Mononoke: more

@LupinIII

Published in 

Fan Fiction

 · 24 Jun 2024

From: mew3point14@doramail.com (Daniel Snyder)

Two decades had passed. Although the town was known for its crafts, they still called it Iron Town. Glass blowers had taken the place of smiths. Rice was a local commodity, not an import. Iron still glinted, but as knives and ploughs, not harquebuses. In the main streets of the town early on market day, vendors could be seen selling all manner of wares: grains, spices, wooden toys, pretty dolls, hand-dyed cloth for kimonos. Boys loafed about waiting for beautiful girls to walk by, while the older women traded gossip and the grown men joked and bragged.

It was just light when the enigmatic man walked into town. Ashitaka, satellite citizen of Iron Town, was by his own choice not a part of them. Half-Animal they called him behind his back, out of fear. Yet his reappearance in the town was in many ways a happy occasion--a memento of where the town had come from. Only the early hour and the many empty stalls of the market kept the people from swarming him in celebration.

Muddy and dressed for travel, Ashitaka walked as quickly as he could to the edge of the town, where he knocked on the front door of a large house. A maid opened the door and, unbidden, showed him into a sitting room. He sat on the floor, out of place amid the trappings of luxury.

A few minutes passed before the same maid brought in his hostess. The years had not been merciful to Lady Eboshi. Lines upon lines creased and cracked her wan face. The one hand left to her, the one that had ruled Iron Town for so long, clutched a cane; and as the woman entered, her old knees buckled out from beneath her. Ashitaka and the maid caught her halfway to the floor. Humbled, she offered a smile. "Unable to stand and greet my visitors, such is the way of the flesh. Ashitaka, my dear boy, it is so good to see you again. Can I offer you some tea?"

"It is urgent. I must refuse."

Ashitaka pulled away his mask, showing time had not spared him, either. His face was hard, chiseled into sharp angles by the struggle to live outside of civilization's walls. He had looked into the eyes of life itself and found a reason to be hidden away within the vitreous depths.

"I have a favor to ask of you, Eboshi-sama," he said; and then he lay prostrate, touching his forehead to the ground. His hostess was so shocked by the gesture of humility that she could say nothing for a few moments.

When she did find her tongue again, she laughed. "Ashitaka, this must be some kind of a joke. There's no need for such behavior..."

"It is not a joke. And there is." Prince though he was, Ashitaka spoke into the carpet. He did not say a word more before Eboshi lifted up his head. "Eboshi-sama, San is sick to the verge of death. Neither I nor any spirits in the forest can help her. You are a clever woman, Eboshi-sama. I beg you, please help her however you can."

"Mononoke-hime? In trouble?" Eboshi smiled again. Neither triumphant nor sadistic, its meaning was too mysterious for the man to understand. She let his head go and drew herself up. "Of course I will help, Ashitaka. You need only have asked."

He made no reply. Eboshi continued her thought. "I could not live without her to remind me why I live the way I do. I feel her eyes on me every hour of every day. Come. We'll go to my garden out back."

The two walked side by side to the back of Eboshi's house. As in days of old, flowers and vegetables grew in neat rows between her home and where the lepers lived. Eboshi took an iron sickle and harvested some fresh herbs that grew along one rock wall. "Tell me the truth, Ashitaka. Did you tell Mononoke-hime that you would come to me for help?"

"Yes."

"And did she forbid you from coming?"

"Yes, she did."

"Then I think it better that she refuse me to my face." Eboshi placed the herbs into a bag and drew the string tight. "We'll ride. I haven't the strength in me to walk a long distance through the forest anymore."

Yakkul was long dead, but the mare Eboshi borrowed was strong and sure-footed. They rode through the midday, when the mare drew up at the foot of a hill and would go no further. "We are nearly there," Ashitaka told Eboshi, and they dismounted. He carried her on his back up to the summit.

Looking out over a vale covered in the green garb of nature was a small cave, hewn by unknown forces into the mighty granite rock. Two yama-inu were perched on the roof of the cave, eyeing the humans suspiciously; but they made no effort to stop Ashitaka or Eboshi as they went inside.

The smell of sickness came from within the cave. It was an unholy itch that could not be scratched or exorcised. Human infirmity wafted upon papery wings. Tucked away from the sun's light was a small nest of pelts, and lying small on the top was the princess San. On that day, her beauty was marred by her disease. San was flushed yet shivering. Her breath came in wheezes and gasps. The odor of shit, and a companion aura of infirmity, clung to her. But of the three, only she had become more beautiful over two decades. Dignified and mature, her gifts--hidden by the thin wrap she wore--made her look like Mother Nature: gentle curves, muscle beneath skin, and fertility. Stronger than the disease, she still held about her an adoration for life and all living things.

"Whozzat?" she asked as they stepped back into the cave. "I can hear...smell...you..."

"It's me," Ashitaka said coming close to her. "I've brought Eboshi- sama with me."

"It's been a long time, San," Eboshi said, bowing as low as her old body would let her.

San growled. Only the sickness kept her from sounding more vicious, more regal, than she did. "You've come to watch me suffer. Is that it, woman?"

"No," she replied gently, "I've come to help you as much as I can. You saved my life, and soul, once upon a time. I'd like to return that favor now."

San made no reply, caught in a fit of coughing. "Wait outside, woman," she said. When Eboshi had hobbled off, San turned her bleary eyes to Ashitaka. "I told you, I didn't want any help from her! Or any human!"

"Forgive me," he said, "I was worried for you."

"I _won't_ take any human medicine! I won't!"

"I had Eboshi-sama harvest some herbs from her garden. You can take them if you want. I promise you, I won't force you to."

She was quiet, and even her symptoms seemed to ebb while she thought. At length, she said, "Ashitaka...do you...did you ever think about...what life would have been like if we had been mated?"

"I do. As much now as then."

"But you never said anything."

"I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't want to make you make a choice."

She sighed a wheezy sigh. "Send...that woman in. Please. Then...I want you to wait outside."

Ashitaka did as he was told. Eboshi trudged in on her old feet and watched San quietly. San saw tears in the older woman's eyes.

They waited on the cusp of conversation.

"You're not saying anything," San observed.

"What's there to say? We've been together a long time, you and I. It's sad, now, to think of losing you."

"Why? You've your redemption, I have...nothing but memories. The gods are dying. The boars and the apes never set foot in these hills. In another twenty years, they'll all be dead."

Eboshi couldn't hide her surprise. "Are these the words of the woman who stared down an entire village? Have you really lost all of your hope, San?

"I stand for things you wouldn't dream of, woman."

"You've made me dream, then. It's something you've shown me how to do. And as I sit here, I would not have had it any other way. Lose the arm. Forfeit power. Never know of the Emperor's grace. I'll take death with dreams over an empty life, because of who you are and what you have taught me."

Eboshi waited.

"I don't want Ashitaka to see me," San burst out. "There've been nights in the winter when I heard the south wind coming, felt it blowing through the trees, and I wanted his arms around me. And the first days of spring, when the mountain cascades flood the streams higher than they do all year, and I see my reflection, and I want to see his face beside mine. Ten thousand moments have passed like that, Eboshi. It's rotten to want a human with me. I've chosen not to be with him. Now..." Anxiously, she put her finger into her mouth to dam the raging emotions.

"He cares about you," Eboshi said soothingly. "Ever since I've known him, you've made his life richer and happier. Mine too, even. All of ours. But not the same way, oh, no."

"I don't want him to see me," she said again. With an effort, she raised herself up off the nest and looked at the pouch around Eboshi's neck. "What's in there?" she asked.

"Herbs from my garden."

"Why do you take plants out of the forest and grow them in the company of people?"

"Because I love them."

"That's not love."

"I fear losing what I have, then." Eboshi rose to her feet and hobbled to the mouth of the cave. "Ashitaka, San needs a lot of good clean water. Will you go and get her some?"

"Of course."

Eboshi turned back inside. San had raised herself up onto her elbows and was watching the older woman from half-lidded eyes. Eboshi opened the bag and pulled out the drying plants. "These will reduce your fever, and these will help the pains in your body. The flowers here will be good for your stomach." She pressed the herbs into San's hand. "Let me make you comfortable there," Eboshi went on. "I can help you straighten out your bed, and clean up that...mess."

San stared at the cluster of herbs. "Days and days of changes, but everything's stayed the same, and now this! I'm going to eat plants that a human's cut with a knife!"

"You value your pride more than your life?"

Clutching the herbs in her hand, San lay back down on her nest. "He loves me for what I am."

"He loves you unconditionally."

An hour later, Ashitaka returned with two gourds full of water. He had seen nothing. An hour after that, as the afternoon became evening, an allergic reaction seized hold of San. The herbs' alkaloids slipped into her bloodstream, and something went wrong: chemicals didn't bond as they should. In fear, histamines poured to fight an unintensional aggressor. San's blood pressure fell perilously. Her temperature skyrocketed. Convulsions set in. She grew delerious. It was all Ashitaka could do to hold her down, to keep her from hurting herself as her garbled shouting became more and more like a wolf's growling.

Late that night, on Death's door, she had a merciful burst of lucidity. "Why, woman?" she asked, desperately clinging to the spark of life inside of her.

"It's an allergic reaction to one of the herbs. There was no way for you or I to know it in advance...I'm sorry. I truly am."

"I forgive you. You were only trying to help me live. Just like you've tried to help those plants in your garden live."

"Do you forgive yourself, San? Could you live with yourself now, if you had the chance?"

"I could. I do. Ashitaka, hold me now while I can still feel your arms..."

And that was how she died soon afterwards, in the company of her one true love and her unlikely friend. Her kin the yama-inu howled a dirge for her as night became dawn, as things had been on the Earth for epochs and kalpas. It is the way things are now, and they shall never change, Ashitaka told himself. He wept openly, unashamed, for his lost love.

They dressed her in her clothes again and brought her outside the cave. "We should give her funary rights and cremate her body," Eboshi said.

"Rites, yes. But I think we should bury her body," Ashitaka replied.

"Cremation is cleaner, I think."

"You will burn away that which I love. I love even the worms in her stomach and the bugs in her hair, for they have touched her and grown beautiful because of who she has been."

So they buried her on a hill removed from Iron Town. The folk who admired her were silent and the forest that loved her wept. It was all righteous behavior, for every one of them marked the loss with a gentle touch. No longer was there a princess of the Mononoke: San, who smelled more like dirt than like stone, more like blood than like milk.
--
Copyright 2001 Daniel Snyder. Permission granted to duplicate in any digital/binary/e-mail form; however, any physical printout is strictly prohibited. Mononoke Hime/Princess Mononoke is the intellectual property of Miyazaki Hayao. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased is purely coincidental.

Special thanks to Marco de la Cruz and Greg Smith. For my parents as they journey around the world.