Disclaimer: I do not own nor do I claim to own any characters or concepts related to Avatar: the Last Airbender. This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.
Hunter's Moon
Hama rose in the darkest hours of the morning, before the sky softened with the advent of the sun. There was work to do, always work, and with the first of the autumnal festivals drawing ever nearer, she could find no sense in the thought of wasting away in bed. As a child, her mother had often reproached her for such things, saying to her, Idle hands make for... But the rest of it was lost.
She fixed herself a pot of spiced tea and as the water boiled, she set to work opening the great window at the end of the corridor.
The moon hung low in the sky, sweet and fat, a fruit nearly ready for the plucking. A full moon tonight, or the night after. Tonight, she thought. She knew the moon well. Tonight. Hama knotted her fingers over the window frame and leaned out, out into the coming morning, her face turned up to the moon. In this, the deadest hour, the air was still and the night silent but for the distant, hollow song of a young boar-toad, lost in the underbrush and crying for its mother.
Hama closed her eyes and breathed in the familiar smells of autumn in Yingxi: the dry tinder, the late-blossoming blooms of the vines which wound their way between the trees, the earth. The clear fragrance of the river, so near. She opened her eyes. The mountain rose before her, impenetrable and unwelcoming beneath the stark light of the moon.
Tonight.
Hama turned from the window. She had work to do.
*
She did her shopping in the morning, before the heat could overwhelm. A number of stalls were not open and would not open until the early afternoon when the shoppers would be out in force, but there was little Hama needed of those establishments.
Mrs Jiao surprised her as Hama arranged to have the week's rice delivered to the inn.
"Imagine, up and about at this hour!" Mrs Jiao laughed. "Oh, but here I am, too! How awful. Well, I can see you're busy, so I won't bother you anymore. Will I see you this afternoon?"
"I couldn't possibly miss it," said Hama. "After all, I've already made the sweet rolls."
"Oh, goodness, and here I am trying to lose weight," said Mrs Jiao. "Oh, well, I suppose some sacrifices must be made. And now I really must leave you to your business, I see Ms Ito turning the corner and I haven't spoken with her in at least a week, goodness me."
Hama nodded and shared her farewells with Mrs Jiao, who hurried with as much dignity as she could after Ms Ito.
Fruit, rice, slabs of meat, and seeds for spring, so distant but inevitable, and a new bolt of cloth, perhaps not immediately necessary, but it couldn't hurt to splurge on herself every now and then: an hour passed, then another.
"What a lovely day, Miss Hama," said Mr Yao as he arranged the purchased fruit in her basket.
"Oh, yes, a lovely day," Hama agreed as she fanned her throat. A trickle of sweat ran down the back of her neck. So hot already! "And a lovely moon last night, wasn't it?"
"Indeed it was," said Mr Yao. "But it's going to be a full moon tonight, mark my words. Very unlucky." He turned the basket around for her to grasp the handle. "You must be careful to stay inside, Miss Hama, where it's safe."
"What do I have to worry about?" said Hama, the loose skin around her eyes bunching as she smiled. "As old as I am, why, I must be the safest person in Yingxi."
"Don't say that, Miss Hama," said Mr Yao. He knotted his fingers together. "If you were to disappear..."
Hama touched his arm. "I'll stay where I'm safe," she said gently. "Thank you, Mr Yao. I'm sorry to have worried you."
Mr Yao studied his displays of fruit, his fingers working against one another.
"Miss Hama," he said, reaching for one of the boxes of fruit, "if I could have your hand, please?"
"Why, Mr Yao," she teased. "I'm flattered." But she lifted her hand from his arm and turned her palm up to him.
Mr Yao pressed three small, round fruit into her hand, reddish berries liberally sprinkled with short spines. "Kousa," he said. "In gratitude, for your continued patronage."
"I shouldn't accept this, Mr Yao," said Hama. "You're very generous, but--"
He closed her fingers around the fruit. "I insist, Miss Hama," he said to her closed hand cupped within his own. "Please accept this, as my thank you."
Hama smiled at him. "Thank you, Mr Yao," she said. "They look delicious."
He bowed low.
"You must promise to stay inside tonight," said Hama, before she gathered her baskets and made her way back to the inn. "I should hate for you to disappear."
"I'm no fool, Miss Hama," said Mr Yao, straightening his back and holding his shoulders high. "You won't find me wandering those woods on a full moon."
"That's very wise of you, Mr Yao," said Hama.
Sweat beaded beneath her breasts and along the column of her spine. Bowing, Hama excused herself and set off under the hateful glare of the rising sun.
*
At the inn she sorted out her purchases, this to the cupboards, this to the storehouse, this to the icebox buried in the earth. She drank deeply of water, forsaking tea, and retreated to her own room, where she dragged the drapes across the window, through which the sun shone hot and unforgiving. Her room she kept cool, far cooler than the rest of the inn, and when she collapsed onto her futon, she slept as if she were a child, surrounded by snow, somewhere far from the heat.
*
In the afternoon Hama joined Mrs Jiao and the newly Mrs Tanaka at Mrs Hara's house for a game of Shi Guo much as she did most afternoons. Mrs Hara's house smelled strongly of the scented firesticks she smoked one after the other and her teeth showed red when she smiled, which was infrequent.
"Miss Hama will take Water," said Mrs Hara as Mrs Tanaka sorted the tiles.
Mrs Tanaka, whose recent advantageous marriage to Mrs Hara's nephew had won her the privilege to attend this particular gathering, gave Hama a startled look beneath her lashes, indiscreet in her unfamiliarity. "O-Oh?" she said. "Does she like to..."
Hama smiled at Mrs Tanaka. "She most certainly does, my dear," she said.
"Miss Hama always plays as Water," Mrs Jiao told Mrs Tanaka.
"Oh, but why?" said Mrs Tanaka. "I mean, Water isn't very useful--"
"Mrs Tanaka," said Mrs Hara, her lips pursing. She held her firestick at a sharp angle, directed down to the tiles. "Please finish your task so that we might begin."
Mrs Tanaka flushed and withdrew. For a time they were silent as Mrs Tanaka sorted the tiles, her fingers moving shyly between pieces.
"I like the color," Hama said at last. She touched an upturned tile near her wrist. "The blue," she said to Mrs Tanaka, "is soothing. Like the color of the water at the bottom of the river. And I'm very good at playing defense."
"She's quite good, quite good," said Mrs Jiao. "Rather scary at it, if you ask me."
"What a terrible thing to tell the poor girl," said Hama. She touched Mrs Tanaka's wrist. "I'm not scary at all."
Mrs Hara exhaled a sweet, red cloud of smoke through rounded lips.
Conversation turned to village gossip, as it always did, and as they played one game and moved on to the next, Mrs Tanaka's uncertainty eased, enough so she could speak, if only in a little voice.
"Darling found a baby boar-toad in the garden just this morning," Mrs Tanaka said as she turned one of her tiles over. She frowned at the red emblem at the heart of it: Fire Nation, and Mrs Tanaka was playing Earth. "He's sleeping in the bath right now, but it isn't enough. He really ought to go home, before he gets sick. I think tonight I should bring him up the mountain--"
"Oh, my, no," said Mrs Jiao. "Not tonight. It's a full moon coming."
"Is, is that bad?" said Mrs Tanaka.
"Not if you stay inside, dear," said Hama, reaching out for Mrs Tanaka's hand. "There've been quite a few disappearances in the woods during the full moon for, oh, a year now, I should think. People go into the woods," she said. "They don't come out."
"It isn't a surprise that you shouldn't know," Mrs Jiao said kindly. "You only came here after the wedding - from Zichuankou, wasn't it?"
"And you came after the last full moon, didn't you, dear?" said Hama. Mrs Tanaka turned her wide, brown eyes on Hama, her lips parted as if to speak. "You couldn't know."
"Why," said Mrs Jiao, getting into the spirit of things, "just last month, the Daos lost their daughter, Ganmei. You know Ganmei," she said to Hama. "She tended your garden last spring, when you were ill."
"Poor, sweet child," said Hama. "She was such a kind girl. I can't imagine why she would have gone into the woods."
Mrs Jiao sighed. "The poor Daos. To lose their first two to the war, then Ganmei to the mountain..."
Hama closed her eyes. "The war has taken so much from so many."
Mrs Jiao clicked her tongue respectfully. "As you say," she said. "But with luck, it will soon be over."
"May we be so fortunate," said Hama. She turned her tiles over.
"Ah!" said Mrs Tanaka in dismay.
"Fortune, it seems," said Mrs Jiao to Hama, not without humor, "is with you."
Hama inclined her head with the appropriate degree of modest delicacy.
Mrs Hara tapped her scented firestick so the long column of ash fell into the lacquered dish as artfully as if she had arranged it by hand. "Another game," she said. "If you girls are up for it."
"Oh, yes," said Mrs Tanaka, eager to put her losses behind her.
Hamma excused herself with properly tendered regrets. "I do wish I could stay," she said, patting Mrs Tanaka's hand, "but I have preparations to make."
"The festival, Mrs Tanaka," said Mrs Hara with the air of one minding a child. "Miss Hama has much to do."
Mrs Tanaka turned her eyes down to her hands.
"We shall see you tomorrow," said Mrs Hara to Hama. She waved her hand graciously, the firestick trailing sweet-smelling smoke which shimmered like a red mist in the air, then dissipated as if never there.
Hama bowed low. "I thank you for your hospitality," she murmured.
"Good night!" Mrs Tanaka whispered. Mrs Jiao smiled indulgently.
Hama bowed again, to Mrs Tanaka now, who returned the gesture with awkward grace and unmistakeable gratitude. Hama left the women to their game. Outside the sun was setting behind the mountain, the sky turning a violent and unpleasant shade of red peculiar to the hour. Taking care to place her feet on the even stones, she ascended the path which ran from the widow Hara's opulent house to Hama's inn and beyond it, rising to meet the sky, the mountain, beholden to nothing but itself.
*
Hama fixed herself a small dinner, stewed ocean kumquats and a broiled flank of mongoose-serpent, with spiced tea to warm her belly. She ate outside, her plate balanced on her knees. The meat was unexceptionable, but she was hungry and the flesh was tender enough, falling apart on her tongue. Hama sucked at the small bones and watched the sky. Soon the moon would rise and night would begin.
Somewhere on the mountain a grown boar-toad cried out, the mournful sound rising like a moan on the wind. A mother crying out for her child. How sad, Hama thought. She hummed a song from her childhood, a song her mother had sung to her. Beloved moon, beloved sea, wait for me, wait for me.
The last light of the sun vanished behind the horizon behind the mountain. The moon rose. Night fell.
Hama went into the woods.
*
In the woods: a soft keening, and the sudden, harsh sounds of a body moving through the brush with little concern for what was in the way.
Hama stepped into a small clearing, bathed in moonlight. "Hello?" she said. "Is someone there?"
A woman burst into the clearing, out of the shadows which bound the trees. She struggled through the brush and fell to her knees, scrabbling at the earth with her fingers. Half-wild, she looked up.
"Miss Hama!" Mrs Tanaka gasped. She stumbled toward her, hands outstretched. Mud coated her legs in dark splatters, spoiling the cloth. "It's you, it's you. I was so afraid!" She clung to Hama, her fingers digging into Hama's back. "I shouldn't have, I shouldn't have come out here, but the baby, the baby boar-toad, and I couldn't, I couldn't just, he's only a baby."
"There, there," said Hama, stroking Mrs Tanaka's back with her fingernails.
"And I thought," she said, "I heard, there was something following me, Miss Hama, I could hear it, this awful crashing--"
"Poor dear, you must have been so scared."
"And a voice," Mrs Tanaka said, beginning at last to weep, "I didn't understand, and I ran, and I ran, and I ran, and I don't know where I am, Miss Hama, I shouldn't have come here--"
"Hush, now," said Hama. She ran her hand down Mrs Tanaka's hair, so sleek, so black that afternoon, now so tangled, so dirty. Mrs Tanaka trembled in her arms. "I'm here."
"You're here," Mrs Tanaka sobbed. "You're here. Miss Hama."
"I'm here," said Hama.
Mrs Tanaka's face was slick; it glowed beneath the moonlight, her tears shining like silver, like the moon. Her pulse fluttered in her throat like a hummingjay's wings, faster and faster.
Hama touched her fingernail to the corner of Mrs Tanaka's eye, where the tears began. "Mrs Tanaka," she said, "do you know how useful water can be?"
"Miss Hama?" said Mrs Tanaka in a small voice which stuttered and hiccoughed and faded away.
"You silly girl," said Hama. "You couldn't have known."
She slipped her arm free of Mrs Tanaka's waist and holding it out straight from her shoulder, she tightened her fingers just so, like a puppetmaster drawing on strings.
Mrs Tanaka started to scream.
This story was originally posted at livejournal on 08/16/2009 for the fic challenge cliche_bingo, hosted on livejournal. The prompt was "day-in-the-life."