Free The Heavenward Path by Kara Dalkey Page A

the part of our Esteemed Ancestor. What human maiden would weep for a tengu, after all?"
        "I do."
        Kuroihane closed his eyes and bowed. "Clearly our Prince Goranu was right, and you are a creature extraordinary for your kind."
        Goranu sighed deeply, and I looked down. He had closed his eyes, and his hands fell limp from mine.
        "Ai, no!" I cried, fearing the worst.
        Kuroihane pried open one of Goranu's eyelids, then turned to me with a sardonic look. "Silly girl. He is only sleeping. He has been up for many hours reading your stupid sutra, after all." The tengu took Goranu from my lap and laid him out on the floor, covering him with a cloak. "Thank you for helping him," said Kuroihane at last. "Now get out before you cause more trouble."
        "Will he… be all right?"
        "If he can forget about you and your foolish religion, he will be fine. Now go."
        Stung by the tengu's rudeness, I said nothing, and hurried out of the hut.
        Though it was bright late morning, I saw no other tengu in the village. It appeared deserted, so I presumed all the rest were sleeping. I walked down the path through the center of the village, wondering what to do. Even though I had saved Goranu, the other tengu were not very grateful. I doubted that I could ask any of them for help with my debts to Lord Chomigoto. I was so tired and hungry that I began to consider searching for the nearest graveyard and simply giving myself up to Lord Emma-O. It would be pleasing to be free of this world and its weighty problems, even if it meant dwelling in the Hell of Headlong Falling for a time, until my soul could move on.
        "Help?" I heard from not far away. "Please let me out of here." It was not a tengu voice-in fact, it sounded familiar. I looked around and saw a tall tree behind one of the huts. There seemed to be something like a large cage hanging from one of its branches.
        Lifting the hems of my kimonos, I ran around the hut and saw there was a girl in the cage. She turned her head to look at me.
        "Suzume?" I cried in astonishment.
        "Oh, Great Lady Little Mountain Puddle! I knew you would find me. Please get me out of this." She shook the bars of her bamboo cage.
        I walked up, but the cage was too high, just out of my reach. "I cannot. Oh, Suzume, how did you get here?"
        "I will tell you everything, but please get me out!"
        I looked around and saw an old man, or a tengu in old-man form, emerge from the nearest hut. "Venerable Sir," I said to him, in what I hoped were fine and imperious tones like my mama once used. "Would you please be so helpful as to release my servant from this cage?"
        "Who, her?" From the old man's cackle, I could tell he was a tengu. "She is yours, is she? How very interesting. Perhaps you would like to know why she is caged in a tengu village, eh?"
        "I will listen avidly to all you say, as soon as you release her!"
        "Nope. Can't do that."
        "But I am a Fujiwara, and I demand it!"
        This sent the tengu in old-man form into howling laughter, and his body shook so with his ha-has and hee-hees that he had to sit down on the ground. I wanted to pummel him. But that would have been entirely unsuitable, so I pulled my hair instead. "I do not see what is amusing. Release her at once!"
        This only made the old-man tengu hoot louder, and he grabbed his knees to his chest and rolled on the ground as he laughed.
        "Forgive my observation if it is rude," said Suzume, "but I do not think your method is working. Ah, here comes a bird- man. Maybe you can make him laugh, too."
        I turned before I could snap at Suzume and saw a tengu in the strange half-man-half-raven form, with both wings and arms, and a beak. "Can't help disrupting things wherever you go, can you?" he said to me.
        So it was Kuroihane. "I meant no disruption," I said. "But this is my servant who is