Hiro and the Snow Maiden: Part 4

Chapter 10

The dining room was as lavish as the rest of the mansion; the table could have seated twenty, though we all bunched up at one end. I was surprised when Aunt Oyuki wasn’t waiting for us. Instead, there was a stranger behind Uncle Kaito there who looked a little… Mom would have said ‘creative’, if she was feeling too polite to call her a wacko.

She wore a sky-blue kimono decorated with unfamiliar symbols the same shade as the shock of white hair in the center of her forehead. Where Oyuki’s skin was naturally pale, this woman’s face was caked in white makeup that almost hid the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. Her pale cheeks made her bright red lipstick stand out against her skin like a wound. The effect made me shudder; she looked even more like a yuki-onna than Oyuki.

She didn’t notice me staring at her as she walked around the room with something that reminded me of a cricket bat. The strange device was covered in strings, each ending in a strip of paper with different symbols drawn them. I couldn’t get a good look at them as she waved the bat back and forth, but I didn’t think there were any Latin or Japanese characters.

She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat with similar slips of paper hanging from strings. Once I got a good look at them, I realized that they were Egyptian hieroglyphs. So were the arcane symbols printed on the kimono. The heck?

“What’s the word, Noriko?” asked Kaito.

She closed her eyes, her lips moving noiselessly for a moment. “The spirits will not bother us tonight, but it is not safe for Oyuki to join us. You know how they afflict her at this phase of the moon. I’ve already arranged for her to take dinner in her room.”

Kaito let out a long sigh before nodding to her. “Well done.”

“What the heck is this crap?” asked Yukiko, taking the words out of my mouth… though with less tact.

Noriko whirled around, her eyes narrowing. “I thought I’d detected a negative presence. Perhaps you should explain my services, Master Sato.”

Kaito coughed into his hand. “Noriko advises me on numinous matters.” He almost seemed embarrassed by the description.

“Numinous?” I asked, since I’d legitimately never heard the word before.

“There is a world beyond what the eyes can see,” said Noriko. “These forces can benefit us mortals, or work against us. I am Master Sato’s broker with the spirits.”

“No, seriously,” said Yukiko, turning towards her uncle. “What is this crap?”

Kaito’s grip tightened around his teacup. “This ‘crap’ is why Oyuki is as healthy as she is, so I’ll ask you to treat Noriko with respect!”

“Do not be too harsh,” said Noriko, leering down at us between the dangling paper strips. “You were skeptical when we first met, too. You needed to see the evidence.”

Yukiko looked to me for support.

“Ms. Noriko,” I said, “that’s an interesting getup you have there. What are the hieroglyphs for?”

Noriko held up her club for inspection. “These are passages from the Egyptian Book of the Dead attached to a bat carved from a sacred tree. It can dispel wandering spirits from an area, at least for a time.”

“Oh now I know you’re full of—”

“Yukiko, either you can be civil to her, or you can leave,” snapped Kaito. “And I might just have to tell your father about this.”

Yukiko’s eyes blazed with anger. “You’d use…”

I put a hand on her shoulder, and she took the hint. “I don’t know about Yukiko, but I’d love to hear how this all works.” I gazed into Yukiko’s blue eyes, willing her to see my meaning. I didn’t believe a bit of this either, but if Kaito had fallen under the sway of some faker, more information couldn’t hurt.

“Why hear when I can show you?” asked Noriko. “Master Kaito, this room is cleansed for now; you may eat in peace.” She bowed to him before turning back to us. “Mistress Oyuki’s greenhouse is a hotspot of activity. Join me after dinner and you’ll see what I mean.”

“Gladly,” said Yukiko.

Noriko left us to prepare for this mysterious ritual. Things were… frosty during dinner. Yukiko and Kaito mostly talked about trivial matters, but both were more guarded than before.

“Kaito, if you don’t mind me asking,” I asked during a longer silence, “what did you mean before? About Noriko helping Oyuki, I mean.”

“Oyuki hasn’t been well for the last few years,” he replied. “Things took a turn for the worse earlier this year.”

“She did?” said Yukiko, nearly dropping her chopsticks.

He nodded. “She was listless and confused for a time, but shortly after Noriko’s treatments started, she fell into coma. Noriko said it was dark spirits; she went in with her artifacts and my wife came out again. I owe her more than I can repay.”

“Why didn’t I hear anything about this?” demanded Yukiko.

“That’s a question for Hitori,” he replied. “I gave him updates. You haven’t exactly reached out on your own, now have you?”

“I… you have me there,” she said, glancing downward.

“You’ve been busy with school and our missions,” I said.

Yukiko was deep in thought; I’m not sure she noticed me covering for her. “She was seriously in a coma?”

“Yes, and nobody could explain it,” he said. “Healing magic didn’t help, and the best mundane doctors in Japan had no idea what was the matter. Just when I’d lost hope, Noriko showed up on my doorstep saying that she’d heard a voice calling to her, begging for help.”

“How did she find out?” I asked.

“Best that I can tell, something supernatural really spoke to her,” he replied. “After all, nobody knew except some of the staff and us Satos; apparently, not even the whole family knew.”

“You’re too reasonable to really believe that,” said Yukiko.

“Says the woman using magic to fight Christian devils,” he replied. “If that mythology is true, who’s to say what else is possible?”

“The difference is, I can reach out and touch a demon,” said Yukiko.

“You haven’t seen the miracles Noriko can work,” said Kaito, his eyes going unfocused. “You will soon enough, though.”

After dinner, we met Noriko in the darkened greenhouse. She was sitting on her knees in the dead center of the main path between two rows of sunflowers. She had lit a small fire in front of her in a stone-lined fire pit, and she rocked back and forth on her knees, clearly in deep concentration. Her voice echoed through the greenhouse in something that sounded like Latin.

With all of the lights out, the night sky was visible through the thick glass panes, the stars stretching as far as I could see. This only added to the unearthly atmosphere.

Yukiko gave my hand a subtle squeeze. “You can sightsee later. Pay attention; we might just figure out her trick.”

I nodded as Noriko stood, her voice carrying through the whole greenhouse. “There are places where the veil between this world and the next are at their thinnest. Lone Mountain Estate has particularly thin walls, and so the grounds must be regularly purified.”

Kaito was leaning forward on his cane, engrossed by the spiritualist’s words.

“Many troubled souls wander this mountain,” she said. “Logging was a dangerous business, and the Lone Mountain Company cared little for giving their dead employees a proper burial.” She turned away from us and began stamping her feet and waving her club in wide arcs around her. “I know your pain, oh spirits. Come, come to me, and be cleansed.”

As if on cue, the fire lit at Noriko’s feet died, snuffed out by an unseen extinguisher.

Normal magic has a few dead giveaways. When a spell is cast, a wizard will usually speak words, and the runes representing the magic will float in the air around their hands until they collapse and make the wizard’s will reality. I’d seen a couple examples of a completely silent spell, but even then, there would always be runes in the air. A magical artifact, a fabricata, would have the same symbols etched into it. So, when magic was applied, the runes always stand out and glow.

As Noriko posed at the center of the greenhouse, I didn’t see any of those signs. There was a faint, blue glow around the club, but it was the wrong color for spellcasting, and I couldn’t make out any individual runes. The ethereal light spread all across her body, seeming to emanate from inside her robes.

Green shapes filled the air around us, and I instinctively activated Immortal Form and put myself between them and Yukiko. My affinity boosted my senses, but that didn’t help much. The shapes were completely noiseless as they sailed towards Noriko, and they still looked like formless pockets of green gas.

“That’s it. Do not be afraid,” said Noriko. “I am here to deliver you.”

Yukiko stepped from around me, her hand glowing red for a moment as she tried to grab one of the balls with her magic. Gravity Shift couldn’t affect energy structures, though, and none of the spirits slowed as they drifted towards Noriko.

As her glowing bat touched each spirit, the gas dissipated. After a few minutes of this, the four of us were alone again.

Her work done, Noriko slumped to the ground, gasping like she’d run a marathon. I went to her side, but she shook her head, refusing my help.

“I only need a moment to recover,” she said before turning her gaze to Yukiko. “Do you still doubt me?”

Yukiko scratched her chin thoughtfully. “That was certainly interesting… tell me, are you a wizard?”

Noriko chuckled to herself. “No, I am completely talentless in conventional magics. I am grateful for the gifts I have, though. They have allowed me to help so many.”

“I’m sure they have,” said Yukiko. She was visibly shaken, which made me feel more relieved, since I had no earthly idea what I’d just seen, either.

Maybe Mom had a point about these lands being full of spirits?

Chapter 11

Lone Mountain Estate, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan

Saturday, April 15^th, 2051

To my surprise, Yukiko had suggested another jog the next morning. I almost thought she’d changed her mind about exercise, until she said she wanted to get it out of the way. “It’ll be a busy day, after all.”

It was slower going that morning, since our mystery wizard hadn’t gone through and melted us a path yet. There was a light dusting of snow that covered some ice patches, and I’d had to catch Yukiko once when she lost her footing. As she often did, she thanked me before implying that she’d had the situation under control.

We hadn’t encountered any of Artem’s guards in the main building, but we caught a pair of them on their way to the guard shack at the front gate. They seemed like nice enough guys and were Russian like Artem. That was about the most we could get from them; their command of Japanese wasn’t the best.

As we got back to our routine, I pointed out to Yukiko that their rifles weren’t quite as scary as we’d thought; they were a Philippine-made model that looked like military weapons, and used NATO-standard rounds the Anti-Demonic League had carried over from the old world order, but they couldn’t burst fire.

“I suppose that’s a relief,” she said.

“It means there probably won’t be another tank hidden away somewhere,” I said.

She chuckled at that, which turned into a yawn as we arrived back at the big house. “Darn, the whole point of these morning runs is to wake us up, but I’m still groggy.”

“We did keep each other up pretty late,” I said.

“Don’t say it like that!” she snapped, turning bright red. “Somebody’s going to get the wrong idea!”

“What, that’s what we did,” I said, stifling my own yawn. We’d spent some time talking about the strange experience before falling asleep in each other’s arms. I only realized much later why she’d blushed; I must have been groggy, too. “Now that we got the blood pumping, do you have any new ideas about Noriko’s tricks?”

“Maybe it’s something with mirrors?” she said, not sounding convinced.

“What about projectors?” I suggested. “I’ve seen some really impressive holograms at concerts before.”

“Maybe? Though, those projections are only convincing from one side, and those so-called spirits were all around us. Besides, those floating shapes looked three dimensional.”

“What if it was some sort of gas?”

She shook her head again. “No, it must have been energy; Gravity Shift can at least affect gas, even if it’s harder to work with than solids or liquids.”

“Is there anything else that could move the gas around like that? All I can think of would be fans, but we’d have been able to see them,” I said.

“Real magic makes the most sense, even if she says she isn’t a wizard,” said Yukiko. “I wish we could check and see if she had a service record.”

“Even if we could borrow your uncle’s computer, we wouldn’t have a lot to go on,” I said. “We don’t know her last name, or if her first is really Noriko.”

“Yes, that was rather suspicious,” said Yukiko. “You’re into Wizard Corps trivia; have you ever heard of anybody with her hairstyle?”

I thought back to my childhood trading collectable cards and talking stats with my buddies. It wasn’t that much different than when we followed the Hanshin Tigers during the baseball season, though Confirmed Orc Kills was a more morbid statistic than Runs Batted In.

“I can’t think of anybody; I think I’d remember somebody with that white spot right in the middle of her forehead,” I said. “I dunno, maybe there is something to this paranormal stuff?”

“Psht, as if,” said Yukiko, physically waving off the idea. “We don’t know everything about magic, but we know what Noriko did back there was a scam.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked. “Thirty years ago, our parents wouldn’t have ever dreamed their kids would grow up to be wizards. Maybe there’s more to magic than we know.”

“I’m not… entirely opposed to the idea of other sorts of magic,” said Yukiko in a hesitant tone, “but historical facts are something else. The Egyptian Book of the Dead isn’t some tome of magic. It’s more like a straight religious text.”

I cocked my head at her. “Really? Huh. I thought…” I was too embarrassed to admit that I’d been learned about it from bad horror movies.

“The only people who think it’s dark magic haven’t actually read it,” said Yukiko, accidentally wounding my pride. “That proves she’s a charlatan.”

“Weird that your uncle wouldn’t know anything about that…” I scratched my chin.

“Well, of course he wouldn’t; he was desperate, and her snake oil ‘worked’,” she replied. “He’s too close to the matter to be objective.”

“You should stick close to your aunt; Noriko’s bound to come around for another round of ‘treatment’, and you can get more intel.”

Yukiko winced at the thought. “You’re right; I just hope that she isn’t too scatterbrained. I hated seeing that confused look in her eyes yesterday.”

I leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “I know you’ll do fine, Yukikins.”

“You’re right, I will,” she said, standing a little straighter. “Enjoy your playdate with Artem, and be careful.”

I didn’t really like the note of worry in the last part, but I nodded.

The bald Russian wasn’t too hard to track down; one of the staff had seen him near the greenhouse, towards the back of the big house. He was sitting on a bench with a thermos in his hand and a rifle slung across his back. I noticed that this one was able to go full auto; I guessed it made sense for the leader to keep the best gear for himself. It wasn’t clear what he was doing, besides staring into the forest.

He noticed me as I came up from behind. “Ah, Takehara! I wasn’t expecting to see you so early. You’re certainly eager, yes?”

“You invited me to spar the second time we met,” I said. “So really, you were the eager one.”

He smirked back at me. “You have me there. Come, I know just the place.”

To my relief, it was out of the cold; I’d had enough of that lately. We entered one of the additions to the main house, which turned out to be a small racquetball court.

Kaito was amusing himself by smacking a ball against the far wall. I wondered how a man who got around by cane could play the game. The answer was, surprisingly well; as we waited for him to finish, he was able to flawlessly bounce the ball off the wall and back to himself five times. The sixth time, it went outside his reach, but he didn’t go for it. Instead, he went for another ball from his shoulder bag. There were only a few of the balls along the back wall, which showed how good he was at the game.

I decided to show off a little bit for Artem; Kaito was able to rally the ball another three times before it flew past his shoulder. I activated Immortal Form and leapt into the air, catching it before it could hit the back wall.

Kaito’s eyes went wide when he heard me land right behind him. “Takehara! How long have you been there?”

“Not too long,” I said, offering him the ball. “You’re pretty good.”

“You should have seen me when I had two working knees,” said Kaito. “I imagine you two are waiting to use the court?”

“We wouldn’t impose, sir,” said Artem, walking up with a gym towel. “Though this is usually when you stop for the day.”

Kaito accepted the towel and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “How do you always know what I want before I do?”

“I aim to please, sir,” he replied.

“If you ever get tired of slinging a gun around, you’d make a fantastic butler,” said Kaito.

“If I ever do, I might take you up on that,” said Artem.

“I ought to get going,” said Kaito. “Be sure to lock up when you’re done; we wouldn’t want another raccoon incident.”

I tilted my head at that. “Raccoons? In Hokkaido? Do you mean tanuki?”

Kaito shook his head. “No, there was a whole damn family of American raccoons in here one morning; Artem figured out that they’d escaped from a local zoo.”

I missed Artem’s comment, as I still reeled from Kaito’s casual use of the d-word. Who still said that in the 2050’s?

[Editor’s Note: Kaito was about in the right age range for it, growing up well before the Horde invaded. He probably got away with it because he was rich.]

Once Kaito had left, I helped Artem roll out a blue, well-worn mat onto the floor, and we removed our shoes and heavier clothes. For somebody who had a thing for fist fights, Artem had an awful lot of holdout blades hidden around his body.

“What are they teaching wizards about martial arts these days?” he asked as he unstrapped the last hidden knife from his right shin.

“We don’t get much in the way of unarmed training,” I admitted, almost feeling embarrassed. “They figure there isn’t a weapon in our hand, then it should be casting a spell.”

“Then they did you dirty,” he said. I noticed that his Japanese had become rougher once there wasn’t a Sato in the room.

“They aren’t wrong, though,” I said. “I mean, I can do better against an armored orc with an enchanted sword than I could with my bare hands.”

“Do you have your sword with you now?”

“Well, no,” I admitted. “I couldn’t take it on the plane.”

“That’s exactly the problem,” he said, shaking his head. “Every man should know something about hand to hand fighting.”

“I do,” I said, sounding more defensive than I wanted. “I took some karate classes in middle school. It’s just that the Wizard Corps didn’t train me in it.”

“Ah, then there is hope for you!” he said, shooting me a broad grin. “Can you turn off your magical strength?”

“Yes,” I said. “Wait, you challenged me without knowing that?”

He shrugged. “I like a challenge. Still, let’s not go knocking my head off, yes?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I usually have Immortal Form under control.”

“Usually?”

I winced; I’d said too much. “It won’t be a problem, sir.”

“I am not a ‘sir’,” he said, bringing his hands up to cover his face like a boxer. “I am Artem to you; I don’t spar with anybody except my equals. Do you understand, Hiro?”

“Yes, Artem.” I put my hands at my sides, ready for what came next. “What are the rules?”

“This is a friendly bout, yes?” he said. “Still, you are a wizard; you can fix yourself if you need to. I’m going all out.”

“Hold on,” I said. “I don’t really…” Why was I embarrassed to admit it to the security guard? “I don’t have great magical reserves; it’s kinda hard for me to get healed.”

“Oh?” The gears turned in his head a moment. “Then I suppose we should avoid hitting one another in the head; we wouldn’t want Ms. Sato to worry about you.”

“Yeah, we wouldn’t,” I muttered. “Okay, no headshots. How do you want to score this?”

Artem ran his thumb across his nose. “Scores? Psht. We see who gets knocked down first. That is how we choose the winner.”

I’d meant to ask about gloves or protective gear, but I realized that this wasn’t that sort of match. I found myself wanting to match his macho energy, even as my common sense worried about what would happen if I slipped.

“Alright, you’re on,” I said, taking an extra moment to suppress Immortal Form, being more careful than I usually was. I didn’t want to accidentally break his bones, after all.

It came easily, thankfully; after a few moments of controlled breathing, I could feel the magic flow out of my limbs. The idea of a friendly spar made it easier to stay focused than being in the thick of a fight.

We closed in on each other on some unspoken signal. He wasn’t much taller than me, so our reach was about equal. My instinct was always to end the fight quickly, so I went in for an aggressive one-two combo.

He weaved around the first punch and blocked the second with his left forearm. His free right fist lashed out, tagging me in the shoulder. Even without Immortal Form boosting me, the blow didn’t do more than sting. Was he pulling his punches, or was I unintentionally solidifying my muscles?

I shoved that thought aside as he directed a jab at my stomach. My moment’s hesitation cost me, and this one did more than sting. I was able to deflect his left cross, as well as the rapid rabbit punches that followed. He’d still put me on my back foot, and I gave ground to him.

He was good. Too good for me to match skill for skill. Still, I noticed that I wasn’t hurting much; even my stomach only felt a dull ache. I didn’t think he was holding back; I really was stronger than him.

All that strength wouldn’t do me any good if I couldn’t land a punch, though. We hadn’t agreed to no kicks, but he’d had more than one chance to try. That was fine by me; I was used to going blade to blade, and my base fighting style didn’t incorporate much fancy legwork. If he wanted to treat this like a boxing match, I’d play by his rules.

We traded punches like that for a few minutes. I only caught him with a few glancing shots, but he’d landed blows across my upper body. Neither of us showed any signs of slowing. My knuckles were starting to suffer, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me.

“This is hard when we have to keep it below the neck,” he said, his Japanese gaining a harsh accent as his mind focused on the fight. “My hand keeps wanting to go high.”

“Glad you’ve got good control,” I grunted, blocking a right cross with my forearm. “You’re a real pro at this!”

He took a step back, smirking at me between his raised fists. “Don’t flatter me too much; Miss Sato might get jealous.”

“It’s not flattery if it’s true,” I said, firing off some quick jabs. One of them got through his defenses, smacking him in the right pectoral. That one forced him back, and I thought I saw my opening.

Emphasis on ‘I thought’; he weaved around my wild haymaker, and the momentum threw me off balance. My arms were thrown wide and Artem took full advantage, hammering my body with punches.

Some part of my mind wondered why they didn’t hurt more; I was sure I’d be left bruised, but that should have dropped me.

The rest of my brain focused in on the battle, and he was starting to slow. I stepped back and tried to use his trick back on him, feigning a right cross I didn’t intend to throw.

Artem saw through the trick, though, and closed in with his arms raised in defense. The left jab I threw had no weight behind it, and he took it to the shoulder to slam my stomach with a powerful uppercut that doubled me over.

I still kept my feet, though. That little analytical voice in the back of my head told me I must have been cheating, instinctively using embers of Immortal Form to boost my durability.

Whether I’d cheated or not, he left me in the perfect position for a tackle straight out of American football. I’d knocked him down in a flash, and I was looking down into his startled grey eyes before he could blink twice.

“Blyat, you move like lightning!” He seemed more impressed than upset at the loss.

“I…” I put out a hand to help him up, which he accepted graciously. “I think I might have cheated, sir… I mean, Artem.”

He didn’t look at me, inspecting his bruised body instead. “How do you mean? That move wasn’t against the rules.”

“I mean I don’t think I could move that quickly without Immortal Form.”

He raised an eyebrow, again surprisingly calm about having been knocked flat. “You said you had it under control.”

“I did,” I said, feeling ashamed. “But I… I used to not be able to turn it off at all in a fight, or when I got stressed. My training has been about turning it down, so I don’t smash things in my daily life.” Or people, for that matter.

“Turning it down,” he said, nodding, “but not off. I see. You think it is always going in the background, yes?”

“Yes, Artem,” I said, bowing to him. “I apologize that I cannot give you the fair match you wanted.”

“It makes sense,” he said, flexing his hands, unbothered by the blood leaking from his ripped knuckles. “Boxing you was like punching iron. Still, you did not know this before because…”

“Because I guess I don’t do these sorts of martial arts much,” I said. “I never realized what punching me was like.”

“Martial arts?” Artem nearly spat the words. “This does not rise to that level. This was a friendly scrap. Stop bowing like you did something wrong!”

“You’re awfully calm about this,” I said.

He ran a hand down his forearm. “If I fight a novice, am I supposed to un-lift all the weights that gave me my muscles? Unlearn hours of practice in throwing punches? If this magic is part of you, then it is part of what I need to beat if I am to claim victory.”

“Huh. I never thought about it like that,” I said.

“Of course you didn’t,” said Artem, tapping me on the chest. “Wizards give their magic cute names and talk about it like it floats apart from them. From what I see, it is like asking you to fight without your heart. Besides, you promised not to hit me in the head, and you kept your word there.”

“I did, didn’t I?”

He clapped me on the shoulder. “You see? Now, pick yourself up; I don’t want to spar again with a man who is kicking himself while I punch him. Two on one is hardly fair.”

I laughed at his joke, feeling the tension leave my shoulders. “Then you’ll fight me again?”

“Of course; I will not let you leave Lone Mountain Estate until I can best you,” he said, assuming a fighting stance again. “I want to be able to tell people I beat a famous hero. Do you accept?”

Well, if an experienced brawler like Artem called it my win, who was I to disagree? I raised my own hands in defense. “Of course.”

I knocked him to the ground again, more quickly this time. By the third bout, he was breathing hard and having trouble staying on his feet.

“Blyat, it’s heck getting old,” he said. “Ten years ago, I’d have had you.”

“You got close in that last one,” he said.

“Don’t lie to my face,” he spat. “I think I’ll need to call it a day. Same time tomorrow?”

I felt a smile cross my face. “Oh, I’ll be there.” Yukiko wouldn’t have been able to keep me away with Gravity Shift at full tilt.

Chapter 12

Not that she didn’t try…

“Hiro, you are just covered in bruises!” she chided. I’d made the mistake of wearing a t-shirt around the big house after lunch, exposing the black and blue marks that ran all down my forearms.

“Well, yeah,” I said, wincing as she applied antiseptic to an open cut on my shoulder. I hadn’t noticed the injury; I wasn’t sure if that was down to Immortal Form or simple adrenaline.

“I don’t care what you say, this can’t be relaxing.”

I winced again as she poked one of the larger bruises. “But it was,” I said. “It’s like outmaneuvering someone in War of the Arcane.”

“I don’t have to patch you up after you play a board game,” she said.

I shrugged. “It looks worse than it is.”

“Well… as long as you’re having fun,” she said. “I don’t see the appeal, personally.”

“You love magic duels,” I pointed out.

She paused. “Would it sound egotistical to say it’s because I usually win?”

“A little,” I said.

She shrugged and crossed her arms, seemingly satisfied with her work. “Then I’ll sound egotistical.”

“Be true to yourself, Yukikins,” I said. I noticed that she hadn’t used many of the bandages she’d gotten out, which I thought proved my point that my spar with Artem was harmless. Still, I didn’t want to make it a fight. “How’s your aunt doing?”

Her face fell. “It’s strange. She knows a lot of things still, and most of the time, you wouldn’t think anything was wrong. If it’s from the last few years, though, she either doesn’t know it, or it sounds like she’s talking about somebody else.”

“I hear that with those sorts of diseases, it’s the new memories that go first,” I said.

“I guess,” she said, letting out a sigh. “She isn’t all there physically, either; she had to go rest after a few hours of gardening.”

“I’m glad you could be there for her.” Like I hadn’t been for Mom while I’d been serving…

Yukiko interrupted my moment of guilt by puffing out her cheeks in a pout. “Hmph! She’s lucky she’s ill, or I’d think she was teasing me! You know, she asked what I wanted for my fourteenth birthday! As if I don’t get enough ribbing about my height.”

“It just means you’re cute.” I reached out and patted her on the head. I couldn’t help myself. Anybody else would have probably gotten a dose of Gravity Shift for the gesture.

I got off with a verbal warning. “H-hey, what are you doing?” she demanded, ducked away.

“I dunno. Enjoying myself, mostly,” I said.

“You’re going to pay for that,” she snapped, blushing furiously.

“Oh? And how am I going to do that?” I asked.

“Just for that… um…” She didn’t have a threat ready to go; I really must have flustered her. “I was going to go interrogate that charlatan, Noriko. Just for that, I’m going to make you do it.”

“All by myself?” I asked.

“It’s probably better that way,” she said, averting her gaze a bit. “Knowing how that woman’s taking advantage of my family with her lightshows and so-called ‘treatments’, I don’t think I’d be able to stay civil.”

I couldn’t disagree with her; she wasn’t the best diplomat under good circumstances. At least I never had to guess how Yukiko was feeling.

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I found Noriko in a private room in the servants’ quarters. While the big house had been brand new construction, I’d realized that this building was part of the old logging camp. It looked like a giant log cabin from the outside, and the rustic building still smelled of must and aged pine.

The butler from before had been nice enough to give me directions to Noriko’s room, though I declined his offer to lead me there. I wanted to get a good look at the place, just in case things went south with a potential wizard. One thing I’d learned from years of strategy board games was how important terrain was. For example, in a normal drywall house, I’d take my chances powering up with Immortal Form and smashing through a wall if I was cornered. These solid logs would give me a lot more trouble.

More importantly, there weren’t that many rooms in use. There were some common spaces, like a rec room, a laundry room, and a kitchen. Most of the dorm rooms were empty, though; a building meant for dozens of loggers now held less than ten people. Most of the servants had bunched up near the common areas at the front of the quarters.

Noriko had gone the opposite way, putting herself on the second floor at the back of the building. Nobody came this way much; the cobwebs and dust confirmed that.

I knocked twice, my stomach churning. Yukiko and I had come up with an excuse for me to see her, but I felt like such a fake. Still, even if Yukiko had sent me as a semi-punishment, I was the best choice. The way she’d laid into Noriko before, the mystic probably wouldn’t have given her the time of day.

The tall woman gave me a curious look when she answered the door. “Hiro Takehara? This is a surprise.”

I didn’t remember being formally introduced. Had somebody told her my full name? Or was it more of my fame? I decided to stick to the script and think that one over later.

“Do you have a minute? I was hoping I could bother you.”

Her piercing eyes lost focus a moment as she took me in. After a long pause, she nodded, gesturing for me to enter.

Noriko’s room must have been an office or another common room at some point; it was larger than the guest room me and Yukiko had been given back at the big house.

Good for her, because she needed the space. Every square centimeter of wall was covered in enough curios and occultic artifacts to start a store. There were taxidermized animals (including an American raccoon that looked suspiciously new), crystals, charts, and a dozen instruments I could only guess the use of. Just like with her weird combination of rituals from before, there wasn’t any rhyme or reason to her collection. I recognized Christian, Buddhist, and Shinto icons everywhere, and there were others I figured came from other religions. The smell was… something, with the stench of mildew, aging paper, and three sorts of incense covering up the building’s pine smell.

The rest of the room wasn’t any less cluttered. There were strips of paper covered in hieroglyphs, along with others in Japanese characters. Those I recognized as traditional wards and charms, and they were the most normal artifacts on display. The only thing I didn’t see were any real magical runes, either human or demonic.

I think I spent too much time gawking at her collection, since she coughed into her hand to get my attention.

“What brings you to my door, Mr. Takehara?” With her flowing kimono covering her feet, Noriko almost seemed to glide along the floor.

“I was curious about your demonstration last night,” I said, pretending to inspect a mounted deer’s head to avoid looking her in the eye. “Were those will o’ wisp things really lost spirits?”

“Sadly, yes,” she said, coming up alongside to stare at me with unblinking eyes. “You see, when a person dies in a horrific way, their soul can have difficulty letting go and passing on properly. Those negative emotions can build up over time and eventually manifest in a form that can interact with the physical world.”

I shuddered, moving on to a diagram of a human body marked with chakra lines and Chinese text. “Where does that theory come from? I noticed you’re borrowing ideas from all over.”

“I don’t like to be restricted to one tradition,” she said in a condescending tone. “I keep myself above that, which lets me choose the best of each.”

She sounded sincere, but I remembered what Yukiko had told me about the Book of the Dead. This woman was either sincerely mistaken or running a scam.

“Were there really that many deaths here? There must have been dozens of those balls of gas,” I said.

“Unfortunately, once an area hits a certain critical mass of negative energy, it draws uneasy spirits from all over. I probably have already settled the souls of the loggers, but there are always more flowing in.”

“What happens when those spirits are around?” I asked.

“It isn’t too obvious this far up in the mountains,” she said. “This isn’t the most fertile ground to start with, but it can start causing crops to fail. There are also unnaturally cold spots, though again, good luck distinguishing them in winter.”

“That doesn’t sound too serious,” I said.

She shot me a wry grin. “A few isn’t too bad, and there’s nowhere that isn’t tainted by a little death. If you get as many bound to one place as we have, though? They can start to manifest physically.”

“Like yokai?”

She nodded, finally feeling something for me besides disdain. “Exactly, Hiro! That’s their origin, you see. Master Kaito was an unbeliever like his niece, until he started seeing the spirits around the property. He hasn’t told me about it, but I suspect one of them is why he walks with a cane.”

“Sounds like the Wizard Corps should have been called in,” I said.

She scoffed at that. “You assume they weren’t! The wizards they sent up here poked around for a few days before declaring nothing was wrong.” She smirked at the memory. “You probably shouldn’t ask him about it after all; it’s bad for his blood pressure to rant about them wasting his time and food to ‘half-ass’ the search.”

That was concerning; if there was something going on up here, how were me and Yukiko supposed to do better than real investigators? I kept that thought to myself, forcing a sheepish grin to my face. I decided to turn that doubt against her. “Ma’am, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you do better than the Wizard Corps?”

Her eyes narrowed, her sharp cheekbones and slightly hooked nose giving her an owlish look. “They didn’t have the right tools, or even the right magical paradigm to know how to look.”

“What do you mean? I’d think that magic is magic.”

She waved that off, though her expression softened. “Human study of so-called ‘real’ magic is barely twenty years old, and it’s inherited from demons who came from another physical world. The practice of the spiritual has gone on for as long as we have human records, yet it’s dismissed by Yosuke Tachibana and his ilk. They want to put the supernatural in a box. Well, I’ll tell you this: the numinous spits on our ideas of what is and isn’t.”

“I think headmaster Tachibana would study spirits and what you’re up to if there was any evidence for it,” I countered.

Her eyes narrowed. “Let me make an analogy. If a group of scientists went out to sea with a net where the holes were five centimeters apart, they could only catch fishes wider than five centimeters. Would they have proven that all fishes were larger than five centimeters?”

“No, I guess not… anything smaller would have escaped the net,” I said.

She gave me a definitive nod, as if I’d just proven her case. “Such it is with the science of wizardry. It is excellent at what it does, but it fails to account for its own shortcomings.”

“You have a point,” I conceded. A shiver ran through my body. I’d spent a lot of effort convincing myself that I hadn’t seen a yuki-onna that night, and if Noriko’s ideas had any weight, that opened up some uncomfortable questions.

I forced the thoughts out of my mind, deciding to change the topic. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, Miss… I don’t know your family name.”

“Noriko is sufficient,” she said, turning away. “I have set aside my old self in the quest for greater understanding. Now, Mr. Takehara, if you don’t have anything more pressing to discuss, I have much work to do.”

“What kind of work?”

“Nothing you are ready to accept,” she said. “Perhaps you’ll come around in the fullness of time.”

I left the servant’s quarters, half-convinced that I’d heard something profound.
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