Japanese Dreams

by Sean Wallace (ed)

  Another item I had not provisioned myself with: a knife. But then, I had emptiness of form, better than any blade. I hoped. Murmuring my sutra, I began the onerous chore of unknotting and unwinding the silk. Before long, I knelt in a pool of air-light whiteness. But as I tugged the final strip, I felt sweat tickling my forehead. Without thinking, I rubbed it away. My fingers came back smeared with black, the Hannya-Shin-Kyo characters smudged from the droplet of perspiration.

  Kimitake’s eyes started open. We shared a moment of fright, then he flung himself away, gripping the gofu in both hands.

  “Guards!” he shouted.

  The two soldiers barreled in, knocking me to the ground. One thumped my head with his fist, while the other drew his katana.

  “Wait!” Kimitake called.

  The speeding katana stopped, its tip a child’s fingertip from my throat.

  “Before you die, thief, tell me who procured your services. Who knows about the gofu and the oni?”

  “My service is not procured,” I said.

  Kimitake ignored my denial. “Tell me who spies upon me at Yoritomo’s court. Give me the name of the man who dares plot against me, and your death will be quick. Otherwise, I will ensure that your last hours are a banquet of suffering.”

  “I am not from Yoritomo. My name is Taira no Chikazane. My father was Taira no Sukemori.”

  A sinister smile curved Kimitake’s lips. “Sukemori’s brat. You survived, after all. No matter. The detail of your death was only postponed.”

  He displayed the gofu, taunting me with the gem under my chin. “Be cheered, boy. You will die as your father did.”

  I stared at him. “You are the steel beneath the paper.”

  Kimitake swept from the tent, gesturing to his soldiers to bring me. He snatched up a burning brand while they hefted me like a sack of rice and dragged me to the black cave mouth.

  “Oni!” Kimitake shouted. “Come out. I have a gift for you.”

  The ground shivered as the demon emerged. “What is this?” he grumbled.

  “Do you not recognize him?” Kimitake said. “You devoured his father many years ago. I would have spitted him upon a katana as a babe, but now he shall meet the same fate as Sukemori.”

  “He is only a boy.”

  “He is old enough to die. Sukemori’s death was too easy. You will eat his son alive, beginning at his feet.” Kimitake flaunted the gofu, shoving it at the oni like a weapon. “Obey me!”

  Hissing and yowling, a milk-white star detached itself from the abyss of sky and sped through the air. It struck Kimitake’s outstretched hand, and the gofu flew out, an arc of gold. Four red stripes crossed Kimitake’s wrist, possibly the first blood that Hime had ever drawn.

  For a heartbeat, we hovered, frozen. Then the oni, Kimitake, his two soldiers, and I scrambled after the gofu.

  The torch dropped, sputtering and dying on the ground, and all was blackness. Around me, the sound of frantic movement swelled the night, accompanied by the oni’s bellows. A man screamed, and I heard silk and other, thicker things torn asunder. The chime of drawn steel rang out.

  I crouched in the dark, searching. It was an impossible task. I would never find the tiny jewel before the oni turned its fury to me.

  “Hime, I can’t see it!” I shouted.

  “Clarity!” she yowled. “Heed Akio’s wisdom. This is another truth.”

  It seemed a questionable time to meditate, but I did as Hime advised. I inhaled and pushed aside the wet, ugly sounds erupting in the darkness, exhaled, and let my terror leave with my breath. I whispered the syllables of Hannya-Shin-Kyo and embraced the stillness between thoughts like a warm robe against the cold.

  In the quietude of my mind’s eye, I saw the sun. It floated upon the horizon in glorious brilliance, wreathed in garlands of fire.

  I plucked it from the sky and opened my eyes.

  In my hand, the gofu blazed, turning the clearing from night to noon. All activity stopped, fixated by the radiant jewel.

  The oni gripped its iron club in a monstrous claw. At its feet, both of Kimitake’s men sprawled in unnatural poses, their blood soaking the ground. Kimitake had drawn his katana.

  “Oni, stop!” I shouted.

  The demon regarded me. “I have no argument with you, son of Taira no Sukemori. Give me the gofu, and I will not trouble you.”

  “Do not believe him!” Kimitake shouted. “He is a demon and lies as easily as he breathes.”

  “As you do.” I stepped forward. “Oni, lay down your club.”

  The oni did not obey, but only stood, watching me.

  “Fool!” Kimitake cried. “You think possession gives you mastery over a demon’s youki? It took me years to learn the secrets of the gofu. Give it back, or the oni will kill us both.”

  “I think he will not harm me while I hold it. Is that so, oni?”

  The oni rumbled assent. “But know, young Taira, that though you hold my fetters, I will not volunteer the key. I will not willingly embrace slavery.”

  “That demon killed your father,” Kimitake said.

  “You may as soon blame my iron club for Sukemori’s death,” the oni growled. “I was your tool.”

  “Unbound, it will destroy indiscriminately. Demons have no honor, only hunger and lust.”

  I faced oni and kinsman. “The demon has shown more honor than you.” I flung the gofu at the oni. Fast as thought, the oni snatched it from the air. He popped it into his gaping mouth and swallowed.

  “Fool!” Kimitake shrilled. He slashed at me, a killing stroke, and the world slowed. For the third time that night, I watched my death approach. But again it was deflected, this time by the bluntness of iron.

  “No,” the oni said. “You have harmed this one enough.” A claw snaked out, taloned lightning, and seized Kimitake around the waist. The club came down on the nobleman’s head. A slight tap, but it rendered Kimitake senseless.

  The oni bowed to me, the man clutched in his fist like a limp doll. “Your father was an honorable man too. You should know that his dying request was that I spare his wife and son. I was taken by his sincerity. I could not save your mother, but it was by my intervention that Kimitake’s assassins did not find you. And it was my envoy, pledged to secrecy, who saw you safely to the priests’ care.”

  “Envoy?”

  “Here,” Hime miaoed, twining herself about my ankles. “Have I not taken good care of you?”

  “Wondrous good care.” I kneeled to stroke her white fur. Purring, she sprang into my arms.

  “Should I be concerned at the intricacies of your machinations, oni?” I asked.

  The oni chuckled. “If I were younger, perhaps. But the spinning of the universe is long, and I have shed enough blood this turning of it. I wish nothing more than to meditate upon enlightenment and be left alone.” He grinned at Kimitake. “But first, I will have a fine meal.”

  Hime and I made haste down the mountain, not wishing to be privy to the oni’s vengeance.

  We paused only to fish the stream by my mother’s boulder, and so passed beneath the torii’s gate well fed and bearing a bounty of fresh trout. I remembered to doff my waraji before I strode into the shrine, and I bowed low to Akio as he poured an offering of omiki.

  “Welcome back, Taira no Chikazane-dono,” he said.

  “You must always call me Hiroki-kun, Sensei. All that I am, I owe to your teachings. After I have taken my priest’s vows, I will explore my destiny with the name Oda no Chikazane to honor both my parents and this shrine. But to you, I will be Hiroki.”

  Akio smiled and bowed.

  As was our habit, the next morning, Hime and I rose to greet the dawn. But though we watched the whirling surf until the sun gilded the waves, not a single crab came ashore.

  Tale of the Poet and the Dog

  Jay Lake

  It is a tale little told now, but the Fox women once climbed out of their heather beds and went to war. No one will speak of this behind the paper wall, and the farmers in th
eir fields claim they have never heard of the story. Still, the rice men leave out their hopeful offerings of aburaage and politely look away when a kitsune slips past them.

  Kamakura, Warring States, Tokugawa, even the Gaijin Shogunate—history does not matter to Fox women, any more than it matters to kappa or red ogres. They do not see our years, only the four seasons that turn in a wheel around the axle of the sun over and over again in eternal sameness. The islands are a cart to them, bound on a journey that never ends. To their eyes all men and their works are but rats in the rice bin.

  Still, there was a time when a younger son in terror of the armies of Kublai Khan roused them from the bright country of their dreaming.

  His name was Mimura. He had been trained in the gentlemanly arts of his day—poetry, painting, the proper arrangement of flowers. Being a practical lad he also knew how to dress a kill, bind a harvest and weave a bolt of cloth. Being a younger son, little care had been taken to prevent him from soiling himself with such base knowledge, and less care to school him to horse and armor and the discipline of fire and sword.

  Mimura was in his father’s audience chamber, attending the daimyo quietly from behind the ranks of the warriors as was his station, when the runner came from the Chinzei Bugyo with the red-and-white banners. A great hubbub arose, for many in Mimura’s fathers lands had expected Lord Kifume to march from the north in the next turning of the seasons, but not yet.

  “No, no,” the messenger shouted, so bereft of his reason that he was beyond custom or duty. “The ships come, each with a hundred mounted warriors carrying bows that can shoot the shadow from the moon. The armies are gathering at the ports and beaches all through Kyushu. The Bakufu will have the west lined with steel to drive them off before they can land!”

  “The shogun is a fool,” Mimura’s father said quietly.

  With those words the entire audience chamber fell into a deathly silence. A man’s head could be carried three times around the walls of Prince Koreyasu’s palace for less, while his body was sent home in a tub of offal.

  Mimura’s father rose from his throne and drew his sword. “We will fight. It is our duty. But we will make a column of march on the Hill of Withered Plums, where we can watch the western sea and move great force to wherever the enemy will land. There are not enough men in all of Kyushu to wall the beaches as we have been commanded, but still we will prevail.”

  Mimura slipped away. This was work for oldest sons, samurai, bannermen and even hired swords from the ronin drinking in the villages. He was less than a servant. Mimura was also afraid, very afraid, but he wanted to see this thing for himself. A fleet of bowmen striding across the western waters would make such a mighty poem, if he grew old enough to command the words.

  Though he could not stand and fight, he could sit and write, and so make a memory of them. So with an apology to the shrine in the forecourt, he packed rice balls and his calligraphy pens, took the oldest mule from the night soil man’s wretched stable, clothed himself in rags from the ashpit, and set out west to see the sea before the steel marched forth in the hands of men.

  Mimura sat in the empty doorway of a shepherd’s hut east of Hakata Bay and watched the ships come from the water in their numbers. The Mongols were like locusts rising from the field. His father’s men were arrayed in the fields behind Fukuoka Castle, formed next to Lord Kifume’s army as it happened. The Bakufu had thrown over all feuds in defense of the island, and there was surely no different will in the palaces at Kyoto.

  It did not matter who had been right about the disposition of the troops, his father or the prince. When the ships came the banners had rallied to meet them. And come they did, rank on rank of vessels riding the waves, until the waters were painted with wood and iron and the plaints of the Mongol horses on their decks were loud as thunder in the night.

  He had a bit of a view, which he shared with a hard-bitten old dog and a great quantity of sheep dung. There had been a shrine here, but weather or hooligans had scattered its stones and torn the shimenawa rope. The dog whined softly amid its rough breathing, so he shared a rice ball with the poor beast.

  “They will walk across the beach and slay my father and my brothers and all the men,” Mimura told the dog.

  The tail, bare with mange, thumped the dirt.

  He tried to imagine an epic telling of what was to come, but celebrating the deaths of everyone he had known seemed beyond even the finest of the poet’s art. A thousand Mongols could drown in every epigram, but not the wise and witty servants of his father’s court, nor even his loutish brothers.

  The first of the ships came to shore with a groaning of oars and the shouting of officers. In the light of the setting sun, the Mongol army began to find the beach, carrying the fall of Kyushu on the tips of its spears.

  Mimura settled back into the shadows hut and prayed on what to do.

  He startled awake in the night, unsure if he had been dreaming. There were fires on the beach. Drums beat, and even in the darkness Mimura could hear the creak of hulls. The dog wheezed like a forge bellows, as if the last of its life would be as great a struggle as its birth must have been.

  In his small kit, he had brought an ink stone, three brushes, and a small sheaf of paper. Mimura spilled a bit of water from his sack and began to mix the ink.

  He could not celebrate death, but he could celebrate what might have come.

  There was no tea, there were no flowers, the shapes around him were unfortunate and infelicitous, but still he could find the words.

  As summer takes the blossoms, he wrote.

  That was wrong. Mimura meant to celebrate the coming victory, as if he could make the history of tomorrow true by writing it before the day came and thus force the world to follow his lead.

  So the battle claims honor

  “No!” Where were the words coming from?

  The dog whined, turning its head toward him.

  Cherries ripen and fall to dust

  He threw down his pen. The dog hauled itself to its feet and stumbled over to sniff at the horsehair tip, still dripping with ink as it sat in the dust. It looked at Mimura and whined again.

  “I apologize,” he told the animal. “Perhaps you are someone wise, living out their life this way.” He paused, and read the wretched poem aloud to the animal. Then: “Do you know better words for me?”

  The dog shook its head, ears twitching. Mimura realized there was something wrong—had the ears stood up like that in the afternoon, when he’d first come here? And was that another tail?

  Taking the brush in its mouth, the dog stepped lightly out of the hut, swishing both its tails.

  Mimura felt a chill on his spine.

  Not a dog. A fox.

  Outside the east was becoming pale. The armies had settled, each a sleeping beast with ten thousand metal teeth. The Mongols and their horses, with their Korean and Chinese slaves, were arrayed upon the beach. His father and all the other lords of Kyushu were camped in the fields behind the castle, following the standard of the Chinzei Bugyo and the will of Prince Koreyasu.

  Dawn would bring them to a clash of arms. He knew the Mongol arrows, their subject armies, their fierce hatreds, would cut down the armies of Kyushu as surely as the scythe cut oats in the field.

  A faint rain rattled around him on the mouth of a breeze, though stars yet stood overhead. The fox bounded away, moving along the spine of the hill behind him and leaving the scene of the battle-to-come.

  Though he knew well enough to hold a fearful respect for the kitsune, Mimura followed the spirit.

  Dawn came with another pass of the cloudless rain, and Mimura was in a little dell lined with moss and ferns and beds of heather. A beautiful woman in a white kimono with the purple obi of a daimyo sat on a rock. He wasn’t sure how he’d come here—the old fox had been running through the shadows of dawn, then they were here, without passing a door or gate.

  “There are few guests in my house,” she said.

  He bowed deep. “I
t is my honor to present myself. I am Mimura, son of the lord at the Castle of White Mist.”

  She smiled, a small expression as filled with secrets as any ancient well. “You showed generosity to my husband when he was indulging his fancy of watching men at their play.”

  “He offered me no challenge, mistress, nor did he trouble me.”

  “Still you could have passed him by.” Her smile flickered away like koi in a pond. “Have you come to watch the steel dance upon the sand?”

  “No…” He tried to find words for what he wanted—that the Mongols would never have come, that the daimyos could fight and bicker as they always had, but life would go on in the villages and courtyards of Kyushu. This would be a burning such as they had never seen.

  An old man, wrapped in ashy rags much as Mimura himself was, stepped out of the shadows of the heather. “Read her your poem, boy.”

  “Grandfather Fox,” Mimura said, bowing again. “I am shamed by my poor words, and left them in the dust of the shepherd’s hut.”

  “Wife, I tell you, he did not celebrate the sword, but wept for those who would fall.”

  The kitsune gave Mimura a long, steady look. “What manner of lord’s son are you, not to pray for blood?”

  “With peace we all keep our blood in our veins.”

  Her smile flickered back across her face, though she moved to hide it with a small hand. “You would deny the foxes and crows their feast after the fighting is done?”

  “Lady.” Mimura gathered his breath, his words, his courage. “These Mongols will not respect our ancestors. They will chop down the greatest trees, burn the heather dells, kick apart the shrines, and hang the priests up by their heels. The paddies will lie fallow and choked with mud, and the roads will be grown with weeds. There will be no Nihon to be home to red ogres and kappa and kitsune and all the other elders of field and forest. We will fall like the blossoms of spring and wither like autumn fruit. None will remain to honor you save ghosts and ashes.”

  “Honor.” The old man hawked and spat. “Respect is rare enough, where is honor?”