The Winter of the Ubume
An LLS Production
六: 寒波
❆Viktor
The stairs kept going... and going... and going... and this would be an excellent exercise for Yurio. Why wasn't he here? How tall was this mountain?
It felt like a geological epoch before we finally reached the top of the moss-covered stone stairs. Trees on either side were garlanded with folded paper and twisted ropes. Hundreds upon hundreds of the tiny roadside shrines and grinning bald statues stared out in between the sacred trees – I'd seen monk-trees in Southeast Asia, but a tree wearing a saffron cassock just seemed a bit dumb to me.
Here, I would not be surprised if a leshy had set up shop.
All at once a strong breeze came tearing up the hillside. Scattering leaves, and sending the trees creaking and moaning. Something moved – nothing when I looked back. Not even the dog. No one to be seen.
The wind blasted again, carrying the petrichor of rain even without a single cloud in the night sky. It stole my breath, and I gave it willingly as the ocean opened up beyond the summit.
By my observation, Atariûni Shrine should be surrounded by houses interspaced with forest. Here, though, it looked unspoiled – either that, or I had been led into another world at the top of the hill. But that could not be right – to my left was the silhouette of that Japanese castle rising from the plain it stood upon. To my left was the bridge stretching in the distance, the tiny houses – and Yū-topia – dotted in specks of light, swaying like a wave on the sea. Endlessly inky black mirrored the sky, currents drawing pale lines shrouded in moonlight across the surface. It was so hard to breathe, with a heavy weight on my lungs, but I would have given anything, everything-
I was pulled.
"You went the wrong direction," Atarime-hiko scolded me as I landed on my feet. "You're lucky the dog managed to catch your foot before you drowned."
I spat out some water. It smelt like seaweed. Around me was the wet, loamy smell of more forest. "What... was that?"
"That was an idiot leaving open the doorway to the Dragon King's Palace, which nearly put you into the Sea of Japan," Atarime-hiko commented, waving a hand towards a tree. A pair of ropes joining two trees snapped, the ropes fraying before leaves poked out from between its twists.
"But I saw a city," I floundered. "Like Hasetsu, and a castle... was that all false?"
"That was probably a shinkirō," he shrugged. "They're magic giant clams that breathe out fantastical illusions over the open ocean. It's for that reason that the word for mirage is written as 'clam breath tower'. They function as the gates to the palaces of the dragon kings."
I got back up. A trickle of salt water dripped from my hair onto my face; I was sopping wet, probably from walking into the Sea of Japan.
"Come, human," Atarime-hiko led me through the familiar sloping gate I associated with Shinto shrines. "Welcome to Atariûni Shrine."
I probably could into describe it very well. The shrine was a building set far back into whatever space there was, surrounded by smaller... buildings. On my right was a well covered with a roof, beside that was another building. The left was occupied by far more buildings. The road under my feet was smooth slate; not as magical as whatever lay beyond the ruined doorway I had nearly drowned in, but definitely far safer.
Its veranda was opened to the front of the shrine, which had been turned into a tiny theatre of sorts. The area before the large building itself was a stage, ringed in more of the twisted ropes called shimenawa and festooned with coloured folded paper strips – the shide. An assortments of picnic carpets surrounded it. Paper lanterns aped grinning faces – they looked cute, until I overheard one threaten to set another on fire in a heated argument in jabbered Japanese.
In that movie with the bathhouse and the dragon and No-Face, the shadowy beings that came alive in the street leading up to the bathhouse seemed to me extremely cute and funny. Looking at them up close was... well, intimidating. Four old crones cackled and babbled at the far west. A giant loomed, drops of alcohol dripping from the saucer-shaped cup Yuuri had explained was a cup exclusively for sake. A family of foxes and dogs turned into humans, cats, kettles... and it was so cold, as cold as the inside of a skating rink or comparable to the winters of Moscow – not very cold, but sometimes colder.
"Meow!" A yowl caused me to jump and back away from the gold-furred cat. Which could talk. Which could talk, and had a forked tail. "What're you looking at?"
I took a deep breath. "No, no way-"
The cat's nostrils flared. "Hey, you're-!"
"There you are," my host looked impatient as he forded across the crowd. I could sympathise with him – if I hadn't ended up at what looked like a party of monsters. A porcelain mask was shoved into my hands. It was completely blank – and by blank, I meant it was as smooth as an eggshell. "Wear this."
To the cat, he said: "I know you're hiding from Kyō-sama, so I will not mention this to her if you mention nothing of him to anyone, Akihito."
I tried to ask him. "How would I-"
"Remember when you nearly drowned?" Atarime-hiko sweetly reminded me. "Put on the mask."
I did so, and found to my surprise that it did not impair my vision a bit.
"The masks of the spirit world is half-illusion and half-actual material," Atarime-hiko reminded me as he led me towards the main building. "Let's find a change of clothes. And a bath," he added as I gave a sneeze. "Luckily this is a volcanic region, Hiroko would forgive me if I used some of her..."
By bath, he meant a hot spring bath out in the open backyard of the shrine buildings. It was far more of a relief to wash off the drying saltwater and dive in.
The back door that led into the shrine opened, and a creature that looked like a cross between lion and dog pushed out a bamboo washbasin – entirely with the Japanese aesthetic, it seems.
"Hey," I spoke. "That's the Yū-topia... soap, right?"
The... thing gave a huff.
"Ah..."
"Is there something wrong?" Atarime-hiko was back. "My apologies, however my retainers are not acquainted with your tongues. Any of them. And we are understaffed as it is, being a small shrine of little comparative worth."
His mouth wasn't moving. "Ah, thank you," I bowed shortly, unsure of the etiquette of the ultra-polite. "It's... this is the Yū-topia soap."
"Hiroko leaves some bars as offerings each year."
"Oh..." Now I felt uncertain. "Thank you."
Washing up was simple enough, after I found a tap to rinse off with the washbasin. I poured the waste water down a drain by the side, which was probably for this ostensible purpose. Any shame I felt when cleaning up vanished when I found another kimono waiting next to the door leading out of the shrine building, and the lion-dog creature waiting.
The creature pulled the hem of my kimono towards a classic Japanese room. My clothes has been stretched out on wooden racks standing within the room, with fireballs surrounding them.
"Eh, good enough." Atarime-hiko dominated the room from the raised dais upon which he sat on my left – stage right, that is. The left of the dais currently stood empty. His right hand made a motion. "You have come to find the answer as to our town's Yuuri."
"Yes," I nodded. "And... Yura. Yuri Plisetsky. How has Yuri offended your wife?"
"He called her creepy."
I wanted to cringe. I would have cringed, but it was in front of a guest. "He's still young. Tomorrow I will bring him here to apologise."
"No, your... guardians in this town have settled it," Atarime-hiko dismissed with the great dignity that not even Lilia had ever managed. In fact, I think the former prima would have been jealous of his carriage. "However, that is where I am... uncertain. You see, he has chosen to beg for the god's forgiveness using a new form of kagura dance, meant to entertain the gods. It coincided with tonight's flower-viewing party. However, I find myself in need of your help, Nikiforov-san."
One of the flaming lights floated over, to hover around the man with the tentacles under his hat. In its spectral light, the man no longer resembled a human, more like a predatory squid aiming to eat humans.
"What do you know about Lohengrin?"
❅Yuuri
"It's part of my dark past..." I complained.
"It can't be helped. Unihime's type is the knight-and-lady romances," the event organiser consulted a truly fearsome stack of handwritten notes in a leather binder.
Tonight, Kyō Kaigara wore a young-looking face with her dark blue kimono tied at the front with a Kai-no-Kuchi knot. I'd heard Mari-neechan say that you could tell the season just based on Kyō-sama's clothes, and it showed – silver butterflies stuck on hair-sticks threaded through her bun, falling cherry blossoms depicted against a gunmetal-grey silk background. Jade rings around her fingers made a clacking sound when they knocked against her binder.
All of that was fake, since I'd seen her change forms into Mum, Mari-neechan and Minako-sensei in quick succession. Each time she came to Hasetsu, though, her face was that of a homely, pretty, middle-aged woman. She did not seem like a supernatural being from China; older than all of us put together.
"Tonight's theme is culture-mixing," she continued. "Because Hasetsu and Karatsu were historical ports between China and Korea, I thought it'd be an East Asian theme right up to Unihime dropping this."
"I'm very sorry for the trouble," I apologised.
"Never mind it, it's an interesting challenge. And a large bill." She dismissed it. "Perform Lohengrin. Do it very well. I'll then get Osakabe-hime and Hashihime on my client list. "
Hiring ordinary event planners was one thing, but pulling in the yōkai equivalent of a fairy godmother was probably pushing the envelope. "I'm sorry that Unihime-sama is forcing this onto you-"
Kyō Kaigara stopped consulting her notes to regard me, her eyes shining with the power she had used to craft the rink. Out of ice. Because it wasn't enough that my sister have the same strength as me, she had to have access to a literal fairy godmother, albeit one that was more distant than most. "Were you picturing yourself as the Grail knight, Katsuki-kun?"
I nodded, blushing. "Because... of my strength."
She nodded. "Done kagura before?"
"A... few times." I fidgeted. "In high school. Mainly when nobody was available. This is my old routine, so... my old costume-"
"You cannot perform in that," Kyō-sama might have physically recoiled. "The pride of our textiles are at stake here!"
"There's no other choice," I pointed out. "There's no way to put together a working costume-"
I waited until she had stopped laughing to ask.
"Oh, child," the elder demon just looked at me. "Who do you think I am?"
A clack of the jade rings put me in-
"Is this a real feather mantle?" I asked, scandalised as I poked the outfit she had stuck me in. Rather than a form-fitting bodysuit, she chose to put me in black-and-white samurai armour. A large cloak of white feathers feeding out to black tips marked the mantle in question.
I shifted. Despite the whole attire, it was as easy as skating in workout clothes. That made me green with envy about the expense of commissioning an outfit for each and every event.
"To recap for you: this is a flower-viewing party for spring," Kyō-sama honestly told me. "The story of Lohengrin involves a swan knight, but you have to consider your audience."
That's... culture doesn't usually play a part in choice of routines, but a lot of skaters chose to use Western classical music for a reason. Kyō-sama's choice, while it doesn't make sense to people who know Lohengrin, might make sense if introducing the concept to yōkai, who were fairly alien to human cultures as far as it went. That was actually pretty good... "Yōkai don't know Lohengrin, but they surely know the Crane Returning the Favour. That's... that's genius. I won't do much changes to the routine or my choice. It's just... the music is the prelude to Act One, right?"
"It is." She handed me the slate of performers so far. "You're up first. My newest understudy is performing the Beauty Song after you, and then it's more or less a free-for-all."
"If you move her to the first slot, I go second, and then rearrange this bit and this bit, I think we can piece together the Lohengrin story." I pointed to the relevant bits.
"Even the bit where Gottfried is turned back, Lohengrin leaves, and Elsa dies?"
"Even that bit."
"Even the Bridal Chorus?"
"... then you'll have to improvise an ice dance in the..." Her fingers flew in a rough calculation. "...two hours that come between these two. Ôbō-Jikara or not, we haven't worked out the blocking issues."
"Turn it into several performances within a play," I argued. "Look, you can be the narrator... move up the Aoi no Ue and this bit from Atsumori..."1
Kaigara-san looked doubtful, but she accepted my explanations up until she said: "I'm glad we're a kabuki-mono troupe. Less pressure to stick to traditions like that."
❆Viktor
"This is possibly the weirdest rendition of Lohengrin I had ever seen," I commented to my hosts. The mask apparently masked my... human-ness, so my host assured. The beautiful lady I was introduced as Atarime-hiko's wife, Unihime, kept giving me stern looks like she would like nothing better than to crush my skull under her alarmingly tall clogs, even as she gave a speech from the veranda to announce the start of festivities.
There was a whole crowd of... yōkai... assembled before them, in what looked like a midnight picnic around the stage. A flower-viewing party for yōkai consisted of sake, snacks, and raucous partying interspaced with dignified performance.
The funniest thing was its opening – a large boulder was tossed in, and then a beautiful lady perched atop it. Her hand shifted, and her voice echoed about the meadow and shrine buildings at such an impressive volume, I was surprised that humans hadn't noticed them.
"Welcome, one and all," Atarime-hiko translated for me when I asked. "You may know us as Kyō Kaigara, the mistress of ceremonies this night. Tonight, we will be performing a succession of plays according to the story of Lohengrin."
Then she left, another beautiful lady took her place, and sang and danced... in Chinese.
"Such was Elsa of Brabant celebrated."
That was the least weird thing that happened in the whole performance.
Two literal demons – one male and one female, probably – then clambered onto the stage, taking the motif of Telramund as it played in the air. My hosts was addressed, and in this tradition of leaning on the fourth wall, Atarime-hiko called for a trial by combat. The horned demon cackled, a deep baritone that completely fulfilled the concept of Telramund.
That was the cue for Lohengrin's entry. Even his figure was dwarfed by the demons, yet his cut a dashing black-and-white figure on the ice. As he came gliding over the stage, it was then that I realised that the Japonised figure of Lohengrin was standing on skates.
Which meant... that the entire stage is an open-air rink.
Murmurs came up amidst the audience, about the atypical cloak of black and white feathers of the swan knight, set off with a helmet as red as fresh blood. "Ah, they chose to adapt him as a crane."
My neck must have suffered whiplash as I turned to see Unihime desperately looking through what must be the stage directions. "The Crane Wife."
"What's that?"
"A man marries a woman who is in fact a crane disguised as a human," Atarime-hiko narrated. "To make money, the crane-woman plucks her own feathers to weave silk brocade which the man sells, but she becomes increasingly ill as she does so. When the man discovers his wife's true identity and the nature of her illness, she leaves him, by the rules of the yōkai world. I suppose it does parallel the fact that, even if yōkai wishes to live with humans, their fates do not remain forever intertwined-"
"Bozhe moi!" I ejaculated as the trial by combat, with Lohengrin championing Elsa in the form of Telramund picking up the boulder and flinging it at Lohengrin. "Is that allowed?!"
"It's trial by combat."
Lohengrin drifted out of the way, easily skating across the ice – and he was skating, I could tell. A quad toe loop followed, to great gasps and a smattering of applause, but Lohengrin's glide belied the strength by which he picked up the boulder and smashed it into the demon. A rain of broken stone crashed across the ice before Telramund and Lohengrin exchanged arm blows, which resounded with titanic echoes across the cold spring night.
The narrator threw a white powder onto the stage. More cries and words in Japanese echoed, cracking like whips.
"Sumo?" I asked as Telramund was body-checked out of the ice after a few more spins, flips and jumps. Maybe if I were more focused I would have seen the routine as it were, but monsters apparently had their entertainment via combat.
"Seems like it, since they're giving him the shimenawa. Only the yorozuna – the highest rank of wrestler – normally gets to wear that," Atarime-hiko pointed it out to me. Unihime, as one of the 'kings' in this scenario, declared the outlawing of Telramund as a mass of dancers poured onto the ice – all manner of unrecognisable ghouls and demons, four of which stood out for Telramund to approach them, lumbering to make great spiderweb-cracks in the ice.
The Japonised pastiche of Lohengrin continued as Ortrud – the female demon – then engaged in something like casting spells towards Elsa. The flashing lights were a sight to watch.
"Ah, the kijo – Ortrud, I mean – is casting a spirit to delude Elsa," Atarime-hiko explained to me. A bottle of sake and its accompanying tableware was placed next to me. "Thank you, Mari."
"Mari?!" I tore my eyes away from the stage with great difficulty. Mari Katsuki blanched as she saw me.
"Why are you here?"
"He invited me. Why are you here?!" I shouted back at her in surprise.
She turned paler, turning to Atarime-hiko. "Does Kyō-sama know you're trying to do another Ono no Takamura?!"2
My host smiled back to her. "I am answering a prayer."
"You can't do this to Yuuri."
"It is inevitable," Atarime-hiko turned back to the performance of the wedding chorus – which had already devolved into chaos and combat, since it was directly at the bit where Elsa asks the fatal questions at the cusp of Telramund and his cronies attacking the swan- I mean, crane knight. His arms were like the wings of a swan slapping out – and those birds had enough strength to break a man's arm, as well as pluck eyes out. The demon Telramund, having been knocked off-balance, fell down with a convincing scream, at which Lohengrin stooped, lifted him by his back, and chucked him into the audience to screams and stamping.
From the ice grew a tree, convincingly waving leaves of frost and its icy trunk lined with white powder. Flakes of snow condensed and fell, with Lohengrin's mask in the middle of his farewell dance. Not a single word of the opera had been sung by him – but the sorrow of parting was imparted in Elsa's scream, in Lohengrin's farewell bow, fluttering and gliding away into the mists towards the veranda.
"No!" I heard Elsa – no, Mari – shout. "Yuuri, don't look here!"
Before I saw his video, I had thought that I would be a good coach when pigs fly.
He is flying now. My Lohengrin had been with me all along.
...Yuuri.
Critiquez, s'il vous plaît !
1 Aoi no Ue is a Noh play about a mistress cursing a wife with spirit possession. Atsumori is a Kabuki play about a young samurai's death – and the death is the most famous thing about him.
2 Ono no Takamura was a noble, scholar, poet, and government official who lived in the first half of the 9th century. He is famous for being clever, quick-witted, and somewhat insolent. He is even more famous for his side job in hell as an attendant to Great King Enma, discovered because he saved a fellow official when the other official descended to King Enma's court for judgement.
