Okiku, smiling at me for the first time in the glow of a lone lamppost.
Okiku as the fireflies stream past, my fingers tangling in her hair.
Okiku before the silkworms took her away.
No.
I won’t let it take my memories of her.
I
won’t.
I won’t.
I
won’t!
I rip my mind free before I go in too deep, before the tree ensures I can never go back. I can hear the tree snarl as I slip from its grasp.
I won’t!
I delve one last time into the priest’s mind, forcing my way through his insanity to find what I need before the darkness claims from him what it could not from me. I begin a new hymn, breaking the seals containing the area’s power, allowing it to surge through me. I force myself to look through the dark gateway at the center of the tree, and I see the hell’s gate in its true form: never-ending emptiness and despair. I feel the priest breaking free, yowling and shrieking, as the darkness pulls him into its gaping maw and to his fate.
With all my might, with thoughts of Okiku in my head as my sanctuary, I take in everything the gate has to offer, absorbing its power. For several moments, I’m sure I won’t survive the onslaught, but I push on and on and on until it has nothing left to give.
I am ruling the gate. The power is so immense that I understand why the kannushi was willing to kill so many people for it, and my head spins at all I could break and bend to my will. I could move mountains, bring down lightning from the sky.
I could be like a god. I could be God.
No, I hear someone whisper in the darkest corners of my mind—the part of me that contains all that’s left of Okiku. It’s enough.
I feel the darkness’s eagerness, its hunger.
I close my eyes. I take the energy channeling through me and wrap it around the malice. It does not expect this and struggles. For an instant, it nearly overwhelms me, its hatred overpowering. But I hold on to my memories of Okiku and slice through the blackness with everything I have.
The resulting backlash tosses me on my butt. A million screams of pure agony ring in my ears as the gaping hole in the tree explodes—and then, like a dark supernova, it abruptly collapses into itself.
***
When the world stops moving, I lift my head and cough out a mouthful of dust. The silkworm tree remains standing, but where it once thrummed with energy, it is now still. Half of its branches are gone, and the silkworm cocoons…
I brush past Kagura, who’s finally achieved some mobility but isn’t quick enough to stop me. I dash toward the silkworms. In the aftermath of the explosion, they’ve scattered and I don’t know which one holds Okiku.
The dagger in my grip, I tear through the nearest cocoon and am rewarded with the faintest whiff of an image—a girl in a peony kimono. Ran Hirano. I move toward the next, the blade flashing quickly. Fujiko Kajiwara. Mineko Kunai.
I find Hotoke Oimikado inside the fourth cocoon, but unlike the others, she doesn’t dissipate. She’s so transparent as to be practically invisible, but she lingers—expectant, anticipating.
The fifth cocoon is empty, but I sense her, that faint scent of eucalyptus, the sensation of morning light on my face.
“No!”
I paw at the silken shell, scavenging for any trace of her, but there is nothing. Okiku is gone.
“No! No, no, no, no!”
I don’t recall much of the minutes that followed, but I remember trying to cradle the bits of the silk threads around me, as if Okiku would return if I held them long enough.
She can’t be gone. There’s no way she could leave me behind with nothing but the memories of what she had to sacrifice for me.
Because it isn’t fair. I didn’t realize the consequences. It’s only now that we’ve won the fight and the aftermath of the ritual has settled over us like dead skin that I feel truly afraid. I have to leave Okiku here with that terrible tree for her tombstone.
It doesn’t deserve her. No grave deserves her.
I hear Kagura calling my name, but I don’t answer. I feel her arms surround me, but I remain rigid and bent. My grief won’t allow for comfort.
I’m crying when she lets me go, taking the ceremonial dagger from my hands. I’m crying as Kagura moves toward the godforsaken tree and slides past the twisted branches and the cobwebs spun across the floor like brittle blankets. I’m crying as she lifts her slender arms, the blade glinting in the unnatural light, and drives it violently into the tree’s rotting trunk. Pools of frothing black gush out. The miko circles the tree, the knife flashing in and out, in and out, scoring new holes into the gnarled surface and spilling more blood.
No longer fattened by the blood of its cocooned prey, the tree succumbs. What is left of its branches thin out, and the bark sloughs off its limbs. Smoke rises from the tips, thatches of kindling consuming the rest of the wood in flame as if it had been nothing but an illusion all along. Within the space of a few minutes, the tree rots away until only a protrusion of stump remains.