The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(47)

“I do not ‘peddle’ fish,” Hiro said, scowling, “I award them to others in exchange for their friendship and undying gratitude.”

“Maybe that’s why your charm is falling flat on me and my brother,” I said. “We haven’t had this magnificent tuna.”

“I offered!” Hiro said, eyes wide as if he’d been seriously affronted.

I rolled my eyes and turned to the scroll, consciously forcing a smile off my lips. Hiro’s theatrics probably should have annoyed me for the time they wasted, but somehow I couldn’t despise the way he made me forget about the magnitude of my task for a few moments. Neven came up beside me, sliding his glasses down his nose to squint at the title painted down the side.

“What does it say, Ren?”

“The Book of...Hakutaku?” I read, looking to Hiro for confirmation.

Hiro nodded, patting the floor before him. I set the scroll down and began to unroll it.

“Hakutaku was one of the first Yokai,” Hiro said. “He was a white ox with nine eyes who could speak all human languages. He told a Chinese emperor about all 11,520 Yokai. His words were recorded in this book. Hopefully, this will tell us more about the Yokai that Izanami wants you to kill.”

“You don’t already know everything about them?” I said, unwinding more and more of the paper. “Didn’t you just tell us you were infinitely knowledgeable?”

“I just said that there are over eleven thousand distinct Yokai in Japan,” Hiro said, pouting. “I have only met about five thousand of them. I hope you can forgive my severe shortcomings.”

I ignored Hiro as I kept unrolling the paper in search of Yuki Onna’s name. The writing on the scroll seemed to have no end. No matter how many meters of washi paper I unrolled, the scroll never changed in size, never looked like it was nearing its endpoint.

“Wait, it’s here.” Hiro leaned over and rested his warm hand on mine to stop me from rolling up any more paper. I looked up and met his eyes, far too close to mine. I caught myself cataloging the different shades of black in them, forgetting for a moment that time was not, in fact, frozen, and I did not have all the time in the world to observe him.

Hiro pulled his hand away and I dropped my gaze to the paper, my cold skin feeling too warm.

“Here,” Hiro said, pointing to the center of the paper. I frowned at the thin brush strokes, as if glaring at the page might make the words clearer. I’d never read so much handwritten Japanese before. The characters were so different from the clean printed ones in my textbooks.

“What does it say?” Neven said, looking at me.

I remained perfectly still, too ashamed to tell Neven that I couldn’t read it, but not able to pretend in front of Hiro, who would know if I lied. Neven looked to me for guidance in a country and language he didn’t understand. How could I tell him that a simple change in handwriting had rendered me mostly illiterate?

“May I?” Hiro said.

I looked up. Hiro wasn’t asking Neven, but me. Were my thoughts really so transparent? Was he trying to rescue me, or did he just enjoy playing storyteller?

“Go ahead,” I said.

Hiro cleared his throat, sat up straight, and told us the legend of Yuki Onna.

In the cold, lonely mountains of Niigata, at the top of a tall, tall hill, an old man and his wife opened their inn to travelers.

On the darkest night of winter, when snow fell thick and blazing white, a young woman knocked seven times on the door. She had long, black hair and eyes like jagged ice, her skin the same crystal-white shade of new snow.

The innkeeper and his wife gave her food, but she would not eat. They offered her a bed, but she would not sleep. She merely sat by the irori, warming herself as the darkness grew deeper, the storm louder.

When the storm began to beat its fists against the windowpanes, the lights in the inn went out, as did all the stars in the sky.

Only then did the young woman stand up and walk toward the door.

“Please don’t leave,” the old man said. “You will die in the storm.”

But the young woman didn’t listen, and walked out into the night.

“I have to find her,” the old man said at last. He put on his coat and ventured into the freezing darkness.

The long night never seemed to end as the old woman waited for her husband to return. The sunrise never came, the mountains only growing colder and darker. Eventually, the old woman put on her coat and went out to find her husband.

She found him only three paces from the front door.

His skin was blue and his whole body had turned to ice, like he was trapped in a glass chrysalis. When the old woman bent down to touch him, he shattered into one thousand pieces.

From high up in the mountains, Yuki Onna watched, eating the old man’s liver as his warm blood dribbled down her chin. When she finished, she went deeper into the darkness, in search of an even colder and lonelier village, one that would not tell her secrets.

“Wonderful,” I said, crossing my arms. “I hate winter.”

Neven had gone quiet and pale beside me. This was too reminiscent of Corliss forcing him to listen to her ghost stories when he was a child. Only this time, we were actually hunting down the ghosts.

“Don’t worry, Neven,” I said, rolling up the endless length of scroll. “We’ll just put on some mittens and go carve her heart out.” I didn’t think it would be so simple, but Neven wasn’t going to be the one killing Yuki Onna anyway, so it didn’t matter if he underestimated her.