Dendera (4 page)

Kayu Saitoh had no idea how to react to the news that Kura Kuroi was still alive, living in Dendera, and, moreover, grateful for being rescued. So she did the only thing she could, which was to throw off Maka Kikuchi who was sitting on top of her.

As she did so, Kayu Saitoh heard a gaggle of voices coming up from behind. The fishing party, comprising Ate Amami, Chinu Nitta, Hikari Asami, Soh Kiriyama, and Makura Katsuragawa, had returned.

“Oh my. So you were only able to catch two?” It was Ate Amami who spoke first, eyeing the spoils of Kayu Saitoh’s hunting party and seemingly oblivious to the bad blood in the air.

“We were teaching her the basics as we went along. That takes time,” Hatsu Fukuzawa shot back defensively. Kotei Hoshii and Maka Kikuchi had also taken up guarded postures, their hackles raised at the implicit criticism in Ate Amami’s breezy remark.

“Oh, no, please don’t misunderstand me,” Ate Amami hastily corrected. “I meant no disparagement. You see, we had something of a rotten time of it ourselves. Hardly
anything
was biting today. All we really have for our troubles is sore, freezing legs.”

She showed them the contents of their rough wicker basket. Four measly fish.

“This is turning out to be a lean year. Nothing’s coming easy,” Hikari Asami said, fiddling with the half-frozen flask of water that was dangling from her crude straw overcoat.

“As long as we don’t have to eat those shitty millet-husk dumplings again, that’s all I ask. I can hardly keep those bloody things down,” said Somo Izumi.

Somo Izumi’s words gave Kayu Saitoh a jolt. Kayu Saitoh had been used enough to eating millet and chestnuts back in the Village but never the actual millet husk. The reason for this was simple: it wasn’t a foodstuff fit for human consumption. Kayu Saitoh realized that she had been underestimating just how precarious the food situation was in Dendera.

“Have you even got any stores for the winter?” Kayu Saitoh asked, concerned.

“Do you see those storehouses over there?” Ate Amami pointed out two comparatively sturdy buildings in the distance. Kayu Saitoh could see some ears of corn hanging out to dry and noticed that the two buildings’ entrances faced directly opposite each other, and that each entrance was guarded by an old woman acting as sentinel. The sentinels both held wooden spears in their hands. Kayu Saitoh had noticed before that both buildings seemed to have a permanent guard day and night, but she hadn’t had the opportunity to ask about them before. “We’ve got dried fish in there and whatever grains we’ve been able to rustle up. Though nowhere near enough to comfortably feed fifty old women for a whole winter, of course.”

“But why have two storehouses?” Kayu Saitoh asked. “And what’s with the two guards? They look like they’re watching each other.”

“You don’t miss a beat do you, Ms. Kayu,” Ate Amami said, craning her grimy neck. “We had storehouses in the Village too, to guard our food from wild beasts and thieves, of course. But you have to remember that food in Dendera is even scarcer. What’s to say that the sentries won’t start raiding the stores that they’re supposed to be guarding, unless there are other sentries to watch
them
?”

“It’s just the kind of place Dendera is during the winter,” Makura Katsuragawa said, covering her flared nose with her hand. “Nothing for it except to grit your teeth and tough it out until the ground frost thaws and we can start planting again.”

“That’s how desperate you are to eke out your miserable little existence, huh?” said Kayu Saitoh bitterly.

“Kayu …” Makura Katsuragawa’s voice was trembling again.

“Women eating coneys? Setting guards to watch the other guards?” The bile inside Kayu Saitoh was rising again, and she snorted, causing a whistling sound to emerge from her frozen-over nose. “I just don’t understand you all. You run away from the Mountain and make this little Dendera, but so what? What’s this all
for
?”

“I thought Mei Mitsuya had explained that all to you. We’re going to attack the Village. That’s what we live for,” Hatsu Fukuzawa answered.

“Pathetic. So this is what you call revenge …” Kayu Saitoh muttered.

“You’re one of
them,
then, are you, Kayu? One of the weaklings who just wants to fritter away the rest of her days in Dendera?” Hatsu Fukuzawa said.

“No! How dare you lump me in with
those
wretches. I’m not like them. I’m not like
either
of you! And I won’t be staying here forever, that’s for sure.”

“Well, what
are
you going to do, then?” Hatsu Fukuzawa asked harshly. “You’re not going to attack the Village. You won’t be staying in Dendera. So, I ask you once more, Kayu—what
are
you going to do?”

What Kayu Saitoh
had
been going to do, of course, what she had
wanted
to do, was to Climb the Mountain and enter Paradise. But it now seemed that what she wanted didn’t have anything to do with what she was going to get. She was now an inhabitant of Dendera whether she liked it or not, and the road to Paradise was closed off forever. So what
was
she going to do next? She simply didn’t have an answer. Kayu had to find a new path for her life now, but she hadn’t thought about it yet, hadn’t been able to think about it, and she still had no idea, not an inkling. Her face contorted in frustration and shame.

“Ah, ladies, it seems it’s time.” Ate Amami changed the subject when she noticed movement in the distance.

Figures were emerging from the two-story wooden building—from Mei Mitsuya’s house. Three women: Mei Mitsuya herself, with Nokobi Hidaka and Naki Sokabe in tow. They were moving unsteadily toward the clearing in front of the house. Soon, the area was full of old women clutching wooden spears.

“Time for drill,” Makura Katsuragawa said breezily, as if all of Kayu Saitoh’s objections to this lifestyle were now answered.

Drill.
It wasn’t a word that Kayu Saitoh had ever heard used in the Village. It had a lazy, wasteful, decadent sound about it. Once more, Kayu Saitoh felt deluged by a wave of shame. She wished it could wash her and all the others away and kill them all instantly.

“Well,
we’re
going for our drill,” Hatsu Fukuzawa said. “Are you coming?”

“Am I … ?” Kayu Saitoh was at a loss for words.

Before she could answer, a new voice was heard on the scene. “There’s absolutely no need if you don’t want to, you know.” It was an old woman who wore a dog pelt. Hono Ishizuka. “It’s a savage idea and pointless to boot. Rather than squandering our time and energy on such nonsense we should be focusing our efforts on something constructive, such as finding all the food we can.”

“Oh, looky here. The yellow-belly’s come to try and recruit another to her cowardly ways,” Hatsu Fukuzawa said, squaring off with the new arrival. “What an embarrassment.”

Hono Ishizuka didn’t flinch at the challenge and coolly shot back that it was Hatsu Fukuzawa’s way of thinking that was the true embarrassment.

“And what’s embarrassing about what we’re doing, pray? Can’t you see how serious we are?” Hatsu Fukuzawa said.

“Yes, and
tha
t
’
s
what’s so embarrassing,” Hono Ishizuka said. “Expending time and effort on such folly. Why not actually make yourselves
useful
? There’s food to gather and buildings to build—”

“This isn’t the Village!” Hatsu Fukuzawa barked. “Stop trying to make things like they were! We’ve got a different task now!”

“Have you forgotten what happened in Dendera ten years ago as a result of your obsession with your new little
task
?” Hono Ishizuka asked. The question evidently hit a nerve, as Hatsu Fukuzawa, whose expression remained unchanged, took this as her cue to go silent, and she retreated to join the other old women who were practicing with their spears.

“Hono Ishizuka,” Hikari Asami said, brushing her white hair, “what you say is … correct, of course. But …”

“You don’t need to say any more,” Hono Ishizuka said, her tone gentler.

“But I still …” Hikari Asami’s words trailed off, and she walked toward the clearing where the drill was starting. Somo Izumi, Ate Amami, Kotei Hoshii, Maka Kikuchi, Chinu Nitta, and Soh Kiriyama all followed her. Only Makura Katsuragawa hesitated, but eventually she too went to take up a wooden spear.

“And what about you, Ms. Kayu? Will you be joining the drill? Will you practice whirling a spear around?”

“I heard that there was a faction who were against the idea of attacking the Village. Are you their ringleader, then?” Kayu Saitoh responded with a question of her own.

“Ringleader of a faction? My, that’s a rather harsh way of putting it,” Hono Ishizuka said with a wry smile. “It’s true that there are some of us who consider that we’d be better off working on making Dendera a better place to live, rather than worrying over attacking the Village.
Doves,
they call us. No, I do my bit, but our real leader, if you want to call her that, is Masari Shiina. I’m sure you’ll remember her? She Climbed the Mountain nineteen years ago now, it must have been.”

“Shiina? You mean the Shiina from the salt merchants?” Kayu Saitoh asked.

“Just so.”

The incident of the salt merchants had happened when Kayu Saitoh was only a little girl, but it was etched into her memory as if it had happened only yesterday.

The salt merchant himself had been a serious and conscientious man in every respect until one day when he became possessed by a hunger demon. He gobbled his way through his household’s food supplies in no time flat, and soon he was reduced to desperate measures such as chewing weeds, shoving his face straight into the river to drink water, and even sucking on pebbles. The salt merchant’s wife, deprived of food, grew so thin that her skin started clinging to her skull, and the children of the household soon starved to death. As the salt merchant had eaten his household into abject poverty, the Village had to provide the rice for the ritual offerings for their graves, but the salt merchant snuck into the graveyard at night and ate the offerings as well. And then the incident happened. The salt merchant was discovered in the fields of another household, chewing on a pile of raw potatoes that he had dug up with his bare hands. The salt merchant was immediately apprehended, blinded, and lynched. Then his wife was tied up and brought out into the open to join him, as was Masari Shiina, who had married into another household. After that, the entire populace of the village, excluding the young babes, gathered in the open, and the Mountain Barring began.

Mountain Barring was the punishment reserved for households that broke taboo. First, the offending household’s possessions and livestock were seized and distributed among the rest of the Village. Then, the house was razed to the ground. Next, pieces of wood were taken from the debris and used to beat the members of the household. While this was happening the Villagers would take up a ritual chant:
We won’t let you Climb the Mountain.
A household so lacking in shame that it couldn’t uphold the ways of the Village had no right to Climb the Mountain. Furthermore, it would be a terrible thing if the Mountain were ever to know of the existence of such embarrassments, and so it was up to the Villagers to destroy their shameful secret before it ever got out. So the salt merchant and his wife were both ritually cudgeled to death. The twenty-seven-year-old Shiina was beaten to within an inch of her life too, of course, but the Villagers were more merciful to her as she had entered the Shiina household and taken their name. She wasn’t killed, but only blinded in her left eye.

After the Mountain Barring ritual was complete, all trace of the salt merchant was removed from the Village, and no one ever spoke of the household again. Food was always scarce in the Village, and in actuality any sort of theft, let alone the stealing of food, was crime enough to warrant the annihilation of an entire household. The young Kayu Saitoh who had witnessed the Mountain Barring vowed to herself that however hungry she became she would never, ever resort to stealing, as the prospect of being denied the right to Climb the Mountain and enter Paradise was a fate worse than death.

“Of course you remember her. How could anyone forget a Mountain Barring?” Hono Ishizuka said softly, as if she were reading Kayu Saitoh’s thoughts and memories. “There’s every chance that something just as barbaric could happen here in Dendera, you know, given the chronic shortage of food.
That’s
what we’re about, the Doves. Our priority is to make Dendera a place where that sort of tragedy never happens.”

“With Masari Shiina and you leading the way?” Kayu Saitoh said.

“Yes.”

“Fine. So once Dendera is a nice, peaceful place with a nice, stable food supply, then what?
That’s
when you attack the Village?”

“Heavens, no.” Hono Ishizuka shrugged her shoulders. “Why would we go out of our way to disturb our hard-won peace and stability? Not that I don’t have plenty of ill feelings toward the Village, of course, but the idea of
attacking
it is sheer folly. As if a gaggle of raggedy old women stood a chance of winning in the first place!”

“Well, I’m in complete agreement with you on that point,” Kayu Saitoh said, nodding. “So, according to Mei Mitsuya, you—
Doves?
You’re about half of Dendera? How many of you are there exactly?”

“There are twelve of us who you could say have declared for the Doves,” Hono Ishizuka said.

“That’s nowhere near half!”

“No. I imagine that Ms. Mei Mitsuya conflates all those who haven’t made up their mind with those of us who have declared against an attack on the Village. There are twenty-eight Hawks in total—that’s those who plan to attack—and twelve Doves. The other nine are either undecided for the time being or not in any state fit to make decisions.”

And so it was that Kayu Saitoh learned how Dendera comprised three distinctly different groups: the Hawks, the Doves, and the undecided. Not everyone in Dendera was cut from the same cloth. Not that their differences were enough to cause them to descend into outright hostilities, of course—their common bond of all having been abandoned, all being outcasts, was enough to ensure
tha
t
,
Kayu Saitoh decided, but nonetheless there was a definite uneasiness to their truce. Yes, this was still a land of shameless, pathetic creatures, Kayu Saitoh thought.