“But why—”
“I wanted to just tell you, Hirota-san. But my family assumed you would be as hostile toward us as your brother is. People usually are hostile toward fox-spirits; it’s the reaction we’re most accustomed to. So I did what they wanted. Did my duty.” She bit her lip. “Do you always like doing your duty, Hirota-san?”
Satoshi clenched his teeth. “I am sorry,” he said, in a voice of ice, “that you found me such an unpleasant duty to perform. But you will no longer have to do it. I release you from your contract, Akemi. You are no longer my concubine.”
“No!” She grasped his arms, and he felt her strong fingers, clutching. “Hirota-san, please—”
“Oh, don’t worry, fox-woman. I’ll make certain my brother doesn’t make war on your clan. It’s the least I can do. You’ve given me a few good nights, after all.”
“No,” she said again, and he saw that she was in tears. “No, it was more than that. I meant it was my duty to cast spells on you, Hirota-san. I didn’t mean it about—”
“You can say anything you like. It doesn’t matter now.” Satoshi managed not to show how her tears moved him, though the restraint was physically painful. “I thought you were … well, you can’t be, can you? You aren’t even human, and you didn’t tell me, so you obviously didn’t care whether I trusted you or not. And now, I cannot.”
To his horror, she knelt before him, clasping his hand and crying. “Please, Hirota-san. Please … Satoshi. Don’t send me away!”
He felt his stomach lurch, with the effort not to cry himself. “You’re just like my brother,” he said. “You both use me for your own ends. It’s not right for him to do that, and it’s even worse for you. Go.”
She released his hand, stood up, and left the room.
Satoshi strode out the other door to the next room, where he knew Hideki was waiting. His friend — Satoshi felt sickened by the word now — was seated on a cushion, finishing off the rest of the shochu. Satoshi hadn’t even been aware that Hideki had taken it with him.
He looked up as Satoshi came into the room. “What news, brother?” he said, as though he hadn’t heard everything that had gone on in the room next door.
Satoshi glared at him and pointed a finger.
“You,” he said. “Let me make a few observations about you.”
Hideki smiled, his usual carefree smile. “Go ahead.”
Satoshi’s lips tightened. “You like to drink,” he said. “A lot. And you don’t like to do any work.”
Hideki grinned. “That’s why we’re brothers,” he said.
“True.” Satoshi nodded, feeling an odd new dimension to the anger already coursing through him. “But you like to drink and lie around to the exclusion of everything else.”
“And I’m proud of it,” said Hideki, “of course.”
Satoshi grabbed him by the shoulders as he had Akemi. It occurred to him that he would rather have grabbed him by the throat. “My friend Hideki, indolent though he is, is extremely loyal to the people he cares about. And when some task or problem does come immediately before him, especially when it’s something that will help a friend, he will worry away at it and won’t give up until he’s solved it. You, on the other hand, left me to swing in the breeze through this entire crop-failure crisis. You couldn’t even keep yourself interested enough to spend an afternoon in a rice field with me, let alone help me solve this problem, even though if it wasn’t solved Masa would have probably had the whole village beheaded and ordered my balls cut off.”
Hideki was no longer smiling. Satoshi felt his own fingers digging into the man’s shoulders — and dug harder.
“Add to that,” Satoshi said, “the fact that you’ve suddenly developed a hellraising streak that makes all your previous efforts at trick-playing seem mild, and that you suddenly know a hell of a lot about gaki, and — and fox-spirits, and supernatural matters you never gave a damn about before, and things start looking just a little bit unnatural. So, Hideki, or whatever your damned name is — exactly what kind of shape-shifter are you?”
Hideki stared at him a moment. Then he chuckled, as one unable to help himself. In another moment he was laughing so hard that he rocked back and forth.
Satoshi had actually drawn back a hand to strike him, when Hideki smothered his laughter and wiped a hand across his face. His eyes danced; but they weren’t Hideki’s. “Oh, well done, brother,” he said, unable to suppress a giggle. “You said a few days ago that you wanted to be one of us. Remember?”
Satoshi gripped the table behind him, hardly aware that he was doing it. Hideki was changing. The old, familiar shape of his friend was sliding away before his eyes, distorting like a blob of paint stirred into another colour. Satoshi felt dizzy, nauseated, his mind rebelling against what he saw; but he could not bring himself to look away.
When it was over, the colours and outlines had settled into the squat form of an animal, but much larger than the one found in nature — a short, sharp snout, a pair of rounded ears high on the head, thick limbs and a big solid belly, and a huge pair of testicles, like hairy rice sacks; and the eyes, big and round and curious, good-natured enough, but entirely without concern or generosity.
“Tanuki,” said Satoshi, his voice just a breath. “You’re a tanuki.”
“Sure am,” said the creature — Satoshi could no longer think of it as Hideki, and the fact that he had once done so made him feel soiled. The tanuki’s voice had a husky twang, and the creature smiled as it continued. “Your friend Hideki has finished up his eight-day drunk, and now he’s holed up in a backroom in Ikewara, working on an eight-day hangover. I think his mother’s afraid he’ll go straight to hell when he dies, but who needs hell when you’ve got an eight-day hangover?”
“And so, you … stole his life.”
The tanuki snorted. “Don’t be so judgemental. I just copied his appearance. Hey, it’s what tanuki do, isn’t it? I figured he had the temperament for me to replace him easily enough, for a while anyway — he’s kind of like a tanuki, himself. I was curious about his life. And there was the matter of sake, of course. Figured a daimyo’s brother’d understand about the need for sake.”
“Did you really?” said Satoshi. He was surprised, even in his anger, to hear how his voice resembled his brother’s.
The tanuki raised its hands, which were more like paws. “Hey, hey, don’t be angry,” it said, with a genial kind of worry. “I didn’t mean any harm, after all. And I didn’t do any, did I?”
Satoshi felt the urge to blink hard; instead he frowned to suppress it. “You know what you did,” he said, through his teeth. “You betrayed me. You posed as my friend and you betrayed my trust and you — you ruined something I cared about. A lot.” He concentrated deliberately on his anger; it seemed best just then. “And none of that matters to you, does it? All that’s important to you is where your next drink is coming from, and who you can take advantage of next.”
“But I did you a favour, too, didn’t I?” Unbelievably, the tanuki winked at him. “I knew from the moment I met her that Akemi was a kitsune, and I knew she had to be stopped. So I stayed with you. You see? I stopped her.”
“You stopped her because it amused you to, not because you wanted to help me!”
“Well … I had my fun showing you Akemi’s tail; but I did some good, too, ‘cause now you don’t have to kill yourself. I could tell you were thinking that today, that you’d have to kill yourself. Made you a lot less fun, by the way. It was easy to tell that she was doing fox-magic on you: you looked so drained, and sex with a kitsune who’s bewitching you takes your life force away. But now you know Akemi was giving you those dreams of treason against your brother; it’s not that you were harbouring the urge to overthrow him. So you don’t have to commit seppuku after all. Isn’t that a good thing?”
Satoshi drew a long breath,
then let it out. “I can’t believe I ever mistook you for Hideki,” he said. “You’re disgusting.”
The tanuki blinked at him, looking hurt. “I’m just what I am,” it said. “We’ve all got to be what we are, Satoshi.”
It picked up a straw hat that had suddenly appeared on a table nearby, and clapped the hat on the back of its head. “Anyway,” it said, turning to Satoshi with a return of its impish grin, “thanks for the sake.”
Hoisting its immense testicles up over one shoulder, it waddled out the door. As Satoshi watched, it made its way along the road and disappeared.
The morning sun hadn’t reached the valley of the two rivers yet, but Satoshi trusted his horse to find the path up and out of the town. The bright scent of wood smoke mingled in Satoshi’s nose with the deeper, more acrid smell of burning charcoal as the town farmers and samurai began their day. Their homes were nearly indistinguishable from the trees under which they sheltered; only the occasional dot of light from a lamp betrayed them. Behind him, nestled securely among the riders of his escort, pack animals carried his brother’s silver.
Soon, the townsfolk would be performing the tasks set out for them by their places in society, just as he was doing his duty. We’ve all got to be what we are, the tanuki had told him. That isn’t right, though, he thought. Not for me.
He’d been awake much of the night, wrestling with what had happened. He’d been so quick to accuse Akemi and the tanuki of betraying him, but the truth was that he’d betrayed himself. In fact, the tanuki had helped him. And the fox-magic wouldn’t have been able to get its claws into him had he not harboured the envious conviction that he was more deserving of the power his brother wielded. The realization had sickened him; he had eventually slept, but only to dream of being a tanuki himself, so that he could shift from what he was.
This morning, though, he had decided that no tanuki could change in the way he had to: their shifts were all surface. He had to change what nobody could see. I can do that, he thought, watching the first sliver of dawn brighten the sky above the trees. Not on the outside; but on the inside, I can change.
Laughing, he urged his horse ahead of the others. The hooves pounded on the frozen road, and it seemed to him that the horse was sensing some of the release he felt. At the top of the hill above Nikawa he reined in the horse and turned it around. He had arrived just in time: as he watched, dawn flowed across the valley, illuminating the houses beneath the smoke plumes and glittering on frosty branches.
He heard a rustle and looked down. A few paces down the road, but well ahead of his baggage train, a fox stood in the road, looking up at him fearlessly.
Intersections
Grace Seybold
The longing hit Nadia for the third time that day as she stepped out of the sleet into the bus shelter. She wasn’t sure who was drawing her; the small space was filled to capacity with heavy coats and the dreary faces of late January in Montreal. Two teenage girls in black leaned against the outside wall, passing a joint back and forth and trying not to look cold. Nadia sighed, tucking her hands into her armpits. Here we go again.
Three in one day was a lot; sometimes she went weeks between them. She wished this were one of those weeks; already her clothes were bloody from the first incident of the day, and despite her long coat that hid the stains she couldn’t help worrying that people were staring. But the feeling here was strong, pushing at her like a railroad spike between her shoulder blades. If she turned her head a little to the left, she would see him. She did so, wondering if it was worth the bother.
Late twenties, grey coat, worn schoolbag, copy of Sartre. Caricature of a world-weary grad student. He looked preoccupied, but no more so than any of the other commuters pretending to ignore each other. He didn’t look special. None of them, Nadia thought, looked special. No-one did. She focused on him, locking her eyes to his jutting wrist bones because she didn’t want to look in his face, and pushed.
Casually, the young man took a cigarette out of his pocket and thumbed his lighter. There was a general rustle of distaste at his rudeness. Someone coughed ostentatiously. Nadia grimaced and moved away a little. She had to help them; she didn’t have to like them.
Another man, older and heavyset, abruptly turned and began to harangue the smoker in a torrent of French. Obviously not bilingual, the younger man lifted his hands placatingly, and the other’s shove sent him staggering against the plastic wall. The cigarette dropped to the floor, narrowly missing Nadia’s boot, and the offended man ground it out with obvious malice, his stream of invective continuing. The other occupants of the bus shelter looked uncomfortably at each other, clearly hoping someone else would do something.
The smoker stumbled out into the sleet, glaring at everyone through the clear wall, and defiantly took out another cigarette. A moment later he realized that his lighter was still on the floor inside where he had dropped it. The older man smirked.
“Here,” one of the girls said, leaning over to touch the tip of her joint to his cigarette. Closest to the entrance, Nadia could hear her clearly. “That was really shitty. Some people shouldn’t be allowed off leashes.”
“Thanks.” The young man took a long drag on his cigarette. “I’m Keith.”
“Steph. Hi.”
The bus came, headlights scything through the falling ice. Nadia clambered aboard, vaguely waving her pass at the driver, and watched through the window: the girl’s head leaned toward the grad student’s as they scurried into the bus shelter together to wait for the next bus. She’s fifteen at the most. And he’s a jerk. God, this one is stupid. But they all are.
The bus pulled away from the curb, and the longing faded from Nadia’s mind. The feeling of blessed relief that followed carried her through the balancing with an unshakeable calm, as a jaywalker at the next light made a fatal dart into the path of a taxi. Horns blared at each other. The bus edged ponderously around the accident like a bull moose trying to be tactful, and the screams faded behind them. Nadia settled back in her seat and thought about dinner and sleep.
Tweaking the threads of fate has consequences. Nadia Kislowicz was seventeen the first time, and the restlessness she had felt that morning might have been nothing worse than spring. She was in her second semester at Dawson College, an English major with what the teachers called a lack of application, and the classroom seemed more than usually confining. She remembered the pressure in her mind and the push, she remembered the faces of the two students who collided in the hallway. The jumper in the metro later that day still occasionally starred in her nightmares; but it was much, much later before she began to associate effect with cause.
Eleven years later, Nadia opened the door of her apartment, dropped her coat on the sofa, and flopped down after it. Her head was pounding, and the blood spots from the day’s first death had probably ruined her work pants. At least she wouldn’t have to see anyone else today, unless the landlord finally decided to come up and look at the sink. Even if he did, he wouldn’t be the fourth; it never happened if Nadia already knew them.
Wearily she got up and went into the too-small kitchen. There were a thousand little things wrong with the apartment, but none of them were really bad enough to make it worth the hassle of moving. She filled a pot with water and turned on the stove.
I could move to a small town, she thought for the thousandth time, as she put the pasta on to boil. Get to know everyone. Make it stop. But there was no guarantee that it would, and there would be lost tourists, visiting relatives, people from the government — strangers would come sooner or later, no matter how remote a place she went to. She’d thought of running off and living in the woods, too. Go north, build a cabin — or buy one, really, since she had never been good with her hands. Maybe a person could avoid the whole world, at least for awhile.
Only, she had this power, and what was it meant for if not to use? She had tried to resist it at the
beginning — succeeded, even, for a long while. Until one day the pressure broke through the surface like a geyser through a thin crust of clay, and she had gone to a Canadiens game at the Bell Centre and let her gaze and her blessing sweep through the stands like a searchlight, striking nearly two dozen people in a single moment of release. Later that night, as she turned her mother’s car onto the off-ramp that led to her parents’ house and the overpass collapsed in a shower of concrete behind her, she vowed never to do that again.
The pasta was finished, and she drained it and added oil and measured out the spices in the palm of her hand the way her mother had always done. Nadia wasn’t much of a cook, but her job didn’t pay enough for her to eat out very often, so it was often pasta or canned soups. It hardly mattered. Food didn’t interest her all that much at the best of times.
Her plate was empty, and she put it in the sink on top of an already teetering pile — have to do those soon, I guess, they’re starting to smell — and went into the bathroom, showered, put her pants in the sink to soak the blood out, and stumbled into sleep with her usual prayer, the only one she knew anymore. No dreams. Please no dreams. Please.
Morning came with grey snow swirling around the window and the warbling of the radio alarm clock. Nadia slapped it quiet and rubbed gritty salt from her eyes. She had been crying in her sleep again. She curled into a ball and debated staying there all day, but it was Friday and, once she came home from work and did the week’s groceries and laundry, she wouldn’t have to go outside again until Monday, so it would be tolerable.
At least she could get away with wearing jeans on Fridays, since she’d forgotten to hang up her good pants. She was a junior secretary at a company that made electrical parts, and she spent most of her time dealing with files and purchase orders rather than people, so nobody ever really got too excited about her clothing anyway.
Tesseracts Twelve: New Novellas of Canadian Fantastic Fiction Page 9
