Mirror's Depth

by Fox in the Stars

based on Natsume Yuujinchou
by Midorikawa Yuki and Brain's Base

Matoba Seiji was nine years old when his grandfather died, and at the time no one except his mother and his older sister, Ichiyo, took much notice of him.

He had only met the old man once, when he was very young, and had heard his mother scoldingly tell the story too many times to count: how he'd been set on his grandfather's lap but squirmed away from any dandling or cuddling and refused to say a single word. What he remembered for himself was the strange voice resonating close to his ear and the view past his grandfather's shoulder at the mirror on the wall, that deep nothing-silver hole in the world where across two distances of tatami and dark polished wood he could see another himself - but couldn't see his grandfather's eyes. From that angle, only the right side of his face had been visible in the mirror, and Seiji remembered watching the white cloth eyepatch, inches above his head and far beyond arm's reach, the strokes of the seal shifting shape or slivering out of view with every slight turn of his grandfather's head.

At the wake, the eyepatch was simple solid black. As the Buddhist priests chanted their sutras, Seiji's mother for once didn't chide him for being too quiet.

The various observances simply occurred, as if the weather had taken a turn toward hushed voices and black wafuku, and people seldom seen drifted in with those clouds. Seiji's father returned from Tokyo, only to disappear on a different kind of business except for a few minutes here and there. Representatives from outside arrived bearing condolences, and some of the heads of other exorcist clans came in person - including Natori Kensaku, whom Ichiyo pointed out; he was about their grandfather's age, had graying brown hair and bifocal glasses, and seemed perfectly polite, but when he noticed the children looking and waved at them, Seiji didn't get a chance to look at the infamous red eyes; Ichiyo grabbed his hand and ran away in such a flurry that she had to fix her kimono afterward.

Seiji felt another shift in the air as well, but he didn't realize what it was until that afternoon, when Ichiyo had brought him along with a pair of cousins and found a corner of the garden where they could shelter from the silence.

"All the youkai are gone," he said.

The conversation the others had been having suddenly stopped.

"Well of course they are," his sister made certain to answer first. "They're not allowed. Even the old servants have to stay off the grounds, and the great-aunts and -uncles' families are making sure. If any of them break the rule, they won't even seal them, just-" She clapped her hands with finality.

"All the way until the new clan head's chosen," the older girl cousin added. "Means more chores for us until then..."

"But you know they have to do it that way," Ichiyo insisted. "You wouldn't want them to feel a youkai coming and get confused and think it was The Crocodile, would you?"

"The what?" the younger boy questioned.

"You know, that."

"That's not a crocodile!"

"Not a real crocodile, just- If you haven't read Peter Pan, just trust me, okay? It's The Crocodile."

Seiji, listening, thought that "The Crocodile" was better than resorting to "it" or "that" - since no one seemed to know its name or even what kind of creature it was: the youkai that had been cheated by the founder and had stalked the clan head's right eye ever since, sniffing it out within minutes no matter where it was unless the seal on the eyepatch was masking its spiritual scent. When a head of the clan died, on the night of the Forty-Nine Day Memorial every descendant who was of age - soon now, Seiji's father, aunts and uncles, even some of his older cousins - would gather, prepare the repulsion spell, and then wait for it to appear and choose whose eye it wanted next.

"But that doesn't make sense, to keep the servants out for that," the girl said. "Everybody knows when it comes. Maybe they really have it sealed and just let it out then..."

Ichiyo shook her head decidedly. "You can't seal it, I know that."

"Mama said she saw it fly away, remember?" the boy took Ichiyo's side.

"That's true..."

"You can't kill it, either," Ichiyo added. "If you could, somebody else would have done it by now to make us lose its power."

The other girl rubbed her chin. "...If you can't seal it or kill it... Is it a god? That might be why they don't say..."

Ichiyo stared at her. "No way! The founder wouldn't have cheated a god, that would just be..."

Seiji tilted his head a little, and saw his sister notice it with discomfort. Of course everyone liked to think of the founder's story as heroic and clever, but in fact there was no way for them to know what kind of person he had been.

"So who do you think it's going to pick?" the boy asked excitedly.

Nothing useful could follow from that, and Seiji turned to watch the adults conduct visitors to their cars. In the distance, he noticed one of the youkai-sentries his sister had mentioned, a woman dressed in hakama and carrying a bow.

Ichiyo had to answer the question anyway, but at least waited until they were back home and out of the funeral clothes. "It'll pick Father, I just know it," she whispered, under cover of the television. "They say it goes after the one with the strongest powers, and they always have him in Tokyo doing the jobs for the big politicians, so everybody must know he's the best. Well, Aunt Miho is good, too, but she's the oldest and I think it would pick someone a little younger than her. A younger person's eye would have to taste better, don't you think?"

Forty-nine days was long enough for the novelty of it all to wear off. Eventually the daily memorials became routine. The children stopped complaining about taking over some of the servants' usual work, and those who usually entertained themselves by binding weak vermin-sized youkai and making the little creatures fight or do tricks until the adults insisted on exorcising them found other amusements. They tired of the fruitless wrangling over whose parent or older sibling was the most likely and deserving successor, and even Ichiyo explained the entire succession process to people who already knew it enough times to satisfy herself. The only excitement left came on the rare occasions when a youkai was exterminated for trespassing, and that never seen firsthand.

With the time having blurred into monotony, the arrival of the long-appointed day felt strangely sudden but also anticlimactic. The entire clan was gathered into the main house, ready to congratulate their new leader immediately - and, Ichiyo said, to help expel The Crocodile if needed, but as far as Seiji could see, everyone trusted tradition enough to go on to bed and wait for the bells that would be rung when it was all finished.

To him it felt like nothing so much as a night in a hotel on a visit to his father in Tokyo. When he and his mother and sister had laid out the futon in their assigned room and shut out the light and Ichiyo had been shushed enough times, he lay looking into the darkness. It was the wrong color; the blurred shapes in its depths were in all the wrong places. The silence had the wrong sound, and it rattled violently with every small motion in that room or one adjoining it, or with the periodic footsteps of the sentries in the hallway. Even as the empty hours ground a slow, dry ache into his eyes, sleep was impossible, so he was still awake and staring up at the ceiling when he noticed the first slight tint of light filtering over it and felt a lifting of the air, the sense that night had spilled over into pre-dawn.

Then, as if someone had soundlessly lighted a lantern, a pale silver glow spread across the room. Seiji hadn't heard a single sound of a door or of footsteps, but now he found a man sitting on the floor beside the foot of the futon, and he sat up and looked steadily at the intruder. In that silent light, it couldn't be a human. Even its form, though human-shaped, was otherworldly and too-perfect, with youthful features, long silver hair and long silver mustaches, a robe of black silk embroidered in pearl white - and no mask.

It returned his gaze, smiled, and raised one brocaded sleeve to speak behind its cuff. "Good morning, Young Master." The voice was smooth, with a strange, deep resonance.

Although the figure didn't give him a strong sense of energy, a youkai that could appear in a form like this without a mask would usually be powerful, more powerful than anything he had been taught to deal with himself. It could be one of the old servants, one kept in the main house where he wouldn't have seen it, but so many times he'd been told that even with the servants... The well-drilled cautions spooled through his mind.

"...you must never show fear..."

"You can't be here yet," he told it flatly, under his breath. "They'll kill you."

"Oh, my, how bloodthirsty!" Its mouth was still hidden, but a smile flashed from its voice and its eyes. "I'm not here to do harm to anyone - certainly not to you, my treasure." It leaned closer. "But you'll wake the others if we speak here. Will you come with me?"

"...you must never follow where they lead you, or run where they chase you..."

"No."

"Come now, don't be afraid. You can't imagine how far and how long I've been searching - and now to find you in this place..."

At those last words a warning shadow crossed the creature's eyes.

"...walk away if you can, run only if you must..."

Seiji got up and calmly crossed to the door. He'd heard the sentries enough times to know which way they passed; if he circled through the hallway in the opposite direction...

It rose to follow him.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"What do I...? Oh, but, that question is for you to answer. I know these things, you see, and ahead of you I see something quite extraordinary. If I were there to guide you, I'm sure of it - anything at all that you might wish for..."

"...they will say all sorts of pretty things, promise protection or blessing, but they say it only to suit their own purpose, and you must not listen..."

He slid the door open, but heard a shuffle of cloth from the futon behind him and looked back.

Ichiyo was awake; she had pushed herself halfway up, and looked at him blearily. "Seiji? Who are you talking to?"

Something he had never felt before prickled up the back of his neck. His sister had the Sight at least as strongly as he did, and one glance confirmed that the apparition had not vanished; it was standing right in front of her eyes...

"Tell her to go back to sleep," it said.

This time its hands were lowered from its face; its mouth didn't move when it spoke, and Seiji realized that there was no sound; its voice was resonating directly in his mind.

Even without a word of answer from him, Ichiyo squinted into the darkness with the look she wore when she was straining to see some flow of energy. Suddenly she caught her breath. "SEIJI! Run and get Father!"

"What?"

"That's IT! THAT'S The Crocodile!"

Their mother sprang up from bed; movement echoed from every room nearby, but that soft-spoken voice effortlessly drowned it all out...

"'Crocodile'? What a rude name."

It was reaching toward him; its fingers alighted on his shoulders.

Seiji broke away and ran.

"...and if you must run, you must know your way; never lose sight of it or look back..."

He knew the way to the great hall where the circle was ready to repel it, focused on that path and ran forward even as he heard doors flung open, even as he knew that it was right behind him. He rounded a corner and saw the stairway-

The entire corridor burst into spirit-flame with a buffeting BOOM, and he barely kept himself from falling over backward. No way forward - he turned for any chance to double back -

And saw it. One glimpse - like a real crocodile, a gigantic row of fangs that shot toward him and snapped shut.

The teeth missed his face by inches and caught the front of his pajamas. In the first moment his chest was frozen in stone, but he had time to feel his heart pounding as it used that hold to swing him backward off his feet and lower him to the floor with slow, surreal gentleness.

"...you must never show fear..." Somehow he had managed not to scream...

The head that loomed over him was that of a dragon - silver scales and snaking whiskers and antlers like branching tree boughs - but the foot it placed on his chest to hold him down was a pearled hoof, a hollow ring of pressure.

"Don't struggle," it told him. "I believe I would cry if you were bruised because of me."

Spirit-flames raged on every side; Seiji could hear snatches of human voices, but across the roar they sounded far, far away. Even with that show of power, that enormous form, his sense of its energy hadn't changed, and he realized in a flash what his sister had seen. Its human form hadn't given him a strong impression because its power was larger than that, enough to hide in the night's shift toward dawn, so large it had blinded him.

Something no one could seal or kill...

And it had chosen... him?

"To lead this nest of parasites?" it snarled at the unspoken question. "I have no interest in anything so petty."

Seiji's pride flared but couldn't escape him, only burn hot inside. His hands were still free to form the mudra, and he pushed that heat into the only chant he knew that could cause a youkai pain.

"Now, now, don't say such horrible things. You could hurt some poor little creature."

The fire burned white-hot; his concentration crumbled to ash. He trembled as no fear had ever made him tremble, pushed beyond movement or speech, almost beyond breath, only staring fiercely into that crocodile face, those loathsome patient eyes.

"Calm and brace yourself." It leaned in closer. "We have little time, and we must begin by squaring accounts, you and I."

The eye!

"...a younger person's eye would have to taste better..."

But the teeth didn't come. Instead it dipped its head, almost as if offering a bow, and Seiji didn't realize what it was doing until the antler-prongs raked his face; one caught against the bridge of his nose, pressed upward to the bone of his brow and in-

The explosion of pain obliterated his mind. An animal scream burst forth from his body as he fell...

The blackness was brief, but what followed was such a shattered half-blind confusion that none of what happened was clear to him afterward. His first sense was of being carried against a human body, then shouting, chanting, a lashing burst of wind that blew it all apart again, with it howling... A car seat, a blur of fluorescent-lit whiteness...

He never heard the announcement bells.

Over a longer time, he drifted alternately downward into sleep, then back upward, enough to hear snatches of voices...

"...we kept the eye, barely..."

"...never chosen a child before, how could this..."

...But if he got too close to the surface, the hot lead throbbing over half his face pushed him back down. At last he determined to fight it, wrenched himself up into the light and forced his left eye open.

It immediately shrank back into a watery squint as the ceiling sprang at him, sending a sympathetic shot of lightning through the mass of pain on the right side. With steady breaths, he blinked it away and looked up.

It wasn't the ceiling back home; it was still the main house. The dark woodwork was flattened into strange angles devoid of distance, as if it were all painted in light and thrust into his face. When he raised his hand, even that was only a picture that grew larger or smaller rather than moving through space. He turned his head to follow it and caught an unexpected flash of pink motion in the inner corner of his eye; beside the futon, there was a mirror on the wall.

Seiji hauled his head with that throbbing weight up off the pillow and sat upright to look at the mirror. It was the same mirror, reflecting the same room - his grandfather's old room, but now it was only his own face, looming large and close as a photograph, and the seal was over his own eye, tilting with every motion of his head, covering a thick pad of gauze and not quite containing the outreaching strips of tape. He reached out toward it, slowed his hand as the matched images of his fingers overlapped closer, and finally, at a point he couldn't quite judge by sight, met the cold, smooth glass.

Bringing his hand back to touch the reality was not so mysterious. It was a sudden tipping point from just feeling the texture of the cloth to driving in another burst of pain, but maybe if he pressed carefully enough, he could understand what was underneath, feel for himself that the eyeball was still there...

The door slid open. "Don't touch that." It was his father's voice.

His footsteps came closer, and Seiji watched the image of him expand until he sat down beside the futon and regarded his son with a grave look. "I don't think I have to explain to you what's happened."

Seiji looked back at him with quiet, fixed attention.

"You mustn't be prideful about this. You realize that this will be very difficult for you. Nothing will be the same from now on." He paused for a long moment. "You aren't what anyone expected; you know that, don't you? Their acknowledgment won't just fall at your feet. You will have to work harder than anyone else. You will have to show more strength and more cleverness than anyone else."

The words had no depth, either; they were only a flat image placed in front of Seiji's face, but they seemed sensible...

He watched as his father let out a slow, audible breath, and he knew at once what his mother would be saying if she were here -

"...Seiji, it's creepy just to stare when someone's talking to you; nod your head, say 'oh really?' now and then..."

- But she wasn't here. Somehow he knew that from now on, his mother and sister would be very far away, and he remained still.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes," he said at last, very calmly. "I understand."

End