Dendera (6 page)

Circumstances, however, conspired to cloud Redback’s usually sound animal instincts.

It was winter. The very fact of a bear roaming the mountains during winter was, in itself, an anomaly. Redback should have been hibernating, as she did most years. Most years she would eat her fill of salmon from the streams, and strawberries and lingonberries from the fields, and then settle into a comfortable, fatty, torpid stupor, but this year had been different. Food had been scarce, and she hadn’t managed to eat enough to acquire the necessary layer of insulating body fat. And so the cold winter wind had sapped away at her body heat, and when the snow began to fall and her stomach began to rumble, Redback sensed that her life was in danger and emerged prematurely from her winter hideaway. So far she had managed to scavenge just about enough nutrients to survive by gnawing at roots and other such meager offerings, but the miserable forage left her in a bewildered, disturbed state close to anger. Why should she—whose rightful territory this was, who was supposed to be stronger and prouder than every other creature in the mountain—be reduced to such misery?

On top of that, Redback had given birth to a cub the year before last.

Like her, the male cub had missed his opportunity to hibernate. Suffering extreme hunger, he followed his mother in short, weak strides. Whenever she looked at him, her maternal instincts heightened—in terms of human emotions, she wanted him to somehow survive. But the winter wouldn’t end, and food wasn’t to be found, and the mother and cub weakened further with each passing day. When they searched for it, they could find fir trees with inner bark to scavenge and paltry remnants of decaying plants buried beneath the snow, but none of this would fill their stomachs. Such was their existence, when one day, her cub became too emaciated to walk steadily, and her normally sound animal judgment went awry.

There were two places where the Two-Legs seemed to congregate. One of those was where Redback had tried to enter and received the awful wound from those strange fire-breathing sticks. But she had not yet tried the other one, so that was where she was heading. It wasn’t a risk she would have taken under normal circumstances, but it was clear that there just wasn’t enough food anymore, and besides, the fact that all of this should have been
her territory
was starting to gnaw deep. She drew on her remaining reserves of strength and raised her hackles. Night crows resting on a nearby tree branch flew away, sensing the disturbance in the air caused by Redback’s new sense of resolve. Redback was a female and slightly past her prime, but she had an unusually large head for her kind, and her build was exceptionally muscular, and her fangs and claws were all in good order. Redback had, after all, only ever lost one fight in her life, and that was to the Two-Legs with their strange spitting sticks. Redback wasn’t exactly calm at the prospect of having to face those things again, but her four legs carried her forward nonetheless. Redback—that is to say, a bear—is able to move through mountain terrain at speeds that are quite remarkable considering its short, stubby legs. So it wasn’t long before Redback arrived at that other place where the Two-Legs lived.

This place seemed quiet. Redback could remember that sharp smell those hateful sticks gave off when they had hurt her back leg. Well, that smell was nowhere to be found now. Still, Redback was taking no chances. She moved stealthily through the night, using the trees for cover, scouting out the whole area. Eventually she saw some of the Two-Legs. There were four of them with sticks in their hands, standing still in front of two of those strange dens that the Two-Legs made. There were ears of corn hanging from the walls of the dens. Redback sniffed the air once more, carefully, to check again if she could detect that sharp smell of those pain-sticks, and when she confirmed she couldn’t, she started advancing, slowly, toward the Two-Legs.

Redback moved boldly now. After all, there was nothing underhanded about what she was doing, not from her point of view. She was just taking back what was rightfully hers. This wasn’t an invasion—she was just claiming bounty that had been harvested from her territory. Unlike smaller, weaker animals that tried to sneak in to steal from under the Two-Legs’ noses, Redback simply walked up to the corn as if she had every right to do so and began to furiously devour it. The Two-Legs just stood there at first, dumbstruck, at a complete loss as to how to deal with this new arrival. Having said that, they couldn’t simply watch in silence as Redback ransacked their stores, so eventually one of them plucked up the courage to swing her stick at Redback’s rear. At this point it would have been easy for Redback to take a lazy swipe with one of her massive paws and rip through the offending Two-Legs’ flesh and bone, but instead Redback chose to make a show of standing erect on her hind legs and facing her attackers, as if to show once and for all that this was
her
territory, not the Two-Legs’, and that she would take down any interlopers face to face, anytime, anyplace. Then, Redback decided it was time for a little experiment. She gave one of the Two-Legs a little exploratory jab, fully expecting the counterblow of the painful sticks and bracing herself for the pain. It never came. Instead, the Two-Legs’ head just flew off into the air, and blood spurted from the place where its head had been attached to its body. The remaining Two-Legs were rooted to the spot in fear, but in her own way Redback was even more fearful and confused than they were. She tried poking at another one of the Two-Legs with her claws. Its belly ruptured and its innards poured forth as it crumpled into a heap on the ground. Redback really wasn’t sure what to make of this complete lack of resistance, so she charged at one of the two remaining Two-Legs, slamming her into—and then through—the wall of one of the dens, as both the Two-Legs’ body and the wall were pulverized. Redback’s face poked through the wall too, and she had been a little slow in removing it to face the final Two-Legs, and when Redback finally did look back she realized that the creature was aiming its stick at her, ready to stick it in her anus. Redback was vulnerable there, she knew, so she shifted her rear end, and the Two-Legs’ stick bounced off her hind leg instead, snapping instantly. Redback jumped onto the Two-Legs, shoving it to the ground with her massive front paws and then, not really knowing what else to do, decided to take a big bite out of its head. Redback’s giant jaws and fangs made light work of the creature’s skull. The Two-Legs gave a short scream from inside Redback’s mouth and then was silent. Its flesh and blood and brains splattered viscerally onto Redback’s tongue.

That instant, Redback’s instincts and experience informed it of two facts.

The first was how weak these Two-Legs were.

The second was how delicious these Two-Legs were.

After finishing off the head, Redback moved on to the flesh on the Two-Legs’ body. It had been a long time since she had felt the exhilarating taste of fresh meat, but Redback managed to contain her excitement long enough to raise her head and look around to check that no other Two-Legs were drawing dangerously near. Her mouth half open and dribbling with fresh blood, she sniffed, confirming to herself that nothing was coming and, even better, that there was more food nearby. That new smell came from inside the den that she had crushed the Two-Legs against. Redback deftly used her claws to enlarge the hole she had made with her charge, and then she forced her giant frame inside. There she found dried fish, beans, and grains. Redback ate and ate to subdue the hunger that had been driving her half mad. Once her belly was finally full, she went back outside, selected the Two-Legs that looked like it had the most eating on it, and picked it up in her giant mouth before sauntering back into the Mountain, satiated and proud once more, having eaten her deserved fill and restored her honor as the rightful master of all she surveyed.

“W
e will now form an expeditionary squad to kill the bear.”

Mei stood on her balcony, surveying the forty-one able-bodied old women gathered in the clearing below. The day had started with the terrible news of the ransacked stores and the mangled bodies, and Mei had wasted no time in hastily assembling the inhabitants of Dendera from their respective houses.

“This hateful beast has declared war on Dendera! It ate our supplies and killed four of our friends,” Mei declared. “It must be killed. We must have a bear hunt!”

“Ms. Mei. It’s a fine thing to see you so lively this early in the morning, and an expeditionary squad is all very well, but can we actually win against this bear? That is my question.” Hono had stepped forward from the crowd and was looking up at Mei. The sun had only just risen above the peak of the Mountain, casting a light on Hono’s back.

“Don’t be a coward. It’s just a dumb beast! How can we lose?”

“But we have no experience fighting bears. We don’t know how to fight them. We have no rifles.”

“We have the numbers!” Mei rasped, licking her crusty lips. “There are enough of us. What chance does a bear have if we are united against it?”

Her war cry seemed to have a rousing effect on the rabble of old women assembled below, and there were shouts of agreement, one after another, until it seemed they were all speaking with one voice. The old women had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, so perhaps it was only natural that, when backed into a corner, their decision was to fight.

Kayu Saitoh kept her cool amidst this fighting spirit, but she agreed with the idea of a do-or-die expeditionary squad. She understood that Dendera was the only place that the old women—herself included—could survive, and that if a bear threatened its existence then it was only natural to resist. She also agreed to some extent with Hono, or at least understood where she was coming from. However much the inhabitants of Dendera might have wanted to stand strong and united, the fact was that they didn’t have any rifles, or the strength of the men of the Village, only their pathetic makeshift weapons and the weakness of old women.

“If we’re going to hunt down this bear then let’s do it quickly, before it gets the chance to eat Sasaka’s body.” Kyu Hoshina’s voice rose from the throng.

Kyu had Climbed the Mountain seventeen years ago, the same year as Shigi Yamamoto, but unlike Shigi she had not been immediately rescued by the inhabitants of Dendera. Neither had she simply died on the Mountain. Instead, she survived by herself for three full years before finally discovering Dendera on her own. As such, she was a credible voice among the Hawks, second only to Mei in terms of her influence over the others.

“That’s right. We need to bring Sasaka’s corpse back before it’s too late. So that we can give her a proper burial along with these others!” Mei looked down pointedly at the basket at her feet.

It was full of the remnants of the bodies of the old women killed by the bear.

Kayu Saitoh couldn’t see the fleshy remnants clearly as they were hidden by the basket. It all seemed so pointless to her. The women had endured, they had suffered, they had fought, and then they had been eaten by a bear that had no conception of what they had been through. And that was all, a meaningless ending. Kayu Saitoh felt something akin to sympathy for those women, and it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling.

“Yeah, we need to find the rest of Sasaka as soon as we can,” Kyu said.

To say that Sasaka’s corpse was incomplete was an understatement. The other corpses had also been chewed to the point of desecration, but they could at least be identified. In the case of Sasaka, however, only her head had been left behind, and there had been a trail of blood leading away, so the prevailing verdict was that her body had been dragged off into the Mountain. Kayu remembered being told by the menfolk back in the Village how a bear would always take its fresh-caught prey to a safe place before it started feasting on it.

“I don’t even care whether you’re a Hawk or a Dove!” Mei yelled. “Our Dendera has been attacked! This thing decimated our food supplies, killed four of our number, and dragged Sasaka’s remains into the Mountain! So who will step forward? Who has the courage to lay their life on the line? Raise your hands!”

Kayu Saitoh’s hand was the first to shoot up, causing quite a stir.

It might have been only her fourth day in Dendera, but she had already acquired quite a reputation for herself—and not in a good way—as a complainer, unhappy with the very existence of Dendera. The other old women were understandably surprised, then, when Kayu Saitoh was the first to volunteer for a mission that was potentially suicidal. Hono looked at Kayu Saitoh as though she were being betrayed.

“This has nothing to do with Hawks or Doves, right?” Kayu Saitoh said, defiantly meeting Hono’s gaze, then looking up at Mei.

“I’d like to volunteer too,” said Kyu, jumping forward. She smiled at Kayu Saitoh, and her face, as sun-blackened as the chief’s, possessed such intensity that Kayu Saitoh could hardly believe this was a woman seventeen years her senior.

The expeditionary squad ended up consisting of Mei, Kayu, Kyu, Makura, Somo, Hatsu, Kotei, Ate, Chinu, Hikari, Soh, Tai, Koto, Naki, Nokobi, Itsuru, Kaga, Guri, Tsugu, Tsuina, Tahi, Ume, Kan, Mitsugi, Shima, Usuma, Hyoh, Tema, Mumi, Tamishi, and Tsusa, numbering thirty-one in total. Hawks and Doves alike were welcomed, and members of both volunteered, but the final numbers were skewed toward the Hawks. Hono held out till the end, flatly refusing to volunteer.

As the series of steely-eyed, determined women stepped forward one by one to coalesce into the expeditionary squad, Kayu Saitoh noticed one woman out on a limb, going against the flow. This woman had long white hair that hung over her face, obscuring her features. The woman stood straight and was dressed well enough, by Dendera’s standards, but the way her hair just fell over her face was incongruous to Kayu Saitoh—it made her look weird, unnatural. As Kayu Saitoh thought this, a sudden burst of fresh air blew through the clearing, lifting the woman’s fringe up so that Kayu Saitoh managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of the face underneath.

It was Masari Shiina.

Masari Shiina, who had lost her left eye in that ugly Moutain Barring affair, seemed equally as unconcerned by her thick fringe as she did the expeditionary squad, and she simply walked back toward her house.

Once the expeditionary squad was satisfied that the sun had risen far enough in the east, they made their way into the Mountain. It was Mountain Climbing season, of course, but the actual Climbing always took place between noon and evening, so the chance of accidentally running into a Villager was minimal, and the hastily taken straw-poll consensus of the old women was that this slim chance was a risk worth taking given that time was of the essence, and that a sudden flurry of snow could cover up the bloody tracks at any time to make pursuit impossible, and that furthermore it was already a race against time if they wanted to recover Sasaka’s corpse while it was still in a semblance of good shape. And so it came to pass that the expeditionary squad charged eagerly up the Mountain without the women even taking the time to partake of their morning gruel, without even taking the time to stop for water. It was hardly surprising, then, that the pathless climb was quick to take its toll on the even-more-than-usually-famished Kayu Saitoh, whose breathing became ragged and uneven. She used her wooden spear as a walking stick as she pushed herself along through the white mountainscape following the red blood tracks, but that could last only so long, and soon she found that her legs would no longer carry her, and her feet slipped away beneath her, landing her on the soft snow. As Kayu Saitoh watched the rest of the expeditionary squad charge ahead determinedly, a memory from her past floated into her mind.

Last year had seen crop shortages in the Village, but that paled into insignificance compared to the great famine of ten years ago that had brought the Village to its knees. The Villagers had resorted to desperate measures, surviving on thin soup with tiny dumplings made of vegetable scraps and the flour left at the bottom of mortars, or by chewing on roots like wild animals. Before long the last of the Village’s livestock had perished, and the last ounce of nutrition had been wrung out of their withered carcasses, and then the Village had faced the real prospect of mass starvation. It was against this backdrop that a decision was taken to relax the normally rigid rules surrounding Climbing the Mountain. At a household’s discretion, its elders could now be sent to Climb the Mountain even if they had yet to reach the age of seventy. Kayu Saitoh had been sixty at the time and had wanted to go herself, but her son and in-laws refused to send her. Other families were quicker to take advantage of the new rule, however, and that year had seen ten women—Tai, Kaga, Guri, Tsugu, Tsuina, Tahi, Ume, Kan, Mitsugi, and Shima—all Climb the Mountain, even though they were all technically underage. All ten of the premature Climbers were here now on the hunting expedition. Even with the ten years that had passed, Kaga was only sixty-seven years old, and Tsugi was still only sixty-two. From her prone position amidst the thick snow Kayu Saitoh couldn’t help but feel a pang of envy at their relative youth, but then she considered that most of those who had to Climb the Mountain that year were now older than she, and she pulled herself together and forced herself to stand up again and push on.

The expeditionary squad was moving through the Mountain at a fair pace, and before long Kayu Saitoh started to notice things about the way the more experienced women moved, how there seemed to be a knack of sorts. They were lifting their legs in a way that allowed them to spring against the ground, to utilize the momentum of each step rather than allow it to be absorbed into the ground. Kayu Saitoh attempted to follow suit and found that it made an immediate and noticeable improvement. This discovery lifted her spirits, and she sped up, only to trip and fall again—her earlier exertion had taken its toll. A figure ahead doubled back and appeared beside Kayu Saitoh, holding out a hand to help her up. It was Kyu.

“I can stand on my own,” Kayu Saitoh snapped, hastily gathering herself back up. She wasn’t about to let an eighty-seven-year-old rescue her.

“Sure, I know where you’re coming from. You want to
pull your weight,
right?” Kyu, stinking of sweat and grime, grinned at Kayu Saitoh. “Ms. Hatsu told me all about you. That’s the spirit, kid!”

“But I’m not pulling my weight. I’m a burden,” said Kayu Saitoh, disgusted with herself.

“Hey. Before you start kicking yourself, isn’t there something else you should do?” Kyu said.

“Huh? What?”

“Why,
walk
,
of course! Lift your legs! First one and then the other! You can wish all you like, but you won’t get anywhere until you start walking! Now, come on. With me!”

Urged on by Kyu, Kayu Saitoh managed to get some of her breath back. The clouds of white vapour emerging from her mouth flowed more steadily. She moved one leg and then the other, and soon she was walking at a decent speed again.

“That’s it. Remember, take it at your own pace,” Kyu said from behind, gently encouraging her. And then, “By the way, Ms. Kayu, I’ve been wanting to ask you. Why are you always so
angry
all the time?”

This new line of conversation stopped Kayu Saitoh in her tracks. She certainly hadn’t considered herself the angry sort before. Certainly not compared to the hot-blooded Hawk faction of Dendera. Indeed, she had always thought of herself as one of the reasonable, levelheaded ones.

“The word in Dendera is that you were actually looking forward to Climbing the Mountain, Ms. Kayu. That you wanted to go to Paradise. Would that be the reason for your anger, perhaps?” Kyu was walking right beside Kayu Saitoh now. “I do believe that you are the only one who thinks this way.”

“Yes, well,” Kayu Saitoh said, breaking her silence in spite of herself, “that’s what gives you a reason to live, isn’t it? You wouldn’t want to live on if you believed in Paradise.”

“Actually, speaking for myself, I do believe in Paradise,” Kyu said.

“What? Really?” Kayu Saitoh’s tone betrayed her surprise.

“Sure. Your body may disappear, but what happens to your thoughts and memories? Where do they go? Where do they fly to? I can’t imagine they hang around here on the ground, can you?”

“So you’re saying we fly away to Paradise?” Kayu Saitoh asked.

“Well, yes. Paradise is the name given to the place to where the memories of the dead travel. That’s what I believe, anyway.”

“Kyu. Answer me this then. If you believe in Paradise, why didn’t you accept your death?” Kayu Saitoh said, her tone now uncomprehending, more than angry. “I heard that you somehow survived for three whole years on your own in the Mountain.”

“Why didn’t I accept my death?” Kyu said. “Why, because I didn’t
want
to go to Paradise, of course.”

“Even though you believe in it …”

“I survived by eating worms and weeds, Ms. Kayu, worms and weeds. It was a … harsh time. My face went black from sunburn, as you can see, and I lost all my teeth. Why do you think I put up with all this?
Because it’s better than having to go to Paradise,
of course. That’s what I think, anyway. You’re in pain? Suffering? Fine, you’re still
alive,
that’s what matters, that’s what’s important. When you’re alive you can walk, like we are now, or talk, like we are now.”