A Small Charred Face

by Kazuki Sakuraba

  The words felt painfully real. One more time. “Alone…I won’t be able to bear it…”

  But I got nothing in reply.

  Morning steadily drew closer. I heard their footsteps as they left. All alone, I went to sleep.

  Night fell once more, and I woke up. Darkness filled the coffee shop. Momo was gone; no trace of her remained. I could tell from the air that she’d left me forever several hours earlier. I got out of the tent and stretched slowly.

  Night. An autumn night.

  I was again a Bamboo alone. Fifteen years old for a century already.

  I couldn’t really put it into words, but something seemed different from how it had been up until last night. When I stepped into the night and started walking, the heels of my boots ringing out, it wasn’t my beloved Momo’s voice that came back to life in my cold, empty Bamboo heart, but rather the voice of that stranger, the boy.

  I’d forgive you.

  (A lie. A lie.)

  I’d have forgiven you a long time ago.

  (Really? Really?)

  I went outside and looked up at the night sky. The air was horribly cold, chilled. It was the start of winter.

  I was seriously heartbroken.

  Reaching my right arm out into the sky, I kicked at the ground and shot upward. Night bird style! The sky that night was vast and beautiful.

  Jasmine

  Asked for directions, I turned around in front of the large supermarket by the train station. As I did, the child holding my hand threatened to run off on her own to the opposite side of the street. “Whoa, now!” I hurriedly scolded her, loudly. “No running!”

  The season was on the verge of passing from winter to spring, into that warm, pleasant season. It was loud in the tumult of the change from evening to night. I passed groups of junior high students on bicycles, senior citizens apparently on their way back from a gathering. A housewife around my age pushing a stroller yawned when I passed her. In the distance, a crow cawed, followed by the honking of a car horn.

  A map was thrust in front of me, and I peered at it. Right hand. The shape of the fingernails looked familiar. Small, round nails.

  “Oh my!” I lifted my face. “It’s you, isn’t it, Marika?”

  The skinny girl standing in front of me opened her eyes wide, shocked to the core. That face! I couldn’t help bursting into laughter. She hadn’t changed even a bit, not one bit, from the girl I remembered; it was almost surprising. The large blacks of her round eyes were wet, like she was crying, and the nose hidden under the mask was also exactly as it had been. The voluminous, long black hair danced in the warm breeze.

  She wore a light-pink spring coat, and I was suddenly jealous of the adorable, dainty design, something which no longer suited me. The left sleeve fluttered and flapped.

  Frightened, the girl took a step back.

  “Right? It is you, Marika?” I said her name again. “Hey!” I grabbed her wrist with my free hand and felt her trembling. She jumped like she had been burned.

  “What? Er, um. So you remember me, Momo?”

  “Huh? What’re you talking about? How could I forget? Don’t be silly. But where have you been all this time? You’ve been a good girl, I hope? Oh! Or maybe all this time, I—” I interrupted myself. “You knew I was living in this town? What? And you never came to see me?”

  “You totally hated me, so…” Marika hung her head, embarrassed.

  “What! Hmm. Oh, I guess I did.” I suddenly remembered the fight we’d had when we parted and dropped my head, uncomfortable.

  Silence.

  Marika lifted her face ever so timidly. As she looked up at me, she started to smile again. Goodness, why did she seem so happy? She was still, always, a strange child.

  “Anyway, Momo. You remembered me, huh?”

  “Well, of course I did. But what’s going on, out of the blue? I mean, it’s been ten years, hasn’t it? Maybe longer?”

  “So, like, Momo?” Marika came in close, almost in a panic. “It’s like, my time’s up. I can tell. That day, I promised you, so I came back here. I wonder…if you remember? You know, the flowers? The flowers I told you I’d bloom? My final flowers. I think it’ll be late tonight or tomorrow evening.”

  Flowers? Final flowers? What on earth was she talking about? As I cocked my head to one side in confusion, a distant memory flickered on the screen in the back of my mind.

  I was sure I’d heard this story about flowers blooming. About how Bamboo lived for 120 years or so. And how in the end, they bloomed beautiful white flowers just like the tall grass.

  Right, I had cried and begged her, Stay with me forever, okay? But if you do leave me, then…at least show me those flowers, okay? But that had been over ten years ago. Back then, I’d felt like this far-off future would never come.

  But actually, the season for those flowers was around the corner. Just like that. The flow of time is quick like water, I suppose. A person’s life—it’s surprisingly short.

  Marika slowly removed her mask, exposing her tragic face. The child ducked behind me, afraid. I patted her head to reassure her while I looked down at Marika. She really hadn’t changed at all. It was almost frightening, you know?

  Marika reached her right arm out like a ghost and wrapped it around my neck. She put some power into it, squeezing. I felt an instinctive terror. Right, Marika wasn’t human. She was a sad monster who had lived 120 years as a little girl.

  “M-Mari—”

  “Heh heh.” But she soon pulled away and flashed me a grin as if to hide how she clung to me. “You seem regular happy, huh, Momo? Like a textbook, you know?”

  “I-I—Marika. You saved me… To this day, you’re the only one who knows.”

  “I told you, enough of that. Okay? Come on, Momo!” Marika whirled around on one heel and started to run. Aah, just like always, she moved effortlessly, like an animal.

  Dragging the child behind me by the hand, I hurriedly chased after her. I couldn’t run like I used to anymore, though. I stomped along somehow.

  The moon was coming out, like a ship putting out to sea. The darkness behind the supermarket. The fog gradually growing thicker.

  It wasn’t the fog of that early evening from back when I hunted with Marika; it was a cold fog, something not of this world. I heard a dog bark somewhere. I could see a vision of a puppy racing along behind Marika, wagging his stubby tail. What, a dog? What was that about again? I was sure I’d heard that story too. But it was a long time ago, at any rate, and I was so busy all the time now. Huh? Marika? Where did you go?

  I reached the empty lot in the back. Marika turned around, grinning from ear to ear. The fog grew even thicker. It really wasn’t of this world.

  “So, okay, Momo?” Marika beamed, as she started to tell me something. Like she wanted to confess a secret she had kept for too long. “Like, I—”

  But she abruptly fell silent, a look of surprise on her face. She took a breath and then opened her mouth to try to speak again, but it seemed that her moment had come sooner than she’d expected. She didn’t have the time left to finish telling me, her old friend, what she had started to say.

  “Marika?”

  (Mo. Mo… So I… So I…)

  “Marika?”

  (Traveling. With you. That time. Was fun… I. Love…)

  “Marika…”

  The wind gusted up, and I lost sight of her.

  And then, before I knew it, these tiny white flowers—flowers I’d never seen before—sprang up all around, blooming one after another in succession, so bright, so vivid that they dyed the night sky white. Until finally the blossoms fell to the ground and scattered, and the skinny figure of the little girl was no longer anywhere to be found. So this was the death of a Bamboo! A monster so strong, so frightening, and yet ultimately ephemeral.

  “Marika!” I called out
in a small voice.

  But I heard nothing in reply. I would never know what she’d been trying to tell me in her final moments.

  Back then, I had a little brother. A small one.

  Night

  Since time immemorial, there had lived a community of mysterious creatures deep in the mountains—grass monsters with great life spans, who were active only at night and put nothing other than the blood of human beings and other animals into their mouths. They were called the takezoku—the bamboo tribe—and they had long been feared by the humans of the villages. No, not simply feared; the humans perhaps also held them in a curious kind of esteem. Because the takezoku—we—were orderly monsters. Not only did we raise livestock such as water buffalo and mountain goats for our own food, once we drank the blood of these animals, we shared the meat, organs, and flesh with the humans. We could also fly, and we were stronger than the humans of our size. So, for instance, if a large tree was about to fall on a bridge, one or two takezoku who happened to be in the area could easily catch it and save lives. Before we knew it, the humans revered us as “the protective gods of the mountains” and started offering ten young men and women to us at their annual harvest festivals.

  Our magnificent castle and the houses of our people were spread out on the face of a mountain blanketed by beautiful bamboo forests, looking down on the cramped human settlements at the base. A darkness not of this world led the way even deeper into the mountains. The white plaster of the castle gates rose up against the cliff, the silver towers of the large main building shining beyond them. On the other side of the gates were neat rows of the square white houses of the common takezoku, the echoing cacophony of the Yellow River’s upper streams flowing along behind them.

  And in the castle?

  In that old castle, which had been sitting there for who knew how long…

  The great hall.

  In the light of the moon, my eyes slid open. The usual start of the night. I stretched long and hard within my length of orange light-blocking fabric. I’d slept the entire day away, wrapped snugly in this blanket suspended from the ceiling on silver ropes at a height around that of a person. I jumped nimbly to the floor. Stretched again.

  I looked around and saw any number of silver ropes snaking down from the ceiling of the hall like the silk of hell spiders, holding aloft the noble members of the royal family as they slept wrapped up in blackout drapes of red, yellow, green, purple, blue.

  I was the royal family’s fifth child. The third princess. Two older brothers, two older sisters. And one younger brother.

  I had dropped down still naked, so I kicked lightly at the floor and flew up to take the orange cape in hand and fling it around me. I set on my head the hat covered in fine silver decorations that I kept inside the cape. The long, thin adornments were in the shape of bamboo stalks and were only permitted to the royal family; they clanged coldly against each other like ice in water.

  The blue hammock next to me wriggled and squirmed, and then a naked boy of about twelve or thirteen rolled over with a lazy yawn and dropped to the ground. Such a simple movement, and yet he landed on his backside, almost comically.

  “Morning, Sis!” He laughed with embarrassment when he noticed me looking down at him.

  “You really know how to make an entrance, hmm, little idiot?”

  “Huh? It’s just—” Faced with my exasperation, the baby turned beet red and began squirming.

  “What?”

  “I mean, I’m a total loser!”

  “Th-that’s not true!” I said, flustered. Now I’d done it.

  But my brother continued, innocently, “But, like, our brothers tell me every day that I’m a runt. They say I’m the most useless member of the royal family. Our sisters too.”

  “S-so, uh, this is just what I think, but…I feel like you being born with that small body, the way you never really grow, I mean, there must be some kind of meaning in that. We just don’t know it yet. But when a door closes, a window opens, you know! And, I mean, you—you just gotta put your mind to it, and you can do anything!”

  He said nothing in reply.

  “What? What’s with the weird face?”

  “Either you sorta make sense or you’re kinda weird. Sometimes, I really don’t know.”

  Now I was silent.

  “Maybe it’s just that you’re too smart? You do way better than our brothers in Father’s governance classes.”

  “Mmm.” I held my tongue. It was true my work in class wasn’t bad, but I was still probably the oddball of the royal family.

  Perhaps awakened by our conversation, the brightly colored light-blocking hammocks around us began to wriggle and twist, and soon our brothers and sisters dropped down to the floor one after the other. Their pale, symmetrical nudity on display, they stretched in unison. They were quite tall, with almond eyes that suited their faces and proud noses. Magnificently attractive in both face and form, they made it easy to see why the humans held us in reverence as the gods of the mountains.

  I, however, was smaller in stature, and if pressed, I’d say my face was more on the average side of things. And my youngest brother was sickly and also rather average looking. On top of that, he had stopped maturing when he was still a child. The two youngest members of the royal family were noticeably different from the rest.

  “What’s this?” Our eldest brother looked down on us, truly annoyed. “You little runts are up too early for no reason at all.”

  “Good morning, Brother!” my little brother replied breezily. Unlike me, he had always been an easygoing child.

  “Heeey, early birds with no worm to catch!” our second brother muttered, sounding still drowsy as he wrapped his dazzling naked body in light-blocking fabric. “Go check on things outside the gates before Father’s lesson! And…” He hung his head. His voice steadily grew thinner, anxious. “Tell us how things are outside.”

  Although my eldest brother was working to make it seem like everything was fine, this brother, urged on by our sisters, was worried. He furrowed his shapely brow.

  Outside the castle, I let my gaze drift in the direction of the gates. “That commotion has been going on for a while now, huh?”

  “Right?”

  “Ohh, so then—” I started to say.

  “Whatever!” My eldest brother cut me off. “Just go look!”

  “I mean, you’re smart and fast, right?” My second brother got serious and argued further, “And you have lowborn friends outside the castle. Right?”

  “Mmm.” I wasn’t sure about going out before class. I stared up at my second brother.

  My baby brother latched on to me, needy, a spoiled child. “I want to meet your friends! Please! Take me outside!”

  I ended up nodding with a wry smile. He might have the appearance and heart of a child, but he had always excelled at keeping the peace. And he knew I was particularly susceptible to this sort of pleading. Plus, I was also curious about what was happening outside the gates.

  We walked out into the hallway, our backs turned to our brothers and sisters, and I pulled on my little brother’s hand. We flew through the castle, beyond the walls, outside. My brother’s hand in mine had the pudgy feel characteristic of a child, but he was takezoku, so it was the chill temperature of ice, which made it even more beloved to me.

  The moon was excessively bright. The light of the early night. The stars also glittered and shone. The winter was not yet over; a light smattering of snow danced down. Illuminated by the moonlight, the flakes looked like fragments of stars.

  “Aaah, it’s so pretty!” My brother looked up in delight.

  “It is.” I nodded, and then I shot up into the night sky. As if to drop down on the other side of the stars.

  I was a takezoku by birth! And a daughter of the royal family! So the night was an inexpressibly delightful time.

  We mov
ed away from the castle and danced up into ever-higher reaches of the sky, wrapped in silver light, black hair and blackout capes fluttering in the wind, the ornaments on our hats jangling and clanging. Despite the brutal cold, the one layer of fabric was more than enough. The wind nipped and pulled at my cape to flash pale arms and legs, stomach and back, and occasionally the skin of my chest.

  I circled the castle lightly three times, and once my body grew accustomed to the wind, I headed for the gates and the white walls that were dug into the face of the mountain and that surrounded the castle. Soon I smelled fire, and then a sea of torches came into view. This was what my second brother had ordered me to check on.

  For the last month or so, things had been strange in the village at the foot of the mountain. Young people were moving in, and they looked different in both face and dress from the villagers who had lived there since olden times. Before we knew it, these newcomers had exploded in number. And they had no reverence for the takezoku, the gods of the mountains.

  Yes, the young people had started to gather around the castle gates, trickling in one by one, bearing torches, to keep watch on the takezoku. The height of rudeness! We would never hurt humans! Naturally, it did happen that a newly born, inexperienced takezoku would occasionally attack someone, but the majority of us lived amicably alongside humanity. Was there ever a tribe of monsters so peaceful? Which was why I was baffled as to what this fuss was all about.

  My brother clung to me, frightened, causing me to lose my balance and spin around. Right, this was the first time he was seeing this.

  Torches in hand, the young people looked up at us and howled in terror. Some were inexplicably angry. The commotion grew.

  What? Was a person flying this unusual?

  They opened their mouths, dumbfounded, pointing fingers, yelping and shouting. I caught the eyes of a young woman in the very back who was about as old as I still looked. She stared at me with terror and confusion on her face.

  Ah! Some people were throwing stones! They fell heavily back to earth without so much as grazing me. Ridiculous.