Dendera (31 page)

“Well, my reasoning is simple. Unlike you, I don’t believe in Paradise or any such twaddle.”

“I don’t believe in it either.”

“You … don’t? But you—”

Kayu Saitoh cut in, surprised by the conviction in her own voice. “I’ll repeat myself. I just want to die. I abandoned my aspiration of going to Paradise. I failed my Climb, so I’ll never get there. And if that’s the case, I give up on Paradise. Instead, I’ll just die. I’ll free myself from any other efforts, and I’ll die alone. If I manage to take the bear with me, no one will be able to complain.”

“I’ll complain!” Hotori Oze asserted angrily.

Kayu Saitoh merely sidestepped the woman’s comment. “We’ve talked enough. My aspiration won’t change. You all should fulfill yours. Today, we disband. Do whatever you wish. But don’t ridicule anyone else’s aspirations. Don’t laugh at those who want to sustain Dendera. Don’t laugh at those who want to flee. Don’t laugh at those who die.”

Resentfully, Hotori Oze said, “You’re only saying that because you get to die the way you want.”

But the dissolution proceeded. One of the women suggested that if this was the last day that Dendera was to be Dendera, then they should have a celebration, however modest it might be. Only six women survived in Dendera, and their food reserves were practically gone—and the potatoes were too unsafe to eat. But in talk of a celebration, the women’s disparate beliefs and opinions found unity. Hono Ishizuka and Usuma Tsutsumi gathered together the corpses scattered around the settlement, while Kayu Saitoh with her one arm and Ume Itano with her injured hips scoured the huts for food. As thoroughly as they searched, they still didn’t find much that could be called food, but they did come across some cornmeal, flakes of dried fish, some rabbit meat one of the women had hunted and dried in secret, and a few other such things.

By the time each woman had finished her task, night had fallen, and soft moonlight illuminated Dendera’s ruins. Working together, the six buried the remaining bodies—those of Kotei Hoshii, Ate Amami, Kyu Hoshina, Nokobi Hidaka, Tamishi Minamide, Shigi Yamamoto, Masari Shiina, Hogi Takamiya, Shijira Iikubo, and Maru Kusachi. As Kayu Saitoh dug through the dirt with her only arm, she tried to come up with some thought about how the dead outnumbered the living, but she didn’t find any insight. Hono Ishizuka began to cry again as she carefully placed Masari Shiina’s body—now nothing but charred bone and festering flesh—into the grave, but Kayu Saitoh couldn’t connect with the dead in that way. When she looked at Nokobi Hidaka’s exposed, shriveled intestines, or Kyu Hoshina’s perforated corpse, she felt nothing. Neither did Hotori Oze, judging from the way the woman hauled the bodies much the same as she would bundles of wood. Kayu Saitoh deemed death in this place to be entirely without meaning.

After their work was done, the six old women gathered in the clearing. They all had felt that the center of the grand destruction was the proper place to celebrate, rather than one of the desolate, stranded huts. The women used pieces of the manor’s former walls to construct a makeshift fire pit, in which they began heating a stone pot. Before long, the broth began to smell of dried meat and fish. When they added in the cornmeal, the sound of the simmering soup made their stomachs growl. Then, in the sparkling moonlight, they began their meager feast. Around the fire they ate meat and gristle, and sipped hot, starchy cornmeal porridge. As they chatted and slurped, they polished off the rest of the stone pot’s contents. With their stomachs full for the first time in a long while, drowsiness and fatigue washed over them, and in moments, exhaustion took hold. This time, they had used up almost every last scrap of food in Dendera, but no woman complained.

“This is nice,” Hono Ishizuka said. “It’s so very nice to eat this much.” With the preservation of Dendera her aspiration, the woman typically would have taken a position against such reckless overeating, but her expression was one of true contentment.

Adding wood to the fire, Kayu Saitoh said, “Once I kill the bear, you’ll be able to go into the Mountain again. If I do, I bet you’ll be able to find much more food than this. You’ll again be able to find the abandoned women too. Dendera will be vibrant once more.”

“Yes, that will be my duty to fulfill,” Hono Ishizuka said. She lifted her head, seeming to imagine Dendera’s future. “Now that Kayu mentioned it, will any of you help me to rebuild? Do any of you wish to remain here?”

Usuma Tsutsumi and Ume Itano’s expressions were a little conflicted, but they both volunteered their names. This seemed not to be out of a personal aspiration, but rather a lack of any other path to follow. Kayu Saitoh felt a pang of guilt for single-handedly declaring Dendera’s dissolution, but she knew there hadn’t been a choice. She also understood that the more freedom a person had, the harder it was to choose a course of action. But Usuma Tsutsumi and Ume Itano seemed to have realized that nothing would come of life in Dendera as it was now, and they didn’t seem unhappy with the disbanding or with staying to help in Dendera’s reconstruction.

The one to display clear displeasure was Hotori Oze. Even during dinner, she hadn’t spoken much, her expression that of a sulking child who had been left out of the group, and she stared in silence at the Mountain looming over the night. But Kayu Saitoh knew she couldn’t take the woman with her.

Kayu Saitoh looked to Hikari Asami, who was sitting beside her, and asked, “What are you going to do? Will you remain here? Will you go somewhere else? Or will you die?”

“I think … I’ll be leaving the Mountain. The food is poisonous, and this land is without hope. And there’s that bear. So I’m going somewhere far away from the Mountain … though I don’t know how far I’ll make it.”

“I’m going to kill the bear.”

“Even so … Even so, I’m going far away. I
want
to go far away.”

“I understand.” Kayu Saitoh nodded. “I’ll say nothing more.”

“So, Kayu,” Hono Ishizuka said, “when are you going to leave?”

“I’m planning on being gone in the morning. Why?”

“We’re counting on you to deal with the bear. Usuma, Ume, and I are staying here in Dendera. If the beast attacks again, we’ll be defenseless.”

“I knew I hadn’t felt that pain in my ass for a while. Listen, Hono Ishizuka, if you don’t have faith in me, you can go somewhere else with Hikari Asami.”

“If I went far from the Mountain,” Hono Ishizuka said, her voice level, “finding the women Climbing the Mountain would be tough. We don’t want long lives—we want to rebuild Dendera.”

After a moment, Kayu Saitoh said, “It’s all starting to sound the same to me.”

“The same?”

Kayu Saitoh decided to speak what she was thinking. “Me, you, and all of us—what we’re saying is all starting to sound the same to me.”

“To die or to live? Those sound like opposites to me. Of the two, I’ll pick a long life. You can laugh at me all you want, but I’ll live a long life.”

“Good. And I …”

“What’s that?”

“Never mind.” Kayu Saitoh stood. “I’m going to sleep.”

No one watched her go. She hadn’t expected otherwise. She was now a stranger to Dendera. If she wouldn’t be seeing them off, no one would be seeing her off. The women had come from solitude, and to solitude they were returned. There was no sisterhood now, only solitude. Kayu Saitoh had simply been the first of them to experience it.

Kayu Saitoh went to the easternmost hut in order to sleep alone. It was the same hut she’d been sleeping in, night after night, since she came to Dendera. Shigi Yamamoto’s corpse had been taken away, and the room felt too large for Kayu Saitoh alone. Unsure of how to handle all the space, she nevertheless spread out some straw and lay down to sleep. With her full stomach, sleep soon came, melting into her. In her head were not thoughts of the dead, or of Dendera, or of the day to come. She slept without dreaming.

When she forced herself out from that deep slumber and pulled herself out of the straw, a fair amount of time had passed, and darkness surrounded her. She stirred the hearth to feed the fire, producing a dim light for the room. Still feeling half asleep, she stood, rubbed her eyes, scooped water from the water jug, and took a drink. The cold water froze her insides and banished the remnants of sleep. She took the several cooked potatoes from the hearth, put them in a basket, and tied the basket to the sash of her white robe. Then she lit a torch from the hearth’s fire, put on her straw coat, and went outside.

The night had not yet lifted, with inky darkness spreading out before her, but still she walked. Having to hold the torch in her left and only hand, she was without a spear to lean on. Moving was a fair challenge, but her steps were brisk. She walked with the lively, cheerful steps of an animal that had just learned how to walk. Soon, her walk turned into a run. As she was enjoying the sound and sensation of the snow crunching beneath her straw sandals, she noticed that the snow was firmer than it had been before. Its surface had melted in the day’s heat and frozen at night into a texture like granulated sugar. She ran, sinking her feet into the sugary snow. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the white expanse seemed to glow pale blue. Kayu Saitoh’s plan was to leave Dendera before dawn and without anyone noticing her.

But when she saw two torchlights ahead she knew that wouldn’t happen.

Hotori Oze and Hikari Asami stood near the boundary between Dendera and the Mountain.

Each held a wooden spear, wore a straw coat, and carried a basket from which wafted the smell of food. Hotori Oze wore a smirk as she silently watched Kayu Saitoh approach. Hikari Asami wore no expression as such and held her torch aloft to provide Kayu Saitoh light.

Kayu Saitoh stood before them and said, in a tone emphasizing admiration over disapproval, “You figured me out.”

Hotori Oze said, “Only every thought in your head.”

Hikari Asami lowered her torch and said, “Kayu Saitoh, I know you want to go alone, but it’s too reckless. You should take us with you.”

“But …”

“We won’t be any trouble,” Hotori Oze said with a grin. “Not to Dendera, and not to you. Surely you can’t complain then.”

“You won’t listen to me no matter how many times I say it, will you? Not when you’ve headed me off like this.”

“Good. I’m glad we could keep this short. All right, let’s go up the Mountain.” Hotori Oze turned toward the Mountain. “I’ll lead the way.”

“And I’ll find the bear for you,” Hikari Asami said, facing the same way. “I know the creature better than anyone.”

“But Hikari Asami, are you sure? I thought your bigger purpose was to get far away from the Mountain.”

“After I find the bear, I’ll do just that,” she replied. “Once I find the bear, I’m leaving the Mountain—because I’m not like you. I don’t intend to die. Don’t assume everyone wants to die.”

The three women stepped onto the Mountain at night. Kayu Saitoh felt calm and without fear. Emotionally, she had returned back to when she first began to Climb the Mountain, when she clasped her hands tightly and listened to the night ravens flapping their wings. Some might call this regression, but Kayu Saitoh felt blessed. She knew that if she told her feelings to her guides, Hotori Oze and Hikari Asami, the women would laugh at her, so she held her tongue and walked in silence. The Mountain was as steep as ever, and the snow deep, and the farther they walked, the less use their straw sandals were. Dragging their sore, snow-soaked feet, the women kept moving.

Hotori Oze pointed at a patch of snow no different than the rest and began her babbling. “At the right time of year, a lot of grapes grow over there. I didn’t give a damn about Dendera, and I was so angry all the time, but when the grape season came, I always felt just a little bit better. Just a little bit, yeah? And over there, way back that way, it’s covered in snow now, but the ground gets wet there, and it’s full of snakes. They’re black, and only little things, but they’ll bare their tiny fangs and jump right at you. They’ve bitten me many times. Many times, on my feet.”

As the woman cheerfully chatted, they entered deeper into the Mountain. The slope grew gradually more severe, and without a spear to use as a walking stick, Kayu Saitoh kept losing her balance. When Hikari Asami noticed this, she snatched Kayu Saitoh’s torch and handed her her own spear. In time they reached the narrow animal trail where the bear had killed Itsuru Obuchi and the others. With the path barely visible in the darkness, Kayu Saitoh proceeded with great care. Hotori Oze had taken the lead. The woman seemed untouched by fear of any sort and walked in her typical jaunty way. But suddenly, she stooped over and began puking blood. Nothing could be done to help her, and Kayu Saitoh and Hikari Asami waited wordlessly for it to pass. And when it did, Hotori Oze stood as if nothing had happened, laughed, and said, “I guess I ran out of blood,” and started walking again.

The women made it through the ravine, but the steep slope continued. The Mountain was still, the trees only visible in hazy outline. Kayu Saitoh noted, with great impatience, that they weren’t even halfway up the Mountain. Soon the night lifted. The world was tinted blue, becoming a little more visible. The women pressed on into the blue Mountain. When the sunlight reached them, however weak it yet was, the women decided to rest. They tossed aside their burned-out torches, spread their straw coats out on the snow, sat, and removed their sandals. Their feet had turned a deep purple color and could barely feel the straw. Enduring the jabs of pain in her feet, Kayu Saitoh pulled a potato from her basket. When Hotori Oze and Hikari Asami saw it, they yelped in surprise.

Hotori Oze stared at the potato and said, “Where … did you get that?”

“What do you mean, where? It’s one of Shigi Yamamoto’s potatoes.”

Without peeling the skin, Kayu Saitoh bit into the potato. She could feel its coldness in the roots of her teeth.

“What are you doing eating that? Do you want to end up like me? Do you want to puke blood?”

“I’m going to play tag with a bear. I should fill my stomach first.”

“But …”

“If the food poisoning kills me, the result’s the same,” Kayu Saitoh said, chewing on the potato. “I’m going to die. It’s what I intend to do.”