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I am his food. He eats slowly, conserving strength until he can come together again and wrap himself up in river-reeds, in necklaces of ibis-talons, in beast-heads which can be changed to suit the latest fashions. Today it will be Hawk, tomorrow black-tongued Jackal. How beautiful he will be, when the dream is over and he is bodied. My name will be written down in the book of the dead in gold ink, curled vowels and tender penmanship. There will be an asterisk, which notes that I took his place.
The Eaglehawk Studies and Learns
The air is still. It cups me like an older sister’s arms and I become slow, languorous, heavy. Mountain has put on his best green, deep and savage, and there are birds circling his gnarled head. Soon, I think to my Ayako-self, the boy will come from the dream-village. Perhaps he will bring me a little chicken whose eggs I could eat. Or even some rice-wine in a clay bottle with a pretty yellow cork.
I haven’t seen the moon in weeks. The constant heat-haze, as though from a well-rolled cigarette, prevents it. I am unconnected, removed from light, from the luminal braids that did not tumble down to the fennel and sage, basil and wild mint of an earth where I might have stood if I had not listened to Sparrow and been adopted by Mountain.
Perhaps instead of the fulmination of selves in my heart, I would have made daughters with eyes like plum blossoms. Perhaps I would have had a son with clean fingernails. I would have owned five kimonos, each with a different flower-pattern along the hem. Cherry, lily, chrysanthemum, orchid, peony. There would have been bleating goats and a rooster, even, perhaps, a fine brown horse. There would have been a husband to share a bed, and I would never have built the master-work of my loneliness with such care, the care of a swordsmith or royal architect. I would have kept a little songbird, and learned to play the koto with graceful hands.
The moon shines on the woman I never was, on the house I never owned, on her hair like moving water.
Rotted Weeds Metamorphose into Fireflies
I dream that this is the History of the World as River wrote it and Mountain spoke it:
When in the height Heaven was not named, and the Earth beneath did not yet bear a name, all things were Dark and without Law. Into this came Mountain and his brother River, and they brought Light to the World. Mountain saw that a wicked and hideous woman held dominion over Earth, and she was the Mother of Chaos. Mountain saw her, and knew that she was evil, and resolved to deliver Earth from her grasp.
And so in the fullness of Time, through great strength and cunning, it came to pass that Mountain, though her form disgusted him, let himself be seduced by her, for she was also a Harlot. And when he came to lay with her, Mountain contrived it so that River could enter her chamber and bind her at the arms. When the demoness could not move and cried out in her extremity, Mountain drove all the four winds through her belly. He severed her inward parts, he pierced her heart, he overcame her and cut off her life; he cast down her body and stood upon it. And the lord Mountain stood upon her hinder parts, and with his merciless club he smashed her skull.
Mountain shouted his triumph, but the People did not hear, for they had lived in Terror.
So that she could not return and do further evil, Mountain and River devised between them a clever plan. River cut through the channels of her blood, he split her up like a flat fish into two halves; one half of her they established as a covering for heaven; from the other half they fashioned the earth and all its districts. Mountain fixed a bolt; he stationed a watchman, and bade them not to let her Waters come forth. Only River would hold Water beneath his sway, and only Mountain hold Earth. They saw that their Work was Good, and Rested.
This is how the World was made, and how the Men of the World were liberated from the dominion of Evil. So it has been Written, and let no one doubt its Truth.
Dream-tears trickle down my cheeks, and pool on the wheat-bearing valleys below.
The Earth is Muddy and the Air is Humid
The rains have begun. It rained for five days and five nights, battering at my skin even through the slats of the pagoda-floors. Even on the third floor (which is not, after all, so difficult to reach) I cannot escape it, only lie curled around the faceless statue and murmur to it senselessly, words that are all vowels.
And then nothing but the same white haze for days, as though the wind smoked opium, until the belly of heaven opens again and the fat droplets splash down and turn the earth to a sloshing storm of mud and torn branches. Poor Juniper looks bedraggled and his branches have lost their fine berries by the bushel.
Wind conspires with water and I hide away from it. The green on Mountain’s flanks looks almost obscene under the footfalls of rain. It is has a glower to it, a strut. Even the cicadas are quiet, a wing-quivering audience for the sky.
Once, when the I-Ayako was younger, we danced in it. Our toes pointed east and the great thick drops fell down onto skin which was perfect, cream-pale and smooth. those were the days when dreams stayed dreams, and did not encroach on the daylight like cities on the forest. Our/my hair spun around me in a long fan, my toes wriggled in the soft mud. Those were the days when I loved my lessons, and I laughed wide-mouthed at the pearl-silver sky:
“Rain! Tell me a lesson about dancing!”
Even the bamboo sways when the wind visits.
In those days, the voice of the rain was young and sweet.
The Great Rains Sweep Through
I dream I range over the seas, above the hyphen of rain clouds. I see my dream-sister on the bone-islands, her hands in the chalky soil, trying to force her crops to grow. River tries to help her, he flows around her, through her sugar cane and orange trees, through her banana groves and her copses of dark-leaved mango. All of these have withered and turned black, and I can see her beat her red fists against the earth-that-was-me and weep terrible tears.
She has set up a temple, fine and white, with a shaded veranda—heaps of hibiscus and palm fronds pile up the altar. There is a thickly sweet smell as they rot, trickling a sickly red juice onto the clean floor. She preaches there, and calls herself the fire-god who kindled the first flame when the world was dark. She tells River she never had a sister, that she was an only child, that mother and father loved her too much to have another. She demands that she is beautiful and that pigs be roasted in her honor.
But still, her groves will not grow. My bones would not let such a thing occur, that my sister would eat the fruit of my body. Still, the dream-rot spoils everything she touches.
It is no matter to me—better that she destroyed my flesh, that I am now naked of it and a flame alone. But I pity
her. She rages, scarlet hair flying behind her, clutching handfuls of the bone-soil and ripping her breaths in half. I care little; she is a mewling puppet stuttering in her temple, her aspect mawkish and dull. I am grateful for her stones, which made me the lover of cities, which took my flesh and left only the fire.
I shrug garnet shoulders and move on. It is of no concern.
The Cool Wind Arrives
