The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(58)

“This text was recorded thousands of years ago,” Hiro said, his voice quiet and warm. “Our language has changed since then. Even for me, this text is not easy to read.”

I dared to look up at Hiro’s expression. Surprisingly, I saw no judgment or trace of humor in his eyes. He stood up and slid into the seat beside me, barely able to fit with all three of us crammed together. My body still felt thoroughly frozen from our time on the mountain, so Hiro’s warm blood burned where his arm pressed against mine.

“You’re freezing!” he said.

He laid his hand over mine on the table, scalding hot, but I couldn’t bring myself to move away.

“My normal body temperature is quite low,” I said. Hiro made a sound of understanding but didn’t move his hand. I found myself leaning closer to him, drawn to warmth like an insect to light, even though I’d never found the cold that uncomfortable. With my Reaper’s hearing, I could sense the beat of his heart. Reapers had cold bodies and hearts that beat slowly but constantly, and apparently the hearts of Shinigami beat almost twice as fast as mine.

“Read what you can understand,” he said, “and I’ll fill in the rest.” Together, squinting in the pale light of the moon through the train window with Hiro’s heartbeat pounding in my ears, we read the legend of Iso Onna.

On the shores of Takaoka lay a beach full of bones.

Sailors passing through the black waters often crashed their ships on the jagged rocks of Takaoka’s coast and washed up on the sand, only to die of hunger and thirst when they had no way back home.

One day, a beautiful woman emerged from the sands to greet the seamen who crawled half-drowned onto the shore.

She had hair so long that it dragged behind her on the sand, tangled with starfish and seaweed. When she looked at the men, they fell into a trance, unable to think about anything but her beautiful eyes, as green as sea glass.

When the men came close enough, she opened her mouth and screamed.

The sound shattered every star in the sky and splintered the earth beneath her feet. It was a sound that no human was ever meant to hear, a song that was long forbidden.

Unable to fight against her voice, the men were dragged out to sea by her long hair, like thousands of black arms. She drowned them in the frigid waters and drank their blood, then spit their bones out on the shore.

Iso Onna still ensnares men like a spider. She never has to hunt, because her victims always come to her. And once they reach her shores, they never leave.

I sighed as I read the last word of Iso Onna’s tale. Why couldn’t Hakutaku have given explicit instructions on how to defeat her?

“What is her essence, then?” I said. “Her hair? Her voice? Maybe her blood?”

“All reasonable guesses,” Hiro said. “I’m not sure which one is correct.”

I drummed my fingers against the paper.

“We have time to think it over,” Hiro said. “By the time we reach Takaoka, it will still be too dark to take a boat. And you’re still drenched in melted Yokai.”

I grimaced, glancing down at my formerly white kimono, which had turned a sickly shade of gray.

“I don’t know that a change of clothing will prepare me to bleed a Yokai like a pig, cut off her hair, and rip out her vocal cords.”

Hiro shrugged. “It’s your mission to finish as you please,” he said, his voice even.

“Nothing about this idea ‘pleases’ me,” I said.

“Doesn’t it?”

I frowned and turned to Hiro, his eyes boring into mine with a strange intensity. It was hard to make out his expression in the changing light of the train, but the blackness in his eyes burned more brilliantly than the entire night sky outside the window.

“You don’t like it at all?” he said, a chilling edge to his voice.

Do I? I thought about Yuki Onna, and the strange rush that had swept through me when she’d dissolved in my arms, the feeling of destroying someone who deserved it. She had dared to speak cruel words to me, and now she no longer had a mouth to form any words at all. Was it so horrible if that pleased me?

Neven groaned and shifted beside me. I turned away from Hiro, glad for the excuse not to answer. Neven was leaning against the window, so I pulled his glasses off and set them on the table.

Hiro didn’t speak for the rest of the train ride, but somehow I felt that he already knew my answer.

The train arrived one hour later at Takaoka.

We stepped out of the station and into the night, the air pinging with the sound of hammers striking metal into shape, sparks and embers flashing up in sudden flurries of light behind the windows of the houses.

Hiro had called this the city of bronze and copper, and now I understood why—it clinked and clanged like one great machine as metalworking continued into the night. Outside, the clear black sky smelled of fire and molten metal. The lanterns of a night market cast circles of light on lattice windows, each one ornamented with metal wares—shiny pots and rice cookers, spoons and chopsticks, tiny Buddhas and flower vases carved with intricate patterns.

Neven still looked half-asleep, stumbling through the crowd, so he and I waited on a short stone wall by the station while Hiro went to find us a place to stay. Behind us, the waters of the East Sea lapped back and forth against the wall, the moon a thin crescent above us and the sky a pale black, the darkness diffused by the lanterns and moonlight. Compared to Yomi, nights aboveground no longer seemed dark. I wondered once more if my mother was looking up at the same moon. I shook the thought away and slid closer to Neven. There would be plenty of time to find my mother once I became a true Shinigami.