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

beams worn to a glow from servants’ constant rubbing; and trunks and lacquered boxes filled with silk robes and tortoiseshell combs, porcelain bowls and silver chopsticks, Michinoka paper and bamboo-handled brushes and cakes of ink, a ceremonial tea set glazed to look like pebbles seen underwater. No, we did not make these things, exactly: it was still just bare dirt and a dry little hole. But we made it seem as if it were so. I can’t explain.
    We filled the house with many beautiful things, and then we made a garden around the place filled with stones and ponds and thick bushes. It would have been a fox’s dream had I still been a fox. We placed a sun, a moon, stars, just like the real ones. We made many servants, all quick and quiet and clever.
    And we made my family human. My brother became small and exquisite, with narrow poet’s hands. We made my mother slender with a single streak of silver in the black hair that fell to her knees. And Grandfather was very handsome. He wore russet robes with small medallions on each sleeve; when I bent close to see what they represented, he smiled and pulled away. “Fox paws,” he said.
    I sat in a billow of skirts and sleeves behind a red and green curtain-of-state. I had a fan painted with a poem I didn’t understand in one hand; I kept staring with wonder at the way the fan snapped open and then shut, and at the quick gestures of my human fingers that made this happen. My family was arranged around me: my mother behind the curtain with me, Brother and Grandfather decently on the other side. Mother had a flea; I saw fox-her lift a hind leg and scratch behind one ear, and, like a reflection on water over a passing fish, I saw woman-her raise one long hand and discreetly ease herself.
    “Mother,” I said, shocked. “What if he sees both?”
    She looked ashamed and Grandfather asked what was going on. I explained and he laughed. “He won’t. He is a man; he’ll see what he wants to see. Are you happy, Granddaughter?”
    “It is all beautiful, I think. But my lord does not love me.”
    “Yet.” Grandfather cackled. “I’m enjoying this. It’s too long since I got into mischief—not since I was a kit, and my brothers and I used to lure travelers into the marshes with fire in our tails.”
    I heard Brother sigh. I longed to see his expression, but the curtain separated us. Grandfather said: “Be respectful, Grandson. Be as human as you can, for your sister’s sake.”
    Brother replied, “Why can’t she be happy as a fox? We played and ran and I thought we were happy.”
    “Because she loves a man,” Mother said. “We are doing this for her.”
    “I know,” Brother said. “I will try to be a good brother to her, and a good son and grandson to yourselves.”
    “This man will help us all,” Grandfather said. “He will be a good provider, and perhaps he will find you a position in the government somewhere.”
    “I will try to be dutiful and satisfy all your expectations,” my brother said. He didn’t sound dutiful, only melancholy.
    “Well,” said Grandfather. “Granddaughter, are you ready for the next step?”
    “Grandfather, I will do anything.”
    “Then go tonight. Walk in the woods, and when Yoshifuji comes out, let things happen as they may.”
     
    I left the beautiful house—which meant I crawled from our dusty little hole—in the company of several ladies-in-waiting. There was a fox-path that appeared to lead through gardens and over a stream to the cedar forest-path, but it was really just passage through some thick weeds behind the storehouse. We moved down to the cedar path and walked there in the twilight.
    He came. My fox-eyes saw him before he saw me. He was in house-dress, simple silk robes without elaborate dyed patterns. He wore no hat but his queue was arranged just as it should be. His face was sad—missing his wife, I imagined, as well he might, she was so pretty and gentle. What was I doing, stealing him like this? Now she