Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter

by Richard Parks

  “So why hasn’t he dealt with the creature before now? Snow­demons may be powerful, but they can be killed, and he has the men to do it.”

  “Yes, but Lord Yoshi had sent men into the pass on several occasions, according to the villagers. They always return empty-handed.”

  Kenji paused to pull himself out of a hole. He waved off my assistance. “Are you just making conversation again?”

  “No. I asked a question of the sentry while you were adjusting the ties on your snowshoes. It seems that Michi-san always volunteers to lead these particular hunting parties.”

  “Coincidence?”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “I don’t believe so. Any more than I believe that the messenger we just saw was being sent to Lord Yoshi.”

  We had just passed the first few trees as the path crested into what would become the mountain pass. Up ahead, the woods showed dark and gloomy; it was only the snow on the ground reflecting the fading sunset that kept the area from going completely dark. Below us, Aoi Village winked out of sight around the mountain as we climbed to the highest point in the pass.

  Kenji’s eyes opened wide. “Michi-san took the doll! He’s hiding it up here, and his friends are helping him conceal the fact! When we tell Lord Yoshi­­—”

  I sighed. “Michi-san did not take the doll. He comes to this place nearly every day. Every spare minute he can find, he’s up here. If he were hiding the doll near the pass, it would be stupid in the extreme to call attention to this area. The man is not stupid.”

  “But . . . then why?”

  “I don’t know. I suggest we ask him when he gets here.”

  “Gentlemen. We meet again.”

  It was Yuki. Standing no more than ten yards away. Smiling. I cursed myself for a careless fool and drew my sword while Kenji quickly pulled a ward from his robe. Her smile grew wider. She reached into the front of her robe and pulled out the necklace she wore so that we could see—it was a string of prayer beads.

  “That won’t work this time, sir priest,” she said. “If I’d realized what you had done that first night, I’d have realized the remedy was in my hands. Silly me.”

  “How do you wear that . . . ?” Kenji started to ask, but she cut him off.

  “I’m hungry. My little one must be fed. I do not think I will answer your questions.” I heard footsteps behind us but didn’t dare turn and look. Yuki started forward and I readied myself. I knew that when the cold struck fully, it would be very hard to move. If I missed the first blow . . .

  “Yuki, no!”

  Kenji had already drawn his own prayer beads and was in the first phrase of a chant when suddenly Michi was between us and Yuki.

  Kenji looked frantic. “Michi-san, look out! She’s a demon!”

  I grunted. “Save your warning, Kenji. He knows what she is.”

  Yuki stopped, and her anger and frustration were obvious. “Anata, move aside.”

  Anata?

  I’d had my suspicions, but now everything was that much clearer.

  Michi held out his arms as if to shield us. “You must not harm these men!”

  “Why not?” she asked. “I am hungry.”

  I spoke up quickly. “Shall I tell her, Michi-san? It’s because, if you kill us, this time Lord Yoshi will send everyone he can spare, far more than you can kill or elude, and your husband will not be able to protect you,” I said. “Or do you want to risk the little one’s life as well?”

  That got her attention. Michi’s, too.

  “Yuki is the ‘woman from another village’ you were married to. When she left you, she took up residence in her old haunts. Am I right?”

  “She did not leave me,” Michi said. “She left the village. She tried—”

  “—to live as a human, for your sake,” I said. “Yes, Michi-san, I have seen that before. It never seems to work. Not for foxes and not for snow-demons.”

  Kenji scowled. “Michi-san and this . . . creature?”

  Yuki looked faintly amused at Kenji’s outburst, but Michi cut in. “I crossed the pass alone the first day I came here,” Michi said softly. “She could have killed me when we met. Perhaps it would have been better for us both if she had.”

  Yuki wasn’t amused now. There were tears in her eyes. They turned to ice crystals and fell softly, just two more flakes of snow. “I cannot help it. I am hungry,” she said. “Soon your daughter will be hungry.”

  “Come home,” Michi said.

  She looked away. “I cannot. You know I cannot.”

  “That is a problem, since she cannot stay here, either,” I said. “My guess is that, unless she’s living as a human, human food cannot sustain her. She can suckle the child for now, wherever she keeps it hidden, but she can’t feed herself without taking life. That’s why you’ve been coming up here, isn’t it? She’s taking life from you because there’s no one else, but since she doesn’t wish to slay you, it’s never enough, never all of your life. That’s why she’s still hungry while you can barely stand.”

  Michi didn’t say anything, but I knew it was true. If anything, the exhaustion I had seen in the young man when we first met was worse. He was functioning on will alone.

  “Sooner or later she’s going to kill you. Then what do you think will happen to her and the child?”

  “There’s another way. I’ll find it,” Michi said.

  “Believe what you will. For now, if she gives up the doll, perhaps we can at least buy you both and the village some time.”

  Michi frowned. “Doll?”

  I turned to Yuki. “When you left the village, you took a doll from Aoi Temple, didn’t you?”

  Michi scowled. “Why do you accuse her?”

  “Because, as far as I can determine, the doll disappeared at the same time she did,” I said, “and while I recognize that this is not proof and that coincidences exist, true coincidences are very rare. Or did it never occur to you to ask her?”

  Michi looked as if he’d been struck between the eyes with a mallet. He finally looked at the snow-demon. “Yuki?”

  She sighed. “Human children need such things, so I brought one for our child. It was the newest one, perhaps, but I don’t understand all the fuss; the temple had plenty of others.”

  Michi smiled a weak smile. “I will bring you food when I am stronger,” he said. “Please be patient. I will bring another doll for our child. A better doll. But I think we had best return that one to the temple.”

  She scowled. “Very well, and for your sake I will wait a little longer. But do not break faith with me or I will do what I must. I have your word?”

  “You have everything that I am,” Michi said.

  The snow-demon apparently considered this oath enough and turned and floated back into the forest like a swirl of snowflakes and disappeared. We rushed forward to support Michi, who was in imminent danger of falling face first into the snow.

  “You never saw where she keeps the child hidden, did you? Otherwise I assume you would have known she had the doll,” I said.

  Michi admitted that this was so. “She’s afraid I’ll try to take our daughter back to the village if I know where she is. I mentioned the doll was missing and that it was a problem, but Yuki never said anything. I shouldn’t be surprised; she doesn’t always think the way you or I do. I’ve learned that.”

  “No doubt. I gather those prayer beads were a gift from you?” Kenji asked.

  “They help remind her . . . of her human side. Yuki does have one, you know. I’ve seen it.”

  “That may be so, but sooner or later you’re going to have to bring your daughter back among true human beings. Or see her turn into her mother,” Kenji said. “You know this to be true.”

  Michi didn’t even blink. “I also know that, without the child, Yuki may forget everything of what being human meant, prayer beads or no. One day I will bring them both home.”

  “One day she’s going to kill you,” I said.

  “No,” he said serenely. “She won’t. I will n
ot lose them. Either of them.”

  “You’re a fool,” Kenji said, “but sometimes fortune favors the fool. I will pray for you.”

  Michi sighed. “I’m not such a fool that I won’t take whatever help I can get.”

  We told Lord Yoshi that a trickster badger-dog had taken the doll and hidden it in the mountains, but with Michi’s help, we had managed to find it. I’m not sure he believed us, but the doll was back in its rightful place, and that was all he cared about. Lord Yoshi informed the headman of the village, who through his daughter sent word to Akitomo.

  While we waited to hear the outcome, Kenji and I made a doll. Naturally, it was the first doll I’d ever attempted, though I’d done a little carving from time to time. Kenji, with help and scraps of cloth from the headman’s wife, made the clothes. I wouldn’t call either of our contributions a work of art, but together they made a very passable doll.

  For his service Michi was granted a temporary absence from his duties, which, while we worked on the doll, he spent mostly eating and sleeping. He said he could wait two days but no longer before he had to return to the mountain.

  Just enough time to be certain we would be able to leave. If there had been any way back except through the pass, I’d have taken it, but having Michi escort us through was the next best thing.

  Word came. Akitomo and the boy’s mother were together praying for their son, and that was all. The Emishi were dispersing back to their farms and villages. The new doll was completed and we presented it to Michi, who, if not fully recovered, was at least rested.

  The time came to go. We took our leave of Lord Yoshi and the headman and his family. Michi went with us up to the pass. We saw Yuki among the trees, but she kept her distance until Michi left us on the far side of the pass. As we made our way down the mountain, the snow crunching under our feet, we saw them meet again under the trees.

  I turned back to the path ahead. “Idiot.”

  Kenji grinned. “Funny thing, Lord Yamada. The way you said that, it almost sounded like a compliment. So. I assume you learned that the snow­-demon was Michi’s lover the same way I did?”

  “I already suspected, but yes. When she used the familiar form of ‘you’ to address him. Anata. Only someone on intimate terms with a man would do that.”

  “That’s the common usage, but don’t you think we were making a great deal out of a simple pronoun? I might do the same referring to you.”

  I smiled a grim smile. “Not the way she said it. She may as well have called him ‘beloved.’ Unless there’s something you’re not telling me?”

  Kenji ignored that. He looked thoughtful. “Do you really think she’ll kill him?”

  I thought about it, but not for long. “Yes. I really do. I’ll go so far as to say she might not mean to do so, but she will.”

  “Then don’t we have a duty to stay and try to reason with him?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I might be wrong.”

  “Lord Yamada—”

  I cut Kenji off. “Michi is a grown man. He’s made his choice and he understands the possible consequences. He’s going to try and be happy. Just because I failed doesn’t mean he will.”

  Kenji just sighed. “You’re a romantic, Lord Yamada.”

  I saved my breath for walking rather than argue the point. I had already resolved to stop and make offerings at the first temple or shrine that we passed, and to offer prayers on Michi’s behalf that he might succeed. That I might actually be wrong. It wouldn’t be much more trouble to add a prayer that, for my own sake, Kenji might be wrong, too.

  THE MANSION OF BONES

  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.”