Senior Retired Emperor Toba was dead, and all our work was for nothing. Our plan had gone off perfectly, and we had the court convinced of Ikeda Minbukyou’s guilt. In a moment, it was all washed away. So much time and effort would be expended on the funeral for the senior retired emperor that no one would have any time to take any action on Akiko’s behalf.
Is my evil karma to blame for this too? Or do the gods just hate us?
I was at a complete loss. No matter how I wracked my brain, I couldn’t think of a way to fix things.
While I had thought Surei’s plan risky and had reservations about what we were doing, it had never even crossed my mind Benkon would react as he did at the end. He had stormed out followed slowly by Surei, leaving me alone in the room.
I jumped up and ran after her. When I caught her, I said, “Surei?”
She kept walking without acknowledging me. I grabbed her by the arm and turned her to face me. “Surei! Talk to me.”
Her face was slack and her eyes lifeless. Dully, she said, “Yoshi, just leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to anyone right now. After I check on Dimples, I just want to go to sleep.”
“Are you sure?”
“He was the last of my family.”
She walked off without even looking at. I let her go.
I hated to see her like this, but I couldn’t think of anything I could do to help things. Besides, I could use a little rest myself. Since Governor Abé and Mayumi had started staying in the guesthouse with the children, I had moved into the male quarters with the yojimbo who lived at the saké house, so that is where I went next.
Preparing to sleep, I stared longingly at the bowl on the side table. It had held the herb packets Benkon had given me to help me rest, but was empty now. I had used the last one the previous night, and with Benkon gone, I wouldn’t be able to get any more.
Oh, well, it’s probably just as well. He said it was dangerous to take it for longer than five or six days. It’s not likely he would have given me more.
Sighing in frustration, I went to sleep.
My rest was uneasy that night. I tossed and turned, subjected to odd dreams and disturbing nightmares. Each time I awoke, I remembered nothing but dark shapes and unknown terrors. Finally, just after the temple bells tolled midnight, I fell into a deeper slumber.
I dreamed.
A silver light lit the landscape. It emanated from everything. It had an unhealthy feel, like the glow from a fungus growing on a rotting corpse.
Gradually, I recognized my surroundings as the streets and building of the capital. They lacked substance as if composed of mist—not wood and earth. Their forms wavered in the sickly light, walls and roofs of the buildings faded. With every step, they lost solidity until I could see inside.
Figures passed among and through the buildings. They were not the usual citizens of the capital. These were the spectral inhabitants of a Kyoto I had never seen before.
Kyoto teemed with ghosts and spirits. Every direction I looked, there were throngs of the disembodied inhabitants. They ignored one another, each intent on his own business. All this activity occurred in an unnerving silence.
A strong pull on my right arm guided me along my path. I could see fingers wrapped around my wrist, but the limb faded above the forearm. As we walked, the shape of my guide slowly became clear. Turning a corner, I caught a glimpse of Akiko’s face in profile. She led me through Kyoto to an unknown destination.
We moved at a tremendous pace compared to the other denizens of the ghostly city. Akiko appeared unaware of or indifferent to the existence of others. Several times we passed spirits on their own errands, missing them by the slightest margins. Eventually, we hurtled directly into one of these manifestations, passing through without slowing.
As I came into contact with the ghostly figure, I was chilled as if I had jumped naked into a stream of water from the runoff of a snowy mountain. My chest constricted with the shock of the cold, and my heart felt like it had stopped.
I tried to speak. “Akiko?” My mouth moved, but no sound came out. There was something wrong with my voice. I tried again but still could produce no words. Finally, making an effort that felt like shouting at the top of my lungs, I managed to croak an almost inaudible “Akiko?”
Without releasing my arm, she stopped and turned around. While it was unmistakably Akiko’s beautiful visage looking back at me, it had undergone a terrible transformation. Her face was white and her eyes shadowed. Her lips parted as if to answer me. No words emerged, but her bright red lips framed a blackness like a portal to the darkest hell.
I recoiled in shock and tried to pull away, but had no control over my limbs.
She looked at me for a moment, then turned away, and we resumed our rapid progress. Although I was walking on the solid surface of the road, I belatedly realized Akiko didn’t touch the ground. Her robes faded out just shy of the ground, and her hair floated free around her head, responding to her slightest movement as if she were underwater.
A feeling of horror came over me. My mind gibbered like a terrified monkey, beating on the walls of my imprisoned body, trying to break out of the nightmare. It didn’t work—I was helpless. I desperately wanted to tear my arm loose from her grasp, but I couldn’t.
You are a bushi! Act like one! I told myself, sternly. This craven behavior does neither you nor Akiko any good. You must remain clear-headed.
I wondered, Was Benkon right? Are Surei and I responsible for this terrible change? Did our fake hauntings and staged exorcism pull her ghost back for vengeance?
The thought appalled me.
As we traveled the ghostly streets, I became more attuned to her mood. Despite her blank expression, she harbored a maelstrom of emotion. A dreadful mixture of terrible resolve, unrelenting hate, and, above all else, incandescent anger filled her.
The clarity of my perceptions and the strength of my emotions disturbed me.
Is this really a dream? What is going on?
We reached the Fourth Ward, then proceeded to Ikeda Minbukyou’s manor. My fear and horror redoubled. Every instinct cried out for me to stop Akiko, but there was nothing I could do. The walls surrounding Ikeda’s manor were even more insubstantial than the rest of the city, seeming no more than a shimmer of heat in the night air. We effortlessly passed through and entered the estate grounds.
Akiko headed straight for the main building. When we were close, she stopped, letting go of my wrist. I still couldn’t move my legs, so I stood there, an unwilling witness to the events unfolding in front of me.
She is here to haunt Ikeda. What have we done?
Akiko seemed to draw into herself, and then thrust both hands towards the building with a furious scream of “Burn!” I was buffeted by a tremendous force that struck like a silent clap of thunder. My entire body shook. Flames exploded from the roof of the manor house. Like the structure itself, the color of the flames appeared translucent and insubstantial, a delicate ink-wash painting of a raging conflagration.
With every bit of strength in my body, I tried to move, to break free, to stop the madness. It was futile. My body was held as thoroughly as if chained to a rock. I could do nothing.
I thought I caught momentary glimpses of shadowy figures running around the flaming edifice. Confusion reigned.
Apart from her single command, the house burned in complete silence. I tried to scream at her to stop, but no sound emerged. I wanted to grab her, force her away, but I couldn’t move. The only sound I heard was my ragged breathing and thudding heart.
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Akiko glided over towards a different building. She shouted “Burn!” and I was struck by that tremendous force again.
Akiko’s attention shifted from the fires. A furtive movement of an indistinct figure caught her gaze. As she concentrated on the misty shape, it came into focus. It was Ikeda Minbukyou, his clothes torn and blackened, his face smudged with soot, and a wild panic in his eyes.
She raced for him.
He spotted Akiko’s approach and started yelling. Another hazy figure interposed itself between Akiko and her target. The newcomer’s presence forced her to break off her headlong rush. As her attention shifted to the interloper, I caught a glimpse of his white hair. A wild hope rose inside me.
Maybe Kamo can stop her.
Kamo hurriedly marked the ground in front of him, finishing just as Akiko screamed “Burn!” He staggered backwards with the force of her command, his clothes beginning to smoke. He backed off a bit and marked the ground again. This time, at Akiko’s command of “Burn!” he remained standing. The command had no visible effect on the two men. Kamo pulled a paper doll out of his robe, held it up in front of him and his mouth worked as if chanting. Akiko paused and floated in place, cocking her head to listen. When Kamo finished, Akiko charged the two men again. Abruptly, she halted as if she had run into an invisible wall.
She kept trying to chase Minbukyou Ikeda, but whatever the white-haired onmyouji had done prevented her. With each failure, she became more frantic. After confirming her inability to reach them, Kamo said a few short words to Ikeda and pointed in a direction away from the manor. Ikeda began running and soon disappeared from sight. A feeling of relief and disappointment filled me at his escape. I was glad that Kamo had managed to stop Akiko, but I wished she had been able to kill Ikeda first.
Akiko tried to move but was still contained by the invisible wall. Kamo turned back to her and held up the paper doll again. He said something and ripped it in half, carefully tearing it from head to groin. Akiko uttered a wordless scream of rage and frustration, then disappeared.
The world returned to me, all in an instant. The deafening roar of the burning buildings, the screams of panicked animals and people, the throat-tearing smoke, the eye-stinging glare of the leaping flames—all of these assailed me at once. The impact on my senses drove me to my knees, my eyes screwed shut, my hands covering my ears.
It wasn’t a dream, it had actually happened, and I had travelled to Ikeda’s manor. This was real.
It took me several moments to adjust to the assault on my senses. Finally, I opened my eyes and looked around. A number of people were trying, ineffectually, to put out the fires. There were still people trapped in some of the structures. For the moment, only the roofs were ablaze, but the cedar shingles were rapidly catching fire, and the flames would soon travel to the other parts of the buildings.
A woman stood screaming outside one of the houses. I could hear a child inside, crying. There was no time to waste. I knocked one of the shutters loose and dived into the smoky interior. Once inside, I froze. It was so much like when Akiko died! The helplessness and panic I felt in my recent nightmares of smoke and flames filled my thoughts.
I deliberately closed my eyes to block out the sight of the fires and concentrated on my hearing. Following the sound of the crying, I reached the source of the bawling, but couldn’t find the child anywhere. I looked frantically around but didn’t see anyone. There was nothing but a cabinet in front of me. I listened more carefully. The crying was coming from inside the furniture. I tore the door open and grabbed hold of the small boy cowering and whimpering in the cabinet. Shoving him under my arm, we made our way out.
Just before we got outside, I heard the piercing scream of a terrified infant behind me. I threw the boy out the broken shutter then went back inside. The air was so foul I could barely breathe, and the smoke made it impossible to see. Feeling my way to the crying child was an exercise in frustration. I kept running into collapsed ceiling planks and fallen lintel posts, forcing me to alter my path. I tripped and fell over a tiny bundle wrapped in a sleeping robe. Standing up, I grabbed the infant and prepared to leave. Unfortunately, I’d gotten turned around and could no longer remember from which direction I had come. I made my best guess and had started forward when the main ceiling beam, aflame from one end to the other, collapsed onto the floor, trapping the infant and me in a small corner of the room. It was impossible to breathe, and the raging flames scorched my exposed hands and face. Once again, panic threatened to overcome me. I pushed the thought of dying in a fire to the back of my mind and focused on escape.
With my back to the flames, I faced into the corner to shield the baby. I threw my shoulder against the thin wooden wall in front of me. Nothing. I did it again. And again. And again. Finally, I heard a cracking sound as the wood began to give. I put everything I had into one last effort.
The wall splintered, opening a hole, and I stumbled out into the cool night air. Placing the baby gently on the ground, I stood with my hands on my knees, gasping to get air into my starving lungs. The woman came running up with the boy in tow and took the baby into her arms. She held both children close and cried as she alternately kissed one then the other.
After a short time, I got my breathing under control and stood to leave. The woman came over. “How can I ever repay you? I thought my children were dead.” I mumbled something about not needing anything and quickly turned away. If anyone recognized me, there would be some awkward questions as to my presence and about responsibility for the fires now consuming the manor buildings.
By this time, there was a huge crowd watching the fire and others working to prevent the flames from spreading to other estates. As far as I could determine, every building on the property larger than a small shack was fully ablaze. The flames leapt high into the sky, casting weird shadows in the night.
I stumbled back to the Spring Palace, meeting ever more people heading to the firestorm. Even from as far away as the gates of the saké house, the orange sheets of fire were visible above the tops of the trees.
Making my way to Surei’s quarters, I knocked on the door before sliding it open. “Surei?” I said, softly. She sat up in her pad, pulling the sleeping robes up to her chin. I was struck by the fact she and I had slept together many times when we were young, but since I returned, this was the first time I had been inside her room while she was asleep. A sudden sadness and a stab of regret for all the lost might-have-beens assailed me as I watched her rub the sleep out of her eyes. I shook off the self-indulgent feelings.
You made your choices, now you have to live with them.
Surei was awake enough to be irritable. “Yoshi, what are you doing here this—” She stopped, sniffed the air, and stared at my soot-marked face. “Where is the fire? Are you all right?”
I stepped into her room and slid the door closed. “Ikeda Minbukyou’s manor,” I said. “Akiko burned it to the ground.”
She shook her head. “No, that’s not possible.”
“She took me with her. Her ghost set the buildings ablaze.”
Surei’s face closed up, and she continued shaking her head in disbelief.
I raised my voice, desperate for her to understand. “She almost set fire to Ikeda, but Kamo was there and protected him.”
With an expression of pain, she cradled her head in her hands.
“Surei,” I asked her in a more normal tone, “could we have caused her return? We haunted Ikeda’s manor, and then she did the same thing. Are we responsible?”
She raised her eyes. “No, no, no. There’s no way we could have caused this. Benkon would have said something if that were possible. Nothing we did could bring her back.” Her words were definite, but her voice and her eyes betrayed her doubt.
I just looked at her.
She stood up, walking back and forth, gesturing with her hands. “You make it sound like I could tell what she was going to do. How would I know? I have little control over my magic. Sometimes I do things without even being aware I am doing them.” She slammed her fist against the wall. “The law is stupid. If a female can show an ability with yin-yang magic, she should be trained in onmyoudou. If anything happened, part of the responsibility should be laid at the feet of the idiots that made it impossible for me to get proper schooling. But I don’t think we did it.”
She turned back to me. “What were you doing at Ikeda’s, anyway?”
I described my journey through a spectral Kyoto.
She stared at me, seeming to gaze into and through me. The blood drained from her face, and she raised her hand to her mouth in alarm. “She’s possessed you,” she whispered. “I checked Dimples for possession after the exorcism, but I never thought to check you.”
She turned away and wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. “You’ve been acting strangely since Akiko’s death. Your inability to sleep, your behavior around me, I thought these were all simply because you were upset by her passing. I was wrong. She must have possessed you after she died. All this time, you have been reacting to Akiko’s emotions, living Akiko’s nightmares, and providing her a foothold here in the material realm. Nothing we have done to aid her passage to the next world has had the slightest effect.”
She turned back and looked at me. “We have to lay Akiko to rest. If her ghost stays here, she will never move on to the afterlife. She’ll be doomed.”
“How can we lay her to rest?“ I asked. ”When Benkon left, he made it clear he wanted nothing more to do with us. Do you think you can convince him to help?”
Surei looked pensive. “Even if I could persuade him to come back, I have no idea where he is.”
The thought of Akiko continuing in her current state upset me terribly. In a louder voice than I intended, I said, “We have to do something. We can’t just stand by while Akiko goes after Ikeda. She would have killed innocent people tonight. If I hadn’t been there, two children would have died!”
Surei looked sick. “What an evil mischance it is that has brought gentle Akiko to this.” Suddenly her face cleared. “As I was reading some of Abé no Seimei’s writings, there was a passage detailing procedures for controlling rogue spirits, including a rite of exorcism. I can study up on it, and then we can lay Akiko to rest.”
“Isn’t that illegal? I thought only priests were allowed to do exorcisms. How much experience do you have with this sort of ritual?” I asked her.
Surei answered a little sharply. “None, but I am sure with a little bit of study, I will be able to perform it well enough. Besides, what choice do we have?”
I remembered other times, when we were children, that she was sure “with a little bit of study, I will be able to do it just fine.” They didn’t always turn out well. However, since I didn’t have any other ideas, I kept my doubts to myself. Surei showed me out, saying, “Go to bed, I need to study.”