Fudoki Read Online Free Page B

crouched there, gathering her bearings. There was packed earth under her sore feet, a ditch beside her. She smelled the air, and then opened her mouth to taste it: smoke; horses and oxen; cooking rice and radishes; stagnant water and rotting wood; a squirrel’s musk and the tiny fresh scent of a chewed twig. She also smelled the dog who had touched her and stood nervously, salivating involuntarily at the renewed pain. She saw no dogs, but beyond the ditch was Rokujavenue. Broad as it was, it seemed (to her) filled with people and animals and wheeled conveyances. In fact, it was not a busy day: the fire had not affected this corner of the capital, except as people from the north and east came here from their own, more damaged quarters. The iroha maple above her was untouched by flame.
    She limped to a safe place under the raised floor of an ancient small building away from the road, where she inspected her front paws. The pads were sticky from blisters that had broken during her flight, and caked with ashes, dirt, shards of broken pottery, and splintered wood. The pads’ leather seemed torn away, leaving only raw flesh. She licked herself clean, biting at the clots of blood and pus that kept her claws from retracting. The pain made her queasy, and sometimes she had to stop and wait for the dizziness to ease, but after a long time her tongue found skin under the filth, and blood began to flow cleanly from the cuts and blisters, a soft comforting taste in her mouth.
    Her flank was less damaged, only a broad sore area that made her flinch when she nosed there. The exhaustion was worse: every muscle and joint and bone ached, and grooming was a slow and painful process. Once finished, she looked about her.
    A human is a reasoning creature, or so we would like to think. After disaster, we assess our situation and make plans: make sure the stored rice is untainted, rebuild the main house’s roof, borrow quilted robes from our sister until we can replace our ruined ones. The tortoiseshell’s idea was simpler: find home. She returned to the avenue, and looked about her, but everything was new, unfamiliar. She took a tentative step first one way, then the other. Nothing smelled or looked right; no way led home, to her fudoki and her cousins and aunts. She could not help the cry of sorrow that escaped her.
    She was lost, in every sense. There was only her. She recited the fudoki to herself, compulsively, one cat after another in their proper order: The Cat Who Ate Silk, The Thousand-Spotted Cat, The Cat Who Hid Things. But without a place and her cousins and aunts and fellow-wives to anchor it, the fudoki had no meaning, and the tortoiseshell was no one and nothing. She had been like a brazier balanced on three legs: tales, clan, and the ground they claimed. Each was necessary. Each was useless without the other two. Lose one, and she fell.
    She was young and not very experienced and did not understand that one cannot simply tack on a new leg. In her thinking, if she had lost one home, perhaps she could find another. If she lost her clan, surely there were other clans. If she taught them her tales, they would somehow become part of the fudoki, which would settle easily over new ground, and she would be whole again.
    Her burnt paws hurt, and she felt and smelled the beginnings of infection. She needed to find a safe range. The lot where she had cleaned her paw seemed unclaimed by any cat (or dog or human, either), but it was poorly drained, a reeking swamp even in drought. There would be food—frogs, insects; ducklings, come spring—but she would never be dry, and the heavy smells would dull her senses. The building’s support posts were spongy with moisture, riddled with beetles. Worse, there was no one here to learn the tale.
    She limped east and south.
     
     
    I cuddle pain to myself tonight. My woman Shigeko watches me in lamplight, her eyes dark with concern; but I say nothing to her, only smile and continue to write. I could