NAGAMORI - III
the House - the Fable - Amitabha
Red leaves fell gently on the freshly trimmed lawn. In that season they had gathered into a thick litter blurring the line between white backyard fence and the rocky outcrop, roots from the Nagamori wood winding through the cracks.
Even now past the wicked woods of the west, mothers tell stories to their children of desert natives prowling through the barren wastes like the Grimm they kill and the Grimm that kill them. But hush the mother says, for we are in the kingdom of Vale and in Vale the Kingdom keeps out the Grimm from the west, silence under the blanket the only thing left to speak for the children who had too been abandoned on the other side of the wood.
The dog kicked up leaves around the backyard. Weaving between the fence and tall punching bobs it knocked over a collection of training swords neatly arranged by length. As the dog passed through an especially large pile of leaves it darted away and yelped in pain. A centipede retreated from its fallen encampment and the dog turned to curse the autumn wood that loomed before it. When the doorbell rang from behind the dog ceased its superstition and came running back through the living room. Past the housewife keeping the dishes, past the man answering the door, and out the front lawn with filthy paw prints trailing behind it barking all the while.
"Oh, if it isn't my girl Luna!" Their visitor chortled.
The dog clung onto his wrist with tight jaws alone, its canines cushioned by a soft purple glow that squashed under the pressure but refused to tear.
"I am terribly sorry about her, Mr Nyte. Do you want me to get her off? I don't think it's worth wasting your Aura on such a trivial matter."
"It's the least I could do, we're not just Grimm-killing machines. Besides, it's not like anything happens here in good ol' Nagamori County, right?"
"Yes, it is quite peaceful out here."
"Mhm, seems 'quite peaceful' in here too now that the lil' sprout's living in the dorms. Mind spilling what his mom and pop over here get up to once the lights are-"
"I-I, the madame wouldn't want-"
"Ahem." The woman spoke up. "The 'madame' standing only a few feet away wouldn't want anyone talking about her private affairs right in front of her, would she now?"
"Of course, ma'am. Wouldn't be a good neighbourhood huntsman if I didn't check up on the townsfolk!"
"Naturally Sir Nyte, a good neighbourhood huntsman would also be finishing their patrol in ten minutes."
"How did you-?"
"My son is enrolled at Beacon academy, of course I know. I wouldn't be a good mother if I didn't."
"Right, sure. I gotta get going now, could one of you just…"
The girl watched from between a pair of trimmed hedges as the dog was unstuck from the man's wrist and dragged into the house flailing wildly. After the door had shut, the man outside sighed and moved on to the next house down the street. Inside the girl couldn't quite see clearly what the couple were doing, but after a good while the husband came out in a suit and tie carrying a briefcase. He got into the car parked out the front door and drove off. Soon after the wife too went out the other way with a large black garbage bag over her shoulder.
Sneaking back through the hedges the girl was at first content to stay outside watching the tiny black and white characters dancing around inside a glowing box. Then she noticed the door to the backyard was left open. Her old handler said animals weren't allowed to open doors, but if they were invited, if the cage was opened for them, it was only their duty to oblige. She strode around the carpet for fear of staining it with dirt from the forest. The dog was sleeping behind the sofa while the man preaching sermons on the television covered her footsteps. Even with the sink and the dishes cleaned there was still the lingering scent of scrambled eggs and honey in the living room and for her it was divine.
Just beside the television on the counter sat a gold framed photo of the couple with a little boy seven years at the youngest. A snapshot in time, encased in glass. A small, pale jade idol of Brother Light quietly hid behind it. She followed a gallery of family photos hung all the way up and around a tight spiral staircase. As she climbed the steps on all fours the wrinkles started appearing on the parents' faces and the boy grew frame by frame until he stood taller than both of them.
Turning down the hallway, a heavy door of laminated spruce loomed over her. The girl spotted a small wooden plaque hanging from the doorknob which held the door ajar. Scrawled on the plaque in red, she now sketches it out once more for me. The handwriting is unstable and lost, traced over multiple times by multiple people. 'Arnold'.
The girl ran her hands over it, tracing over the name. Red powder stained her fingers and she put them to her nose and found it wasn't blood. Within the room too was a blending of the past and present moving up the wall, markings where their son had grown taller. His bedside was peppered with multicolour handprints of different sizes that all worked to hold and comfort the boy as he slept. Above that hung an array of small medals with the gold-coloured foil coming off cheap plastic, and past that a poster collection of many big name hunters were pinned to the wall.
A bookshelf by the bed held many childrens' picture books at the bottom level. As the boy grew up and turned his focus to more important things, the number of books slowly dwindled upward, their contents turning to thick manuals she could barely reach on all fours but not read. Pulling out a handful of thin picture books from the bottom shelf, it coughed out a plume of dust and the girl backed away swatting at the cloud in sunbeams.
"Luna?" The voice returned from the ground floor. She tightened her grip on the picture books. The window was closed, but going down she would certainly be spotted by the housewife. There was no other way out. The knob on the windowsill gleamed in the sun and when the girl grabbed it she felt the furious heat in the metal surge through her palms. Quickly she turned the knob and pushed the window and fell out the moment the footsteps reached the second floor. The dog started barking and by the time the woman barged into the room she was already behind a large rock in the woods.
She flinched as a loud crack rang out from the open window. The housewife held a shotgun in both hands and she was leaning out the window sill aimlessly scouring for the intruder. With no target in sight she kept firing out into the woods and shooting the birds out of trees and painting the fall grass and book pages red where the girl cowered.
'Slain'. The word was there when fairy-tale hunters clashed against the black hordes. The girl was intimately familiar with that haze of battle, when her vision would blur out the gory details like the simple mono-coloured swathes spread across pages covering graphic savagery hiding between the paper, but she couldn't relate to the word itself. For her, that inescapable clarity would return to her eyes and in every moment of victory their guts drowned out any sense of glory.
"Mr Nyte was telling me about this afternoon. You alright?"
"What's there to say? Crazy bitch from Vacuo shouldn't have a gun, right? They'll think I'm one of those Ten Year War vets at this rate."
"Come on, don't say that."
"It's just… with the dog around-"
"Luna."
"With… Luna in the backyard barking all the time at the woods, it's like she sees something I don't."
"We're close to the Coopers and the Wrights, they'll understand if you open up about it."
"They're close to you."
"They're- I'm trying to say there's no need to worry. No one sees you as a bad person. You've been a good neighbour, and an even better mom. Here, his letter this month just came in the mail."
"Pass it to me? 'Dear mom, thank you for your advice last month, it turns out Pearl and I both read the same books growing up, and it was fun to reminisce about how corny the Blue Bolt books were back in the day. It looks like we'll be great partners for the next three years. Don't tell dad about this, but-' Mind if I read out this part?"
"Sure, if that's what you want."
"It's because you play bad cop too much. '-sadly I feel Leek and Ebon might not have the best image of me.' You don't think it could be because of…"
"With kids their age, who knows?"
"This is why I didn't… He needs to grow a spine, it's the only way he can be team leader."
"He'll learn at Beacon, but only if you leave him alone for a few months."
"Telling me not to write back?"
"I'm not saying that. Just… don't solve all his problems for him."
'Hero'. An honour bestowed to only a sparse few. All the vibrant colours on the page went into their clothes and their hair and in their eyes. Beacons of hope, their light almost glowing from the page. Unlike the other characters they were allowed to feel. Joy, anger, sadness. Through the best and worst of times they bore the girl's feelings for her.
"What will he think of me then, suddenly throwing him to the wolves?"
"We both know Beacon isn't that kind of place."
"No system is perfect, people always slip through the cracks. And when those cracks lead down into Grimm-infested waters and collapsing tunnels…"
"Trust in our son, Sauda."
"Trust isn't enough, it's never-"
"He's strong enough, Sauda. Enough to protect himself and those dear to him, even if he doesn't realise it."
"Will he?"
"When he realises he has something to protect. That's why I brought Luna back home. And if you're up for it, a little sis-"
"No! I'm sorry, it's just-"
"It's alright, I was only-"
"Just… I'm not ready for that again, Sid. The… Luna is enough, for now."
Somewhere deep in her gut there was a kind of realisation. Nothing she could put a word to, but she gained some new understanding of her place, the very earth she stood on and the space between the evergreen hedges she had sandwiched herself between. There was a rustling in the awful quiet that followed the couple's embrace, and she immediately turned to see the dog shaking thin needle leaves off her fur as she entered the hedge. Their eyes met.
"Sid, the… things I asked of you earlier, did you get them from the hardware store?"
"Yeah, if it makes you feel safer. Are you really sure we need it? Are we going to stop Luna from running through the backyard?"
"Yes, I'll do anything. We've been through enough for this new life, I'll be damned if we don't keep it."
'Saved'. It always ended the same way. The hunter's silver blade cleaving across the page and through their enemies. Without fail she would be pulled out of the bowels of despair and throw her hands up in quiet celebration. However, after she turned the final page the storybook world would disappear, leaving her alone in the woods. The girl tried the word for herself, but no sound came from her lips.
Dark red petals drifted together with leaves from the wood. The picture books and the hands holding them were finally clean. All the neighbourhood folk and all the beasts in the woods were asleep and she didn't intend to wake them. She was only here to return her debt to the son's room with the couple none the wiser.
The girl's footsteps were muffled in soft grass as they dodged around the dry leaves. The son's training dummies and foam swords were back in their place, but the leaves were still a mess even up to the back entrance. She gently swept them aside with one foot, revealing a mat in front of the door still unlocked. Entering the domain of man the least she could do would be to clean her filthy paws before opening the door.
A light ping sounded off below her and something loud tore partway through her heel. The shot sent her writhing in a tiny pit dug out just below the doormat. Laying there, a picture book cover stared back at her. Four hunters, a distant figure looming over them in the distance. She heard the commotion above as the couple ran down the stairs.
The woman fired. The girl yelped as the shot threw her back out into the yard, piercing the many junctions where all her old wounds crossed one another. Skin parted violently like a garden of roses in full bloom. They shouted at her and between each other while the girl pleaded and cried in half formed words she could barely understand over the thunderclap shotgun that punctuated every sentence.
"What the hell is that?"
"You've come back to finish the job, haven't you?"
"Calm down, it has to be some kind of animal-"
"Twenty years and thousands of miles apart, and yet here you are. To burn me and my life to the ground? Just because you were left behind? After you took him from me?"
"Just chase it off, I'll call the hunters-"
"You know, I've been bleeding too. Every month I'm reminded of those days with you! I try to look like I'm above it all when I'm in front of my neighbours, my friends, in front of my own son."
"Sauda, please-"
"That's right, my own son! Funny how that turned out. He grew up so lonely, no one to play with at home. And when he asks me why we took him in, why we didn't have any on our own!"
"Please, you have to let this go!"
"I will! I'm tired of jumping at shadows. I should have buried that girl back at Coquina!"
The firing stopped.
Nine shattered moons and twenty-nine days since she'd left Vacuo the girl had told herself that under the night sky and shattered glass windows, on the shattered land and in her shattered body and soul, somewhere in there it would be all right. Imbued within their words was a divine heart-wrenching power, almost enough for the girl to believe they were the ones on the ground broken and bleeding and not her. But when she put the pieces together, she could find nothing that excused the blood pouring off her bare back and the boiling in her gut. From where they stood, it must have looked as if a holy ward had been cast upon the backyard lawn, repelling the demon. The girl saw only steel bars between them. The padlock had been shot open, she needed only step out.
She didn't remember what was spoken in those moments. Not much of any sensation beyond white noise and the tinge of red that coloured her entire world. Numbness clothed her fully as she glided through the planks and concrete and rebar that held the walls together, into the empty living room where the couple had fled. Furniture crashed into her and shattered, an iron shovel bent backwards against her shoulder and with a swat it caved in the man's skull. The final shotgun round pressed against her cheek shattered the weapon from within, scarring the walls with far-flung fragments. The gilded photo frame hung on by one corner, holes in the glass case letting in fresh air. The mother collapsed to the floor, a red hot piece of the barrel embedded through the skull.
The doorbell rang once all was quiet. Her footsteps plunged through the corpses, washing the dirt from her legs as the girl trudged onward.
The front door creaks open very slowly as if the house were taking a long breath. The girl emerges towering, a stray lock of platinum blonde hair off the top of her head brushes under the door frame. On the other end of the ghillie suit hood, scarlet eyes bear down on me, her brows furrowed with tension barely contained. She grits her teeth. Crystal clear droplets stream down bloodstained cheeks and leave their final mark on the front porch.
There was one last word she learnt from those storybooks. Before it was a spear of light made to deliver judgement on her and her alone. But in the books it was a rabid double edged sword, that cut into with equal contempt the creatures of Grimm and those people deemed unworthy of salvation by the story, the world itself. No rhyme or reason given to their crimes before the gavel or guillotine fell. It is the only word she truly knows.
The girl from the Nagamori wood speaks for the first time. The breath escapes her in a choked sob trying its best to sound like a knife to the gut.
"Monster."
I smile back at her.
A/N: More inconsistent uploads from now on. Second arc is done but editing.