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

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    “Sad,” Brother said. “What do you expect?”
    I shook my head, then remembered he couldn’t see me. I was behind my curtain-of-state. As always. “I hoped she would feel better in time.”
    “How can she?” he said. “It is years you have had Yoshifuji beside you. Out there he’s only been missing for a few days.”
    I dropped my ball and it rolled across the floor. “How can that be?”
    Brother’s sigh was impatient. “When were you out last, Sister?”
    “I don’t know. Before the boy was born, anyway.”
    “Why not?” He sounded shocked. “Why aren’t you going out? Are you sick? I know you were nursing but the kit’s weaned.”
    “I like to be here when my husband is around.”
    “We used to play, Sister, just you and me. Remember? We would run in the woods, and at night we’d hunt mice in the formal garden and play Pounce in the Shadows. What happened to you?”
    “Nothing,” I said, but I lied when I said this. So much had happened to me, how could I start?
    “Then come outside with me. Now.” Brother jumped up and knocked the curtain over. I looked up at him, too shocked to hide my face with my sleeve. He caught my hand and pulled me to my feet. My son looked up at us. I gestured to his nurse, who picked him up and took him from the room.
    “Very well,” I said. “We’ll be foxes together.”
    Crawling out of my woman’s form this time was excruciating, as though it were my own skin I pulled off. My brother’s muzzle pressed against mine, I hunched over until the sense of loss eased. When I felt a little better, I lifted my head and left the space under the storehouse.
    It was early evening. The moon was nearly full and the stars were washed out with its brightness in the east and the dying colors in the west. We traveled across the formal garden, moving in the trees’ shadows. When I leapt across the stream beside the half-moon bridge, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the moving water, and it startled me enough that I stumbled when I landed and rolled into a ball.
    Brother stopped and nosed at me. “What’s wrong?” he whispered. I shook my head, the gesture coming uneasily to my fox’s body. I did not tell him that I had seen a woman in my reflection.
    There were already lights in the house: torches set along the verandas, and braziers and lamps in the rooms despite the night’s summer heat. Many of the sliding walls were open. I watched moths fly in and die in the house’s many flames.
    The north suite of rooms, Shikibu’s rooms, were dimly lit. I crept up almost to the veranda and looked in. I couldn’t see her, but I saw her sleeve half exposed beneath her curtain-of-state. A priest knelt before the curtain chanting a sutra. The night’s breeze pushed aside one of the curtains; before one of her women could pull it back in place, I saw Shikibu, listless and sad in the gloom.
    The house’s main rooms were full of light. My husband’s other son stood with two older men in traveling clothes, men who looked like brothers to Shikibu. They had brought a tree-trunk segment as tall as a man, and they clustered around it, with a Buddhist priest and many servants crowded in the garden watching. Everyone was dressed strangely; in mourning, I realized. It surprised me—no one was dead—until I realized it must be my lord they were mourning. I found that funny but something hurt quite incredibly in my chest at the thought.
    The boy chipped at the tree trunk with a chisel and mallet.
    “What can they be doing?” my brother whispered. “How eccentric humans are.”
    “I don’t like this, whatever it is,” I said.
    “Come up closer. Let’s see at least what it is.” My brother crawled forward on his belly.
    “Brother!” I hissed but he didn’t turn around, so I followed him.
    The boy in the hall passed the chisel and mallet to one of Shikibu’s brothers.
    “Finished, Tadasada?” the man said.
    I squinted at the wood: close