Beneath Ceaseless Skies #86 Read online

  “You will forgive me this thing,” he said.

  I wondered at his insistence. “If you forgive me this thing.”

  In the pouring rain, I surrendered to the creature inside of me. My human flesh gave way to dragon scale, which gleamed gold-green in the storm. No fir, no cypress, only immense power coiled within this gods-crafted body, splitting into eight snarling heads and eight whipping tails. Even Susanoo cried out at the sight of it—of me. I dug claws into the muddy ground and leapt not for him but deeper into the forest, toward the home of the elders and their sweet, eighth daughter.

  It was an instinct I could no longer deny. Yamata no Orochi demanded tribute, feeding, and when I burst through the bamboo, the elders shrieked and screamed for Susanoo, Susanoo who was close on my heels, The Slash of Heavenly Wings slicing through the air. He came from the bamboo tops, flying like a graceful egret. His kimono whipped in the storm, bright and sharp like his sword. I lunged for the house and saw no sign of the eighth daughter. She was not awaiting me; the elders had not offered her up.

  I rounded the house with a bellow, snapping my tails into the trees. The bamboo leaned as though the entire world had been thrown off balance. And then I saw her, her eye’s gleam in the ornate comb that Susanoo wore in his ebon hair. The comb’s teeth curled as her very own smile, flower hands free to bloom under the warmth of his protection.

  Trickster! I snarled and leapt for him as he came, twisting one head toward the earth elders as seven others went for Susanoo. He laughed as we clashed, looking happier than I had ever seen him.

  The bite of his sword was sharp, yet there was some part of me that longed to be cut apart. It was this part of me that was awakening, stretching on the shore, trying to escape. When I leaned into the thrust of the sword, Susanoo withdrew, crying out his surprise.

  Then I smelled it, the sweet lure of sake. It was sheltered from Susanoo’s storm, eight beautiful and gleaming masu brimming with fresh sake. Each sat through its own gate, as if in offering, and I could not help but turn toward them.

  Even as I bent each of my heads, I knew this was a trap. Eight gates for eight heads with eight thirsty mouths that could never resist the varied flavors of the rice wine. The flavors deepened or mellowed depending on the rice; this sake had come from rice fields strewn with cherry blossoms and this from rice allowed to dry under an autumn sun. I plunged forked tongues into the sake, over and over, knowing that this was the moment; when the sake began to soak me the way the rain did, releasing another piece of me.

  This was the moment, but it was not Susanoo’s voice which said again “you will forgive me this thing.” I lifted my heads, maws dripping with sake, and stared at the strange brilliance of little Sun Lin there. She smelled like sake but glowed with the radiance of a thousand heavens, eternal sun.

  Amaterasu—a trickster’s daughter, I thought, a second before I knew the bite of Susanoo’s fierce sword.

  He made seven cuts, sure and swift the way he brought a storm. He lingered over the last cut, though, and I whipped away from Sun Lin to swallow Susanoo whole. He wriggled down my throat like a caught fish, until deep inside me he swung and severed the eighth head from the inside out. I fell into the masu of sake, and the thing inside me was freed.

  This part of me, gleaming like the moon, stretched toward the bamboo tops then fell through the whispering green, human form reassembling itself from memory, so that when I landed it was on hands and feet made cold from the storm, hands and feet the color of palest jade. Water flooded my skin, running from my hair that was the gray-green of the lake.

  “Min!”

  Susanoo thundered my name yet again, though this time, it was a sorrowful thing—and not wholly my name, for this part of me was no longer a lady. Tsukuyomi, I thought. My eyes moved to Sun Lin, who crouched in the mud and spilled sake.

  “Sister?” I asked of her.

  She glowed like the sun and I like the moon, and together our eyes sought stormy Susanoo. He stood over my dead dragon body, The Slash of Heavenly Wings poised to cut through the tail which held the sword he sought.

  Susanoo’s eyes met my own. Was he surprised or was it pleasure that made his lips lift in an unsteady smile? He said nothing, only turned his sword within his hands and offered it to me. The Slash of Heavenly Wings felt like fire in my hands, and I drew the blade down the dragon’s tail, to reveal the gleam of another sword within.

  We each jumped for it. Smaller than Susanoo, I moved more swiftly—like a dragon yet!—sliding beneath him as I abandoned his sword. But I could not curl my hands around the slick hilt before Amaterasu did. She pulled the Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven from the dragon’s tail. Hard rain washed the blood clean and she laughed, the coming of sunrise after a long winter.

  “Day and night forever divided,” she whispered, taking a backward step from Susanoo as he reclaimed The Slash of Heavenly Wings. “Izanagi willed it so.”

  Something inside me died at that; Sun Lin no longer at the temple, no longer pattering small feet across my bridge. I shook my head, advancing on her. “There are times when moon and sun occupy the same sky,” I said.

  Amaterasu snarled and lunged. Susanoo’s sword saved me, his storm obliterating her sunlight. The swords together were like thunder and lightning twined, strong and bright and the ground shook beneath us.

  “You will forgive me this,” Susanoo said, and The Slash of Heavenly Wings rang once more against the Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven. Susanoo beat Amaterasu backward until I cried him off. He stared at me, fish slipping from his kimono as Amaterasu fled into the bamboo.

  Everywhere she went there trailed a golden light, and I watched until I could see it no more. Only then did I look at Susanoo, picking myself up from the sake-drenched mud.

  “The sun has its course,” I whispered, “and so too the moon, but the storms go where they will.”

  I fled through the bamboo, opposite the sun. Susanoo, with his gleaming comb and bride, flooded the land, sending the elders fleeing for the hills as my blood washed deep into the roots of the bamboo, of the fir. I still do not carry these things upon my back. The moon is cold and empty.

  I walked back to the small house upon the island and there, kneeled again before my calligraphy table. I spread out a fresh page with these strange new hands and stroked my brushes slow over the paper. I drew a single name there, a prayer in its own way: Amaterasu.

  When I had finished, I set the brush aside and folded the page into a hundred tiny creases before at last taking up a length of twine and walking to the ancient bamboo.

  Even this moon might make a prayer.

  Copyright © 2011 E. Catherine Tobler

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  E. Catherine Tobler lives and writes in Colorado—strange how that works out. Among others, her fiction has appeared in Sci Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, Talebones, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. One cat, one Schwinn, and miles to go! For more, visit www.ecatherine.com.

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  COVER ART

  “Tower of Babel,” by Zack Fowler

  Zack Fowler is an environment artist who has worked for computer gaming studios as a Lead Environment Artist and a Level Designer. His main focus is in 3D environment art, but he also works on environment concept art, high-poly 3D modeling (organic and hard-surface), texturing, materials lighting, and event scripting. See more of his work at http://www.zackfowler.com/.

  Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  ISSN: 1946-1046

  Published by Firkin Press,

  a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

  Copyright © 2011 Firkin Press

  This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy and share the file so long as you retain the attribution to the authors, but you may not sell it and you may not alter it or partition it or transcribe it.

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  Lingen, Marissa, Beneath Ceaseless Skies #86