Pentecostes

May 15th, 2005. Pentecost Sunday, and a year to the day before the end of the Chugoku War.

A strong wind came through, and there descended upon them tongues of fire.

Hiroshima City, just before 0300 hours. Maps had been drawn and re-drawn several times over the past few months, with the border between Satsuma and Japan fluctuating somewhere around the city of Okayama, but Hiroshima’s status as Satsuman territory had remained unchanged. Of the roughly million inhabitants prior to the war half still lived here, with the effects of death and desertion more pronounced in the historical center of the city upon the Otagawa Delta. Taking advantage of the supply route provided by the Seto Inland Sea into the Hiroshima Bay, the Satsuman armed forces quickly occupied the city, using it as a base for further advances east.

The night was still, practically breathless. The military worked around the clock, of course, but now even they had hit a lull. A fresh wave of reinforcements had just made its way through the city, destination Okayama, or thereabouts. If one cocked an ear out one’s window and listened hard enough, one might hear the rumbling of a tank or truck along the main streets, dawdling about on its beat, enforcing the curfew.

What the Satsumans had wanted to convert, they had converted. The former capitol building had become offices and strategy rooms for some of Satsuma’s highest-ranking field officers. What the Satsumans had wanted to destroy, they destroyed. They could not get every shrine and temple, but they got many. Torii gates were toppled or burned, shimenawa ropes were cut and thrown into fires, buddha and bodhisattva statues were defaced, and artifacts and donations were looted and hauled off. And, of course, countless civilian buildings had been reduced to rubble in the course of the Satsumans clearing the city of Japanese forces.

The few civilians who remained in the Satsumans’ area of operation offered no resistance. When it came to fight or flight against the Satsumans, most of the city had chosen the latter, seeking refuge in Osaka or even further east; now there were too few left to make fighting a possibility. Nor would they even be seen on the streets after 1000 hours, when the Satsumans enforced a strict curfew.

This night was a little different. In the gaps of emptiness left behind by the roving patrol vehicles, one man walked the streets in Naka-ku. He wore robes of a shamanistic character—one might have thought him both out-of-place, and there for a purpose. He seemed to have walked for quite some time, as footage collected from CCTV cameras in the area showed, but none revealed his destination. The only other indication of his presence was when he crossed paths with a military truck. The driver of the vehicle stepped out to seize and arrest him, but in that brief span of time the man vanished.

That was the only event of note that night before the Miracle of Fire.

Around 2:57 AM, reports began streaming in over military comms of fires breaking out in apartments, offices, and government buildings all across Naka-ku, first being recorded within the vicinity of the Tenman-gu Shrine. An army chopper flying over the ward captured the scene: starting with the tallest structures, and closest to the epicenter, the buildings lining the streets of Naka-ku began to light like torches. The flames quickly climbed their way down, and when those of one building were level to its neighbor, this one’s roof would catch fire.

By the time the media had arrived and begun recording, the blanket of flames had covered nearly the whole ward. The smoke piled hundreds of feet high. Silhouettes of structures against a bright-red backdrop could be seen crumbling and collapsing.

But this paled in comparison to the hellscape that unfolded on the ground. Fires at the base floor of an apartment block in the middle of Naka-ku were engorged by powerful gusts, growing exponentially and spreading from block to block in a matter of minutes. This coincided with the fires on the rooftops, and, with these apartments having been converted into barracks for the Satsuman armed forces following the takeover of the city, thousands of Satsuman soldiers found themselves trapped.

Chaos broke out on the fire exits. Men were trampled, knocked unconscious, and even shoved off the sides, falling stories down to their deaths. At least one, unable to support the weight of the men packed on it, collapsed, killing dozens. Not that making the descent guaranteed the soldiers’ survival; powerful, wind-whipped flames were waiting at the bottom to consume them. Dozens, if not hundreds, committed suicide by jumping or by their weapons upon seeing the only other option available to them.

The flames tore through the streets, setting vehicles, checkpoints, and people ablaze. Tanks and trucks were rendered charred husks of iron in only a couple of minutes, their drivers forced to abandon them. At least one unfortunate media team was pulverized by a wall of flame which barreled straight for their cameras. Firefighting crews, the few the military had on hand, surrounded the capitol building, but soon found themselves overwhelmed. Not a single man was saved.

Back in Satsuma, high command authorized the deployment of dozens more choppers and tanks to the city. They believed this to be a firebombing attack, but found no enemy aircraft in the city, nor any explosions. Imperatives were changed; these vehicles began firing on structures in the flames’ path, in an attempt at containment, reducing scores to rubble.

Black clouds and blood-red skies above. Flames full with vigor below. Men, women, and children; Japanese and Satsumans; military and civilians; all running through the city in a frenzy, flailing and screaming. Stiffened bodies, shattered concrete, and hot lead pouring down upon the streets. Cries of alarm and agony audible for miles around, and only growing louder as the fire spread.

If anyone were to describe this scene in one word, that word would surely be hell.

Most recordings of the incident were destroyed, broadcasts suppressed. The official story was maintained on the Satsuman side that it was a firebombing attack by the Japanese. Japan would later admit to this, but bore no proof that they had ordered anything of the sort.

The people did not call it a miracle because they genuinely believed it to be the act of a deity, but because they had no better answer.

Over 5,000 military personnel and 2,000 civilians dead. 1,000 combined injured. Satsuma’s top field officers, wiped out in a single night. Morale destroyed beyond any hope of repair. Remaining Satsuma troops withdrawn from Hiroshima and Okayama within the week, though the fighting would rage on for another year.

* * *

May 24th, 2026. Pentecost Sunday once again, and Karen Koizumi seemingly doomed to follow in her father’s footsteps.

As it had been four hundred years ago, the heart of the Catholic Church in Satsuma was in Funai, a city of moderate size on the eastern coast of the island. It did not boast the largest church buildings—that honor belonged to Seikyo—nor did it boast the oldest—that honor belonged to Nagasaki—but it did boast some of the most ornate. As the diocese of the Archbishop of Funai, the overseer of the whole Catholic Church in Satsuma, it was considered a privilege among artists and architects to be called to offer their talents to any church building in the city.

And, of course, the crown jewel among these churches had to be the Cathedral of St. Francis Xavier, the archbishop’s seat. Built in the early seventeenth century and updated and refurbished several times over its life, it represented perhaps most picturesquely the relationship between Eastern and Western aesthetics in Satsuma. The architecture was Gothic; blatantly European, unlike most of the churches that had come before it, which were typically repurposed shrines and temples, or structures built in the pagoda style.

But within the cold stone, behind the rose window, and beneath the spires upon spires upon spires, was a warmer, more ancestral space. Here in the vestibule, one was greeted by beams of old wood, cross-hatched ceilings and windows, and wooden doors stippled with gold. On either side of the main doors, leading to the nave, were paired wooden statues of two archangels, Sts. Michael and Gabriel, whose eyes seemed to watch all who entered and left the cathedral. Karen, not wishing to meet their gaze, went in through a side door.

Even with all the wood and fabric in the church’s interior, the words of the Gospel reading, in the voice of the archbishop standing at the lectern, resounded quite well, traveling to Karen’s ears in layers.

And now it was evening on the same day, the first day of the week; for fear of the Jews, the disciples had locked the doors of the room in which they had assembled…

Karen Koizumi did not know where her father had been on the night of the Miracle of Fire. But she remembered well what happened to her and her family, not even a month after: her mother told her they were going on a trip, and to bring whatever she wanted to keep with her. They left Edo and never returned.

And some trip it was. Whisked away in the dead of night to some little hamlet nestled within the mountains of Tohoku. Hastily lodged in a farmhouse that her parents may not have even given any money for. Nothing to do all day but sit around inside and watch the windows. On the one day that there was some commotion outside—men shouting, the hum of diesel vehicles and helicopters—her mother did not even permit her to go near the windows, and begged her father to do the same. But he, at length, stepped outside and never returned.

Before long, her mother took her on another trip, this time to their new home in Hakodate. Karen asked over and over when “Daddy” would join them, and each time her mother answered that “Daddy” had gone away for work, in the mountains. But many things happened to her after, which seemed to indicate that this was not all to the story here.

Her mother still taught her a little magic, and let her play with the spirits, but never again did she see another magician like her until she was picked up by the master. Nor did she go to school with all the other kids, instead having everything taught to her at home by tutors. The few times she did meet kids in the same grade as her, she would have to tell them that she was not their age, but four years younger. And, of course, she could never give her name as Karen Dokkakuji; from now on she was to use her mother’s maiden name.

The mother insisted the father had not left them, but what was left for them to live was a lie. Thus it was easy for Karen to accept what the master revealed to her. Her father, an onmyoji like she was, had been stripped of his title and excommunicated from the Bureau of Onmyo following the Miracle of Fire incident. This he paid no heed, but when the secular authorities served him a warrant to be arrested and tried for war crimes, he fled. He was apprehended while they were in Tohoku, likely to never see the light of day again, and furthermore the Bureau of Onmyo ordered a full damnatio memoriae campaign against him. Thus why Karen had been forced to live in seclusion, why her birth records and all other records relating to her had been altered, and why she had been stopped at the threshold of entering magic society.

Because she herself was a living memory of Myogen Dokkakuji.

…I came upon an errand from my Father, and now I am sending you out in my turn.

Karen made her way down the pews, past tapestries depicting the Stations of the Cross cushioned with green. But she cared not for the art nor the designs; for the painted statues of the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph flanking the sanctuary, for the ornate baldachin spreading itself out over the altar, for the frescoes bordering the steeple which depicted scenes of heaven, earth, and hell. All she had eyes for was the archbishop; his face wizened; his robes an eminent red amongst a sea of browns, whites, blacks, and blues; and she certainly did not know how much longer he would be up at the lectern.

…when you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven…

Karen drew the pistol. Her aim wavered, the iron sights bobbing up and down with every breath she took. Her left arm shook; she lowered it. The archbishop took a lacuna in his reading, took the time to look out into the congregation and lock eyes with Karen.

BANG!

The recoil sent her hand flying backwards. She dropped the gun. The next thing she knew, she was being dropped to the ground; tackled and pinned by someone who weighed well more than her. Both of her wrists were seized and squeezed together. She could not bring herself to look up, but once again she heard that resounding voice:

…when you hold them bound, they are held bound.