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1. Passus et sepultus est
It was a long-forgotten familiar thing, the struggle against every word that came out of his mouth. In a way, the challenge was welcome. Feeling uncertainty about the outcome of an event was like flexing his hands after having spent hours writing cramped script: he had to learn how to move his fingers again.
“It’s best… to go like this…” His mouth breathed against his will. “I’m… so sorry… I’ve been so useless…”
He fought. He fought against the words, against the tears that came to his eyes though nothing had been said that could touch him, against the determination and the gratefulness that kept this body from him.
You’re a coward. You’re nothing. Nobody needs you. He thought hatefully to counter the strength coming in from outside, and when that didn’t work, he tried to scream. Let me out!
“Please go,” his lips said, and his eyes defied the distraction of pain to watch the girl nod and disappear from his field of vision.
“Please go,” they said again, and, “Don’t worry about me…”
“We’ll stay by you,” promised a deep, masculine voice.
He tried to wrench control away from the other person in this body. What kind of idiot was determined to die? No matter what—no matter what—you should always try to live. Living is the main thing, the only important thing. If you can just stay alive, anything is possible.
I want to live.
“Tell everyone… thank you…”
2. Natum ante omnia sæcula
The floor was tiled with marble; somebody was wearing a blue hat; he cried when he learned he had been wrong about something. One night he fell out of bed on purpose, to see what it felt like, and somebody came running to see if he was injured. Details faded around the edges; all this was before he knew that he should make an effort to remember things. And so he didn’t remember to whom the blue hat belonged—things like that were never important in the first place—but he remembered the grass that grew under the sea where only the whales could swim, and a hundred first kisses, and the exhaustion of childbirth.
Kutou was a magnificent country in those days, with hundreds of nations paying tribute to an emperor who reigned with the splendor of the sun. He was conducting a secret campaign against Hokkan, and hundreds of proud soldiers went to their glorious deaths at the whimsy of a single imperial thought. There was no debauchery, no waste, no weakness—men were hard and cruel and stern.
When he remembered the past, he saw that memory was a poor guide to truth.
~*~
“…Soi, Suboshi, and Tomo.”
He looked up at his grandfather from his place on the floor. “When?”
“Soon, since you’re here,” said the old man. “Within your lifetime—and maybe even within mine.”
He stroked the boy’s hair. “We have waited for this! I’m so proud of you, and,” he said, glancing across the room at the young man who stood by the door, “I know your parents are, too.”
The boy wrinkled his nose. “I guess this is a pretty important job?”
Grandfather nodded. “We’re depending on you,” he said sternly. “You’ll have to take good care of yourself and grow up to be a dependable, ethical man.”
“I will,” said the boy. “I’ll be amazing! I’m the monster-tamer! If people try to hurt our priestess, I’ll make the monsters kill them!”
He looked over at his father for reassurance. There was no disguising the relief the man had felt when it was discovered that the demons that trailed his son were reacting to a celestial power rather than enacting a curse.
Beaming at the approval, the boy hopped up onto his feet. “I bet I’ll be the first one to find her! Probably, we’ll get married. When I’m a hero, everyone will tell stories about me, like they do about the Lady of Ch’iao Kuo.”
The grown-ups laughed, which both pleased and irritated the boy. He stamped his foot, eager to be taken seriously.
“I’ll get better and better until the day I find her,” he insisted.
At least, that was the way Miboshi remembered it.
~*~
Not even when he had learned to read did he manage to find a book that could answer his most important questions. The true mysteries of life remain hidden, even to a man who lives a hundred years and memorizes the accumulated wisdom of his ancestors.
~*~
“Hey,” Xia Qi whispered. “Are you still awake?”
“Mmfph.” He rolled over to face her. “Yeah...”
“I’m sorry I woke you.” Her cheeks would have been red if he could have seen them. “I really didn’t mean to—“
“No, I was awake,” he said cheerfully, but quietly enough that he wouldn’t disturb his brother and sister-in-law across the hall. “What did you need?”
“Nothing,” said Xia Qi. She took a deep breath and set her face. “It’s just that I’ve been so busy the last few weeks, and you’re always asleep before I get to bed, so I…” She struggled for words, embarrassed. “I mean, I miss, um, snuggling with you.”
He laughed, but it was kind laughter. Pulling her close, he said, “I’ve missed it, too.”
It was very dark, and his eyes were too tired to stay open, but he knew her expression.
~*~
He buried two sons and lay on his bed with aching joints, wondering, When is she coming? And then, How will she summon the god if I die before she arrives?
“Chen Fai Chi!” roared the yāoguài. “Come and learn the secret of eternal life!”
All knowledge, it is said, is a gift from the gods. A man must chose the lesser of two evils; when the fate of an entire country hangs in the balance, of what worth is the pitiful soul of one small, broken child?
3. Sedet ad dexteram
“I’m scared!” The priestess was crying. “It’s like the world is moving without my knowledge, and I’m losing one person after another!”
The shogun held her and whispered sweet, poisonous words. “As long as you do as I say, everything will be fine. You have nothing to fear… because I love you.”
People get hurt because they take stupid risks. This is the way the world works: the foolish stumble into danger, and then they die. In this manner, the weak are culled from the human race. Thus, the sun remembers to rise and to set, and the pillars of the earth are able to hold up the sky. All things are the same; there is nothing new; everything continues to continue continuing, and life and death blend into one another.
“You can’t compete against a priestess, can you, Soi?” Hundreds of years couldn’t erase the relish he took in destroying illusions, but the awareness that he caused pain by doing so was an additional pleasure. Soi was old enough to know better than to believe in things like lasting happiness.
All around them, happiness had shattered and was shattering. A hand reached out of the darkness and covered the Priestess of Suzaku’s mouth. Across the temple, “The mouse has fallen into my trap,” said the shogun, although no words were spoken to inform him. Nakago simply knew.
A light flared. He grinned. The Priestess of Suzaku opened her mouth to shriek, but no sound came from her throat. Her hands reached up to touch her neck, as though it were possible to feel what was wrong. She couldn’t even scream with pain when the shogun’s fist landed in her stomach.
The prayer wheel spun.
“You look like you’re enjoying yourself, Miboshi,” said Nakago, his arms folded across his chest as usual. “Hundreds of monks controlled by one man.”
“It’s wonderful,” he answered, not bothering to conceal his delight. Another thing time had not managed to erase was the heady feeling accompanying power. “The followers come to give money and offerings, and even the emperor reveres me.” He paused, affecting a moment of thought. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to allow Her Eminence to be around the Priestess of Suzaku?”
The shogun just laughed.
Nakago kissed three people that day—but he only kissed them. Tsk. He was old enough to know better than to respect the memory of the dead.
4. Et homo factus est
Eternal life is eternal suffering.
Eventually, you learn everything there is to know. Eventually, you’ve done everything there is to do—even things you might have thought beneath you—even things you yourself would call unethical or immoral. After all, how are you to understand evil, really understand it, if you’ve never experienced it yourself?
And then the evil you do naturally has consequences, and you have to go on living, on and on, watching the people you love suffer for your sins, and all the places you think are beautiful crumble, and all the people in your life fail and falter. There is never, never any rest, and you beg for death, but it doesn’t come. At last all that exists is the endless repetition of memory, until you’re not sure what really happened or whether reality even exists.
After you’ve been everyone there is to be, you deserve the opportunity to die.
~*~
Vines and tails and tentacles tied up everything, and no matter how hard the enemy fought, he would lose. Time fought against him, and his decrepit body paid for every minute of vitality with a year of life. The human body is a frail thing—so why allow yourself to be limited by the weakness of the aging human form when life can be extended indefinitely, always in the choicest flesh?
He only had to live long enough.
Nakago held out a hand for the Priestess of Seiryuu. “Preparations for the summoning ceremony are nearly complete.”
5. Judicare vivos et mortuos
A seed fell. Their bodies died within moments of one another. Tatara’s soul left for the afterworld willingly, and Miboshi’s self also left willingly. Children were so easy to possess.
The new legs weren’t as flexible, and he tried out the arms, eager to see what new things he could do. This body was vulnerable—but the prayer wheel still came to his hand, as he had known it would, and it began to spin.
It was pathetic that the best way to distract his opponents was by taunting a little girl.
She had no voice, yet he could hear her calling to him. Can you hear me? Please. Listen to me. You can’t give up! You can’t! Not to him! Fight him! Fight!!
Nothing could shut her out.
In the end, there were simply too many of them. It was unreasonable to expect him to concentrate on subduing his own body while fighting off the forces of Suzaku—not to mention the two Byakko warriors. Perhaps Nakago had never intended for him to succeed. In fact, success was not required; he only had to hold them off long enough.
The earth shook at his command. The wind obeyed him. Hell itself opened and sent forth its most terrifying servants. But her voice went on and on in his head, and the other person in the body seized his moment of distraction to scream, “Tasuki!! Burn me!!”
He tore control back into his own grasp and spread his arms, the wheel spinning.
“I don’t… want him to win!” said his body without his permission.
I don’t want you to win, either, he thought maliciously. And I’m stronger than you.
Yet the sharp end of the prayer wheel cut into his skin, parting muscle from bone.
Let go of me.
You’re not going anywhere.
A child can’t kill me!!
I’ll die, and you with me.
“I’ll heal you,” said a dark-haired man, already bent over him.
Let me out.
“You mustn’t,” his body said in a very small voice. His eyes pinched closed with pain. “If you do… you’ll end up saving… this monster within me…”