by T. Isilwath
“Tadaima,” she said as she entered the grove, saying the traditional word that announced her arrival.
“Okaeri nasai,” he replied automatically, proving that the greeting custom was practiced in this time as well.
She first noticed that Akihiro was staring at her when she looked over to find him sitting on his haunches only a few feet away. He seemed fascinated by her hair for some reason and kept sniffing in her direction.
“Doush'tano?” she asked him.
“Ie…” he replied, blushing and looking away.
‘I’ll bet he’s smelling my shampoo.’
She decided to ignore his embarrassment and went back to combing her hair. A moment later, she saw a flash of movement in her peripheral vision, and looked to see Akihiro twisted around in a ball so he could clean his tail.
‘No human being could ever bend like that. Not unless they were a contortionist or into advanced yoga,’ she mused.
He caught her watching him and stopped, his eyes clouding, and his face falling with shame and uncertainty. She smiled and moved closer, taking his tail in her hands and using her comb to brush out some dried mud. He gasped at her bold move, but did not pull his tail away, and she gently began to systematically separate the hair to comb it clean. Like a normal fox’s tail, it was long and heavily covered in red fur with a tuft of white right at the end.
Neither of them spoke as she groomed him, and she tried to make it seem like what she was doing was no big deal. When she was finished with his tail, she moved up to his head, noticing that his hair was tangled and littered with cedar needles and bits of bark. Back in her time, she’d often brushed Michael’s hair, and he hadn’t cut it more than a few inches in the eleven years she had known him. He always said she had a light touch, and she used that now because she was certain that Akihiro’s scalp was more sensitive than a human’s, especially around his ears.
He stayed very still, letting her carefully work out the tangles and remove the debris. She wasn’t in any real hurry. The stew was warming on the fire, but the duck gizzards needed time to cook so dinner wouldn’t be ready for a little while yet. Little by little, she worked her way from the top down, brushing and smoothing. His hair was very different from Michael’s. It wasn’t all one length, but varied in length depending on where the hair grew. On the very top of his head, around his ears and over his forehead, the hair was shorter, but on the back of his skull and along the sides, it was much longer. He had bangs, too, uneven locks of hair that fell haphazardly over his narrow eyebrows. All of it was the russet red, thick and very soft just like a fox pelt, and the hair on his ears was even softer. The two black-tipped triangles moved like miniature satellite dishes, rotating about 100 degrees in any direction, but they were relaxed now like their owner, who was groaning softly under his breath. The evil imp in her took over, and she put down the comb in order to give him an ear massage, digging in her fingers and rubbing them at the base. Her fox let out a contented sigh that graduated into a throaty croon.
‘Like that do you, huh? ’ she mused wickedly. ‘Hmmm, methinks I’ve got leverage here.’
He whined when she stopped, then immediately blushed with embarrassment. She giggled and picked up the comb, getting out the last of the tangles.
She heard him sniffing again and his nose was focused on her hair.
‘Has to be the shampoo…’
“Kono nioi,” he whispered.
“Ma-na.”
“Nani?”
“Kami sekken.”
“Kami sekken? Hen nano,” he commented, sniffing again.
Weird.> “Ii nioi da.”
“Arigatou.”
By the time she finished with his hair, dinner was ready so she served up the stew with some mushrooms and vegetables they had collected earlier in the day. Akihiro had taken her out of her usual territory and brought her to the remains of an abandoned hut. The solitary homestead was falling apart, but the garden had grown wild and now sprawled over its borders. It was riddled with weeds, but there was a great deal of potential in the little plot. Akihiro had told her that he had been collecting food there for a long time so the place must have been empty for years. She took what foods were ripe and ready, noting that there would be more to be had in the coming weeks.
After dinner, she washed the dishes and collected stones for the earthen oven. Akihiro helped her gather enough rocks and watched as she made the fire tower. In the morning, she would heat the rocks, spice the ducks and stuff them with vegetables, then wrap them in leaves and bake them in an underground oven for most of the day. Once preparations for the following day were complete, she boiled water and served tea, then retrieved Iris and removed the guitar from her carrying case.
“Ohhh, shamisen!” Akihiro exclaimed, mistaking the instrument for a three-stringed lute until he counted the strings. “Eh? Nanda?”
“Guitar,” she supplied helpfully.
“Giiiiii-taaaaaaa,” he repeated, his face comical.
“Hai.”
“Nanda giii-taaaa?”
She gave him a secretive smile as she tuned Iris, and his ears came straight up at the sound. “Kawaii kitsune mimi.”
“Hen na onna,” he replied, but flicked them for her.
She chuckled and settled Iris on her lap, running her fingers over the strings to make the first chord. Iris obliged her with the resonant, rich sound that had made an eighteen year-old Joanna blow $1100 of her precious death benefit money on the acoustic guitar.
Handmade by an Algonquin in Vermont, she was a true work of art. Her price had originally been $2600 at a multi-tribal Pow-wow and craft fair in New York that she had gone to with Michael and a few other young Cherokees.
She’d discovered the Algonquin’s booth on the first day there and had painstak-ingly sampled a number of his wares. He had cheaper instruments: drums, flutes, mountain dulcimers and the like, but Iris… Iris was the prize.
From the get-go she was way too expensive, even with the “tribal” mark-down the artist had listed for fellow Indians. She knew that the guitar could easily sell for $5000 or more off the reservation, but Michael had known how much she’d wanted her so he’d somehow managed to haggle $1500 off her already deeply discounted cost. To this day, she didn’t know how he had done it because Iris was worth every penny of her asking price and her creator knew it. Still, it was by some small miracle that he agreed to take $1100 for her on the last day of the festival. Why she hadn’t sold before then, Joanna didn’t know, but she didn’t question her good fortune.
She loved the guitar and the guitar loved her because Iris’s rich music played only for her and Michael. In the hands of anyone else, she was dull and hollow, but under her and Michael’s fingers, she sang like an angel and made gooseflesh come up on the skin of the listeners. It was soon apparent that Akihiro would be no exception because his eyes opened wide the moment she started to play, and he remained enraptured for the next half hour.
Because it was a full moon, she played songs to celebrate Her power. She played other songs as well: a couple of contemporary favorites and then an old song Michael was fond of called “You and Me.” The familiar strains of the song brought back bittersweet memories. There were many
summer nights just like this one where she and Michael had sat together beside a campfire with only the trees, the stars, and each other for company.
Sitting by the fire pit with Akihiro only a few feet away, his fox ears and amber-brown eyes focused on her, she felt Michael’s absence deeply. The place beside her where he ought to be was empty, and the void of distance and time between them stretched out beneath her like a bottomless pit. They hadn’t seen each other for over a month, the longest they had ever been separated, and she knew she might never see him again.
It would have been very easy to allow her sudden melancholy to ruin the evening, but she did not want to upset Akihiro or deprive him of something that he was so obviously enjoying. If she gave in to her sadness, he would only ask questions that she had no words to answer, and she did not feel emotionally up to trying to explain why she was missing the other half of herself.
Pulling herself out of her memories, she forged on and chose a happier song for the next one. She sang in English and in Cherokee, and even tried one in Japanese-an old folk song about a nightingale that Akihiro especially liked.
When she was finished, she had sung approximately eight songs, and her fingers ached from the prolonged use. Normally a half hour would be nothing for her, but she hadn’t been playing for more than a few minutes recently, and her fingers had stiffened up.
“Sugoi! Sugoi!” Akihiro praised when the impromptu performance was over.
She flushed under the compliments. “Arigatou.”
“Johrannah-sama wa subarashii ensoukada. Omae mata gitaa o ensou suru no?”
“Hai. Ashita-no yoru.”
“Yoshi!”
She yawned and stretched, feeling the bones in her spine crack and snap back into place. “Ahhh. Tsukaremashita.”
“Un.”
“Atashi wa nerune,” she told him, standing up.
“Un.”
“Akihiro, omae mo korukai?”
“Hai. Suguni.”
“Ii yo.”
It looked like he was planning to bank the fire and make sure that it was safe to leave overnight. She thought he might also want some private time to himself for whatever reason, and that was fine with her because she needed to write in her journal and record the events of the day. According to her insulin pump it was June 4th, and she had been in pre-industrial Japan for exactly twenty-nine days. There had been no sign of anyone looking for her, and she wondered if she would ever be found.
Going into the hollow, she lit a tallow lamp and retrieved her journal. Once she was finished writing her daily entry, she put it away, said her evening prayers to Spirit and to the trees that guarded her, and crawled into her sleeping bag. About an hour later, she was awakened from a light sleep by Akihiro coming into the hollow. She could barely see him in the darkness, but she heard him moving about and caught the telltale rustle of his bedding being tamped down.
She smiled to herself when she counted three rotations of his body before he settled into his blankets. There was another rustle, then a deep sigh followed by silence. She hunkered further down into her bedding and closed her eyes.
‘Maybe they’ll never find me. And maybe I’ll die here. But at least I’m not alone. ’
Chapter Seven
Dawn found him warm and comfortable in the bed Johrannah had made him, and he had half a mind to stay there for a while longer, but he heard Johrannah moving about in the shelter so he thought it best to get up as well. His senses were at their sharpest because it was the full moon, and the slightest noise disturbed him. Now that the moon had passed its crest, his power would wane until it reached its lowest point at the end of the month. He was well used to the natural ebbing and rising of his demon blood, and he had long ago learned how to work with the cycles and capitalize on whatever power he had at the time.
He heard the little “beep” of Johrannah’s medicine pouch and popped his head out from under the blanket to look at her. She gave him a happy smile and giggled when he made a show of yawning. She didn’t seem to mind when he flashed his teeth. Most humans saw the fangs and were either shocked or repulsed, but Johrannah didn’t blink twice at his teeth… or his ears… or his tail.
She’d even groomed his tail.
‘And rubbed my ears the way Haha-ue used to.’
“Good morning,” she greeted.
He snuffled, feeling playful, and burrowed back under the blanket. He heard her laugh, and a moment later the end of the blanket was lifted as she peeped in.
“Boo,” she said.
He chuckled and charged, popping his head out and making her snicker.
“Cute,” she told him, rubbing his ears.
He sighed and closed his eyes in pleasure. She knew just how to rub them for maximum results, and he swooned under her touch. She was fast becoming the most wonderful person in the world.
‘You can just keep doing that. I won’t stop you,’ he mused happily.
A few moments later, she stopped rubbing and gave him a pat.
“Fire for oven. Cook duck today,” she told him, then left the hollow.
‘We’re cooking the ducks and she has to start the fire. I’d better help.’
He exited the hollow and made a short detour to the waste pit. When he came back, Johrannah had already started the fire, but she hadn’t dug the pit for the oven. The previous evening, she’d shown him where the pit was going to be so he went over to the chosen spot and began to dig. His claws cut easily into the soft earth, and he knew it wouldn’t take him very long to carve out the hole.
“Akihiro, wait,” she said and he paused, looking over his shoulder at her.
“Hm?”
“Your belly wound.”
“Eh? It’s fine,” he assured her, putting one hand over the threads. He’d looked at it yesterday when he’d changed into the clean nobakama pants she had brought him, and it had been fine.
“I want to see,” she insisted.
He thought about arguing, but he had long ago learned never to go up against a female who was being maternal. With a sigh, he gave in and returned to the entrance of the hollow. There he sat down and waited while she went into the shelter and came out carrying a white metal box with a red marking on it.
Curious, he put his ears up and watched her as she opened the box. It smelled odd and was full of strange objects. She chose some things from the box and took them out, then she motioned that she wanted to see his wound. He paused for only a moment, then pulled his short kosode out from the waistband of the nobakama field pants. Then he undid the obi sash and opened it wide enough to bare his belly wound.
She looked carefully at the incision, frowning, and poked the area around it.
“Hurt?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No.” It didn’t. In fact her poke tickled.
“Okay.”
She poked a bit more and he tried not to giggle. He knew the wound was fully healed.
“Hmmm. Okay,” she said with a nod, then she picked up two of the items she took from the metal box: a funny looking jar that he could see right through and a paper pouch.
She opened the jar and a noxious odor assaulted his nose.
“Aie!” he cried and started sneezing.
“Sorry, sorry!” she apologized, but she didn’t close the jar until she had opened the paper pouch, pulled out a tuft of white fluff and doused the fluff with liquid from the jar.
She closed the jar and bottled the horrible stench, but his eyes were watering, plus the fluff was soaked with the liquid so the smell was still in the air.
“What is that?” he demanded, holding his nose and flattening his ears.
“Alcohol.”
“Alcohol! ”
Alcohol? He’d been around a lot of alcohol in his life, but he’d never encountered any alcohol that
smelled like that. He cringed as she swiped the wet fluff over the wound and sneezed again.
“Sorry. Sorry.”
“What are you doing?”
“Akihiro no infection.”
“Infection? I don’t get infections. I’m a hanyou,” he argued as he suffered another sneeze. This time he was certain he’d almost sneezed himself right out of his skin. “Oh I’m dizzy…” He rolled his eyes and let himself fall back, landing on the ground with a heavy whomp.
“Akihiro?”
“Akihiro’s dead,” he replied.
“Liar,” she answered teasingly, and he cracked one eye open to peek at her.
He giggled. Despite his discomfort, and his burning eyes and nose, he was still in one of the best moods he had been in since before his mother died.
Kitsune were playful by nature, and they tended to be on the mischievous side of things. His mother had often borne the brunt of his tricks since he’d had no friends, but she had never seemed to mind indulging him when he wanted to play. He knew she’d spoiled him, but he’d had no one else. He hadn’t played or genuinely laughed in over thirty years, but now that he was with Johrannah, the side of himself that had been locked away was raising a hopeful head.
She ruffled his hair and rubbed his ears, then patted his belly.
“Be still,” she told him, and reached down to pick up a metal object.
He saw her slip her fingers into the holes on the ends and he realized that it was a small set of tailor’s shears except the ends were curved.
“What…?”
“Be still,” she said again, and he saw her going for the threads.
‘She’s going to cut them and pull them out.’
He obeyed, not wanting to get stabbed by the sharp shears, and even held his breath to keep his belly from moving while she worked. He heard the snip, snip, snip of the shears and felt the tug of the threads being removed from his skin. It pricked a little, but didn’t really hurt, and soon it was over and she was giving him a belly rub.
