Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter

by Richard Parks

  “Master Saigyo has requested that we join him on the temple grounds. There’s a lovely moon tonight, or so he says.”

  I nodded, a little relieved. I had feared that I might be forced to endure a more formal audience, but the choice of venue seemed to imply that the abbot was more concerned with business than ceremony. That, and we would be much less likely to be overheard. At least, so I hoped and so it proved.

  We found the abbot on the northern slope bordering the temple. Two stone lanterns marked a path leading further up the mountain and there Saigyo waited for us.

  There was, indeed, a lovely full moon rising and Master Saigyo, after introductions, invited us to join him in viewing it. While Master Saigyo studied the moon and Kenji pretended to, I studied Master Saigyo as much as courtesy allowed. He was around Kenji’s age, maybe not yet fifty, a heavy-set man who bore himself in a manner that suggested he was used to being obeyed. Other than that, his face was as impassive as that of the moon above.

  Kenji was the first to speak. “I only recently learned of the death of your youngest sister, Master Saigyo, or I would have written sooner. She was a sweet and gentle soul and I grieve with you.”

  There was, perhaps, the flicker of a smile on the abbot’s face. “Thank you, old friend. We know that death is inevitable in this world yet each loss still feels like a blow, and a blow hurts. Yet we should not bother our guest with such things. Yamada-san, I must thank you again for coming. Daisho speaks well of you.”

  It took me a few moments to remember that “Daisho” was Kenji’s proper name as a priest. I resolved to remember it only so long as necessary.

  “No doubt my friend praises me far past my worth,” I said, “but I will do what I can. If I may, I would like to ask a few questions.”

  “We had thought the time of the ogres had passed around Mount Oe,” Saigyo said, looking resigned. “And yet here we are again. I will, of course, answer any question I can.”

  “To begin, where was the ogre first seen and when did it first appear?”

  “By the large fallen stone that some refer to as ‘the Weeping Woman.’ Kenji, I’m sure you know the one I mean.”

  Kenji nodded. “It’s just out of sight of the border post further west. Well known in the area though I’m sure my friend has not heard of it.” He turned to me, and I acknowledged that I had not.

  The abbot continued. “I know the answer to the second question quite well. The first reported sighting was six weeks ago.”

  Kenji frowned. “But that was . . . ” He didn’t finish.

  Master Saigyo nodded somberly. “Yes, old friend—that was the day Hanako died. Forgive me for the vagueness of my letter, but it seems it was the ogre that slew her, and now wears her kimono as a trophy. Perhaps you can understand why I did not wish to wait for the Emperor’s Justice.”

  When our audience with Saigyo was concluded, rather than returning to our rooms, I asked Kenji to take me to the section of road where Hanako had been killed, and as Master Saigyo said, the ogre still lurked. Kenji agreed, although reluctantly.

  “Don’t worry; I do not intend to challenge the beast tonight. I just want to have a look around.”

  The moon was past its zenith but there was still a fair bit of light on the road, and I was counting on that. We stopped at the border crossing where a rather scruffy and sleepy-looking watchman made us state our business before waving us through. He muttered something about “sending the priests to pick up our pieces in the morning” that he didn’t think we heard, but otherwise made no objection. After that Kenji and I had the road to ourselves.

  Kenji was nervous. I would have enjoyed that more if I wasn’t feeling somewhat the same. I broke the silence. “Why do they call the rock ‘the Weeping Woman’?”

  “Legend has it that, in times past, a woman traveler was murdered by bandits at the foot of the rock, and that her despair and anger at her fate trapped her soul there in the stone, where she weeps and bemoans her fate to this day.”

  “Is it true?”

  “It’s a story,” Kenji said. “The rock does appear to weep but this section of the road is prone to mists and fog. It might just be water collecting on the stone.”

  “For a priest who specializes in talismans against spirits and demons you seem very reluctant to draw the obvious conclusion,” I said.

  “Because the obvious conclusion is so often the wrong one. Don’t mock me, Yamada-san. You know it’s true.”

  That I did. Just because a tradesman believed that a vengeful ghost was driving his customers away or an artist suspected that a demon inhabited the piece of wood he’d been hired to carve, that didn’t make it true. It did, however, make fertile ground for someone like Kenji with his charms and trinkets. But that did not mean that demons and ghosts did not exist, nor that Kenji was incapable of making true wards against them. I had risked my life more than once on the strength of Kenji’s skills and I had no doubt the talisman he’d given me would work as described. Otherwise I’d never have accepted this commission in the first place. Yet sometimes I felt that Kenji preferred the rational explanation to the true one, given a choice. I said so.

  Kenji seemed to consider this. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I would prefer a world with no ghosts and demons and shape-shifters in it. Shouldn’t one wish for simplicity? Especially a priest?”

  “Should the number of complications in life really matter? The world is an illusion and thus merely a distraction from the True Path. Isn’t that what you priests say?”

  Kenji sighed. “One can acknowledge a great truth and still wish it were a little less true . . . Ah. Softly, now. We’re getting close.”

  At this point the road was practically carved out of the mountainside, with a sheer drop into darkness below on the left and a nearly-vertical cliff face above to the right. No wonder the ogre was causing so much trouble; with a little time and preparation a mere handful of men could hold the road here against an army. One could well imagine how impassable the presence of an ogre made it.

  “There it is,” said Kenji in a harsh whisper.

  At first I thought he meant the ogre, but I soon realized he was pointing at the rock. Apparently a section of granite had broken off the mountainside some time in the distant past and landed upright there at the edge of the roadway nearest the mountain. The “Weeping Woman” was about seven feet wide and twice as high, from my reckoning. I thought of Kenji’s story and realized that, indeed, it would make a very good spot for an ambush; two or three armed men could easily lurk behind it, unseen.

  Or one ogre.

  I started to move closer, but Kenji grabbed my arm. “What are you doing?” he whispered. “I thought you didn’t mean to confront the beast tonight?”

  “I want a better look so I can plan my attack. Besides, it can’t see me, remember?”

  “No, but it can see me easily enough if you make enough noise to rouse it!”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  I hadn’t gone more than ten steps when the ogre appeared and I stopped short. I assumed it had slipped out from behind the rock, but either it was extremely fast or the light wasn’t quite as good as I thought, since I did not see it do so. One moment it wasn’t there, and the next it was. Most definitely.

  The creature seemed small for an ogre, perhaps no more than seven feet tall, and definitely female, or at least a grotesque parody of one. Its hair was long and coarse, its mouth distorted by two-upward turning tusks like those of a boar. It wore a ragged blue kimono rather incongruously covered in a design of little pink peonies. The kimono did not fit and was torn in several places, revealing the creature’s withered dugs and most of her limbs. It was at once extremely fierce-looking and somehow pitiable as it looked down the road. A breeze along the road brought the faint smell of death.

  If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was looking for someone. Or, perhaps, waiting?

  For the next available traveler, no doubt. Using Kenji’s talisman as cover, I moved slowly
forward, careful to be as silent as possible. I noted that the Weeping Woman was very rough and broken on the side nearest the road.

  The beast has to sleep sometime.

  I thought, perhaps, if I could come back during such a time I might be able to climb to the top of the stone and later take the beast unawares from above, but I needed a better look at the stone. I move forward but now off to the left side of the road to give the ogress a wider berth. I was no more than about thirty feet from the creature now, and it was only the certainty of Kenji’s talisman that let me dare approach so close.

  The ogress looked at me. Not at where I was, not in the direction of some inadvertent sound I had made, because I had moved as silently as a shadow. No. The creature looked directly at me. I didn’t even have time to react before the beast took four giant strides and stood in front of me, looking down. Only then I noticed its fingernails were talons fully six inches long. It reached for me.

  The talisman . . . ?

  Had failed completely, and I was going to die. There wasn’t a doubt of that in my mind. I didn’t waste time trying to run, or cursing Kenji’s apparently useless sutra that had doomed me. There was simply no point. I didn’t even try to draw my sword because there was no way that I would get it clear of the scabbard before the beast had me. I was going to die.

  “You have me, ogre,” I said, because it was so. “Do as you will.”

  One of her talons brushed my cheek, drawing blood. And then she shook her massive head. “You’re not the one. Go away!”

  She shoved me back. Not struck, not impaled, shoved. I practically flew several feet before landing, sprawling, not five feet from where I’d left Kenji moments before. It was a few more moments before I could force my tortured lungs to breathe again; the front of my body felt like one enormous bruise and, despite the need, it was even longer before I could even attempt to rise. When I did, Kenji was there to help me up.

  “Kenji, you worthless—” I started, but found I still did not have enough wind in me to curse him.

  “Yamada-san, I swear. It should have worked! Why didn’t it work?”

  He sounded as puzzled as I felt. While I was angry enough to kill him, I decided that could wait until later. I got my sword out as best I could, swearing that I would at least try to meet the ogre’s next attack on my feet.

  The attack did not come. The ogre was nowhere to be seen.

  I lowered my blade, feeling foolish. After a moment I put it back in its scabbard. “Kenji, please explain yourself.”

  I don’t think he was even listening. He stared at the rock called the Weeping Woman, and he was shaking. “You saw! It is as Saigyo said. . . . That kimono belonged to Hanako, as well I know—it was a gift from me for her wedding day, and Saigyo said she wore it often. She must have been wearing it when she . . . ” He didn’t finish. There were tears in his eyes, though of rage or grief or both, I could not tell.

  “I saw very clearly,” I said, “since I was no more than three feet from the infernal thing. Master Saigyo spoke of funeral rites too, but no one told me that Hanako’s body was not recovered. I just assumed that, apparently correctly, unless the ogre stripped her first and then discarded the body. Which an ogre would not do.”

  “Of course not! The ogre has certainly devoured her,” he said. “Though there must be something yet remaining of poor Hanako other than her clothes—the place smells of death.”

  “So I noticed. While we’re on the subject, why am I still alive? It’s certainly no thanks to your sutra of ‘pure, ethereal truth.’ ”

  Kenji’s rage seemed to abandon him. “Yamada-san . . . I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not above creating a fake talisman when there’s no harm in it, but not when a man’s life is at stake, and certainly not now! For Hanako’s sake, I want that creature destroyed even more than you do.”

  “What are you not telling me, Kenji?”

  He scowled for a moment or two, then answered me. “I was in love with Hanako,” he said.

  I wasn’t surprised. Something in the way he’d said her name before made me wonder. “Did Saigyo know? Or, for that matter, did Hanako?”

  “Hanako never had reason to know. Saigyo knew, I’m sure,” Kenji said. “Very little escapes him. Still, it was long ago. She was too young and her family would never have approved in any case, as I had nothing and was a priest besides. It was useless.”

  I knew a little of such things, unfortunately, and understood his pain, but just then what little strength was left to me faded out. I found a convenient stone and sat down. “Why am I still alive?” I repeated.

  “I’m glad you are, but as I said, I do not know why my talisman failed.”

  I shook my head, though it took an effort. “That’s a separate question—oh, believe me, I want the answer to that as well. I mean, why didn’t the ogre kill and devour me? It had me, but it apparently didn’t want me. Why?”

  Kenji scratched his chin. “I don’t know that either. The creature is certainly capable of doing so, witness the fate of poor Hanako. Perhaps it only eats women, though that doesn’t explain why it did not kill you.”

  I shifted, trying to decide if I was merely bruised or if the creature had cracked my ribs. “We’re not going anywhere for a little while, so perhaps a few more details of Hanako’s fate are in order.”

  Kenji glanced at the stone. “I’m not sure I can tell you anything that Saigyo has not. Other than the bare fact of her death, I’m learning all this just as you are.”

  “Perhaps, but no one has yet explained to me what Hanako was doing on the road unescorted in the first place! You know that’s highly improper—she was the wife of a provincial noble, after all.”

  Kenji smiled a little wistfully. “That may be, but she was first and most of all Hanako. She grew up along this section of the western road and had many friends along the route. She had gotten into the habit of calling upon them unescorted from the time of her childhood.”

  “But she was not a child. She was a respectable married woman of good family!”

  Kenji sighed. “I don’t dispute the point. But it was such a common sight that no one here would think anything of it.”

  “I wonder if her husband felt the same.”

  I tried to rise and, with only few grunts of pain, managed. Kenji moved to support me and I leaned on him as we turned back toward Kokusho Temple.

  “If you want to know the answer to that, I suggest you ask Tetsuo. Yet how could this possibly matter now?”

  “I don’t know. Apparently there is entirely too much I don’t know. If the mountain road is ever to be free of this ogress I’m going to have to learn what matters and what does not.”

  In the end it was not necessary to arrange an audience with Minamoto no Tetsuo. On the afternoon of the second day after the incident, when I was somewhat recovered from my injuries, he came to see me at Kokusho-ji. Master Saigyo himself made the introductions in my rooms and then discreetly withdrew.

  Tetsuo was a handsome young man, perhaps in his late twenties. His clothing was extremely fine, considering his position in what amounted to a provincial backwater, but I knew that a man’s current position in the Imperial hierarchy didn’t always reflect either his family’s true influence or his own future prospects. He seemed a bit stiff and nervous but no more than the circumstances would dictate.

  An acolyte had just brought tea and I offered him a cup. We sipped our tea in silence for a little while. There was a lot I wanted to ask him but, just then, what I wanted to know most of all was why he was there. That was for him to answer in his own good time.

  “I apologize for not seeing you at once, Lord Yamada, but the last of the funeral rites for my late wife required my attention. I’ve just come from the temple,” he said.

  “I had heard of your tragedy, of course,” I said. “It is most unfortunate.”

  “Circumstances now in motion may conspire to compound my misfortune,” he said. “Forgive my directness, Lord Yamada no Goji
, but considering what I heard of your first encounter, I must ask if your resolve to slay the beast has weakened.”

  I almost smiled then. The only people who used my full title and name either didn’t know any better or wanted something from me. I judged Minamoto no Tetsuo in the latter category.

  “My resolve was never to slay the beast as such, Minamoto-san, but rather to eliminate the problem. If killing the beast is the only way to do so, then yes, of course that is still my intent.”

  His relief was obvious. “Then it must be so, as there is neither bribe nor reason that will persuade an ogre to be other than what it is. The beast must be destroyed!”

  “No doubt you are right. Still, I would like to ask you to clear up a few details. Your answers may help me deal with the beast.”

  “If I can help in any way. I confess that my own efforts to both seek revenge and do my duty as governor have come to naught. I cannot risk myself against the creature without the Emperor’s permission and the bushi under my command have been worthless, I’m afraid, though they proved brave enough.”

  I nodded. I’d assumed that whatever force was available had already been tried, though this was my first confirmation of it. “It does take a brave man to attack an ogre directly, even in a group. Were there losses?”

  He grunted. “Nothing but their pride, fortunately. Ten good men, and they bounced off the creature like hailstones, and doubtless inflicted less injury. Swords and arrows proved useless.”

  “Very curious. Ogres are known for their toughness, strength, and ferocity,” I said. “But not for their restraint. The ogre’s presence blocks traffic to the Tamba Road and travelers have been forced to seek alternate routes. Yet, except for your unfortunate wife, no one has been killed—not me, not even the men who attacked the ogre directly.”