IX. Dreams...
"'Yes... life's like that,' says the moon, picking its teeth with a twig." – Meatball Fulton
The moonlight moved again. For a moment it made a circle right in the middle of the garden door, to Yumi's sight, and there was the twisted silhouette of a great leaping beast at its center. Then the beast was gone, and the moon was moving away. Yumi couldn't tell which direction it was going, and there was too much danger right where she was. I have to move! she thought. She wriggled. The doings of the bedroll were on the other side of it, and she couldn't reach around or through Sachiko-sama to get at them. So she wriggled, for her life.
The moonlight wasn't as strong as it had been, but it was still somewhat stronger than the taper-light they'd all been drinking by not long ago, and the moving shadows in the room, not cats and not women, neither yet somehow both, were beginning to unpuzzle themselves in front of Yumi's eyes. Some of them were befurred over their whole bodies, some over only parts, and others had it only on their tails and their pointed, high-set ears. They seemed newly-awakened, and they were noticing, with consternation, the many sleepers on the floor. The current position of the traveling moon threw the shadows of the shutter-slats and the garden door everywhere, but Yumi and Sachiko-sama were right in the brightest part of the room, and it was only time till Yumi was noticed – Now or never –
The precious narrow gap of Yumi's egress was around her thighs just now. Her feet couldn't remember the earth unless they were in direct contact with it. The only "elements" within reach were straw bedroll and floorboard, and she doubted her servant could be successfully called forth from either.
And now a hiss was approaching. Yumi saw one of the cat/woman shapes approaching her from the shadow of the wall between the garden door and the shutters, at first only a shadow with glowing eyes, crouching low, almost on its hands and knees, but then the shadow passed into a beam of shifting moonlight and Yumi could make out her long legs covered with brown-and-orange-and-black fur, and a like patch between her breasts and tufting her forearms. She wore a leather jerkin and a headband to keep her tangled hair out of her eyes, which burned stolen moonlight yellow into Yumi's heart.
Yumi's mind went out like a taper in the wind. Terror made her body rigid.
Then another light burned fiercely inside her – she mustn't give up, everyone was depending on her –
"Hisssss!" Yumi hissed at the cat-woman, thrusting her hands in front of her like claws.
The cat-woman's ears went flat back onto her head and she leapt back a few paces. Her glowing eyes were wide with carnivorous alarm.
With a desperate jerk Yumi got her legs free of the bedroll at last. Her feet found floorboard, and –
The cat-woman pounced, but Yumi made a spring towards the only clear bit of floor she could see – several paces away, about halfway to the kitchen entrance at the back of the main room. Her sudden, rather clumsy arrival startled the hissing shapes in that part of the room, making them leap backwards and go into crouches, but Yumi had seen the other one's recovery time, and she knew that there was no way she was going to make it to the kitchen – the one place in sight that might provide sanctuary, however briefly – before they all fell on her at once. She had to find another way –
She went to the floor between two occupied bedrolls.
She sensed the weight and warmth of many cat-women converging on her; they would give her no more time than they could help. They were snickering. No doubt they thought she was mad, trying to hide from them in plain sight.
There were three ways out of her exposed burrow: up, or toward the garden, or toward the opposite wall. The cat-women would get her if she took any of them. Up was useless, unless there were also a down. Yumi looked to the one side – the sleepers' heads, the garden – and the other – the sleepers' feet, a blank wall. Hisses, soft feet nearing –
She crossed her eyes.
And the middle way opened before her, and she was on it like a startled rabbit fleeing down its burrow.
She heard the furious hisses and snarls of cat-women behind her, even a brief scuffle which sounded like someone had tripped someone else up by mistake. But she couldn't tell; where she was, the walls and the sleepers seemed to bulge outward, there was a red tinge to everything, and the cat-women were visible only as dancing wisps of fuzzy smoke.
The middle way wouldn't stay open for long – it was as dangerous in its way as the remembering-place, because while the remembering-place was always there in some sense, the middle way was temporary, and when it disappeared forever you went with it, if you were so improvident as to still be inside it – but the nice thing about it was that one could choose where one came out of it, as long as it was a place one had seen before. Yumi's mind, which had come so close to freezing solid only moments ago, was burning with activity now, and she knew she had to make it up fast.
Any place she had seen, ever in her life. So she chose the inside of the kitchen, hoping there was something in there she could make use of. The kitchen had no door she could close, and it wouldn't take the cat-women, with their ears and noses, very long to figure out where she'd gone... The bulge of the walls of the front room twisted, and the kitchen walls formed around her, the stove, the mess, the cups and bowls soaking in a wooden tub glistening in the weird light from the little window. And a large cask of sake, unopened: the spare Yamiko-sama had brought down from the attic.
Yumi had no time. They would smell her out, if their noses were as catlike as their ears and tails. And as soon as she made a noise, they wouldn't have to smell her. She looked wildly about her, trying to think what might serve her, hearing the sound of the cat-women approaching the kitchen door, growling low –
Sachiko was reading. She was in her former chambers in her father's house, where she had not set foot since her fifteenth year, and yet she was the sorceress Ogasawara Sachiko, a three-year veteran of the Guild. It seemed completely natural that she should be here, on one level, but on another, she knew she was dreaming.
"Mistress?"
The garden door was standing open. She had looked up a while ago to see early spring, with ornamental trees new-budding. Now there was some subtle change in the light, and she looked up again and saw summer weather, and heard the song of the cicada.
Was that Yumi's voice?
She looked at the door to the outer chamber. It, too, was standing open, but there was no sign of Yumi. Except that her hand was on the doorjamb. Just her hand. Well. Sachiko would wait until the rest of her arrived.
– dreaming –
It was vital that she reach some conclusion as to just what this book was saying. The author enjoyed hiding behind obscure, archaic dialect and figurative language. Sachiko was capable of deciphering such matter, but it made her impatient. Abstruse recondite fiddlesticks... as near as she could tell, the author was saying that the hastily-approaching end of the world would only signal a new beginning, but the beginning of a transformed world of chaos and dark forces, of nightmares walking. This was clean contrary to Buddhist doctrine. But Buddhist doctrine, Sachiko had always thought, was not always wise, unlike the Buddha himself. She had heard things about other ways of believing, from Sei-san, and from other travelers, and it seemed a common theme, no matter where you went in the great world. Someone very clever and compassionate and sympathetic comes up with a system of thought and action, and then the followers come along and say whatever pops into their heads... everyone, cut off a finger... everyone, swallow mercury... we must gather our shoes together into a bundle...
"Sachiko-sama?"
Yumi's voice again. I am so close, here, Sachiko thought. If she could just let me be a little while longer –
Sachiko heard the distant cry of a deer. She looked up, and there were autumn colors in her garden. She stared for a moment, and the colors were in the room with her, fading sunset light speckling the walls with leafy textures...
Yumi?
She looked at the doorway and Yumi was not there. Even her hand had gone. The girl is too impatient, Sachiko thought. She should have been able to tell I was busy... The trouble with this author was, he was too emotional and impulsive. Sometimes something he said seemed right to Sachiko, but then he'd explain his reasons for saying it, and his reasoning was terribly faulted, and often secondhand. He seemed ready to believe anything an elder told him, and from the sound of it he must have had the gamiest assortment of elders ever at the disposal of any writer...
The air was turning chill, and it occurred to Sachiko that winter was probably imminent. She rose, thinking to close the garden door, but there, where there had only been bare floorboard, there was suddenly a little old man, dressed in a monk's habit, and with a wicker helmet the wrong way on his head, so that half his face was hidden.
He was muttering to himself. He was blocking Sachiko's way to the garden door. She tried to step around him, but he shifted position to block her again. He wasn't even looking at her. She would have thought he was unaware of her if he had not moved so purposefully to block her. She caught a phrase of his muttering – "if those who are willfully blind will not be made to see then may darkness perpetual be visited upon them" – and she recognized it from what she'd just been reading.
Is this the ghost of my author?
She assumed a waiting posture. She didn't know what he could do or what he intended to do. The first snowflakes were beginning to whistle through the open door, and night was falling in earnest. Sachiko gritted her teeth and growled. The old man looked directly at her for the first time, and his one visible eye was black and empty. It occurred to Sachiko that he'd been distracting her, standing between her and Yumi all this time, he and his book. Was it lies, pernicious lies, or only ill-intentioned misdirection, mindless malignance? She didn't care. She stood ready to eradicate him the moment he showed any weakness...
Sei was having speech with the Dagda, the Red Man of All Knowledge. His many children were dancing and loving one another in the mud at their feet. "Do you not know what it means, the song of the Stone?" the Dagda was asking her. "And did you never think to tell your father what you heard when you set foot upon it?"
"Did you never think to curb yourself, in the matter of children?" Sei asked in turn. "There must be fifty of them, if not more. How do you feed them all?"
"My people ruled your country once." The Dagda seemed unwilling to discuss his progeny, despite the fact that two of them were performing a disreputable act on his left shoe. "We will never rule it again. It is for the sons of the Gael to rule now. But now, even they are being pushed aside, and the land will be ruled by people who don't care about it, but only want to squeeze it over their faces so that its wealth drips down their beards. Is it pleasing to you that it should be so?"
"You'll never get the stain out," Sei said, mourning the Dagda's left shoe.
"It's your country, daughter of Cormac."
"Not anymore." Sei looked up at him, with a serious look now. "Nihon isn't even my true country. My country is Dreams, and Waking, and the Lands Between." She pointed at him. "You took the land from the Firbolgs, and the Gaels took it from you. Now the Northmen are taking it from the Gaels. I think Nihon was taken from someone too, once. Most lands have been." He was looking at her with a lack of expression which she knew meant anger. She relaxed again, and smiled at him. "When I was younger, I had a druid rod I cherished much; I could turn pigs into men, and men into pigs, and back again, with one little tap. Lir son of Conor took it from me and used it to become the finest sheepherder in all Connacht. Was I livid! I guess that I was. I put a charm on his face, turned his nose upside down, so to this day he gets snot in his hair when he sneezes. But I never did get my rod back."
"The two things aren't the same," the Dagda said disconsolately.
"Nothing is ever the same as anything else," Sei said grandly. "But that won't stop them trying. You know, if you fashioned a snug little sheath of sheepskin, and wore it at happy times, it might abate the neverending flow of children. If you Tuatha de Danaan truly do not age or die, then your wife can go right on having children till the Crack of Doom, which will probably be the sound of a whole world of hungry children falling on you and breaking your bones."
"This shoe is ruined," the Dagda finally noticed, an eternal sadness in his eyes.
There was no sly interweaving of dream and waking; the Dagda and his children were gone, like a soap-bubble, exploded quite, and someone was shaking Sei. "Please, oh, please wake up, Satou-samaaa!"
Sei opened her eyes, and found that it was Yumi's hand on her shoulder. "Why, good morning, sweet one. What a delight to wake up to you!" She reached up and ran her fingers through Yumi's sleep-tousled hair. Yumi clung to her arm desperately, which made Sei a bit more alert. "Can it really be morning already? Oh... the light's a bit queer, isn't it? –" Sei broke off. Crouched a little way behind Yumi was a hulking shape, about Yumi's height, but broader. It occurred to Sei that the shape was familiar, and then it occurred to her that the shape was a familiar: the water-creature, Yumi's dear aqua-homunculus, back again. The strange light was refracting through it and casting shifting, eerie patterns over the walls, and over the sleepers covering the floor.
And there were a lot of other crouching shapes nearby, one or two among the sleepers, but most against the eastern wall, opposite the garden doors and the shutters, many of them flashing pointed teeth at the water creature and hissing. One seemed to have a difficulty: she was very wet. She did not like being very wet. Her body was mostly covered in fur, and the fur was quite soaked and dripping. She was trying to dry herself with her tongue, and a few of her companions were trying to help her, but they kept cringing and making faces at the taste.
Oh, and there was rather a strong smell of sake.
"I'm not still dreaming, am I?" Sei wondered, her sleepy smile frozen in place.
"I wish you were," Yumi answered fervently.
"What is your water-creature doing?"
"It's a sake-creature at the moment," Yumi said, "and what it's doing is watching over my Mistress."
Sei boggled at the dear girl. "You fashioned an elemental servant out of sake?"
"There wasn't enough water handy," Yumi said defensively, too fast, "and I might have done it with earth, but I didn't know if it was safe to go outside after – though it doesn't seem to be very safe inside either – well, I don't – I couldn't –" She seemed on the verge of tears.
Sei sat up and put her arms around Yumi.
Yumi stiffened, then sagged. Her breath hitched a bit. Her fingers tangled in the folds of Sei's loose shirt, and clung.
"Calmly, calmly, my dear," Sei said soothingly, patting the girl's head, taking a more intense look around the room. The balance of power seemed stable for the moment. "Is everyone else still asleep?"
"Yumph," Yumi said, against Sei's shirt.
"Have you tried to wake any of them?"
"Mistress," Yumi said, lifting her face off Sei's chest a bit, but not letting go. "And Mizuno-sama, and Torii-sama, and Rei-sama, and Shimako-san."
"And then me?"
"I tried you first after Mistress," Yumi corrected. "This was my second time trying to wake you."
Sei gave the bowed head before her a very soft look, and ran her fingers through the fine brown hair again. "Sorry I gave you so much trouble, popkin. I can be hard to rouse when I've been at the sake." Sei was beginning to be seriously worried. "Do you think the others might be? –"
"I'm sure they're all alive, Satou-sama," Yumi said hastily. "They may be glamoured. I don't know why I wasn't affected. And I don't know why I was sure you wouldn't be affected –"
"Tell me," Sei interrupted. "Everything. From the beginning."
Yumi did so.
Youko was annoyed. She was doing everything herself, as always. Well, she was just as well pleased with that, in a way, because at least she knew things would be done right. But she quickly chided herself for that thought. I am not a Guild unto myself, she reminded herself, as she finished looking over the figures for the quarterly report. The Guild's finances were in a state. She could ask Suga-sama for advice, but Suga-sama hated to talk about money. It would be a short, unilluminating conversation. Suga-sama would offer her Oe Hikaru-san's services, to help fix any problems… and Oe-san would sit opposite Youko for as long as she liked, answering direct questions with superficially respectful insults, making every appearance of helpfulness without actually helping.
She could ask Fujiwara-dono, if Fujiwara-dono hadn't gone and got herself turned into stone.
There she stood, in the corner of Youko's office, near the sliding door to the Gaijin Garden. Fujiwara-dono had been weeping at the moment of transformation, and her mouth was open, almost in a scream. Youko had to remind herself, That's Fujiwara-dono, because it didn't look like her.
Sometimes, in the dark of night, if Youko could bring herself to stand next to the statue in the moonlight from the open door, and not move or make a sound for some space of time, she could hear Fujiwara-dono speak. Only one word. The word might or might not seem to make any sense at all. One night it had been "dance". Another, "laurel". Both good words, and they might make sense, if they could only be put together with something – there had been a Guild dance only the other night, and certainly the laurel was flowering at this time of year. Another night, it had been "budgerigar" which, as far as Youko could tell, made no sense whatever, and was so out-of-place and preposterous as to cast grave doubt on any other words heard in the vicinity of the darknight statue.
And tonight, the lamplight was wavering in the drafty room, and the shadows were dancing on Fujiwara-dono's tragic basalt face so that Youko couldn't tell if the statue was really weeping, or screaming with laughter, and Youko had to wonder if keeping it company under such oppressive circumstances would be worth it.
You left me your field to farm, and forgot to tell me where you keep your plow, she thought reproachfully at it.
She could ask Sachiko for help, but Sachiko had gone into the earth and had not come up again. She was looking for Yumi, of course. Youko felt fairly sure Sachiko would come back, but when she had found Yumi, and not before. Trust Yumi to get all vaporish at a time like this, and go running home to mother…
Every day, Youko looked at her Dragons and Oxen and Rats, at the morning assembly, and every day they looked more disillusioned. Go ahead and run things, everyone had seemed to say, and then refused to help her. But she could have borne it all, without complaining even to herself, if a certain someone had stood by her.
She stood, and walked to the garden doorway. The moon was full and huge. The night was marvelous and yellow. And there… yes, the small planet north of the moon, that was Sei. It was a planet, and yet Youko could clearly see Sei standing nonchalantly in the heavens there, arguing with the moon. They both loved a good argument.
The door behind her rattled open. "Awake, my lovely. I bring you fresh fruits, and the wine of springtime, and pillows for your aching footsies."
Youko turned. The well-loved face was grinning at her from the door.
"Sei?" she said, scarcely believing. She took a step forward –
There was no one there. The door wasn't even open.
She wearily stifled her misery and disappointment, as she was so used to doing, though this time it seemed almost unbearable. She was sure now of Fujiwara-dono's stone laughter. She felt an unusually violent urge to topple the stone sorceress, break her, but that would break the room, and the earth as well, and bring the moon down on her. She dismissed the urge. She must care for the statue, as for an aged parent. I can bear only hearing one word from you a night if it's a helpful word, she thought, touching the statue's grey cheek. If it's a word that tells me how to get Sei back, I'll keep you always with me, and polish you every day. The stone laughter seemed gentler now, not so strident. The air had stilled, and the lamplight was steady.
But then, the shadows of trees outside were dancing, shifting over her hand on Fujiwara-dono's face, and now Fujiwara-dono looked as if someone were twisting a stone blade in her stone belly. Youko turned quickly, and stepped to the garden door again –
The lady moon had Sei by the throat, and together they were making a mess of the southern sky, planets and stars were knocked all awry, flat on their faces in the black, doing involuntary somersaults, or sitting up, rubbing their bruised pates and complaining. Youko could see the combatants swinging one another about, Sei pulling at the hands on her throat, kicking at the moon's ankles, and she saw their mouths moving, but she couldn't hear their words, and she didn't know what the fight was about.
Insult was added to injury now. Not only was Sei out of reach and yet visible, she was in trouble, and Youko could only watch. She clenched her fists involuntarily. Everything was piling up, minor indignities as well as major, and she felt ready to burst with rage. She looked around at the garden, glaring, looking for something to take her rage out on –
– and she found that the plum tree was about half again as tall as it should be. It was, in fact, almost in danger of blotting out the moon with its uppermost branches.
She thought about this for a moment.
She looked anger at it again, and there it was, growing in front of her eyes. The branches swelled, the knots and boles growing, dwindling, shifting position like muscles, reaching to claim more sky. The moon and Sei were both obscured, and shadow of the tree swallowed the Guild offices.
She knew then that she had the power of stepping up into the sky to intervene. The roughs for the quarterly report were still in her hand. She flung them at the fountain. They fell short, wrapping themselves haphazardly around a laurel shrub. She'd had enough. She was going to go into the sky and stop the moon from killing Sei. Then she and Sei would make a pilgrimage together. They would travel, it didn't matter where. Maybe they would even forget to come back to Heian Kyo. She was almost certain she could talk Sei into it –
And then the stone hand was gripping her right wrist.
She spun, and put a hand on the stone arm. Fujiwara-dono was still standing in the same spot. Her long arm had reached out to grab Sei, but she seemed not to have moved otherwise, except that her head had turned, and she was looking at Youko, a fathomless look. She was still basalt, except that her eyes were now obsidian. They almost glowed black.
Sei saw that her own arm, the one Fujiwara-dono was clutching, was turning to basalt. The stone was creeping up her arm, turning the white of her robe to grey, advancing on her shoulder.
She looked Fujiwara-dono in her black glass eyes, and shook her head once, firmly.
The grey went back down, but stopped at her elbow. Youko kept pushing, and Fujiwara-dono kept pushing back.
Fujiwara-dono spoke, one word: "Love."
"Whose love?" Youko asked her urgently. "Mine? Yours? Sei's? The moon's?"
Fujiwara-dono grinned. Her teeth were black like her eyes.
Youko began to be afraid. No, she told herself. That won't do. She performed the magic of transmuting her fear into anger, which she then controlled. She could control anger. Fear was harder. "And what do you want me to do about it?" she asked the statue.
The black smile did not waver.
There was still a little fear left in Youko. To be killed, or to be exposed. Which is worse? The ruckus up above continued, making no sound but a violent, spastic play of shadows over Youko and all that was left of her teacher, stalemated for the moment in stone and chilled flesh…
"So," Satou-sama said, pondering. She looked around. A hand disappeared into her bedroll, and reappeared holding two worn lengths of straw. In that one hand, without her looking at them, her thumb and middle finger began weaving the straws together, with occasional help from her index finger. She stared up into the eerie half-darkness of the half-attic, and then at the shutters in the far wall back of the house, through which the queer light burned strongest.
It seemed to Yumi she'd seen this one-handed weaving trick before. "What are you doing, Satou-sama? The weaving –"
"Gathering power," Satou-sama muttered. She sniffed once, paused, then again three times rapidly. "Weaving strengthens; braiding binds. The finger seeks; the spirit finds..." Satou-sama half-sang this, then her voice was more ordinary again. Her eyes were shifting around, looking especially at the strange shadows made by the stranger light, shadows which kept moving slightly. "Something about all this... Worrisome. I'm going to have a try at waking Youko –"
"Sachiko-sama –" Yumi said anxiously. Then she looked down, ashamed.
She felt Satou-sama's hand on her cheek. "I know, Yumi sweet. It's all right. Sachiko next, okay? I need Youko's help."
They went towards the back of the room, moving to the garden side where a path had been left, so they wouldn't have to step among the sleepers. As they passed the sake-creature, it raised a blobby, indistinct hand in apparent greeting to Sei, without taking its three-eyed gaze off the cluster of cat-women by the opposite wall. Satou-sama cast a considering eye at them too – and, when Yumi pointed them out, at the ones that were still lurking up on the roof-beams – but the hissing, tail-twitching creatures seemed to be keeping their distance for the moment, and Satou-sama seemed to feel that they had more urgent business, for she whispered in Yumi's ear, "One absurd and foolish mystery at a time, my old wildlife expert." They stopped short of the still-open kitchen door, where Mizuno-sama lay, with Touko-san in her own bedroll just next to hers. They were hard by the shutters now, where the light was strongest, and Yumi couldn't look at the gaps between the slats because the light seemed almost to boil in her eyes if she opened them full on it, and made the room about her darker. She could hear a constant droning sound, like a chorus singing no particular song, in no particular key, with voices that were not human.
"There's something out there," Yumi whispered. Her fear, calmed considerably now that Satou-sama stood with her, was nevertheless still alive inside her.
She felt Satou-sama's hand on the back of her neck a moment later, and felt a bit better.
Satou-sama knelt close to Mizuno-sama and put a hand to her sleeping face, and her mouth to her ear. She sang:
While you here do snoring lie,
Open-eyed
conspiracy
Her time doth take.
If of life you keep a care,
Shake off slumber
and beware:
Awake! Awake!
Mizuno-sama's eyes opened, and it seemed that they had already been looking at Satou-sama. Always before, Mizuno-sama had seemed to Yumi a cool, formidable person, but the total vulnerability of sleep was still upon her now, and the look she gave Satou-sama was very soft, almost childlike. "Sei?..." she said softly.
"There's trouble, Youko," Satou-sama said.
But Mizuno-sama closed her eyes again.
Satou-sama blinked. "Not quite the reaction I was hoping for."
They shook Mizuno-sama a little, but she was asleep once more.
And there they sat.
"Should you try again, Satou-sama?"
Satou-sama seemed to struggle with herself. She had one hand still on Mizuno-sama's shoulder. "The enchantment's too strong, I think," she said at last. "I could expend a lot of energy and still not succeed, and the energy might be better spent after all following the enchantment back and attacking it at the root." She touched Mizuno-sama's cheek briefly. "It's difficult to know just how to proceed..."
Looking at Satou-sama's considering, worried, unsmiling face, with the scar on the right cheek more stark than Yumi had ever seen it, it almost seemed that Satou-sama was defeated. (Yumi also wondered, not for the first time, where Satou-sama had got the scar. One didn't like to ask her, somehow.) Yumi felt disappointment, and the increase of her own worry. She had allowed herself to hope that Satou-sama awakened would heal all harms, but she seemed to be as mystified by the situation as Yumi herself was; neither Mizuno-sama nor Sachiko-sama was awakeable, as it seemed; the problem was still what it had been. Yumi began to feel impatience and anger as well as disappointment and worry –
– but Satou-sama had said before, "When anyone needs help, we all help. Always... none of the younger sisters has disappointed us yet..."
Yumi now felt shame as well. Satou-sama had just woken up, and the situation was weird in the extreme. Satou-sama might still find a solution to the problem, if Yumi just stood by her, as Satou-sama, and all the others, had stood by Yumi only yesterday.
"Should... should we try to wake Fujiwara-dono?"
Satou-sama looked at Yumi blankly at first, then smiled and ruffled Yumi's hair again. "That's a good thought, duckling, but her chamber is connected to this one by a covered walkway, open to the weather. Until we have a better idea what that strange light is, and where exactly Yamiko-san has got to, it might be best not to take the risk. Everybody is depending on us, and if we commit inadvertent suicide, we'll be no help to them at all." She frowned. "I'll wager these transmogrified moggies have some notion, if we could only get them to open up a bit, and stop hissing at us." She glared at the cluster of strange creatures in the shadows, looking them defiantly in their glowing eyes. "The solution to one mystery might be the solution to the other, the two being so close together. Have you spoken to them?"
"No, Satou-sama. They haven't spoken to me either. They tried to attack me at first, but since one of them tried to pin the sake-creature and got a wetting for her pains, they've kept their distance. They may be as confused as we are."
"Did all the cats change form?" Satou-sama wondered. "I seem to remember there being more of them -"
Then they heard the scream. A girl's terrified scream, from around the middle of the long room.
"Momo!" Sei said, her eyes widening. She sprang forward instantly, and Yumi, who didn't understand, followed anyway...
Momoko was having the loveliest dream. In it, she and dear Mizuki-chan were walking in a field of flowers. "Do you like cats?" Mizuki-chan asked her in a gentle voice. Momoko said, "Yes." They walked on a little. It seemed to be late summer, by the flowers, but the sky was a strange, beautiful silvery grey although the sun was shining and there wasn't that oppressive feeling one gets in the air before a heavy rain. Mizuki-chan said, "Did you say that knowing that I am a cat?" And Momoko said, "Yes."
Now they were lying together in the lowest bough of a large katsura tree. Curiously, Momoko was lying in Mizuki-chan's lap, rather than the other way around. Mizuki-chan had grown, and seemed different whenever Momoko looked at her; now she looked like a large cat, and now she looked like a girl, a soft, sweet, gentle girl of the sort one meets in the country, visiting a shrine with her mother, and who has a roll of colored paper in which she writes poems, her own and other people's, and a white cat, and a passion for dominoes. Once, when Momoko looked at her, Mizuki-chan had two faces; the girl's face, looking at Momoko lovingly, and the cat's face, looking at the distant forest, blinking and licking her teeth. But this seemed quite natural to Momoko, as the strangest things will in dreams.
They spoke, but Momoko couldn't remember later what they said, only that everything Mizuki-chan said made Momoko love her more. They held one another closer and closer, and Momoko felt the most wonderful warm tingling sensation all over her body. She shifted a bit, and sighed...
The wonderful warm tingling sensation, and the sigh, survived the rest of the dream into wakefulness, where she found that the light was stronger and stranger, and the bedroll more crowded, than she remembered them. Mizuki-chan had unaccountably grown, and got one hand into Momoko's robes, and was rubbing her belly, and kissing her neck, and licking it with her rough tongue, and occasionally nipping it playfully with her pointy teeth. She was purring and chuckling sleepily.
Momoko screamed. Mizuki-chan screamed too; her strange, slit-pupilled green eyes were huge and her black, furry ears laid back in surprise and fear. Then there was the thumping of running feet on boards, and a voice crying out, trumpeting, "Here, you! Leave off this instant! Get out of it!" The bedroll jerked, as someone grabbed at the doings, and then there was a rush of cool air as it was flung open. And, with a wail, Mizuki-chan was gone.
And Momoko was trembling in the arms of Satou Sei-sama. Yumi-sama was there, too. Satou-sama was speaking gently, soothingly, patting her on the back. Yumi-sama was holding her hand. Momoko was safe. She began to calm down.
Mizuki was upset. She was still shaking off the muzziness and sleepiness of the day, of her other form, and of sleep itself. She had found herself lying intimately with someone warm, and had behaved the way she usually did in such circumstances. It was unusual to find that her bedfellow was wearing such a lot of clothing, but she hadn't given that, or anything else, a lot of thought. Now here she was perched on a roof-beam, trembling from reaction and annoyance.
She looked down, and found that the people were looking up. One in particular. She remembered being introduced to Momoko-san while a complete cat, the way one remembers something that happened in a dream. And she had actually dreamed about Momoko-san, something about the two of them lying in the bough of a tree, though most of the details had been scattered with her wits by Momoko-san's rather unusual method of waking a person up. She seemed to remember Momoko-san fitting her with a collar and a silver chain... and she remembered not minding that at all, which was how she knew for certain it was a dream.
Looking down, it occurred to her that Momoko-san was trembling even worse than she herself was.
I must have frightened her.
"Momoko-san?" she called down. "Are you all right?"
"What are you?" came Momoko-san's trembling, tearful answer.
"What"? "What" am I? "I am Mizuki," she said slowly. "We were introduced last night."
"Mizuki-chan was a cat!"
Mizuki growled. She picked a likely bit of the floor, between sleepers, and slid off the beam. She made a good landing, and turned to face the little huddle of persons regarding her suspiciously. "I am a cat," she said, with carefully feigned patience. "Tail –" she twitched it – "ears –" she flicked them in three directions fast – "teeth –" she bared them briefly – "claws." She flourished them, then concealed them again. "And, most importantly, attitude. Yes, all parts are in place. I am a cat, from a long line of cats."
"The bloodline appears to have been adulterated at some point," said the tall one with straw-colored hair who was holding Momoko.
Mizuki didn't like it that this person was holding Momoko. I will dislike this person, she thought. "Hwhat do you meeeannn?"
"I mean that you are obviously not completely human, but you're not completely a cat either," the person said. She was older than Momoko-san or the quieter girl with them, and seemed to Mizuki like a person to reckon with. But I still don't like her. "You have cat parts, but you're bigger than a cat, and less furry, and more human in the shape of your limbs -"
"Why must you humans always be so obsessed with categories and classifications?" Mizuki interrupted, sniffing. She was impatient with long speeches.
"Ordinarily I'm not much of a one for them myself," the person went on, in colder tones – Hmmm, she sounds annoyed. Good. – "Only when an uncategorizable creature molests my friends in the dead of night do I give it much thought. Are you a cat – you seemed to be one earlier – or are you – well, whatever this is? I have never seen a creature like you before. You are beautiful, but strange. Can I not know what you are?"
"Do you really think it will help you?" Mizuki preened herself a bit. She was bored, though pleased to be thought beautiful.
"It might. You were a cat, not long ago, and Yamiko-san was human. Now you're closer to human, and Yamiko-san is closer to something else."
"You didn't even know she was a shape-changer?" These odd people were so behind the times!
"I did know that." The wild-haired one was gritting her teeth. The quiet girl put a hand on her sleeve. Mizuki smirked a little. The wild-haired one went on, more calmly: "She has spoken to me of the curse she has lived under since childhood. I didn't know her cats lived under the same curse. And what is this enchanted sleep which seems to have seized our friends?"
Mizuki had no idea, but why let on? She yawned, closing her eyes. "Must I explain all this?"
"Yes, and quickly." The wild-haired one was still calm, but she was standing now. She had let go of Momoko-san. That's better.
"Mizuki, look out!" someone hissed from nearby – Katsuko, Mizuki saw; the reflections of her yellow eyes were quivering with excitement or fear or both – "They have strong magic! That one –" a wild arm-wave; Mizuki couldn't tell which one she meant – "covered Ami in disgusting liquid!"
"I will never be clean again!" Ami wailed. She was washing herself frantically. A few of the others were trying to help her. But they kept pausing to spit, so they weren't making much progress.
"The liquid has form!" Katsuko growled, and pointed across the room. "It crouches there, and has the face to stare at us!..."
Mizuki looked around, and saw the creature hunkered near the garden door. She couldn't think why she hadn't noticed it before. It was sitting very still, but the liquid of which it was made swirled, and the bright moonlight shining through it made patterns everywhere its strange, glowing shadow touched. She couldn't tell what it was looking at – its eyes were watery, like the rest of it – but she thought it might be looking at everything, and everyone. Mizuki's confidence drooped a little as she took in its form, and its ready posture, and drooped more when she realized that she was between it and the little group of mysterious women, and that little group was between her and her friends.
"I'm not a violent person," the straw-haired one went on, softly, "but we need to understand this situation, and we need you to be a little more helpful. So, the yawning? And the superior attitude? Drop them."
"Please don't, Satou-sama," said Momoko-san. And she stood.
The straw-haired one – Satou-sama, it seemed – put a hand on her shoulder, saying "Momo!" urgently.
Momoko-san looked at Satou-sama. After a pause, Satou-sama removed her hand, and watched Momoko-san. Consideringly.
And Momoko-san walked to Mizuki, and took her hand, and looked up into her eyes.
This cut through Mizuki's fear and rage, clearing her head. It was strange, looking at this person she knew, and didn't know; standing with her for what seemed, and did not seem, the first time. She had been a cat when she had first known Momoko-san, and then she had been a dream, and now she was tall and on her hind legs like Momoko-san. Three of her, but it was as if there were also three of Momoko-san, or more: one a sweet, shy girl, one a dream, and this one a woman, almost a queen, a woman to be reckoned with.
"We must not harm Mizuki-chan," Momoko-san said, addressing Satou-sama apparently, but still looking into Mizuki's eyes. "We must ask for her help, and the help of her friends."
Satou-sama said, "Really? I thought you were a bit annoyed about the attempted rape."
Here some of the clumsy girl came back to Momoko-san's face. "I was! But... I guess I was just startled," she said in a wondering, embarrassed way. "I was half asleep. I think Mizuki-chan was too. I don't think she meant any harm." Mizuki shook her head, and Momoko-san nodded. "I want..."
"You want?..."
"I want us to be friends," Momoko-san said. Lamely, a bit embarrassed.
There was silence. Then Satou-sama and the quiet girl were walking slowly towards Mizuki.
"Because Momoko asks it..." Satou-sama said – a question?
Maybe I'll have to like her after all. Mizuki sighed. "I'll tell you what I know. Which isn't much."
Her compatriots hissed and yowled, outraged at this concession. Satou-sama rolled her eyes and muttered something Mizuki couldn't hear.
Yamiko dreams...
But when a person as old as Yamiko dreams, it's awfully hard to explain her dreams to anyone else, or even describe them.
A mere child of seven, she sits around the fire-pit with her first family. They are very different from the people she has just spent the evening with: shabbily dressed, by Heian standards, and none of them can read or write. And none of them knows a single Chinese word, even reworked Japanese-style. They've heard of the Middle Kingdom, but they know little about it, and care less. And their clothing is made for hard-lasting capabilities, rather than any aspirations to high fashion.
What do they know? They know a little rice farming. The men (mostly just the men) know how to hunt, and gather edible plants. The women understand weaving and the making of clothes, which doesn't sound like much until you realize that none of the other activities is possible without clothes. Once, perhaps, for their distant ancestors, but not anymore.
They know songs and stories. Everyone knows songs and stories, even now, when we pay other people to know them for us, but these people really know songs and stories, because they're the only ones who do, or can, in their world. There is no one else here, so it must be them. Duty? Need? Hunger? Love? All of these things, and more.
They know about kami. They have to know about kami. They live in a chaotic world, where storms rage, and the earth shakes, and strange things come out of the night, and you can't go running to a policeman for help. The kami are the police – and they might help you, or they might not – they might hurt you, come to that – but they are all that brings order to this chaos.
This family, huddled around their fire, feel the shadow passing over their little clay house – just a little moonlight can be seen through the smoke-hole, and it is obscured for a moment, but a bird could have caused that, or a quick cloud on this windy night. There is also a sudden heaviness to the sound of the wind, and an indefinable sense of impossible weight hanging over their heads, married to the cringing alarm up and down everyone's spines, the heritage of deep racial memory: the warning that there is a predator in the vicinity, hunting for meat, a large toothy thing out of the night, larger and stranger than anything even they have ever seen. Almost they can smell it, a musk like dunged earth and lightning.
Yamiko – that isn't her name, not yet – all of seven years old, and a little tough like you've never seen, baked and tanned by the sun, battle-hardened by hours of hunting and roaming the forest with her father and uncles and brothers, scarred already, fierce-eyed like a hawk – looks up, and feels something that makes her lean a little closer to her mother, seated next to her. Her mother is also looking up, but she puts an arm about her daughter, who for once doesn't struggle.
A year from today, everyone else in the house will be dead, and the house itself will be destroyed. Yamiko will be the only one left. She will wander far, under her curse, and see much, and live long, but she will never find out what it was that passed over her house on this night when she was seven years old. She still wonders about it and, as you can see, still dreams about it. Some nights – thankfully, not tonight – she sees it in her dreams, or almost thinks she does. Tonight, all she sees is her family circle, in their home, one of her clearest memories of them, and she thinks she's still there, still the mad-eyed little huntress taught and shaped and scolded and slapped and cherished by her loving, if somewhat-bemused-by-her, family. The one place where she was completely, unconsciously happy, because she didn't know yet what sadness was.
This is what she dreams, in her mind, while her clever body is out moving in the night, casting its long and terrible shadow in the moonlight.
Yumi drew her head back from the shutters. Out of the corner of one eye, she saw that Satou-sama had done the same thing at the same moment. They looked at one another.
"It looks like the moon," Satou-sama said.
"Un," Yumi nodded.
"The light is brighter, more concentrated than I've ever seen moonlight get, but the thing giving off that light looks very like the changeable mistress, the moon we all know and love."
"Un," Yumi nodded again.
"If it didn't seem to be nearly as big around as fat old Yukito at the Saiji baths," Satou-sama added, "and if it weren't floating seven handspans, eight at most, above Yamiko-san's depopulated koi pond, I'd even think it was the moon. But that, of course, is the rub."
Most of the cat-women sat in a rough semicircle behind them. This truce was an uneasy one, to say the least. Mizuki-san was the only one Yumi was sure of; it seemed clear by now that Mizuki-san would not go against anything Momoko-san said. Momoko-san was sitting right there next to Mizuki-san, with one of Mizuki-san's arms around her shoulders. The politics of this coven of cats was unclear in its arrangements, but Mizuki-san seemed to be one of its more respected members. Most of the others seemed ready to defer either to her, or to one of the other two opinion-makers, the only others who had joined Yumi and Satou-sama right by the shutters: the furred-all-over one called Ami-sama, who seemed to be the eldest, and Katsuko-san, the yellow-eyed one who had come after Yumi when she was getting out of her bedroll. Mizuki-san and Katsuko-san both wore leather jerkins – the only two of the cat-women who wore any clothing at all. They both seemed like pretty rough-and-ready people, and they seemed to be friends, though currently having a disagreement – about what, Yumi could not so much as speculate. The others, though just as well clawed and fanged, seemed tame by comparison. Ami-sama's authority came from age, and from something that passed with the others as wisdom, though to Yumi, Ami-sama looked a complete child next to Fujiwara-dono. Ami-sama had reacted to Mizuki-san's insistence on truce with indignation, and Katsuko-san by sulking. Ami-sama still had not forgiven Yumi for drenching her in sake. But she had finally told the others to stop trying to clean her fur; she would go out and find a river or a pond to take a dip in when it was... convenient to do so.
"As disgusting as that will be," she had added with a fierce glare at Yumi, "this is worse."
Yumi had bowed deeply and apologized with the utmost formality, for what must have been the seventh time. None of her apologies had improved the atmosphere, but at least it wasn't getting any worse. Anyway, they were wary of Satou-sama – Katsuko-san kept glowering at Satou-sama as if she found her mere presence offensive – and they were definitely wary of the sake-creature, which was keeping its distance as Yumi had desired it to – still crouching over Yumi's sleeping mistress – but continued to keep its unfocused yet unwavering gaze on the group by the shutters, as if it were noting every move made, every word said. It made some of the cat-women nervous, but the consensus seemed to be that it was better to be watched by the thing than landed on.
Satou-sama turned to look at Mizuki-san. "This – extra moon business. Does it happen often? I ask out of some concern."
"Every night."
"What does it do?"
"It floats around out there. Sheds light on things." Mizuki-san shrugged. "It obeys its mistress."
"Who is this mistress?"
This set off an exchange of many incandescent glances, to and fro. The cat-women were facing the glowing shutters, and their eyes picked up even indirect moonlight, or whatever-it-was light, in a downright eerie way.
"She is the ghost of Ren-san –" A whiskered one with black tufts on the backs of her hands.
"She's not Ren-san. Preposterous." This was Ami-sama, at her most imperious.
"But she looks like Ren-san –" A plump one with very large ears.
"She does. But she isn't. Absurd." Ami-sama again.
"She floats in the air with her moon –" A wild-eyed, trembling one whose tail lashed about uncontrollably.
"She'll stand on it, and the whole world is at her feet –" Another tail-lasher and paw-wringer. Her sister, no doubt.
"She is the mistress of the moon and all beneath it!" A small slender one with black and white patches of fur all over her chest.
"Even our mistress must do as she says, and our mistress is not to be commanded –" The trembler again.
"Our mistress is not herself these days –" Mizuki-san said defensively.
"Let me get one thing straight," Satou-sama said, cutting through the fog of contradictory declarations with a quick shake of one hand. "Ren-san is definitely dead?"
"In late winter," Ami-sama said firmly, almost coldly. "A wasting illness."
"I see," Satou-sama said after a pause. Her voice was a bit rough, which startled Yumi. "I was hoping that wasn't so. I liked Ren-san. I imagine Yamiko-san was – distraught?"
"She was furious."
"Furious?" Satou-sama blinked. "At her dying lover?"
"At herself. She had been in one of her moods – you know how she gets sometimes? She turns in on herself. She doesn't want to acknowledge anything or anyone."
"Moping."
"In a way. In a way. Ren-san never liked to disturb Mistress when she was in those moods, so she didn't tell Mistress she was sick. I guess she didn't know she was dying. When she did die, Mistress ran mad. We all had to step very carefully for a while –"
"We still do!" The second of the tail-lashers.
"The worst of it has passed." Mizuki-san.
"Now the ghost of Ren-san is here to comfort her, she's less difficult," a calm, quiet little white-eared creature at the back put in. But no one even looked at her, except for Ami-sama.
"Nitwit! That is not the ghost of Ren-san."
White-ear-san looked at the floor.
"Why are you so sure of that, Ami-sama?" the second tail-lasher wondered.
Ami-sama paused a moment to reflect. "She doesn't smell like Ren-san."
"Of course she doesn't, you simpleton. She's a ghost. She doesn't smell of anything." The first tail-lasher tisked and rolled her eyes.
"You watch yourself!" Ami-sama hissed at the insolent one. She got back a defiant stare with slightly laid-back ears, but no further noise.
"That's not true." Katsuko-san was speaking, for the first time in a while. She had a rough, light little voice like sandstone. "She does give off a faint odor. It's hard to say of what, though, because I've never smelled anything like it. But it's nothing like Ren-san."
"Anyway, I wasn't just talking about smell, when I said smell," Ami-sama said.
Many tufted ears cocked quizzically at this.
"Her whole manner, her whole attitude, is not that of Ren-san," Ami-sama went on. "Ren-san had power over Mistress, but she avoided using it. This one not only uses it, but enjoys using it. She is a Queen, as Ren-san never could have been, because Ren-san underestimated herself –"
"But where is this Queen?" Satou-sama interrupted again. "Her moon is out there. Where is she?"
"I don't know," Ami-sama said, reluctantly. "She's usually out there waiting for Mistress. Mistress brings her a live animal, a deer usually, and the ghost drinks its blood."
And there was a stunned silence from the humans, accompanied by nonchalant, carnivorously glowing eyes gazing unconcernedly into the abyss. Yumi's throat had closed. She looked from the cat-women to Satou-sama, who was wide-eyed and pale.
"Well, well," Satou-sama said softly at last. "A Queen, and a blood-drinking ghost, with a pet moon, and she looks like Yamiko-san's dead lover, but doesn't smell like her. Just imagine it." She looked at Mizuki-san, who looked back, apparently confused. "And you haven't asked Yamiko-san about it?"
Momoko-san had hidden her face in Mizuki-san's shoulder. Stroking her hair, trying to comfort her, Mizuki-san said, "We couldn't very well... by the time she comes back in the morning, we've all turned normal again. We can still communicate with her, but only about simple, straightforward things – 'we're hungry,' 'you smell good,' 'let us out so we can pee,' and like that. We can't go into specifics, like, oh –"
"'– you seem to be possessed by a blood-drinking ghost, are you all right?'" Satou-sama suggested.
Mizuki-san frowned. "She's always in a bit of a daze anyway; she doesn't seem to remember what she's been doing. But we can't tell her about it."
Yumi was getting more nervous by the moment. She put her face back to the shutters and looked out at the improbable moon. Satou-sama was busy, and somebody ought to be keeping an eye out.
"What about that, anyway?" Satou-sama wanted to know. "You all change into human –" hiss, hiss, hiss, "– almost-human form at the same hour Yamiko-san changes into her beast form. How does that happen?"
This was answered by a lot of vague, disinterested murmuring. Ami-sama said, "It started very recently," and seemed unable, or unwilling, to say more on the subject.
Satou-sama went on, with a little annoyance evident in her voice, "And why don't all of you change? There are still ordinary cats in the rafters, and the attic. I saw them."
"Those are the boys," Katsuko-san said with bored disgust.
"They don't change. They're too insensitive," said the tail-lasher, as if it were obvious.
"I wish they would change," Ami-sama said discontendedly.
"I'm just as well pleased," Katsuko-san drawled. "Being in this form keeps them off my butt for a little while, at least. The rest of the time, it's fight, fight, fight."
There was a white shape floating out of the sky, and landing on the glowing moon, and a giant dark shape coming out of the trees, slinking low over the grass, and Yumi was so astonished, she forgot for a moment that she should give the warning – "Satou-sama! They're here!"
Ren stands on her moon, looking affectionately down at the monster cat.
It has brought her a present in its wide mouth: a stag deer, still alive, but in shock, a consequence of terror; it twitches briefly as the monster-cat, the child of the dark, lays it down, where Ren's feet would be if she weren't hovering in midair.
The beautiful, terrible Yamiko-monster yowls an almost gentle yowl, and looks up at Ren expectantly. The beast's coat is black, with dark red stripes which glint eerily, gorgeously in the light of the loving moon. Her mouth is open in a snarl, and she slinks forward, the huge muscles of her shoulders bunching, her head neither rising nor falling with her movements.
Ren's moon watches them both, without comment. It doesn't usually have much to say. It spins a bit, keeping its careful watch, with no eyes.
Ren thinks, My creature.
The Yamiko-monster yowls again, and transforms. She is the Yamiko-woman again, tall, comely, wild, and wholly absorbed in Ren. "Beloved," she whispers.
As it should be, Ren feels. As it should have been, from the beginning.
She comes not quite to earth, to Yamiko-woman's embrace. She touches her teeth to Yamiko-woman's throat, and drinks briefly. Only a taste. It would be the height of bad manners, as well as downright unromantic, to glut herself on her beloved sweet precious.
Yamiko-woman moans, and tangles her fingers in Ren's hair.
Ren smiles, and giggles, against the soft flesh of Yamiko-woman's throatie, and lifts her mouth from it, leaving not a trace of a scar, not a drop of blood. She caresses this dear throat with infinite respect, smiling, and then lids her eyes when she feels Yamiko-woman's hands stealing into her robes, and making themselves at home there. Her pet cobra pokes its head out of her hood and looks at her, as if confused. She sighs.
But there is business at hand. She keeps her form relaxed, but her mind narrows to a point.
Your servants, my heart, she thinks softly into Yamiko-woman's head, are fools.
Yamiko-woman's hands pause in their explorations. "How so, my darling one?"
They cannot even handle a single lot of intruders. All but three of the enemy are asleep. Why do they dither so? All that prowling about and hissing, letting the moonlight glister on their fangs – no doubt it looks impressive, but it is nothing to the purpose.
There is a silence. The cobra goes back into her hood, making itself scarce. It can't bear scenes.
Yamiko-woman, her wonderful body wonderful against Ren, the most delightful mixture of hard places and soft places, says with dreamy confusion, "You call them 'servants,' and talk as if they were an army. They are cats. They tend not to accept discipline from any but themselves. And you talk of the humans as 'enemies,' when in fact they are my guests, love. Two of them are dear friends of mine..."
Yamiko-woman's voice holds unnerving hints of lucidity.
Ren wraps one leg around Yamiko-woman. She presses her softness against her toy, her child, her mistress, her beloved, and whispers the thought again: They are the enemy.
Silence.
"They... are..."
They are the enemy.
Silence.
"They are... the enemy."
If they live, Ren whispers, I cannot stay here, with you, or ever return. It will be as if I had died.
Yamiko-woman makes a noise that would have been a howl if she had let it out of her throat.
Remember when you thought I had died? How you felt?
Yamiko-woman grinds her teeth "Lost – broken – half-dead myself -"
You will feel that way again. And this time, it won't ever end.
Through her teeth, Yamiko-woman says, "They are guests – "
Ren tries to stifle her rage, her impatience. Which is more important? A guest in your home, or your love in your arms?
Yamiko-woman's eyes, having squeezed shut as she struggled inside, now open wide in shock, and she stares at Ren. Slowly, almost roughly, she takes Ren's shoulders and sets her down, on her feet.
"I know what Ren would say to that," she growls.
Ren lays a hand lightly on Yamiko-woman's right wrist.
I am Ren, she thinks.
Yamiko-woman falls to her knees.
Ren will never tire of the thrill she feels, that this proud, powerful creature is under her control. What you do is up to you. As always.
Yamiko-woman puts a trembling hand on the hand that gently grasps her wrist, and she bows her head, and she breathes.
I put an enchanted sleep on them, because I wanted to protect them. But three of them have insisted on waking up. I don't know how. Our secret is out, or will be soon: they know something is going on. It can't be hidden. And we can only continue as we are if no one else knows about us.
Even in her pain, Yamiko-woman pats Ren's hand comfortingly. Ren is very moved by this, but slaps it. She must be firm.
So if you will not do the necessary, then I must leave. Do you want that?... Do you?
Yamiko-woman whines.
Ren is a little disgusted now. I leave it up to you. She lets go of Yamiko-woman's wrist.
Yamiko-woman crouches there. She is still looking down.
"Forgive me, Ren. I will do as you ask."
Ren smiles, and reaches down to touch Yamiko-woman's cheek. The poor thing is cold.
But then she turns away, towards the still-trembling, comatose deer. If she's going to fight, she had better feed first…
Yumi was doing her best to remain calm. "Satou-sama, we have to do something. She'll be here soon – Mistress, and everybody, they're all –"
"The sleepers are safe, for now," said Satou-sama. "She won't bother to kill them until us lively ones are taken care of. Yon sanguinivore seems a practical beastie." She looked at the cat-women. "But what are you going to do? Eh?"
There was silence. Many of them were sleeping, or pretending to. Some were washing each other unconcernedly. The washing was strange to Yumi; or rather, it seemed perfectly natural to her that cat-women should wash each others' heads with their tongues, and yet it also seemed to her that it shouldn't seem natural. She looked away, confused.
Then her head was forced up, by a clawed hand on her chin – Yumi gasped, but more from surprise than pain – and she was looking into the yellow, unreadable eyes of Katsuko-san.
"These are humans," Katsuko-san said, "and outsiders. Slow, stupid, blundering creatures, who wandered in here uninvited. If our mistress wants them dead –"
"She doesn't want us dead," Yumi said. She was still afraid of whatever was outside, but for some reason she felt no fear of Katsuko-san. She just wished Katsuko-san would let go of her face. "She's glamoured, now. You saw how she resisted, didn't you? If she kills us all, she will hate herself later. Especially Fujiwara-dono and Satou-sama, they're her friends –"
Katsuko-san pulled up a little on Yumi's chin. "She can stay with her love, in illusion, or she can be all alone, in your beautiful human reality. Which way will she be happiest? That's the –"
Katsuko-san stopped talking then because there was a blade against her throat.
There was a pause while the assembled cat-women stared at Satou-sama, and Satou-sama and her hostage stared at one another. From outside, there was a long, unhappy-sounding groan: the dying deer.
"We slow, stupid humans are outnumbered and in great danger," Satou-sama said softly, "and I suppose I should be adopting a conciliatory attitude here. I will in a moment, but first you will take your hand off her chin, or I'll have your guts for lute-strings."
Katsuko-san took her hand off Yumi's chin. She seemed uncertain for the first time since Yumi had seen her, even – rebuked? put down? She looked at the knife as if it had hurt her feelings.
Satou-sama made a quick, subtle motion with her hands, and the knife was gone. "Cold reality is better than illusory love, to answer your question," she told Katsuko-san gently, as if nothing had happened. "No matter how you cling to it, the illusion is gone eventually, like the morning mist, and there's nothing to do but pick up the pieces, and regret the things you said and did."
"What do you know about it?" A defiant, slit-pupilled look.
"Everything." A calm, unsmiling, scarred one in return.
Katsuko-san looked away. Not surprising. Yumi wasn't in the staring-contest, and she could barely keep her eyes on Satou-sama's face. "You didn't have to use a knife," Katsuko-san mumbled reproachfully.
Satou-sama looked surprised. Then she slapped Katsuko-san affectionately on top of her head. Katsuko-san's ears went flat and she put her arms up, yowling a little in annoyance. "Be thankful it was me and not Yumi's mistress," Satou-sama said easily. "Sachiko might not have bothered with a warning."
Then Satou-sama looked at the others, serious again. "Give her back her cold reality, and maybe another lover will come along. But this midnight passion looks unhealthful to me. Don't you agree?"
There was more silence. Ami-sama moved to join the seated ones. Katsuko-san moved away from the shutters but, oddly, didn't join the others. She leaned on the wall by the kitchen door, looking down at her feet. She seemed to be sulking still.
Satou-sama turned and started looking out the shutters again. She squinted between two fingers, trying to protect her eyes from the glare.
Yumi found this puzzling. She went to stand by Satou-sama. "What are the cat-women doing, Satou-sama?"
"Deliberating," was the terse reply. Then, with pity in her voice: "Ah, the animal is still struggling. How she savors a meal!..."
Yumi decided to ignore that. "They're not talking, Satou-sama."
"Cats have their own way of deliberating. It's frustrating, at such a time, but you can't expect them to make a decision any other way."
Satou-sama looked calmer – and more herself – than she had since Yumi had wakened her. She didn't present her usual picture of irrepressible glee, but her small smile was steady. Yumi knew that whatever had troubled Satou-sama was still troubling her. She wondered if she really needed to know what it was or merely wanted to. She was pretty sure she didn't have the right to ask Satou-sama what it was, but there was no one else here who could ask her, and... "I was wondering about, about what you were telling Katsuko-san just now –"
"I can't tell you."
She wasn't cold, but she was cooler than she'd ever been, to Yumi. Yumi had almost expected it, and had braced herself for it, but found that it hurt anyway. She looked down. "I'm sorry, Satou-sama, it's only that you seemed –"
"I can't tell you because there isn't time."
Yumi looked up again.
"If I were to tell any thoroughly charming girl I'd only known a few days, it would be you, Yumi. But it's a long story, and there's a killer moon at the door. And I doubt you'd believe above half of it even if I told you."
Yumi only looked some more. The suddenly fragile smile, the almost defenseless grey eyes, under the tousled yellow hair –
"All right. If any near-total stranger were to believe me, again, I'm sure it would be you. But there still isn't time."
"You seem calmer now," Yumi said. "As if you think you know what's going on."
Satou-sama sighed. "Persistent, aren't you? Like your mistress. All I'll say is, the situation Yamiko-san is in is horribly familiar to me. I think this creature is very like a creature I knew before. I was caught in just such a trap then – savvy? – and I might well have died of it if not for friendship. That's why we have to stand Yamiko-san's friends now, she may never have needed it so badly in her life –"
Anger and tears had crept into her voice, and she stopped herself talking. She looked away. She turned half away from Yumi, and glared at the glowing shutters. "'I am the foam on the wave; I am the beast in the water'..." she murmured.
Yumi stopped thinking. It wasn't helping her or Satou-sama right now. There was really only one thing to do. It seemed to help Sachiko-sama, so... she went to her, this strange, mad woman she'd known such a short time, and come to trust in spite of the fact that she clearly couldn't be trusted, and she put her hands on a rigid arm, and leaned her head on a tense shoulder.
"Sei-sama," she said softly.
The arm and the shoulder both relaxed. Yumi didn't look up.
She felt a familiar hand ruffle her hair, and smiled.
Sei put a hand on one of Yumi's hands. This was nostalgic. She had been like this. Shimako wasn't like this with Sei; the benefit there was that they gave each other distance, autonomy, while both knowing that if there was a real need, the other was there, within shouting distance. But Yumi...
Sei pulled herself up short, before she started thinking thoughts she shouldn't think about Sachiko's imouto. Other thoughts were taking shape: dragonish thoughts. A good sign. Yumi had waked the dragon in Sei, and it was about time something did –
Outside, Yamiko-san was rising from her knees. Sei thought the set of her shoulders intimately familiar. They had run out of time. "I am the winding of the horn; I am the raven on the rock; I am the cat who hunts the raven." Let the raven speak. "Yumi, you have given me your certainty. You have honored me, my sweeting. I must ask something else of you now. It is a hard thing I ask, and I wouldn't, if I wasn't almost certain you were up to it."
"Yes, Sei-sama?"
I need you to deal with Yamiko-san, while I deal with the witch."
Yumi was quiet a moment. She had begun to tremble. She didn't let go of Sei's arm, or take her head away from her shoulder. "Sei-sama –"
"Please, Yumi," Sei said urgently. "This witch, or ghost, or what-she-may-be – she's a powerful one. I'm actually not sure I can take her, and I know I can't take her and Yamiko-san together. Everyone is relying on us. I can't ask Momo, she's fresh-caught; I think there is a great sorceress in her, waiting her day, but right now it would be murder, sending her into a fight like this. You're fresh-caught too, but you're different. I've seen what you're capable of. Do you think you could, well, enrage Yamiko-san somehow?... draw her off, into the trees?... You led that demon a merry dance of it, the other day, and you managed to stay well ahead of it, for a long time..."
Yumi stepped away from her. For a moment, Sei thought she had asked for too much – Yumi was still trembling – but then she saw Yumi's sweet smile, and her eyes, strangely dark, even in the glow from the shutters.
"That was in the streets," Yumi said. "I was exposed. In the trees, I think I might do better. And I have an idea..."
"You'll do it?" Sei felt a grin surfacing on her face. She was beginning to feel really good for the first time since she'd woken up.
"For you," Yumi said. "For Mistress. And all the others." There was such sweetness in Yumi's smile. "But mostly for you, Sei-sama. I still have to pay you back for last night."
Sei put a hand to Yumi's cheek. They just stood like that a moment, in the light from the shutters. "I won't forget this, Yumi."
Then they turned, as one.
Yumi was frightened now, but she felt a little stronger. Well, feel a lot stronger, she commanded herself. She wanted Sachiko-sama, that was her trouble. She felt strong and safe when Sachiko-sama was there. But Sachiko-sama couldn't always be there, and what would Yumi do when she wasn't? What had Yumi done before she'd met Sachiko-sama? Sei-sama trusted her, and she had to live up to the trust, or she wasn't worthy to stand with Sachiko-sama and the rest of them...
Sachiko-sama protects me when she's awake. Now I have to protect her when she's asleep. My duty to her is nothing less.
She looked down the room at her sake-creature, a meaning look.
It nodded once, very clearly.
"Please," Sei-sama was saying to the cat-women. "Time is short. I know it's futile, asking cats to hurry, but soon it will be too late."
Mizuki-san turned to the others. "I think we should help them," she said.
This seemed to touch off another frenetic round of self-washing unrest and closed-eye meditation. "Of course you do," Ami-sama said, with a sour look at Momoko-san.
"Then consider this," Sei-sama said. "I suspect that this ghost killed Ren-san."
Considerably more alertness at this.
"Ren-san died of an illness," said Ami-sama, scornfully.
"A wasting illness," said Katsuko-san in her small, rough voice. She had stepped away from the wall, and was looking at Sei-sama intently with her shining yellow eyes.
Now there were many surprised glances exchanged, and some staring at the shutters.
"I'm with them too," said Katsuko-san. "You lot do as you please."
Yumi went to the shutter and peered through, and what she saw made her tremble. "Satou-sama! She's changed back into the giant cat!"
"What do you want us to do?" said White-ear-san.
"If you don't do anything to help her kill us, that's enough for me," Sei-sama said. "I won't ask you to try to hurt her. If you don't want to be a part of this, just stay in here. Momoko –"
"We'll look after our sisters," Momoko-san said unexpectedly. Mizuki-san nodded.
Sei-sama nodded back. "Thank you. You do your best, and so shall we."
The light was moving, now. It printed every detail of the shutters on the floor in rolling relief, and disappeared at the corner of the house. Yumi and Satou-sama and Momoko-san and the cat-women looked at it and at the shifting shapes and shadows with great wonder and fear. The light at the garden door was becoming brighter, and brighter still –
"I have to go out there now," Sei-sama said.
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