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The name of the sacrifice had already been forgotten.
His name, if they ever knew it, if it could be known, had been forgotten: peeled off with his clothes and washed off in the lake; had been knitted over by a tapestry of freshly-woven ropes. The scent of his name (once beatific), was overpowered by the smell of the oils, anointed each sweetly behinds his ears. His name, if it had once been knowable, was forgotten, no longer memorable, barely mnemonic. A woman stopped midwash, gathering the gray-red fabric of the man's clothes and wondered… The poor quality of it seemed somehow fragrant with memories, heavy with stream water. But she could not know. She could not be reminded, the name as lost as the scattered riverstones; she washed on.
They put him in a cage, to better serve him.
They put the cage on an altar, to better see him.
They carried the altar, laden with straw (to better burn him), the wine (to better numb him) and bones (to better garnish him), and with all the fluence they could summon from their harvest, their year-long bent-back suffering on the field; they carried him to the woods and left him there to die.
They left him for the gods, of which they could remember there were two, the tiger and the snake.
They danced, summoning a nation of fireflies to bear witness to them, and they sang songs as young as memory, and then they dined, feasting on the poorest fare a man could wish: to show the gods that this was all they had: poverty. They swore that there was a poverty of goods but never intentions, they had surrendered all that could be given; may they always be spared. At the end of their revelry, they trooped out of the forest whence they had intruded, leaving behind the sacrifice, the food — and of both the most bitterly forgotten and grievously mourned was the food.
One man who did not forget climbed against the grain of the stones, the furred cheeks of the forest.
Where was he; does he know? Where is he going; does he know? Who is he; does he know? Of the three he could answer two with confidence and one barely: He was Nishikiyama Akira, and he was in the woods, he was going towards — ah, someone, whose name kept slipping in and out of the mist like a coy maiden, someone — that's right, it was Kiryu. Who was this person (man?) and why was he going? Was it not easier to turn around, be turned around? Was it not more comfortable at home?
He stood in the middle of a crossroads, grasping thinly at memory. Was it not simpler...?
He lifted the sleeve of his yukata and checked the words carved into his flesh. Ah. Friend. Family. Love. When he read the last of the words a light came on in the forest, a lantern lit deep in the mist: a striped lantern like a folded paper tiger, glowing orange with greed.
Nishikiyama walked, stopping every few minutes to check the bleeding words on his arm.
By the altar a tiger had come sniffing in its whiskery-whispery ways, soft feet padding, mustache quivering. It sniffed first the wind and then the wine, first the bones and then the boon. Then at last it came and stood before the sacrifice, and sniffed him, smelled him, licked its own long teeth, suckled its paws, severed the ropes (he had no hope of running), licked its teeth, glistened with hunger, and nibbled: it gnawed a chunk off the sacrifice's thigh, who grunted. A patient sufferer.
"Good vintage, kyoudai," it yawned, licking its chops. "Ya'll like this one."
Then with one great claw it cut itself down the middle, so that its belly split apart and all the guts, the juices of beastdom, it came gushing out; flowed. The tiger turned itself inside out like a great pelt. Its pelvis move ahead of its head. Walked from beneath him; the smell of blood-matted fur. Its insides yawned cavernously, then it fell apart like a rug, and out slithered from its belly a huge white snake. The snake had only a single golden eye. Set deep like a grudge. With it, it surveyed the sacrifice.
"Eh?" It slithered about the man, forked tongue touching skin. "I do like it, kyoudai — but rude! First bite? Ya gone and took a bite off it and ya ain't so much as asked first." It clambered over the torn flesh, wincing when the sacrifice cried out.
"Oi, no need to be so loud now, it's just a bit of dyin' innit? Really, mortals..." Grumbling, it seized the sacrifice and constricted it, measured the amount of good eating to be had.
The sacrifice struggled. It was a feisty man in his late thirties, hair sweet-smelling but messy. The snake nibbled, gouged out flesh from the other thigh — so that they were equal — and munching on the man's knee he asked: "So what's yer name, luncheon?"
"My— name?" The sacrifice said, incredulous.
"Yer name? Yer name! Just our luck they sent up a turniphead again. Are ya gonna faint now?"
"If I do," said he. "It's because you've bitten through both my legs, and I've lost enough blood to pickle two barrels."
"Pig's blood," The snake drawled. "That sounds like farmerly work. Ya a farmer? Think carefully — I don't like lean meat."
"I am — I think."
"Ya think? Ya don't know?"
"I don't know — nor my name..."
The snake threw its head back and laughed. Idiot! It cried. Village idiot! No use at all! Then it gorged: went to the pile of food and ate with voracious inhuman hunger, twisting and burning with greed through the souring vegetables and the rotting meat, drank, by puncturing the flask of a great jar of sake, all the wine it could. Thus grew. Thus grew and grew, sweltering with food, with fleshstuff, with meatminds, until it began to stretch. As it walked it waddled as a snake could only waddle, pregnant with congealed food, dragging its belly across the fullness of the clover-covered field, until with a great shriek — its middle tore. Out came a hundred wormy maggots and an orange paw; the tiger glowed once more.
"Looks like this one lost its name too," the tiger said. "Ya lost it in the mist? What's the last thing ya remember?"
The sacrifice, who in mindfulness had crawled across the field so he could sit in comfort even while he died, leaned against a tree. "The — mist, yes. It came to the village."
"Like a blanket?"
"Like a wave. The tides of the burning came from the north and came then the mist — it came to the village. That's when elder said there must be sacrifice. Or the rains will stop."
The tiger sliced his calves, ignored his cries. In his blood it read the truth. "Ya volunteered? Brave soul, huh?"
"What must be done, must be done." The man said.
"Brave soul," The tiger judged. Slaughtered itself, and out came the snake.
"Ya some kinda shittin' hero?" The snake asked. "Moralizer? Think carefully — I don't keep my meat 'round long!"
"What must be done, must be done," The man repeated. "Though when the elders said I was to feast the gods, I imagined godlier beings than a big snake and a tiger."
"That's because we're old," The snake suggested. "When we were just done bein' made all the world knew nothing, there was no imagination. It was all snakies and doggies, lil ol' birds and Mother Maggots. Ya should see what came after. Frankly ya oughta be thankful, that we ain't the horrors that came. I don't fancy myself with a head of snake-hair; that's a special kinda ugly."
"It must be nice to be — simple."
Golden eye narrow. "Ya dissin' me?"
A grim smile. "What will you do, kill me?"
For which the snake laughed, laughed the world, liking the spunk, the humor, and rose til it was as tall as the trees laughing still, guffawing, chortling, trembling with rageful mirth and wrathful goodwill, until it split its sides, split right down the middle. From its head downwards it fell front and back. Half of its skin careened forwards into the trees, narrowly missing the sacrifice, crashed with a thunderous sound into the underbrush. It's back half fell backwards, lost into the darkness. From its iron-hot belly came the cat. It came forward, dipped its paw into the man's wound, and painted back on its stripes. Then it was a tiger.
"Nice to meet ya," said the tiger. "We like ya, and we'll keep ya. The name's Saejima. The unruly one is Majima."
It carved itself. Out came the towering snake.
"I am Majima," it announced, gold eye glinting like a fistful of coins.
The sacrifice looked it in the eye, and was not afraid.
One man who was afraid climbed against the polish of the rocks, the ingratiating carpet of slippery leaves. How far more to go; does he know? Is this the right direction; does he know? Who was he seeking; can he know? Of the three he could answer none with confidence and had none, confidence.
He knew he was Nishikiyama Akira, but the mist had descended, and even that (the name) was being cruelly wrenched out of his grasp. It was twisting, like soy-clotted cloth, away from him. His knowledge. His identity. The mist enveloped him, and turned him about so thoroughly that it was as if he walked through a womb, a white womb: no entry nor exit, no stars, no map, no tree that spoke. Beneath him the ground gave way to lily pads; he was walking on water, but how?
He stood in the middle of a lake, gawking thinly at happenstance. The flowers were lit in the distance. Pink, blue, like soaring fireflies; shimmering pollen. He was crying. It seemed like he had been crying for hours. He did not remember starting, or the reason for his grief. Was it not simpler...?
He lifted the sleeve of his yukata and checked the words carved into his flesh. Friend. Family.
The last word had healed over.
Nishikiyama stared, watched the goodness spread.
Family being eaten. Family eaten now. Jaws hinging clasped those words and ate it. Famil. Fami. Fam. Fa. F. F — Nothing. Angrily he clawed his flesh until it tore; he expected that it would be like a sheathe, a cover, and when he ripped his own skin off there beneath the webby outskirts of his meat there would be words. There was none. The skin of his arm came off entirely, and there were no words beneath, only the red pickings of goodness underneath.
Friend left.
He stood upon the pond and wondered if it was not easier to be afraid —
The more they ate him, the more Kiryu glowed with good health. A paradox, certainly, but not as mystifying as his name, which they had found stitched into the skin of his buttocks, under the lattice of ropes. His cerements. It had been made with a bumbling but earnest hand, a manly hand, and in that embroidery was Kiryu's name: Kiryu Kazuma. How reassuring to know his own name at last! Naked without his ropes he roamed, as best a man could roam with rapidly diminishing legs, about the clearing.
"Why do you do this?" He asked them over dinner one day.
They had generously shared the rotting meat with him, and reluctantly he took it, swallowing without breathing, so he could sustain himself. He had to keep himself alive until they were thoroughly dined with him.
"Saejima and me, we can't exist at the same time — ya mighta notice." Majima said, cleaning his fangs in a flask full of wine. He dipped his head in, washed, removed himself, grinned. "Ya gonna ask why?"
"Why?"
"Ain't for mortals to know!" He shrieked, laughing until the tiger came again.
"It's a curse," Saejima said. "We're lit by different stars. That's star-crossed, what some said, that's happened to us. Look closely at the sky," he said. "Look."
Kiryu looked. When Saejima fell apart the stars winked out, and when Majima was there again a new set were lit.
"Long ago when the mold on yer ancestor's grave was still smokin' hot," Majima began. "We stole a pearl from a dragon so we could love each other. They didn't think to give us that, ya see — love — so we needed a pearl that could grant wishes like so. We found it and used it and wished that we could love, love each other, and then well — the shittin' dragon found out, and we got bigtime cursed."
"He really laid in the law," Saejima elaborated.
"The law?" Majima hissed. "My foot! Or — my feet, if I had some. Hey, that's an idea, innit, if we get the pearl again, I'll wish for my feet back — "
"Concentrate, kyoudai."
"Oh yeah, where was I? This damned mist." The snake sneezed. "Anyway, everything woulda be fine if we returned the pearl. Except we couldn't. That oldfarty dragon got himself knocked outta heaven before we could. He never managed to forgive us in time, so here we are — until someone finds him again."
"But why did you wish for love, if you've never known it?" Kiryu asked. "Wouldn't it be easier, if you couldn't? Why would you want something you've never felt?"
"We were experimentin'?" Majima said, chortling. Shrugged his snakey shoulders. "You explain, kyoudai."
"A blind man knows he is blind, though he has never seen," said Saejima, rolling in the grass, leaving a wet hole.
"As a deaf man knows there must be music he cannot hear," said Majima, crushing twigs with his girth, papering the hole with them.
"As the tongueless know words, yet cannot speak," said Saejima, weaving a shroud, so that all could not see them except Kiryu.
"As the loveless grow lovelorn, lovers without love, a joy full of heartbreak," concluded Majima, and laid down in their nest. He closed his eyes. Wetly. Opened. Glistened. "When we eat ya fully, then on that day as no other we may meet. For a week we can be together, and I will have my lovey with me again. Rejoice, Kiryu-chan. Ya are to be a feast for two gods; most mortals only ever become a feast for one."
Then it laid down to sleep, and intermittently turned, rolling in its sleep into its other skin: splitting apart, joining together, defusing, refusing, refuse, rising again, two souls in the same spot; always one after the other.
One man who was legless was struggling against the forest, the corded neck of its muscling roots, its gnarled hands. Will he escape; can we know? Will he leave this night alive; may we know? For his answers to these questions scarcely mattered anymore. There was strictly speaking, no Nishikiyama Akira, the separation between him and the forest (never spurious) now melded.
He knew he was Nishikiyama Akira, but the forest was twisting the name out of him; the forest wanted the name, it had never had one. No name! No-name-forest? The forest hungered for a name, it salivated to be more than a collective of bickering trees. If it could— if it could only have a name — it could be greater, something wilder. A forest named Nishikiyama Akira. Many syllables. Desirable sounds, covetous words. The forest breathed and snuffled and gored the name, nibbling on all the delicious turns of the tongue, licking the word, grinding it between its branching teeth: it was not about to drop even a single syllable, it will not let go. It will not let Nishikiyama go.
Nishikiyama melded into the tree. Minutes ago he had touched a branch and then his healing flesh had become bark.
His skin grayed, then flaking. The words were lost forever. Now friendless — loverless — orphaned — and soon, perhaps, flowering. The trees were not pink nor blue as seen in the undistance, and it was not shimmering pollen that he had seen, but glowing hate.
Yet the forest waived it aside and promised him: flowering, bearing fruit, rooted. All the things the human condition desired.
Does a maiden not want to flower? Do your endeavors not strive to bear fruit? Do you not crave, in your heart of hearts, to be as rooted as a mud-bound oak, great and towering, immovable, unyielding, unchanging, immotile — rooted? It was everything a man could want; to be a true thing. Come be a tree, it said. Come be a tree. Share his name with them. He was turning into a tree, but why?
He lifted his hands. His torso had already melted into the carnivorous oak, and the bark crept steadily up his hips, his belly, now to his nipples, then to his collarbone. Like wings they spread down both his arms. Like numbness and teeth; a lover's bite. Why? He cried — but so close! In the distance he could see a glowing clearing, he could see a shroud being weaved. He could see a lone torch being lit; a lone man sitting there; and though he did not know any longer WHY he had first come here — he knew it must be that, the man (the only thing living in this forest, all else being dead) that had driven him here. It was only a pond across! Nishiyama gnashed his teeth, wailed, and then — broke himself in the middle.
Reached down and bent, cracked himself across the heart like a branch and fell, plunging into the water. The darkness enveloped him, the smell of duckweed, pond water. Murky fish dreams rushed into his mouth, his nose, his eyes, and he could spit nothing out, stung, yet could not feel escape, could neither shut nor open his eyes; with no legs and atrophying arms he could never swim.
Like driftwood drifting into the depths of the water.
Glowed, the surface.
Bubbling like a cauldron. Water neither cold nor light.
Darkening every inch by inch into the water, up above he heard the screaming of the trees, denied its name. Now it will never be a Nishikiyama forest. Akira denied immortality, and they, a name. He sank, hands reaching out in the cagey dark to touch, hoping his fingertips might graze, yes? But no. Nothing but filtered pondlight, glowing dazzling blue green in dappled patterns from above, and all else when he looked below — billowing darkness.
Ah but dying.
He opened with effort his death-clotted eyes. Away from the trees he had atrophied anyway, so that his face (if he could touch it, which he could not) was hewn out of bark. His cheeks would crack if he spoke; his throat a well-formed trunk, his fingers flowering like branches. Pink were his flowers. Pink.
A fish laid eyes on him, and saw him. Nishikiyama could not see it; a man could not see in these waters.
"Eat me," he begged, blindly.
And may have been heard.
In the clearing the tiger and the snake was mating, and Kiryu — if not quite dead yet — was certainly dead enough to uncurse them. Ahead of him there were stars. He laid now on the ground, most of him pecked into bones. Saejima had promised they would leave his bones behind, for the villagers to bury.
If the villagers wanted to bury him; if they could remember him enough to bury him.
He knew for sure if there was a grave it would not be marked: no epitaph, no name, which even in him was quickly fading… Kiryu, he reminded himself. Kiryu. Kiryu. He blinked at the mist-clotted skies, and obligingly they cleared to allow him one last glimpse.
Closing his eyes, he heard:
The universe sleeps
And its gigantic ear
Full of ticks
That are stars
Is now laid on its paws —
Understood that the universe was a ravenous sort. A great dog.
He listened to the rhythm of the tiger's love, the controlled passivity of the snake. Their breaths twisted and wounded around each other. They attached themselves together. Their imitation of the human's kiss (or did man imitate them?) was a sucking motion: Saejima's fangs pressed against scaly skin. Devouring. Once in decades. They spoke, and could be heard. They did not need the trees nor the wind to capture the sound, until the other could be around. They glowed: with love, but also glowing in earnest, glowing in health, glowing in vitality, but mostly in love. Against the moon, the snake's scales was iridescent, the tiger's fur a refractive black. Held against a tree being loved passionately the snake opened its one eye, looked at Kiryu and said —
"Poor Kiryu-chan. Eh? Pity it's gotta be this way."
What Kiryu cared about was that the stars were being beheaded. The sky was full of carnage. Did they not see? No. They had only eyes for one another. He gazed into the distance and saw something twisting in the shadows beneath the lilypads. Something was being eaten in the lake. A feast of eyes, as up here, there was a feast for eyes.
"Pour me into the lake," he said, urgently. "Pour me."
"Ya got it," Saejima said, licking his kyoudai's neck. For a snake, that meant all of him. "Later."
Later came, but Kiryu was dead.
Their passion sated, they walked claw by scale beside one another, carrying the desiccated body to the lake. Placed on Saejima's back the grotesque corpse was like mummery, a puppet. It jerked and dance to every move, every rearrangement of the tiger's back. The snake looked down and repeated: "Poor Kiryu-chan. A good ballsy cabbage. Better than any who came before, no wailin' or shouting."
"Not so poor, I think," Saejima said, beginning to suspect.
They threw him into the lake and went back to their joys and passions.
On their fifth night together, the last they were allowed before the curse befell them again, there came from the lake a great din. Bent together in the nest they did not budge, hardly moved, for they need not go to the shoreline: the shoreline came to them.
The bank eroded in the greatness of the being being raised. The insides of the lake turned inside out, so that where it caved deeply now it was a hill; the heels of it, rumbling, lifting, turning in its wrathful sleep. All across it, the denizens of the lake died out, compressed in the hurried earth; winked out one and all. The lilypads slipped into the clefts. The trees — who had lost their chance at a name — cried when uprooted and flung aside. The bowels of the mountain constricted; the mountain bit its own shoulders; it ripped out its own muddy fingers, its crown of underwater weeds. Shook itself loose. When all the mud was eaten, there stood a dragon again.
In the moonlight the gray dragon was translucent as it bestrode the hill, the world. It lifted its head and grasped a star in its teeth. Crunching it. Savoring it. It ate juicily the star, and when it spat, those specks of spit became yet more stars. In its belly, they could see the pulsating red shape of its organs and a little fish. Swimming among its thousands of hearts. A pearly koi.
"Oi, Kiryu-chan!" the snake shrieked, jumping up and down. "Forgive us, ya fucker!"
The tiger paced, but calmly: "Ya better. It's been too damned long,"
"Forgive us, or else!" Majima shouted.
"Ya got your fish back," Saejima added.
"Forgive us, or I'll rip ya a new one! Kill you! Eat you! Kick you in the head! Kyoudai, gimme a leg up — "
Standing one on the other, wavering, they could barely reach the dragon's knees. But still threatened to kill it. Hopping mad. Screeching fury.
What will the dragon do? Do we know?
We do.
The dragon laughed, glad to be back. In its belly the fish swam in ecstasy. The dragon stamped its feet, furious flesh elemental, stomping on the throat of its own song. The ocean inside it bore up his hearts and all of them soared, rising on tiptoes, straining as a tide to caress the moon. All the stars streamed silver in the night. Paradise! —