“This is where a lot of the Shizuoka tea is made,” Tomo said. “They sell some of it in there.”

“Oh,” I said. “So these are the rolling lands of your dad’s tea empire.” I poked him sharply just above his hip and he jumped a mile.

“Oi!” he snapped. He reached for me and I raced toward the tea shop. The sound of grinding gears and wire scraping against itself stopped me in my tracks. Tomo crashed into me, grabbing me around my waist and lifting me off the ground.

“Hey!” I shouted as he laughed. A few of the Japanese tourists looked over and then quickly away. I was a foreigner, so they made it their business to politely ignore the shenanigans I was causing.

My feet touched the ground again and Tomo broke off his hold on me.

“That’s the ropeway,” he said, following my gaze.

Little cable cars bounced up and down on the wires as they whirred slowly through the air, rolling along the thick cord toward a distant mountain peak.

“Is that where we’re going?”

“Not exactly, but we can take a detour. There’s a shrine up there, so there’ll be more tourists. But on the edges of the shrine are forests, and no fence.”

“Got it,” I grinned. “Let’s ride the ropeway. I want to be surrounded by forest.”

He grinned. “Ikuzo.” Let’s go.

We’d lost something important without Toro Iseki. We needed to be alone among the trees and the birds, somewhere horses could come to life if we wanted them to.

The thought was sobering. No, we couldn’t bring anything like that to life again. No horses, no butterflies, not even any furin chimes in the trees. They’d been dangerous, sinister, but they’d been beautiful, too. It made me sad to think I would never see those things again.

I noticed a weird frame covered in brass squares while we waited to enter the cable car. A large metal frame held a dozen rows of silver pipes, and along these pipes hung hundreds of brass padlocks like on vintage high-school lockers or construction-site fences.

“What’s this about?” I said.

Tomohiro rested his hand on the locks, giving them a shove so they swayed back and forth. Now that I looked closer, kanji names had been written down the sides of the locks in black pen.

“Lovers’ locks,” he said. “Lock your heart here so your relationship lasts forever.”

I felt too warm then, looking at the rows of locks. Were these couples all still together? Every lock had a keyhole at the bottom, but no keys in sight. The locks weren’t going anywhere.

Tomo spoke beside me, his breath warm on my ear. “They threw the keys away,” he said. “Guess they’re stuck together until the end. Maybe I should get a lock for us, too.”

“You sure you want to be stuck with each other that long?” I was joking, but what Shiori had said still stung, leaving an uneasy hole at the edge of my confidence where it seeped away into the shadows.

Tomo took a deep breath as the cable car arrived, a lady opening the door and announcing it was time to board. “It’s not that long until the end for me,” he said, and I shivered.

We crowded into the cable car with the tourists and lifted into the air.

“So we can fly after all,” Tomohiro said, but his voice was sad. He’d thought once he could fly safely on a dragon, but that didn’t end well. Now here we were, suspended by a cord, bouncing over every pole along the ropeway.

“At least this mode of transportation won’t try to eat you,” I said. “Although it is kind of rickety.”

“Well, it’s run fine for the past fifty years,” Tomo said, his eyes gleaming. “I guess it’s due to break down and throw us to our untimely deaths.”

“You better grow feathers fast if that happens.”

He tucked his bangs behind his ears—where they stayed for a few seconds before tumbling back—and closed his eyes. I knew he was pretending we weren’t surrounded by tourists.

At the end of the ropeway, we followed the crowd as they curved around the platform and toward a staircase of what looked like a hundred giant stone steps. They rose sharply from the cable-car platform, and I gasped when I saw the roumon gateway at the top.

It looked like the entrance to an ancient castle, a fortified gate of deep crimson and white. The roof tilted up like a bird raising its wings, the black rounded tiles stubbed with crests of shining gold. A thick rope wound around the gate, little thunderbolts made of white cloth hanging down from it and swaying in the breeze.

“Kunozan Toshogu Shrine,” Tomohiro said. “That’s just the entrance.”

We walked up the steps slowly. “A shrine? So it’s Shinto, then, not Buddhist.”

“Yeah,” said Tomohiro. “Dedicated to the most famous Kami of Shizuoka, Tokugawa Ieyasu.”

“That sounds like a person’s name, not a mythical kami,” I smirked.

Tomohiro stopped climbing the stairs to look at me. “It is,” he said. “He built Shizuoka Castle. And when he died, after months of sickness and nightmares, he was buried here.”

I felt the blood drain from my face.

“When?” I whispered.

“Sixteen-hundred-something,” Tomohiro said, and he kept climbing. I followed him. “Don’t worry. I’m sure the ghost is long gone.”

“And you think he was really...?”

“A Kami?” Tomohiro stopped to catch his breath and then continued up the stone steps. “Well, let’s see. He was kidnapped during an uprising when he was six. The abductors demanded Tokugawa’s father break ties with their enemy clan or they’d kill his son. And his father said, ‘Go ahead.’”

I raised my hand to my mouth, my eyes wide.

“Yeah,” Tomo said. “And after three years of the boy suffering in their hands, his captors suddenly dropped dead. So did his father. So did half the Japanese in the area.”

Shit.

“Tomo,” I said, my throat dry. “How do you know all this?”

“I’m just looking for answers,” he said. “It used to be Taira no Kiyomori in my nightmares. Now it’s Tokugawa. And I want to understand why.”

“I thought we were looking for a new place to be alone.”

“We are,” Tomohiro said. “But you wanted to come here, and I felt the pull, too. I feel like I’m supposed to be here. He led a lot of successful battles in his time. Maybe he knew something I don’t about controlling the ink.”

We’d reached the gateway now and could see the shrine before us. It was a flurry of bright rainbow colors. I’d never seen any shrine or temple like it in Japan. The posts and foundation of the house were painted bright red, but the walls were a deep black and covered in bright images of dogs and birds. Every surface shone with elaborate whorls of intricate gold. The painted dogs curled around the building had blue and white spots, with tails and manes like lions. Once-brass lanterns, now turned green and scaly with time, hung from thick chains in the roof. Just under the ceiling beams wove an elaborate pattern of blue, red, white and green flowers and shapes. Everything gleamed like it was alive.

“Tomo,” I said, stepping forward. My breath caught in my throat.

That was when I heard the gasp, like air being wrenched from his lungs.

The painted dog’s lip curled back with the sound of wood snapping and grinding, a growl echoing from his mouth of sharply drawn teeth.

I turned just as Tomohiro collapsed in the gateway, his head cracking against the stone. Ink pooled around his skull like blood.

Chapter 5

“Tomo!” I shouted, racing back to the gateway where he fell. The ink spread in a shimmering pool on the stone as tourists clustered around him. I collapsed onto my knees beside him, putting my hands on his shoulders. His eyes were closed and it didn’t look like he was breathing.

Behind me I could hear the groan of ancient wood bending and snapping as the painted dog snarled, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. I shook Tomohiro by the shoulders gently, but nothing happened.

Above us, in the shadow of the gateway, I heard strange groans and whispers. Something was really wrong. Adrenaline coursed through my veins. We needed to get away from here, fast.

“Someone call for help!” one of the tourists shouted. Several had already reached into their bags for their keitais.

“No,” I shouted, and they hesitated. I knew what Tomohiro would say. Don’t draw attention. But how could I help it? He’d passed out in a pool of ink.

I hooked my arms under Tomo’s shoulders and started dragging him away from the gateway, toward the top of the stone stairs where I could look at him in the light. The ink left a bloodlike trail as I pulled him forward to see what the emergency might be.

The moment he was out of the shadow of the roumon, he gasped as if he were drowning, like he was breathing in life itself.

“Tomo!” I smoothed his hair out of his face. The ink had soaked into his copper spikes and they stuck together in matted tangles.

He opened his eyes and looked at me. His pupils were huge, alien, glistening black.

No! Like the times he’d lost control while drawing. The Kami in him had taken over.

He kept gasping for air, his voice frantic as he groaned.

“It’s okay,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “It’s okay.” My hands dripped with ink as I stroked his damp hair.

A woman stepped over and offered her water bottle. I nodded my head in thanks and opened it, the ink slicking over the cap and trickling down the sides.

“I’m going to call an ambulance,” another tourist said.

“No!” I said. We couldn’t risk getting the hospital involved. What if it drew the police or something? “It’s okay. He’s okay now, see?”

Tomo closed his eyes, and when they opened again, they were their normal dark brown. I pressed a hand against his heart.

Please calm down. Please.

“Katie,” he managed.

“Pull it together, Tomo,” I said quietly. “Everyone’s worried.”

He got the message, and his breathing slowed.

“But he’s bleeding!” shouted a tourist.

“It’s ink,” I said. “See?” I splayed my fingers, showing the black liquid to the crowd. It was strange, showing off the one thing I wanted to hide. Their faces crumpled with confusion and I had to fix it, fast.

I reached into Tomo’s satchel, hoping for a pen, anything I could lay the blame on. My fingers brushed against glass, and I pulled the item out.

A bottle of ink, sealed shut, but the ink on my hands muddied up the container so the crowd couldn’t tell.

“It leaked,” I said, my body shaking. “He’s in Shoudo Club. It’s for his calligraphy projects. He’s okay. Come on, Tomo, sit up.”

He took hold of my arm and pulled himself upright. His body was shaking, his heartbeat erratic.

“I’m okay,” he managed, bowing his head to the crowd. “I’m sorry for the commotion. I...I got too hot.”

“He just needs some water,” I said, passing him the bottle. He drank deeply, the water spilling over his lips, dripping onto his shirt and the satchel strap.

“Well, if...if you’re sure,” said the tourist.

Tomohiro ran a hand through his ink-caked hair. He curled his legs underneath him and stood slowly. I kept a hand on his arm just in case.

“I’m all right,” he said again. “No need to call for help. Thank you, everyone.” And he bowed deeply to the crowd, his eyes cast to the ground. He stayed like that, and I just stared at him. But then I realized that the whole occurrence would have been considered troublesome for the tourists. Japanese courtesy called for us to apologize. I bent over in a deep bow, too, until Tomo reached for my wrist and led me down the steps.

We couldn’t make it into the woods to be alone. There were too many eyes on us. So we got on the ropeway, making our way back to the platform.

I squeezed Tomohiro’s hand, but he pulled it away from me. “Are you okay?” I said quietly. “Really?”

“My head’s killing me,” he said. “That stone was hard.”

“It’s stone.”

He grinned, rubbing the back of his head. “I’ll live,” he said. But that wasn’t what I’d meant.

On the other side of the ropeway, Tomohiro walked silently down the winding road past the red-and-white radio towers.

“Are you really okay?” I said, but he wandered like he was dreaming. After a few minutes, the Nihondaira Hotel came into view, which he circled past. A vast green field stretched out behind it, edged by forest and hidden mountain slopes. In the center of the field, two pools of deep blue water gleamed in the sunlight, separated by a tiny wooden bridge that barely looked safe to walk across. A sprawling tree with deep green leaves reached high above the pool like a ginormous bonsai tree. In the distance I could see the looming shape of Mount Fuji through the haze.

“It’s...wow,” I said as we sat at the base of the tree.

“This is what I wanted to show you,” he said. “Somewhere we can be alone. And a new place to draw, if it comes to that.”

I looked around. It was far enough from the ropeway that there were no crowds.

“It’s not exactly private,” Tomo said. “But most days it’s quiet. Especially at night.”

“Wait, you’ve been coming here at night?”

“In theory,” he smirked.

“You have, haven’t you? To draw?”

“I told you, I’m not drawing.”

I figured the fact we were having a coherent conversation meant he was okay from his hit against the stone. “So if you’re not drawing, why did you have a bottle of ink in your bag?”