PARTONE
Messenger of the Gods
CHAPTERONE
Demons
Gyokuji Year 1
Era of the 78th emperor, Suji Ten’in
10th day of the first month
Winter
The man took too long to die.
He thrashed and screamed and trembled in the girl’s arms, and at the end, he begged for mercy, clutching at her with a wet, wavering voice, choking and full of fear. But he was just a priest. She was small, no more than a child, and the man was weak, and the knife was not too heavy.
When it was done, his lifeblood warm over her fingers, the girl crouched beside him, waiting for the last of his spirit to leave. The red spilled a darkening ochre into the dirt; she held his hand. “You don’t have to be afraid,” she said. “It will be over soon. You’ll be all right.”
When it was done, she let the body fall.
When it was done, she looked up, and slowly seemed to remember where she was. She peered into the night, the rotten fence, the winding line of cobblestones and weeds. She saw a clump of steps that crowded at the foot of a decrepit hut, dark and so ramshackle that a ghost could knock it down. There, the woman she called her sister stood waiting like a statue in white mourner’s robes, gazing up into a black and hooded sky. Two more dead monks lay in broken pieces at her feet.
“Sister.” The child went to her, hesitantly, and tapped a finger on the woman’s arm. “Look, sister,” she said, peering upward. “The gods are walking. Do you see?”
“Yes,” the woman said. Her face shone pale as alabaster, smooth as stone. “Yes.”
The rain had stopped long before the two figures had entered the courtyard, leaving the air wet and heavy. But when the dark-eyed woman in the long white mourner’s cloak stepped across the gate, a chill fell through the night and even the crickets stopped their clamor. The lack of a breeze and the oppressive feeling of the low clouds overhead filled the air with a cloying fullness, a kind of thick humidity that made it hard to move; it was as if the dark itself had weight. There were no stars.
Storms had come hard and fast, flooding the little courtyards of the decrepit shrine and the temple just beyond, but now, everything was still. The two figures walked past the gate, sandals squishing in the mud and between the sodden stepping-stones. The small temple lay before them, hardly more than a shack. A thin stream of smoke unfolded itself from an opening in the roof, and the crackle of a fire whispered faintly from within.
“We will stop here,” the woman said.
If not for the lines and the shadows under her eyes, she would have seemed almost young. But there were shadows, and there were lines. Criss-crossing a gentle face, the trace of a dozen written marks cut across her features as though she’d been splashed by ink. Words written onto skin, fine strokes almost too faint to see. When she stepped into the light, the writing vanished, leaving her skin unblemished. When she looked down, her face falling into shadow again, the letters reappeared, faint as they were, and hard to see in the darkness. She took the young girl’s hand.
The girl didn’t notice the marks. Or if she did, she didn’t mind them.
“Let us hurry,” the woman said, leading her toward the shack at the edge of the courtyard. “Before the rains return.”
Her voice was but a whisper, sibilant and thin; like the trickle of water on the shores of Onji River in the spring. Her eyes were polished stones, shining in dim cloudlight. She was tall, towering over the child, and her movements were gentle, but slow, careful as a tiger on the hunt. She seemed, with her steady gaze and calm, unnatural look, to be somehow disconnected from the earth.
By the time they reached the little temple, her face lay smooth and mournful again. The words, like spells, had disappeared.
The girl shifted as they got close, listening to the sound of the fire inside. “Someone’s in there.”
“Yes, child,” the woman said. “Come. He has been waiting for us. Though, perhaps, he does not know it.”
The hut, a simple open space, had a shrine on peeling wood, a place for tea, a hearth, a dying fire: nothing more. There was barely any warmth. A young monk sat in meditation by the wall. In his third decade on this earth, he swayed, turning prayer beads with slim hands, counting each one,click, click, click.“Namu Ohirume Kotaijin,” he intoned.
A breeze swept past, the fire flickered, and in the space between one breath and the next, the woman was there. She stood as if she’d always been there, floating in the dark beside him. Finally, she sat. The prayer continued in silence. The incense burned. The woman said nothing, but in the end, he glanced up, his young face no more than twenty-two or three.
“Welcome, sister,” said the monk. The fire cast tremulous shadows over his features, black as lily seeds, then warm and orange in the glow. “The storm has not ended yet. I fear it will return soon, and you must be weary.”
“Thank you, young one.”
He tried a smile. “You are surprised. Am I so young on this earth, and yet remove myself from it already?”
