by T. Isilwath
Joanna was his very first true friend, and he was learning so much from her about the nature of friendship and the joys it could bring. He was rediscovering the jovial side of himself, and he was remembering what it was like to be happy. No matter what happened between them, he would always be grateful for the gifts she had given him, and how she had made him feel like a man.
Although the friendship he shared with her was completely alien to him, he loved it and there was an easy familiarity between them because she wished it so. She wanted him only as her equal, and even though he knew he was nothing but the dirt beneath her feet, he did his best to be what she wanted him to be.
He molded himself in her image, creating an Akihiro that behaved and responded in ways that were pleasing to her. He wore the character like a custom made cloak, but he had noticed that he was slowly starting to become that person, as if it had always been there inside of him and had only needed Joanna to draw it out. She was changing him, making him become more of what he could be, and he knew he would never be the same again.
“You only think that because I’m the only kitsune you know,” he teased, smiling and tossing his head.
“Are you telling me other kitsunes have cuter noses?” she replied with her signature wry smile.
The twinkle in her eyes triggered his mischievous streak, and he knew she liked it when he was playful.
“You forget I’m only half kitsune. Full kitsune might have cuter noses, but they don’t have my ears,” he admitted, perking his ears straight up because he knew that would make her laugh.
“Hmmmm, cuter noses but no ears. I dunno if I’m willing to trade the ears for a cuter nose.”
He snickered as she rubbed the aforementioned ears and leaned into her touch, sighing as he bowed his head to give her better access. Her talented fingers found just the right spots to rub, and he relaxed under her attentions.
“I promise not to be gone long,” he vowed quietly, returning to their previous conversation.
“Take your time. I don’t want you to rush things and arouse suspicions.
You told me the young priestess…”
“Suzuka,” he provided.
“Suzuka was asking you odd questions.”
He grunted an assent and nodded. “Yes. She is very smart and she senses a change in me. It’s bound to make her curious.”
“Well, do what you can and make the best choices you’re able to.”
“I will.” Her faith and trust in him always made him proud, and he hoped that he would never disappoint her.
Dinner was soon ready and happily consumed. He delayed his leaving for as long as possible by helping with the dishes and gathering more firewood, but eventually he couldn’t put it off any longer. Leaving Joanna was gut wrenching, and the further he traveled away from her the more his fox instincts protested. It happened every time he had to return to the village for his visits, and often he had to quell the rebellion in his heart in order to force himself to be away from her. He placated his fox side with promises of a quick return and a satisfying hunt, swiping two large fish out of the river as offerings for the shrine.
He rang the bell when he arrived and hoped that Kaemon would respond instead of Ichiro or Suzuka, but his hopes were dashed when he heard the light step of the young miko and smelled her unique scent.
“Hanyou,” she said coolly as she appeared on the long engawa.
He lowered his eyes respectfully. “Suzuka-sama.”
She regarded him silently, her face expressionless and her eyes hooded. He saw her flick them towards the fish and he pushed them forward.
“I brought fish for the shrine.”
“To what do we owe this offering?”
“I am going away.”
“Again?”
“Yes.” He hoped that she wouldn’t ask too many questions. Since he refused to lie, if she asked the right questions he would have a hard time keeping where he was going and why a secret.
“Where are you going?”
His heart sank, and he wracked his brain for an answer that would be the truth without revealing too much. “I must go to the sea.” Suzuka raised her eyebrows slightly. “The sea? Whatever for?” He gulped. “Salt, Suzuka-sama.”
His answer seemed to confuse her and she cocked her head. “Salt?” He nodded. “Yes, Suzuka-sama.”
He expected her to ask him why. He knew it was coming and he dreaded it.
Then the answer dawned on him and he was stunned by his own brilliance. In fact, he couldn’t believe that he hadn’t thought of it before.
“Salt, Hanyou?”
“Yes, Suzuka-sama. I have been giving thought to the threat of the oni-gumo. Kaemon-sama is right. The oni-gumo are increasing in numbers and moving closer to human villages. Now that the rains are over, they will be moving towards more abundant food sources and places to nest for the winter. Oni-gumo are sensitive to salt. It burns them. That is why they are only found inland away from the ocean and never in sea caves.”
“Salt burns oni-gumo?”
He nodded. “Yes, Suzuka-sama.”
He saw her take the idea and work things out for herself. She had always been a quick thinker and highly intelligent. He had provided her with the seed and knew she would sow it well.
“So, if we were to… to poison the caves with salt…” she began.
“No oni-gumo would move into them. Yes. That is my belief. We wouldn’t even need that much salt; just enough to cover the entrance. The oni-gumo would walk over the salt and think the caves were tainted with it,” he explained.
“Would that… work?” she asked, her voice hopeful and pensive.
“Forgive me, Suzuka-sama, but… oni-gumo are not known for their intelligence,” he replied sheepishly.
Amazingly, she gave him a rare smile. She hadn’t smiled at him in years, and he caught a glimpse of the little girl who had once been kind to him.
“That is very true. Do you need anything from us for the salt?”
“Carrying sacks, Suzuka-sama, to hold the salt.”
“I will retrieve some from the granary. Stay here. I will return shortly.”
“Yes, Suzuka-sama. Of course, Suzuka-sama. Thank you,” he answered with the humility that was expected of him.
She left a little more quickly than she had come, taking the fish with her as an afterthought. Once she was gone, he breathed a sigh of relief and mentally patted his back for his own ingenuity. His idea not only legitimized his trip to the ocean with Joanna, but also fostered good will for him with the village, and the theory was a definite possibility. If they sowed salt into the soil at the entrance of the caves, then there was a good chance nest-seeking oni-gumo would reject them. His quick-thinking was nothing short of a stroke of genius.
Suzuka returned shortly with the carrying sacks. Ichiro was with her.
“My daughter tells me that you have a plan for keeping oni-gumo out of the caves,” the priest said without preamble.
He put his head and tail down in submission. “Yes, Ichiro-sama. I wish to salt the entrance to the caves in hopes of discouraging them from nesting there.”
The man took the carrying sacks from Suzuka and handed them to him personally. The silent implication wasn’t lost on him, but he steeled himself to hide his reaction as he reached up to accept them.
“Thank you, Ichiro-sama. I will return in a few days. I will ring the bell when I am back.”
“May your trip be successful.”
“Thank you for the blessing, Ichiro-sama.”
“We will pray that your plan will keep our village safe from oni-gumo nests.”
He bowed his head. “It is my fervent hope.”
Knowing they were finished with him, he kept his head down and backed away. Once he was off the porch, he turned and headed for the forest. He kept his steps slow and calm until he was completely concealed by the trees, then he let out his joy in a massive leap that took him sailing over the branches and towards home.
Joanna had yet to go to bed when he arrived. She was sitting in the hollow and writing in her “journal” like she did every night. She had never shown him
the book, but she had told him that it was used to record the events of her days.
She said it also helped her keep track of how long she had been in the forest.
While he knew how to record the passage of time, he paid little attention to it. Joanna had once asked him what year it was, and he could honestly say he didn’t know. After his mother died, he didn’t bother keeping track of who was Emperor or Shogun, or the name of the era. Lady Yukiko had died in the second year of Entoku. Ashikaga Yoshitane had been Shogun and Go-Tsuchimikado was Emperor. He knew that neither man was still in power, but he couldn’t say who was the current ruler or Shogun. In all honesty, he didn’t really care because who was in power had little effect on his life. In fact, unless they were a member of the ruling class, or worked for one, very few people cared who was Shogun or Emperor because their lives were the same no matter who was in charge.
Once the Emperor had been great, and he had ruled all of Japan, but now he was merely a powerless puppet while the daimyos fought bitter wars over territory and thousands died. His mother had read him stories from the books she took from Ojiisan’s library: like tales of the young man Genji and poems that spoke of times that were different.
The weakening of the Emperor had spawned the terrible flesh-eating demons who thrived on the death and destruction left behind by decades of civil war. They had always existed, perhaps longer than the human race itself, but their ranks had never been so numerous. Now they were everywhere, feasting on death and wrecking everything in their path.
These “carrion-eaters” were a different sort from the kitsune and other demons like dog, wolf or boar demons: the high demons who could trace their ancestors back to China. The high demons could be good or evil, but the carrion-eaters were nothing but mindless scavengers that delighted in blood and misery. They were low-life rabble and almost every high demon he had ever met had always hated and slaughtered the carrion-eaters. While his father was alive, Ojiisan’s lands in Kai had been regularly cleansed of them, and the local farmers had practically worshipped the great Kazehiro for his service. After the warrior monks from Mt. Hiei had killed him, the carrion-eaters took their vengeance for the years of culling and ravaged the countryside, razing whole villages and slaughtering hundreds of innocents. His mother and he had passed many of them on their desperate flight to Musashi, and he vividly remembered the horrific, bloody carnage. He hated the carrion-eaters as much as his father did.
“I’m back,” he announced, popping his head into the hollow.
Joanna cast him a brilliant smile that made his whole body feel warm.
“Welcome back. You weren’t kidding when you said you wouldn’t be gone long. How did it go?”
He took his usual place by her side and showed her the carrying sacks.
“Much better than I expected. I remembered that oni-gumo are sensitive to salt, and I told Suzuka and Ichiro that I was going to collect salt to poison the caves.
For many years oni-gumo have made nests in the caves near the village. This year I hope to trick them into thinking the caves are tainted with salt.” She looked thoughtful then nodded. “I think I’ve heard about that; about using salt to kill insects and spiders. It burns them doesn’t it?”
“Yes. If they burn their feet in the entrance of the caves, maybe they will pass them by.” He shrugged. “At least, that’s the idea.”
“It’s a very good idea and I think it’ll work.”
“I am hoping. Oni-gumo are deadly and they can slaughter a whole village in one night. They will come in and poison as many victims as they can, then wrap them up in their webbing and drag them off to the nest. Those who are caught are paralyzed and helpless, then eaten alive.” He saw her shudder. “I wouldn’t want something like that living near me either. I’m not overly fond of spiders, but I won’t go out of my way to kill them. Where I live, the vast majority of our spiders are harmless to humans and animals, and they eat nuisance insects so I actually kind of like them. Michael, however, he hates them. He’s not afraid of them, but he will usually squash any spider he sees in the house or camp. He won’t tolerate them living in the same place he is.”
He nodded. “I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t either. There is no telling when one will come and bite you while you sleep.”
She shrugged. “Like I said, most of ours are harmless, and they eat mosquitoes so I’m likely to just let them live.”
“There are better ways of getting rid of mosquitoes,” he argued, then he saw her yawn and he nuzzled her with his nose. “You’re tired. You should sleep. We have a long day of traveling tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, putting her journal aside, and checked her blood number.
“What is it?” he asked, wanting to know the number. He knew which numbers were “good” and which were “bad,” and the bad ones made him nervous.
“116.”
“That’s good.”
She nodded. “Yeah, but I should eat a little something before I go to sleep otherwise it might drop too low overnight.”
“I’ll bring you something,” he offered immediately.
“One of the kudzu bean cakes. That should be enough.”
“Okay,” he answered and left the hollow long enough to retrieve the aforementioned bean cake from their underground cache of food. He brought it back a few moments later.
She ate the bean cake and a few strips of dried venison, then went out to do her nighttime preparations. He fluffed his own bed and straightened out the blankets. Soon the straw would need to be replaced, but there was no sense in doing it before they got back from the coast. Then he went out to perform his own nightly ablutions and returned to find her settling down in her sleeping bag.
He crawled into his own bedding and snuggled under the blankets. Dimly he was aware that the longer he stayed with her, the less he slept curled up like a fox, and the more he slept stretched out on his side like a man, and he wondered if she had noticed. He tucked the pillow under his head and pulled her blanket shawl over his shoulders, more for the comfort of being covered than the need for warmth, and closed his eyes. It wasn’t long before he drifted off to sleep.
The following day, they left shortly after the morning meal. Joanna packed light, and he finally learned what the metal frame with the straps was for. She rolled up her sleeping bag and put the supplies they would need into the black pack, then strapped everything to the frame and hooked it onto her back. She was even bringing Iris for which he was very glad. The rest of her belongings were staying in the hollow, but she was not concerned about them being stolen or damaged while they were gone. Before they left the grove, Joanna asked the trees to guard her camp, and she had faith in their ability to fulfill their promise.
It seemed very weird to him to talk to a tree, and even weirder to believe that the tree talked back, but she told him that she could converse with them as easily as she spoke with him. He supposed there was some credence to it, especially since the grove of Sugi was so sacred. It didn’t seem all that farfetched that such blessed and ancient trees would have consciousness, but Joanna insisted that all trees could talk. In fact, she said everything could talk, even the rocks and the rain. He had argued that he had never heard a tree talk, but she had said that was just because he didn’t know how to listen.
Since then he had tried to listen to the trees, but all he had ever heard was the wind in the branches. At the same time, he knew she would never lie to him, so he guessed that he couldn’t hear the trees because he was a hanyou.
Joanna argued with him that his kitsune blood had nothing to do with it, nor did purity because Michael could talk to trees too, but he’d pointed out that Michael was human while he wasn’t. She’d shaken her head and dropped the subject in deference for getting on the road.
They traveled all day, walking along the trade roads
when possible, but hiding if he heard or smelled anyone coming, and Joanna surprised him with her endurance and fast walking pace. By the time night fell, they had passed into the country of Shimosa and were more than halfway to the sea. The bay was close-by but they stuck to the forest, and Joanna amazed him by finding a perfect campsite in a small hidden field surrounded by trees. He caught a rabbit for their supper, and she spitted it over the fire to cook. When it was done roasting, they split it between them, with Joanna insisting he take the larger portion, and they ate in companionable silence.
He licked his fingers and hummed happily as Joanna picked up Iris and began to play. The day had been wonderful, despite the sweltering summer heat, and they both were in good spirits. He relaxed completely, or as completely as he ever did with his fox senses on alert, and leaned back to enjoy her music.
“I am still amazed that we found such a perfect campsite. This time of the summer, usually everything is overrun with insects and vines,” he commented after she had played two songs for him; just instrumentals with no vocals. She said she was too tired to sing tonight.
“I knew it was here. The trees told me. I asked them because they know this forest better than I do,” she replied, strumming the gitaa before she put it away.
He perked up his ears and listened. “I still don’t hear anything.” She smiled at him. “That’s because you’re not listening.”
“I am,” he insisted indignantly. “I keep telling you that I won’t be able to.”
“Your kitsune blood has nothing to do with it. If anything, the fact that you are a fox should make hearing the trees easier for you. Four-leggeds are closer to the natural world than two-leggeds. They’ve never forgotten how to listen to the trees whereas we have to be reminded. The reason you can’t hear them is because you don’t believe that you can. The world will happily play dead for you if that is what you want. Attitudes like that have caused a great deal of trouble and damage to my world. People forgot how to listen to the earth, and they convinced themselves that She had no feelings or consciousness. It made them think that they could do whatever they wanted to the earth without suffering any consequences,” she explained tolerantly.
