course,” my father boomed. “One of my fastest wani will carry you home. But before you go, please accept this gift from me.” With these words, my father produced two jewels, the size of a bream’s head, one green, and one pink.
Hoori accepted the gifts with tremulous hands.
My father explained. “The green one is a tide-raising jewel Shiomitsu-Tama, and the other is the tide-lowering jewel Shiohuru-Tama. Use them if you need them.”
I smiled at both of them through my tears. In my naiveté, I thought that the jewels were to make our meetings easier, so that Hoori could bring the sea to his doorstep and me with it. But I was wrong.
When Hoori returned home, born on the back of our swiftest shark, he discovered that Hoderi had a hidden purpose in sending him away to find his hook. While Hoori was away, Hoderi had taken over the land, installing himself as an Emperor, usurping Hoori’s place. I do not know what it is that men usually do to hurt each other; but I do know that Hoori used Shiomitsu-Tama, the jewel of flow, to call the ocean forth and flood his brother’s fields, poisoning the land with salt, to steal the breath of Hoderi’s men. The ocean flowed onto the land, drowned the fields and people who worked in them, until it rose all the way to the doorstep of Hoderi no mikoto’s house.
And we, the inhabitants of the ocean, we suffered too. The ocean fell so low that many of the shallow places were exposed, killing the coral and the slow starfish and sea urchins. Jellyfish flopped on the exposed rocks and collapsed into sad puddles of death. The secret grotto grew too shallow for the snails, and they fled, their mantles rustling on the dry sand. That was the price of your triumph.
And when you succeeded in subduing your willful sibling, you lowered the tides, filling back the ocean. Oh, how happy we were that day, and how we mourned those we had lost! But there was little time for mourning; it was time for our child to be born.
Tamayoribime and I dressed in our finest silks and mounted our loyal whale who took us to the shores of your country. Tamayoribime sang and tried to make conversation, laughing a little desperately, trying to recapture the carefree days of our childhood and failing. Soon, she gave up, leaving me to my thoughts. I worried if you remembered to build the hut and fretted that you wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to look. And I felt guilty about my deception, about hiding my true nature from you, but when one was born a princess, a daughter of the Sea kami, one was bound to have some secrets even one’s husband was not meant know.
The night had descended, setting the ocean aflame with many tiny candles lit for us by the tiniest of our subjects, and they reflected in the fine sky canopy of black velvet stretching far above us. The roaring of the waves signaled that the shore was close, and anxiously I searched the outline of the dark beach against the darker sky for the sign of my beloved. I saw a flickering of a lantern mounted on the cormorant-feathered roof of a hut. The hut was small but warm and dry and richly decorated on the inside. You waited for me there, and the moment our hands met I felt the first pangs of birth pain.
Tamayoribime ushered you outside, into the darkness, where the waves crashed on the shore with a hungry roar and the air tasted of salt spumes. When she returned, she wiped the sweat off my forehead and comforted me as the contractions grew stronger, and I was no longer able to maintain my human form.
My hair unwound like the seaweed in the current and fell off, and my nose elongated as my mouth jutted forward, pushed wide open by the gleaming triangular teeth. My smooth skin turned into sand and leather, my arms turned into fins, and my legs fused into a muscular tail armored with a crescent fin. As a shark, I writhed in agony of childbirth, my entire body convulsing and my tail whipping the tatami covering the earthen f loor.
Just as the head
Hoori accepted the gifts with tremulous hands.
My father explained. “The green one is a tide-raising jewel Shiomitsu-Tama, and the other is the tide-lowering jewel Shiohuru-Tama. Use them if you need them.”
I smiled at both of them through my tears. In my naiveté, I thought that the jewels were to make our meetings easier, so that Hoori could bring the sea to his doorstep and me with it. But I was wrong.
When Hoori returned home, born on the back of our swiftest shark, he discovered that Hoderi had a hidden purpose in sending him away to find his hook. While Hoori was away, Hoderi had taken over the land, installing himself as an Emperor, usurping Hoori’s place. I do not know what it is that men usually do to hurt each other; but I do know that Hoori used Shiomitsu-Tama, the jewel of flow, to call the ocean forth and flood his brother’s fields, poisoning the land with salt, to steal the breath of Hoderi’s men. The ocean flowed onto the land, drowned the fields and people who worked in them, until it rose all the way to the doorstep of Hoderi no mikoto’s house.
And we, the inhabitants of the ocean, we suffered too. The ocean fell so low that many of the shallow places were exposed, killing the coral and the slow starfish and sea urchins. Jellyfish flopped on the exposed rocks and collapsed into sad puddles of death. The secret grotto grew too shallow for the snails, and they fled, their mantles rustling on the dry sand. That was the price of your triumph.
And when you succeeded in subduing your willful sibling, you lowered the tides, filling back the ocean. Oh, how happy we were that day, and how we mourned those we had lost! But there was little time for mourning; it was time for our child to be born.
Tamayoribime and I dressed in our finest silks and mounted our loyal whale who took us to the shores of your country. Tamayoribime sang and tried to make conversation, laughing a little desperately, trying to recapture the carefree days of our childhood and failing. Soon, she gave up, leaving me to my thoughts. I worried if you remembered to build the hut and fretted that you wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to look. And I felt guilty about my deception, about hiding my true nature from you, but when one was born a princess, a daughter of the Sea kami, one was bound to have some secrets even one’s husband was not meant know.
The night had descended, setting the ocean aflame with many tiny candles lit for us by the tiniest of our subjects, and they reflected in the fine sky canopy of black velvet stretching far above us. The roaring of the waves signaled that the shore was close, and anxiously I searched the outline of the dark beach against the darker sky for the sign of my beloved. I saw a flickering of a lantern mounted on the cormorant-feathered roof of a hut. The hut was small but warm and dry and richly decorated on the inside. You waited for me there, and the moment our hands met I felt the first pangs of birth pain.
Tamayoribime ushered you outside, into the darkness, where the waves crashed on the shore with a hungry roar and the air tasted of salt spumes. When she returned, she wiped the sweat off my forehead and comforted me as the contractions grew stronger, and I was no longer able to maintain my human form.
My hair unwound like the seaweed in the current and fell off, and my nose elongated as my mouth jutted forward, pushed wide open by the gleaming triangular teeth. My smooth skin turned into sand and leather, my arms turned into fins, and my legs fused into a muscular tail armored with a crescent fin. As a shark, I writhed in agony of childbirth, my entire body convulsing and my tail whipping the tatami covering the earthen f loor.
Just as the head
Similar Books
