The Secret History Files

A Touhou Project Fic in the Danmakuverse by Achariyth

Chapter 5: Ball Peen Hammer

The four Secret History archers made for poor highwaymen and worse guards, so while Komachi, Kotohime, and I dragged them archers into the bocage hedgerows, I soothed my wounded vanity with a snap kick into their leader's ribs. Unfortunately, Kotohime pulled me away before I could kick him a second time. Somewhere in my resulting fit, between trying to stomp on the crossbowman and crushing Kotohime's toes, the rabbit princess managed to snake an arm around my throat and squeezed…

For once, I didn't blame the Secret History Association. Kotohime forced me to go out without my hair bow and ribbons. Not everyone gets to be a top-heavy cow like Komachi. At least she had proved her worth earlier, when, without warning, Komachi had vanished, reappearing behind the thugs' leader. All four Secret History goons pitched forward into the dirt before the first crack of her scythe's long handle against his head faded away.

I blinked myself awake only to stare up at the cop who knocked me out. "Are you done with your tantrum?" Kotohime pulled me to my feet. "If not, you can wait it out back in your cell."

I rubbed my throat and steadied myself against her. Breathing deeply, I choked back my ire. Haring off every which way while m blood bayed in my ears hadn't led me any closer to Keine than the inside of a jail cell. I only enjoyed what remained of my current freedom as Kotohime's charge. Not that the princess play-acting as a cop's careful methods had brought us any closer, but for Keine's sake, I could be reasonable.

For a time.

Komachi dangled a locket from her fingertips, a memento from her past dalliances with the kidnapped Miare child's previous male incarnations. Attuned to Komachi's lover's soul, the golden heart spun on its chain until it wound to a stop. The reaper pointed to a wooden A-frame farmhouse poking above the hedgerows. "She's inside."

I perked up. Keine's letter had implied that Keine would be able to come out of her seclusion after Lady Akyuu's rescue. "Any hope of sneaking in?"

"We should hurry." Kotohime nodded towards the brush covering the four Secret History goons. "Even if no one heard your outburst, someone's going to be looking from them soon."

Komachi pocketed her locket and grabbed Kotohime and I by the shoulders. I closed my eyes…

…and found myself in a dim attic surrounded by walls of thick brown paper boxes. As I staggered away from Komachi, the tall reaper reached up and pulled on a dangling chord. An overhead light, brighter than any kappa gas lamp, lit up the room.

While Kotohime fussed with a folding staircase on the floor, I rummaged through open boxes. It beat brooding in the corner. It had been decades since I had last left Gensokyo. The gadgets and gewgaws had changed since then. Maybe if I brought one back to Keine, she could find some use for it. More likely, we'd stay up late and tell silly stories about it. But the box held only books. I waited until Kotohime and Komachi looked away before slipping a book with a strange slip sailing among indigo clouds into by back pocket. Keine loved stores, too.

A loud bang filled the room. I jumped and peered around a stack of boxes. Komachi had shooed Kotohime away from the stairs and slammed the butt of her scythe against it. The staircase fell through the floor, unfolding with the twanging protest of uncoiled springs. I held my breath and waited. That racket should have brought Secret History goons running, but no one came.

"This doesn't feel right." Kotohime clutched her batons in a white-knuckled grip.

Komachi glided down the steps. "We don't have time to stop for a warrant."

As we searched the empty farmhouse, I soon came to agree with Kotohime. Little oddities screamed at me: a reflection lingering a moment too long in the mirror, a shadow falling over a sunlit room like a cloud, the creaking of old wood from rooms we had yet to visit. And above all, the ever-growing pins and needles dread of someone walking over my grave.

We were being watched.

Kotohime knew it, too. The policewoman flowed from shadow to nook, always seeking the hidden places. But Komachi paraded through the halls, ever prattling about some long gone secret rendezvous where she had once met the Miare child's previous incarnations, just like my father's mistress, Eri, always did. It was a relief to open the final door.

In the center of a spiral of tatami mats, Lady Akyuu knelt behind a scholar's desk and leafed through a ream of loose paper. The dollish Child of Miare looked up at me with doe eyes. "Are you a ninja?"

I froze in mid-step, poleaxed. My cheeks burned while Komachi laughed and pushed me out of the doorway. Somehow I found my voice. "Why do you ask?"

"There are many legends around you, but precious few facts." Lady Akyuu pulled out a notebook and a pen from the scholar's desk. "Not even my perfect memory can be trusted."

"It's not that perfect," Komachi whispered. The junoesque reaper hid behind a plastic smile. "Do you know what it's like to be forgotten?"

I watched as Kotohime brushed open a curtain and looked outside. For a moment, she reminded me of my long lost sister, Tahino, who loved to spy on everyone. "You have no idea," I croaked.

"She never remembers me when she's alive." Komachi turned to the Miare girl. The reaper's voice grew cloyingly sweet. "Why the sudden interest in Mokou?"

Lady Akyuu, like the court darling she was, paled and shrank away from me. "They asked me to. They left me with nothing but a used copy of a Moonlight sequel." Her voice waivered until it broke. "There was nothing else to do. I was so bored that I read it four times. Now I'll never be able to forget a single word, not for another nine lifetimes!"

Sure, Moonlight isn't anything like the poetry my clan wrote during the Heian court, but I like it. It's nothing to grow hysterical over. Just don't take my copy. That said, if a silly love story reduced this pampered princess until she was little more than the babbling wreck in front of me, I'd hate to see what she'd look like if someone like my father got his hands on her. She'd be as worthless as my father's tame mistress, Eri.

Cutting in front of Komachi, I flashed that sweet smile that worked so well with lost children and took a deep breath. But before I could speak, boxes tumbled out of a closet behind this spoiled little rich girl and crashed to the floor.

The Miare girl darted around me and clung to Komachi, who swept her up in a motherly hug. "What are you doing?" the reaper hissed at the closet.

Another box tumbled free, spilling junk across the floor. Kotohime dipped her head out of the closet. "Looking for evidence." She vanished back inside.

I looked down at the spreading pile of knickknacks spilled across the floor. How Kotohime could find anything in that mess she was making was beyond me. "By ransacking the room?"

"I don't have time to be tidy. Her captors will return soon."

Behind me, the Miare girl collected her composure. "My…captors fussed with that one." She detangled herself from Komachi and pointed out one of a near identical set of sliding doors lining the fsr wall.

Kotohime stumbled across the junk in her way and threw open the door. A lacquered cabinet hung inside, identical to the many reliquaries throughout Gensokyo. If I could ever keep anything private from Kaguya, I'd display the icons of my clan's founder in mine. As Kotohime flicked the latch, an uneasy thought crossed my mind.

What sort of gods would these history goons revere? Did I really want to find out?

Kotohime opened the reliquary. Her eyes grew wide and she backpedaled away, flashing signs with her fingers to ward away evil. Komachi stepped in front of Lady Akyuu, shielding the smaller girl.

I stepped lightly around a tangle of wires until I saw inside the reliquary. My breath caught in my throat. A skeletal hand sat upright inside a glass tube, surrounded by chips and shards of worn white bone.

Yukari Yakumo occasionally tells stories of the stranger peoples outside the islands of Japan, so I knew that some of them cut up the bodies of their saints as good luck charms. Such an act would be unthinkable for my clan. No one would risk turning their entire lineage, past and future, into pariahs.

Lady Akyuu had heard the same stories. Showing more backbone than I had given her credit for, the Miare child wormed past me. "Any idea who that might have been?" She flipped open a small notebook and scrawled a tight cluster of shorthand inside.

I was dimly aware that Kotohime and Komachi had crowded around me. Leaning closer, I searched for a nameplate on the glass tube. Instead, I noticed a tarnished flask hidden behind the bones. I had seen its twin earlier, when that Secret History woman had tried to control me with magic made from my own bones. I waggled my fingers. For a moment, the bony hand seemed to twitch. "Me."

The pampered pretty's eyes flickered between the reliquary and me, her lips pursed in a silent question.

Kotohime pulled Lady Akyuu away from the reliquary. "We should go now and get Lady Akyuu to safety before we blunder into anything worse."

"That's the only reason why I'm here." Komachi wrapped her arms around the two noblewomen and motioned for me to stand next to her.

"Let me burn these first." Thin wisps of smoke rose from my clenched fists.

"We don't have time," Kotohime snapped. She pointed towards the window. "They'll be back soon."

"So I'll burn down the house instead." If that's what it took to keep my bones out of the hands of mind controlling magicians, so be it. But Kotohime just rolled her eyes and stared me down. Pouting, I said, "At least let me take the box for evidence."

Komachi shook her head. "I can only carry so much my ability. I came here for Lady Akyuu, not for souvenirs."

I reached inside the reliquary and plucked out the flask. The glass tube fell and cracked against the floor. "Let's go."

"Hold on tight," Komachi said. I wrapped one arm around the reaper's waist and the other around Kotohime's shoulders. Looking back at the bone shards filling the reliquary, I hissed as the bile rose in my throat. Komachi tensed as she gathered her power.

I let go.

In the blink of an eye, I was alone.

That wouldn't last. Kotohime was right; the Secret History Association would return to check on the Miare child. Fine by me. The sooner I confronted them, the sooner I got Keine back. But first, like any good hostess, I needed to prepare the farmhouse for visitors.

Whistling a tune I normally reserved for my amusements at Kaguya's expense, I rubbed my hands together and got to work. The steel flask was poured down the kitchen sink. The bones and reliquary burned to ash, which I then ground underfoot into the straw tatami mats. I left the soot stain on the ceiling, but I slid the windows open, venting smoke from the farmhouse. Finally, after hiding a few spell card surprises, I hid inside a closet and closed the door until the light from the room became a sliver. Settling in for the long wait, I hummed to myself and smiled.

Anticipation brings its own piquant flavor to revenge.

Have you heard of the mermaid's tale? How just one morsel of her flesh grants immortality? That is, if it doesn't kill you outright or drive you mad. I never gave the story much thought, until the first hunters came looking for my liver. No one stops to ask the mermaid what she thinks of the tale, after all.

Over the centuries, I have been hunted by snake oil salesmen who would peddle my flesh to those seeking eternal life, stalked by youkai who would have turned an undying girl into an everlasting larder, and hounded by men and youkai who saw only an unnatural monster. It made me sneaky, until I could persuade them all to leave me alone with simple flame. Anyone left quickly got the hint.

However, one youkai had a different plan for me. Like a hermit crab, she scuttled from body to body, and I was to be her final undying shell. For ten years at the height of Heian pageantry, she dogged my steps, using any human, youkai, or beast that she could seize, springing out like a trap door spider whenever I lowered my guard.

Our fights were rarely in the flesh, but will against will. My sister Miyako always complained that I was bull-headed, but it served me well for once in my life. The first struggle had been a narrow-run thing. I managed to evict that alien mind just before she made me a prisoner in my own head.

I learned to greet all I met with fire. She came after me with bone magic and blood curses. I torched my discarded remains. She learned to possess multiple bodies. I never saw her real form, only the endless parade of hosts. Finally, in the wind-whipped inferno of a dying village, I scattered the pieces of the shintai icon that housed her soul into the waters.

After that, I could only find peace in the solitude of the forest.

The door outside creaked open.

I pushed on the closet door until I could squint through the crack. My breath caught in my throat as a woman appeared with a strange ageless face like looking into the mirror. The Hourai elixir had fixed my appearance in time; I would never age out of my teens. But in watching the strange woman slip through the room, I saw what I would have looked like in my twenties, my thirties, and my forties with each second a shifting balance of youth and maturity. Yet she still wore that gaunt look from when she had played my bones in the village.

I'd teach her not to wear my face, but before that, I pushed my way into the room. "Where's Keine?"

The Secret History woman didn't even turn towards me. "Hidden even from us. She won't spoil our plans."

"I'll do that for her. The Miare child is on her way back home and your bone relics are ash."

My reflection turned towards me, tilted her head, and pulled out a stamp of carved soapstone.

"Why did you take the Miare?"

She looked up at me, pursed her lips, and etched new lines into the soapstone's pattern with a paring knife.

My hackles rose. "Why are you collecting my bones?"

She blew dust off of the stamp and examined me once more. I felt like a schoolgirl quailing under her teacher's glare. (Keine has given me plenty of chances to be familiar with that look.) "Aren't you going to speak?"

She doubled over in a racking coughing fit more fitting of a miner than a courtier's daughter. As the knife clattered on the ground, her beautiful black hair and porcelain smooth face faded into steel gray wisps and wrinkles.

Fear gnawed at the pit of my stomach. Keine had always warned me that the Secret History elders were craftier. I cracked my knuckles. "If you won't talk, I'll beat the answers out of you."

The Secret History woman held up her hand. She wheezed one last time and swayed upright. Sliding a sleeve away from her wrist, she slapped the soapstone stamp against her skin. Instantly, I looked into a mirror once more, but this time her cheeks were fleshed out, unlike the near-starved wretch she was before.

"How did you do that?"

"With a masterpiece of Forgery." Like all artisans, she could not resist the urge to crow about her work. Listening to her speak in my voice rankled. "Rewriting the history of a soul demands such fine work. Although, I must say that it is easier to do with a live model than from dead bones."

I eyed the soapstone, knowing that I must deprive her of it. Even if the stamp didn't burn, heat would crack and shatter it. "Why do you need that effort?"

"For Remembrance's sake."

A wave of icy terror washed over me like a chill wind as the farmhouse shadows grew dark. My reflection paled until her skin matched the paper walls. Something heavy smashed into the front door cracking the frame

Fourteen hundred years ago, I would have curled into a ball and cried, but I had learned through hard-won lessons to always fight. Fortunately, my reflection didn't even flinch. Pocketing the soapstone, she drew a knife from her belt. Meanwhile, I called upon the flame.

The door shuddered until it flew open in a spray of splinters. The archers' captain loomed in the entryway and howled. His eyes were as dark as a moonless night, without iris or white, just like that creature's hosts' centuries before. Behind him, thick tendrils of smoke roiled into the farmhouse.

My reflection hissed, "You haven't spoiled our plans; you've fulfilled them."