The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(50)

“Not particularly,” Hiro said. “Why do you ask?”

“I read about it,” I said to the window, hoping he wouldn’t notice the lie if I wasn’t looking at him. It seemed that I would have to wait to find my mother until I’d finished killing the Yokai. In fact, it would be better that way. I would stand before her as a true Shinigami demanding answers, not a lost child begging for her help. She would see all that I’d become without her, and she would have no choice but to respect me.

We got off at the next stop and walked a short distance through the new snow until a valley opened up below us, revealing a small village. Homes shaped like massive triangles carried roofs three times their size, tucked in with a hearty layer of snow. The mountains rose up behind the houses, flanked by an army of snow-dusted evergreen trees. From a distance, the village looked peaceful and perfect, like the Christmas dioramas in toy store displays back in London.

The wind rose in pitch as we descended into the valley, a chorus of dissonant flutes in our ears. The crunch of snow gave way to roads paved in ice and a deeper chill that prickled my eyelashes and stung my lips.

As we drew nearer, I should have been able to hear the soundscape of the village in exquisite detail—small talk in the streets and merchant transactions and the creak of doors opening. Instead, only the keen of wind sweeping through a hollow landscape reached my ears. Lights gleamed through the glass windows but no shadows shifted inside, as if we were in the same eerie quiet of Yokohama in the hour of spirits.

“Something’s wrong,” I said.

Neven nodded, looking up at the midday sun through the screen of gray clouds. “It’s not omagatoki,” he said. “Why can’t I hear anything?”

I looked to Hiro for answers, but he only frowned.

“Is there anything unusual about this village?” I said. “Do they hibernate for the winter or something?”

Hiro shook his head. “There is nothing strange about Shirakawa-go, other than the heavy snow.”

I pulled my coat tighter around myself, the weight of my knives in my sleeves comforting as we descended deeper into the valley.

“Let’s go.”

We followed the frozen dirt road to the closest homes in the village, buildings half-buried in snow with lamplight burning from the upper windows, great pine trees casting dark, swaying shadows over them.

“Ren,” Neven whispered, tugging my sleeve. He pointed to the yard, where a woman in a pale blue coat crouched on all fours, unmoving. I crunched through the snowy yard, waving for Neven to follow me, and knelt a careful distance in front of her.

“Hello?” I said in Japanese.

The woman’s eyes were closed, eyelashes twinkling with snow crystals, lips a deathly purple. She remained crouched, fingers sunken like claws into the snow. Her rib cage didn’t expand with breaths, nor did any clouds of water vapor come from her nose or mouth. I inched closer, kneeling to examine her face. Her skin glimmered as if coated in a thin layer of glass, leaving her complexion eerily perfect, more like a hand-painted doll than a human. Was this Yuki Onna’s doing?

“Can you hear us?” Neven said to her.

But the wind swept his words away and no one answered.

“Ren,” Neven said, “is this—”

“Ren? Neven?”

I turned toward the main road, where Hiro’s voice called to us.

“I think you should come here,” he said.

I took one last glance at the woman, then crossed the yard and hopped the small fence to walk around the corner to the main road. I took in a sharp breath, pausing a few feet from Hiro.

All the people in the village were frozen.

Villagers paused in the thresholds of their homes, hands on doorknobs. Children laughing as they slid down the ice-slick roads, frozen on their hands and knees. Men frozen midstep on their walk home, eyes cast up at the white sky. We hadn’t found Shirakawa-go, but a painting of what it had once been.

Snowflakes tickled my eyelashes and I turned my face to the sky. It couldn’t be a time freeze, because the snow was still falling, the towering evergreens still swaying hypnotically in the breeze that shuddered down the mountain pass.

I stepped closer to a young man pulling a sled of wrapped parcels behind him. His skin wore the same clear glaze as the woman in the yard, but unlike her, his open eyes stared straight ahead. His irises were whiter than the winter lake beyond the trees, a thick layer of ice over his pupils. Inside his open mouth, tiny icicles of saliva hung down like an extra layer of jagged teeth.

This was just like the man in Yuki Onna’s story. I looked over my shoulder at Hiro, and his face told me he knew it, too.

Neven came up beside me and waved a hand in front of the man’s face.

“Hello?” he said. He turned to me. “Do you think they can be unfrozen?”

“I don’t know, Neven,” I said, even though I was fairly sure the answer was no, especially if Yuki Onna had already eaten their organs. But if Neven wanted to have hope, why take that away?

When the man didn’t answer, Neven reached out to set a hand on his shoulder.

“Neven,” I said, “don’t—”

Neven’s hand came to rest on the man’s shoulder and gave it a gentle shake.

A loud cracking sound echoed down the silent street, like an ax through a frozen pond. The man’s arm snapped off at the shoulder, hit the ground, and shattered into a thousand shards.