Teito Monogatari:
The Tale of the Imperial Capital
Part 3: The Book of Catastrophe
Author: Hiroshi Aramata
Part 1: The Eternal Moon
A gigantic silver moon hung in the endless pale-blue void of the sky. Silver droplets gathered along its edge and dripped steadily down, faintly illuminating the room where Tatsumiya Yukari dozed. The rice mat flooring rustled beneath her.
The courtyard beyond the covered hallway gleamed coldly, as though silver-plated.
The moon in Yukari’s dream was unimaginably large, so large that her head felt heavy and she couldn’t stand up. Oppressive, that moon, shining on a summer night without wind. The moon itself felt freezing cold.
Covered in sweat, Yukari turned in her sleep. Her pale face turned toward the courtyard. Bright light flickered against her eyelids. The backs of her closed eyes were dyed silver. Hard and sharp silver, like a gleaming sword.
Yukari blinked. Deep furrows carved the skin between her brows.
It was midnight. Why was the light so dazzlingly bright?
A headache clawed at her. She could not bear it and awoke because of the pain.
For an instant, her pupils narrowed thin as a cat’s and reflected gold.
At first, she thought she was still the dream. An immense, silvery disk even larger than the moon she had just seen hung in the pale blue sky. And why was the night sky so washed-out? Looking at it made Yukari feel sorrowful, like the sky had faded after years of suffering wind and rain.
The light of the moon was as bright as day and white as snow.
It took Yukari some time to realize that she was awake. When she understood what she was seeing, she jerked upright as if she feared being struck for standing still.
A sense of foreboding clawed at her chest. She crawled toward the covered hallway and looked up at the preternatural moon. She blinked again and again, but this was no dream. The moon shining on her now was the real thing.
Her head hurt as if it would split apart. Her hair stood on end. She stood up carefully and stood still. She didn’t know what to do. She only knew that she was too terrified to remain on the ground. Her legs crossed over one another, tangling so that she nearly fell. Her body felt distorted like sunlight curving along a horizon line. She leaned against the wall of the covered hallway, her spine arching backward.
Yukari clung to the wall to steady herself. She took deep breaths and looked across the silver-dyed courtyard. In the shadow of a wall was a little girl sobbing softly as she looked up at the gigantic moon.
Yukiko.
Yukari let out a voiceless cry.
The girl turned toward Yukari. Tears ran down her fine-boned cheeks.
Yukari slipped down into the garden before she knew what she was doing. The cold texture of the stones ran up her spine like an electric shock.
When she began walking, the moon’s weight increased on her. She felt like she was walking through water. A mother’s instinct drove her onward.
“Yukiko,” she said, catching the girl in her arms. “What’s wrong?”
The child gazed up at her with profound eyes. The silver moon was reflected in them.
“The moon has died,” Yukiko whispered. “The moon is dead, Mother.”
Yukari looked up at the moon floating in the void.
“The moon will not move anymore,” Yukiko said. “Soon it will be flung out beyond the sky.”
Yukari held her daughter close and strained to hear. There was a dull, metallic ringing in her ears that made her feel numb.
Then all sound disappeared.
What spread afterward was not silence, but a blank space. A gaping hole in the world.
Yukiko was whispering, but Yukari could not hear her. All she could faintly make out were phrases.
“—eternal moon—”
“What?” Yukari asked.
“—eternal—”
“Eternal?”
“—moon—”
“The eternal moon?”
The girl nodded. Hot tears ran down her cheeks. Yukari’s hearing finally returned to normal.
“What has happened to the eternal moon?”
“The moon will never wane again. It will remain full forever.”
“Why?”
The girl was silent for a long time. Then she whispered, “Because I stopped the moon.”
***
That night, in the void above Tōkyō, the moon had frozen and refused to move. The city would experience the Great Kantō Earthquake a few days later. Only the mother and daughter knew that the Moon had halted its course and drawn dangerously close to the Earth.
This was an omen of tragedy.
Was it a dream? Or was it reality? When Yukari awoke the next day, she could not understand the meaning of the enormous moon she had seen. The words her daughter had whispered remained in her ears like the voice of a ghost.
I stopped the moon.
Yukiko had just turned eight years old.
Yukari shook her head and covered her ears.
The eternal moon they had seen that night was a prophetic dream woven by the earth spirits of Tōkyō. The spirits had learned that Tōkyō’s fate would be death.
Dawn broke on September 1, 1923.
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