The Night Parade (10 page)

“I'll run if you run,” Jun whispered.

Saki rolled her eyes. “Just do it for Grandma, okay? It won't last forever.”

Saki went through the motions of the dance. She stepped to the side and clapped. As each one of her feet moved, she held up the arm that matched. The dance was simple and repetitive, and the steps kept the dancers revolving around the drum platform, creating an endless circle of moving and clapping. After only a few minutes, Saki was bored out of her skull. Only when Grandma looked her way did she make any attempt to smile.

After their third revolution, Grandma's cheeks were tinged red. The rest of her skin had turned white, and there was a slight catch in her breath after every turn. Saki remembered her father's warning about the “condition.”

“Hey, Grandma, why don't we take a break for some ice cream?”

“What a wonderful idea.” There was a slight wheeze in the words that hadn't been in her voice earlier in the day. “Oh my. Where did Junnosuke run off to?”

“Nowhere good, I'm sure. I'll find him.” Saki sighed and glanced around the community center lot. He never listened. “Let's meet at the food stalls.”

After Grandma left to catch her breath, Saki caught a glimpse of a familiar yukata pattern on the other side of the lot. Jun had his back to the dance. He leaned up against a bicycle rack as he talked to a group of taller kids in plain clothes.

Yuko's blond highlight shone under the glow of the festival's electric lanterns. After pushing away the flutter of embarrassment at being caught tied up in a stiff yukata, Saki squared her shoulders and marched straight ahead.

The village kids saw her approach and pulled their attention away from Jun.

“Hey, if it isn't Tokyo!” called Yuko. “We were just talking to your little brother.”

Saki yanked on Jun's sleeve. “Come on. We're going to get ice cream.”

“I'll be there in a second.” Jun pulled his arm away with a scowl.

“Yeah, let the kid stay a while,” said Yuko.

“I'm not a kid!”

Saki gave her brother a shove. “Go, or I'll tell Mom that you skipped the dance.”

Jun stuck out his tongue as he passed, but he trudged off toward the food stalls, the sleeves of his yukata inflating like windsocks when he burst into a run. Saki turned, crossed her arms, and glared at Yuko.

“I thought you guys were supposed to be in the city tonight.”

Yuko shrugged. “Change of plans. Besides, now we get to see how cute you look in your little yukata.”

“Don't make fun of me. It took more time to put on than whatever you fell into this morning.”

“Wow, you sure are cranky. Do you have your obi tied too tight or what?”

“You guys left me to take the fall. How am I supposed to feel?”

Yuko exchanged looks with her group. “Are you mad about that? Jeez, get over it. What did you think would happen when you rang that bell? We didn't want to get caught.”

“But you were okay running off without me so that I could take the blame.”

Yuko closed her eyes and shook her head. “Well, you're still here, so I'm guessing they didn't kill you or anything. And you didn't rat us out either, which means you're cool in our book. So if nothing happened, what's the big deal?”

“You certainly didn't stick around to make sure.”

“Look, I said I was sorry—”

“No, you didn't, actually,” Saki cut in.

Yuko put on a fake smile. She seemed to be losing patience. “Well, I'm saying it now. Happy?”

Saki sighed. “Not really, no…”

“Great.” Yuko put her hands together. “Because I have the best plan for tonight. I saw this thing in the graveyard last time, these really old stones…”

Saki couldn't believe what she was hearing. Did they think she was stupid? She bit the inside of her cheek and took a moment to calm down. When she gave her answer, she locked eyes with Yuko. “I'm not interested.”

Yuko blinked. “What do you mean ‘not interested'? What else are you gonna do?”

“Whatever it is, I'll be doing it by myself.”

“Fine. We were just being nice, seeing as you don't know anyone else here. But we'll go without you. Your loss.”

Saki smiled. Watching Yuko try to play cool made her next move all the more satisfying. “No, I don't think you understand me. You're not going back to that graveyard.”

The rest of the group went still. One of the boys leaned forward. “What, did something happen?”

Saki kept her eyes on Yuko. “You won't be going.”

“You can't tell us what to do,” the other girl sneered.

“No,” Saki replied. “But I can tell my dad who made all that noise last night.”

“You won't. You wouldn't dare. Not with what we could do to you.”

Saki shrugged a shoulder. “I'm already stuck here in the middle of nowhere, aren't I? How much worse can it get?”

Yuko made an ugly face and a sound as though she might reply, but then turned and stormed off. The other village kids followed in her wake, a rather sad procession. They cast glances back to Saki, as if still trying to understand what had just happened.

Now, if only she could talk to Hana like that. But something like that, where she'd have to stay and live with what she'd done, took more courage than she thought she had. As Saki turned to look back at the dance, another pair of eyes stared back at her. Maeda.

Instead of averting eye contact and pretending that she hadn't been staring, Maeda broke out of her dance formation and headed toward her.

Saki looked away and crossed her arms again, though the long sleeves of her yukata made the gesture difficult. Maeda jogged up, the lines of her yellow yukata perfectly straight and her hair done up in a bun with ribbons.

“I saw you dancing with your grandmother,” she said. “I was helping one of the kindergarteners learn the steps. Otherwise, I would have said hello. Are you having a good time?”

Saki snorted. “Are you for real?”

Maeda blinked. “I don't understand what you mean.”

“I mean, I can't tell if you're being honest or not.” Saki bit her tongue. She hadn't meant to say it like that. Or at least she hadn't meant it to sound so mean. She didn't know why being around the other girl made her act this way.

The rumor about Saki being a stuck-up Tokyo girl had supposedly started with Maeda, though Yuko had been the one to actually say the words. But at least Yuko had been more obviously untrustworthy. She still couldn't tell with Maeda.

“And I can never tell if you're making fun of me or if you're just insecure.” Maeda's face remained impassive. “Or maybe you're just bored. City girls are probably used to more excitement. Did you end up having fun at the graveyard last night?”

Saki shuffled her feet. “I never wanted to go. It was Yuko's lame idea.”

“They tried to scare you, didn't they?” Maeda was now looking straight at her. Saki couldn't read her eyes.

Saki kicked a rock on the pavement. “Look, I told you last night that I could handle them. If you want something from me, just say so.”

“What do you mean?”

Saki sighed. “Isn't that what you came over here for, to say ‘I told you so'? Well, don't bother asking for a bribe or anything. I'm in big trouble already, so there's not much you could do to make it worse.”

Color rose to Maeda's cheeks. She frowned and took a half step backward. “I wasn't going to tattle on you. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

She seemed upset, and Saki didn't know what to say next. “Sorry, I just thought—”

“That I was like Yuko or whoever else you're friends with in Tokyo? Not everyone is that selfish.”

“Hey,” said Saki. “Thinking that way is just normal. Everyone has to look out for themselves.”

“No,” Maeda told her. “It's not normal, especially if you can't even trust the people you call friends. You shouldn't have to try so hard to impress someone just to make them like you.”

“Come on, you're so naïve.” Saki was starting to lose patience. Sure, it would be nice to act without being judged by other people, but life didn't work that way. “Weren't you trying to impress me at the grave cleaning? Isn't that why you kept ‘helping' me like I was too dumb to figure it out on my own?”

Maeda looked as though she was about to cry. “I was just trying to be nice. You came from a big city and didn't know anyone, so I thought I would talk to you. But you don't care about meeting people or making friends. You just want to get out of here as fast as you can. This might be a small village, but we've got more than you think. If you can't even bother to look around and see it, then maybe you really are stuck-up.”

The tirade stunned Saki into silence. She couldn't meet the other girl's eyes. As words hung unanswered in the air between them, Maeda turned back to the dancers and wiped her yukata sleeve under her eyes. She spoke again without looking at Saki.

“Well, if you think you know so much, I guess you don't need naïve people around to weigh you down. I won't bother you anymore. To tell you the truth, I was only trying to be nice because your grandmother asked me to. So there. I hope you can get back to your city soon.”

Maeda walked back to the dance, leaving Saki completely alone. Anger and guilt twisted her stomach into knots. Lately, none of Saki's relationships were turning out right. First Yuko, then the fox, then Maeda… Saki was so caught up in feeling sorry for herself that she didn't notice a voice calling out her name. Her mother waved through the crowd.

“There you are. Grandma's been waiting for you. You can't just keep running off without telling anyone. I thought we talked about this last night!”

Saki resigned herself to the scolding. All of her fighting spirit had gone with Maeda's confession. “I know. I'm sorry.”

• • •

In the car on the way home, the color had returned to Grandma's face. She reached over and patted Saki on the knee.

“I think I had more fun tonight than I've had in a very long time.”

Saki did her best to return the smile despite the squirming guilt in her stomach. She didn't really deserve Grandma's forgiveness, but she was glad for it. At least she could make one person happy, even if she was making a mess of almost everything else.

As the house came into view, Saki turned her eyes to the woods. The night obscured everything but the vague shapes of the trees. After all of the problems she'd been having in the real world, an encounter with a hungry spirit from the Night Parade might actually be a nice break. But with the fox long gone, would she be able to cross over at all? The fox had mentioned two other guides, but Saki knew nothing about what they would look like, act like, or—most important of all—what they would want from her.

Maeda had been wrong about one thing, at least. Saki had seen part of the village that no other living person would ever believe.

The floorboards whined and jarred Saki out of her uneasy slumber. The old house creaked and cracked. Her grandfather used to say that the house was simply “settling” into the earth and the complaints of a few wooden beams were no cause for alarm. Still, sweat collected on Saki's skin underneath the covers.

The thatched roof shifted against the attic. The paper in the shoji doors rustled as the frames rattled in their tracks. The woven reeds in the tatami mats shifted against one another. Saki stared wide-eyed at the dark ceiling. She tossed sideways, turned her back on the door to the woods, and kept the pouch of flat marbles tied to one wrist.

The rhythmic creak of the wooden planks from the walkway outside her room sounded like footsteps. The dust that moved through the air felt like breath against her cheek. Her mind made hands out of the shadows, and she heard scraping in the frames, like the slow opening of a door. Saki shot up, clutching her phone, the metal charm, and the glass marbles close to her heart.

Her brother was still asleep, and she was sure that her parents couldn't sneak around half so well. Grandma's old body would have creaked louder than the house… The moonlight cast silhouettes of the forest trees against the paper doors. The hands clawed at her again.

“Who's there?” she whispered into the dark.

The creaking noises ceased abruptly, leaving her brother's snores as the only sound in the room. Saki waited, her heart pumping in time with the cicadas' cries outside. After a few long breaths, she lowered herself back down to her futon, but she kept her eyes trained on the shoji panels of the door. As her head brushed the pillow, the door to the forest wiggled open a finger's width.

Saki slid her legs out from under her blankets. She tried to muffle the sound as best she could, slowly peeling back each layer of her sheets. She pressed the charm and the phone into her pocket and tugged the string tied to her wrist. As she reached out for the door, the dark silhouettes blew across the paper panels and turned the shadows into great black wings.

“Hello?” she called in a voice smaller than a whisper. “Are you a friend of the fox?”

Saki opened the door wide enough to peek through. She pressed one eye to the opening and peered out onto the empty walkway. There was no fox, nor any other living creature out beyond the perimeter of the house, and she was too far back to see if the shadow-strapped geta had been laid out beneath the walkway.

The anticipation was maddening. Every rustle or flicker of shadow seemed like a spirit crouching to snatch at her. She pushed the door open wide enough to slide through sideways and kept her hands against the walls of the house as she peered over the edge. She thought she saw two bumps in the darkness. She took a half step closer.

A pair of wooden geta sat underneath the walkway overhang, perpendicular with the shadow. Saki glanced around, but there were no spirits to be found. Her brother's snores echoed from the house, and the cicadas cried against the bark of the tree trunks. The shoes might have been an old pair of Grandma's misplaced during the day. Perhaps they'd been there all along. The most logical possibility, despite the dull ache still creeping through her legs, was that she had dreamt the entire story up, from the fox to the whole procession of spirits. The pain in her legs could have been from kicking off her covers during a vivid nightmare, and the marbles might have been stuck between the futon covers from the start.

A simple test would do the trick, and then she could sleep without interruption. Saki sat on the edge of the walkway and eased her feet into the wooden geta. From the shadow straps down to the way her feet fit into the wood, they were undoubtedly the same.

The moment her heels settled, the trees surrounding the house began to quiver. Their leaves rustled, and from the depths of their branches, hundreds of black wings burst forth. The wings circled overhead, blotting out the moon and pressing down onto the house. Saki dangled over the edge of the walkway. There was no time to rush back inside. She threw her hands over her head to shield her face as the mass of feathers bore down.

• • •

Dust tickled the inside of her nose, and Saki woke with a violent sneeze. She was curled up on a stone floor in a dark room. She blinked, shifting the dust particles that had wedged themselves above her eyelids. Slowly she sat up in the dark and held out a hand. The walls around her were made from old wood riddled with holes. Moonbeams peeked through and swam across the dusty air before settling in blurry patches on the floor. She sniffed and sneezed again. The dust was drifting down from somewhere up in the vaulted ceiling. She tilted her chin up. Crouched among the rafters, a feathered spirit stared down at her over its blood-colored nose.

Saki screamed and reached for the pouch of marbles, but the ties tangled on her wrist.

The spirit craned its neck and clicked its claws. With a single motion, it dropped from its perch and landed before her on a pair of clawed feet. It stood upright, like a man, and wore a battered metal shoulder guard over one arm of its dark robe. Across the red skin of its face, inky feathers shone in the dusty moonlight. The smell of pipe smoke and carrion clogged Saki's nose along with the dust, and the orange glint in the creature's eyes silenced her scream.

The spirit cocked its head and poked its long nose into her face. “Is that your battle cry?” he asked, his sonorous voice somewhere between the firm pluck of a bowstring and the sharp whistle of an arrow cutting the sky.

Saki trembled as the spirit waited expectantly for an answer. She started twice before she could push out a word. “Are you…are you going to eat me?”

The spirit's nose brushed past her hair and sniffed. “Not today, humanchild. I prefer my meal flavored with glorious death on the battlefield. Also, insects.”

Saki scooted herself away from the feathered spirit until her back hit the wooden wall. “If you don't mind, I'll be leaving now. I have to lift a curse…” She rose on shaky legs and felt the wall behind her for an opening until her fingers curled around the edges of a swinging door.

The spirit took a bobbing step toward her, the feathers on his crown rising in anger. “What insubordination! I took great care to recruit you, yet you cannot be bothered to await my briefing. Perhaps the fox is such an indulgent escort, but I will not allow my command to be disrespected.” The spirit flared all of his feathers until he was at least twice his original size. His orange eyes stared down his beak nose as he loomed over her.

Saki held up her hands. “I'm sorry! I didn't mean to offend you! I'm just really confused. You did sort of kidnap me, you know.” The spirit shrank down a little at the apology. Saki narrowed her eyes. “So the fox sent you to help, huh?”

The feathered spirit jerked his head to and fro as though he were shaking off beads of water. “That swindler has no authority over me! Her trickery is an insult to her office, and her kind are a blemish upon the Night Parade. I deign to succeed her role only because it is my duty, not my choice.”

“At first, I thought she was pretty nice…” Saki brushed the dust from her face as her panic began to retreat. “But I guess she tricks everyone, doesn't she?”

“In some ways,” the feathered spirit explained, “she cannot help it. We are all bound by our nature.”

“So what kind of spirit are you?” Saki asked.

The feathered spirit straightened his arms at his sides and bent into a stiff bow. “I am a tengu, bound to defend this shrine from impurity and malevolence. What is your rank, humanchild?”

“Um, thirteen? I'm in my second year of junior high…” Saki didn't think this was what the tengu meant, but he seemed to consider the answer.

“Ah,” he said. “You are moving up, I see. But be cautious; the further a soldier rises in rank, the less he can see his feet.”

Saki nodded without understanding. “If you're my guide, where should I go first?”

The tengu swept his arm up and pointed past her to the door set into the wall.

Saki turned her back to the tengu and set her hands against the wood. The hinges creaked as the door eased open and wind rushed against her face. The wooden room she'd woken up in was one of many watchtowers set atop a high stone wall. None of the holes in the walls were visible from the outside, nor had she felt a single gust of wind. Saki didn't spend much time worrying over this. She was focused on the high stone wall they stood atop and the alarming knowledge that if she fell from the edge, she would have a long time to scream before reaching the ground. Saki bit her tongue and stepped back from the drop-off.

Inside the confines of the wall, overgrown gardens choked dozens of half-finished roads and long, low buildings. The haphazard arrangement of the complex made a labyrinth of paths that wound through the grounds in dizzying curls. At the far end of everything rose a towering castle that shone as bright as the moon. Steep stone repelling walls jutted up to form the base, and the golden tiled roof rose even higher than where Saki and the tengu stood. Settled atop the stone walls, the castle blazed white, gold, and green.

Saki stood in awe. “What is that place?”

The tengu bobbed to her side and poked his great nose over the edge of the wall. “That is the seat of the great spirits, the palace where the Midlight Prince dwells. There are ancient forces in that house that few have ever held audience with. Do you sincerely wish to break this curse?”

“I don't really have much of a choice, do I?”

“The desire toward life is a choice in itself,” said the tengu.

Saki sighed. “Then yes. Of course I want to break the curse. Just show me the way.”

“The only way up is through the Path of the Gods,” the tengu told her. “But it is not so easy to find.”

Saki untangled the pouch of marbles around her wrist as she eyed the tengu. “Well, can't we just use your wings? You can fly, right?”

“Look carefully.” The tengu raised his head and pointed his nose to the sky.

Flickers of shadow and reflections in the moonlight became more distinct. The air was thick with giant insect wings. Saki shrank back against the watchtower door.

The tengu raised his own feathered wings. “Do not be so quick to retreat, humanchild. You may thank your first escort, the nefarious fox, for this inconvenience. The insect soldiers are on their guard now for any suspicious happenings, including a humanchild who has wandered into the Night Parade.”

Saki counted the marbles still left in her pouch, but even by looking at them, she knew there wouldn't be nearly enough for every member of the swarm. “What do we do?”

“We must stay out of sight.” He surveyed the landscape with a sweep of his nose. “The gardens below are full of their spies. Do you see the buildings between the paths?”

“Those paths are like a maze. We'll never get through if we don't think of some way to mark where we've been.”

“So we will not take the paths,” the tengu told her. “If we advance under the protection of a roof, the horde will not be able to spot us.”

“But none of those buildings are connected!” Saki protested. “Some look only half-finished. We'll get caught for sure.”

The tengu blew air from his beak of a nose. “Just because you cannot see the connections does not mean they do not exist. The buildings will keep us from being detected from the air, but in other ways, they will be more treacherous than the paths or gardens. What weapons are you trained with?”

“I have these.” Saki shook the pouch of flat marbles.

The tengu nodded vigorously, a gleam in his orange eyes. “Those are powerful, indeed. Keep them close to you at all times. The shrine complex teems with spirits, not all of whom are kindhearted.”

“I also have this, if you think it might help.” Saki felt for the phone in her pocket.

The moment the tengu saw it, he recoiled as if he'd been struck. Saki immediately shoved the phone back in the folds of her clothes. He let out a breath and lowered the feathers he'd splayed in alarm.

“Never, ever display such a thing without the direst of need. Only if your very life is in danger, do you understand? That object has no place in our world. You will surely lose your way if you use it flippantly.”

Saki pushed the phone down deeper into her pocket. The tengu took a moment to compose himself as they stood staring out into the maze of disjointed buildings.

He inhaled with a sharp sound. “There is no time to waste. We must make the first plunge and position ourselves to infiltrate the compound.”

“So…that means we're sneaking in?”

The tengu hesitated. “We are infiltrating the compound.”

Saki tried not to snort. “Yeah, that still counts.”

“Now, look alive. We must remain vigilant. There is a ladder no more than a dozen paces in front of you. Do you see it?”

Saki took a few steps toward the outline of an old bamboo ladder. “Uh, that doesn't look very safe. I don't think it's going to hold one of us, let alone two.”

“Of course,” the tengu explained, “I shall not be climbing. I shall track your progress from the air and descend to meet you. Is this agreeable?”

“Why don't you just take me down with you?”

The tengu cleared his throat. “The laws of aerodynamics dictate that with the addition of your considerable weight—”

“Excuse me?”

“Your considerable weight,” the tengu repeated, unfazed. “As I was saying, to allow for the angle of descent—”

“Stop. I get it. I'm climbing, all right?” Saki gritted her teeth, knelt near the edge of the wall, and tried to convince herself she wasn't scared. She frowned at the bamboo and pressed the top rung with the toe of her wooden geta. The ladder whined and bent but didn't break.

The tengu clicked his clawed feet against the stone wall. “Are you just going to sit there, looking at it?”