Dendera

by Yuya Sato

  “And the two of you intend to attack by yourselves?”

  “Weren’t you the one who told me to do it alone if I was brave enough?”

  “I was just talking.”

  “I should hope so.” Nokobi Hidaka chuckled. “I won’t do anything rash. I won’t move until the time is right.”

  As she listened to the rain fall into the stone pot, Kayu Saitoh said, “Masari Shiina and Hono Ishizuka might already be aware of how you feel. They’ve split up the Hawks into different huts, haven’t they? That’s proof that they’re taking precautions.”

  “Even if the Hawks are split up, even if Mei is dead, my hate for the Village won’t go away.” Nokobi Hidaka touched a hand to her wrinkled cheek. “Even the Doves have to feel some resentment or something toward the Village. As long as those feelings exist among those of Dendera, there will always be Hawks.” She looked Kayu Saitoh straight on. “What I think, Kayu, is that you need to attack the Village. I don’t know your true feelings, but I can see that you don’t know them either.”

  “Don’t talk like you know.”

  “But if you attack the Village, couldn’t it be that you’ll find this aspiration you so desire?”

  Filled with discontent, Kayu Saitoh repeated, “Don’t talk like you know.”

  “Look, I don’t care for Dendera either,” Nokobi Hidaka said, giving weight to her words. “And I don’t mean that just because our leader changed from Mei to Masari. I’ve felt that way for a long time. By hiding the plague and the killings, we act just the same as the Village. We weren’t born in Dendera. We were born in the Village and raised in the Village. All of our deeds and all of our relationships are rooted in the Village.”

  “But you want to attack the Village. You want to kill everyone.”

  “I wanted to be born somewhere else … That’s all,” Nokobi Hidaka said softly. “If only I had, then I wouldn’t have been forced to Climb the Mountain. I could have lived my whole life in prosperity. I could have lived my whole life in happiness. I could have died still treasuring my birth, my growth, my deeds, and my relationships. But that’s impossible here. The Village exists through violence, and Dendera exists through deception. And yet only our relationships are true. It’s enough to drive you mad.”

  “And that’s why you want to attack them—because it pains you to see people working their whole lives when they can’t even get along with each other?”

  “That’s right,” Nokobi Hidaka said.

  “Ridiculous. It’s too extreme. Is that line of thinking enough to make you truly able to carry out an attack? Can you really kill all of them? Can you really butcher your family and your acquaintances? The way I see it, you’re just trying to destroy everything they’ve done.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Will destroying everything bring you satisfaction?”

  “If that means their deeds and relationships will cease to be,” Nokobi Hidaka said. “I never wanted to live long enough to tell a lie. When we captured Makura in secret after she developed the symptoms, and when I hid the plague from sixteen years ago from you, I felt it was wrong … but I can’t take back what I did.”

  Struck by an intuition, Kayu Saitoh said, “Nokobi Hidaka, were you the one who told Soh Kiriyama?”

  Without any sign of surprise, Nokobi Hidaka nodded and explained that she had been friends with Soh Kiriyama’s older sister. She and the sister had been close in age, and consequently she knew Soh Kiriyama as more than an acquaintance. Kayu Saitoh crossed her arms and watched a bead of water prepare to fall from the edge of the ceiling beam. As she thought about how so many different ways of thinking had led to the same idea of raiding the Village, her face took on a look not far from fatigue.

  “Everyone has their own reason to attack the Village,” Kayu Saitoh said. “Why you’re attacking the Village, why Hotori Oze is attacking the Village, and why Mei Mitsuya wanted to attack the Village—they’re all different.”

  “Ate Amami, Hikari Asami, and the other Hawks might still want to, but they too likely have their own separate reasons. Other people are different from me.”

  Finished with this conversation, Kayu Saitoh said, “If you understand that, then quit trying to lure me into the Hawks. I’m not interested in your ideology.”

  Nokobi Hidaka stood, then picked up the water pot and carried it outside. Her manner wasn’t that of giving up on Kayu Saitoh, but rather that she was simply giving the woman time to think, and moreover, she wasn’t trying to hide it. Kayu Saitoh responded with a snort. On the other hand, she envied Nokobi Hidaka for holding on to her thoughts of attack despite the current situation. She stretched her neck, then searched her thoughts for what her own aspiration should be if she wasn’t attached to Dendera, was skeptical about the assault on the Village, and could no longer Climb the Mountain. During her seventy years in the Village, she had gotten by without giving particular thought to anything, and she wasn’t used to doing it now. In her lack of experience, a part of her naively believed that if she kept on thinking and thinking enough the answer must come to her. She hadn’t learned that some problems could never, ever be solved, no matter how hard she puzzled over them, and no matter how much advice she was given. This was a limitation Kayu Saitoh faced at this moment.

  Nokobi Hidaka returned carrying the empty stone pot. In the Village, she had been an entirely average woman. She held no convictions or anything else that made her stand out. Like any woman, she married into a house and made that house her life. Kayu Saitoh didn’t know what experiences and resentments the woman had accumulated during that ordinary life that informed who she was now.

  As Kayu Saitoh thought upon these things, she suddenly realized that Masari Shiina might hate the Village more than anyone else. She had lost her eye in the Mountain-Barring to which she had had only a tangential connection. Taking that into account, Masari Shiina had earned the right to attack the Village more than any other, yet as the chief of Dendera and the head of the Doves, why she focused her efforts on Dendera’s reconstruction was a mystery to Kayu Saitoh. Trying to imagine the new chief’s feelings toward the Village only made her a little confused.

  Before she knew it, she was asking the question aloud.

  “Why do you think Masari Shiina won’t attack the Village?”

  Warming herself in the heat of the hearth, Nokobi Hidaka replied, “How should I know? Like I said, other people are different from me.”

  “So Masari Shiina has her own personal motivations. I wonder what Hono Ishizuka thinks about that.”

  “Again, only she knows. But Hawk or Dove, hate for the Village is the one thing we all share equally. All that differs is the path of the revenge; the direction of the fury. Listen, Kayu, that aspiration or whatever it is you’re looking for—it might be in revenge or fury after all.”

  Kayu Saitoh turned her gaze to the silent, sitting Shigi Yamamoto and thought, If that’s the case, then even this one has an aspiration. But the woman remained unresponsive.

  Exhausted from all her thinking, Kayu Saitoh sighed. “I had no idea finding my own aspiration—finding my own way of thinking—would take so much effort … even after seventy years of living.”

  “I know what you’re saying. Everyone else acts as they please, and you act as you please too. It can be a shock.”

  “A shock … You’re right. I’ve been in constant shock since I came to Dendera.”

  “You learned you’re not some tree or some rock. That would unsettle anyone. Now, how about we put some more wood in that fire. We’re not trees or rocks—if we don’t keep warm, we’ll die.”

  Nokobi Hidaka went to fetch some firewood from the pile on the dirt floor at the hut’s entrance.

  As Kayu Saitoh listened to the raindrops hitting the roof, a penitent resolve came to her, albeit indistinctly. If she had to force this feeling into words, it would have been this: for each
individual to fulfill her personal aspiration, she either needed to draw in others to her cause or go it alone. In addition, under Masari Shiina’s leadership, Dendera’s currents had strengthened even further. Instead of constantly raising her objections to each and every constraint placed upon her—including the larger constraint that was Dendera, and the smaller ones that were the other women—Kayu Saitoh needed to establish her own aspiration. For the first time, she saw objectively the distance between herself and Dendera, and herself and the other women. This of course didn’t immediately change anything, but she was content in feeling that she had progressed beyond pouring all her energy into negativity.

  6

  That sort of resolve—or any kind of newfound direction in life—meant nothing to Redback, being a creature of the wild. She kicked at the earth with her four legs, propelling her giant body forward. But if she was to continue on, she needed meat, and for that, she returned to land where the Two-Legs dwelled.

  7

  “You’ve come,” Masari Shiina said, her voice unperturbed. “You’ve come, you damn bear.”

  Because Masari Shiina assumed the brown bear would attack again and had assigned women to watch duty, she had been able to respond even when the attack came at night. When the word came from Usuma Tsutsumi, who was one of the lookouts, the chief promptly assembled all of the women inside the manor. Kayu Saitoh and Nokobi Hidaka had even brought Shigi Yamamoto inside. The nervous women filled the space of the ground floor room and, amid their own collective stench, awaited Masari Shiina’s next announcement. As the scar on her head throbbed, Kayu Saitoh tried to detect the presence of the bear she knew must be near, but the sound of the pouring rain blotted out all else.

  Masari Shiina stood before the women, affixing them in place with the stare of her single eye. She spoke.

  “According to a report from one of our watch, the bear has entered Dendera and is roaming near the burial grounds. But you have no need to fear. This is not the Dendera of Mei Mitsuya’s time. We have a trap. Unfortunately, in this rain, we can’t cage the bear inside and burn it alive, but we have more than one way of using the trap. We will barricade ourselves inside, and it will be our impregnable fortress. Do not worry. Do not fear. Do not be ruled by panic, for it is panic that invites death. If we keep our nerve, victory will be ours. No one else will die. That is all.”

  The women began to move.

  Kayu Saitoh and Nokobi Hidaka pulled Shigi Yamamoto outside with them. With the moon shrouded behind heavy clouds, the fire baskets extinguished by the rain, and the women’s torches kept unlit lest the bear see them, the outside was in near total darkness. Kayu Saitoh strained her eyes to see, but she could hardly catch sight of her own body, let alone the bear. What she couldn’t see, she imagined, and several seeds of doubt began to sprout inside her. She wasn’t the only one to be stricken by this affliction, and she heard one of the women let out a terrified moan. Kayu Saitoh responded to the sound with immediate disgust and tasted shame at knowing it had almost been her. She and Nokobi Hidaka were carrying Shigi Yamamoto by the arms, and she firmly pulled Shigi Yamamoto closer. Kayu Saitoh thought that if she gave in to foolish hysteria, she would cause Shigi Yamamoto trouble—possibly even to a fatal degree—so she turned the panic into courage. Even so, with the darkness remaining ever so dark, and the bear’s location remaining a mystery, the women took a considerably long time to reach the trap at the clearing’s edge. But the rain concealed their scent and sound, and they arrived unnoticed by the bear. As the raindrops pelted her, Kayu Saitoh reached out into the darkness with one hand. She felt the wall. She hadn’t seen the completed structure, but she had heard Hono Ishizuka’s description of the plan and was relieved to find that the sturdiness of the wall attested to the women’s capable construction. The door took several women to open and let out a leaden groan as it did.

  Once the women were through the doorway and had confirmed by roll call that all had made it inside, Hikari Asami and Ate Amami closed the door with considerable effort. Kayu Saitoh sat Shigi Yamamoto down and, relying on the faint light of the crude hearth set into the center of the space, surveyed the interior. From the walls to the ceiling, layered stacks of logs surrounded the women. Several fist-sized holes had been opened in intervals along the walls, and in each corner was a more-than-ample supply of wooden spears. The nineteen women filled this space, waiting, their shoulders jostling, even their breaths battering against one another. Even under normal conditions, the room would have been hot and stuffy from their body heat alone, but the women were feverish with fright, and a thick, nauseating stench hung in the air. Kayu Saitoh’s throat twitched, sticky, and she felt suffocated.

  Soon, she heard the sound of something large stepping in the muddy earth. The noise continued, growing louder than the rain. Kayu Saitoh felt as though her insides were fervently leaping about. She pressed firmly against her stomach, battling the sensation, and listened. The stomping footsteps approached. The bear. That sole thought occupied Kayu Saitoh’s mind. The bear. The bear. The bear. The bear. She strained her ears to listen, but something soon provided more confirmation than the sound.

  She saw something bright red through one of the holes in the wall.

  The color stood out even in the gloom, and she knew exactly what it was: the thick red fur that grew from the rear of the bear’s head down its back. Kayu Saitoh’s body went as stiff as a dried-out twig. As blood rushed to her eyes, she looked out through the hole. The red fur, as gorgeous as it was wet, glistened brazenly in the darkness. At the sight of the bear, the women began to drip sweat from their foreheads and under their arms, but one stood watch in steadfast confidence of their victory, and that was Masari Shiina. The chief positioned herself at the wall closest to the bear, opened her right eye wide, looked through the hole, then quietly raised her arm. She was signaling the women to prepare to attack. Kayu Saitoh tilted her head slightly to see the women nearest the chief—Hono Ishizuka, Ate Amami, Hikari Asami, Itsuru Obuchi, Ume Itano, and Tsusa Hiiragi—pick up wooden spears from the pile without making a sound.

  Masari Shiina swept her hand down.

  The six women thrust their spears through the fist-size holes.

  The next instant came a bellowing roar of surprise and pain from the sudden attack. Then a fierce impact and noise assailed the trap and startled the women inside. Hono Ishizuka, Ate Amami, and Ume Itano recoiled, while Hikari Asami, Itsuru Obuchi, and Tsusa Hiiragi’s spears shattered. Outside, the bear raged, battering the walls again and again. A snapping log sent the women’s fear to a new level. The women packed inside the narrow confines clashed shoulders and buttocks and legs as they began to panic.

  “Only one log broke,” Masari Shiina said as if nothing had happened. “Keep attacking.”

  “Aye, aye!” replied Tsusa Hiiragi, who seemed to have found her bravery. The woman lifted another spear and jabbed it through one of the holes. The bear roared again. Pushing past anyone in her way, Kayu Saitoh ran to the wall. From directly on the other side came the sound and shocks of the beast’s powerful forelegs trying to break through, but no matter how giant the creature, destroying a log wall wouldn’t be easy.

  Kayu Saitoh picked up a spear and thrust it through one of the holes.

  It didn’t go very deep, but she felt the wooden tip dig into something. She pulled back her spear and thrust it again. This time, she felt more of an effect, and exhilaration overcame her.

  “I’ve pierced it!” Kayu Saitoh shouted. “I’ve pierced it! Damn, we can kill this thing!”

  Her words ignited the women’s fighting spirit, and Ate Amami, Hikari Asami, and Itsuru Obuchi readied their spears and plunged them through the holes. Their attacks were met with more howls and cries.

  Then, suddenly, Kayu Saitoh felt nothing on the other end of her spear.

  Gone were the cries, and gone was the sound of walls being battered.

  She pulled back her spear
and looked through the hole, but the outside was completely still. All she heard was the sound of the rain, and all she saw was darkness.

  Tsusa Hiiragi snorted and looked out through one of the holes. “The bear ran away, did it?”

  “Don’t go outside,” Masari Shiina commanded.

  Time crawled. The women had looked outside all four of the walls and saw no bear, but with the rain and the darkness, they might have only missed it, and there was the possibility that the creature had only feigned its escape and was hiding somewhere nearby. From inside, the women had no way of finding out. All they could do was wait, quiet and still, until they could be sure. The wait was stifling. The women were more nervous now than before the bear had come, but more lifeless at the same time. All they did was wait. Kayu Saitoh wiped sweat from her face and watched through the hole as if she were a part of the wall itself, but she learned nothing save for the smell of the rain. She put her ear to the wall, but the downpour blocked out any other sound. Soon, some women gave in to fatigue and stale air and slumped down, miserable. When the hearth’s fire died out, darkness and cold added to their suffering. Kayu Saitoh was not exempt, and when she stared out through the hole in the wall and saw nothing, she could no longer tell if it was because of the darkness or if she had gone blind. She put her hand to the wall to steady her wavering body. She needed to breathe deeply of the outside air or she would throw up all of the unpleasantness inside her.

  But she withstood this intense urge, and at some point, she noticed that light was coming to the outside. The rain hadn’t stopped, but the bear was nowhere in sight. Women at other holes announced that they didn’t see the bear either. After looking out every hole, Masari Shiina finally allowed them out. They opened the door, and refreshing, cold air blew in, but the women remained cautious and carefully stuck out their necks. Once they were sure the bear was gone, they tumbled outside like a shabby avalanche. Tsusa Hiiragi vomited the moment she leaped out the door. As Kayu Saitoh staggered outside, she turned back to look at the trap. Several cracks ran through the logs. Hikari Asami ran a hand along one of the cracks and whispered, as if to herself, that the walls needed reinforcing.