#The Fifth Treasure
zn05 closing tale · gravity ★★ · pure Scent (fiction). No rules or numbers appear.
I watched the five noble suitors fall one after another, the whole of it, from outside the wall.
Buddha's bowl was a soot-covered counterfeit; the jeweled branch of Horai was exposed by the craftsmen who never got paid. The fire-rat robe burned in the flames, and the Major Counselor who went seeking the jewel from the dragon's neck came home with both eyes swollen like plums. The Middle Counselor who rummaged for a swallow's nest fell and died.
I was the nephew of that house's gardener. A nameless boy who did nothing but draw and carry water. Having once glimpsed the radiant lady inside the wall was the whole of it.
And yet that night I packed a bundle.
"Where do you think you're going."
My uncle stood there holding a lantern. I cannot tell a lie.
"I'm going to become the sixth."
My uncle laughed. He did not even grow angry; he only laughed sadly. "The lady never asked you for anything."
"That's just it." I tied the cords of my straw sandals. "There's one treasure left that nobody was ever asked for."
I know what it is.
The five treasures were each either not of this world, or, if they existed, beyond reach. They all said the lady had known from the start when she made her demands — that by asking for what could not be obtained, she shaped refusal into something that was not refusal.
So the treasure the lady truly wants is not on the list.
For someone who came from the Capital of the Moon, the hardest thing of all to obtain in this land.
I thought it was a reason to stay.
It was a foolish thought. I know that too. A departure the Emperor could not stop even by mustering two thousand soldiers — by what means could a water-drawing boy? And still my feet would not stop walking.
I can reach neither Horai nor Tenjiku. I simply — climbed the hill behind that house. As high as the place where the lantern of the lady's room could be seen. Sitting there, I thought all night about what I might bring her so that she would laugh even a single day longer.
The bamboo grove rustled in the wind. One joint of it, just for an instant, seemed to shine.
The fifteenth of the eighth month.
The house at the foot of the hill was ringed all around by warriors. On the rooftops and along the wall stood men holding bows. Unable even to join them, I crouched on a rock on the hillside and watched.
Near midnight, the sky opened.
A light brighter than noon came down. Treading on clouds, the celestials stood in a row. The warriors raised their bows — but the strength drained from their arms, and no one could draw a string. So it was with me. I could not move a single finger. Only tears flowed of their own accord. Not from sorrow, but because it was too beautiful.
The lady came out to the veranda. Even within the light, she alone was distinct.
A celestial spread out a robe. The Celestial Robe of Feathers, which, once worn, makes one forget all the affections of this land and all human memory.
The lady paused before it for a moment. She bowed to the old couple. She seemed to be weeping. That having come to know affection, she was sad to leave — her back said as much.
Then she lifted her face.
Beyond the light, she saw me on the hillside. It could not be. From that far away, that tiny me.
Her lips moved. No sound reached me. Yet I read them. A water-drawing boy grows skilled at reading lips.
— What did you bring?
I raised my empty hands to show her. There was truly nothing. A reason to stay — that I had, in the end, never obtained.
The lady smiled. It was a smile I had never seen. A face she had given neither to the five noble suitors nor to the Emperor.
— That is the fifth treasure.
The empty hands. Having brought nothing at all.
— The other four tried to possess me. You simply came. Not trying to possess what cannot be possessed, and being near — in this land that was the most precious of all.
The feathered robe touched her shoulders. Even from that far away, I saw something slip quietly out of the lady's eyes. The eyes that had been looking at me — became eyes that did not know me.
The light folded upward. The clouds tilted toward the moon. The lady never came down again.
When I came down the hill it was dawn. My uncle had come out to the foot of the hill to meet me.
"Did you get the treasure?"
I opened my empty hands to show him. And I smiled. Whether I was weeping or smiling, I did not know myself.
"I got it. But I left it behind."
Knowing I would never hold it in my hands for the whole of my life, still, for once, I had been near it. What neither the five noble suitors nor the Emperor could do, nameless I had done.
Since that day I sometimes look up at the highest mountain. People say smoke rises from that peak. Smoke from burning the elixir that never reached, the heart that never reached.
I know. Only what never reaches shines that long.
Like the full moon.
(End)