HOUSE OF THE CRYING GODS

Miu

It was disappointing, naturally, when her daughter had not arrived for the weekend. Disappointing, but not unexpected. For the past year, work trouble and missed transport had resulted in several cancelled visits. Upon hearing the news, Miu went about the ritual of packing away the box that she always brought out of storage when Kyou’s room was to be her own again; Miu didn’t like to think of it as a space for guests. It was only a small box of things; she had long ago thrown out the clutter and trashy magazines left behind after her daughter’s unexpected exit. What remained were the stories that her sister had read to Kyou as a child: The Tale of Genji, Momotarō the Peach Boy, and a translated copy of The Little Prince that had been gifted by a European traveller. The latter, probably for its illustrations, had been a favourite of Kyou’s when she was very young. Miu’s sister had been more flexible then, able to sit cross-legged on the floor and read over the shoulder of the audience of one in her lap. Kyou would always slap the page depicting the fox as Kiku read out the words: “To you I am a fox like any other, like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, you and I, we will have created a relationship, and so we will need one another.”

That was all a lifetime ago, but on the occasional visit, when Kyou finally took a break from hammering messages into her phone, Miu had sometimes caught her daughter with that same book, reading with the earnestness of her younger self.

So her daughter had missed her train. It was unfortunate, but there would certainly be a follow-up visit. At least a call to her aunt and perhaps a letter to her mother. However often she forgot a train, Kyou always remembered an apology. What was more disheartening was Kiku’s news that there wouldn’t be enough to cover the therapy session with Megumi that week. Miu hadn’t expected to care, but she did. She very much did. Recalling the fat envelope of money, she had felt an urge to challenge the assertion. She swallowed it down. Kiku had been increasingly distracted of late: forgetting her way mid-sentence, leaving cups of tea to go cold and doors unlocked. It was over her husband’s deteriorating health, and that was understandable.

So it was as it was. It shouldn’t matter. The problem was that after that session, Miu had started to hope. The more she thought over it—in quiet moments while washing dishes, or in the hazy transfer from wakefulness to sleep—the bigger the hope grew. And the stronger it grew. It was magnetic; little details were pulled towards the hope and became part of it. Under the gaze of the decidedly unremarkable therapist, Miu had felt something heavy falling away. Or being lifted. Megumi, who seemed to like games of all descriptions, had said: “If you understand chess, perhaps I could explain it that way? Many things in a life—not even things for which there are necessarily culprits—will make us think that we are each a very, very small player. It’s probably cultural to some extent. So we think of ourselves as pawns. We can see one direction to move in. Maybe we can see further ahead, and maybe we don’t like it, but we have grown to believe that there aren’t other choices.

“If a chessboard were more like life, there would be very few pawns. There would be ones that look like horses and castles. And there would be many, many queens—more queens than pawns.

“I don’t know. I think checkers is more fun.”

So perhaps there was some other direction to move—one Miu wasn’t being forced in. The idea was terrifying and wonderful. But hope, like most things in great quantities, was dangerous.

Instead of going to the appointment that had been booked, Miu put on her gloves, apron, and wide-brimmed hat and presented herself for gardening duty with the women of the Bijushima Beautification Society, also known as ‘Bii Bii Essu’. The day’s location was Site Four of the Art Trail, ‘House of the Crying Gods.’ It was a popular spot during Spring owing to the cherry tree grove at its entrance. The site’s artistic feature was a carved rock face meant to be viewed from the path leading up to a temple. That meant that beautification work typically involved a measure of gathering litter in the form of crushed brochures, discarded face masks, and bottles that didn’t find their way into one of the many, many available bins. It was unpleasant. Miu far preferred clipping back branches or plucking clover.

As midday approached, the other older women disappeared for tea and sandwiches. Miu continued, grateful for the reprieve from repetitive gossip; she heard enough from her sister. She struck again and again with a trowel at the base of a knotweed plant that had been left to its own devices. The women of the BBS were predominantly retirees without the arm strength to manage heavy work. One weekend each year, they cajoled their husbands and sons to assist and bring out tools with teeth and motors. Kyou used to participate as Miu’s representative, and when he had been in better health, Kiku’s husband had joined, too. He had made Kyou put on goggles—which she promptly replaced with sunglasses—to keep wood splinters from getting into her eyes. He had guided Kyou’s slight hands into a pair of battered leather gloves. He had been terribly gentle. And then he got sick.

The cherry tree grove had also hosted picnics when Kyou was in junior school. Back then, the board had still been fighting to keep the school open. Volunteers had done the groundskeeping, the accounts, the fundraisers. Banners had been painted with “For the future of Bijushima.” All Miu had wanted was for her daughter to have access to the few children her own age. It didn’t last.

By middle school, it was sickening to watch the passenger ferry carry away her daughter to the mainland. Kyou had informed her after a biology class that the ocean contained ‘one point something sextillion litres.’ It was supposed to be funny or clever, but Miu couldn’t see it that way. Every time the ferry pulled away from the dock and the furious turbine threw up heavy, innumerable quantities of water, Miu became dizzy. Her heart transformed into a trapped sparrow, panicking, beating its wings, unsure of its own survival. On really bad days, Kyou stayed home with her. She never complained, but she did lie; the disappointment was clear in her eyes as she shrugged off school as ‘a drag’ and ‘a waste of time,’ full of mainland snobs and stupid rules. No wonder her visits home were so infrequent. Worse than being a pawn, she had been pushed into a corner.

Miu gave up on the stubborn roots and rocked back onto her heels. She took a cloth from her apron and wiped the sod from her trowel. The glint of its blade was obscured by a shadow. A person. Miu twisted to look at the shoes, jeans, and dreadful anorak of—Megumi. She was wearing a backpack and a floppy hat, looking every bit the dowdy tourist. Miu ducked her head and broke into a smile.

“Miu. Your sister mentioned that you work around here. How lucky!”

“Nn.” Miu nodded. Her sparrow heart.

“I was sorry not to see you at the session. I was looking forward to it. I’ll tell you—privately—you’re one of the very few people that I talk to these days who is younger than 80 years old.”

“Nn.” Miu repeated more quietly, taking off her gloves.

“Never mind. I was glad to see you. I wanted to ask a favour—have you had lunch? I feel strange eating alone, even when there are no witnesses.”

They found a spare bench beneath a weeping cherry. Miu had packed a bento in a similar style to the one that she put together for travellers who requested the ‘Japanese-Style Menu.’ It contained small portions of salad, pickled turnip, rice, and grilled chicken. Megumi cooed at its elegance. She had picked up lunch from the convenience store: a pork bun, sugary milk tea, and a collection of chocolate bars.

“It’s rather unprofessional of me,” Megumi said between mouthfuls, “but I was hoping I would find you. I got the sense it might be a financial reason that you didn’t come? That doesn’t matter. Not to me. I do some remote work for those big mental health app companies and otherwise I get paid for availability, so it’s not a big deal. I brought something with me, and I thought we could look at if you like?”

Megumi smiled in her usual way that said ‘I’m safe, you’re safe,’ and Miu found herself nodding before she even thought about it. The ‘something’ was a wooden box with regularly-spaced pegs on its face, about the size of a picture book. Above the pegs was written ‘My Family.’ The top opened to reveal compartments containing red string and little tags with faces and words like ‘brother,’ ‘niece,’ and ‘dog.’ Megumi started by shuffling through the tags and selecting a handful.

“I’ll show you my family to start. This tag here is me.” She placed it on a peg in the middle of the board.

“This is my mother and my father.” She wound a thread around her peg and connected it up to her parents.

“And I have two older brothers and one younger sister. And we have a cat. I guess I still think of the cat as mine. I can’t have one at my apartment. It wouldn’t work with travelling for work, anyhow. Oh! And my eldest brother has a wife and a little girl.” Megumi placed a tag for ‘baby’ and connected the tree up.

It was a neat little depiction of a family that would fill a large table for New Year celebrations. Two sons, two daughters, two proud grandparents, and a precious little child. Miu tapped the tag for ‘baby’ and looked at Megumi.

“Oh, Miyuki? Yes. I have so many photos. Let me show you.”

The photo reel began with a tiny swaddled bundle with tightly-shut eyes. In a timelapse of captured moments, little Miyuki unfurled to the world: laughing at her parents, grabbing toys, and crawling towards the family cat, who looked surprisingly placid about her approach.

“Would you like to show me your family?” Megumi offered her the board, now cleared of her pieces. Miu nodded haltingly. She gathered the pieces for ‘me,’ ‘sister,’ ‘daughter,’ and ‘husband’ and drew the threads between them. Daughter belonged solely to Miu. Husband was for her sister. Megumi watched for a moment without commenting.

“And your parents?”

Miu shuffled through the tags and found two with a pair of angel’s wings.

“I see. A while ago?”

“Nn.”

“So your sister must have been important to you.”

“Nn.”

“So then.” Megumi hovered her fingers over the fatherless tag for daughter. Miu inhaled shakily.

“Do you have any photos? Of your daughter?”

Miu smiled. That she could provide. Her daughter had messed around with the cell phone she’d gifted her, taking photos of herself wearing sunglasses and pouting dramatically before presenting it to Miu. She showed them to Megumi, who smiled in turn.

“Wow. Very cool. She could be in a band or something.”

“Tsu.” Miu shook her head.

“No good at singing?”

“Tsu,” Miu repeated.

“Well,” Megumi handed the phone back. “I can see she’s your daughter. Very beautiful. I wish I had skin like that.”

They sat a while longer together, Megumi talking about her relief that her younger sister had not yet become engaged and forced the conversation with her parents. Megumi wasn’t all that interested in dating if it meant sacrificing her job. Her parents were interested in another grandchild, though, and their second son wasn’t displaying much promise in that area. After a while, as the grocery bag filled with food wrappers and the ladies of the BBS came up to start packing away tools (or more likely eavesdrop), it was time to wind up their engagement. Megumi enquired whether Miu might like to continue with her on her hike, which Miu politely declined. She wasn’t dressed for it. She hoped never to be dressed as a hiker.

Just before they parted ways, Miu took the book from her apron and ripped out a dog-eared page. She folded it thrice and pressed it into Megumi’s hand. She didn’t know how she Megumi might take it, but she knew what was written on it:

When the infant screamed, ancient forests trembled, dropping their needles out of season. Mountains quaked. Rivers diverted and the tides forgot to recede. The fisherman’s homeland was thrown into chaos. The glowing child in his care seemed more a curse than a blessing. Still, he could not bring himself to abandon or harm it. He decided to seek out a village elder known to have fathered more than twenty children, though a further thirty were suspected.

It was a good half-day's trek with a baby on his back to their destination. When he located the elder, hacking at the nodules of bamboo roots, the fisherman realised that he was not dealing with an ordinary man at all. From beneath the elder’s robes slithered a thick, scaly tail. Upon noticing his guest, the creature flashed a smile with too many teeth.

“So you have ensnared my favourite child,” the creature said smoothly, eyes flashing gold, then black. “What will you pay to keep her?”

The fisherman, although near-petrified and unprepared for such a conversation with such a being, knew the answer. “Everything,” he said. “Everything I have, and whatever I can steal.”

“Good,” said the elder. “A fine response. Well-articulated. I shall allow her to live freely on your land. But, as I’m sure you understand, you may no longer remain.”

The fisherman understood. Being a man of the sea, he recognised the dragon-god Owatasumi even in disguise. “Will she be cared for?” the fisherman asked.

Owatasumi laughed. “Have you not beheld the baby’s face? She is the loveliest of all my children. Beauty will always unearth kindness in others.”

Before the fisherman could protest that beauty also inspired jealousy, covetousness and violence, Owatasumi waved his hand in a circular motion. From this simplest of gestures a golden wave appeared. It engulfed the fisherman.

“I have named her after me,” the fisherman gritted out. “I was named after the sea, and that is where I will return.”

Owatasumi, who had the occasional soft spot for the sentimentality of men, deigned to allow it. “That is fine. Her name shall be Kai.”

It was the last word the fisherman ever heard.