Beyond the Werefox Whistle
Written by Uehashi Nahoko
Illustrated by Yumiko Shirai
Part 2: The Cursed One and the Guardian
Chapter 7: A Gloomy Rain
Light rain fell, making pitter-patter sounds on the stable roof.
“Touta, could I trouble you to take care of my horse for a bit? I’ll grab an extra rice ball for you later,” Shigeta said. He was one of the stable hands.
Touta, a castle page, gave him a light and mocking bow. “Of course.” He slowly rubbed the chestnut horse’s back with a bundle of straw. The horse snorted happily.
With the horse taken care of, Shigeta ran out into the rain.
Recently, Shigeta had become addicted to gambling. He didn’t look forward to complaints from others about him losing more money, but going gambling was a good excuse for him to be gone for long periods of time. No one thought it strange for him to vanish for an hour or two.
Touta was actually Nobi in disguise. He didn’t mind Shigeta’s absences, either. Horse duty wasn’t so bad now that he knew how to manage the animals. When Nobi had first come here as a castle page, he hadn’t known how intelligent and sensitive horses were. Horses knew that he was a spirit fox, no matter what shape he took. They could smell his species on him, and most horses didn’t like it. He got kicked a lot before he learned ways to calm horses down.
It was easy for a spirit fox to trick people, but tricking horses was next to impossible. The same was true of dogs. People trusted their eyes, so every person who saw Nobi recognized him as someone who’d worked in the castle for years. The castle’s animals had never been fooled.
For a castle page, caring for the horses was a daily chore. If Nobi hadn’t managed to get along with the horses, he wouldn’t have been allowed to be a page. When he was still new to the castle, he would get around the issue by doing other work as much as possible, but that couldn’t last.
One day, while Nobi was fetching water, he passed by a horse that didn’t react to him at all. At first Nobi thought that this was a fluke, but it kept happening. He finally figured out that when he felt like a human, the rest of the world—including animals—thought he was one.
Feeling like a human was weird. Sometimes Nobi got the sense that he’d been born a human, though that was nonsensical. The first time he’d transformed into a human, he’d gotten so motion-sick that he’d nearly thrown up. His body had felt alien: long-limbed and too tall, too big in every way, and there was so little fur! Human bodies were just wrong.
Human senses were also different from his spirit fox ones. His sense of smell was worse and his need for company was greater. He didn’t really like it, but he got used to it after a few days.
The horses and dogs in the castle didn’t mind Nobi when he forgot, however briefly, that he was a spirit fox. That happened when he spent a lot of time among people: talking, eating, laughing, reading. Being accepted as a human made him feel like one, and that feeling was soothing to the animals he encountered.
Sometimes Nobi wondered what would happen if he stayed in his human form for too long. Would he get stuck like this? He might feel like a human sometimes, but he wasn’t one. This form was temporary. He’d go back to being a spirit fox one day.
And he still transformed into a spirit fox to report to his master. These days it was his spirit fox form that felt alien to him. He was too close to the ground, his limbs were too small and his fur itched.
Nobi was himself—the spirit fox—and Touta, the castle page, but he also wasn’t fully either. He could pass as either one, but he wasn’t human and he’d lost his family among the spirit foxes.
The poorly fitted stable door rattled in the wind. Gazing blankly in that direction, Nobi remembered seeing Sayo earlier that afternoon. Why was she there? he thought. Had she realized that there was something off about Koharumaru—that the riders were a trap to lure in Koharumaru’s enemies?
Nobi was sure that Sayo had noticed that Koharumaru wasn’t the same as she remembered. He recalled her eyes, so full of anxiety and confusion. He had found out more about the strange place with the barrier and all the plum trees: it belonged to Dairou, who could use barrier magic. He was a foreigner that Lord Harumochi had assigned the task of protecting Koharumaru. Nobi guessed—but he didn’t think he was wrong—that Sayo would go to Dairou and tell him about the strangeness she’d observed in Koharumaru.
And if Sayo did that…
Nobi would have to kill her. There was no other choice.
Nobi closed his eyes tight and breathed. He felt a slight tug on his mind: someone was calling him.
The horse’s ears twitched. Nobi felt the animal’s tension.
Nobi frowned, then opened his eyes. There was no one around. He leaped into the air and somersaulted into fox form, then dashed off in the direction of the call.
What is happening? Nobi thought as he ran.
Right after a transformation, objects in the world appeared far too large to Nobi. Trees twice his height when he was in human form towered ten times his fox form height or more above him. The sound of the rain was much louder; he heard the echo of every raindrop as it struck the ground. Smells were more intense and told him more. The wet earth and fast-growing grass surrounded him, threatening to overwhelm his senses.
Nobi sprinted past the stables and castle walls. This castle was fairly old—it had been here before Dairou’s father had come from over the sea, at least. That meant there was a barrier around the castle. Nobi wouldn’t have been able to get in and out without assistance from his sorcerer master.
There was a short tree that had been planted by a member of Dairou’s family, or at least someone with their powers. It was inconspicuous—and it didn’t grow—but it was the linchpin that solidified the barrier in this area. Ivy wrapped around the tree, suppressing its strength so that Nobi could sneak through a small gap. Nobi set his paws on the ivy and vanished.
No one saw Nobi leave. The darkness and the rain hid him too well, and there were few people outside.
As Nobi returned to the world between words, he let out a sigh of relief. He was unpleasantly wet and shook himself. The world of the spirits was close—close enough to touch—but Nobi couldn’t go there. The gods dwelt there, and the gods would shun him for being a familiar: slave to a sorcerer with evil magic.
Nobi was born in the world between worlds. This was his home, little though he remembered the time of his birth. He streaked through the shadowy forest like a flame and only slowed when he reached the tree where he and his fellow familiars gathered to exchange news.
The tree touched Wakasa Fields in the world of the humans. Nobi saw indistinct cherry and plum blossoms blooming in the trees and falling around him. Tamao and Kageya were already at the tree waiting for him.
“You’re here.”
Nobi shivered, then shifted into the human form of Touta.
Tamao looked at Nobi with her bright, narrow eyes.
“What’s going on?” Nobi asked.
“The door to the dark world,” Kageya said, folding his human arms. “It’s gone.”
Surprised, Nobi looked to the place where the door to the dark world used to be, then stepped closer to it so that he could examine it more closely.
Tamao frowned. “I came here to report to our master, and then I noticed this… You guys can smell it too, right? There’s a faint scent of incense on the underside of the leaves.”
Nobi paled when he caught a whiff of incense.
Tamao wiped her sweaty forehead. “I can smell the scent of that foreign guardian, too. Besides him, there seem to have been two… no, three others here. Two of them women.”
Nobi nodded. The smell of incense was strong here, but not strong enough to completely obliterate the scent of a few humans.
“It’s not the usual repair,” Kageya said. “It’s not a spell woven from incense and prayers. This place is restored. It’s like a door to the dark world was never even here.”
Kageya spoke in a low voice, gazing at the place where the door to the dark world had been.
As Nobi parsed the different scents here, he realized that one of them was Sayo’s. Sayo had been here.
“This isn’t the guardian’s doing. He can’t just erase doors to the dark world—he’s never done it before,” Tamao said.
“If we cannot pass through the doors to the dark world, then we spirit foxes cannot cross between worlds. The guardian’s protections will stop us,” Kageya muttered.
“In any case, we must let the master know immediately,” Nobi said. “We could go around the barriers, over water. There are no barriers over water.”
Kageya shook his head. “That will take too long. We could send hakage as messengers. Hakage are just humans—the barriers won’t repel them.”
“The quickest route would be to go over Mt. Oro from Wakasa Fields, but there are many guards, so it would be dangerous,” Tamao said. “Whether we send the hakage over the mountains or by horseback along the main roads, the journey will take a long time. Humans are slow and get tired easily. But if we cannot travel through the door to the dark world here, then what other choice do we have?”
Tamao muttered darkly under her breath for a few moments. “We can’t just sit around waiting for the master to hear about this,” she said. “Someone with more power than the guardian has appeared—or the guardian has gained a new power. If this new power is put into the service of Lord Harumochi, it will be disastrous. The trap we have set will be discovered. Koharumaru will be out of our reach.”
Kageya stared intently at Tamao. “It’s our job to prevent that from happening.”
The spirit foxes, in their human shapes, stood before the door to the dark world that was now closed forever. Gloomy rain fell in the world between worlds, casting shadows over Nobi’s face. Nobi stood there in the rain and the darkness with the other familiars and shivered.
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