Kagami opened the sliding door and walked past the doctor without a word, without even looking at him. She put on a pair of sandals and walked out into the dead of night, away from Kanagawa. There was just a sliver of the moon occasionally peeking through the heavy clouds above, but it was enough for her to see the road.

For two weeks she walked, drinking from streams and sleeping with her short sword close to her breast.

At last, though, she was drawing close to her goal. She was shuffling along in a hunger-induced daze, shivering under a cold autumn rain, when she heard the hoofbeats of a horse coming up from behind. The rider dismounted and began to follow her, drawing closer to her, his feet splashing in the mud. She tilted her head to the side and saw the movement of some long object. Her hand went to the hilt of her sword at the small of her back and she whipped around.

“Akagi…” she said. Handsome Akagi was also soaked through. He flipped open the wooden umbrella and she heard the tapping sound of the rain stopping over her.

“No need to explain yourself. I understand. I’ll stay with you as far as I can.” Akagi said. She wondered what he meant by that.

Putting one foot in front of the other, like a sleepwalker, she walked alongside him in the beating rain until they came to a large wooden bridge. The Uji Bridge, it was called, lead into the Grand Shrine. There was not another soul anywhere in sight as they crossed over it together. Akagi accompanied her along the path that hugged the river until they rounded the corner which led up to the Sanctuary. Kagami blinked in surprise when she saw that the road to the Sanctuary was lined by dozens of monks in fine white robes. Each of them held a red umbrella and stared straight forward. Akagi paused there and gestured with his hand to go forward. Kagami nodded dumbly and untied the string which held the scabbard of the short sword to her back. She motioned for Akagi to take it, but he gently shoved it back towards her.

“You’re not going in empty handed, are you?” he said, with a sorrowful smile.

“But, this…”

He only bowed silently. She’d never seen him bow that low for anyone. Kagami held the sword to her in a death grip and began to walk up the path between the expressionless monks. There was a moment, at the gate to the sanctuary, where she began to kneel down, prepared to make her prayers there. To her shock the pair stepped forward and each pushed on one of the double doors leading in. There were three more doors just beyond that which each, in turn, spread open as she approached them. She was wide-eyed with terror as she was admitted into the final courtyard, at the end of which was a pavilion she had never dared to dream she would ever see.

Within it was the Sacred Mirror, which was used to lure the great Sun Goddess Amaterasu out of the cave. Taking small and fearful steps, she approached and then, gathering up all her courage, pushed aside one of the doors leading into the pavilion. Her sword fell to the side and she took a few stumbling steps forward, falling to her knees and then forward onto her hands. In a cradle of timeless gold was the legendary Mirror. It had been dulled with the ravages of time, but in its silvery face she could still make out the vague outline of her own body. She crawled over to a place in front of the cradle and pushed forward her short sword, one of the valuable Sol blades, as an offering. She pressed her forehead against the wooden floor.

“Great Goddess Amaterasu,” she began, in her mind, “Please see that my brother’s spirit reaches its proper place.”

She waited and gathered her thoughts.

“Goddess, I beg of you: take my life and everything else I have, turn all my dreams into nightmares, but please, please, please, Great Goddess, give me the strength to turn the predators away from your children. I will, I will, I will!”

—

When she came out she found the rain had cleared and the courtyard was full of cool sunlight, glittering off the droplets falling from the autumn-colored forest. An auspicious sign. Akagi was waiting for her on the other side of the bridge, along with a black horse-drawn carriage. He hopped up with one foot in the cabin and extended a hand down to her.

“I hate those things.” she said, flitting her eyes to the carriage.

“I thought you might say that.” Akagi said, and reached inside a cloth-covered basket that was laying on the floor. He brought out a rice ball with a flourish and sat himself down on the far side. Kagami followed it with her eyes as the first bite disappeared into his mouth.

“I’m warming up to them, though.” Kagami said, and put a foot up on the railing. Akagi leaned over and motioned to take her hand. She grabbed the frame of the door and surged forward, leaning far enough in to snatch the half-eaten rice ball out of his hand. Out of reflex he withdrew his hand away from her a little and her lunge unexpectedly put her face uncomfortably close to his. The effect of that was wholly different than when she pulled similar tricks on her brother. She slowly retired to her seat with her prize and looked at it sullenly. Akagi pulled the edge of the basket towards him and fished out another rice ball. He finished it, and Kagami two more, in silence, and washed them down with springwater.

“It’s a terrible, what happened to your brother.” he said. Multiple terrible things had happened to her brother, but she didn’t feel in the mood to clarify. “Though it’s a little besides the point, your pilgrimage hasn’t gone unnoticed in Edo.”

“I don’t care.” Kagami said. There was only one place it needed to be noticed.

“As expected.”

She leaned against the wall of the carriage, exhausted enough to fall asleep the next time she blinked.

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“I imagine you think my brother is well on the way to being reincarnated.” she said. Buddhism was a more comforting belief, at least as far as death was concerned. Maybe that was the reason he smiled.

“He would be at that.” Akagi said. She allowed herself a small smile.

“He’d make a good monkey.” she said. Akagi made a hum of thought.

“Usually the idea is to go higher up the chain, but I’ll see what I can do. I have some pull.”

Akagi pulled down a long panel at the front of the carriage and instructed the driver to move forward, back to Edo. With a snap of the whip the carriage began to move forward. They overnighted at an inn where Kagami had to put up with some Imperial soldiers who had heard about her trip to the Grand Shrine. They were greatly impressed by her piety and were eager to show it, buoyed along by the sake. She and Akagi were initially seated at a small private table, but had to move to the largest one available. Kagami thought: if every stopover was going to be like this, the way back was going to be harder her and the one here.

“To His Imperial Majesty! Banzai!” yelled one of the beet-faced soldiers, and not for the first time.

The collective reply: “Banzaaaaiiii!”

Kagami lifted her cup and joined in, though her voice was a whisper among them. After that Akagi selected more out-of-the-way accommodations. Another man stood up for another toast.

“Revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians!” he yelled. Another roar of approval and raised glasses followed. Kagami had no trouble toasting to that, but when she glanced at Akagi she saw he hadn’t yet joined the toast. After a moment’s hesitation, he raised his cup, looking at her all the while.

In an ancient forest clearing she saw a tranquil pond, perfectly undisturbed and reflecting the canopy of stars overhead. Kagami crawled on her hands and knees over to it, to see her reflection. When she came to the edge, the pond wasn’t mirror-like. She could see into the black deep, where the monstrous face of an ogre was lying in wait, smiling up at her. Then it surged towards her to devour her. At the same moment she reeled back from this terrifying image, she awoke. It was a quiet night and she was safe in her futon at a roadside inn. Edo was still two days away. She remembered asking the Great Goddess for nightmares. That didn’t mean her wish had been heard. It was well within the power and the right of Heaven to give her all the bad things and none of what she wanted, for her impertinence in coming before the Sacred Mirror. Her forehead was hot, her stomach turned over—she’d fallen ill.

The following day she and Akagi stopped to eat lunch at another inn. She felt dazed as she walked down hall of the inn, coming back from the washroom. At that moment the divine hammer landed upon her and everyone else in the ill-starred Empire.

She was thinking of Tosa and her childhood in Kanagawa when her reverie was interrupted by a low, deep roaring sound. It was like nothing she’d ever heard. Before she could think of what it was, indeed an instant later, a tremendous jolt nearly knocked her off her feet. It was followed by a second, then a continuous shaking as though the entire inn had become the toy of a giant. People all over the inn began to cry out, flying immediately into panic.

Yes, an earthquake. Such events were commonplace in Yamato and it would all be over in a moment, with only a few broken vases and flesh wounds for the wear. A particularly bad one might mean fires and some unfortunate people losing their lives. Kagami tried to move down the hall to find Akagi. She had to throw her hand through a piece of washi paper to find something to grab onto. Her sickness was not helping her find her footing. It was Akagi who found her first, in good health and surer of foot, and led her outside. Kagami was acutely aware that it would have been over by then if it was like any earthquake in her memory. But it was like no earthquake in anyone’s memory, at least no one who lived.

It was impossible to stand, and she was compelled to lay down before she was toppled. It wasn’t getting weaker, it was getting stronger. It went on and on, for minutes, until the roar of the earth finally quieted to a murmur and stopped. The two of them and, indeed, all the travelers who made it out of the inn, were panting from exertion and panic. There faces were uniformly wide-eyed, and no one spoke for a while after it was over except to sob or cry. They had seen a god.

Except for a few splinters and cracks, the old inn had weathered the storm just fine. That was the initial opinion, but it turned when a thin white wisp of smoke was seen rising from one of the grated windows on the first floor. It quickly became a thick cloud followed by licks of yellow flame, faster than Kagami could have imagined. The gob-smacked travelers began to stream back into the doomed building to retrieve their valuables.

There was nothing left to do but get back to Edo at all speed. Akagi exchanged the carriage for a pair of saddles. The eastern road was crowded with people streaming out of the city, a scene that recalled to her the panic in Kanagawa when the Black Knights arrived. It was as windy as a typhoon, with none of the rain. The horizon was aglow, and they began to feel the heat before even a single building came into view. Larger and larger the glowing ball loomed over them, until they rounded the last obscuring tree and saw the holocaust. Black shapes of charred buildings were sometimes visible through walls of swirling fire. A god of flame was dancing through the city, the wind his partner

“I’m going to find Amagi.” Akagi said. Kagami whipped her head towards him in shock.

“You’re not planning to charge into that furnace, are you? What if she’s already safe, and you went ahead and died like a fool! Do you think she’s waiting where you last saw her? She could be anywhere!” she said.

Akagi bristled.

“Are you suggesting we do nothing?” he said.

“No, we will do what we can, for those we can. The ones in front of us!”

He looked off and gritted his teeth. “You’re right.”

The city’s water service, such a keystone of the fire brigade in ordinary times, was soundly dealt with by the shock of the tremendous earthquake. More lost their lives than Kagami even imagined was possible in a day, most by fire, some by the waves of a tsunami which had come ashore, others when the mountain earth, loosed by the shaking, covered them over. A few were simply crushed by the wooden pillars of their houses. Every force of nature had been turned on the people of Yamato. By the time the last of the fires was extinguished, two days had passed. Amagi was nowhere to be found. Akagi was hopeful she was elsewhere.

As the thought troubled her, she knelt to lift a board off of a charred body. It was what she imagined the Underworld to be like, with everything in sight destroyed and rotting. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Akagi approaching along a road which had once been a verdant, tree-lined boulevard. She looked up at his face. Whatever he had come to tell her, it wasn’t good.

“Kagami,” he said, then took a deep breath, “They found my sister.”

She looked away to hide her look of indifference.

“I’m sorry.” she said mechanically. It wasn’t untrue, but even though she hated it, another thought ruled her heart: it’s going to be me!