Another one...no FB character cameos...but they'll show up again soon!
Disclaimer: FB isn't mine, nor is anything else you recognize.
Chapter 24
"Very little of Hoth's actual history can be salvaged from the period known as the 'Realm of the Wind.'"
"Tell me something I don't already know," muttered Hotohori, rolling her eyes at the open book. Nevertheless, she kept reading. This out-of-the way library near Mhagenu School was the last one on her list. Hotohori had spent her first week after graduation combing through libraries and bookstores in Lhasa. Asheno did attempt to keep her at the compound once or twice, but threat of severe third-degree burns warded him off very effectively.
Her previous attempts to discover the cause of the curse by reading books about the Shoma family had met with little success; naturally the family kept a tight grip on what was published about them. Books on the Hothan calendar offered nothing noteworthy besides what they'd already been taught in school. Same for the Dzuni legends: nothing that deviated from the educational curriculum.
In all fairness, Hotohori had stumbled on Thiri Library only by accident. On her way back to the estate from her latest failed attempt at finding new clues, she walked, sifting through her options.
"Oh!" exclaimed a diminutive old woman as Hotohori collided into her, knocking the woman's books out of her arms.
"Please forgive me," Hotohori apologized, bending over to pick up the books, "I was—" She stopped as she took in the fine leatherbound covers, the delicately painted trims and the golden lettering on the books.
"Thank ye, dearie," the woman inclined her head, taking the books from Hotohori's hands. Noticing Hotohori's reverent look towards the books, she smiled and said, "I say, are ye inna rush, dearie? An ould woman li' me don' get much attention inna big city li' Lhasa."
"Um, of course, I'm not in any hurry," Hotohori replied.
"Come in!"
The sweet smell of venerable books filled the interior of the crammed library. "I don' worry me head over customers an' money or such, I just li' bein' wi' me books," explained the woman, huffing as she gently laid the massive books on an old escritoire by the dusty window. She gestured proudly to the books. "Books li' these, you canna just fin' them anywhere in Lhasa. Th' way ye looked at them, I could tell ye were a true book lover."
"Books were my best friend when I was younger," Hotohori whispered, letting the homey atmosphere draw her in. The ragged, plush armchairs invited her to settle back with a book and perhaps some cocoa. "Do you run a bookshop here?"
"No, ye migh' say this is a library," the woman chuckled. "I couldna bear to part wi' me books for good. Tha's easy enough, since no one here's interested in ould legends."
"Did you say legends?"
"Aye, legends. Folks in th' city, they don' give a thought t' th' ould stories. No li' where I hail from…a small mountain town in the south, ye wouldna know it, dearie…Come to think of it, dearie, when I firs' saw ye, ye reminded me of an ould print I have around here somewhere. What's ye name?"
"Zhuruth Hotohori."
"Aye, the dragon! Of course!" exclaimed the woman.
"The dragon? What about the dragon?"
"Ye eyes are th' same color as th' dragon's in this print. I'll find it for ye."
"Uh…I'm sorry, what's your name?"
"Ye can call me Hina." The wrinkles multiplied as she beamed. A conspiratorial gleam appeared in her eye as she bent her head towards Hotohori. "Ye've been searchin' for somethin' unusual haven' ye?"
"Well…" A painting of a dragon with the same eyes. She would take the plunge. "I've been trying to find legends about the Dzuni-"
"Aha!" The old woman brightened even more, if possible. "Would ye be wantin' th' borin' version, that everyone in Hoth knows, or th' interestin' version?"
"The interesting version? What's that?"
"Me late husband Riha, may he rest in peace, had a passion about th' Realm of Wind, a passion mind ye. He always though' it a crime no one bothered to save the less-known legends." She briskly trotted through a door partially blocked by a bookshelf. Hotohori followed with some difficulty. "It was his life's work to collect th' ould books and paintin's. Th' best of 'em come from th' south. Ye go any further north than Hareth, good luck findin' anythin' the gov'ment hasna touched."
The "gov'ment," Hotohori guessed, had been strongly influenced by the powerful Shoma family. It made sense—the Shomas would want to erase all traces of the family curse.
"Ye are a Shoma, are ye no'?" Hina asked confidentially, her hand resting on an elaborately carved door handle. Hotohori could only stare at her, unsure how to handle the explosive question.
"Aye." A bony hand rested comfortingly on Hotohori's shoulder. "Don' worry, ye are safe wi' me. So I suppose th' curse is still afflictin' ye an' others in th' family?"
"Y…well, no…it's different," stammered Hotohori, doubtful of how much she could trust Hina.
The shining black eyes regarded Hotohori compassionately. "It's all righ', dearie. Tha's why I've kept th' shop out of th' way, so it would still be here if a Shoma needed help again."
Hotohori could only keep gaping.
"Close t' forty year ago, me husband was close friends wi' one of th' Shoma. It were righ' after we moved t' Lhasa. Riha'd just started his work on collectin' th' stories. Anyway, he met a man name Shoma Khazuma. Khazuma whacked th' glory out of Riha in a good-natured pickup martial arts match." Hina chuckled softly at the memory. "Black eye didna leave for weeks. Riha an' Khazuma, they took a likin' to each other from th' start.
"Sooner or later, Riha told Khazuma about his project. I remember verra well, I was servin' tea when Riha says, 'My particular hobby is finding legends about th' Dzuni—'Riha always talked better than I did, he did—'Th' bedtime stories mothers tell their children, those are th' tame stories. I've found some books that suggest th' existence of much juicier tales. One even contains a—what was the word he used, oh, yes—a passage telling how the Dzuni curse might be broken.'
"I remember, Khazuma wen' queer at that. But when Riha started talking abou' his collectin', there were no stoppin' him. He kept talkin' an' Khazuma got whiter in th' face. Riha says, 'Imagine! A Dzuni curse! What an amazing developmen' for Hothan mythology! Now, I haven' found anything else abou' this curse yet or how it began.' I near though' Khazuma would faint by now. Riha finally noticed somethin' was wrong wi' th' man.
"'Khazuma, are ye all righ'?' he asks. Khazuma just says, real tense, "It's no' mythology. The curse isna a myth.'" An' th' story starts comin' out, abou' how his foster son is one of th' cursed Dzuni, an' how Khazuma had spent all these years lookin' for a cure wi' no luck. Of course, Riha an' me offered righ' there an' then t' show him the book wi' th' cure. Khazuma thanked us, an' warned Riha t' keep his collection a secret because th' family head migh' destroy it if he found out.
"Let's see, now, abou' a year went by before we heard from Khazuma again. All he told us was that the cure had worked. Oh, he was so happy. 'Me boy can finally hug th' woman he loves,' he said t' us. It were no' until then I saw how painful the curse had been." Hina's eyes glistened with tears. Her grip on the door handle tightened.
"We went our separate ways, talked every so often. Then Riha began to find certain books…" She took a deep breath. "But it were the paintin' tha' made us worry. It didna fit wi' the curse Khazuma told us abou', but it were similar enough. Riha an' me kept quiet, didna tell Khazuma, hopin' our worries were nothin'." The door yielded, shrieking loudly.
The dryness of the room parched Hotohori's throat, and the dimness made her vision swim for a minute as her eyes adjusted. An amber light flickered, an old-fashioned lamp lit by Hina, illuminating the cracked wall in front of Hotohori. The girl gasped as she beheld the framed parchment, a rectangular piece almost as large as the bay window in Asheno's parlor.
The candlelight enhanced the vivid red strokes forming the graceful curves of the dragon's body. The dragon stood, looking directly at Hotohori, in front of a twisted tree on fire. The long-forgotten artist had skillfully captured a majestic and intelligent expression, one of great dignity, in the jade-green eyes. The bottom portion had been blocked off from the rest; its black paint contrasted with the gentle orangish-brown background of the painting. In carefully elongated letters, the words "Hori Hot" glittered golden. Next to the words was a simple, swishy contour of a dragon in flight.
"That's what I turned into?" Hotohori whispered, in awe. It was a miracle she hadn't burned the entire estate down.
"So the curse isna over, then," sighed Hina. "Riha found that paintin' four years ago, righ' before he died. There are others, in th' south. I have loyal friends—who won' make a peep, don' you worry, I didna tell them why I wanted th' paintin's—back in th' south, workin' on findin' an' preservin' th' rest. I have only one other here. Haven' framed it yet." Hina pulled a large, thin wooden drawer out of the wall at the back of the dusty room. A plastic cover shielded the snarling, frothing wolf from the elements. Hotohori recognized Faran-Zhuku, in all his savagery. The fangs shone a brilliantine white, the red eyes marking the viewer as the next victim. Only a faint, shifting dark blue outline differentiated the wolf from the completely black background. Unlike the dragon, whose name had been written in beautiful calligraphy, the words "Zhuku Hetu" had been hurriedly scratched, as though the painter were fearful of the wolf leaping off the paper any moment and crushing his throat. Three slashes served as the ghost wolf's insignia.
"Because the Dark Age destroyed most of the records…" Inwardly groaning, Hotohori continued the search for the passages she needed.
The next week, Hotohori had finally managed to return to Hina's little hole in the corner of Mhagenu. Her knees had started shaking uncontrollably, causing Hina to shepherd her out of the room and push her into one of the creaky armchairs.
"There now, I imagine that were a bit much," Hina glanced worriedly at the stunned girl.
The antiquity of the paintings—Hina said Riha estimated their age to be about 800 years old—made Hotohori realize that the Dzuni were rooted much more deeply in Hothan history than anybody ever knew. Except maybe for Haku.
The image of the dragon and wolf remained in the forefront of Hotohori's mind as she debated whether to tell the other Dzuni of her discovery. Eventually she decided against it for the short term, because the more people that knew about it, the more likely Asheno would find out. And he'd likely destroy the shop. She hated keeping such an important secret, but only until she learned more.
Hotohori sipped the hot tea, turning the page. A pile of books sat on the escritoire surface next to the open one.
"I wish Riha had at least marked the pages," mentally grumbled Hotohori. For a scholar, he had been a horrible notetaker. No records, no pieces of paper, nothing. "He kept it all in his mind," explained Hina proudly. Hotohori's eyes lazily drifted to the footnote at the bottom of the page.
"…man in the town of Mharhan told the author he once saw a
letter, written two hundred years ago, discussing the existence
of a second cycle of Dzuni in the celestial calendar, thus opening
the possibility of the former existence of a 26-Dzuni calendar,
not just thirteen…"
Twenty-six Dzuni?
In another book, far more ancient than the first:
"The bards used to sing of a sacred creature who lived on Thika
Mountain, and tended the flame trees. The songs praise this
unknown being as the protector of Hoth and the leader of the
Dzuni."
Later in the same book:
"It is quite clear to this humble author that, contrary to our great
government's assertions, worship of multiple gods was once
widespread in Hoth. In the southern regions, the villagers believe
that their personalities are determined by the Dzuni they are born
under, and they rely heavily on their respective Dzunis for
heavenly guidance. This is a practice whose shadows persist
throughout Hoth, despite…"
Shrill ringing snapped Hotohori's concentration. She opened her cell phone.
"Hello?"
"Tori, you'd better get back here, wherever you are." Hatsuharu sounded concerned. "Asheno's wondering what happened to you."
"Thanks, be there in a few minutes." Damn, thought Hotohori, just as she found some interesting pages.
"Hina, I need to go," she called.
"Oh, all righ', dearie. I'll keep lookin' for th' book abou' the cure."
"Thank you so much, I'll try to come back soon." The door slammed behind Hotohori as she rushed out.