Burly Tales

by Steve Berman

  When he stepped back from his first drawing, he saw he had drawn out the face of a cat in characters. He bit his cheek, thinking it looked childish instead of legitimate. Surely the townspeople wouldn’t think something so silly would save them.

  He made hundreds of such cat faces. He ran out of words and started writing sentences, including “The Monk Shiro commands that you leave this house alone”. He replaced his name with more powerful monks instead. Finally, he broke down into tired scratchings of, “Go away. I eat mice. Die.”

  The townspeople were mostly illiterate anyways. What did the words of a talisman matter if the intent was the same? He let the various cat faces, poses, and paws dry before giving them away.

  He was ready for people laugh at him, but instead, villagers scrambled for a painted talisman. They offered payment, anything at all, but he asked only for more paper and ink. He spent the next weeks writing out words made of cats. Shiro had no idea if they were working or not. The number of corpse-walkers remained unknown. When a new one was discovered, it was impossible to tell if the person was changed pre-or-post talisman. Eventually, it would be clear if the talisman were working, though. Those possessing one of his talisman would either all be alive, or dead.

  But maybe they did do something. For when the fall leaves were at their reddest, the monk Mitsue stopped by. Mitsue was a wiry fellow who had visited years ago to welcome him to the valley. Welcoming him meant that Mitsue had really come to chastise Shiro, saying that he shouldn’t wear monk robes if he wasn’t a monk anymore. Shiro did stop wearing the adornments, but always made sure to wear his robes when visiting the monastery—mostly to annoy the man who scolded him.

  Mitsue caught him mid-painting. He stood in Shiro’s doorway with clenched hands, all smiles and shyness.

  “Good afternoon. I’ve come on behalf of the monastery. Do you think, great artist Shiro, that you could paint some talismans for us too?”

  Shiro looked up from his page.

  “You don’t need to treat me with reverence, my friend, just because these are trying times.”

  “Of course. Endless apologies.”

  “There’s no need to apologize. You can take some of these back with you, though I’m sure that your own talismans would work better. I remember something about not being considered a real monk?”

  “We have a big monastery,” Mitsue replied, ignoring him. “We thought you could paint our Shoji screens. You must understand—holy ground is always a target for demons. They would love nothing more than to slaughter us all.” Mitsue smiled at him.

  Shiro didn’t know what was so amusing about it. “I can paint your walls,” he replied.

  “That’s great news. We’ll pay you with whatever you’d like.”

  “I don’t need payment.”

  “Then we can offer you as much ink as you need, so long as you protect our monastery.”

  This was surprising, but not unpleasing. “But some more kindness from the monastery would please me,” Shiro replied.

  The monk laughed, but when Shiro invited him in for tea, Mitsue backed up and bowed. “I really have to get back, although if you wouldn’t mind stopping by tomorrow, that would be most appreciated.”

  Shiro didn’t think it was a strange meeting at first, even if Mitsue was overly formal with him. Perhaps he had to be, being on official orders from the monastery and all. But when Shiro walked up the monastery path in the morning, he was taken by how queer the woods had gotten.

  The forest, by day, should have been anything but peaceful. He listened for rustling creatures or birdsong, but even the wind seemed muted. There was the occasional gust of leaves caught up in wind, but nothing else. His footsteps were muffled by the unkempt steps. Perhaps the monks were too afraid to leave their domain to sweep away the leaves. Perhaps the valley was in worse shape than he thought.

  When he arrived, breathing heavy, at the top of the hill, nobody was there to greet him. The monastery should have been full of hundreds of monks, but he only saw a handful scattered about the grounds. They were in prayer or walking, their hands behind their backs. He breathed out, waved to a few, and they waved back. He found Mitsue by the entrance and the man ran to greet him.

  “This place is nearly abandoned,” Shiro said.

  “The Goblin Rat scared most of them off. But that was months ago, now.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “You don’t pay attention to most things. That is … if you don’t mind such an impetuous statement, honorable artist Shiro.”

  “The Goblin Rat is that powerful?”

  “Of course!” The monk shook, more emoted than Shiro had ever seen him. “She could rule this entire valley, if she wanted to.”

  “Do you think that’s her goal?”

  “It’s impossible for somebody like me to know the goals of a being so awe-striking. It’s beyond comprehension.”

  “Well, you could still guess,” Shiro suggested. “Sometimes it’s fun to guess at things.”

  Mitsue didn’t seem to understand.

  Shiro dropped the subject and the monk left him alone to paint the cloister screens. He worked straight through the day and made cats large and small. Three hours into his task, Shiro realized he had made a fatal mistake.

  For these monks were most likely all corpse-walkers.

  Shiro painted anyways. But his grip tightened to keep his hand from shaking. As a former monk, Shiro knew that routine was ingrained deeply into every monk’s day, but these monks seemed to have no plans. Even if dwindled down to a few scared monks, he couldn’t imagine them abandoning the faith. If anything, people stuck to routine more strictly when faced with so many unknowns. Instead, these monks lingered. They peered into the woods and didn’t speak to one another. There was no bell for prayer; no chanting. They didn’t seem to notice time at all. It had taken Shiro years to stop planning his day around the ingrained call to prayer and sometimes, even on the road, he would find himself humming at sunrise and sunset.

  Maybe this was his fate. That a disgraced monk should be torn apart by imitations of his own order.

  Mitsue came to check on him, flanked by the other monks.

  Shiro lowered his paintbrush.

  “You plan to kill me, I take it,” Shiro said by way of greeting. “If you don’t mind, I’d sooner kill myself than be murdered by rats. Can you at least give me that option?”

  Mitsue’s laughter was the sound of hundreds of squeaking rodents held deep in the monk’s frame. “You’re not our high prize. You’re bait, so we keep you alive.”

  Shiro paused. “Haven’t I killed scores of you? This isn’t revenge?”

  “Killed us with your words and pictures? Of course not! Your little follower is the scourge. And he’ll come out of hiding if your life’s forfeit. The Goblin Rat comes tonight. We’ll slay you both.”

  “Crow won’t come for me,” Shiro said. “He gave up on me months ago.”

  The monks laughed as they assaulted him.

  Despite the blood rising from their bites, he held no anger against them. No rage. He did nothing but clutch his brushes closely. They ripped open a screen and dragged him by the hair through to the prayer room and threw him on the cushions as though he might plead to some higher power to step in and help.

  He didn’t pray. He pressed the blood on his face and pulled his hand away, staring at the redness.

  They didn’t guard him. They didn’t think he was worth the bother. Shiro sat alone in the prayer room. There were no life-threatening wounds, but dozens of bites and scratches. They had fought animal-like. That had probably saved him some agony; humans fought far more cruelly than rats. Humans flayed and tortured and knew what pain was. These rats had only nipped.

  He didn’t think Crow would come. Crow hadn’t come when people went missing or were turned to corpse-walkers, but the rats seemed to hate the tengu. He sat wondering, feeling useless. But wasn’t that the fate of humans? In a world of myth and demons, what were people but patheti
c creatures? Not even worth posting guards for.

  The false monks waited outside for the Goblin Rat or for Crow to arrive. He hoped neither did. He hoped each would sit outside from day to night then day again, feeling foolish.

  His talismans had done nothing. How could he think some scribbling on a paper could fend off demons? The monks taught that the world was illusion and, thus, the world was meaningless. He didn’t know how they could teach that because he found so much meaning, in everything. Even if comprised of pictures and the two-dimensional, didn’t that still have meaning?

  He pressed the paintbrush to a gash on his arm and drew a hand-sized cat on the floor beside him. He wouldn’t mind being a haunt to this place. If they killed him, then he wanted to tie himself to the monastery. He was addicted to the world. To material things. To life. If they murdered him, perhaps in a hundred years’ time the Goblin Rat would move on and Crow would perch on a tree nearby. Shiro would peer out, specter-like, from the abandoned monastery, and talk to him again.

  He might as well be a ghost. Might as well be an illusion clinging to a material object.

  He painted with his blood. On every surface he could reach, he drew a cat. When his blood dried up, he mixed his blood with his ink. The ink turned the lines from red to black. His iron and cells were embedded in that color. It was his ink; his drawings. He marked the world again and again, claiming his stake in it. That he was worth something, if only a scribbling. If only an etching on the wall.

  When night came and he heard yelling, then fighting, outside, only then did he pause. It sounded like a bloodbath.

  The Goblin Rat had come. She would discover Crow was nowhere to be seen and walk into the monastery to shred him. He sat on a cushion and closed his eyes, waiting.

  He wouldn’t scream in death. He wouldn’t fight. He would drift from his body and they could do what they wanted with the corpse he left behind, though he didn’t have much pull in town, so how could he be worth imitating?

  When the screaming quieted and the door slid open, Shiro opened his eyes. The Goblin Rat was a murderess. She must have attacked her followers because Crow had not appeared.

  He faced his death head-on, expression placid.

  But standing there was no goblin twisted with savagery; standing there was Crow. Or Crow in pieces, for his wings were gone, and his arms hung limp with chunks of feathers torn out. His mask was cracked down the middle, barely holding in place. Everywhere, his feathers were tufts, the ends shredded.

  Crow also bore older wounds. His wings were months’ scabbed over. The tengu walked with a limp. Shiro saw that Crow bore two severed claws on his right foot. These were fresh. The third claw, front and hind, was slick with red.

  Shiro gasped. “I didn’t think—”

  “You should think more, it’s a good talent,” Crow said. He staggered and fell forward.

  Shiro wasn’t quick enough to stand and catch him. But he ran to Crow and crouched down until they were close. So close that he smelled iron and salt.

  “You came for me,” Shiro said.

  Black, beaded eyes stared up at him. “I did, didn’t I? It makes me a bad tengu.”

  “But it makes you a good man.”

  Crow laughed, but with pain. “It seems that I’m the one that’s been driven mad by a human.”

  “You were watching over me all this time? All this time you’ve been keeping away and just watching? Even when I kept the door open? Even when I walked around at night looking up at the trees? Why? Do you really find me so repulsive, just because I reached out one time? I didn’t need your undying love if you were so disgraced at the thought of being with me.”

  Crow stared at him, surprised.

  Shiro wasn’t used to raising his voice or edging over to anger. He breathed out and sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You think I’d find you repulsive? The disgrace is mine, Shiro. You should be the one turning away.”

  Shiro watched him. He saw how self-conscious Crow was about Shiro looking at him, how much more tense about that than being in pain. It was true that tengus were most vain creatures. Crow had spent so much time trying to appear beautiful that he was fearful of not living up to the tales that told of what a tengu should be. That he had a role into he was placed, the same as Shiro was, But whereas Shiro made his own way, gaining the kind of confidence that only comes in knowing oneself, Crow had hidden all of his insecurity behind pride. With his wings gone, Crow seemed more disgusted with himself than with anybody else.

  “I was trying to keep away,” Crow said.

  “Why?”

  “Because they would have killed you sooner,” he said. “But it looks like they’ll kill us all the same. They found what would lure me. Even when I tried to hide it.”

  “If I may?” Shiro asked.

  He used one of Crow’s uninjured talons to rip off a strip of his shirt and wrapped the material around Crow’s foot. The makeshift bandage did little to staunch the blood.

  “You could have stayed,” Shiro said, “if it didn’t matter. You could have stuck around and we could have been killed then. Instead of months of silence.”

  “And me, thinking I was fool for following a bird.”

  “You are a fool for following a bird,” Crow whispered. “And I’m a fool for coming.”

  “Do we run? Do we fight?”

  “They own the woods. And now I am worthless. The Goblin Rat is on her way. When she arrives, she’ll sniff us out. She’ll have everyone in the woods looking. We should seek a more merciful death.”

  “Let me understand. You stayed away because she took your wings? And you only came because I was going to die either with you at my side or alone, so you chose to stay with me?”

  Crow said nothing.

  “Did you really think I’d care to see you without your wings? Did you really think I’d drive you off?”

  Crow stiffened. “Isn’t that all I am to you? Some pretty bird?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I didn’t want to be like your cat, either. I was afraid to be a pity case.”

  “You aren’t a pity case to me.”

  “Then what am I to you? How can I be worth a thing as a tengu, with no wings?”

  “‘Tengu’ is but a title. And I know your name. You are Crow.”

  Shiro looked around the darkened room. The moonlight illuminated what it could. He could barely make out outlines. His drawings were no more than shadows. Shiro lifted up Crow in his arms.

  The defeated tengu did not resist, which Shiro found heartbreaking. He walked with him around the room, looking for anywhere to hide, and eventually came across a linen wardrobe. He opened it and tried to fit around the sheets. He kicked at them until they loosened and he could just squeeze the door shut, but they were both-full sized men. They took up most the space and the clean sheets absorbed their blood.

  “She’ll find us here,” Crow whispered. “Nothing keeps a rat away.”

  “I don’t care.” He fumbled in the dark, trying to find Crow’s face amongst all the feathers. When it was close, he pressed his forehead against the mask and breathed out. “If she comes, if she kills us ... then it will be like when you kidnapped me. We’ll be reborn and show up somewhere else, won’t we? And then we can wander and find each other again.”

  “That’s a nice dream, it is. But it’s a dream all the same.”

  “I think I love you, Crow. I think I’ve loved you more than I’ve loved anything else. Even cats. And I love cats so much.”

  “Even though she tore off my beautiful wings—”

  “Love is the deepest cut and the darkest stroke. My heart cares for yours. It beats faster than your wings ever did. Can you not say the same for me?”

  “Fully.” Crow’s word echoed with emotion.

  In the doomed and shadowed prayer hall, Shiro kissed the crack on the mask. In the dark, they were both blind.

  Crow pressed the side of his face to Shiro’s. “When I died, I woke upon
a shore. I was in a body bloated by the sea and, slowly, I pecked my way free until I was panting in the sun with sea water dried to salt on me. My old flesh was nothing more than rotten skin, a husk.”

  “How did you die?”

  “I—I don’t remember. Drowned, probably. There was rope around my legs and it was frayed at the end. I was killed for a reason, probably deserved.”

  “But you don’t remember?”

  “No. I have never wondered why. But now I want you to know my past.”

  Crow’s mask split down the middle with the sound of a nut cracking in one’s palm. He pressed his head closer to Shiro’s, who felt the sharp turn of a beak against his neck.

  “I don’t think I mind getting killed,” Shiro said. “Even if it’s by a rat.”

  “No, I believe I don’t mind much, either.”

  When the Goblin Rat came, she spoke in a tongue that Shiro did not know. He kept his breath quiet, though Crow was unconscious from his injuries. They smelled too much like blood, the two of them.

  He waited for a long snout to push through the crack in the dresser and grin at them. Instead, the Goblin Rat yelled at whoever was with her. The sound of dozens of sniffing, snorting human-rats filled the monastery. He heard her nails clicking on the floor.

  She laughed taunted him in her demon tongue.

  He felt Crow stir, but pressed a hand to his beak to keep him quiet. Shiro didn’t want to be butchered. He figured that nobody ever did, but life was cruel and took and sometimes turned a person into lunch. It would be a brutal but quick death.

  The Goblin Rat was close now, close enough for him to hear her claws against the door.

  She hissed.

  The hiss carried from the mouth of one to another. Well, there was a hiss, but perhaps it wasn’t her.

  Shiro wondered if she had an army of hissing monsters at her side, but the Goblin Rat suddenly went quiet.

  The hissing continued, loudly, then gave way to growling, yowling, then fighting.

  Shiro held his breath and listened to terrible screaming, but from whom he could not tell. The violent fight shook the cabinet and woke Crow, who tensed against Shiro. They waited in the dark, together.