Songs of the Illusionary Veil: A Book for Her Pillow
A Touhou Project story by Achariyth
Kosuzu leaned over an ancient scholar's desk and tapped a chalcedony inkstone. Charcoal ripples splashed inside the stone's shallow bowl, threatening to spot the leaves of snowy paper that the bookseller had unwisely sat the polished well upon.
Her breath hissing from her throat, Lady Akyuu grabbed her confidant's sleeve. "Careful." The young landgravine, heiress of the Hieda clan, guided Kosuzu away from the trembling inkstone. She pointed towards the paper. "That is a treasure beyond measure."
"You do realize that we sell blank journals by the shelf." Kosuzu's eyes narrowed and she swept a hand towards the bookshelves surrounding the desk. "Wait, what have you been reading lately?"
"'What do you think we could write on this?'" A smile graced Lady Akyuu's porcelain lips as she paused in her quotation, drawing out the caesura. "'Perhaps we should make it a pillow.'"
Huffing, Kosuzu rocked back into her chair. "I knew it. There was no way that you could spend all that time studying. But why Sei Shonagon? She's so frivolous. Lady Murasaki's works are better." She tilted her head and stared at the landgravine. "Did any of your past selves ever meet Lady Murasaki?"
Pursing her lips, Lady Akyuu, ninth reincarnation of the Child of Miare, brushed a dark lock of hair over her ear. "Ami passed away before Lady Murasaki came to court."
"Pity. I would have loved to have met her, if I were you."
In the heart of the village, surrounded by suitors, Lady Mokou Fujiwara huddled in her fiery mink robe and sneezed.
Lady Akyuu picked up the inkstone well with both hands and set it upon the desk. "We can fill up the pages with our thoughts."
Kosuzu picked up the loose leaves of paper and tamped them into a tidy stack. "You mean poetry."
The slight landgravine giggled. "You could use the practice. At one time, a clever turn of phrase and clean brushstrokes were all a girl needed to lure a suitor." Rose crept into Lady Akyuu's cheeks. Ami's amorous adventures in the Heian court flashed vivid in her mind.
"I've watched while the boys chase after Komachi. It isn't her poetry that they're looking at." Kosuzu crossed her arms beneath her breasts.
Lady Akyuu closed her eyes and sighed. "Well, at least you looked up from your youkai books for once."
The bookseller thrust the stack of paper in Lady Akyuu's hands. "Better ghost stories than dusty histories."
Lady Akyuu's smile grew strained. Kosuzu was closer than a sister, and occasionally bickered like one. The landgravine hugged the ream of paper again her chest.
"I'll use a pen this time, not a brush." The bell at the bookstore's door rang, and Kosuzu vanished into the maze of tall bookshelves.
Smiling, Lady Akyuu set the pages on the desk, dipped a brush into the well of the inkstone, and began to write.
"'In spring, the dawn - when the slowly paling mountain rim is tinged with red,and wisps of faintly crimson-purple cloud float in the sky.'"
Lady Akyuu tapped her brush dry against the inkstone and sighed. Fighting the urge to blot out her lines, she blew the page dry and slid it beneath the stack of paper. She wanted a pillow book of her own, a journal of thoughts and memories, not a transcribed copy of the 291 entries in Sei Shonagon's. Kosuzu's bookstore could print a copy faster.
Besides, she had been relying too much on poetic allusions since reading The Pillow Book. Yukari Yakumo, her editor, had mentioned as much, although the enigmatic youkai preferred the grace of Heian verse to the more scholarly Chinese proverbs. But a woman of the Hieda was expected to know her poetry, and the Child of Miare, more so.
Before each child of the Hieda clan could read, she was brought before the head of the family. He would read a line from the twenty volumes of the Kokinshu and wait for the child's reply. If she completed the verse, he would read another and another until the child made a single mistake or the twenty volumes were exhausted. Only the reincarnated Child of Miare would be able to recite the poems from a perfect memory of her past lines.
But if a chronicler steeped in the classics found a simple journal a challenge…
Lady Akyuu stood up and peeked around a bookshelf. Kosuzu chatted with Alice Margatroid by the shop's counter. The blonde magician traded silver for a slender book of sonnets, her cheeks glowing like the sunrise. As the door chimes rang out, Lady Akyuu swooped up the paper on the desk and rushed towards the counter.
Kosuzu leaned against the checkout counter and tapped a capped pen against the pure white page. She never knew how to start, at least whenever Lady Akyuu wanted to play her word games. The blank page invited her to fill it with the smoke-like glyphs that the youkai used, but her copies lacked the virtue of the texts written by youkai. Besides, her neighbors grew worried whenever they couldn't understand a word that Kosuzu had written.
Her pen spinning through her fingers, Kosuzu pursed her lips and looked behind her. Back by the scholar's desk, Lady Akyuu checked a stack of books against a list in her hand. Knowing the landgravine, it was probably a list of lists, just like many of the classics on the table.
Kosuzu sighed and turned away, gazing through the storefront window and watching as the people of her village hurried past the bookstore in the course of their day. A young girl ran across the village street and leapt into her father's arms. Kosuzu cooed as the man spun his daughter through the air.
The bookseller's pen twirled to a stop, and Kosuzu began to write.
'Things that delight - Fairies singing as they dance circles beneath the blossoming sakura flowers. The crackle and hiss of the phonograph as it spins up a new song. Resting among the daisies with a favorite book in hand, basking in the midsummer warmth alongside the damselflies. The chimes of the storefront bells as they greet my father at the end of his long book-buying trip. The first sip of leftover plum wine from my mother's cup while I'm clearing the dinner table, after she's gone into the kitchen, of course.'
A shadow fell over the page. "You do frivolous well."
Kosuzu shrieked and threw her body across the page.
"It's too late. I've already memorized it."
The bookseller looker up. "Oh, it's just you."
Lady Akyuu's face became a placid mask. "'Just me?'" A ghost of a smile flashed across her lips.
"Well, I don't see what you've written." Kosuzu sat up and smoothed out the front of her shopkeeper's apron. She held out a hand towards her friend. "Hand it over."
"It's not ready yet." The landgravine cast a look over her shoulder. "My family is known for their writing. It takes time to craft something worthy of their name."
Kosuzu sighed and slid her writing into a nearby drawer. "I'm surprised. With a memory like yours, I'd have just written down something that a past life had overheard."
"Then it wouldn't have been mine." Lady Akyuu hid her scarlet cheeks behind flowing sleeves.
The pixyish bookseller twirled her pen before flipping it at her friend. As Lady Akyuu caught it with both hands, Kosuzu said, "Just bring something tomorrow. Make it two. A poem for a poem."
"So you'll keep writing?"
"As long as you do."
"That's great." Lady Akyuu smiled and pointed to the ream of paper at Kosuzu's elbow. "One down, two hundred ninety-one to go."
Kosuzu groaned, but slid a fresh white sheet onto the counter.
Author's Note:
Akyuu quotes from Meredith McKinney's translation of The Pillow Book, by Sei Shonagon, and used without permission.
A Book for Her Pillow is set several weeks after All's Fair in Love and Thievery.