The Heavenward Path

by Kara Dalkey

  "Though we're very open to suggestion."

  "Besides, you deserve to be miserable after what you've done to Prince Goranu."

  "But I have done nothing to him," I said, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. "He chose to-"

  "Nothing? Why, you impudent mortal, Goranu has hidden himself away from the rest of us reading a sutra you gave to him. His fingers and mouth are nearly burnt black."

  Poor Goranu. If only I could have convinced him that I was an unworthy reason for his seeking the Heavenward Path. If only I could speak to him again, perhaps I could distract him with my misery. But how?

  Then in the wild mood that sometimes comes with despair, I turned to the closest tengu and said, "You are lying."

  The tengu jumped back, aghast. "What?"

  "What!" cried the other tengu, beaks agape.

  "We tengu never lie!"

  "Unless we feel like it."

  "I know you are lying," I persisted. "Because you want me to feel bad. You are just teasing me."

  "Of course we are teasing. That is what tengu do."

  "But that doesn't mean we're lying."

  "Prince Goranu is in terrible pain right this very moment."

  "And it is all your fault."

  I crossed my arms on my chest. "I do not believe you. I think that even now Goranu is watching us, ready to laugh at me for believing your lies."

  The tengu all stepped back, clacking their beaks and fluffing their feathers.

  "How dare she!"

  "The impudence!"

  "What a callous little thing she is!"

  "She stands there and calls us liars while her lover is dying."

  "If you want me to believe you," I said, "you will have to prove it."

  The lead tengu took a hop toward me. "I am Kuroihane, Leaflet Tengu and second only to Prince Goranu himself. Your accusations do me great dishonor. You want proof? Very well. We will show you."

  "No, no," I said. "I know all about your illusions. They will not prove anything. You must take me to Prince Goranu so that I may see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears whether you are telling the truth or not."

  The tengu looked at one another.

  "Demanding little creature!"

  "Do you even have a heart capable of pity?"

  The one called Kuroihane glared at me through his crow black eyes. "Yes. We will take you to our Prince Goranu and let you see for yourself the horrible thing you have done."

  I waited as they produced from somewhere a net made of rope and bade me step into it. I did so, remembering the night two years before when Amaiko and I were carried in such a net to the village of the tengu. It felt as though it had been a lifetime ago.

  I crouched down and grasped the rough net as the tengu leaped into the air. They were not gentle with me, and the net lurched and swayed and bashed into treetops as we rose above the forest. From the height, I could see Riko and Sotoko in another clearing not far away. "Good-bye!" I called out to them. They looked up and pointed.

  "Mitsuko!" Sotoko cried.

  "Do not worry about me!" I shouted back at her. "I shall be all right. Good-bye!" I do not know how much they heard, the tengu were carrying me away so fast. I wished I could thank Sotoko and Riko for their hospitality and hoped someday I would have the chance.

  We flew high above the forested slopes. The temples and monastery sitting on the flanks of Mount Hiei looked almost peaceful from that height and distance, the morning sun glinting off of their tiled roofs, smoke drifting up lazily from cooking fires. We swung away from the sight of Mount Hiei and again before me was the tall cliff with its long, narrow shadow running down it-a wind-carved hole in the rock wall, just wide and tall enough for us all to fly through. It took only a moment for us to pass through the dark cleft to the other side, where a deep valley with a little village in it opened up below us. These tengu were not disposed to treating me kindly, however, so instead of letting me down gently, I was bump-bump-bumped along the ground until we stopped.

  I stood, rubbing those places where I surely was bruised. "That was unkind," I said, glaring at Kuroihane.

  "Unkind? Us? Let us see who is most unkind. There." He pointed with the tip of his wing toward the nearest thatched hut. "There is where poor Goranu lies, breathing his last with burning prayers."

  I brushed the dirt off my kimonos. "I will see him for myself before I will believe you."

  "Go and look then, heartless creature. We will not stop you."

  I tossed my head as if I did not care and walked straight to the hut. At the curtained doorway, I heard a strange croaking from inside, and I hesitated, my hand on the curtain. They were sacred words, but the pain in that voice! My courage nearly failed me. The tengu who had carried me here were right behind me, preventing me from turning back.

  "Go on."

  "What are you afraid of?"

  "Afraid of the truth?"

  "Afraid of seeing what you have done?"

  I growled at them, "I have met the Dragon King, Ryujin, and I have met your Esteemed Ancestor Susano-wo, and I have met the Lord of Death himself. What have I to fear?" I pulled open the curtain and stepped up into the hut.

  There was a smell of burnt hair and feathers in the air. Goranu lay sprawled, in mostly human form, in a corner of the tiny hut. He clasped the sutra copy I had made against his chest. It was he making the croaking noise, trying to say the Lotus Sutra. All my feelings of self-pity melted away as I crept closer to him.

  Ai! He was a horrible sight. His lips were blackened, cracked, and bleeding, as were his fingers. His half-shut eyes were red and oozing. What feathers remained on his body were scorched.

  "Oh, Goranu," I whispered, "do you understand now why I would not teach you the sutras?"

  He did not seem to hear me or know I was there. Gently, I took the scroll out of his hands and laid it aside. At this, Goranu stopped his croaking chant. "Awk, what thief is it who steals the holy words?" he rasped.

  "It is me, your friend, Mitsuko," I said, taking his hands carefully in mine. "Please do not die, Goranu."

  "I… must continue," he whispered. "I must… be reborn… a mortal."

  "No, that is unworthy," I said, fighting back tears. "One learns the sutras to gain enlightenment, to escape the Wheel of Rebirth, not so that you may choose what creature to be in the next life."

  He reached up with one burnt and blistered finger and touched my cheek. "I want… to be… with you." He laid his head upon my lap.

  "I am here," I whispered, gently taking his hands in mine.

  And then I could no longer stop myself, and I wept. Because I held his hands, I could not cover my eyes with my sleeves to soak up my tears, which flowed freely onto Goranu's fingers and dripped onto his face. I do not know how long I knelt beside him that way.

  After a while, however, I heard the other tengu behind me, saying, "Well, will you look at that!"

  "Amazing!"

  "I didn't know she could do that."

  "Maybe we should have brought her sooner."

  I blinked my eyes and peered around, trying to see what they were talking about. Then I looked down. Goranu's hands were healing where my tears had dripped onto them. I wiped my eyes with the edge of my sleeve and dabbed Goranu's lips and eyelids with it. These, too, began to heal. And I remembered a time two years ago when Goranu had burnt his feet while rescuing me from the Temple of Kiyomizudera. I had wept over his feet and bandaged them, and then was amazed at how quickly he had healed.

  "Tears of maidenly pity," said Kuroihane behind me. "No wonder. Such tenderness has great healing power for us."

  "Why?" I turned and looked at the raven-headed creature. "Why should my tears matter?"

  "Heh. No doubt it was a jest on the part of our Esteemed Ancestor. What human maiden would weep for a tengu, after all?"

  "I do."

  Kuroihane closed his eyes and bowed. "Clearly our Prince Goranu was right, and you are a creature extraordinary for your kind."

&
nbsp; Goranu sighed deeply, and I looked down. He had closed his eyes, and his hands fell limp from mine.

  "Ai, no!" I cried, fearing the worst.

  Kuroihane pried open one of Goranu's eyelids, then turned to me with a sardonic look. "Silly girl. He is only sleeping. He has been up for many hours reading your stupid sutra, after all." The tengu took Goranu from my lap and laid him out on the floor, covering him with a cloak. "Thank you for helping him," said Kuroihane at last. "Now get out before you cause more trouble."

  "Will he… be all right?"

  "If he can forget about you and your foolish religion, he will be fine. Now go."

  Stung by the tengu's rudeness, I said nothing, and hurried out of the hut.

  Though it was bright late morning, I saw no other tengu in the village. It appeared deserted, so I presumed all the rest were sleeping. I walked down the path through the center of the village, wondering what to do. Even though I had saved Goranu, the other tengu were not very grateful. I doubted that I could ask any of them for help with my debts to Lord Chomigoto. I was so tired and hungry that I began to consider searching for the nearest graveyard and simply giving myself up to Lord Emma-O. It would be pleasing to be free of this world and its weighty problems, even if it meant dwelling in the Hell of Headlong Falling for a time, until my soul could move on.

  "Help?" I heard from not far away. "Please let me out of here." It was not a tengu voice-in fact, it sounded familiar. I looked around and saw a tall tree behind one of the huts. There seemed to be something like a large cage hanging from one of its branches.

  Lifting the hems of my kimonos, I ran around the hut and saw there was a girl in the cage. She turned her head to look at me.

  "Suzume?" I cried in astonishment.

  "Oh, Great Lady Little Mountain Puddle! I knew you would find me. Please get me out of this." She shook the bars of her bamboo cage.

  I walked up, but the cage was too high, just out of my reach. "I cannot. Oh, Suzume, how did you get here?"

  "I will tell you everything, but please get me out!"

  I looked around and saw an old man, or a tengu in old-man form, emerge from the nearest hut. "Venerable Sir," I said to him, in what I hoped were fine and imperious tones like my mama once used. "Would you please be so helpful as to release my servant from this cage?"

  "Who, her?" From the old man's cackle, I could tell he was a tengu. "She is yours, is she? How very interesting. Perhaps you would like to know why she is caged in a tengu village, eh?"

  "I will listen avidly to all you say, as soon as you release her!"

  "Nope. Can't do that."

  "But I am a Fujiwara, and I demand it!"

  This sent the tengu in old-man form into howling laughter, and his body shook so with his ha-has and hee-hees that he had to sit down on the ground. I wanted to pummel him. But that would have been entirely unsuitable, so I pulled my hair instead. "I do not see what is amusing. Release her at once!"

  This only made the old-man tengu hoot louder, and he grabbed his knees to his chest and rolled on the ground as he laughed.

  "Forgive my observation if it is rude," said Suzume, "but I do not think your method is working. Ah, here comes a bird- man. Maybe you can make him laugh, too."

  I turned before I could snap at Suzume and saw a tengu in the strange half-man-half-raven form, with both wings and arms, and a beak. "Can't help disrupting things wherever you go, can you?" he said to me.

  So it was Kuroihane. "I meant no disruption," I said. "But this is my servant who is caged here, and I want her released."

  Kuroihane spat out a growled caw at me and kicked the old man on the ground. "You. Get up. Prince Goranu says you can let the mortal girl go."

  "He does?" asked the old-man tengu, sitting up. "Well, that's different then." He stood and clambered up the tree as easily as a monkey. He crawled out onto the branch holding the cage and released the catch or knot holding it there. The cage crashed to the ground with a thud.

  I ran up to it. "Suzume! Are you all right?"

  "I think so." She stood, rubbing her elbows and knees, though they had been padded by her layers of kimonos. "My brother and I used to climb and jump out of trees all the time."

  I tried to imagine a life where one could do such things, and it seemed very strange. My sisters and I had been taught to admire trees and write poems about them, not climb them.

  The old tengu dropped down from the branch and untied the knot of the cage door. Suzume pushed it open and stumbled out.

  "Now," I said to the old-man tengu, "why was she in a cage?"

  But it was Kuroihane who answered. "You might be interested to know that after Prince Goranu flew you to your sister's house and came back here with that cursed scroll, he felt someone else summoning him. He was so eager to read those ridiculous sutras, he sent us to see who had the impertinence to call him, since he knew it wasn't you. Well, we found this little creature in some nobleman's yard in Heian Kyo, with one of Goranu's feathers, saying Goranu's name. So we brought her here and caged her up until Goranu could decide what to do with her."

  "Is this true?" I asked Suzume.

  She nodded, hanging her head. "I did not know what to do when I saw you flying away on the tengu's back. Really, you place quite a burden on your servants, you know? I was afraid your father would blame me for your running away and beat me or throw my family back onto the street. So I found the feather in the garden, and I did just what you did. And a tengu came and carried me away. I hoped I could find you and talk you into coming back before anyone noticed we were gone. But it is too late now. Now they will find us both missing and truly wonder." She wiped away a tear with her sleeve.

  "Poor Suzume," I said, hoping to calm her. "I did not realize what effect my actions might have on you. I do not think my father would have beaten you or sent you and your family away." Given how angry and upset he had been when he demanded that I marry Prince Komakai, I truly did not know what he might have done. "But you should not have used the feather to call the tengu."

  "I am beginning to see that now," Suzume said.

  I had a frightening thought and turned to Kuroihane. "What would you have done with her if Goranu had died?"

  "Oh, I don't know." He tilted his head to regard her as a bird does a possibly edible worm. "Probably something quite entertaining… though rather unpleasant for her. A pity you have robbed us of such a game. Oh well. Try not to cause any more trouble, either of you, or we'll fly you to the top of Morning Sun Cliff and drop you there." With that, he turned to the old-man tengu and said, "You, come with me." The two tengu walked away through the village without another look at us.

  "So," said Suzume, "this is where your demon friend lives. Such nasty creatures they are."

  "Goranu is… not like them," I said, although in some ways he was.

  Suddenly, Suzume flung herself prostrate on the ground at my feet. "Forgive me, Lady Mistress!" she cried.

  "Oh, stop it," I said, sighing.

  "But I have caused you trouble by behaving foolishly." She tilted her head to regard me through strands of her hair. "Isn't this what I'm supposed to do?"

  "Oh, I do not know. It does not matter now what you are supposed to do. We are not in the Palace or my father's house."

  Suzume stood and straightened her kimonos… incorrectly, I noted. "I'm sorry, then. There is so much that I haven't learned yet. Sometimes I think life was easier as a rice cake girl."

  "I am sure you are right," I said.

  "Will you forgive me if I tell you something else?"

  "I am sure I will."

  "You look terrible."

  Such a comment coming from her almost made me laugh. "I what?"

  "No, really. You look the way you did two years ago when your house burned down and you had to come stay with me."

  "That bad?" My hand strayed to my hair, which, of course, was all tousled. I had not thought about it, but my kimonos had been torn by the brambles in the forest, and my face was doubtless
pale from shock, and my eyes red from weeping. "Yes, I suppose you are right."

  "Here." Suzume reached into the bottom of her deep sleeve. "I have some rice cakes left. I brought them thinking I might need to bribe the tengu." She handed me one.

  It had been crushed out of whatever shape it had been first molded into, but there were bits of seaweed and poppy seeds on it, and the handful of rice tasted wonderful. "Thank you," I said, covering my mouth because it was still full of rice.

  Suzume laughed, and I almost did, too. "If you please, Great Lady," she said, "let us get out of this dreary village and find a pleasanter place to eat the rest of these."

  I nodded, and we walked away from the huts. We followed a path that led up the hillside of the valley, hoping for an enjoyable view. But the clouds drifted lower and lower until we couldn't see the tengu village at all.

  We finally stopped at a rock outcropping that overlooked a pool of water. On a sunny day, this place might have been lovely, but the mist was now so heavy around us that it felt eerie, as though we were cut off from the rest of the world.

  As we ate our rice cakes, I told Suzume all about the shrine and Lord Chomigoto and the things he demanded of me. Mama used to say that confiding in one's servants was a mistake, for they remember everything you say and might gossip or do even more harmful things with it later. But Suzume was different. She had been my friend first. And there was no one else around to trust. So I blurted out the whole story to her.

  When I had finished, she said, "So… why didn't you bargain with the ghost?"

  "What? Bargain with the ghost of a warrior priest-king?"

  "Why not? You know, if you can't do all those things he asked for, you should have talked him down to just fixing the shrine. That's what my papa would have done. When he buys rice from the farmers, they always try to ask a high price. He talks them down to what is reasonable, which is what they expect him to do, so no one is upset. It's just a game, he says, and the only person hurt is the stupid merchant who won't bargain."

  I am sure my mouth hung open.

  "Ooops," Suzume said, eyes suddenly wide. "I didn't mean to say you were stupid, Great Lady."

  "No, of course you did not," I said, wondering if she had.