by Zoe Marriott
When I squinted upwards, I realized he was right. The sun had passed out of sight beyond the roof of our house, and the sky to the east was growing dim. It must be almost sunset. Hurriedly, I gathered up a last armful of wood and headed back towards the house. I brushed carefully past Shouta where he stood like a tree stump, apparently unwilling to move. As our arms touched, he seemed to jolt, and then clumsily reached out to take some of the split logs from my arms. He followed me to the porch.
“Thank you for coming to fetch me,” I said, piling the wood untidily outside the kitchen door. “I lost track of time.”
I hung the hatchet back in its place and wiped wood dust and splinters from my hands, wincing as a sliver of wood drove into my palm. I pulled it out with the ease of long practice and pressed my thumb over the tiny wound.
“You needn’t have done this,” he said, dropping the few pieces of wood he carried on top of mine. He took my hand to examine it, ignoring my instinctive move to withdraw, and grunted with satisfaction when he saw that the bleeding had already stopped. “I would have been happy to chop the wood for you. Anyone would have.”
“It’s all right.” I pulled at my hand again, more strongly, and this time he let go. “I don’t mind splitting a few logs – I’m used to it.”
“It is not all right, Hana-san,” he said slowly. “Chopping wood, hunting and trapping, spending half your time in the trees by yourself – you shouldn’t be used to that kind of work. Those are jobs for a son, not a daughter.”
Taken aback, I tried to make out his expression beneath the shadow of the porch roof in the deepening dusk. He had never spoken to me like this before. I always thought the reason he liked me was because I was sturdy and strong, and willing to lend a hand to any task.
I am a better hunter than any son in this village, a small part of me thought rebelliously.
My movements brisk, I began to untuck my yukata from its obi. “Shouta-kun, I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to talk to you about this. I must go to Mother. The elders will be at the meeting house with the volunteers—”
“There are no volunteers.”
The words were stolid and matter-of-fact. I froze in place, unable at first to make sense of them. “What did you say?”
“There are no volunteers, Hana-san. The plan the elders suggested is crazy. It is like asking us to slit our own throats and lay down for the crows to feast upon our bodies. You must have realized that. You must have realized that no one would be willing to go.”
“That … that isn’t true.” Shaken, I gaped at him. “It isn’t crazy. Something has changed – it must have changed. This is our first chance, our only chance to – to change things. To break the monster’s hold on us. Someone must be willing to go.”
“It is a chance to die, and nothing more,” Shouta said flatly. “No one comes back from the Dark Wood.”
“My father did.” It was fact, inarguable fact.
“There are some who say he shouldn’t have. No one blames you. We – well, most of us – think what you did was brave. You always have been brave. You’ve stood unbending under your father’s cruelty for years, done whatever he asked, tried to be as good as a son to him without ever asking for pity—”
I thought I might be sick. “Don’t say that about him!”
He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “You did a good thing. You brought him back so that your mother could say goodbye, and he could be buried here. But that’s enough now, Hana-san. It’s enough.”
My mind whirled with confusion, and disbelief – I was too shocked yet for anger – but one thing above all others stood out. “You’re speaking as if he was already dead. Does everyone think that way? Is this what they’re all saying?”
His expression held the sort of patient kindness I would have expected from someone forced to deal with a small, recalcitrant child. “This is reality, Hana-san. Your father was dead the moment the monster called to him, the moment he set foot in the forest at the dark of the Moon. If your mother had any sense she wouldn’t have let you—” He cut himself off swiftly. “No, I don’t mean that. But there’s nothing else to be done for him. She must accept it. You both must.”
Dazed, I did not resist as he reached out to me. His broad, capable hands made contact with my bare forearms tentatively, thick fingers encircling my wrists with more confidence when I did not struggle. “You are free of him now. Do you understand? You and your mother are free. Your father’s house was cursed with ill-luck and everyone knew it. Your ancestor was the very first to be taken, then your grandmother, then Kyo, and now him. One from every generation. No other family has ever lost so many. But he is the last male of his name. The bad fortune will die with him. You won’t have to live this way any more. You can make a new life.” He swallowed audibly – the first sign of uncertainty he had shown. “With me. If you want.”
I ripped my arms free with a violent, angry jerk and took two unsteady steps back. “My father lies dying. How can you speak to me like this now? What is wrong with you?”
“I am sorry—”
“You’re not sorry! You’re glad! You think, all of you think, the village will be better off without him. That we will be better off – that I will. Dear Moon, will no one help us?”
“I will always do anything I can to help you,” he said with his usual firmness, as if his speaking the words made them fact. “But I am not willing to die for him. None of us are.”
I spun away, clasping my hands around my head. “Mother. Have they told her?”
“The elders are with her at the healer’s house,” Shouta said, sounding just a little discomfited. “She is … upset. She asked for you. She said you must come to her right away. I shouldn’t have – forget what I have said, Hana-san. Forget it for now. Come, I will walk with you to Kaede-sensei’s place.”
“No. No. Leave me. Go away.”
“Your mother—”
“I said leave me!” I cried. I sucked in sharp, shuddering breaths. “I – cannot go to Mother – like this. I must calm myself first. Tell – tell her – tell them that I shall come in a moment. I just need to…”
He shifted from foot to foot. “I don’t think I should leave you alone.”
“Shouta-kun, if you do not leave me alone, I will scream. I swear by the Moon. You said you wished to help me, so go to my mother and tell her that I will come very soon. Go.”
Disappointment tugged down the corners of his lips, but he nodded, and after a small pause turned away, stepping off the porch and disappearing down the path into the village.
I put my hands over my face and let out a hoarse shriek, and it was an effort to stop. For a moment it was all I could do not to lose control completely – not to keep on yelling until my breath was gone. Cowards.
They were all cowards.
Hiding their cowardice with the pretence of … of common sense. Disguising their fear under a thin, oily patina of justifying words. They thought I should have left him there in the trees to die alone. They – they welcomed the opportunity to rid their village of him! How could I bear to live amongst them knowing that they would look upon the miracle of my father’s return as some kind of … ill-chance?
But I would have to live with them. There would never be any way out of this place if no one was willing even to try to break the curse. I dug my fingers into my hair, welcoming the faint sting as my nails scratched my scalp.
If it had been anyone else, any other father or son or sister or cousin in this village who had been dying in Kaede’s house, I knew I would have wanted to help. I had believed these people, people I grew up with, spoke to or saw every day of my life must feel the same.
Perhaps that was the rub. If it had been anyone else in the village – anyone but my father – their decision might have been different. He was not an easy man. Not a likeable one. Not since Kyo. His skills made him valuable, and he had friends who had known him from a child, who had stayed loyal even as his tongue turned bitter and his temper uncerta
in. Apparently that old friendship only stretched so far.
We are not willing to die for him.
But then who would? Who would, if not his friends, his neighbours, his family in all but blood? Who else would risk their lives for him if not them?
The answer swum up from deep inside, as if it had been waiting there all along:
You, Hana.
You.
I had not thought of it – not let myself think of it – not even before Hirohito’s pointed words this morning. My mother relied on me. Not just for practical things, but as any mother will rely upon her sole surviving child, especially when her husband has gone far away inside himself. What was more, she loved me. If she were here, she would forbid me from going without a second’s hesitation.
But she was not here.
I took a deep, slow breath, dropping my hands from my face as I stared unseeingly through the open door into the house. Gradually my gaze fixed itself upon my bow, lying on the kitchen table where I had left it, the curving red-brown wood washed with shifting patterns of firelight. I stepped inside and picked up the weapon. A shiver moved through my body.
You are free, Shouta had said. Was that what they all thought? They had it wrong, so wrong.
If my father died now, without forgiving me, then I would never, ever be free.
If I let this glimpse of hope slip through my fingers without even trying to catch hold of it, none of us would ever be free.
Shouta may have scorned me for behaving more like a son than a daughter, but I was still the best hunter in the village. I knew the woods as no one had in a hundred years. I heard the whispers of the trees. I had carried my father back out of the forest when anyone else would have given him up for lost.
If anyone alive had a chance of tracking the beast and slaying it, surely it was me.
But I had to go now. Now, before anyone else came to seek me out. Now, before I had to face my mother, and she read what I was thinking in my eyes. Now. Before my courage failed.
In a single swift movement, I slung my quiver over my shoulder, stowing the unstrung bow inside with the arrows. I left the warmth of the kitchen, took the hatchet from the wall where I had hung it moments before, and drew the door carefully closed behind me. Then I turned my back on home and village, faced the gathering shadows of the night, and began the climb towards the forest.
I did not look back.
Six
There is a monster in the forest! the trees protested as I entered their shelter.
Full dark had not yet spread its mantle across the mountain – but the trees still had almost all their leaves, so the shadows were deep beneath the dense canopy of branches. I stopped a few feet into the wood and closed my eyes, allowing my sight and my other senses to acclimatize. All the normal woodland noises were still there, if a little muted. Somewhere in the undergrowth a determined quail was letting out its soft kukroo krrr, kuckroo krrr. The wind sent waves whispering through the forest, and the trees creaked and groaned, uneasy with my presence. Eyes still closed, I lifted one hand and found the whiskery trunk of the venerable old kusunoki beside me, breathing in the bitter, herby scent of its foliage.
“Hush,” I whispered. “Hush, all will be well.”
The creaking noises around me died down a little. When at last I opened my eyes, I could see the pale brown blur of my hand against the dark grey of the tree bark.
“Grandmother, you and your sisters have kept me safe all these years. I know I can trust you. Help me, as my own people will not.” The trunk seemed to shudder under my touch. The forest stirred and then stilled: listening. “I cannot do it by myself. I need you to guide me. Show me the way to the Dark Wood.”
A long, gusty sigh moved through the trees. Leaves rustled, and boughs swayed and trembled overhead. Then:
Help.
Hana.
Walk. Walk. Walk.
The voices were faint, beckoning me away from the treeline, deeper into the forest.
“Thank you.”
I patted the kusunoki and started off, following the soft murmurs through the towering hollows, mossy clearings and overgrown deer trails of the wood. At first I travelled ways that I knew well, taking comfort from the distinctive shape of a large rock that glowed with yellow-gold lichen even in the deepening darkness, or the position of a fallen tree over the clear trickle of a stream. The forest floor was dry, soft and almost warm beneath my rough soles. The wind kept pace with me faithfully.
Exertion made sweat spring up on my skin, but my friend the wind swept the moisture away and left a chill in its place. I shivered as I forced a path through the prickly, trailing tendrils of a hop vine, wishing I had stayed at the house a moment longer to don my much-mended, down-stuffed jacket. But it was useless to think like that. If I had stayed but one or two moments longer to put on a warm coat, then certainly I should have tarried for three or four more and packed a bag with what food could be spared from our pantry. I hadn’t eaten since breaking my fast that morning, and my stomach was now reminding me, pointedly, that it was empty. And if I had delayed for that long, then why not roll up a blanket to strap to my quiver, for extra warmth? Take flints to light a fire? Except then I would have run out of moments altogether, and found myself listening to the arguments of whomever my mother sent to fetch me next – or worse, looking into the knowing eyes of Mother herself, and not able to leave at all.
To plan, or prepare, or even to think, was the end of hope. It was already a narrow enough, fragile enough hope. The only way to do something impossible was to do it. It was too easy for fear to creep in, else.
I believed I could find the monster. It had been found by countless others before me, after all, who never even meant to seek it. And I was sure I had as good a chance as anyone to deal it a death blow; it would not be used to prey which fought back, and there had never been any animal on this mountain that could escape me once I laid eyes upon it. These things I knew without question.
But if I stopped to think, then I would have to confront the knowledge that killing the beast and surviving it were not at all the same thing. This hunt was very different to the one the elders had proposed. I was alone. I was armed only with a quartz and wooden hatchet and my bow and arrows. And it was the dark of the Moon. The Dark Wood’s evil magics would be at their peak.
There was a soft, trembling place huddled deep inside me that flinched from the truth of what this meant, a tiny frail voice that whispered: I am not ready to die.
So I could not think of it, any more than I could think of my warm coat. I had a debt to repay. There was only that. Only the hunt. That was how it must be, if I was to succeed.
Deeper into the wood and the shadows I went, with the trees closing in around me and their branches interlocking over my head until even my night vision almost failed, and I walked face-first into low boughs, and thin twigs lashed my skin. The mountainside began to feel like a great, alien intelligence, unloving and unknowable, that sought to slow me or even turn me back. Yet through it all the soft whispering voices of my friends the trees called me on:
Turn now. Turn.
This way.
Walk. Walk…
My steps came slower and heavier, tiredness causing me to trip and falter. I had no idea where I was on the mountain any more, or of the way back, if there was one. I knew I must have been walking a long time, hours and hours, though there was no burning candle nor sight of the circling stars to tell me how long. If I had entered the forest on a normal morning and simply walked straight, I was sure I would have encountered the wall of strange dark pines by now. A dreadful suspicion that the trees – whether well-meaning or malicious – were sending me deliberately in circles caused my stomach to turn over.
“Is this the right way?” The words were panted more than spoken as I stopped to lean wearily against a young larch, wiping my forearm across my face. I licked my lips and found them dry and beginning to crack. I tasted my own sweat on them, and the metallic tang of blood too.
Look up, the trees replied.
Look ahead. Look behind.
Look.
I lifted my gaze from my feet and glanced over my shoulder. Very little of whatever weak starlight gleamed above penetrated these shadows. I had to squint to make out my surroundings. Following blindly where the trees called me I had been aware that I was climbing for a while without really thinking about it. Now I stood at the top of a ridge, and I realized – with a shock that brought me fully awake – that I could see the distinct, foreboding line of closely growing evergreens at the bottom of that slope … several hundred yards behind me.
I had passed into the Dark Wood without even knowing it.
Slowly I turned to look at the forest ahead. Was it my imagination that the twisted trunks and low-hanging boughs seemed more shadowy still than the ones I had left behind? I could not see what lay beyond them. In truth I could barely see a thing.
A great, rolling rush of wind moved through the wood, and the trees – the trees of the Dark Wood! – spoke to me again: There is a monster in the forest.
I did not answer this time, but the warning was well heeded. I pulled my bow from its place on my back and strung it, working by feel and memory alone and allowing the methodical movements to steady me. Taking an arrow, I held it at the ready between two of the fingers that grasped the stock of the bow. With my other hand, I loosened the cord that held the hatchet at my waist so that it could easily be pulled free. Then I began to walk once more.
The trees stirred unhappily as the wind gusted between them, sending dry leaves spiralling around me as I moved forwards. There is a monster in the forest, the forest groaned. There is a monster!
Fear squirmed down my spine. I nocked the arrow and drew it, my eyes straining at the dark as I entered a hollow in the mountainside where there was a small clearing amongst the trees. The ground dipped steeply under my feet, and I could see glints of deep midnight blue – the night sky – among the wildly tossing leaves of the overhanging branches.
A monster!
The wind rose higher and higher, buffeting and shoving me back. My arm muscles quivered as my grip tightened on my bow and its string. Eyes watering, I pressed on until I reached what I sensed rather than saw was the lowest point of the hollow and the centre of the clearing.