by Yuya Sato
“This way,” she said, keeping ahold of Kayu Saitoh’s arm as she ran ahead. “You really couldn’t have done it without me.”
Thankful for Hikari Asami’s decision to help, she shook free from the woman’s grasp and kept on running.
At the speed the two women were sprinting down the Mountain, one tiny mistake would send them tumbling. Yet still they had no hope of outrunning the bear. The beast’s odor, its bloodthirsty growls, and its tangible rage pursued them. But Kayu Saitoh couldn’t spare a glance over her shoulder. Focused on what was ahead, she ran. But the view around her was unchanging. The trees stood densely, and deep snow blanketed the earth. Gritting her teeth, Kayu Saitoh squeezed every bit of strength from her body as she ran. Each time she sucked the cold air in through her nose and mouth, her lungs protested in pain. Her wide-open eyes had thoroughly dried out, bulging nearly out of their sockets. Her feet had long since gone numb, and she couldn’t tell when they were on the ground. And yet she kept on running. But the bear had closed in, and Kayu Saitoh could feel its breath hot and wet on her back.
“Keep running this way,” Hikari Asami said from ahead. “Run straight forward. When the woods open up … the Village will be right in front of you.”
Then Hikari Asami stopped on her heels and lunged at the bear.
The beast hadn’t been able to react to this sudden movement, and the two of them rolled down the slope and crashed into a large fir tree. Hikari Asami was wedged between the bear and the tree, and the impact had split open her head, but she had tangled herself up in the bear’s front legs. The beast moved its limbs about and managed to sink one set of its glistening claws into the woman. Kayu Saitoh thought only of reaching the Village. She ran with her mind cleared of anything else.
This was her plan.
If the few remaining old women weren’t strong enough to defeat the bear, they could lead the bear to the Village. The people of the Village might kill the bear. Or, the bear might kill everyone in the Village. But for the plan to work, someone had to lead the bear to them. And no one could do this but Kayu Saitoh. If any other of the women did it, any survivors would find her presence suspect and would come looking in the Mountain. And they would likely find Dendera. But unlike the other women, Kayu Saitoh hadn’t been on the Mountain long. The people of the Village would simply consider her a coward who, unable to face her death, had come back. She didn’t care if they butchered her. She didn’t care if the bear devoured her first. And even if she somehow survived, the potatoes were in her stomach.
She would be able to die.
Kayu Saitoh kept on running. Swinging her remaining arm, she gave herself to the run. She didn’t see anything. She didn’t feel anything. With her sandals shredded, her gray hair frozen standing, blood streaming from her nose, her straw coat blown away, and her white robe flapping open, Kayu Saitoh looked like a monster. She shot across the Mountain with the ardent wish to die not as a monster but as a person. She wanted to die as a human being.
Suddenly, she could again sense the bear’s presence.
Thinking she had built up a little distance between herself and the beast, she looked over her shoulder and saw it chasing after her, its red fur, bathed in Hikari Asami’s blood, glistening even more redly than before. Its stout legs moved with terrific speed, and it kicked up snow as it gave chase, its single eye glittering with pure rage. A single thought materialized inside Kayu Saitoh’s mind: Kill and devour, and she knew the bear’s creed had jumped into her thoughts. She shook her head to dispel the image, then looked forward again as she glided down the Mountain’s slopes. A change had come to the Mountain’s scenery. It was nothing dramatic, merely a slight alteration, but the scenery now felt familiar to her. She was convinced this feeling was no mistake. She had seen this place when she had Climbed the Mountain. She had seen it while her son carried her on his back. Her lips broke into a smile, and the air rushed into her mouth and puffed out her cheeks like those of a frog. But meanwhile the bear was catching up to her, its growls coming from close by now, but Kayu Saitoh kept on running.
She was running as hard as she could when she noticed that she was approaching the tree line. And she saw that the snow had melted in patches, exposing the bare soil. But more than that, the slope had eased up, and the ground was flat underneath her feet. She was nearing the Village. Nearly half naked, nearly a monster, but wholly human, Kayu Saitoh held nothing back as she ran. From behind, she could still hear the bear gaining on her. As she kept running, she became aware of a rich aroma she hadn’t smelled in some time. It was the smell of wet earth. The snow had melted, bringing the hidden earth to the surface where it released its pent-up aroma. Kayu Saitoh felt as if she could cry out in elation, but she wasn’t out of danger yet. The bear too was desperate; desperate to carry out that single-minded thought—Kill and devour!—desperate to continue its bloodline. Kayu Saitoh sensed this, herself desperate to die and desperate to find her ending. She picked up her speed, for death right here and right now was the only outcome she could not permit. But she had pushed her body beyond its limits. Her entire mind was occupied with putting one leg in front of the other. Blood seeped from her cracked lips, wind buffeted her swollen eyelids, a sour taste spread in her mouth, her heartbeat thundered in her ears—in other words, she was near death—but her legs alone were in fine function. And yet even they had become a struggle.
Then Kayu Saitoh’s feet, which had been almost completely numb, suddenly stepped on something. She felt a soft, springing sensation she hadn’t experienced in a long time. This was no time to concern herself over such things, and she ignored it and kept running, but then she felt it again, and she permitted herself to lower her gaze, just a little bit, and looked at the ground.
The adonis flowers had begun to sprout.
Startled, Kayu Saitoh broadened her view. New buds dotted the ground where the adonis had broken through the thinning snow. The yellowish buds spread out atop their leafy stems, pushing aside the snow to poke their heads out of the ground. They were little things, but they made a grand statement. Kayu Saitoh saw the many buds that would soon be blooming in abundance, and she knew that spring was coming. Spring began with the adonis flowers; spring was coming. She felt strength flooding through her. She was, of course, not completely healed, but she would at least be able to run at her fastest for a little while longer. She ran through the adonis, their buds beneath her feet. Those round buds came up everywhere, and beneath them, their thick roots must have extended far.
Kayu Saitoh, and the bear, ran through this landscape. She could count the fir trees, and only a thin layer of snow—and the adonis buds—covered the ground. The Mountain was behind them now. Kayu Saitoh, and the bear, were running almost on top of each other. Kayu Saitoh, and the bear, ran as if it were only natural. Kayu Saitoh looked up from the adonis flowers, and there, not that far away, she saw the Village.
END
Yuya Sato, born 1980, is a writer of “strange fiction,” which features fantastic or horrific concepts treated in a refined literary style. Some of his short work has appeared in English in the mixed manga/prose anthology series Faust. His novel 1000 Novels and Backbeard won the Yukio Mishima Prize.
Haikasoru
The Future Is Japanese
PHANTASM JAPAN—NICK MAMATAS AND MASUMI WASHINGTON, EDITORS
The secret history of the most famous secret agent in the world. A bunny costume that reveals the truth in our souls. The unsettling notion that Japan itself may be a dream. The tastiest meal you’ll never have, a fedora-wearing neckbeard’s deadly date with a yokai, and the worst work shift anyone—human or not—has ever lived through. Welcome to Phantasm Japan.
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Gary A. Braunbeck
Quentin S. Crisp
Project Itoh
Yusaku Kitano
Jacqueline Koyanagi
Alex Dally MacFarlane
James A
. Moore
Zachary Mason
Miyuki Miyabe
Lauren Naturale
Tim Pratt
Benjanun Sriduangkaew
Seia Tanabe
Joseph Tomaras
Dempow Torishima
Sayuri Ueda
ASURA GIRL—OTARO MAIJO
Seventeen-year-old Aiko lives a life of casual sex and casual violence, though at heart she remains a schoolgirl with an unrequited crush on her old classmate Yoji Kaneda. Life is about to get harder for Aiko, as a recent fling, Sano, has been kidnapped, and the serial killer Round-and-Round Devil has begun slaughtering children. The youth are rioting in the streets, egged on by the underground Internet bulletin board known as the Voice from Heaven. Expecting that Yoji will come and save her from the madness, Aiko posts a demand for her own murder on the V of H, but will she be left waiting … or worse?
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