by Yuya Sato
“What’re you trying to say?” Mei Mitsuya asked.
“This group of half-dead hags don’t stand a chance against them,” Kayu Saitoh said. She ignored the half dozen or so pairs of eyes that were now glaring at her.
“You’re forgetting that I was the one who roused the women of the Village at the time! They didn’t want to go through with the punishment at first! Yes, I was their leader. And I’ll be leading the attack again, except this time against the whole Village. How can we possibly fail?” Mei Mitsuya was in an elated mood. “At that time, all the people in the Village felt was anger, anger that their food was stolen. Anger can be channelled! It gives people strength. Strength enough to run riot through the Village!”
Mei Mitsuya opened her large mouth and laughed triumphantly. Kayu Saitoh couldn’t think of anything to say back, and she just stared at Mei Mitsuya’s open, red-raw mouth.
The twenty-eight women continued their drill. Their movements might have been stiff, a farcical parody of a real army, but Mei Mitsuya was right at least about the anger that dwelled in their eyes, smoldering away and driving them on. Kayu Saitoh didn’t think that would be enough to affect the outcome of an attack on the Village, though. Kayu Saitoh knew all too well that back in the Village life was hard, that there was an undercurrent of resentment and anger running through everybody’s lives, whether they were old or young, man or woman, and that even so nothing ever changed. The old women here should have known for themselves that anger alone was never enough to change anything. Perhaps they had forgotten or were willing themselves to try and forget, for there was nothing half-hearted about the effort that these women were putting into the drill, even if the outcome was risible. Kayu Saitoh had seen enough, and she turned away from the drill to go back to the home that she had been assigned to.
They called it a home, at least, but although it might have been big enough to be called a house, it was basically just a makeshift shelter consisting of planks of wood and straw—nothing compared to Mei Mitsuya’s residence or the storehouses. This particular excuse of a house was residence to Kayu Saitoh, Ate Amami, Shigi Yamamoto, and Inui Makabe.
Only Shigi Yamamoto was in, sitting in front of the fire in the center, muttering something unintelligible to herself under her breath.
Kayu Saitoh removed her straw shoes and sat down by the hearth, opposite Shigi Yamamoto, and picked out a potato from the embers. Food was strictly rationed in Dendera, and each person was allowed one potato a day. The potato was hot and brought a twinge of pain to Kayu Saitoh’s frozen hands where it came into contact with them and thawed them out, but even that pain felt good as Kayu Saitoh split the potato open. A warm, savory cloud of moisture rose up, making Kayu Saitoh’s stomach rumble, and she took a big bite. Having said that, Kayu Saitoh had lost most of her teeth, so it was more a case of trying to crush the potato between her dribbling gums.
Kayu Saitoh glanced over at Shigi Yamamoto as she ate the potato, but Shigi Yamamoto simply stared into the fireplace without appearing to notice her. Shigi Yamamoto was always lost in her reveries. She would feed herself occasionally, but other than that she hardly did anything—never talked, never went outside the house. She just waited for the days to end. Even so, Kayu Saitoh thought she understood why Shigi Yamamoto acted the way she did.
Kayu Saitoh had decided that Shigi Yamamoto must have wanted to Climb the Mountain.
Shigi Yamamoto was about seventeen years older than Kayu Saitoh, and Kayu Saitoh remembered her from their Village days as a lively and articulate person. Her memory of Shigi Yamamoto was that she married into a household with a fine herb garden and that Shigi Yamamoto took great delight in cultivating it. Not that you would have known any of this to look at her now.
The sun set, and it was time for dinner. Rations in Dendera were never enough, so to make what little there was go further, everything was thrown into a communal pot on the fire. There were no such things as iron pots in Dendera, of course, so it was more like a makeshift stone bowl, hollowed out using bone and flint. It was a poor substitute for the real thing, and it took a long time to heat up, unevenly. The broth itself was made of water, the day’s catch of coney (both the flesh and the bones), a few vegetables, and corn dumplings. The old women huddled around the fire, scrunched up from cold and fatigue from the days’ exertions, and all went calm as they focused single-mindedly on the task of slurping up the bland, tasteless broth. An eerie quiet fell on Dendera.
After that, the old women all went to sleep before the next bout of hunger pangs had time to fall on them. Kayu Saitoh tried to do the same and burrowed herself into the straw, but the biting cold that gnawed at her fingers and froze her rump was too much, and she opened her eyes. The cold had never been too much of a problem back in the Village, but here it was a matter of life and death. The only clothes the women had were the gossamer-thin white ceremonial robes they had worn to Climb the Mountain, supplemented by whatever straw overcoats they had been able to rustle up without real tools, and the huts they lived in were so flimsy the roofs had to be regularly cleared of snow lest they collapse under its weight. The cold was ever present. It suffused their lives.
Because Kayu Saitoh lacked the fiery determination of the Hawks who lived for revenge on the Village, or even the quiet resolve of the Doves who were passionate about turning Dendera into something safe and stable, she could not comprehend what possessed people to put up with this level of suffering and hardship just so they could extend their miserable lives that little bit further. She needed to consider how she would choose to live her life from now on. It was the first time ever that she was faced with such a choice. When she lowered her eyelids again she saw the figure of Kura Kuroi floating up in her mind’s eye. I must find time to go and see her tomorrow, she determined, and by and by she was overtaken by a death-deep sleep that won out over the ever-present thick cold. She dreamed no dreams.
The next morning Kayu Saitoh awoke amidst icy air that seemed to sap away at her very soul. She flicked away the frost that had almost glued her eyelids shut and emerged from the straw bedding. Ate Amami, Shigi Yamamoto, and Inui Makabe seemed to have grown used to the cold, for they were blithely asleep amidst the chill air that was enough to freeze solid the remnants of last night’s broth still in the pot. Kayu Saitoh felt a painful, raw swelling at the back of her throat and realized that she must have some sort of cold coming on. She dragged her miserable, maladapted body out of the hut and into the still-dark breaking morning. Snow had settled where it had fallen during the night, more snow. The promise of the new day was in the air, and when Kayu Saitoh exhaled, crisp clean puffs of crystal emerged, but the beauty of the scene was lost on her.
Then her nose picked up a strange odor.
It was a cloying scent, dense, and it puzzled Kayu Saitoh. It might have been different had the women been walking around and going about their business, but nobody had stirred, as far as Kayu Saitoh could tell, so there should have been nothing to pollute the fresh morning air. Kayu Saitoh lifted her nose and sniffed, and she followed the scent. The two storehouses came into view. Kayu Saitoh noticed that the ears of corn that had been hung out to dry were now scattered on the ground in ruins, and she hurried toward them to investigate. As she grew closer the smell became worse, much worse, assaulting her senses and forcing her to stop using her nose to breathe, but still she pushed forward.
The women at the scene had become chunks of meat.
Blood. Entrails. Teeth. Clumps of hair with pieces of scalp still attached. All scattered about the entrances to the two storehouses. It was impossible to tell which body part belonged to which person. Furthermore, one of the storehouses had a hole ripped into its side. Agitated, Kayu Saitoh tried to consider what to do next, what her next step should be, but she couldn’t think; her head wouldn’t work. She couldn’t link one idea with the next. The next thing Kayu Saitoh was conscious of was sitting on the ground being kicked in the back by Me
i Mitsuya, who had somehow arrived on the scene.
It took a few such kicks before Kayu Saitoh snapped out of her daze. She looked up to meet Mei Mitsuya’s eyes. Mei Mitsuya’s wrinkle-etched face was trembling, and she looked about to collapse, but she kept herself propped up using her wooden staff and sheer force of will, speaking the names of the old women who had been brutally dismembered. Kayu Saitoh learned through this that the dead were Matsuki Nagao, Ran Kubo, Kuwa Kure, and Sasaka Yagi, but as none of the victims had been particularly well known to her, this new piece of information did nothing one way or another to affect her already-shattered mental state.
“It was a bear!” Mei Mitsuya hollered.
That was the only explanation, of course, for what other creature could have performed such an act of brutality? Still, hearing it spelled out in so many words made Kayu Saitoh shudder. As the Village had been equipped with rifles, bears had simply not been a real issue there, and Kayu Saitoh had never heard of one actually attacking the Village. Bears were supposed to have been responsible for desecrating cemeteries, for killing and eating horses and cows, for attacking people while they harvested vegetables in the field, but that was just rumor, closer to legend than reality. Here, in Dendera, it was reality. Kayu Saitoh realized, once and for all, that she had just understood the crucial, decisive difference between the Village and Dendera.
Mei Mitsuya looked at the broken wooden spears and then entered the storehouse through the hole in its wall. Kayu Saitoh followed her and, as soon as she entered, saw the chaos inside. The stores of dried fish, potatoes, and beans had been well and truly eaten, with debris scattered around the floor. When Kayu Saitoh realized the implications of the sudden loss of so much of their valuable stores, her fear of the bear was replaced with a sense of despair at how they would possibly survive the morrow.
“Ludicrous!” Mei Mitsuya banged her staff against the ground. “What the hell is this? It’s ludicrous! Why would it do a thing like this? A bear! What have we ever done to hurt it? So, you think you can get away with ruining all our plans, do you? You? A mindless beast? Well, you’re wrong. I’m going to kill you for this! Kill you!”
3
A beast cannot speak the language of men and has no such thing as a name. Nevertheless, as the hair on this particular bear’s back was notably reddish, let us call her “Redback.” Let us say that Redback could speak the language of humans. What would she say if she were given the opportunity to explain herself? No doubt, she would angrily growl that the mountain was her territory, and that the Two-Legs had no right to be here. The reality was that Redback’s ancestors roamed the mountain for many a generation, long before people even arrived on the scene to start calling it “the Mountain.” And yet these Two-Legs had the temerity to appear on the scene and start cutting the trees down with their tools and shaping the mountain according to their will, carving what they called their village into the landscape, preventing Redback from roaming freely around what should have been her birthright.
Redback knew what a powerful beast she was.
She knew that she was the strongest, proudest beast in the area, as did the other beasts of the region, who all deferred to her might and kept out of her way. That was the rightful way of things. And yet when the two-legged intruders ignored this natural order, and when Redback decided to teach them a lesson by going to that place that they had claimed for themselves, Redback came across a group of these Two-Legs on the way down the mountain, and they had pointed those strange sticks at her that spat fire, and she felt a pain like no other as her rear leg went limp. After that Redback decided never to appear before the Two-Legs again. That was the law of nature, the logic of beasts. Avoid confrontation with that which is stronger than you.
Circumstances, however, conspired to cloud Redback’s usually sound animal instincts.
It was winter. The very fact of a bear roaming the mountains during winter was, in itself, an anomaly. Redback should have been hibernating, as she did most years. Most years she would eat her fill of salmon from the streams, and strawberries and lingonberries from the fields, and then settle into a comfortable, fatty, torpid stupor, but this year had been different. Food had been scarce, and she hadn’t managed to eat enough to acquire the necessary layer of insulating body fat. And so the cold winter wind had sapped away at her body heat, and when the snow began to fall and her stomach began to rumble, Redback sensed that her life was in danger and emerged prematurely from her winter hideaway. So far she had managed to scavenge just about enough nutrients to survive by gnawing at roots and other such meager offerings, but the miserable forage left her in a bewildered, disturbed state close to anger. Why should she—whose rightful territory this was, who was supposed to be stronger and prouder than every other creature in the mountain—be reduced to such misery?
On top of that, Redback had given birth to a cub the year before last.
Like her, the male cub had missed his opportunity to hibernate. Suffering extreme hunger, he followed his mother in short, weak strides. Whenever she looked at him, her maternal instincts heightened—in terms of human emotions, she wanted him to somehow survive. But the winter wouldn’t end, and food wasn’t to be found, and the mother and cub weakened further with each passing day. When they searched for it, they could find fir trees with inner bark to scavenge and paltry remnants of decaying plants buried beneath the snow, but none of this would fill their stomachs. Such was their existence, when one day, her cub became too emaciated to walk steadily, and her normally sound animal judgment went awry.
There were two places where the Two-Legs seemed to congregate. One of those was where Redback had tried to enter and received the awful wound from those strange fire-breathing sticks. But she had not yet tried the other one, so that was where she was heading. It wasn’t a risk she would have taken under normal circumstances, but it was clear that there just wasn’t enough food anymore, and besides, the fact that all of this should have been her territory was starting to gnaw deep. She drew on her remaining reserves of strength and raised her hackles. Night crows resting on a nearby tree branch flew away, sensing the disturbance in the air caused by Redback’s new sense of resolve. Redback was a female and slightly past her prime, but she had an unusually large head for her kind, and her build was exceptionally muscular, and her fangs and claws were all in good order. Redback had, after all, only ever lost one fight in her life, and that was to the Two-Legs with their strange spitting sticks. Redback wasn’t exactly calm at the prospect of having to face those things again, but her four legs carried her forward nonetheless. Redback—that is to say, a bear—is able to move through mountain terrain at speeds that are quite remarkable considering its short, stubby legs. So it wasn’t long before Redback arrived at that other place where the Two-Legs lived.
This place seemed quiet. Redback could remember that sharp smell those hateful sticks gave off when they had hurt her back leg. Well, that smell was nowhere to be found now. Still, Redback was taking no chances. She moved stealthily through the night, using the trees for cover, scouting out the whole area. Eventually she saw some of the Two-Legs. There were four of them with sticks in their hands, standing still in front of two of those strange dens that the Two-Legs made. There were ears of corn hanging from the walls of the dens. Redback sniffed the air once more, carefully, to check again if she could detect that sharp smell of those pain-sticks, and when she confirmed she couldn’t, she started advancing, slowly, toward the Two-Legs.
Redback moved boldly now. After all, there was nothing underhanded about what she was doing, not from her point of view. She was just taking back what was rightfully hers. This wasn’t an invasion—she was just claiming bounty that had been harvested from her territory. Unlike smaller, weaker animals that tried to sneak in to steal from under the Two-Legs’ noses, Redback simply walked up to the corn as if she had every right to do so and began to furiously devour it. The Two-Legs just stood there at first, dumbstruck,
at a complete loss as to how to deal with this new arrival. Having said that, they couldn’t simply watch in silence as Redback ransacked their stores, so eventually one of them plucked up the courage to swing her stick at Redback’s rear. At this point it would have been easy for Redback to take a lazy swipe with one of her massive paws and rip through the offending Two-Legs’ flesh and bone, but instead Redback chose to make a show of standing erect on her hind legs and facing her attackers, as if to show once and for all that this was her territory, not the Two-Legs’, and that she would take down any interlopers face to face, anytime, anyplace. Then, Redback decided it was time for a little experiment. She gave one of the Two-Legs a little exploratory jab, fully expecting the counterblow of the painful sticks and bracing herself for the pain. It never came. Instead, the Two-Legs’ head just flew off into the air, and blood spurted from the place where its head had been attached to its body. The remaining Two-Legs were rooted to the spot in fear, but in her own way Redback was even more fearful and confused than they were. She tried poking at another one of the Two-Legs with her claws. Its belly ruptured and its innards poured forth as it crumpled into a heap on the ground. Redback really wasn’t sure what to make of this complete lack of resistance, so she charged at one of the two remaining Two-Legs, slamming her into—and then through—the wall of one of the dens, as both the Two-Legs’ body and the wall were pulverized. Redback’s face poked through the wall too, and she had been a little slow in removing it to face the final Two-Legs, and when Redback finally did look back she realized that the creature was aiming its stick at her, ready to stick it in her anus. Redback was vulnerable there, she knew, so she shifted her rear end, and the Two-Legs’ stick bounced off her hind leg instead, snapping instantly. Redback jumped onto the Two-Legs, shoving it to the ground with her massive front paws and then, not really knowing what else to do, decided to take a big bite out of its head. Redback’s giant jaws and fangs made light work of the creature’s skull. The Two-Legs gave a short scream from inside Redback’s mouth and then was silent. Its flesh and blood and brains splattered viscerally onto Redback’s tongue.