“Homunculus! Stop it!”
I strike and strike and strike again. He swats at me, knocking me back, and she still fights, until the jar teeters, tips, and falls with a crash of glass. Where the broken glass touches her it melts away, rolling off of her like tears. She streaks upwards in flight, through the rafters. Her fire catches on timbers and wood begins to split. Sparks shower down, landing atop papers. Years of research turns to ash, and smoke fills the room.
She is free. As am I. I run beneath the door and to the rat-hole, leaving the burning cabin behind.
~ ~ ~
I think I know where I will find her. It takes me a long time to walk there on my own. I am light enough to walk atop even the freshest snow, but it is almost dawn when the distance is covered. And she is there, my Maria, in the clearing, just as I knew she would be.
She lies on dry earth now, scorched from where she fell, like a comet to the ground. Beneath her shift she is whole and plump, like ripe fruit, and she sleeps.
I walk up to her face and touch along the line of her full lips, and she smiles in her dreams before waking.
“Alrun—are we free?”
I nod. I think we are. She picks me up. “I feel much better now. What happened?” She looks down at herself and then around. The early snow is melting. We can walk to the main road and wait for a rider to pass. I’ve been there. I know where to go.
“I wish I knew what happened,” she says, cradling me. “I wish you could tell me.”
I shake my head. Even if I had lips, I would not utter a word.
~ ~ ~
I think the Alchemist lived. I think some days he tries to call me back to him still, because I can feel his will flutter in my chest. But there’s a different feeling there now as well—my own volition.
So I serve another master now. I serve my Maria, by choice.
And she never asks me to forget.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Erin Cashier is a nurse at a burn ward in the Bay Area. Her fiction has appeared in Writers of the Future XXIV and is forthcoming in Shimmer Magazine.
THE MANSION OF BONES
Richard Parks
THE TWO GHOSTS APPEARED with the rising of the moon. At first they were nothing but mist, each hovering over the pile of stones on either side of the path that marked where the gate towers of the Fujiwara compound had once stood. Large sections of crumbling wall remained, but the gate itself had long since fallen.
So much of the atmosphere of sadness and misery of this place filled the senses that one might easily make the fatal mistake of overlooking the ghosts entirely, if one—unlike me—wasn’t expecting them. Beyond the opening I could see the grassy mounds that contained the ghosts’ handiwork—piles of broken, moldering human bones. They were sobering reminders of how easily Kenji and I could join them.
At such times I was all too keenly aware that I had not had a drink in over a week. I waited for the ghosts to finish their manifestation while Kenji, blissfully ignorant, waited on me, but I would not be rushed. Only now, with the two wretched spirits before me, did I finally understand the full extent of my mission here. Even so, I did not yet see what path I would need to take to complete that mission, and our lives were in the balance.
“Don’t you feel it?” I asked. “The unrelenting sadness of this place? It sinks into my bones like the cold of winter.”
“Lord Yamada, you’re a moody sort in the best of times, and I know you don’t like ghosts,” Kenji the scruffy priest said. “I’ll exorcise them if you wish, but you’ll have to hold the lantern.”
I sighed. “First, no one asked you to do so. Second, you charge exorbitant rates for such services. Third. . .tell me again why you’ve insisted on accompanying me? I didn’t believe your story about wanting to see the countryside, you know.”
Kenji smiled a rueful smile. “If you must know, matters are a bit unsettled for me in the Capital at this time. Therefore I felt it prudent to make this journey with you.”
“You could contain the abundance of my surprise in the husk of one grain of rice, with room to spare. Who was she?”
Kenji looked at the moon. “The wife of a minor palace official. You wouldn’t know her.”
“Neither should you.” I thought of saying more on the subject, but dismissed the idea. It was pointless to scold Kenji. He was what he was, and even a reprobate monk with both the appetites and the piety of a stray cat had his uses. “I hope you brought your prayer beads. We may yet need them.”
“So I surmised. What have you led me to?”
I started to remind Kenji that I had led nowhere; he had simply followed. I did not, since that reminder was pointless too. We were three days from the Capital along the southern road toward Nara, safely through the bandit town of Uji, and now outside a ruined compound that, I was reliably informed, had once belonged to the former provincial governor, Fujiwara no En. “Former” as in nearly one hundred years previous to the rein of the current Emperor Reiza.
“My client insists there is an object somewhere in this compound that once belonged to her family. I have been engaged to reclaim it. That is all you need know.”
“So your client is a Fujiwara. And the ghosts?”
“Rumor, but a very consistent one, which fortunately I believed. Now please be quiet for a little while.”
There’s not much you can tell about a ghost if its preferred manifestation is little more than a vapor, but I was given to understand that these two normally presented themselves in a more substantial form. After a few more moments, it was plain to me—and especially Kenji—that this was the case.
“They’re women!”
I sighed. “Your morality may be suspect, but your eyes are still good.”
The figures were still vapor from the knees down, but from the knees up, they had the appearance of two very pretty young women with long black hair and cold, dark eyes. There was menace and suspicion in those eyes, but also a sadness almost beyond bearing. Now I knew the source of the melancholy I had felt the moment I came near to this place. I had seen ghosts times beyond counting, but I found that I could not look into these pitiful faces for very long.
They were clearly aware of our presence, but they said nothing, merely hovering over the twin sets of ruins, watching us.
“The Chinese say that ‘to make love to a spirit is to know the ultimate pleasure,’” Kenji said a little wistfully.
“They also say that to love a ghost is to die. Is that a price you’re willing to pay?”
Kenji sighed again. “Such is the nature of the bargain that one wouldn’t know the correct answer to that question until it was too late. Still, they are lovely.”
“Were, Kenji. They are dead and have been for most of the past hundred years. And unless you want to join them, stay where you are, keep quiet, and leave this next bit to me.”
I rose just high enough to slip forward about ten paces from where the old gate had stood, and with my back to Kenji, I produced the token my client had entrusted to me. As one, the two ghosts bowed respectfully and faded to mist and then to nothing. “It’s safe to come forward now,” I said, rising. Kenji soon joined me.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“I showed them my client’s credentials, which I am not at liberty to reveal to you, so do not ask.”
Kenji scowled. “Then I’ll ask this: what would have happened if we’d attempted to enter the compound without those ‘credentials’?”
“We’d have been ripped limb from limb by those two charming rei, which I can assure you are far more dangerous than they appear. Look over there.”
I pointed to the thick clumps of grass that I had already noted, now drawing them to Kenji’s attention. When Kenji peered closer he saw what I saw: the graying skull and leg bones of a man.
“What happened to him?”
“The same thing that happened to those two over there. . . and there,” I said, pointing out more unburied bodies. “Or do you still wish to pay court to those
two charming guardians?”
“I think not,” Kenji said, “but why did we not wait for daybreak? Both ghosts’ and demons’ strength is diminished by the sun.”
“Not nearly enough, I think, but in this case rumor also has it that there is a demon guarding the item I was sent to retrieve. In which case, only that demon’s presence will reveal where the object may be found. If the demon hides from us, so does our objective.”
Kenji just shook his head. “And a demon as well. I’m beginning to think I should have taken my chances with that lady’s husband.”
We passed through the empty gate. I noticed Kenji keeping an eye on the ruins, but there was no sign of the two ghosts. Not that I believed for a moment that they had departed. If the stories I’d heard were true that wasn’t possible for them, but they did not show themselves or interfere, and for now, that was all I wanted. I had gotten a much closer look at them than Kenji had, and there’s only so much pain and sadness one can bear to see on the face of another person, living or dead.
The compound was—or had been—a rather large one, befitting the status of its former master. The main building was once a massive structure, but now it was little more than a roof and pilings on a rotting platform; the left and right wings that had once run perpendicular from the main house and connected to it with covered walkways were little more than two long mounds of rotten wood and vegetation. One or two of the outbuildings stood as well, but little else. I knew where the garden had been, of course, as the placement of the garden was a fixed feature at such stately homes, but it was impossible now to differentiate it from all the other weeds and trees that had grown as they willed in the past century.
“You’re not going into that, are you?” Kenji asked. “Forget the demon; the roof’s more likely to collapse and kill you, if you don’t break your leg falling through a hole in the floor first.”
Kenji had a point, but I didn’t see much in the way of alternatives. I kept my hand near the hilt of my sword as I approached the house; Kenji followed close behind and held the lantern high, though the light did not reach very far into the gloom of the house. The moon shining through the gaps in the ceiling gave more, and I used it as I stepped on the great stone leading to the veranda that encircled the decaying mansion.
I passed the threshold into the deeper gloom of the interior, and the air was thick with the scent of rotting wood. Even so, I quickly realized that there was one great advantage for us in the dilapidated condition of the house—there was, almost literally, no place to hide. Most of the sliding screens that had once been used to divide the interior space of the mansion had long since either collapsed or gone to tatters. Except for the shadows not covered by either our lantern or the shining moon, there was nothing hidden.
We located and entered the nurigome, the family’s inner sanctum where treasures were likely to be kept, but found nothing. After a slow and careful round of the interior with Kenji holding the lantern, and even raising that lantern toward the rafters, we could see that there was nothing lurking in the house save for an ordinary rat or two and several moth-demons and other nightflyers too small to be a threat. The floor creaked ominously but otherwise held.
Kenji looked unhappy. “I know I’m going to regret asking this, but what about beneath the house?”
That had occurred to me as well, but the area beneath the floorboards was little more than a crawlspace, and it would simply be impossible to explore it properly without the risk of setting fire to the entire structure, a chance I was not yet prepared to take. “That’s something that very well might have to wait until morning, if no other signs present themselves.”
“Are you sure that what you’re searching for is within the house?” Kenji asked.
“I’m only sure it’s within the compound. It could be anywhere; the house simply seemed the sensible place to begin.”
“There’s far more to this tale than you’re telling,” Kenji said.
“Did I not say as much?”
We stood together near the center of the old house. Due to its state and the bright moonlight, we could see the approaches to the mansion in all directions. On the far side of the mansion was an outbuilding I hadn’t been able to see clearly before, but in the gloom it was hard to tell much about it. The rats had fled, so there was nothing stirring anywhere and no sounds save our own voices, the creaking of old wood, and the chirp of crickets. Not even the ghosts were in sight.
“You can’t tell me what we’re looking for or who your patron is. Fine. What about the story of this place and those two ghosts? That’s history, not a confidence.”
I shrugged. “It was during the Fujiwara Regency, if you must know. A time of great unrest and uncertainty. As a member of that clan, Fujiwara no En, the governor of this province, was recalled to the Capital to support the Regent. He took his household and most of his bushi with him. The item I’m seeking was left behind.”
“And the two ghosts?”
“Also left behind. Two trusted female attendants of Lady Fujiwara remained with some of the older servants to maintain the house, as no one knew then that the family would not be returning. I think you can guess what happened next.”
Kenji looked glum. “Uji.”
For more than a hundred years the town of Uji had harbored bandits that preyed on travelers on the southern road to the old Capital at Nara. This was not to say that all members of that village were thieves, but a significant portion were and had remained so by family tradition from ancient times until the present.
“Just so. As the local Governor, En could be depended on to make a show of force on his departure, but I’m afraid he had no more tactical sense than the average locust. His procession passed through Uji, so the entire town knew of his absence. A dozen or so of the worst lot decided to seize the chance and joined forces to attack the compound directly. They quickly overpowered whatever guards remained, if any, and ransacked the house. They found little save some rice, furnishings, and ordinary cloth and did not believe the two attendants when they told them there was no gold or any other valuables. In their anger and frustration, the bandits murdered the remaining servants, then brutalized the two unfortunate women before slaying them as well. Or so the story is told.”
Kenji nodded. “So they died to defend their lord’s property.”
“Actually, they died because their pitiful excuse for a master didn’t properly consider their safety, and because the bandits were foolish and greedy enough to believe that a Fujiwara would have left anything of real value behind, despite his haste.”
“Your opinion of the Fujiwara clan and this man in particular is duly noted. Nevertheless, he left the item you seek.”
I smiled. “True. But remember—he did mean to return. Regardless, now this is a cursed place, and the attendants’ miserable, wretched spirits guard in death the compound they could not defend in life.”
“There is some justice in this, that those bandits and thieves would pay the price for the past crimes of their village.”
I almost laughed. “You think these poor fools were from Uji? Hardly. As the primary cause of the curse, they know better. Those bones we saw are the remains of outside treasure-seekers drawn by the stories of this place, and that is the common fate of all who enter here.”
“Except for us. We survived,” Kenji pointed out.
I smiled again. “So far.”
I know it was wrong of me to savor the look of fear on Kenji’s face, but some temptations are not to be resisted. I didn’t have long to enjoy it, however. As I was glancing out toward the rear of the house, I saw a shadow that did not belong.
The moon was still high, and I noted the shadow cast by the house and another by the outbuilding that still stood in the near courtyard about ten paces away from what was left of the far wall, but there was a third shadow, roughly man-sized, that had apparently been cast by nothing. It had been approaching the house, but I think my attention alone had stopped it. Now it stood, wavering, l
ike the surface of a cold, dark stream.
“A spell of protection, if you please,” I said. “There’s work to be done.”
Kenji took his prayer beads from around his neck. “Spells? Do you think I am some sort of Chinese yin-yang magician? I am a monk, and I invoke the protection of holy writ. You also know I do not work for nothing, Lord Yamada.”
“And you also know that if I die, you die,” I said. “How does that weigh against the needs of your purse?”
Kenji sighed and scratched his shaven head. “Heavily, as you damn well know.” He began to chant. It might have been a passage from the Diamond Sutra; I was not pious enough to know one book of Buddhist scripture from another, but Kenji, despite his flaws, knew nearly all of them and could recite the appropriate passages at will. Which he was doing now. The shadow moved away from us toward the outbuilding as we stepped out onto the rear veranda, always keeping the structure to its back, or such I judged its back to be. It was hard to be certain with something so close to formless.
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