Myths of Origin

After a long silence, the abbot folded his hands in his lap.

“No, my lord. No man knows that.”

EIGHT

Call us Monster. Call us Leech. Call us Daughter.

We smelled it first. The scents came looping and spinning up through the banyan-roots and into the little clearing where we lay in our cradle of blood, and it smelled, oh, it smelled like warm rice and pickled eyes, it smelled like cassia and persimmon, it smelled like jellyfish thin as breath.

And it smelled like Kazuyo-that-was.

And it smelled like Kameko-who-laughed.

And it smelled like Kiyomi-who-wept.

And it smelled like the Kaya-bird.

And it smelled like Kyoko-who-was-plain.

And it smelled like Koto-who-had-no-story.

And it smelled like Kaori-who-waited-outside-the-door.

And it smelled of Hiruko-who-wailed-for-its-mother.

And it smelled like Kushinada, Kushinada, who tasted of tea.

It smelled like ourselves, and we were drawn to it.

Of course, under that we could smell you, brother—even in your new skin you smell of scorched air and boiling water. But the other smells—the other smells were better smells, and we have wanted better things. It is not that we were fooled, or befuddled. We were fed all our life on eyes: there is nothing we do not see.

We came down after it, down the grassy hillocks and the forest chasms, and our back rolled and creaked like a ship under the weight of flowering trees—but in the reflections of the puddles and paddies we thought ourselves beautiful, and our blood was so red, so red. And we saw the city of Hiroshima, and the river delta, and the sun on the water—and oh! The manifold fence! Out of red and smoke-scented woods a fence had been thrown up, and in it were eight doors, and each door was thrown open as though you were expecting us for festival, brother, as if you welcomed us. Just beyond each door were eight pearl-lined bowls, and each bowl was filled with rice-wine eight-times-brewed. They were laid out so carefully, so sweetly, that we thought—forgive us!—for a moment, that you knew us, and wanted to drink to ghosts among family.

Was it not clever of him, to lay out such well-crafted dishes? I think there has never been anyone so clever as he.

We bend our heads, ducking under the lip of the eight-fold fence, crossing the threshold, threaded as through an ornate needle. Blood pools beneath us—we do not notice. Its warmth has become familiar as a hand. We look hopefully for our brother, to greet us, to toast our health. There is no one; the city below is quiet. Not far from here Kushinada was born in the witness of a fish; not far from here Susanoo-no-Mikoto descended from the rage-blind fire of heaven, the fire which blanches all things to bones. We thought we could still see the afterimage of that fire still laid over the streets, a scald in our vision—but perhaps it is nothing, nothing, perhaps it is a trick of the sunlight, and the wine, which drinks up the gold and throws it up into our eyes like a column of flame.

We look again for our brother-who-is-not-our-brother—the genealogy is muddy, now that we are ourself and no longer a leech and eight girls—we put on our best and most practiced smile like a festival dress. Come see us, come see that we grew up to be beautiful, after all.

There is no one.

The rice-wine smells of fish-eyes, and salt.

It will not hurt, certainly, if we drink a bit before he comes.

He would not begrudge us wet throats.

X

HIROSHIMA

The wretched, stupid thing drank itself into stupor. Its heads lolled on the grass as I approached, looking up at me with great dark eyes, its translucent eyelids opening and closing weakly over sixteen dark irises. It tried to raise each head, one after the other, and let them fall with a heavy slap onto the dirt road beyond the manifold fence. Spittle dribbled from its mouths. It was pitiful; it could hardly moan. Stinking blood ran in arm-thick rivulets from its prone belly, and on its back grew a tangled, stunted forest of trees whose flowers, too, were streaked with bloody muck—in among the ruin there might have been sprigs of cassia, but who could tell? I ran my hands over the massive body, through the thin trunks and the dripping belly. The skin beneath was silver, flushed with blue and gold, rose and green, iridescent as that of a snail.

It was helpless as an infant, unable to stand, and I could smell, still, the skin of Kushinada on its breath.

The monks crowded around, prodding the beast, awe-struck at its size and nearness, this thing they had feared for so long. They tugged at the eight tails, even tasted the oozing blood, and plucked limbs from the forest of its spine. The abbot put a decrepit sword into my hand, the ceremonial blade of their shrine, hardly sharp enough to cut lard. But even below the cellars of heaven, my arms are strong.

I walked to the first head, and in the late afternoon light, the eyes seemed to struggle, the lid seemed to draw aside like pale curtains, and its mouth seemed to protest. With that blunted sword I hewed into the gray-green flesh of its neck—and the blood which flowed from the serpent was red as a woman’s, and the jaws sprung open, and its exhale was a shriek: