Chapter Text
“Is it true?”
The boy asking is tall, and lanky, and ashen, and standing in the middle of the woods. He’s alone there, save for a the trees and the occasional mountain animal. One of which is currently sitting on a rock nearby, eating a slice of an orange, trying to maneuver it in two cute little white paws up to its mouth.
“Kyui!”
The boy frowns, ever so slightly, as if the answer dissatisfies him, somehow. He’s really far too serious for his own good, if you care what a weasel thinks.
Ah, but this isn’t where the story starts. In medias res, they call it. All the rage, these days. Or perhaps not anymore. It’s hard to keep track. Sometimes, they just take acts right out of the middle of the story, and perform them all on their own. They didn’t used to. Once, people gathered into that wooden theater early in the day and wouldn’t leave until night had fallen, despite the ashes from pipes and wood fires lighting the stage. Twelve hour affairs — epic sagas, from the open of the curtain through to the finale. People would give their whole day to it, in offering — despite the discomfort from sitting on hard cushions for hours, so close to strangers. Despite the outrageous prices of refreshments, and despite the fact that sometimes, the actors weren’t even up for the task. Thus was the power of theatre, the appetite, the draw. It was a force — a threat worth taking seriously. Even the government would try to crack down on it. They cut four hours right off the top of it, once. Eight hour limits, can you imagine?
“Why?” The boy is asking.
“Kyu, Kyui Kyuii!”
But where would the beginning even be? At the mouth of a divine cave, Ame-no-Uzume whirling and spinning to lure the sun back into the sky? Maybe that’s too far back. Some six centuries ago, Zeami sitting in contemplation in the shogun’s court? Maybe in the middle of the Edo period, right by this very spot, a theater troupe following its young leader to a new stage and a new name? We could start there, but that’d be an awfully long story. Over eight hours, for sure.
So how about here, instead?
“Is it true?” The boy is tall for his age, and lanky, and ashen, and standing in the middle of the woods. He’s alone there, save for a the trees and the occasional mountain animal. One of which is currently perched on a branch above his head. A raven, but white as the snow from its head to tail feathers, except for the tip of its beak, stained blood red — from a cherry it’s eating.
“Kaa, kaa.”
The boy’s amber eyes are wide and as pure as a mountain spring. They stare up at the bird, which isn’t a bird at all, but a squirrel, turning the cherry pit around in its hands like an acorn.
“Really, though,” says the squirrel. “It is a funny question.” It drops the cherry pit off the branch. At the base of the tree, the boy catches it in his hand. “I mean, does it make a better story if it’s true? What do you think?”
The squirrel climbs half way down the tree trunk and then jumps onto the boy’s hair. He doesn’t even flinch. Little squirrel hands tug at the dark grey strands there.
“Why?” the boy asks.
The squirrel tugs a little harder. “You really are interesting. Why not?” It hops off his head then, and lands on two pale fox’s paws on the dead leaves. The fox circles the boy, yawns, and curls up under the tree. “I’ve told you before. It doesn’t matter what’s true or not, if it’s a good story.”
He’s all of maybe five years old, but sharp, and perceptive, and skilled well beyond his years. This unsettles people, and so they talk. Gossip from one to the next, until someone relays the idle rumors all the way back around. It’s an awfully cruel thing to tell a little boy. But it’d make for an awfully interesting story. The long awaited heir, a child saved from being born into the grave only by the intervention of a capricious god, and dedicated at birth to the stage. Someone could write a play about that kind of thing.
So maybe that is how the story started. Maybe the hidden descendants of a lost line prayed for three weeks, every night, at the shrine of their ancestors. Maybe on the 21st night, their prayers were answered, and in return, the child born on that night when the moon was just a little past full was dedicated to that shrine and the stage which it ruled.
Or maybe nothing of the sort happened, and this boy was born as any child is, these days — after careful tests and prenatal care, and surrounded by doctors and monitors and other such boring things. Maybe his parents were merely doing what many parents do, and trying to raise their child to fulfill their own dreams — so they taught him to dance with his long limbs, and sing with his clear voice, and act with his pure, amber eyes. Maybe he’s named for a simple mundane reason like that. A parents wish that their son one day reach the heavens itself.
Maybe that’s the kind of story you prefer, though. There’s no accounting for taste, as they say.
The white fox bats at the boys leg, and when he doesn’t reply, starts nibbling on his shoe. The boy takes a plum from out of the basket he’s got with him and places it down on the dirt. He has several fruits there, picked from the orchard planted generation by generation in front of the shrine. Even at this age, he’s tall enough to reach the lowest hanging fruits when the trees are full and weighed down by them at the peak of the season.
It’s picked up by a weasel in two tiny paws, holding a fruit almost half the size of its body. It takes a bite of it, getting juice all over its white fur. The ancestor of the tree this came from was planted in that orchard hundreds of years ago, grafted down over the centuries, and yet, every summer, the fruit tastes slightly different. It’s been a very long time since anyone’s offered one like this, rather than at the alter, with all the pomp and ceremony.
Not that there’s anything wrong with all that. It is, after all, a form of theatre — it’s got dancing, and singing, and lines to say — an actor and an audience. But they rarely stick around to talk, after. So even if this boy isn’t particularly talkative, it’s a nice change. It’s been a long, long time since anyone has bothered to listen like this. Since anyone has understood how to do so.
“Think of it this way,” a snow white raven says, perched on a branch “Is that the part you want to play, Tamasaka Chui?” It drops the pit of a plum down over the head of dark grey hair below it. The boy catches it, with ease.
It’s New Year’s Day and Chui is standing at the edge of the shrine’s courtyard as people come and go on their first shrine visit of the year. They walk up, toss a coin in with the rest, clap twice and bow. Some stand there, just a bit longer, asking for something or another.
“Admission to university, and health for her mother.” By his feet, a winter hare twitches its little nose. The woman at the front of the line turns and leaves, passing the pair of them on her way out, completely unaware. A middle aged couple takes her place, performing the same dance steps, but heavier with years. “A wife for their son.” The hare makes a quiet little noise that doesn’t sound all that much like the laughter it is. “If they expect me to perform miracles, at least they could ask for something more interesting.”
“People’s sincere wishes,” the young boy says. To anyone who bothered to look over to him, he would have appeared, as he often does, silent and still. But this is the most talkative he’s been in a while. “They bore you.”
“Nothing gets past you, does it?” A little white songbird flutters onto a bare tree branch. “Their wishes may or may not be sincere, but their prayers rarely are.” The couple leaves down the walkway stopping for a moment to watch a young father lead his son up to get his fortune. The boy couldn’t be much younger than Chui, but is maybe half his height. He struggles to reach the slips of paper, and his father helps him.
“Medium fortune,” the bird says, with a quick sharp chirp.
“His father lied.” They’re too far away for Chui to have heard the exchange. He could simply read the gestures of it — the reactions and emotions in the air.
“His father doesn’t believe the fortunes have any meaning.” The child nearly skips up to the shrine to clap and bow, clumsily. “And that child’s prayer has been the first genuine one all day.”
“And what did he pray for?”
“How insolent,” the little songbird says. “You expect me to divulge the benedictions of my faithful adherence?” It titters. “I actually have no idea what the toy he wants is. Who am I, Santa Claus?”
Little song birds can’t exactly sigh, but the winter wind blows through the barren branches of the shrines orchard and the needles of mountain pines. The god enshrined by these gates and lanterns, by centuries of prayers and offerings, and by the blood, sweat, and tears of hundreds of actors and patrons of the theatre alike, is whining like more of a child than the one it’s speaking to.
“You know, the troupe runs up to this shrine day in and day out to pray, and you know what they’re actually thinking about? Breakfast. Paychecks. Petty politics. Even when it’s the stage they’re praying for, it’s hollow. They used to tremble, you know. They used to bow their heads in earnest. Run their lines here under these eaves with the true desire to etch them into their very souls. At least they still know how to bleed for the stage, even if they’ve forgotten how to truly worship it.”
The child and his father make their way past. A white little song bird lands on the path in front of the small boy and chirps. The boy, still a child, and not yet too dull to it all, stares at the little thing, standing unnaturally close and unmoving, before his father tugs him away. “You should try to make friends your own age,” The Great Tamasaka Himehiko, of the First Generation, the God of Theatre Itself says. “You can’t put on plays entirely alone, you know.”
Chui says nothing in reply.