Mushishi | Marginalia
Title: Marginalia
Fandom: Mushishi
Rating: PG
Summary: A woman discovers a strange man high in the mountains - and everything changes. A Mushishi casefic.
Notes: Written for telophase in 2007 Yuletide. Quite a bit different (and longer!) than what a usually write, so I was nervous about it.
The storm had come on suddenly in the late afternoon, as storms often did this high in the mountains, and Saya counted it among her blessings that she had been gathering greens higher than she usually chose, where the ground was rocky and still to be trusted. She huddled back against a large outcropping, hunched herself against the thick cold rain, and stared out across the valley where lightning flashed against the darkness into brief, transient life.
Above the clouds, unnoticed, the day faded into night.
When the storm had passed she gathered up her things, wrung the worst of the water out of her clothes, and began to make her slipping, sliding way back down the mountainside to her home. Even now the pilgrim's path was still more reliable underfoot than most of the ground, and so as soon as she could she made for it. And it was there, under the dripping branches of the trees, that she found what the rains had left her.
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The fire in the central hearth snapped, leaping greedily at the fresh wood. She fed it one final lump and looked up, over at her unexpected guest. He lay still, stretched out as near to the hearth as she had dared to put him, covered with all the cloth in the house. The bluish tint to his skin was beginning to fade, she noticed thankfully when she leaned close to him to see, and when she picked up his lax hand to rub between hers the flesh felt less chill. Saya breathed a sigh of relief, knowing herself at the limit of her medical expertise.
In the warm, flickering glow of the fire, the only light in the room, his hair looked almost orange; in the moonlight she had found him under it had looked grey. How did one come by white hair, except by age? Saya wondered curiously, her gaze shifting down to his face; even unconscious it appeared untroubled, his skin smooth. Young. The rest of him had borne that impression out when she had wrestled his limp body out of his soaking clothes and into her husband's old yukata. Those clothes now lay drying on the north side of her hearth.
Dinner was simmering in the pot hung above the fire; she had been more lavish with the rice in her grain mix than she usually allowed herself to be, for there was a guest after all. And with soy beans and the greens she had gathered earlier it would make quite a satisfactory meal she decided, pleased.
Her stomach rumbled loudly and she flushed, embarrassed, although there was no waking company to hear, at the reminder of what had sent her up the mountain to gather greens when the sky threatened rain. I always seem to be hungry lately, she thought ruefully
Hungry enough to ignore caution and sense; since the landslide, since the mountain had shrugged and set the earth to falling, the land around her home had been treacherous and uncertain. And that greediness and lack of care was more reason to blush than the noises of an empty stomach.
The fire snapped in its hearth; Saya jumped, startled, and blushed as she suddenly realised she was still holding the stranger's hand. She set in down hurriedly and reached for his other one, massaging cold fingers to encourage blood flow.
What had been her stranger's reason for walking into this uncertain country? A pilgrim probably, either ignorant or fanatical or hopeful, to come to this place where no destination waited. His clothes were good quality but worn and often mended; his body was strong and muscled. Perhaps he was a farmer, or a labourer of some kind?
But his hands had none of the calluses that kind of work would produce, and when she peered closely at the hand she held she could just see, in the flickering firelight, ink stains.
She sighed ruefully and set the stranger's hand back down by his side. She was seeking mysteries where there were none. There was a simple explanation for all the oddities she had catalogued.
She glanced across the room, into the shadows of the far wall where the tall, heavy chest she had dragged in after the stranger's heavier body rested. And there was her answer. The box of a peddler or a medicine seller. Except...
Surely word must have spread by now that there was no community worth a peddler's journey this high on the mountain anymore? And even if it hadn't... Saya found herself eyeing the man in renewed curiosity. Even when there had been a thriving community of monks and priests and regular pilgrimages, a living shrine, here, she could not remember ever having seen this particular peddler or medicine seller before.
And why would a new one try out such an uncertain route, with so little surety of return? But if he wasn't a peddler or a medicine seller, than what was in that box?
The box had lain in the damp and mad for a long time before she had been able to return for it; if there was anything perishable inside it might be damaged if left and alone. And if the man was a medicine seller there could well be something in his stock to help himself with.
Smiling slightly sheepishly to herself, and despite knowing that all her good reasons were in truth merely excuses, she rose to her feet and crossed the room to the medicine box, eager to solve the mystery of the stranger. It was heavy when she heaved it up to carry back to the fire, whose light would allow her to see better; a solid weight of a life to be carried around.
The box was made of pawlonia wood, like most of the medicine seller's boxes she had seen, and when she unhooked its door the interior looked very similar to those boxes she remembered displayed at the shrine, or in the marketplace when she was a girl. It was filled with tiny drawers that invited opening and, with a mystery sleeping beside her hearth, she wasn't strong enough to refuse.
In one she found an empty cocoon wrapped about with paper, in another unfamiliar dry flakes and thin paper, such as might be used for rolling cigarettes. There were small paper packages that crackled when she rubbed them between her fingers, as if they were full of dried herbs, but the names written on them were of no plant she recognised.
In one drawer there was a sheaf of thin, narrow paper but she blushed and put them back hurriedly when she saw that they were letters, mostly from two people called Tanyuu and Adashino. She wasn't so curious as too infringe on a man's privacy.
From the lowermost, and largest, compartments she drew out tightly wound scrolls, the thick paper soft and heavy across her hands from damp. She thought of herself as a fairly competent reader but she could understand almost nothing of what the scrolls discussed. The pictures, though... Saya drew her fingers gently across an exquisitely inked drawing of what appeared to be a kimono with eyes. She shivered, uneasy for no reason she could name, and put the scrolls away from her. She spread them out around the two free sides of the hearth, where they might dry, and turned back to the box.
In the centre of the chest there was a compartment rather larger than the rest, which slid open smoothly when Saya hooked her fingers in its handle, as if well oiled by use. In it, she discovered two folded pieces of paper and several small glass vials, carefully stoppered, more than half of them filled with soil. Saya studied them in bewilderment. Those filled had tiny labels tined about their necks, with numbers marked on them.
Some of the things in the chest looked valuable. Others she had never seen before, and therefore were probably at least rare, and likely to be valuable. But what kind of travelling peddler would include dirt in his wares? When she unfolded the pieces of paper, in the hope that they might help to make some sense of the drawer's other contents, she found that one was simply a list of seven names, meaningless to her. The other was a rough map that she recognised as depicting the mountainside where she lived. There were a few numbers marked on it, corresponding to the numbers on the vials, but she couldn't make any sense out of them.
The rustle of blankets and a choked off moan alerted her to the fact that the stranger was stirring; she jumped guiltily and, leaving the contents of the chest strewn across the floor, hurried back to her patient's side. One green eye opened a slit and peered blearily up at her. "Don't try to move," Saya told him gently. "My name is Saya. I've been looking after you."
"Ginko." He attempted to sit up and winced, putting his hand up to his head.
"Don't move so quickly," Saya remonstrated him anxiously, putting a hand on his shoulder to help him steady himself. "You've taken a nasty fall."
All she got in return was a blank look. "Fall?"
"There was a storm earlier; I think you must have slipped and fallen on the pilgrim path outside. You're lucky, really, to have fallen there. I don't think there's anyone else living in this part of the mountain anymore."
"Which mountain?" a slightly hoarse voice asked.
Saya blinked and named it.
"Huh." The man raised his hand and rubbed his head carefully. "I don't remember deciding to come here."
"Oh." Saya sat back on her heels and regarded him helplessly. "I've heard stories of people who lost their memory after a blow to the head. Is that what happened to you?"
Ginko fingered the knot on his head thoughtfully. "There is probably a simpler explanation."
Saya couldn't think of one. "You still remember you're name," she commented hesitantly. "That's a good sign, isn't it?"
"I believe it's only a short time I've lost." Ginko squinted thoughtfully at the fire. "Is it still spring?"
"It is," Saya confirmed.
"Then I've forgotten only a few weeks. Unless, of course, years have gone by."
Saya stared at him, rather taken aback by the calmness and equanimity with which the man was taking all this."
"Was there a box with me?"
"Yes." Saya indicated it with her hand, and then blushed to realise that its doors were hanging open, its contents spread out across the floor. "Your scrolls were damp, I was just drying them," she added hurriedly.
"Was there anything in the central compartment?" At Saya's confused look he added; "I keep the details of the project I'm currently working on in there. It might explain what I was doing here."
"Oh, I see. That makes sense." Saya rose to fetch the three strange items she had found; returning, she said; "May I ask... but what is it that you do?"
"I'm a Mushishi," Ginko said, accepting his possessions.
Mushishi, Saya thought, enchanted. She knew little about that strange profession, only that they kind moved in a world rather more strange than most people knew, and that they could be excused any odd behaviour, up to and including gathering dirt.
He read quickly through the list of names, frowning contemplatively, before setting it aside. He tapped one of the glass vials with his finger, making it ring, said "hmm" and opened the map.
"I was taking soil samples," Ginko commented, indicating the marks that had confused Saya. He perused the map a bit longer. "What's this building?" Ginko pointed at the map.
"Hmm?" Saya peered over his shoulder. "Oh! That's where the old Shrine was; my husband was a priest there."
"Was?" He glanced up at her, single visible eye bright almost like a fox's in the dimness of the room. Saya shifted, a little discomforted.
"Yes. It was a tragedy, really; a landslide. It destroyed almost all the shrine buildings, and the ground is still too unstable to build safely on. They've had to rebuild the Shrine on another site entirely." That's where my husband is, she added silently to herself. Every hour that the day brings.
Ginko was studying the map. "Looks like I was heading there when I fell. See?" His finger traced the wavering course of markings up the mountain side.
Saya tilted her head curiously. "Do you think you're a pilgrim? This was a popular pilgrimage site before the shrine was destroyed."
"No."
"Why not?" Saya asked, a little annoyed to have her theory blown out of the water so quickly.
"I'm a Mushishi. It's far more likely I came here to investigate a mushi. Especially if I was taking samples."
"Mushi?" Saya repeated uncertainly, thinking of the strange drawings in Ginko's scrolls. "I haven't seen anything like that around here."
"You probably wouldn't have," Ginko said. "Not many people can see them."
"Then how would you know there was a mushi here to come looking for it? Someone would have to have seen it to tell you to come here..."
"I can't remember how I learnt there was something to investigate here. But I'm sure I'll find out. Could you pass me those scrolls?" Ginko gestured towards the papers drying beside the hearth. "I need to begin looking for references to a mushi that causes memory loss."
Saya stared at him. "No," she said, quite firmly.
Ginko gave her a blank expression.
"You've just woken up from a bad fall. You were freezing by the time I found you and dragged you in here. If you don't want to ill tomorrow you're going to eat the food I will give you and then sleep."
The Mushishi shifted uncomfortably but didn't put up too loud a protest when Saya handed him a generous helping of stew.
Ginko tapped the small collection of glass vials with his finger, making them chime. "I collected these soil samples for a reason. And tomorrow I will find out what that was."
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Saya and Ginko were both up as soon as dawn broke the next day, despite Saya's best efforts to get him to rest longer. He changed out of her husband's yukata back into his own clothes with almost insulting haste, except that Saya had to admit that he immediately looked more at ease.
As Saya banked the hearth fire and began preparing materials for breakfast Ginko commandeered her wide, east facing window, settling himself down in the bright morning light. Saya found herself watching in open curiosity as he brought a strange contraption out from his Mushishi's box. It looked like a hunched old man with a rounded back, wearing an exceptionally tall bullet hat.
"What is that?" she asked, fascinated.
"It's a microscope," Ginko replied absently as he pressed his eye to the top of the 'hat' and fiddled with the arcane looking knobs of the device. "It uses light and glass to make objects appear larger."
"Oh," was all Saya found she could say in response to that. Well, she supposed that Mushishi knew about that kind of stuff. "Ah." She returned to preparing breakfast.
She couldn't help watching surreptitiously as Ginko took out one of his vials of dirt and shook a few grains onto a thin plate of glass. He slid it into his 'microscope' and peered down the lens, made a small thoughtful noise, and then repeated the process with the next vial. After a while even Saya grew bored with watching him, and after handing him a bowl of breakfast turned to her morning cleaning tasks. A task made more difficult by the growing spread of scrolls on the floor around Ginko, as he chased after those mushi who could steal memories.
And in the brief moments when he wasn't chasing his mystery mushi, when she put food into his hands and told him firmly to eat, Ginko had the most fascinating stories to tell. Not only of mushi, although those came first as if they were the ones he had most practice at, but of strange landscape and stranger townscapes, different people living different lives. Saya wished she could see them.
It was late morning when Ginko finally looked up from his work. "Saya. I need to see the ruins of the old shrine."
Saya stopped in her work. "Oh," she said. Ginko was watching her carefully.
"If it's too painful, I can find my own way."
"No," she smiled, shaking her head. "There's nothing painful about it. It's just a little sad. When would you like to leave?"
"Now would be good."
Saya considered this. "Alright," she agreed. "As long as you promise to take it easily."
The distance to the old shrine site from her home wasn't truly that far; in the old days she had been able to make it on a fair day in under a quarter hour. The landslides and the destruction of portions of the path made the journey longer, as did Saya's insistence on a slow pace with many regular rests in deference to Ginko's recovering health.
Saya was forced to admit to herself that a man who spent all his life travelling must know how to pace himself, but the disgruntled looks he gave her for her chiding were too amusing to make her want to stop.
The trees were still heavy and steaming from yesterdays storm as they walked through the forest; it made it easy to walk slowly. What she had told Ginko was true; the scene of the landslide was not painful to her, but it was sad. Still, after more than half an hours walking they approached the new edge of the forest. She squinted and raised a hand to shield her eyes, as the green, forested dimness suddenly cut away and they stepped out onto bare land and devastation. Saya shivered and hugged herself against the exposed, cold air, looking about reluctantly.
"Amazing," Ginko murmured, staring down at the gaping swath in the forest, where ancient trees had simply been scoured away. "The landslide must have been enormous."
"It was," Saya agreed. She turned and pointed a little way further up the slope. "The shrine stood there."
The landslide hadn't wiped away all evidence of that fact.
It was a vast sea of mud, only momentarily set in place, black and fragile and perfectly smooth save where the split and broken wood of the shrine and its attendant buildings heaved or thrust themselves out of its slick clutching surface. Some of them were painted, the colours bright in the sun and incongruous in this moment of frozen violence.
The wind whistled around the exposed wood slats; Saya stood silently besides Ginko as the Mushishi looked out over the mud plain, taking in the ruins. A few hopeful plants had sprouted in the flat mud, their green almost glowing in the light of the afternoon sun. Saya smiled wistfully to see them
"They won't last," she told Ginko.
"Hmm?" Ginko gave a start, as if he had been thinking very hard on something, only to have his attention abruptly recalled to the present. "What did you say?"
"The plants," Saya repeated patiently. "They won't last. Look, you can see that one's roots already. The ground is still too unstable here for anything that grows to last; it all gets washed away. That's why my husband and the other priests had to move the Shrine."
"Where is this new Shrine site by the way?" Ginko asked.
Saya pointed. "It's over there somewhere; slightly lower than we are now, and behind that curve of the mountain." She turned to smile at Ginko. "Quite a distance away. They didn't want to risk all their hard work being destroyed by another landslide."
"Quite a distance away from your home to. Why didn't you go with them?"
Saya winced. "Neither my husband nor I wanted to give up the house," she told Ginko a little sharply.
"My apologies," Ginko said. He looked back over the ruins. "I need to take some soil samples."
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Once back in the house Ginko immediately prepared a slide from his new sample and slid it into microscope. After barely a minute of intense examination he made a complicated noise, part confusion, part intrigue, and part satisfaction.
Watching, herself intrigued, Saya asked; "have you figured it out?"
"Partly," Ginko admitted, leaning back from the microscope, "but there are still some things that don't make sense." Saya thought he sounded rather pleased about that.
"Well?" Saya came and joined Ginko at the window, smiled at him. "Aren't you going to tell me?"
Ginko eyed her narrowly, but made no move of dismissal. "There are no symptoms that would indicate the presence of any of the memory stealing Mushi I know, besides the memory loss itself. Which suggests the presence of a previously uncatalogued mushi."
"But you don't think so."
"No." Ginko's smile was slow and satisfied. "Although there are no other indications for a memory stealing mushi, I have found signs of the presence of a mushi I have encountered before."
Saya propped her chin up on her hand and smiled at him, amused at his grandstanding. "Well?"
Ginko gave her a slightly annoyed look, but continued.
"This Mushi resides in the ground and infiltrates the soil, the trees, even the buildings near itself. It might be more true to say that instead of a single complete building this Mushi is more of a hive. An amalgamation of fragmented pieces that is, nevertheless, one entity. It feeds off attention."
"Attention?"
"Ah. The act of seeing. The moment of perception, when someone's eye looks at the soil or tree or building it has infiltrated. The Mushi consumes that moment, but because for a human or an animal that moment exists only in the present, which passes instantly, they cannot tell from their memory that something has been taken from them. But the Mushi cannot continually feed from one person's perception; it has to take from many."
"Why do you think this Mushi is the one here? That doesn't sound very much like what has been happening."
"It's possible to detect this mushi by the presence of white particles in the matter it occupies; this is a reaction to its growth. I've found traces of them in the soil all the way down the pilgrim's path, but by far the largest concentration was in the soil near the shrine ruins. The Shrine, in essence, was the mushi."
Saya let out a breath she had been holding. "Oh." Amused, she wondered what her husband would have said to that. "So why is it stealing memories?"
Ginko sighed and leaned back on one hand. "These Mushi are typically small; they dislike packed soil and stone, so they are not found in the cities where they would be seen by many people. Mushi of this type aren't meant to grow this big. There has never been a case of one settling at a major pilgrimage site; this one must have gorged itself on so many different people viewing it."
"But now the shrine is no longer situated here..." Saya realised.
"Exactly. The mushi's food source has dried up. Now it's starving to death."
"Poor thing," Saya murmured in dismay.
"Mmm," Ginko said noncommittally. "The mushi is trying to stay alive. That drive can made animals and plants act in ways that go against their nature. The same is true of mushi."
"The lost memories?"
"Exactly. Ordinarily, this Mushi would only feed on the first moment of perception, the one that is seen by the eye of the body. This one has begun to reach back into the past, into the memories people having of seeing it. To feed from the moments it is seen by the 'eye of memory.' Not just the remembrance of its actual physical body, either. Most likely, it is feeding on the perception of its imagined existence as well."
"But, Ginko, if that's the case, why do you still remember it now? You've been up to the shrine to see it - why didn't it take your memories then?"
Ginko grinned, showing his teeth. "Because I'm still thinking about it. It can't take the memories I'm using. That's probably why it hasn't taken yours, either," he added.
Saya smiled back hesitantly, a little unnerved by this sudden cheerful combativeness. "But then how did it take the memories of yours it has taken?"
"I was disorientated by the fall yesterday. For a moment when I woke up I couldn't recall where I was or what I was doing. It must have fed then." Ginko tapped his fingers against his legs, frowning. "I'm certain that is the Mushi we're dealing with. But there are still aspects of this case that don't add up." He gave the microscope an annoyed glance.
"May I see?" she asked hesitantly.
Ginko studied her for a moment, then nodded and shuffled aside, allowing her to move up next to the microscope." Look through the eyepiece," he instructed.
She peered down through the lens; all that could be seen was a brown and white blur.
"Now I'm going to adjust the focus. Let me know when you can see it clearly."
For a moment the image seemed to wobble and then all at once it cleared, as if she had blinked sleep haze from her eyes.
"Oh!" she exclaimed in delight. "I can see so much! There's so much detail."
"Do you see the white grains of soil among the brown? That's the body of the mushi."
"I see it," Saya murmured, fascinated. "So that's been under the shrine all this time?"
"Seems so. Now do you see the way the white grains are multiplying? The white looks as if its expanding into the brown."
"Expanding?" Saya pulled back from the microscope and looked up at Ginko, puzzled. "What do you mean?"
Ginko's one visible eye widened slowly; the hard line of his mouth relaxed. Abruptly he reached past her and drew the microscope to him, fastening his eye to the lens once again.
It occurred to Saya, watching him in some bewilderment, that this was the first time she had seen Ginko look shocked, despite the great number of surprising things that had occurred since he arrived. Saya watched him for a while, but he was once again absorbed in his study. At last she sighed, and deciding that the interesting portion of the day appeared to be over, rose to continue with the daily business of living.
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That afternoon she came back inside from tending the small vegetable plot she kept outside, shaking the mud off her feet just outside the door.
"Ginko?" she called out merrily. "Do you fancy some sweet potatoes with dinner tonight? The tubers are coming along well."
"I've discovered who the people on the list are." Saya blinked at this non sequitor, before what he had said sunk in.
"Really?" she asked eagerly, turning around to find Ginko, who had migrated across the floor as the day progressed, following the light. "How did you -" and then she stopped. Ginko was sitting cross legged on the floor, an enormous ledger open across his lap. One of the built in storage compartments in the wall was open next to him.
Ginko looked up. "This is a record of pilgrimages made to the shrine."
"I know," Saya said in mild annoyance. "My husband has this copy for safe-keeping."
"I checked it against my list of names," Ginko continued on, ignoring her. "All of them made regular annual pilgrimages here."
"Really?" Saya asked, annoyance forgotten in her fascination. "I wonder if they still visit the new site."
"About that I couldn't say. But they have come by here since your husband kept this record. See?" He held the ledger out that she could see.
Saya stared down at the page chill spreading through her. "That's my handwriting," she said softly, "but I don't remember those men ever coming here." She swallowed. "Could your memory stealing mushi have taken my memories as well?"
Ginko regarded her, his green eye unreadable under a fall of white hair. "Perhaps." He shut the ledger with a heavy thud. "Saya, I need to go back up to the shrine."
Saya nodded sombrely. "Just let me bank the fire."
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It was already growing dark under the trees when they set out. This time, it was almost a relief to step out of the forest into the devastation left by the landslide, where at least the dying light of the evening still remained.
Saya watched Ginko as he stared out over the ruined shrine, frowning contemplatively. At last he turned back to her.
"Saya. When did you last eat?"
"Eat?" Saya blinked uncertainly. "Why, this lunch time of course. I made a whole pot." She looked anxiously up at him. "Don't you remember? You said it tasted good."
Ginko made a small noise of agreement. "Did you think it tasted good?"
"What are you talking about Ginko?" Saya laughed uncertainly. "I can't compliment my own cooking. That would be conceited."
"Saya." Ginko was looking down at her very intently. "Do you remember eating lunch today?"
"Of course I - " Saya began immediately, but the seriousness of Ginko's expression, the quietness of his single visible eye, silenced her.
She thought back hard. She remembered choosing what she would cook, stewing the meal above the hearth. She remembered filling a bowl for Ginko. And then - well, then of course she had filled a bowl for herself, hadn't she? Of course she had. But thinking back, Saya realised with growing dismay that she couldn't actually remember picking up a bowl for herself, ladling a second portion of stew from the pot. She couldn't remember picking up chopsticks. She couldn't remember putting food into her mouth.
Ginko was watching her closely, his expression closed, when she looked back up at him in dismay.
"When there have been no new visitors for a period of time, the Mushi begins to starve. When the Mushi starves, so do you. That's the only time when you feel physically hungry."
"Hungry?" Saya repeated. Distantly she was aware her hand had moved and was resting against her stomach. "I was - I was hungry yesterday, when I found you. That's why I found you. I was so hungry I'd gone out to look for plants to add to the pot, even though it looked like it might rain."
"Saya. You didn't eat any of the meal you cooked last night."
Saya stared at him. "But I was full when I went to bed," she whispered.
"After I'd woken up and seen you."
"No," Saya shook her head, denying, but Ginko continued on relentlessly, laying out the facts. Like a peddler, come to market, setting out his goods on a mat for the customer to see. But even the most persistent peddler did you the courtesy of allowing you to refuse to buy the goods he offered. You couldn't un-see, un-hear, or un-own the world that Ginko handed to you.
"When you looked at the soil under the microscope, you should have seen those white grains multiplying. The mushi feeds on perception."
"Perception. Feeds."
"Ah. The act of another independent entity looking on it and perceiving it."
Saya shook her head slowly. "You told me this, Ginko."
"It didn't grow when you looked at it, Saya. Because it can't feed from its own perception of itself.
"No." Saya shook her head. "No, that doesn't make sense, Ginko. I've lost my memories too! Why would the mushi have taken my memories if I - if I'm somehow part of it, as you say?"
Ginko looked at her steadily. "I don't think you've lost your memories, Saya."
Saya stared at him. "Of course I have. I have no recollection of ever meeting those men in the shrine records."
"But there have been people visiting this shrine, haven't there?"
"Well, yes, of course. The landslide only happened a few months ago. Some of our pilgrims come from miles away, and they hadn't heard that the shrine has been destroyed and moved."
Ginko nodded once to himself, as if something had been confirmed. "Do you remember who they were, or when they came?"
"I - ", Saya began, then stopped and forced herself to think, not just to remember. "I - I remember that they came." She could almost see those figures coming up the path, resting in her house as she cooked them a meal. "But I can't remember who they were. I - I haven't really thought about them since
"I believe some of them were the people on my list," Ginko said quietly, and Saya forced herself to nod. "The Mushi isn't eating your memories, Saya."
"But something's affecting them!" she cried. "This isn't normal, Ginko."
"Ah. I know," Ginko nodded. "And I believe I know why."
"What then? Ginko, tell me."
"One last thing. Just to confirm it." Ginko placed one hand on Saya's shoulder and pointed out into the path of the landslide. "Saya, look at this. What do you see?"
"The shrine ruins, like I showed you this morning."
"No." Ginko took her by the shoulders, half supporting, half forbidding her to turn away from the scene of devastation. "Look at it Saya, make yourself truly look at it. The same way you made yourself remember lunch today. Stop refusing to let yourself see the world as it really is."
I'm refusing to let myself see the world? No. No, that couldn't be right. She'd always wanted to see the world. She'd always been so curious. That was one of the things her husband always said about her, ever since she had come to see the shrine, and met him.
And now that the shrine has moved, I never see him... Have I really never seen him since then? Saya stared into the ruins, panic beginning to rise in her throat. But no matter how hard or how far she stretched her memory, she found no remembrance of her husband. Not even a shadowy figure, as she could recall of the pilgrims.
And she began to notice that the wood was much more weathered than she had thought, that the bright red paint was much more dulled. And why was the wood still there? They had rebuilt the shrine. Rebuilt the shrine further away down the mountain, because the ground here was so unstable.
But they would have used the wood. They would have taken away as much of the wood of the old shrine as they could to rebuild it as the new. If there had been anyone left to do so, she wouldn't be looking out across a landscape of splintered wood and mud. If there had been anyone left.
"Everyone is dead under there. My husband."
"Ah." Ginko's hands tightened briefly around her shoulders. Sympathy. Support.
"Did the mushi do it? Did the mushi cause the landslide?"
"No. The mushi was as much a victim as anyone. It may be responsible for the instability in this area since then. The smaller mushi of this type can move around slowly; this mushi has been trying to move to better feeding grounds, but its too large. It had nothing to do with the first landslide."
Saya stared down into the ground. She thought she could see faint swirls of white threaded through the dark mud.
"It's going to die, isn't it?" she said quietly. "You said yourself that it shouldn't still be alive..." And then there will be nothing here she thought, nothing but the moss and the wind and the broken bones of the shrine.
"It should have starved. Even among the pilgrims who still came, few of them would have risked the journey up to see a destroyed shrine. But it found a way to feed on those who only came as far as your home. Saya. It's been years since the landslide destroyed the shrine."
"I know," she spoke through numb lips. "I know that now. I see it. Why did I never realise it before?"
"Mushi experience time differently to that of the animal world. Once, a man's wife was swallowed up by a mist that came from the sea. He waited three years before he found her again, but for her only three days had past. That mist was a mushi. Since the shrine was destroyed, you have been living by the mushi's time. The mushi hasn't starved to death because it has been able to feed off those who only saw you, as well."
Saya stared at him. "So you're saying that I'm - I'm somehow inside the Mushi, or..."
"You're an oniko. A person who is half human, half Mushi."
"That's impossible," Saya shook her head pleadingly. "Both my parents were human. I'm certain of it."
"Oniko don't have to be born. You have lived here. Drunk the water in the streams, ate the plants that grew in this soil. It would be more of a surprise if you didn't have any of the mushi in you when this began. And then, in desperation, it learned to make a human part of itself too."
Saya brought her hands up to her face. "Can you fix this?" she asked plaintively, and let them fall so she could see Ginko's face as he answered her.
Ginko hesitated. "There are methods of treatment, yes. With time, it is possible that you could be fully human again."
"Human," Saya repeated softly. How strange that she had never realised that she wasn't.
Would her mind have been able to tell her the same story, of a rebuilt shrine and a living husband, if she had been able to feel the days grinding past?
She imagined what would happen if Ginko healed her. She would have to leave the mountain. She supposed, without the Mushi supporting her at least part of the time, she wouldn't be able to feed herself as well. She'd start a new life, perhaps remarry. The years would begin passing for her again.
And behind her, at the back of the years, would be the landslide and the death of her husband and everyone she knew. The shrine and the Mushi.
"The mushi's main weakness is that it can't move around, isn't it? It has to wait for its meals to come to it, and there is no one coming here anymore..."
"Ah."
"But now it's got me," Saya said softly. "I'm a part of it that can move around. Ginko...If I left this mountain. If I travelled around the country... would the people who saw me be enough to keep the Mushi alive?"
For a moment Ginko was completely still; all that moved about him was the smoke rising from his cigarette. "Most likely," he said at last. "But, Saya... It will not be able to feed so well, through you, as it would directly. Probably, it would still take all the memories of itself from a person, not just the act of perception. As soon as you left them, the people you'd meet would forget you."
Saya closed her eyes. "Ah," she breathed. "I think that might be alright." She opened her eyes and tried to smile. "After all, I will not truly remember them."
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In the morning she closed up her house, packing everything up into walls and floors, throwing the rice and grain, which would now never be eaten, outside for the birds. Ginko, seated at a low table writing his records, watched from the corner of his eye.
At the last she stood before the hearth, staring down at it, a large ceramic jug cradled in her arms. "I came here as a bride," she said softly. "I can't even remember my husband dying. And now I'm leaving." She looked up at Ginko, who stopped even pretending to write to listen. "I'm leaving," she repeated. "But part of me isn't. Part of me is the mushi, and that part is under the shrine, with my husband and all my friends. One day they will be part of me too." She looked around the house. "But I won't be here again." She tipped up the jar she carried and torrent of water poured down upon the hearth. The fire hissed and spat and died, and a great cloud of steam and smoke rose up from it, until she was almost entirely hidden from view.
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They stood outside the small, one roomed house in the damp of the morning, grey clouds heavy in the sky above and grey mists heavy upon the treetops in the valley below. They looked at each other for a long time without speaking.
"I am afraid," Saya said quietly, "but I'm also excited. I've always been interested in new things." She tilted her head and stared up past her house, to wear the mountain's shoulder hid a ruined shrine and a mushi whom she still didn't understand. And yet, surely, she had moved past the need for understanding. She did not have to understand how the blood moved in her veins or why her lungs filled with each breath; these things simply happened, necessary for living. Why, then, should she need to understand the mushi, herself?
She looked at Ginko, and thought that maybe that was why he was a Mushishi, maybe that was why he pursued them so intently. Not to kill them, but to understand, these beings that were so completely alien to his own nature of being. And yet she remembered what she had thought of him that first night, when she had still thought she was human. It had seemed to her then that he moved in a world strange to humans, and she wondered if all Mushishi might not be a little kin to an oniko.
"The thing I am most afraid of," she spoke quietly, "is that I will be forgotten. I will walk through many, many lives but no one will remember me. Even if I leave echoes of my presence behind people will find other explanations for them, take me out of them. There will be much more likely explanations for a disturbed bench or missing rice than a woman no one remembers." She looked back at Ginko. "You will forget me."
"I will keep my notes." Ginko touched his hand briefly to the strap of his Mushishi's box, his eyes steady on hers. "I am no stranger to unusual occurrences; I will believe what I have written in them."
Saya managed a small smile. "That helps," she said softly.
"If our journeys cross - remember yourself to me."
"I will. And I will try to have stories to tell you." She smiled again, and this time it was stronger. "I may be going out there to be seen, but I mean to see as well."
She picked up the woven bag that rested at her feet, slung it over her shoulder. Then she turned and walked away, from the one there to see her go. And when she passed out of Ginko's sight, she passed out of all the history of men.
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After leaving the mountains, I found I could not remember what I had found there, or what my purpose had been. When I checked my travelling case, I discovered a record I could no longer remember writing. Following the instructions I had left to myself there, I revisited all the names of the list. They were names of people who, in the past year, had made their annual pilgrimage to a shrine high in the mountains and who, when they returned, possessed no memory of having gone, or indeed of having ever travelled to that shrine before. As I spoke to their families, who could remember discussing the same matter with me only weeks ago, I discovered that their memories of the shrine were also fading. They could not even remember which kami was worshipped there.
Extrapolating from the notes I made on the case I found in the mountains, I believe that soon all knowledge of the shrine will fade from living memory as the mushi drinks those recollections to the dregs. Soon the only place that shrine will exist is in the margins of memory; in the words written on paper. And the woman as well. Saya, who I know only through notes I have written. Even as she disappears from sight and memory, she will still be here.