Chapter One

      Mukashi, mukashi, long ago, as the Kami later told it, there was nothing of the islands of Japan but a swirling whirlpool of black ink, spanned by a bridge of crimson and gold. A single thin shoreline, stained black by the waves, stood at either end of the crossing, each sandbar no longer than ten steps to the edge of the opaque waters. The world was small then, unformed and infinite in possibility.

      The chaos of it engulfed the kami Ameno, the fog swirling around him in clouds of unshapen mist. A golden bead of ink dripped down the side of the spear he clutched to his chest. He could hear the roar of the ink around him, flecked with shining gold like a mirage in the distance. He couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t heard the rush of it, when he hadn’t longed to reach into the waters and feel the warmth of the flowing ink as it raged toward the edges of the mist.

      Another bead of gold dripped off the spear as he reached it toward the darkness. He grasped the naginata spear in his hands, the blade of it gleaming with gold, gems of darkly lit sapphire and azure dangling from a string wound around the weapon. He tilted the naginata’s blade toward the ground as the ink fell.

      The ink bloomed into the shape of a reed leaf, a single stem that bent in the flow of the dark waters. The golden light of it faded, and the reed stood there, a tiny shoot of bright green against the swirling chaos.

      “You’re painting again,” said a voice, and Ameno turned toward it. The edge of the riverbank curled under a lip of dark fog, the geta sandals of another kami pressed into the sand of the shore. The kami wore a kimono that shimmered faintly with specks of gold that faded into plum.

      “The ink waves tumble toward the future, Kunitoko,” Ameno said, tilting the spear toward the other kami. “It’s been quiet for too long, with no life for them to crash against.”

      Kunitoko grasped the hilt of the spear and nodded. “I, too, tire of the endless roiling of the waves,” he said. He took the spear in both hands, the gems gleaming with dark light. He threw forward the curved edge of the naginata’s blade and the golden ink gleamed, the clouds of fog dissipating as they swirled backward.

      The shoreline cleared, a red-and-black pagoda looming in the distance. Ameno nodded, leaning against the planks of the bridge that scaled the shoreline to the other side, shrouded in mist.

      Two new kami lay on the banks of the sand, their eyes blinking as they stared at the golden dust of the ink, flying upward like a backward snow of sparks and embers. The two of them curled around each other, heads side by side but one facing the pagoda and the other the inky waters, one of them in a robe of white with long black hair that spilled over the fabric, the other wearing black with his hair pulled into a tight coil.

      “Let me help you,” Kunitoko said, reaching his hand out for the kami in white. She looked around the shore, her eyes wide.

      “What is this place?” she asked as the kami in black rose to his feet, dusting the sand off his hands.

      “It is everything,” Kunitoko said.

      “Everything is very small,” said the kami in black. “Only a bridge, a shore and an angry ocean.”

      “No,” said the kami in white. “There is a small reed leaf, there, that fights the current.”

      Kunitoko smiled. The naginata’s blade gleamed with golden light. “Would you paint more?”

      The eyes of the kami in white went round and amazed, her mouth opening in a small O.