten steal Kōtenbō’s eyes?”
“That was the trick,” Moya said. “The tengu never trusted the peace agreement with the founding families, and they knew it. Every night, Kōtenbō would turn into a giant vulture and patrol the skies, spying on the humans below. The humans knew that without his eyes, the tengu leader would be harmless. You know, like a kitten when you pop out its eyes and toss it into the air.”
“Okay, leave the kitten analogies to me, please.”
“Shibaten stole Kōtenbō’s eyes, but the tengu escaped the massacre that followed. Over the next century or so, Kōtenbō hid somewhere here in Kusaka. He seethed alone in the darkness, searching out the Tengu Road and drawing from its dark power.”
We stepped off the street and into the reeds that lined Kusaka River.
“By the time he murdered Seimei’s parents,” she said, “Kōtenbō had learned how to use the crows as his eyes.”
“Is that what happened at the shrine?” I asked.
Moya stopped.
“I mean, Kōtenbō wasn’t really blind,” I said. “He probably had a hundred eyes wherever he went. Is that how he escaped your trap in Ōmura Shrine?”
She turned to me and poked her finger at my coat. “He didn’t escape.”
“I’m pretty sure he did.”
“I exploded him through a wooden wall that was half a meter thick, Koda. He didn’t escape. He … survived.” Moya turned and continued walking.
“You think he went back to the same hiding place,” I said. “He let the whole Tengu Road thing simmer for another seventy years and when it was done, he’d learned how to use the crows to break into people’s minds.”
“That’s my theory,” Moya said.
We reached the banks of the river.
“Well, the attempted barbecue at the shrine must have messed him up,” I said. “If Kōtenbō has to send crows out to hack people’s brains now, he can’t be doing too well with the walking and the moving and the decapitating people in front of their families.”
“I’m definitely counting on that,” Moya said. She looked around for the abandoned truck. “All right. We’re here.”
We jumped across the rocks in the river and walked up to the barberry bush.
“O Shibaten!” I called out.
“He knows we’re here,” Moya said.
A sudden chill ran up my spine. I pulled my winter coat tighter around my body. Maybe the temperature had dropped. Or maybe I was starting to doubt my nursery rhyme plan. “We have returned, O Shibaten! With your tribute!”
“Gods, Koda. Are you trying to alert every crow in Kusaka Town?”
Deep beneath the barberry came a loud sucking noise, followed by the stomach-churning stench of the kappa Shibaten.
“That is potent,” Moya said, covering her face. “I’m just going to step off to the side here and vomit all over my hands.”
“Wait, don’t leave me.”
“Do the best you can,” she said, and then disappeared into the cattails.
When I turned back around, Shibaten was standing in front of me. “Aaah!” I cried out. “You scared me. And you look bigger. Have you gotten bigger? I didn’t remember that you had all those … muscles. Gods, even your fingers are ripped.”
Shibaten rotated his head in curiosity. The water in the dent on his head sloshed gently. I stepped back.
“Do you have the eyes?” I said.
Shibaten looked from side to side.
“Ikeda-sensei is coming. Soon.”
Shibaten raised his arm, clutching a crude wooden box.
“Are they inside?” I asked. “I can just take them now, if…”
Shibaten lowered his arm and sniffed at the air.
“Or you could hold on to them for a while. I do have to actually touch them in order to start a cold dream, but hey, it’s not like finding Kōtenbō’s secret lair and stopping him before he kills everyone in this valley is a time-sensitive issue, right?”
Shibaten grunted.
“Well, I guess we do this the hard way,” I said, slipping my hand up into my sleeve and gripping the sawed-off baseball bat. “Ikeda-sensei will be walking along this path over here. We can hide beneath the bridge, and then you can eat him—or whatever you plan on doing. Follow me.”
I took a few steps and looked behind me. The kappa blew air out of the holes in his beak but crept forward to follow me. As we got close to the bridge there was this awkward silence, so I thought I’d try to make small talk. With a kappa.
“So … you like cucumbers, huh?” I asked.
Shibaten clicked his beak and smacked his chest with the box of eyes. Which is probably kappa for Shut your squirrel mouth—it’s annoying my ear holes.
Fine. Awkward silence it is. Your choice.
When we reached the bridge I turned around and said, “Let’s hide down there. I’ll take the eyes so you can hold Ikeda-sensei down and break his bones. Or suck the life-energy out of his anus. Which is totally not the grossest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re probably used to it, though—why would it be gross to you?”
Shibaten stomped his foot and walked past me. He didn’t offer Kōtenbō’s eyes.
So when is the best time to jump a kappa and smash him in the head with a sawed-off baseball bat? When his back is turned, I guess. I’d never done it before, but that seemed as good a time as any. I let the bat slip from the palm of my hand and caught the handle. Without a word, I stepped up behind Shibaten and cracked him in the back of the skull.
The kappa pitched forward, dropping the box as he reached out to steady himself. The water in his head rippled against the edges of his hair, but almost nothing dribbled out. I took another step, swung my arm up, and caught the kappa on the side of his head with a dull wooden thunk!
Shibaten rolled facedown into the dirt. A little water spilled out, but before I could run forward, he shoved himself up to his feet. The tremor from his throat became a bone-jarring roar and his pale blue eye fixed like stone onto my face. The element of surprise was entirely gone.
“Kso,” I whispered.
From the reeds, a white fox tore between us, snatching the thin box from the ground. It’s about time, I thought. I can’t actually fight a kappa. I’d hit him twice, and from what I could tell, he might have a headache later on. Moya was right, this was an awful idea— Oh gods, he’s running right at me! Moya, where did you go?
I swung my bat again. Shibaten caught it in the air and squeezed. The wood exploded into a shower of splinters.
“Betrayal!” Shibaten roared.
What? He knows actual words? Shibaten yanked the shattered bat from my arm, snapping the string and flipping it into the reeds behind us. He kicked me in the chest, and I slammed into the footbridge hard enough to jumble my insides.
Shibaten leaped at me. He pulled me up from the ground and threw me through the air. The ground raced up and punched me in the brain. Shibaten landed on my arm and shattered it. Light shot in and out of focus. The sounds of Kusaka River fell away. I could feel the end coming. I looked up in the sky and saw the kappa’s foot hovering right above my face.
“Betrayal,” Shibaten growled.
I was going to die, but the fact that in two hundred years betrayal was the one word Shibaten had learned from his interactions with the human race was actually pretty sad.
The kappa didn’t stomp down, though. Moya shot out from the reeds and sank her fox teeth deep into Shibaten’s leg. With her jaw locked like a steel trap, she rolled her body, loudly popping the kappa’s bones from ankle to knee.
“Betrayal!” the kappa cried.
Moya dropped to the ground at my feet, growling and snarling and smoking. Shibaten’s leg hung loosely on the ground. He hopped back, still facing the kitsune, hissing and grunting and trying to keep his balance. Never taking his eyes from hers, Shibaten roared but slowly disappeared beneath the barberry bush.
I looked to the side as the world shook in and out of focus. The kitsune was gone. Two hands grasped my shoulders and began to drag me.
“Moya?” I could see her face floating above me. “I’m not doing very well.”
“I know, you stupid, stupid, little thief.”
“It hurts so much.”
Moya stopped to lean over me. “Look into my eyes, Koda. I give you permission this time. To escape the pain.”
I looked up and tried to smile my appreciation as the world slipped easily into ice.
* * *
“Seimei,” the whisper said. “Seimei, open your eyes.”
The boy obeyed and the park burned all around him.
“You are safe. I am with you.”
When Seimei looked up he saw a girl in a long silver kimono covering him, shielding him from the flames. She smiled, just centimeters from his face.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Who do I look like to you?” she replied.
“A girl. In a gray kimono.”
“Then that is who I will be.”
“No!” Moya yelled out.
The cold dream vanished like smoke. I turned my head painfully to the side. We were at the edge of the bamboo forest looking in at the kaki tree. Only the kaki tree wasn’t there anymore. Moya was screaming. I tried to shift, but ribbons of fire seared up my arm. The kaki tree was in pieces on the ground, an ax thrown hastily to the side. Was I still cold-dreaming?
Moya’s face appeared above mine. Dark trails of ash ran down her cheeks. “It isn’t safe here,” she cried. “Oh gods, Koda, it isn’t safe here anymore.” She grabbed me by my coat and yanked hard. The world, and my pain, disappeared into ice again.
“No!” Moya screamed.
Kōtenbō moved like lightning, sinking his sword so deep into Seimei’s chest that the blade wedged itself into the smoking shrine wall. Kōtenbō grabbed the boy’s face in his enormous red hand and yanked the sword free. Seimei’s body hung limp in the tengu’s grip until Kōtenbō dropped him like a bag of rotten fish.
Moya rushed forward and cradled the boy’s head in her lap. Kōtenbō turned and suddenly ran for the exit. When he pulled the handles, the doors stayed shut.
“Seimei,” Moya cried.
Fire swept along the walls. The crows stormed around the door and Kōtenbō yanked until wood popped and hinges whined, but the chain on the outside of the shrine held true.
Moya didn’t look up. Her silver kimono covered Seimei’s legs. Her light hair fell over his empty eyes. Sulfuric tears ran down her neck. “No, no, no,” she whispered. “Please, Inari, no.”
Kōtenbō banged his massive fist on the door again and again. Moya saw nothing. Where her eyes should have been, embers burned brightly. Moya opened her mouth and screamed light, and Ōmura Shrine exploded in a hurricane of fire. Kōtenbō’s broken body sizzled as he was flung through the tops of the trees and into the valley below.
“Seimei,” the flames wept, “I am so sorry.”