Momo Arashima Duels the Queen of Death

No One Likes an Angry Goddess

“Why can’t you just buy me a cell phone and use the locator app like other parents?” I whined. “I’ll look like a total weirdo!”

It was Monday morning, and after spending all day yesterday in bed feeling awful (I’ll tell you why in a minute), I’d decided last night that I had to go to school no matter what. Mom had been difficult to convince, but I insisted that I was okay, that I was fine, that she didn’t need to worry, and she had finally agreed to let me go—­as long as I wore an extra-­strength shimenawa around my waist. She’d woven the protective white rope herself last night, and it was as thick around as one of those corgi dogs. Then she’d enchanted it so that she would know where I was at all times.

According to Mom, a shimenawa was far superior to a cell phone because a cell phone would: (a) rot my brains, (b) make me obsessed with social media and ruin my self-­esteem, and most importantly, (c) be useless against Izanami the Destroyer and any evil yōkai she might send after me.

“Oh, stop your sniveling,” said Niko. The talking fox was one of my best friends, but he almost always took Mom’s side over mine, probably since he’d known her for at least a hundred years. I gave him my best stink eye, but he pretended not to notice.

“If I had a phone, you could enchant it so that it shoots yōkai-­killing magic laser beams,” I suggested. “Danny’s phone always points us in the right direction. And it keeps track of time on Earth even when we’re in a time bubble.”

Mom shook her head. “Just because Danny has something you want doesn’t mean I have to give it to you. If Danny jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, would you jump off as well?”

“Actually, I jumped first,” I said, because it was true. Two times now, my best friend Danny and I had leaped through a portal that was located just off the top of the northern tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Niko started to laugh but turned it into a cough when he saw that Mom didn’t think it was funny. “I’m giving you the shimenawa so you don’t have to jump off any bridges,” she said, and from her tone, I knew I’d just lost the argument. I let her put on the rope and enchant it so I couldn’t take it off, and stomped out the door, muttering under my breath all the way to the bus stop. To be honest, it hadn’t been an easy decision to go to school. And having to wear this big old ugly rope around my waist didn’t make things easier.

The fact was, I wasn’t okay, I wouldn’t be fine, and Mom did have reason to worry—­several reasons. But Mom only knew one of them, and I couldn’t tell her about the rest. This made me even angrier at her, because I should have been able to tell her all of it. It was an awful feeling, being in trouble and not being able to ask anyone for help or advice.

I wished I could travel back in time to when everything felt safe. Like maybe six weeks ago to New Year’s Eve, when I’d teamed up with Niko and my friends Danny, Ryleigh, and Jin to secure the Mirror of the Sun and stop the nine-­tailed fox demon Tamamo-­no-­mae from sucking the lives out of 888 kids. Or even just back to Friday night, when Jin had performed with his band, Straight 2 tha Topp, at Oracle Arena in Oakland, and Danny, Ryleigh, Niko, and I had had front-­row seats and then had taken a limousine back to Jin’s hotel.

But it turns out that things actually hadn’t been safe at all; in fact, they were getting less safe every day. And unless I did something soon . . . my heart squeezed and I had to fight the urge to curl up into a little ball right there on the sidewalk. Don’t think about it. Breathe. In three minutes, the bus would arrive, and I looked strange enough as it was with this giant white rope around my waist. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to breathe away my loneliness and fear.

After our New Year’s Eve adventure, I’d given the Mirror of the Sun to Tsukiyomi, the kami of the moon, for safekeeping. He had promised to return it to its original owner, Amaterasu, the kami of the sun. But then he’d betrayed us all and taken it straight to Izanami the Destroyer, queen of Yomi, the land of the dead. That was the reason Mom was so worried that she wouldn’t let me out of the house without magical protection. Everything else that had me in a state of nervous dread happened in a nightmare I had on Saturday night, the night after the concert.

I was in Yomi. Izanami had just informed me that Mom had been right all along: Ever since his boat had been lost at sea three years ago, Dad had been alive. He’d been transformed into a whale and spent years wandering the oceans, calling and calling for us until Izanami had taken him hostage.

Even though he was a whale, I recognized something in his eyes—­something kind and loving and brave. I’d seen it before, just off the coast of the Island of Mysteries, and in one of my lives in the Mirror of the Sun when Dad and I had been whales together. But my joy at seeing him alive was knotted up with fear and anxiety over his condition: His body was wrapped in razor-­sharp metallic cords that gleamed in the murky water of the tank where he was being held prisoner. His skin was criss­crossed with scars. He looked defeated and worn out.

“Momo! Is that you?” he called out, as if he couldn’t see me.

I’d nearly forgotten what he sounded like. And when I heard his voice, it was like three years of missing him burst out of a secret locked compartment somewhere deep inside my heart. It coursed through me, making my hands shake and my lungs gasp for air, as if my body thought breathing would bring him back to me and everything would go back to the way it used to be.

“I’m right here! In front of you!” I waved my arms, but he didn’t seem to see them. “Are you okay?” I couldn’t help asking, even though he was obviously not okay.

“Can’t complain. I’ve tried but no one listens,” he quipped weakly, and if I’d had any doubt about who I was looking at before, this was the moment when that doubt would have vanished. Even as a whale, even now that he was clearly suffering, he was the same old Dad with the same old dorky sense of humor, the same old urge to make me laugh so I wouldn’t worry. My heart swelled with love until I thought it would burst.

Then with sudden urgency, he added, “Get out of here, Momo. It’s not safe. Go home and take care of—­” He gasped in pain as the cords tightened around him and his blood bloomed red in the water.

I screamed and lunged forward, reaching for him. But the murk closed around him, and he was gone. My arms met only air.

Izanami reached out a pale, bony hand, and I felt ice water slide across my scalp as she passed her fingers through my hair. I shuddered in revulsion but couldn’t move to swat her hand away. When she spoke, her voice was as cold and sharp as a shard of broken glass.

“I’m sorry to cause you distress,” she said, not looking at all sorry. “But I need you to know how serious I am. Fetch me the Jewel of the Heart—­perhaps you’ve heard it called the Jewel of Kindness, but as with so much of what you think you know, you’ve been misinformed. Bring it to me, and I will let your father go. If you refuse, I can’t predict how I will react. Most likely, I’ll take out my anger on your father. I might even kill him. And then I might visit your mother and show her what you’ve done—­how your reluctance to cooperate has caused your father to suffer and die. I wonder how she’d feel? It would break her, I imagine. She’d probably never recover.” Izanami smiled and tapped her chin thoughtfully with a long black fingernail as she pretended to think.

“She would recover,” I said automatically.

“Would she, though?” Izanami raised one delicately arched eyebrow, and that was enough to stir up a hornets’ nest of my own doubts. Those years after Dad had died—­I mean, disappeared—­had been so hard. Mom had gotten lost in her grief and turned into a faded, empty version of herself. I’d been left to take care of both of us, to worry constantly not just about groceries and doctor appointments, but about whether she would get out of bed in the morning. If she found out that I could have saved Dad’s life and hadn’t . . . An image of Mom, glassy-­eyed and weeping, rose in front of me. She turned to me and whispered reproachfully, How could you let him die? Then she turned away and stared silently into space.

I shook my head hard. Stop it. Mom wouldn’t let herself go like that again. She loves me and she’ll stay strong for me, I told myself. But I wasn’t sure I believed it.

“I expect you’d never forgive yourself. Killing your father and ruining your mother.” Izanami shook her head and clucked her tongue. “You’re a better daughter than that, certainly.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but my throat closed up and my jaw clamped shut. I could barely even think. I am a better daughter than that, I wanted to say. I would never let my father die if I had a way to save him. But if I saved Dad’s life and brought Izanami the jewel . . . 

“Why do you want it?”

“The Jewel of the Heart?” Izanami sighed deeply and rolled her eyes, as if it should be obvious. “Well, for starters, it belongs to me.”

Even in my fear I must have looked skeptical, because she said, “No, I mean it. It’s mine. I had it at the very beginning. But it was stolen by my rat-­clown of an ex-­husband. And I think it’s high time I got it back.”

“But—­”

“As you may know, Izanagi cast a spell that has trapped me here for eternity. He told everyone it was because I was so evil, but the real reason is that he ran away and took my jewel with him. If I can get it back, I will return to my full power. I will use Kusanagi—­that is, we will use Kusanagi”—­here, she paused and nodded at me—­“to break down the gate between Yomi and the Middle Lands. Then I will cross over and, well. You know.” She smiled and drew her finger across her throat.

“Kill everyone,” I whispered.

“Ding, ding, ding! Give this girl a prize!” Izanami sang out. “That’s right, my darling. At one time, I thought merely opening the gates and storming through with an army of demons would be enough. But meeting you last fall inspired me. I thought, why not use you to fetch all three Sacred Treasures? Then I could do things right! That sword of yours is an incredibly efficient killing machine, and with the jewel in my possession, at my full power, I can do a thousand times the damage at a tenth of the cost.”

The Queen of Death times ten thousand. I felt like a sheet of aluminum foil that someone had crumpled into a tiny little ball and that would never be its smooth shiny self again.

“It’s only fair. Izanagi took away everything I cared about when he locked me in here—­for no good reason, I might add—­and now it’s my turn to do the same to him.”

“But—­”

“But that’s not nice! But it’s been so long! No one likes an angry goddess! It’s not becoming! It’s ugly! That’s why no one likes you!” Izanami rattled off in a whiny voice, and then snorted. “Is that what you were going to say?”

“I . . .” Not exactly. But it wasn’t not what I had been going to say.

“Izanagi ruined my entire life for all eternity and told every­one that it was my fault. He deserves my wrath. He deserves what’s coming to him.” Her eyes burned red, and her voice grew deep and menacing. I shrank away from her.