“They cursed me because I hurt them,” Rui said. “Cursed me to suffer.”
“That may not be the only path,” Jobo said. “You must stay awake now. Have I ever told you the story of my teacher’s teacher, Abai-no-Haruaki?”
She shook her head.
“Once,” Jobo said, “a young monk of Mount Takano, known as Utsui, fell ill with a strange disease. No one had seen its like before; his skin seemed to burn, his spirit in jeopardy. The monks believed it was due to some shadows from his past lives, a mark against his spirit that would not be cured by medicine. Despairing what to do, they called a hermit, Abai-no-Haruaki, to the temple, to divine Utsui’s fortune and find a way to heal him. Now, Haruaki prayed at the temple and its river-shrines, but he saw nothing but death in Utsui’s future. He told the monks that if someone was willing to take the man’s place, he could trade their lives, perform a ceremony, and the young monk might survive.
“The monks were stunned. They loved young Utsui, but no one was willing to offer their own life to save his. Finally, an apprentice, hardlyolder than you, came forward. He was called Seizan, like the mountain. He was not even a monk, just an acolyte, but he stepped forward and offered his life in exchange for Utsui’s own.
“Abai-no-Haruaki accepted the offer. He performed the secret ceremony, and soon the boy Seizan shook and cried in pain. At the same time, the sick monk Utsui opened his eyes. His fever broke. He stood, weak from his long illness, but was healthy once again. His heart welled in gratitude to the diviner, and in awe. But the boy Seizan had paid the price. He lay unmoving, moments from death. Haruaki lowered his arms, ceased his spells, and looked away, struck by the youth’s selflessness. Utsui cried for the boy who had given life for his, but just then, as the boy drifted into the other world, a great wind blew, and the god of the river rose and appeared before them, voice like a crashing waterfall in the rain:
“‘You offer to give yourself freely to save another,’ the god said. ‘To save one life is to save all lives: let me take your place instead.’
“The boy Seizan gasped with the breath of life, and woke again, shaken but alive. All looked upon him with awe. The god saw the great sacrifice the young boy was willing to make. This willingness, not to die, but to give up everything on the slim hope that he might save another, with nothing gained in return. This selflessness is what the gods admired most; and so the gods intervened, and acted not on their own account, but for the sake of the young boy who had such a willing heart. They saved him. And they blessed him for that, Rui. May they bless you.” He pressed a damp cloth on her forehead and prayed. “May they bless you.”
In Rui’s fever, the spirit-world seemed to come alive. She saw moving shadows, ghostly giants walking at the edges of her vision, as though passing through the edges of the world; tall as mountains, they turned to her, seemed to look her in the heart, skeletal faces grinning with bone and fire in their huge, lidless eyes.
“Go away!” she screamed. “Leave me alone!”
Shhhhhhhhhh, they seemed to say.Deathhhhh.
As they reached for her, she jolted back to reality, shaken and scared.
“What are you doing to me?” She saw herself in darkened woods.
“I told you,” the Hososhi said. “You are mine…”
“What do you want from me?”
The sound of the god’s laughter floated to her through the earth. The wind and the trees bent over, and the world seemed to grow immense, unknowable, and cold.
“You have a role to play, Rui Misosazai,” they said. She could feel theHososhi in her still, their presence in her chest, their invisible eyes watching her own and watching through her own, their face behind her face, their shadow in her shadow.
“I will have a use for you. Before the end.”
“Why are you doing this?” she gasped. “What do you want from me?”
“I want to repair the gates.”
“What does that mean? Tell me, please! What does it mean?”
“I will show you.”
Instantly the world changed before her eyes. She was floating in darkness, a strange whistling sound in her ears. A great pressure passed over her like wind, and then she was falling, falling onto a hillside that hadn’t been there before. Strange, confusing images passed before her, unsettling and intimate as those in dreams, and swift as wind from the mountains. She saw a river in the rain, a little girl standing on a bridge. A child, a young boy, bawling, by the sea. She saw an infant crying on a beach of sand, surrounded by shells. She saw herself, holding the child in her arms, a temple bell, three wells in a courtyard of polished river-stones and barren trees; she saw Sen, thin as sticks and bones and a great-span crow that plucked out his eyes; she saw monstrous creatures, giants, tall as mountains, hawks and shadows and feathers in the air; a brilliant light, a god flowing into view; it looked like an animal, a fox or a dog, but it had boar’s tusks, a long nose like an elephant.
“You belong to me,” the Hososhi said.
“What if I don’t do what you want of me?”
“You will.”
“What if I die before that happens?”
“Then you become a hungry ghost. A corpse that walks, never satisfied, cursed to wander on the road to hell, until the end of time.”
“What if I kill myself right now!”
“I won’t let you.”
