Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things Part 8

Now when the legal period of mourning was over, there came to Raishu, from the Tokoyo palace, a shisha, or royal messenger. The shisha delivered to Akinosuke a message of condolence, and then said to him:--

"These are the words which our august master, the King of Tokoyo, commands that I repeat to you: 'We will now send you back to your own people and country. As for the seven children, they are the grandsons and granddaughters of the King, and shall be fitly cared for. Do not, therefore, allow your mind to be troubled concerning them.'"

On receiving this mandate, Akinosuke submissively prepared for his departure. When all his affairs had been settled, and the ceremony of bidding farewell to his counselors and trusted officials had been concluded, he was escorted with much honor to the port. There he embarked upon the ship sent for him; and the ship sailed out into the blue sea, under the blue sky; and the shape of the island of Raishu itself turned blue, and then turned grey, and then vanished forever...

And Akinosuke suddenly awoke--under the cedar-tree in his own garden!

For a moment he was stupefied and dazed. But he perceived his two friends still seated near him,--drinking and chatting merrily. He stared at them in a bewildered way, and cried aloud,--

"How strange!"

"Akinosuke must have been dreaming," one of them exclaimed, with a laugh. "What did you see, Akinosuke, that was strange?"

Then Akinosuke told his dream,--that dream of three-and-twenty years'

sojourn in the realm of Tokoyo, in the island of Raishu;--and they were astonished, because he had really slept for no more than a few minutes.

One goshi said:--

"Indeed, you saw strange things. We also saw something strange while you were napping. A little yellow b.u.t.terfly was fluttering over your face for a moment or two; and we watched it. Then it alighted on the ground beside you, close to the tree; and almost as soon as it alighted there, a big, big ant came out of a hole and seized it and pulled it down into the hole. Just before you woke up, we saw that very b.u.t.terfly come out of the hole again, and flutter over your face as before. And then it suddenly disappeared: we do not know where it went."

"Perhaps it was Akinosuke's soul," the other goshi said;--"certainly I thought I saw it fly into his mouth... But, even if that b.u.t.terfly was Akinosuke's soul, the fact would not explain his dream."

"The ants might explain it," returned the first speaker. "Ants are queer beings--possibly goblins... Anyhow, there is a big ant's nest under that cedar-tree."...

"Let us look!" cried Akinosuke, greatly moved by this suggestion. And he went for a spade.

The ground about and beneath the cedar-tree proved to have been excavated, in a most surprising way, by a prodigious colony of ants.

The ants had furthermore built inside their excavations; and their tiny constructions of straw, clay, and stems bore an odd resemblance to miniature towns. In the middle of a structure considerably larger than the rest there was a marvelous swarming of small ants around the body of one very big ant, which had yellowish wings and a long black head.

"Why, there is the King of my dream!" cried Akinosuke; "and there is the palace of Tokoyo!... How extraordinary!... Raishu ought to lie somewhere southwest of it--to the left of that big root... Yes!--here it is!... How very strange! Now I am sure that I can find the mountain of Hanryoko, and the grave of the princess."...

In the wreck of the nest he searched and searched, and at last discovered a tiny mound, on the top of which was fixed a water-worn pebble, in shape resembling a Buddhist monument. Underneath it he found--embedded in clay--the dead body of a female ant.

RIKI-BAKA

His name was Riki, signifying Strength; but the people called him Riki-the-Simple, or Riki-the-Fool,--"Riki-Baka,"--because he had been born into perpetual childhood. For the same reason they were kind to him,--even when he set a house on fire by putting a lighted match to a mosquito-curtain, and clapped his hands for joy to see the blaze. At sixteen years he was a tall, strong lad; but in mind he remained always at the happy age of two, and therefore continued to play with very small children. The bigger children of the neighborhood, from four to seven years old, did not care to play with him, because he could not learn their songs and games. His favorite toy was a broomstick, which he used as a hobby-horse; and for hours at a time he would ride on that broomstick, up and down the slope in front of my house, with amazing peals of laughter. But at last he became troublesome by reason of his noise; and I had to tell him that he must find another playground. He bowed submissively, and then went off,--sorrowfully trailing his broomstick behind him. Gentle at all times, and perfectly harmless if allowed no chance to play with fire, he seldom gave anybody cause for complaint. His relation to the life of our street was scarcely more than that of a dog or a chicken; and when he finally disappeared, I did not miss him. Months and months pa.s.sed by before anything happened to remind me of Riki.

"What has become of Riki?" I then asked the old woodcutter who supplies our neighborhood with fuel. I remembered that Riki had often helped him to carry his bundles.

"Riki-Baka?" answered the old man. "Ah, Riki is dead--poor fellow!...

Yes, he died nearly a year ago, very suddenly; the doctors said that he had some disease of the brain. And there is a strange story now about that poor Riki.

"When Riki died, his mother wrote his name, 'Riki-Baka,' in the palm of his left hand,--putting 'Riki' in the Chinese character, and 'Baka' in kana (1). And she repeated many prayers for him,--prayers that he might be reborn into some more happy condition.

"Now, about three months ago, in the honorable residence of Nanigashi-Sama (2), in Kojimachi (3), a boy was born with characters on the palm of his left hand; and the characters were quite plain to read,--'RIKI-BAKA'!

"So the people of that house knew that the birth must have happened in answer to somebody's prayer; and they caused inquiry to be made everywhere. At last a vegetable-seller brought word to them that there used to be a simple lad, called Riki-Baka, living in the Ushigome quarter, and that he had died during the last autumn; and they sent two men-servants to look for the mother of Riki.

"Those servants found the mother of Riki, and told her what had happened; and she was glad exceedingly--for that Nanigashi house is a very rich and famous house. But the servants said that the family of Nanigashi-Sama were very angry about the word 'Baka' on the child's hand. 'And where is your Riki buried?' the servants asked. 'He is buried in the cemetery of Zendoji,' she told them. 'Please to give us some of the clay of his grave,' they requested.

"So she went with them to the temple Zendoji, and showed them Riki's grave; and they took some of the grave-clay away with them, wrapped up in a furoshiki [1].... They gave Riki's mother some money,--ten yen."... (4)

"But what did they want with that clay?" I inquired.

"Well," the old man answered, "you know that it would not do to let the child grow up with that name on his hand. And there is no other means of removing characters that come in that way upon the body of a child: you must rub the skin with clay taken from the grave of the body of the former birth."...

HI-MAWARI

On the wooded hill behind the house Robert and I are looking for fairy-rings. Robert is eight years old, comely, and very wise;--I am a little more than seven,--and I reverence Robert. It is a glowing glorious August day; and the warm air is filled with sharp sweet scents of resin.

We do not find any fairy-rings; but we find a great many pine-cones in the high gra.s.s... I tell Robert the old Welsh story of the man who went to sleep, unawares, inside a fairy-ring, and so disappeared for seven years, and would never eat or speak after his friends had delivered him from the enchantment.

"They eat nothing but the points of needles, you know," says Robert.

"Who?" I ask.

"Goblins," Robert answers.

This revelation leaves me dumb with astonishment and awe... But Robert suddenly cries out:--

"There is a Harper!--he is coming to the house!"

And down the hill we run to hear the harper... But what a harper! Not like the h.o.a.ry minstrels of the picture-books. A swarthy, st.u.r.dy, unkempt vagabond, with black bold eyes under scowling black brows. More like a bricklayer than a bard,--and his garments are corduroy!

"Wonder if he is going to sing in Welsh?" murmurs Robert.

I feel too much disappointed to make any remarks. The harper poses his harp--a huge instrument--upon our doorstep, sets all the strong ringing with a sweep of his grimy fingers, clears his throat with a sort of angry growl, and begins,--

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms, Which I gaze on so fondly to-day...

The accent, the att.i.tude, the voice, all fill me with repulsion unutterable,--shock me with a new sensation of formidable vulgarity. I want to cry out loud, "You have no right to sing that song!" For I have heard it sung by the lips of the dearest and fairest being in my little world;--and that this rude, coa.r.s.e man should dare to sing it vexes me like a mockery,--angers me like an insolence. But only for a moment!...

With the utterance of the syllables "to-day," that deep, grim voice suddenly breaks into a quivering tenderness indescribable;--then, marvelously changing, it mellows into tones sonorous and rich as the ba.s.s of a great organ,--while a sensation unlike anything ever felt before takes me by the throat... What witchcraft has he learned? what secret has he found--this scowling man of the road?... Oh! is there anybody else in the whole world who can sing like that?... And the form of the singer flickers and dims;--and the house, and the lawn, and all visible shapes of things tremble and swim before me. Yet instinctively I fear that man;--I almost hate him; and I feel myself flushing with anger and shame because of his power to move me thus...

"He made you cry," Robert compa.s.sionately observes, to my further confusion,--as the harper strides away, richer by a gift of sixpence taken without thanks... "But I think he must be a gipsy. Gipsies are bad people--and they are wizards... Let us go back to the wood."

We climb again to the pines, and there squat down upon the sun-flecked gra.s.s, and look over town and sea. But we do not play as before: the spell of the wizard is strong upon us both... "Perhaps he is a goblin,"