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“I met a woman long ago
Her hair the black that black can go
Are you a teacher of the heart
Soft she answered no.”
Leonard Cohen
•
He knows better, he truly knows better. But when he catches sight of her, he steps in.
•
The passage will be in sight shortly beyond that turn of maple trees in the distance. It is now, when the leaves are golden and the sky a vibrant blue, that he makes the trip for a few bottles, a box of sweets, and a trinket or two. There are friends in this wood as well, and air, and water. The city becomes a prison for one with wings and a thirst like his.
These sojourns are far and few in between, such that his joy for them is unmatched. The shop is bustling and fragile and in constant need of his presence to bolster it with life, but sometimes, he can leave. Today he leaves the children and Mokona with Shizuka behind.
Each time, though the passage is the same, the placing of the exit changes. Time and space conform to the universes and each other, such that no two things ever happen the same way. All things are constant, as they are changeable; it is through such a paradox that once he walks through the space in between spaces, he may expect a new scene to welcome him. Last fall when he took this same trip, a swirl of colour met his eyes as he stepped behind a clothesline that was hung of silk so brightly dyed: golds and greens and pinks and red. This fall, he meets the welcome of a secluded grove lined with tall maple trees.
It is a long walk through abandoned footpaths down the slope of a mountain. He wanders, of course. The shop he seeks lies at the edge of the glistening town in the heart of the valley. He looks forward to delicate sweets melting against the inside of his cheek and a refreshing cup of tea—but only after a good journey. The opposite mountains are far and blue: there dwell friends of other worlds than this, and he must visit them, too. It is to be a long day, but a good day. He has never explored this side of the valley before.
He travels the eastern face of the mountain and lingers until he can linger no longer. Reaching the shop, he drinks his promised tea and partakes his special sweet. When he leaves, he carries with him three bottles of sake and a box of the same sweets and most oddly a small wooden flute. The proprietor insists. Heading home, he travels the western face under the twilit sky. It is then that a strange shape passes by: a sphere, a skull—he stops, and looks, and the vision passes.
•
A foot north of the other, focussed until he is almost there. But it is then that the figure looms to his left, an old house in ruins on the other direction of his passage home. Just beyond that turn of trees, a mere twenty paces away—but a spell has settled upon the air. Dare he not breathe, for breathing will be the breaking of the spell. He has learned his lessons well. Spells unknown are spells best left alone.
Soft motion against his finger bids him to take notice. He watches as the red lace of Master Hare’s best sake unknots itself and blows with the wind. It slips, as if to beckon, half underneath the wooden gates. When he bends to retrieve it, the wind blows it inside.
They are heavy beneath his small hands, these wooden gates. He opens them and gazes upon an old and ruined beauty: the grey of aged stone; the brown of a dead garden; and the black of a house long past its prime. The roof is holed in sections and the wooden panels of the doors are broken. On the first step of stone leading to these doors is his red length of lace, curled and delicate as one drop of blood.
A fine-boned hand lifts it from the stone so graceful and gentle that he never even jolts. She stands like a spectre in the doorway, her eyes coloured with her smile. Her lips are red as the lace she kisses, her eyes beckoning, her hair black as black can go. She is radiant and blinding in her radiance, such that tears come searing down his cheeks. He can still hear her voice from years ago, whispering—hitsuzen—whispering—Kimihiro—whispering—
He knows better, he truly knows better. But when he catches sight of her, he steps in.
•
She never speaks and they both know why. Such spells require breath to make and breath to break, so their lips stay sealed even as they sit under light. It is now light. The night has passed. The sun spears through the horizon and begins to swallow the darkness. He lays his head on her lap. It is quiet.
•
His world is younger then when he meets an old man with a tale to tell. The old man walks with a limp and carries a satchel in his thin, browned arms.
“The ashes of my wife,” the old man says, “because I am too weak to be parted with what remains of her.” Kimihiro smiles. The old man does not see. “I had already lost my son, you see. My son I lost already. Into the skies he flew. My wife and I, we wish to follow. We would follow, had we wings.”
Kimihiro smiles.
“Did you know,” the old man says, “that the Thunder has a mistress? She is called Lightning, and they have a son. They had a son, rather, because he fell from the skies. He is the child of rain and terrible Thunder, of rain and glorious Lightning. We called him Raitaro, my wife and I. We raised him as our own.”
Kimihiro notices the old man’s arms. They are gnarled with sun and age and toil and soil, the fingers strangely twisted, the skin dark and rough, the nails rimmed with dirt. Kimihiro notices the clothes, threadbare and patch-worked. Kimihiro notices the smile. It is soft. It remembers.
“And my son, my son, was nothing like his father. His father Thunder,” the old man says, “is followed and follows the harbinger of misfortune. His father Thunder is strength, might. Might in malevolence. His father protected our ancestors, yours and mine, against invaders from the western land. But Thunder wreaked havoc upon all the earth as he did. What Thunder despises, Lightning destroys for him. The remains, the rain washes away.”
The wood grows warm underneath his palms. Kimihiro falters to speak. The afternoon is quiet as they sit at the porch. The children are sleeping inside. Mokona is motionless. She is not here.
“Your son, he left you for the sky,” Kimihiro says. She is not here, but this is the shop. It is alive. Kimihiro can feel it thrumming beneath his fingers. He is to do this alone.
“Perhaps,” the old man says, “but I shall never know until I meet him again. He flew before his words were formed. He flew into the clouds. He joined them; he always watched them closely when he was young. Oh, my words fail his beauty!—he was magnificent when he flew. Magnificent—a dragon! A white dragon, white as purest snow, white as wintry sky. Long and strong and elegant. Do you know elegance? He was elegance. His hair the softest down of white, his eyes the very light, his skin as pale as porcelain of the finest quality—oh, my boy, my boy who flew into the sky—”
The old man turns to face him, eyes edged and heavy with a weight he does not yet understand. For how can he, young as he is, knowing no concept of loss and longing just as he knows no concept of having and wanting? This weight is indescribable in words, only knowable through the passing of time.
“Will you help me, Apprentice? Will you lend me your wings? I know they are small, but my burden is light. You shall have them back for I will want no more after I see my son. When one ceases wanting, one ceases breathing,” the old man says to him. “Will you help me, young one?”
Kimihiro says, “I know not how.”
The old man smiles. “This,” says he, “is what I’ll take.” Gnarled fingers reach for his neck, where the imprints of two hands are bruised in snarling blue and red. They are from a previous task, from which he still remembers the darkness caressing his skin. It would have killed him, but he fought back.
The fingers withdraw and clutch a small light in the spaces they have in between them. It glows with the color of blood and life and sadness. Within it is a form—Kimihiro squints—
“My words,” the old man says, “are what I give in return. You will remember them—they will wake you—when it is time. All things fall into their place.”
Kimihiro never hears the words, never remembers the payment, because he looks too intently into the little light. It is his light, his will to life. It is his will to push the darkness away. It is him, waking up.
The light takes the old man away with it, emerging from the gnarled fingers, stretching its tiny wings out with full intent to fly far. Kimihiro looks on as it leaves for now, a delicate monarch butterfly.
•
As she slides her hand through his hair as they sit in the daytime cast of ruin around them, as he lulls to sleep, he hears the words. They are faint. Far. But he remembers—they are waking him up.
The old man says:
Remember my son, the child of the sky. Remember that he is beauty and might and elegance. Remember that he fell. That was his flaw. Remember that every flaw is not without its beauty. He came to me to be my son to be away from his father Thunder. Remember that his true father is Thunder. He is not my son. He was my son and it was beautiful while it lasted, but remember, young one, that every beauty is not without its flaw.
•
He sees her even in his dreams. They walk side by side, her grace unparalleled. She puts one foot north of the other, focussed yet effortless, like the willow branch swaying in the breeze. They walk into the fading light, the day ending, waning, and he feels a deep, velvet calm. She takes his hand and they look to the night sky. They pick out the stars one by one between finger and thumb so that they are pinched away and blink into oblivion. It grows darker still. He is calm with her by his side. They walk. It is quiet.
•
It is a week before the old man finds the way into the shop that Kimihiro meets the darkness. He sees it first upon the form of a girl. He watches the girl for days afterward, waiting, wandering, unable to help. Shizuka is away, far away, at the time; an archery tournament demands his presence in Kyoto. Kimihiro is thus left alone.
He follows the girl. She is young and happy. Her house is close to the shop and her school is close to his. She has a younger sister who is yet very little, and a father, and a mother, and her mother’s younger sister who lives with them for now. He watches. He waits.
The darkness grows around her, bigger and more sinister the longer it lingers. It will break upon her soon. She has some strength to withstand it but not much; she is not like Kimihiro, cursed with power. But it seems she is cursed anyhow.
She lives in an old house, traditional but poorly kept. They are a very modern family and in the details the mismatch shows. The truth is always told by the details in the picture: the doors left ajar, the shoji when ripped left unrepaired for days, the untrimmed gardens, the unkempt roof tiles. The Doumeki family’s temple is a model of tradition as much as this house is of tradition in neglect.
One day, Kimihiro notices the odd arrow pierced into the roof. It is the same day he approaches her.
“Excuse me,” she says, slipping past him into the bookstore. His eyes water and his throat crawls as he catches whiff of the darkness.
“You dropped this,” he calls out to her, handing over the kerchief. Their fingers brush and the darkness stills.
“Thank you,” she says, meeting his eyes at last. She is pleasant, he thinks, and will grow very beautiful soon. Her spiritual strength shines in her eyes. He wonders for how long the darkness has followed her. She does not even know.
He hurries out of the bookstore and into the evening sun. Concrete is grey beneath his feet. His steps are fast and he manages a corner before the darkness is upon him. He has lured it away.
It converges around him in a tight and cold embrace, the echo of a hundred thousand voices gliding across his skin. Power, it whispers. Power, it sees. Power we must join with us by the breath and the blood. He struggles against it, digging his head in. Reaching, searching, groping for the seed. It is velvet in this deep. His power shields him, bolsters him as the darkness tries to drown him. It closes over his head just as he pulls in his last clean breath. He feels hands against his neck, around his neck, cold and draining his consciousness. He begins to sink.
Not yet, he thinks. Not yet, not yet, just a little more, just a little and I’ll find it—
Give us your power, it says.
No. I refuse.
Because if he doesn’t, he will die.
No. I refuse.
Because if he doesn’t, the girl will die too.
No. I refuse.
Because if he doesn’t, the darkness will win and take him and then return to take the girl as well. So he needs to find the seed, the root, pull it out and crush it so it will wither away. So she will be safe.
I refuse.
His fingers brush against it now, small and rough and round. With the last of his strength, he pulls and squeezes until it cracks between his fingers. The darkness screams in agony. The hands fall away. He takes a deep, starving breath.
When he opens his eyes, night has fallen. He sits slumped in a darkened alley. The street outside his quiet. He stands and touches his neck where red welts are beginning to form. His hand stays there until he arrives home at the shop to be welcomed by Mokona and Shizuka. The archery tournament has concluded today. It will be a few days hence when the old man walks into the shop.
He tells them of the girl and the darkness over dinner. Come the next day, he goes with Shizuka to the girl’s house. When the family is away, they retrieve the arrow on the roof and dispose of it by fire and salt. The next he passes her by, she lacks her spiritual strength. Crushing the seed had taken a considerable amount of energy from Kimihiro, but she had paid him back by giving up her own power. Her curse is lifted and she never even knows. Kimihiro never finds out her name.
•
The marks on his neck where the darkness had pressed hardest are a symbol of the power he had gotten from her. She had protected him as he had protected her and together they had given fruit to a new determination. It was the first time he drove away the darkness on his own. The marks on his neck resemble the spread wings of a butterfly.
•
When Shizuka returns with sake after the old man had flown away, the marks are gone. Shizuka notices.
“They were borrowed,” he tells his friend. “There was a customer.”
“You dealt with it alone,” Shizuka frowns, but She sweeps in and steals a cryptic smile.
“Worry not, Doumeki-kun,” She says then, “for what was borrowed will be returned when the time is right and the need is dire. It is good to have investments kept in higher places.”
That night is among the last nights they spend together.
•
She had plucked him out of his life of fear and misery. She had taught him to stand and fight. She had taught him to listen, to give and to take, to judge and be judged, to love and be loved. She, for so long, had anchored his life.
He does not ask for a lot, because doing so disobeys time and space, and such disobedience betrays what she has taught him.
His only true wish—his yearning, his waiting, his one true regret—is the silence of their parting.
There is yet so much he has to say.
•
It is night once more when he wakes. She holds him as he lays against her chest. The fabric of her kimono is vibrant and grotesque under the moonlit sky. They are spread on the grass in the garden, her arms slender against his, the line of her wrist a slope no artist can perfect.
“You never even gave me the chance to thank you,” he says.
The spells breaks at his breath. He closes his eyes. She breathes against his shoulder.
“The house in which you dwell is haunted by demons,” and the voice is not her voice but the voice of the darkness. It is a deep calm, velvet. It is all-encompassing. He looks up to the sky but they have picked out all the stars, picked out all the stars!—there is only one left. The darkness converges overhead.
He struggles against her, this false her, in the depths of the darkness. He dares not breathe it in. She is false, false, false—he watches her transform, her arms thinning and her body bulging and her fingers diminishing into painted claws pale as thread. Cobwebs spin around him as he falls even deeper and only she shines, bright and white, her body sleek in the likeness of a spider. He dares not breathe.
Suspended in space, she opens her wide maw and laughs an inhuman, crushing laughter. “Foolish human fooled by his own heart. Foolish yearning, foolish, foolish!”
This time the darkness grips him tighter than before—and there is no seed to pluck. He keens and his vision swims. His arms flounder; his feet kick. A rock cuts his leg and the cobwebs soak up the blood.
“Give me your power, human,” she says. “Give it to me.”
Tears streak down his cheeks in pain, in pain. He can feel the blood being drained, the power being taken, the very fabric of his soul threatening to shred into pieces, the threads straining, coming loose, and only one star remains in the sky, only one. A claw takes his chin and tilts his head back and the claw is cold like lightning against his skin. It traces his neck.
“Your blood, when I spill it, will sustain my web for centuries. Your blood will be the pearls upon which I will feed. Give it to me,” she croons. “Give me your power.”
The darkness is absolute.
•
“I have a wish,” Shizuka says, but his words are lost upon Kimihiro. There is only the heady breath of sakura in full bloom and the linger of sake. Mokona sits idle on a pillow and the children are playing outside.
“You don’t need to do this,” he says to his friend. He knows what Shizuka wants, what Shizuka hopes to achieve. He has known from the very start.
“Yes,” Shizuka says. “Yes, I do.”
Kimihiro closes his eyes and is helpless against fate. Beneath his skin, he is bound to the shop, and he feels it responding to the call. A client has a wish. We exist to fulfil it. It thrums warm beneath his fingertips.
“I wish,” Shizuka says, “to free a friend from physical confinement. My mortality I am willing to pay.”
Shizuka is a grown man now, broad-shouldered and serious. But he has always been serious, even young. He remembers long ago when they were both very young and together ran in sync with the rolling of time. There are plenty of memories between them, promises broken and kept, words said and unsaid. He has never truly thanked Shizuka for all of it, but now he will have to.
Kimihiro lifts his hand and passes it over Shizuka’s face. A faint dust lifts above them and gathers to form a blade. It hovers between them, this ochre and golden blade, before it falls to sever a thick rope of power. The blade is no more, Kimihiro sees. The rope is no more.
Yesterday was the day of Shizuka’s graduation, who is now a professor of history and ancient Japanese literature. He is a man with a purpose, a life. Kimihiro is proud of his friend for achieving what he is not able to achieve while bound to this shop. But now Shizuka has uttered a wish, and for it the price is paid.
“Your wish has been granted,” Kimihiro says. He still does not open his eyes.
But Shizuka takes his hand. Shizuka pulls him up. Shizuka takes him outside where the sakura petals dance in the breeze and the light, oh, the light is warm—Shizuka takes him outside to the gates and together, together, they step through.
For the first time in a long time, since She disappeared, he is walking in the light, and Shizuka is with him.
This is what Shizuka has thrown away his mortality for—thrown away time and the luxury of age, condemned forever until his death to a life without waning or release—in exchange for this, so that Kimihiro may live amongst the world once more. They are now both frozen in time. They now cease to age, but together.
Passersby walk the street as they stand by the gates. They are unnoticed. Shizuka still holds his hand. He now has to thank his friend, truly thank his friend, except he cannot, because his words refuse to come. He is so grateful. He is crying.
He is alive.
Today, he still has not thanked him.
•
The one star—not a star—descends from the sky. It is not a star at all. It is a soft, red light, fluttering. Breath stutters in his lungs as the monarch butterfly returns to his soul. He swallows the light and opens his mouth.
“I refuse.”
The darkness screams.
His fingers close tight around the wooden flute in his sleeve, and as the spider screams at his impudence, he swings the flute up in an arc. Wind whistles through its holes and sharp, empty sound shreds the darkness into tatters. She retreats, the spider retreats, but he staggers after her, tearing her cobwebs apart. He tears them with each slash and brandish, with the notes of his anguish. When he finally stabs her head with the flute, she cracks, and groans, and crumbles away, taking the darkness with her, withered to dust.
The dust blows away as ash in the wind. The house is empty now. The ruins are ruins. A shred of her kimono lays the ground. It is beautiful, he thinks—but not every beauty is without its flaw.
She has still yet to return; he must live to thank her. Shizuka is still waiting at the shop; he must live to thank him, too. He keeps the piece of colourful cloth and goes home with a mended broken heart.
•
“The heart breaks and breaks
And grows by breaking.
It is necessary to go
Through dark and deeper dark
And not to turn.”
Stanley Kunitz, “The Testing-Tree”
•
Footnotes & afterthoughts:
(1) In Japanese lore, the hare is supposed to attain, like the fox, tortoise, and tiger, a fabulous age, extending to no less than a thousand years. In Taoist legends, the hare is said to live in the moon, and is occupied in pounding, with pestle and mortar, the drugs that compose the Elixir of Life, while in other legends, he is represented as pounding rice. – I was trying to find a particular creature that would be an ideal proprietor of a sake shop, and I thought it would be a funny little detail to use Master Hare. Yuuko would have approved, I think; she, if anyone, would agree that sake is equivalent to the Elixir of Life. (Whether it is or not, I remain sadly uninformed—but that must be some good sake for Watanuki to go so far!)
(2) Raitaro, the Child of the Thunder God. Most people are familiar with the images of Raijin and Fuujin, the respective gods of Thunder and Wind. (They are always depicted together; I am assuming here that they are best friends. /troll) Just as the old man told the story above, Raijin would travel the skies with his wife Lightning and his friend Fuujin. The three of them would throw storms about to protect the people from invaders from the West. (Most significantly, in Chinese lore, the god of Thunder is always depicted on the constant defence of evildoers, protecting only the wicked.) But Raijin’s force and bewildering randomness lends itself to images of malevolence in might. This might eclipses other parts of his story, hence few are familiar with Raijin (or Raiden) and the Lady Lightning’s child. The child allegedly fell from the sky to a farm owned by a poor man in the mountains. He had great difficulty growing enough rice for himself and his wife due to a drought, but at once there was a clap of thunder and a sudden flash of rain. Behold, in one of the rice paddies lay a baby boy laughing at the rain. He took the child and named him Raitaro (“the child of thunder”). He grew loving and happy, but never liked to play with other children, instead preferring to roam the fields, watch the streams, and observe the flight of the white clouds overhead. After Raitaro came, the poor man experienced prosperity, for the child could beckon to clouds and make it rain. (He is the child of a terrible god, but every flaw is not without its beauty.) After some time, he grew into a handsome young man of eighteen and thanked his adoptive parents for their care, before turning into a small white dragon and flying into the sky. (Most Asian depictions of dragons, including the Japanese ones, refer to them as water-loving creatures embodying rivers, streams, other bodies of water, and rainfall.) When the old couple died, they had their tombs engraved with the name of their lost adoptive child. – The addition of a little detail (Raitaro’s white hair) was a little allusion to this. /troll (You can all tell I am having a lot of fun, hee.)
(3) A widely read and acclaimed book on Japanese lore called “Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things” (by Lafcadio Hearn, published 1903) talks of butterflies and their significance as the soul of a being or creature, whether they be living, dying, or already dead. We are also familiar with the popular notion of butterflies as a symbol of metamorphosis or transformation (change). If you have read your manga or watched your anime, you will know that this is the mangaka’s ascribed meaning to Yuuko’s butterfly symbol. It was also the symbol that was drawn by the dowsing chain upon the sand basin when Watanuki visited grandmother fortune-teller. – I have used these above meanings for the purposes of the story. However, it is important to note that these meanings can be taken as positive or negative depending on the context. For example, when a black butterfly visits the house, it is said that someone in the family will die or has already died. (References to this, fandom!) Another superstition says that a white butterfly inside the guestroom signifies a dead loved one coming to visit the house as a spirit (can be good or bad depending on whether you are on good terms with them, lol). Lastly, Taira no Masakado, a Heian era samurai who famously attempted a rebellion against the government of Kyoto, was visited by a swarm of black butterflies during the planning of said revolt that his men were terrified and took it as an omen of impending evil and death. – Yet another reference is to a Japanese horror RPG called Fatal Frame 2, where the storyline follows twin girls, one that is playable as a character and the other who disappeared into an old forest and whose recovery is the general goal of the game. The village in the forest has long since used twin girls as sacrifices to appease the gods: the younger would need to strangle the elder. Here is one Youtube video that you can watch to see the image of the neck bruises shaped in the form of a butterfly (at 5:45, near the end; beautiful song, anyhow, and actually quite fitting to this fic if you listen to the lyrics - which I can provide a translation for, if anyone is curious enough to leave a comment about this).
(4) The darkness and the arrow on the roof can be referenced to a very old Japanese superstition about human sacrifice from the prehistoric times (even before the sprawling cities of Heian-kyo, when they still lived in small villages of huts, rice paddies, and chieftains). Arrows have always been viewed with great spiritual power and significance. When a man witnessed in the morning an arrow pierced upon his roof, it signified that the eldest unmarried daughter dwelling in the house must be sacrificed. She was buried alive so that her flesh might appease and be consumed by the Deity of Wild Beasts. However, as time passed, this negative connotation of the arrow was lost, eventually replaced by a more positive connotation of protection and good luck. Fans will recall Doumeki’s broken arrow protecting Watanuki, and later on, the little son fox of Master Fox of the Oden stall. This is the reason why Watanuki did not think twice of it. Doumeki, however, being heir to a temple and to many old traditions of Shinto, would know about this hidden meaning. The girl’s family, being a modern family, did not think twice about it either. The darkness represents the Deity stalking its prey. – Another kind of human sacrifice is seen in the custom of burying a man alive with the idea of giving sacrifice to a bridge, castle, or other important structure. They would bury the sacrifice under a main pillar, hence the term hitobashira (lit. “human pillar”) to denote a person of great importance to an organization, team, or endeavour. One vivid example of this is the sacrifice for the bridge over the river Matsue in Izumo, made during the daimyo Horio Yoshimaru. The bridge was called Gensuke Bridge for the poor labourer Gensuke who was buried under the central pillar. It was said to glow a bright unearthly red at night as if to remind everyone that Gensuke remained in sorrow for being buried for the bridge. This bridge was said to have lasted 300 years.
(5) “They have picked out all the stars.” In Eastern culture, permission is never taken for granted, and creates a strong barrier of protection around a creature’s property if invoked properly. Plenty of legends tell about dark creatures unable to intrude into territory unless they are allowed inside. Watanuki picking out all the stars with the false Yuuko signifies his own acquiescence to the elimination of his ties to the outer world, the ruined mansion being in a separate dimension owned by the goblin spider. In a more poetic sense, one could say he allowed his guiding lights to be extinguished while under the thrall of the spider. This also explains why both the darkness and the spider keep demanding willing surrender from Watanuki, for what is willingly given is always more potent than what is forcibly taken.
(6) The flute. The modern world is most familiar with the shakuhachi when told of Japanese flutes (“fue”). This is because the shakuhachi is the oldest, most widely used, and most common type of Japanese flute. During the medieval period, monks would move from place to place, playing the shakuhachi in the streets to beg for alms as required by their religion. Travelling across Japan was tightly restricted by the shogunate at the time, but one particular sect of monks managed an agreement with the government so that they would be allowed to play their flutes in exchange for working as spies to the shogunate. In the advent of the Meiji Restoration (1868, the fall of the shogunate and restoration of imperial Japan), this sect was abolished along with the use of the shakuhachi. Eventually, its use was permitted again, but only as accompaniments to the shamisen or koto. This particular sect of monks responsible for these events was called the Fuke sect of Zen Buddhism, also known as the komusou (lit. “the priests of emptiness”). They were the most notable users of the shakuhachi during medieval history, using it for spiritual music and pacing it to the players’ breathing (a form of meditation called suizen). They believed the shakuhachi to be a tool to channel a great amount of spiritual strength by its facilitation of calm and focus. Notably, another kind of Japanese flute called ryuuteki is held with high regard in the Shinto tradition. It is said that the sound produced by this flute is the sound of the dragons ascending to the skies, again a symbol of strength. – I used the flute in the manner of a sword for the sake of art. It seemed to fit better instead of having Watanuki put it to his lips while begin attacked by a giant goblin spider.
(7) “A spell takes breath to make and breath to break.” References to this particular series and how the protagonist releases the spell over a creature’s name (with breath and saliva, or “iki to daiki”). The astute reader will also note that the flute requires the player’s breath to make music.
(8) The Onigumo (Goblin Spider) of Oyeyama. Taken from “Myths and Legends of Japan” by F. Hadland Davis, unabridged Dover edition republished 1992 from the original Harrap & Company edition published 1913. – “On one occasion, the noble knight Raiko left Kyoto with Tsuna, his most worthy of retainers. As they were crossing the plain of Rendai, they saw a skull rise in the air, and fly before them as if driven by the wind, until it finally disappeared at a place called Kaguragaoka. Raiko and his retainer had no sooner noticed the disappearance of the skull than they perceived before them a mansion in ruins. Raiko entered this dilapidated building and saw an old woman of strange aspect. She was dressed in white, and had white hair; she opened her eyes with a small stick, and the upper eyelids fell back over her head like a hat; then she used the rod to open her mouth, and let her breast fall forward upon her knees. Thus she addressed the astonished Raiko: ‘I am two hundred and ninety years old. I serve nine masters, and the house in which you stand is haunted by demons.’ Having listened to these words, Raiko fled to the kitchen, where he caught glimpse of the sky and saw a storm brewing. As he stood watching the dark clouds gather, he heard a sound of ghostly footsteps, and there crowded into the room a great company of goblins. Nor were there only these supernatural creatures, but also a being dressed like a nun. Her very small body was naked to the waist, her face was two feet in length, and her arms ‘were white as snow and thin as threads.’ For a moment this dreadful creature laughed, and then vanished like a mist. Raiko heard the welcome sound of a cock crowing to herald morning and imagined that the ghostly apparitions would trouble him no more; but once again, he heard footsteps, and this time he saw no hideous hag, but a lovely woman, ‘more graceful than the willow branches as they wave in the breeze.’ As he gazed upon this lovely maiden, his eyes became blinded by her radiant beauty. Before he could recover his sight, he found himself enveloped in countless cobwebs. He struck at her with his sword but she disappeared, and he found that he had but cut through the planks of the floor and broken the foundation-stone beneath. At this moment Tsuna joined his master, and they saw that the sword was covered with ‘white blood’ and its point broken in the conflict. After much search, Raiko and his retainer found in a den nearby a monster with many legs and a head of enormous size, covered with white downy hair. Its mighty eyes shone like the sun and moon, as it groaned aloud: ‘I am sick and in pain!’ As Raiko and Tsuna drew closer, they recognized the broken sword-point protruding from the monster. They dragged the creature out of its den and cut off its head. Out of the deep wound of the creature’s stomach gushed nineteen-hundred-and-ninety skulls, and in addition many spiders as large as children. Raiko and his follower realized that the monster before them was none other than the Onigumo of Oyeyama. When they cut open the great carcass, they discovered, within the entrails, the ghastly remains of many human corpses.”