It was a few days after the Shadow Eater had disappeared and the people had gotten their shadows back. Kakeru was sitting in the reading area of a little community center in town. It wasn’t much, but the place had some books about local history and folklore. He took one of the books off the shelf and began to read.
It was a collection of legends from this region, all having some connection to shadows. It contained everything from tales hundreds of years old to more recent ones, although the book itself was pretty old—it had been printed before Kakeru was born.
There was a story about missing shadows, the same phenomenon that old Kagekake Village had gotten its name from. And then there was another story about two people who could trade their shadows between them. Another told of a tree that had been struck by lightning and burned away, leaving only its shadow behind. And of course, there were several stories about the creatures known as Shadow Eaters, too. Even that wasn’t the end of it…
“Well, now. What are we reading today?” someone asked.
Kakeru had been sure there was no one else in the reading area besides himself. He raised his head at the familiar voice, which sounded like it was coming from the chair across from him. Sitting there was, of course, Lord Chikage.
“O-oh, hello! Thank you again for your help. It seems like everyone in town is back to normal again,” Kakeru told him.
“Is that so? I’m glad to hear it.”
“Y-yeah… I asked around, and it seems like they remember what they said and did while they didn’t have their shadows. But no one remembers how they felt during that time.”
“Probably because people who’ve had their shadows eaten are unable to think or feel anything.”
“Right… Back when their shadows were gone, they all seemed so empty inside. They probably were experiencing stuff that should have made them happy or sad, though. Like meeting new friends, or saying good-bye to people they really cared about…”
It was Kakeru’s fault they’d all had their shadows eaten. He didn’t know how he could ever make up for that.
“At the very least…I want to make sure I don’t make the same mistake again. So I’m going to try learning everything I can about the strange things that happened with shadows in this region,” he said.
“That’s an admirable notion. What kinds of stories have you read so far?”
“I just finished this one… The sacrifice whose shadow couldn’t be beheaded.”
Kakeru read back over the page and summarized what he’d learned.
“Hundreds of years ago, the people of Kagekake Village decided to offer a human sacrifice to the gods to halt some natural disasters. As part of the ritual, the sacrifice had to be beheaded…”
As he continued relating the story, Kakeru felt more and more gloomy.
A human sacrifice. They cut off a person’s head to try to appease the gods. Even if it was a story from olden times, it was still awful that people did that…
After taking a minute to breathe and pull himself together, he went on.
“But when they cut off the sacrifice’s head, his shadow stayed the same. Since the shadow of his head was still attached, he didn’t die. But he’d lost his real head, so he wasn’t alive anymore, either. He’d become something else—not quite alive, not quite dead, not even human anymore. After that, he’d appear around the village sometimes… That’s all the book says about it.”
It was a strange, creepy story, but it also had an edge of sadness to it. A sacrifice with no head, but the shadow of a head still attached…
As Lord Chikage listened to the story, he heaved a sigh and nodded. Then he held out his hand for the book. The boy passed it to the god, who leafed through the pages for a while.
“Would you like me to teach you some more about this story? About the sacrifice who couldn’t be beheaded?” Lord Chikage asked.
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“This is the story of how the villagers selected their sacrifice,” he began. “They started by taking several people from the poorest families to an old shack on the edge of town. They talked to them one by one and told them all the same thing: ‘If you don’t want to be the sacrifice, you just have to leave the village by dawn. If you don’t run, we’ll assume you’re volunteering to be the sacrifice. If you all run, we’ll go after you and sacrifice whoever we can catch. And if none of you run, we’ll call off the ritual and won’t sacrifice anyone.’
“You see how this was set up? If they all stayed behind, none of them would have to die. But abandoning the others and running away was a more reliable way for each individual candidate to ensure their survival. That’s how the system really worked.
“The next morning, dawn came, and the villagers returned to the shack. Inside, they found a young man—the only one who didn’t run. He’d spent a sleepless night in deep conflict with himself. He’d wanted to believe in the others, right up to the end. He couldn’t bring himself to save his own skin if it meant one of the other people would be killed instead. But they trampled all over that compassion.
“The villagers decided that the young man had volunteered to be the sacrifice and went ahead with the ceremony. Nobody stood up for him or tried to save him. Friends, family—they all betrayed him. He was abandoned to his fate and had his head cleaved from his body.
“…What’s that? How do I know all this?” Lord Chikage added. “Because I am the god they sacrificed him to. His head is the same head that now sits upon my shoulders. I still have all his memories from when he was alive.”
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In the blink of an eye, Lord Chikage was gone. The only thing left on the table was the book Kakeru had been reading.
Wedged inside one of the pages was a tiny scrap of shadow. When Kakeru opened it to that page, he found it was at the same place he’d stopped reading before.
Lord Chikage had used a tiny shadow as a bookmark. It slid down the page and disappeared, melting into the book’s shadow without a trace.