Free Fudoki by Kij Johnson Page A

before; but she took it without comment, along with the walking-stick beside them.
    She crossed the border to Mikawa province, and stopped to eat her goose meat and rice. Her hands were cold and clumsy (a mixed advantage: fingers were better than paws had been, but then paws had never felt cold, even in the rainiest weather. Still, she was young and had not lived through her first winter; she did not know the numbness that snow brings to even the most leathery of pads) and she dropped several of the rice balls. She was not a lover of rice, so she left them where they lay, hoping some edible animal would find them and grow fat and slow, ready for her should she ever return this way.
    There were few people on the Tkaidthat day. No one traveled for pleasure, and even men who must travel—for pilgrimage or with news from the provinces for the capital—find there are days when they cannot quite bring themselves to hustle about. Such a day as this—cold, wet, and monotonous—encouraged a certain lack of discipline, and everyone who could stayed inside. But the tortoiseshell woman did not travel for pleasure or because she was required to, by gods or man. She traveled because there was no reason not to, because her misery was independent of weather, and so she moved on.
    That evening it was still raining, steadily and everywhere, so she stopped in an abandoned roadside temple. (She slept much at shrines and temples: they were near the road, and they did not require her to talk with people, which became fatiguing sometimes, with their interminable chat about families.) There were no priests or monks, and not even a statue to show to which of the ten thousand Buddhas and saints the temple had been holy. All that was left was a bell the color of verdigris, its silver tassels tarnished and frayed; fading vermilion paint on the beams; and empty stone pedestals: the ghosts of Buddhas. The little stones once heaped before the statues were still here, scattered to the temple’s corners. With each step the tortoiseshell woman kicked aside now-purposeless pebbles. The roof was more cracks than shingles. Water fell through everywhere.
    Using wood she broke from a ruined screen, she started a fire on the largest pedestal. Her wicker pack held many things, it seemed, though she only found them when she needed them; one was an oiled deerskin bag with a flint, and a bundle of dust-dry grass. The fire was small but bright, for the wood had been resinous. It spat colored sparks, and hissed when rain fell into it. Smoke seeped upward and let itself out at the cracks in the roof. She shook her cloak dry, and was soon warm again.
    I cannot say quite how it was, but she was still a cat in some ways. Her robes never got as wet as they would have on a person, as if they were fur and she could shake and then groom herself dry whenever she wished. She did not know that this was not normal for people, and so she never thought of it. But I do. I have taken everything else from her: home, family, story. I know some of where she goes, into winter and conflict and more loss. And I find that I cannot make her physically miserable, as well: not tonight as she huddles in an unfamiliar body, anyway. We—the gods who create things, even we small gods who write monogatari tales—find that there are limits to our cruelty.
    She ate the last of her food from the farmer, and curled up in her cloak to sleep.
    She was dozing when something bit her hand. She killed it without waking up fully, and only after it was dead did she look at the little creature. It was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, fat, and the dead-white of rice or ghosts. When she turned it over, she saw that it had either no legs or myriad tiny legs, though she couldn’t tell which in the dim light of the dying fire. She felt another bite, on her ankle, and slapped at it, killing another of the little things. She was ready for the third one, and caught it between her hands when it sank its