Chapter 38

“You’re unusually quiet,” Yukimi says.

It’s half past six. We’re sitting in the dining car of the Hokutosei, eating a breakfast of omelets and fish.

I shrug and take another chopstick-full of food. “Nervous.”

“Understandable.” Yukimi dabs her mouth with a napkin.

My stomach feels like worms have taken up residence. I’m not the least bit hungry. I stare out the window. Tokyo was getting a little salt-shaker snow, but Hokkaido is blanketed in white.

Hokkaido. A thrill zips down my spine.

I’m finally back in my childhood home. Although that phrase sounds much too cozy and nostalgic for the way I feel about it.

“We’re getting off at Mori,” Yukimi says. “Do you remember Mori?”

I shrug. “Probably. Where are we going from there?”

“Into the forest.”

Do Akira’s bones lie buried in the forest of her dream, mingled with twisted old tree roots in the dirt?

I shudder, then lower my voice. “How’s your leg?”

Her face closes off again, like I knew it would. “Not now.”

We finish our breakfast in silence.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Yukimi says.

I perk up. “They have showers?”

“You needed to make a reservation last night.”

“Oh.” I poke at my omelet some more. “Okay.”

Yukimi sighs. “But you can have my reservation.”

I meet her eyes for the tiniest of glances. “Thank you.”

When I head into the shower with a borrowed towel, I make sure to hide the little moth on the towel’s underside. I lock the door to the changing room and start pulling off my clothes.

“The door’s locked,” I say.

The moth shivers, beating its wings rapidly, then flutters to the floor. It grows and grows into a giant moth, then blinks into the shape of a human—Gwen. She gasps and climbs to her feet.

“That was bizarre, Tavian,” she says.

“Not too loud,” I say in a low voice.

“I don’t think I’ve ever shapeshifted for so long,” she whispers. “My brain was starting to get all mothy.”

I nod. It’s distracting to stand so close to her in such a tiny space. She’s totally naked, of course, and brushing against me in a way that would be more than welcome at any other time.

“We’re getting off the train soon,” I say. “At Mori.”

“What’s in Mori?”

I stare at the pattern of tiles on the floor. “My father’s grave.”

“That’s not what I—Tavian, are you okay?”

I shuck off the rest of my clothes, then step into the shower and hit the button for hot water. Eyes closed, I tilt my face toward the spray and let it wash away the tears I know must be on my face.

Gwen slips in after me and hugs me.

“She killed him,” I whisper. “My mother killed my father.”

“How do you know?” Gwen’s voice sounds odd, like she’s already suspected this, or thinks it’s obvious.

“I slipped into her dream last night.”

She withdraws from me and smoothes her wet hair from her face. “So you aren’t sure if it was a memory.”

I scrub my face, hard. “It has to be.”

“Well.” Gwen takes a deep breath. “You’ll have to ask her yourself.”

She looks so miserable for me that I draw her into a tight embrace. I bury my face in her wet curls and concentrate on the realness of her skin against mine. She sighs, and I kiss her neck, her cheek, her lips. We stand together, wordless, beneath the water.

And it’s almost a moment where I can forget.

~

I recognize the trees, even beneath their draperies of snow. And even if I didn’t, the look of deep-buried sorrow in Yukimi’s eyes would betray her. She walks by my side, limping through the snow.

“We’re almost there,” she says.

Above us, a crow glides over the frosted trees. Gwen managed to shapeshift again after eating smuggled food, though I’m still amazed at her endurance. Myself, I feel like lying down.

Yukimi’s nostrils flare. She sniffs the wind, circles beneath the bare-branched trees. I could tell her that yes, this looks like the place in her dream. But I don’t have the guts to do it.

“Here,” she says.

“The ground is frozen,” I say, stalling for time. “Obviously.”

“And obviously, I brought a shovel and a strong young man with me.”

I narrow my eyes. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Yukimi laughs, and I’ve never heard a more empty laugh. She drops to her knees and starts pawing the snow away with her bare hands, even though it must be at least three feet deep. I sigh and kneel beside her, scooping handfuls of snow out of the way.

My fingernails scrape dirt, and I stop digging. “Yukimi?”

She slings her backpack off, grabs a small shovel, and attacks the frozen earth. Acid rises in my throat. I can’t look, I won’t look—a crow caws hoarsely above me. I glance up, and I see a black comet streaking against the overwhelming whiteness. Gwen? She lands with a thump in the snow and struts toward me in that jerky sort of crow walk.

“What does she want?” Yukimi says.

“She?” I stare at her. “You know—?”

“It was obvious. She said she was a shapeshifter. And that crow doesn’t smell like an ordinary crow.”

Well, obviously my sense of smell isn’t that good.

Gwen nips at my sleeve and tugs. I frown, and she hops back and shapeshifts. She huddles there naked, nothing left of her crow body except the imprint of her wings in the snow.

“Tavian,” she says, her teeth chattering. “The inugami.”

Yukimi straightens, the shovel clenched in her hand. “Where?”

“I saw them coming.” Gwen hugs herself tight. “A pack of dogs.”

I peel off my jacket and hand it to Gwen. “Here.”

She shakes her head. “I’m changing back.” Squeezing her eyes shut, she shrinks into the black body of the crow again. She pumps her wings, whirling snow around her, and takes flight. In a few minutes, she’s gone again.

“We have to get out of here,” I say to Yukimi.

“Wait.” Yukimi bends over the ground—the grave—again. “Almost.”

I swallow back the returning acid in my throat. I walk away from her and stand near a tree, scanning the snow for any sign of the advancing inugami. Wind whisks clouds away from the face of the sun, and the diamond glittering of the snow dazzles me.

“Tavian!”

I turn and see Yukimi kicking clods of frozen dirt and snow back onto the shallow grave. I hurry to help her. I’m not going to leave my father’s bones out in the open for animals to gnaw on. No matter what kind of man he was. Was that a bone under my foot? I recoil with instinctive revulsion, before I can stop myself.

“You can go,” Yukimi says. “Leave here while I distract them.”

I meet her gaze. Sunlight shines sideways through her amber eyes.

“Forget it,” I say. “I don’t abandon people in the snow.”

“I can’t run quickly like this,” she says, “and you can’t create any illusions like that. You go. I’ll stay.”

I smooth the last of the snow over the grave, my hands numb. “No.”

Yukimi growls. “I didn’t do this just so those dogs could get you.”

“Neither did I.”

In the distance, cawing ricochets off the trees.

“They’re coming.” I grab Yukimi’s arm and drag her after me. “Run!”

We struggle through the deep snow, our feet sinking deep, our breath clouding the air. Both of us are weak, like foxes who have run far too long already. But the dogs are coming.

“Let me stay,” she says.

“I know why you want to stay,” I say, my tone mocking, my throat tight. “You think everything will be better if you make your last stand by Akira’s grave and die where he did.”

She twists her hand from my grasp, her fangs bared. “That isn’t true.”

She’s angry. Good. That will goad her into going faster.

“Then let’s get out of here,” I say.

A chorus of baying and barking rises above the trees. The sound injects adrenaline straight into my blood, and I break into a sprint. Yukimi keeps pace, but she’s limping badly now.

“Wait,” she gasps.

I turn back to see Yukimi bending double. In the forest ahead, the first of the inugami burst into the open. Katashi. His breath steams the frigid air; his tongue lolls from his mouth like he’s craving another taste of Yukimi’s blood. Yukimi grabs fistfuls of snow. Inky darkness seeps from her fingers into it. She tosses the black snow high into the air, and it blurs into a twisting thicket of brambles that hits the ground and grows into a wall of thorns impossible to run through.

Yukimi smiles thinly, her lips white. “Now we run.”