Even worse, I recognize the kannushi’s face. He guided me out of the underground passage and showed me the books in his library.
The mob in the pit is still scratching at its sides, but now that I know the truth, they no longer seem as malevolent, only beseeching. I watch as Hotoke drifts toward them, stopping by the corpse of her boyhood companion, the man who survived the first culling, only to succumb many years later to the fate he once escaped. I watch as she stoops to lay a hand along the man’s sunken cheeks, fingers tracing a pattern across the withered skin.
“Will you help me?” For us to leave, I have to finish the ritual. And to finish the ritual, I need a sacrifice. I ask.
Hotoke doesn’t answer, doesn’t even turn to look at us, but I can hear her reply, loud and clear.
“Thank you,” I tell her, but she continues to stroke the dead man’s face like she hadn’t heard. I feel Okiku’s hand on my sleeve.
“Do you trust me?”
“Of course I do,” I respond, appalled that she would have to ask, but when her eyes don’t meet mine, I understand. Keren McNeil’s death still hovers between us, and she’s thinking about my previous accusation that she was no better than the woman in black who haunted my life for so long.
I cradle Okiku’s face with my hand. “I trust you with my life, Ki. I will always trust you.”
Her rigid mouth relaxes slightly. “She needs something from you.”
I glance at the ghost. Hotoke kneels beside the remains of her fallen love while skeletons cluster around her, a mass of spectral memories venerating their queen. After a moment, she rises and moves toward me. I shrink back despite myself. “Do you trust her?” I ask Okiku.
“Enough for our purpose.”
It’s not the most comforting answer, but I nod. The specter studies me almost curiously, and then I feel the lightest of touches in my mind again—
It is late in the afternoon when a group of woodsmen encounter the half-delirious boy, too weak to resist as they carry him away. From the gates of the cursed village, the ghost watches until they are gone, the stillness of the woods muting their footsteps.
“Do not come back, Tomeo,” she whispers. “Do not come back—”
—I don’t quite understand what happens next, but when I resurface, Hotoke is gone. With her departure, the other ghosts have also lost their mobility, their bones lying scattered as they were when we first arrived.
“She wishes to be left alone,” Okiku says. I decide not to argue with her. Kagura and Riley are still somewhere in these tunnels, and I need to find them quickly.
But first, I hang the magatama around my neck and attend to the cocoons, which contain the essence of more villagers and a few of the lower-ranked assistant priests who’d been too innocent to really understand the kind of ceremony they were taking part in.
The last cocoon reveals the image of a familiar face, and my heart lurches in sympathy.
I’ve found Garrick Adams. I don’t know how he found this place on his own—if his past experience with ghosts enabled him to get this far—but I’m sorry to discover one more person we couldn’t save.
***
The old man is waiting for us when we return to the fork where I lost Kagura and Riley. It is as if he’s been expecting me all this time. He tips his head and gestures toward the other end of the tunnel.
“Cut the bullshit, kannushi,” I snap. Hotoke’s memories are still as clear as a cloudless day in my head, and her hatred for her father mingles with my own disgust. “Or should I say, Hiroshi Mikage. Stop pretending to help me. We both know finishing the ritual is all you’re interested in. Where are my friends?”
If I’m hoping to somehow intimidate the man, I’m wrong. A tiny, almost mocking smile appears on his face. It was the same expression I saw when he lifted his mask and condemned his own daughter, using her life to strengthen his.
My previous hunch is right. Hiroshi Mikage is the Lord Oimikado, the kannushi of Aitou village. Mikado means “emperor” in Japanese, a clue I should have noticed sooner. Given the accounts of him before his exile from the emperor’s court, Mikage wouldn’t have stooped to using some lowly peasant name.
Without saying a word, Oimikado walks down the passage. I follow; I already know where he’s taking me.
When we step into a cave even larger than the one containing the altar, the silkworm tree is what first catches my eye. It’s every inch as imposing and as terrifying as in the girls’ visions: a stunning monument to decay and aberrance.