Chapter 15 — INTERLUDE: Kuzunoha
A note on this chapter: the rest of the book is told in Hana's close first. This chapter, and one other late in the book, are not. They are told in a third person calibrated very near the kitsune's interior, in a slightly more archaic register. The shift is the chapter's only craft warning; Hana will not, in the chapters to come, know what is in it.
The inner shrine of the Kuzunoha line is not on the public path at Fushimi. It is, on the maps the city of Kyoto has filed since 1893, a small cedar grove at the upper edge of a hillside south of the great mountain, on land that the city's surveyors recorded as belonging to the family of a man who had been dead since 1632 and which had never, in any subsequent surveyor's revisit, changed hands. The cedars, on those maps, are catalogued as eighteen. There are, by his own count, eleven; the seven absent are the ones, by old courtesy, the surveyor was not permitted to see.
He walked to it through the cedar grove at midnight. He had been, an hour before, on the cedar counter of a teahouse on the inside of Pontocho, having poured the midnight blend for one cup and waited at the third stool from the left until four in the morning. The woman had not come. He had set the silver coin on a coaster of bamboo. He had folded a single page in his black-ink hand: I will return when you ask. — K. He had turned the noren from closed to closed — that is to say, he had not changed it; he had merely left as he had come.
He had walked back to Fushimi by the river. The river at four in the morning is the river of the herons before the herons have known they will be herons today. He had walked past the Sumire-gate at the third bend and had not, on the way down, touched it; he had touched it on the way up. He had thought: the coin has been on the counter since the first night. The coin has been on a counter since June of 1965. Sumire knew, in 2018, that I would, in 2026, do the thing she did not, in 1965, ask me to do.
He had not, by the long arithmetic of his line, expected to be a man whose grief had a daughter.
He climbed the inner stair at the inner shrine. He knelt at the inner stone. He bowed his head against the cedar of the lower lintel. He spoke aloud, in the register of the twelfth century, the prayer that the line's founder had spoken at the same stone in 1101 and that had been spoken at it, by some hand of the line, on every night since when a hand of the line was — in the old word — imo, which is to say in difficulty. The prayer is fourteen lines long. He spoke it in the time it took. He listened, after the fourteenth line, for the kind of silence that follows the prayer when the line has heard.
The silence was the silence.
He did not, by any rule of his line, take comfort from it. He took, instead, the next thing the line gave a hand of its blood at such a stone, which was the slight tipping-forward of the lantern at the stone's right shoulder by a half-degree. The lantern had not, this evening, been lit. It tipped anyway. The tipping was, in the line's old grammar, we hear you. Proceed.
He sat back on his heels.
He turned the silver kan'ei tsūhō over in his right hand. He had — he was suddenly aware — turned it sixty-one years. The coin had been minted in 1668 by a smith in Kannonji whose hand he had known. The smith had given the coin to him in 1669 as the price of a kindness it would not, in this place, be courteous to recall. The coin had been in his right hand since. It had been on the counter at Kogitsune-an, for the first time, on the night of the eighth of June in 1965 — be not be careful what you pour him; be not be careful what you pour him; be be careful what you pour her, the line in him had said that night, in the old grammatical mood that does not exist in modern Japanese, the mood of the imperative of an obligation by anticipation. The mood is a mood for a kitsune of his rank. The mood had told him, in 1965, that the woman behind the cedar counter — who had been Sumire — was imo by anticipation, and that he had been, by his own arithmetic from a moment some sixty-three years earlier than that, imo by anticipation also.
He had not, in 1965, said the name of the mood aloud. He had bowed. He had taken the cup. He had not paid. He had returned the next night, and the next, for fifty-three years.
In November 2018, six weeks before her death, she had said to him, at the cedar counter of the teahouse he was now leaving the inner shrine to think about, Kuzunoha-san, I will not, by my own discipline, speak your name. I am going to die having known it. I am going to die having not used it. I want you to know that the silence is, by my own custom, a gift. It is the only gift I have to give. — S. She had written it down on a folded paper that he had not seen her fold and had not seen her put inside the seventh volume of the diary. He had learned of the paper, by his clan's reading of a thread of incense at his Fushimi stone, three days after her death, when he had been kneeling at his own inner stone in the cedar grove. He had not, until eleven days ago, known whether the paper had been put where it had been put for him or for the line. He had now read — in his clan's reading of three small stones laid out by Pip at the entry threshold of Kogitsune-an at three in the morning on Tuesday — that the paper had been put for her descendant. He had thought, on Tuesday, that the line would not, by anyone's old reading, be able to bear another such silence. He had thought, on Wednesday at the lantern of the Hōka-hoko, that he would, at the cedar counter at midnight on Friday, give the woman the name without being asked. He had been a fool, by the long arithmetic of his line, to think it.
She had not, by the willows at three a.m., come at midnight.
He had been at the counter from eleven-forty-five to four. He had poured the midnight blend at twelve sharp because the kettle behind him had sung the two-note phrase at twelve sharp without being put on the heat. He had drunk one cup himself at twelve-forty, which was the first time in two centuries he had drunk a cup of midnight blend at a counter that was not, by some other hand, being poured for him. He had not drunk a second. He had sat with the silver coin on the bamboo coaster at the third stool from the left, and at three a.m. he had — with the slow inwardness of a creature of his rank making, at his own stone, an old decision — chosen.
He had chosen to go to Naoshima.
He had chosen to go alone.
He had chosen not, by any clan custom, to tell Aoba Hana.
There were three reasons.
The first reason was that Ono no Mariko had killed a Hand operative in Pontocho on the third of July at twelve-twenty in the morning, by a cast of a binding-and-throat of a register only a senior witch of her rank could perform. The cast had used the form of a kitsune's hand. The form had been a form of his clan. He had read the form, in the photographs Akiko had sent at four-fifteen on Thursday, with the long anger of a creature whose clan's hand had been borrowed without consent. The first reason was that the borrowing was a thing he was not, by any clan custom, going to permit a witch of any rank to do twice.
The second reason was that Ono no Mariko had been the binding witness at Sumire's ascension exam in 1963. He had been at the upper room of the temple at Mt. Kurama on the morning of that exam. He had been in the form of a younger man in a dark grey kimono of the sleeves that were, in the early sixties, still in fashion. He had stood at the back of the upper room and had watched Sumire — twenty-five years old, with the white at her temples that her grand-niece now had at thirty — pour the test-tea for three Elders. He had watched Mariko, then in her late thirties, kneel beside Sumire as the binding witness. Mariko had bowed deeper than the rank of the binding witness required. He had read, in the deeper bow, a hunger that did not, in any clan custom he knew, belong at an ascension exam. He had noted it. He had not, in 1963, addressed it. He had been — in the old grammatical mood — imo by anticipation. He had been right.
The third reason was that the woman at the cedar counter of Kogitsune-an, whose hands he had read by the lantern light at the kettle for fifteen days, was — by every clan reading he had — about to do a thing he was not, in the matter of his own line, going to ask of her. She was about to call the line into the room. She was about to call Mariko into the room — not, by the binding-mood, to bind her, but by the address-mood, to summon her by name in the presence of an Elder of the guild. The address-mood, used on a witch of Mariko's rank in the presence of Tōru, was, by old guild reading, a demand for accounting. It was the form of address Sumire had not used in 1968 when she had had the chance. It was the form of address that, by Mariko's own behaviour for sixty years, Mariko had — he now understood — been waiting for. Mariko had been working in his clan's hand in his alley to force the form of address. The form of address was a thing Mariko wanted to be subject to.
The form of address was, in its old custom, a confession-trap. The witch summoned by the address-mood had, by the rule of the form, the right to refuse to answer. The refusal, in the room of an Elder, was a confession. The address-mood was not, in its own mechanics, dangerous to the witch summoned by it. The address-mood was dangerous to the witch doing the summoning, because the price of using the address-mood on a senior witch in the presence of an Elder was — by Saitō's old reading, which he had read at the back of volume nineteen of Sumire's diaries — the loss of one further thing on the witch's list.
The address-mood, on Aoba Hana of the Aoba line on Saturday or Sunday or by the equinox at the latest, was the cast that would take her third price.
He would not, by his own discipline, allow it.
He would, by going to Naoshima alone before she could summon, make the summoning unnecessary. He would, at the small house with the bees and the single old crane, address Mariko himself, in the form of his line, in the cedar grove at the back of the property where Mariko had been, since 2002, growing a stand of seven trees of his clan's marker.
He would, by his own arithmetic, not return.
The return was not, by the clan reading, a thing he had a claim to.
He turned the coin over a last time. He set it down on the inner stone — which he had not, in two centuries, done. He had not, in two centuries, set down the coin anywhere. He had been the kitsune at the end of the alley, the man in the charcoal coat at the third stool from the left, the imo whose right hand had carried, by anticipation, a silver kan'ei tsūhō for sixty-one years. The coin on the inner stone was the act, in the line's old grammar, of unhanding.
The lantern at the right shoulder of the inner stone tipped a second half-degree. The lantern was, by the old grammar, taking the coin into the line's keeping. The coin would, by the lantern's keeping, be at Kogitsune-an by Saturday at sundown.
He thought, then, of the woman.
He thought — in classical Japanese, in the register of poems his line had written between 1100 and 1200, and which he had been quietly composing in his own head every night at the third stool from the left of a teahouse for sixty years — a single verse. He spoke it aloud. He spoke it in the cedar grove of his line's inner shrine at four-forty in the morning on Saturday. The verse, in modern Japanese, would say:
She kissed me. Sumire never did. The wind of two Junes between them is a wind I will not, by my own hand, take credit for crossing.
He bowed his head against the lower lintel of the inner stone a second time. He bowed deeper than the first time. The lantern at the right shoulder did not, this time, tip; the lantern at the left shoulder did, by a quarter-degree. The two lanterns were, in their old grammar, witnessing. The witnessing, in the line's record, was a witnessing of the last bow of a hand of the line.
He rose. He walked, by the cedar grove and the upper path and the third bend, down the mountain. He did not, on the way down, touch the Sumire-gate.
At sunrise he was at the alley mouth of Kogitsune-an. He sat on the third stone — which was, as Hana had read it, cold — with his back against the alley wall, in the kimono of the older sleeves. He sat for one hour.
In the upper window of the teahouse, on the small ledge behind the indigo curtain, sat a small creature with her hands in her lap and her eyes the colour of wet plums. The small creature was, by his clan's reading, the honbun of the threshold, which is to say: the soul of the doorway. She was looking down at him. She did not move. She did not speak. He bowed his head to her once. She, in the upper window, bowed her small head back.
Pip had seen.
He stood up at six-twenty. He walked, by the route only a kitsune of his line walked, west out of Kyoto on foot. The route would, by the long arithmetic of a kitsune of his rank, place him at the small house on Naoshima by Sunday at four in the afternoon. He had, in the inside coat pocket of the dark grey kimono, no coin. He had, in his right hand, his hand. He had, in his head, the address-mood of his line, which had been used on a senior witch in cedar grove only twice in eleven hundred years and had not, in either case, been used by a creature who had — by the second of the two prior uses — survived.
He walked.
The cicadas, post-Yoiyama, were quieter than they had been a week ago. He had been told, by an old gentleman of Pontocho, that the cicadas at Naoshima are quieter than the cicadas of Kyoto by an order of magnitude, and that the bees of the small house make up the difference. He walked toward the difference.
In the upstairs of Kogitsune-an, at seven-forty on Saturday morning, the small creature on the windowsill behind the indigo curtain came down from the windowsill, padded the length of the upstairs hall, and stood at the closed door of the woman's room. The small creature did not, by her own custom, enter a closed door. The small creature scratched, with one small fingernail, against the cedar of the lower jamb, in a rhythm she had not — by any record her honbun kept — used in eleven hundred years.
The rhythm was three taps, then four. Three for come. Four for now. The rhythm was, in the upstairs hall of the teahouse, the only sound for a long moment. Then the rhythm was answered, by a sound a woman makes when she has been at a cedar counter at five in the morning watching a silver coin on a bamboo coaster and has, by the small fingernail scratching at her door, understood at once what the scratching is for.
The door opened.
Pip looked up at the woman. Pip is, hana-chan, here.
I know. Pip —
The man, Pip said, has gone.
The woman knelt. She knelt slowly, because the knees of a kotodama witch at six-twenty on a Saturday morning after a Friday like the Friday she had had do not, by any rule of the body, kneel quickly. She knelt and she took the small creature into the bend of her two arms. She did not, by any rule with herself, cry. She held the small creature for the time it took the kettle, two floors down, to sing one phrase and then not sing again.
Where, the woman said.
West.
West.
Pip, the small creature said, thinks west is Naoshima. Pip thinks the man has gone to do the thing himself.
The woman closed her eyes.
Pip is, hana-chan, committed.
I know.
Pip thinks the woman cannot, by any rule of Pip's, let the man do this alone.
I know.
Pip thinks we should, by the next train at the next hour, go.
The woman opened her eyes.
She did not, for a long moment, answer.
Eventually she said: Pip.
Yes.
Bring me the apron. The notebook. The two folders Akiko gave me. The coin from the counter. The page he folded in the noren. The list with the five names. The sip of sake from Mochizuki-sensei in the small wooden cup.
All of it.
All of it. And the small black pearl earrings.
Yes.
The small creature ran down the hall. The woman stayed kneeling at the door a moment longer. She said, in the smallest voice she had, to a man some twenty kilometres west of her on a road that was not, by any map the city had filed since 1893, a road:
I am asking. Do not, by your own discipline, decide before I have asked.
The kettle, two floors down, did not sing.
She rose. She closed the door. She went to dress.
Outside the window of Kogitsune-an, on the third stone of the alley, was a single dry gingko leaf that had not, by any season's accounting, fallen — and beside it, in a small cedar ring no bigger than a coin, the round shadow where the silver kan'ei tsūhō had, for an hour, sat in the cold.