Chapter Thirty-Six Rui #2
Then she was on the ground. On the dirt. Curled into a ball. She was floating in the air above herself, looking down on herself: that cursed, killer girl. There were tears on her cheeks, but she couldn’t feel them, couldn’t feel the dirt on her hands and on her fingernails.
She blinked.
She gasped, facing the bodies of the killers she had killed.
The Hososhi was gone.
What have I done? she thought, reeling, as the pain and nausea swelled.
What have I done?
Now the flames were getting worse. “I got you,” Rui said, staggering with her friend’s weight, nearly falling.
You were so strong, she thought, but you don’t have to be strong for ever.
It doesn’t make you less. You can be vulnerable, you can feel the weight.
That’s what truth is, Sen, she wanted to say.
You don’t have to hide your tears. It doesn’t mean you’re lost. You can let go.
I can be strong now too. I can be strong for both of us.
I can do anything I have to do, because I need you to survive.
She helped Sen limp to the side of the muddy paddy.
She heard the ringing of a bell.
“Rui,” Sen said, pointing. “Look.”
Ahead of them, the woman in white was waiting on the road.
“You,” she said.
Something came whistling at them from the trees. Shadows, like a thousand tiny birds, bursting from the foliage, black against the lighter black of night. A piercing sound, a thousand tiny gods, screaming…
Shikigami.
Summoned spirits.
Rui shouted. “No!”
The shadows came flying at them, ghostly, unbearably loud, aural shapes with paper faces, each with a symbol in ink.
Rui cut some in half – felt the others raze past her, slicing her arms, her hands, like paper-cuts.
“Back!” she shouted, striking one on its paper face, its mask.
It split in two; the other conjured spirits vanished.
But the woman in white was still there.
“You,” she said.
Ten paces away, at the top of the road where it loped gently over the hill, the woman stood tall, framed in ghostly light from the fires. She wore white mourning robes. Her eyes gleamed. Her face, devoid of expression.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Rui didn’t wait. She struck at the woman, swinging her sword in an arc that licked the side of her face and snapped her head back. She glimpsed a flash of anger in those pale, piercing eyes, white pupils somehow reflecting light.
But as the woman turned, feeling the cut on her cheek, beneath her eye, she looked at Rui. And she smiled.
And the cut that Rui had given her vanished.
When it did, a cut appeared on Rui’s face, exactly where she had cut the woman.
Dripping blood, Rui staggered back, in shock and pain, holding her face.
The injury she had inflicted on the woman had been somehow sent back to her.
Her heart thudded in her chest. Bright fear flared through her, from the back of her throat to her fingertips. She called out: “What do you want?”
“Him,” the woman – the demon – said.
And leaped toward Sen, who was trying to stand.
Rui attacked again, stabbing the demon in the shoulder – and again, the woman seemed not to feel it; again, Rui received the wound instead. Her shoulder burst with blood, and she cried out. Sen called to her, tried to help, but Rui shouted, “Run! Sen! Run!”
The demon stood above her. Knocked the sword away. Gazed into her eyes. Like peering through her heart.
She heard a bell. A roar. The Hososhi, raging in her veins—
She moved. Rage took her again. Drawing back, she dove for her fallen sword with the Hososhi’s laughter ringing in her ears.
You have a role to play.
She fell out of herself again. Somehow, the god took over. Wrenching her away, gone, lost to the world. And the Hososhi, eager as a glint of knives under the moon. Blood in air; she felt nothing.
The demon closed in.
Rui struck a glancing blow to the wrist, and her own wrist shuddered with blood.
I can’t attack. The thought came hazily, as if through smoke. She wasn’t in control. She couldn’t think. She’d almost cut off her own hand. The Hososhi in her spirit roared.
Rui blinked.
She gasped, fell back, facing the demon.
The woman stood, looking down, as if she’d never moved.
Rui fought against it, but what hope did she have in the face of a god? “What do you want?” she cried.
“Who are you?” the woman asked.
Rui staggered, struck by something she couldn’t see, pain cascading through her, unable to move, unable to protect herself, pain like fire—
“I would have let you live, child,” the demon said. “You should not have gotten in the way.”
She took a step.
Then Jobo’s sacred spear whistled through the darkness, stabbed itself into the dirt between them, her and the demon, blocking the path. The crow monk appeared a moment later, standing before her with his arms out.
“Onryo,” he bellowed. “Keep back!”
The woman stopped, mid-step. Unable to pass the spear.
Staring at her, he shouted, “Rui! Sen! You must run! Do it now!” But Rui barely heard him.
Gasping, still, in shock and pain. Sen came for her.
Jobo spoke. She heard no words. She heard a crash like lightning, the world flared, and everything went bright.
The next she knew, they were running, faster than seemed possible.
Jobo had taken her into his arms, and Sen was clinging to his back.
He leaped, thundering, huge flying steps and the woods blurred past. His hand gripped hers.
Then they were at the temple gate, the one that had been ablaze –
everything felt hazy now, like the world was melting; they passed the barrier, he pulled them across, and stabbed the sacred spear into the ground before the gate, barring entry to evil beings.
And stood, muttering a prayer with his hands clasped, his body stiff, as though holding some great tide at bay through force of will.
“What was that?” Rui gasped, tried to stand, but the world tilted away from her, and she was left in darkness for an infinite, splitting moment, until she hit cold dirt and was in the temple once again. Head spinning, she tried to rise; fell again.
Heard the Hososhi in her heart, and saw:
A bridge over raging water –
A temple gate –
Three wells in the middle of a garden –
Sen, on a boat, sail rising high –
In blood-red armor, dead bodies at his feet –
An old man, wearing the Keishi butterfly, writhing, on fire –
A strange, ghostly girl, walking through burned buildings and bodies, humming lightly to herself –
Rui tried to fight the vision, to reach the girl, but the world fluttered, and she hit the dirt again.
At some point she found his hands, lifting her gently, his worried face near her own, whispering that she was safe. But she wasn’t. She pulled away. She’d never be safe.
All she wanted was to go back home. All she wanted was to sleep. All she saw was the woman, the demon. Her face, her hands, like claws; her fury; the screeching of her as she came hacking, slashing at my face, my gut, my heart.
She heard voices, human this time: Tokuon and the others. Myorin, coming to her. It was only when she saw the fear in their eyes that she felt the pain, put a hand to her side; it came away bloody.
“I think,” she said, staggering. “I think I need some help…”
And collapsed.