#The Guest of Kamuy
zn06 end fiction · gravity ★★★ · pure Scent (fiction). No rules or numbers appear.
There are times when snow means to kill a man.
Jirobei learned that for the first time today. The saying that crossing Sai Pass shortens a three-day road to one was a saying for the season when no snow falls. The wind struck from above to below, from the side to within. The road had long since vanished. Even looking with his eyes, he could not tell where his feet were stepping. His straw sandals had become lumps of ice, and his fingers grew distant as if they belonged to someone else.
He sank to his knees. He tried to rise, then sank again.
I am going to die here, he thought. On a mountain whose name I do not even know. In a place no one will ever find.
Then in the white darkness a single yellow dot rose into view. It was a light.
It was a young man who opened the door. He stood a head taller than Jirobei, his beard thick, his eyes deep-set. The man looked down for a long while at the figure collapsed before his door, then, saying nothing, gripped his arm and drew him inside.
In the middle of the house a square hearth was burning. The man sat Jirobei down beside it, stripped off his soaked outer robe, and hung it on a rack. His movements were practiced. As if this were not the first such guest he had received.
"...My thanks."
Jirobei said it with trembling lips. The man looked at him with a face that had not understood. Then he pressed a hand to his own chest and spoke a single word. A word Jirobei did not know. Soft, round, song-like.
It seemed to be a name. Jirobei pressed a hand to his own chest as well. "Jirobei." The man slowly repeated the word. The pronunciation was off, but it was unmistakably his name.
The words ended there. The two had nothing more to exchange.
The man set something over the hearth. Dried fish, a root he did not recognize, and a broth that gave off steam. He filled a bowl and held it out to Jirobei.
As the warmth went down his throat, his body began to tremble. It was not from the cold. It was that the fact of being alive only then made itself felt in his body. Jirobei bowed his head. He did not want the man to see that the rims of his eyes had grown hot.
Before eating from his own bowl, the man scooped up a little of the broth and poured it gently over the fire of the hearth. There was a small hiss.
Jirobei watched that gesture. He was feeding the fire first. There were hearth gods in Yamato too, so he could guess at its meaning. Yet there was something more in the man's hand. Something that did not treat the fire as merely fire.
The man pointed at the fire. And with his mouth he spoke a single word. "Kamuy."
"Kamuy." Jirobei repeated.
The man nodded slowly. Then with his hand he pointed at the beam of the house. "Kamuy." He pointed at the darkness beyond the eaves. "Kamuy." Last he pointed at Jirobei — and after a moment's hesitation, he pointed at himself as well. A faint smile clung to that gesture.
Jirobei half-understood and half did not. That the fire, the house, the mountain, and people too — all were that same word. Something too close to be called a god, too great to be called a neighbor.
That he too, then, was one guest who had entered this house tonight.
As the night deepened the man began to sing low.
There was rhythm to it. The same melody turned and turned at length. Jirobei did not understand a single word of what it meant. And yet the song held him. It was not a song meant to be heard by anyone. It seemed a song offered to the fire, to the beam, to the mountain beyond the darkness — to all those kamuy. It seemed a greeting that one person extended to the whole of his world.
Jirobei looked at the man's profile lit by the light of the hearth. Firelight wavered in his deep-set eyes.
He looked suddenly lonely. Was there anyone else in this valley who knew this song? When the man died, would this song depart with him? Such a thought welled up for no reason, and Jirobei was saddened by it.
The song ended. The man looked at him and smiled a little. He made a gesture to sleep.
By dawn the snow had stopped.
The world was white and silent all over. The man came out to see him off as far as the door, and pointed out the way to go with his hand. Beyond the pass, toward where the village lay.
Jirobei wanted to give something, anything. He searched his pack but had nothing worthwhile. In the end he unfastened the small blade at his waist and held it out with both hands. Take it. The man looked at it for a long while, then shook his head without taking it. Instead he gently wrapped Jirobei's hand in his own and pushed the blade back into Jirobei's bosom.
Then he pointed toward the hearth. That gesture of pouring broth over the fire the night before, once more.
Jirobei understood. What is received is not repaid, but passed on to the next guest. That you too should someday take in someone who has collapsed before your door. That was what the man was saying.
Jirobei bowed his head deeply. Deeper still, deeper than he had ever bowed to anyone in his whole life.
Walking down the snowy road, he looked back once. The man still stood before his door. With that small yellow light at his back.
Jirobei never did manage to pronounce his name correctly. But for the rest of his life, he never forgot it.
(End)