Fudoki by Johnson Kij

Author:Johnson, Kij [Johnson, Kij]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2004-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

As I write here, my cat Myb watches me, suddenly intent, as though a fire flickered over my head. There have been many cats over the years, and I have spoken to them all in the high tones reserved for children, drunken men, and pets. They have never spoken back, but I have never thought they would. They are not badgers or foxes, after all. They are from distant godless places, beyond my most ambitious dreams.

A month later, Kagaya-hime left with the war band. It was a bright spring day, still winter-cold, except that the trees showed a haze of pale green, and the air seemed furred with moisture and the possibility of life. Nakara and Kagaya-hime had avoided one another, but now the woman joined the cat, and in silence they watched the band form an unruly line of snappish horses and hoarse-voiced men.

“Must you do this?” Nakara said again.

Kagaya-hime said, “Yes.”

Nakara sighed. “I cannot stop the wind from blowing, and I cannot stop you. I’m sorry that I was angry with you.”

Certain cats hold grudges. Shisutko, the little nun, was like this; she refused your embrace if she thought she had been slighted, or if you were to toss her from a veranda into the garden after a particularly wearisome morning of her face in everything; and she waited days if necessary to take a revenge as indelicate as it was surprising. I think it is possible that our cats learn how to bear grudges from people, for we can hold one for a lifetime.

Kagaya-hime was not of a resentful nature. This requires a sense of perogatives infringed, and she had no expectations to be dashed. She saw Nakara’s sorrow and did something she remembered from the aunts and cousins when they sought comfort from one another; she stepped forward and pressed her cheek into the curve of Nakara’s neck. Nakara reached out and pulled her close, held her tightly. Kagaya-hime stood taut-muscled for an instant, then relaxed and embraced Nakara: the first time she had embraced another, felt the comfort of one’s arms filled with a person one loves.

“I am—sorry,” she whispered into Nakara’s hair, “though I do not know what that means.”

They stood joined for a time, but no matter how tender the moment, a cat grows restive. Kagaya-hime moved away, still close but no longer touching.

Nakara looked at her and sighed. “There are people who cannot settle, as if they were birds born without legs. They go on and on, to the world’s end—the lands of the hairy northerners, or India; farther, even.”

“What happens to them, the ones who go?”

“I don’t know. They never return to tell us. Perhaps they never find a place to stop.”

“I am not one of those,” Kagaya-hime said. “I long for home and fudoki. I would stop if I could.”

“Would you?” Nakara said.

“I have a gift for you,” Kagaya-hime said suddenly. Tucked in her sash was a slim, shallow box carved of tortoiseshell, hardly larger than a fan-case. She laid it in Nakara’s hands.

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