“All that, even if true, doesn’t mean you have anything to do with our clan. What proof is there we’re related to you?”
You heard my call, did you not?
Sanae snorted, mind-talking even though she knew they couldn’t hear her.
Just because we’ve never encountered someone able to call us in such a way, doesn’t mean there’s no explanation other than us being your descendants!
Inari looked at her.
I must ask—why are you using that body, daughter?
Wait, what? Can you hear me?
Why wouldn’t I?
Inari said, sounding between puzzled and amused.
Because nobody else can hear me, not even my brother.
Ah. I forgot how weak you young ones are.
Her tone sounded affectionate instead of insulting.
That flesh is not yours and hinders your communication. So why use it?
It was the only living creature I could find in the area. I don’t have a human body anymore to protect me.
Ah, how unfortunate. I remember body death as unpleasant.
Akakiba shifted. “Are you two having a conversation?”
Ah, right, her poor brother could only hear one side of the conversation. That must have been disconcerting. She patted his cheek with a tiny paw.
Yes,
Inari told Akakiba.
She says she does not think my ability to call to you is proof of your lineage. I will try to provide better.
After a moment, she offered,
I had six children. Takeo, eldest and most inquisitive. Haru, my spring child. Susumu, my quiet one. Masao, ever merry. Saki, red haired and fierce. Aki, my lost one.
The Fox clan used five different family graves, each engraved with the name of one of the five children the First Lady was said to have borne. Nobody outside the clan knew these names, not even Yuki. Even if this spirit had gone there and read the
kanji
—how would she have known Saki was rumored to have been the first red-haired child in the clan?
Besides, there was the sixth name.
We didn’t know about Aki,
Sanae said at the same Akakiba objected, “There’s no record of anyone called Aki.”
She drowned young. You might not remember, but I never forgot.
The grief of a parent for a dead child had a peculiar sound to it, one Sanae had heard far too often in her clan. If she couldn’t be sure of anything else, she could be sure this grief was sharp and cutting, as if time had had no dulling effect on it.
Akakiba sank down on the nearest fallen tree. His hand no longer hovered near his sword’s hilt. “Wasn’t the clan house established while you were still alive? Tell us about it.”
Inari told them many things. Somewhere along the way, she started to talk about the friendly spirit who lived in the pool—the Mirror Pool spirit!—and Sanae realized she
believed
. This was Inari. This was their great-grandmother—though she had no idea how many “greats” needed to be added to be correct.
To think they’d come here intending to kill her! Ah, wait…
If you’re already awake,
she asked Inari,
who or what are they trying to resurrect by draining so much energy out of the world? Everything is dying.
I can see the strain,
Inari said.
I woke early in the process, because my mind-part is small. Now they’re pulling the rest of me out, the part I separated from so I might become human. Oh, let us call it my mindless body. I never merged back with it, but neither can I break free. As long as they have a hold on that part of me, I cannot travel far from this area. It was vexing to be forced to wait and call for you.
We couldn’t hear
, Sanae said
. Not until we got closer.
“We’re sorry it took so long for us to come,” Akakiba said. “How do we free you from their hold?”
And, just like that, they became traitors. Hachiro had been right. In the end, fox would side with fox. Stopping a cult from bringing back a god at great cost to the world was good. Killing their own god was less good. Killing their own ancestress? Never.
Destroy the object they use as focus and their work will be undone. But there are too many guards for us three to reach it.
“We came here with humans who want the cult stopped,” Akakiba said as he drew the special glyphed sword he bore alongside his own. “We have three of these weapons to use.”
The fox padded a few steps closer, ears angled forward in curiosity.
Interesting.
Do you know how to destroy one of these?
Sanae said.
We’d like to release the energy inside once we’re done here.
Extreme heat would melt them like any other sword,
Inari said.
A volcano might be safest, considering there will be an explosion.
Evil swords were bad enough, but
exploding
evil swords were worse. Well, there would be time to consider the problem later.
“Leave the matter to us,” Akakiba said. “With the humans’ help, we can get through the guards and destroy the focus. The information we have says it’s in a guarded box, but not what it is. Do you know?”
The remains of my body, likely.
“How would they have found those? Wouldn’t you have died in the clan house, even if we don’t remember?”
Inari’s tail twitched.
I did not stay in the clan house past the time my youngest married. I wandered, afterwards, to explore the land. My human body died here, on this northern island. I left it as it died and told my then-companion to dispose of it. Knowledge of who I had been must have been passed on down the years, until someone struck upon this disastrous resurrection idea.
“We’ll destroy them,” Akakiba said. He looked back towards camp. “We’ve been gone too long. Stay away from the humans. It’ll be safer.”
He strode back to camp with Sanae still on his shoulder. Thanks to her superior night vision, they evaded the guards easily and slipped back inside the building where their friends slept.
“I was about to come get you,” Yuki said sleepily.
Sanae waited for her brother to seize the chance to start talking about Inari and how meeting her had changed their plans, but he didn’t say anything. Instead he settled down to sleep as if nothing had happened.
She was still clinging to his clothes, so it was easy to grab some hair, chatter, and point at Yuki.
“Unnecessary,” he grumbled, brushing her off with a hand.
Unnecessary to tell their friends? What was he thinking? She sat and sulked and wondered how unhappy their friends would be when they found out.
Chapter
E
ight
Mamoru
A
nother morning, another spying trip. There was no sign of Sanae. From the worried faces of her parents, Mamoru gathered she hadn’t come while he was away. Did that mean the expedition was going badly? He could have tried to go and find out, but he wasn’t suicidal. He didn’t want to be eaten by a god or by a suspicious fox girl.
The grandmother was either elsewhere or deep in the spirit realm, leaving the clan house largely unprotected from his attentive eyes and ears. Nobody had anything interesting to say today; parents scolded troublesome children, guards chatted with each other about the weather, and the leader was drinking sake by himself. He seemed to do that far too often.
An earsplitting shriek rose. Two fox kits raced down the hallway, followed by an angry, flour-coated woman. “Hikaru and Kaoru,” she howled, “you come back here this instant!”
Takashi lifted his cup as if to hide his smile. “The twins are troublesome again?”
The woman whirled about. She was one of the human women of the clan, her plain aura betraying her. “Isn’t it about time you do something?” she snapped at the clan leader. Mamoru marveled at her brash tone; if he’d even spoken to Yoshio so, his head would have flown off his neck before he’d finished his sentence. “They’re getting worse all the time! They ambushed me with rice flour! Look at this mess.”
“Children will be children,” Takashi murmured. “But I will speak to their parents.”
The woman stalked away, flour drifting off her at every step.
The fox kits popped out of a hidden passage in the floor. Mamoru had noticed quite a few of those running through the clan house, places where a section of polished wood could be lifted to reveal a sort of secondary floor underneath, the space in between adequate for foxes. The children crawled in there in human form sometimes, apparently unafraid of tight spaces.
“Not bad,” Takashi told the kits, pulling a wooden box out from under the table. The top slid aside to reveal a variety of confectioneries. He tossed a few. The kits snapped them out of the air. “But try not to disturb the ladies in the kitchen next time. I rather dislike burnt rice.”
The kits scampered off, no doubt to plot and execute another trick.
Mamoru wouldn’t be reporting this. Advisor Yoshida wouldn’t even believe it. Foxes were weird.
You know,
a voice said in a conversational tone,
you’d look far less suspicious if you didn’t linger the same rooms for so long. I might not have noticed you as quickly.
It took a moment for Mamoru to register the words were meant for him. And who was speaking them.
He had two choices: keep pretending he was just a normal spirit drifting by or flee for his life. Grandmother Naoko was bigger than he was, in spirit terms.
He bolted for the spirit realm. He could try to lose her there, he could—
He couldn’t get through. Why couldn’t…
Reversed glyphs hidden in the walls,
Grandmother Naoko explained.
We had no idea such things existed, but I found out about them. They hinder the passage of spirits.
He made for the door.
New spirits appeared, converging on him. Where were they coming from? Oh, oh—familiar auras. The foxes were learning to leave their bodies, weren’t they? Could he find an abandoned body and steal it, or would they have taken precautions? He’d never paid attention to the quarters of unimportant foxes and didn’t even know where he might find those currently unoccupied bodies.
He didn’t make it outside, spirits blocking doorways before he got to them. It wasn’t fair, how strong and healthy they were; the demon had been small and weak when it’d come into the human and the resulting being, him, wasn’t much stronger.
A man with a fake leg hobbled towards him—the healer?—while holding a vase in his hands. “In here you go,” he said cheerfully, tossing salt at Mamoru.
Something was pulling on him, dragging him towards the vase. Fighting it was as useless as fighting a tsunami.
Binding glyphs exist, too,
Grandmother Naoko said.
I wonder why the Great Temples don’t use these anymore. They’re so useful.
Mamoru was swept into the vase. They put something in the opening, and all was dark.
Time passed, enough of it for fear to dull and, eventually, turn to boredom.
They didn’t hurt him. Maybe they couldn’t figure out how to torture a spirit. They locked him up in the dark instead, promising to let him out if he told them who had sent him. They might already know, might be after proof; that would explain why they weren’t in a hurry.
Would they really let him out if he told them? Unlikely. Besides, Advisor Yoshida wouldn’t take treason well. Usagi either. He couldn’t afford to drop further in her esteem; she’d barely spoken to him since the disastrous reveal, watching him with wary eyes.
Would Usagi notice he’d been unconscious for far too long? Would she care to feed his body or would she allow it to waste away? How long could a human body last under these conditions? Would he even feel it if his body died? He wished he knew.
But knowing these things wouldn’t get him out of here. He poked and prodded the vase from inside, finding no crack to squeeze through. He couldn’t shift to the spirit realm either. Hmm, could he do the opposite?
He rarely did this, but he could fold himself down like a piece of scroll, fold and fold until he was so dense it made him solid, real. He hit one side of the vase, then the other. The vase shook, a little. Again, and again, and again—yes, it was rocking! Harder, harder! If the vase fell and shattered, he would be free.
You’re excited,
Grandmother Naoko said.
Best we put you somewhere safer.
He could hear her, but not see or sense her. He was only vaguely aware of motion, but someone seemed to have picked up the vase, presumably to put in on the floor or elsewhere he couldn’t hope to shatter it by rocking. He screamed in frustration, wordlessly and noiselessly. If that annoying fox hadn’t been watching! But maybe she always watched. She didn’t require sleep anymore, did she?
Well, he didn’t require sleep either. He’d think of something.
Without such things as hunger or the sight of the sun to judge time, he could only guess he’d been in here for several hours. Usagi could be, right at this moment, worrying over why he hadn’t risen yet. He wouldn’t find out unless he went back to her, so he’d better find a way.
He settled down in a puddle at the bottom of the vase, and thought furiously.
Chapter Nine
Sanae
T
ravelling speedily was easier when they didn’t have supply carts to drag along. Everything unnecessary for battle had been left in the village, unguarded. There was nobody to steal from them.
A halt was called; they gathered, looking to their guide as he said, “This is as far as we can go unseen. As soon as we cross the ridge, we’ll be in plain view. Dead trees provide no cover.”
Their guide had scouted ahead the entire time, occasionally falling back to indicate the way was clear. He looked less tired, as if excitement was a temporary cure for flagging health.
The fighters had brought weapons, water, cold snacks, and supplies to tend wounds. The scribe had brought his writing table, several bottles of inks, and enough parchment to detail weeks of fighting. Sanae hadn’t brought anything other than a few nuts wrapped in a piece of fabric.
“We could use a close scout,” the scribe said politely, side-eying Akakiba. “They’ve already seen a fox in the area; perhaps you could attempt to contact the woman we have inside? She has three tiny beauty marks on her right cheek.”
Before Akakiba had to try to explain he couldn’t shift fox, Sanae tugged on his hair and launched into the air to glide to the ground.
“There’s our scout,” Jien said. “Give her a message to carry.”
The scribe looked skeptical, but nonetheless applied brush to scroll to produce a squirrel-sized rolled up message. Sanae snatched it and took off. Time to find the lady with the beauty marks.
The shrine was indeed over the ridge. Looking at it gave Sanae a headache, her vision swimming. Wait. Was that an aura around the building? Momo’s eyes weren’t sensitive to auras in the least. If they could discern this one, it must be impossibly large.
If she could just peek—no, too dangerous. She was willing to bet the aura was orange, of the exact shade found on foxes.
She scouted the shrine as best she could without being seen. A squirrel wouldn’t normally look suspicious, but there hadn’t been any squirrels here in years. She climbed on the roof and crept along, freezing when someone seemed to look up in her general direction. The roof’s tiles were grey, and so was Momo’s fur—they blended. She counted patrolling guards, careful not to count them twice.
There was nothing further to be seen from up high. Like most buildings, the shrine was build slightly off the ground, the space underneath allowing a squirrel easy passage. Moving along, she listened intently for the creaks of footsteps and the murmur of voices.
Priests were gathered in the largest room, praying to Inari. Half of them were slumped on the floor in various positions. Those standing on their feet were better dressed, a hint they were the ones afforded the luxury to live somewhere else to protect their health and strength.
In the middle of the room, a box. A nice box of lacquered wood, dark and gleaming. It was big enough to stash a child—or the bones of a long-dead adult. This was the focus, the item they were using to steal energy. She tried not to think about how close she was to it. Momo didn’t feel sick or weak, so it clearly didn’t pull to a degree sufficient to present an immediate concern. Unless perhaps one touched it, but she had no intention of finding out.
No women here, hm. Onward then, with an ear tuned to—ah, there, a female giggle. Peering inside, she spotted three women dressed like priestesses, white tops paired with red
hakama
and hair tied at the nape with white ribbons. One had beauty marks on her cheek, three of them in a triangle. That one must be their insider, their spy. The priestesses were walking leisurely, the spy a step behind the others.
Shoving the message scroll into her mouth, Sanae launched, all limbs outstretched as she glided down and forward. Tiny paws clutched at red fabric on impact. She’d almost missed; she was at knee-level. She climbed up, claws finding plenty of purchase in the fabric. Sensing something, the spy looked over her shoulder—her gaze fastened immediately on the rolled up message.
The spy slowed. “I forgot something,” she told the others. “I’ll be a moment.”
The instant the two real priestesses turned a corner, the fake one scooped Momo up with one hand and seized the message with the other. “I’d like to know who trained you, little one,” she murmured before dropping her gaze to scan the message. She slid it into her clothes, out of view. “Go back to your master,” she said, making a quick shooing motion with an elegant, long-fingered hand. “I need to hurry.”
Sanae climbed to the roof and waited to see what the spy would do; moments later, she emerged with a platter and sake cups to offer to the guards. They smiled and drank, unaware their trust was misplaced. There would be poison in there, surely, but was it fast-acting or slow-acting?
She scurried back to the others, laboriously reporting by writing in snow. Aito and Jien aside, all the humans were looking at her strangely. None of her friends bothered to explain why a squirrel could write.
The guide grunted. “It’ll take a short while before they really feel the effect.” He sounded like he knew what she would have given them. Ah ha, he
was
a
shinobi
.
“We don’t want them to notice us before they fall down,” the scribe murmured, tapping his fingertips on his writing table. “Can we plan something to divert their attention briefly?”
“Plans are for those who lack confidence in their strength,” Hachiro boomed. “Let us go forth and take them down!”
Squirrels didn’t laugh, but Sanae managed an approximation when she saw the scribe’s expression. His opinion of samurai as terminal idiots wouldn’t change any time soon.
“A fire in the back,” Yuki suggested. “That would draw their attention quickly.”
“A good idea,” the scribe said, looking grateful someone was capable of intelligent thought. “But I fear the flames might spread rapidly through the forest and prevent any of us from escaping alive. We do, at this time, hope to survive.”
Looking at her, Yuki said, “A noisy distraction without fire? I’m sure a squirrel can cause mischief.”
She chattered excitedly at them. She had an idea already.
“Be careful,” Akakiba told her. “We’ll be right behind you.”
In a Shinto shrine, there was often a gong hung in front of the inner altar. It was meant to be rung to alert the gods someone was talking—praying—to them.
As soon as Sanae located the altar, she squeezed in the space between the flat gong and the wall. A rock, small enough to be gripped by her tiny paws, served her purpose. Invisible in her hidden place, she smacked the gong with the rock. The noise wasn’t terribly loud, but in such a quiet place, the sound carried.
A pair of guards drifted close, then a second pair. That accounted for all of the guards who had been watching the front. As long as they were looking this way, they couldn’t see her friends coming. At least one looked like he wasn’t feeling well; had he drunk the lady’s tea?
“Who’s ringing the gong at this time?”
“I didn’t see anyone.”
They started drifting away, so she lifted her rock. Bang, bang, bang.
“That’s not the wind,” a guard said, peering round suspiciously.
“It’s nothing,” the sick-looking one said grumpily. “Only the wind.”
An irate priest stepped out. “What are you all doing here?”
“The gong’s ringing by itself,” one guard said.
The priest’s face brightened. “The goddess Inari must be giving us a sign! She’s coming!” He turned sharply, as if he’d heard something. “What was that?”
Someone screamed. The priest and guards took off—or, well, two ran, one dragged himself along, and the fourth sat on the ground.
The sound of metal on metal carried. Were the others already here? Sanae ran, jumping and gliding her way to the room where the focus was. Jien and Aito stood in the doorway, using their spears’ longer reach to persuade the guards and priests to back away. The others spilled in the room behind the advancing
sohei
or stood in the hallway to meet guards rushing from other directions.
How many guards hadn’t been poisoned? Someone blew a conch, bringing every remaining guard running to surround them. The answer, it seemed, was “too many.”
A lavishly dressed man with an elaborate headdress stood in front of the box, arms spread wide. “Fools!” he cried. “It’s too late to stop us! Guards! We need more life!”
“I don’t understand,” Jien began, “why certain people feel obligated to talk like they’re in a tale. Obviously it isn’t too late since we’re right here and—”
The guards turned their swords on the weakened priests, the ones who couldn’t rise from the floor.
Akakiba jerked forward, past Jien. “Stop them!”
Too late. As the men expired, their lives went straight to feed the ritual. The box cracked and the ground shook under their feet. The outline of a fox grew from the box. And grew. And grew. Its head went right through the roof, pieces falling. The spirit was already physical, solid. The still-living priests screamed in either alarm or ecstasy; it was difficult to tell the difference.
“Inari! Inari! Inari!”
This was Inari’s “body”? It was bigger than the hundred biggest spirits she’d ever seen put together! Inari had discarded all that so she could fit inside a human?
Hachiro and Sora threw themselves forward, special swords in hand. Behind them, Akakiba hesitated, then flung an arm out and snapped at the others, “Get out! The building won’t hold!”
They retreated, Sanae catching a ride on Yuki’s shoulder. She nipped his ear to keep him stumbling onward instead of looking over his shoulder for Akakiba.
Between the ground’s brutal heaving and the spirit thrashing the roof, the building stood no chance. It collapsed, groaning and flinging dust into the air.
The sword-bearers stumbled out of the wreckage, coughing.
“Couldn’t see anything,” Hachiro said between two coughs.
The world had calmed under their feet, but there were zigzag cracks in the earth. They looked up at the spirit.
“Who saw this coming?” Jien asked. “Because I didn’t. I should have, though. Nine is classic.”
A giant, nine-tailed fox rose before them. It was bigger than most temples.
“Fools!” the high priest cried, standing in the ruins of his shrine with dust and blood covering his face. “Goddess Inari herself is on our side! She will destroy you all!” He raised his arms to the fox. “Goddess Inari! These men have come to attack your faithful! We beseech you, defend us!”
A bone-shaking roar came from the fox’s throat. Its tails lashed wildly as it turned, one of them smacking the high priest into a still-standing wall so hard he slumped to the ground and did not rise again.
“I saw that coming,” Jien said. “I don’t think she wants to be friends with them. Want to try talking to her, Aki?”
Akakiba thinned his lips. “She can’t understand us, right now. Unless she comes to herself soon and starts talking to us, consider her an enemy. Remember that only the special swords can hurt her.”
Hachiro grunted. “Very well. We will spread out and keep our distance for a time, to see what she does. Take up formation and defend yourselves!” From the guards, he meant; the ones who hadn’t been flattened by the temple’s collapse were organizing, advancing as if to try to push them under the giant stomping fox’s paws.
It was a short glide from Yuki’s shoulder to Akakiba’s. He eyed her sideways, something almost helpless in his gaze. “Find her,” he whispered, teeth gritted. “If she can’t control that thing…”
Sanae took off, fast. Nobody seemed to notice her passage except the
shinobi
guide. He was standing guard over the scribe, who knelt in the snow, recording the scene with jerky, feverish brush strokes. The scribe also held a dagger in his mouth, a sign he wasn’t averse to using violence to protect his life, whatever his dismissive words about swordsmen.
Inari shouldn’t be too far away, right? Sanae called for her, screaming with her mind.
Lady Inari! We need you!
A fox bounded out of nowhere, nearly frightening Momo to death. Because she was currently in charge of the body, Sanae felt the cold flush of instinctive terror as if it were her own. Predator! Flee, flee!
Gah, don’t do that!
She held Momo, trying to convince him the fox wasn’t going to eat them.
Hm? But you called for me.
Inari looked away, through the trees. Her “body” was just about visible from here.
They woke it. Unfortunate.
What do we do now? Can you control it?
If I come any closer I will be drawn to merge with it. But doing so would not restore what was stolen from the land.
There’s no choice. You have the swords; you can kill it.
But it’s part of you! Will you die?
It’s a possibility.
Sanae choked on horror and indignation.
We’re not going to risk killing you!
There’s no choice
, Inari said without so much as a trace of fear or regret in her tone, as if the possibility of her death was but an inconvenience.
Without a mind, it is a vicious thing. Unless… Can you see this? The thread connected to my chest?
Sanae squinted and said,
I don’t…Oh, maybe?
There was a shimmering, as if there was something she couldn’t quite see, as if she could see the smoke but not the fire responsible for it.
Tell your brother to cut the thread with the sword he showed me. It is the last link between us, now. If he severs it, I will be safe from its demise, but I will also be unable to ever control it. It does not know who you are and will not refrain from harming you.
We’ll be fine,
Sanae said, faking complete confidence.
We can do this. Wait here, and we’ll end this.
She bounded off in the opposite direction. Inari’s soft
Be safe, granddaughter
followed her.
The snow on the battlefield was trampled and muddied, hardly fit for her to write in. She hopped onto the scribe’s writing table and dipped a paw into ink to write. It would be ugly, not at all like proper brushwork, but there was no time to do better.
“What are you doing?” the scribe demanded to know. “You’re ruining my work!” He nonetheless let her continue, gaze following her progress.
Use the Sword Eater copy to cut the thin thread coming out of its chest,
the message said.
It will separate them.
“Separate what?” the scribe asked. He ripped and rolled up the piece of parchment for her. “Here,” he said with a sigh. “You
will
explain this to me, later.”
She patted his hand with her tiny paw. Perhaps she would.
Her boys fought in a cluster, Jien, Aito, and Yuki loosely surrounding Akakiba. Hachiro and Sora were also at the center of such formations, supported and protected by the others.
After shoving the message in her brother’s face, she glided to the ground. Knowing where Inari was in relation to the rampaging nine-tailed fox allowed her to determine where the thread was. If she squinted—oh, there! Sitting underneath, she chattered wildly.
Akakiba looked at the message, then at her. “The thread is where?”
Squirrel limbs weren’t made for pointing, but she tried to lift them upward to signify, “Above my head, you blind idiot! Cut it!”
He saw the thread. Either that, or he swiped his sword blindly and hit it anyway. The leaf-thin thread vanished. The nine tailed fox roared, shaking the world as if it were an earthquake by itself.
Relief flooded Akakiba’s expression. If she’d had a human face, Sanae expected she’d have sported the same look. They didn’t have to hurt Inari.
“What was that?” Aito asked. “I saw—”
“Later,” Akakiba said shortly. “First we take it down.”