The Bride Doll

by Richard Parks

  Kenji had already drawn his own prayer beads and was in the first phrase of a chant when suddenly Michi was between us and Yuki.

  Kenji looked frantic. “Michi-san, look out! She’s a demon!”

  I grunted. “Save your warning, Kenji. He knows what she is.”

  Yuki stopped, and her anger and frustration were obvious. “Anata, move aside.”

  Anata?

  I’d had my suspicions, but now everything was that much clearer.

  Michi held out his arms as if to shield us. “You must not harm these men!”

  “Why not?” she asked. “I am hungry.”

  I spoke up quickly. “Shall I tell her, Michi-san? It’s because, if you kill us, this time Lord Yoshi will send everyone he can spare, far more than you can kill or elude, and your husband will not be able to protect you,” I said. “Or do you want to risk the little one’s life as well?”

  That got her attention. Michi’s, too.

  “Yuki is the ‘woman from another village’ you were married to. When she left you, she took up residence in her old haunts. Am I right?”

  “She did not leave me,” Michi said. “She left the village. She tried—”

  “—to live as a human, for your sake,” I said. “Yes, Michi-san, I have seen that before. It never seems to work. Not for foxes and not for snow-demons.”

  Kenji scowled. “Michi-san and this... creature?”

  Yuki looked faintly amused at Kenji’s outburst, but Michi cut in. “I crossed the pass alone the first day I came here,” Michi said softly. “She could have killed me when we met. Perhaps it would have been better for us both if she had.”

  Yuki wasn’t amused now. There were tears in her eyes. They turned to ice crystals and fell softly, just two more flakes of snow. “I cannot help it. I am hungry,” she said. “Soon your daughter will be hungry.”

  “Come home,” Michi said.

  She looked away. “I cannot. You know I cannot.”

  “That is a problem, since she cannot stay here, either,” I said. “My guess is that, unless she’s living as a human, human food cannot sustain her. She can suckle the child for now, wherever she keeps it hidden, but she can’t feed herself without taking life. That’s why you’ve been coming up here, isn’t it? She’s taking life from you because there’s no one else, but since she doesn’t wish to slay you, it’s never enough, never all of your life. That’s why she’s still hungry while you can barely stand.”

  Michi didn’t say anything, but I knew it was true. If anything, the exhaustion I had seen in the young man when we first met was worse. He was functioning on will alone.

  “Sooner or later she’s going to kill you. Then what do you think will happen to her and the child?”

  “There’s another way. I’ll find it,” Michi said.

  “Believe what you will. For now, if she gives up the doll, perhaps we can at least buy you both and the village some time.”

  Michi frowned. “Doll?”

  I turned to Yuki. “When you left the village, you took a doll from Aoi Temple, didn’t you?”

  Michi scowled. “Why do you accuse her?”

  “Because, as far as I can determine, the doll disappeared at the same time she did,” I said, “and while I recognize that this is not proof and that coincidences exist, true coincidences are very rare. Or did it never occur to you to ask her?”

  Michi looked as if he’d been struck between the eyes with a mallet. He finally looked at the snow-demon. “Yuki?”

  She sighed. “Human children need such things, so I brought one for our child. It was the newest one, perhaps, but I don’t understand all the fuss; the temple had plenty of others.”

  Michi smiled a weak smile. “I will bring you food when I am stronger,” he said. “Please be patient. I will bring another doll for our child. A better doll. But I think we had best return that one to the temple.”

  She scowled. “Very well, and for your sake I will wait a little longer. But do not break faith with me or I will do what I must. I have your word?”

  “You have everything that I am,” Michi said.

  The snow-demon apparently considered this oath enough and turned and floated back into the forest like a swirl of snowflakes and disappeared. We rushed forward to support Michi, who was in imminent danger of falling face-first into the snow.

  “You never saw where she keeps the child hidden, did you? Otherwise I assume you would have known she had the doll,” I said.

  Michi admitted that this was so. “She’s afraid I’ll try to take our daughter back to the village if I know where she is. I mentioned the doll was missing and that it was a problem, but Yuki never said anything. I shouldn’t be surprised; she doesn’t always think the way you or I do. I’ve learned that.”

  “No doubt. I gather those prayer beads were a gift from you?” Kenji asked.

  “They help remind her... of her human side. Yuki does have one, you know. I’ve seen it.”

  “That may be so, but sooner or later you’re going to have to bring your daughter back among true human beings. Or see her turn into her mother,” Kenji said. “You know this to be true.”

  Michi didn’t even blink. “I also know that, without the child, Yuki may forget everything of what being human meant, prayer beads or no. One day I will bring them both home.”

  “One day she’s going to kill you,” I said.

  “No,” he said serenely. “She won’t. I will not lose them. Either of them.”

  “You’re a fool,” Kenji said. “but sometimes fortune favors the fool. I will pray for you.”

  Michi sighed. “I’m not such a fool that I won’t take whatever help I can get.”

   

  We told Lord Yoshi that a trickster badger-dog had taken the doll and hidden it in the mountains, but with Michi’s help, we had managed to find it. I’m not sure he believed us, but the doll was back in its rightful place, and that was all he cared about. Lord Yoshi informed the headman of the village, who through his daughter sent word to Akitomo.

  While we waited to hear the outcome, Kenji and I made a doll. Naturally, it was the first doll I’d ever attempted, though I’d done a little carving from time to time. Kenji, with help and scraps of cloth from the headman’s wife, made the clothes. I wouldn’t call either of our contributions a work of art, but together they made a very passable doll.

  For his service Michi was granted a temporary absence from his duties, which, while we worked on the doll, he spent mostly eating and sleeping. He said he could wait two days but no longer before he had to return to the mountain.

  Just enough time to be certain we would be able to leave. If there had been any way back except through the pass, I’d have taken it, but having Michi escort us through was the next best thing.

  Word came. Akitomo and the boy’s mother were together praying for their son, and that was all. The Emishi were dispersing back to their farms and villages. The new doll was completed and we presented it to Michi, who, if not fully recovered, was at least rested.

  The time came to go. We took our leave of Lord Yoshi and the headman and his family. Michi went with us up to the pass. We saw Yuki among the trees, but she kept her distance until Michi left us on the far side of the pass. As we made our way down the mountain, the snow crunching under our feet, we saw them meet again under the trees.

  I turned back to the path ahead. “Idiot.”

  Kenji grinned. “Funny thing, Lord Yamada. The way you said that, it almost sounded like a compliment. So. I assume you learned that the snow­-demon was Michi’s lover the same way I did?”

  “I already suspected, but yes. When she used the familiar form of ‘you’ to address him. Anata. Only someone on intimate terms with a man would do that.”

  “That’s the common usage, but don’t you think we were making a great deal out of a simple pronoun? I might do the same referring to you.”

  I smiled a g
rim smile. “Not the way she said it. She may as well have called him ‘beloved.’ Unless there’s something you’re not telling me?”

  Kenji ignored that. He looked thoughtful. “Do you really think she’ll kill him?”

  I thought about it, but not for long. “Yes. I really do. I’ll go so far as to say she might not mean to do so, but she will.”

  “Then don’t we have a duty to stay and try to reason with him?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I might be wrong.”

  “Lord Yamada—”

  I cut Kenji off. “Michi is a grown man. He’s made his choice and understands the consequences. He’s going to try and be happy. Just because I failed doesn’t mean he will.”

  Kenji just sighed. “You’re a romantic, Lord Yamada.”

  I saved my breath for walking rather than argue the point. I had already resolved to stop and make offerings at the first temple or shrine that we passed, and to offer prayers on Michi’s behalf that he might succeed. That I might actually be wrong. It wouldn’t be much more trouble to add a prayer that, for my own sake, Kenji might be wrong, too.

   

  © Copyright 2013 by Richard Parks. Originally published in Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter. Reprinted by permission of the author. 

  © Copyright 2015 Richard Parks