Dendera (9 page)

“So these are the cripples, then?” Kayu Saitoh asked.

Mitsugi Kaneda nodded and said, “The woman in your hut, Shigi Yamamoto—she’s the same way, but she doesn’t ever leave there.”

Still lying on the floor, Kura Kuroi grinned and said, “Kayu, even in Dendera, you’re the diligent worker I always knew. I’m impressed. I’ve never seen you complain about anything, not once. You go about each day with this serene look about you. I don’t know how you do it. It’s a mystery to me.”

“And I’ve never seen you complain,” Kayu Saitoh said, continuing her work. “Even though you’ve always been stuck with that body.”

In her weak voice, Kura Kuroi replied, “I got used to it, that’s all.”

“What about the bear?” Sayore Nosaka asked, looking nowhere near whomever she was addressing. “Can it be killed?”

“Ah, we’ll be fine,” Shima Iijima said, wiping at the base of her neck. “The chief is committed to bringing it down.”

“It’s too bad I can’t help. If only my eyes worked, I would give that bear a licking.”

Mitsugi Kaneda chuckled. “There’s more than your eyes that’s clouded. Keep quiet and get some rest. Leave the bear to the young and able. Once we’ve killed the beast, you can have your fill of meat.”

“I’ll be looking forward to that. Since I’ve come here, I haven’t had a single piece of meat bigger than my fingertip.”

“That bear was incredible,” Shima Iijima said. She turned her head toward the ceiling, as if looking up at the giant in her imagination. “It was
that
big. There’ll be enough bear to fill all of our stomachs.”

“That’ll be a relief,” Kura Kuroi said. “I’ve been so hungry that any one of these days now my old belly will be gone.”

Mitsugi Kaneda joked, “I think your stomach’s the only part of you that works right.”

A wave of modest laughter spread through the women. Only Kayu Saitoh and Noi Komatsu didn’t join in. Noi Komatsu swiftly arranged the straw on the floor into a depiction of the river that flowed just beyond the Village’s fields. Kayu Saitoh had gone there to fetch water many times each day.

When Kayu Saitoh had finished her task and was about to leave, Kura Kuroi called to her.

“Kayu, what do you think? How do you like living here?”

“I’d rather not answer.”

“Yeah. I thought you’d say that,” Kura Kuroi said. “I
knew
you’d say that. But this is our new life. You can accept it, you can reject it, you can ignore it, but you have to use your head. You’re resilient, and you’ve got spirit, but you’re not bright. When faced with the unfamiliar, you go this way and that. I know that about you.”

“Kura Kuroi, are you a Hawk?”

“Certainly not.” She shook her head. “I could never attack the Village. My little brother, who took such good care of me, lives there … Though I’m no Dove either. What about you, Kayu? Are you the same way? Have you thought about it?”

“I’m a Dove,” Sayore Nosaka said. She unfolded her legs and tilted her head, favoring her ears over her eyes. “I don’t know anyone in the Village, and they never took care of me right, so I wouldn’t mind if the Village went away. But I’m blind; if Dendera is destroyed by the fight, I won’t be able to survive on my own.”

Kayu Saitoh looked into the woman’s unseeing eyes. “I envy you, Sayore Nosaka. Everything’s so simple for you. The rest of us have it complicated. It’s hard for us to kill and to live.”

“Nonsense. It’s easy for you; you can see.” There was an edge in Sayore Nosaka’s voice. “I couldn’t kill anyone without help, and neither could I live. It’s a hardship. Well, I suppose it’s the people who can’t speak for themselves who really have it tough.”

Seto Matsuura remained seated in silence, and Noi Komatsu was rearranging the straw into a new picture. As Kayu Saitoh looked to these two women who couldn’t speak for themselves, she realized that she was avoiding what she had been wanting to say.

She glanced to Kura Kuroi, and when she spoke, she was surprised at how the words caught in her throat. “Can I be honest with you?”

“Sure,” Kura Kuroi replied. “I won’t mind.”

“Kura Kuroi … after you went to the Mountain, I felt alone. My husband had already gone, you see. I had my son and his wife, but that’s not what I mean. I felt
alone.
And yet … I was at peace. I was relieved because I could Climb the Mountain.” She looked away from her friend. “I wasn’t afraid of it, and I didn’t resent it. All I wanted was to reach Paradise, and all I had to do was Climb the Mountain. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“But we’re all still alive,” Kayu Saitoh said.

“We are,” Kura Kuroi said. “We have failed to die.”

“I talked with some of the Hawks, and while they’re conflicted about certain aspects of it, they seem like they really do want to attack the Village. They’re going to kill everyone they know, even their own children.” She thought to her conversation with Hatsu Fukuzawa and Ate Amami. “I wanted to go to Paradise. That’s all. I won’t join the Hawks.”

Right away, Kura Kuroi said, “But you also won’t join the Doves. You want to die, so that much is obvious.”

“But you changed your ways; you want to live now.”

“Changed my ways? What an odd way to put it.”

“When we were both in the Village,” Kayu Saitoh explained, “you told me you wished you could Climb the Mountain even sooner. But when you were rescued, you were grateful, weren’t you? What a change of heart!”

“This is a nice place. Unlike the Village, here I don’t feel guilty about being in this condition. Everyone here is equal. Everyone’s an old hag with an empty belly. We’re hungry ghosts. And we all know it about ourselves, so the able naturally help the disabled, and the disabled naturally accept the help.”

Sayore Nosaka nodded. “That’s how I feel. No matter what else, we’re all simply nothing more than old women.”

Summoning a feeling akin to courage, Kayu Saitoh looked to Kura Kuroi. “What you both said is true. We’re all the same here. We’re equally elders. We’re equally women. And we’re equally frail. But is that really all you have to say, Kura Kuroi? Be honest with me.”

Kura Kuroi’s eyes locked on to her, and their intensity didn’t diminish as she answered. “In Dendera, to want to die is to be a villain,” she said. “From your perspective, raiding the Village and living peacefully in Dendera are both wrong and shameful acts. I understand that. But I have to repeat myself: whoever believes that here is the greatest villain.”

“And that’s why you started wanting to live? Ridiculous. I can’t change the way I think so easily. Kura Kuroi, are you … really happy to be alive? Are you fulfilled?”

“I am happy,” Kura Kuroi said, and nothing more.

And so Kayu Saitoh needed to leave the hut.

Night came, and the funeral began.

For a funeral, it was a simple affair. The women could afford the ceremony no extravagances, and shared not a drop of sake nor lit a single stick of incense. They merely lined up the four baskets that held the victims’ remains, clasped their hands in their respective ways and with their respective thoughts, and then left the hut. Ten remained until the end—Kayu Saitoh, Kyu Hoshina, Mei Mitsuya, Hatsu Fukuzawa, Soh Kiriyama, Inui Makabe, Ume Itano, Hikari Asami, Itsuru Obuchi, and Somo Izumi—and in the silence, they built a fire in the sunken hearth together. The flames turned the chief’s face, already dark red with anger, into an even deeper red. Kyu Hoshina clasped her hands and didn’t speak, while Ume Itano cried, her throat occasionally twitching. The only other sounds in the room were the popping of the fire and the women breathing out their noses to keep the stench of the remains at bay.

“Unforgivable,” Mei Mitsuya said, breaking the silence.

Kyu Hoshina nodded in agreement and said, “I want to get that bear as soon as we can.”

Itsuru Obuchi reached with her wrinkled arm and added a fresh log to the fire, then said, “Right, we won’t be able to raid the Village until we kill the beast.”

“Feh!” Mei Mitsuya exclaimed. “I bet that makes you Doves happy.”

Her voice hoarse, Itsuru Obuchi said, “You always have so much energy. You’re only six years older than me, yet you haven’t changed a bit since you were a little girl. Are you really a hundred years old?”

Baring her yellowed teeth, the chief said, “I’m a demon now.”

“We’re all old here. No one would be mad at you if you took it easy.”

“I’d be mad. And listen, Itsuru Obuchi, you’re not old yet. You’re on the expeditionary force, aren’t you?”

“With a brown bear about, we can’t idle. But anyway, why has the bear come in the middle of winter?”

“Maybe it doesn’t have a den,” Hikari Asami said, standing beside the earthen-floor entryway. “Bears typically hibernate through the winter, but if they’re unable to store up enough fat, or if they can’t find a hole the right size for their bodies … they will roam and forage.”

Itsuru Obuchi asked, “And that bear hasn’t found a—what was it, a den? The humans and the bears are all starving. It’s tragic.”

Hatsu Fukuzawa folded her arms and said, “But still, I’ve never heard of a bear attacking a place where people lived.”

“The creature might think us weak,” Itsuru Obuchi explained. “After all, there’s no one in Dendera but a bunch of old hags who have outlived their deaths.”

“Itsuru Obuchi, that’s enough of your crass remarks,” the chief snapped.

“No, she might be right,” Hatsu Fukuzawa said. “I’ve heard that bears are clever. Maybe it’s figured out that we don’t have any hunting rifles here.”

“Like that damned brute has that much brains,” the chief said.

“Bears,” Hikari Asami said, “have sharp noses. And rifles smell of oil and gunpowder.”

“Hikari Asami,” the chief bellowed, “what is all this? How do you know so much about bears?”

“My husband … was a bear hunter. I’ve heard most all there is to know about them.”

“I remember that now,” the chief said, her expression calculating. “So, do you think we have a chance?”

“It’ll be tough …”

“Why?”

“We don’t have rifles,” Hikari Asami said.

“But we have spears!” the chief countered.

“It’s true that people used to hunt bears with spears before there were rifles, but even then, the hunters had steel spearheads. All we have here is … wood.”

Somo Izumi cut in, saying, “What if we set a trap? We can dig an enormous hole and lure the bear to it. When the beast falls in, we clobber it.”

“That’s idiotic,” Hatsu Fukuzawa said with a smile on her lips but nowhere else. “Why don’t you try tossing one of those straw wadara rings of yours at it?”

“Stuff it,” Somo Izumi retorted. “If a pit won’t work, we can poison the thing.”

“Poison it? With what? Where do we have anything like that?”

“Who cares what we use to kill it,” Kyu Hoshina said, her hands still clasped, “as long as we do.”

Hatsu Fukuzawa clapped Kyu Hoshina on the shoulder and said, “Let’s avenge them together, Kyu.”

“I’ll be dead soon either way.” Kyu Hoshina smiled weakly and separated her hands. “A bear’s head won’t be a bad prize to bring to the other world.”

The chief said, “A bear’s head, you say? That’s a good one!” Arising, she stood before the four baskets and proclaimed, “We’ll bring you the bear’s head in offering. That should please you. You’ll be able to rest in peace.”

Kyu Hoshina said, “I hope they can reach Paradise. They didn’t complete their Climb, but they were killed by the bear. I think the Mountain will forgive them.”

Hatsu Fukuzawa said, “Right now, they’re in Paradise eating all the bear meat they can fit in their stomachs,” then shared a laugh with Kyu Hoshina.

The women had begun to regain their spirits, but Kayu Saitoh remained wordless. Her conversation with Kura Kuroi remained in her head, but that wasn’t what bothered her—a strange noise had caught her attention for a little while now. She could hear it coming from the other side of the wall. It was a rustling. Something was moving out there. At first she thought it was snowflakes hitting the walls, but it wasn’t snowing and the skies were clear, the moonlight illuminating the snowy ground. She stood to go see, when a rumbling came like she’d never heard, and a black shape burst through the wall, scattering the four baskets and their grisly contents. The black mass tossed Ume Itano aside and kicked over the hearth.

The moment the fire went out, Kayu Saitoh saw the clear image of the bear’s face and forelegs.

After eating of the Two-Legs meat that she had brought back, Redback’s stomach was finally full again. Together with her similarly full cub, she hid in the bamboo grass and slept. The cold air clung to her, but the food in her stomach warmed her body, and she was so very tired. Both she and her cub should have been hibernating in a den until spring’s coming. Out here, even the simple act of breathing consumed their energy.

Whether bears dream or not remains unknown, but in Redback’s slumber, she recalled the time when the mountain was bountiful.
Spikenard. Wild parsley. Grapes. Acorns. Salmon.
She thought of the time when such sources of nourishment abounded. As the products of nature, these foods weren’t necessarily to be found in the same amounts each year; but Redback had never seen a year as mean as this one. The prolonged rains that had come at summer’s end were the primary cause, affecting even the rivers. The cold currents rose, and not even the spawning salmon swam upstream, for the changes in water temperature and volume had sent the fishes’ paths astray. Redback’s food supply had vanished. Frustration at her empty stomach turned to rage, which then turned to hatred against the Two-Legs.

In truth, Redback feared the Two-Legs.

They could fell trees using some kind of strength unknown to her. They could inflict terrible pain upon her with those strange sticks. But without those strange, fire-spitting sticks, the Two-Legs were weak. They crumpled at a single blow.

Two-Legs were weak without those strange sticks.

And their meat was remarkably delicious and came in such volume that she couldn’t finish it in one sitting. Even better, the Two-Legs were far easier prey than salmon or deer. Ruminating over these many blessings, Redback slept.