"Long, long ago, a boy not much older than you set out on the first of many great adventures. His name was Yuki Haku, and he was the cleverest and the fairest of all his mother's sons. By the time he was your age, Haku could already call down the snow from a reluctant spring sky, or freeze a well solid with little more effort than a child's tantrum.
"In those days, our family lived along the banks of a great river in a valley where peach trees grew. Though the rest of Old Japan was wracked with turmoil and civil war, the Yuki clan thrived under the protection of the river's living spirit, and if you believe the stories, each of them was blessed with powerful magic.
"Each year, Haku's talents and his ambition grew, until no one in the village could keep up with his progress. It was decided that he would fare better under the tutelage of a wiser teacher, and who better to teach him than the very source of the Yuki clan's magic?
"So it came to pass that, on the morning of his twelfth birthday, Haku kissed his mother goodbye and set out alone in search of the river spirit."
—
The rough stone path under his feet was jagged and cool, and about as wide as the road in front of his family's apartment complex. Where the sunlight spilled in through the canopy overhead, the stones were a blinding white.
Haku stood almost directly beneath a square wooden structure. He had seen one of these before in a book about Japan that Grandmother had given him, but that one had been much better shape. This structure was just a few straight, simple beams, tangled with weeds and exploring vines, and its bright red paint was peeling from weather or age or both.
Ahead of him, through the gateway, he thought he could see tile roofs in the distance. Behind him, the forest stretched on into deep, hungry darkness.
The fact that he had no idea where he was dawned on him comparatively late. He could not explain how he'd gotten there, though, and so he did not try. Instead, Haku thought about his mother, repeated his home address and phone number in his head—twice, just to be sure he'd gotten them right—and stepped forward onto the road. He didn't know where he was, but someone else must, and that someone could probably help him find his way home.
Maybe he was dreaming, he thought as he walked, passing brightly colored but alien flowers and tall dandelions with blooms the size of his head. But the rough stone bit at the bottoms of his uncalloused feet and threatened to burn him where the canopy gave way to open sky. People in dreams couldn't feel pain. That was common sense.
Haku pinched himself just to be sure. He felt that too, and scampered over to the side of the road shaded by a row of abandoned buildings.
Each house had its own dilapidated version of the towering red gate poised gracefully above its gate. No life stirred in the darkness beyond the settling glass. The buildings grew closer together as he walked, and better cared for, though each one seemed just as empty as the last. How long had it been since anyone had lived here?
If anyone had ever lived there at all, he thought. The whole place had the eerie feel of a place not for living, like the empty hallways of his school at night.
Further in, the road began to branch out into narrow side streets. He ducked into one of these, followed its winding path until it reached a dead end, then retraced his steps and tried another.
Every alley yielded the same result. No signs of life, nothing that looked like more than a pale imitation of the real world. The whole place reminded him of an abandoned movie set.
He wasn't supposed to be here.
To make matters worse, he had no way of knowing how long he'd been walking, how long he'd been gone. As the sun climbed towards noon over the glittering tile rooftops, he considered once again that he might be dreaming. Mother had tucked him in only a few short hours ago.
But Haku's stamina was beginning to flag. The cold breeze bit at the tops of his bare feet, and his nose was beginning to run. He prided himself on being a sensible boy—clever, even, like the brave and beautiful hero from Kosuke's bedtime stories. It was safer to assume this was all real than to find out too late that it was, and this realization brought with it the first creeping edges of the panic he'd been avoiding.
He was lost, stuck, and he had no idea which direction home even was, let alone how to get there. Mother and Father would look for them, once they noticed he was gone, but how would they know where to look? He had seen enough grocery store tabloid headlines to know that lost children didn't always come home.
And then there was the matter of Mother's note. The thought—of curses and spells and angry spirits, of the possibility that Mother might know where to find him—was not a comforting one. He buried his hands in the pockets of his fleece pajama pants and shivered and told himself it was just the cold.
When the fifth alley he explored turned up just as empty, Haku decided that exploring them was a waste of time. Instead, he kept to the main road, which rose ominously towards what he guessed must be the center of town. Or maybe the end of the whole world; he could see no roofs or treetops above it, and fear was beginning to get the better of him.
The world didn't end at the top of the hill, though he couldn't decide if he was grateful for that or not. What he saw instead was a sprawling network of empty side streets stretching down to a body of water too small to be called a lake. On the water sat the strangest building Haku had ever seen.
It dwarfed the surrounding buildings, with enclosed gardens and ornate balconies jutting out from the upper floors, and all shaded under a tile roof that glittered iridescent green and purple. Huge clouds of steam billowed up from a round, narrow chimney as tall as the building itself.
The whole thing seemed to float on the surface of the water with no ground below to anchor it. Haku thought that must have been a trick of the light.
The sound of distant music floated up from the town below, along with the smell of woodsmoke and cooking meat. That meant people. He thought about his parents, repeated his home address and phone number one more time, and started down the hill.
Gravity and the steep slope did most of the work in carrying him to the bottom, though the cracked rock still bit angrily at the bottoms of his feet as he ran. He tried to ignore the way they stung with every step, the fact that they were probably bleeding. He could worry about his feet when he got home; right now, he was more worried about finding someone who could get him there.
Mother had taught him what to do in an emergency. Stay calm, find an adult—a police officer was best, or a mother with her children. Someone who looked trustworthy. Someone who looked like they could help, like they would help.
The smell of food and the sounds of voices were much closer at the bottom, but the streets still seemed vacant. On this side of the hill, the main road was lined with shops and restaurants—all empty, but he could see plates piled high with strange, delicious-smelling food. Haku's stomach growled; he had excused himself halfway through his rapidly cooling spaghetti at dinner when Mother and Father had started to argue, and hadn't eaten since then.
Voices meant people, he reminded himself, and people meant home. He had no money, but there was food at home. Reluctant to leave the open air of the main road, Haku picked a side street that looked promising and started down it. Maybe the sixth time was the charm.
Though the street was wider and better lit than the alleys above, it was soon apparent that it was just as empty. There was no motion, no life, inside the buildings or out. His enthusiasm began to fade; he was still lost, perhaps hopelessly so, and now it seemed like the ghost town was simply playing tricks on him.
He almost gave up then, almost marched back to the main road to pick another street and search until he found something. What possessed him to round the last corner, he wasn't sure—desperation, or perhaps the quiet whispered voices of the three women huddled together under a balcony at the end of the street.
They spoke in slow, grating whispers that sounded like gibberish until he got close enough. Haku understood more Japanese than he spoke, but their elongated vowels and stretched words sounded like nothing he'd ever heard in his short, formal education.
Still, they were the first people he'd seen, which made them his best chance at getting home. He waited and hoped they would notice him without him interjecting, but they did not.
"Excuse me," he said. The foreign syllables felt stiff and unfamiliar in his mouth, and suddenly he wished he'd paid more attention to Mother's lessons. "I'm lost. Can any of you help me find my mother?"
The trio fell silent. None of them turned to face him.
"Did you hear that?" asked one in a hollow voice.
"The little prince is lost," said the next.
"He wants us to help him find his mother," said the third.
Haku took a step back. Now that they were not whispering amongst themselves, their voices sounded wrong—gravelly and echoing, like a whisper too close to his ear.
"He must be frightened," they chimed in unison. Their laughter was high and ill-matched for the deepness of their voices. The sound froze him, fixed him to the spot.
The women raised from their huddle to their full height, towering above him, and turned to look at him one by one. Now he could see their faces, or where faces should have been; their pale, greyish skin covered their heads like smooth masks, with only gently curling slits where their eyes should have been. Through these, there was only darkness.
On one of their "faces," there seemed to be a great deal of blood.
His legs trembled as they glided towards him. He should have run. He should have turned around and come back the way he came. But turning around meant turning his back on them, and he couldn't bring himself to move. Instead, he took a few, shaky, hesitant steps backwards, until he felt painted brick behind him and knew that he could go no further.
Haku knew his home address and his phone number, but his mother had never prepared him to deal with monsters. He tried to will himself awake, but when he opened his eyes, one of the faceless women merely cocked her head at him. In the shadows, she looked thoughtful, almost curious.
"Let's eat his heart," said one, although he could not tell which.
"Our host will be displeased," said another.
"He's not a guest," said the one in the center, leaning in close to inspect him. There really was nothing where her eyes should have been, nothing but empty darkness. "Our host will never know."
A gust of frigid air pushed him back against the brick as the other two monsters converged on him. Haku screamed and covered his eyes with his hands and thought, not for the first time that day, that he was going to die.
The fact that he did not came as something of a welcome surprise.
He waited several seconds, just to be sure, then peered between his fingers at the three towering creatures standing over him. They did not move, but stood gleaming, surrounded bright sunlight. It was as if time, for them, had stopped. They didn't turn to watch him as he slipped out from under their gaze, but he thought he saw the shadows stir behind their eyes.
It wasn't until he'd stepped around them that he realized they'd been completely encased in ice.
"You'd better come away from there, or they really will eat you," said a voice from behind him.
Haku jumped and spun on his heels, but relaxed when he saw that the owner of the voice was normal-sized and had the correct number of facial features. The newcomer was older than Haku by at least ten years—around Kosuke's age, give or take a little.
His voice was gentle and soft, and, most importantly, human.
And he was beautiful; his skin was fair, his features pointed and delicate, and his long black hair swept the ground. He wore plain white robes that reflected the blinding sun, tied at the middle with a thin red cord. He gave Haku a warm, patient smile that reminded him of Mother and beckoned him over with one dainty hand.
"How did you do that?"
"Magic," the older boy replied, as if was the most natural answer in the world.
"Oh."
Until today, Mother had always told him that magic wasn't real. Then again, she'd also told him that monsters weren't real, and that he'd get sucked down the drain if he stayed in the bath too long after she told him to get out. As he considered the frozen figures clustered in front of him, Haku was forced to admit that Mother might have been wrong about some things, magic clearly being one of them.
He would have to ask her about it when he got home.
"I'm lost," Haku admitted finally. "Can you help me get back home?"
The stranger's smile drooped a little. "I'm afraid I can't," he said. "I'm trying to find my way back home myself, you see. But I can help you find someone who can."
Ten minutes ago, Haku had been prepared to accept any help he could get, but now he was skeptical. Things were certainly not what they seemed in this place, and just because the stranger seemed nice didn't mean he could be trusted.
There was a series of ominous popping and cracking sounds from the ice behind him. Haku looked over his shoulder and was met with the stares of all three of the faceless women, who had turned their heads within their icy prisons to watch him. He yelped and ran to hide behind the stranger.
"You're not going to try to eat me, are you?"
The boy laughed, a restrained but genuine chuckle that set Haku surprisingly at ease. "No," he said. "I'm not going to try to eat you." He started back down the street, towards the main road. The boy, too, seemed to glide over the stone path, though this more a measure of balance and grace than any supernatural propulsion. Haku hung back a moment to make sure his legs were moving anyway, just in case.
The main road was bustling by the time they returned. It had felt like only a few minutes to explore the winding side street, but now the hot stone path was shaded by countless towering bodies. He tried his best not to look at them; some of the people looked almost human, but others seemed too tall, to wide, too sharp. Others didn't look human at all.
The youth somehow managed to fit right in with the mismatched crowd. He walked with his head high, never pausing to make eye contact with those he passed and never looking away when they stopped to inspect him.
"Stay close to me," he said, "and don't stare. If you get too far away from me, they'll notice you."
Haku nodded and clung to the trailing back of the white robe. His raw feet had started to bleed at some point, and each step stung against the rough stone. He tried to ignore them. They walked in silence for a while, Haku struggling to keep up without getting blood on the pristine fabric.
Not far from the bridge that led to the building across the water, they stopped, and the stranger pulled Haku into the shadows of another side street. He crouched down to speak in a voice barely above a whisper. "Do you see that building over there?"
"You mean the palace?"
"It's a bath house," the boy corrected patiently. In the shadows, his shimmering kimono seemed dull and grey, and his glossy black hair no longer caught the light. "There's someone inside you must find, someone who can help you, but I cannot come with you. Your mother should have given you a note…?"
Silence.
Haku felt his cheeks flush. "I lost it," he admitted.
"Lost it," the boy repeated, in a voice that was skeptical but not unkind. "Nonsense." He studied Haku carefully, his dainty eyebrows furrowed in thought. "Have you checked your pockets?"
Haku had been walking with his hands in his pockets for the better part of the morning, but he checked just in case. His hand clasped the folded, crumpled paper, still warm around the edges. The boy smiled and looked relieved.
"There, you see? Now," he lowered his voice again, "listen carefully to me, Haku. Don't speak to anyone until you've found him, alright? Spirits will try to trick you, but you can't let them, or you'll never go home."
Haku stared at the crumpled paper in his open palm, disappointed but not altogether surprised that it hadn't taken him back home on its own. "I don't understand," he said. "I can't read this. Who am I supposed to speak to? How do I find him?"
"His name is Zabuza," said the boy, "although he may not remember it. I only know that he is somewhere inside—I cannot set foot in that building. If you hold onto that note, though, your mother's magic should take you to him."
"What if I can't find him?" Haku asked.
The boy's smile fell at the corners, and his warm expression turned melancholy and distant. "If you want to go home, you must."
It seemed like no one noticed the older boy as they rejoined the crowd, or if they did, no one acknowledged him. He wove patiently through a sea of bodies, swift but unhurried. Haku trailed after him, leaving a string of uneven and slightly bloody footprints on the road. No one seemed to notice those either.
He was grateful to trade the rough stone for the cool, smooth touch of lacquered wood as they reached the bridge, though he still winced with each step. It was even more crowded here than on the main road. The other side of the bridge was obscured by the flow of moving bodies.
They clung to one side, moving in roughly the same direction as the rest of the crowd. He had found some courage now, with the older boy walking ahead of him, and his eyes wandered. It was hard not to stare—each passerby was wildy different than the last, and they transfixed him with colorful shapes and wild exaggerations.
The pair passed a huge creature roughly the same shape as a ferret, but it burned a brilliant black that hurt his eyes to look at. The heat radiating from its body pushed him closer to the older boy. Silently, Haku chided himself for getting so far away from his protector in the first place.
Faint stains had begun to creep up the pristine white robe, blooming like macabre snowflakes in shades of grey-green. He pulled his hands away and inspected them, convinced he had somehow ruined the garment by clinging too tightly, but they seemed clean.
Distracted by his hands and the crystalline stains, Haku ran headlong into another member of the crowd. She was tall, like the women they'd left in the alley, and her hair fell in flat, stringy bundles around her face, which was twisted into an expression of perpetual despair. She reached out for him with long, pale fingers, and suddenly he was reminded of how tired he felt. Though the sun was still bright overhead, his body knew it was way past his bedtime.
His eyes drooped, but as the woman's face swooped down closer to him, fear won out. He yelped and retreated behind the boy, whose name he still didn't know. The youth put one comforting hand on Haku's shoulder.
"My apologies, mother," he said to the woman. She turned her head to him, tilted it slightly to one side. "I wasn't watching where I was going. I'm in something of a hurry. I hope I did not offend."
The woman wailed, a piercing sound that made Haku cover his ears and cry out in pain, but she pushed past them towards the other side of the bridge. The heavy feeling behind his eyes dissipated, and he felt awake and alert again—at least, as much as he had before.
"You didn't have to apologize for me," he said. "I was the one who—"
He stopped short. There was blood tricking down one side of the boy's mouth, thick and clotted and dark.
"A-are you okay?" Haku asked. "You're bleeding."
"I'm fine," said the boy, but the more of the thick black liquid spilled from his mouth as he spoke. He didn't seem to notice. "Come on," he prompted. "We should keep moving."
Haku trailed further back after that, and kept his eyes fixed on the older boy, who clearly was not what he seemed. He noticed, too, other changes in the boy's appearance; his rich, dark eyes turned vacant and glassy, and his porcelain skin now seemed sunken and sallow.
The blossoming stains in his clothing darkened as they passed the bridge's halfway point, turning a dark, dirty red beneath his dull, matted hair. Haku bristled. That wasn't his fault. He resisted the urge to hang back even further.
"Are you a ghost?" he asked, eyeing the other side of the bridge as it came into view. How fast could he run on bloody, blistered feet?
"Don't be silly," said the boy. "Ghosts aren't real."
They stopped at the very edge of the bridge, the edge of the youth's high sandals only just this-side of the brick-and-mortar walkway. "This is as far as I can go," said the boy, his soft voice heavy and wet and hollow. Haku didn't look at him when he put a skeletal hand on his shoulder, kept his eyes closed when he crouched down to speak to him.
"Remember what I told you?"
Haku swallowed hard and forced himself to look. For that fleeting instant, the boy was beautiful again, full and soft and alive. He wasn't sure if that was comforting or not. "Don't talk to anyone until I've found Zabuza," he repeated. "The spirits will try to trick me, but I can't let them."
His voice trembled and his heart raced, but the older boy smiled. "That's a good boy," he said, nudging him forward. "You'll be alright."
But Haku couldn't make himself move. He studied his dirty feet even as the youth stood, tracing the grain in the wood with one toe to take the weight off. "Why can't you come with me? What if I can't find him on my own? Or what if something gets me, or—"
"Don't worry so much, Haku. In the spirit world, things tend to turn up where they belong—and that goes for people too."
Haku furrowed his eyebrows and looked up. He had questions, like how the boy had known his name or what his cryptic statement had meant, but all he managed was a voiceless scream. He leveled his eyes with the stranger's chest and what he saw there sent him running towards the bathhouse: a hole, big enough to fit a human hand through, that went all the way to the other side of the boy's body. It dribbled more thick, black liquid.
He did not stop to look up at the boy's face.
When he stopped short of the open gate to look over his shoulder, the boy had vanished.
"Hey!" someone shouted, "You aren't supposed to be here!"
He didn't stick around to see if the owner of the voice would follow him. He just ran as fast as he could, Mother's note crumpled in his hand. He squeezed through the wooden side gate before the almost-human figures on either side could slam it closed in front of him. Haku didn't care where he was or where he was going. He would worry about that when he found somewhere safe to hide.
He nearly tripped as he rounded a corner, pushing himself up from the fall with both hands. Around another corner. Up a set of squat stone steps, two at a time. He ran and ran until he found an open door and ducked inside to rest. There would be more places to hide inside the building. He could slow down. He could breathe.
Haku rested his hands on his knees and tried to hold in a cough. His chest felt like it might explode, but on the plus side, he could no longer feel the stinging pain from the bottoms of his feet. A single cough escaped him. He looked up, to see if anyone was around to hear.
Grey slitted eyes stared back at him from a pale, too-long face. The man wore pretty silver earrings. He also had razor sharp teeth. Haku noticed little else about him.
"H-hey!" sputtered the stranger, reaching for him with spidery fingers.
This time, he didn't even try to scream. He took off past the creature, his feet slipping on the smooth hardwood floor. He could hear the sounds of chase behind him along with muffled swearing, and forced himself to run faster and faster until they began to fade.
He ran past open doors and squat women who shrieked as he flew past them. He ran down hallways he prayed were not dead ends and nearly bumped into something that looked more like a mannequin than a living person.
Finally, he rounded a corner into a dark, narrow hallway lined with paper screens. It was empty here, and quiet, and the sounds of people behind him had long since faded away. Haku sank to the floor, coughing as quietly as he could manage. His legs trembled. His mind was blank, just a blurry rush of scenery he was too tired and too hungry to process.
A couple of minutes passed like this, until each shaking breath no longer felt like it would collapse his lungs. He had spent all morning looking for someone to help him, but now he had never felt more grateful to be alone.
The murmur of voices crept back down the hall behind him. Haku scrambled to his feet. He'd hoped to have a little more time to rest, but his knees buckled with every step. If he didn't find somewhere to hide before someone caught up with him, there was little chance of getting away again.
The narrow corridor left him limited options. He could go back the way he came—towards the sound of the voices, towards the razor-mouthed man who had chased him this far—or he could try his luck with the slate-grey door at the shadowy end of the hallway.
Haku thought about the too-long face, the spidery fingers, the creatures he had encountered so far, and opted for the door.
It opened to a claustrophobic stairwell, lit only by a few sparse, bare lightbulbs. Flakes of cracked paint hung down from the sagging ceiling with little more than cobwebs to anchor them. At the bottom, darkness. He stood at the top of the stairs, stale, humid air crowding his lungs, and reconsidered his choice.
But the voices behind him echoed louder off the bare walls and spurred him onwards. He closed the door behind him as quietly as he could and considered his situation.
The stairwell was clearly in disrepair, which might have meant it was out of use. If all else failed, he could hide out here until the sounds of the bathhouse above died down. From there, he wasn't sure what he would do.
The boy on the bridge had told him to find somebody called Zabuza. Haku remembered that name from his uncle's stories, but the recognition gave him no relief; in the stories, Zabuza's caprice was matched only by his cruelty, and he was known to have a habit of eating the unworthy. If he existed at all, he couldn't be trusted.
Haku crept down the stairs into the stifling darkness, which only got warmer the further down he went. There was a door at the bottom, he noticed as his eyes adjusted, and a thick cloud of steam rolling out of the crack underneath.
Against his better judgement, he raised one trembling hand and knocked three times. The sound was quiet, hollow, but its echo managed to fill the entire stairwell. It reverberated off the walls. There was a sound from inside, like metal being dragged across stone, but the door did not open.
He tried again.
This time, the door flew open before the second knock, creating a rush of air that sucked the steam back with it. The clouds settled, then rolled out again, engulfing him in dim, hot light that glowed orange and ominous from a nearby grate.
"What?" growled a terrible voice from within.
Haku opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
The dull scraping sound came closer, louder, moving towards him steadily with an awkward, uneven rhythm. His legs trembled. He wanted to run, but his knees threatened to buckle at even the thought. And where would he go? Not back up the stairs, to whoever was searching for him in the long, narrow hall.
So he stood, frozen, as the hulking shape of a man who must have been twice his size came into view. He was bare-skinned from the waist up, and far too thin for his broad frame. Even from far away, Haku could count the giant's ribs.
The man's odd limp brought him to a halt at the door where he lingered, squinting into the darkness above Haku's head. Then he looked down, and his gaunt face twisted scrunched into a frown.
"Shit," hissed the giant, with a flash of razor sharp teeth.