Frost and Fire

by Roger Zelazny

  I regard the huge old tree and listen for its echoes down the ages: Yggdrasil, the Golden Bough, the Yule tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Bo beneath which Lord Gautama found his soul and lost it… .

  I move forward to run my hand along its rough bark.

  From that position I am suddenly given a new view of the valley below. The fields look like raked sand, the hills like rocks, Fuji a boulder. It is a garden, perfectly laid out… .

  Later I notice that the sun has moved. I have been standing here for hours. My small illumination beneath a great tree. Older than my humanity, I do not know what I can do for it in return.

  Stooping suddenly, I pick up one of its cones. A tiny thing, for such a giant. It is barely the size of my little fingernail. Delicately incised, as if sculpted by fairies.

  I put it in my pocket. I will plant it somewhere along my way.

  I retreat then, for I hear the sound of approaching bells and I am not yet ready for humanity to break my mood. But there was a small inn down the road which does not look to be part of a chain. I will bathe and eat there and sleep in a bed tonight.

  I will still be strong tomorrow.

  12. Mt. Fuji from Lake Kawaguchi

  Reflections.

  This is one of my favorite prints in the series: Fuji as seen from across the lake and reflected within it. There are green hills at either hand, a small village upon the far shore, a single small boat in sight upon the water. The most fascinating feature of the print is that the reflection of Fuji is not the same as the original; its position is wrong, its slope is wrong, it is snow-capped and the surface view of Fuji itself is not.

  I sit in the small boat I have rented, looking back. The sky is slightly hazy, which is good. No glare to spoil the reflection. The town is no longer as quaint as in the print, and it has grown. But I am not concerned with details of this sort. Fuji is reflected more perfectly in my viewing, but the doubling is still a fascinating phenomenon for me.

  Interesting, too … In the print the village is not reflected, nor is there an image of the boat in the water. The only reflection is Fuji’s. There is no sign of humanity.

  I see the reflected buildings near the water’s edge. And my mind is stirred by other images than those Hokusai would have known. Of course drowned R’lyeh occurs to me, but the place and the day are too idyllic. It fades from mind almost immediately, to be replaced by sunken Ys, whose bells still toll the hours beneath the sea. And Selma Lagerloffs Nils Holgersson, the tale of the shipwrecked sailor who finds himself in a sunken city at the bottom of the sea—a place drowned to punish its greedy, arrogant inhabitants, who still go about their business of cheating each other, though they are all of them dead. They wear rich, old-fashioned clothes and conduct their business as they once did above in this strange land beneath the waves. The sailor is drawn to them, but he knows that he must not be discovered or he will be turned into one of them, never to return to the earth, to see the sun. I suppose I think of this old children’s story because I understand now how the sailor must have felt. My discovery, too, could result in a transformation I do not desire.

  And of course, as I lean forward and view my own features mirrored in the water, there is the world of Lewis Carroll beneath its looking-glass surface. To be an Ama diving girl and descend … To spin downward, and for a few minutes to know the inhabitants of a land of paradox and great charm …

  Mirror, mirror, why does the real world so seldom cooperate with our aesthetic enthusiasms?

  Halfway finished. I reach the midpoint of my pilgrimage to confront myself in a lake. It is a good time and place to look upon my own countenance, to reflect upon all of the things which have brought me here, to consider what the rest of the journey may hold. Though images may sometimes lie. The woman who looks back at me seems composed, strong, and better-looking than I had thought she would. I like you, Kawaguchi, lake with a human personality. I flatter you with literary compliments and you return the favor.

  Meeting Boris lifted a burden of fear from my mind. No human agents of my nemesis have risen to trouble my passage. So the odds have not yet tipped so enormously against me as they might.

  Fuji and image. Mountain and soul. Would an evil thing cast no reflection down here—some dark mountain where terrible deeds were performed throughout history? I am reminded that Kit no longer casts a shadow, has no reflection.

  Is he truly evil, though? By my lights he is. Especially if he is doing the things I think he is doing.

  He said that he loved me, and I did love him, once. What will he say to me when we meet again, as meet we must?

  It will not matter. Say what he will, I am going to try to kill him. He believes that he is invincible, indestructible. I do not, though I do believe that I am the only person on earth capable of destroying him. It took a long time for me to figure the means, an even longer time before the decision to try it was made for me. I must do it for Kendra as well as for myself. The rest of the world’s population comes third.

  I let my fingers trail in the water. Softly, I begin to sing an old song, a love song. I am loath to leave this place. Will the second half of my journey be a mirror-image of the first? Or will I move beyond the looking-glass, to pass into that strange realm where he makes his home?

  I planted the cryptameria’s seed in a lonesome valley yesterday afternoon. Such a tree will look elegant there one day, outliving nations and armies, madmen and sages.

  I wonder where R’lyeh is? She ran off in the morning after breakfast, perhaps to pursue a butterfly. Not that I could have brought her with me.

  I hope that Kendra is well. I have written her a long letter explaining many things. I left it in the care of an attorney friend, who will be sending it to her one day in the not too distant future.

  The prints of Hokusai … They could outlast the cryptameria. I will not be remembered for any works.

  Drifting between the worlds I formulate our encounter for the thousandth time. He will have to be able to duplicate an old trick to get what he wants. I will have to perform an even older one to see that he doesn’t get it. We are both out of practice.

  It has been long since I read The Anatomy of Melancholy. It is not the sort of thing I’ve sought to divert me in recent years. But I recall a line or two as I see fish dart by: “Polycrates Samius, that flung his ring into the sea, because he would participate in the discontent of others, and had it miraculously restored to him again shortly after, by a fish taken as he angled, was not free from melancholy dispositions. No man can cure himself …” Kit threw away his life and gained it. I kept mine and lost it. Are rings ever really returned to the proper people? And what about a woman curing herself? The cure I seek is a very special one.

  Hokusai, you have shown me many things. Can you show me an answer?

  Slowly, the old man raises his arm and points to his mountain. Then he lowers it and points to the mountain’s image.

  I shake my head. It is an answer that is no answer. He shakes his head back at me and points again.

  The clouds are massing high above Fuji, but that is no answer. I study them for a long while but can trace no interesting images within.

  Then I drop my eyes. Below me, inverted, they take a different form. It is as if they depict the clash of two armed hosts. I watch in fascination as they flow together, the forces from my right gradually rolling over and submerging those to my left. Yet in so doing, those from my right are diminished.

  Conflict? That is the message? And both sides lose things they do not wish to lose? Tell me something I do not already know, old man.

  He continues to stare. I follow his gaze again, upward. Now I see a dragon, diving into Fuji’s cone.

  I look below once again. No armies remain, only carnage; and here the dragon’s tail becomes a dying warrior’s arm holding a sword.

  I close my eyes and reach for it. A sword of smoke for a man of fire.

  13. Mt. Fuji from Koishikawa in Edo

  Snow, o
n the roofs of houses, on evergreens, on Fuji— just beginning to melt in places, it seems. A windowful of women—geishas, I would say—looking out at it, one of them pointing at three dark birds high in the pale sky. My closest view of Fuji to that in the print is unfortunately snowless, geishaless, and sunny.

  Details …

  Both are interesting, and superimposition is one of the major forces of aesthetics. I cannot help but think of the hot-spring geisha Komako in Snow Country— Yasunari Kawabata’s novel of loneliness and wasted, fading beauty— which I have always felt to be the great anti-love story of Japan. This print brings the entire tale to mind for me. The denial of love. Kit was no Shimamura, for he did want me, but only on his own highly specialized terms, terms that must remain unacceptable to me. Selfishness or selflessness? It is not important …

  And the birds at which the geisha points … ? “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird?” To the point. We could never agree on values.

  The Twa Corbies? And throw in Ted Hughes’s pugnacious Crow? Perhaps so, but I won’t draw straws.—An illusion for every allusion, and where’s yesterday’s snow?

  I lean upon my staff and study my mountain. I wish to make it to as many of my stations as possible before ordering the confrontation. Is that not fair? Twenty-four ways of looking at Mt. Fuji. It struck me that it would be good to take one thing in life and regard it from many viewpoints, as a focus for my being, and perhaps as a penance for alternatives missed.

  Kit, I am coming, as you once asked of me, but by my own route and for my own reasons. I wish that I did not have to, but you have deprived me of a real choice in this matter. Therefore, my action is not truly my own, but yours. I am become then your own hand turned against you, representative of a kind of cosmic aikido.

  I make my way through town after dark, choosing only dark streets where the businesses are shut down. That way I am safe. When I must enter town I always find a protected spot for the day and do my traveling on these streets at night.

  I find a small restaurant on the corner of such a one and I take my dinner there. It is a noisy place but the food is good. I also take my medicine, and a little sake.

  Afterward, I indulge in the luxury of walking rather than take a taxi. I’ve a long way to go, but the night is clear and star-filled and the air is pleasant.

  I walk for the better part of ten minutes, listening to the sounds of traffic, music from some distant radio or tape deck, a cry from another street, the wind passing high above me and rubbing its rough fur upon the sides of buildings.

  Then I feel a sudden ionization in the air.

  Nothing ahead. I turn, spinning my staff into a guard position.

  An epigon with a six-legged canine body and a head like a giant fiery flower emerges from a doorway and sidles along the building’s front in my direction.

  I follow its progress with my staff, feinting as soon as it is near enough. I strike, unfortunately with the wrong tip, as it comes on. My hair begins to rise as I spin out of its way, cutting, retreating, turning, then striking again. This time the metal tip passes into that floral head.

  I had turned on the batteries before I commenced my attack. The charge creates an imbalance. The epigon retreats, head ballooning. I follow and strike again, this time mid-body. It swells even larger, then collapses in a shower of sparks. But I am already turning away and striking again, for I had become aware of the approach of another even as I was dealing with the first.

  This one advances in kangaroolike bounds. I brush it by with my staff, but its long bulbous tail strikes me as it passes. I recoil involuntarily from the shock I receive, my reflexes spinning the staff before me as I retreat. It turns quickly and rears then. This one is a quadruped, and its raised forelimbs are fountains of fire. Its faceful of eyes blazes and hurts to look upon.

  It drops back onto its haunches then springs again.

  I roll beneath it and attack as it descends. But I miss, and it turns to attack again even as I continue thrusting. It springs and I turn aside, striking upward. It seems that I connect, but I cannot be certain.

  It lands quite near me, raising its forelimbs. But this time it does not spring. It simply falls forward, hind feet making a rapid shuffling movement the while, the legs seeming to adjust their lengths to accommodate a more perfect flow.

  As it comes on, I catch it square in the midsection with the proper end of my staff. It keeps coming, or falling, even as it flares and begins to disintegrate. Its touch stiffens me for a moment, and I feel the flow of its charge down my shoulder and across my breast. I watch it come apart in a final photoflash instant and be gone.

  I turn quickly again but there is no third emerging from the doorway. None overhead either. There is a car coming up the street, slowing, however. No matter. The terminal’s potential must be exhausted for the moment, though I am puzzled by the consideration of how long it must have been building to produce the two I just dispatched. It is best that I be away quickly now.

  As I resume my progress, though, a voice calls to me from the car, which has now drawn up beside me:

  “Madam, a moment please.”

  It is a police car, and the young man who has addressed me wears a uniform and a very strange expression.

  “Yes, officer?” I reply.

  “I saw you just a few moments ago,” he says. “What were you doing?”

  I laugh.

  “It is such a fine evening,” I say then, “and the street was deserted. I thought I would do a kata with my bo.”

  “I thought at first that something was attacking you, that I saw something …”

  “I am alone,” I say, “as you can see.”

  He opens the door and climbs out. He flicks on a flashlight and shines its beam across the sidewalk, into the doorway.

  “Were you setting off fireworks?”

  “No.”

  “There were some sparkles and flashes.”

  “You must be mistaken.”

  He sniffs the air. He inspects the sidewalk very closely, then the gutter.

  “Strange,” he says. “Have you far to go?”

  “Not too far.”

  “Have a good evening.”

  He gets back into the car. Moments later it is headed up the street.

  I continue quickly on my way. I wish to be out of the vicinity before another charge can be built. I also wish to be out of the vicinity simply because being here makes me uneasy.

  I am puzzled at the ease with which I was located. What did I do wrong?

  “My prints,” Hokusai seems to say, after I have reached my destination and drunk too much brandy. “Think, daughter, or they will trap you.”

  I try, but Fuji is crushing my head, squeezing off thoughts. Epigons dance on his slopes. I pass into a fitful slumber.

  In tomorrow’s light perhaps I shall see …

  14. Mt. Fuji from Meguro in Edo

  Again, the print is not the reality for me. It shows peasants amid a rustic village, terraced hillsides, a lone tree jutting from the slope of the hill to the right, a snowcapped Fuji partly eclipsed by the base of the rise.

  I could not locate anything approximating it, though I do have a partly blocked view of Fuji—blocked in a similar manner, by a slope—from this bench I occupy in a small park. It will do.

  Partly blocked, like my thinking. There is something I should be seeing but it is hidden from me. I felt it the moment the epigons appeared, like the devils sent to claim Faust’s soul. But I never made a pact with the Devil … just Kit, and it was called marriage. I had no way of knowing how similar it would be.

  Now … What puzzles me most is how my location was determined despite my precautions. My head-on encounter must be on my terms, not anyone else’s. The reason for this transcends the personal, though I will not deny the involvement of the latter.

  In Hagakure, Yamamoto Tsunetomo advised that the Way of the Samurai is the Way of Death, that one must live as though one’s body were already dead in order to gain f
ull freedom. For me, this attitude is not so difficult to maintain. The freedom part is more complicated, however; when one no longer understands the full nature of the enemy, one’s actions are at least partly conditioned by uncertainty.

  My occulted Fuji is still there in his entirety, I know, despite my lack of full visual data. By the same token I ought to be able to extend the lines I have seen thus far with respect to the power which now devils me. Let us return to death. There seems to be something there, though it also seems that there is only so much you can say about it and I already have.

  Death … Come gentle … We used to play a parlor game, filling in bizarre causes on imaginary death certificates: “Eaten by the Loch Ness monster.” “Stepped on by Godzilla.” “Poisoned by a ninja.” “Translated.”

  Kit had stared at me, brow knitting, when I’d offered that last one.

  “What do you mean ‘translated’?” he asked.

  “Okay, you can get me on a technicality,” I said, “but I still think the effect would be the same. ‘Enoch was translated that he should not see death’—Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, 11:5.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It means to convey directly to heaven without messing around with the customary termination here on earth. Some Moslems believe that the Mahdi was translated.”

  “An interesting concept,” he said. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  Obviously, he did.

  I’ve always thought that Kurosawa could have done a hell of a job with Don Quixote. Say there is this old gentleman living in modern times, a scholar, a man who is fascinated by the early days of the samurai and the Code of Bushido. Say that he identifies so strongly with these ideals that one day he loses his senses and comes to believe that he is an old-time samurai. He dons some ill-fitting armor he had collected, takes up his katana, goes forth to change the world. Ultimately, he is destroyed by it, but he holds to the Code. That quality of dedication sets him apart and ennobles him, for all of his ludicrousness. I have never felt that Don Quixote was merely a parody of chivalry, especially not after I’d learned that Cervantes had served under Don John of Austria at the battle of Lepanto. For it might be argued that Don John was the last European to be guided by the medieval code of chivalry. Brought up on medieval romances, he had conducted his life along these lines. What did it matter if the medieval knights themselves had not? He believed and he acted on his belief. In anyone else it might simply have been amusing, save that time and circumstance granted him the opportunity to act on several large occasions, and he won. Cervantes could not but have been impressed by his old commander, and who knows how this might have influenced his later literary endeavor? Ortega y Gasset referred to Quixote as a Gothic Christ. Dostoevsky felt the same way about him, and in his attempt to portray a Christ-figure in Prince Myshkin he, too, felt that madness was a necessary precondition for this state in modern times.