Archive of Our Own

This mountain is holding its breath.

Ginko can’t seem to catch his own breath in the oppressive air of the dense darkness around him and he stops to shake the tightness out of his chest, his neck, his limbs. The vicious rain all around his coat-cocoon has begun to seep into his coat-cocoon, and he uses the sensation to imagine it washing away the unfamiliar tension that has also seeped into his mind. The deeper he ventures into this unwelcoming territory, the more ominous he feels. Ginko, like everything and everyone in this mountain is waiting for something, like one waits for the tree to tilt after the saws fall silent.

He almost wishes that something might just happen to make sense of the unrest. He wants to equilibrate it, as much for the villagers in the valley below as for the mountain and himself. He’s not quite sure if it’s the presence or the lack of something that makes him constantly want to turn around and check for it. All the same he knows that in a night that’s only illuminated by lightning here and there, and with the deafening roar of water and wind encompassing him, his instincts and his intuition will serve him better than his senses. But those, too, have failed him in his quest to find this mountain’s new guardian so far.

‘By now, I would welcome its presence’, Kumado said of the Forbidden Mushi. I don’t want the world to fall into chaos, but I now understand what he meant. States are never steady. Everything that’s order and equilibrium strives towards entropy. Out of chaos, a new order will eventually emerge.

Where in this cycle is this mountain?

On this matter, the tumultuous mountain somehow maintains its silence, as if it’s not its place to speak. Its supposed new-fledged lord, too, stays mum.

Does a mountain lord command its creatures to act a certain way? Or does the creatures’ behavior command the master’s actions?

Ginko knows such musings are best left alone but finds himself drawn to them with the curiosity of a fox cub exploring a bristling hedgehog. He’ll gladly pay the price of a bloody nose to deepen his understanding of this primordial neighboring world. He knows it makes him a better mushishi, and a better person.

Origin, causality, and consequence are illusions in the circle of existence and expiration. Everything that is comes from a state where it wasn’t and if it wasn’t there – it had to be someplace else.

The River of Light snakes beneath him, clear as day in the pitch-black night.

So where are you, mountain lord?

He’s hesitant to make use of the mugura, be it or not the go-to method to seek out an elusive mountain lord. But the fox won’t hunt for mice while the owl hunts for the fox and as he once more turns his gaze back down the almost non-existent path he’s been battling he’s feeling hunted.

I’m not the only one. The dead animals I found along the way didn’t die of natural causes. I couldn’t determine their cause of death, and hopefully I won’t find out.

For now, he’ll search for the animal without the help of the mountain, keeping cold ears and overstrained eyes open for any sign of its presence. But his squishing trudge through the mud soon turns into haphazard sliding on slimy, decaying blankets of leaves that were shed before their time and ends abruptly with him on his behind. That’s when Ginko gives up for the night. If there had been a mountain lord’s path here, it’s long gone. Looking back, his own footprints have already given their little ridges and furrows back to the soaked earth. He’s mastered an impressive indifference to inclement weather from a young age, but right now he’s cold. No, he’s freezing.  And he won’t be of any help to the new ruler of this mountain if he’s dead.

No mountain lord in their right mind would be out in this weather, either. Still, if the mountain lord needed my help, wouldn’t they let me know, somehow? Is that what the mountain is waiting for?

Then again, the turtle let me run around in circles on his winter-locked mountain for quite a while before he set its oroshibue on me. Kaya told me to get lost even as I offered to help her. And the only help Mujika knew to call was a huge, predatory snake that took him away. I may be waiting for something that never comes.

Can mountain lords be haughty?

No. That wouldn’t be in the best interest of the mountain. Only humans act in their own best interest.

The treacherous torrent he now wades through mirrors the one running down his back and by the time he finds a more or less dry hollow to crawl into on all fours, he wishes someone would wring him out like he then does with his shirt, his pants, even his shoes. It’s an abandoned bear den, but high enough to sit in – if crouching can be considered sitting – and its opening is protected from the flood outside by a natural roof of roots and vines. There’s no sign of the mountain lord here either, unless the funky-looking mushroom in the very back is the new chosen one. There are, however, signs of its former occupant in the form of long-dried bear faeces. The watari have taught him a long time ago that these make excellent fire starters, and with the dry twigs and pillows of moss scattered around, he gets a meagre, smoky fire going that is barely able to roast the sweet chestnuts, wild parsnips, and plump grubs he’s picked up along the way.

With his dripping coat hung across the entrance to keep the icy drafts out and the fire’s heat in, he’s surprised at how cosy and warm this tiny place is. He thinks of sunbathing blackbirds, resting with their wings and tails splayed out across hot rocks to let the summer heat take care of the mites in their feathers. He doesn’t think he has mites, but if he had feathers, he would spread them out now. He settles for reclining back against the dry moss behind him, but his mind will not rest with him.

The turmoil of the mountain – does it represent the turmoil of its guardian animal?

There’s nothing I can do about it tonight.

Ginko gently nudges his attention from the urge to find the animal to the turmoil in his own tired body. Breathing comes easier in here and finally he manages to let go some of his uneasiness. But then he lets go too much and loses the grasp on his thoughts. There’s not enough room for them to take proper flight, so they flicker and flit along together with the tongues of the flames and the shadows they are throwing on the earthy walls.

Whenever I meddled with a mountain lord’s affairs in the past, the outcome was not what I hoped. I couldn’t keep Mujika from being consumed by the kuchinawa. I couldn’t keep Kaya from returning both her human life and her mountain lord existence to the natural order.

There was nothing I could do then, either.

He thought he’d accepted that long ago and casts the regret like a skipping stone into a flat, shoreless lake in his mind.  He feels it bounces a few times on the smooth surface before it gives into the water’s pull and sinks towards a dark and calm place deep down, never to be touched by him again.

For all my efforts and offers, there was nothing to achieve. No, that’s not true. They showed me what an inhuman burden the mountain lord duty is to us men. And I made my case with the mushi banquet. I made their case. Without them, human children would still be chosen as mountain lords by those obstinate glowing… things.

Thank you Mujika, Kaya, for your sacrifice.

He’ll keep the weight of their fate in close reach always, to draw on like his cigarettes when his hopes threaten to consume him. Tonight though, his cigarettes are soggy, and he tosses a couple of them into the fire to disseminate their effect.

Hope… another human trait. There’s a difference between hoping and hoping for someone else. Was it ever my place to act on my own hopes and keep Mujika trapped in his painful half-life? Let alone offer Kaya the experience of being a normal girl, a sister, a daughter…

Can a desire to help be selfish?

Ginko knows he already encountered the grossest example of his own selfishness when as a kid he’d picked up and subsequently dropped the new mountain lord’s egg. He had to watch the ancient serow calmly walk into the komyakou, realizing that its strength, given back to the mountain’s vitality could never help hatch the new mountain lord. It had lain dying in his hands as his pleas to the mushi banquet to trade his life for the bird lord’s had been refused. Like the precious egg, his heart suffered a crack that night that no self-forgiveness and toleration by the Natural Order would ever be able to fully heal.

All creatures pursue life without distinction, so all life is sacred without distinction. With all my actions I’m trying to preserve this life and its balance. Would that even be possible without hope?

‘All a mountain lord does is obey’, Kaya said. But Kaya, don’t we all?

A crack of thunder vibrates the ground all around him and sends his thought-wisps scampering around the cave like a flock of panicked bats. He takes this opportunity to think about what he’s thinking about.

Will questioning my past concerns with mountain lords really help this one in the present?

Yet, the only time he can think of where he’d made a positive difference in a mountain lord’s life was when a mountain lord had meddled with him. Ginko shakes his head and smiles. Preserving him in a swamp like a pickle and pilfering his kouki supply – he hadn’t thought the sly old turtle capable of it.

Maybe this time, there’ll be a way we both can have a say in it. Maybe I can help this mountain lord for their sake and that of their mountain, not for my hopes and jealousies.

As soon as I find the mountain lord.

~~~~~~~

The tense atmosphere of the woods outside reprieves him in here and soon his bat-thoughts start dripping from the ceiling like the water droplets from his coat. His exhaustion makes him sluggish, and he’s not inclined to pick them back up. In here he’s in no danger of freezing to death tonight, so he invites sleep to claim him. But just as his eye droops closed, something moves in the little overgrown alcove opposite the fire.

Groggily he sits back up. Between the dirt, the roots and the sort of alien plants that shun the light and thrive where most creatures wither, he can’t make out anything but more pebbles overgrown with moss. Then he sees it again, barely distinguishable from the green backdrop in the dimness of his burnt-down fire.

One of the brighter mossy pebbles is moving, maybe rolling. Or scurrying.

What the-

His curiosity wins out over his sleepiness and he jumps up, over the fire and quickly cups his hands over the little green ball. It starts squeaking and squirming and a short, mostly hairless tail is wriggling between his fingers.

Just a mouse and a trick of the light then. Or…

He picks up the tail and lifts the unruly rodent into the light, which makes it fidget and screech even more. And marvels. The critter is, in fact, green. The moss on its back hadn’t been his tired imagination. Small germ buds are timidly poking their way out of it as if yet unsure of their new habitat. The mouse’s head is adorned by a fragile purple iris blossom.

“Eeeh?! This can’t be right! A shrew mouse?! The law of nature agreed to never again let human children shoulder the burden of the mountains – and here they are entrusting this mountain to a mou-”

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the mossy knoll wiggling once more before a bunch of even smaller moss-mice come tumbling out. Each of them is endued with their own colorful blossom.

“-a family of mice?!”

In his bewilderment he’s forgotten about the presumed mother of the lot and remembers her only now that she buries sharp teeth in his thumb. Startled, Ginko lets go of her tail.

“Ow! Excuse me… uh… mous…ntain lord…”

Still clinging on with her teeth, she’s dangling from his finger like a green plum in an early summer breeze. He supports her with the palm of his other hand and she lets go and settles on it. They eye each other curiously for a long while and Ginko can’t help himself but find her quite dainty rather than dignified. The fuzz-ball wiggles its pointy nose and as the long whiskers twitch, so do the corners of Ginko’s mouth. He’s never had the chance to study a mouse this up-close before, but he finds a cleverness in her dark, shiny eyes that entrances him and makes him wonder if he’s misjudged their intelligence up until now.

The mouse, too, seems to be musing about the nature of men, as she cocks her head and gives a quiet trill.

“How complex even the smallest beings turn out to be. You know, Kumado called me absurd for seeing mushi as something worth sympathizing with. He’s to be pitied, don’t you think? Never seeing beyond the practical and missing the beauty and the- hey!”

The juveniles are clambering up the insides of his pants and, when he tries to dislodge them, opt for his shirt sleeves instead. Tiny claws turn into pins and needles on his skin as they shimmy their way up to his shoulders. They pop up out of his collar and more or less make their way towards their mother. One goes right into his other sleeve. One clings to the underside of it. Another is hanging on with only its tail. Two are wrangling to ensconce themselves on top of the other one. The ridiculous little spectacle absorbs him enough to be ignorant of one small renegade at first. At length, he picks the last one out of his hair and puts it next to the biggest mouse. It’s the runt of the litter, but one big yellow blossom covers almost the entire creature like a miniscule sun. It seems to shine right into his heart, worn out tonight by the dreadful mountain and its atrocious ambience, and warms it with a happiness he didn’t know he’d lost along the way.

“So you lot are the new master…s of this mountain?” He inspects the curious line-up on his am. Next to the purple iris and the golden sunflower, there’s a mouse adorned with an orange glowing freesia and a red poppy mouse, one decorated with a daffodil and one with a crest of pink sweet peas. A trail of turquoise morning glories twines over the last one’s head, back and tail.

“I guess delegation and distribution are key when you’re this small on this big a mountain. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. That’s what it takes to supplant a human child, hm. Maybe I ought to have another talk with the Law of Nature.”

But then he shakes his head as if his presumptions might fall out like more clingy critters.

The Law of Nature may not understand the nature of men. They’ve treated all living beings equally in the past. But as humans we are fallible. It’s no wonder they were confused by the consequences of choosing Kaya as a lord.

But the Natural Order knows itself. Creating and ending, being and fading. Maybe Kumado was right. There is something archaic and plain about it. Do humans still fit into this arrangement? After all, we have our own laws.

The peculiar posse looks at him expectantly.

“But for now, your laws shall be mine as well. I am a guest here, after all.”

On closer inspection, he finds them to be a bit on the scrawny side. He tries to feed them the rest of his roasted maggots which they reject.

“You want the good stuff, I see.” Ginko sets his hand down and the family climb down one by one to gather around a small saucer he’s put out. He pours his last drops of kouki into it and offers it to them. Seven tiny tongues eagerly lap it up and soon the kouki’s glow spills over and the critters themselves begin to shine like a little mushi banquet with tails. Their flowers’ dazzling gleam reminds him of fireworks in the warm night breeze of a summer festival.

“That’s better. Though you should be able to nourish yourselves. What’s up with you? Are you stuck?”

But he knows shrews and mice to have vast tunnel systems underground, often spanning an entire mountain. There had to be hundreds of entries and exits. Plus, they could always burrow themselves to the surface somewhere else.

“Are you lost?”

He could swear the adult mouse shakes her head.

“Figured. You and your kin should know this mountain better than anyone.”

So you’re here voluntarily. Or are you?

“Are you hiding in here?”

Like a horse’s croup beset by a swarm of flies, a ripple goes through the whole group that makes their moss-fur bristle and passes right over to Ginko, making him shudder.

If the most powerful mushi in the region are afraid, there must be a cause.

He has his back turned on the entrance of his little cavern, but at the realization he whips around. Nothing’s there.

The mountain is holding its breath. It’s expecting danger, a threat these recent mice-masters are no match for yet. A threat that made even me feel hunted.

“But something in here keeps you safe… and me as well, I hope.”

Mushi form their own strange alliances and treaties. Assuming the root of my small charges’ plight is of a mushi nature, the remedy should be as well.

He looks around and his gaze follows the iris mouse to the gooey mushroom in its little hidden nook, where she stops and stands up. It looks like a purple ink cap on its last oozing leg and now, after a closer inspection, it has mushi written all over its slimy folds and flabby scales.

He’s loath to touch it for more reason than one.

‘If I act now, I can make its power mine.’ Is that really what I was thinking back then? By the time I realized my arrogance, it was too late. The moment I picked up the new mountain lord’s egg, Suguro’s mountain was doomed. What am I supposed to do with this creature?

His entourage relocate from the kouki dish to surround the dubious toadstool with squeaky excitement.

Make its power theirs.

As he pokes the cap with his finger, he half expects it to make a noise or start scooching away, but all it does is dissolve into a gloopy heap.

“That bodes well. Unless there’s another of those around, I don’t see how…”

Ginko remembers something the old man from the watari had first taught him: The visible mushroom, the part above the ground, is merely a fungus’ reproductive organ, its fruiting body bearing its spores to help the fungus spread across the ground.

Isaza had made a comment about how the size of mushrooms mattered that had gone right over Ginko’s cluesless head at the time but had earned Isaza a slap to the back of his. A grin splits Ginko’s face as he now understands the joke but then he eyes the sad remains of the purple cap and stipe and just like that it’s gone.

Anyway. Fungi are ones of the biggest organisms on earth, their mycelium can spread through whole landscapes. And their gigantic networks serve as a means of delivery between pieces of woodlands, sharing connections, information, nutrients…

He looks from the waiting moss mouse mother to the mushroomy mess.

From one single mushroom a whole world can form, underground, convoluted and manifold, creating many more mushrooms in the process… delegation and distribution.

An idea slowly comes together from his entangled thoughts. Carefully he digs around the mushroom’s mushy corpse and discovers a delicate mesh of mycelium. It’s small still, no bigger than the size of both his hands – the otherworldly mushroom must be as new as its protégées.

“If this mycelium keeps whatever’s out there away from the cave, on a larger scale it should keep the threat away from the mountain, so you guys can commence your duty as mountain lords in safety. All we need to do is form a ring around the mountain side with this stuff. That should act as a barrier until the fungus’s had time to form a proper network.”

He’s mostly talking to himself, but his blossomy troupe, now gathered around the purple gunk, is listening intently. Ginko starts to pull the fragile weave from the ground, leaving a small part of it connected to its former fruit and then breaks it into pieces small enough for the mice to carry. He creates a small pile in the hopes that his micey lords will be busy distributing the precious material underneath the forest’s every glade and grove, into every hollow, onto every hill for the rest of the night. The mother mouse must’ve already left, because it’s nowhere in sight when he watches the rest of them set off in all directions with their small mouths stuffed with the purple tufts.

Looking around his hidey-hole, again he ponders his role in helping this mountain and its mighty mice.

“Hang on. You could’ve done all of this yourself! What did you even need me for!”

Then the significance of his presence for this little flower family dawns on him.

 “Ah. You need a bait to distract this mystery mushi from you and your children.”

Your mountain, your rules. Just don’t make me hibernate in a swamp.

With a sense of foreboding, Ginko steps back into his cold and squishy shoes and packs up his mushishi paraphernalia. He does a double take when he spots the biggest piece on the mycelium pile slowly inching away from him. When he lifts it, the sunflower mouse is dangling from the underside, teeth buried in the stuff, legs flailing about.

“You don’t have to do this all on your own, you know. Why do you think these Law-of-Nature-guys created your brothers and sisters? Have a little faith in their madne-, their method.”

But as he detaches the determined moss ball from the clump to send it on its way with a much more suitable piece, he scoffs at his own pretentiousness.

Here I am, telling a mouse to trust the Natural Order when it’s me that’s questioning it. Maybe this time I’ll get to see their reasoning. Now that I’ve found the mountain lord.

He pushes his coat-curtain aside to test the waters – literally as it turns out – because he’s greeted by a veritable waterfall rushing down from the natural overhang outside his little cave. What lies beyond can’t be much drier.

“I’ve had worse. Though it’s been some time since I had to say this.”

~~~~~~~

He drapes his frigid coat over both his box and himself as best he can and leaves the relative cosiness for the blustery madness outside.

It takes about ten steps until it gives in to the pelting of the merciless downpour and he’s once more acquainted with the feeling of water running down to the waistband of his pants and beyond. As before, he tries to turn his attention outwards, but has a hard time of it.

My coat works as a tent. I can hear every single blop reverberating in my head… like distant hammer blows echoing through a valley. But I can’t hear anything out there. Guess there’s nothing for it.

Against his every instinct and reason, he pulls the garment from his head and immediately recoils at the sensation of the icy tapping on his skull. His senses get flooded with the pure volume of the rain’s roaring and he wants to cover his ears.

This is worse.

If one drop of water falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it – does it make a sound? It must be because millions of them build up to this deafening commotion. It’s like I told Maho. The mushi’s voices amount to one big racket, while inaudible of their own. Like him, I can’t make out anything. Just one tremendous hissing… Hissing?!

The hissing isn't coming from all around him; it’ s coming from behind. The wet hair in his neck still manages to stand on end and for a moment he’s frozen in place with the primal fear of being prey rather than predator. The pounding of his heart in his ears joins the pounding of a billion tiny droplets on leaves, on roots, on puddles, on each other, on one unfortunate human. This fear of the unknown won’t pass until he turns around and faces the threat, he knows. Ginko does so exceedingly slowly, and the seconds stretch like the endless night with its infinite moons he experienced as a kid.

It's only his exceptional vision in the dark that's allowed him to clamber about a pitchblack mountain the way he has and that allows him now to behold a beautiful leopard cat further down the precarious path. Ginko recognizes its energy as that of a mountain lord immediately, even if he can’t see the glow or the ferns. What he can see is that it’s about four times the size it should be. And before he can launch half a thought as to the cause, he sees it barrelling straight towards him. He takes the blink of an eye to acknowledge the peril he’s in.

Has a mushi ever directly attacked a human like this? Let alone a mountain lord - the mediator between humankind and the rest of the biosphere? Is that part of the natural order?

It's this second that he'd have needed to dodge the giant cat’s pounce and in another blink of his eye he’s pummelled to the ground, right onto his cabinet. The impact knocks the wind out of him and with the cat’s full weight now pinning him down, he’s truly immobilized.

‘We’re just stronger’ I told that weird watahiko-child-thing. I may have been wrong.

The pounding of his heart in his ears is replaced by an impossibly loud growl that drowns out even the rain, the storm, the thunder. It reverberates through the whole mountain like an earthquake. His field of vision consists solely of long, pointy fangs now and he expects them to sink deep into his neck, when a blinding light shoots out from the collar of his shirt. He has to close his eye against the overwhelming glow and when he opens it again, the blazing ball has jumped from his shoulder onto the beast’s face.

Ginko squints against the brightness and the rain and can just about make out the shape of a tiny shrew mouse inside the shine – the rightful lord of the mountain. Its fierce shrieking stands out against the furious roar of the leopard cat lord as it chomps down on its sensitive nose. The feline throws its head from side to side in agony but the little critter clings on firmly, just as it had on Ginko’s finger. He can only watch the spectacle, in awe of the mouse’s bravery and defiance, quite literally in the face of danger. But then the predator lifts one massive paw and strikes itself in the face, half-crushing Ginko’s little savior and flinging the injured mountain lord down the side of the track.

“NO!” Ginko wants to jump to his feet, catch the precious animal, keep it safe but is still being weighed down by his box and pinned down by the cat. Somehow it seems to have gotten even bigger and heavier. Blood from its mangled nose drips down onto Ginko’s face, but those droplets he can’t hear at all. The cat stares into his eye with a viciousness no mushi should be able to muster. But he won’t let the mouse lord’s fight be in vain, so he glares back.

“This mountain has learned to protect itself now. I suggest you leave, before either the mice or the mushrooms catch up to you.”

The cat’s face creeps even closer, their noses almost touching now, and if Ginko had any air left, he’d hold his breath. He’s no match for the beast and he’s not sure reasoning will do him any good here. But then the animal snarls one last time, and with Ginko the whole mountain flinches in fear. Then it’s gone. He hears the creature gallop down the path, and the thuds of its huge paws remind him of distant hammer blows, echoing through the valley.

The blackness, the storm, and the rapid patter from above have become his constant companions on his quest, yet being surrounded by them now leaves him feeling forlorn and strangely untethered. He breathes in. He breathes out. The aftermath of the horrid happenings washes over him in one big wave of disbelief and terror. He lets it. Then he lets it go like a little leaf-and-bark raft in a creek. A wave of relief follows and that he holds onto.

Still, it takes him longer than it should to calm his breathing and his heart and once he succeeds, they feel almost too sedate, like he wouldn’t be able to animate them now, even if he wanted to. He struggles out of the straps of his pack, then to his feet with the help of the nearest tree. But he feels so faint he needs to lean against it and lock his knees to keep upright.

I don’t have time for being in shock. I need to find the mountain lord.

It’s his luck that the mouse lord must be somewhere below him because he can't imagine taking one step up the mountain in this wretched state. He strains his eye to find any trace of a glow amidst the underbrush and creepers, the trickles and the carpet of leaf mush but has trouble focussing. Maybe it’s only the dark, or maybe he’s hit his head on his cabinet when the cat plowed into him. Finally, he spots a faint golden shimmer under a pathetic patch of thimbleweed and falls, skids, and topples his way towards it. He picks up too much momentum to stop in time and does have to fight his way back up to where the mossy mouse lies motionless.

Ginko picks the fragile being up with the utmost care and cradles it in his hands. She’s glowing but it’s getting fainter. The ferns are already wilting. And once more he’s forced to realize:

There’s nothing I can do.

“Why is it always like this?” he whispers to the dying mountain lord. The mountain lord lifts her head and looks at him, entirely too understanding, entirely too at peace. She gives one feeble peep, that, if he cares to listen, sings ‘It’s going to be alright.’

Then the small being in his hand goes slack and its golden aura flickers out.

But Ginko doesn’t listen. Instead, he listens to the horrendous crack in his mind as the mountain lord egg from long ago reverts him into a child again, calling for Suguro, crying as he’s carrying the broken, leaking egg who-knows-where. Desperate to undo what he hadn’t meant to happen. His memory carries him all the way back to the disembodied hands that accept the destroyed mountain lord from him and gently request him to leave.

A crack of thunder takes Ginko back to his present self. He’ll never know why the mushi banquet allowed him to live that night, but he knows not to question it. He won’t question the mouse’s reasoning either.

“You saved my life. So the least I can do is to trust you.”

Ginko’s face feels hot even as the merciless wind wraps its icy claws around him like a spider’s thread around its prey. It makes it hard to move but he gingerly strokes one finger over the mouse’s soft head and ears.

“Thank you, my little friend.”

If Kumado was able of actual emotions, he’d have the time of his life… watching me grieve for a mushi.

But Ginko has more pressing problems than wondering what the Minai mushishi would or wouldn’t do: He can feel his limbs growing heavier and number than even the cold has rendered them. The worrying sensation spreads from within him, from below his belly button. Something vital and warm has disappeared, as if a furled cat had jumped from his lap and left him craving its body heat.

And as he slumps face-first into the mucky forest ground, still holding on softly to the lifeless, lightless mouse, he comes to understand:

The cat lord wasn’t simply after my life and that of the mice – it was eating my life energy. That’s how it sustains itself on a mountain that isn’t theirs: preying on the vital force of its inhabitants. If the mouse hadn’t intervened, I’d not only be dead, but the leopard cat would’ve grown even bigger. And more powerful. It would surely attack more humans.

With a heart that won’t beat as fast as Ginko needs it to, lungs that take too long to draw too-short breaths and the last of his adrenaline now gone, so is every hope of getting back into shelter tonight.

Am I going to melt and seep into the ground like that mushroom that gave its life to its mycelium and the mice? 

He's aware of his eye closing and that he may never open it again.

Maybe this isn’t death. Maybe I’ll just cease to be myself. Like Mujika. Like Kaya. ‘ I'll simply return to the arrangement that connects the mountain, life and nature's law.’, that’s what she said.

He’s content with the thought.

And if I wake up… another mountain lord will be gone and I’ll be alive.

He passes out before he can evaluate this sentiment.

~~~~~~~

But Ginko doesn’t fade away into his surroundings – it’s rather them that keep fading in and out of his unconsciousness. His dreams are overrun by an inrush of scratchy, screeching critters. Rustling, scampering, bustling about. Darting all over him and around him. They wriggle their way into his mind, into his skin, his everything, and in his more lucid moments he wonders if he should have ever touched that mushroom.

Are the mice taking my body away? Am I being scattered all over this mountain, too? Am I turning into mushrooms?!

Sometime later, though he doesn’t know if hours or days have passed in his delirium, Ginko gets an impression of being buried, if not alive, then in whatever liminal state he exists in right now. Things aren’t being taken away – things are added, by something even smaller than hallucinatory mice feet. At long last, the feeling of being at the mercy of some micey mischief gives way to a vague sense of aloneness. Yet, when a deep sleep finally drowns his tired body and even wearier mind, fantastic flowers and radiant blossoms fill his dreams. 

~~~~~~~

Cheeky sprinkles of sunlight find their way through the forest’s roof, freshly shingled with bright green leaves. Their restless shadow-play on Ginko’s face pulls him out of his comatose state and his spirit strives towards this bright promise of life, just like any primordial mushi – even without eyes - will. However, his eye won’t open, so he listens. To his breath, to his heart – sure and steady like a sōzu in a quiet dawn garden. Tok… tok… tok… He listens to whatever surrounds him. He listens to his thoughts.

Is it morning? Is there such a thing here? Where am I? Am I, still? The smell of wet earth, of rain still hanging in the air, birdsong… leaves fluttering in the wind… leaves rustling on the ground… something was rustling last night, also…

At the memory of his hectic delusions, he manages to pry his eye open, but it takes a long time to focus. When it does, all he sees is green flecked with golden dots. They remind him of many sunsets marvelled at from Adashino’s porch, with dusk’s amber sparks bopping on the ripples of a dark green sea. He shakes his head to dislodge whatever’s covering his face and is blinded by the unfiltered sunlight. A big green leaf sails down next to the only other object in his line of sight. A delicate dragonfly mushi hovers above it, then perches on what turns out to be his hand, so he wiggles his fingers to shake it off. His hand is empty, yet Ginko remembers his fingers holding something, something warm and bright, like the sunlight…

“The mountain lord!”

He wants to bolt upright and find her, but his body feels numb and detached and the mere thought of moving any of it exhausts him.

There’s nothing to be found.

The sudden grief weighs his body down even more, but he stashes this stone of sorrow in the back of his mind until he’s ready to let it join the others in his peaceful lake. Here and now, he ought to focus on why he’s feeling warm and dry instead of freezing and dead. His limbs feel strangely puffy and stiff, will barely bend in fact, so he settles for moving his head to look for the cause:

He’s a human anthill, covered from head to toe in pine needles. Said hill in turn is covered by huge hosta leaves. On top of those, small pebbles are precariously perched like pigeons on a steep roof.

What the-

His peculiar state makes him re-assess his arms, legs, his back and scratchy neck.

An anthill stuffed with moss?!

Wherever his loose-fitting clothes allow for it, cushions of moss are tightly packed in between his skin and his formerly soaking wet shirt on his back, in his sleeves, in his pants’ legs.

No wonder I can barely move.

With much ungainly effort he flips over on his back and sheds his leafy raincoat and prickly heating blanket.

Weighing the leaves down against the storm. Keeping the needles from washing away under the leaves. Keeping me warm with their insulation. Drying my clothes with the moss… quite an intricate arrangement to keep me alive. But do hosta even grow here? I sure haven’t seen them. Let alone dry moss after last night’s downpour?

Without his protective toppings, he can soak up the warmth of the heating-up forest like a lizard coming out of hibernation. Apparently quite a few ants got left behind after last night’s haul and he can feel them crawling between all his comfortable layers. He can’t be bothered to move when he feels them in his hair, or his shirt collar, or on his chest. One can’t be treading through the forest and not expect it to tread on you. But then he feels them in his pants and that’s what finally brings him to his feet with a yelp.

Ginko falls back down to his knees at once and realizes that being upright really is not up to him right now. When the black dots in his vision subside, he spots his wooden chest, sat as a matter of course next to where his head had just rested, keeping a stoic vigil over its owner. It, too, sports a cape of huge leaves and hidden under it rests his kouki cannister. He knows he gave his last drops of kouki to the mice, but now it’s too heavy for him to lift on his first uncoordinated try and he must put all his will and tenacity into finally bringing it up to his lips. It smells sweet, fruity, it smells of life itself.

Kouki?! How…

He drains the whole bottle in a couple of greedy gulps unbefitting of the precious liquid, but he can thank the earth later for its gift. This act alone drains him enough to ignore the ants and he lets himself fall back on the sun-warm ground. All he can do now is wait for the kouki to revive his drained body, and his mind to revive his doubts.

The creatures of the forest saved my life. Did I save theirs? At what cost? Did I doom the leopard cat to an existence of homelessness and starvation? Does helping one party live always mean aiding in the demise of another?

Does the cat not have the same right to live as every other creature in this forest?

He’s not done with these contemplations, but once more they take flight and the cloud of dragonfly mushi above his head get the better of them. Sleep at this point gets the better of Ginko.

When he wakes up again, it’s because he’s too hot and groggily he struggles to his feet to shake a heap of moss out of all his clothes and wiggles and jumps until he’s satisfied he dislodged most of his crawly companions. Not only does he stay on his feet, he can feel the kouki coursing through his blood, making his skin crawl just as the ants did before. The woods are taking a peaceful afternoon nap, but after some stretching and some deep breaths Ginko feels rejuvenated and ready to trust his intuition to take him where he is supposed to be next.

The mushi surrounding him are dancing their foreign, ephemeral roundels – a sign of a mountain reborn. For now he leaves them be, savours the approaching early evening air without a cigarette. He knows he doesn’t have to fear their importunity on this mountain. As he descends the mountain ridge, it appears much friendlier to him. Gone are the muddy ponds, the slippery slopes of rotten leaves, the dangerous, fast-flowing streams, the whole region’s crushing ambience.

As if a long-abandoned guestroom has been tidied, aired and a warm fire lit. The little flower bearers are hard at work. As time moves on, will there be more?

He smiles at the thought of a multitude of little ferns on feet bustling about the mountain.

Out of one arise many. Baby mice as the main mountain lord’s sprig. Mycelium as the mushroom’s. This pattern permeates the whole of nature. A tree’s branches, twigs and leaves, reaching resolutely towards the sky. The countless streams of a river’s sprawling delta. Lightning. My own blood vessels.

And wherever he steps, stops, and stands, a fine susurrus accompanies him all around. Once he thinks he spots a radiant yellow blossom zigzagging over the animal path he’s following but he loses sight of it before he can be sure. Too soon he reaches the bottom of a ravine and a vast, vividly verdant plain spreads out in front of him, dotted with patterns of flowers, weeds, and insects even the most expensive kimono design couldn’t do justice.

Before he enters it and leaves the wondrous mountain and his wondrous time on it behind, he turns around. Only now he sees them: As if threaded on an invisible necklace for the mountain, a row of luscious, brightly purple caps already peek their way through the loose soil.

To fungi, our world of light and air is their underworld. But soon, they’ll build a giant underground web, spanning the entire mountain. Together with the mouse’s offspring they’ll guard the mountain as one big organism, one whole shield.

Out of many arises one.

Like ice crystals forming a snowflake. Like innumerable streams feeding into one river. The rain’s droplets combining to a roar. My own blood vessels joining up in my heart.

All of my experiences forming my current self.

Next to his feet, right where the path enters the forest’s cool shadow, stands one single purple iris, nodding gently in the breeze.

“Looks like it took both of us to help this mountain, hm, mountain lord? It’s been an honor. Do you think I did it justice?”

I’d like to think so. Without being selfish. Without breaking the laws of nature. Without being bullied out of my kouki.

He smiles and turns to face his next adventure, already knowing he’ll be back. When the colorful specks are gone and the wilted grass will give in to the foreboding winter winds. In the meantime –

There must be a mountain around here missing its mountain lord. What made the leopard cat leave it and come here?

The simplest answer to this question was men. They came to destroy and take away and destroy some more.

Is mankind truly superior just because they can act like it? Does every place belong to them just because they know how to take it? No. This is hubris. Another trait exclusive to men.

Suguro had taught Ginko that he belongs everywhere, but that didn’t mean that everywhere belonged to him. The oversized leopard cat, however, belonged on one mountain, and that mountain belonged to him.

He’ll have to talk to this mountain’s inhabitants and gain their trust before he drives this point home. But trust is not one of mankind’s easiest qualities and impatience is. Thus, this too hasn’t gone over well in the past, so this too, will be an opportunity for Ginko to learn.

Yet he's confident he can restore the fragile agreement between the two parties and hopefully restore the leopard cat to its normal size.

As soon as I find the mountain lord.