At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories Read Online Free

and blackened wood, with great eaves. In the shadow of a half-moon bridge I leapt a narrow stream; I slid past an ornamental rock covered with lichens and into a small willow tree that slumped down to brush the short grasses that grew near the house. Lost in the green and silver leaves, I crouched there and watched. Or I hid in a patch of glossy rhododendron. Or under the floor of the house itself; there were many places for a fox to conceal herself.
    I watched whenever I could, longing for glimpses of my lord or the sound of his voice; but he was often gone, hunting with his friends or traveling in the course of his duties. There were times, even, when he stayed out all night and returned just before dawn with a foreign scent clinging to his clothes and a strange woman’s fan or comb in his hand. It was his right and his responsibility, to live a man’s life—I understood that.
    Still, I felt a little sorry for his wife. Her rooms were the innermost of the north wing, with layers of shoji screens and bamboo blinds and curtains-of-state between us, but it was the seventh month, and she left as many of these open as she decently could, and sometimes I saw her, almost lost in the shadows of the dark-eaved house. She had a handful of women: they played children’s games with tops and hoops; they practiced their calligraphy; they wrote poems; they called out the plaited-palm carriages and went to the monastery and listened to the sutras being read. It seemed clear that all these things were merely to fill her time until Yoshifuji came to her. Her life was full of twilight and waiting, but I envied her for the moments he did spend with her.
    And then Shikibu left to visit her father’s family in the capital. She took her women and many servants, including the fat cook. The house was very still and empty. Yoshifuji was home even less often, but when he was there, he was almost always alone. He spent a lot of time writing, taking great care with his brushwork. Most evenings at twilight, he walked through the formal garden and into the woods, to follow a sharp-smelling cedar path that led between two shrines. I paced his walks in the woods and tried to see his expression in the dusk.
    There was one night when I crouched under the willow. My lord sat alone in a room with the screen walls pushed back. I think he was just looking at the garden in the moonlight; maybe he was drinking sake as well. His face was lit by the red coals of a brazier and by the reflected blue light of the full moon. My heart hurt, a sad heavy weight in my breast. Tears matted my cheek fur.
    A shadow slid past the ornamental rock and settled next to me. Grandfather touched his nose to the tears and to my ribs, which belled out without flesh to soften them.
    “You will die,” he said. “Without food, you’ll waste away.”
    “I don’t care. I love this man.”
    He was silent for a while. “Nevertheless,” he finally said.
    “Grandfather. We are foxes and we have magic. Can we bring him to us?”
    “Is this what you want?”
    “Yes. Or I will die.”
    “If you want this, we will do what we must,” Grandfather said, and left me.
     
    The magic was hard to make. We worked a long time on it. I am a fox, but my grandfather and mother made me a maiden, too. My hair was as black and smooth as water over slate, and fell past my layered silk robes. One night I looked at myself in a puddle of water. My face was as round and pale as the moon, which delighted me.
    My grandfather made me a small white ball, which glowed in the shadows. I looked at him curiously.
    “For playing,” he said. “You’re a maiden. You can’t just wrestle with your brother anymore. A ball like that is traditional for a fox maiden.”
    “I don’t like playing with a ball.”
    “You don’t know yet if you do or not. Put it in your sleeve. You will want it sooner or later. It will pass the time.”
    We made the space beneath the storehouse a many-roomed house, with floors and