Page 59 of Secrets & Sake

Heart skipping, I take out my notepad and pen.

“This was all so long ago. I was just a little girl, but I remember as if it were yesterday,” Yuki begins hesitantly. “I had a high fever one night, so my mother took me to the hospital. It was late by the time we left, and my mother carried me home. A car pulled up, and a young man called out, offering to drive us home. My mother declined his offer. These brutes stormed from the car and grabbed my mother. They forced us into the car and took off. I was too sick to stay awake and passed out.”

What Yuki describes next is the scene from a nightmare.

When she wakes up, she’s being carried in the arms of her abductors. They’re in the woods, walking beneath tori gates. It’s pitch-black except for the full moon above. Tears slide down her cheeks. Her heart won’t stop racing. She’s scared. So scared. Her mother calls out, telling her everything will be okay. She wants to go home. Her mother begs them to let her go, saying her husband will worry for her, but the man laughs and tells her, “I’m sorry, dear, but you will never see your husband again.”

She begins to weep, struggling in vain against the cage of her captor’s arms. A shrine looms ahead with incense smoke thick in the air. At first, she thinks it is a shrine of Inari, the god of harvest and agriculture. Stone statues of foxes stand guard over the shrine, teeth bared. Something dark red is smeared upon the statues. Then she sees talismans swaying in the wind from where they hang on the shrine’s eaves. The prayers ask for power, for the blood of their enemies, for death.

Frightened whimpers fill the night. Chains rattle. There are people in these woods. So many people. Their dirty faces are pale with fear or streaked with tears. She’s dropped into the dirt, and pain splits her skull as she strikes her head on a rock. A low growl rumbles like thunder, and she can barely silence her scream as a wolf bares its fangs at her. There are more of them, huge wolves as big as horses, that roam among the prisoners. She wants to run, but she’s too afraid she’ll be bitten. She knows it’s not a normal wolf. It can’t be. It bares its fangs in a smile as she whimpers, like her fear thrills it. The wolves surround her and the other prisoners, keeping them from running away.

The man lifts a heavy-looking stone from the altar and holds it up high, then throws it to the ground. The stone shatters into two halves. “The time has come,” he announces, voice ringing through the woods. “Prepare the sacrifices.”

A scream splits the air as wolves pounce upon her mother. They grab her by her flailing ankles and drag her toward the corrupt shrine until she lies before it.

The man pulls a knife from behind his back and slashes her throat. Yuki’s scream echoes in the night as her mother’s blood gushes down her front. She collapses on her side, a river of crimson flowing from her neck.

“Bring them!” he bellows. “Now! Hurry!”

All Yuki can do is cover her eyes and sob as the people around her scream, as blood gurgles from wounds, as bodies hit the dirt. The wind kicks up, howling through the trees. The moon’s bloody glow gets brighter, staining the forest crimson.

The man howls laughter. The wolves sing, and it almost sounds like a song of triumph. His laughter becomes shrill, almost like the cackling of a fox. His body changes as he shifts to something inhuman. The guard holding Yuki is distracted, in awe of what’s happening. His grip on her arm is loose. The time is now. She stamps on his foot as hard as she can, and when he screams, his grip slackens. Yuki runs, and she doesn’t look back.

She was lost in the woods for days until hikers found her and helped her finally get home.

I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath as Yuki tells her story. I suck in a gulp of air, hands in fists in my lap. At some point, I stopped taking notes, too spellbound by Yuki’s story.

“What were they summoning?” I croak.

“A kitsune.” A fox spirit. Those exist, too? “But not just any kitsune, dear. Do you know the legend of Tamano-no-Mae?”

“I think so.”

She smiles, clearly excited to tell this story. “During the Muromachi Era, it is written that an evil lord plotted to kill Emperor Toba. He hired a woman to seduce the emperor and assassinate him. Her beauty and intelligence enraptured the emperor, and she became his courtesan. But slowly, the emperor became gravely ill. He aged rapidly, and no one could understand why. When an astrologer arrived to treat the emperor’s ailing condition, he discovered the courtesan’s secret. She was a nine-tailed kitsune. Her identity revealed, she fled the emperor’s court. The great warriors Kazusa-no-suke and Miura-no-suke hunted her down, but while they slew her body, Tamano-no-Mae’s spirit endured. It was believed that her spirit embedded itself in the Sessho-seki—the Killing Stone.” A grim expression twists her mouth. “However, the stone was stolen many years ago. Not long before I was abducted, in fact.”

Understanding makes my mouth run dry. “So if her spirit was contained within the stone… then when your abductor broke it—”

She nods sullenly. “He released her spirit and allowed her to possess him.”

Ami’s eyes are wide, cheeks bright red. “I… I’m sorry, Onodera. Grandma, that’s not what happened.”

“It is!” Yuki snaps.

Laughing with embarrassment, Ami suddenly springs up. “I think it’s time that you left, Onodera. I’m so sorry for wasting your time.” She all but walks me out the door. Before the door closes, she says, “Grandma! I told you to tell him what you told the papers! He’s going to think you’re crazy!”

For several seconds, I’m frozen in the hallway. My mind won’t stop spinning.

A kitsune.

If I didn’t know about the existence of werewolves, I wouldn’t have believed this story for a second. I’ve heard about kitsune from folktales. They’re fox spirits who sometimes possess humans, usually women just like Tamano-no-Mae. But according to Yuki’s story, kitsune are real, and they’re nothing like the folktales. They’re worse.

Is there a kitsune among the Namikawa-kai or the Takada-kai?

I wanted a big story, well I’ve got one.

I don’t know if I can do this… but I’m going to give it my all.

Chapter 16

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