Fifteen minutes later, they emerged from the white shroud into rocky mountains and pine forest. They were back in the Human World. Far below, toy-sized people bent over rice paddies.
"Oniisannn!" A child's voice came from the outcropping before them. "Oniisan...where are you? I know I haven't come to see you and I'm sorry. Please come out? Oniisan!"
"Ryoshi, I'm here." Shika said calmly. "Shush, little one."
The boy's head popped up over the edge of the cliff. He frowned as he pulled himself up. "Shika-oniisan! I'm Kojika, not Ryoshi," he whined. "Why do you keep forgetting?"
"I don't forget, little one. You'll just always be Ryoshi to me," Shika replied. The boy ran to Shika and clung to his leg. He barely came up to the deer spirit's waist.
Chihiro stared at the sight of his bright red cheeks and grubby little hands and feet. He couldn’t have been more than five years old. She looked down over the edge of the rock and grabbed Risuni to keep from feeling like she would fall over the edge. A landslide had created the pile of rocks that the boy had climbed up; solid ground was at least twenty feet below. “Should he be climbing up here all by himself?” she whispered to Risuni.
“His parents know he’s up here,” Risuni replied.
“But isn’t it dangerous?” Chihiro said.
“The whole village grows up this way,” Risuni said, smiling. “I did. Look, I still have all of my limbs. Don’t worry.” She turned to the boy. "Ryoshi!" she called. The boy looked around Shika's legs at them all.
"Cousin Risuni!" He ran over and she picked him up into a hug and swung him around. "Not you, too," he said.
"Alright, Koji," she laughed. "You've grown so big!"
"Hi, Uncle and Auntie," he said, still in Risuni's arms, and then stuck a dirty hand into his mouth.
"Kojika," Suzume said in mock despair, "aren't you getting too big to be eating your fingers?" He shook his head, and his hand slipped out of his mouth.
"Mommy says it'll make me sick, but the doctor told me that it’s okay to eat dirt sometimes," he said, and stuck his hand right back in.
“Your Uncle and I need to stop by the shrine and see Grandfather. Will you take Risuni and her friends down to the village for us?” Suzume asked, smiling.
“Sure!” he said, grinning. He wriggled out of the Risuni’s arms, and ran down the path gleefully. The adults followed, more slowly. The rock path, covered in a thin layer of pine needles, was steep and winding. Chihiro felt like a klutz walking along with her mincing steps next to the sure steps of the others. Kojika reminded her of a mountain hare, bounding here and there along the narrow path with no care for the steep drop.
“Bounce a little,” Risuni advised after the third time she slipped on the pine needles and was only prevented from tumbling down the mountain by Haku grabbing her arm. “It won’t be as slippery if you tamp down the needles before you step.”
After some time Kojika complained that he was tired and asked to be carried. Shika sighed and bent down, motioning for the little boy to get on his back, which Koji did with enthusiasm. He chattered happily, pointing out birds and fox dens along the way, and telling them all about the chicks that were hatching at home and how Mommy was going to let him keep one. At a paved courtyard with two shrines, Risuni’s parents waved and split off from the group to walk into the larger shrine at the center of the courtyard. Chihiro caught a glimpse of a statue beyond the darkened doorway before the headache she was starting to recognize started coming back. By this point, Koji had fallen asleep.
As they walked back down the mountain to the village, Chihiro wondered aloud about the neglected, smaller shrine to the side. Shika grimaced.
"It’s Shika’s,” Risuni explained. “We built it for him when he was born. It's traditional. But Shika would rather run around the mountain and befriend the children of the village than be worshipped in a shrine like a 'proper' spirit," she teased.
"It makes me feel old," Shika said, adjusting the position of the sleeping boy he was piggy-backing. "It's much more interesting to do Tenryu’s dirty work." Tenryu, Chihiro thought, feeling a slight twinge of now familiar pain. I have to try to remember.
Chihiro was more curious about something else. "Spirits are born?" she asked.
"Born, created, come into being. It's complicated. You humans come together, you mate, have babies. Simple,” Shika said. Risuni rolled her eyes. “It can take any number of spirits to create a mountain, a forest, or a river, and there's never any guarantee that a spirit will be born. No one knows what will work until - poof - baby spirit."
“In other words, we have no idea,” Haku said drily. “No one has bothered to figure it out, because it hadn’t been a problem until the last few millennia. Spirits used to be born all the time, and then mostly left to their own devices.”
"So do spirits have family? Parents?"
"Technically, yes," Haku said. "But spirits aren’t much for “parenting.”It’s not in our nature. Before, many spirits grew up never having even met their parents. Familial units didn’t exist, and even now, they’re more political constructs than what humans regard as families."
"Spirit children are rare these days, and no one knows why," Shika said, "but that means it’s become a huge honor to be a parent. Children are status symbols. Having a powerful child, like Tenryu, is a mark of high status, whereas having a child like me is a...well..."
"A disappointment?" Haku suggested, smiling knowingly.
"To put it mildly," Shika said. "Being worshipped is power. Being befriended is a disgrace."
"Being killed," Haku said, "is also a disgrace. To put it mildly."
They laughed, but Chihiro saw that the shadow was back in Haku’s eyes.
They came to the village before they knew it. One second the village was below them, the next, they were walking between wooden houses. Shika set Kojika down and bid them goodbye, promising to be back in the evening.
Risuni looked at Haku, who had hesitated. “Coming with us?” she asked.
He looked at Shika, and then toward Chihiro, and shook his head. He watched them walk away into the village.
Risuni called out to the old men and women sitting in their living rooms, the paneled doors wide open to the narrow street. They waved and greeted the girls, and called into houses to summon the household children. Soon, Chihiro and Risuni had an entourage following them.
“They don’t have school?” Chihiro asked.
“Not until they’re seven,” Risuni replied.
“Are they all related to you?” Chihiro said, astonished.
Risuni laughed. “Maybe half of them, and distantly,” she said. “When younger people move away, sometimes they hire people to work the fields and look after the older folks, and these workers often bring their families here. Some stay.”
Risuni led them, winding between the houses, until they came to one that was closed and shuttered. She produced a key and unlocked the wooden doors, pushing the panels aside to reveal a living room that could’ve been identical to any of the ones they’d passed. An older woman came, pulled by the hand by one of the children. She smiled and called out to Risuni, and held up a bucket full of rags. She handed the bucket to one of the older children and sent her behind the house to draw water.
By the time the child returned from the well, they had opened up the doors and windows of the house, and together with the children, they took the dampened rags and raced through the house, cleaning the dust from the floor. The house filled with shouted arguments and laughter. Chihiro was amazed by the scene, but she reined it in and focused on the work. The work felt good and familiar in her body, and it was good to stop thinking and to do something so simple. As they worked, other villagers came by with news, with food, or just to say hello. Risuni introduced Chihiro to each of them, and many of the older people commented on how comfortable a city girl like her seemed to feel cleaning the Japanese way. They said it with good-natured laughter and a teasing smile, making Chihiro blush and smile in return. She thought about her neighbors back home whom she had rarely spoken to, and who ignored her in return, and shook her head.
After they and the children had cleaned off the floors, they sat on the still-damp floor with legs dangling off the edge together eating rice cakes that one parent had brought and fruit brought by another. Chihiro was again astonished and delighted by this easy camaraderie, and found herself chatting easily. After this impromptu lunch, most of the children ran off to their own chores at home. The ones who stayed helped to open up the closets and take out the furniture that was stored there. They dusted the furniture off and placed them around the house. They were just placing clothing into drawers when Risuni’s parents returned with bags of fresh produce. They thanked the children and invited them all to stay for dinner.
They crowded around the small low table piled high with food in the living room, and ate, and talked. Risuni’s parents asked the village children for news of their families, and the children begged Risuni and Chihiro for tales of stores and skyscrapers in the big city. As the children fought over the last helpings of everything on the table, Chihiro looked around at the joyful chaos around her, and wondered why she had never felt that at home, or even at school. Then she realized: there was no television in the corner, and no phones in the hands of the children. They only had each other.
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