A/N: This is where the fic branches off into AU. (And for me it's where the fun begins for real. ;) Enjoy!)
I do not own or profit from any of what Kazue Kato has created.
All that lives, grows. All that lives, dies.
All that lives births new life, and all that dies nurtures it.
The sun gave birth to twins; that shouldn't be forgotten. Twins as different as night and day, one that gives and one that takes away.
Shiemi's friends are cannibals. She knows, because she lays their corpses in the compost pile, and once they rot she feeds them to their children: that is the way of things. That way the dead are with the living, and never truly gone. Baa-chan, Baa-chan's parents, Otou-san and Otou-san's parents… They are all still with their loved ones, never truly gone.
That is what they celebrate, this October spectacle called True Cross Academy festival.
To Shiemi, the festival is special – like Obon, or Christmas. It's a time for family, for gathering close and doing things together. It's a time when all three of them sit down to work, when old fingers teach young fingers and laughter simmers in the pot of herbal tea. When she was little she helped cut necks in the garden flowerbeds; when she was older she helped bind the ornaments at the table in the garden shed.
Now, her place is in the festival itself.
It isn't the feeling of being a woodlouse, she thinks, as she and Izami bleed the yamauba kimono with crimson paint. (Izami is a fantastic seamstress) It is the feeling of being an ant. She is a tiny thing, but part of something much, much greater. (thinking that tickles pleasantly in her stomach) The costume they are working on is part of the haunted house her class is working on, which is part of the festival that everybody is working on. Part of. Part of. Every little thing they do builds something bigger, together. It's a colour-bathing concrete colony, and Shiemi is part of it. A small part. (but the feeling is big)
Ants are strong, like weeds. Small and tough and never griping. Shiemi doesn't either. A smile paints sunshine on her face while, underneath her kimono, bruises paint her arms and back. She played tag with the King of Earth the other day. Even ants aren't tough enough for that.
The yamauba costume molds her body into horror. Izami has a bottle for everything, even making wounds and streaks of blood on Shiemi's face. (she likes to cosplay as a hobby, she says) She traps Shiemi's hair inside a net that hugs her scalp and fits a haystack wig on top of it. (it's warm, and itchy!) It's a good thing that she wears it, for Shiemi's own hair threatens to stand on end when she spots herself in the cracked mirror surface.
"Uwah, it looks so scary!" she squeals. (it is much too bright and happy for a yamauba – she will need to work on that) "You're so good at this, Izami-chan!"
"Thank you, Shiemi-chan." Izami is from Shikoku – Shiemi didn't understand her dialect at first – and is so pretty in her hime haircut that she looks almost like a doll. (it's strange to think she likes to dress as monsters) "You should try and walk around in it a bit: test the costume in action. It's good to know if there's anything we need to fix or change before tomorrow – and if this thing will hold or not", she says, and flicks the ping pong eye she fastened to the wig with wire. (Shiemi can feel it when it wobbles)
"Ooh, Shiemi-chan looks scary!" It is Paku, who comes with a whole box full of paper seals to decorate the outside of the haunted house. (ah, Nori-chan! she said Shiemi could call her Nori-chan!)
"We did a really good job", Izami agrees, and flicks her thumb up with a victorious grin. "Is it okay if she takes a break to walk a bit and test the costume out?"
"Of course." Nori is all smiles today: the festival becomes her. "Shiemi-chan has been working hard all day. Take a break and see what the others are doing. I think Izumo's class is setting up a planetarium somewhere by the paper shop, just before you reach the food stalls."
The walk there is a soda bottle - tickling, refreshing - and Shiemi enjoys every second of it. There is a pride inside her chest that bounces when wide-eyed students look at her, when their faces break into excited grins and they shout that they will definitely come to Class B's haunted house. There are painted signs being put up in every corner of the school and a broth of cheerful talk and hammered nails floating about the campus. This will be the best festival ever. She can't wait to show Kamiki her costume, even if feedback isn't something she expects. (Kamiki-san is a little reserved)
She scares the students working on the planetarium when she arrives. (it wasn't easy to find, the sign is not yet up) They are fewer than the ones working the haunted house, and much less enthusiastic for their task, but for one who has never seen a planetarium it is a marvel. (Shiemi never has) The ceiling is a firefly parade and the planets that are up glow spookily in the LED light. Kamiki isn't there. Her classmates aren't sure where she went but are happy to show Shiemi how they hope to make Saturn rotate before tomorrow. (she has never had an interest in electronics, but the boy who shows her is good at explaining)
When Shiemi sees the haunted house again, Kamiki has come to speak with Nori. Shiemi can't resist. She sneaks around the haunted house and in through the backdoor that is only for the personnel, all so that she can step out behind Nori.
"Paku! Behind you!"
Shiemi had never thought Kamiki could make a face like that. (best not to say that to her)
"The planetarium's great!" Shiemi chirps from within her haystack wig and wobbly ping pong eye. "I'll come and visit."
"Moriyama… Shiemi…?!"
Shiemi had not thought Kamiki could make a face like that either. (yes, definitely best not to say that) It seems like Kamiki will leave to study, though, so Shiemi waves her off along with Nori.
"Study hard! Come and visit our haunted house, okay! I'll scare you~"
Kamiki's swift step makes a stiff hiccup, then, and she tosses her farewell over her shoulder: "Ah, shut up! Unlike you I'm busy, you know!" She whips her head around and stalks off, and… it seems somehow familiar. Her words, the sight of her walking down that street…
"Uhm, sorry about that", Nori apologises on her friend's behalf and wakes Shiemi from her ponderings.
"No, it's fine", she smiles, and hopes she doesn't look too flustered. Kamiki doesn't mean it: she's a chestnut, thick hide and thorny spikes. It still hurts, but she doesn't mean it. "Everyone really does seem busy. Even Yuki-chan declined to go to the dance party."
Yuki-chan. Shiemi doesn't know what kind of flower he would be. When she was little she would have said he was an oak tree, strong and dependable. (she admired him so much it's embarrassing) Yuki-chan wasn't always so, Shiemi knows. He was small and weak, like her: afraid of everything, like her. He still is afraid, for his brother's sake, that he won't be enough. Nobody is perfect, not even Yuki-chan, and when she saw that… things became clear.
People grow. Over a lifetime they grow, from seed to sapling to tree, and Shiemi simply has more growing still to do.
"Huh? Didn't Okumura-kun invite you?" Nori seems confused.
Shiemi is even more confused: "Rin? No, he didn't?"
"But, some time ago, during lunch time…?"
"Ah, I see. No, Rin and I had a talk about Yuki-chan, and the fact that he's been tired lately", Shiemi explains and paints a smile on her lips. The truth is… the truth is… "We thought it would be a good idea for him to go to the dance party."
The truth is that trees can fall ill. Trees can fall ill and Shiemi isn't sure that Yuki-chan is well. She can't say what it is, that smile he showed her when he declined her invitation, but deep down she knows he isn't well. Yuki-chan is busy but he is more than that. He is pushing everyone away. (like Amaimon when he was wounded)
"A-ah, but like I said, he declined. Rin seemed really upset when I told him about it, too. I hadn't expected such a reaction: he just took off." Shiemi flops her bloodied kimono sleeves dejectedly. She would like to apologise, but she doesn't know what for. "I don't know why he flared up like that…"
Nori puts her cardboard signs away. Shiemi isn't sure what sort of flower she is, either. A small one, nothing bawdy, with a gentle but pleasant fragrance. Nori straightens with a friendly smile, and Shiemi knows what she is: a Linnaea. A Linnaea is like ambience and coffee shops.
"Okumura-kun probably intended to ask Shiemi-chan to the dance, but couldn't say it?"
"Eh?!"
Nori's face grows kinder still, like demure flower bells sipping literature in shady forest nooks. "Shiemi-chan, between Okumura-kun and sensei, who do you like?"
"Who do I like…?" Comparison has never touched Shiemi's mind. She likes both of them, of course! But Nori seems to mean something else and she can't tell what it is. "Both of them. They're important fr-friends to me!"
"Umm, it's not that kind of like?" Nori almost takes on the colour of a Linnaea, unsure how to explain. She puts her fingers together (index index, thumb thumb) and shapes a heart. "The romantic kind…"
This… is also… familiar? But Shiemi can't stop the laughter bubbling up her throat. The romantic kind? Rin? "Fufufu love!? It's still too early for me!"
It is. But words are pollen. They spread, flower to flower, and when they meet a compatible one they make thoughts grow. In Shiemi's mind, they grow. In cram school class, they grow. She can't stop watching Rin and his chestnut attitude towards his classmates. (he's so like Kamiki suddenly) He does seem upset with something. But love… That is so unlike Rin.
Rin is an important friend. Is that not enough?
Shiemi feels like a mulberry tree sensing summer. All day, Nori's pollen words sprout thoughts inside her head. (pop, pop, pop like breaking leaf buds) Shiemi barely knows what she eats for supper. Her mind is locked in orbit and she knows that yes, she must resolve this. It was she who caused it, whatever it truly is, and she must set it right. Tomorrow she will talk to Rin and sort out what upsets him.
"Hey, you! Are you listening?!"
Mother is busy, too. The festival makes everybody busy and chestnut prickly. Shiemi apologises: she was lost in thought and no, she wasn't listening.
"Oh… Well, the school festival is when our shop will make a great deal of its earnings." Mother sets her bowl down on the table, not to distract herself from negotiating. It is a business negotiation: Shiemi hears the numbers and calculations written neatly in her voice. "For the flower arrangement, I'll be troubled if you don't help out from tomorrow. Since your granma isn't around this year…"
Shiemi's chewing ceases. For the first time in hours Nori's pollen words stop swirling, and her mind is a still pond in a storm. How could she forget? She was so busy all day and forgot that she'll be even busier the coming days!
Last year, Baa-chan sighed and said she was too old to put the decorations up inside the school: her knees were old, and too much like the gnarly orchard apple trees that creak when even tiny sparrows land in them. Next year Shiemi should help put up the flowers, she said, and smiled as sly old foxes do.
How right she was.
"I'm sorry! But, but, it's already been decided that I'll be the ghost – my class is making a haunted house attraction – so please allow me to leave several times in the middle!" The words are out in a garbled waterfall but somehow mother understands them. That will be okay, she says, and Shiemi breathes a happy sigh.
Thoughts sprout again, as Shiemi does the dishes over the humble kitchen sink. Swirling eddies. Frothing worries. She has to make the flower arrangements this year, there is no other way around it. (and work shifts as ghost in the haunted house) (and visit the planetarium) (and eat at Rin's food stall) (and sort out this mess of festival evening dates) Shiemi lets her eyes fall closed, breathes deeply, and exhales. Yes, she will do it. She can. Ants are strong, and tough, and never griping.
to help each other, to make each other happy: that is why they all are here
One more. There is one more who needs her help, before lights are out and sleep can claim her listless body. The rusty key is calling and the bag of lonely children's toys is ready for departure. Shiemi's bedroom floor is swaying on its feet and the door is barely steady either, but Shiemi reaches it. She turns the key.
It grits its teeth and wails.
A jacket would have been a good idea, Shiemi thinks. Autumn days are pleasant, much more so than humid summer, yet night already tunes its song for winter. The sun looks tired when she peeks in through the trees, and the evening gauze of mist is rising out of moss and soil. (it's so beautiful she stops a moment just to watch) It will be chilly in the bog, Shiemi thinks, and pulls her shawl closer round her neck.
The Earth King doesn't want to play. Like a sullen orchid stem that won't have anything to do with flowers, he sits on his haunches and does nothing more. Shiemi has suggested all the games she knows and all the games they've played, but none is to his liking.
"I'm bored", is all he says, and looks at her like he expects her to do something about it. (well, she did promise she would)
"I know", she says, and all she wants is to go to bed and sleep but she has a promise to fulfil, and promises are important. Shiemi rubs her eyes and speaks: "Is there anything you want to play? I think I've run out of ideas."
A silence coats the bog, then. It is more like winter cold than summer heat, more like prickling little frostbites down her spine. Shiemi's heart is gasping and she doesn't know why, only that it's… familiar. For a moment. Then she blinks, and it is gone.
Amaimon seems to notice nothing, although with his indifferent looks one can never tell. "Let's play hide-and-seek", he decides.
"Okay, we'll play hide-and-seek. Who hides?"
"You hide. I'll count to a hundred."
Shiemi settles for a slow-paced jog. Her heart is back to normal, whether that is a good or a bad sign. What was before… Stress, maybe? With all she has to do these days, wouldn't she be stressed out, too?
She jogs until the counting monotone is but a blur among the trees. Ground vegetation in cedar woods is rather barren, so she must aim for better terrain to hide. Forests have layers, like onions. Each one with their special personality. Humans aren't unlike onions, either, Shiemi muses as she strides across the moss and needles. (must save her breath a bit) They have layers, one atop the other: some of them more private than others. (she can't help but worry over Yuki-chan)
Some of them more private than others, and some of them quite unexpected, too. Shiemi has never been this deep within the forest before. She had no idea this layer of vegetation was here. (it's like finding a new and unexpected friend) Cedar soil is red from needles; this soil is red from iron oxide. Cedar forest vaults stand high on skyward pillars, spacious and prone to playing tricks with echoes; this forest envelopes, hushing sky and ground like a magician keeping secrets. The vines grow thick in here, like drapes; they'll be good for hiding. Shiemi doesn't recognise them but thinks immediately of kudzu, and how the climber carpets everything it comes in contact with. How it hides things. How it buries things.
nothing wants to be buried
This place is nothing like her garden arbor or the wise old cedar forest round the bog. This forest is silent. This forest feeds on sunlight, feeds on all that lives inside of it and hides their bones in carpetlands of moss and greedy vines; feeds… slowly. Grows, slowly.
Silence, crawling slowly down the watchful trunks the deeper in she goes, eating tingling nerve ends underneath her skin so slowly she can feel each one of them flicker and go out like broken light bulbs. Shiemi doesn't dare to breathe, doesn't dare to turn around yet that is all she wants to do. She wants to go back but she can't. (there is no questioning that knowledge) She hugs Nii-chan closely to her chest, and something in her ripples. Even her familiar is silent.
There are places that are old as rock and soil; this place is older. If it ever had a name it has been long forgotten. If any language used to speak it, it has been lost from living minds. There are crumbled stones, half-buried in the vines and in the roots, bearing symbols that held meaning, once. They might have spoken it, before time gouged their tongues out. Before these woods fell silent. Before this place forgot its name.
nothing wants to be forgotten
There are other things than stones half-buried here. There are other things than trees that keep the silence. Shiemi's shoes touch rusty iron daggers that dream vicious dreams among the roots; her eyes brush tapestry of wizened bone that wishes only to wake up. This is not a place for games, she realises. (it's like swallowing ice) This is not a game and Amaimon isn't playing. (she couldn't entertain him: couldn't uphold their deal) These trees are fed on flesh and the red soil isn't red from iron oxide.
A crack of breaking twigs – in her mind or in her ears, Shiemi doesn't know, and her body doesn't care. Her heart explodes. Lightning bolts tear through her bones and she runs.
There is nowhere to run to, but panic doesn't care. The climber walls condense to tunnel paths and she races through them without stopping, without thinking; her breath is gasps and her head is growing light. Paths split and she chooses one at random, flashes flowing past the corners of her eyes - of large stone slabs, of carved runes undone by age, cracked and soiled with sacrificial dreams.
This place is not a forest.
It's a maze.
The left path is wrong (she knows?) but Shiemi's gasping feet decide to go there anyway. She runs, she floats; solid feet on liquid ground that she can't feel but it must be there because she isn't falling. Yet. She isn't falling yet but Shiemi doesn't wonder why that thought is in her head; there are too many thoughts in there already, they thrash and throb against her forehead and she's getting dizzy. She wants to stop and turn around, stop and look for her lost breath because her heart is signalling for air in Morse. (ta-dump, ta-ta, ta-dump-ta) But there's no stopping, she realises.
Her feet aren't hers to move.
Shiemi wants to scream then, but her throat is not responding either. Nothing does. Her mind is crying stop, her body is a raft in riptide and there is only forward motion, foliage prison walls, and things that wait.
they have waited a long, long time
There's things that sleep in nightmares, things that carve out nests in the corner of the eye and
wait
There's things that live on stuttered heartbeats, things that watch and starve and
wait
There's things that wait for her to stop (oh god please don't stop) and Shiemi is on fire; tears burn her eyes, panic burns her lungs. Run. That's all there is: run. Past strangled rocks, past moss-clad stumps, past crossroad corners and silent, solid, solemn walls of vegetation. Roots writhe and arch before her rippling eyes but vanish when she stumbles into them. (are they real? is this real?) Somewhere somehow sometimes she thinks directions might be running circles in her skull because she can't think straight and her mind is swimming two feet ahead. She wobbles: there's no ground beneath the roots, no oxygen in the air, and the maze walls clench like a throat about to swallow. (those aren't trees either, are they?) It will swallow. Soon. She knows it. She knows, and she can't stop.
She knows before it happens: a stumble. Rock or root or something else – Shiemi is unsure of the difference. Her fall is heavy but her thoughts are light falling through the leaves and scattered shards on moss green eyes that chase delirium in the swirling air.
The roots are strangely warm… like… breath…
"Nii! Nii!"
Shiemi's eyebrows furrow and she tries to remember that something isn't right. Something's slipping and it's slipping fast as fingers twitch and fail to hold the breath from lips turned gasping blue. (no, that's not it) That's not what slips. She knows what's really slipping.
"Nii-chan…" Green eyes grasp the word in flight, an unblurred moment as the greenman frantically pats her cheek: it smells like chlorophyll and sunshine. It's a nice smell. A nice smell for a horrible end. "Maybe… I'll meet Baa-chan…" Shiemi smiles; and blurs, and all is… blinding bright... "Nii-chan…"
Once upon a thousand times, their stories ended,
moored to nameless soil and living walls.
All forgotten.
All buried.
All waiting
for the story to be told again.
A/N:
…you do notice that I haven't marked the story as completed yet, right? Right. Just checking. =9
Yamauba is the mountain witch Shiemi is dressed up as.
Kakurenbo is hide-and-seek.
True Cross Academy festival could be a Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration. It borrows a lot of visuals from it (sugar skulls, Mexican hats, skeletons) but the time frame is slightly off. Dia de los Muertos falls on November 1-2, while the TCA festival is at October 13th.
Mulberry trees have a reputation of leafing late in spring, but they compensate by leafing very fast once the temperature does go up. "Overnight" or "you can hear the buds unfolding" are popular things to say about it. (Don't look at me, I have no idea if that is true or just exaggeration.)
Now it will be a while until I have time to write the next chapter, so enjoy your cliffhanger. ];9
Dear Guest
Shiemi is indeed adorable. That's why I have to do awful things to her. :D I hope you won't mind. (The awful things are pretty cool, too.) Thanks for the review!
/ Dimwit