Chapter Sixteen Violet
Chapter Sixteen
Violet
Rotting fish. Alkaline. Pond water.
I smell it before Akira materializes out of the brush farther up the creek, wearing his brilliant-blue kimono.
He approaches the water and his reflection slides across it as though it’s window glass.
Ren and I go silent, watching him, though my mind thinks only of Ren.
It’s like my thoughts are a sunray shining through a crystal, its facets bending everything toward him.
Then Akira begins to speak. I lose my breath, listen hard, wait.
In my pocket, my deer swells with warmth. It seems to wait, too.
“You are beautiful,” Akira says to his reflection.
“Even with this abomination.” With trembling fingers, he touches his cheek.
The horrifying crack forms a semicircle around his face.
If it continues, I wonder if his face might detach entirely.
It’s a terrifying thought. Dramatically, Akira lifts his head to the moon.
Then he holds his hands over the creek, just as he did the first time.
The fount rises immediately beneath his fingers.
“Rise!” he cries. “Rise from Yomi and attend me!”
A shape shifts through the water. I think something might indeed be rising from the underworld through the temporary geyser, and Akira must, too, because his eyes flash triumphantly.
Then a fish pops out. Its flopping body sprays Akira with droplets and then it plops back into the creek.
Akira gnashes his teeth in frustration. The wisp of his shadow rises from him, and he swats at it like a fly.
It subdues only to come back, stronger. I grip Ren’s arm.
He radiates warmth. It steadies me as my pulse pounds.
“Let’s go.”
We slip from the brush and approach. By the time we get there, Akira is attempting the spell again, but this time the fountain hardly gathers.
“It’s you two!” he cries, spying us drawing close. “You’ve ruined my focus.”
“Hello, Akira-sama.” I ignore his accusations and bow in veneration. He pretends not to notice, but satisfaction spreads across his cratered face. “We were hoping to find you here.”
“Have you found it? A way to set me free?” Rudeness gone, Akira rushes toward us. His earthy smell billows around him and envelops us, as though he creates his own atmosphere wherever he goes, one made from standing water and crushed rose petals instead of nitrogen and oxygen.
“No,” I say apologetically, and Akira’s face falls.
“You shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up,” he says, pouting. “It isn’t nice to play with an immortal’s emotions.”
“However will you recover?” Ren asks acerbically.
“However will I recover?” Akira has perfected mimicking Ren’s voice, always adding a mocking note. “I shan’t!” He cups his face delicately, feeling the crack. “You mock me as my condition deteriorates. Go find a way to free me. Otherwise, leave me in peace. I’m trying to fix this.”
“Fix it?” Ren asks. “It’s only gotten worse.”
“It’s a very difficult process.” Akira turns back to the water and stares at his reflection, angling one way, then another.
“There!” He freezes in place. “If I stand in this precise way, with the moonlight in this position, you can’t see the abrasions.
” A passing cloud changes the light source and illuminates the holes even more.
“No!” Akira wails and he slashes angrily at the sky.
“Stay still, you shifty fluffs!” Attempting to re-create the lighting, he holds his hand up to shadow himself, but it isn’t nearly as effective.
“I’ve been researching you,” I say, taking a step forward. Akira abandons his quest to hide the crack and turns to me, twirling his fingers through his hair. His earring sways in circles beneath his ear.
“I’m most happy to regale you with tales of my wonders. I’ve done many. Poems and tales about my deeds are recorded in the celestial halls, and all who visit beg to read them.”
I take a breath, more scared than I thought I would be.
“You don’t need to. I’ve figured out what you are.”
“What I am? You already know what I am. A most powerful god,” Akira says commandingly.
“Oh, I don’t think so.” My words come out in a nervous rush. “You’re a Haragetti.”
“A Haragetti?” Akira growls. “You think I’m a Haragetti?”
“You must be,” I continue. Rage gathers in Akira’s face. Fear washes over me, but I can’t stop, not if this is going to work. “And it makes sense you’re ashamed. No one worships those hairy little vermin, after all. They aren’t deities. We won’t tell anyone.”
The vertical slits in Akira’s pupils dilate, and his hair stands on end.
When his hands slash at the empty air, his shadow rises around him, leaping high into the air.
Then it descends, bursting into thick smoke.
I choke and cough, stepping back in horror.
It doesn’t help. The smoke floods the bank.
Ren grabs my hand and uses it to pull me close, tugging his shirt up to cover my mouth and nose.
I flinch against him, getting as close to him as I can, terrified.
“You call me a Haragetti, mortal?” Akira is hidden by the smoke.
Bolts of light shoot through it. When they flash, they illuminate peculiar faces in the smoke, each one with an expression of discontent—anger, disgust, sadness, guilt, disappointment, heartbreak.
Then the flashes die, and the faces are gone.
Ren coughs and gags but keeps his shirt over my face, protecting me.
Wildly, I gasp against the fabric. It pulls taut against my mouth and nose.
It smells like Ren, his alluring, distinct scent cutting against the acridity of the smoke.
“I am a sacred being.” Akira’s voice comes from within the cloud, ominous and low.
“A deity, a god, a divinity. You are impulse ticking down to death, but I am the force of nature itself. I am the world around you. I am the trees, the dirt, the sky. I am the utter mystery of everything. I am the Nameless Faceless God and you will know me as thus.”
The Nameless Faceless God. It’s him. I’ve drawn versions of him before, trying to give an image to the mysterious deity.
I’ve mixed a wani with an obake to create him.
Another time, I gave him unkempt hair and a furious expression like Susanoo.
Akira, though, flouts everything I’ve ever drawn of him.
“Nameless Faceless God,” Ren chokes out. “Got it.”
The silhouette of Akira in the smoke goes very still. His arms lower, his hair limply falls across his shoulders, and even his earring freezes. The smoke dwindles and re-forms into his regular shadow. His lips part as though to speak and then close again.
Ren still holds his shirt up around my face to save me from the smoke, his bare abs pressing against my side.
His stomach muscles contract as he coughs.
Gently, I pull free so he isn’t restricted by me.
He leans forward and anchors his hands on his knees for the last few violent coughs.
I put my hand on his back. He stiffens but his eyes close at the same time from my touch.
For a moment, he’s still beneath my hand.
Then he straightens, shrugging me off and not looking at me. He faces Akira. I do, too.
“How is that so?” I dare to ask. “I know about the Nameless Faceless God. But you can’t be him. You might not have a name, but you certainly have a face.”
Suddenly, Akira collapses onto the dirt and turns onto his back.
His hair spreads out in long black tentacles around his head, and his kimono pools around him like a silken puddle.
He stares at the sky, arms and legs limp, as though all his will is gone and he doesn’t have the strength to even lift a finger.
His despair leaks into the creek. The reeds wilt.
The running water takes on the sound of a lament, along with the crickets.
The twitching, slithering lizards and snakes in the brush become still and the shadows of fish swimming downstream stretch long and sad.
“You horrid mortal girl,” he whispers pathetically. “You force me to shame myself.”
“Oh, come on.” Ren stares down at Akira, uncomfortable with the display. “It can’t be that bad.”
“What would you know of it?” Akira pushes himself up to glare at Ren.
Then his face melts into tragic grief. “I am the Nameless Faceless God and I am in disgrace. This is…not me.” He holds up his arms. The long sleeves of his kimono billow around him like wings.
“I know I am most estimable and worthy of worship.
I did indeed anger the creator gods by trying to bring spirits out of Yomi to worship me.
I was merely trying to plan for the future like a responsible god.
No one worships me, so I thought I might train spirits from Yomi to do so.
Even though I begged for mercy, my celestial parents punished me and bound me to the form of an old man.
“At first,” he whispers shakily, “it wasn’t so bad being trapped inside a mortal.
Of course, I missed my beautiful islands of Japan.
My parents were cruel to place me within an American mortal.
But I enjoyed the Los Angeles. The weather is like spring in Shikoku, full of temperate breezes and blue skies.
In this mortal body, I gorged myself on oranges and the wrinkly brown Los Angeles fruit that is green inside—the avocados.
I even prowled about with bobcats in the park called the Griffith and walked along the boardwalk at the piers, scaring the nasty mortal children with their ice creams. Then my nature began to torture me.
I needed to fly. To move. But, alas, I was rounded up by the mortals in their matching costumes and pushed into a horseless cart, which brought me here.
Now I am trapped in this dry body with its pointy bones and terrible shoes and every day I grow weaker. ”
“So you are truly trapped here,” I breathe.
Akira nods mournfully.