I woke to the sound of my keitai buzzing beside my laptop. I blinked, trying to orient myself in the dark room. Had Diane come home? I hadn’t heard her. The rain was quiet now; the storm must have stopped. The phone screen was too bright to look at with my tired eyes, so I lifted it to my ear as I stretched out my legs.
“Hello?”
“Katie-chan?” It was Niichan, Yuki’s brother. I realized my mistake then, that I’d answered the phone in English.
“Oh, hi,” I said, switching to Japanese.
“Sorry, is it too late to call? I think I woke you.”
“No, no,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes. “I was in the bath.” I stopped midrub. That was more embarrassing. “I mean, um, the rain is really something, huh?” Bath was furo, and the verb for raining was furu. Maybe I’d get away with it.
Niichan sounded like his face was bright red. “Uh, I...don’t know,” he said. “It’s not raining in Miyajima.”
“Right,” I said, squeezing my eyes closed.
“Is everything okay? I was worried about calling so late, but you sounded nervous on your message.”
I shook my head and flicked on my bedside light so I wouldn’t crash into anything as I talked. “I need to talk to you about the kami,” I said. “Things are out of control, Niichan, and I don’t know how to stop them.”
“You didn’t stay away from him, huh?”
“It’s more complicated now,” I said, sliding my door open and stumbling into the hallway. I was relieved to see Diane’s shoes in the genkan. She must have figured I’d gone to bed and so she hadn’t woken me. “There’s a rogue Kami out there and he’s trying to take over the world.”
Niichan hesitated. “Are you joking?”
“I wish,” I said. “I need to know how to make the ink go dormant, Niichan. For Tomo’s sake, so he doesn’t...lose himself. And I have to make this guy Takahashi Jun’s power go away, too, or he’s going to destroy everything.”
“Wait, wait. Takahashi Jun, the kendo champ? He’s a Kami? Katie, tell me everything.”
I grabbed a mug and held it under our hot water dispenser as I filled in Niichan on the details. “Jun told me there are two kinds of Kami, right? Imperial ones, descended from Amaterasu. That’s the royal line, all the emperors and stuff. But there were also Kami in the samurai families, and they showed up through a bunch of different ways. Marriages, affairs, even different kami ancestors than Amaterasu.”
“Right,” Niichan said. “You said to me that day you were scared Yuu was descended from Susanou.”
“I was wrong,” I said, dipping a genmai tea bag into the hot water, smoothing the little string attached over the ceramic lip. The side of the mug burned my finger and I pulled away, the string slipping into the cup. “It was Jun—Takahashi—that got his ink bloodline from Susanou. Tomo is descended from Amaterasu on his dad’s side, and Tsukiyomi on his mother’s.”
Niichan was silent for a moment, and then he let out a shaky breath. “Maji de,” he said. “That’s impossible.”
“It’s true,” I said. “And I need a way for the power to go dormant. There’s got to be a way, Niichan.”
“Maybe, but I... I’m sorry, Katie. I don’t know.”
My heart sank. I curled my fingers around the handle of the mug. “Not even any ideas?”
“No pleasant ones,” he said. His list was probably about the same as mine. 1) Leave Japan. 2) Die.
“Well...can you at least tell me more about Tsukiyomi?” I said. “Jun said he went crazy and murdered kami. Is that true?”
“They’re myths, Katie. How do we know what’s true? And remember what I told you about judgment calls—times have changed. You can’t judge what the kami did by the way society works now.”
“I know,” I said. “I just need to know what happened. Maybe there’s some detail that can help us, Niichan. Please.”
“Ee to,” he said, deep in thought. I could hear a sound across the phone, like a pencil tapping against a chair. “Well, Amaterasu, Tsukiyomi and Susanou were all created at the same time by the August Ones.”
August Ones. Where had I heard that before? The vision of the dead samurai snapped back into my memory. Amaterasu had mentioned them. I had to stop him, before he destroyed everything the August Ones had made. What had she meant? “Who are the August Ones?”
“The first kami, Izanagi and Izanami. They created Japan, and then they gave birth to all the other kami. Well, a lot of them. The three you mentioned were created by Izanagi.”
“So Tsukiyomi was going to destroy Japan?”
“Destroy Japan?” Niichan’s surprise reminded me I hadn’t told him about the nightmare. “I don’t think that’s in the legends.”
“Then what happened?”
“Let me think. It’s been a while since I studied it. So Amaterasu and Susanou fought, that I remember. She hid in a cave—solar eclipse, ne? And they tricked her back out again. They threw a big party and fooled her into glancing at herself in a mirror to draw her out, and they hung the Magatama jewel in a tree to tempt her out, too.”
The Imperial Treasures. That was two of them linked to Amaterasu and Susanou. But it didn’t make any sense. How could the treasures be involved? “What about the Kusanagi?”
“The sword? It belonged to Susanou.” That made sense. Jun had always had the sword beside him in my nightmares.
I remembered Tomo in the nightmare, unconscious, dripping in dark ink. Jun’s head bowed, his apology.
Oh god. What if that hadn’t been ink spilling from Tomo’s wounds?
I was an idiot. A complete idiot. But it was just a dream. I couldn’t let Jun hurt him.
“How does Tsukiyomi fit in? He was Amaterasu’s lover, right?” I yanked the cutlery drawer open and dug for a spoon; my tea was already way too strong, but I dipped the spoon into the mug to chase down the tea bag, anyway.
“At first. But then he killed another kami. Amaterasu banished him from the heavens. That’s why the sun and moon are separated, right? Night and day. It’s just a creation myth, Katie.”
But the Amaterasu I’d met hadn’t banished him. She’d killed him. Why? “She didn’t...hurt him?”
“I don’t think so. She had a lot more trouble with Susanou, but she was a gentle ruler. She’s always been considered benevolent, a protector of Japan.”
“She gave the first emperor the Imperial
