After all, we are family, she and I.
Of course, I thought of none of this then. Then, there was only the air and the light, and the fall through tiers of star and ether, the light of her golden heels receding above me, and the earth below, green and checkered with watery rice-fields, their squares made radiant by the reflection of my descent. I understood nothing but the sky-roar and the grass-beckon: I did not even comprehend my name—the last brassy exhalation of Ama-Terasu obliterated it from my mind, and replaced what had been my name with a devouring whirlpool, black and spinning—and it was this, finally, which cut me from heaven as a spleen is cut from a diseased body.
One hopes it will cure the patient, but one cannot be sure.
The grass-leaves of Izumo were the first I ever touched with feet enfleshed. It was there my heel-pads first bent and crushed green things, there I first opened up my lungs like windows and breathed the air of the world. I was naked, my hair unpinned. I was a man, and my knees were knot-strong. I was surprised, of course. Mine was the first descent of all the Kami, I had neither map nor report of a wild-toed predecessor to direct me on my way—and so all things were bright and sharp, painful in their novelty, colors that scalded my eyes, as though a pan of steaming water had been flung at me. I believe I might have stood, knowing nothing but that I had fallen, but not what or whom had done the falling, until the moon flickered and snuffed itself out, had I not heard a terrible sound: wails and ululations like the keening of roosters who know they are to be slaughtered for soup.
I followed the terrible sound until I came upon a long river, winding through the quiet fields in the pleasant way that well-tamed rivers will. It was unremarkable as rivers go, its water more or less greenish-brown, its current neither quick nor sluggish, its span perhaps that of four or five men laid head to foot. Having by now seen many rivers and their tributaries, their deltas, their silt and their sand, I think it was rather paltry, but it was to me on that first day the most beautiful of all possible rivers, sparkling in the morning like a stream of jewels tumbling down to the sea. So enraptured was I that I forgot the piercing cries I had sought, and stared transfixed at the splashing eddies, struck dumb with admiration. And so it was only when the shrieks ceased, as if cut off with a choking fist, that I looked up, startled from my dream of perfect rivers, and saw the first humans my incarnate-eyes had known.
Like the river, they were neither lovely nor hideous, but plain and peasant-colored, quite aged, clothed in simple kimono the hues of which were not unlike the earthy shades of the river-bank where they knelt, tearing their hair in unworded grief.
Green and brown their clothing folded; green and brown the river ran.
They looked from me to each other, and back to me, some strange calculation clicking away in their furtive eyes. Their wrinkles fascinated me, etching their skin with rippling lines like hiragana, and I admit I spent some minutes trying to read the secrets of their senescence, the withered psalms written on their tired limbs. I was like a babe in those first hours—everything enchanted me, absorbed me utterly, until the next wonder tore my attention violently from the first marvel. And so it was that I was deep in the study of their wrinkled cheeks when one of them, the male, spoke to me—the first voice to flood itsel
f into my ears.
“O, Lord of the Wind! You have deigned to appear to this old man! I have done no deed worthy of such an honor!” He pressed his brow to the cool grass, and the female swiftly did the same, as if answering some unheard cue, crying out as she did so, though her quavering voice was muffled, since she spoke into the blades:
“Susanoo-no-Mikoto, Heavenly Ocean-Father! How we have prayed for this day!”
It was at this that I knew myself, the utterance of the crone scrubbing aside the scorch-black of my sister’s rage, allowing me to see the walls of my godhead, the ceilings and floors of my name, my being, my history. It is always the peasants who know what they see—they are not befuddled by opium or intellect, as the city-dweller so often is. It took them not a moment to see past the gloss of my hair and the beauty of my new flesh and know that they were in the presence of the Sea-God, the sibling of Heaven, the seed of all storms. In the palaces of Hiroshima to the south, I would have had to tie on a great blue mask with a demoniac grimace and a nose like a bludgeoning club, trailing rainclouds behind me like a woman’s robes to make myself known. But this woman needed no theatrics, and calling me by name she gave me my name; and naming me she made me myself, and myself, named, knew for the first time the tang of exile, the shiver of loamy air untinged by golden vapors.
The taste of sorrow is the taste of broth which has grown a skin and begun to attract mayflies—it sticks in the throat, fecund and foul. Did I even then love my sister, forgive her, long, perhaps, for her ember-bronze arms slung round my shoulders again? For the taste of her cakes in the evening, the perfect seams of the robes she wove in the days when she was inclined to gift-giving? I worried the question between my jaws like a meat-ribboned bone.
I decided I did not. Let her have the skies—the earth would lay itself out under me like a wife. And what new storms would I make when I was my right self again! Typhoons like spinning sunflowers would flutter against these sands, winds and seas as I had never before attempted would rise up like carved columns under the roof of heaven. She would not restrain me here, not if I could find my way from this heavy flesh to my old radiance.
I was disturbed in these pleasurable thoughts by the peasants, still kneeling at the river. It was strange to me that they had not gone, having served such divine purpose as they had already done, but still they wept and beat their chests, their throats open to the rainless air. I was compassionate—it is easy to be compassionate.
“Why do you weep?” I said softly, with infinite grace, putting my hands, knuckles raw and new, to the poor couple’s heads.
“It is our daughter, Storm-King,” the man said bitterly. “Kushinada, whose hair was dark as ink pooled in the belly of a crow, whose skin was pale as new-sewn silk! She was our only happiness—one by one, our daughters have disappeared into the air, but she, at least, was left to us, fair enough to marry an Emperor, if she cast her eyes to his throne! But she would not look so high, for our girl was humble as a mound of straw, and asked for no more than to cook simple rice-mash, and fish-eye soup, and serve weak tea to her poor parents.”
“And where has this marvelous daughter gone?”
“Gone? She would not go,” said the mother indignantly, “she was meek, meek as a deer startled by the moon’s weight on a maple leaf. She was taken, taken from us by a beast with eight heads—it will swallow her as it swallowed our seven daughters before, and now we will never see our Kushinada more.”
I considered this. Maidens are prone to kidnapping, and the loss of theirs was no more or less tragic than the scores of sailors whose brains I had dashed out on the brine-pink reefs—but Kushinada seemed to me worthy enough, and to kill a thing is always pleasant work. My sister never understood that, but destruction is a peculiar skill, and I longed to practice it, to know if its flavor was different in the skin of a man.
“If you wish, I will go after this beast, and bring the maid Kushinada back to this very river, to make your rice-mash, and your eye-soup, and pour your weak tea for all her days.”
The ancient couple fell again upon their faces and wept.
“We dared not pray for such an honor as this! Surely nothing can stand where the Tide-Lord rises! We cannot pile up the jewels a god deserves, or weave for him a robe fit to be worn at the throne of his sister, the Queen of Heaven!”
The woman wrung her robe between her hands and spoke through teeth yellowed and grinding. It was then that she baited the trap they had cleverly set with their fine words and high praise for the virtues of the missing girl.
“Bring her back to us and we will give her to you to wife—she is the best of all women. Her limbs are young and will please you; she will make your rice-mash and serve your tea, and smile only when you permit it.”
I laughed, but that gurgling belly seethed at my sister’s name. This body could not turn from such bait, even when the teeth of the trap were plain.
“Tell me what sort of beast it was and I will disappear it, I will pass over it like a cloud and it will be no more. In your virtue, you called me by name, and I will repay it.”
The wife looked at her husband and shook her silvering head. “It was a serpent—but it was not a serpent. Its heads were terrible, and each different. The husband of our other daughter said that he could not keep his eyes on it; they slid off of its skin as though he were staring into the sun. It seemed to be plumed in fire, yet its body was wet and slick as a worm’s, mottled green and brown, with patches of blue, patches of black, patches of gold, patches of slime and flame. Its eyes were red, sixteen pupils like black chrysanthemums, and it had a tail for each head, thick as a woman’s waist. Its body muscled and knotted in the center, with its mass of heads and tails spreading out before and behind like a doubled fan. On its back grows a strange snarl of trees and grasses, and some say there are eyes along its spine, blinking. Yet it does not slither on the ground like a snake, but has legs like a bird—save that there are four—gnarled with muscle, green as bile. It drags itself along the ground by these legs, and from its belly a great font of blood flows, and stains the land.”
I bowed only slightly—in acceptance, not deference, you understand. I thought nothing of the beast itself, only wondered vaguely if that blood would be warm or cool flowing over my wrists.
They fussed over me, insisted on piling my hands with rice-balls—the last of Kushinada’s excellent cooking—and draping me with their own rough robes. They tied sandals onto my feet and belted my slim waist tightly. Only when I was thoroughly uncomfortable did they let me go, directing me southward, into a range of mountains lying on the earth like a severed jaw, its jagged teeth sawing the sky, crusted over with ice. Beyond Mt. Hiba, they said, the beast snorted and feasted its nights into day. Beyond Mt. Hiba, Kushinada lay naked on a stone table, her sweet skin ready to be carved into meat for each of the eight slavering heads.