(Art: “The Rescue,” by Mai-sensei)
“So, what are you going to do?” Shiomi asked.
We had just left a small turnoff by a temple where I had called Chinmoku Izumi Temple. Her tone conveyed a vague sense that she disagreed with me continuing the way we were going. But of course, she wouldn’t say it. Not when she could save it up and blame me later.
As soon as I had the thought, I realized I was being unfair. The passive-aggressiveness and profane-laden outbursts had ceased once I renewed my promise not to abandon her, but I had a vague headache and sense of foreboding. All of which made me irritable. The light sleet that was falling didn’t help either.
“I don’t know. Go to Sen no Taki (Sacred Falls) and hope for the best.”
It was that or go home, an unacceptable option. If I went home, Shiomi would walk out some night into Mikawa’s arms. I was unsure why I cared so much. Sure, I would care about anyone threatened by an onryo, but I suspected my feelings went further. Feelings that weren’t reciprocated.
“They’re sacred, after all,” I continued. “Surely no harm can come to us there.” Not that I believed that. Like whistling in the dark, I was trying to make myself feel better.
“Sen no Taki. Are you sure it means Sacred Waterfall and not Wizard’s Waterfall?” she asked.
I looked at her. “Yabai, who says you’re stupid? That’s pretty clever. I wouldn’t have thought of that. ‘仙’ could mean ‘wizard’ not ‘sacred’. Still, I don’t see that we have a choice. If it’s the wrong place, we’ll continue to Daienji. We still have time, assuming nothing goes wrong.”
“If nothing goes wrong,” I thought sarcastically. Neither of us said that was a big if, especially if it was Wizard Falls.
After a minute, the sleet let up, and we rolled through patchy fog. On our right, the Usune River rushed along its course. As much as I tried not to, I listened for voices in its babble and the periodic gusts of wind. If they contained words, they were beyond my comprehension, but it didn’t stop my mind from trying to find meaning in every sound.
You would have thought that would be enough to keep me alert, but a restless night and a residue of fatigue from overwork weighed on me. The fog of the Kawaba Valley or the smoke from Shiomi’s cigarette seemed to have seeped into my mind, and I drifted and nodded.
I thought about asking Shiomi to talk, but she was lost in thought, smoking. Besides, I didn’t think I could face any more of Shiomi’s story. Mikawa hadn’t hit her. I suppose that was a small blessing. That was the best I could say.
So instead, I fished out a CD and glanced at it. The label said THE GUERRiLLA BiSH, something loud to mask any voices and keep me awake.
When I fumbled with the case, Shiomi roused herself, took it, and put the disk in the player. Instead of loud rock, the music was a slow, melancholy, dark-pop tune. Mournful like a funeral dirge.
“You have our CD?” Wonder tinged Shiomi’s voice. “Did you know who I was?”
Soft wailing voices joined in with the guitars. Shiomi’s smoldering cigarette traced an arc in the dim gray light in time with a short crescendo. Then her hands came down as the music exploded with a resounding crash of drums and electric guitars.
She reached out and turned the music down, which had become a wild riot of chords, so that she could speak to me. “The audience would all have their arms up like that and scream as they brought their arms down. ‘Oye, Oye, Oye.’” Her face was animated; shining with inner fire. She could have outshone Amaterasu. This was yet another Shiomi I had never seen. If she had half this energy on stage, I could see why people would come to see her. I would have come to see her!
“Did you ever see our show?” excitement lit up her voice.
I had to shake my head no. I had no idea where the CD had come from. It wasn’t something Tomo would have picked up, and it wasn’t anything I recognized.
My gesture caused her face to fall, and I had enough wits about me to say, “I wish I had. I can tell you must have been quite something. Fans must have flocked to you like moths to a flame; a dark goddess.”
My words return some of the glow to her face. She continued with pride and wonder in her voice, “I was Fukitsu! A Kami of Ill Fortune.”
The irony did not escape me. She was indeed a Kami of Ill Fortune. And I was another moth attracted to her flame.
It didn’t matter, did it? Mikawa would probably snuff out her flame soon. I would do what I could to prevent that and pray that if I failed, I wouldn’t go up in a final puff of smoke with her.
But right now, what I wanted was to keep that look on her face, even if it was only for a few moments more.
I continued, “You loved it. The music part. Ever think of starting again, with a new unit or a rock group?”
I heard her cigarette sizzle as she took a drag and answered. “Yes, I loved it.” There was a pause while she flipped the butt of her smoke out the window, then she finished, “No one would hire someone as old as me without a history and my history is poison.”
That hadn’t worked. The glow was rapidly departing her face, so I returned to what had worked, saying, “I wish I had seen you then. I bet you were something.”
“If you like that CD, you would have loved us, and I was something.”
She turned the music back up and said, “I have a solo here.”
We listened to music until the end of the song. Her voice was velvety, moving smoothly through the tempo changes. The song was dark, and the lyrics were messed up. It was not the kind of thing you wanted to be listening to on a ghost-ridden drive through fog-laden countryside. But her voice made you want to listen anyway.
Another song started, and I just caught the word “Hate,” as she turned it off. “I’m sorry. If we listen to it anymore, I’ll cry. You have no idea how much I miss it.”
I thought I did, and if I could have comforted her, I would have, except I had to drive. The road wound as it climbed. The wheels rattled over cracked asphalt. Signs warning of falling rocks would appear out of the fog and then were gone. All of which required my maintaining full control of the car.
As we drove on in silence, the sleet returned, turned to hail, and finally became a fine gray snow that lay on the ground and made the road slick. In a way, I was glad about the road conditions because it distracted me from thinking about Shiomi’s story.
“Would you like to be a character in one of my novels?” I said, attempting to brighten the mood. “I think I could bring your past to life. It’s a compelling story, or would it be too painful?”
There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the heater and the rattle of the car, then a soft reply. “A book about Fukitsu? I would love that, but no soppy ending. Let her wear her misfortune proudly till the end.”
I heard a gentle popping sound as she smoked, and the car began to smell of cloves, hiding a metallic odor that had been creeping into the car.
My eyes fastened on a slender black cylinder between her lips and wondered where she had gotten kreteks. They must have been Djarum Blacks, the smokes Mikawa-san used to buy her. But where had they come from?
“No soppy ending,” she repeated. “You don’t think I understand the irony of my existence. I am Fukitsu, the Kami of Misfortune, and misfortune has followed me all my life. Without singing and dancing, all I have left is tragedy. Without tragedy, I am nothing more than a poorly educated girl working in a dead-end job.”
Her smoke crackled, then she continued, “People say Mikawa is dead, but she’s not. I’ve seen her. But even if she is dead, so what? Isn’t that a fitting end to my story? A Samurai falls on their sword to preserve their honor. I will fall on my sword. Write THAT in your book!”
The sweet aromatic odor of cloves was heavy in the air, mixing with a new floral scent, that of peonies. Shiomi’s words and the perfumed vapors seemed to wrap around my brain, evoking strange visions. I thought, “Ophelia has to drown; Helen must pull the walls of Troy down around her ears; that’s what granted them immortality. If Kiyohime had married her monk, there would be no story, only a dreary rendition of marital strife and lost dreams. Instead, Kiyo will live forever as the dragon who traps and kills her lover in a bell.”
“And wasn’t Mikawa the incarnation of Otsuyu, returning for her living lover, Shinnojo?”
I glanced at Shinnojo’s feathery blue hair falling over her forehead, one wisp lying on her cheek. It reminded me of when I first met her at the konbini, with Otsuyu glowering in the background.
I blinked. Something was off. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Shinnojo took a drag on her smoke and I remembered how she had lit one for me. Ingrid Bergman… Lauren Bacall? The image of a woman standing in a doorway, with blue hair pointing every which way, in a T-shirt that barely covered her, came to me. Shiomi!
I repeated the name softly to myself, “Shiomi.”
I looked over and saw Shiomi, not Shinnojo.
Shiomi was singing softly, something slow and sinister. I caught the words “suicide, suicide, longing, the end,” as her arms went up in a dramatic motion.
“Something bad is going to happen!” I thought.
“Stop, stop now,” I thought, and I slammed on my brakes as there was a crash like thunder.
The tires slid on the slick pavement, and we came to a stop in front of a tall figure.
Our headlights revealed a woman in white. The snow swirled around her, gray against the pristine white of her garment. The pink petal pattern of her kimono revealed that Hanayome-shin had appeared. Her hand raised in warning.
A little longer and we would have hit her. In fact, for a moment, I thought the crashing sound was me striking her. But the sound continued, a wild beating like drums and electric guitars. The music of Tamoto Suzume shrieking like a blizzard wind.
“Look,” Shiomi said, pointing to the right with the black cigarette dangling from her fingers. “She’s there.”
It took a second to realize she didn’t mean Hanayome-shin, but another woman, also wearing white. Dirty white, not the bright clean white of Hanayome’s kimono. Otsuyu stood…
I shook my head to clear it. I meant Mikawa stood where Shiomi pointed, Mikawa’s kimono flapping in the wind.
A voice like a storm in the trees, a fierce rustling, silenced the music. “Ume-san is mine. You can’t have her. Take what is yours and begone.” Hanayome-shin had spoken.
If there was an answer, I didn’t hear it, but Shiomi fumbled with her door and I heard her say “Mika.”
I grabbed Shiomi and restrained her from getting out of the half-open door. Fortunately, she focused on the door instead of fighting me.
“Let her go,” screamed the wind.
“No,” I shouted back. I should have been frightened, but adrenaline animated me. “I won’t sacrifice her.”
“Let her go,” Hanayome-shin commanded and there was a sound like a branch breaking and the windshield exploded into a crazy quilt of spiderweb-like cracks. At the same time, I dodged the burning end of the cigarette in Shiomi’s hand as she left off trying to get out the door and turned on me. I don’t know if she meant to burn me or was just flailing.
The glowing end of the thing almost convinced me to let go. Instead, I shouted, “I won’t abandon her.”
The wind shrieked, the car door slammed all the way open, and the car rocked under the blast. “Beware of trifling with me!!!”
Then it was quiet. Hanayome-shin was gone and with her went Mikawa.
Beside the road was construction equipment, lightly blanketed with snow. Ahead, I could now see the highway ended in a gulf where the Sen no Taki bridge had washed out. A gulf of death that I had been speeding toward. My sudden stop had saved us. I don’t know if Hanayome-shin could have stopped me in time if I had sped on enchanted, but she had saved me from Mikawa.
With shaking hands, I took the smoldering cigarette from Shiomi, before she could hurt me with it. Not that she looked like she would anymore. I took a hit off the tail end of her smoke. It was a normal Camel Light.
Shiomi was staring at me, pale-faced. I reached out and brushed the hair out of her eyes with my free hand and said stupidly, “My wife, she’s quite something.”
With shaking hands, I lit one of my smokes from the butt of hers. The peach flavor was familiar and calming. The whole time Shiomi watched me with wide eyes, saying nothing.
I handed her the peche, and she took a hit.
“God, your cigs suck!” she said and then took another hit and passed it back to me. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“My wife? Oh, Mikawa. Yeah, she’s dead.”
“She’s dead, and I have been…” For a moment, she looked like she would be sick.
Part of me wanted to say, “That’s what I have been telling you,” but the better part of me sighed in relief. This is what I had been hoping for. Any words I could have said would have reflected that less noble part of me and I opted to light her a Camel and hand it to her.
She took the cigarette from my hand and took a hit. “Why didn’t you let me go? She, your wife, she could have killed you.”
“Promises. I promised to marry her, and I did. I promised not to abandon you and I won’t.”
Suddenly, her arms were around me. “Thank you. Thank you,” she whispered into my shoulder.
The smell of her hair, sandalwood and violets, tickled my nose. She was warm, and holding her was something I had been waiting for. I didn’t want to let her go even though an icy wind whistled through the open car door, so I held her closer, trying to block out the voices in the wind saying, “Mine.”
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Notes:
Thank you for finishing volume one. Our lovers are finally united, or are they? And if they are, how is Hanayome-shin going to take it? Regardless of Hanayome-shin’s feelings, Mikawa is still out there and won’t be pleased. Please come back for volume two and find out what happens. Oh, and hopefully Tomo has a bit of story of his own.
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Story by Nara Moore
Twitter/X:@nara_moore
Mastodon: sakurajima.moe
WordPress: Josei Yuri and Paranormal Romance
Art by Mai-sensei
Twitter: @Maiisheree
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