Demon Sword Dance
Book 2 of the Dororo Novel Series
Toriumi Jinzō
Part 4 - Priestess Mai
Chapter 4
Rain fell in the village that night. Nuinosuke and Mai sat together drinking and talking, just as they usually did. Mai was in an unusually good mood. A faint blush painted her cheeks a soft rose color; her eyes sparkled with excitement or joy.
“You seem pleased,” Nuinosuke said.
“Yes,” she said with a little laugh. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been.” Mai pounced on Nuinonosuke, falling chest to chest onto the floor.
“Do you feel like telling me why?” Nuinosuke asked.
“No,” she said. “I am happy for reasons known only to myself, but that doesn’t mean I can’t celebrate with you.”
I can never tell what she’s thinking, Nuinosuke thought. She’s so beautiful...how does she have such a hold over me?
He thought that even as he pressed his mouth over hers.
There was a sudden flash of light inside the estate as if it had been struck by lightning, but there was no storm. Mai started in surprise and pushed Nuinosuke away, covering her face with a cry.
Nuinosuke stood straight up and took a step back from Mai. “Your...your face...”
“What has happened to it?” she asked. She turned toward a mirror in the corner and gasped. “Why would they do something so cruel?”
Nuinosuke kicked over the sake bottle in shock as he got a good look at Mai’s hideously transmogrified features. “M-monster! Demon!” He drew Nihil from its sheath.
Mai’s face had transformed into a giant gypsy moth’s. Large, furry antenna emerged from both sides of her head. Huge white wings sprouted from the base of her skull and fluttered behind her. Brown fur grew over her white skin. Mai seemed just as shocked as he was; she stood still and didn’t move, though she couldn’t control her trembling.
Nuinosuke’s hair stood on end. What on earth was happening here? “Yōkai! For how long have you deceived me?” His voice was hard-edged from rage. He slashed Nihil wildly out in front of him.
Bright lightning, soundless, flashed in the room again and reflected off of Nihil’s blade. Nihil seemed to absorb part of the light. Nuinosuke was briefly distracted by the sight, but he forced himself into focus again and faced the monster.
“Nuinosuke--wait--”
Mai stood there, looking the same as she always did.
“I--am not a living woman, but a spirit. Forgive me. I should have told you sooner.” Her voice was barely louder than a whisper.
Nuinosuke gaped at her in shocked. I’ve been bewitched this whole time by a ghost?! The thought made him vaguely nauseous.
“Listen to me, please,” Mai said. “I’ll tell you everything.” And she did, in starts and stops.
Mai was born to the Madenokōji Clan. Her father Kimifusa was a court noble of the fifth rank and the keeper of the Imperial Court’s historical archives. The role of had a long history: it was established in the year 810. Shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa transferred this role to the Imperial official in charge of communication between the shogunate and the court. He didn’t do this because Kimifusa was incompetent or untrustworthy, but because the historical archives were increasingly concerned with recording matters of warfare. Yoshimasa had frequent, pestering requests by the Imperial Court for more transparency into how the archives were maintained and updated.
The Imperial official in charge of communication between the shogunate and the court gained a lot of power in those days. When Jukai’s father Hisamaro was summoned by the leader of the Imperial Court physicians after the sudden and violent death of his wife Seiko, that official was also in attendance, along with all the high-ranked samurai lords.
At that time, Mai was only just of marriageable age, but there had been no marriage negotiations as of yet. She was a remarkably ugly woman and had been since birth. The hair on her head was stringy and too thin. Her eyes were small and piggy. Her nose was too large and drooped down to her thick, cracked lips. She rarely spoke. As a child, she preferred to hide in her room, drawing or reading or writing poems and songs. When she did need to be presented to people, the preparations were so arduous and laborious that she was exhausted by them. She despaired of ever being accepted by the world. It was her fate to spend most of her time alone in study or prayer.
In Mai’s early adulthood, her father Kimifusa received a marriage proposal from a samurai house. Mai wouldn’t be marrying the family’s heir, but one of the younger sons. The proposal came from Kaneko Tomoyasu, who was a temple overseer in the capital.
Mai strongly opposed the match, but her parents worked for months and months to convince her that it was for the best, so she finally agreed to go through with it. Kimifusa and Tomoyasu had always been good friends. Everyone understood that Mai’s marriage would be a political one that would serve the interests of her family as well as the Kaneko Clan.
Before Mai’s father sent her off to visit the Kaneko estate and meet her betrothed, he said, “I know you have devoted your life to reading and study. I understand that you prefer that life and wish to continue it. I just want you to know that all I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy. I truly believe that you will be happy at Kaneko estate.”
Mai was deeply moved. The marriage went on as arranged, with all the due ceremonies required. But when Mai and her husband were married, he would not touch her. They did not sleep in the same room, and he never shared her bed.
Ashamed and frustrated, Mai visited the bedroom of her new husband instead, but all he said was, “Leave me alone. You’re hideous. I can’t stand to look at you.”
He had never done or said anything cruel to her before that. Mai understood that he was finally being honest. Her husband never touched her, not even in anger. When he desired companionship, he sought out other women. Mai was his wife in name only. She learned later that he’d only married her for her family’s wealth and influence at court.
Mai had hoped to be happy, but she should have known better.
One night, she sneaked into her husband’s room very late and tried to stab him through the heart. She was prepared to follow him in death. But as she was standing over him in the dark with a naked blade, she lost her nerve and only managed to scratch her husband’s arm.
“What are you doing, woman? Are you drunk or mad?”
Mai was weaker than him--she should have expected that--so he wrestled the blade away from her. “Die, you bitch!”
Mai felt the blade pierce her chest. She fell. “Do you hate me that much?” she gasped. “Have you always?” Those were her last words. Her husband died forty-nine days after her of a mysterious wasting illness.
Mai was dead, but she wasn’t gone. She assumed the shape of a woman from a northern branch of the Fujiwara Clan and became an onryō--a spirit that existed only for the sake of anger and revenge. The girl, Shishō, was very beautiful and loved by all, but she passed away of an illness when she was twenty years old. Mai possessed her body and used it to walk in the world once more.
“I never wanted to deceive you,” Mai said. “I wanted you to love me. I never wanted to give you any reason to hate me.”
Mai had lived near Hino Village for more than sixty years. During the last great moth infestation in the village, Mai had absorbed the vengeful rage of the moths that were exterminated on the mountain. She became as powerful as a yōkai, though her motivations were still mostly her own...for a while. Mai enjoyed the strength that the absorbed spirits gave to her. It was only when the moths were threatened again that her shape changed, as Nuinosuke had just seen. She was consumed with a desire for vengeance against the villagers for slaughtering so many moths.
Mai had taken to insect worship and pretended to be a priestess in the hopes of appeasing the moth spirits, but this was a temporary solution at best. The rage that had sustained her after death and the rage of the moths had fused together into one being.
But then Nuinosuke had arrived in the village. He was so strong and so devoted to her. She felt loved as a woman for the first time in her long life.
Nuinosuke finally understood why Nihil had never cried out for Mai’s blood. Nihil only craved the blood of living beings. It was possible that Nihil itself had become something like Mai after being forced to take the lives of those forty-two innocent carpenters. Nuinosuke’s tortured pain at what he'd done had turned him into a relentless killer, with the spirit of the sword influencing his actions. Nihil was an object inhabited by a resentful or vengeful spirit--just like Mai.
Nuinosuke dropped Nihil. “If you’re a yōkai, then so am I,” he said quietly. “I don’t even remember how many people I’ve killed with that sword.”
It started to rain. The sound of pattering drops echoed loudly on the roof as if the sky was weeping for both Mai and Nuinosuke.
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