(eng) Lian Hearn - Tale of Shikanoko 03 by Lord of the Darkwood

Author:Lord of the Darkwood [Darkwood, Lord of the]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

8

MU

The fox girl laughed when Mu asked her name, as she laughed at most of his questions.

“You can call me Shida, if I have to have a name,” she said, tickling him with a dried fern. She liked to drape herself in the leaves and flowers of the forest as they came into season, making garlands from strands of berries and the brown fronds of bracken for herself and Kaze, and for the child, when it came.

They had been together for four winters. The child was a girl, as slight and delicate as a fern leaf herself. They called her Kinpoge, after the celandines that starred the forest floor around the time of her birth. She did not seem to have any fox attributes, apart from her animal-like agility and her rapid growth, though in certain lights her thick hair had a russet gleam to it and her eyes were amber.

During those years, Shida taught Mu the bright playful magic of the fox people. It seemed to have no purpose other than to make life amusing. She cast a spell on Ban’s skull, to Kaze’s utter delight, that sent the horse flying through the air. She summoned up shape shifters, tanuki, cranes, turtles, and snakes, just for the fun of startling Ima or Ku. They never knew if an iron pot was really a pot or a grinning fat-bellied tanuki, or if an old robe, thrown on the ground, might not suddenly sprout wings and launch itself, squawking, into the air.

Her presence seemed to revive many of Shisoku’s fake animals. One of the creatures, a cross between a dog and a wolf, which had been Shisoku’s water carrier, raised its head from where it had fallen by the stream and Shida ran to help it to its feet, chuckling at its awkward gait.

“You should make a companion for it,” she said, when it tried to lift the water vessel on its own and the water spilled out lopsidedly.

Mu had to admit he did not know how to and that all he did not know overwhelmed him. The forest and the mountain were home to thousands of plants, flowers, trees, and grasses, and myriad creatures, insects, birds, and small animals as well as deer, monkeys, foxes, bears, and wolves. There was no one who could teach him their names. Shida did not understand his need to label them. They were all instantly recognizable to her, she did not need words. Mu realized she lived like an animal, in each single moment, observing, feeling, enjoying, but not reflecting or recording. Sometimes he felt himself slipping into the same way of being, and days would pass when he hardly had a single thought. Then he would wake in the night from a bad dream in which a stranger who was at the same time familiar accused him of wasting his life. He would lie there in the dark, hearing the others breathing around him, alarmed and uneasy at what he was leaving undone, yet ignorant of what it might be.

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