Dororo: A Novel
Tsuji Masaki
Part Two:
The Tale of Yarokamizu,
the Water Demon
Chapter 2
Hyakkimaru.
Dororo didn’t know his name yet. He wouldn’t learn it until some time after.
Hyakkimaru had been standing still along the riverbank for quite some time without being noticed. He was like a shadow, almost invisible. He was five or six years older than Dororo. His clothing was just as shabby as Dororo’s was, with one significant difference: he carried a sword at his hip. He might have been a temple foundling or the son of a farmer: his origins were unclear. There was an otherworldly aura around him that was difficult to describe, but easy to sense.
Hyakkimaru was whole and sound of body--his limbs no less than his eyes and ears--but there was also something a bit off about his physical appearance. He was almost too perfect, as if pieces of him had been molded like the pieces of a doll. His face was a pale white. His eyes gleamed like glass. Though his eyes moved in the direction of sound, they never focused on anything specific.
The leader of the roving thieves that had chased Dororo caught sight of Hyakkimaru. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.
“Stay back,” Hyakkimaru commanded. His voice was clear, but his lips didn’t move. They were as pale as the rest of his face, ash-gray and thin.
“Who do you think you are?”
The thieves hadn’t noticed that Hyakkimaru’s lips hadn’t moved. Why would they? Telepathy wasn’t exactly common--if telepathy was indeed the cause of Hyakkimaru’s weird ability to speak without moving his mouth. The thieves had no conception of the power Hyakkimaru possessed--his ability to transmit his thoughts into the minds of other people, as if he’d spoken them aloud. And because they had no conception of this power, they made the mistake of thinking that Hyakkimaru was an ordinary boy.
“You cheeky bastard! You’re talking to the world’s greatest thieves. Don’t think to cross us, or you’ll regret it!”
Dororo took note of Hyakkimaru standing up to the thieves and thought to take advantage of the situation. “Yo! Can you talk to these guys for me? They won’t back off.”
Hyakkimaru shook his head. “Why should I speak on another’s behalf? I can tell that you’re beaten up, but that has nothing to do with me. I only spoke to warn them, and you. Stay back.”
“Warn us?”
“Yes. I’m here to exterminate a demon.”
“A demon?”
The thieves exchanged glances. Was this boy crazy? The thieves looked at him again, as if there was some obvious sign of insanity in him that they’d be able to see with the naked eye.
Hyakkimaru’s right arm twitched. He raised it, then pointed out at the river, upstream. “It’s coming from that direction. I sense it.” His tone was exceedingly confident.
“You believe in demons? You know, it’s better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”
The thieves laughed. Hyakkimaru didn’t react.
“So, a demon’s coming, huh? How do you know? You got demon kin or somethin’?”
The thieves laughed again.
Hyakkimaru showed no sign of being troubled by their mockery. He didn’t seem angry in the slightest. With the prudence and self-possession of a man thrice his age, he said, “I’m not related to any demons. It’s more accurate to say that I’m blessed.”
“Blessed?”
The thieves were confused by Hyakkimaru’s statement.
“Get away from here,” Hyakkimaru said. “I’m serious. If you don’t, you’ll regret it.”
Hyakkimaru glanced down to check his footing. He entered the water, then drew himself up to his full height in a threatening pose. He ignored the thieves and Dororo as if they were nothing more than mute stones on the riverbank, concentrating only on the water in front of him. The river became broader upstream, where he was looking.
It was early autumn, and the sun was setting. The wind blowing over the water went from chilly to ice-cold in an instant as the sun dipped below the horizon. There were tales that claimed demons came out at sunset. Twilight was nicknamed “the time of disaster.1”
Dororo heard a voice on the wind.
“Do you want some?”
The voice was barely louder than a whisper. Dororo couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Was it coming from the sky? Or was it coming up through the crust of the earth?
“Do you want some? Do you want some?”
The voice was louder now. Instead of one voice whispering, it sounded like a thousand.
“Do you want some?”
Dororo’s knees shook. The thieves went pale and cast one another frightened looks as if they were searching for reassurance from their comrades.
“Do you want some?!”
As the voice raised in pitch and volume, Hyakkimaru planted his feet strongly in the water, then cried out: “Yes! Give some to me!”
The voice faded away. In its place, there was a terrific splash, and then the sound of something emerging from the surface of the river. Something huge.
As the thing emerged, its shape gained definition: it appeared to be a large river stone, worn smooth from erosion and time. But the stone had a face. When the stone caught sight of Hyakkimaru, it laughed.
The stone’s voice was the same one that had asked, “Do you want some?” Its laugh was an explosive sound that shook the ground underfoot and caused ripples in the water. If you listened closely, you would realize that the stone’s laughter was not true laughter, and that it was mimicking the sound by using all the little stones in the river to imitate a human voice.
“Gah!” Dororo gasped. In the time it took to blink, the wide streambed was transformed into an enormous whirlpool.
The thieves were swiftly pulled under by the current; they could no longer see. Dororo was lighter and faster; he jumped up the bank and held onto the bough of a willow tree for dear life.
“Wha… what the hell is that?!” Dororo cried out.
Dororo didn’t know it, but there was a demon in the water, as Hyakkimaru had said. The demon’s same was Yarokamizu--the Water Demon.2 The demon lured in victims with its repeated questions, then overwhelmed them with a flood of water to drown them. Ancient records of what is now Aichi Prefecture mention the demon inhabiting Lake Iruka in Inuyama. The lake is now in Meijimura.3
“You... what are you doing?” Dororo’s eyes went wide from shock.
Hyakkimaru stood in the center of the whirlpool. The water was up to his waist, but his footing was steady. It seemed like the force of the whirlpool didn’t affect him at all. The largely unremarkable boy--impoverished, ordinary--lifted his hands overhead.
Dororo only noticed the moment that he raised his hands that they weren’t hands. Not anymore. From the elbow to where his hands should be, Hyakkimaru’s left and right arms were sharp short swords.
“Gah! A monster!” Dororo yelled.
Hyakkimaru fell into the water with a violent splash. He righted himself, shouting wordlessly, then stabbed strongly into the water as if there was an enemy standing before him.
Unfortunately, Dororo couldn’t see what happened next. The branch he clung to broke, and he fell straight down into the whirlpool’s current.
“Hyaaah!
Dororo hit the water like an iron cannonball. He clawed his way by inches to the riverbank and pulled himself up, gasping. He looked around and caught sight of Hyakkimaru again.
“Hey, you!” Hyakkimaru shouted. “Grab my arms for me, will you?”
Dororo turned to look at him. He was still standing in the water, sword-arms at his sides. The blades of both swords were stained with something blue and sticky.
“Are you deaf? Can you get my arms for me?” Hyakkimaru asked. “They’re over there.”
And they were. Dororo looked where he pointed and identified two pale, bloodless arms.
“Don’t worry.” Hyakkimaru must have noticed confusion or fear in Dororo’s expression. “You can pick them up. They won’t move on their own.”
Dororo offered Hyakkimaru a cold smile. “Well, now. Where did you learn your manners? If you want someone to do something for you, isn’t it better to use ‘please’ and ‘thank you?’”
“What?” Hyakkimaru replied. He seemed surprised. “You were clinging to that tree and shaking with fear a little while ago. I dealt with the demon, so it was safe to come down. Shouldn’t you be thanking me?”
“Of course I was shaking,” Dororo said. “I was wet, and the water was cold!”
“I see... so you’re blaming the water?” Hyakkimaru shook his head. “That’s... not true, I think.”
Dororo frowned. He’d just fallen into the river, and he’d been wet before that, too, from when he’d outrun the thieves. But now, he was bone dry--not even his clothes were damp.
“The water that the demon summons is an illusion,” Hyakkimaru said. “It’s not real.” He cleaned his swords in the river, then walked over to his fallen arms and used his feet to kick them up so that they slotted over the swords. He slid both arms into place carefully, one at a time. “Have you heard the stories around Musashino?4 They call water demons ‘Fleeing Water’ there. People say they conjure shadows to hide in, and draw in water from faraway rivers and streams.” The demons were apparently capable of creating mirages--images that weren’t there, but that deceived people into following the demons.
“Yarokamizu was similar to those demons, but older--thousands of years older. It could manipulate every stone in this river--and probably not just this river, either. And it used water, real and imaginary, to hide itself, like you saw.”
Once his arms were fastened on securely, Hyakkimaru pointed to a large boulder a few yards away from him. The stone was weirdly shaped and covered over with moss. When Dororo looked closer, he noticed that it was cloven in two. The crack between the two split pieces bubbled with blue liquid that was the same consistency as blood--the same stuff that Dororo had seen staining Hyakkimaru’s swords. When Hyakkimaru had aimed at the water to stab it, that had been an illusion. He’d been aiming for the stone the whole time. The cut was thin, but clean through.
“I don’t hunt demons,” Hyakkimaru said. “They hunt me.” He said no more.
Dororo’s lower lip trembled. There was a strange light in his eyes. For no clear reason, he started to laugh.
“Hey!” Hyakkimaru said. “What’s so funny?”
“Hehehehe...” Dororo didn’t bother to hide his intent. He was a thief, but a strangely honest one. “I’m gonna steal those swords of yours if it’s the last thing I do!”
1 The expression used here is 逢魔ヶ刻, which means “twilight; time for disasters.” This phrase is similar to the Western concept of the witching hour, but it occurs at sunset, not at midnight.↩
2 やろか水: Yarokamizu is likely a (slight) abbreviation for “Do you want some water?” The question the demon has been asking throughout this passage is やろうか？, yarou ka, meaning “Do you want some?” or “Will you take some?”↩
3 Inuyama (犬山市, Inuyama-shi) is a city in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. The name of the city literally transliterates to "Dog Mountain." The name appears in historical records from 1336 AD, but its origin is unknown.
Meijimura (明治村, "Meiji Village Museum") is an open-air architectural museum/theme park in Inuyama, near Nagoya in Aichi prefecture, Japan. It was opened on March 18, 1965. The museum preserves historic buildings from Japan's Meiji (1867–1912), Taishō (1912–1926), and early Shōwa (1926–1947) periods. Over 60 historical buildings have been moved and reconstructed onto 1 square kilometer (250 acres) of rolling hills alongside Lake Iruka. ↩
4 Musashino (武蔵野市, Musashino-shi) is a city located in the western portion of Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. During the time that this novel is set, Musashino would be to the west of Edo (Tōkyō), which is to the northeast of Kyōto. ↩
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