The safest way to go from Misty Lake at the northern edge of the village to the Hakurei Shrine far to the east of it is to return to the village via the north gate, then take the trail to the shrine. This path is a long and arduous one though, and just as before I wondered if there might be a way to make a quicker, straighter path. It didn't seem likely to happen though. The only people other than myself and Renko who I could imagine ever making use of such a trail were all able to fly.
We finished off the last of our food on the way back, stopping by the side of the river to snack on fruit and enjoy the coolness of the stream. Afterwards we made our way back to the village and turned left at the central square, proceeding along the road to the east and eventually, after another two hours of walking, coming to the stone steps set into the hill that lead to the Hakurei shrine. I had heard it said that the stairway and torii gates leading out of the shrine faced directly away from the great Hakurei barrier, and could be reached by walking directly East of the village, but if the Great Hakurei barrier had a gate, seam or any other such identifying feature, it was too large and too solid for me to see. As far as I could tell, it walled off the lands behind the shrine and extended infinitely in every direction one could see from there. Whatever might lay beyond it was a hazy blur.
Looking up at the stairs climbing the hillside before us, I suppressed a sigh and forced my tired legs to march forward through will alone. Renko was already a dozen steps ahead and looked back down to me. "Come on, Merry, we've been doing this climb for years now. How can you still be this weak?" In my opinion my stamina had improved significantly since our time in Kyoto, but I won't pretend I wasn't relieved when Renko took a step backward and offered me her hand.
Hand in hand, we ascended and passed through the proud uprights of the torii. As usual, the shrine appeared deserted, with no sign of any worshippers. Reimu herself had said that her main source of income was money offerings from visitors to the shrine, but I wondered if that could really be enough to support someone at a shrine so far removed from the village.
"Do you suppose Reimu went back to the mountain with those newcomers?" Renko asked. "I don't hear anyone around."
"Well, let's just have a look around to be sure. And you should put something in the donation box either way, Renko. I'm sure that would make Reimu happy, and a happy Reimu would be much easier to interview than a grumpy one, I bet."
"Just the cost of doing business, I suppose," Renko said with a nod as we walked toward the shrine building. Just before she reached the veranda, she stopped and flipped a coin through the slats of the wooden offertory box, where it landed with a clatter.
"Ow! Who's throwing coins at me?" called a voice from within. Renko flinched back as a distinctive horn rose up from the offertory, first poking between the slats then snagging and lifting the whole lid as the head it was attached to rose up and turned to regard us blearily. Suika Ibuki blinked twice, scratching at her scalp lazily as the lid clattered back and forth. "Renko and Merry? What are you two doing all the way up here? If you're looking for Reimu, you'd better not, she's in a pretty bad mood right now."
"Oh? Did something happen, I wonder? You wouldn't happen to know, would you Suika?"
"Sure I do. A strange person came flying in from Youkai mountain and made a bunch of complaints."
"Oh yeah?" Renko was practically bouncing with excitement. "What were they like?"
"I dunno, a weirdo. She a friend of yours?"
"No, we've just been hearing rumors about her all day. Apparently she's part of a group of newcomers that appeared suddenly on top of the mountain. Including a goddess!"
"A newcomer goddess on the mountain, huh?" Suika made a dubious face and took a pull from her gourd.
"Ah, that's right, the mountain was once your home as well. Do you still feel some attachment, perhaps?"
"Nah, I don't care about the mountain. I haven't even been back since coming above ground. Those tengu find ways to make everything stuffy and boring. I'm sure if I went back there'd be nothing but drama. I think the one who came must not have been the goddess though, she looked like just a human to me. She said she was here to take over the Hakurei shrine. I don't really think it would matter much if she did though, it's not like this shrine has any -Ow!"
Suika cried out as a softball-sized sphere of solid red and white stone in the shape of a yin-yang hurtled through the air to collide with the side of her head. We turned in the direction the orb had come from to see Reimu standing there, arms crossed and fuming, looking more annoyed than I had ever seen her.
"Maybe throw a few more coins in the box, Renko," I whispered under my breath.
"You two! What are you here for now?" Reimu demanded.
"We heard some mysterious figure had attacked the Hakurei shrine, so we came to check on you."
"How could you possibly have heard about that already? Either you're a tengu or Merry has Yukari's ears as well as her eyes."
"We're just two normal humans. What happened to the assailant?"
"She left already, a little while ago. But not before ordering me to close the shrine and 'cease all operations.' Who does that priestess think she is!"
I looked over at Renko. I'd never heard of a shrine receiving a cease and desist order before. I wondered how the Hakurei shrine could even comply -I wasn't aware of much that would classify as business that got done here.
"That's certainly very suspicious," Renko said, leaning in and cupping her chin with one hand. "Can you tell me exactly what happened?"
"There's not much to tell. A shrine maiden in an outfit kind of like mine flew over from the mountain and said she wanted to talk to me..."
The following is the story of Reimu's interaction with this other shrine maiden, as she relayed it to us:
-.-.-.-.-
"Is this really an active shrine? It's so isolated and run down. Everything about it feels abandoned."
"What a rude thing to say! Who are you and what are you doing in my shrine?"
"I'm a divine messenger. I've come to bring you a message from the god of the mountain."
"God of the mountain? Is there a god living on Youkai Mountain?"
"She's only just arrived here in Gensokyo. Having come to this land, she hears the cries of the people who's prayers have gone unanswered. I heard that this was a shrine where some people worshipped, and so I thought I would come to pay homage to the local gods, but I can barely sense a spiritual presence here at all. Tell me, what sort of god is enshrined here?"
"The god of this shrine? It's an important god. A powerful one. The specifics don't really matter, do they?"
"What? How could they not? How can you attract faith if you don't know what sort of blessings a god offers or what sort or rituals or tributes it prefers? Are you really a shrine maiden?"
"What? Of course I'm a shrine maiden, I live here at the shrine, don't I? It's the only shrine in Gensokyo."
"I see. That is the reason the presence of the god here is so weak. It's because of a lazy miko who had ignored her duties that things appear so desolate. How tragic."
"What? Did you come here looking for a fight? Because you're about to find one."
"If you have no intention of properly venerating and propitiating the divine being enshrined here, then this shrine has been profaned. I must ask you to cease your operations immediately, before the god this shrine was built for becomes angered by your negligence. You must cease playing the role of a miko immediately and allow this shrine to be reclaimed by nature."
"Wait, what?"
"Or perhaps it would be better to devote this shrine to my god and use it as a proper place of worship. With appropriate veneration, this shrine could become a source of blessings, benefitting the humans of the village. In time, humans seeking blessings will flock here, garnering faith, earning more donations and eventually making this a spiritual center. This could be the beginning of a spiritual revival, for humans and gods alike!"
"Hold on, will you shut up for a second and listen? This isn't your shrine, it's mine!"
"I'm not saying you have to leave immediately, of course. You can take as much time as you need to pack up your things and vacate the premises. Once this shrine has been fully abandoned, we can sanctify and re-purpose it, making it into a center for human worship. If you like, we could even keep you on as a miko operating this branch shrine. The number of worshippers coming here would increase, the faith invested in our goddess will grow and everyone involved will benefit! It's what they call a win-win relationship, right?"
"win-win? Wait, what was that about more worshippers?"
"It would be great, wouldn't it? I bet there would be a line up all the way back to the village to come and visit this shrine!"
"Worshippers lining up to come visit...?"
"Sounds nice, right? You don't have to give me your answer right now. I'll come back tomorrow and we can start planning things out. It'll be fun! I'll see you then."
-.-.-.-.-
"...and then she flew off." Reimu finished, gesturing vaguely toward the mountain.
"And you just let her leave after that?" Renko asked incredulously.
"What sort of villain do you think I am? She was just a human, and all she did was run her mouth. I can't just start shooting people over just something like that. Do you take me for some sort of violent thug?"
I refrained from commenting.
"Besides," she continued, "it was a bit of a rude surprise, but maybe it wouldn't be that bad if the god who lives in this shrine was replaced. I don't really know what the current god even does."
"You just want more worshippers and more donations, right?" Suika asked, leaning towards Reimu and leering, the lid of the donation box still speared by her horn.
"No one asked you!" Reimu shouted. Somehow the stone orb that had hit Suika earlier had made its way back to her hand. She hurled it overhand, striking Suika in the face with a perfect fastball. The oni staggered backward and tripped over the edge of the donation box, tumbling backwards out of it.
Renko sighed in exasperation. "I don't know, it sounds a little fishy to me, don't you think?"
"Hmm? How so?"
"Well, whoever heard of one god ousting another from a shrine? There's lots of Shinto shrines in the Outside world that are said to house multiple divinities. Plus, just from the name and its location, I'd assume this shrine has something to do with the Great Hakurei Barrier. Trying to force the god out of this specific location instead of building a new shrine somewhere else almost sounds like they're trying to cause an Incident of some kind."
"Hmmm. My intuition isn't warning me about anything just yet, but you're right that it sounds suspicious." With her arms crossed, Reimu tucked her chin to her chest and grumbled, mirroring Renko's pose from a moment earlier. I imagine that the thought of attracting more worshippers to the shrine had to be tempting for Reimu. She was among the most powerful humans, perhaps the most powerful beings of any kind living in Gensokyo, but it was impossible to imagine that her living situation wasn't at least a cause for concern.
"I think you should be careful Reimu. From the way you described her, this other shrine maiden sounds like a sweet-talker. By the way, what was her name?"
"Her name?"
"Didn't you ask?"
"Why would I?"
Renko sighed. Thus, the identities of both the newcomer shrine maiden and her patron goddess remained unknown.
-.-.-.-.-
Before much longer we headed back to the village. Reimu was in a particular grumpy mood and Renko giving her more to consider didn't seem to have helped.
"So after all that walking, we're still no closer to knowing who they are," I said irritably.
"On the contrary," Renko replied, "we know a bit about their motivations. That tells us more about them than a name or a face would."
"I don't see how. We know that a goddess has appeared on the mountain and is trying to take over the Hakurei shrine and gather faith from the humans in the village, but we don't really know the reason for it. Is it a religious crusade? Or would this count as something more like the spread of a faith to a new land? For that matter, where did the new goddess come from?"
"Hmm, if it is a goddess from the Outside world I don't think it could be one of the more famous ones as they'd still have worshippers. I don't think Shakti or Aphrodite would be likely to appear in Gensokyo, for example, especially since they're not from around here. Being as they set themselves up on Youkai Mountain, I'm guessing it would be some sort of regional Shinto divinity tied to a sacred mountain or the like."
We were discussing such things as we walked down the stairway leading away from the shrine when suddenly we were interrupted by a voice from behind us.
"-I could teach you about her, if you like."
Renko and I both whirled around to look behind us. There, standing on the steps, about halfway up to the shrine, was a girl we had never seen before. She had long, slightly curly green hair in which she wore a pair of frog and snake themed ornaments and was wearing an outfit just as unusual as Reimu's - a vest-like white robe, a long, patterned blue skirt and a pair of voluminous sleeves cinched around her upper arms and worn as separate garments.
"Hello," she said with a small wave. "Nice to meet you. Are you two humans from the village?" Her smile was almost blindingly brilliant. "If you'd like to come visit Moriya shrine, I think I could probably fly you both to the mountain. I'd appreciate it if you could spread word of our blessings in the village for me."
Renko recovered from her surprise quickly and returned her smile. "You must be the miko of the mountain goddess, I assume?"
She bowed quickly, still smiling brightly. "I'm Sanae Kochiya, wind priestess of the Moriya Shrine."
