The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(77)

Next, she fled to India and called herself Lady Kayo. She whispered in King Kalmashapada’s ear, and a feral darkness washed over his eyes, his teeth lengthening like a wolf’s. He began inviting children into his palace and locking them in shadowed rooms. Lady Kayo would hold them down while her king ate their flesh with his bare hands and sharp teeth. He swallowed their organs and sucked the meat from their ribs, bit their eyeballs like grapes and drank their burning blood like wine. When all of the children were gone, and her king lay choking on their bones, Lady Kayo grew bored and disappeared once more.

Finally, she came to Japan, this time not as a woman, but as a baby. A human couple raised her as Mikuzume, more beautiful than fields of lavender and wiser than all the court scholars. She recited the poems of oracle shells in Emperor Toba’s court in Nasuno, her words so enchanting that he begged her to come closer. She whispered sweet words in the emperor’s ear, and a gray fog overcame his bright eyes. He made her his wife and gave her the name Tamamo No Mae: Lady Duckweed, for the dainty leaves that float in lakes.

Then the children of Nasuno began to disappear.

At night, they vanished from their beds, even through locked doors and windows, they slipped away so suddenly and silently that it was like they’d never existed at all.

The emperor grew ill, too weak to speak a single word, his face gray, but his eyes screamed with an urgent message that no one could hear. Every day he grew weaker, and every day the children of Nasuno continued to disappear. The court prepared for the inevitable day when Tamamo No Mae would ascend as queen regent upon her heirless husband’s death.

On one foggy night, the palace priest saw Tamamo No Mae leave the grounds, shifting into a nine-tailed fox as she ran into the forest. He prayed to the gods for guidance, and their verdict was unanimous:

Tamamo No Mae must die, or all of Japan will fall.

The imperial army chased after her for months, but she was always too fast, too clever, too strong to be captured.

But after four months and four days, the king’s strongest soldiers found the fox asleep in a clearing, lit by pale moonlight. As she slept, one soldier fired arrows through the fox’s stomach and neck, while the other severed her head with his blade. The fox did not fight back, bleeding dark blood into the wet soil.

Back in Nasuno, Emperor Toba awoke from his deep sleep. He remembered nothing of Tamamo No Mae, or his strange illness, but the gray fog never left his eyes.

The children of Nasuno were never found, but at night the walls of the castle creaked and groaned as if in agony, and everyone who slept in the palace could hear nothing but the screams of children in their dreams.

No one dared to admit what they all knew: that Tamamo No Mae had allowed herself to be killed. That she had given up only when her plans had gone awry, and that a creature like Tamamo No Mae would never truly end.

She is not gone. She is waiting.

I put all my concentration into not shattering the porcelain teacup in my hands.

We were sitting on the floor of a small café, a kettle of wheat tea and Hakutaku’s book between us on the low table. The other customers watched warily as we spoke in English, but Hiro paid them no mind. I was beginning to understand why Hiro hadn’t wanted to mention this in passing.

“You’re certain this is the same girl we saw?” I said.

Hiro downed the rest of his teacup like a shot of alcohol, then poured himself another steaming cup. Neven had long since abandoned his cup to stare slack-jawed at Hiro.

“The old woman found her by the side of the road and named her Mikuzume,” he said. “It’s the same as in her legend.”

“You want Ren to kill a child because the old woman picked a strange name?” Neven said.

“The presiding Shinigami here has been watching her since her appearance,” Hiro said, turning away from Neven and speaking only to me. “She’s already showing signs of unusual intelligence. The humans of the village might be weak and pliant, but I know you can sense Death around her.”

I stared at my reflection in my teacup. “If she’s already been killed once and come back, then what’s the point of killing her again?”

“Time,” Hiro said, shrugging. “She’s been quiet for seven hundred years since the last time she was killed. She’s a creature of Buddhist origins, so she’s always going to be reincarnated, but I imagine that Izanami wants to stop her while she’s small and weak.”

“You mean ‘helpless,’” Neven said, frowning. “Her story might be different this time, since we know who she is. We could keep her far from any royalty. Buddhists don’t believe in predeterminism. They think we’re in control of our own fates.”

I had known as much, but unlike Neven, hadn’t wanted to say it out loud.

“Though she may be Buddhist, she’s still a Yokai under Izanami’s domain,” Hiro said, each word chosen carefully, as if to placate Neven. “She must have decided this was too great a risk.”

“But...” Neven’s fingers twitched like he wanted to grab something. “Does she even remember her past life?”

Hiro’s gaze slid to me, grimacing at Neven’s line of questioning. “I’m no Buddhist,” he said, “but to my understanding, no. One usually cannot access memories of past lives without concerted spiritual effort.”

“So she won’t even know why she’s being killed?” Neven said. I wished he would stop asking questions I didn’t want to hear the answers to.