Dendera

by Yuya Sato

  “The Mountain?” Kan Tominaga said. “Why would they go there?”

  “Maybe they realized they had no hope, and gave up and Climbed the Mountain. Or …”

  “Or?”

  “Maybe they went back to the Village.”

  Some time passed under heavy silence.

  Usuma Tsutsumi’s speculation troubled them all. If the three plague-bearing women returned to the Village, they would likely reveal Dendera’s existence. Kayu Saitoh couldn’t predict what the Village would do once they learned about Dendera, but she recognized that the women’s surprise attack would no longer be possible, and the Village might attack Dendera instead. At the very least, this would nullify the women’s largest advantage: the Village was ignorant of Dendera, while Dendera knew about the Village.

  “Don’t worry. They won’t go back to the Village,” Mei Mitsuya said. “What would happen if they did? They’d be killed, of course. They’ve witnessed it themselves. No, they have to be nearby. Shut up and search.”

  Her words held some truth, and the women calmed down and resumed their search amid the oppressive, clinging stench of blood. But they remained unable to find the three women. Then, just as one of them suggested moving their search to another hut, Koto Onodera burst into the room.

  “What is it?” Mei Mitsuya asked. “Did you find them?”

  “Th-they,” Koto Onodera gasped, heaving her shoulders, “they’ve shut themselves in the storehouse. It’s a siege.”

  “Bastards!” Mei Mitsuya screamed, teeth bared, spittle bubbling. She ran outside through the wall the bear had destroyed.

  Kayu Saitoh followed after, but the storehouse was a good distance away, and along the way she tired and tripped in the snow. She didn’t feel the coldness or pain. Such sensations were superseded by an unidentifiable fear that made her legs shake. She forced herself to stand, and she ran nearly oblivious to anything else. A siege at the storehouse. The thought filled her awareness. That alone was enough to make her certain that Soh Kiriyama’s group truly meant to fight Dendera.

  By the time Kayu Saitoh arrived at the storehouse, the other women had already surrounded the building.

  But nobody was doing anything.

  “What are you doing?” Kayu Saitoh asked Nokobi Hidaka, who was glaring at the storehouse door. “Open the door already.”

  “I can’t tell if they are pushing against it or if they’ve barred it, but the door won’t open.”

  “Bust it down then.”

  “We built it sturdy so it would withstand such attempts. Our spears are useless.”

  The storehouse, built differently than the other structures in Dendera, appeared impenetrable to most lines of attack. Kayu Saitoh snatched Nokobi Hidaka’s wooden spear and struck the door with it. At the first blow, the spear snapped like a twig.

  “Let’s set it on fire!” Tai Komaki suggested. “We’ll burn it down. We can burn down the storehouse and the plague inside it.”

  “Our food is inside,” Hono Ishizuka pointed out. “If we do that, we’ll starve to death. We won’t have a single potato to eat. We’ll die.”

  “If we don’t do anything, we’ll die of the plague. The plague will kill us before the starvation will.”

  “Well, the plague is terrifying, but starvation even more so. Do you really want to go through such suffering?”

  “Shut up!” Tai Komaki said, her eyes defiant. “Do you want to get the plague? Do you want to retch putrid blood before you die?”

  “If we’d stored up more food, we wouldn’t be having this problem. We could’ve set the storehouse on fire.” Hono Ishizuka didn’t attempt to hide her anger. “This is all because you Hawks idled about with your training instead of helping us gather food. You Hawks do nothing but cause Dendera trouble.”

  “What did you say?”

  “It was only thanks to the Doves’ stockpiles that we made it through the famine ten years ago with minimal losses.”

  Mei Mitsuya muttered, “Would you stop that? What good does talking like that do us?”

  The two women realized their argument was pointless, and their conflict dissipated, leaving only silence. The group of women got back to taking up their positions around the storehouse, itself silent as well.

  But when Kayu Saitoh realized what role she could play, she went to stand in front of the storehouse.

  “Soh Kiriyama, can you hear me?” she shouted. “I understand that you’re serious. I won’t disrespect you by asking you to open the door. But let me tell you this one thing: you’re wrong. You’re so very wrong. If you resist this way, you’ll only die. Those of you inside that storehouse, and those of us outside—we’ll all die in this confusion and ignorance. This isn’t a victory. You’re not making a point. Hey, what’s wrong with you? Answer me. Answer me!”

  No reply came.

  Kayu Saitoh recalled what Soh Kiriyama had said: “I’ll have a hard time letting them kill me without a fight.” She realized that this conviction was shared by all the women who escaped the Mountain to live in Dendera. The difference between the three fugitives and the women of Dendera was the circumstances of their resistance. With this realization, Kayu Saitoh stared at the storehouse and saw danger in failing to take the three women seriously. They weren’t simply clinging to their lives; they were making their last, desperate stand.

  2

  Night came, but nothing had changed. Several fire baskets cast light upon the storehouse, while the surrounding armed women, beset by a mixture of hunger and coldness and irritation, expectantly awaited a new sign of movement from within. But all in the storehouse remained still; its occupants issued not a single demand and made not a single noise. The women on the outside weren’t merely idle. Hono Ishizuka and several of the others had made several attempts to open negotiations. Eight of the women, headed by Mei Mitsuya, went up the Mountain to chop down a fir tree. They planned on using a log to batter down the door. These two separate approaches—negotiation and attack—proceeded concurrently. All had agreed to leave fire as only the last resort. They absolutely couldn’t lose the precious provisions stored inside.

  With Soh Kiriyama and the others holed up inside the storehouse, the rest of the women hadn’t been able to eat. The women of Dendera were chronically malnourished and accustomed to hunger, but robbed of the knowledge of when their next meal would come, the hunger wasn’t so easily endured. The fire baskets illuminated their haggard faces and anxious expressions. On the inside, their empty, aching stomachs churned, sapping their spirits before their physical strength had a chance to wane. Too exhausted to move, the women were halfheartedly watching the motionless storehouse when Hono Ishizuka came to stand in front of Kayu Saitoh. The woman’s face too showed exhaustion.

  “Hey, Kayu. You don’t have to keep standing there. Move where some of the fire can reach you. It’ll make you feel a little bit better.”

  “Please leave me alone. I’ll move when I want to.”

  “I know everyone’s on edge, between the plague and the hunger, but you seem upset about something else. What’s gotten you in such a foul mood?”

  “I’m not in a foul mood. I just have the feeling there’s a better way to go about this.”

  “A better way … I certainly can’t think of one.” Hono Ishizuka glanced over her shoulder at the storehouse. “They’ve got all of our food. We’re the ones who are imprisoned out here. If this goes on for days, we’ll have to go foraging in the Mountain.”

  “What about water? No matter how much food they have, they can’t survive without water.”

  “The storehouse holds water reserves for times of emergency. If they’re careful, they can make it last for several days. No matter what else, those three won’t be dying from hunger or thirst.”

  Kayu Saitoh thought of something that had been bothering her. “I heard someone saying that the Doves had saved the Haw
ks during some big famine. What was that about?”

  “Oh, that’s nothing important. What you said covers it. We were hit by a famine ten years ago, Dendera ran out of provisions, and five of us died. The Doves shared their food reserves with the Hawks.”

  “And I’m sure you got something out of it.”

  “Actually, we did.” Hono Ishizuka gave her a quick nod. “After that, the Hawks lost some of their power, and more women joined us Doves. Before then, it had just been Masari and me.”

  “Come to think of it, what’s Masari Shiina doing? If Dendera is so important to her, where is she now?”

  Kayu Saitoh searched the firelit faces for the woman but didn’t find her.

  Hono Ishizuka said, “This rough stuff is the duty of the young—and to be blunt, the Hawks.”

  “Listen, Hono Ishizuka,” Kayu Saitoh said, trying to appeal to the woman with her tone. “You know something about the plague, don’t you?”

  Her expression completely unchanged, Hono Ishizuka replied with a question. “Why would you think that?”

  “No reason. The thought just came to me. That’s all.”

  “Since you were kind enough not to hide your suspicions about me, I’ll give you a straight answer. I honestly don’t know anything about the plague.”

  “But you didn’t have any of the bear stew.”

  “I lived through the events sixteen years ago, so I was being cautious. Nothing more. Didn’t Naki say it this morning? She had an objection to eating the meat of the cub that rampaged through the plague victims’ graves.”

  “Do you really believe that? Do you believe that the bear’s meat has caused the plague to spread again?”

  “I don’t know.” Hono Ishizuka shook hear head wearily. “We can never know what the cause is—we just live here in Dendera. That’s why I took a precaution. I don’t think there’s anything unusual about that. If I had known that the meat would cause the plague, at the very least I wouldn’t have allowed the Doves to eat any of it.”

  Having said that, Hono Ishizuka walked around to the opposite side of the storehouse and disappeared into the shadows. For a moment, Kayu Saitoh watched the woman go, but then she realized that wasn’t her role, and she joined the others finding warmth around one of the fire baskets.

  The storehouse remained ever still.

  As Kayu Saitoh puzzled over what the three women were doing inside, her hand began to itch from the fire’s heat, and she scratched at it like a filthy monkey.

  Eventually, a voice called out from the darkness. The eight women had returned from the Mountain carrying a log. From the looks of the log, Kayu Saitoh thought that no matter how well barricaded, the door wouldn’t stand a chance.

  The eight women’s spirited expressions conveyed their confidence in the success of their plan. They laid the log to rest on the ground and brought their frozen bodies to the heat of the fires. Mei Mitsuya warmed herself as she explained her plan. As far as plans went, hers was simple. If the further attempts at negotiation were ignored, they would use the log to break open the door, and then they would butcher the three plague-bearers inside. Smiles of relief and optimism spread on the faces of the listening women, who then began a growling chant, saying, “Kill the plague, kill the plague.” Kayu Saitoh didn’t join in, but neither did she object to the butchering of the three women cloistered inside. She didn’t even think it was the wrong thing to do. She still had a thought or two for Soh Kiriyama, Makura Katsuragawa, and Somo Izumi, but she wasn’t in a position to give them any serious amount of consideration.

  “All right, let’s begin!” Mei Mitsuya shouted and ran to the log. The others in her group followed, took their positions, four on each side, and heaved up the log. From the point of view of the storehouse, Mei Mitsuya, Inui Makabe, Kyu Hoshina, and Ume Itano held the right side, while Chinu Nitta, Tai Komaki, Guri Togawa, and Naki Sokabe took the left, and they all stood at the ready. Hono Ishizuka hadn’t returned, so Hotori Oze attempted the negotiations, but no matter what she said, no response came. Mei Mitsuya held up her hand, and the rest of the women divided into two groups and moved to each side of the doorway, ready to attack as soon as the door was broken open. Kayu Saitoh had joined with the group on the left, looking from the storehouse.

  When all were ready, Mei Mitsuya let loose a bestial roar. Her voice lit a fire within the others. The sensations of battle filled Kayu Saitoh; her breaths came heavily and she clutched her wooden spear, no longer capable of reconsidering what—or whom—that weapon would be killing.

  The women holding the log charged ahead with ferocious force. When the storehouse door suddenly opened, they were unable to halt that force, and the eight women and the log went all the way inside. Mei Mitsuya, Kyu Hoshina, and Ume Itano scrambled back out, but in the next instant, the door was closed again. None of them knew what had happened; none of them realized what had been done to them.

  What brought them to understand were the screams coming from within the building. When Kayu Saitoh heard them, she finally realized that their plan had been countered. The three women inside had predicted the others would try to ram through the door and came up with an effective countermeasure. In secret, they unbarred the door, and just as the charge came, they opened the entrance on their assailants and locked them inside. Mei Mitsuya, Kyu Hoshina, and Ume Itano had barely escaped, but the other five—Inui Makabe, Chinu Nitta, Tai Komaki, Guri Togawa, and Naki Sokabe were trapped inside. And now came the screams. The door sprang open again, one of the old women was tossed out, and the door immediately closed. It was Inui Makabe. Her stomach was punctured in several places. Kayu Saitoh could see her chest rising and falling, so she thought the woman was still alive. But this was a simple misunderstanding; the motion was nothing more than the muscle spasms of the freshly deceased.

  After Inui Makabe’s corpse had been tossed out, the storehouse returned to silence. The door didn’t open, and no more screams could be heard. The women outside could only stare at the closed door. Kayu Saitoh thrust her spear into the ground and hastily left the scene. She had made a grave error. She had bungled a crucial judgment. These thoughts occupied her head as rage against Soh Kiriyama bubbled up inside her, while the same anger spread through the crowd surrounding the storehouse. Infuriated, Kayu Saitoh walked through the night. Most of the women were gathered at the storehouse, and a deep stillness filled the rest of Dendera, with little separating the settlement from the Mountain itself.

  She heard something, possibly a voice. She stopped and listened, and this time she could make out the voice as what it was: a moan. It was the moan of unceasing pain and fear wanting to be released, if only by some small measure. It seemed to come from within a nearby hut, and Kayu Saitoh peered inside. There, Ire Tachibana and Kushi Tachibana had collapsed in front of the hearth. A stone pot rested beside them. From the stench of the blood, Kayu Saitoh realized what had happened and quickly backed away from the hut. Breathing in and out through her nose, as if the night air would cleanse away the lingering smell, she tried to think of where Hono Ishizuka and Masari Shiina were and what they were doing.

  “Kayu.”

  As if Kayu Saitoh’s thoughts had taken form, Hono Ishizuka appeared behind her.

  Kayu Saitoh shoved Hono Ishizuka against the wall of the hut. “The plague and the bear meat are completely unrelated! Ire Tachibana and Kushi Tachibana didn’t eat the stew. But they’re vomiting foul blood.”

  “Kayu,” Hono Ishizuka repeated, her expression solemn. “Not a word of what you’ve seen to anyone.”

  “The plague is spreading. It’s spreading, and it has nothing to do with the bear meat. How can I not tell the others?”

  “Telling them the bear meat didn’t cause it won’t change anything. It’ll only add to the chaos, and everyone might start killing each other. We need to let them go on thinking the bear meat was the source.”

  “Hono Ishizuka
… You do know something about the plague.”

  “If I knew, I’d be doing something to stop it. Kayu, I’m a Dove, not a monster.” Her eyes glistened with indignant anger. “After we spoke in front of the storehouse, I thought that the situation would remain unchanged for a time, and I was going to go into the Mountain to look for food. But then …”

  “You found these two vomiting blood, is that it?”

  “I don’t think anyone but us knows.”

  “This isn’t something that can remain hidden forever.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  “That’s a fool’s talk.”

  “It’s no such thing,” Hono Ishizuka said heatedly. “I will protect Dendera no matter what. I won’t let something like this end us.”

  “Where do you find such spirit?” Kayu Saitoh said, but overpowered by Hono Ishizuka’s palpable determination, she released the woman.

  “Kayu, you have it too. The people who live in Dendera have only Dendera.” Hono Ishizuka felt at her shoulder where Kayu Saitoh’s grip had been. “Climbing the Mountain is forever closed to us, and we have no hope of defeating the Village. All we have left is Dendera. To protect its continued existence, I would perform any deception, and I would tell any lie.”

  “I won’t lie,” Kayu Saitoh said without hesitation.

  “That means telling everyone about Ire and Kushi. If you do that, there’ll be slaughter. You’ll be the villain of Dendera.”

  “Nonsense. I’ll only be telling the truth. And you mean to tell me to keep it to myself? That won’t make the plague go away.”

  “It went away sixteen years ago,” Hono Ishizuka said. “We killed the ones with the symptoms, and the plague went away. We don’t have any proof connecting the two, but … No, because we don’t have any proof, we have to do the same thing this time.”

  “You want to kill Ire Tachibana and Kushi Tachibana? They’re still breathing.”

  “What if I did? Would that make me the villain?”