The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(76)

“Are you dumb, as well?” the woman said. “Come to these sacred places and you can’t even speak our language.”

“Grandma,” the little girl said, tugging on the old woman’s sleeve with impatience. The woman yanked the sleeve away, making the girl stumble and grab her skirt for balance.

“We’re just passing through,” I said, not able to put much anger behind the words when I was too busy figuring out why the world was crushing down on all sides. The old woman didn’t emanate Death like a Reaper or Shinigami, nor did she seem to be dying, despite her age. Instead, Death crawled up from the dirt beneath her feet and pulled color from the sky.

Disregarding the fact that I’d actually spoken in Japanese, the old woman scoffed. “These gods have no interest in people like you. Go trample through a different village.”

She took a step forward as if to blaze through us, but Neven moved forward at the same time, standing between me and the woman. He crossed his arms and stood still in her path, his eyes hard purple quartz, his clock gripped tight in his right hand. He couldn’t have understood much of the conversation, but he definitely would have noticed the pull of Death around us.

They both froze in an odd standoff—a decrepit old woman and a scrawny nearsighted teenager, glaring like they were about to grab each other’s throats. The combined energy of Death began to peel the last clinging leaves from the trees, melting the slender shadows of the barren trunks into solid pools of darkness around our feet. What kind of creature could impact the world so severely?

Hurried footsteps stomped up the stone staircase and all four of us turned. Hiro appeared at the final stair into the courtyard and leaned on a nearby stone lantern for balance. His eyes cast over me and Neven, then slid to the old woman and her granddaughter. Suddenly, his breath caught in his throat and his grip went rigid on the lantern.

“Come here,” he said, barely above a whisper. “Now.”

I shot one last look at the old woman and slowly edged away. Neven seemed more reluctant to abandon his stance, his limbs uncooperative as I tugged him away, still glaring over his shoulder as if the woman would leap across the courtyard and attack us from behind.

Hiro waited until we’d reached the top of the stairs, then spun around and hurried back down, waving for us to follow.

“I leave you alone for twenty minutes and somehow you find her,” he said.

“That was her?” I said, looking back over my shoulder. But the old woman had vanished in the sparse trees. “Why are we letting her get away?”

“She’s not ‘getting away,’” Hiro said. “She’s not running or hiding, and it won’t be difficult to find her again in this tiny village. But there’s a lot you need to know about her before we go forward. The presiding Shinigami confirmed what I’d suspected.”

“Which is?”

“That she’s definitely Tamamo No Mae,” he said, sounding strangely disappointed.

“That explains why the sky was curdling like milk from all the Death around her,” Neven said.

“And why she was so charming,” I said, scowling.

Neven checked over his shoulder once more, walking faster. “What was she saying to you?”

“Nothing I haven’t heard before. Let’s just say I have no qualms about ending her now.”

Hiro slowed down, casting me an odd look over his shoulder. “She insulted you?”

“She wouldn’t be the first,” I said, waving a dismissive hand. “Will you finally tell me how to kill her now?”

Hiro stopped walking, looking between me and Neven like all three of us were speaking a different language.

“You’re oddly impassive about this,” he said.

“You haven’t told us what there is to fear!” I said, throwing my hands up in exasperation. “She looks about thirty years overdue for a soul collection. I’m honestly surprised she didn’t turn to dust when the wind changed, so what, pray tell, makes her so horrible?”

Hiro’s eyes flashed with understanding, then his expression turned sour. “Ren,” he said, “Tamamo No Mae is not the old woman. She’s the little girl.”



Chapter Seventeen


The Legend of Tamamo No Mae went something like this:

Long before humans began counting years, a Kitsune was born in a forest in China where tall trees blocked out all the sunlight. She crawled from the darkness of the forest and met the world, and when she saw all of its light and splendor, she knew she had to devour it.

She grew up more beautiful than clear moonlight, able to speak all the languages of the world and recite every book in the royal library. With her beauty and sweet words, she could make men do anything she wanted.

First, she called herself Daji and ensnared King Zhou. She whispered in his ear, and his eyes went dark and hollow like moon craters. He promised her his kingdom and all its subjects to prove his love for her, so she took his hand in marriage and became China’s Queen of Darkness.

Her subjects became her toys. She cut the feet off farmers to see why they were so sturdy. She cut out the belly of a pregnant woman to see what an unborn child looked like. When the king’s concubine protested, Daji cut her into a thousand pieces and fed her flesh to the peasants. When the people grew to hate her king, and the Shang Dynasty collapsed from her cruelty, she vanished.