Japanese Dreams

by Sean Wallace (ed)

  Owen took too long to answer. Saul had left. Owen didn’t know how to tell that, just once, he wished to be the one hunted.

  ___

  At Nabekura, Owen avoided the paved road leading up the mountainside. It seemed likely that monsters had an aversion to macadam and steel and glass. He imagined the Industrial Revolution stranded them like polar bears in the shrinking Arctic. The Yama-uba might not have fed in decades. She might have withered away to bones frosted with the region’s famous white dew.

  He flipped through the pages of the library book. They were so brittle with age that corners cracked and fell like eggshell. He didn’t seem able to focus on the words. If the Yama-uba proved to be another hoax, he didn’t know what he’d do next. He couldn’t conceive of a day after. The thought of being alive tomorrow filled him with dread.

  He reached into his jacket pocket for a snack and remembered Saul’s hand slipping past his lapel. Had that been a flirtation?

  Owen clutched the packet of Cool Fran Lemon Biscuit Sticks. He marveled at their sweet smell, sweeter than any lemon ought to be; if he had never come to Japan to die, he would have never discovered so many treats. Though the chocolate he had purchased in Andreapol had been wondrous too. The Brosno dragon never rose from the lake but Owen had enjoyed the mild weather and the Babaevsky bars.

  The beech trees on the mountain wore a golden-bronze raiment and whispered in a breeze that grew as the sun lowered to the horizon.

  Owen moved higher. He rewarded exertion every so often with another biscuit. They crunched beneath his jaws. Like tiny bones. I’m a troll snacking on bones, he thought.

  “Most people take the road.”

  He turned around. A Japanese girl stood in the shade. Long black bangs concealed her eyes. She wore layers and layers of clothing. Owen counted two stringy scarves, an overcoat with pale fur trim, strata of stockings with holes and socks showing beneath. Her zori crushed fallen leaves with their wooden soles.

  “Scared you?” She stepped closer. Old-style headphones, the kind sold with old reel-to-reel players, lay atop the scarves around her neck.

  “Startled would be more correct.”

  The girl, who might have been fourteen, fifteen, tapped her chin. “Don’t litter.”

  “I won’t.” Guilty, he made a show of crumpling the empty package and putting it into his pocket.

  “Good. The kami wouldn’t like it.”

  “Kami?” The word sounded familiar.

  She looked up the mountain a moment. “Spirits. If you believe in that sort of thing.”

  “I’m looking for one of them. The Yama-uba.”

  She giggled and repeated the name.

  Owen’s cheeks flushed and he felt foolish, as if he had stopped and asked her for directions.

  “Why her?” she asked.

  Owen shook his head and started hiking. The girl called out her question again. He answered without turning around. “Most people don’t like being mocked.”

  “You’re too late. She’s gone.”

  He stopped and slid back a little. “Gone?” He muttered the word at first. “Gone?” He heard the girl climbing after him.

  “Yes.”

  “As in dead?” He imagined a heap of bones forgotten on the mountainside.

  The girl’s eyes widened for a moment and she seemed ready to break into another bout of laughter. “No, no, no. She went to the city. Moriokashi. Or maybe Tokyo. It doesn’t matter.”

  “How—”

  “You really do want to find her.” The idea seemed to perplex her and she stuck the frayed end of one scarf into the corner of her mouth. Her tongue was very pink.

  “You’re not some director, are you? She’s not like those yūrei in J-horror. I hate those.”

  “But you’ve seen her…” Owen didn’t know whether he should be thrilled to have finally found a monster to be real or disappointed that he’d arrived too late.

  “She raised me. I ran away years ago.” The girl pointed up the mountain. “Her cave is not far from here.”

  “I came all the way from Jersey,” Owen said. He felt about to topple, as if his left foot wanted to take another step while the right wanted to turn back.

  “Did she eat someone you know?”

  “Not quite.” Owen took out his notebook. He didn’t know whether to cross out the last entry or not.

  The girl must have turned on an mp3 player in her pocket because he heard noise coming from her headphones. He didn’t care for popular music and couldn’t understand why anyone would enjoy something that sounded like eerie whispers and smacking lips. “I could show you the cave. Her cave.”

  He shook his head. What would be the point?

  She looked hurt and nibbled more at her scarf. Watching her do so threatened Owen’s gag reflex. He imagined the girl living in a hole in the ground, gnawed bones shoved off to the side, kanji scratched on the walls. No wonder she dressed and acted so peculiar. “Why stay? I mean, if she’s gone you’re free to leave.”

  “Where would I go? I know the smell of the stone when it rains and the feel of the dirt at my back. When I’m there I can close my eyes and still see everything.” Her response sounded petulant. “Every time I step out, there’s this tiny voice, echoing my own. It tells me to go back. It’s safe and solid, sleeping in the earth. Like my hair and fingers become roots sinking into the ground.”

  The way she talked about the cave made Owen’s chest tighten. “Sometimes being safe is stifling.” But after he said it, he remembered that his quest had failed. He’d have to return to America, to Trenton and his mother’s house and retreat to his bedroom. He heard himself wheezing, trying to breathe.

  He waited for the girl to walk away. But she didn’t. They both stood there in awkward silence for a while.

  “In all the books I’ve read about monsters, the authors always mention how man is afraid of the unknown. They even capitalize it. The Unknown. But they’re wrong. I’m more afraid of what I expect, what I know I’ll be doing tomorrow and the next day.” He licked his lips. “And the next. I’d rather have a bit of the Unknown, anything but the Given.”

  The girl chewed her scarf harder for a moment. “Would you help me carry some things I want from the cave?”

  He nodded and moved slowly to follow her.

  He stopped when the brush rustled off to his right. A strong breeze? He couldn’t be sure. Perhaps a squirrel, if they had them in Japan. He stopped to peer through the beech trees.

  The girl called down to him but he remained there. She tramped back down to where he stood. Her music had grown louder.

  “Thought I saw a kami,” he said with a grin.

  Her face turned pale like milk. He almost laughed at how scared she looked. The dreary tune quieted for a couple of seconds, as if it had skipped a beat.

  When she turned her head to look where he had, Owen took a step behind her. She was no taller than his chest. He couldn’t resist teasing her as his mother had done to him. “You’re not looking the right way.” He brought his hands to her face, covering her eyes, while he smiled. Then he glanced down at the top of her head.

  There was no mp3, no radio, making the hungry whispers. In her scalp a pair of leathery lips split and showed teeth sharper, more numerous, than a shark’s. Fetid breath blew up and spittle slicked the surrounding hair.

  Both Owen and the girl stayed motionless.

  Owen felt cold, exposed, as if the temperature had suddenly dropped to freezing. Why couldn’t he see his breath? Or hers, rising from between his fingers and rising from her scalp into his eyes. The fear that filled him made all his past anxieties seem like laughter. He could feel the muscles and tendons, nerves and bones within his hands, his entire body, recoiling, seeking to push away from the girl, this thing’s body. But his hands refused to move.

  He bit back the scream. Thoughts of dying sweated out of his every pore.

  He clamped his hands tighter around her head. She said something in Japanese but his palm muf
fled her lower mouth. Then he twisted, hard, to the right. The snap sounded like stepping on a branch. The Yama-uba went limp against him. A soft sigh escaped her lips.

  Owen let her fall to the ground. His hands trembled. He hugged them in his armpits. His teeth chattered.

  The exposed skin of the Yama-uba’s hands and neck grew loose, like dripping wax, then congealed in wrinkled folds. The nails long and yellowed and split. But her face, from smooth brow to rounded cheek and slight chin, her face remained a young girl’s.

  In movies, the monsters always looked different when they died, even poor Lawrence Talbot. He turned away from the body. He could not stand the sight of her face, serene despite the open stare.

  He stumbled down the mountainside. Sometimes he fell and slid, ripping and staining his clothes. He almost collapsed when he saw the dark ribbon of the roadway. He sat down by the side of the road and put his head between his knees.

  He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He hesitated to look up, knowing, somehow, that he would see the Yama-uba’s youthful face. But the thick mustached man who stood over him and spoke a rush of German looked concerned. Owen offered a weak smile that satisfied whatever Samaritan instinct the tourist possessed.

  Owen stood up. When he brushed himself off, he felt the slight bulge of his notebook in a pocket. He slipped it out and turned to the final entry. He became annoyed when he thought he’d lost his pen, and then saw it by his feet. A sense of accomplishment filled him as he crossed out Yama-uba. No monsters after Y.

  Then a cold draft of air brought a thought. Yeti. For a moment, Owen envisioned himself covered in thick furs and climbing snow-covered cliffs. A handsome Sherpa showed him tracks before suggesting they rest for the night. Sharing a tent, of course, to keep warm.

  Sharing a tent with someone like Saul.

  He almost wrote it down. Instead he scribbled in the word Troll, then crossed it out with a grin and headed back to town. He left the notebook behind.

  Dragon Logic

  Yoon Ha Lee

  Once in a realm of islands and morning mist, an emperor’s son died. Perhaps he was murdered by a retainer. Perhaps he ran afoul of a vengeful spirit, or went hunting for tigers in a foreign land, or pined after a lady whose voice burned him with its beauty. There are many ways for princes to perish.

  We are not much concerned with the prince. But the empress, oh the empress, she did not weep. They said her face was fair as foam, and that her hair rippled to her feet. She wore the colors of the sky and the colors of the sea, even after the prince’s death, for the white of mourning is a color shared by sky and sea. But her sleeves were dry.

  All the empire wept for the loss of this prince, yet in one woman’s heart there was drought.

  That is the beginning of the story they tell in the empire.

  In the same realm, a monk who was not a monk studied a tablet left at a mountain shrine. The shrine was a small one, which saw few visitors. The monk who was not a monk would frown over this tablet’s puzzle: circles inscribed within circles, triangles inscribed within triangles, lengths and areas to be computed. The tablet’s mysteries yielded themselves piece by piece under the monk’s devout studies.

  One day the monk found the tablet gone. In its place was another with no puzzle for the mind’s unraveling, only scratches meandering like the course of a river, cuts like the bite of a sword. The monk looked up and saw a man with noble features and strangely gloved hands.

  The monk said, “You are not a man.”

  The man said, “That’s all very well. You’re not a monk.”

  Both of them were correct. The monk said, “Why do you linger here? Surely my devotions can bring you little hope of enlightenment.” For the monk, who spoke rarely with other people, was really a woman.

  “I am not interested in virtue,” said the man, “but in the riddles you tangle and untangle.”

  “Go away,” said the monk, “and find yourself someone who can recite the Lotus Sutra for the purification of your soul.” The monk knew it by heart, of course, for all the good it did her.

  The man ignored her. “I like your thoughts,” he said. “They taste clean and clear and precise. They taste like angles and half-circles and straight lines.” For the man was a dragon, a creature of storm winds and deep wells. He was bound to be intrigued by orderly things.

  The monk said, “Is that why the shrine’s tablet is gone?”

  The man looked faintly embarrassed. “That’s why I brought the shrine another one.”

  The monk sighed. The dragon’s tablet bore little resemblance to the one it replaced. Already she missed its geometrical elegance and subtle numerical challenges. She couldn’t blame him, though. If she sought in numbers the transcendence that was denied her by virtue of her birth, she supposed a dragon could yearn toward the same, however clumsily. “Let us look at it, then,” the monk said.

  The man’s face brightened, like water beneath the moon.

  This is the beginning of the story that matters.

  The empress was of noble birth. Even after her elevation to the emperor’s side, no one found had found any cause for reproach in her. She kept her face covered and took no lovers. She bore the emperor a fine heir. It was not her fault that the prince found himself an end earlier than his father’s.

  After years of doing everything that the emperor and his court expected of her, it is not surprising that the empress could no longer summon up the response they wanted, despite her grief.

  The monk came to look forward to the dragon’s visits, which occurred most often in the morning, before the mist burned away. The man brought a new tablet each time, taking away the last. She held each tablet—wood, usually, but sometimes ivory or stone—and ran her hands over the carved lines. Dragon curves, she called them.

  One day, she said to the man, “You carve each curve with a single motion, without lifting—ah—hand from wood.”

  “Yes,” said the man.

  “They are beautiful curves,” she said. And so they were, like the man himself. “Why do you claw through them?”

  The man only looked at her sidelong. “There is a puzzle,” he said, “but I do not know its answer.”

  Thoughtfully, the monk traced a looping curve of her own in the dirt. She realized as she did so that it could not be a dragon curve. She glanced at the man, whose eyes were the color of pond water.

  In answer, he passed his hand over the curve on the ground. Three deep claw marks cut through it vertically. One of the claw marks passed through the loop twice, top and bottom. Both claw mark and curve began to fill with water.

  The monk considered the water. “So that is the pattern,” she said. This time she drew a circle, then a vertical slash through it. “This is not a dragon curve, because if you claw through its center, you will meet the circle twice. A true dragon curve can only be met once, no matter where you claw it.” The monk would never have thought about such things on her own; to her the circle was the simplest and most pleasing of shapes, where all things began. She said as much to the man.

  “You are a very strange monk,” said the man. She knew by now that he meant it as a compliment.

  The monk trailed a hand in the water, then tasted a drop. It was clear and sweet, and not a little wild, like the first rains of spring. “Why are your curves important?” she asked. She did not mean importance in the way of wars and grand intrigues. Rather, she wondered as to the focus of the dragon’s peculiar devotions.

  “I don’t know,” said the man. “I find shapes in the storm. I don’t understand what they mean, and I am not a creature of patterns.”

  “We will figure it out,” said the monk.

  She was not wrong.

  The emperor’s court began to whisper unkind things about the empress. Her heart must be made of stone, they said, for her to remain unmoved by her own son’s death—as if tears were the only way to mourn. The emperor approached her and asked her why she did not w
eep.

  The empress bent her head. Her voice trembled as she answered from behind the silk screens. But the tears, the tears would not come.

  The emperor could not endure her dry eyes. There had to be a way, he said, to bring tears to the empress’s eyes so she might mourn properly.

  One of his courtiers spoke to him of a monk at a small shrine. This monk, he said, was often visited by a dragon. And dragons bring rain.

  Dragons are not very good at disguising themselves.

  The monk was pondering the man’s latest offering when the emperor’s messenger arrived. This tablet was a new thing altogether. The monk could compute the areas of circles and triangles and rectangles, and other strange shapes formed by their boundaries. But this was a dragon curve, a whimsical thing undulating above a straight line. The man had clawed beneath the curve, dividing up the line. The monk lifted her head and gazed at the clouds. Of course. Rectangles. Divide the region between dragon curve and line into rectangles and find the area thus. However, the monk was dissatisfied, for the result would be inexact.

  The messenger coughed politely and waited for the monk to look at him. The monk did. The messenger told the monk, “It will be trouble in the eyes of earth and heaven if the empress cannot weep.”

  The monk acknowledged the truth of this. All things had their proper order, and on earth it began with the emperor and his court. A woman’s dry eyes might become drought in the rice fields.

  The messenger said, “You must command your friend the dragon to bring water to the empress’s eyes, or you will be exiled.”

  “You may tell the emperor that I understand,” said the monk.

  We do not know whether the messenger noticed that the monk was not a monk.

  The next morning, the man came through the mist to find the monk tracing circles in the dirt, like eyes. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “I didn’t mean the tablet to distress you.” Indeed, he seemed distressed at the possibility himself.

  “It is not the tablet,” the monk said. She explained the situation.

  The man was silent for a moment. Then he said, “All water has its own path through the world, and the dragon king decrees these paths. He must have decided to withhold tears from the empress.”