The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(93)

“Speak quickly,” Izanami said. “I grow tired of this exchange.”

“Another Shinigami helped me with my tasks,” I said, forcing myself to look up. “I ask that he be rewarded as I have.”

For an unbearable stretch of time, Izanami said nothing.

“Who?” she said, the temperature of the room crawling upward.

I swallowed, my throat suddenly scorched. “His name is Hiro.”

The temperature of the room skyrocketed, and for a moment I thought I would faint from the rush of heat and smell of rot.

“Do not waste my time!” Izanami said, the language of Death splintering the floorboards. “I told you before, I have no Shinigami of that name!”

“How can you deny him, even now?” I said.

“I deny no one!” Izanami said. “I have no Shinigami by the name of ‘Hiro’ and I never have.”

The door to the throne room slid open, slamming against its wooden casing. A pale circle of flickering candlelight appeared in the doorway.

“But you have one named Hiruko.”

I started to turn toward the sound of Hiro’s voice in the doorway, but I froze as his words echoed through the darkness.

“Hiruko?” I whispered.

And then all the pieces began to come together—everything Hiro had ever told me that should have made me suspicious. He was a wounded fishing spirit from a coastal town, older than time itself, called a “leech” by the other Shinigami, wearing a name on his spine that wasn’t “Hiro.”

Izanami can have children? Neven had said as we entered Yahiko village.

She had two children without bones after she ruined her marriage ritual, I’d said while Hiro had stared at the horizon, reticent from what I’d thought was anxiety about Tamamo No Mae. But his silence had had nothing to do with the Yokai, and everything to do with me nearly uncovering his secret. He’d known perfectly well that the names of Izanami’s first two children were Awashima and Hiruko.

According to Shinto legends, before Izanami and Izanagi made Japan, they made a horrible mistake.

They built a pillar of Heaven and a great palace for their marriage, but during the ceremony, Izanami broke tradition by speaking before her husband.

As punishment for her transgressions, her first son was born without bones. They named him Hiruko, leech child, and cast him off to sea in a boat of reeds.

He washed ashore in Ezo, where he was raised by humans and grew most, but not all, of his bones. He became a great god of fishermen who they called Ebisu, and that was where the legend of Hiruko was supposed to end.

But the legends never told the rest of the story—that Izanami’s firstborn son had taken a new name and returned to Yomi.

Hiro’s footsteps crossed the dark room, and a great surge of sadness caught in my throat. I had trusted him, and he had lied to me. I bit my lip and pressed myself hard into the mat and wished I could melt into the darkness.

“How did you enter my palace?” Izanami said. Heat washed over the room in nauseating waves.

“Is that really the first thing you wish to say to me, after all this time?” Hiro said. “Aren’t you so pleased that your firstborn has returned?”

“How can you even walk?” Izanami said, her outrage boiling the air. “I thought—”

“I learned to do many things without you,” Hiro said, scowling and stepping closer, his circle of light drawing nearer and nearer Izanami’s hidden form.

“You dare to bring light into my sacred darkness?” Izanami said, but her confidence wavered, her presence retreating under the threat of light.

“Are you scared of what I’ll see when I cast my light on you?”

“Hiro,” I whispered. He turned to me, his rage softening when he saw my face in the dim light. “What are you doing?”

“I’m showing my mother what I’ve become,” he said, turning away from me. “Am I worthy of your grace now, Mother?” he said. The light flickered dangerously close to Izanami’s throne.

“My dearest Hiruko,” Izanami whispered. The gentleness of her voice stilled Hiro’s rage.

“You were my first and gravest mistake,” she said. “I had all the magic of the gods in my hands...the power to create the world...and yet, I couldn’t fix you.”

“I didn’t need to be fixed!” Hiro said. “There was nothing wrong with me! There was everything wrong with you! The gods should be ashamed that they gave their powers to anyone so cowardly.”

“Hiruko,” Izanami whispered. “I’m sorry. I should never have sent you away...”

Then the darkness parted and the light from Hiro’s candle inhaled Izanami’s true form, half bone and half grayed flesh, thousands of years of slow and tortuous decay. Her empty eyes teemed with maggots and her lips had rotted away to reveal sharp yellowed teeth. She pushed herself up and rose with a shuddering creak, bones clicking and scraping against each other.

“I should have ended you myself.”



Chapter Twenty-One


Death compressed the room, smashing both me and Hiro flat to the floor. Rather than simply immobilizing us, the weight of the universe kept crushing harder and harder on our backs, my joints popping out of their sockets, my bones threatening to splinter. The pressure on my brain sent blood spilling out my nose and ears, forcing my eyes to cross.