Soraki lay peaceful under a pure blue sky. Even in the height of summer, the temperatures remained cool and fresh. Sitting in a north-facing bay, it was the last large town and final port before the two islands that formed the isolated, snowy kingdom of Chup-tuk.
The trip had taken less than a week, but not much less; they had managed to hitch some rides from Kinhama, but the further north that they travelled, the fewer travellers they met. They had walked for the last few days, and now, they had finally reached the top of the hills surrounding the town.
A breeze from the distant ocean carried the scent of flowers, slightly spicy and slightly sweet, and a host of memories that slammed into Eitsu with the force of a typhoon.
Tsubaki watched her changing expressions wordlessly.
“Let's go down,” Eitsu heard herself say, distantly. She drifted down the hill with the others following her, into her memories.
She had arrived at Soraki... when, exactly? From where? She had an impression of unending cold, winter for miles, red blossoms against white snow. A grey ocean.
Soraki had been little more than a few buildings, back then. Fisher-people suffering the cold for the abundance of seafood that lived there. Wooden houses, wooden boats, wooden faces. The people needed all the luck they could get.
A young village woman cleaning clothes saw her first. The sea breeze blew her hair into her eyes and she straightened up, pushing the strands away with wet hands, to find a figure watching her.
A tall woman, with high cheekbones and long white hair, golden tips brushing the ground. A woman tanned from years outdoors, clad in thick, embroidered red and white robes, fur collar buffering her from the cold wind. A beautiful woman with gold glittering at her ears and fingers, with narrow golden eyes and red markings on her face, with a wide mouth and sharp teeth.
The village girl knew immediately that this woman was not human. She bowed hurriedly, her heart beating fearfully in her throat.
A slim hand with long red nails lifted her face. A scarlet tongue licked her lips. The strange woman spoke in the language of the people across the small sea to the north, the language of Chup-tuk, the Sunrise. Her golden eyes pierced the young woman like a cat spying a mouse. The girl felt fear and desire battle each other, but in the end, she led the cat-eyed woman into her house.
From that day on, her family always had great luck. If their fishing boat got caught in a storm, they always made it safely back. On days when others could not catch any fish, their family always managed to haul a full net.
They raised a small shrine for the goddess, apologising for its size. The goddess transformed into a cat, a large one with golden fur and bright red markings, and hopped inside.
“Perfect size.”
And as the years rolled on, and the young woman who had first seen her became a wife and mother, and then a grandmother, and then died, and the village grew in size to a small town, and the shrine was made a little bigger, repainted, furnished with fabrics brought from the southern reaches of the country, the cat goddess brought luck to those who found her favour, but mostly spent her time happily sleeping in the gentle sunlight.
Mostly.
Eitsu, Tsubaki and Ayame entered the town. The air was alive with the sweet trills of small, fluttering birds, the short bright quacks of a group of mandarin ducks, the calls of stall-keepers in the market. Tsubaki paused to watch a woman expertly chopping the heads of fish in preparation for cleaning until Ayame pulled her sleeve and brought her out of her trance.
“Tennai-sama.”
“Brat.”
The amusing little kid was back again. They had turned up out of nowhere, a child so under-developed that one couldn't tell if they were male or female. Not that Eitsu cared. The kid was entertainingly sarcastic and fun to tease. She had been getting bored in Soraki. Perhaps it was time to move on.
There were many homeless, parentless children in Soraki. They gravitated towards large cities - the same could be said of Ohanashi.
So the scrawny brat who visited every day should have just been another street kid, fierce, desperate, here one day and gone the next, a brief flicker even in the short life of humans, barely registering to a kami with an eternal lifespan.
Eitsu watched Ayame pull Tsubaki away from the woman chopping off fish heads, and wondered when it was that that fierce spark disappeared from her dark eyes. Even in their most intimate moments, the dancer's eyes were shuttered.
I WANT TO LIVE.
Like a blazing light, the street brat's heart roared out every day, every night, ringing in the ears of the cat god. It burned the brightest when she lay on the street, hungry, the precious coin she had managed to beg for, stolen by someone bigger and stronger than her. It burned the brightest when she lay curled up, protecting her face, as a boot cracked her ribs or broke her fingers.
The kami always knew how to find her. Just follow the light.
"Isn't it tough?" the golden cat asked incuriously, seated beside the kid's prone, bruised body. Sh cleaned her paws.
"It wouldn't be so tough if you gave me some luck," the child grumbled.
"Everyone has a different definition of luck. In your case, that fact that you're alive is luck."
"Stingy cat."
"Stupid brat. Can you walk?"
"No."
"Stay there then."
"Hey, don't go! Come back!"
The cat did come back, several minutes later, carrying a large bun in her mouth.
"Here, eat."
"Is that an offering from your altar?"
"Yes."
"Good."
The girl winced as her ribs crunched, but her hunger drove her upright and she devoured the bun so fast, she almost choked. "Tea?"
"Wow, you're demanding."
"Why do you think I'm still alive?"
"Luck?"
It was late. There was no one on the streets. The child lifted her head at the sound of a small bell, the remains of the bun falling from her hand.
The tall woman with the white and gold hair and the eyes of a cat held out a long-nailed hand. "Don't waste the food, brat. Come on, get up."
In a daze, the girl picked up the remains of the bun and stood. The woman swept her up as though she weighed nothing.
"Hold on."
The shrine was on the other side of the village, but it took the kami less than a minute to cross the distance, leaping lightly from roof to roof with the girl in her arms.
The girl stared and stared. The long white and gold hair tickled her face. It smelt like a campfire on a winter's night. Like a cat in a patch of sunlight on a cold morning.
"What are you looking at?"
"Nothing!" the girl snapped harshly, looking away as they landed before the shrine.
"Really...?" the kami smirked, devolving back into her cat form. "Sleep here. There's some soft fabrics behind the altar."
The fabric was still there, but it crumbled when Eitsu touched it. Ayame's eyes were big in the gloom of the shrine. "This place was yours, Eitsu-sama?"
"It was. No one's been looking after it for a while, though. What a mess!"
Tsubaki looked at the pile of decaying fabrics. The small shrine was large enough for the three of them to stand inside, even with the altar, but it was falling apart, pieces of timber missing, paint peeling, dust and dirt banked up against the walls and altar. At least the frame itself still seemed sound.
The dancer retrieved a broom from a dingy corner, shaking spiders from it, and began to sweep.
"Tsubaki-dono! I'll do that, you shouldn't-"
"It's my job." She stopped. "What are you doing?"
Eitsu, who was pulling out the decayed fabric, realised the question was directed at her. "Tidying?"
"No. Your job is to sit to one side and make sarcastic comments."
"Are you ordering me around?"
Tsubaki's jaw twitched.
"It's fun to do something different, especially when you've lived as long as I have."
"You're two years old."
"Give or take a thousand years." She lifted the heavy pile of fabrics and tossed it easily through the shrine door. "Besides, how can I sit anywhere, it's filthy."
Between them, the shrine was tidied and cleaned, although it was still woefully in need of paint. The building stood alone by the side of the road, with only trees either side, but several shops had sprung up on the opposite side of the road since the time Eitsu had occupied it. Passers-by cast curious glances at the cleaning, some even stopping to watch. A man from one of the stores opposite laughed at them. "Tidying up? Ha! A luck kami, they said it was. Not very lucky, looking at the state of that shrine!"
He was ignored, which seemed to annoy him. He came out of his shop and spoke louder. "You're wasting your time! Everyone says that kami's never going to come back here. Go find your luck elsewhere."
"You're not from around here, are you?"
The man baulked. A tall woman emerged from the darkness at the back of the shrine. The golden tips of her long white hair brushed the ground. She turned her golden cat-eyes towards him, and a big smile, made bigger by the red markings that extended her lips almost to her ears, crossed her face.
"Eitsubyou no Mikoto!" someone cried. The watching crowd was instantly on the ground, bowed to the floor. Even Ayame's legs had gone weak. Only Tsubaki remained standing. There a faint smile on her lips and a lightness in her eyes. Eitsu had seen the same look on the night of the Hyakki Yagyo.
It still wasn't enough. She was looking for a fire, not a mere light.
"Eitsubyou no Mikoto... Eitsubyou no Mikoto..."
The people were murmuring the name over and over, some with hands clasped, eyes closed.
"Eitsubyou no Mikoto..."
"Is that your real name?"
"What do you think?"
The kid paused in the middle of sweeping the shrine. She looked a lot better, tidier, cleaner, fed by the offerings on the altar and sleeping safely in the shrine. "I don't think it's your real name."
"Of course it isn't. A human couldn't understand my real name."
"What other names do you have?"
"You've heard them."
"I don't mean Omanekineko or whatever. You came from somewhere else. Not Yamato, right? What did they call you before?"
"'Or whatever'. This brat! You're talking to a kami, you know."
"What are you going to do? Hiss at me?"
The cat pushed all of the offerings that the girl had neatly arranged on the altar onto the floor.
"Argh! I just tidied that!"
"Yes."
"Is it so hard to answer the question?" The child bent with a long-suffering sigh and began to tidy again.
"It wouldn't mean anything to you even if you knew. And I have no attachment to it."
"So there is another name."
"Enough. Or I'll knock everything onto the floor again."
*
There was a hurried rush to bring offerings. The townspeople didn't dare to touch Eitsu, but they crammed things into Ayame's and Tsubaki's arms.
"Priestesses, please help me make this offering to the goddess."
"Little priestess, please say good things to the kami for me."
Eitsu yawned, transformed into a large golden cat, and leapt up onto the altar. The red markings on her face glowed as she eyed the bare wood critically.
"Here, a fine cotton cushion!" called the man who had mocked them. It seemed that his store sold soft furnishings. "Bring lanterns!"
With the altar now decked out with soft fabrics and lit with bright lanterns, Eitsu gave a satisfied nod, gave the cushion and experimental kneading, lay down, and closed her eyes.
Tsubaki bowed elegantly to the watching people.
"Eitsubyou no Mikoto is tired from travelling and wishes to rest. Your generous offerings will be rewarded."
The people nodded, dazed and eager. “Yes... Yes...”
Slowly, reluctantly, they dispersed. Some children stayed for almost an hour, watching Eitsu with fascination, from the way her whiskers twitched to the flickering of the tip of her tail. But eventually they too wandered away.
Eitsu's ear moved. "Are they gone?"
"Yes. Let's eat."
"Tsubaki-dono, those are offerings-"
The cat sat up, yawning. "To me. And I want you to eat with me. Will you disobey me, Aya-chan?"
"N-no! No, kami-sama!"
"Calm down, girl. You can treat me the same as you always have."
"But... but..."
"Are you regretting your previous behaviour?"
"Ye-"
"Stop. Eat. And then we'll look for the dance troupe."
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