Pearls That Were Her Eyes, part one; ophelietta; T/PG-13
Title: Pearls That Were Her Eyes
Author: ophelietta
Summary: A history of love. Jorougumo, Yaobikuni, and a few
centuries of waiting.
Rating: T for Teen
The Prompt:
Jorougumo/immortal girl from recent chapters. Some kind of romance/intimate friendship. post-Watanuki's intervention, of course.
Notes: Credits go to Shaxberd for the title, Matsuo Basho for
the poetry, and Shimizu Hiroshi and Hirakawa Hitoshi for info on the
karayuki. Sources for the yaobikuni myth are scattered and sort of…
everywhere. Much thanks to the Obakemono Project for all sorts of
research on the creepy, crawly, many-eyed things of the night.
Pearls That Were Her Eyes
Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made.
Look! These are pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest
In the wreckage of the apartment building, Jorougumo felt the last of
the Bordeaux singing away in her veins, and she mourned the loose,
golden feeling that had flooded her limbs while Mokona drunkenly
lambasted the little shopkeeper for not knowing how to play “Moonlight
Legend”, which he proclaimed to be the greatest of the Sailor Moon
openings, louder and more incoherently each time he did so throughout
the night. She had sipped wine and cackled as the shopkeeper’s
uncannily smooth hospitality became frayed; he grew more and more
cat-eyed and irritated, finally all but throwing her out after they
polished off the tenth bottle of liquor.
She was sure, however, that he had enjoyed himself - enjoyed being
exasperated, enjoyed being shouted at to play the shamisen, to crack
open more bottles, to fetch more snacks. Beneath all the grumbling,
there had been a flash of something - something wise and tender and
sweet in his face, something nostalgic. His face sharpened when he
looked at her, something of the sweetness falling away, replaced by…
knowing-ness. Just for that, she left a biting kiss on his
collarbone, and hoped it would sting; it was his own fault if he was
still too polite to push a lady away. She wondered if it would leave a
scar, or heal seamlessly in just another invisible reminder that his
game of playing human was just that - a game.
That had barely been half an hour ago and already it seemed like
distant memory; even though she had been pinioned by pipe fox’s fire
and almost suffocated by its fur, she had not felt even a fraction of
the vulnerability that clawed at her now, as she waited for the
answer to a question that she had waited… centuries… to ask. She
wondered if this was what the human men had felt, trussed up in spider
silk the color of sunlight, with her pincers tapping lovingly against
their naked throats.
In the palm of her hand, the crimson pearl throbbed gently, like another heart.
“Of course,” she said, trying to sound as neutral as possible, as if
she wasn’t pleading, as if she didn’t feel the mad urge to fall to her
knees and babble like a child, “you are the one that will choose.”
The yaobikuni cocked her head up to her, staring up at her
thoughtfully with those dark, unblinking eyes.
“Is your promise true?”
The yaobikuni’s voice was very soft, small silver waves lapping
against sand. Jorougumo felt her own throat suddenly become dry as
driftwood, her thoughts tangling like seaweed.
You shouldn’t trust me, she thought, suddenly. I am
Jorougumo, I am the Queen of the Spiders, I have made my home in dark
places, I have eaten men and monsters and cities whole, I poison the
air around with me with my very aura…
Then she straightened. I am Jorougumo. I was here when Tsukiyomi
and Amaterasu still shared the same sky, before the humans were even a
shadow in a god’s mind. And I always keep my word.
“It is,” she said.
The yaobikuni gave a long, long sigh. “Very well then,” she whispered.
“I will live with you.”
The crimson pearl throbbed wildly, almost searing her palm with heat.
Jorougumo clutched it and turned her face away, almost feeling faint,
struggling with - with - with some emotion she couldn’t name, powerful
as it was.
“Very well,” she said, still in that neutral tone, when she had
gotten control of herself again. She snapped a finger, and in her
mind, she was at the center of a great orb web made of an almost
endless number of different threads, glinting and sparking in the
darkness that was not darkness. She found the thread she wanted at
once - thicker, rough to the touch, impudently bright - and tugged it
sharply.
She blinked and she was returned to the ruins of the apartment. The
only difference was the brown-haired youth that seemed to come
tumbling out of the air. He sputtered as he tried to place his
awkward, gangly limbs on the floor without falling onto shards of
broken glass and porcelain, or splinters of wooden furniture, that
littered the small room.
“Geez, Aunty!” he snapped, scowling and straightening his dark jeans,
brushing dust off of them as well as his t-shirt, which, oddly enough,
sported a large Spider-Man. “Couldn’t have warned me, could you!?”
Jorougumo suppressed the desire to roll her eyes. “You should be alert
to my summons at all times,” she said pertly. “What warning do you
need?”
“I was in the middle of watching Naruto,” he said sulkily. “Gah!” He
moved and glass crunched beneath his feet. “These are brand new
Chucks…” The look of mourning dragged down his normally cheerful face.
He was pointing to the strange, gigantic red and blue shoes encasing
his feet. “Are you going to reimburse me for these if they’re
damaged!?”
“Your accoutrement is your own concern,” she said, sniffing. “Perhaps
if you took better care of it…”
“Just because you traipse around in fishnets instead of proper shoes,
and own a million pair of hooker boots…” he muttered. Now that his
eyes were off of his clothes, they roamed around the apartment. “What
are you doing summoning me to a rat hole like this, anyhow - GAH!”
He pointed at the yaobikuni, still kneeling on the tatami floor,
watching them with a blank, placid stare that Jorougumo refused to
admit she found both irritating and unsettling. What seemed like miles
of her long, silvery, rippling hair rippled around her - her only garb
- and over her and through a good portion of the apartment.
“Aunty!” he yelped. “What’re you doing with a yaobikuni?
They’re cursed unlucky - “
“That’s a superstition, Dobe,” she said, bored. “One of those
stupid made up human stories.”
“Don’t call me Dobe!”
“Then stop acting like one!”
“Who’s acting like a - “ His mouth dropped open, and he did a double
take. “Wait a minute. Is this the yaobikuni, the one that you -
“
“Yes,” she said, cutting him off. “Now,” and she turned back to the
wide-eyed yaobikuni, as if she hadn’t just been arguing with what
looked like a fourteen-year-old teenager, “this is my manservant and
liegeman, who will be serving us from here on out.” She put on the
sweet, light, pleasant smile that she knew he hated the most, and
said, “Why don’t you introduce yourself, Dobe?”
He gave a rough, surly bow. “Pleased to meet you,” he said darkly. “No
matter what she says, my name isn’t Dobe, it’s Dosha. I serve
this wrinkled up old aunty, Jorougumo-dono - like I have a choice -
and all those under her protection. Who’re you, and how did you get
stuck with her?”
“Manners, Dosha,” Jorougumo said sweetly, giving another yank to his
spirit thread, which she still kept clutched in one hand. He yelped
again, and she found it a rather satisfying sound.
The yaobikuni blinked. “Pleased to meet you,” she said, still in that
soft, worn away voice. “My…. name…” A little of the blankness was
leaving, but it was replaced by something coiling and shadowy and sad.
“My name, I can’t…”
“Yao,” Jorougumo said abruptly. Those sea-silver eyes flickered up to
hers. “It’s Yao.”
“All right, cool, whatever,” Dosha said, unconcerned.
“And… from now on, I will be living with Jorougumo-dono.”
Dosha’s mouth dropped open. “No matter what you say, Aunty, I think
she is cursed unlucky. To have to live with you - “
Jorougumo bared her fangs in a smile. “Oh don’t spread your sympathy
too far, Dobe dearest. You’re going to be living with us too.”
“And I, of course, get no say in the matter…”
“No, you don’t. Go prepare the Manor, make it liveable again. Yao and
I will follow in a while.”
“Whatever you say, oh Jorougumo-dono, Supreme Mistress of the
Universe.” He reached into his pocket, spun on his heel, and was gone.
The room was suddenly darker, and more claustrophobic, once he was
gone. Jorougumo kneeled in front of Yao, not caring about the broken
glass. “Now,” she said, “I can transport us to my home, but you’ll
need a certain kind of key to enter. Dosha has one already.”
Gingerly, she took one of Yao’s hands in hers. The hand was very
small, cool and light, but with a sort of hardness to it, like coral.
Her fingernails had a faintly pearly sheen, and her skin was so pale
and clear that Jorougumo could see the blue veins swimming in it like
tiny rivers and streams.
Jorougumo tore her eyes away from the sight of that small hand so
naturally entwined in hers. She gripped it, carefully, and conjured
the shape in her mind. When the black-and-gold lights dancing across
her vision faded and she remembered to let go, she saw the “key” lying
in Yao’s hand: a medallion of a stylized, curving spider at the center
of a web, made of dull, beaten gold.
“There,” Jorougumo said, not knowing why she felt almost breathless
to see Yao cradling her sigil so gently, as if it was a living thing.
“Hold onto that, and take my arm.”
The girl obeyed, drifting abut in her slow sleepwalker’s daze.
Jorougumo drew the shape of a web in the air, and she and the
yaobikuni stepped through it. She felt the girl spare one last glance
at the small, ruined apartment haunted by violence and pain and the
thin ghosts of love, It could’ve been, we could’ve been, I know we
could’ve, if only -
But Jorougumo gave a ruthless tug, and they were in the foyer of the
Manor, and Dosha, already with his pant legs rolled up and up to his
elbows in suds, was complaining that she hadn’t cleaned the floors in
years.
~
Time passed. Dosha, despite his many, many, many complaints,
was a good worker, full of restless energy and an eye for detail that
bordered on OCD. Jorougumo entrusted him to hire on a temporary
working staff, all of them her subjects, of course, to make major
repairs and do some construction to the Manor which she had, she
admitted, allowed to fall into disuse. She left many of the details up
to Dosha, who bitched at her when she showed some impatience over
colour schemes, wall hangings, types of lighting, and the design for
ornamental gardens - “This is the first time in two centuries that the
clan head has kept an official and permanent residence!” Dosha
bellowed at her. “I will not allow you to screw this up!”
Dosha also took the opportunity to slyly hire the help that she was
usually impatient to keep: houseboys and maid servants to keep the
house running, cooks and kitchen helpers (especially when they were
entertaining guests), messengers and runners, and of course,
attendants for Yao-dono. Of course, Jorougumo said distractedly,
signing whatever pieces of parchment that Dosha - now holding the
position of something like steward - thrust in her face and stamping
them with her personal seal.
Whenever she really was too busy to answer an urgent question, she
would just say to Dosha, “Ask Yao.” This became her answer to many
questions over time - “Ask Yao.” At first Yao would be utterly
tongue-tied and at the most she would be able to stutter, “Whatever
you think would best please Jorougumo-dono,” but after dealing with
Dosha’s bellowing fits for a while (“If I let this place look like
‘whatever would please Jorougumo-dono’, we would be in a CAVERNOUS,
ROTTING MANSION in the FREEZING DARK with nothing for decoration but
SPIDER WEBS in some weird CIRCUS ACT RIG, until of course she lets it
be BURNED DOWN by PIPE FOX FIRE and LEAVES ME TO CLEAN UP THE MESS - “
“He’s exaggerating,” Jorougumo said to the wide-eyed Yao, in her
haughtiest voice.
“Which part?” Dosha said sourly.
“It wasn’t ‘freezing’. It was pleasantly cool.”
“Of course it wasn’t freezing to you, because the icy meat locker
feeling came from the pure evil of your aura,” Dosha pointed out) she
learned to voice her opinion, with the result that there were now some
very beautiful fountains in the ornamental gardens, and a small lake
with a bridge over it in which orange and white koi leisurely swam and
snapped up small bits of bread, and sconces burning softly in dark
corners.
Yao helped out with the construction, too. After Jorougumo nearly hung
Dosha upside down for letting the yaobikuni work with the crew fixing
the roof of the south wing, Yao had said, sounding confused and
nervous, that she enjoyed being useful and working with her hands and
just having something to do around the house, if it pleased
Jourogumo-dono? Jorougumo dropped Dosha roughly to the ground, (“Um,
ow? Are you even going to apologize?”) and said, in very
majestic, velvety tones, “Very well, as it pleases you.”
All in all, Jorougumo enjoyed the sight of her new home rising around
her: a warm, comfortable place, full of light and colour and the sound
of running water. She would’ve preferred something… well, something
much darker, in general, with far closer quarters, something cramped
and luxurious - but Dosha insisted that since she had stopped “gadding
about for decades at a time, drinking and gambling and
treasure-hunting and partying and I don’t know what…” and started
officially performing her duties from a home base, that her residence
had to be bright and welcoming to all, whether they be members of the
spider clan or visitors of… other kinds. She used to conduct her
business on the road, answering the calls of her kin wherever they
were, and travelling and doing pretty much whatever she liked (as
Dosha darkly muttered) - but that was before Yao, of course. It was
Yao who needed a home, and it had become Jorougumo’s responsibility to
provide one for her.
There came a time, however, when she began to wonder if it was
her home that Yao needed.
The priest came on one of the last, long, lazy days of summer, when
the heat even made the cicada’s shrill song fade away. Jorougumo was
wearing one of the light, casual yukata that Dosha had left out for
her, breathable white cotton chased with designs of wisteria, and her
hair was drawn back with a few combs; it was too hot to leave her long
hair loose, and it was easier to just wear what Dosha set out rather
than try to dig through her now rather voluminous closet for her usual
all-black ensembles. Even though they were made of far less fabric,
their colour made them impractical in the heat. Yao wore yukata nearly
every day as well, and today she was wearing one of her favourites:
silver-lavender, covered in sprays of white plum blossoms, a violet
sash tucked around her waist.
The two of them sat on the long, low wooden porch with the shoji slid
open, taking in the sight and sounds of the innermost garden that
Dosha had planned with maniacal detail. Yao had fallen asleep feeding
the fish; with bread crumbs in her hands, her head rested on
Jorougumo’s lap, her silver hair spilling everywhere in fine ripples.
Jorougumo remembered, as if it was a very distant memory, braiding all
that long hair so that it could be cut off; the braid was safely
tucked away in a lacquered cherry wood chest in her store room, with
all of the other treasures she had gathered over the years. She knew,
though, that she could never trade or sell or bargain off that braid,
like she did to so many other items: rare sakes, peach wood rings, her
own silk. It would be…. It just wasn’t the thing to do.
She allowed her fingers to idly comb through the silver waves of Yao’s
hair - something she would never have done if Yao had been awake - and
hummed to herself, an idle spinning song her mother used to sing her
very long ago. It twisted her heart, to see what perfect trust Yao
slept in her lap. She had the irrational urge, suddenly, to slap the
girl or shake her awake, to say something cruel and watch the familiar
shadows take up their home in the farthest corner of Yao’s eyes, where
the silver couldn’t reach. For most of the years that she had known
Yao, the pain had always been present, even under that frozen
blankness. It had been like looking into pools to admire her own
reflection, to see how cruelty brought out the lushness and the gloss
of her mouth, the dark, soft gleam of her eyes. She wouldn’t know Yao
without pain. She wouldn’t know herself without her cruelty. Without
them, they were strangers, shivering and vulnerable, locked in a
drowsy and dream-like midsummer garden, like fatal innocents waiting
for the gates of paradise to be torn down.
“Jorougumo-dono.” Dosha’s voice was stiff and formal as the heavy
brocade of her costliest kimono, which meant that either there were
other servants listening in, or he was deeply upset. Since she could
sense none of the other house staff around, she assumed the later.
“What’s happened, Dosha?”
“We have a guest.” Dosha’s thin-lipped stoicism could only last so
long, as in two seconds. “It’s the priest!” he finally burst out, and
then shushed himself as Jorougumo inclined her head toward the
still-sleeping Yao. Her urge to wake Yao had disappeared as swiftly as
it had first flared up. “The blue priest, the baby-eater. Aunty, that
guy’s bad news. My spidey senses are tingling, and not in the fun way.
Toki’s got him at the gate, and he’s waiting for your orders.”
She gently slid Yao’s head from her lap, resting the girl’s head on a
cushion; she hardly stirred. “Let him in,” she said, rising, tucking a
stray strand of hair beneath Yao’s ear. “Prepare the Sakura Room, and
have Iwara deliver the food and drinks directly there. Send the
shamisen player to distract - entertain - him until I’m ready.”
Dosha grabbed someone along the way and repeated the orders, and then
noticed that Jorougumo was walking away without him. “Aunty - !” Dosha
half-trotted behind her as she strode through the halls, in as long a
stride as her yukata allowed her. “Listen, I know this guy’s got
something you want, but is it really worth - “
She spun on him. “Reishi,” she said, tightly. “That’s what the priest has.”
Dosha’s mouth dropped open. “The elixir of life…” His voice trailed
off. “But how can he possibly…?”
“Does it matter? He’s not pure enough to hold onto it in its original
state, but it doesn’t need to be pure. Even if it’s in a corrupt form,
it will prolong a life. And that’s all we need. To prolong a life.”
She kept walking, her strides eating up the polished wooden floor. She
went to her closet, and started throwing aside all the yukata and
kimono that Dosha had unsubtly placed at the front, trying to find her
old outfits which Dosha usually regarded with his classic,
disapproving eyebrow tilt.
“Aunty,” Dosha said, helping to empty the closet as well, “I love
Yao-dono as well, but don’t you think that maybe - “
“Maybe? Maybe what?”
“Maybe,” Dosha said evenly, “Yao-dono would like to have the chance to die.”
He didn’t have the chance to blink before he went flying through the
room, crashing right through the shoji and landing on the other side
in a mess of torn paper and splintered wood. Jorougumo hauled him to
his feet, and though she usually retained her human form with a
minimum of effort, she had never looked less human with her eyes
sparking and whirling gold and black, long fangs slitting past her
lips as she snarled at him.
“Eight hundred years,” Jorougumo snarled. “We have no idea when Yao
was made, since she herself doesn’t remember, but the yaobikuni have
an expiration date, and that’s eight hundred years. For
centuries, that girl tied herself to worthless human beings who
could only bring her pain. Even though she knew they would die, she
waited endlessly for something good to come along - and now
that she has a life, a real life that she lives for herself with
people who love her, you want to take that away from her?”
“What would I be taking away?” Dosha shouted back to her.
“Give me a break, a ‘real life with people who love her’? You never
let yourself love her! You’re the cruellest one of all, to keep
her alive like this. No matter how close you get to her, you still
keep her at a distance, even after all this time. That girl waited
endlessly? She is still waiting! She’s waiting for you!”
Her hands on his collar went slack.
A tiny, terrified whisper dropped into the room.
“Jorougumo-dono?”
A maidservant, Saki, hovered outside the doorway, and then Jorougumo
realised how they must’ve looked: herself on the verge of killing her
steward, as they stood over the remains of what had once been a very
nice, very harmless, rice paper wall.
“Um, Jorougumo-dono…” Saki cleared her throat. “I was just sent to
tell you that Kumiko-san isn’t feeling well tonight, so Eri-san is
playing her koto for your guest instead - in the Sakura Room as you
ordered.”
“Thank you, Saki.” The little maidservant nodded and fled. She was
left with Dosha rubbing his throat, muttering to himself the whole
while.
“Go wake Yao,” she said quietly. “Tell her I won’t be dining with her
tonight. Tell her I’m… I don’t know, tell her anything. And Dosha?”
The stiff line of his jaw told him that he still hadn’t completely
forgiven her, but he still said, “Yes, Jorougumo-dono?”
“Keep her…”
Out of the way. Out of sight. Away.
“Safe,” she said, finally.
~
Aobozu was enough to make anyone’s spidey senses tingle. It wasn’t his
blue skin, or the single roving, restless eye, or even the rough,
powerful, fleshy lines of his heavy-jawed face. It was the controlled
greed in his eyes, the continual hunger, as if he could feast on flesh
and bone and blood and souls for many moons and never be sated.
Although she understood how Aobozu made Dosha’s hair stand on end,
Jorougumo was unafraid in his presence; he was ruled by his appetites,
straightforward in his needs. Because of that, she could deal with
him. The only emotion she felt was a contained excitement, a delicate
tension, like that of a well-trained dancer warming up in the wings.
She had a job to do, a show to put on. She knew, as soon as his
gleaming eyes drooped low in pleasure at the sight of her, that she
would be brilliant - she would spark and sizzle and burn up the stage.
“Aobozu,” she purred. She took her time strolling in, the sway of her
hips bringing his eyes up to her pale gold, perfect thighs circled by
black garters. As she knelt over him, she felt the cool black satin of
her negligee sigh over her curves like a kiss.
“Jorougumo,” the priest rumbled, her loose hair falling against his
face. His hands gripped her hips, almost unconsciously, and she barely
contained a smirk.
She pulled away, half-settling herself on his lap. “Shall we have a
drink?” she asked. “I asked Saki to bring some chilled sake, but a
little birdy told me that you have something far better…”
~
“Yao-dono?”
Yao struggled out of her sleepy daze. In her dreams, the air, she was
held in the arms of something large and dark and comforting. She knew
the creature was dangerous - knew by the patient clicking of many
legs, by the presence of sharpened fangs glistening redly in the dark
- but that she was, at the same time, in the safest place she would
ever find. There was a voice singing high above her, husky and velvety
and deep, with gleams of a sweeter honey-gold. It made her feel safe
as if she was being cradled deep in the ocean, made her feel loved as
if she slept in the heart of a flower.
“Yao-dono, please wake up…”
Dosha’s voice was strained. She struggled to sit upright,
straightening her kimono, blinking all around and feeling oddly…
bereft. “I thought Jorougumo-dono was here…”
“She was.” Dosha helped lift her to her feet. “She regrets to inform
you that she will unable to dine with you tonight, as she has an
unexpected affair she must attend to.”
Something was definitely wrong if he was being this servile. She
grabbed the sleeves of his dark yukata, forcing his tense, unhappy
eyes to look at her. “Dosha-san, it’s me, remember?” she said.
“It’s Yao. I’ve cleaned pigeon poop from gutters with you.”
“Oh, Yao-dono!” Dosha didn’t even try to pretend to contain himself,
or to scold her for talking about something as unladylike as bird
feces; he threw himself at her in a reckless hug, and she patted what
she could reach of his shoulder and his hair, deeply puzzled. “I’m so
sorry, Yao-dono, I said something awful, I didn’t mean it, I… I don’t
want you to die.”
She stilled.
“That’s good,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “Because I
don’t want to die either.”
“Good,” Dosha said, pulling himself away. He pulled a handkerchief
out of his sleeves and mopped up his face, looking a bit more like his
normal self, if one ignored the redness of his eyes. “Now let’s see
about getting you supper. Jorougumo-dono has a - a special guest,” and
his face twisted as if he’d bitten into a lemon, “so you’ll have to
dine in your room, but…”
“Oh,” Yao said, trying to sound as if she wasn’t disappointed, as
Dosha began to lead the way to her rooms. “Um. That’s fine. But
Dosha-san, could you do me a favour? I forgot to ask Jorougumo-dono
since I, um, fell asleep, but can you remind her that we have to wake
up early tomorrow, if we want to make it to the beach before high
tide?”
Dosha’s lips pressed together tightly. “I don’t think that will be
possible, Yao-dono,” he said, some of the stiffness back in his voice.
And then, as if breaking character and becoming normal Dosha again, he
muttered, as if to himself, “I get the feeling they’ll be sleeping in
very late…”
Yao stumbled.
Dosha caught her - spider reflexes - and almost hyperventilated making
sure that she hadn’t injured herself anywhere. “I’m fine, Dosha-san!”
she said, swatting his hands away, exasperated, as he tried to check
her foot for splinters. He didn’t let up until she was safely kneeling
at the low table of her sitting room. She tried to laugh, and the
sound came out strangely. “I was just a little, ah, surprised…”
Dosha went scarlet, as he mentally replayed what he had just said. “Oh
but that’s not what I - it’s not what you - she’s not some whore!” he
finally burst out.
Yao felt herself going still again, and she was sure that the strange
sensation of coldness she felt coming over her meant that the blood
was draining from her face.
“I know what they call her,” Dosha said passionately. “Like that
merchant’s apprentice at the gates, spouting that filth - it was hard
for him to spout anything once I got him trussed up in that pear tree.
Er, don’t tell anyone I said that?”
Yao would’ve laughed, if she didn’t feel sick.
“The Whore Spider.” Dosha’s voice was bitter. “The Binding
Lady, the Entwining Bride, those are just polite names for what
they’re all really thinking of her. You know, the spider clan weren’t
very prominent before. There are many of us, yes, but few of us are
powerful in their own right… except for the sovereign. If it wasn’t
for her,” he said, forcefully, “being what she was, and using all of
her wits and strength and power and - assets - if it wasn’t for
her using everything she has, most of us wouldn’t be here…
Yao-dono?” He tried to smile. “Yao-dono, please say something. Or if…”
His head dipped low. “If you’re going to leave Jorougumo-dono because
of this, then do it quick.”
“Leave her?” Dosha’s head snapped up. She had never heard her
own voice go so cold before - not with rage. “How could you even ask
me that?”
“I - “
She cut him off. Her dark eyes glittered, and Dosha was forced to
remember again that even if she had been born human, even if she had
first appeared to him as a dazed, beautiful, and infinitely fragile
girl-child who needed protecting from even herself, she had probably
been alive as long as he had, and lived through dark times, through
centuries of violence and tragedy.
“Have you ever heard of the karayuki-san?” she asked. “Or the
joshigun?”
Dosha’s rubbed the end of his nose, looking thoughtful. “Girls,” he
said, finally. “Human girls sold overseas, right. Near the beginning
of the last century…”
“The end of the Meiji era,” Yao said softy. “That’s why they call that
time now... Back then, I was living in a little village of the coast
with a fisherman who had lost his wife and his two daughters a few
years before. I had tried… to drown myself, but he caught me in his
nets. So he brought me to his home and nursed me back to health, and I
stayed. The fishing… was very bad that year, and some of the villagers
thought that I was the cause. They thought that Yamamoto-san - the
fisherman - had brought bad luck upon everyone, by pulling me from the
sea. They came after me…” She faltered, and pushed on. “They came
after me, and tried to hurt me. When I healed myself, they thought for
sure I was cursed. They decided to… to sell me. Yamamoto-san…” She
forced herself to say it. “Yamamoto-san was the one who negotiated the
sale.”
She shook her head, her hair floating around her face, obscuring it.
“Then I was in Singapore. I… worked… there for a long time. There were
many… many other Japanese girls there. A lot of them from villages as
poor as mine - as the one I’d lived in with Yamamoto-san, I mean. And
I… things happened, there. Many things.”
Yao took a breath. “One night, I was… badly hurt, by a client. I
thought I was going to die. I noticed that there was… a spider, a
little black and yellow spider, in a corner of my bedroom. And I said…
I begged to see Jorougumo-dono.”
Dosha jerked out of his reverie. “You knew her already?”
Yao nodded. “I’d met her once - no, twice, before that. I don’t know…
I’m not even sure what I was thinking. In the village, she had warned
me that I couldn’t possibly stay there, not for long, and I - I didn’t
listen to her, though I would’ve been saved much grief if I had. I’m
not even sure why I wanted to see her so badly that night… to tell her
that she had been right, maybe? That I shouldn’t have trusted those
villagers… Anyway… she came. She saved me. And she brought me back to
Japan.”
She still remembered that night in Singapore, the air sticky on her
skin. Jorougumo-dono, brilliant and dangerous in a black Western style
dress that gleamed with scarlet and gold trimmings, her wide skirts
sweeping everyone away. There must’ve been gasps, to see such a
high-born lady entering a pleasure house, but Yao hadn’t heard them.
She had been staring at the ceiling, feeling either blood or sweat
trickle warmly down her temples. Her client, already grunting and
pulling on his clothes, was already miles away. She remembered
thinking, distantly, I will finally, finally get to die. And
the relief of that thought almost drowned out the pain.
Then her client was swearing and saying, “Who the hell - “
And then he was choking and flailing and dying. And underneath all of
that was the sound of the buzzing of flies.
She couldn’t move her neck - it was probably broken, underneath the
last of her client’s crushing blows - but she was able to slide her
eyes around to see him clawing at the golden noose around his throat,
the one that gleamed strong and bright, like spider’s silk.
“Heal yourself, would you,” Jorougumo had said to her, not looking at
her, her voice flat. “Your neck’s at a funny angle.”
She dragged her eyes away from the sight of her client - gone
completely red and fleshy, gasping, cursing, sweat pouring off of him
as he struggled for breath - and tried to remember the ocean, which
seemed like another world from this stinking, heat swollen, death trap
in Singapore. The silken feel of the waves closing around over her
head... the playful, dappled, pale sea-light at the ocean floor,
shifting over the sands... the cool caress of green sea weed, and the
quick fan-like darting of silver fish....
Then the pain was gone and she could move her neck and her hair was
streaming through the room and she barely had time to pull on a robe
before Jorougumo was gripping her arm - not painfully, but tightly, as
if she was a fish that might slip away at any moment. Jorougumo
dragged her out of the brothel, to the confused shouts of the madam -
Jorougumo silenced her with a single, sword-like glare - and out onto
the streets, where red paper lanterns bobbed luridly overhead.
Jorougumo released her arms, but still wouldn’t look at her, and Yao
had clutched herself, still shaking, glad she was covered by the
curtain of her hair.
“I will kill them all.” Jorougumo’s voice was flat and disinterested
again, her beautiful face completely blank. “Everyone there. I’ll kill
them for you.”
The red lanterns made a dizzying sort of light. She shook her head,
trying to clear it. “I... Please don’t... the other girls...”
“They are only human.” The Jorougumo’s voice was hard as diamonds,
and that was what shook Yao out of her daze more than anything else.
“Exactly,” Yao said, hating her voice for shaking. “They are only human.”
The tension held, taut as the finest and farthest stretched of one of
Jorougumo’s web. Then she nodded her head curtly, and the tension
broke. “Very well.”
Yao’s knees almost buckled in relief.
“Come with me,” Jorougumo said. She drew a web in the air, and they
stepped through it. When they stepped out on the other side, they were
in the middle of a lush, cool forest, a small, tidy home before them.
A lovely woman stepped out, dressed in white and blue robes. Her face
had a pure and holy line to it, or it would have, except for the gleam
of mischief in her jade-coloured eyes. The lady was a kitsune, her
name was Youko-san, and she owed Jorougumo a favour or five, as Yao
found out later.
“She’s newly healed, but she needs to take it easy for a few days.
Take care of her,” Jorougumo had ordered. “I have to go settle a
conflict between some feuding clansmen before any more blood gets
shed.” And she had drawn another web in the air.
“Jorougumo-dono!”
Jorougumo tilted her body slightly towards Yao’s, patient, inquiring. “Yes?”
…. Stay.
With me.
But she couldn’t say that.
“Travel safe,” Yao said softly.
Something like a smile had flickered over Jorougumo’s face. “I always do.”
“So you see, Dosha-san,” she said, shaking herself out of her own
memory, “why I would never leave Jorougumo over being called a name
like that. I lost the right…” Her voice died. “I lost the right to
judge, a long time ago, who she keeps company with. Now I wish nothing
more… than to stay with her. That is all.”
Even if Yao herself couldn’t hear it - or maybe she could - Dosha
could hear the longing thick in the girl’s voice.
Many things had changed, in a short time. Even the Yao just a year ago
- the one that was strange and silent and seemed to sleep walk
everywhere and barely seemed to eat or breathe or, for hours at a
time, even move - would’ve been glad to know that her eight hundred
years were coming to a close, would’ve gladly slipped into death
without a single regret.
Yao shifted, and at her throat gleamed dull gold: she wore Jorougumo’s
sigil around her throat, on a thin golden chain woven of spider silk.
And Dosha thought that maybe, perhaps, he had been wrong about what
Yao would want.
~
part two
Author: ophelietta
Summary: A history of love. Jorougumo, Yaobikuni, and a few
centuries of waiting.
Rating: T for Teen
The Prompt:
Jorougumo/immortal girl from recent chapters. Some kind of romance/intimate friendship. post-Watanuki's intervention, of course.
Notes: Credits go to Shaxberd for the title, Matsuo Basho for
the poetry, and Shimizu Hiroshi and Hirakawa Hitoshi for info on the
karayuki. Sources for the yaobikuni myth are scattered and sort of…
everywhere. Much thanks to the Obakemono Project for all sorts of
research on the creepy, crawly, many-eyed things of the night.
Pearls That Were Her Eyes
Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made.
Look! These are pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest
In the wreckage of the apartment building, Jorougumo felt the last of
the Bordeaux singing away in her veins, and she mourned the loose,
golden feeling that had flooded her limbs while Mokona drunkenly
lambasted the little shopkeeper for not knowing how to play “Moonlight
Legend”, which he proclaimed to be the greatest of the Sailor Moon
openings, louder and more incoherently each time he did so throughout
the night. She had sipped wine and cackled as the shopkeeper’s
uncannily smooth hospitality became frayed; he grew more and more
cat-eyed and irritated, finally all but throwing her out after they
polished off the tenth bottle of liquor.
She was sure, however, that he had enjoyed himself - enjoyed being
exasperated, enjoyed being shouted at to play the shamisen, to crack
open more bottles, to fetch more snacks. Beneath all the grumbling,
there had been a flash of something - something wise and tender and
sweet in his face, something nostalgic. His face sharpened when he
looked at her, something of the sweetness falling away, replaced by…
knowing-ness. Just for that, she left a biting kiss on his
collarbone, and hoped it would sting; it was his own fault if he was
still too polite to push a lady away. She wondered if it would leave a
scar, or heal seamlessly in just another invisible reminder that his
game of playing human was just that - a game.
That had barely been half an hour ago and already it seemed like
distant memory; even though she had been pinioned by pipe fox’s fire
and almost suffocated by its fur, she had not felt even a fraction of
the vulnerability that clawed at her now, as she waited for the
answer to a question that she had waited… centuries… to ask. She
wondered if this was what the human men had felt, trussed up in spider
silk the color of sunlight, with her pincers tapping lovingly against
their naked throats.
In the palm of her hand, the crimson pearl throbbed gently, like another heart.
“Of course,” she said, trying to sound as neutral as possible, as if
she wasn’t pleading, as if she didn’t feel the mad urge to fall to her
knees and babble like a child, “you are the one that will choose.”
The yaobikuni cocked her head up to her, staring up at her
thoughtfully with those dark, unblinking eyes.
“Is your promise true?”
The yaobikuni’s voice was very soft, small silver waves lapping
against sand. Jorougumo felt her own throat suddenly become dry as
driftwood, her thoughts tangling like seaweed.
You shouldn’t trust me, she thought, suddenly. I am
Jorougumo, I am the Queen of the Spiders, I have made my home in dark
places, I have eaten men and monsters and cities whole, I poison the
air around with me with my very aura…
Then she straightened. I am Jorougumo. I was here when Tsukiyomi
and Amaterasu still shared the same sky, before the humans were even a
shadow in a god’s mind. And I always keep my word.
“It is,” she said.
The yaobikuni gave a long, long sigh. “Very well then,” she whispered.
“I will live with you.”
The crimson pearl throbbed wildly, almost searing her palm with heat.
Jorougumo clutched it and turned her face away, almost feeling faint,
struggling with - with - with some emotion she couldn’t name, powerful
as it was.
“Very well,” she said, still in that neutral tone, when she had
gotten control of herself again. She snapped a finger, and in her
mind, she was at the center of a great orb web made of an almost
endless number of different threads, glinting and sparking in the
darkness that was not darkness. She found the thread she wanted at
once - thicker, rough to the touch, impudently bright - and tugged it
sharply.
She blinked and she was returned to the ruins of the apartment. The
only difference was the brown-haired youth that seemed to come
tumbling out of the air. He sputtered as he tried to place his
awkward, gangly limbs on the floor without falling onto shards of
broken glass and porcelain, or splinters of wooden furniture, that
littered the small room.
“Geez, Aunty!” he snapped, scowling and straightening his dark jeans,
brushing dust off of them as well as his t-shirt, which, oddly enough,
sported a large Spider-Man. “Couldn’t have warned me, could you!?”
Jorougumo suppressed the desire to roll her eyes. “You should be alert
to my summons at all times,” she said pertly. “What warning do you
need?”
“I was in the middle of watching Naruto,” he said sulkily. “Gah!” He
moved and glass crunched beneath his feet. “These are brand new
Chucks…” The look of mourning dragged down his normally cheerful face.
He was pointing to the strange, gigantic red and blue shoes encasing
his feet. “Are you going to reimburse me for these if they’re
damaged!?”
“Your accoutrement is your own concern,” she said, sniffing. “Perhaps
if you took better care of it…”
“Just because you traipse around in fishnets instead of proper shoes,
and own a million pair of hooker boots…” he muttered. Now that his
eyes were off of his clothes, they roamed around the apartment. “What
are you doing summoning me to a rat hole like this, anyhow - GAH!”
He pointed at the yaobikuni, still kneeling on the tatami floor,
watching them with a blank, placid stare that Jorougumo refused to
admit she found both irritating and unsettling. What seemed like miles
of her long, silvery, rippling hair rippled around her - her only garb
- and over her and through a good portion of the apartment.
“Aunty!” he yelped. “What’re you doing with a yaobikuni?
They’re cursed unlucky - “
“That’s a superstition, Dobe,” she said, bored. “One of those
stupid made up human stories.”
“Don’t call me Dobe!”
“Then stop acting like one!”
“Who’s acting like a - “ His mouth dropped open, and he did a double
take. “Wait a minute. Is this the yaobikuni, the one that you -
“
“Yes,” she said, cutting him off. “Now,” and she turned back to the
wide-eyed yaobikuni, as if she hadn’t just been arguing with what
looked like a fourteen-year-old teenager, “this is my manservant and
liegeman, who will be serving us from here on out.” She put on the
sweet, light, pleasant smile that she knew he hated the most, and
said, “Why don’t you introduce yourself, Dobe?”
He gave a rough, surly bow. “Pleased to meet you,” he said darkly. “No
matter what she says, my name isn’t Dobe, it’s Dosha. I serve
this wrinkled up old aunty, Jorougumo-dono - like I have a choice -
and all those under her protection. Who’re you, and how did you get
stuck with her?”
“Manners, Dosha,” Jorougumo said sweetly, giving another yank to his
spirit thread, which she still kept clutched in one hand. He yelped
again, and she found it a rather satisfying sound.
The yaobikuni blinked. “Pleased to meet you,” she said, still in that
soft, worn away voice. “My…. name…” A little of the blankness was
leaving, but it was replaced by something coiling and shadowy and sad.
“My name, I can’t…”
“Yao,” Jorougumo said abruptly. Those sea-silver eyes flickered up to
hers. “It’s Yao.”
“All right, cool, whatever,” Dosha said, unconcerned.
“And… from now on, I will be living with Jorougumo-dono.”
Dosha’s mouth dropped open. “No matter what you say, Aunty, I think
she is cursed unlucky. To have to live with you - “
Jorougumo bared her fangs in a smile. “Oh don’t spread your sympathy
too far, Dobe dearest. You’re going to be living with us too.”
“And I, of course, get no say in the matter…”
“No, you don’t. Go prepare the Manor, make it liveable again. Yao and
I will follow in a while.”
“Whatever you say, oh Jorougumo-dono, Supreme Mistress of the
Universe.” He reached into his pocket, spun on his heel, and was gone.
The room was suddenly darker, and more claustrophobic, once he was
gone. Jorougumo kneeled in front of Yao, not caring about the broken
glass. “Now,” she said, “I can transport us to my home, but you’ll
need a certain kind of key to enter. Dosha has one already.”
Gingerly, she took one of Yao’s hands in hers. The hand was very
small, cool and light, but with a sort of hardness to it, like coral.
Her fingernails had a faintly pearly sheen, and her skin was so pale
and clear that Jorougumo could see the blue veins swimming in it like
tiny rivers and streams.
Jorougumo tore her eyes away from the sight of that small hand so
naturally entwined in hers. She gripped it, carefully, and conjured
the shape in her mind. When the black-and-gold lights dancing across
her vision faded and she remembered to let go, she saw the “key” lying
in Yao’s hand: a medallion of a stylized, curving spider at the center
of a web, made of dull, beaten gold.
“There,” Jorougumo said, not knowing why she felt almost breathless
to see Yao cradling her sigil so gently, as if it was a living thing.
“Hold onto that, and take my arm.”
The girl obeyed, drifting abut in her slow sleepwalker’s daze.
Jorougumo drew the shape of a web in the air, and she and the
yaobikuni stepped through it. She felt the girl spare one last glance
at the small, ruined apartment haunted by violence and pain and the
thin ghosts of love, It could’ve been, we could’ve been, I know we
could’ve, if only -
But Jorougumo gave a ruthless tug, and they were in the foyer of the
Manor, and Dosha, already with his pant legs rolled up and up to his
elbows in suds, was complaining that she hadn’t cleaned the floors in
years.
~
Time passed. Dosha, despite his many, many, many complaints,
was a good worker, full of restless energy and an eye for detail that
bordered on OCD. Jorougumo entrusted him to hire on a temporary
working staff, all of them her subjects, of course, to make major
repairs and do some construction to the Manor which she had, she
admitted, allowed to fall into disuse. She left many of the details up
to Dosha, who bitched at her when she showed some impatience over
colour schemes, wall hangings, types of lighting, and the design for
ornamental gardens - “This is the first time in two centuries that the
clan head has kept an official and permanent residence!” Dosha
bellowed at her. “I will not allow you to screw this up!”
Dosha also took the opportunity to slyly hire the help that she was
usually impatient to keep: houseboys and maid servants to keep the
house running, cooks and kitchen helpers (especially when they were
entertaining guests), messengers and runners, and of course,
attendants for Yao-dono. Of course, Jorougumo said distractedly,
signing whatever pieces of parchment that Dosha - now holding the
position of something like steward - thrust in her face and stamping
them with her personal seal.
Whenever she really was too busy to answer an urgent question, she
would just say to Dosha, “Ask Yao.” This became her answer to many
questions over time - “Ask Yao.” At first Yao would be utterly
tongue-tied and at the most she would be able to stutter, “Whatever
you think would best please Jorougumo-dono,” but after dealing with
Dosha’s bellowing fits for a while (“If I let this place look like
‘whatever would please Jorougumo-dono’, we would be in a CAVERNOUS,
ROTTING MANSION in the FREEZING DARK with nothing for decoration but
SPIDER WEBS in some weird CIRCUS ACT RIG, until of course she lets it
be BURNED DOWN by PIPE FOX FIRE and LEAVES ME TO CLEAN UP THE MESS - “
“He’s exaggerating,” Jorougumo said to the wide-eyed Yao, in her
haughtiest voice.
“Which part?” Dosha said sourly.
“It wasn’t ‘freezing’. It was pleasantly cool.”
“Of course it wasn’t freezing to you, because the icy meat locker
feeling came from the pure evil of your aura,” Dosha pointed out) she
learned to voice her opinion, with the result that there were now some
very beautiful fountains in the ornamental gardens, and a small lake
with a bridge over it in which orange and white koi leisurely swam and
snapped up small bits of bread, and sconces burning softly in dark
corners.
Yao helped out with the construction, too. After Jorougumo nearly hung
Dosha upside down for letting the yaobikuni work with the crew fixing
the roof of the south wing, Yao had said, sounding confused and
nervous, that she enjoyed being useful and working with her hands and
just having something to do around the house, if it pleased
Jourogumo-dono? Jorougumo dropped Dosha roughly to the ground, (“Um,
ow? Are you even going to apologize?”) and said, in very
majestic, velvety tones, “Very well, as it pleases you.”
All in all, Jorougumo enjoyed the sight of her new home rising around
her: a warm, comfortable place, full of light and colour and the sound
of running water. She would’ve preferred something… well, something
much darker, in general, with far closer quarters, something cramped
and luxurious - but Dosha insisted that since she had stopped “gadding
about for decades at a time, drinking and gambling and
treasure-hunting and partying and I don’t know what…” and started
officially performing her duties from a home base, that her residence
had to be bright and welcoming to all, whether they be members of the
spider clan or visitors of… other kinds. She used to conduct her
business on the road, answering the calls of her kin wherever they
were, and travelling and doing pretty much whatever she liked (as
Dosha darkly muttered) - but that was before Yao, of course. It was
Yao who needed a home, and it had become Jorougumo’s responsibility to
provide one for her.
There came a time, however, when she began to wonder if it was
her home that Yao needed.
The priest came on one of the last, long, lazy days of summer, when
the heat even made the cicada’s shrill song fade away. Jorougumo was
wearing one of the light, casual yukata that Dosha had left out for
her, breathable white cotton chased with designs of wisteria, and her
hair was drawn back with a few combs; it was too hot to leave her long
hair loose, and it was easier to just wear what Dosha set out rather
than try to dig through her now rather voluminous closet for her usual
all-black ensembles. Even though they were made of far less fabric,
their colour made them impractical in the heat. Yao wore yukata nearly
every day as well, and today she was wearing one of her favourites:
silver-lavender, covered in sprays of white plum blossoms, a violet
sash tucked around her waist.
The two of them sat on the long, low wooden porch with the shoji slid
open, taking in the sight and sounds of the innermost garden that
Dosha had planned with maniacal detail. Yao had fallen asleep feeding
the fish; with bread crumbs in her hands, her head rested on
Jorougumo’s lap, her silver hair spilling everywhere in fine ripples.
Jorougumo remembered, as if it was a very distant memory, braiding all
that long hair so that it could be cut off; the braid was safely
tucked away in a lacquered cherry wood chest in her store room, with
all of the other treasures she had gathered over the years. She knew,
though, that she could never trade or sell or bargain off that braid,
like she did to so many other items: rare sakes, peach wood rings, her
own silk. It would be…. It just wasn’t the thing to do.
She allowed her fingers to idly comb through the silver waves of Yao’s
hair - something she would never have done if Yao had been awake - and
hummed to herself, an idle spinning song her mother used to sing her
very long ago. It twisted her heart, to see what perfect trust Yao
slept in her lap. She had the irrational urge, suddenly, to slap the
girl or shake her awake, to say something cruel and watch the familiar
shadows take up their home in the farthest corner of Yao’s eyes, where
the silver couldn’t reach. For most of the years that she had known
Yao, the pain had always been present, even under that frozen
blankness. It had been like looking into pools to admire her own
reflection, to see how cruelty brought out the lushness and the gloss
of her mouth, the dark, soft gleam of her eyes. She wouldn’t know Yao
without pain. She wouldn’t know herself without her cruelty. Without
them, they were strangers, shivering and vulnerable, locked in a
drowsy and dream-like midsummer garden, like fatal innocents waiting
for the gates of paradise to be torn down.
“Jorougumo-dono.” Dosha’s voice was stiff and formal as the heavy
brocade of her costliest kimono, which meant that either there were
other servants listening in, or he was deeply upset. Since she could
sense none of the other house staff around, she assumed the later.
“What’s happened, Dosha?”
“We have a guest.” Dosha’s thin-lipped stoicism could only last so
long, as in two seconds. “It’s the priest!” he finally burst out, and
then shushed himself as Jorougumo inclined her head toward the
still-sleeping Yao. Her urge to wake Yao had disappeared as swiftly as
it had first flared up. “The blue priest, the baby-eater. Aunty, that
guy’s bad news. My spidey senses are tingling, and not in the fun way.
Toki’s got him at the gate, and he’s waiting for your orders.”
She gently slid Yao’s head from her lap, resting the girl’s head on a
cushion; she hardly stirred. “Let him in,” she said, rising, tucking a
stray strand of hair beneath Yao’s ear. “Prepare the Sakura Room, and
have Iwara deliver the food and drinks directly there. Send the
shamisen player to distract - entertain - him until I’m ready.”
Dosha grabbed someone along the way and repeated the orders, and then
noticed that Jorougumo was walking away without him. “Aunty - !” Dosha
half-trotted behind her as she strode through the halls, in as long a
stride as her yukata allowed her. “Listen, I know this guy’s got
something you want, but is it really worth - “
She spun on him. “Reishi,” she said, tightly. “That’s what the priest has.”
Dosha’s mouth dropped open. “The elixir of life…” His voice trailed
off. “But how can he possibly…?”
“Does it matter? He’s not pure enough to hold onto it in its original
state, but it doesn’t need to be pure. Even if it’s in a corrupt form,
it will prolong a life. And that’s all we need. To prolong a life.”
She kept walking, her strides eating up the polished wooden floor. She
went to her closet, and started throwing aside all the yukata and
kimono that Dosha had unsubtly placed at the front, trying to find her
old outfits which Dosha usually regarded with his classic,
disapproving eyebrow tilt.
“Aunty,” Dosha said, helping to empty the closet as well, “I love
Yao-dono as well, but don’t you think that maybe - “
“Maybe? Maybe what?”
“Maybe,” Dosha said evenly, “Yao-dono would like to have the chance to die.”
He didn’t have the chance to blink before he went flying through the
room, crashing right through the shoji and landing on the other side
in a mess of torn paper and splintered wood. Jorougumo hauled him to
his feet, and though she usually retained her human form with a
minimum of effort, she had never looked less human with her eyes
sparking and whirling gold and black, long fangs slitting past her
lips as she snarled at him.
“Eight hundred years,” Jorougumo snarled. “We have no idea when Yao
was made, since she herself doesn’t remember, but the yaobikuni have
an expiration date, and that’s eight hundred years. For
centuries, that girl tied herself to worthless human beings who
could only bring her pain. Even though she knew they would die, she
waited endlessly for something good to come along - and now
that she has a life, a real life that she lives for herself with
people who love her, you want to take that away from her?”
“What would I be taking away?” Dosha shouted back to her.
“Give me a break, a ‘real life with people who love her’? You never
let yourself love her! You’re the cruellest one of all, to keep
her alive like this. No matter how close you get to her, you still
keep her at a distance, even after all this time. That girl waited
endlessly? She is still waiting! She’s waiting for you!”
Her hands on his collar went slack.
A tiny, terrified whisper dropped into the room.
“Jorougumo-dono?”
A maidservant, Saki, hovered outside the doorway, and then Jorougumo
realised how they must’ve looked: herself on the verge of killing her
steward, as they stood over the remains of what had once been a very
nice, very harmless, rice paper wall.
“Um, Jorougumo-dono…” Saki cleared her throat. “I was just sent to
tell you that Kumiko-san isn’t feeling well tonight, so Eri-san is
playing her koto for your guest instead - in the Sakura Room as you
ordered.”
“Thank you, Saki.” The little maidservant nodded and fled. She was
left with Dosha rubbing his throat, muttering to himself the whole
while.
“Go wake Yao,” she said quietly. “Tell her I won’t be dining with her
tonight. Tell her I’m… I don’t know, tell her anything. And Dosha?”
The stiff line of his jaw told him that he still hadn’t completely
forgiven her, but he still said, “Yes, Jorougumo-dono?”
“Keep her…”
Out of the way. Out of sight. Away.
“Safe,” she said, finally.
~
Aobozu was enough to make anyone’s spidey senses tingle. It wasn’t his
blue skin, or the single roving, restless eye, or even the rough,
powerful, fleshy lines of his heavy-jawed face. It was the controlled
greed in his eyes, the continual hunger, as if he could feast on flesh
and bone and blood and souls for many moons and never be sated.
Although she understood how Aobozu made Dosha’s hair stand on end,
Jorougumo was unafraid in his presence; he was ruled by his appetites,
straightforward in his needs. Because of that, she could deal with
him. The only emotion she felt was a contained excitement, a delicate
tension, like that of a well-trained dancer warming up in the wings.
She had a job to do, a show to put on. She knew, as soon as his
gleaming eyes drooped low in pleasure at the sight of her, that she
would be brilliant - she would spark and sizzle and burn up the stage.
“Aobozu,” she purred. She took her time strolling in, the sway of her
hips bringing his eyes up to her pale gold, perfect thighs circled by
black garters. As she knelt over him, she felt the cool black satin of
her negligee sigh over her curves like a kiss.
“Jorougumo,” the priest rumbled, her loose hair falling against his
face. His hands gripped her hips, almost unconsciously, and she barely
contained a smirk.
She pulled away, half-settling herself on his lap. “Shall we have a
drink?” she asked. “I asked Saki to bring some chilled sake, but a
little birdy told me that you have something far better…”
~
“Yao-dono?”
Yao struggled out of her sleepy daze. In her dreams, the air, she was
held in the arms of something large and dark and comforting. She knew
the creature was dangerous - knew by the patient clicking of many
legs, by the presence of sharpened fangs glistening redly in the dark
- but that she was, at the same time, in the safest place she would
ever find. There was a voice singing high above her, husky and velvety
and deep, with gleams of a sweeter honey-gold. It made her feel safe
as if she was being cradled deep in the ocean, made her feel loved as
if she slept in the heart of a flower.
“Yao-dono, please wake up…”
Dosha’s voice was strained. She struggled to sit upright,
straightening her kimono, blinking all around and feeling oddly…
bereft. “I thought Jorougumo-dono was here…”
“She was.” Dosha helped lift her to her feet. “She regrets to inform
you that she will unable to dine with you tonight, as she has an
unexpected affair she must attend to.”
Something was definitely wrong if he was being this servile. She
grabbed the sleeves of his dark yukata, forcing his tense, unhappy
eyes to look at her. “Dosha-san, it’s me, remember?” she said.
“It’s Yao. I’ve cleaned pigeon poop from gutters with you.”
“Oh, Yao-dono!” Dosha didn’t even try to pretend to contain himself,
or to scold her for talking about something as unladylike as bird
feces; he threw himself at her in a reckless hug, and she patted what
she could reach of his shoulder and his hair, deeply puzzled. “I’m so
sorry, Yao-dono, I said something awful, I didn’t mean it, I… I don’t
want you to die.”
She stilled.
“That’s good,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “Because I
don’t want to die either.”
“Good,” Dosha said, pulling himself away. He pulled a handkerchief
out of his sleeves and mopped up his face, looking a bit more like his
normal self, if one ignored the redness of his eyes. “Now let’s see
about getting you supper. Jorougumo-dono has a - a special guest,” and
his face twisted as if he’d bitten into a lemon, “so you’ll have to
dine in your room, but…”
“Oh,” Yao said, trying to sound as if she wasn’t disappointed, as
Dosha began to lead the way to her rooms. “Um. That’s fine. But
Dosha-san, could you do me a favour? I forgot to ask Jorougumo-dono
since I, um, fell asleep, but can you remind her that we have to wake
up early tomorrow, if we want to make it to the beach before high
tide?”
Dosha’s lips pressed together tightly. “I don’t think that will be
possible, Yao-dono,” he said, some of the stiffness back in his voice.
And then, as if breaking character and becoming normal Dosha again, he
muttered, as if to himself, “I get the feeling they’ll be sleeping in
very late…”
Yao stumbled.
Dosha caught her - spider reflexes - and almost hyperventilated making
sure that she hadn’t injured herself anywhere. “I’m fine, Dosha-san!”
she said, swatting his hands away, exasperated, as he tried to check
her foot for splinters. He didn’t let up until she was safely kneeling
at the low table of her sitting room. She tried to laugh, and the
sound came out strangely. “I was just a little, ah, surprised…”
Dosha went scarlet, as he mentally replayed what he had just said. “Oh
but that’s not what I - it’s not what you - she’s not some whore!” he
finally burst out.
Yao felt herself going still again, and she was sure that the strange
sensation of coldness she felt coming over her meant that the blood
was draining from her face.
“I know what they call her,” Dosha said passionately. “Like that
merchant’s apprentice at the gates, spouting that filth - it was hard
for him to spout anything once I got him trussed up in that pear tree.
Er, don’t tell anyone I said that?”
Yao would’ve laughed, if she didn’t feel sick.
“The Whore Spider.” Dosha’s voice was bitter. “The Binding
Lady, the Entwining Bride, those are just polite names for what
they’re all really thinking of her. You know, the spider clan weren’t
very prominent before. There are many of us, yes, but few of us are
powerful in their own right… except for the sovereign. If it wasn’t
for her,” he said, forcefully, “being what she was, and using all of
her wits and strength and power and - assets - if it wasn’t for
her using everything she has, most of us wouldn’t be here…
Yao-dono?” He tried to smile. “Yao-dono, please say something. Or if…”
His head dipped low. “If you’re going to leave Jorougumo-dono because
of this, then do it quick.”
“Leave her?” Dosha’s head snapped up. She had never heard her
own voice go so cold before - not with rage. “How could you even ask
me that?”
“I - “
She cut him off. Her dark eyes glittered, and Dosha was forced to
remember again that even if she had been born human, even if she had
first appeared to him as a dazed, beautiful, and infinitely fragile
girl-child who needed protecting from even herself, she had probably
been alive as long as he had, and lived through dark times, through
centuries of violence and tragedy.
“Have you ever heard of the karayuki-san?” she asked. “Or the
joshigun?”
Dosha’s rubbed the end of his nose, looking thoughtful. “Girls,” he
said, finally. “Human girls sold overseas, right. Near the beginning
of the last century…”
“The end of the Meiji era,” Yao said softy. “That’s why they call that
time now... Back then, I was living in a little village of the coast
with a fisherman who had lost his wife and his two daughters a few
years before. I had tried… to drown myself, but he caught me in his
nets. So he brought me to his home and nursed me back to health, and I
stayed. The fishing… was very bad that year, and some of the villagers
thought that I was the cause. They thought that Yamamoto-san - the
fisherman - had brought bad luck upon everyone, by pulling me from the
sea. They came after me…” She faltered, and pushed on. “They came
after me, and tried to hurt me. When I healed myself, they thought for
sure I was cursed. They decided to… to sell me. Yamamoto-san…” She
forced herself to say it. “Yamamoto-san was the one who negotiated the
sale.”
She shook her head, her hair floating around her face, obscuring it.
“Then I was in Singapore. I… worked… there for a long time. There were
many… many other Japanese girls there. A lot of them from villages as
poor as mine - as the one I’d lived in with Yamamoto-san, I mean. And
I… things happened, there. Many things.”
Yao took a breath. “One night, I was… badly hurt, by a client. I
thought I was going to die. I noticed that there was… a spider, a
little black and yellow spider, in a corner of my bedroom. And I said…
I begged to see Jorougumo-dono.”
Dosha jerked out of his reverie. “You knew her already?”
Yao nodded. “I’d met her once - no, twice, before that. I don’t know…
I’m not even sure what I was thinking. In the village, she had warned
me that I couldn’t possibly stay there, not for long, and I - I didn’t
listen to her, though I would’ve been saved much grief if I had. I’m
not even sure why I wanted to see her so badly that night… to tell her
that she had been right, maybe? That I shouldn’t have trusted those
villagers… Anyway… she came. She saved me. And she brought me back to
Japan.”
She still remembered that night in Singapore, the air sticky on her
skin. Jorougumo-dono, brilliant and dangerous in a black Western style
dress that gleamed with scarlet and gold trimmings, her wide skirts
sweeping everyone away. There must’ve been gasps, to see such a
high-born lady entering a pleasure house, but Yao hadn’t heard them.
She had been staring at the ceiling, feeling either blood or sweat
trickle warmly down her temples. Her client, already grunting and
pulling on his clothes, was already miles away. She remembered
thinking, distantly, I will finally, finally get to die. And
the relief of that thought almost drowned out the pain.
Then her client was swearing and saying, “Who the hell - “
And then he was choking and flailing and dying. And underneath all of
that was the sound of the buzzing of flies.
She couldn’t move her neck - it was probably broken, underneath the
last of her client’s crushing blows - but she was able to slide her
eyes around to see him clawing at the golden noose around his throat,
the one that gleamed strong and bright, like spider’s silk.
“Heal yourself, would you,” Jorougumo had said to her, not looking at
her, her voice flat. “Your neck’s at a funny angle.”
She dragged her eyes away from the sight of her client - gone
completely red and fleshy, gasping, cursing, sweat pouring off of him
as he struggled for breath - and tried to remember the ocean, which
seemed like another world from this stinking, heat swollen, death trap
in Singapore. The silken feel of the waves closing around over her
head... the playful, dappled, pale sea-light at the ocean floor,
shifting over the sands... the cool caress of green sea weed, and the
quick fan-like darting of silver fish....
Then the pain was gone and she could move her neck and her hair was
streaming through the room and she barely had time to pull on a robe
before Jorougumo was gripping her arm - not painfully, but tightly, as
if she was a fish that might slip away at any moment. Jorougumo
dragged her out of the brothel, to the confused shouts of the madam -
Jorougumo silenced her with a single, sword-like glare - and out onto
the streets, where red paper lanterns bobbed luridly overhead.
Jorougumo released her arms, but still wouldn’t look at her, and Yao
had clutched herself, still shaking, glad she was covered by the
curtain of her hair.
“I will kill them all.” Jorougumo’s voice was flat and disinterested
again, her beautiful face completely blank. “Everyone there. I’ll kill
them for you.”
The red lanterns made a dizzying sort of light. She shook her head,
trying to clear it. “I... Please don’t... the other girls...”
“They are only human.” The Jorougumo’s voice was hard as diamonds,
and that was what shook Yao out of her daze more than anything else.
“Exactly,” Yao said, hating her voice for shaking. “They are only human.”
The tension held, taut as the finest and farthest stretched of one of
Jorougumo’s web. Then she nodded her head curtly, and the tension
broke. “Very well.”
Yao’s knees almost buckled in relief.
“Come with me,” Jorougumo said. She drew a web in the air, and they
stepped through it. When they stepped out on the other side, they were
in the middle of a lush, cool forest, a small, tidy home before them.
A lovely woman stepped out, dressed in white and blue robes. Her face
had a pure and holy line to it, or it would have, except for the gleam
of mischief in her jade-coloured eyes. The lady was a kitsune, her
name was Youko-san, and she owed Jorougumo a favour or five, as Yao
found out later.
“She’s newly healed, but she needs to take it easy for a few days.
Take care of her,” Jorougumo had ordered. “I have to go settle a
conflict between some feuding clansmen before any more blood gets
shed.” And she had drawn another web in the air.
“Jorougumo-dono!”
Jorougumo tilted her body slightly towards Yao’s, patient, inquiring. “Yes?”
…. Stay.
With me.
But she couldn’t say that.
“Travel safe,” Yao said softly.
Something like a smile had flickered over Jorougumo’s face. “I always do.”
“So you see, Dosha-san,” she said, shaking herself out of her own
memory, “why I would never leave Jorougumo over being called a name
like that. I lost the right…” Her voice died. “I lost the right to
judge, a long time ago, who she keeps company with. Now I wish nothing
more… than to stay with her. That is all.”
Even if Yao herself couldn’t hear it - or maybe she could - Dosha
could hear the longing thick in the girl’s voice.
Many things had changed, in a short time. Even the Yao just a year ago
- the one that was strange and silent and seemed to sleep walk
everywhere and barely seemed to eat or breathe or, for hours at a
time, even move - would’ve been glad to know that her eight hundred
years were coming to a close, would’ve gladly slipped into death
without a single regret.
Yao shifted, and at her throat gleamed dull gold: she wore Jorougumo’s
sigil around her throat, on a thin golden chain woven of spider silk.
And Dosha thought that maybe, perhaps, he had been wrong about what
Yao would want.
~
part two