Storm. Amanda Sun

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СКАЧАТЬ stuck to my soles as I walked, miniature daggers that pricked me with their warnings.

      “Machinasai,” a voice said, ordering me to wait. I stopped.

      I heard the sound of fabric scraping over sand, and looked to my right. She wore a kimono of gold embroidered with elaborate phoenixes, an obi red as blood wrapped tightly around her waist.

      Amaterasu, the kami of the sun. She looked like she had in the clearing with Tomo and Jun, but different somehow. Larger, more real. She exuded power about her. She smiled, and yet somehow it was terrifying.

      Her headdress of beads jingled as she tilted her head, speaking in a haunting voice that seemed to echo in the vast and empty space. It sounded like Japanese, but I couldn’t make sense of it. Her speech was too formal, too ancient.

      “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t understand.”

      “I have tried to speak to you for so long,” she said, “that my voice is dry from effort.” She was speaking modern Japanese now, graciously but with a subtle distaste, like someone who pretends to be glad to accept a gift they already have.

      “Who’s crying?” I asked, looking toward the gateway.

      “The kami have need of tears,” she said. “We have cried so long that we have drowned the world.”

      I tried to grasp the questions I’d had when I was awake. It was my chance to ask, but my head was hazy from sleep, barely able to remember the real world or the fact that I was dreaming.

      “Tsukiyomi,” I managed. Was that it? It didn’t sound quite right asleep. “How can I stop him?”

      “Tomohiro is the heir of calamity.”

      “What can I do?”

      “There is no hope for you,” she said, like she had said over and over to him. “There is nothing to be done.”

      I looked over toward the torii, toward the back of a figure on her knees in the sand. She wore a kimono of white, the black obi draped in an elaborate bow across her back, and her body shook with the quiet sobs.

      I hesitated, watching for a moment.

      “But Tsukiyomi,” I said. “Tsukiyomi is trying to take control of Tomo.”

      Amaterasu tilted her head to the side, her eyes deep pools of blackness. “Tsukiyomi is dead. Long ago he left this world.”

      I saw another figure beside the crying girl—a boy on the ground in front of her, slumped with a leg bent strangely to the side.

      “The mirror has seen it,” Amaterasu said. “It cannot be undone.”

      I stepped toward the girl and the boy, walking slowly as my bare feet slipped in the sharp sand.

      The girl wore a furisode kimono, with long sleeves that draped over the body of the boy and into the sand, the ends of the soft white fabric stained with ink. The girl had tucked her arm under the boy’s neck, and his head lolled back unnaturally, his copper spikes speckled with sand.

      My stomach twisted as I looked down at the familiar face.

      “Tomo,” I breathed, falling to my knees in the sand. Trails of ink carved down his face and across the elaborate silver robes he wore, collecting in the fabric like pools of dark blood. His eyes were closed, his face expressionless as he rested in her arms.

      The girl looked down as she wept. Her long black hair had come out of the coils she’d tied them in at the base of her neck, and they tumbled in a tangle over her face. She looked up to take a breath and I realized she, too, was Amaterasu. There were two of them. I looked past her to see the Amaterasu in gold, and she stood there, watching, as she clasped her hands on the rim of a huge bronze mirror that stretched from her hips to her feet. I’d seen that mirror before, the one she’d held up to Jun in the clearing to show him the truth of who he really was.

      The girl let out another sob, and black tears ran down her cheeks. Tears made of ink. I reached a hand toward her.

      “Katie!” a voice shouted. I jumped, frightened to be recognized in this strange world. I wanted to wake up. I pinched my arm, twisting the skin back and forth. I didn’t want to know any more. “Katie,” the voice said again, and the shadowy fog pulled back.

      It was Jun, hunched over on one knee and adorned in broken armor, his face streaked with ink. He wore a helmet on his head with golden horns, but one had broken off in a jagged cut and lay in the sand and tangle of brush grass at his feet.

      No, that wasn’t the horn in the sand. It was the wrong shape, too...too sharp.

      It was a sword, stained dark on the blade.

      My blood turned to ice. My world turned black.

      “Katie,” Jun said quietly. “Gomen.” I’m sorry.

       No. It can’t be.

      “Abunai,” Jun warned. “Look.” I heard the sound of sand shifting under paws. I looked up to four pairs of glinting eyes, four mouths filled with sharp and angry teeth. Inugami had advanced while I was looking away; they’d found us. They growled and crouched low to the ground, ready to spring, ready to destroy us all.

      I reached for Tomo, stroked my hand through the copper spikes of his bangs, the ink sticking to my fingertips.

      This was the end of everything. I closed my eyes, unwilling to see any more.

      The inugami pounced.

      * * *

      I screamed into the darkness of my room, so disoriented that I barely heard the slam of my door sliding into the wall as Diane stumbled in and threw her arms around me.

      “It’s okay, hon, it’s okay,” she soothed as my scream turned into sobs. My arms burned like fire; I could still feel the wolf teeth sinking into my flesh, like I’d been torn to pieces. “It was just a dream,” she said, smoothing my hair as I tried to calm down. “It’s not real.”

      But it had felt more real than anything I’d dreamed before. Were these the kind of nightmares Kami had? Did Tomo suffer with these every night?

      I gasped in air, trying to focus on Diane so the room would stop spinning.

      “Do you hear me, Katie? You’re safe. You’re okay.”

      I nodded, wanting to believe her. My heart pounded so hard against my chest it ached. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the room, but Diane reached for my lamp and clicked it on, banishing the gray shores of the dream to the corners of my mind.

      “Thank you,” I said, tears streaming down my face.

      Diane frowned, her lips pursed together, her hair a disheveled mop on her head. “Was it about your mom?”

      I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about СКАЧАТЬ