Rise (The Paper Gods) Read online

  I’m right here, she thought. Don’t you see me?

  Chapter Three

  “Izanami?” Izanagi’s black robes swished about him as he paced the bridge, unable to find her, the kami in white whose strength had helped him dislodge the naginata spear from the shadowy chaos. He’d been surprised to find such strength in her, he had to admit. She’d looked defiant, yes, and powerful, her eyes gleaming with creativity and ideas, but her frame had looked fragile and small, unthreatening and slight. She hadn’t stopped painting since the night the fireflies had speckled the sky with sparks, since the land had risen from the foaming waves of ink.

  She had new ideas, always, carving them first in the soil with a stem of the reed leaves, then again with the golden ink on the blade of the spear. But she’d painted so much that it took him hours now to cross the gap from one side of the world to the other. The bridge had lifted so high into the heavens, pushed by the islands she painted, that the world was but a speck from atop it. The naginata’s blade wouldn’t even reach the ink waters anymore from the broad beams of the bridge.

  “Izanami?” he called again, pushing aside the branches of trees as he ducked under them, searching for her.

  “Here,” she called him, and he saw her then, the trees encircling the clearing where she sat, her kimono robes spread upon the ground.

  Color. So many colors his head ached. Vibrant petals of blue and purple clustered in the bush beside her, the blooms so heavy they dipped down from the stems, pressing toward the earth. Tiny winged kami flitting between the trees above her, each branch lovingly sketched with the sharp edge of the spear’s blade. The winged creatures sat four or five to a branch, dipping and diving across the clearing.

  And sitting in her lap, surrounded by the pure white of Izanami’s kimono robes, a small golden creature had curled around itself, its head propped up on its furry tail.

  “You’ve painted all this today?” Izanagi said, looking around. The creature in her lap lifted its head and blinked its deep black eyes at him.

  Izanami nodded. “What do you think?”

  The golden creature stretched, its fur standing on end and glistening under the dark glow of the firefly sparks. It stepped forward onto the grass, and Izanagi saw it didn’t have one tail, but nine, each bushy and glossy.

  “I call it a kitsune,” Izanami said. “He is soft and warm.”

  Izanagi bent down as the nine-tailed fox approached him. It pressed its head into his hand, its moist nose resting on the inside of the kami’s wrist. He tried to press down his feelings of jealousy. He hadn’t come up with this many new things in the past day. “It’s wonderful,” he said quietly.

  “And I have many more ideas,” said Izanami. “I want this island to grow, with other islands near it. Look.” She pointed to a sketch she’d made in a bare patch of earth. “It’s like the kitsune, but much larger. I thought perhaps it can run very fast on these legs. Of course, we’ll need to make the island bigger.”

  Izanagi stared at the drawing. “It’s big enough that we could ride on it,” he said. “How quickly I could travel to find you. If you wanted to be found.”

  Izanami smiled, smoothing out her kimono as she stood up. She did not hear his resentment, but only his loneliness. “If only there were more of us,” she said. “Ameno and Kunitoko don’t come down from the bridge anymore. When you are gone, I am lonely.”

  The sound of her voice filled Izanagi with warmth. She missed him. His heart leaped as he considered her words. It wasn’t enough for her to be surrounded by her artwork. She wanted him there, too. She wanted not to be alone. He’d been wrong to resent her. They were meant to be together, as they always had been from the beginning.

  “I will never leave again,” he said, reaching for her hands. The warmth ran through him like the golden ink, painting him with a fullness he’d never felt before. “Let’s paint together, like the first day, when we pulled the earth from the inky waters.”

  He reached his hand to the soft cheek of her face. Her color burned beneath his touch. “I will ask Kunitoko,” she said. “What we must do to be together always.”

  “We will knit ourselves to one soul,” Izanagi said. Her creativity wouldn’t outshine him anymore. They would be one, their creations known to both of them. He wouldn’t compete with her artwork, but be above it, beside her. He wanted it more than anything else.

  “Izanami,” came a voice, and Kunitoko stood at the edge of the trees. “I heard you calling.”

  “I want to be with Izanami always,” Izanagi said. “May we pledge it to you, and make a pact? Let us promise this.” She must swear, he thought. If she broke this promise, he, too, would break.

  Kunitoko nodded. “Come with me,” he said, and he led them toward the pagoda he had painted on that first day. A tall pillar stood in front of the pagoda, the top of it reaching toward the firefly stars. “Walk around this pillar,” he said. “And when you come to the other side, you will see each other differently.” He took Izanami’s hand and guided her away; she glanced back at Izanagi, her face beaming.

  Izanagi flushed with warmth at the thought of it. She would be his for all time. No longer would she forget he was there, that in fact he was older than her by a momentary glimmer of ink. He rested a hand upon the pillar, awaiting Kunitoko’s word. The stone was cold underneath his fingers, and he moved them away. He didn’t like the chill of the stone. So hard and unyielding, not at all like the softness of Izanami’s smile. His desire ran deeper than his jealousy; that he knew. He melted the feeling away; nothing to be jealous of now. She would be his, and she desired him as hers.

  “Begin,” shouted Kunitoko, and Izanagi’s heart pounded against his chest. He stepped forward, walking slowly around the pillar. He would see a new Izanami; she would see a new Izanagi. They belonged together. Surely this was what Kunitoko had hoped for when he’d painted them together that first day.

  Another step, his breath caught in his throat, his pulse buzzing in his ears. He couldn’t even hear Izanami’s footsteps. Was she walking around the pillar, too? Did she want this as much as he did? He forced his foot forward, and again, and then he turned the second side of the pillar.

  She stood there, but no longer in her plain white kimono. She wore layers of them, like a waterfall of fabric cascading through a rainbow of colors. She was beauty and grace, a painting more breathtaking than he could ever create. Ameno and Kunitoko were the true artists to dream up a being such as this. But he fought against his insecurity as he looked at her. They belonged together. They were two halves of a whole, as it was always meant to be. All there was left was to step forward and take her hands.

  She smiled at him, and he at her.

  He shifted his weight to step forward, to claim her for all time.

  Then she raced toward him suddenly. “My love,” she said. “You are mine forever.” She pressed her lips to his, and the warmth spread through him like a fire. A flame of desire; a burning hell of shame.

  She had claimed him, another conquest of hers like her foxes and birds and plum blossoms. He was just another thing to her, another pet for her to care for. The jealousy sparked in the pit of his stomach. How had it all gone wrong in that moment? It didn’t matter, did it, what she had said? They belonged to each other now. Her hands roamed his body, her skin upon his skin. He was awash in flame, in the warmth he craved from her.

  He caged the jealousy and ferreted it away to the shadows of his forgotten thoughts. It can rot there, he thought. I have what I wanted. We will be one, together forever. He melted under her touch; he would burn to ashes if he had to live without her.

  “Izanami,” he sighed into her long black hair. She reached her fingers to the knot of his bun and it came loose, trailing his hair over his shoulders as he lost himself in her. Do not forget me, he thought as he held her tightly. I am right here. Do you see me?

>   Chapter Four

  “Ichirou!” The voice startled Tanaka out of his dazed glare at the English textbook. He’d lost his attention somewhere between conjugating irregular verbs and reading the dialogue between the two cartoon characters in the text.

  He looked up in time to see a giant orange ball whizzing at his head. He ducked, the mandarin orange smacking against the floor beside him and rolling along the tatami. Keiko chuckled, kneeling beside the kotatsu table with two more mandarins. It was too early to turn the heater on, but the sprawling duvet was just right to keep the chill out of the room. Keiko passed one of the mandarins to her friend Myu, who held her textbook open with her elbow as she took the fruit. “And you’re a catcher on the baseball team?” Keiko snickered.

  “I didn’t expect an orange hurtling toward my head while I studied,” Tanaka muttered, his cheeks blazing. His older sister always gave him a hard time, but it was the worst when she teased him in front of her friends.

  “Lazy,” Keiko said, peeling back the skin of the fruit. The tart scent of the oranges flooded the air. “I bet Kobayashi Seiji can catch an orange thrown by his sister even when he’s sleeping.”

  “Well, of course,” Tanaka said, digging his fingers into the skin of the mandarin. The orange spritzed open, the juice running down his fingers. “He plays for the Giants.”

  “You do seem distracted, though.” Myu smiled, popping a section of orange into her mouth. “Is English that fascinating?”

  “Oh, you know my brother,” Keiko said. “He wants to study abroad in America someday.”

  “Exactly,” Tanaka said, closing his textbook.

  Keiko grinned devilishy. “Which is why you just read the same page ten times.”

  “I—I didn’t.”

  “Come on,” Keiko said, rolling her orange from hand to hand. “It’s a girl, isn’t it? I know that look.”

  “Who is it?” Myu said. “Someone at our school?”

  “It’s n-no one,” he stammered, but he knew the shade of lobster red on his face gave him away. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Yuki’s question to him that morning, about how much of an idiot he was for blowing her off to go to baseball practice. It’s not like he’d had a choice, but he could’ve apologized to her or something. He popped a piece of orange in his mouth, the world exploding with tartness. It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried. She’d completely vanished as soon as the lunch bell rang. He hadn’t even had a chance to call out after her.

  “So?” Keiko put her elbows on the table and propped her chin up in her hands. “Am I going to have to beat it out of you, or are you going to share?”

  Tanaka took a deep breath. It’s not like he had anything to lose. Nothing except Yuki, and that was huge. That was unthinkable. “Actually, Oneechan, I do need your advice.”

  Keiko’s eyes went wide, and she exchanged a glance with Myu.

  “Oh my god,” Myu said. “He’s serious.”

  “If...if a girl cooked a bentou to share with you,” he stammered. He could picture the steam rising off his cheeks. “And you didn’t go for lunch with her because you had baseball practice...”

  “Then you’d be a total moron,” Keiko said, whipping her orange skin at him. He winced as it smacked him in the arm. “Because clearly practice did nothing for you, either.”

  “Who cooked you lunch?” Myu asked.

  “Um.” Tanaka looked down at his textbook. He couldn’t look Keiko in the face. “Yuki.”

  Keiko sighed. “You’re a screw-up, you know that?”

  Tanaka slumped onto the kotatsu table. “I know.”

  Keiko leaned back, crossing her legs in front of her. “She’s your best friend and you can’t even talk to her?”

  “I got scared, okay?” Might as well completely embarrass himself in front of them. It couldn’t really get much worse. “I didn’t want to mess it up.”

  Myu slipped the last piece of her orange into her mouth. “She means that much to you, huh?”

  “What if I’m wrong?” Tanaka said. “What if I ask her out, and I totally got my signals mixed up?”

  “Oh, come on,” Keiko said. “You guys are totally weird for hanging out, anyway. Guys and girls don’t hang out unless they’re dating. Half of First Year thinks you’re a couple, you know.”

  “Yeah, but we aren’t,” he said, looking down at the table. He’d felt an unstoppable pull toward her since kindergarten. He remembered begging his mom every day to walk past her school so they could walk home together in their mismatched hats and uniforms. Yuki in her yellow sun hat, Tanaka in that itchy straw hat with the blue ribbon. Living worlds apart but parallel, black and white, opposite but needing each other. Tanaka knew how to make the class laugh at his goofy jokes, but when they stopped laughing, it was only Yuki who kept beaming at him. It was easy to hold her hand then. When had it become so difficult to reach for her?

  “Isn’t Yuki friends with that exchange student?” Myu said quietly.

  Keiko paused. “The one who started in the spring?”

  “Katie Greene,” Tanaka said. “And yes. The three of us hang out all the time.”

  Keiko grinned at Tanaka’s English textbook. “Wait a minute. Love triangle much?”

  “Chige yo,” he spat back. “She’s not my type. And she’s dating Yuu Tomohiro, anyway.” Myu’s eyes glazed over, her hand frozen on the cover of her textbook.

  “Oh, so what’s your type?” Keiko teased.

  Tanaka swallowed, the lump in his throat so big he could barely breathe. “Just Yuki,” he said.

  Keiko smiled. “Not bad. That’s pretty romantic, Ichirou.”

  Tanaka looked at Myu then, her face as pale as glass. “Ne, Saeda. Are you okay?” Her fingernails, splotched with blue glitter and tiny polka-dot bows, scraped along the cover of the text.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “Oh,” Keiko said, raising her hand to her mouth. “Myu, I’m so sorry. We didn’t mean to mention Tomohiro.”

  “It’s okay,” Myu said, waving her hand in the air. “It was a long time ago.” But Tanaka saw it on her face, how much their breakup still stung. Her eyes glistened with held-back tears. He didn’t want to ever see that look on Yuki’s face. He was terrified of doing something like that to her.

  “Listen,” he said, hoping to ease Myu’s pain. “You know I used to be in Calligraphy Club with Tomo-kun, but I’ve been hanging around with him and Katie a lot because of Yuki. And I wanted you to know that the rumors weren’t true.”

  “What are you talking about?” Keiko asked, putting a hand on her friend’s shoulder. From the looks of it, Tanaka was making it worse.

  “No, no,” he said. “I mean, he didn’t cheat on you, Myu. That friend of his, Shiori? The baby isn’t his. They never even dated or anything.”

  “Wh-what? What are you talking about?” Myu stammered, her eyes glistening with the tears she fought to hold back. “I found the drawing. He admitted it to me.”

  “It wasn’t true,” Tanaka said.

  Keiko rolled her eyes. “Oh, great, so he just made up a horrible lie to break up with her? That’s so much better, Ichirou.”

  Tanaka waved his arms in the air. How was he screwing up so badly? “It wasn’t like that,” he protested. “Katie told Yuki and me. He wanted to protect her from some bad stuff or something—you know, his friend Ishikawa and his connections. He was trying to be a good guy, I swear. I’m sorry, Myu, and I know it sounds stupid but...he wasn’t trying to hurt you. That’s not the Tomo-kun I know.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” Myu said slowly. “It didn’t fit.”

  “Yeah, well, you guys were wrong,” Keiko said. “True or not, that was a total jerk move. And you’re avoiding the topic, Ichirou.”

  “You’re right,” Myu said, but Tanaka s
aw the doubt on her face. He wished she’d believe him. Maybe she’d find some peace in what had happened. And Yuki? Would she be okay thinking Tanaka didn’t care about her at all? Sitting at home with soggy fried shrimp, wondering where she went wrong.

  No. He couldn’t let that happen. He didn’t want to ever see her in pain like Myu. By not acting, he might be hurting her, too. He didn’t want to hurt her, even if it meant reading her signals wrong and losing her as his best friend. Maybe the bentou was her way of lifting up her hand for his. He wanted to take her hand, to move forward. He’d do everything he could.

  “Oneechan,” Tanaka said. “Help me win Yuki over.”

  Keiko smiled. “Now you’re talking.”

  Chapter Five

  Izanami held the baby to her chest, unwilling to look at the horns spiraling through the little girl’s hair. Hiruko tugged at the end of Izanami’s robe, his misshapen body falling backward from the force of the pull. He began to wail and Izanami leaned over to scoop him into the crook of her other arm. The baby girl bared fangs at her older brother, swiping at him with her tiny clawed hand.

  How had it turned out like this? Izanami sighed. She liked painting creatures that lurked in shadow as much as those in light, but how could something so unsettling come from her love for Izanagi? Hiruko had no bones, unable to sit up for more than a moment before his flesh pulled him down, and now Awashima, her daughter, days old, was passionate to destroy. It didn’t seem right, when Izanami had wanted to create such beauty in the world.

  Izanagi had held his tongue at Hiruko’s birth, but now with Awashima, he wouldn’t be able to stay silent much longer. He loved the new kami as much as she did, but he knew the threat they posed—the first imperfect things in the new world, the first destroyers. Hiruko seemed harmless enough, but Awashima would only become fiercer and more capable. She would tear the world to shreds, and nothing would remain of the painting Izanami had been working so hard to build around her.