She’s a jorōgumo. And she’s blocking the only path to the Meiji Shrine.
Shiro and I halt.
“What do you want?” I shout at her.
The woman smiles as she advances, revealing several rows of jagged teeth. “The Master has heard there are flies who wish to challenge his authority,” she says. Her voice is more hiss than hum. “We have come to end your insurrection before it can begin.”
Other yokai women emerge from the shadows around us, their alabaster faces glimmering with hellish light. I turn, watching them multiply: two becomes four, then four becomes six. They wear furisode in a rainbow of pain, reds and blues, purples and blacks. One wears silk in the off-white color of broken bones; another, the seeping yellow of pus. I’m drawn to and repulsed by them in equal measures.
“You serve Shuten-doji?” Shiro asks.
“Yessss.” The affirmation comes in stereo, echoing from the many mouths around us. The sound worms under my skin and chews its way into the seat of my spine.
“Then you are the ones guilty of insurrection,” Shiro says. “And your master should fear the retribution of Amaterasu-omikami for his insolence.”
The jorōgumo snicker, their voices winding around Shiro and me like a dense web. Words like stupid little kitsune and light-dwellers and fools reach into my ears. Their derision sticks to my skin, heavy and wet. They step forward, circling us tighter.
“My Lord and Master has come to liberate my people from the tyranny of the light.” The red jorōgumo throws off her furisode, gaining height as her glamour falls away. She’s naked beneath and human only to the waist—she dances nimbly on eight spindly, sleek spider legs. Her white flesh quivers in the low light. Muscular. Strong. These yokai are different from the ones that attacked the shrine, more evolved, more poised.
More powerful.
Fear laces every muscle in my body, making them tighten and clench. My brain’s shouting move! at me, but flight isn’t an option. The trees around us wink with endless glittering, ruby eyes. It’s impossible to tell how many jorōgumo lurk in the woods; but we’d never be able to outrun them all.
Either we fight, or we die trying.
“Your day, light-dweller,” the red jorōgumo says, lifting her clawed hands as she stalks toward us, “is over.”
But just as she lunges toward us, a high-pitched scream echoes from somewhere beyond the tree line. Shiro throws a protective arm in front of me. As the sound gurgles and throttles, the jorōgumo halts and turns her slender head.
“Yui?” the red jorōgumo asks, frowning. A susurrus answers from the forest, the sound of many voices whispering,
Yui?
Sister?
Yui, where are you?
She is no more.
Can you feel it?
Yui is no more.
I turn my head, keeping track of the other yokai on the path—but they are not paying attention to me. They shudder on their spidery stilts, easing sideways, looking nervous. Shiro and I inch closer to each other. I wish the claws extending off Shiro’s fingertips were a comfort, but they look so small against an army of so many.
“Yui! . . . Was that you?” the purple jorōgumo asks.
A small object comes hurtling out of the trees. It slams into the red jorōgumo’s chest, leaving a fresh crimson smear of blood across her skin. She scuttles backward with a shriek, her gaze fastened to the basketball-shaped object on the ground.
Wait . . .
Is that hair?
I stumble back before my mind makes full sense of the horror on the ground before me, this head without a body, ripped so savagely from her shoulders. The hellish glow has gone out of the jorōgumo’s eyes, and yet they still seem to stare up at me. Her mouth still rings around an unfinished scream. The white of her throat ends just a few inches under her chin, bits of shredded meat gleaming in the fading light.
“No,” the first jorōgumo says, and the depth of the sadness in her voice surprises me. The jorōgumo lowers herself to retrieve her sister’s head, scooping it off the ground in both hands, tears flowing from the corners of all eight of her eyes. “What has happened to you?”
As she stoops down, I spot eyes glowering in the bushes behind her. Each eye is as big as my fist. No, bigger. The left eye appears cloudy, as if injured once upon a time. One eye gleams yellow, the other blue.
“Kira,” Shiro whispers, barely louder than an exhale, “when I say run, you run to the Meiji Shrine, do you understand?”
I nod, but barely. He twists a single index finger around mine and squeezes as if to say, I’ll be right behind you.
A growl guts the air. Before the jorōgumo can react, a massive cat leaps from the woods, slamming into the red jorōgumo. The two figures tumble forward, a flash of white fangs, singed, brindle-black fur, and spider legs. The creature’s claws run crimson red as they tear into the jorōgumo’s flesh. Her screams punch into my eardrums like sharpened pencils.
Shiro shoves me toward the torii gate. “Go!”
I can’t leave him. “But I—”
The blue jorōgumo charges at me from my left, throwing off her kimono with a shriek. My fear has grown through my feet and rooted me to the ground.
“Dammit, Kira!” Shiro says, pushing past me. He snaps his fingers, summoning a ball of fire that burns like a miniature sun. When he pushes his hands out in front of his torso, the ball follows his fingertips, floating overtop them. He moves his fingers in intricate patterns, and it looks like he’s tutting a spell. A spout of white-hot foxfire erupts off his fingertips, leaping toward the jorōgumo and catching fire on her skin. Each flame looks like a tiny foxtail.
The jorōgumo burns as quick as tinder, the fire licking up her arms and back and catching in her hair. Her screams echo and snap as she tries to beat the flames down with her hands.
Behind us, a roar cracks the asphalt underfoot. I clap my hands over my ears, but before I can turn around to see what’s behind me, Shiro grabs me by the upper arm.
“Go. Now,” he says, his skin starting to glow with ethereal light.
“Shiro—”
“You can’t fight them, Kira! Just go!”
Without another word, I turn and run through the first torii gate. Full dark has settled along the path. The heels of my boots strike the ground, loud as horses’ hooves. Behind me, screams and shrieks snap at each other’s throats like dogs. Up ahead, small lights twinkle like fireflies through the trees.
You can’t fight, Kira.
My eyes blur. I wipe my lower lids with the sleeve of my coat as I run.
You. Can’t. Fight.
A second, more formal torii gate sits at the end of the road, marking the entrance to the shrine grounds. And safety.
Fifty feet from the torii gate.
Then twenty.
I don’t even hear her sneak up behind me.
A loop of spider’s silk catches me around my torso. The leash snaps taut, yanking me off my feet. I slam into the ground. The breath gets skinned straight out of me. I try to wiggle free, but manage only to get more of the silky stuff stuck to my jacket.
As I struggle, someone chuckles at me. I roll onto my side, only to see the jorōgumo in the yellow furisode walking toward me. Thousands of jorō spiders crawl out of the forest foliage, until the very ground seems to undulate on their black-and-yellow backs.
Everything inside me collapses. Not like this, I tell myself, watching the small spiders form a sea of glittering eyes and twitching legs around me. My bracelet burns with fire as they draw closer.