Japanese Dreams

by Sean Wallace (ed)

  “Welcome, Mother.” The voice was all around us; it resonated in my bones and turned my knees to jelly.

  “Thank you, Most Venerable of all the Spirits.” Mother inclined her head in the greatest gesture of respect I’d ever seen her perform. “I am here to ask about the death of the man-child Sato Taro.” She cast the bones at Death’s feet. Back at the tent, I heard the bones hit the dirt floor.

  “Yes, he will die a few hours hence in a pool of blood. A violent death. The death of a warrior. Tell his grandparents to prepare themselves. They will need much strength in the coming days.” His words flowed from Mother’s mouth.

  His grandmother cried out and collapsed against her husband; Mother rocked and crooned to the bones, and Death turned his eyes towards me.

  I fell to my knees as his gaze bored a hole through my soul. The bones in my pocket jumped with my first vision: I saw the flesh fall from Mother’s bones, her eyes dim, and her lifespark sputter. I saw myself, ensconced in her tent, holding her cane, wearing her ring. I was the Deathteller.

  Then Death reached out to touch a finger to my forehead.

  “No!” I screamed, jumping away from Mother, away from Death. I stumbled through the bones and ran from the tent, gasping for air and eyes streaming tears. I ran, with Mother’s voice chasing me. I ran, with the promise of Taro’s blood shining under my fingernails. I ran from the marketplace and into the night, with only one thought.

  I have to get to Taro.

  I was like a creature possessed, afraid to look over my shoulder in case Death gave chase through the streets. He might have followed me to mete out punishment for my disobedience, but I wasn’t stopping to check.

  My practice bones rattled in my pocket, and the clackety-clack picked at my skin and my hair. I could hear them now, the bones, as I skirted the noise and the color of the central market. Their voice oozed from the Gray Place and wound through my head—

  Kasei, why are you running, Kasei? The Mother, she will be angry! And Death… Death will not be pleased….

  Along a crooked alley—

  We know things, great things, terrible things. We will share them with you!

  When I passed the apprentices now dancing with the village boys—

  That bold Mieko, she’ll die in childbirth, and her child too, whispered the horrible bones.

  I clapped my hand over my pocket to silence them, but they roiled and tumbled under my palm. I could feel Mieko as she shuddered and writhed; blood streaked her thighs and her belly heaved, then stilled.

  “No!” I whirled around, sought the safety and solace of a shadowed alleyway. An elderly woman dozed in a doorway—

  She’ll be as cold as the stones by the morning! the bones chittered and cackled. They exhaled a frost that seeped outward and grasped at my fingers.

  Never had they spoken to me so in all the time I’d spent with Mother. She’d thought me stupid when I couldn’t coax even the simplest prophecy from their marrow-middles, thumped me with her cane for being unable to say when a wasting cat would cross to the other side. I’d prayed then for the voices to come, to whisper in my ear.

  Now I wished for nothing but silence. And a way to save Taro.

  Taro! The Master has touched him—

  “Enough! I won’t listen to you any more!”

  I hurtled myself out of the maze and to the river’s edge. The banks were empty tonight, but the memory of a thousand leashed birds tangled with the silver scales of sweetfish and floated over the surface of the water.

  I drove my hand in my pocket and ripped my skirt nearly in two as I grabbed at the bones. They tumbled this way and that, snapped and snarled with the memory of jaws and teeth.

  No, Kasei, we are bone of your bone!

  I flung them into the water before they could say more. For a moment I thought my fingers had gone with them, so empty did my hands feel, but no, my fists shook at my sides, full of fury and panic. My breath came in short pants that sparkled in the night air. The bones bobbed for a moment, then sank beneath the black surface.

  “I won’t be the Deathteller,” I whispered. “I won’t!”

  The bones laughed at me as they found each other in the current. Buoyed by the waves and embraced by the water, a ragged bit of lower jaw kissed the skull as vertebrae slid into place. Four spindly legs discovered their paws as the creature paddled to shore. It shook the river-damp from its ribs and leered at me through empty eye sockets.

  “What are you?” I took a step back.

  Kasei doesn’t know us when we aren’t in her pocket. Maybe if we get a bit closer—

  It grinned; lantern light stained its fangs red and yellow.

  “You cannot be my practice bones.” I wished myself any place but this one. “Mother would never give me a spirit animal in its entirety. That’s forbidden to apprentices.”

  The creature’s sides heaved in silent laughter.

  Mother didn’t know. We crept from her box, from her bed, from her tricksy bag tied up in silk. You could not hear us speak with our jaw under her bed. You could not scratch behind our ears with our skull under her pillow. So out we came when she looked the other way. To whisper, whisper secrets in your ear.

  I shuddered at the idea of those teeth against my ear. “I won’t listen. You’re a demon come from the Gray Place to plague me. He sent you to bring me back.”

  The diminutive framework chastised me with a shake of its head. We can tell you about your Taro.

  “Liar.” I wanted to run, but what if the bones knew a way to save him?

  The bones cannot lie. The skull tilted to one side and winked, if that were possible.

  “I know you can stretch the truth, if it suits you.” The space between us dwindled, but curiosity anchored me. Could they really help me help Taro? “What are you? If it’s not rude to ask—”

  The animal rubbed against my ankles, tailbones twitching.

  Head of a fox, tail of a raccoon. A few other bits borrowed from here and there. Now if you would be so kind?

  The bones vibrated in a cadaverous purr as I touched a hesitant hand to its back.

  Right there, just behind the ear—

  “You… don’t have an ear.” I recoiled a bit at the thought, then made a guess as to where the spirit creature’s ears would be.

  The fox-thing lolled against my hand, its back arched with bliss.

  “Now tell me how to save Taro, kitsune.” For surely this must be a trickster, a malevolent fox-spirit sent to lure me back into the arms of Death.

  The beast hissed at me; where the lower jaw met the skull, a star ball glowed with silver light. “Stupid girl! A true kitsune would not bear the tail of a raccoon. One tail, five or nine; they would be fox tails. And I would have fur of purest gold! My ribs would not show.” The creature hissed once more for good measure and stomped a few feet away. “Perhaps this girl doesn’t want Jiaonuo’s help. Perhaps she’d like to let her Taro die…”

  “I’m sorry, forgive me.” I gave chase, dropped to my knees in the path before the skeleton-fox and made my very lowest bow. “Please, Jiaonuo, forgive a stupid girl.”

  “We forgive you, bone of our bone, even though you are the rudest girl we have ever known.” Jiaonuo nipped the end of my nose and then turned, tail twitching. “We shall take you to Taro. And perhaps, if you are good, we shall help you save him.”

  ___

  Bits of twig and foliage leapt from either side of the path as we walked. Within a few minutes, Jiaonuo wore a coat of summer debris: rice chaff and leaf mold in stripes of white and black. Her tail, that sad raccoon’s tail, dragged limp through the dirt behind her.

  It’s not worth the effort to hold it up, the bones said with a sniff.

  Moonlight leeched the color from the Fortunetellers’ vacant tents and bedraggled banners. The dancers were gone, tossed by the wind like discarded sweet wrappers and broken porcelain cups, their fortunes dissolved like brown sugar cake on the tongue.

  They think it a game. Jiaonu
o sniffed a torn golden ribbon that leaked secrets into the mud. This one—

  I clapped my hands to each side of my head. “No, I want you to promise me. No more deathtelling tonight. Please, venerable spirit. We must get to Taro.”

  Jiaonuo tilted her little fox-head to one side and then nodded. Because you asked nicely. Now if we are to save your little friend, we must get to his house.

  “I know the way.”

  Take your fingers out of your ears, idiot girl. There are better ways for me to get in your head.

  Her toenails went clackety-clack on the stones underfoot as we tiptoed through the main square and past the permanent storefronts. The thatched roofs of lesser dwellings.

  “Where is everyone?” I’d been out at night before, and even in the dead of winter there was activity in the town. Deliveries to make and wares to restock: crates of pears trailing a mysterious perfume or highest quality paper to fold into tiny flapping cranes. Grass mats to sweep and babies to shush and the slams of sliding doors. But now there was nothing and no one. Just me, and the fox spirit, and a tiny, teasing wind that chased us down the road to Cliff House.

  I hesitated at the bamboo gate, but when Jiaonuo marched past me, I hurried after her, through the water garden and to a sliding door cracked to let in scent of night-blooming jasmine and prickly water lily. Jiaonuo nosed the door aside and disappeared into the cool blue interior of the house.

  I kept expecting someone to stop us. Surely his Grandmother would be keeping a vigil at his side now that the Deathteller had consulted the bones and made her pronouncement? But no one was there. The lanterns lay cold and overturned. Dry leaves danced across the floor, twigs lay snapped underfoot. When the moon disappeared, I froze. Jiaonuo opened her mouth, and the silver ball of light at the back of her throat guided us to the very end of the hall.

  Taro lay on a braided grass mat, a thin blanket drawn up to his chin. In the silver light from her mouth, he looked frost-bitten, frozen in place. I dropped to my knees beside him.

  “We’re too late.” His hand was so cold—

  Jiaonuo sniffed his blanket, his pillow, finally his mouth. No. But the sleep is a deep one. Someone is trying to stop us.

  The screens on the far wall slid open with a series of thumps, and a wide wail of screaming wind rushed in. Black streamers of my hair whipped me in the face as I tried to pull Taro back the way we’d come. “He’s too heavy. I can’t lift him!”

  Mother stepped into the breech, flanked on either side by Taro’s grandparents. They swayed, glassy-eyed. Their limbs moved like puppets on limp strings.

  The Deathteller lifted her hand and pointed a finger-bone at me. “Impudent child. Do you know what you’ve done?” She included Jiaonuo in her glare. “And you, you wretched carcass, you shivering skeleton. How dare you?”

  The fox-spirit hissed and arched her back. “Where is my tail, crone?”

  Taro’s grandparents jerked on their invisible lines as Mother laughed. “You’ll never get it back now.”

  Jiaonuo’s jaw unhinged in a cry that filled the room and poured into my ears. Bones rattled and fell to the floor; the star ball exploded toward me. Bits of light crawled under my fingernails and scrabbled through my breasts. Jumping to my feet, I let Taro slump against the wall as I scratched at my skin and tore at my clothes. The pain tapped through me, clackety-clack. I looked at the world through a fox’s eyes, smelled Mother’s fear through a fox’s nose.

  Jiaonuo held out my hand. The bones leapt to her call, swirling in a vortex of silver starlight above my palm, all winking sharp corners of tooth and nail. “I will carve the flesh from your face, and enjoy every rivulet of blood and chunk of skin,” she said through my mouth, “unless you employ that useless wad of matter between your ears and get out.”

  “This isn’t over, dark sister.” Mother leapt into the night sky, robes trailing over the moon before she disappeared. Taro’s grandparents fell to the mats.

  Skin still crawling with starlight, I knelt next to him. “Taro?”

  “Kasei?” It was nearly a man’s voice; the deep timbre of it startled me.

  “Yes, it’s me. Get up. We must get you out of here.”

  His grandmother lifted her face from the mats, reached out a trembling hand. “My dear boy, don’t leave me—”

  “We have to go.” Jiaonuo helped me jerk Taro to his feet and drag him down the hall.

  “Where are we going?” His voice sang in my chest, and Jiaonuo purred.

  That’s enough of that, I growled at her. And just as soon as we get him out of here, you are evicted from my body.

  The fox’s laughter bounced between my ears. I told you I had better ways of getting in your head.

  ___

  The bones in my pocket rattled in a dry, listless rhythm as I coaxed Taro into the trees behind Cliff House. As full as my head was with my unwelcome guest, I couldn’t help feeling very alone without their familiar clackety-clack.

  Don’t be stupid. I’m right here, Jiaonuo said with a sniff.

  That’s the trouble, I retorted. I’d prefer you were in your own bones and back in my pocket where you belong.

  “Please let me rest,” Taro said, startling everyone. “I have to sit down.”

  “You can sit when we’re safe.” Jiaonuo and I put our shoulder more firmly under his armpit and dragged him a few more steps.

  Safe from Death? I ventured.

  It sounds more comforting than “Perhaps we should not wait here for the Deathteller to find us”, yes?

  I didn’t know if there existed a place far enough that we could run from the Deathteller’s prophecy. Taro was to die very soon, a violent, warrior’s death she’d said, but the figure that struggled alongside me was hardly strong enough to lift his own feet, much less a sword.

  This is the trouble when an apprentice dabbles.

  I glared inward. And whose fault is that, exactly? I never would have followed Mother into the Gray Place if you hadn’t collected your bones and started whispering to me.

  Jiaonuo didn’t answer. Instead, she withdrew her strength from my arm, and I was forced to deposit Taro on the nearest rock.

  He cradled his head in his hands as the moonlight sidled through the trees and painted his hair with blue ink. “My head pounds like the drums. Why did you bring me here, Kasei?”

  I stood, uncertain. “You were in danger. Do you remember what happened before you went to sleep?”

  He lifted his head with effort and gave me his lopsided grin. “I went to the market, ate some sweet cakes and drank a glass of rice wine—”

  “Danced with the apprentice Fortunetellers,” I finished for him, and Jiaonuo sniffed with disapproval.

  “Maybe one or two,” he conceded. “I would have danced with you, if you’d been there.”

  That tied my tongue into a knot. Jiaonuo danced with impatience as I sorted through a tumble jumble of emotions: while my insides turned to eel jelly, fear still ruled over all else.

  “And after the dancing?” I finally managed.

  “I went home. My grandmother made me a cup of tea and scolded me for staying out in the night air. She seemed upset about something, but I was too tired to ask what.”

  “And the tea?”

  He thought back to the cup. “Bitter, and so green I could smell the grass growing.”

  A sleeping draught then, one of Mother’s concoctions designed to help the death-fated ease their transition to the Gray Place. But laced with something else, or his head would not be pounding so. Something to ensure the Deathteller’s prophecy would be fulfilled.

  Mother was afraid, then, and trying to help Taro the way a butcher helps the hog to slaughter.

  “What’s happening, Kasei? Tell me.”

  He was the only boy who’d dared venture to the Deathteller’s tent, the only one who would toss me the ball on the courtyard, the only one whom I thought looked nice when he smiled. How was I to tell him that Death waited for him? How was I to tell him to fight, to ru
n, to take me with him? “The Deathteller named you. I was there when she cast the bones.”

  I felt him stiffen with surprise; the space between us spasmed. “When?”

  “An hour. Maybe less.”

  “That’s all?” When I nodded, he jumped to his feet. “How?”

  I lowered my eyes, burned by his gaze. “I don’t know exactly. But He promised bloodshed. A warrior’s death.”

  “I have to get back to Cliff House. I don’t even have my sword—”

  I couldn’t have moved myself, but Jiaonuo knelt next to Taro and put my hand on his arm. “You will not die. I promise you,” she said through my mouth.

  He stared at us with changed eyes; I thought for certain he would see her inside me. “You look different here. I never noticed the light in your eyes before.” He brushed my hair back over my ear.

  Jiaonuo laughed with my mouth and I struggled to take back my words from the fox-spirit, but couldn’t manage it. “The bones have changed me. I am not as I was.”

  “And what are you?” he breathed.

  “Yours,” we both said.

  The kiss we shared was sweeter than plum candy, and lasted twice as long. He sidled into my head alongside the fox-spirit, the Deathteller, the vision, the rattling bones, and crowded all else out.

  I dragged myself from his lips. “We have to go. I must get you away from here.”

  “We cannot run, Kasei. I won’t dishonor my family that way.” Taro stood. Through the trees, Cliff House bathed in a puddle of quicksilver. His grandmother’s wail parted the leaves; wind shredded the paper screens and tore chunks from the walls. “Do you see? Death is taking his vengeance already.”

  I spat on the ground at his feet. “That for Death.”

  He turned and seized my wrist, jerked me to my feet. “You say it is my destiny to die. Just as it is your destiny to become the Deathteller. You cannot gainsay the fortune once it is said.”

  “I did not read that fortune. It was never my own!”