Yukaku — Where The Rivers Are

Osamu opened his eyes. It was late, and from the hilltop on which he had rested, he watched the fading blood-red sun descend past the horizon. He had stopped to rest but had inadvertently fallen asleep. Before him lay Hamayoka, an ancient village steeped in mythology and evening mists. It was rumored the town emerged from the union of sun and mountain, progeny of energy and magic. Osamu walked downhill, wondering lazily.

He had cried in his mother’s womb and had been birthed with his eyes open. He had been a curious boy, only half-present, and only half-human. His heart and his mind, his dreams and fantasies lay with the immortality of air and in his solitude, he would write odes to the joys of being. His most hidden desire was to be and dream without conscious. As he walked into town, he was suddenly aware of the eyes of passerby and stared into them wondering their contents.

Osamu collided with a young boy. The boy dropped a wooden figurine depicting dragons coiled around a peach. Osamu eyed the craftsmanship and with a jarred smile returned the figurine. He stood and arched his back in an attempt to relieve the unsettling agitation that had crept into his lower back. The sky had grown dark. Moisture clung to his forehead. He ran a hand through it. He remembered the crowd. They pushed past him. He felt strange — standing still and self-possessed within their rhythmic, unified movement.

He dreamed they were all headed home and flowed through the streets like an earthen river. How confusing, or mesmerizing, the flow must be from above he dreamt.

And so Osamu pushed his thoughts aside and kept walking, stealing an occasional glance over his shoulder. At a black cage jutting outward from an imposing temple, he stopped and looked at the dark mass sitting in the furthest corner. His face stern, his lips in a thin grimace. It stirred and shuffled. A silhouette separated and crawled forward. It leaned into the moonbeams slaking thru the slits.

“Osamu?”

“In the flesh..”

The woman hung her head and spoke. “I can’t believe you’ve found me. I had hoped you’d come but . . . “

The woman raised her head but Osamu wasn’t there. He was marching the garden path toward the temple doors. He clenched the golden knocker in his hand and gave a solid thump. Osamu thought he heard footsteps shuffling inside. A moment after the door opened and a small girl with suspicious eyes peered at him.

“What brings you?”

He displayed his payment.

Osamu watched wrinkles snake across her head and her skin whiten, the girl aging before him until she was transformed into an old woman. She introduced herself as Kanji. Her mother had run the brothel and her father was of nobility. He had met her in a garden and had courted her, though when he discovered her profession he bound her to the temple, unknowing she was with child. He killed himself in shame. Osamu would never know this, but he felt the lingering pain. He ignored it, for he couldn’t bear to know Kiyoko lived within this turmoil.

“Come in then! Come in! The night is dreary, and the shadows will steal you away! Come in!”

Osamu followed Kanji to a desk upon which rested a statue of a crane and of a toad. They seemed ready to leap, ready to fly. Osamu counted the crane’s feathers and wondered if the toad had ever given a guest a wart. The desk was engraved with cherry blossoms. Kenji’s stature made her nose hover over them, and Osamu imagined she sought to smell them. Behind the desk, a staircase wound toward the ceiling. Osamu peered upward and saw straight through the skylight. Night fell through the glass and onto his jade eyes.

“I am Osamu. I am here for Kiyoko.”

Kanji clapped her hands together and opened the toad’s mouth. She retrieved a small rectangular placard. She handed it to him. “One side has the floor, the other has the door. Go now. Get off. Enjoy. She’ll be right there.”

Osamu bowed and began the ascent up the staircase. Kanji wondered about Osamu . . . His eyes were a brilliant green. She had only seen that color on that girl who was sold into her brothel. The very girl she was fetching now. He must love making love to himself, she mused. Kanji stopped before a metal door. She jostled the keys until she found the right one. She pressed her weight against it and called into the formless dark.

“Kiyoko. Come.”

Kanji led Kiyoko toward Osamu’s room. Kanji filled the silence as they walked.

As she led her from the cage,

“Eye your hourglass.”

As they ascended the stairs,

“Do as he says. Do as he wants.”

As they stopped before his room,

“But be yourself.”

Kanji thrust Kiyoko into the room. She glanced around coyly. Osamu looked away to hide his smile. He stood beneath the chandelier. He emanated a subtle warmth.

Kanji walked in behind Kiyoko and looked about the room. The mirrors were spotless, good. The bed was made. The carpets and rugs were pristine. The hollyhocks seemed parched, but men don’t notice such things.

“Don’t let this one misbehave. Enjoy.” Kanji closed the door behind her.

Kiyoko stood still. Her eyes were closed. She listened to Kanji’s footsteps until they faded.

“It’s really you!”

She flung herself at Osamu and he embraced her. ‘Oh, my little sister. My little sister how you’ve grown.” They held each other. Osamu kissed her shoulder, her cheek, her forehead and breathed in her hair, her skin, her fear. She felt light . . . fragile. “My sister . . . I’ve found you. Wherever I went, whatever I did, I wondered where I was in my relationship to you. I looked at stills of you and wondered who you became. I wondered if you hated me, if you feared I’d never find you.”

“I held onto my hope. I thought of you and our childhood. Truthfully, I could have lasted however long it took you to find me or for me to escape and find you.”

“You tried to escape?”

“I was caught. I used to stay with the others inside. For my attempt, I was put in the cage. The cage . . . was not a good place.” Kiyoko took her hourglass and flipped it on the table. She lowered her head. Osamu bit his tongue. Kiyoko studied the gold patterns on her kimono. She followed the geometry down her torso, past her thighs, down her ankles. On the floor was a magnanimous, beautifully mangled knot. She looked at it. Osamu shifted his weight from foot to foot nervously, so that the planks beneath him began to creak and he stopped doing it. Kiyoko looked at the chandelier and imagined swallowing the candles whole and storing the lights within her belly. As a child, she was close to her siblings. Their mother had passed during a famine. Her father conspired with neighbors to overthrow the lord and inherit his domain. They failed and the lord had sentenced them to death. Even their families were punished. Her family was broken up. Her brother was sentenced to labor camps. She was sold at auction to a noble who then sold her to the brothel when she wouldn’t lay with him. Her dispassion had displeased him. Her childhood was a distant place. In the mirror, she saw who she had grown to be. Who her brother had become. What life was this, she wondered, that she was without a father, without a mother, reunited with her brother in a brothel, robbed of any other destiny by forces beyond her.

“We’re leaving tonight.” Osamu’s eyes were wet and fierce.

Kanji paused. His conviction. Something foreign, but welcome.”Where would we go?” she said at last. “And what of Kanji and her men?”

“Past the town’s edge, I’ve stashed a raft. Down the river, across the bridge, on the opposite bank, there’s a monastery. Christians reside there. They’ll take us in. It’s what they do.”

Downstairs, Kanji sat at her desk. She scratched the throat of the crane statute. She opened the beak and pulled out a key. With it, she went to her private room. There, sprawled across the bed, lay a man covered in wax. He did not move. He did not speak. His eyes did not blink. But Kanji sat next to him and rubbed his head. “These poor things . . . They become women without nature’s blessing. When I was a girl I dreamt of gardens, and I inherited one, but I never believed it’d be this way. That so many young girls would be tossed out of their former lives. What misery to be without a home, without a life. Outcasts in time.” She mused on this. Looked down at the man in wax. “You know, in my sleep, I often envision a river flowing down an endless valley. There are great trees along the banks, and great steep banks that undulate into shorelines, and every so often I see a faun nibbling at some grass or weed. Then suddenly, the earth shifts, and I’m on some other river, in some other land, and I don’t recognize the trees or the grass. There are no deer. The sky is different. And in the moments before I awake, I’m afraid. Isn’t that strange? I’m afraid.” Kanji stood and walked to the other side of the bed. She sat back down. “Do you dream?”

Six floors above, Osamu and Kiyoko hurriedly fashioned together all the sheets in the room. Osamu measured the distance to the floor; Kiyoko fastened the cloths.

Osamu went first. Kiyoko had scarcely lifted her leg over the window when the door opened. She quickly slid down the rope. Kanji had opened the door only to find it jammed. Kiyoko had placed the vanity in front of it. As Kanji yelled for her guard, Osamu and Yukaki climbed down. They first heard the violent sounds of splintering wood and then saw the rooms flood with yellow light. Kanji ran down the stairs. She took a gnarled staff from behind her desk and rammed the bronze bell. A rush of feet sounded and several of her guards stood in front of her. “After them!” She cried. As the men crossed the double doors, Kanji stood in the doorway, unable to leave.

Meanwhile, Osamu and Kiyoko had safely reached the ground and so they ran down the roads that appeared before them, afraid of everything they saw. Osamu looked into the sky that he once knew and recognized his unbecoming. He knew his time had reached its end, but he could not bear to go just yet. What was the meaning of all this, he wondered. Where was his purpose in this and why was he made to suffer so? What world was this for such pain and agony? With a monumental breath he pushed his qualms deep into his chest, and holding his sister’s hand he ran through the night until they reached the town’s pier and ran toward the moored rowboat.

“Get on! I’ll unfasten it.”

As Osamu unwound the rope, the men set foot on the pier.

“Stop! You go no further.”

Osamu flung himself at their swords. He slashed at their flesh, punctured their bodies, sapped their forces and willpower. He leaped onto the rowboat. He had just lifted an oar when an arrow punctured his torso. Kiyoko let out a scream. Osamu dropped to his knees and told Kiyoko to get down. Together they huddled low at the boat’s side as arrows flew above them and slipped into the river. As the current took them, they drifted out of range. Osamu touched his chest: his lung had been punctured. Blood left his mouth, the bitter taste of iron and victory. The current took them away and they drifted through the lonely night. Kiyoko sat with Osamu’s head on her lap. She spoke to her brother. Reminded him of the fields where she had chased him, of the season when their family’s sheep gave birth, of the day their mother had passed. She looked at the sides of the river bank and related to Osamu the silhouettes of the great trees. She lied and related leaping deer and roaming bears. A giant toad had croaked at them. A crane was perched on their boat. Beside the rowboat, moonlike fish had emerged. She looked over the side and had seen an opaque fish gliding through the obscure dark. One had glided alone until it was joined by another, then another, until several dozen swum beneath them. Osamu lay still. He felt his heartbeat slow. He heard his sister’s stories become cries. He did his best to console her, but she sounded further and further away.

He felt himself floating, warm and calm. His breathing stopped and he remembered his sister’s eyes, the grass they had played in, the spaces they had run. He stood beside her watching the sun rise into the sky. The light warmed his skin. The earth told him it had seen this all before. He felt the end approach; he reached for Kiyoko’s hand but couldn’t find her. He turned his head but couldn’t see her. Tight panic overcame him; he flailed his arms and kicked his legs. Where was she? But then in the unfathomable dark, he encountered her warm body. He had found her. She was there. All was fine. Kiyoko wept over her brother as the mournful moon ascended the sky.

Far downstream a priest woke for his morning prayer. He walked out of his bedroom into the night. He breathed in the air and left the courtyard for the river bank. Dawn would soon arrive and with it would come the pure light of day. He was excited for another warm day. Before he closed his eyes he saw a rowboat drifting aimlessly down the river. He readied his prayers but was soon on his knees, fast asleep. He dreamt of glowing fish.