Doku by Tam MacNeil

Author:Tam MacNeil [MacNeil, Tam]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Queerteen Press
Published: 2015-05-08T23:00:00+00:00

Roku

He shakes himself, like a dog shaking the water from his coat, and starts down the street, then turns sharply, in the piss-scented space between two buildings, toward the grey-brown smear that is the River Han. He goes down to the water’s edge—a precipitous drop from a slime-slick stone wall. The river here is wide and deep and polluted to a glossy, almost metallic sheen from the grease from animal hides being turned to leather in the tanneries. He stands alone, looks out on the water, spoiled and stinking, not even pocked by the passage of boats. He thinks of the water upstream, green as the glass of a fisherman’s float, the banks of the river all tiny stones, made perfectly round, the children who play in the shallows when the weather is hot, the launderers who wash there, stripped to nothing and baked the color of clay in summer. As he thinks he nudges a blob of slime toward the edge of the embankment, and then, with a final sandal-push, he knocks it over the edge.

The sound of the blob going into the water is surprisingly loud in the little space. He’s found a little pocket in the city where the constant tide of noise is muffled. It’s a good spot, almost private, and with better water it would be the sort of spot he would come in summertime and swim alone.

He thinks of kitsune and he thinks of bakeneko. He thinks of how it’s the doom of clever animals to try to escape traps, to draw in and in and in until the wire tightens around the middle and either it slips free or is eviscerated by its struggling.

That house, a golden tooth in a rotten mouth, a plum-purple to make a dyer swoon, but in the middle of a bruise.

He’s not shaking any more. He’s not Hyabusa anymore. Now he’s Kazematsuri. And everybody knows Kazematsuri is fucking kitsune.

The buildings here are old and sturdy and jostle together, their rooftops nearly touching. Jao reaches up. A dolphin downspout, corroded from too much weather and not enough care, holds his weight without complaint. His arms, on the other hand, aren’t so sure. He heaves, drawing in and in and in, and kicking off his sandals. They’re only going to slow him down.

* * * *

Up, gripping the under-hang and then scrabbling at the roof tiles while his arms shake because Gods it’s been a while hasn’t it, Jao? And you haven’t missed many meals lately. Then bare feet on the eaves and at last a lever to push himself up so he can lie panting and then laughing breathless on the roof.

“Why didn’t Masahiro tell me I was getting so fat?” he wonders out loud and the thought of Masahiro takes all the humour out of it. He gets up and strides to the edge of the roof. There’s no one on the river, but there are a few people in the street. One or two look up at him.

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