“Where are you going?” Midori’s voice was sharp. She resented Hirata spending so much time with these men and refusing to tell her what they did together. He knew she feared he was going to leave her, as he’d done for some five years while studying the mystic martial arts. “When will you be back?”
“Before you know it,” Tahara said in a teasing voice.
Hirata moved through the door, forcing Tahara, Deguchi, and Kitano to step outside. Tahara waved to Midori and called, “Tell your husband good-bye!”
20
Hirata and his three companions walked up a steep, snow-covered trail into the hills. Far below them, Edo Castle’s misshapen bulk hunched, the lights from the guards’ lanterns moving along its corridors like fireflies. The city was a spread of black wasteland. Above, forests mounted to the heavens.
“This had better be worth it,” Hirata grumbled.
Tahara’s smile flashed white in the darkness. “Have a little faith, why don’t you?”
They stopped in a clearing in the forest, where the ground leveled into a plateau surrounded by tall, ancient evergreen cedars whose tops fringed a circle of sky with the full moon at the center. The moon’s light bleached the snow a ghostly silver. A wide, flat rock stood in the middle of the clearing. Deguchi brushed snow off the rock. Kitano emptied his knapsack onto it. He set out a ceramic flask and a metal incense burner. Deguchi lit the burner and the oil lamps around the perimeter of the clearing. The four men gathered around the rock.
Smoke billowed from the burner, purplish flecked with golden sparks. Tahara had told Hirata that the substance they burned at rituals was a mixture of herbs from China, a recipe from the magic spell book. As Hirata and the others leaned over the burner and let the smoke fill their lungs, the air didn’t seem as cold, and he felt the fatigue of a long day lift like a rising fog. The foliage of the trees glowed green and the snow scintillated with turquoise and pink lights despite the darkness.
Tahara, Deguchi, and Kitano began to chant in a language, full of hisses and singsong intonations, that Hirata couldn’t understand. They’d told him it was ancient Chinese. He recited the syllables he’d memorized with no idea of their meaning. Tahara took a swig from the flask, then passed it around. When his turn came, Hirata drank. The potion tasted like exotic flowers mixed with sewage, fruit, and spices, and distilled into powerful liquor. It burned down his throat and hit his stomach as if he’d swallowed a red-hot cannonball. He gagged and coughed.
Unaffected, Tahara, Deguchi, and Kitano chanted louder, faster. Heat spread through Hirata. His muscles, nerves, and bones were on fire. He held up his hands, expecting to see them blacken and wither. His fingers distorted into white, branching, rootlike shapes. Gasping, he glanced around the circle. Tahara’s, Deguchi’s, and Kitano’s images swam, fragmented, and recoalesced.
“What’s happening to me?” he cried.
“The spell is working.” The chanting continued. “You’re going into a trance.”
The words seemed to come from all of the men. The echo ricocheted off the trees. Strange colors swirled, orange and mauve and iridescent blue. Out of the corner of his eye Hirata saw movement in the forest.
“Who’s there?” he demanded.
As his eyes chased the movement, a figure reappeared and disappeared, a shadow with a horned helmet, a flared armor tunic, and jutting swords. It was larger than any man, a giant. Power radiated from it in waves that boomed and pulsed.
“It’s the spirit. He’s come for you.”
Terror filled Hirata. He didn’t care that the spirit could give him the powers he craved. He only wanted to run away. But his legs were numb as stone; they wouldn’t move. He clawed the air with his hands. They turned numb and useless, too. He spun as he toppled. He sprawled on his back across the altar stone.
The trees above him leaned inward, their trunks like the sides of a funnel, the sky at the far, narrow end. Tahara, Deguchi, and Kitano extended their arms around the altar, hands touching. They stared down at Hirata, their lips moving as they chanted. Their voices sent pressure waves crashing against his ears. Veins of fiery light crossed, linked, and dissolved around him. His heart thumped so hard that he thought it would explode.
“Stop or I’ll die!” he screamed.
The men’s faces, bent over him, shone with exultation. The moon expanded and contracted in rhythm with their chanting. With each expansion it grew larger, exerting a force that sucked Hirata toward the sky. He felt himself rising through the funnel of trees. As he reached the treetops, his point of view suddenly inverted. He was looking down at the clearing. He saw himself lying on the altar, enmeshed in fire-veins, his face a mask of panic, surrounded by Tahara, Deguchi, and Kitano. He tried to call to them, but they didn’t look up. They didn’t know that his spirit had left his body.
The universe upended in another disorienting shift. The moon filled Hirata’s vision. Black clouds streamed across it like ink on water. They gathered into the shape of a samurai in full armor on horseback. It was the warrior from the forest. His image enlarged as Hirata rose into the sky and the moon expanded. Now the warrior charged his mount toward Hirata. His form took on definition. Hirata could see the plates of his helmet and armor tunic, his eyes glowing above the iron face shield. He drew his sword, which shone as if forged from lightning.
Hirata screamed again. He heard the faint, feeble sound from his earthbound body. The men’s chanting followed him as he rose faster and faster. Another deep, garbled voice joined theirs, speaking unintelligible words. It was the warrior’s. The noises mixed into a cacophony that grew louder as he accelerated. The earth fell away beneath him. He saw Edo, the castle, and the hills shrink in a landscape of mountains and rivers and lights from distant cities, then the islands of Japan floating in the sea, dwarfed by foreign continents. The men’s chanting pursued him as he whirled through the vacuum of space.
Celestial bodies appeared-a gigantic ball of red, swirling gas; an orange-and-black-striped orb encircled by a sparkling ring. Stars magnified into white suns with molten, turbulent centers. Hirata’s acceleration suddenly reversed. Now he was falling. Planets and stars streaked by him in columns of light. The chanting rose to an inaudible pitch. Below, the earth soared up to meet him. Mountains raised jagged peaks. Wind shrieked in his ears. Friction burned him as the round gap in the trees around the clearing in the forest swallowed him. He landed with a crash that shattered perception, extinguished thought in silent, empty blackness.
Excruciating pain burned down Hirata’s left arm. A tiger with teeth made of fire was gnawing on it. He moaned and writhed. Hands restrained him. Voices called his name. He awakened to find himself lying on the cold, hard altar stone. The circle of sky above the treetops was pale blue with morning. Tahara, Deguchi, and Kitano pinned him down, their anxious faces bent over him. Hirata raised his head. He was back in his body, alive. When he tried to wiggle his feet and fingers, they obeyed. He gasped with relief.
“What happened?” he said, wondering if his experience had been a hallucination.
“Nothing.” Tahara sounded disappointed. “You just screamed all night.”
“Didn’t you see the warrior?” Hirata demanded as he sat up. His arm still hurt terribly.
“No. You mean you did? This is the first time we’ve managed to evoke him in months, and he appeared only to you.” Vexation tinged Kitano’s voice.
“What happened? Did he tell you anything?” Tahara asked eagerly.
Hirata described how he’d been transported out of his body, into the cosmos. “Something’s wrong with my arm.” The rest of his body was stiff with cold, but the pain burned and throbbed from the tiger’s fiery fangs. He pushed up his sleeve.
The skin on his arm glowed as if from flames underneath. The other men exclaimed. Tiny bright lines appeared within the glow. The pain went from excruciating to unbearable. Hirata rolled off the altar stone onto the ground. He frantically scraped snow against his arm. The snow melted and steamed. As the cold penetrated his skin, the glow faded; the pain eased.
Deguchi crouched, pointing at Hirata’s arm. Tahara said, “Look!”
A line of precisely written characters adorned his skin from bicep to wrist. Hirata stared in amazement. They were bloodred, but when he touched them, they were smooth, dry, and painless, like a tattoo. “Did you do this to me while I was in the trance?” he demanded.
“No. It’s a message from the spirit,” Kitano said.