“I thought you said the goal was awakening.”
“Yes, good!”
Months went by. Each day the same: rise before dawn. Pray, hike the mountains to greet each spirit at the shrines, collect water from the river. The monks trained in physical exercise to keep their bodies sharp, but Sen was getting impatient.
“All you ever speak about is riddles and mystical things,” he complained, weeks later, as they hiked up to the peak.
“What are we, if not mystical things? You’d prefer I wrote an instruction booklet? The little star, still after so long, he wants someone to tell him what to do.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“But it’s what you told me.” Jobo laughed. “I was hung-over the night of my acceptance to the mountain schools, you know that? Oh, a lot to learn. Like you! Now my beard is gray. That’s because I’m approaching the time of my death. Ha!”
“I don’t understand why we have to do all this walking,” Sen grumbled.
“The world of the gods can’t be seen with your eyes. So how could you presume to think you could understand it with your brain? At the beginning of my training, my master, Enno, wouldn’t allow me to speak. I could say nothing but ‘I accept’. It was about surrendering yourself to the universe. Even if I disagreed, I had to accept it. Even if I hated it, I had toaccept. Even when I thought he was wrong. I had to accept all that this world brings.”
They climbed to the heart of the mountain, arriving at the great blue forest falls before sundown. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” Sen said, scowling. “Maybe I should’ve stayed home.”
“Maybe you should.”
“I thought teachers were supposed to help their students!”
Jobo chuckled again. “Oh. That isn’t true.”
Then he turned. “Tell me, have you never encountered a moment – and what is a moment, really? How do you define a single moment of your life – if not for divinity? Have you ever come upon something simple as dew on the grass, or the wisp of steam from your tea in the sunlight, and felt something you couldn’t understand? It can be anything from the power of the highest waterfall, or the loudest thunderhead the god of storms can make, or small as the simple motion of a child, playing in a puddle. They are all of them of this earth; that is what we mean when we say ‘gods’. That is why these woods are special.
“If I die, Sen, a part of me will still exist – not my whole spirit, but an essence, no more solid than memory, but just as strong. I give myself to these woods, this land. Each god is all the gods: I pray to the god of this mountain, whose spirit you feel beneath your feet and in the air you breathe; likewise, the spirit folk of the trees and the rivers are gods, and they join the god of the mountain, and are one and the same. When we consecrate a shrine, the gods take residence in a sacred object, divisible but not separate. So, we don’t need to pray only to the giant gods, the great deities of power or war, or the sun or stars or the moon. The smaller ones, the spirits that live in a stream, or the leaves that fall when the weather changes, they are of this earth, and by finding them again, we may yet be saved.
“It took a long time, but I finally realized the simplest truth: how to stop fighting. With myself, or the gods, or other beings. We say peace is the opposite of war, but do we really understand what that means? So, I sat and learned to ask the questions. Learn to stop fighting, Hoshiakari, and that will be the beginning indeed.”
“I’m not fighting,” Sen said.
“Of course not.” Jobo gave one of his infuriating smiles.
“Anyway, when’dyouever do any fighting?”
“I was not always a crow monk,” Jobo said. “I had much to learn, like you. The truth is, something dark is coming. I’ve been seeing signs for months. I don’t know what it is. It may well be the plagues, as thoseadherents say. It may be something else. Whatever it is, it’s getting closer. And it feels like…”
He met Sen’s eyes, then wiped his own, kneading with the palms of his hands. “Ah. But never mind. When you’re old like me, you’ll have much to worry over, too. No matter.” He cracked a smile. “You’re young, so you should enjoy it. Been tussling around with anybody I should know?”
“Fuck off!” Sen said, shoving him away.
“It’s only natural… Humans feel what they feel, want what they want, need what they need.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“It’s the most human thing there is. What about that girl Rui, she likes you.”
Sen’s cheeks burned. “Get off it.”
“No?”
“I’m not telling you! I mean, hell!”
Jobo chuckled. “Good. Yes. Probably better.”
“You think everything’s so amusing, don’t you?”
