Shimizu-sensei sat alone in a train car. The doors would be closing soon. In just a few minutes there would be no escape.
He’d woken up in an empty parking lot, his head throbbing. The spirits were watching and waiting. They mocked him for letting a young boy and a silly girl make such a mess of him.
The demon will never let us go now, they said. You are too stupid for him to keep alive.
Shimizu-sensei had pushed up to his feet and stumbled to keep his balance.
There is still a way, a young girl told him.
“I failed and he will kill me,” Shimizu-sensei shot back. “He will trap me here forever.”
A woman in a black dress stepped forward and placed her hand on his cheek. Would that be so bad, my son? To stay with your mother forever?
“I hate you,” Shimizu-sensei whispered. “I hate every last one of you.”
Yowamushi, the rōnin at the back of the crowd grunted.
“I am not a weakling. You make me do terrible things!”
A man in a business suit pushed to the front. We can still escape this. Look over there. Do you see the ax? Pick it up, my son. Pick up the ax.
Shimizu-sensei looked across the street at a pile of logs. A silent crow perched on the handle.
“He won’t let us go,” my homeroom teacher said. “No matter what we do. He will always keep us here.”
We have to try, the spirit in the suit said. Pick up the ax.
“I can’t kill the boy,” said my teacher. “I don’t think I ever could.”
You won’t have to. Pick up the ax.
Even sitting on the train, Shimizu-sensei couldn’t force the sounds out of his mind. The kaki tree had whined and creaked under the force of the heavy blade. It was crazy, he knew, but as he tore at the trunk, he’d heard something on the air, floating along the breeze. A scream. No. Lighter than that. Like remembering a scream that wasn’t really there. When the tree was mauled and dead, the screaming breeze drifted away. Shimizu-sensei dropped the ax and ran from the bamboo grove.
Now there were only a few moments before the train doors would shut and Shimizu-sensei’s fate would be sealed. The spirits around him hadn’t left at all—they’d only gotten louder. The ghosts shouted and ordered and begged him to get off the train, but Shimizu-sensei wouldn’t listen.
The crows are calling us back, a small boy screamed. He wants us to return to him.
If we help him this last time, his mother pleaded, then the tengu will let us go. We can move on from this place. We promise this time.
But Shimizu-sensei pulled his jacket close around his body and tried to shut them out.
You will die if you do this, said a man in a bowler hat. You will become like the rest of us, trapped forever in Kusaka Town. No one will be left to free us.
“If I go to the tengu, he will make a murderer out of me,” Shimizu-sensei whispered.
If you don’t go, he will kill your soul.
“The boy is innocent,” Shimizu-sensei said.
The world is full of innocent people.
“No, this is our fault. Our clan. Our betrayal. Our consequences.”
We were just trying to find a way out.
“Desperate people always are,” Shimizu-sensei said. “But that doesn’t make it right.”
You will never be free, said the man in the bowler hat.
“We were never free anyway.”
The conductor’s announcement blared out over the speakers. Next stop: Sakawa-chō. The doors rattled closed and the voices around Shimizu-sensei fell silent. The train lurched forward and started down the tracks. If other people had been in that car, they wouldn’t have seen a man surrounded by two hundred years of ancestors. They would have seen my homeroom teacher with a lump on his head, gripping the front of his jacket, staring straight into the face of a crow perched on the opposite seat.
The 11:00 p.m. train to Sakawa blasted over the border, but Shimizu-sensei was screaming long before it reached that point. Once he left Kusaka, the sound of his voice only traveled backward, as if sucked behind him into that cursed town.
Microscopic bits of Shimizu-sensei were pulled toward Kusaka. The scraps flaked away and escaped the car through open windows and slots in the metal. The deeper the train barreled into the next town, the longer Shimizu-sensei’s cometlike tail became. He was a meteor flying straight into the sun. The cosmic particles broke free and, while he screamed in silence, Shimizu-sensei’s body unzipped at the smallest level.
Kusaka Town was embedded so deeply inside the Shimizu clan that it tore them all to dust. Ghosts, humans, even the crow perched in the seat couldn’t escape the pull. In a final flash of light, the Shimizu clan ceased to exist.
Their funeral ash hung in the air for several moments before siphoning out of the cracks in the train.
* * *
I opened my eyes and looked up at the flickering green ceiling of my bedroom. I smiled. My body felt light. Sure, a kappa had just tried to tear my arms off, but I couldn’t feel any of that. I could barely remember it. The world felt warm. And shappy. That’s a whole new word—shining and happy. I just made it up. Because I’m awesome.
“Well, you’re grinning like an idiot,” Moya said, a sad smile on her face. “Those herbs must be working—otherwise you’d be screaming.”
I dropped my head to the side and smiled extra wide for Moya. A handful of leaves and grass dribbled out of my mouth.
“Can I sit up?” I mumbled.
“I don’t know. Try.”
I rolled over and pushed up from the floor with my good arm. The broken one hung limp at my side.
“Not bad,” she said.
I spit out the last of the leaves and wiggled my arm. It flopped like a wet noodle. “But not good, either,” I said.
“Your bone is like konyaku jelly right now. I think the feeling will come back soon.”
“You think?”
“Well, not if you keep shaking it around like that.”
“How did you fix the bone?”
“Just a little kitsune power,” she said. “It was either that or gnaw your arm off. As a fox, I’m not picky.”
I lifted my wrist and let my arm fall again. “Well, you definitely made the right choice. Dragging my butt around while you’re fighting a tengu could make things a little harder.”
Moya didn’t say anything. She pulled her knees up to her chest and stared into the green flames of the spectral fireball floating in my room.
“That’s not going to burn the house down, right?” I said, dropping next to her. “It’s cool, but my parents have a strict no-burning-down-the-house policy. Probably.”
“I can’t do this,” she whispered.
I looked over at her.
“I’m a protector spirit that can’t protect anyone.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“Seriously, though, you’re the only protector spirit I’ve got.”
Moya burst into tears. The sulfuric streaks ran down her face and sizzled holes into my tatami mat floor.
“You’re scaring me, Moya.”
“You should be scared. Kōtenbō is a horror! He doesn’t care if the innocent suffer. He murdered Seimei. He murdered the last kaki tree. And he will murder us if he gets the chance.”
“The kaki tree is really dead?” I whispered. “I thought it was just a cold dream.”
“Kōtenbō must have sent his puppets to chop it down while we were distracted with Shibaten. She was dead by the time we got back.”
“I’m sorry, Moya.” I tried to put my arm around her, but it just flopped against her back. I reached across with my good arm and awkwardly patted her shoulder. “He knows we’re close. Remember that. He’s desperate.”
“This was more than desperation,” Moya said. “This was his plan all along. Every time I think I’ve trapped him, I realize he was trapping me the whole time. We can’t fight this. He’s going to win, Koda. There’s nothing we can do.”
“You can stop him,” I said.
Moya looked over at me.
“I believe in you, Moya. You’re one of the good ones, right?”
Her eyes fell back to the floor. “I don’t know anymore,” she whispered.
“I do.”
She stared into the flames for a long time. “The shrine was Seimei’s idea,” she finally said. “I didn’t want to use him as bait. I told him not to do it. I told him he should hide in a temple to Inari until Kōtenbō was dead, but he said we had to find the tengu fast. He said that other people would die and he couldn’t live with that.”
“I understand the feeling,” I said.
“The shrine was Seimei’s idea, but I was supposed to protect him. Instead, I just chained him inside with a monster.” She wiped her cheeks with her fingers. “When I walked out of the shadows, Kōtenbō didn’t lunge at me. He didn’t hack at the door or kick through the walls. He turned and drove his sword straight through Seimei’s heart. The poor boy was dead before I could even reach him.”
The floating fire shrank and burned a deeper shade of green.
“I can’t protect anyone,” she whispered. “Kōtenbō killed Seimei. He killed the kaki tree. And he is going to kill you.”
“You did your best,” I said.
“Yeah, well, sometimes doing your best isn’t good enough.”
“But if we put our bests together,” I said, “then maybe it will be good enough.”
She looked at me. “And maybe it won’t. My partner is a kid who hurts himself at sporting events. I think you’re overestimating your value to the team.”
“First,” I said, “that’s rude. Second, I may not be able to fight a tengu, but I’m the only person who can find one. Where are the bastard’s eyes?”
Moya pointed to the open wooden box next to the wall.
I scooted over and picked it up. “These are eyes?” I said.
“They used to be.”
“Gods, that is disgusting. I’m literally going to throw up every time I see a yellow raisin from now on.”
Moya shrugged.
“They’re too gross,” I said. “Will you put them in my numb hand for me?”
Moya crawled over and pushed my head back onto the floor. “This is the kid who was going to cut out Kōtenbō’s heart and give it to a kappa?”
“I don’t remember saying that.”
“You did.”
“I say things I don’t mean, then.”
“Obviously.”
Moya turned the box over onto my floppy hand.
“Did you do it? Is it working?” I asked.
Moya rolled my fingers into a fist. “Do you feel anything?” she said.
“I don’t know! There are eyes in my hand, Moya. Eyes! I’m freaking out here!”
“Calm down and concentrate.”
“Okay, my arm definitely feels cold.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be here when you wake up,” Moya said.
“I feel it now.”
“Ja mata,” Moya said.
“Thank you,” I told her, and fell back into my world of ice.